Mountain West law-enforcement agreements with ICE rose five-fold in 2025

Protests across the Las Vegas Valley erupted after 37-year old Alex Pretti, a legal observer and an intensive care unit nurse in Minnesota, was shot and killed during an altercation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) over the weekend. But Southern Nevada municipalities have been quiet on the subject, and their elected leaders have been more restrained in their criticism than some of their counterparts elsewhere in the country. Many agencies in Clark County have working relationships with ICE, ranging from informal collaborations at jails to financial contracts to hold detainees. With 1 in 5 foreign born residents, the county is one of the most diverse in the United States but has not had the kind of public, large-scale ICE deployment seen in Minneapolis or Los Angeles.

Bovino’s departure from Minnesota comes as the White House on Monday announced that border czar Tom Homan is being sent to the state as the Trump administration’s new point person for immigration enforcement operations.

The replacement of Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino has offered migrant-rights activists both in Minneapolis and nationwide a glimmer of hope that the Trump administration may be reconsidering its harsh approach to mass deportations.

President Donald Trump has said his administration plans to revoke the citizenship of naturalized immigrants who are convicted of defrauding Americans—but legal experts say doing so isn’t straightforward and the law restricts when citizenship can be taken away.

A federal judge in Boston last September issued a landmark ruling that the Trump administration deliberately chilled the speech of international students with a string of targeted arrests intended to “strike fear” in demonstrators and academics critical of Israel’s conduct in Gaza. Now Judge William G. Young will decide what should be done about that violation.

Of the 124 deportation flights that stopped in Nevada in 2025, nearly three-fifths were operated by Avelo. The airline is ending its ICE contract, citing costs.

Professor Michael Kagan is a noted scholar of international refugee law and immigrant rights in the United States. Before coming to the Boyd School of Law in 2011, Professor Kagan spent 10 years building legal aid programs for refugees throughout the Middle East and Asia. In addition to directing the UNLV Immigration Clinic, he has consulted on hundreds of criminal cases involving non-citizens with the Clark County Public Defender. We selected Professor Kagan as one of the City Cast 7 in 2025 because of his tireless work advocating for immigrant rights in a year when those rights are under steady and increasing attack. His research, public speaking, and role as a mentor and teacher to the next generation of immigration lawyers has created a space for clarity and hope in a time of fear and confusion.