Advocates are gathering in Selma, Alabama, this weekend to mark the 60th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday" amid fears of a rollback on voting and civil rights.

Why it matters: The commemoration comes just days after President Trump gutted nearly all federal affirmative action programs while ordering agencies to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

• Meanwhile, the once-routine reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act — a law initially inspired by the brutal beatings of protesters at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma 60 years ago — remains stalled in Congress with little hope of passage under GOP control.
• A Trump executive order "ending radical indoctrination" in K-12 schools and new state laws limiting classroom discussions on race also make it unclear if teachers, even in Alabama, can even discuss events in Selma that led to one of the most dramatic moments of the Civil Rights Movement.

Zoom in: "The Annual Pilgrimage to Selma," a yearly reenactment of the 1965 crossing of Edmund Pettus Bridge for voting rights, is expected to draw tens of thousands of people Sunday.

• The event is sponsored by the nonprofit Bridge Crossing Jubilee, which will also host workshops, lectures and performances. Another group, Salute Selma, will host events on Black women and HBCUs.

Context: On March 7, 1965, future Congressman John Lewis and 600 other civil rights demonstrators crossed the bridge from Selma for a planned march to Montgomery to protest voting discrimination against Black Americans.

• State troopers violently attacked the unarmed demonstrators with batons and tear gas — images that shocked the nation and prompted President Lyndon Johnson to give an emergency address to Congress.
• The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. followed up with a three-day march from Selma to Montgomery under the protection of the Alabama National Guard, which was under federal control.
• Five months later, Johnson got Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act.

State of play: Civil rights advocates and Black elected leaders tell Axios the mood at the gathering this year likely will be a mixture of fear, dejection, defiance and renewal.

• "This moment feels both familiar and unfamiliar," Tennessee state Sen. Charlane Oliver tells Axios.
• "The threats we face today are even more dire because of who is in the White House."

NAACP President Derrick Johnson warns that fundamental rights and economic protections are being eroded — threatening hard-fought civil rights gains. He sees this moment as a pivotal test for democracy.

• "Selma was never just about the past," he said. "It's about the future — about whether we will protect what so many fought and died for."
• "The fight for voting rights was never just about ballots — it was about dignity. And today, policymakers are seeking to steal that dignity, whether by defunding essential programs or undermining our democracy."

Southern Poverty Law Center president and CEO Margaret Huang tells Axios this year's Jubilee feels like a commemoration and a call to action.

• "For the first time in years, there will be no federal participation in Jubilee. That's a signal about where civil rights and our legacy sit in this country."
• "This year, it's not just looking back. We're in it — right now."

The White House did not immediately respond to questions about whether anyone from the administration would attend the Selma gathering.

• Presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden have attended annual events in Selma.

The intrigue: On Wednesday, just days before the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, House Democrats reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.).

• The legislation seeks to restore and modernize the Voting Rights Act of 1965 protections, addressing challenges that have arisen since the Supreme Court invalidated key provisions in its 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder.
• Sewell tells Axios that in recent years, state lawmakers have introduced over 300 restrictive bills — more than 20 of which became law — slashing polling places, cutting early voting, eliminating mail-in ballots, and tightening ID rules.

Between the lines: Since the events in Selma, the number of Black Americans elected in the U.S. has shot up from just a few in 1964 to about 9,000.

• Most Black Americans are aligned with the Democratic Party, but Black Republicans have won high-profile races in Kentucky, New Mexico and California.

President Trump has shut the door to asylum for migrants worldwide. But he's holding it open for white South Africans because of its controversial new law aimed at countering the lingering impact of apartheid.

Why it matters: Trump's offer last month to "resettle" white South Africans in the U.S. — and his moves to cut aid to South Africa — are signs that an Afrikaner group that has promoted a debunked "white genocide" conspiracy theory has Trump's ear.

State of play: The new law in question is South Africa's Expropriation Act, which allows the government to take some land and redistribute as part of a long-running effort to lessen the economic disparities created by apartheid.

• Under apartheid, which ended in 1994, South Africa's white minority government prevented Blacks from owning land or enjoying basic rights for nearly a half-century.
• Three decades later, South Africa's president and many other leaders are Black. But white people make up 7.3% of South Africa's population while owning 72% of the farmland, a disparity that continues to ripple through the economy.
• South Africa's new law is designed to work something like eminent domain in the U.S.: It allows the government to take land from private parties if it's in the "public interest," and allows for it to be done without compensation — but only if negotiations for a reasonable settlement fail.

The backstory: South Africa's apartheid generated college protests in the U.S. during the 1980s and 1990s and calls for boycotts of businesses that operated in South Africa at the time.

• Then-President Reagan and other white conservatives in the U.S. remained supportive of the apartheid regime over fears the country could turn communist.

Zoom in: Trump, whose assault on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs are rooted in the notion that affirmative action-type policies unfairly affect whites, has falsely accused South Africa of unfairly seizing Afrikaners' agricultural property and allowing attacks against white farmers.

• Trump's executive order said the U.S. would "prioritize humanitarian relief" and resettlement for "Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination."

Reality check: The Democratic Alliance, South Africa's most popular white-led political party, is made up of multiethnic voters and is challenging the land law.

• There's no evidence that white farmers are experiencing a spike in violence despite a few high-profile cases.
• A South African court dismissed claims of a "white genocide" as "clearly imagined and not real," in a ruling that blocked a bequest to an organization described in court documents as a white supremacist group, per The Washington Post.

Meanwhile, the nation's leading farmers' union says there've been no land confiscations since the expropriation law was passed.

• South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has said he wants to resolve the dispute over his country's land policy. But he hasn't said what that might involve.
• The White House didn't respond to a request for comment.

Between the lines: The Trump administration's moves on South Africa are in line with Trump reinterpreting Civil Rights-era laws to focus on "anti-white racism" rather than discrimination against people of color.

• The Afrikaner trade union publicly declined Trump's offer for resettlements in the U.S.
• Other South Africans have widely ridiculed Trump for his offer and statements about the new law.

But South African-born Elon Musk, a top Trump adviser, has peddled conspiracy theories that his native country is "pushing for genocide of white people."

• That belief is closely linked to a once-fringe idea called "white replacement theory," which imagines a plot to change nations' racial composition by enacting policies that reduce whites' political power.
• Some U.S. conservatives have repeated conspiracies about white replacement in South Africa. In 2018, Trump tweeted false information about South African land seizures and farmer killings after segments on Fox News.

What they're saying: "It's outright racist," Paul S. Landau, a University of Maryland historian and South African expert, says of allegations that whites there are under attack and of Trump's offer to resettle white South Africans.

• "The biggest people who face dispossession from their land rights in South Africa's history are Black women."
• Landau said there hasn't been any meaningful land reform since the fall of apartheid.
• He added that wealthy white South Africans such as Trump friends Musk and golfer Gary Player could visit and migrate to the U.S. during apartheid, while Black South Africans were forbidden from leaving.

Nearly 100 U.S. immigration court professionals are resigning or retiring, on top of the around 30 immigration judges and senior staff recently fired by the Trump administration, a union for immigration judges said Friday.

Why it matters: The staff reduction will likely add to the historic backlog of cases and slow President Trump's mass deportation plan, even as he asks Congress for more resources.

• The nation's immigration court system is how immigrants can make their case to stay in the U.S.

The big picture: The Department of Justice said in a memo last month it is moving to consider all immigration judges at-will employees without any federal employee protections.

• That's putting immigration judges and the Trump administration on a collision course likely to slow down the record pace of cases immigration courts heard as President Biden left office.

Zoom in: About 85 immigration court professionals are resigning or retiring, the International Federation of Professional Engineers (IFPTE),  the union representing the country's roughly 700 immigration judges, says.

• This follows the firing of 29 judges and senior staff by the Trump administration. The union said no cause was given for the firing of judges.
• The past week, one additional probationary immigration judge has been fired, the union said.

The White House didn't directly address the reduction in immigration court staff to Axios but said President Trump will "use every lever of executive and legislative power" to fulfill his promises.

• "President Trump received a historic mandate from the American people to secure our border, mass deport illegal immigrants, and put American citizens first, White House Spokesman Kush Desai tells Axios.
• A DOJ spokesperson tells Axios the backlog of "cases was only increasing prior to this administration, which is now in position to hire more judges to work towards reducing this backlog."

State of play: The union estimates that the loss of judges and members of judge teams will add 24,000 cases to the courts' backlog in 2025.

• Immigration courts were on pace to rule on 852,000 deportation cases from Oct. 1, 2024, to Sept. 30, 2025, according to an analysis of case data by the nonpartisan Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).
• If that pace had continued, immigration judges would have ruled on more deportation cases in 2025 than in any previous year.
• The current backlog of 3.7 million cases in immigration courts means detained immigrants have to wait months, even years, for a hearing.

What they're saying: "Donald Trump ran for office promising to boost deportations, but as president his administration's policies are actually decreasing the number of immigration judges," IFPTE President Matt Biggs says.

• The administration is making the backlog worse and is being hypocritical in asking Congress for more resources for deportations, he added.

Context: The Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) during the first Trump administration stripped the immigration judges of their bargaining and union power in 2020 after the administration called judges "managers" who weren't eligible for union representation.

• The International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, which represents 90,000 public-, private- and federal-sector workers in the U.S. and Canada, is trying to get the immigration judges' union back.

Between the lines: Almost all immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally and arrested have a right to due process in the country's civil immigration court system.

• There, an immigration judge hears the case, sometimes in less than 30 minutes, and issues a ruling.

Yes, but: One of the executive orders signed by Trump seeks to deny some asylum seekers hearings as required by current law.

• The Trump administration also issued a new rule that dramatically expands expedited removal of immigrants who can't prove they've been in the U.S. for at least two years without full court hearings.
• The ACLU and two of its chapters are suing to halt that rule, which seeks to expand "fast-track" deportations.

A detention center will resume operations as a controversial immigrant family housing facility under a new agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, private prison company CoreCivic has announced.

Why it matters: The South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, was a target of civic rights advocates during the first Trump administration amid family separations and mistreatment allegations, but ICE needs more detention space for President Trump's mass deportation plans.

The big picture: The restart of the South Texas Family Residential Center reverses a Biden administration's policy of ending the practice of holding undocumented migrant families in detention centers.

• President Biden turned to remote tracking technology such as ankle bracelets as alternatives.
• Then-presidential candidate Joe Biden called for releasing families from ICE detention and Trump had vowed to reopen it.

Zoom in: CoreCivic said Wednesday that it has approved an amended agreement between the City of Dilley, Texas, and ICE to resume operations and care for up to 2,400 individuals at the facility.

• CoreCivic managed the Dilley facility from its construction in 2014 through August 2024, when funding for the contract with ICE was terminated. It has housed adults but was no longer being used to hold families.

Context: The Dilley facility was built in 2014 for ICE to detain immigrant families following a surge of migrants escaping violence in Central America.

• The facility came under criticism during Trump's first term for housing immigrant families while children were being separated from families.
• The Biden administration later transformed some family centers into quick-turn processing facilities, with the goal of releasing families within 72 hours.

What they're saying: "We are grateful for the trust our government partner has placed in us. We have an extensive supply of available beds," CoreCivic CEO Damon T. Hininger said in a statement.

• "We are entering a period when our government partners — particularly our federal government partners — are expected to have increased demand."
• CoreCivic COO Patrick Swindle said the company is offering workers from centers the opportunity to transfer to the Dilley.

Zoom out: The reopening comes a week after CoreCivic announced it inked a deal with ICE to expand detention capacity for immigrants at four of its prisons.

• CoreCivic said it has expanded its contracts with ICE to accommodate up to 784 detainees at Mississippi, Nevada, Ohio and Oklahoma facilities.

Between the lines: Holding immigrants in detention is by far the largest cost of the deportation process.

• A backlog of 3.7 million cases in immigration courts, where immigrants are entitled to make their case to stay in the U.S., means detained immigrants can wait months, even years, for a hearing.
• Undocumented immigrants facing criminal charges can't be deported immediately, as Trump has suggested. Instead, they typically have to go through the criminal justice system, serve sentences if found guilty, then face deportation.
• A rapid surge would require a mass building project of "soft detention" centers, or temporary facilities, to house immigrants beyond the system's current capacity of about 42,000 people.

President Trump renewed his ask for more funding to carry out his immigration agenda, including border security and "the largest deportation operation in American history" during his address to Congress Tuesday night.

Why it matters: Trump's mass deportation plans are near-impossible to achieve without more money, which Democrats are likely to oppose. Trump Cabinet members, particularly border czar Tom Homan, have made a similar ask for weeks.

Zoom out: During the speech, Trump said he hoped to surpass the deportation record of "current record holder Dwight D. Eisenhower, a moderate man but someone who believed very strongly in borders" — a reference to Operation Wetback.

• That mass deportation, in the 1950s, used military-style tactics to round up 1.3 million Mexicans and Mexican Americans across the country for the-then largest deportation operation in U.S. history. "Wetback" is a racial slur for Mexicans.
• The president also celebrated new data on border crossings in February that showed they'd declined to their lowest level in decades.

Zoom in: Trump made his case for more funding by repeating messages from the campaign trail, including falsehoods about migrants and immigration policy.

• Trump repeated debunked claims about the immigrant population numbers in Springfield, Ohio and gang members occupying Aurora, Colo.
• He repeated that his predecessor, President Biden, had open borders into the country, which he did not.
• Trump also said that people who illegally crossed the border were "murderers, drug dealers, gang members and people from mental institutions and insane asylums" and invited several guests to underscore his anti-immigration message.

Reality check: There's no evidence that immigrants trying to come into the country were from prisons and mental institutions.

• Immigrants commit fewer crimes than their American-born counterparts, studies have shown. But Trump and others have elevated individual cases that support their claims, like the death of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.
• The 22,797 immigrants out of 43,759 — or 52.1% — currently held in ICE detention at the various locations across the country have no criminal record, data shows.
• Many more have only minor offenses, including traffic violations.
• Less than 0.5% of the 1.8 million cases in immigration courts during the past fiscal year — involving about 8,400 people — included deportation orders for alleged crimes other than entering the U.S. illegally, an Axios review of government data found.

Between the lines: Trump entered office at a time when U.S. immigration courts already are on pace to decide record numbers of deportation cases — and order the most removals in five years — under Biden's push to fast-track asylum decisions.

• A backlog of 3.7 million cases in immigration courts, where immigrants are entitled to make their case to stay in the U.S., means detained immigrants can wait months, even years, for a hearing.
• Immigration courts are predicted to rule on 852,000 deportation cases from Oct. 1, 2024, to Sept. 30, 2025, according to an analysis of data by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).
• If that pace continues, immigration judges will decide more deportation cases in 2025 than in any previous year on record.

The other side: Immigrant rights groups quickly denounced Trump's rhetoric around "invasion" or immigrants coming from mental institutions.

• "It is vital that we remain vigilant against any hateful language that undermines the rich diversity and strength of democracy," Hector Sanchez Barba, President and CEO of the left-leaning Mi Familia Vota said.

In the Spanish language response, U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) said Trump's immigration policies are not designed to deport criminals who should be deported, "but to create a reign of terror that negatively impacts local economies."

• The chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus said the president was acting "more like a king than like a president."

Editor's note: This story has been updated with additional comment from Rep. Adriano Espaillat.

The number of immigrants removed from the U.S. was down during President Trump's first days in office compared to the daily average in the final weeks of Joe Biden's term, according to early numbers reviewed by Axios.

Why it matters: The data offer a mixed view of how Trump's plans to deport "millions" of unauthorized immigrants and dramatically beef up border security are playing out so far.

Zoom in: On one hand, the large drop in illegal border crossings since Trump took office has significantly reduced the number of people U.S. agents are catching at the border and designating for quick removal.

• Trump is celebrating this decline, saying in a Truth Social post Saturday, "The Invasion of our Country is OVER."

On the other hand, the administration's push to quickly remove millions of undocumented immigrants in the nation's interior has run into the reality of existing laws, limited government resources and legal challenges.

• Immigrants arrested well within the nation's interior are entitled to a court hearing in a system that's backlogged for months.

By the numbers: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) removals of immigrants who were in the country illegally declined by 6.5% during Trump's first two full weeks in office, according to the data from the ICE detention management database and collected by the nonpartisan Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).

• From Jan. 26 to Feb. 8, the U.S. government removed from the country 693 a day on average, the TRAC analysis found.
• From Oct. 1 to Jan. 25, the period including the last days of the Biden administration, the daily average for removals was 733.

Zoom out: Daily immigrant arrests by ICE were down nearly 5% during the first week of February compared to the daily average during all of fiscal 2024 under the Biden administration.

• ICE arrested an average of 724 people a day the first eight days of February. The average number of arrests in FY 2024 was 759.

A senior White House official told Axios that overall, Trump is happy with the efforts and pace of his immigration crackdown.

• "He's happy with it, but we're not going to take our foot off the gas. It's all gas, no brakes, is what we say," the official said.

The intrigue: Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, told Axios that "removals aren't down" but did not provide data explaining that point of view.

• McLaughlin said about 55,000 people were removed from the U.S. by all enforcement agencies from Jan. 21 to Feb. 27.
• It appears she was referring to removals (deportations and removals of undocumented immigrants), administrative returns (migrants who withdraw applications at ports of entry or crew members on ships who arrive without visas) and enforcement returns (migrants crossing the border who are returned by ICE, the Border Patrol or another agency).
• That figure would be below the monthly average for those categories in fiscal 2024, which was about 67,700 — excluding December, for which there isn't updated data yet.
• In February alone of last year, total removals were more than 69,000 people, according to the Office of Homeland Security Statistics.

Between the lines: Trump's administration has pleaded with Congress for more funding to ramp up enforcement.

• Border czar Tom Homan has been making the rounds to law enforcement groups, in media interviews and on Capitol Hill to rally support for Trump's biggest campaign promise.

The administration has modified deals with private prison contractors CoreCivic and Geo Group to provide more detention space for arrested immigrants.

• Contractors providing technical and data services also are pitching the administration on how to better share "enforcement lifecycle" data between agencies.
• "Technology is how you supercharge President Trump's policy. Of course ICE is going to need a massive ramping up of resources, but not just legacy additives — creative and innovative solutions are key here," said one person close to the administration, who asked not to be identified because the funding debate is fluid.

What they're saying: "Everybody's caught up in the Dow Jones-ing of ICE arrest numbers — which proves very little," said Jason Houser, a former ICE chief of staff during the Biden administration.

The number of immigrants held in detention under U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has hit the highest level in more than five years, new data show.

Why it matters: The detention surge comes as the Trump administration steps up immigration enforcement and seeks to expand the capacity to detain more immigrants amid a months-long backlog with immigration judges.

By the numbers: ICE is reporting that it has increased the number of immigrants in detention to 43,759 as of Feb. 23, according to new data collected by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) and reviewed by Axios.

• That's the highest detention level since November 2019 during the first Trump administration.
• The number of immigrants in detention reached as high as 55,654 in August 2019, with the help of temporary centers erected to house an increase of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Zoom in: 22,797 out of 43,759 — or 52.1% — held in ICE detention at the various locations across the country have no criminal record, TRAC found.

• Many more have only minor offenses, including traffic violations.
• ICE relied on detention facilities in Texas to house the most people during FY 2025, according to data current as of Feb. 18, 2025.
• Adams County Detention Center in Natchez, Miss., held the largest number of ICE detainees so far in fiscal year 2025, averaging 2,148 per day, the analysis found.

State of play: For the first time in four years, it appears that ICE is now responsible for more than half of all immigrants arrested, leading to detention.

• New numbers show 52% of detainees were originally arrested by ICE compared to 48% first apprehended by Customs and Border Protection (CBP), signaling how aggressive the Trump administration is turning toward the interior of the nation for immigration enforcement.
• ICE arrested 11,755 and CBP arrested 10,198 of the 21,953 people booked into detention by ICE during January 2025.

The intrigue: The switch to ICE making more arrests now than CBP isn't surprising since there is no lower border traffic, but also fewer people even trying to travel through the Darién Gap, Boston College Law School professor Daniel Kanstroom tells Axios.

• "A lot of people are stuck in Mexico right now, and I think the number of people moving north (is) definitely down now," said Kanstroom, the author of "Aftermath: Deportation Law and the New American Diaspora."
• Jennie Murray, president and CEO of the moderate to conservative-leaning National Immigration Forum, tells Axios that the Trump administration appears to be focusing more on enforcement in workplaces and cities.
• Still, in these early days of the Trump presidency, Murray says it's hard to determine long-term patterns. "The reporting has not been that consistent from ICE," she said.

Between the lines: Holding immigrants in detention is by far the largest cost of the deportation process.

• A backlog of 3.7 million cases in immigration courts, where immigrants are entitled to make their case to stay in the U.S., means detained immigrants can wait months, even years, for a hearing.
• Undocumented immigrants facing criminal charges can't be deported immediately, as President Trump has suggested. Instead, they typically have to go through the criminal justice system, serve sentences if found guilty, then face deportation.

Undocumented immigrants age 14 or older must register and provide fingerprints or face a fine or even imprisonment under new Trump administration plans announced Tuesday.

The big picture: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the escalation in the administration's crackdown on undocumented immigrants that she vowed the administration would enforce.

Driving the news: Undocumented immigrants will from Tuesday be required to register and create an USCIS online account, per a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services online page.

• The Department of Homeland Security will soon announce a form to complete the registration requirement, according to the post.
• The requirement applies to anyone in the U.S. for 30 days or longer.
• Once a person has registered and been fingerprinted, DHS will issue "evidence of registration," which immigrants over 18 must carry and keep with them at all times, according to USCIS.

Zoom in: Per a DHS statement, penalties will be imposed on undocumented immigrants who:

• Willfully fail to depart the U.S.
• Fail to register with the federal government and be fingerprinted.
• Fail to tell the federal government of changes to their address.

What they're saying: Noem said on Fox News' "Jesse Watters Primetime" Tuesday evening those who follow the requirements "can avoid criminal charges and fines and we will help them relocate right back to their home country."

• The program provides "them an opportunity to come back someday and to be a part of the American dream," but if they don't register, "they're breaking the federal law, which has always been in place," Noem told Fox News' Jesse Watters.
• "We're just going to start enforcing it to make sure" the undocumented immigrants go "back home," Noem said. "And when they want to be an American, then they can come and visit us again."

Between the lines: The new order will likely face strong opposition from civil liberties organizations and immigrant rights groups since it attempts to criminalize undocumented immigrants.

• Being in the country illegally is a civil violation and not a criminal one.
• Critics will likely say such requirements would require new laws, not executive orders or policy changes.

Zoom out: Since President Trump declared a national emergency on the U.S.-Mexico border soon after taking office in January, his administration has moved to unleash sweeping limits on undocumented immigrants, asylum-seekers and refugees.

• The administration has faced several lawsuits challenging the crackdown, including Trump's move to end birthright citizenship.
• DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement Trump and Noem were sending a "clear message for those in our country illegally" with the latest drive.
• "The Trump administration will enforce all our immigration laws — we will not pick and choose which laws we will enforce," McLaughlin said. "We must know who is in our country for the safety and security of our homeland and all Americans."

Go deeper: Texas, Mississippi have the most detained immigrants

Editor's note: This article has been updated with further context.

The number of deadly police encounters jumped last year to its highest level since 2013, according to newly released data.

Why this matters: The rise comes as the momentum for police reform has died five years after the 2020 murder of George Floyd and as President Trump ends initiatives aimed at reducing police misconduct.

By the numbers: A mapping initiative by Campaign Zero, an organization that advocates against police violence, found that 2024 saw 1,365 people killed by law enforcement.

• That was less than a 1% increase from the previous year, but the small spike came as early data showed an overall national decline in homicides and other violent crimes.
• A large majority of police killings (64.6%) were in response to 911 calls, the analysis found.
• Over half of people (54.7%) killed by U.S. law enforcement were between the ages of 20 and 40 years old.
• When information has been available about the mental state of the victim (70% of cases), 1 in 5 people killed by police exhibited signs of mental illness (not including drug/alcohol use).

Zoom in: Black and Latino residents continued to be disproportionately affected, both nationally and locally, based on new neighborhood data that Campaign Zero began tracking in 2024.

• In Chicago, for example, Black residents were more than 30 times more likely to be killed than white residents.
• In St. Louis, Black residents were more than 10 times more likely to be killed than white residents.

What they're saying: "This rise in police violence, even as homicides and violent crime decline nationwide, is a deeply troubling trend that demands data-backed solutions," Campaign Zero said in a statement.

How it works: The database relies on media reports to track any incident in which a law enforcement officer, whether off-duty or on-duty, uses force resulting in someone's death.

• Campaign Zero executive director DeRay Mckesson told Axios that researchers scour the internet daily for the latest police shootings and verify them to confirm details before including them in the database.
• If staff can't reasonably confirm a person's race or ethnicity, that person is classified as having an "unknown race," Mckesson said.
• The organization says its database has captured 92% of all police killings since 2013.

Between the lines: Last year saw a momentary re-examination of police violence after the fatal deputy shooting of Sonya Massey, an Illinois Black woman who had called 911 for help.

• A fatal beating of a Black man by white corrections officers at an upstate New York prison that was caught on body cam video also sparked anger, investigations and planned protests.

Yes, but: Former Vice President Kamala Harris did not make police reform central to her presidential campaign as she sought to win over white voters in Pennsylvania and Michigan.

• She mentioned the Massey killing and urged the GOP-controlled Congress to pass the stalled George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.
• President Trump campaigned on ending all Department of Justice pattern and practice investigations into troubled police departments

Flashback: After the 2020 racial reckoning from protests called for police reforms, many states saw a rise in new laws that reduced qualified immunity for officers, banned choke holds and required body cameras.

• Increases in crime early in President Biden's term, infighting between Black Lives Matter organizations and political stalemates in Congress all but the drive for dramatic policing reforms.
• A conservative backlash that ended public discussions about systemic racism under the guise of banning critical race theory in schools also stalled reform proposals.

Facilities in Mississippi and Texas are holding the most detainees among the tens of thousands who've been rounded up across the nation during the ongoing crackdown on illegal immigration, according to newly released federal data.

The big picture: The data shed light on the housing arrangements federal officials have made for detainees at a time when the U.S. government's immigration centers are at near capacity — and the Trump White House is pushing for dramatically more arrests.

By the numbers: The Adams County Detention Center in Natchez, Miss., is holding the largest number of detainees for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), averaging 2,154 a day, according to the data collected by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) and reviewed by Axios.

• The South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, Texas has the second-most ICE detainees (1,680 a day), followed by the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Ga. (1,531 per day).
• No state is holding more immigration detainees than Texas: Eight detention centers in the state were among the nation's top 20 facilities that each are holding at least 800 people for ICE, according to an Axios review of the data, which runs through Feb. 8.

Zoom out: Overall, ICE was holding 41,169 in detention at the various locations. Nearly 55% of those have no criminal record, and many more have committed only minor offenses such as traffic violations, TRAC found.

• Also in the immigration system are more than 188,000 individuals and families who were in the Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program as of Jan. 11.
• This group includes nonviolent detainees who usually are given wristbands or ankle monitors, or told to check in by telephone, so that authorities can monitor them until their immigration court dates.

The ICE detention statistics update, which TRAC said has missing and incorrect data, did not report or make any reference to the number of detainees at the U.S. naval facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

How it works: Immigrants can end up in ICE detention after being arrested by ICE or the U.S. Border Patrol.

• Immigrants also can end up in detention after being arrested on criminal charges and released into ICE custody.
• Detention facilities can be run by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons, state or local governments, private contractors, the U.S. Marshals Service or facilities ICE has for families.
• Mississippi's Adams County Detention Center is run by CoreCivic, a private prison company.

Between the lines: Holding immigrants in detention is by far the largest cost of the deportation process.

• A backlog of 3.7 million cases in immigration courts, where immigrants are entitled to make their case to stay in the U.S., means detained immigrants can wait months, even years, for a hearing.
• Undocumented immigrants facing criminal charges can't be deported immediately, as President Trump has suggested. Instead, they typically have to go through the criminal justice system, serve sentences if found guilty, then face deportation.
• To hold more people from a raid surge would require a mass building project of "soft detention" centers, or temporary facilities, to house immigrants beyond the system's current capacity of about 42,000 people.

Advocates, historians, and descendants of enslaved people are planning to join a 60-mile walk in Texas to bring attention to the Underground Railroad to Mexico — a lesser-known route that helped enslaved people escape to freedom.

Why it matters: The "Walking Southern Roads to Freedom," scheduled for March 3 to 9 in South Texas, is the latest development drawing attention to a largely forgotten episode of Black/Latino history amid a new surge of research and advocacy around the route.

Zoom in: Organizers say the walk will begin at La Sal del Rey, a salt lake in Hidalgo County, Texas, and pass many historic sites believed to be connected to the Underground Railroad to Mexico.

• Faith leaders, descendants, artists from Philadelphia and Kansas City, and representatives from the Harriet Tubman Museum and Educational Center in Cambridge, Maryland, are expected to join the seven-day march.
• The event will also include a stop in Mexico to commemorate country's role in the underground walk to freedom. The walk will end in the border town of McAllen, Texas.

The intrigue: The event is a culmination of research by Roseann Bacha-Garza, a program manager for the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley's Community Historical Archaeology Project with Schools in Edinburg, Texas.

• She said the gathering will "increase awareness about the resilience and resolve of freedom seekers of African ancestry who participated in underground railroad-like activities from south Texas to Mexico."
• Bacha-Garza said the plans for the walk began after the school received a National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom designation for the Jackson Ranch Church and Martin Jackson Cemetery in San Juan, Texas, from the U.S. National Park Service.
• Those sites once served as a gateway to Mexico for enslaved people seeking freedom.

Zoom out: The Jackson ranch was located next to another owned by Silvia Hector Webber — dubbed by some historians as the "Harriet Tubman" of the Underground Railroad to Mexico — and her husband, John, who was white.

• The Webbers built a ferry landing on their property to help enslaved escapees move along the Colorado River toward Mexico, says Ohio State history professor María Esther Hammack.

Context: Historians have known for decades that some enslaved Black people in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Alabama escaped slavery by heading south.

• Oral histories, archives of slave escape ads, and narratives of formerly enslaved people show that fleeing to Mexico had been a possibility leading up to the U.S. Civil War.
• Abolitionists wrote about "colonies" of formerly enslaved Black people popping up in towns across northern Mexico — a country that had abolished slavery in the 1830s.

Yes, but: How many people fled south of the border remained a mystery, and historians debate just how well-organized the network was.

The Plano African American Museum in Plano, Texas, is opening an exhibit on March 6 called "Risking It All For Freedom: Women Who Crafted The Underground Railroad Into Mexico."

• It is being partly organized by the descendants of Silvia Hector Webber.

Friday marks the 60th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X (also known as el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz) following a brief but lasting career as a civil rights advocate and Black nationalist.

Through the lens: Here are some images of Malcolm X's evolution from a life of crime, to a prominent leader in the Nation of Islam, to an international traveler investigating racism against Asians, to a cultural icon.

Go deeper: Attorney wants Malcolm X FBI/CIA files to be declassified

President Trump has ordered the shutdown of the first nationwide database tracking misconduct by federal police officers.

Zoom in: The closure, first reported by the Washington Post on Thursday, ends the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database — a resource experts said improved public safety by preventing bad officers from jumping from agency to agency.

• A note on the database on the Department of Justice's website says Trump revoked an executive order signed by then-President Biden and the database will be decommissioned.

The big picture: The move by Trump fulfills a campaign promise to reverse police reforms that came out of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd.

• Trump reversed Biden's order creating the database, even though he had proposed it himself.
• It ends one of the defining moments of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations as many of the police reforms died amid infighting, political stalemate and a rising conservative backlash.

Context: Biden's Executive Order (EO) 14074 established a national database of police misconduct and required all federal law enforcement agencies to participate and use the database to screen personnel.

• It banned the use of chokeholds and carotid restraints "unless deadly force is authorized" and restricted the use of no-knock entries.
• It ensured "timely and thorough investigations and consistent discipline."
• It also mandated body-worn camera policies and the expedited public release of footage in cases of serious bodily injury or deaths in custody for all federal agencies.

And: It restricted the transfer or federal purchases of military equipment "that belongs on a battlefield, not on our streets."

• It also tracked data on use-of-force incidents.

By the numbers: The national database encompassed nearly 150,000 federal officers and agents, from the FBI and IRS down to the Railroad Retirement Board, per the Post.

• All 90 executive branch agencies with law enforcement officers had provided thousands of disciplinary records dating to 2017, a report issued by the Justice Department in December said.

A civil rights attorney is asking the Trump administration to declassify the FBI and CIA files linked to Malcolm X on the 60th anniversary of his assassination.

Why it matters: The plea comes on the heels of President Trump ordering the declassifying of FBI files connected to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Zoom in: Civil rights and personal injury attorney Ben Crump is scheduled Friday to make a public demand for the files of Malcolm X, later known as el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, at the New York City site where he was assassinated.

• Crump, who has represented several Black families of victims of high-profile police shootings, will be accompanied by Malcolm X's family.
• Representatives for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment in the evening.

Context: Malcolm X was assassinated at age 39 on February 21, 1965 while speaking at the then-Audubon Ballroom.

• He was shot 21 times by a group of men in front of his wife and daughters.
• Scholars and civil rights advocates have long said the men later charged with killing Malcolm X were wrongly convicted.
• Some have alleged police and federal agents played a role in his death.

The intrigue: In early 2021, the family of Malcolm X released a letter reportedly written by a now-deceased police officer alleging that the New York Police Department and FBI were behind the assassination of the Black Civil Rights Movement leader.

• The city of New York agreed in October 2022 to pay $26 million in lawsuit settlements filed on behalf of two men exonerated in late 2021 in the assassination.

Between the lines: Scholars believe the files could give clues to tensions between Malcolm X and his former group, the Nation of Islam, after a public breakup.

• Some scholars and historians believe the Nation of Islam and/or the FBI may have been behind the assassination.
• They also believe that the CIA followed Malcolm X as he took international trips to the Holy City of Mecca and London, U.K.
• Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan said in a 2000 "60 Minutes" interview that he regrets his writings may have led others to murder Malcolm X. Farrakhan has denied ordering the assassination but in 1994 admitted to having "helped create the atmosphere" that led to it.

Zoom out: The CIA and FBI put Malcolm X under surveillance after witnessing him drawing large crowds where he spoke of Black nationalism and urged Black Americans to defend themselves against violence.

• FBI leader J. Edgar Hoover and others in the U.S. government sought to prevent the rise of what they feared would be a Black "messiah" who could unify African Americans.
• Malcolm X, King, other Black leaders, and some Latino civil rights figures were under FBI surveillance.

Yes, but: King's family is concerned that Trump's order to release records about his assassination could revive the FBI's attempts to discredit him — efforts that sought to exploit his indiscretions with women and undermine his legacy, sources close to his relatives told Axios.

• The family requested a sneak preview of the records before their release. Trump declined, a White House official said, but not out of animus toward the family.

Preliminary data show homicides in the nation's largest cities fell by 16% in 2024 from the previous year, and overall violent crime appears to have dropped as well.

Why it matters: Stats compiled by the Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA) suggest that the COVID-era crime wave all but evaporated during President Biden's final year in office, even as Donald Trump's claims that crime was rising became a key part of his winning election strategy.

Zoom in: Violent crime, especially homicides, rose during Biden's first two years as president before dropping dramatically the next two years, the MCCA data show.

• An Axios analysis of the preliminary crime data for 2024 from 69 self-reporting large police departments found that violent crimes decreased overall by 6%.
• Overall, robberies (9%), rape (6%), and aggravated assaults (5%) all declined, the Axios analysis found.

Many cities had significantly larger declines in homicides. They dropped 35% in Boston and New Orleans, 26% in Cleveland and Dallas, 34% in Philadelphia and 32% in Washington, D.C.

• One caveat: The data from cities didn't include New York City, the nation's largest city, which didn't submit crime numbers. The city releases crime stats on its own website and has reported declining crime in 2024.

The intrigue: During the presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly made false claims that migrants from Latin America, Africa and the Middle East were driving big jumps in violent crimes.

• Trump singled out Aurora, Colo., saying the Denver suburb was being overrun by Venezuelan immigrant gangs. The MCCA stats indicate homicides declined in Aurora by 5% last year, compared to 2023.
• Phoenix, another city targeted by conservatives as being besieged with violent crime because of undocumented immigrants, had a 28% decline in homicides last year.

Zoom out: Overall, the Axios analysis found that homicides dropped 24% from 2020 (the first nine months of the pandemic and Trump's last year in office) to 2024.

• Over those four years, overall violent crime decreased by 10%. Robberies dropped 10% and aggravated assaults fell 3%. Rapes increased by 3%, however.

A few cities did have large jumps in homicides in 2024 compared to 2020, the MCCA data show.

• Those cities included Albuquerque (20%), Austin, Texas (41%) and Oklahoma City (70%), an Axios review found.

The bottom line: Early numbers show Trump returned to office with lower violent crime rates — especially homicides — than when he left the presidency in January 2021.

• There's no evidence undocumented immigrants during Biden's term were behind a surge in violent crime.
• A report in December found that the homicide surge of 2020 was primarily driven by men and teen boys who were laid off or saw their schools close during pandemic shutdowns.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s family is concerned that President Trump's order to release records about his assassination could revive the FBI's attempts to discredit him — efforts that sought to exploit his indiscretions and undermine his legacy, sources close to his relatives tell Axios.

• The family requested a sneak preview of the records prior to their release. Trump declined, a White House official said, but not out of animus toward the family.

Why it matters: The brewing controversy pits Trump's determination to release documents the government has kept secret for more than a half-century against the family's lingering pain over how J. Edgar Hoover's FBI spied on King and tried to intimidate and humiliate him.

• Last month, Trump ordered the release of all records the U.S. government still holds about King's assassination in 1968, as well as the assassinations of President Kennedy (1963) and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (1968).
• The FBI has released documents about King's private life previously, but the new disclosure could include more documents detailing alleged embarrassing interactions in hotel rooms, private homes and even King's house,

"We know J. Edgar Hoover tried to destroy Dr. King's legacy, and the family doesn't want that effort to prevail," a King family friend told Axios.

• "Family members wanted an advanced viewing" of the documents, "and [Trump] said no," the White House official said, explaining that the president believes "these records don't belong to them. These are the public's records."
• The president's abiding interest is disclosure about what the government knew about the assassinations, not salacious details about the leaders' sex lives, the official said, adding that the King family's concerns had been relayed to the White House.
• "Everything will be revealed," Trump said last month after he announced his order to disclose information about the three 1960s assassinations that shaped a turbulent decade in American society and politics.

Zoom in: King's assassination at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis has long fueled conspiracy theories about potential government involvement, especially because of the FBI's hostility toward him.

• In 1969, James Earl Ray, a career criminal, pleaded guilty to shooting King but later recanted his confession, saying he was part of a larger conspiracy.
• Allegations of government complicity have persisted for decades, with civil rights leaders, investigative authors and Ray's attorneys citing the FBI, Memphis police, and Missouri State Penitentiary — from which Ray escaped a year before the killing — as potential conspirators.

Between the lines: The promise of complete disclosure alarmed the King family, who were hurt in 2019 by the release of FBI files that alleged sordid details about King's sex life, the family friend said.

• "The assassination of our father is a deeply personal family loss that we have endured over the last 56 years. We hope to be provided the opportunity to review the files as a family prior to its public release," the family said in an Instagram post Jan. 24, the day after Trump's order.
• "There are deep concerns" within the family, said a second source who has corresponded with one of King's two surviving adult children.
• "They know the right wing wants to smear Dr. King, and one way to do it is by putting these smears in the public under the guise of transparency. If there are assassination records, release those. But smears are not assassination records."

The big picture: Trump's push to release the assassination records reflect his longtime suspicion of the FBI. He stewed when the FBI investigated him, and has associated the bureau with what many conservatives see as a "Deep State" bureaucracy that has manipulated the government.

• So the King family and Trump share a common antagonist: the FBI.

King's pursuit of civil rights through nonviolence is his enduring legacy. But as his work unfolded in the 1960s, Hoover and others in the U.S. government sought to prevent the rise of what they feared would be a Black "messiah" who could unify African Americans.

• Congress formally recognized King's iconic status by approving a federal holiday in his honor more than 15 years after he was killed in Memphis.
• In the following decades, his legacy drew bipartisan admiration. More recently, however, far-right commentators such as Charlie Kirk, a Trump ally, began criticizing King.

Trump hasn't followed suit, but such criticism coincides with an increasing willingness among Republicans to attack affirmative action, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, and other initiatives designed to ensure fairness for historically disadvantaged groups.

• Trump has banned DEI programs in the U.S. government. He signed a proclamation declaring February as Black History Month — but his DEI ban led federal agencies to cancel activities celebrating it.

Flashback: FBI documents released through the years have shown how King's success as a civil rights organizer was rattling the bureau in 1963.

• "We must mark [King] now ... as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security," William Sullivan, then the FBI's director of intelligence, wrote in a memo two days after King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.
• As attorney general, Robert Kennedy approved Hoover's request in 1963 to wiretap King amid concerns that King was associating with communists.

During its surveillance of King, the FBI stumbled upon recordings, from the bugged home of his lawyer Clarence Jones, that indicated King was involved in an extramarital affair, according to the 2020 documentary "MLK/FBI."

• That led the FBI to expand its surveillance to include bugging King's home and hotel rooms. FBI agents reported that King was involved in several sexual liaisons, according to "MLK/FBI" and documents in the National Archives.
• In November 1964, the FBI anonymously sent a package to King at his home with a copy of an electronic surveillance tape that included personal information and a note suggesting that he kill himself, documents in the National Archives show.

FBI files accessible in the Archives suggest the bureau has tape recordings or photos of King's private activities that have never been released.

• A federal judge in 1977 ordered most recordings and reports on King's private life sealed until 2027. Under Trump's order, the documents would be released two years early, by March 9.

Sam Pollard, director of "MLK/FBI," tells Axios that there initially will be attention on "salacious stuff" when the records on King are released.

• But Pollard said the release also is likely to include tapes that will give scholars insight on conversations King had with Jesse Jackson and other associates on their strategies and views on their civil rights movement.
• "I don't think, personally, it's gonna hurt his reputation," said Pollard, who received a "cease and desist" order from King's family when he was working on his film but later reached an agreement with the family.

What we're watching: Under Trump's order, the government's long-withheld documents on former President Kennedy's assassination are supposed to be released imminently.

• The records regarding Robert Kennedy's assassination are supposed to be released after King's records, sometime after March 9.

U.S. agents arrested more than 21,000 unauthorized immigrants in November as President Biden's term wound down — a pace the Trump administration doesn't appear to be matching in its first month despite its crackdown, an Axios review of new data finds.

Why it matters: Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, says about 14,000 immigrants have been arrested in the three-plus weeks since President Trump took office.

• One possible reason Trump's arrest rate isn't matching Biden's: The publicity surrounding the new president's tough talk on immigration has fueled a dramatic dip in the number of people trying to enter the U.S. illegally on the southern border.
• Homan said this week that illegal border crossings have dropped 92% since Trump took office Jan. 20.

The big picture: The Trump administration, through social media posts, has suggested U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested about 8,500 immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally during Trump's first two weeks in office.

• But Trump's team has stopped giving daily ICE updates since Feb. 4. The administration also isn't releasing details on arrests by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents.

By the numbers: ICE arrested more than 7,500 immigrants in November, while the CBP arrested more than 13,500 that month as waves of immigrants tried to cross the border, according to federal data collected by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).

• TRAC collects immigration data via Open Records Act requests.
• A total of 21,130 people arrested by the agencies were booked into detention sites across the country in November, the data show.

The intrigue: Homan told WABC radio in New York on Tuesday that of the 14,000 or so immigrants arrested since Trump took office, the "vast majority have criminal histories."

• He did not offer any details.

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, said Homan's arrest estimate was just for those done by ICE, though he didn't make that distinction.

• She didn't provide information about the arrest breakdown between ICE and CBP. People arrested by either agency eventually are held at ICE detention sites, where space is nearing capacity.
• The White House declined to comment.

Reality check: Federal numbers in recent years have shown that less than 1% of people with deportation orders had been convicted of dangerous crimes.

• About 60% of the 39,152 people held in ICE detention as of Dec. 29 had no criminal record, according to TRAC.
• The Trump administration has said it considers every arrestee who's in the U.S. without authorization to be a criminal, but just being in the country illegally is a civil violation — not a criminal one — under the law.

Between the lines: Trump's administration has accelerated immigration enforcement in the nation's interior, with ICE raids in cities and towns away from the U.S.-Mexico border.

• Trump's immigration crackdown isn't just about making arrests. It's about choreography, photo ops, wardrobe changes and tough talk — all designed to discourage undocumented people from wanting to be in the U.S.

A coalition of civil liberties and immigrant rights groups are suing to get access to immigrants transferred from the U.S. to detention at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba under President Trump's recent order.

The big picture: The lawsuit filed Wednesday is the latest legal challenge to the Trump administration's moves for mass detentions and mass deportations of immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally.

Driving the news: The groups filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on behalf of several plaintiffs, including the sister of one of the men being detained at Guantánamo.

• While the Trump administration has widely publicized images of people it now detains at Guantánamo, it has also cut off any means of communication with them, the groups allege in court documents.
• The complaint alleges that, without the court's intervention, more immigrants will be transferred to "this legal black hole" without access to counsel or any means of vindicating their rights.
• The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Center for Constitutional Rights, International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) and ACLU of the District of Columbia are the groups that filed the lawsuit.

Catch up quick: President Trump announced in a memorandum late last month plans to house at Guantánamo Bay up to 30,000 immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally as part of his immigration crackdown.

• The White House directed the secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security "to take all appropriate actions to expand the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to full capacity."

Yes, but: A federal court temporarily blocked the Trump administration on Sunday from sending three Venezuelan men from immigration detention in New Mexico to the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.

• The men are currently being held at Otero County Processing Center in New Mexico and "have a pending case before the court challenging their unlawfully prolonged detention," according to the statement that says they faced the risk of "imminent transfer to the island prison."

A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to Axios for comment.

Zoom in: A coalition of immigrant rights and legal groups sent a letter to the secretaries of Defense, State, and Homeland Security last week expressing their serious concern about the detention of immigrants in Guantánamo.

• The groups requested immediate access to them. The groups say they took legal action after getting no response from the Trump administration.

What they're saying: "The Trump administration cannot be allowed to build upon Guantánamo's sordid past with these latest cruel, secretive, and illegal maneuvers," Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney with the ACLU's National Prison Project, said in a statement.

• "Our Constitution does not allow the government to hold people incommunicado, without any ability to speak to counsel or the outside world."
• "By hurrying immigrants off to a remote island cut off from lawyers, family, and the rest of the world, the Trump administration is sending its clearest signal yet that the rule of law means nothing to it," Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, said.

Between the lines: Holding immigrants in facilities is by far the largest cost of the deportation process.

• An Axios review of various estimates put yearly detention costs at $66 billion under Trump's possible mass deportation plan.
• ICE only has about 38,000 people in detention — prioritizing noncitizens the border patrol arrested at the Southwest border and noncitizens with criminal histories, according to ICE's annual report.

A backlog of 3.7 million cases in immigration courts, where immigrants are entitled to make their case to stay in the country, means detained immigrants could wait months, if not years, for their hearing.

Zoom out: There were still 15 prisoners being held at Guantánamo Bay as of the Pentagon's Jan. 6 update, but a separate facility will hold immigrants.

Black History Month this year falls on the 60th anniversary of many crucial moments of the Civil Rights Movement that would transform the nation and spark new fights still being played out today.

Through the lens: From the last days of Malcolm X to the climatic marches in Selma, Alabama, to the Watts Riots foreshadowing what was to come, Axios is sharing images of joy, tragedy and triumphs of 1965.

A broad coalition of Jewish organizations, including reform and conservative Jewish groups, is denouncing President Trump over moves on democracy, his "scapegoating" of immigrants and transgender people, and says his empowering of Elon Musk "to force ideological conformity" threatens the country's "democratic norms."

Why it matters: The open letter, which was released Friday, is signed by more than 100 groups from many Jewish denominations, perspectives and broad missions. It's the latest criticism of Trump by religious organizations over his immigration and cost-cutting policies.

Zoom in: The groups say Trump's moves to deport huge numbers of undocumented immigrants, freeze federal funds and dismantle international programs "fundamentally threaten the freedoms and safety of all Americans."

• The groups emphasize that legitimate policy debates and disagreements are fine — and note that there are disputes among the letter's signees — but say Trump's recent actions go far beyond that.
• "It is a direct assault on the very principles that underpin our democracy — principles including equal justice under the law; the protection of fundamental civil liberties and civil rights," the groups write.
• The letter expresses concern about the "scapegoating and dehumanization of immigrants, people of color, transgender people and other marginalized groups to justify draconian and unconstitutional policies."

Zoom out: The letter was organized by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and representatives of two of the major Jewish denominations: the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and the Conservative movement's Rabbinic Assembly.

• Other notable signatories include National Council of Jewish Women, HIAS, J Street, T'ruah, Bend the Arc and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association.

The White House did not respond directly to the letter's message in a statement to Axios.

• "President Trump is delivering on the promises that earned him a resounding mandate from the American people," Harrison Fields, the White House's principal deputy press secretary, told Axios.

The intrigue: The freezing of federal funds and a takeover of the federal payments system and classified information by Elon Musk, an unelected ally of Trump, alarms the Jewish groups.

• Those moves are "intended to force ideological conformity" and "make it harder for individuals and groups to exercise their rights," the groups' letter says.

What they're saying: "We know where this leads, for Jews and for so many others, and we are proud that this broad coalition is sending an unmistakable message that Jewish Americans will stand for democracy at this critical moment," Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, tells Axios.

• "When we see an administration upend democratic norms and take actions that clearly ignore the law and upend the Constitution, we must stand up for democratic processes, and the rights of all vulnerable people," Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal, CEO of the Rabbinical Assembly, tells Axios.
• "Threats to democratic norms and our democracy overall make us less safe as Jews and as Americans," said Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

Context: The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Episcopal Church and Quaker groups have criticized Trump for allowing federal officials to arrest undocumented immigrants in "sensitive" spaces such as schools and houses of worship.

• Pope Francis called Trump's plan to deport millions of immigrants from the U.S. a "disgrace."
• Vice President Vance countered that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has "not been a good partner in common-sense immigration enforcement."

Editor's note: This story has been updated with additional context on the open letter..