White House Blocks CNN From Air Force One

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 Summary

“The White House blocked CNN from a Saturday trip to Tennessee after a court order restored access following a ban. The TV pool had boycotted coverage but resumed after CNN filmed an event with Xi Jinping.

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CNN won’t be able to join President Trump on a Saturday trip to Tennessee. He had banned CNN and two other news outlets from the White House, but a court order on Thursday restored their access.

Published Sept. 25, 2026Updated Sept. 26, 2026, 10:16 a.m. ET

The decision immediately raised the question of whether the television pool would cover the president’s trip.Pete Marovich for The New York Times

The White House on Friday night blocked CNN from accompanying President Trump on a Saturday trip to Tennessee, a network spokeswoman confirmed, in the latest twist in a weeklong standoff between Mr. Trump and the Washington press corps.

The decision immediately raised the question of whether the television pool would cover the president’s trip. The TV pool, a rotating group of networks that share the work of filming the president’s daily activities, had boycotted those responsibilities this week after Mr. Trump first banned CNN from participating in the pool.

In a Friday night email detailing logistics for the Saturday trip, the White House did not list a primary television pool representative. The White House did not return a request for comment.

In a post on Truth Social on Saturday morning, Mr. Trump continued to argue for banning the media from the White House. “Fake news should not be allowed in the White House!!! It has gone on far too long."

The tumult in White House coverage began a week ago, when Mr. Trump announced he would ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico in a social media post. Journalists for the outlets were denied access to White House grounds on Saturday. By Monday, the outlets had challenged the ban with a lawsuit in federal court.

Other news organizations made adjustments to their White House coverage in a show of solidarity with the banned news outlets. The TV pool suspended its work while CNN was banned from White House grounds, declining to film most of Mr. Trump’s visit this week with the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping.

On Thursday, a federal judge ordered the White House to restore the journalists’ credentials “immediately.” And on Friday, the White House let CNN film Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi during an event at the National Archives in Washington. When it did, the TV pool resumed its coverage.

The media outlets’ lawsuit requested that the White House restore the level of access that they had before Mr. Trump’s ban. The judge’s order directed the White House to reinstate the journalists’ hard passes to enter the White House complex but didn’t explicitly address their pool rotations.

In a Thursday interview with CNN, Theodore J. Boutrous, a lawyer for the media outlets, said he believed the order required the White House to restore their pool assignments“

 

Zombified’ C.D.C., Hobbled by Cuts, Struggles to Fulfill Scientific Mission

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 Summary

“Staff at the C.D.C. fell 30 percent by May 2026, leaving only one of 11 directors. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and associates control operations, hindering outbreak response and guidance. Political appointees redirected work, including autism research and screwworm tasks.

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The agency has lost its independence and nearly a third of its staff, as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and associates have tightened control.

Sept. 26, 2026Updated 9:09 a.m. ET

A protest outside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year after employees were laid off. Beyond staff reductions, the agency also faces a leadership vacuum.Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images

For decades, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was the undisputed global leader in public health. Its scientists helped train health officials worldwide. In the United States, it was the primary source of guidance for prevention and treatment of diseases, including diabetes, H.I.V. and the seasonal flu.

But after a year and a half in the cross hairs of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s drive to remake public health policy, the agency is a skeleton of the powerhouse it was.

The Trump administration’s widespread layoffs in early 2025 cut 18 percent of the C.D.C.’s staff. But new personnel data, compiled by a group of former federal scientists and reported here for the first time, indicate that the agency’s staff has dwindled far more, as large numbers of employees retired or resigned. As of May 2026, the C.D.C. had 30 percent fewer employees than it did before the layoffs, the data show.

Interviews with more than 30 current and former employees reveal the agency is now tightly controlled by Mr. Kennedy and his associates, and its scientists are finding it increasingly difficult to do their jobs effectively. (Some of them spoke on the condition of anonymity because of a fear of retaliation from the administration.)

The number of C.D.C. employees has fallen sharply in one year

March 2025 9,279 staff

Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious DiseasesImmunization and Respiratory DiseasesGlobal HealthHIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB PreventionOccupational Safety and HealthChronic DiseaseInjury Prevention and ControlPublic Health Infrastructure

May 2026 6,683 staff

Nearly a third of C.D.C. employees are gone

–17%–16%–28%–27%–30%–48%–43%–36%–19%–20%

National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion

March 2025 968 staff

May 2026 501 staff

Total loss –48%

The changes have hindered the C.D.C.’s ability to respond to outbreaks as measles spreads at home and Ebola abroad, and to issue timely guidance on vaccinations as cooling temperatures kick off the respiratory season, according to current and former employees. State and local health departments, which rely on the C.D.C. for resources and technical advice, have been stymied by delays. Entire divisions have been shuttered, including teams that worked on smoking, sexual violence, child abuse and falls among older adults.

Even some areas central to the Trump administration’s priorities have been gutted. Despite Mr. Kennedy’s focus on chronic diseases and autism, the C.D.C. centers that aim to prevent chronic diseases and birth defects are at half their previous size, according to the new data, compiled by the Public Data Observatory from the Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the employee union.

The layoffs spared the agency’s infectious disease centers. But even so, the center for emerging and zoonotic diseases, which manages Ebola and hantavirus, among others, now has nearly 300 fewer employees than in March 2025, and the respiratory disease center has lost nearly 200 — about 17 percent in each case.

Beyond staff reductions, there is a leadership vacuum. Only one of the 11 center directors from March 2025 remains at the agency. Most of the other centers are being run by acting directors, some of whom were elevated from jobs one or two levels below.

“It’s a zombified C.D.C. where you have all the bits and pieces — like the body’s there, the substance is there, but it’s not acting like how an agency like that should act,” said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who led the respiratory disease center before he resigned in August 2025.

Despite a series of high-profile disease outbreaks, C.D.C. workers have had little contact with the World Health Organization, with members of Congress and even, for a time, with their partners in state and local health departments, some employees said. Statements to the media about health crises are also tightly controlled by H.H.S.

Even basic functions have broken down. Travel approvals take months; upkeep of bathrooms and vacuuming of offices have been disrupted, some current employees said.

One senior official said it felt as though the agency was being held together with bubble gum and duct tape, with employees running from crisis to crisis, and nothing working the way it is supposed to.

The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to a series of questions about the C.D.C.’s work, staffing and independence. “C.D.C. continues to protect the health and safety of the American people and communicate clearly about the importance of vaccination,” the department said in an emailed statement.

But several former officials disagreed with that assessment, noting that the C.D.C. has offered little leadership or clear communication even as, in just a few months, the nation has grappled with record cases of measles, cyclosporiasis and rabies.

“Imagine losing a third of a city’s firefighters and then wondering why downtown is burning,” said Dr. Jonathan Mermin, who led the agency’s center for H.I.V. and sexually transmitted infections till April 2025, and is now the dean of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

Political Interference

From the very first day of Mr. Trump’s second term, when he withdrew the country from the W.H.O., his administration has sought to upend the nation’s health policies and align them with his political priorities.

In past administrations, just two or three political appointees had purview over the C.D.C. Now, there are nearly 20 political appointees from H.H.S. who communicate with C.D.C. staff members, sometimes directing them to spend time and funding on dubious theories outside the agency’s scope, according to several officials.

Last year, an H.H.S. official directed the C.D.C. to award a no-bid contract — a rarity for the agency — to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to explore whether immunizing pregnant women would lead to autism in their children, a theory that Mr. Kennedy has espoused but that has been debunked by numerous studies. To pay for the research, the C.D.C. took $362,000 from a program that provides free vaccines to about half of American children.

In an email viewed by The New York Times, Stuart Burns, a political appointee, asked C.D.C. employees to pull together details of every measles case since 2010, including patients’ underlying medical conditions with diagnostic codes; that information is not collected routinely, they told him. Mr. Kennedy has falsely argued that measles only causes death in children who are already ill with other conditions.

Dr. William “Reyn” Archer III, another appointee who previously oversaw the C.D.C., repeatedly asked agency employees to work on screwworm, a disease that mostly affects cattle, even though the C.D.C.’s mission is to protect human health, said Dr. Daniel Jernigan, who headed the agency’s emerging disease center before resigning in August 2025. Dr. Archer did not respond to a request for comment.

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Mr. Kennedy’s associates outside the administration have also been allowed direct access to senior C.D.C. staff members. Dr. Ben Edwards, a physician in Lubbock, Texas, who treated children while he was infected with measles and whom Mr. Kennedy had praised as an “extraordinary” healer, asked senior C.D.C. officials to look into cod liver oil as a treatment for measles, citing “historical references dating back to the 1700s,” in an email viewed by The Times.

“We just would have to run around constantly to be responsive to all of these strange asks,” recalled Dr. Daskalakis, the former head of the respiratory disease center.

Numerous other instances of political interference in the C.D.C.’s activities have already been reported. Most notably, Mr. Kennedy openly overruled the C.D.C.’s scientists in imposing strict quarantine measures for people exposed to hantavirus. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who led the agency for six months in the absence of a Senate-confirmed director, squashed publication of a study on the effectiveness of Covid vaccines.

Some observers had hoped the C.D.C.’s new director, Dr. Erica Schwartz, a physician who has pledged to “follow the science,” would provide a bulwark against political interference. But one month into the job, she has made no public statements about the importance of childhood vaccines or corrected misinformation from her boss, Mr. Kennedy. In one of her first big decisions, she ordered agency employees to challenge Pennsylvania’s announcement of two measles deaths, shunning standard procedure.

In its statement, H.H.S. said, “Dr. Schwartz and C.D.C.’s new leadership are evaluating the agency’s structure and operations to ensure C.D.C. can effectively advance the priorities of President Trump and Secretary Kennedy and fulfill its core public health mission.”

Delays and Dysfunction

Across the C.D.C., the employees who remain are backfilling roles left vacant. 

“I’ve never seen such a plethora of acting roles in my life,” the agency’s new chief operating officer, Sean Slovenski, acknowledged to staff members at a meeting in June, a recording of which was obtained by The Times.

Many divisions are struggling to disburse money appropriated by Congress. In an email in May viewed by The Times, an official asked for volunteers from other offices to help the Division of Population Health, which had lost 88 percent of its staff, write notices of funding opportunities for diseases like lupus and epilepsy.

“We are overseeing millions of dollars in funded work, but how can we do this in a responsible way when we just don’t have enough people to really oversee the work well?” said one official at the agency’s chronic disease center.

The agency’s dysfunction is alarming public health experts even outside the country, who had long relied on the C.D.C.’s expertise during global crises. At a recent meeting of global flu experts, Dr. Jernigan said, “people truly believe that we are less prepared now and less capable of having a coordinated response than we were before the pandemic.”

By this time of year in 2024, the C.D.C. had published detailed recommendations for vaccines against respiratory diseases, with endorsements from the director at the time, Dr. Mandy Cohen, and notes from a meeting of its vaccine advisers.

But because of a federal court ruling, the C.D.C.’s vaccine advisers have not met since December, and the agency has not issued updated recommendations for the vaccines. Some employees at the agency wanted to post clear recommendations for flu vaccines, but did not want to get into a conflict with political appointees, Dr. Jernigan said.

After controversy erupted over the Covid vaccine study, Dr. Bhattacharya demoted the previous acting director of the respiratory disease center, Dr. Brandi Limbago, and replaced her with Rebecca Greco Koné, an operational leader who is not a scientist.

The lack of experienced staff members is also affecting one of the C.D.C.’s primary functions: helping state and local governments.

The C.D.C.’s public health infrastructure grant, which helps health departments train employees and build systems, was managed by 20 project officers but it now has just three. As a result, the team’s response time for requests from local departments has increased from less than a day to more than 10, and some requests have been missed entirely. One county health department requested help on Aug. 7 with submitting data for its annual report but as of Sept. 21, the request was unanswered.

“We’re seeing a movement away from clinical guidance, from data, and from working with states,” said Dr. Debra Houry, who was the agency’s chief medical officer before resigning in August 2025.

In all, more than 1,200 people retired between March 2025 and May 2026, nearly four times the number in the comparable period in 2023-24. About 270 people are still on administrative leave, being paid but not working, while a lawsuit challenging the layoffs makes its way through the courts.

Aaron Sussell, an epidemiologist in the agency’s office in Spokane, Wash., who studied the health of miners, was placed on administrative leave in April 2025. He and his colleagues were suddenly recalled to work in January with 24 hours’ notice but by then, some had moved out of state and others had taken jobs outside the government.

Dr. Sussell, who worked at the C.D.C. for 37 years, decided to retire at the end of February. He would normally have trained his replacement. Instead, he saw an ad for his job go up five months after he left, then get taken down. His position remains unfilled.

The agency’s global health center was approved to fill 18 critical positions. Officials posted ads, interviewed candidates and made job offers to some. But the offers expired before H.H.S. completed the next steps like background checks, so they had to start the interview process all over again, according to an official with knowledge of the situation.

By law, C.D.C. employees who were laid off have priority to be rehired, but some applicants were told they were ineligible for the very jobs they had previously held for years. In all, the agency hired 108 employees between March 2025 and May 2026, compared with more than 1,500 between March 2023 and May 2024.

The staffing totals do not always tell the full story. One C.D.C. branch that works on vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles, has lost only seven of its 50 people. But they include the four most experienced scientists from the measles lab team, which is trying to analyze genetic material that will determine whether the United States can still claim to have eliminated measles. And funding cuts to other federal agencies have also affected the C.D.C.’s budget for fighting infectious diseases: The budget for a branch that tackles Ebola and other deadly diseases has dropped by 36 percent.

Some C.D.C. scientists are hesitant to sign up for the Ebola response in the Democratic Republic of Congo because they disagree with the administration’s focus on keeping infected people out of the country rather than on helping to contain the outbreak.

Others are too overburdened to help. About 100 C.D.C. staff members have been deployed to Congo to help with the outbreak, compared with about 2,000 who went to West African countries during the 2014 Ebola outbreak.

“If you’re doing your job and your boss’s job who left, and you also have three staff people who left under you,” said Dr. Fiona Havers, who resigned from the C.D.C. in June 2025, “no one has the spare capacity to help out in something that’s not in their field.”

1. 

   Apoorva Mandavilli

   Global health reporter

   For more than a year, it’s been obvious that the C.D.C. is in distress. It’s gone through a devastating round of layoffs, was attacked by a gunman and has lost its director and other senior leaders. I’ve covered many of these developments, but I was still shocked when I dug deeper for this story.

   1. 

      Apoorva Mandavilli

      Global health reporter

      Recent numbers show that the agency has lost about a third of its staff altogether, while Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others he has appointed have stripped it of much of its independence. The employees still at the C.D.C. are doing their best to hold things together, but as one put it, they’re "running out of fingers and toes to plug holes" in a sinking ship.

Apoorva Mandavilli reports on science and global health for The Times, with a focus on infectious diseases and pandemics and the public health agencies that try to manage them.“

BOMBSHELL: Supreme Court UPENDS election with SHOCK RULING

 

The Oligarchs are Evil, Venal and Dumb as Hell

 

 

Unused Tents and Uneaten Food: Watchdog Finds ‘Waste’ in Immigration Crackdown

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“In a report Thursday, the Government Accountability Office said the Trump administration squandered millions of dollars to expand detention.

Sept. 24, 2026

U.S. Immigration Crackdown

U.S. forces erected a tent city at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to house migrants. Doug Mills/The New York Times

The Trump administration wasted millions of dollars in its swift effort to drastically expand immigration detention, including nearly $3 million on tents to house migrants at Guantánamo Bay that were never used, according to a review by the Government Accountability Office released on Thursday.

The camp in Cuba, planned near the prison that held suspected terrorists in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, was built to hold 5,000 detainees. As of June, the average daily population of detainees there was 16, G.A.O. said.

The administration also spent $20.5 million on administrative costs and utilities on the seven warehouses the government purchased in haste and later decided to sell. And it squandered $7.1 million for food it did not need at one of its new detention camps in Texas, the review found.

Neither ICE nor the Homeland Security Department responded to a request for comment.

The report is the latest indictment of the spending spree by federal officials to follow through on President Trump’s pledge to detain and deport record numbers of immigrants. Officials have poured billions of dollars into hiring immigration enforcement officers, purchasing unused warehouses to convert into detention centers and expanding other enforcement operations.

As a result, immigrant arrests have reached record levels and illegal border crossings have come to a halt. The spending blitz has also drawn scrutiny from critics and watchdogs.

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched six major expansion efforts without a strategic plan in place and has since scaled back four of them, the G.A.O. said. As of July of this year, ICE spent more than $2.5 billion on warehouses and other facilities to house detainees but did not assess the long term costs, the congressional watchdog said.

In its report, the G.A.O. recommended that ICE develop a broad strategic plan to advise its detention expansion efforts with stated goals and budgets. ICE concurred.

The report included several costly, high-profile efforts by the Trump administration to expand detention that were ultimately scrapped that G.A.O. considered wasteful.

• In one of its earliest efforts, the Trump administration planned to house 30,000 immigration detainees on the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. The Defense Department spent $2.85 million to build tents to house 5,000 migrants, but the shelters did not meet federal detention standards and as a result were never used. Ultimately, the plan was scrapped. As of June, the average daily population of detainees there was 16.

• ICE also partnered with the Defense Department to use military camps to house detainees, including one on an Army base in El Paso, Texas, called Camp East Montana. The government wasted $11.5 million on detainee services over a two-week period when the facility was empty. The camp was built to hold 5,000 detainees, but had about 1,600 as of February of this year. Between October and March, ICE spent $7.1 million on meals it did not need.

• After purchasing 11 warehouses for $1 billion to hold detainees, ICE decided to sell seven of them. To break even, the government must sell the seven warehouses for exactly what it paid for them: $707 million. And in the process of purchasing the seven warehouses it no longer wants, ICE spent $7.7 million in sunk costs for zoning assessments and title insurance as well as $12.8 million on utilities and security for the buildings even though they are not in use.

• To add even more detention space, ICE housed migrants at a now-shuttered Florida facility called Alligator Alcatraz. ICE typically enters into formal agreements with state and local agencies to house detainees. But that was not the case for the Florida detention center, and the Department of Homeland Security reimbursed the state through a grant that includes payments of $249 for each detainee bed, which is nearly three times more than what ICE has been paying on average this year.

“Remember when Donald Trump promised to get rid of ‘waste, fraud, and abuse’ in Washington? Well, G.A.O. now has exposed a shocking pattern of waste within the administration’s unconscionable mass deportation campaign,” Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said in a statement on Thursday. Mr. Durbin, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, and two other Democratic senators asked the G.A.O. to investigate the costs of the detention expansion efforts.

Eileen Sullivan is a Times reporter covering the changes to the federal work force under the Trump administration.“

 

A Quiet ICE Surge That Unfolded ‘Everywhere All at Once’ This Summer

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 Summary

“ICE arrests surged to record highs this summer, reaching nearly 51,000 in August through decentralized operations in routine settings. Partnerships and technology enabled enforcement across states; ICE defended the expansion as promised action.

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A review of dozens of incidents caught on camera sheds new light on a largely invisible crackdown.

Sept. 25, 2026Updated 7:40 a.m. ET

The most effective escalation of President Trump’s mass deportation campaign happened quietly.

Unlike earlier high-profile raids that drew thousands of protesters into the streets of Chicago, Los Angeles and Minneapolis, the surge in arrests in June, July and August was captured mostly by grainy security camera footage, through cracked blinds and from behind closed doors.

Arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement this summer soared to record highs since the start of this Trump administration — with 43,000 in June, more than 49,000 in July and nearly 51,000 in August — as officials cut or narrowed the pathways to legal residency in the United States and expanded the pool of people eligible for deportation.

Federal agents appeared in nearly every corner of daily life, carrying out operations at hospitals and airports, outside suburban schools and along rural construction sites and truck stops. They fanned out from coastal cities in Maine to desert towns in Arizona, across the open plains of Wyoming and down through the southern borderlands.

In Republican-led states like Texas and Florida, where the swell was strongest, they amplified their reach through partnerships with sheriffs and state highway patrol officers. In Democratic strongholds, they intensified their activities despite laws meant to restrict them.

David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said the local partnerships, an infusion of federal dollars and new technology had made the dragnet so decentralized that it had attracted less attention.

“This gradual rise everywhere all at once, through a lot of means, is enabling the operation to fly under the radar,” he said.

The spike in arrests, to little public backlash, reflects a turning point in the Trump administration’s efforts to carry out large-scale expulsions of noncitizens. Those arrested were accused of violating civil immigration laws, but most had not been charged with or convicted of a crime. In a statement, ICE defended the expansion of immigration enforcement.

“This is promises made and promises kept in action,” the statement read. “The results speak for themselves.”

To understand how the operations have unfolded around the country, The New York Times reviewed arrest videos, photographs and court records from more than 50 incidents. What follows is a sampling of those interactions.

A Presence in Routine Places

Federal agents appeared as people carried out their everyday routines. People were detained en route to a soccer match. Leaving Sunday Mass. Having a drink at a nightclub. At national forests and outside polling locations.

Roger Hansen, 83, owner of the Little Big Load Laundromat in Madison, Wis., said federal immigration agents took five people from two of his locations in June. Statewide sweeps the same day resulted in the arrests of roughly 40 people, many of whom Department of Homeland Security officials said had criminal charges for sexual assault, driving while intoxicated and other crimes.

Security footage from one of Mr. Hansen’s laundromats shows two agents slamming a young customer to the ground near a soap dispenser. All the while, people continue to do laundry.

Outside, bystanders recorded the man being walked out in handcuffs and loaded into an S.U.V. with dark-tinted windows.

Mr. Hansen said he was disturbed by the violence. “They were having a heyday beating up on a kid,” he said, adding that business had dropped roughly 50 percent the next day and had not recovered. He said he believed many of his Latino and immigrant clientele may be too afraid to return.

In a statement, ICE said the arrests at the laundromat had been part of “targeted operations” in Wisconsin at the end of June. The five people from Nicaragua and Mexico were in the country illegally, ICE said. The agency did not respond to a question about their criminal records.

On July 7 in Salt Lake City, Elizabeth Garcia recorded three ICE agents forcing their way into her home without showing a warrant after following her father, Raul Moreno Meza, 52, from a gas station.

In the video, agents handcuff Mr. Moreno and his 15-year-old son, a U.S. citizen. Ms. Garcia howls and pleads as agents carry her father outside to their vehicles. Her 2-year-old can be heard crying in the background.

Before departing, an agent removed the shackles from Mr. Moreno’s son, who chased the S.U.V.s as they drove away. Mr. Moreno was later released on a bond, his daughter said, but her brother has become withdrawn and is attending therapy.

“He had lots of goals and intentions,” she said. “Now he is so negative.”

In a statement, ICE said officers arrested Mr. Moreno after he did not yield to officers at a traffic stop and then fled on foot. The agency alleged in the statement that “a juvenile occupant of Moreno’s vehicle” had assaulted an officer and was “detained in handcuffs for safety.”

Mr. Moreno, an undocumented Mexican man, crossed the border unlawfully about two decades ago, after his green card petition languished in delays and as his father, a naturalized U.S. citizen, fell ill, his family said. His father later died.  Because Mr. Moreno’s green card petition was tied to his father’s citizenship, the application did not advance after the death, the family said.

All Corners of the Country

Immigration arrests climbed to near record highs in almost every state. Some of the sharpest percentage increases in daily arrests occurred in Oregon, Montana, Hawaii, New Mexico, Vermont and New Jersey.

In June, the dragnet came to Harrison, N.J., where Asian and Hispanic residents account for about 65 percent of the population.

Tugrul Ozkarsli, 33, of Turkey, had just pulled up to his home with groceries when ICE agents in plain clothes boxed his vehicle in with their S.U.V.s, his wife, Kendra Ozkarsli, 46, said. He honked his horn and called her from his phone.

“All I hear is him screaming,” Ms. Ozkarsli recalled. She ran downstairs to find agents pulling him out of the vehicle.

“I’m married!” Mr. Ozkarsli yelled as agents handcuffed him.

“What are you doing? What are you doing?” Ms. Ozkarsli repeated, her hands shaking as she recorded with her phone. “This is my husband! Please stop!”

Mr. Ozkarsli had entered the United States legally on a business visa in December 2024. Before it expired, he applied for a student visa, which is still pending, Ms. Ozkarsli said. ICE said the pending application did not give him legal status.

The agency also said he had been arrested on burglary charges in New York last year. Ms. Ozkarsli said he was arrested after he entered the apartment of a woman he was dating at the time to retrieve his wallet and passport, prompting the woman to call the police. The charges were ultimately sealed and dismissed, she said.

Mr. Ozkarsli and Ms. Ozkarsli had married this summer, and he had been preparing to apply for a green card, she said.

From Roads to Airports

Traffic stops were central to the summer surge. Some were deadly. In Houston and Biddeford, Maine, traffic stops ended in fatal shootings involving officers. An encounter between people in a vehicle and agents at a Florida gas station resulted in a fatal car crash. 

In Milwaukee, Frankely Quezada, 34, and Estenderly Marte Polanco, 31, of the Dominican Republic, were running errands with their 7-year-old son on a Saturday morning in June. Near home, Mr. Quezada said, he noticed an unmarked S.U.V. trailing his van. He turned into an alley and accelerated.

The vehicle behind him flashed its lights, and as Mr. Quezada crossed the street, more S.U.V.s emerged to box him in. Federal agents jumped out, and one of them pointed a yellow stun gun at him and shattered his window, Mr. Quezada recalled. From a balcony, a neighbor filmed officers dragging Ms. Polanco out as her son cried.

Mr. Quezada, who was not arrested, said Ms. Polanco bit a federal agent as they drove her away after he shoved her face into her lap so forcefully she believed she would suffocate. Ms. Polanco, who overstayed a visa and has no other criminal record, remains held without bond in Kansas.

In response to questions about Ms. Polanco’s arrest, ICE said in a statement that both Mr. Quezada and Ms. Polanco had been combative and refused to obey commands and that Ms. Polanco would remain in custody as her case moves through immigration proceedings.

ICE also stepped up its arrests of foreign citizens at airports in July, in encounters that could be more surreptitious. Footage recorded by an airline manager on July 13 captured two ICE officers in plain clothes approaching a gate agent at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport before a flight to Portland, Ore. They identified themselves only as federal officers and instructed the employee to page a passenger.

Flanking the woman, the men discreetly took her into custody, according to the manager, who asked not to be identified, citing concerns for her job. The worker followed them, recording as they escorted the passenger through the concourse, one of them wheeling her luggage.

In the parking lot, the woman was handcuffed and put into an unmarked vehicle.

ICE agents told the manager that the woman was being detained because she had overstayed her visa. U.S. authorities did not share her name with The Times or provide information about her whereabouts.

No More Protected Areas

During the summer surge, displays of force were routine inside some courthouses, and federal agents have increasingly been spotted at and near hospitals and schools.

ICE acknowledged operating in courthouses but said officers did not target schools.

“Nothing in the Constitution prohibits arresting a lawbreaker where you find them,” the agency said in a statement. “The ability of law enforcement to make arrests of criminal illegal aliens in courthouses is common sense. It conserves valuable law enforcement resources because they already know where a target will be.”

On the morning of Aug. 20, Grace Calero, 39, and her daughter, Giulianna Carriel, 19, were rushed to a hospital after a car crash south of Orlando, Fla. As medical staff treated them for injuries, a federal agent entered the emergency ward and began questioning Grace’s sister, Gia Calero, about the women’s immigration status, the sister said.

He remained in the room, joking with nurses.

It wasn’t until hours later, after Grace’s neck brace was removed, that the officer announced he was with ICE, Gia said. In the dramatic scene, captured by Gia on her cellphone, five deputies with the Polk County Sheriff’s Office arrived. They handcuffed Grace as Giulianna wailed on a bed, clinging to her mother and begging them not to take her.

“They didn’t even let them recover,” Gia Calero said.

In statements, ICE and Polk County sheriff’s officials said the women had overstayed their visas. Gia said her sister and niece had pending asylum claims, stemming from attempted kidnappings in Ecuador. The two have since been deported to their native country.

Caroline Kim contributed video editing and production. Kitty Bennettcontributed research.

Jazmine Ulloa is a national reporter covering immigration for The Times.

Miriam Jordan reports from a grass roots perspective on immigrants and their impact on the demographics, society and economy of the United States.“