As Americans around the nation celebrated Thanksgiving on Thursday, progressive Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts — a member of the left-wing cadre of House lawmakers known as the “Squad” — indicated that there were vacant seats at some tables due to people being “abducted & deported.” 

“This Thanksgiving, I’m thinking of our neighbors with an empty seat at the dinner table. Those with loved ones abducted & deported from their families. Those we lost due to gun violence, mass incarceration, & more. A more just America is possible, if we fight for it,” Pressley said in the post.

President Donald Trump’s administration has been cracking down on illegal immigration.

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Democratic Rep. Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, another squad member, said that Thanksgiving reminds some people of “stolen land and broken treaties.”

“Thanksgiving is a time of gratitude and community for many, but it’s also a reminder of stolen land and broken treaties for others. As we give thanks today, let’s also honor Indigenous communities by committing to the fight for sovereignty, justice, and freedom,” Lee declared in a post on Thursday.

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In a post last month, Pressley indicated that Americans are living “on stolen land.”

“Happy Indigenous People’s Day! We are all on stolen land,” Pressley declared in the post. 

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“And while Republicans try to whitewash American history, we acknowledge our country’s role in inflicting trauma on our Indigenous neighbors. We’ll keep celebrating their contributions, centering Native voices in our policymaking, & building a more just, equitable future,” she added. 

California voters are sharply divided along partisan lines over the Trump administration’s immigration raids this year in Los Angeles and across the nation, according to a new poll.

Just over half of the state’s registered voters oppose federal efforts to reduce undocumented immigration, and 61% are against deporting everyone in the nation who doesn’t have legal status, according to a recent poll by UC Berkeley’s Possibility Lab released to The Times on Wednesday.

But there is an acute difference in opinions based on political leanings.

Nearly 80% of Democrats oppose reducing the number of people entering the United States illegally, and 90% are against deporting everyone in the country who is undocumented, according to the poll. Among Republicans, 5% are against reducing the entries and 10% don’t believe all undocumented immigrants should be forced to leave.

“The big thing that we find, not surprisingly, is that Democrats and Republicans look really different,” said political scientist Amy Lerman, director of UC Berkeley’s Possibility Lab, who studies race, public opinion and political behavior. “On these perspectives, they fall pretty clearly along party lines. While there’s some variation within the parties by things like age and race, really, the big divide is between Democrats and Republicans.”

While there were some differences based on gender, age, income, geography and race, the results largely mirrored the partisan divide in the state, Lerman said.

One remarkable finding was that nearly a quarter of survey respondents personally knew or were acquainted with someone in their family or friend groups directly affected by the deportation efforts, Lerman said.

“That’s a really substantial proportion,” she said. “Similarly, the extent to which we see people reporting that people in their communities are concerned enough about deportation efforts that they’re not sending their kids to school, not shopping in local stores, not going to work,” not seeking medical care or attending church services.

The poll surveyed a sample of the state’s registered voters and did not include the sentiments of the most affected communities — unregistered voters or those who are ineligible to cast ballots because they are not citizens.

A little more than 23 million of California’s 39.5 million residents were registered to vote as of late October, according to the secretary of state’s office.

“So if we think about the California population generally, this is a really significant underestimate of the effects, even though we’re seeing really substantial effects on communities,” she said.

Earlier this year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched a series of raids in Los Angeles and surrounding communities that spiked in June, creating both fear and outrage in Latino communities. Despite opposition from Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and other elected Democrats, the Trump administration also deployed the National Guard to the streets of the nation’s second-largest city to, federal officials said, protect federal immigration officials.

The months since have been chaotic, with masked, armed agents randomly pulling people — most of whom are Latino — off the streets and out of their workplaces and sending many to detention facilities, where some have died. Some deportees were flown to an El Salvador prison. Multiple lawsuits have been filed by state officials and civil rights groups.

In one notable local case, a federal district judge issued a ruling temporarily blocking federal agents from using racial profiling to carry out indiscriminate immigration arrests in the Los Angeles area. The Supreme Court granted an emergency appeal and lifted that order, while the case moves forward.

More than 7,100 undocumented immigrants have been arrested in the Los Angeles area by federal authorities since June 6, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

On Monday, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), Bass and other elected officials hosted a congressional hearing on the impact of immigration raids that have taken place across the country. Garcia, the top Democrat on the House’s oversight committee, also announced the creation of a tracker to document misconduct and abuse during ICE raids.

While Republican voters largely aligned with Trump’s actions on deportations, 16% said that they believed that the deportations will worsen the state’s economy.

Lerman said the university planned to study whether these numbers changed as the impacts on the economy are felt more greatly.

“If it continues to affect people, particularly, as we see really high rates of effects on the workforce, so construction, agriculture, all of the places where we’re as an economy really reliant [on immigrant labor], I can imagine some of these starting to shift even among Republicans,” she said.

Among Latinos, whose support of Trump grew in the 2024 election, there are multiple indications of growing dissatisfaction with the president, according to separate national polls.

Nearly eight in 10 Latinos said Trump’s policies have harmed their community, compared to 69% in 2019 during his first term, according to a national poll of adults in the United States released by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center on Monday. About 71% said the administration’s deportation efforts had gone too far, an increase from 56% in March. And it was the first time in the two decades that Pew has conducted its survey of Latino voters that the number of Latinos who said their standing in the United States had worsened increased, with more than two-thirds expressing the sentiment.

Another poll released earlier this month by Somos Votantes, a liberal group that urges Latino voters to support Democratic candidates, found that one-third of Latino voters who previously supported Trump rue their decision, according to a national poll.

Small business owner Brian Gavidia is among the Latino voters who supported Trump in November because of financial struggles.

“I was tired of struggling, I was tired of seeing my friends closing businesses,” the 30-year-old said. “When [President] Biden ran again I’m like, ‘I’m not going to vote for the same four years we just had’ … I was sad and I was heartbroken that our economy was failing and that’s the reason why I went that way.”

The East L.A. native, the son of immigrants from Colombia and El Salvador, said he wasn’t concerned about Trump’s immigration policies because the president promised to deport the “worst of the worst.”

He grew disgusted watching the raids that unfolded in Los Angeles earlier this year.

“They’re taking fruit vendors, day laborers, that’s the worst of the worst to you?” he remembered thinking.

Over a lunch of asada tortas and horchata in East L.A., Gavidia recounted being detained by Border Patrol agents in June while working at a Montebello tow yard. Agents shoved him against a metal gate, demanding to know what hospital he was born at after he said he was an American citizen, according to video of the incident.

After reviewing his ID, the agents eventually let Gavidia go. The Department of Homeland Security later claimed that Gavidia was detained for investigation for interference and released after being confirmed to be a U.S. citizen with no outstanding warrants. He is now a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and immigrant advocacy groups alleging racial profiling during immigration raids.

“At that moment, I was the criminal, at that moment I was the worst of the worst, which is crazy because I went to go see who they were getting — the worst of the worst like they said they were going to get,” Gavidia said. “But turns out when I got there, I was the worst of the worst.”

EXCLUSIVE – Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley – the South Texas nonprofit long known for its migrant shelter run by Sister Norma Pimentel – has been suspended from receiving federal funds and now faces a rare six-year debarment after a Department of Homeland Security investigation found major grant violations, according to internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) documents shared exclusively with Fox News Digital.

The action, taken by FEMA on behalf of DHS on Nov. 19-20, follows months of warnings and data reviews that auditors say uncovered sweeping inaccuracies, large gaps in migrant records and significant billing outside federally allowed timeframes.

The suspension applies only to this South Texas affiliate, not to Catholic Charities USA or any other Catholic Charities chapters nationwide.

In a formal Notice of Suspension and Proposed Debarment, DHS officials accused the organization of submitting migrant data so inconsistent the agency could not verify whether many of the people it reported serving had ever appeared in DHS databases.

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Investigators also alleged at least 248 instances in which the nonprofit billed the government for services outside the 45-day window federal rules allow for migrants released from DHS custody.

FEMA concluded the group provided assurances that its spreadsheets were accurate and compliant, statements the agency said were “false” or “not entirely truthful,” according to the documents.

The proposed punishment is unusually severe. While federal debarments typically run three years, DHS is seeking a six-year ban due to what it describes as a pattern of “pervasive” problems that spanned multiple programs and multiple years.

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If finalized, the designation would cut the organization off from most federal funding streams and flag it in the government-wide System for Award Management, warning agencies and pass-through partners not to issue new grants.

Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley (CCRGV) now has 30 days to respond, submit documentation or request a meeting to argue it remains “presently responsible.” If it does not, the six-year ban would likely go into effect.

The DHS findings center heavily on migrant intake data the nonprofit submitted to justify millions of dollars in payments through FEMA’s Emergency Food and Shelter-Humanitarian program (EFSP-H) and its newer Shelter Services Program. FEMA said it asked the group to provide names, A-numbers, countries of origin and evidence of DHS encounters for individuals it claimed to assist. In response, the nonprofit told the agency all migrants had A-numbers recorded and asserted its spreadsheets were accurate within a 4.99% margin of error.

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Auditors said the reality was far different. In sample sets reviewed by the agency, A-numbers were frequently missing, truncated to four digits, or replaced with phone numbers and other stray entries. Error rates reached 21%, 26% and 42% across three spreadsheets, the documents show. When FEMA tested 100 names, it could not find 61 of them in DHS systems at all.

Investigators also stressed the Rio Grande chapter’s 45-day rule violations. Under federal guidelines, NGOs may only bill for food, shelter or transport for migrants within 45 days of their release from DHS custody.

FEMA told the organization it found at least 248 cases where billing dates occurred after that window had closed, raising concerns that federal dollars were used for services outside what the law allows. The agency wrote that such activity could amount to “potential criminal activity,” though DHS has not said whether it plans to refer the case for criminal review.

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The documents further cite the nonprofit’s own posted FY 2024 audit, which reported “material weaknesses” in internal controls over federal awards, inconsistent intake procedures and missing documentation for roughly 5% of sampled recipients. FEMA said corrective-action plans were copied forward almost verbatim year to year, without meaningful improvements.

Catholic leaders have recently pushed back against efforts to cut funding. Pope Leo XIV praised Catholic Charities USA this fall as “agents of hope,” commending its 168 agencies for decades of work with migrants, refugees and the poor.

Pimentel, who leads the Rio Grande Valley branch, has for years been a national figure in migrant ministry. Her Humanitarian Respite Center once processed more than 1,500 migrants per day at the height of mass crossings. She has been publicly praised by the Vatican for her humanitarian work and has spoken out against a return to the Remain in Mexico policy, saying families forced to wait in Mexico suffered “tremendously.”

But her organization has also been a political focal point. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has pursued cases against several Catholic migrant shelters, accusing them of encouraging illegal immigration and operating illegal “stash houses,” including his suit against Annunciation House in El Paso. A judge earlier this year blocked Paxton from deposing Sister Norma in that separate matter.

The suspension now places the Rio Grande Valley operation under simultaneous federal and state scrutiny. It is not yet clear whether other local shelters or municipal partners can absorb the South Texas caseload if the nonprofit ultimately loses federal funds. CCRGV currently serves far fewer migrants than in prior years, but remains one of the region’s key intake points.

DHS has not said when a final decision on debarment will be made. The organization continues to operate during the suspension period but cannot receive new federal awards until the matter is resolved.

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Fox News Digital reached out to Catholic Charities for comment.

DHS noted to Fox News Digital that future debarments may occur and that investigations remain ongoing.