TAPIA-RUANO & GUNN P.C.

03/31/2026

"Trump’s Justice Department Dropped 23,000 Criminal Investigations in Shift to Immigration"

Report by ProPublica
by Ken B. Morales and David Armstrong
March 31, 2026, 5:00 am

[Excerpts from published Report.]

In the first days after Pam Bondi was appointed attorney general last year, the Department of Justice began shutting down pending criminal cases at a record pace. …

In total, the DOJ quietly closed more than 23,000 criminal cases in the first six months of President Donald Trump’s administration, abandoning hundreds of investigations into terrorism, white-collar crime, drugs and other offenses as it shifted resources to pursue immigration cases, according to an analysis by ProPublica.

The bulk of these cases, which were closed without prosecution and known as declinations, had been referred to the DOJ by law enforcement agencies under prior administrations that believed a federal crime may have been committed. The DOJ routinely declines to prosecute cases for any number of reasons, including insufficient evidence or because a case is not a priority for enforcement.

In February 2025 alone, which included the first weeks of Bondi’s tenure, nearly 11,000 cases were declined, the most in a month since at least 2004. The previous high was just over 6,500 cases in September 2019, during Trump’s first administration.…

Some of the cases shut down were the result of yearslong investigations by federal agencies such as the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration. For complex cases, the DOJ can take years before deciding whether to bring charges.

The shift comes as the DOJ has undergone an extraordinary overhaul under the Trump administration, with entire units shuttered, directives to abandon pursuit of certain crimes and thousands of lawyers quitting or, in some cases, being forced out of the agency.

In doing so, the DOJ is retreating from its mission to impartially uphold the rule of law, keep the country safe and protect civil rights, according to interviews with a dozen prosecutors and an open letter from nearly 300 DOJ employees who have left the department under Trump. …

For entire report go to:

Under Attorney General Pam Bondi, the DOJ abandoned a record number of cases — including hundreds of investigations into terrorism, white-collar crime and drugs — in just the first six months of President Donald Trump’s second term.

02/19/2026

Great news: a recent decision in an important Federal Court Order exposes the current Administrations' Policies that repeatedly disregard the rule of law.

On February 18, 2026, Judge Sunshine Sykes of the Central District of California vacated Matter of Yajure Hurtado, the Board of Immigration Appeals decision that immigration judges across the country had been citing to deny bond hearings to detained noncitizens. The order came in Maldonado Bautista v. Santacruz, the same case that produced the December 18, 2025 nationwide class declaratory judgment declaring indefinite detention of “Bond Eligible Class” members unlawful.

The ruling is devastating for the government. Not because of its legal novelty, but because of what it reveals about how the executive branch has been operating: selectively obeying its own regulations, ignoring federal court orders, and attempting to insulate unlawful policy from judicial review by laundering it through a different agency.

02/19/2026

New analysis linking immigration data with employment data for specific areas suggests that the rapid rise in unauthorized immigrant worker flows increased local employment roughly one-for-one. Extending the analysis to the industry level further suggests that the slowdown of net immigration had a large negative impact on local employment, particularly for construction and manufacturing.

The large increase and subsequent decline of unauthorized immigrant workers in recent years have raised questions about the impact of these changes on local labor markets across the United States. New analysis linking immigration data with employment data for specific areas suggests that the rapid r...

02/03/2026

Great news! On Monday, February 2, 2026, a Federal Judge Temporarily Blocked the End of TPS for Haitians in U.S. | The New York Times

Late yesterday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for more than 350,000 Haitians living in the United States. Judge Ana C. Reyes of the Federal District Court in Washington said that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem did not have the authority to end the protected status and that her arguments that maintaining TPS for Haitians was not in the national interest were flawed.

01/31/2026

If you cannot protest, give support for those who can and do, not only on the streets but in court houses.

For weeks, Minnesotans have organized to respond to ICE's violence towards neighbors and loved ones. Now they need our help and support - whether it's following local organizations and groups organizing on the ground, funding their work, calling on your elected officials, or sharing information.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of orgs and accounts you can follow and support:
MIRAC - Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee
Monarca Rapid Response: monarcamn.org
Unidos MN
Immigrant Defense Network
The Advocates for Human Rights
Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota
Legal Aid - Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid
Indigenous Roots Cultural Arts Center

Visit standwithminnesota.com for more on what else you can do to support

01/28/2026

Happy birthday today to José Martí. A poet, journalist, essayist, lawyer-in-training, political organizer, and revolutionary. José Martí was Cuba’s leading independence intellectual and moral visionary, whose life combined poetry, political theory, and revolutionary organizing. Marti believed political freedom was meaningless without human dignity, education, and social justice.

Feliz cumpleaños hoy a José Martí. Poeta, periodista, ensayista, estudiante de derecho, organizador político y revolucionario. José Martí fue el principal intelectual de la independencia cubana y su gran visionario moral, cuya vida combinó la poesía, la teoría política y la organización revolucionaria. Martí creía que la libertad política carecía de sentido sin la dignidad humana, la educación y la justicia social.

01/21/2026

Tell Congress no more money for ICE!

We Demand Accountability!

12/23/2025

Current White House Administration engaging in Big Brother tactics by withholding vital government records belonging to individuals.

A whistleblower report published today in Government Executive shows how U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is circumventing a court order that requires the agency to provide immigrants with their immigration records within the legal timelines. The revelations state that USCIS has ado...

11/05/2025

On October 30, 2025, a Federal Judge in Marylad has halted the need to pay the asylum application renewal fees due to the significant confusion created by instructions and policies of government agencies.

10/06/2025

ICE Brings Violence to Chicago Neighborhoods

This past weekend ICE and CBP operation on the southwest side of Chicago brought the full weight of DHS’s violence into one neighborhood. Agents fired shots at a car, used tear gas and pepper spray on residents, crashed into civilian vehicles, and detained a U.S. citizen without a warrant.

This comes just weeks after the murder of Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez by ICE in Chicago, and amid daily raids, racial profiling, and reckless tactics across our city and suburbs. Along with a renewed threat from Trump to send the National Guard to Chicago.

The community coalitions — including ICIRR, Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, and the Southwest Rapid Response Team — is standing together to call out this violence for what it is: an attempt to spread fear and justify even greater militarization under the guise of “law and order.”

Even in the face of this brutality, our communities continue to protect one another. On Friday, ICIRR’s Family Support Hotline had its highest call volume of the year — proof that people are still looking out for their neighbors, reporting ICE activity, and refusing to be silenced. We will continue to organize, expose the truth, and demand action from local and state leaders to protect our communities from federal abuse.

If you witness ICE activity or know someone who’s been detained, call the ICIRR Family Support Hotline at 855-435-7693.

Because, DHS and ICE are known to lie about the nature of their operations, and because their statement yesterday is totally inconsistent with our observations in the community, we are sharing our version of events on the southwest side yesterday and across the Chicagoland region. See below.

In solidarity,

Lawrence Benito
Executive Director
Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights

09/22/2025

The Administration wants Immigrants to "Pay-to-Play".

On Friday, Sept 17, President Trump signed a proclamation restricting the entry and approval of new H-1B visas unless U.S. employers pay a $100,000 fee and issued an executive order granting green cards to individuals who “gift” $1 million to the United States, replacing merit-based categories.
AILA President Jeff Joseph said the President is turning H-1B into a “‘pay-to-play’ system” that “effectively shut[s] out teachers, nonprofits, researchers, rural doctors, clergy, and other professionals.” He warned it “will undermine innovation” and “prevent businesses both large and small from accessing the talent they need.”
AILA Executive Director Ben Johnson said the measures “attempt to rewrite laws created by Congress” and “will not stand up in court,” but cautioned that “in the meantime, we are inflicting needless harm on ourselves” and sending a message that “the United States is closing its doors” to global talent.