The Citizen at the Door

On Tuesday, ProPublica published a list. Not an argument — a list: 506 U.S. citizens it says federal immigration agents held against their will since January 2025, each one with a date, a place and, in many cases, a video.

This page is written for people whose Temporary Protected Status ended on July 27 — Haiti and Syria — and for the relatives holding those households together. It is worth saying why a story about American citizens belongs here. Most of these households contain at least one: a child born in a hospital down the road, a naturalized aunt, a spouse. The list is about them.

The investigation names no Haitian and no Syrian. It is here for the mechanism, not the arithmetic. So this is organized the way the week actually lands on a household — by who is in the house.

The person who was asked to prove it

ProPublica built the count because the government publishes none. It says it compiled the list by scouring social media, court records and local media, and that it counted anyone held against their will for any length of time — handcuffed, held at gunpoint, or otherwise stopped from leaving — noting that courts consider a person detained when they are not free to leave.

These are the newsroom’s own figures from its own cataloguing, not an agency count.

The newsroom also says the list is an undercount, in its own words. After one raid at an Idaho horse track last autumn, witnesses estimated more than 200 citizens were detained; ProPublica included only the 30 it could identify. So 506 is a floor, not a roster.

What the law allows is in the reporting too, and it belongs in the same breath: agents do have authority to detain Americans in limited circumstances — if they can reasonably suspect someone is in the country illegally, or if the person allegedly interfered with or assaulted officers. DHS told ProPublica its “enforcement operations are highly targeted. We do our due diligence,” and that anyone who obstructs agents “will of course face consequences which include arrest.”

The gap inside that category is worth carrying. Of more than 300 Americans the newsroom tracked as detained for allegedly assaulting or obstructing agents, it found fewer than half were actually charged in federal court, and many of those cases were dropped or dismissed. An accusation made at the scene is not a charge, and a charge is not a conviction.

This week: put a copy of your proof — passport, certificate of naturalization, birth certificate, permanent resident card — somewhere outside your own house, with a person who would answer the phone at 6 a.m.

The child who is a citizen

This is the finding to act on first.

ProPublica reports that about a dozen American children were deported with their parents, in its words “allegedly over their parents’ objections.” DHS described something different to the same reporters: “Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children or ICE will place the children with a safe person the parent designates.”

Those two accounts do not agree, and this page is not going to decide between them. There is an action that is correct under either version. If the parents are asked, the answer goes better when it was decided in advance. If they are not asked, a name already on file with a school and a lawyer is the only thing standing between a child and a stranger.

The newsroom also counted at least 70 American children and teenagers detained, some of them handcuffed.

Nothing about the law changed this week: a U.S.-citizen child cannot lawfully be deported. What the record shows is that a parent who is being removed may have very little time to decide whether the child goes — which is why the decision should not be made in that hour.

This week, and it costs nothing: write down who should care for your children if you are not there — full name, address, phone number. Give a copy to that person, to your child’s school, and to a lawyer if you have one. Keep your child’s U.S. passport or birth certificate where that person can reach it, not only inside your own home. There is a family plan at /tools/ that walks through it.

The parent whose permit ended

The ground under this has not moved, worth re-stating because so much else did.

TPS for Haiti and for Syria is terminated, effective July 27, 2026, and work permits that depended on it expired the same day. This page re-read the USCIS TPS page and the I-9 Central news index this week: the stamp has not moved, the most recent Haiti item is still dated July 29, there is no Syria item at all, and nothing on either page extends anyone’s work permit.

Losing TPS is still not a judge ordering you personally to leave. A minority of people do hold a removal order a judge already signed, and for them that order did not go away — if that is you, a lawyer should see it this week.

You do not have to take anyone’s word for which group you are in. The Executive Office for Immigration Review runs a free automated line, 1-800-898-7180, around the clock: with your A-number it will tell you your next hearing and whether a judge has entered a decision. The online case status page shows your most recent case only. Two honest limits: the line is in English and Spanish only, and if you have never had an immigration court case, you will find nothing — which is itself an answer.

This is not a prediction about you.

The door, and the paper they show at it

ProPublica reports that an ICE memo made public this year by a whistleblower showed agents had been entering homes without a judge’s warrant, and that the agency asserted administrative warrants — which do not involve a judge — gave agents the ostensible authority to force their way into homes looking for someone with a final removal order.

The distinction is the whole thing, and it fits on an index card. An administrative warrant is signed by an immigration officer. A warrant a judge signed carries a judge’s name and the name of a court.

One household in the catalogue is named. In Oakdale, Minnesota, on Jan. 14, 2026, Jeyli Salguero, 20, says in a lawsuit that armed agents broke through her family’s front door while they slept, looking for her brother, who does not live there. After about half an hour, agents released her and her mother but detained her father, who had Temporary Protected Status, and her sister, who was undocumented. The sister was later deported; the father was later released. The allegations have not been tested in court.

DHS has moved to dismiss that lawsuit, saying it has “paused” the policy. No agency has published that guidance, and this page has not seen it. Your answer at the door does not change either way.

At the door: you do not have to open it. Ask them to pass the warrant under the door or hold it against a window, and look for a judge’s name and a court’s name. Know your rights at the door has the script; report a sighting afterwards.

And keep going to every hearing and every check-in. Not appearing can bring a removal order against you without you in the room, which is the harm most of this litigation is actually about.

The person holding the phone

At least 63 Americans in the catalogue were held while recording.

Salguero says she told agents she was a citizen and had the right to record, and that they took her phone. Courts have read free speech to include recording in public; senior DHS officials have said filming agents interferes with arrests. Both of those are true at once, and the second one is what happens to you on the sidewalk.

So the instruction this page has given for months stands, with its limit attached rather than removed: record only if you can do it safely. Then write down the date, the time and the exact place, and get that to a lawyer instead of only posting it. In most contested cases, the only record that was not the agency’s came from bystanders.

And in Haiti, what “retaken” means

On Tuesday Haiti’s national police said they had retaken Belot, in the Kenscoff hills above Port-au-Prince, along with the site of the Le Montcel ranch, and published photographs and video of officers in the area. No toll of any kind has been published.

Read the rest of the same reporting first. Security forces pushed armed groups out of Belot on Jan. 28, 2025. Armed groups moved back into Belot on Feb. 26, 2025.

That makes this a dated report from this week worth handing a lawyer who is arguing country conditions in an asylum or protection case, next to the State Department’s Level 4 “Do Not Travel” rating. It is not a reason to plan a return. Nobody has to leave — and if you are weighing it anyway, talk to a lawyer first, because leaving can affect whether you can come back. Free legal help is here.

One sentence to carry: the people in your house who were born here are not outside this, and the cheapest protection any of them has is a name, an address and a phone number written down before anyone needs it.