A prosecutor was dismissed in Minnesota after complaining that they would be happy to be held in contempt by the judge because they desperately needed sleep. Now it appears the rest of the office is following that lead.

Politico legal reporter Kyle Cheney wrote on Thursday that the top prosecutor appointed by President Donald Trump in the Minnesota district is dropping "pressing priorities" to manage the huge number of cases. Cheney said on X that it's "a crushing immigration workload."

In a "little-noticed filing" last week, Cheney said the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals said it is being crushed by the number of cases filed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen said that they must make serious changes to triage the situation.

Trump sent a surge of 3,000 federal agents to Minneapolis to nab people it claimed were undocumented immigrants.

The office is already short-staffed after several high-profile resignations. Now the lawyers working in the office are "bouncing between contempt hearings."

There have been 427 habeas cases on top of the "100+ cases filed in the second half of 2025," the report said

The office thus shifted resources from other priorities to address immigration matters.

"The MN-USAO has cancelled all ACE work and any other affirmative priorities and is operating in reactive mode. AUSAs are appearing daily for hearings on contempt motions. The Court is setting deadlines within hours, including weekends and holidays. Paralegals are continuously working overtime. Lawyers are continuously working overtime. All this is happening while the MN-USAO Civil division is down 50 percent," Cheney said.

Trump spent the first part of his new administration firing staff in an effort to shrink the size of government. Deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller set a quote of 3,000 immigrants the country must nab and detain each day.

Rosen's office is also overseeing a critical case involving a daycare facility scandal that Trump and his Justice Department highlighted as part of their crime-fighting fcorce. While the investigation had been going on for most on President Joe Biden's time in office. It's unclear if that is an example of one of the cases that must take a back seat to Trump's immigration crusade.

See the full report here.

A drop in immigration amid President Donald Trump’s enforcement crackdown led to historically slow population growth in the United States last year.

Activity at the southern border is at a historic low. The population change reflects the last months of the Biden administration, when immigration controls began to tighten, and the first months of the Trump administration’s massive anti-immigration and deportation agenda.

Five states lost population, according to the new Census Bureau estimates released Jan. 27 covering changes between mid-2024 and mid-2025. The changes suggest Texas and Florida could gain congressional seats at the expense of California, Illinois and New York.

States that did gain population were concentrated in the South, where numbers appear to give Republican states in the region a political edge halfway through the decade.

An analysis by Jonathan Cervas at Carnegie Mellon University predicted four more seats in Congress after the 2030 census for Texas and Florida, with losses of four seats in California and two each in New York and Illinois. Cervas is an assistant teaching professor who researches representation and redistricting.

“We are still a long way off from 2030, so there is a lot of uncertainty in these projections,” Cervas said, adding that California’s loss in the next decade could be only two or three seats.

Another expert, redistricting consultant Kimball Brace of Virginia, said he was suspicious of the sudden drop in California’s population. Earlier projections had the state losing only one seat after 2030, he said.

“This acceleration in California’s population loss is not something that was in the projections at all,” Brace said. “I’ve got to be a little bit skeptical in terms of the numbers. It shows a significant difference in what we’ve seen in the early part of the decade.”

Brace was still working on his own analysis. William Frey, a demographer at The Brookings Institution, said net immigration was about 1.3 million nationally for the year, down by more than half from the year before.

“As a result most states showed slower growth or greater declines,” Frey said. California had about 200,000 fewer immigrants than the previous year, similar to Texas and New York, though those two states eked out populations gains anyway because of people moving in and births

Texas and North Carolina gained the most people between mid-2024 and mid-2025, while California and Hawaii lost the most.

Nationally, the population increased only about 1.7 million, or half a percentage point, to about 341.8 million. It was the lowest increase of the decade and the smallest gain since the pandemic sharply cut growth in 2020 and 2021. Growth was just 1.4 million between mid-2019 and mid-2020, and only about 500,000 between mid-2020 and mid-2021. Before that, national population growth was below 2 million only twice since 1975.

Among the states, Texas gained about 391,000 in population, up 1.2%, followed in the top 5 by Florida (197,000, or .8%, North Carolina (146,000, or 1.3%), Georgia (99,000, or .9%) and South Carolina (80,000, or 1.5%).

California went from one of the largest increases the previous year to the greatest population loss, about 9,500, less than .1%, followed by Hawaii (down 2,000, or .1%), Vermont (down 1,900 or 0.3%), New Mexico (down 1,300, or 0.1%) and West Virginia (down 1,300 or .1%).

Vermont had the largest percentage decrease and South Carolina had the largest increase.

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

Top Trump White House aide Stephen Miller on Friday elicited disgust after he said that a beloved Christmas television special reminded him of his own personal animus toward immigrants.

Miller, often seen as the architect of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation policy, revealed in a post on X that he and his children had just watched “Christmas with The Martins and The Sinatras,” a one-off 1967 TV holiday special that featured singers Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra.

Miller then quickly pivoted from that to once again bash immigrants who come to the US.

“Imagine watching that,” Miller wrote, “and thinking America needed infinity migrants from the third world.”

As Rolling Stone politics reporter Nikki McCann Ramírez pointed out in response, both Martin and Sinatra both had parents who were first-generation Italian immigrants.

“Dean Martin was born Dino Paul Crocetti and gave himself a stage name because of braindead xenophobes like Stephen,” McCann Ramírez observed. “Sinatra was also a child of Italian immigrants. Imagine watching them and thinking immigrants didn’t build the culture you fetishize today.”

A similar point was made by civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill in a post on Bluesky.

“Imagine watching Sinatra, son of Dolly and Antonini born in Genoa and Sicily, respectively,” she wrote, “and Martin, son of Gaetano and Angela, born in Montesilvano, Italy and Ohio respectively... and crusading against the value of children of immigrants to the US.”

Journalist and author Jeff Yang added some historical context to Miller’s remarks by noting that Italian immigrants in the early and middle decades of the 20th century faced many of the same stereotypes that Miller and his political allies ascribe to immigrants from Latin America.

“A reminder,” Yang wrote, while also posting old cartoons that featured racist depictions of Italians, “that Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra’s parents emigrated here during a period when Italians were considered to be a genetically inferior and criminal-minded underclass that Stephen Miller’s racist predecessors said should be excluded from America.”

Yang added that Frank Sinatra’s mother “ran an underground free abortion clinic, chained herself to a fence to fight for women’s suffrage, and was an extremely influential organizer for the Democratic Party.”

Princeton University historian Kevin Kruse promoted Yang’s thread that demonstrated Miller’s apparent ignorance of Dean and Sinatra’s family histories, and said it showed the Trump adviser is “a horrible racist in the sense that he is actually not that good at being racist.”

Tim Wise, a senior fellow at the African American Policy Forum, managed to find an upside to Miller’s holiday-themed anti-immigrant rant.

“The one silver lining in all this sickness is that one day your children will despise you as much as most of America already does,” he commented.

Film producer Franklin Leonard was even more succinct in his response to Miller.

“Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra would hate Stephen Miller and his politics,” he wrote.

Legal and national security experts are responding to what the White House is calling, “one of the most important messages ever released” by President Donald Trump, a 511-word broadside attacking 53 million immigrants in America, vowing to not only end immigration from certain countries but to foster “reverse migration,” a term used in white nationalist circles.

In his Thanksgiving remarks, President Trump denounced the U.S. being “divided, disrupted, carved up, murdered, beaten, mugged, and laughed at, along with certain other foolish countries throughout the World, for being ‘Politically Correct,’ and just plain STUPID, when it comes to Immigration.”

He claimed that there are 53 million people in America born outside the U.S., most of whom, the president claimed, “are on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels.”

The president condemned what he called the “refugee burden,” stating that it “is the leading cause of social dysfunction in America.”

He specifically targeted the “hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia,” and alleged that “Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for ‘prey’ as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone.”

Trump vowed to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s Autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country.”

He also promised to “end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization.”

The Associated Press called it Trump’s “most severe social media post against immigration since returning to the Oval Office in January,” and noted that it “came after the shooting Wednesday of two National Guard members who were patrolling the streets of the nation’s capital under his orders. One died and the other is in critical condition.”

The Washington Post reported that “the tenor of Trump’s posts was a significant escalation in his rhetoric around immigration and appeared to be a vow to make life so difficult for many immigrants to the United States that they eventually opt to depart.”

Attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, remarked that the rhetoric in the president’s statement “is indistinguishable from the stuff you hear coming out of white nationalists. Completely identical language.”

Reichlin-Melnick rejected Trump’s “outrageous claim that ‘most’ immigrants, which include over 25 million U.S. citizens, ‘are on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels.'”

He also noted that “immigrants use LESS federal benefits per capita than native-born U.S. citizens; and the most common is Social Security (after they paid into it for decades like everyone else).”

The Steady State, a group of more than 360 former U.S. national security officials, in a statement warned that, “Trump is now describing millions of immigrants, refugees, and even naturalized citizens as ‘invaders,’ ‘non-compatible with Western Civilization,’ and candidates for ‘reverse migration,” which they called, “a blueprint for total authoritarian population control.”

“If he can revoke citizenship based on his personal judgment of who ‘loves America,” they asked, “the question becomes: who is next?”

Professor of law Richard Painter, a former chief White House ethics lawyer, commented that “The United States should enforce immigration laws passed by Congress, but this proclamation is racist and far exceeds the power of the president.”

Bill Neely, a former Chief Global Correspondent for NBC News, wrote that Trump’s remarks were “filled with hatred & virtually an incitement to violence against not just immigrants but settled US citizens of a different colour from him.”

Most of us, whether we admit it or not, engage in a great deal of passive scrolling through social media daily.

In the past, conservative Republicans ranging from Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush to GOP strategist Karl Rove were aggressive proponents of immigration. Reagan famously argued that Latinos were natural-born Republicans — they just didn't know it yet — and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a fluent Spanish speaker, expressed his pro-immigration views during appearances on Univision.

But hardline views on immigration are a prime feature of President Donald Trump's MAGA movement, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in Minneapolis, Chicago and Los Angeles have been a source of heated debates during his second presidency.

In an article published on April 21, Politico's Samuel Benson details GOP infighting surrounding the Dignity Act — an immigration reform bill that conservative Rep. María Elvira Salazar originally introduced in 2023 and reintroduced in 2025. The bill has bipartisan support, while MAGA's immigration hardliners are adamantly opposed to it—including Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) and "War Room" host Steve Bannon.

"The GOP's escalating infighting over immigration now has a pair of PACs lining up millions of dollars on opposing sides of Republican primaries across the country," Benson reports. "The dueling pledges turn a congressional fight over Rep. María Elvira Salazar's (R-Fla.) Dignity Act into an electoral proxy war between hardliners and moderates over how far the Republican Party should go on immigration reform. It's putting the bill's 20 House GOP co-sponsors in the spotlight."

The Politico reporter continues, "The Homeland PAC, backed by immigration-restrictionist Republicans, launched last week in an effort to primary some of those co-sponsors. Meanwhile, American Business Immigration Coalition Action, a pro-immigration group, secured $1.2 million to protect them through its Building America's Economy PAC and hopes to raise $5 million in total, according to plans first shared with Politico."

Benson notes that the Dignity Act is facing "an onslaught of criticism from conservative MAGA influencers and allies of President Donald Trump."

"While the bill doesn't create pathways to citizenship, it would allow millions of unauthorized immigrants to eventually gain work permits and remain in the U.S. legally," Benson explains. "Republicans like battleground Reps. Gabe Evans (Colo.) and Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.) have signed onto the bill. But critics pan it as 'amnesty' and signal that the future of the Republican Party hinges on this debate."

GOP strategist and Homeland PAC organizer Ryan Girdusky argues that Trump shouldn't be the last word on whether the Dignity Act passes or not.

Girdusky told Politico, "Donald Trump is not going to be around forever. The goal is to focus and to put our efforts into the future, and make sure Republicans know that the demand for stronger borders and for reforms to legal immigration and illegal immigration means something. We are not going to roll over and go back to business as usual."

Rebbeca Shi, CEO of ABIC Action — a PAC defending supporters of the Dignity Act — told Politico, "Extreme-right internet influencers have escalated their attacks, and we want to ensure the leadership on common-sense immigration reform are protected."

Trump’s chief bigot, Stephen Miller, said on Fox News that immigrants to the United States bring problems that extend through generations.

“Not only is the first generation unsuccessful,” Miller claimed. “You see persistent issues in every subsequent generation. So you see consistent high rates of welfare use, consistent high rates of criminal activity, consistent failures to assimilate.”

Bullshit. The children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of most immigrants are models of upward mobility in America.

In a recent paper, researchers found that immigrants today are no slower to move into the middle class than immigrants were a century ago. In fact, no matter when their parents came to the U.S. or what country they came from, children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than their U.S.-born peers.

Stephen Miller’s great-great-grandfather was born in a dirt-floor shack in the village of Antopol, a shtetl in what is now Belarus. He came to America in 1903 with $8 in his pocket and spoke no English. Three generations later, little Stephen was born in 1985 to American parents but somehow developed a visceral hatred for immigrants.

Miller and Trump have been dealing with immigrants the same way Pete Hegseth and Trump have been dealing with Iran and the Strait of Hormuz — inflicting pain on both them and the United States, in the hope their pain will be worse than the pain we endure.

Today’s Tax Day was supposed to be a big PR boon for Trump, in which he touts his “no taxes on tips” and other ersatz tax “cuts” for average working Americans (while hiding that his Big Ugly bill actually gave most of its benefits to the wealthy and big corporations, and paid for them by taking money from Medicaid and food stamps and other programs the working class and poor rely on).

But the war in Iran has made everything — even Stephen Miller’s war on immigrants — feel like the Strait of Hormuz.

Consider that before Miller ordered the Internal Revenue Service to give ICE officials the addresses of people subject to deportation, undocumented immigrants had been paying roughly $60 billion annually in federal taxes, much of it going into Social Security and Medicare — programs from which they don’t benefit.

Now, tax experts fear many immigrants won’t file returns, and those who formerly had their taxes withheld in every paycheck will shift into under-the-table jobs. The Yale Budget Lab, a nonpartisan research center, projected lost tax revenue of about $300 billion over a decade.

Meanwhile, Miller’s vast, sadistic crackdown on undocumented workers is causing significant pain for the U.S. economy. There aren’t enough workers in construction, hospitality, and agriculture to keep these sectors going. Another Strait of Hormuz situation.

Let’s be clear. Apart from Native Americans, we are all immigrants — all descended from “foreigners.” Some of our ancestors came here eagerly; some came because they were no longer safe in their homelands; some came enslaved.

As Ronald Reagan put it in a 1988 speech,

You can go to Japan to live, but you cannot become Japanese. You can go to France to live and not become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey, and you won’t become a German or a Turk. But … anybody from any corner of the world can come to America to live and become an American. A person becomes an American by adopting America’s principles, especially those principles summarized in the “self-evident truths” of the Declaration of Independence, such as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Reagan understood that America is a set of aspirations and ideals more than it is a nationality.

Miller and Trump, on the other hand, want to fuel bigotry. Their entire project depends on hate. Like dictators before him, Trump’s road to tyranny is paved with stones hurled at “them” — whether “they” are immigrants, Iranians, or anyone else who doesn’t fit the white Christian nationalist mold.

America is better than Trump and his chief bigot.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.