Abraham Lincoln faced a nation divided, and not just by the Civil War. 

A national battle over immigration had already raged for decades as millions of Europeans arrived.

The Republican president might be best known for his emancipation mission, but he also saw immigration as key to keeping the country afloat with so many men off at war. Hundreds of thousands of German, Irish, and other foreign-born soldiers also helped the Union Army win.

Why We Wrote This

The United States’ current debate over immigration is only the latest episode in the country’s history. President Abraham Lincoln – best known for the abolition of slavery – had a mixed record on immigration but championed newcomers’ “right to rise.”

Still, Lincoln’s immigration record is mixed. He signed legislation in 1862 that limited Chinese labor. But Lincoln also championed a law that reduced barriers to immigration – the last such law for a century. His Homestead Act offered land out West to U.S. citizens and future citizens as well – though at the cost of more Native American displacement.

More broadly, the president believed that anyone with talent, ambition, and a willingness to work “had the right to go as far as the American experiment allowed you to go,” says Harold Holzer, author of “Brought Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration.” 

As the American debate over who belongs here continues to roil, the Monitor explored Lincoln’s immigration legacy with Mr. Holzer, the director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College and Manhattan’s new borough historian. Our conversation was edited for clarity and length. 

How did the Lincoln-era debate over who to let in compare to the immigration debate now? 

America always seems to be embroiled in the question of who should enter the country. Who should be encouraged, or who should be discouraged, or who should be banned, or who should be deported. It’s been going on for centuries, ever since the founding of the republic. 

If you look today at the responses that we hear from certain anti-immigration forces about endangering Americans – creating a separate culture, replacing us, the fear of being replaced – all of that has been heard before. 

It happened when the Irish started coming in the 1840s, and then the German Protestants in the late 1840s. ... Then in the 1890s, when Eastern and Southern Europeans came, and Jews came, there was exactly the same kind of resistance and fear. Same with the anti-Asian immigration laws.

Early in his political career, Lincoln, along with other Whigs, accused Democrats of coaxing ineligible Irish immigrants to vote for their cause. How much merit did those voter fraud claims have then?

As little merit as they have today. Were there occasional incidents? I’m sure there were. And Lincoln himself fell into this kind of ugly trope during the election ... for Senate in 1858. We have a letter from him, in which he reports to his campaign colleagues that he saw “about 15 Celtic gentlemen” ... who had just arrived in the city, and maybe detectives should be hired to see if they were coming here to vote illegally. 

On the other hand, even earlier than that, he was in favor of noncitizen immigrants voting in municipal elections. Because he felt that they were being taxed with services, and participated in the municipal culture, and therefore should have responsibilities and obligations and rights. 

I wonder if you can talk about the evolution of Lincoln’s support for immigrants and how that related to his antislavery work.

There was a relationship. 

He identifies early with the Whig Party. [It included] a lot of Easterners who are anti-immigration as part of the Whig big tent, I guess. And the reason for it is that immigrants’ first port of call in the United States were the Eastern cities: Boston, New York, Philadelphia. And that’s where nativism first reared its ugly head, because most of the Irish arrivals joined the Democratic Party almost as soon as they arrived, for good reason. The Democrats courted them. The Democrats reached out to them and promised them guidance in establishing themselves in the city. 

So, Lincoln and the Whigs were suspicious of these new Democrats, anyone who was added to the Democratic ranks. But early on, there was a riot in Philadelphia, an anti-nativist riot, a really ugly one, with casualties. ... And Lincoln and other Whigs quickly disassociated themselves from mob violence and stressed that there had to be a recognized, universal system of accepting immigrants and adding them to citizenship. 

It’s important to know, by the way, how easy it was to become a citizen. ... In those days, you came into the country, there were no walls, no [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], no discouragement. America wanted people, needed people. Aside from this prejudicial resistance, they simply entered. They signed some papers. Five years later they could return and apply for citizenship and earn voting rights. 

As far as the kinship to the antislavery movement: When nativism became a big force in American politics, it evolved into a real political party known as the American Party, or more informally as the Know-Nothing Party. They ran a presidential candidate in 1856, who did very well. They elected a governor of Massachusetts. They elected public officials in Illinois. They were a force to be reckoned with. And Lincoln, at this time, was helping to organize the brand-new, antislavery Republican Party. And he needed the biggest tent he could open to swell the ranks of this brand-new organization. So Whigs, who no longer had a party, were encouraged into the new Republican Party.

He let the word out that if there were antislavery forces within the Know-Nothing movement, and there were, they would be welcome to join the Republican Party as well. So, at the same time he was creating an antislavery coalition, he was not shutting off the nativists for their past sins.

How much did merit – versus humanitarian concerns – factor into Lincoln’s immigration ideals? 

I don’t think it was a merit-based system, because most of the people coming in were entry-level positions. 

Yes, there were indentures. There were all sorts of difficulties. But there was opportunity. And Lincoln made sure that the Homestead Act, which offered free land in the West to people who would settle and cultivate it, extended to immigrants as well, which was an enormous opportunity.

So it wasn’t merit-based so much. It was opportunity-based. Lincoln always believed in what my late friend Gabor Boritt, who just died – a great historian who was himself an immigrant from Hungary – called the “right to rise.” 

Lincoln believed that anyone who wanted to work, and had talent, and had ambition, and most of all was willing to do the work had the right to go as far as the American experiment allowed you to go. And I think he ultimately came to believe that extended to Black people as well ... especially once they fought for their own freedom in the Union Army. 

How did foreign-born troops contribute to Civil War victory?  

Lincoln realized from the get-go that the advantage in man power … was going to be magnified in the Union Army, because of the foreign-born population. And what Lincoln did immediately and so brilliantly was encourage enlistments from Irish- and German-born citizens. 

With the Irish, it was a big political stretch, because they were Democrats. He couldn’t be sure, at the beginning, that they would be fighting under his command, as commander in chief, to restore the union. 

Germans were mostly Republican and mostly antislavery. It was a more natural fit. But he also encouraged foreign-speaking regiments to enlist. 

There was a requirement in the military code, at that point, that soldiers had to speak English. They sort of just ignored it, and recruited. 

If he helmed the White House today, how might Lincoln address our deep political polarization over immigration?

I would like to believe that he would be perplexed and disappointed that we don’t try to create a pathway to citizenship and encourage immigration. I think the idea of roving bands of masked people – picking up people who are working here, going to school here, and living here – would be abhorrent to him.

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America had no tolerance for criminals seeking new criminal opportunities in the United States. And if you read some of the anti-immigration editorials, they really sound like they could have been written yesterday: We will get the “refuse” from the “sinks” of Europe if we open the doors. But that proved to be untrue. The Irish and German immigrant gained footholds in the United States and enriched the culture. 

Maybe he would turn the new ballroom into an immigration center. That’s my dream.

After U.S. talks with Iran to end their six-week-old war broke down Sunday following 21 hours of negotiations, the White House is once again ratcheting up pressure on the regime.

The U.S. Navy has been directed to put in place a blockade designed to force Iran to reopen the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, while preventing Tehran from profiting from its closure, President Donald Trump announced after the failure of weekend discussions.

The blockade will go into effect at 10 a.m. Washington time on Monday, according to a statement from U.S. Central Command, which runs U.S. military operations in the Middle East.

Why We Wrote This

US-Iran talks failed over the weekend, with Tehran’s nuclear program a key obstacle. President Trump has ordered a Navy blockade designed to pressure Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz.

It will be enforced “impartially against all vessels of all nations entering or departing Iranian ports or coastal areas,” the command said.

Officials have not ruled out returning to the peace table during the two-week ceasefire, which expires April 22.

Vice President JD Vance, in Pakistan for the discussions, said a major sticking point was that the U.S. does not “see a fundamental commitment of will” on Tehran’s part to give up pursuing nuclear weapons. 

“We hope that we will” in the days to come, he added.

Iran struck a defiant tone after the talks, blaming the U.S. for  “excessive” demands. Tehran’s lead negotiator, Mohammed Bagher Ghalibef, said that Washington had “failed to win Iran’s trust.”

President Trump said in a social media post on Sunday that Vice President Vance, along with Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, have become “very friendly” with Iran’s top three negotiators. 

But Tehran was “unyielding” on the subject of retaining nuclear power, which Mr. Trump said he could not allow “in the hands of such volatile, difficult, unpredictable people” leading the regime. 

The U.S. delegation is reportedly demanding that Iran “hand over or sell” its highly-enriched uranium stockpile. 

Tehran wants, among other things, war reparations and the unfreezing of $27 billion in Iranian funds as part of the deal. 

For now, the only vessels moving through the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil usually flows, have been Iranian and Iranian-approved vessels, according to an analysis released Sunday by the Institute for the Study of War think tank. 

The U.S. Navy blockade will involve interdicting any vessel that may have paid a toll to Iran to transit the strait, Mr. Trump said.

The blockade, if effective, will cost Iran an estimated $435 million a day in lost imports and exports, said Miad Maleki, former senior Iran sanctions official at the Treasury Department and now a senior adviser at the conservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank. 

“The blockade makes continued [Iranian] resistance economically impossible,” he added in an FDD analysis Monday morning. 

In the meantime, two U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyers, the USS Frank E. Peterson and the USS Michael Murphy, crossed the Strait over the weekend to begin minesweeping operations, according to U.S. Central Command. 

“We will share this safe pathway with the maritime industry soon to encourage the free flow of commerce,” Adm. Brad Cooper, who leads the command, said in a statement Saturday.

But mine clearance is difficult and time-consuming work, and the U.S. Navy’s capabilities on that front have lagged behind its other high-tech specialties. 

Some Gulf countries will also support mine-clearing efforts, Mr. Trump said. Several other nations reportedly will, too, including Britain. Officials there said last month that the U.K. was drawing up plans to send minesweeping drones to help reopen the strait.

Iran has used the threat of drone and missile barrages as well as a “limited number of mines” to declare a “hazardous area” throughout the strait –except for Iranian territorial waters, where Iran then imposes fees, the ISW report notes.

At its narrowest, the strait is about 21 miles wide. The territorial waters of Iran and Oman overlap across most of that area.  

While the U.S. military has destroyed most of Iran’s larger naval vessels, the job of laying mines can be carried out by small speed boats that are easy to build and hide. By some estimates, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had hundreds of these small boats on hand before the war began. 

Iran may not be able to find some of the mines it has put in the strait, which could, in turn, be complicating Tehran’s compliance in fully reopening the waterway, The New York Times reported Friday.

For now, there remains ongoing confusion about what, precisely, the two-week ceasefire agreement entails, some analysts say. 

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“The lack of a public, mutually-agreed upon document establishing the ceasefire requirements makes adherence to the ceasefire difficult to establish,” the ISW report concluded.

The Trump administration’s delegates left Pakistan over the weekend after making “our final and best offer,” Mr. Vance said Sunday. “We’ll see if the Iranians accept it.”

It was only a test flight, but it was a test flight for the ages.

After a nerve-wracking six-minute communications blackout, during which the Artemis II Orion spacecraft plunged through the Earth’s atmosphere at over 25,000 miles per hour – reaching temperatures of over 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit – the Artemis II crew splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean Friday.

When the four-person crew of commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen launched into space, NASA had a five-decade data gap in its records. The agency last flew humans to the moon in 1972. Some muscle memory would have to be relearned.

Why We Wrote This

The Artemis II mission has concluded with a safe return to Earth. The mission rekindled ‘moon joy’ for the public and made scientific advancements, which NASA aims to expand during the next phases of the ambitious Artemis program.

NASA had two broad goals for Artemis II: ensure the Orion spacecraft – the home for all astronauts on future Artemis missions – can operate safely in deep space; and learn as much as they can about the moon through observations during its lunar flyby.

The 10-day mission was both record-breaking and an almost complete success.

Not only did the crew collect valuable data about Orion and about the moon – and then return safely – but they appear to have galvanized public interest in space exploration a half century after the Apollo program took humans to the moon. The crew set a record for the farthest distance traveled from Earth (252,756 miles), and they viewed areas of the moon never seen by human eyes.

NASA now turns its attention to future moon missions, with the ultimate goal of building a moon base in the 2030s and launching human crews to Mars in the 2040s.

History tells us that sustaining government funding, public support, and mission safety will be easier said than done. On Saturday, however, the Artemis II crew and NASA leaders began to process the magnitude of the mission during their first public comments since splashdown.

“You haven’t heard us talk a lot about the science, about the things we’ve learned,” said Mr. Hansen. “They’re there, and they are incredible, but it’s the human experience that is extraordinary for us.”

“What you saw was a group of people who loved contributing, having meaningful contribution, and extracting joy out of that,” he added.

Artemis II was the “opening act in America’s return to the moon,” NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said Saturday. “Artemis III will start being assembled, and the next crew will begin playing their part as we return to the lunar surface, we build the base, and we never give up the moon again.”

Here are five key takeaways from the mission:

Orion works (mostly)

The teardrop-shaped spacecraft had already flown around the moon and back in the Artemis I mission in 2022, but that mission was uncrewed. Artemis II was the vital test of the capsule’s so-called “human systems,” such as life support and temperature control.

One human system that had almost immediate problems was the toilet. Just hours into the mission, the crew reported that the specially designed microgravity commode had jammed. Despite days of troubleshooting, the crew and NASA engineers on the ground were unable to diagnose and fix the problem. They hope to find a solution once Orion returns to the Kennedy Space Center in the coming weeks.

Another, more serious, issue appears to have been resolved. The heat shield on the Artemis I Orion capsule suffered cracking and abrasion during re-entry. NASA reported that it had identified the cause and had adjusted the re-entry angle for Artemis II to reduce stress on the heat shield. More analysis will follow, but the changes seem to have worked.

Testing Orion’s maneuverability was also an important goal of the mission. The capsule reportedly passed those tests with flying colors. The crew successfully practiced docking the capsule to another ship – an important test, as this is how future Artemis crews will dock with the spacecraft they will pilot to the lunar surface.

“Overall, guys, this flies very nicely,” Mr. Glover reported during the test.

Artemis II yielded new science

The crew returned from their seven-hour journey around the far side of the moon with dozens of spectacular images of the lunar surface and of the Earth from space. NASA expects to process hundreds more in the weeks ahead.

In some cases, they saw regions of the lunar surface never before seen by humans. These early impressions will help guide NASA’s future exploration and scientific research of the lunar surface, including the selection of landing sites and the location of a moon base.

Artemis II also represented the first time a science team was integrated into Mission Control itself. The lunar science team had a physical desk in the Mission Control room, and during the flyby, a lunar scientist communicated with the crew directly through CAPCOM, the designated communication channel to Orion.

Artemis II also featured the first major test of the NASA Deep Space Network, a global array of large radio antennas that allows Mission Control to maintain communication with spacecraft on interplanetary missions. Mid-mission, flight director Rick Henfling said the network was performing “exceptionally.”

The lunar fab four captured hearts

The crew themselves can be chalked up as another success of Artemis II.

Ms. Koch and Mr. Glover became the first woman and the first Black man, respectively, to travel around the moon. Jeremy Hansen, an astronaut with the Canadian Space Agency, became the first non-American to travel into deep space.

The crew’s charisma and camaraderie shone through during the mission. Ms. Koch christened herself “the space plumber” as the Orion battled its toilet issue.

The most poignant moment came during the lunar flyby. When the crew spotted two previously unknown craters, Mr. Hansen suggested that the second be named “Carroll,” after Carroll Taylor Wiseman, Mr. Wiseman’s late wife.

“It’s a bright spot on the moon, and we would like to call it ‘Carroll,’” he added, spelling the name out for Mission Control. The entire crew were soon in tears, embracing each other in a zero-gravity hug.

“It was a powerful moment up here,” said Mr. Wiseman during a call with the press on April 8. “That was, I think, where the four of us were the most forged, the most bonded.”

On Saturday, the crew gathered for multiple group hugs and demonstrated how they would sync their watches to regroup and center themselves during the mission.

“Even bigger than my challenge of trying to describe what we went through, the gratitude of seeing what we saw, doing what we did, and being who I was with, it’s too big to just be in one body,” said Mr. Glover.

Steps for future missions are underway now

Preparations for Artemis III have already begun. That mission aims to practice, in low-Earth orbit, docking the Orion capsule with lunar landing spacecraft designed by private companies. The first flight simulations for Artemis III will be scripted this week, NASA officials said. Training for Mission Control staff will begin next week. The crew will be selected “pretty soon,” NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik told reporters on Friday.

NASA has contracted with private space companies SpaceX and Blue Origin to build the landing spacecraft. Blue Origin’s “Blue Moon” lander is being shipped to Kennedy Space Center soon, Mr. Amit Kshatriya, NASA associate administrator, said last week. More tests of the SpaceX Starship lander are scheduled for this month, but Mr. Kshatriya said they are hoping to send that ship to Florida “relatively soon.”

He added that the repair and repurposing of the Mobile Launcher 1 – a 377-foot tower used to stack the Artemis I through III rockets – at the Kennedy Space Center could be completed as soon as the end of this week.

A moon base beckons

NASA’s next goal, particularly in the context of a new space race with China, is to establish a permanent human presence on the lunar surface in the 2030s.

It’s an ambitious task, and a lot has to go right, experts say, starting with successful Artemis III and Artemis IV missions. These missions would ideally see a human walk on the moon in 2028 for the first time since Eugene Cernan stepped off the lunar surface during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

Such an expedited timeline carries risks, but experts say that NASA’s recent safety record is encouraging.

Other technical challenges loom, including integrating NASA’s Mission Control with the control rooms at SpaceX and Blue Origin. (The recent experience integrating the lunar science team will help in that regard, NASA officials said.)

But the biggest obstacle to achieving the moon base goal is likely to be the same challenge NASA always faces: government funding.

During Apollo, NASA accounted for 4.4% of the federal budget at the agency’s peak. That figure now stands at around 0.4%.

The past 10 days have been thrilling, but reality could quickly douse enthusiasm, according to Joan Johnson-Freese, a senior fellow at Women in International Security and author of “Space as a Strategic Asset.”

“I’ve seen more optimism [this week] than I’ve seen in 40 years, but I’m still skeptical,” she says. “Multiple times we’ve been here and not been able to sustain it.”

For example, the Apollo program canceled three missions due to budget cuts and a lack of public interest, among other factors. The Artemis program has the wind in its sails right now, but NASA will have to find a way of maintaining that momentum once the world moves on.

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Artemis II “has reawakened the public to the whole joy and thrill of space exploration,” says Dr. Johnson-Freese. But “the thrill only takes you so far.”

“We can overcome technological challenges, but whether we can overcome commitment challenges is something else.”

It was only a test flight, but it was a test flight for the ages.

After a nerve-wracking six-minute communications blackout, during which the Artemis II Orion spacecraft plunged through the Earth’s atmosphere at over 25,000 miles per hour – reaching temperatures of over 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit – the Artemis II crew splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean Friday.

When the four-person crew of commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen launched into space, NASA had a five-decade data gap in its records. The agency last flew humans to the moon in 1972. Some muscle memory would have to be relearned.

Why We Wrote This

The Artemis II mission has concluded with a safe return to Earth. The mission rekindled ‘moon joy’ for the public and made scientific advancements, which NASA aims to expand during the next phases of the ambitious Artemis program.

NASA had two broad goals for Artemis II: ensure the Orion spacecraft – the home for all astronauts on future Artemis missions – can operate safely in deep space; and learn as much as they can about the moon through observations during its lunar flyby.

The 10-day mission was both record-breaking and an almost complete success.

Not only did the crew collect valuable data about Orion and about the moon – and then return safely – but they appear to have galvanized public interest in space exploration a half century after the Apollo program took humans to the moon. The crew set a record for the farthest distance traveled from Earth (252,756 miles), and they viewed areas of the moon never seen by human eyes.

NASA now turns its attention to future moon missions, with the ultimate goal of building a moon base in the 2030s and launching human crews to Mars in the 2040s.

History tells us that sustaining government funding, public support, and mission safety will be easier said than done. On Saturday, however, the Artemis II crew and NASA leaders began to process the magnitude of the mission during their first public comments since splashdown.

“You haven’t heard us talk a lot about the science, about the things we’ve learned,” said Mr. Hansen. “They’re there, and they are incredible, but it’s the human experience that is extraordinary for us.”

“What you saw was a group of people who loved contributing, having meaningful contribution, and extracting joy out of that,” he added.

Artemis II was the “opening act in America’s return to the moon,” NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said Saturday. “Artemis III will start being assembled, and the next crew will begin playing their part as we return to the lunar surface, we build the base, and we never give up the moon again.”

Here are five key takeaways from the mission:

Orion works (mostly)

The teardrop-shaped spacecraft had already flown around the moon and back in the Artemis I mission in 2022, but that mission was uncrewed. Artemis II was the vital test of the capsule’s so-called “human systems,” such as life support and temperature control.

One human system that had almost immediate problems was the toilet. Just hours into the mission, the crew reported that the specially designed microgravity commode had jammed. Despite days of troubleshooting, the crew and NASA engineers on the ground were unable to diagnose and fix the problem. They hope to find a solution once Orion returns to the Kennedy Space Center in the coming weeks.

Another, more serious, issue appears to have been resolved. The heat shield on the Artemis I Orion capsule suffered cracking and abrasion during re-entry. NASA reported that it had identified the cause and had adjusted the re-entry angle for Artemis II to reduce stress on the heat shield. More analysis will follow, but the changes seem to have worked.

Testing Orion’s maneuverability was also an important goal of the mission. The capsule reportedly passed those tests with flying colors. The crew successfully practiced docking the capsule to another ship – an important test, as this is how future Artemis crews will dock with the spacecraft they will pilot to the lunar surface.

“Overall, guys, this flies very nicely,” Mr. Glover reported during the test.

Artemis II yielded new science

The crew returned from their seven-hour journey around the far side of the moon with dozens of spectacular images of the lunar surface and of the Earth from space. NASA expects to process hundreds more in the weeks ahead.

In some cases, they saw regions of the lunar surface never before seen by humans. These early impressions will help guide NASA’s future exploration and scientific research of the lunar surface, including the selection of landing sites and the location of a moon base.

Artemis II also represented the first time a science team was integrated into Mission Control itself. The lunar science team had a physical desk in the Mission Control room, and during the flyby, a lunar scientist communicated with the crew directly through CAPCOM, the designated communication channel to Orion.

Artemis II also featured the first major test of the NASA Deep Space Network, a global array of large radio antennas that allows Mission Control to maintain communication with spacecraft on interplanetary missions. Mid-mission, flight director Rick Henfling said the network was performing “exceptionally.”

The lunar fab four captured hearts

The crew themselves can be chalked up as another success of Artemis II.

Ms. Koch and Mr. Glover became the first woman and the first Black man, respectively, to travel around the moon. Jeremy Hansen, an astronaut with the Canadian Space Agency, became the first non-American to travel into deep space.

The crew’s charisma and camaraderie shone through during the mission. Ms. Koch christened herself “the space plumber” as the Orion battled its toilet issue.

The most poignant moment came during the lunar flyby. When the crew spotted two previously unknown craters, Mr. Hansen suggested that the second be named “Carroll,” after Carroll Taylor Wiseman, Mr. Wiseman’s late wife.

“It’s a bright spot on the moon, and we would like to call it ‘Carroll,’” he added, spelling the name out for Mission Control. The entire crew were soon in tears, embracing each other in a zero-gravity hug.

“It was a powerful moment up here,” said Mr. Wiseman during a call with the press on April 8. “That was, I think, where the four of us were the most forged, the most bonded.”

On Saturday, the crew gathered for multiple group hugs and demonstrated how they would sync their watches to regroup and center themselves during the mission.

“Even bigger than my challenge of trying to describe what we went through, the gratitude of seeing what we saw, doing what we did, and being who I was with, it’s too big to just be in one body,” said Mr. Glover.

Steps for future missions are underway now

Preparations for Artemis III have already begun. That mission aims to practice, in low-Earth orbit, docking the Orion capsule with lunar landing spacecraft designed by private companies. The first flight simulations for Artemis III will be scripted this week, NASA officials said. Training for Mission Control staff will begin next week. The crew will be selected “pretty soon,” NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik told reporters on Friday.

NASA has contracted with private space companies SpaceX and Blue Origin to build the landing spacecraft. Blue Origin’s “Blue Moon” lander is being shipped to Kennedy Space Center soon, Mr. Amit Kshatriya, NASA associate administrator, said last week. More tests of the SpaceX Starship lander are scheduled for this month, but Mr. Kshatriya said they are hoping to send that ship to Florida “relatively soon.”

He added that the repair and repurposing of the Mobile Launcher 1 – a 377-foot tower used to stack the Artemis I through III rockets – at the Kennedy Space Center could be completed as soon as the end of this week.

A moon base beckons

NASA’s next goal, particularly in the context of a new space race with China, is to establish a permanent human presence on the lunar surface in the 2030s.

It’s an ambitious task, and a lot has to go right, experts say, starting with successful Artemis III and Artemis IV missions. These missions would ideally see a human walk on the moon in 2028 for the first time since Eugene Cernan stepped off the lunar surface during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

Such an expedited timeline carries risks, but experts say that NASA’s recent safety record is encouraging.

Other technical challenges loom, including integrating NASA’s Mission Control with the control rooms at SpaceX and Blue Origin. (The recent experience integrating the lunar science team will help in that regard, NASA officials said.)

But the biggest obstacle to achieving the moon base goal is likely to be the same challenge NASA always faces: government funding.

During Apollo, NASA accounted for 4.4% of the federal budget at the agency’s peak. That figure now stands at around 0.4%.

The past 10 days have been thrilling, but reality could quickly douse enthusiasm, according to Joan Johnson-Freese, a senior fellow at Women in International Security and author of “Space as a Strategic Asset.”

“I’ve seen more optimism [this week] than I’ve seen in 40 years, but I’m still skeptical,” she says. “Multiple times we’ve been here and not been able to sustain it.”

For example, the Apollo program canceled three missions due to budget cuts and a lack of public interest, among other factors. The Artemis program has the wind in its sails right now, but NASA will have to find a way of maintaining that momentum once the world moves on.

Deepen your worldview

with Monitor Highlights.

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Artemis II “has reawakened the public to the whole joy and thrill of space exploration,” says Dr. Johnson-Freese. But “the thrill only takes you so far.”

“We can overcome technological challenges, but whether we can overcome commitment challenges is something else.”

On a recent gray and dreary day, lecturer Chesney Snow circles a studio at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts, surveying students who are role-playing on yoga mats. Their aesthetic of Nikes, shell-toe Adidas, and Pumas matches the subject perfectly: hip-hop. 

Mr. Snow’s students – seven women and one man – are preparing to perform spoken word and body movements as an accompanist plays a black upright piano.

“Center yourselves,” Mr. Snow instructs. “Being vulnerable in hip-hop is really, really central to the work that we have to do.”

Why We Wrote This

Colleges are adding courses and even degrees in hip-hop, signaling a growing recognition in academia of the musical genre as an art form. Educators and students believe career paths will keep opening.

The course name is Miss-Education: The Women of Hip-Hop. 

Although an elective on this campus, hip-hop has advanced in academia, from the first class on the genre being taught at Howard University in 1991 to minors and certificates, and now to full degrees in hip-hop offered at schools like Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute in Baltimore and Loyola University New Orleans. Some educators say hip-hop studies can boost student engagement and foster culturally relevant pedagogy. It also bridges the gap between academic theory and lived experience. 

A Broadway actor and singer who founded the American Beatbox Championships, Mr. Snow envisions the class as a study of feminism in hip-hop. But he also wants it to be performance-based, similar to the popular early aughts MTV program “The Lyricist Lounge Show,” which blended sketch comedy and hip-hop. He says he uses musical theater, comedy, and hip-hop to delve into critical social issues.

His students read scholarly books, learn the importance of documenting history, and conduct research through interviews. Performance is next, with original student pieces in the pipeline.

How we got here

Hip-hop music, created in the 1970s on New York City streets, was once considered a fad, but it has grown to become arguably the most influential music genre in the United States and a dominant force globally, creating billionaire artists and producers and dominating music charts. Hip-hop has influenced global fashion and social justice movements and solidified itself as a major art form. From rapper and music producer Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer Prize to classes in esteemed university lecture halls, hip-hop has solidified its status.

Academics say that, like jazz in its early days , hip-hop has relatively few academic programs for now, but it will keep growing. 

Hip-hop practitioners are being hired to teach, students are writing dissertations, and more graduate courses that draw research dollars are being taught. Money has been pumped into conferences at institutions such as Ohio State University, Columbia University, the University at Buffalo, and Rutgers. 

Harvard University started the Marcyliena H. Morgan Hip Hop Archive & Research Center in 2002. In 2012, the University of Arizona was the first to offer a minor in hip-hop studies. A year later, Harvard offered the first Nasir Jones Hip Hop Fellowship. 

In 2021, Loyola University New Orleans offered the first Bachelor of Science in Hip Hop and R&B. In January of this year, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign board of trustees approved a Bachelor of Arts degree in Hip Hop Culture and the Arts. The Illinois Board of Higher Education is reviewing the proposal.

From study to career

Bachelor’s programs in hip-hop signal not only students’ willingness to invest four years studying it in college. It also means students believe hip-hop degrees will help them transition into marketable careers spanning from hip-hop artists and producers to teaching and researching the art form’s contributions to the world, similar to jazz more than half a century ago.

“Hip-hop has been a galvanizing grassroots arts movement that grew from our cities, including having a vibrant history and presence here in Baltimore,” says Fred Bronstein, dean of the Peabody Institute, the country’s oldest conservatory, at Johns Hopkins University. Mr. Bronstein says that the major grew from a popular class that composer and pianist Wendel Patrick started teaching in 2018. Enrollment in the course has tripled over the last five years, he says.

The major blends Peabody’s music engineering and technology programs with performance training, the foundation of its strong reputation.

Mr. Patrick leads the program and recruited Grammy Award-winning rapper Lupe Fiasco to be a visiting professor. Mr. Fiasco has held other prominent faculty appointments at schools such as Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“We in academia have to break down artistic silos, expand the canon, and teach all our students to think more broadly about what it means to be a musician,” Mr. Bronstein says via email.

Using a hip-hop lens to see the world

Timothy Welbeck is an assistant professor of Africology and African American Studies and the director of the Center for Anti-

Racism at Temple University. Last year, he began teaching a class called Kendrick Lamar and the Morale of m.A.A.d City, which uses five of Mr. Lamar’s studio albums – a blend of Black music art forms, such as rap, jazz, and rhythm and blues – to discuss themes like police brutality, housing segregation, and urban policy. 

In addition to his Pulitzer, Mr. Lamar is an Emmy Award-

winner who recently became the most decorated Grammy Award-winning rapper of all time.

“It’s a legitimate form of academic study, but it took a long time for the academy to figure that out, and there was a lot of stumbling along the way,” Mr. Welbeck says. 

He says that it was hard for academics to wrap their heads around what hip-hop studies can be. 

“If we can talk about Shakespeare, we can talk about Kendrick Lamar. If we can talk about Beethoven and or Chopin and Bach, and talk about baroque music and how that illustrated the tones and the impressions of the time that it was released, we can talk about how ‘good kid, m.A.A.d city’ reflected the times that it was released,” Mr. Welbeck says, referring to Mr. Lamar’s second studio album.

How it relates

Toby Jenkins, a professor of higher education at the University of South Carolina and associate provost for faculty development, teaches a course on hip-hop culture and has documented some of the history of hip-hop and academia. She says that she treats hip-hop as a tool for student engagement.

“I think it is attractive to students to have institutions that have unique offerings that seem exciting,” Dr. Jenkins says. “[Students] expect it to feel a little bit different than high school felt, and to be more life-giving and exciting.”

The class she teaches this semester touches on hip-hop culture and elevates themes in everyday life, such as what it means to have ambition, to affirm people in their lives, or to be creative and authentic to oneself. There’s the music and the genre’s visual and audio components. Students create playlists for each class and discuss reading material through a hip-hop lens. 

“As some scholars become really important, you see somebody writing a book, and they’re on The New York Times Best Seller list, then [hip-hop] becomes okay,” Dr. Jenkins says. “You see an institution like Harvard creating the Nas fellowship, and it becomes OK. Harvard has a whole archive on hip-hop. This is viable.”

“A serious class”

Back at Princeton, second-year neuroscience major Rachel Adjei participated in a class recently where students interviewed Grammy-nominated rapper Rah Digga over Zoom to learn about documenting oral history. 

“What really drew me to the class was the title, the Miss-

Education portion,” says Ms. Adjei, referring to the play on the self-titled iconic debut solo album “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,” the first hip-hop album to win a Grammy for Album of the Year. 

“Not only are we going to be working with hip-hop and creating raps, but also embodying them on stage and giving yourself a presence,” she says.

Faculty understand that parents paying more than $80,000 a year for their children to attend college might be dubious. But as hip-hop on campus grows, so might the career opportunities that have nothing to do with performance, educators say. 

Jediah Worrell is a second-year African American studies major. She was all smiles as she and her two group partners performed their skit in Mr. Snow’s class. An amateur rapper herself, she raced to a microphone in front of a camera, where Rah Digga smiled back and answered her questions. She enjoys the class, but when she told her mom about it, she got questions.

“My mom’s response was, ‘So when are you going to take a serious class?’” she laughs and shakes her head. “But I was trying to explain to her, as an African American studies major, this is a part of my field. This is also a part of the culture and what we’re studying, the interior of Black life.”

America is moonstruck once more.

With Artemis II and its four crewmembers returning to Earth after a record-breaking, and visually spectacular, trip around the moon, the U.S. love affair with lunar exploration has been renewed.

Something else from that era may have been renewed as well. In the punch-counterpunch style of the 1960s, a rival nation’s response to Artemis could be coming in a matter of months. In the second half of this year, the China National Space Administration is scheduled to launch Chang’e 7, an uncrewed mission that – if successful – would be the nation’s second successful landing on the lunar south pole. (In 2023, India became the first nation to land in the resource-rich region.)

Why We Wrote This

The United States and China are leading a global competition to build a permanent presence on the moon. Scientific research, national pride, and potentially lucrative lunar mining operations are at stake.

NASA will hope to one-up the Chinese again in 2028, when it plans to return humans to the lunar surface on Artemis IV.

It has all the hallmarks of a space race, experts say, but it differs in important ways from America’s contest with the Soviet Union in the 1950s and ’60s. Among them: Both China and the United States want to not just return to the lunar surface but establish a permanent presence there. And unlike the ’60s, there are more than two players in the space business.

Slow and steady progress over two decades has China with its nose in front right now, according to experts, but with NASA last month announcing a new plan to build a moon base in the early 2030s, the U.S. has the capability – and renewed focus – to take the lead in lunar exploration once more. Both countries have ambitious goals, and with human operations on the moon unprecedented and difficult, this race is likely to last over a decade. If the first space race was a rocket-fueled roller coaster, this one might be closer to the Iditarod.

“If the finish line is the moon becoming a site of regular, sustained human activity, we’re still fairly early in that race,” says David Burbach, director of the Space Studies Group at the U.S. Naval War College, speaking in his personal capacity.

China’s Chang’e

In 1970, China launched its first satellite into orbit. It would be 30 years before the Chinese government began even researching a mission to the moon. Then, in 2007, the Chang’e 1 probe launched to the moon.

The China National Space Administration has since performed five other Chang’e missions – named after the Chinese moon goddess – and they have all been successful. The missions have delivered two rovers to the lunar surface, Yutu 1 and Yutu 2. The second rover is still operating after its arrival with Chang’e 4 in January 2019.

Amid these successes on the moon, Chinese astronauts, called taikonauts, have routinely set new milestones. Their first manned flight in space came in 2003, and in 2008 the first spacewalk. The agency’s Tiangong space station has been operational since 2022.

The Chinese space agency doesn’t share much information, but it appears that the agency hasn’t had any major setbacks or failures, says Dr. Burbach.

“They’ve tried some really ambitious things, and they’ve all succeeded on the first try,” he adds.

China has now put forward plans to build a permanent base on the lunar south pole – a region believed to be rich in water ice, a resource chemically different from ice on Earth that could be used to make propellant and support human inhabitants. The China National Space Administration in 2021 signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, pledging to jointly build the International Lunar Research Station.

Described as a “comprehensive scientific experiment base with the capability of long-term autonomous operation,” the station, according to China, will be “open to all interested countries and international partners.” At least 12 countries have reportedly partnered on the project, including Venezuela, Egypt, and Pakistan. Separately, India aims to land its own crewed mission to the moon by 2040, and has signed an agreement with Japan to explore the lunar south pole.

The Chinese space agency wants to build a robotic base by 2035, and then a base that can support human inhabitants by 2045. The Chang’e 7 mission is seen as the first step in that process.

China does have one significant advantage over the U.S., experts note. The country’s slow and steady progress is aided by its autocratic government, which can fund the lunar program as it sees fit without having to worry about public opinion or a change in administration.

“They have a more spaced out timeline they’re working with,” says Victoria Samson, chief director for Space Security and Stability at the Secure World Foundation, a private nonprofit focused on promoting peaceful uses of outer space.

“Our [timeline] keeps shifting to the right, whereas China’s has more or less stayed at 2030.”

New focus at NASA

In late March, NASA announced that it was accelerating its lunar exploration program.

The moon had been an afterthought in U.S. spaceflight for a half century. The space race had been won, and NASA turned its attention to reusability and international collaboration through the space shuttle program and the International Space Station.

For decades, presidents flipped NASA priorities back and forth. George W. Bush proposed sending crewed missions to the moon, and establishing a base there, as a stepping stone for Mars exploration. Barack Obama canceled that effort, shifting focus to sending humans to Mars by 2030. Early in his first term, Donald Trump created the Artemis program to return humans to the moon.

Yet Artemis I, an uncrewed test flight that orbited the moon, didn’t launch until 2022. With a race against China likely to focus minds – and open purse strings – in Congress, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced changes to speed things up.

“The clock is running in this great-power competition, and success or failure will be measured in months, not years,” Mr. Isaacman said on March 24. NASA, he added, should “concentrate [its] extraordinary resources.”

The changes – announced on the eve of the Artemis II launch – are dramatic. The agency paused work on Lunar Gateway, a multinational space station meant to replace the International Space Station, to focus on a moon base. The Artemis III mission was narrowed and moved to 2027 instead of 2028. Artemis IV aims to land humans on the moon in 2028.

Overall, NASA wants to increase its launch cadence from one launch every three years to one launch every 10 months. The new, $20 billion plan hopes to establish a permanent human presence on the moon by the 2030s.

A long road ahead

In that sense, this new space race – or space marathon – is about who can build a moon base first. The competition “is ultimately about who gets to control the lunar surface,” says Norbert Schorghofer, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, in an email.

“Whoever controls access to the lunar surface and lunar resources will for all practical purposes own the moon,” he adds.

Geopolitics are another uncertainty. Whoever establishes a stronger presence could take the lead in setting rules for lunar operations, including mining the moon’s potentially billion-dollar resources. Both the U.S. and China are signatories to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which says no nation can own a planetary body, but how the agreement would be enforced is unclear. Efforts by private companies to establish operations on the moon is another complication.

NASA sees the Artemis Accords, developed with the State Department in 2020, as a key effort to establish “a common set of principles” for the latest era of space exploration. The document explicitly permits the mining of celestial bodies, and outlines standards for resource extraction, space debris, and the sharing of scientific data, among other topics. Sixty-one nations have signed on to the agreement as of January. Two notable exceptions: China and Russia.

But there is a long road ahead. If the U.S. and China are engaged in a metaphorical space marathon, they’re both currently in the first mile, experts say. That’s a lifetime in geopolitics, and in the harsh environment of the moon, the two countries may face bigger problems than each other.

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“If nothing else, the moon is a very challenging environment to keep people alive in,” says Ms. Samson.

“China will be following the same laws of thermodynamics on the moon as us,” she adds. “So there’s no reason they shouldn’t want to coordinate with us on lunar missions.”

The United States paused its 38-day war against Iran on Wednesday, with President Donald Trump appearing eager to declare victory and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth saying the military, “for now, has done its part.”

Announcing a two-week ceasefire just minutes before the Tuesday deadline he had set for reopening the Strait of Hormuz – an ultimatum that included threats that “a whole civilization will die” – President Trump hailed the truce as a “big day for world peace.” The Iranian regime has “had enough,” he said.

But hours after the truce, Iran and Gulf Arab countries reported new attacks, Israel bombarded Lebanon, and Iran once again closed the strait, through which 20% of the world’s oil flows, raising concerns about whether the deal would hold.

Why We Wrote This

President Donald Trump and his defense secretary are boasting of military success. But Iran’s peace proposal, which Mr. Trump says is a "workable" basis for talks, appeared to reflect Iran’s wishes without making meaningful concessions.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration came under criticism for being willing to negotiate an Iranian 10-point peace plan that appeared to give that country significant concessions while not addressing America’s stated reasons for starting the war.

Secretary Hegseth claimed “a capital V military victory,” and Iran’s army and navy suffered tremendous blows, analysts agree. Indeed, there was little doubt going into the war that America’s armed forces could beat Iran’s.

The question was at what cost – and to what end.

For now, all sides can make the case for victory. For the Iranian regime – more hardened than ever, some analysts say – success means having survived. For the U.S. and Israel, the win is in claiming to have dramatically curbed Iran’s ability to strike out militarily against the rest of the world.

At the Wednesday briefing, Mr. Trump said the U.S. action had resulted in a “very productive regime change” in Iran, while Mr. Hegseth seemed to blur the definition of what, exactly, regime change means.

“It’s a new group of people who’ve seen the full capability” of the U.S. military with “a new calculus about what it means to negotiate with us,” Mr. Hegseth said.

What the Iran peace plan says

Iran has submitted a 10-point peace proposal that Mr. Trump said Wednesday is a “workable basis on which to negotiate” with “almost all of the various points of past contention” resolved. The two-week ceasefire, announced Tuesday night, will allow the deal to be “finalized and consummated,” Mr. Trump added.

Under these terms, Iran’s military could retain its current control of the strait. And Iran and Oman could charge transit fees of up to $2 million on selected ships that pass through the waterway, with the collected funds used for postwar reconstruction rather than using reparations from the U.S. and Israel, according to other reports. The waterway operated under international, not Iranian, control before the war began, analysts point out.

When asked Wednesday morning whether the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran had effectively closed, was now reopened to ships, Gen. Dan Caine, America’s top military officer, did not appear certain. “I believe so,” he said.

Some leaked details of the peace proposal suggest that Iran is seeking acceptance of its right to continue with its nuclear enrichment program. Many analysts argue that such a concession by the U.S. is an unlikely prospect, since it would run counter to one of Mr. Trump’s stated reasons for attacking Iran in the first place.

This is bolstered by The New York Times reporting this week that the Trump administration, during talks in the February run-up to the war, offered to fund Iran’s nuclear fuel indefinitely to get the country’s civilian energy program going. That move, the report said, was to test whether Iran’s regime was truly interested in benign nuclear energy resources, as it claimed, or nuclear weapons. Iran reportedly rejected the offer, making the administration’s case, some officials argued, that the regime remained focused on developing a nuclear bomb.

At the Pentagon, officials say, they will soon be focused on retrieving enriched uranium that remains buried under rubble since the U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities last June.

“Right now it’s buried, and we’re watching it. We know exactly what they have,” Mr. Hegseth said Wednesday. The regime will give it to the U.S. “voluntarily,” or the U.S. will “take it out,” he added.

Destruction of many, but not all, weapons

Eager to bolster their claim of victory, Pentagon officials on Wednesday emphasized the destruction that the war had wrought on Iran’s military.

The U.S. has destroyed roughly 80% of Iran’s air defense systems, as well as 450 ballistic missile storage centers and 800 facilities that housed attack drones, General Caine said. The U.S. has also sunk 90% of Iran’s Navy, with 150 ships, along with half of its small attack boats, now “at the bottom of the ocean,” he added. Some 95% of Iran’s naval mines have also been decommissioned, according to military intelligence that the general cited.

But as these numbers suggest, Iran still has firepower. About 20% of Iranian air defenses are still functional, some analysts said. The number of storage facilities that U.S. and Israeli strikes have destroyed sounds impressive. Still, the remaining capacity is difficult to evaluate without knowing the overall total, Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, said in a post on the social platform X.

And while the U.S.-Israel force’s destruction of 95% of Iran’s mines sounds promising, it leaves the Middle Eastern nation with potentially hundreds of mines, Ms. Grieco added. That’s plenty of explosives that could be used to close the strait again.

Analysts, meanwhile, remain split on how quickly Iran could rearm should the regime decide to do so. It could also reposition its weapons systems, including the shoulder-fired missile launchers known as MANPADS that shot down a U.S. F-15E fighter jet last week, setting off a search and rescue mission for two crew members.

The Pentagon is now analyzing the details of the downed fighter jet, including the “tactical lessons learned,” General Caine said.

For now, the U.S. military will ''be hanging around” the region to ensure Iran complies with the ceasefire, Mr. Hegseth said.

In the meantime, as Wednesday wore on, there were concerns about whether the ceasefire would hold as the United Arab Emirates reportedly carried out airstrikes on an Iranian refinery in retaliation for earlier Iranian strikes on the UAE’s infrastructure.

Even as military leaders were fielding reporters' questions in Washington, Lebanon was undergoing some of the most intense attacks from Israel since the war began. Closing the strait once again was Iran’s response.

When asked whether there would be some “grace period” for the exchange of strikes to end, Mr. Hegseth was philosophical.

“It takes time, sometimes, for ceasefires to take hold,” he said.

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Another reporter asked the Secretary whether the U.S. is still encouraging protesters in Iran to rise up, or whether it is satisfied with the country’s current leadership.

“They’re brave people,” he said. “We wish them the best.”

The Trump administration is signaling a shift in immigration enforcement to more workplace arrests as hard-liners in the president’s base push him to begin a second, broader phase of his promised mass deportations.

Some inside the White House have reportedly urged less talk of mass deportations ahead of the congressional midterms, as Americans express dissatisfaction with the high-profile immigration arrest tactics in the heartland. But a network of Trump allies says the administration will not achieve its deportation goals without pursuing a much larger pool of targets.

Following the confirmation of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin last month, the coalition is pitching a reset away from a stated goal of deporting the “worst of the worst” to “populations that are easier to remove,” such as immigrants with final orders of removal and those who have overstayed their visas. Policies such as worksite enforcement will be key, the group’s plan says, raising the risk of the pushback seen after earlier workplace raids.

Why We Wrote This

Conservative groups allied with President Trump are calling for the White House to broaden its immigration enforcement strategy with worksite raids to deport anyone in the country illegally. Some critics say the government has already been doing that, but hard-liners want more to achieve the president’s promised mass deportations.

After the Mass Deportation Coalition published its recommendations last week, White House border czar Tom Homan told Fox News, “You’re going to see more worksite enforcement operations coming.”

Expanding deportations

President Donald Trump pledged the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. After record-high illegal border crossings under the Biden administration, the White House has wielded a wholesale crackdown that has ended status even for immigrants lawfully living in the United States.

While the government withholds key statistics, formal removals of immigrants so far appear to number in the hundreds of thousands. (Also among the coalition’s demands is full transparency by the Trump administration about its enforcement numbers.)

Enter the Mass Deportation Coalition, a collection of conservative groups ranging from Washington insiders to college Republicans. The group says it formed in February.

One high-profile member is the Heritage Foundation, the conservative Washington think tank behind Project 2025. The Trump administration has implemented about half of that blueprint for a complete overhaul of the federal government.

Another key voice is Mark Morgan, a former Border Patrol chief during the Obama administration, who also served as acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection in Mr. Trump’s first term.

Amid concerns about aggressive immigration enforcement – and what the public’s response to that might mean for the midterm congressional elections – “there is a push within the administration, and among many conservatives, to back off,” Mr. Morgan says, adding that the president campaigned on a clear promise: historically high deportations.

Expanding worksite enforcement could boost those numbers, while encouraging “self-deportations” – people who leave because they’re afraid the federal government will apprehend them – and deterring illegal entries, says Mr. Morgan. He also says the administration shouldn’t just prioritize unauthorized immigrants with criminal records.

The goal: at least 1 million deportations this year. “Everyone that’s here illegally should be removed,” he says.

Asked about the coalition’s goals and the administration’s plans, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that no one is changing the administration’s immigration enforcement agenda. “President Trump’s highest priority has always been the deportation of illegal alien criminals who endanger American communities.”

Lacking consensus

The GOP has generally united around arguments that illegal immigration strains public resources and introduces public-safety risks, though research contradicts assertions that immigrants are more likely to commit crimes than Americans.

But surges in interior enforcement have shown cracks in the conservative base, from the Oklahoma governor questioning the president’s “endgame” to Florida sheriffs raising concerns about the scope of immigrant arrests. Public outcry, including from some Republicans, followed the killings of two U.S. citizens by Department of Homeland Security law enforcement in Minneapolis.

With that in mind, the White House in recent weeks has asked Republican lawmakers to de-emphasize mass deportations. An analysis by Politico of official social media accounts marked a similar retreat – at least in messaging.

Last year, federal raids at farms, factories, and other jobsites shook red and blue states alike. Arrests of workers at a Hyundai plant in Georgia even caused a diplomatic rift with South Korea. As public outrage grew, the government ping-ponged between pausing and then promising more arrests. Mr. Trump himself acknowledged the toll on employers at the time.

The farming and hospitality sectors report that “our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them,” he wrote in a June post.

Mr. Morgan says the coalition doesn’t support “random patrols in sanctuary cities,” and immigration officers shouldn’t be “walking the parking lots of Home Depot or Target.” That’s not efficient, though enforcement must expand in other ways, he says.

“If Congress doesn’t want the executive branch to enforce the laws that they passed, then Congress should change them,” Mr. Morgan says.

What should enforcement look like?

Immigrant advocates also want reforms, but say DHS flouts legal standards that already exist. This year, the government has violated over 300 court orders related to immigrant detention, according to the publication Lawfare.

“We need some actual respect for the rule of law, for the laws that exist on the books,” says Sarah Mehta, deputy director of policy and government affairs at the American Civil Liberties Union. She rejects the government’s claims of targeting “the worst of the worst,” noting how children, military spouses, and lawfully present refugees have been swept up in arrests. U.S. citizens, too.

Secretary Mullin says he wants to keep DHS out of lead stories in the daily news. “But large-scale enforcement operations against people that are contributing to and sustaining our communities?” says Ms. Mehta. “That does the exact opposite.”

Moving forward, more worksite enforcement “might take a less visible form,” says Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. There may be fewer raids but more “briefcase enforcement,” he says, such as audits.

Still, targeting more workplaces could double deterrence, says Mr. Krikorian, whose think tank supports low immigration but isn’t part of the new coalition. More jobsite scrutiny not only nudges unauthorized immigrants to consider leaving the country, he says, it also “gives your employer more incentive to say, ‘Look, you know, I can’t keep you here.’”

Reality check

Beyond Washington, however, solutions aren’t straightforward. Not at Glenn Valley Foods in red-state Nebraska, which federal agents targeted last year.

The Mass Deportation Coalition calls for moving the whole employee verification process online and mandating a system called E-Verify. The owner of the Omaha meatpacking plant says he does use E-Verify. But Homeland Security still detained more than 70 of his workers in a June raid.

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“The government is the problem. It’s not the immigrants,” says Gary Rohwer, owner of Glenn Valley Foods. He says workers buy false IDs knowing the system to catch them fails. Mr. Rohwer also says the government’s widespread termination of work permits has jeopardized his workers’ employability.

“They’re family-oriented. They pay taxes. They show up for work on time,” he says. “I can’t hire Americans. They won’t do the work.”

The Trump administration is signaling a shift in immigration enforcement to more workplace arrests as hard-liners in the president’s base push him to begin a second, broader phase of his promised mass deportations.

Some inside the White House have reportedly urged less talk of mass deportations ahead of the congressional midterms, as Americans express dissatisfaction with the high-profile immigration arrest tactics in the heartland. But a network of Trump allies says the administration will not achieve its deportation goals without pursuing a much larger pool of targets.

Following the confirmation of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin last month, the coalition is pitching a reset away from a stated goal of deporting the “worst of the worst” to “populations that are easier to remove,” such as immigrants with final orders of removal and those who have overstayed their visas. Policies such as worksite enforcement will be key, the group’s plan says, raising the risk of the pushback seen after earlier workplace raids.

Why We Wrote This

Conservative groups allied with President Trump are calling for the White House to broaden its immigration enforcement strategy with worksite raids to deport anyone in the country illegally. Some critics say the government has already been doing that, but hard-liners want more to achieve the president’s promised mass deportations.

After the Mass Deportation Coalition published its recommendations last week, White House border czar Tom Homan told Fox News, “You’re going to see more worksite enforcement operations coming.”

Expanding deportations

President Donald Trump pledged the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. After record-high illegal border crossings under the Biden administration, the White House has wielded a wholesale crackdown that has ended status even for immigrants lawfully living in the United States.

While the government withholds key statistics, formal removals of immigrants so far appear to number in the hundreds of thousands. (Also among the coalition’s demands is full transparency by the Trump administration about its enforcement numbers.)

Enter the Mass Deportation Coalition, a collection of conservative groups ranging from Washington insiders to college Republicans. The group says it formed in February.

One high-profile member is the Heritage Foundation, the conservative Washington think tank behind Project 2025. The Trump administration has implemented about half of that blueprint for a complete overhaul of the federal government.

Another key voice is Mark Morgan, a former Border Patrol chief during the Obama administration, who also served as acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection in Mr. Trump’s first term.

Amid concerns about aggressive immigration enforcement – and what the public’s response to that might mean for the midterm congressional elections – “there is a push within the administration, and among many conservatives, to back off,” Mr. Morgan says, adding that the president campaigned on a clear promise: historically high deportations.

Expanding worksite enforcement could boost those numbers, while encouraging “self-deportations” – people who leave because they’re afraid the federal government will apprehend them – and deterring illegal entries, says Mr. Morgan. He also says the administration shouldn’t just prioritize unauthorized immigrants with criminal records.

The goal: at least 1 million deportations this year. “Everyone that’s here illegally should be removed,” he says.

Asked about the coalition’s goals and the administration’s plans, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that no one is changing the administration’s immigration enforcement agenda. “President Trump’s highest priority has always been the deportation of illegal alien criminals who endanger American communities.”

Lacking consensus

The GOP has generally united around arguments that illegal immigration strains public resources and introduces public-safety risks, though research contradicts assertions that immigrants are more likely to commit crimes than Americans.

But surges in interior enforcement have shown cracks in the conservative base, from the Oklahoma governor questioning the president’s “endgame” to Florida sheriffs raising concerns about the scope of immigrant arrests. Public outcry, including from some Republicans, followed the killings of two U.S. citizens by Department of Homeland Security law enforcement in Minneapolis.

With that in mind, the White House in recent weeks has asked Republican lawmakers to de-emphasize mass deportations. An analysis by Politico of official social media accounts marked a similar retreat – at least in messaging.

Last year, federal raids at farms, factories, and other jobsites shook red and blue states alike. Arrests of workers at a Hyundai plant in Georgia even caused a diplomatic rift with South Korea. As public outrage grew, the government ping-ponged between pausing and then promising more arrests. Mr. Trump himself acknowledged the toll on employers at the time.

The farming and hospitality sectors report that “our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them,” he wrote in a June post.

Mr. Morgan says the coalition doesn’t support “random patrols in sanctuary cities,” and immigration officers shouldn’t be “walking the parking lots of Home Depot or Target.” That’s not efficient, though enforcement must expand in other ways, he says.

“If Congress doesn’t want the executive branch to enforce the laws that they passed, then Congress should change them,” Mr. Morgan says.

What should enforcement look like?

Immigrant advocates also want reforms, but say DHS flouts legal standards that already exist. This year, the government has violated over 300 court orders related to immigrant detention, according to the publication Lawfare.

“We need some actual respect for the rule of law, for the laws that exist on the books,” says Sarah Mehta, deputy director of policy and government affairs at the American Civil Liberties Union. She rejects the government’s claims of targeting “the worst of the worst,” noting how children, military spouses, and lawfully present refugees have been swept up in arrests. U.S. citizens, too.

Secretary Mullin says he wants to keep DHS out of lead stories in the daily news. “But large-scale enforcement operations against people that are contributing to and sustaining our communities?” says Ms. Mehta. “That does the exact opposite.”

Moving forward, more worksite enforcement “might take a less visible form,” says Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. There may be fewer raids but more “briefcase enforcement,” he says, such as audits.

Still, targeting more workplaces could double deterrence, says Mr. Krikorian, whose think tank supports low immigration but isn’t part of the new coalition. More jobsite scrutiny not only nudges unauthorized immigrants to consider leaving the country, he says, it also “gives your employer more incentive to say, ‘Look, you know, I can’t keep you here.’”

Reality check

Beyond Washington, however, solutions aren’t straightforward. Not at Glenn Valley Foods in red-state Nebraska, which federal agents targeted last year.

The Mass Deportation Coalition calls for moving the whole employee verification process online and mandating a system called E-Verify. The owner of the Omaha meatpacking plant says he does use E-Verify. But Homeland Security still detained more than 70 of his workers in a June raid.

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“The government is the problem. It’s not the immigrants,” says Gary Rohwer, owner of Glenn Valley Foods. He says workers buy false IDs knowing the system to catch them fails. Mr. Rohwer also says the government’s widespread termination of work permits has jeopardized his workers’ employability.

“They’re family-oriented. They pay taxes. They show up for work on time,” he says. “I can’t hire Americans. They won’t do the work.”

All but three of the 4,499 refugees let into the United States this fiscal year so far have come from South Africa. This squares with the president’s pledge to prioritize Afrikaners – white South Africans – while capping refugee entries at a record low. 

Halfway through fiscal year 2026, the latest State Department data published this week shows that refugee arrivals have already surpassed half of the 7,500 admissions cap.

During the last full year of the Biden administration, by contrast, over 100,000 refugees arrived (a three-decade high). The sharp reversal now – and the singling out of one ethnic group to protect – marks a deep departure from the program built with bipartisan support in 1980.

Why We Wrote This

Virtually all of the refugees let into the U.S. in the first six months of the fiscal year have come from South Africa. The State Department data released this week appears to support President Trump’s pledge to prioritize Afrikaners – white South Africans.

President Donald Trump took an ax to his predecessor’s immigration policies, including expansive refugee resettlement. On his first day back in office, Mr. Trump suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, citing security and assimilation concerns. 

Following that news, refugee advocates criticized the withdrawal of American humanitarian aid as major conflicts abroad continued to displace millions. The Episcopal Church, a longtime refugee services provider, announced it would end those services with the government and decline resettling white South Africans over others. The church cited its “steadfast commitment to racial justice.”

Later last year, Mr. Trump affirmed that he would prioritize Afrikaner refugees “and other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination.” The president appeared to stake a claim in a debate over the persecution versus privilege of white South African farmers. Farm attacks are real in South Africa, but have been exaggerated. 

While more than 80% of South Africa’s population is Black, the Trump administration singled out white Afrikaners. The State Department data does not specify race.

Refugees, who flee identity-based persecution, are accepted for protection in the U.S. before they’re admitted. Before this administration, refugees had often waited years in camps before they were approved to arrive.

The largest share of South African refugees – over 500 – have arrived in Texas, followed by Florida and California. The exception to South African arrivals came in November, when three refugees from Afghanistan landed in Colorado. 

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The Trump administration’s separate attempt to arrest refugees already here – ahead of their obtaining green cards – has been blocked by courts. 

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the prospect of admitting other nationalities as refugees.

All but three of the 4,499 refugees let into the United States this fiscal year so far have come from South Africa. This squares with the president’s pledge to prioritize Afrikaners – white South Africans – while capping refugee entries at a record low. 

Halfway through fiscal year 2026, the latest State Department data published this week shows that refugee arrivals have already surpassed half of the 7,500 admissions cap.

During the last full year of the Biden administration, by contrast, over 100,000 refugees arrived (a three-decade high). The sharp reversal now – and the singling out of one ethnic group to protect – marks a deep departure from the program built with bipartisan support in 1980.

Why We Wrote This

Virtually all of the refugees let into the U.S. in the first six months of the fiscal year have come from South Africa. The State Department data released this week appears to support President Trump’s pledge to prioritize Afrikaners – white South Africans.

President Donald Trump took an ax to his predecessor’s immigration policies, including expansive refugee resettlement. On his first day back in office, Mr. Trump suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, citing security and assimilation concerns. 

Following that news, refugee advocates criticized the withdrawal of American humanitarian aid as major conflicts abroad continued to displace millions. The Episcopal Church, a longtime refugee services provider, announced it would end those services with the government and decline resettling white South Africans over others. The church cited its “steadfast commitment to racial justice.”

Later last year, Mr. Trump affirmed that he would prioritize Afrikaner refugees “and other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination.” The president appeared to stake a claim in a debate over the persecution versus privilege of white South African farmers. Farm attacks are real in South Africa, but have been exaggerated. 

While more than 80% of South Africa’s population is Black, the Trump administration singled out white Afrikaners. The State Department data does not specify race.

Refugees, who flee identity-based persecution, are accepted for protection in the U.S. before they’re admitted. Before this administration, refugees had often waited years in camps before they were approved to arrive.

The largest share of South African refugees – over 500 – have arrived in Texas, followed by Florida and California. The exception to South African arrivals came in November, when three refugees from Afghanistan landed in Colorado. 

Deepen your worldview

with Monitor Highlights.

Already a subscriber? Log in to hide ads.

The Trump administration’s separate attempt to arrest refugees already here – ahead of their obtaining green cards – has been blocked by courts. 

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the prospect of admitting other nationalities as refugees.

The crew of Artemis II set a record Monday for the farthest distance humans have traveled from Earth, as the spacecraft swung around the far side of the moon.

Shortly after traveling 248,656 miles away from Earth, breaking the record set by Apollo 13 in 1970, Artemis mission specialist Jeremy Hansen said he and his crewmates “choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long-lived.”

NASA and its partners in the commercial U.S. space industry are counting on the Artemis mission to break records and garner enough popular support to help usher in a new era of space exploration, one that is fueled by a thriving space economy.

Why We Wrote This

The Artemis II crew made history Monday, reaching the farthest distance humans have ever traveled from Earth. NASA and its commercial partners aim to also pioneer a new space economy through the Artemis missions.

To accomplish that goal, NASA is testing a strategy of relying more heavily on public-private partnerships. For Artemis II, that has meant partnering with traditional contractors like Lockheed Martin and Boeing. For future Artemis missions, partnerships are to include SpaceX and Blue Origin and other newcomers, like Firefly Aerospace, a Texas-based private space company that successfully landed a spacecraft on the lunar surface in March 2025.

Where once only governments could afford the eye-watering sums associated with reaching outer space, private companies like SpaceX have helped turn rocket launches into a (relatively) cheap, profitable business. Meanwhile, companies like Firefly are designing rovers and landers for NASA – and other customers – to explore the lunar surface and help build a permanent lunar outpost in the near future.

Firefly Aerospace is one of thousands of private space companies that now make up the commercial space industry. As of 2021, there were over 10,000 companies in the industry, Forbes reported, with a total value in excess of $4 trillion.

NASA is hoping that the future of space exploration is built on public-private partnerships with several of these companies.

The Artemis program, which will involve partnerships with multiple private companies in future missions, is a glimpse into that future. However, while the commercial space sector has certainly grown, it is not as big or as profitable as NASA officials hoped it would be by this point. The lunar economy could be worth around $170 billion over the next two decades, according to a 2021 analysis by PricewaterhouseCoopers. But as it stands today, there are some hard economic realities, like lack of current profitability, standing between private industry and that kind of lucrative space economy, according to experts.

Still, there is excitement – particularly following NASA’s announcement in late March of a new plan to gradually build a permanent base on the moon, starting with returning humans to the lunar surface in 2028 with Artemis IV. The landing spacecraft for that mission are being built by private companies.

When the Blue Ghost touched down last year, “it felt like starting something new,” said Kevin Scholtes, a future systems architect at Firefly Aerospace, in an interview on Monday.

“It felt like we were getting the tremendous privilege, with a lot of help from NASA, to start a new chapter in space exploration.”

Successes, and warning signs

The government paving the way for private industry to turn a profit has happened previously. The most apt comparison might be the settlement of the American West, which the government facilitated through friendly contracts with railroad companies.

A similar trend has happened in low Earth orbit. During the Apollo era in the 1960s and ’70s, only NASA (or put another way, taxpayers) could pay the cost of entry into space. Private companies – led by billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX – have helped slash the cost of launches by about 70% through developing reusable rockets and lighter payloads.

Now, private rocket launches into low Earth orbit are routine. But these launches often serve one purpose: to deploy new communications satellites into orbit.

“Now we’re incredibly dependent on” satellite communication, says Angel Abbud-Madrid, director of the Center for Space Resources at the Colorado School of Mines.

But if the space economy is going to be worth trillions of dollars in the future, he adds, “you’re going to have to get more” revenue streams.

Other ventures once seen as building blocks for a space economy have fallen flat. The market for space tourism, for example, seems to have dried up amid high costs and a lack of demand.

At an event in late March announcing the agency’s pivot to focusing on a moon base, NASA officials bemoaned the slow progress of private efforts to create a commercial space station in low Earth orbit. (The agency has been planning to decommission the International Space Station by 2030.)

“This is a real challenge; this is a real problem,” said Amit Kshatriya, NASA associate administrator, at the event, a week before the Artemis II launch.

“Having our presence in [low Earth orbit] is a national imperative,” he added. But “the current industry that we have that’s proposing to build destinations does not have the direct experience with that, or the resources, to go do it.”

Mining the moon

The economic viability of commercial operations in cislunar space – meaning the region extending from Earth’s atmosphere to the lunar surface and beyond – might be even more remote. For one, the moon is 100 times farther away from our planet than low Earth orbit. Secondly, as of right now there is no profit to be found.

Surveys have found potentially useful resources on the lunar surface. Rare earth elements, used to power many modern devices, have been found on the moon. So has helium-3, an isotope that could be used in nuclear fusion, cryogenics, and quantum computing. Extremely rare on Earth, helium-3 has been scattered across the moon by solar winds for billions of years.

Potentially the most valuable lunar resource is water ice, a resource that is chemically different from ice on Earth and could be vital for human missions and settlements. Found mostly on the lunar south pole, in permanently shadowed craters, the deposits could (in theory) be turned into rocket propellant and oxygen for breathing. Finding a way to efficiently mine and process this lunar ice could (in theory) turn the moon into a self-sustaining gas station for deep-space exploration.

“You can then start lowering the transportation costs,” says Dr. Abbud-Madrid. “Then you start opening up cislunar space.”

But if that is to become reality, a lot of science has to happen first, experts say – science such as what Artemis II conducted with its lunar flyby Monday, when the crew became the first humans to directly view some areas of the far side of the moon in daylight. The crew spent the roughly seven-hour flyby photographing and cataloging features of the surface in detail. They had 35 targets for 10 science objectives, including identifying potential future landing sites.

“We need more scientific characterizations of the moon,” says Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. “There’s water on the moon, but that’s like saying, ‘There’s gold in the West.’”

Several private companies are gearing up for a gold rush. Three companies – Interlune, Black Moon Energy, and Magna Petra – are focused on helium-3 mining. Colorado-based Lunar Outpost is building vehicles it says could support the construction and operation of a permanent lunar base.

Conversations and “friendly” competition

While these possible ventures have major financial question marks around them, there are also legal, environmental, and even moral consequences, analysts say.

For example, what would be the rules for a lunar economy? The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 says the moon cannot be taken over by any nation, but it doesn’t explicitly ban mining of its resources. The Artemis Accords – a U.S.-led guidance on “best practices” for “the civil exploration and use of outer space,” signed by 61 nations – affirms that resource extraction in outer space is lawful, provided certain conditions are met.

China and Russia, which are planning to build a permanent base together at the moon’s south pole, are not signatories to the Artemis Accords.

This doesn’t mean a lunar turf war is inevitable, experts say. The International Space Station has proved that foreign governments can collaborate in space despite tensions on Earth, but a space station is very different from a planetary body with potentially lucrative resources.

“If everyone wants to go [to the south pole] and everyone wants to have a base there, there’s going to have to be some conversation,” says Dr. Abbud-Madrid.

“And this is a good time to do it,” he adds. “All of these things have to be addressed before we start on a massive scale.”

In the meantime, Artemis II has begun its journey back to Earth. The crew is scheduled to splash down off the coast of San Diego on Friday.

2026 is also scheduled to be a busy year for commercial moon shots. Three companies – in partnership with NASA – are scheduled to land scientific payloads on the lunar surface, including a second Blue Ghost mission by Firefly Aerospace.

Mr. Scholtes describes the competition between all these companies as “a friendly rivalry.”

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“We compete over the same contracts; we compete over the same missions,” he says. “But ultimately, we’re in the same industry.”

“All ships are going to rise and sink with the tide,” he adds. “We love it when our competitors succeed because it means more opportunity for everyone.”

With some 68,000 immigrants in detention – as of February – and a goal of making space for up to 92,600 by this fall, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has roiled communities as it snaps up warehouses to hold those it hopes to deport. 

After record-high illegal border crossings under the Biden administration, President Donald Trump ordered a whole-of-government crackdown on illegal immigration. His administration has also moved to end deportation protections for many immigrants lawfully here. Congress last year gave ICE a $45 billion check to expand detention and help fulfill Mr. Trump’s mass deportation goals, as arrests began to surge in the interior. 

ICE says detention isn’t punitive, but ensures immigrants show up on their court dates and are already in hand when a judge orders deportation. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is broadly interpreting the reasons for mandatory detention and urging immigration judges to deny immigrants bond. 

Why We Wrote This

The Department of Homeland Security has been buying up warehouses around the United States so that it can house more immigrants that it hopes to deport. Some communities oppose the new detention sites, while some local officials see economic opportunities.

As ICE buys warehouses that the agency says would hold 1,000 to 10,000 beds each, some communities are pushing back. Towns where new ICE sites could crop up are grappling with infrastructure and humanitarian concerns. 

Newly confirmed Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin is reviewing where things stood under his predecessor, so, last week, DHS said it had paused new warehouse purchases. Mr. Mullin said during his confirmation hearing that he wanted to work with communities where detention centers were proposed. 

Critics say the government uses harsh detention conditions to coerce “self-deportation,” and they raise concerns about access to medical care and legal counsel. DHS has denied such claims. Meanwhile, 14 people have died in ICE custody so far this year, reports analyst Austin Kocher, a professor at Syracuse University. (ICE did not respond to several questions sent by the Monitor.)

Why is ICE expanding its detention efforts?

The agency says it wants to “streamline” the deportation process and hold more people in fewer detention centers. 

ICE sees detention as a way to guarantee deportations of those ordered to leave, as it’s easier to deport people from custody than to search for them. Despite the administration’s claims that it targets “the worst of the worst,” most ICE detainees have not been convicted of crimes. That said, civil immigration violations are enough to deport someone without a criminal history.

ICE has reportedly bought at least 11 warehouses around the country. Separately, ICE has also canceled 13 planned warehouse purchases, nearly all following local opposition, according to Project Salt Box, a website tracking the purchases through public records. The agency has said its goal is buying 24 “non-traditional facilities.” 

How have communities responded to new proposed detention sites?

Reactions have been mixed. After local backlash, warehouse purchases have slowed significantly in recent weeks, says Michael Wriston, a former intelligence analyst and head of Project Salt Box. 

From New Hampshire to Mississippi, elected officials and residents have voiced alarm over the facilities’ potential impacts on local resources and their suitability for human habitation. They say the federal government hasn’t consulted with them. Still, states and localities generally have little power to stop the federal government from buying up properties. 

In Social Circle, Georgia, a city of 5,000, ICE purchased a warehouse where it plans to hold at least 7,500 detainees with 2,000 staff members. Once operational, the site will exceed the city’s entire sewage capacity and overwhelm local emergency resources, says City Manager Eric Taylor. 

“I’m extremely worried,” says Mr. Taylor, adding that he locked a water meter at the facility in February to prevent water from being turned on. “[DHS officials] don’t seem to have any plans for how they’re going to address [the facility’s impact].” 

Mr. Taylor says the only time he heard from Homeland Security regarding the warehouse was in mid-February, weeks after the $129 million purchase was made. During the meeting, he says, a federal official presented a sewage analysis that erroneously included an out-of-county treatment plant under Social Circle’s sewage system. Mr. Taylor says he has since reached out to DHS multiple times but hasn’t heard back.

In Bradford County, Florida, prisons are already a major source of employment, so county officials see a new ICE facility as a potential economic boost. County commissioners voted in January to refine a proposal to turn a vacant, county-owned warehouse into a facility holding at least 1,000 detainees for ICE. The facility would be run by Sabot Consulting, which the county sheriff says reached out to him with the proposal. The company did not respond to a request for comment.

Bradford County Sheriff Gordon Smith says he “totally supports” the idea. In his county of roughly 30,000, the project would create hundreds of “living-wage jobs,” he says, and bring infrastructure upgrades to the warehouse that the county can’t afford itself. 

“If we don’t do something to bring more economic development to our community, we’re going to be in a real crisis,” the sheriff says.

How long can ICE detain immigrants in these centers?

“The courts have said that you cannot detain people forever,” says Kathleen Bush-Joseph, who until this month worked as a lawyer at the Migration Policy Institute. However, “sometimes people can languish in detention for long periods of time.” 

In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled that ICE can’t indefinitely detain people who have final deportation orders. That case said they shouldn’t be held for more than six months if it appeared unlikely they would be deported. By contrast, courts haven’t set detention limits for people still awaiting outcomes in their immigration cases. 

How long people are in detention can depend on a variety of factors. For those with cases still in immigration court, choosing to fight on and appeal can extend their stay.

Detention is “the cornerstone of the deportation process,” says Scott Mechkowski, a former deputy field office director at ICE, but it costs money. “Every day that you’re in custody, you’re costing taxpayers X amount of money.”

As much as immigrants want to get out of ICE detention, it’s not easy. They are not entitled to lawyers at the government’s expense. Still, immigrant detainees have been filing challenges to their detention in high numbers – on average, more than 200 a day, ProPublica reported in February.

Other logistical and even diplomatic barriers can block deportation and prolong detention. For example, some countries don’t cooperate in accepting their citizens. 

Another wrinkle: Courts have both stymied and sped up federal attempts to bypass deportation roadblocks, with mixed rulings on plans such as third-country deportations.

What about children? How long can ICE detain them?

Whether a child is with a guardian matters. Under U.S. law, DHS generally can’t detain unaccompanied minors past 72 hours. By then, those children must be transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services. That agency housed on average 2,348 unaccompanied children in February.

Families, on the other hand, can be held in custody longer. Courts have interpreted a decades-old settlement agreement in a way that generally requires ICE to hold family groups including minors no longer than 20 days. 

At the Dilley detention center in Texas, families with children have endured lockdowns, virus outbreaks, and worms in food, according to complaints. It is not clear yet whether any of the new facilities will hold families.

Over 900 children have been held beyond 20 days as of January, reports NBC News, citing data from court-appointed monitors. 

The Trump administration, it seems, “is not taking those rules very seriously,” says Scott Shuchart, a former assistant director for regulatory affairs and policy at ICE. “It does seem like they’re detaining people, family groups, longer term.”