Dilley, Texas calls itself “A slice of the good life,” but for hundreds of detained families, life there looks very different. Letters written by detained children and shared with ProPublica paint a harrowing picture of life inside the Dilley Immigration Processing Center. Ali breaks down the Trump administration's new strategy of quickly transferring migrants to Texas, where appeals are heard by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, a court widely seen as favorable to the administration’s immigration agenda.

The Trump-aligned Fifth Circuit Court in Texas just handed the Trump administration broad authority to lock up scores of detained immigrants, provided it can get them to Texas, Louisiana, or Mississippi. As legal challenges to their detention soar, the Trump administration has begun transferring arrests from Minnesota and other places to Texas, where their challenges can be heard by courts that are friendlier to the White House. While federal law dictates that migrants detained inside the country may be released while their cases work their way through courts, Vox's Senior correspondent, Ian Millhiser, says, "Trump has started to apply the rules that apply to people at the border to every immigrant in the country."

The judge pointed to a letter from Bondi to Minnesota that tied federal immigration enforcement to demands for voter data as the smoking gun.

Trump raised the threat to the 2026 midterm elections to an entirely new level.