Afghan evacuees face uncertain legal status in the U.S.
In the next few weeks, more than 50,000 Afghan evacuees are set to leave U.S. military sites to resettle in communities across America.
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Camilo Montoya-Galvez is the Immigration Correspondent at CBS News, where his reporting is featured across multiple programs and platforms, including national broadcast shows, CBS News 24/7, CBSNews.com and the organization's social media accounts.
Montoya-Galvez has received numerous awards for his groundbreaking and in-depth reporting on immigration, including a national Emmy Award, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award and several New York Emmy Awards.
Over several years, he has built one of the leading and most trusted national sources of immigration news, filing breaking news pieces, as well as exclusive reports and in-depth feature stories on the impact of major policy changes.
Montoya-Galvez was the first reporter to obtain and publish the names of the Venezuelan deportees sent by the U.S. to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador, with little to no due process. Using that list, he co-produced a "60 Minutes" report that found most of the deported men did not have apparent criminal records, despite the administration's claims that they were all dangerous criminals and gang members. Montoya-Galvez was also the first journalist to interview Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador and imprisoned at the CECOT prison.
In 2025 alone, Montoya Galvez broke dozens of other exclusive stories. He disclosed the internal Trump administration plan to revoke the legal status of hundreds of thousands of migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela; landed the first national network sit-down interviews with the current heads of ICE and Border Patrol; and obtained government data showing that illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2025 plummeted to the lowest level since 1970 amid Trump's crackdown.
Montoya Galvez's North Star is to cover immigration with nuance and fairness, in a nonpartisan, comprehensive and compelling way that respects the dignity of those at the center of this story
Before joining CBS News, Montoya-Galvez spent over two years as an investigative unit producer and assignment desk editor at Telemundo's television station in New York City. His work at Telemundo earned three New York Emmy Awards. Earlier, he was the founding editor of After the Final Whistle, an online bilingual publication featuring stories that highlight soccer's role in contemporary society.
Montoya-Galvez was born in Cali, Colombia's third-largest city, and raised in New Jersey. He earned a bachelor's degree in Media and Journalism Studies and Spanish from Rutgers University.
In the next few weeks, more than 50,000 Afghan evacuees are set to leave U.S. military sites to resettle in communities across America.
The Biden administration has maintained a pandemic-era policy enacted under former President Donald Trump to rapidly expel some migrants from the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Biden administration directed U.S. officials to focus on detaining immigrants determined to pose a threat to national security or public safety, as well as migrants who recently crossed the southern border.
The ruling is another blow to Democratic efforts to create a massive legalization program for millions of undocumented immigrants without Republican support
The Obama-era program currently provides deportation protection and work permits to roughly 590,000 immigrants known as "Dreamers."
The deportees, including hundreds of families with children, are returning to a country ravaged by natural and man-made calamities.
The suspension comes days after news outlets captured video and photos showing mounted Border Patrol agents aggressively dispersing migrants near Del Rio.
Special envoy Daniel Foote called American policy in Haiti "deeply flawed" and said his recommendations were brushed aside.
Over the weekend, photos and videos emerged depicting mounted Border Patrol officials herding and chasing migrants who had crossed the Rio Grande near Del Rio, a small border community in southwestern Texas.
The 125,000-spot refugee cap for fiscal year 2021 will mark a 733% increase from the historic low 15,000-person ceiling former President Donald Trump set before leaving office.
The ruling is a crushing setback for Democrats, who hoped to use the budget reconciliation process to create a massive legalization program for 8 million undocumented immigrants.
Thousands of migrants, many of them from Haiti, have crossed the southern border in recent days near Del Rio, Texas, prompting U.S. agents to set up a makeshift processing site underneath a bridge.
Carlos Gregorio Hernández Vásquez, 16, became the sixth migrant child to die after entering U.S. custody during a six-month period starting in December 2018.
California and Texas are set to receive thousands of Afghans evacuated to the U.S., while other states are expected to resettle fewer than a dozen or none at all.
Under a Trump-era policy that the Biden administration has maintained, hundreds of thousands of migrants have been expelled without a chance to apply for asylum.