On the brisk morning of October 25, 2025, the sidewalks outside San Francisco’s immigration court were crowded with activists, their voices rising in protest against President Donald Trump’s latest plan to send Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents into the Bay Area. The demonstration, as reported by multiple sources including California Times, was a direct response to a broader immigration crackdown that has swept across the United States in recent months. Yet, in a surprising turn, the planned immigration enforcement action for the Bay Area was abruptly called off just a day after Trump himself announced he would hold off on deploying federal agents to the region.
This abrupt policy shift didn’t erase the anxiety that had already gripped immigrant communities in San Francisco and beyond. After all, the Trump administration’s escalation of enforcement—most notably through the deployment of the National Guard to several major cities—had already set the tone for a tense autumn. The sense of reprieve was fleeting, and for many, the larger story was still unfolding elsewhere.
One of the most high-profile and contentious cases at the center of the national debate is that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national whose legal odyssey has become a lightning rod for opposition to Trump’s immigration policies. According to a court filing reviewed by California Times and Los Angeles Daily News, the U.S. government now plans to deport Abrego Garcia to Liberia as soon as October 31, 2025—a decision that has drawn sharp criticism from advocates, legal experts, and even foreign governments.
Abrego Garcia’s journey through the U.S. immigration system has been nothing short of extraordinary—and harrowing. In March, he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, despite a court order and a settlement agreement that specifically protected him from such an action. There, he was sent to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, a move that his attorneys say put him at grave risk. After the U.S. Supreme Court intervened, the government was forced to bring him back to the United States in June.
Why can’t Abrego Garcia simply be returned to El Salvador? The answer lies in his history: an immigration judge in 2019 granted him protection from deportation, recognizing his "well-founded fear" of violence from a gang that had targeted his family. With El Salvador off the table, ICE began searching for alternative countries, attempting—unsuccessfully—to deport him to Uganda, Eswatini, and Ghana before settling on Liberia.
In a Friday court filing, the Department of Homeland Security painted Liberia as an ideal destination, describing it as "a thriving democracy and one of the United States’s closest partners on the African continent." The filing went on to assert that Liberia’s national language is English, its constitution "provides robust protections for human rights," and the country is "committed to the humane treatment of refugees." Yet, as California Times notes, this glowing assessment stands in stark contrast to a U.S. State Department report from the previous year, which documented troubling human rights abuses in Liberia, including extrajudicial killings, torture, and severe restrictions on press freedom.
Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, minced no words in response. "After failed attempts with Uganda, Eswatini, and Ghana, ICE now seeks to deport our client, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, to Liberia, a country with which he has no connection, thousands of miles from his family and home in Maryland," Sandoval-Moshenberg said in a statement. "Costa Rica stands ready to accept him as a refugee, a viable and lawful option. Yet the government has chosen a course calculated to inflict maximum hardship. These actions are punitive, cruel, and unconstitutional."
Abrego Garcia’s personal circumstances only add to the controversy. He has lived in Maryland for years, is married to an American citizen, and is the father of a U.S.-born child. He first immigrated to the U.S. as a teenager, and in addition to his ongoing deportation saga, he now faces criminal charges in federal court in Tennessee related to alleged human smuggling. He has pleaded not guilty and claims the prosecution is retaliatory, filed as a form of government retribution for the embarrassment caused by his mistaken deportation earlier this year.
Meanwhile, the human cost of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is being felt acutely in other parts of the country. In Chicago, the case of Ruben Torres Maldonado has galvanized local activists and elected officials. Torres, a 40-year-old painter and home renovator, was detained by immigration authorities on October 18, 2025, while his 16-year-old daughter, Ofelia, battles a rare and aggressive form of cancer—metastatic alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma. According to Chicago Tribune, Torres has lived in the U.S. since 2003, has a partner, and is the father of two U.S. citizen children.
On October 25, a federal judge ruled that Torres’ detention was illegal and ordered that he be given a bond hearing by October 31. The judge, Jeremy Daniel, wrote, "While sympathetic to the plight the petitioner's daughter faces due to her health concerns, the court must act within the constraints of the relevant statutes, rules, and precedents." Torres’ attorney, Kalman Resnick, called the ruling a win for the family, stating, "We’re pleased that the judge ruled in our favor in determining that ICE is illegally detaining Ruben. We will now turn the fight to immigration court so we can secure Ruben’s release on bond while he applies for permanent residence status."
The Department of Homeland Security, however, took a much harder line. Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin issued a statement asserting, "This is nothing more than a desperate Hail Mary attempt to keep a criminal illegal alien in our country. The Trump administration is fighting for the rule of law and the American people." Federal prosecutors argued that Torres was not cooperating during his arrest, and pointed to a history of driving offenses, including driving without a valid license, without insurance, and speeding.
For Ofelia Torres, the emotional and practical toll of her father’s detention has been immense. In a video posted on a GoFundMe page, she said, "My dad, like many other fathers, is a hard-working person who wakes up early in the morning and goes to work without complaining, thinking about his family. I find it so unfair that hardworking immigrant families are being targeted just because they were not born here." According to her family’s attorneys, the stress and disruption caused by her father’s arrest have prevented her from continuing her cancer treatment.
Chicago’s immigrant community has rallied around the Torres family, organizing protests and press conferences to demand his release. The city has been a focal point of the Trump administration’s "Operation Midway Blitz," a major immigration enforcement campaign that began in September 2025 and has led to a wave of detentions across the region.
Back in San Francisco, the decision to call off the planned ICE and CBP deployment offered only a brief respite. The underlying tensions—between federal enforcement priorities and the lived realities of immigrant families—remain unresolved. As the cases of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and Ruben Torres Maldonado demonstrate, the human stakes of the current immigration crackdown are as high as ever, and the debate over America’s immigration future shows no sign of abating.
