Abuses

This Controversial Immigration Enforcement Program Threatens U.S. Communities
In an era of increased immigration enforcement, it is even more important to understand the ways in which some states and localities collaborate with the federal government. Recent research also highlights the benefits that immigrants bring to these communities across the country—contributions that could be jeopardized by aggressive enforcement efforts… Read More

Family Separation FOIA Request
The requests ask for policies, guidelines, or procedures followed or used by the governmental agencies to address the processing and treatment of families at the U.S.-Mexico border and specifically, the separation of adult family members from minor children and the criminal prosecution of adult family members. Read More

USCIS Is Withholding Records Showing That Border Agents Are Abusing Asylum Seekers
As thousands of Central American families arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border asking for asylum in 2014, human rights organizations raised alarms about asylum seekers’ treatment by Customs and Border Protection officials. But these organizations were not the only ones expressing concern—asylum officers within U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services… Read More

Lawsuit Challenges the Government’s Policy of Indefinitely Detaining Asylum Seekers
A class action lawsuit was filed on March 15, 2018 challenging the U.S. government’s practice of detaining asylum seekers indefinitely and argues the practice is an attempt to deter future asylum seekers from seeking safety in the United States. The suit claims that the Department of Homeland Security has… Read More

When Detention Is a Death Sentence
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is pursuing a massive increase in resources for immigrant detention centers, a fundamentally flawed network of largely privatized and remote facilities used to hold immigrants. Yet this already unwieldy system has a concerning history of abuses and substandard conditions, which would likely only… Read More

Immigrants Rights Group Sues U.S. Government Over Family Separation at the Border
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit this week to demand the immediate release and reunification of an asylum-seeking Congolese mother and her 7 year-old daughter, who had been forcibly separated by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers at the U.S.-Mexico border last November. Read More

Oversight Agency Finds ICE Improperly Obtained Contract for Texas Family Detention Center
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released a damning report this week, finding that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) improperly modified an older, existing contract with the City of Eloy, Arizona to create the notorious… Read More

Immigrant Women and Girls Often Face Abuse, Homelessness After Arriving to the United States
Immigrant women and girls face unique challenges in navigating the U.S. immigration system, their dire circumstances often exacerbated by the gender-based violence they encounter on the journey and upon their arrival to the United States. These struggles were captured in a new report from the Tahirih Justice Center, which surveyed… Read More

Homeland Security Watchdog Conducts Surprise Inspections of Immigrant Detention Centers
The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General (DHS OIG) released a report which found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) detention facilities are violating their own detention standards when it comes to housing immigrants. The OIG, which serves as a watchdog division for DHS at large, found that… Read More

How Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric Turns Immigrants Into Criminals
It has been well established for decades that the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals by any stretch of the imagination. Yet, immigrants who have committed no violent offense are often subjected to a different kind of violence doled out by the U.S. immigration-enforcement system. Young undocumented immigrants… Read More
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