The Donald Trump administration is creating a team of federal attorneys to represent unaccompanied migrant children (UACs) in their asylum cases. Few details have been released about how the unit will be staffed or operate, but independent organizations that have provided such legal services until now see a clear conflict of interest. Although the new division within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is being presented as independent, the same administration responsible for the children’s custody — and that is pursuing policies aimed at increasing deportations of minors — would also be tasked with defending their cases before immigration judges.

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When Republican Greg Abbott was re-elected governor of Texas in 2022, his margin over opponent Beto O’Rourke was nearly 11 percentage points. Less than a month before the midterm elections, however, polls no longer show him with a comfortable lead. Survey averages put Democratic candidate Gina Hinojosa just over two points behind and rapidly closing the gap, raising alarm among Democrats over the need to boost campaign funding in the final stretch.

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In the 2024 elections, the Latino vote took center stage, proving decisive for Donald Trump’s victory. In less than a month, their vote could determine whether Republicans keep control of both chambers of Congress or lose it in the midterms. Given that the electorate’s top concern is the economy, the outlook does not bode well for the red party.

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When attorney Vanessa Potkin learned about the botched execution of inmate Christa Pike, she worried that her client, Melissa Lucio, would hear what had happened in Tennessee and think about what might happen to her. The Latina has spent nearly 18 years on death row in a Texas prison trying to prove she is innocent of causing her two-year-old daughter’s death.

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Donald Trump’s latest financial promise, a $90 check for people enrolled in Medicare, will be sent out in October to millions of older adults in the run-up to midterm elections that will decide control of Congress, with Republicans facing voter discontent over the president’s economic record.

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President Donald Trump told reporters this week he would embark on a 32-day campaign tour to try to save Republican races ahead of the midterm elections. Texas, along with other traditionally Republican states such as Iowa, is on his must-stop list. But the state attorney general and the party’s Senate candidate, Ken Paxton, does not appear convinced the visit will help.

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The Trump administration’s immigration policy and the state of the economy are prompting a shift of Latino voters back toward the Democrats. Although many remain undecided, a new poll shows that in the November midterms, Democratic congressional candidates will receive between six and 10 percentage points more of the Hispanic vote compared with Kamala Harris’s 2024 results. By contrast, Republicans would lose five points of the votes Trump won among this electorate. On November 3, all seats in the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate are up for election, as well as 36 governorships.

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A Venezuelan man wounded by an immigration agent during an operation in Austin on September 20 was charged Tuesday by the federal government with assault, resisting authority and impeding the work of federal officers, according to a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas.

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A federal appeals court will examine Tuesday whether a federal judge can proceed with a criminal contempt investigation into the Trump administration related to the deportation of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador in March 2025.

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Polls are unfavorable for Texas attorney general and Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton. With 38 days until the midterm elections, some Republican politicians have all but conceded the Lone Star seat and remain haunted by the belief that the safer bet would have been to give the nomination to veteran congressman John Cornyn. Paxton isn’t gaining traction, not even after President Donald Trump himself urged voters at the unprecedented Republican convention in September in Dallas — his “Trumpapalooza” — to imagine that on November 3 they would be choosing him instead of the controversial Southern politician.

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You may have recently come across some of these athletic shoes with unsettling holes in the sole. If you noticed them, you might already have seen a lot of them. It’s not just your imagination: in a few short years, designs from the brand On have spread across the globe. Outside the sports world the label was little known before the pandemic, but it has since become a cultural phenomenon that goes beyond the world of running. The company’s latest headline-making move came last week, when it announced a deal with Real Madrid forward Kylian Mbappé, who left Nike after 20 years of collaboration. On already works regularly with luxury house Loewe, superstar Zendaya, and former tennis world number one Roger Federer. The brand so appealed to Federer that he became one of its shareholders.

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The iconic GALA Hispanic Theater in Washington, D.C., a pioneer in presenting Spanish-language plays in the U.S. capital, hasn’t been immune to the impact of Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration policies. Faced with the intensification of raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) across D.C., this center for Hispanic culture has become a refuge for the Latino community on more than one occasion.

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In recent months, the Donald Trump administration has been proudly releasing statistics on migrant arrests. Nearly 51,000 detentions were recorded in August, setting a new record that surpassed July’s 50,208, according to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data. But while the administration celebrates increased operations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), business owners lament the effects on the labor market. “I’ve already lost several employees. There’s nobody to work,” says Carlos Raba, a chef of Mexican descent.

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Colombian Julián Palacios Obregón spent 650 days in immigration detention in the United States. He was sick for most of that time. A month after being transferred to the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington state, he began vomiting and suffering diarrhea with fecal incontinence that forced him to wear diapers. Although he was prescribed antibiotics that temporarily improved symptoms caused by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, the underlying problem repeatedly returned: he remained exposed to cloudy water and to food he often described as raw or foul-smelling.

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