This Week by the {Immigration} Numbers (May 16, 2026)

Welcome to the weekly segment called This Week by the {Immigration} Numbers! I’ll highlight some of the main takeaways from the week’s news that you might have missed, and do it in a unique way. Rather than try to summarize everything, I’ll pick a handful of figures each week that best capture where things are moving, explain why they matter, and provide a source where you can learn more. If you have a number to add to the mix or have a question about any of the numbers here, let me know in the comments. Without further ado, let’s get into it.

85

85-year-old Marie-Thérèse Ross, the spouse of a recently-deceased U.S. Army captain, was detained by ICE for two weeks. But it gets weirder.

Octogenarian Marie-Thérèse returned to France recently after being detained by ICE for 16 days. She met her second husband, William Ross, in the 1950s when he was stationed in France and she worked for NATO. William and Marie-Thérèse went on to marry other people and have children (in the US and France respectively), but after their respective spouses passed away, they rekindled their romance and married in April 2025. Marie-Thérèse came to Alabama through the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) to live with William who died in January and left a modest inheritance (~$190k) that his second wife would have mostly inherited—except, according to a local judge, one of William’s sons appears to have (1) prevented Marie-Thérèse from receiving mail, resulting in her missing a crucial immigration appointment for her green card, and (2) used his position as a government employee to trigger an immigration arrest (VWP allows up to 90 days, she had overstayed). Worth reading more about this.

• York, J. (2026, April 16). From rekindled love story to ICE ‘nightmare’: France calls on US to release 85-year-old. France 24.

725,000

The number of Brazilians living in the United States. This has more than doubled since 2010, but rarely appears in U.S. immigration coverage.

The 725,000 Brazilian-born residents in the U.S. in 2024 are just over 1 percent of all U.S. immigrants, but the Brazilian population has grown 114% since 2010, more than four times the rate of the overall immigrant population growth (26%). The Migration Policy Institute finds that they are typically highly educated (48% hold BA/BS vs. 36% of all immigrants), earn above-average household incomes, and are nearly three times as likely as other immigrants to obtain a green card through an employer. Half live in Florida, Massachusetts, or California. In January 2026, the Trump administration paused immigrant visa processing for Brazil and 74 other countries, effectively ending the employer-sponsored green-card pipeline that has defined the community’s recent growth.

• Santos, M. A., & Batalova, J. (2026, May 14). Brazilian Immigrants in the United States. Migration Policy Institute.

6

Trump promised to hold 30,000 immigrants at Guantanamo Bay. As of May 11, only six were actually there.

On May 11, the U.S. government was holding exactly six immigration detainees at Guantanamo Bay, all of them Haitian nationals. The figure is a fraction of one percent of the 30,000 detainees Trump pledged to send there in January 2025. The base’s actual immigration-detention capacity tops out at roughly 400 beds, and fewer than 2 percent of those were occupied. Over the past year, 832 people have been moved through the facility on more than 100 flights, but at any given moment the staff has dramatically outnumbered the held: 522 Department of Defense personnel plus about 60 ICE and civilian staff, against six detainees—a ratio of nearly 100 employees to 1 detained person. The operation is projected to cost the U.S. military $73 million, nearly double the previous public estimate. Another huge waste of taxpayer money.

• Montoya-Galvez, C. (2026, May 13). Trump promised to hold 30,000 migrants at Guantanamo. A year later, it's mostly empty. CBS News.

10,000

Number of times federal judges have ruled against Trump’s no-bond detention regime. Trump’s Supreme Court may overrule all of them.

Since July 2025, Trump’s mass detention push has denied bond hearings to immigrants arrested anywhere in the country, including longtime residents with no criminal record. But this creative interpretation of immigration law has been rejected by more than 10,000 federal court rulings. The administration won just 1,200 cases, a roughly 90% loss rate that crosses every political appointment line, including judges named by every president from Clinton through Trump. Over 30,000 detained immigrants have filed habeas petitions. Three federal appeals circuits (the 2nd, 6th, and 11th) have struck the policy down in the last six weeks. The 5th and 8th have upheld it, and the 1st has deadlocked. The Supreme Court is now all but certain to take the case, where it will decide whether the administration can subject millions of long-resident immigrants to mandatory detention without recourse.

• Cheney, K. (2026, May 13). 10,000 rulings: The courts’ overwhelming rebuke of Trump’s ICE policies. Politico.

$1.2 Billion

That’s an estimate of how much Alligator Alcatraz cost taxpayers: $1,200,000,000. Now that facility is closing.

Alligator Alcatraz is closing. Vendors were notified on May 12 that the remaining 1,400 detainees would be transferred out by June, and the tents in the Everglades dismantled in the weeks that follow. Combined state and federal spending has reached an estimated $1.2 billion, including $390 million in Florida state spending in just the first four months. Florida had asked the federal government for $1.49 billion in reimbursement. FEMA awarded $608 million, with the first distribution being released just recently. The 22,000 "deportations" DeSantis claims for the site don't withstand scrutiny: nearly 70 percent of those sent there had no final removal order from an immigration judge. Amnesty International documented torture and enforced disappearances. Lawmakers who toured found 32 detainees packed into each 1,000-square-foot cage. Less than a year after opening, Alligator Alcatraz will be gone—along with an enormous quantity of wasted taxpayer money.

• Morel, L. C. (2026, May). They Were Held in Cages in the Florida Sun. Now “Alligator Alcatraz” May Finally Be Shutting Down. Mother Jones.

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