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“Families consistently report their children are hungry, exhausted, perpetually sick, and despondent from the conditions of confinement.” The Trump administration has put children in immigration detention at ten times the daily rate of the last year of the Biden administration, according to government data obtained by the Deportation Data Project. ICE officials have detained 6,200 children since the start of the second Trump term, often in conditions that advocates assert can lead to “an incredible amount of trauma.” TMP’s Anna Flagg and Shannon Heffernan have our story. The Marshall Project

Blossoming with a second chance. Mario Monteiro learned to garden decades ago as a teenager inside Rhode Island’s maximum-security prison. He spent 23 winters behind bars before being released in 2024 and now plants trees across the state as part of a job he could hardly have imagined when he was first convicted and sentenced. He tries to give back to the communities he serves, encouraging the children who watch him do his work to pick up a shovel and join in. “Every human who came to me with their watering cans — whether in the form of phone calls, dreams or shovels — helped me blossom,” writes Monteiro in the latest installment of our Life Inside series. The Marshall Project

Immigration nation. On Friday, a federal judge in California ruled that Border Patrol agents have continued to make illegal stops and arrests after she ordered them to halt. The Associated Press Hundreds of people held in immigration detention in Adams County, Mississippi, have been waiting for months for a judge to rule on their release petitions. Mississippi Today ICE agents are still arresting U.S. citizens at high rates, despite promises from administration officials that immigration raids would be more targeted. The Washington Post Just in time for Easter Sunday: “You’re deporting the future of American Christianity,” said a Latino leader of an evangelical church that supported Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential bid. NBC News

Bye bye Bondi. Trump ally Todd Blanche, temporary head of the Justice Department, is the president’s former criminal defense lawyer and he still acts like it. Politico Former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi may still have to testify on Capitol Hill about the Justice Department’s mishandling of the Epstein files. Politico Bondi’s contentious tenure was largely defined by her role in the Epstein story. The Associated Press Her sudden departure last week was noted with scorn from some current DOJ staffers. MS Now Jeanine Pirro, the Trump ally installed as U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C. is among the candidates to replace Bondi as the next Attorney General, despite her terrible track record so far. New York Magazine

What “community safety” now means in New York City. Deputy Mayor Renita Francois has been named the first head of the city’s new Office of Community Safety. Its budget for 2026 will be $260 million, or roughly one quarter of what Mayor Zohran Mamdani asked for during his historic campaign. “If you want to go fast, go alone,” Francois told TMP’s Wilbert L. Cooper in the latest edition of our Closing Argument newsletter. “And if you want to go far, go together. So of course, we are definitely going to be doing the work to lay solid partnerships across the city, because safety really is inclusive.” The Marshall Project

Conditions inside one of the largest immigration detention facilities in the U.S. are dirty and dangerous to the thousands of people imprisoned there, an internal ICE report has concluded. The report found 49 deficiencies at Camp East Montana in Texas, including excessive use of force, and poor medical care and treatment. The Associated Press Most of the measles cases in Texas are from the West Texas Detention Facility, a federal immigration-prison run by LaSalle Corrections, a private contractor. The Texas Tribune

The Trump administration has asked Congress for $152 million to reopen Alcatraz, the long-shuttered California prison, and return it to use as a maximum-security prison. Officials in San Francisco say they have no interest in supporting the attempt. The New York Times

Tennesseans with past felony sentences now have the opportunity to regain their voting rights by establishing that they have complied with their child support obligations. A new law also untethers the payment of restitution to the restoration of voting rights. The Associated Press

Salah Sarsour, the president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, was detained by ICE agents in Wisconsin last week. He is now being held in an immigration detention facility in Indiana. Federal officials claim he lied on his U.S. green card application. Sarsour has no criminal record in the U.S. The New York Times

A former Bureau of Indian affairs officer pleaded guilty last week in Montana to sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in 2024. Murrell Deela then tried to cover up the crime, prosecutors say. The Associated Press

Rap music and the death penalty. “Creative expression, no matter how loathsome or violent, cannot become a death warrant if the First Amendment is to have any meaning.” The Boston Globe TMP Context: Rap lyrics helped send James Broadnax to death row. Some musicians are trying to help him gain his release. The Marshall Project

The worst U.S. attorney general in history. Pam Bondi “was the first attorney general to operate unencumbered by any loyalty to the rule of law, or any pretense of independence.” Mother Jones More: “Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Bondi’s eventual successor will inherit a department fractured by institutional upheaval — one often at odds with a federal judiciary that historically has been highly deferential.” Cato Institute

Jeffrey Epstein undermined the #MeToo movement. “If you can transform a person from a victim into a liar, you can cut out her tongue for good.” The New York Times

An “election integrity” order that makes no sense. “It isn’t easy for the executive to impose voter ID requirements, because the Constitution makes it impossible. But that hasn’t stopped the president from trying — and it’s unlikely to stop him next time, either.” Lawfare

Trump’s intimidation tactic didn’t work. The Trump administration seems destined to lose its challenge to birthright citizenship enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment. But a MAGA justice or two will likely dissent. The New Yorker More: Last week’s oral argument in the birthright citizenship case undermines any Democratic plan to pack the court. Washington Monthly

“They were going to come. It was going to be a big thing. We were going to go to the beach right after. All those plans had to go out the window because they said ICE would be here.” ICE’s threats to detain the immigrant parents of U.S. Marine Corps graduates took the shine off this year’s ceremony at Parris Island, South Carolina. NBC News

A rare ruling by an immigration judge that protects a potential deportee. A judge ruled last week in favor of a permanent legal resident of the U.S., an Indian national, who was taken into immigration detention last year after his murder conviction was overturned in Pennsylvania. Subramanyam Vedam spent 44 years in prison before his wrongful conviction was recognized. Last week’s ruling was intended to protect him from deportation. The Guardian

“This essentially turns the city’s general fund into a refund pool for any property owner that is dissatisfied with law enforcement’s outcomes when it comes to these particular matters.” Georgia lawmakers passed a measure last week that allows property owners to sue local governments if those owners don’t feel as though local police are enforcing anti-homeless bans or federal immigration policies. The Associated Press

Autocracy watch. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has issued an opinion, which is not binding on the courts, that the president does not have to turn over his records to the National Archives under the Presidential Records Act. NBC News

Poetry inside the Louisiana State Penitentiary. “At the beginning of National Poetry Month, it feels right to read these poems and remember that, despite the horrors of U.S. prisons, incarcerated writers are doing the lifesaving work of making beauty.” Inquest TMP Context: From behind bars, try sending your kid a poem without line breaks. The Marshall Project