Briefing: Immigration, Food Safety + more
This week we have another big update in Immigration plus some gut-churning news in Medical Research Funding and Food Safety. Our single-item update in Medicaid is that the feds are withholding a billion dollars in reimbursements to California and Minnesota, for reasons.
Immigration
The Immigration team added 28 new events to our timeline, including the deaths of Juan Jairo Coronilla Dura, a tourist who was hit by a tractor-trailer while fleeing ICE agents, and Jesús Manuel Arenas Silva, who died in ICE custody, apparently without his medications. ICE released detention data for the first time since April, showing record numbers of ICE arrests and tracking about 66,000 people in immigration detention. See our special briefing from last week, “ICE Is Still Everywhere,” for more.
In policy news, DHS announced the biggest change to student visas in 50 years, making it difficult or impossible for many international students to pursue PhDs at US universities. USCIS has revived a 2019 policy allowing DHS officers to deny green cards to people who use federal assistance programs. And the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which houses unaccompanied children until they can be reunited with their families, has shared more than 460,000 “leads” with ICE since January 2025, resulting in the arrest of more than 12,000 children and sponsors.
We also want to call attention to the administration’s latest method for denying due process: With only days’ notice, Trump’s immigration courts are scheduling chaotic “mega master” hearings that cram hundreds of cases into a single session. Removal orders issued to people who didn’t know about or couldn’t attend their hearings are spiking all over the country. In NYC, these “in absentia” removal orders have more than doubled since May; nationwide, they increased by 55% in June over May’s already record high.
Medical Research Funding
The Medical Research Funding team added 10 new entries to our timeline. The executive branch’s attempt to seize control of research funding is both wildly unpopular and failing in court.
Despite previous direct denials, the administration has finally admitted to using keyword searches for topics including diversity, gender, and vaccine hesitancy to terminate grants. The OMB proposal to radically overhaul grantmaking has drawn massive opposition: Nearly half a million public comments have been submitted to the official record, with the overwhelming majority opposing it. And although the decision does not actually reinstate any grants, federal judge Indira Talwani has ruled that the administration’s termination clause is unlawful; research grants cannot be cancelled simply because they “do not effectuate” the president’s current priorities.
But the administration just keeps spawning bold new ideas. The latest is the “Science: A New Golden Age” report, which advocates shifting research funding away from universities into private industry and de-prioritizing life sciences in favour of “artificial intelligence” research.
Food Safety
The Food Safety team added 6 new items to our timeline, all related to the ongoing Cyclospora outbreak. The CDC counts more than 18,000 confirmed or suspected cases across 9 states and expects the number to rise. A day after announcing that it had discovered Cyclospora in lettuce that wasn’t part of the initial recall of Taylor Farms greens, the FDA retracted the finding as a false positive. Taylor Farms spun this as “an apology”, which the FDA disputed, clarifying that “overwhelming” epidemiological data still links Taylor Farms to the outbreak. Ranking member of the House Oversight Committee Robert Garcia (D-CA) has opened an investigation into whether Taylor Farms, a major donor to Republic super PACs, influenced the government’s response to the outbreak.
Medicaid
Our Medicaid team added 1 entry to our timeline: HHS is withholding a billion dollars in Medicaid funding from California and Minnesota. Administration officials claim that essential in-home care services ”smell like fraud,” and they are using “AI, advanced analytics, and other cutting-edge tools” to justify their allegations.
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