From classifying immigrants as dead to deportation: A guide to actions on Trump immigration policies

President Donald Trump's immigration agenda is playing out in numerous ways Friday, from hearings in key cases on the government's power to deport people to the start of a registry required for all those who are in the country illegally.

And on Thursday, immigration developments came on multiple fronts as federal officials work on the president's promise to carry out mass deportations and double down on his authority to do so. The Supreme Court ruled in the case of a mistakenly deported man, and the administration's classification of thousands of living immigrants as dead came to light.

Here is a breakdown of some of what has happened so far and what is ahead.

An immigration judge in Louisiana decided Friday that Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil can be kicked out of the U.S. as a national security risk.

Immigration Judge Jamee E. Comans presided over a hearing over the legality of deporting the activist who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

The government’s contention that Khalil’s presence in the United States posed “potentially serious foreign policy consequences” was enough to satisfy requirements for his deportation, Comans said.

Lawyers for Khalil said Khalil will appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals, and that lawyers can also pursue an asylum case on Khalil's behalf. And a federal judge in New Jersey has temporarily barred Khalil’s deportation.

Khalil, a legal U.S. resident, was detained by federal immigration agents on March 8 in the lobby of his university-owned apartment, the first arrest under Trump’s promised crackdown on students who joined campus protests against the war in Gaza.

The Supreme Court on Thursday said the Trump administration must work to bring back a Maryland man mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a Salvadoran citizen who had an immigration court order preventing his deportation to his native country over fears he would face persecution from local gangs. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported him anyway to El Salvador, where he's been held in a notorious prison.

At a Friday hearing, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said it is “extremely troubling” that a government lawyer couldn’t explain what, if anything, the Trump administration has done to arrange for Abrego Garcia's return. The U.S. attorneys told Xinis they haven’t had enough time to review the Supreme Court ruling and struggled to provide information about Abrego Garcia's exact whereabouts.

“I’m not asking for state secrets,” Xinis said. “The government was prohibited from sending him to El Salvador, and now I’m asking a very simple question: Where is he?”

Xinis ordered daily updates on plans to bring Abrego Garcia back.

Also Friday, a federal judge sided with the Trump administration in refusing to block immigration agents from conducting enforcement operations at houses of worship.

U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich found that there have been only a handful of such enforcement actions and that the plaintiffs — more than two dozen Christian and Jewish groups representing millions of Americans — hadn't shown the kind of legal harm for a preliminary injunction.

The groups argued that the policy violated the right to practice religion. They said attendance has declined significantly since Trump took office.

But Friedrich said they didn't show the drops were linked to the church policy.

A Tufts University doctoral student from Turkey said she was talking to her mother on her phone at the time she was detained by immigration enforcement officials.

Rumeysa Ozturk said in a document filed Thursday by her lawyers in federal court that she had just left her Massachusetts home on March 25 when she was surrounded by several men, and “I screamed.”

Ozturk, 30, has since been moved to a detention center in Louisiana. Her lawyers say detention violates her constitutional rights, including free speech and due process.

Ozturk is among several people with ties to American universities who attended demonstrations or publicly expressed support for Palestinians during the war in Gaza and who recently had visas revoked or have been stopped from entering the U.S.

A federal judge said Thursday that she will prevent the Trump administration from ordering hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans with temporary legal status to leave the country later this month.

More than 500,000 people came to the country under the Biden-era program. They were facing an April 24 deadline by which their work permits would be terminated, and they could be subject to deportation.

The program was launched as the Biden administration was generally trying to alleviate pressure on the southern border by creating new pathways for people to come to the U.S. and work, usually for two years on humanitarian parole.

The government is likely to appeal.

Federal judges in New York and Texas ruled Friday that temporary restraining orders to stop the removal of Venezuelans from the U.S. would expand to protect more people in those states.

The rulings come in class-action lawsuits filed to halt the government from removing Venezuelans accused of being gang members under the Alien Enemies Act. The judges granted temporary restraining orders earlier this week that prevented the U.S. government from removing Venezuelans held at a detention facility in Raymondville, Texas, and those held within the federal jurisdiction of the Southern District of New York.

On Friday, Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. in Texas broadened his ruling to protect all Venezuelans detained in his judicial district, which includes the cities of Houston and Galveston, among others. Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein in the Manhattan federal court changed his order to include protection for “individuals subject to the Presidential Proclamation who are in state or local custody.”

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled the administration can resume removals under the Alien Enemies Act, but detainees first must be afforded due process, including reasonable time to argue to a judge that they should not be removed.

Friday marks the launch of a requirement for people who are in the country illegally to register with the federal government.

Homeland Security announced Feb. 25 that it was mandating all people in the U.S. illegally register with the federal government, and said those who didn’t self-report could face fines or prosecution. People will be required to carry registration documents with them.

Opponents sued to stop the registry from taking effect, saying the government should have gone through the more lengthy public notification process, and that it’s enforcing this simply to facilitate Trump’s aim of mass deportations.

On Thursday, a federal judge sided with the administration. Officials had argued they were simply enforcing a requirement that already existed for everyone who is in the country but isn’t an American citizen and have emphasized that going forward, the registration requirement would be enforced to the fullest.

The Trump administration has said between 2.2 million and 3.2 million people could be affected.

In an effort to make more migrants voluntarily go home, the Trump administration is classifying more than 6,000 immigrants — who are alive — as dead. Officials are canceling the immigrants' Social Security numbers and effectively wiping out their ability to work or receive benefits in the U.S. That is according to two people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plans had not yet been publicly detailed.

The move will make it much harder for those affected to use banks or other basic services where Social Security numbers are required.

The officials said stripping Social Security numbers will cut the immigrants off from many financial services and encourage them to “self-deport.”

It wasn’t clear how the immigrants were chosen. But the Trump White House has targeted people in the country temporarily under Biden-era programs.

Earlier this week, the departments of Homeland Security and Treasury signed a deal allowing the IRS to share immigrants’ tax data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to identify and deport people illegally in the U.S.

Associated Press reporters Rebecca Santana, Jake Offenhartz, Will Weissert, Fatima Hussein, Mark Sherman, Michael Kunzelman, Lindsay Whitehurst and Michael Casey contributed.

Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia of Maryland, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, speaks during a news conference at CASA's Multicultural Center in Hyattsville, Md., Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Supporters hold up signs as Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia of Maryland, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, speaks during a news conference at CASA's Multicultural Center in Hyattsville, Md., Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

An aerial view of the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Facility in Jena, La., Tuesday, April 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

FILE - In this photo provided by El Salvador's presidential press office, a prison guard transfers deportees from the U.S., alleged to be Venezuelan gang members, to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, March 16, 2025. (El Salvador presidential press office via AP, File)

The relatives of Venezuelan migrants in the U.S. who were flown to a prison in El Salvador by the U.S. government who alleged they were members of the Tren de Aragua gang, protest outside of the United Nations building in Caracas, Venezuela, Wednesday, April 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

Two former attorneys and an aide who all worked on President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign were scheduled to appear Monday for a preliminary hearing in Wisconsin on felony forgery charges related to a fake elector scheme.

The Wisconsin case is moving forward even as others in the battleground states of Michigan and Georgia have faltered. A special prosecutor last year dropped a federal case alleging Trump conspired to overturn the 2020 election. Another case in Nevada is still alive.

The hearing comes a week after Trump attorney Jim Troupis, one of the three who were charged, tried unsuccessfully to get the judge to step down in the case and have it moved to another county. Troupis, who served one year as a judge in the same county where he was charged, also alleged that all of the judges in Dane County are biased against him and he can’t get a fair trial.

Here's the latest:

The fight over California’s new congressional map designed to help Democrats flip congressional House seats will go to court Monday as a panel of federal judges considers whether the district boundaries approved by voters last month can be used in elections.

The hearing in Los Angeles sets the stage for a high-stakes legal and political fight between the Trump administration and Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who’s been eyeing a 2028 presidential run. The lawsuit asks a three-judge panel to grant a temporary restraining order by Dec. 19 — the date candidates can take the first official steps to run in the 2026 election.

Voters approved California’s new U.S. House map in November through Proposition 50. It’s designed to help Democrats flip as many as five congressional House seats in the midterm elections next year. It was Newsom’s response to a Republican-led effort in Texas backed by President Donald Trump.

▶ Read more about California’s redistricting effort

Even though Republican Brian Jack is only a first-term congressman, he has become a regular in the Oval Office these days. As the top recruiter for his party’s House campaign team, the Georgia native is often reviewing polling and biographies of potential candidates with Trump.

Lauren Underwood, an Illinois congresswoman who does similar work for Democrats, has no such West Wing invitation. She is at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue working the phones to identify and counsel candidates she hopes can erase Republicans’ slim House majority in November’s midterm elections.

Although they have little in common, both lawmakers were forged by the lessons of 2018, when Democrats flipped dozens of Republican-held seats to turn the rest of Trump’s first term into a political crucible. Underwood won her race that year, and Jack became responsible for dealing with the fallout when he became White House political director a few months later.

Underwood wants a repeat in 2026, and Jack is trying to stand in her way.

▶ Read more about Underwood and Jack

The Arizona Democrat is emerging as a crucial surrogate for a party desperately seeking to win back the Latino support that slipped in 2024 with the election of President Trump. His fall travels have included trips to New Jersey, Virginia and Florida, where he campaigned for Democrats who went on to win their elections. Strategists say Gallego is flexing his muscle as a rising star for the party while also laying the groundwork for a 2028 presidential run despite not being a household name like California Gov. Gavin Newsom or U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

It’s a role Gallego is expected to continue next year, when Democrats hope to break Republicans’ hold on Congress and counter Trump’s agenda.

“Ruben Gallego is going to be our not-so-secret, secret weapon,” said Maria Cardona, a longtime Democratic operative and member of the Democratic National Committee.

Gallego is among the Democrats named as possible 2028 contenders who had the busiest travel calendar in 2025. He stumped for Democratic female candidates in New Jersey’s and Virginia’s gubernatorial races and Miami’s mayoral race.

▶ Read more about Gallego

Trump said Saturday that “there will be very serious retaliation” after two U.S. service members and one American civilian were killed in an attack in Syria that the United States blames on the Islamic State group.

“This was an ISIS attack against the U.S., and Syria, in a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them,” he said in a social media post.

The American president told reporters at the White House that Syria’s president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, was “devastated by what happened” and stressed that Syria was fighting alongside U.S. troops. Trump, in his post, said al-Sharaa was “extremely angry and disturbed by this attack.”

U.S. Central Command said three service members were also wounded in the ambush Saturday by a lone IS member in central Syria. Trump said the three “seem to be doing pretty well.” The U.S. military said the gunman was killed in the attack. Syrian officials said the attack wounded members of Syria’s security forces as well.

▶ Read more about the attack

Two former attorneys and an aide who all worked on Trump’s 2020 campaign were scheduled to appear Monday for a preliminary hearing in Wisconsin on felony forgery charges related to a fake elector scheme.

The hearing on Monday comes a week after Trump attorney Jim Troupis, one of the three who were charged, tried unsuccessfully to get the judge to step down in the case and have it moved to another county. Troupis, who was joined by the other two defendants in his motion, alleged that the judge did not write a previous order issued in August declining to dismiss the case. Instead, he accused the father of the judge’s law clerk, who was a retired judge, of actually writing the opinion.

Troupis, who served one year as a judge in the same county where he was charged, also alleged that all of the judges in Dane County are biased against him and he can’t get a fair trial.

▶ Read more about the hearing

President Donald Trump talks to reporters as arrives on the South Lawn of the White House, Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025, after attending the Army-Navy game. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

President Donald Trump talks to reporters as he departs from the South Lawn of the White House, Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025, in Washington, en route to Baltimore to attend the Army-Navy football game. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)