Border Enforcement
Beyond A Border Solution
- Asylum
- May 2, 2023
America needs durable solutions. These concrete measures can bring orderliness to our border and modernize our overwhelmed asylum system. Read…
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Immigrant Tax Contributions and the Future of the U.S. Economy
When it comes to the topic of immigration, Tax Day is a reminder of two important and often-overlooked points. First, immigrants pay billions in taxes every year. This is true even of unauthorized immigrants. Second, the federal government spends billions of taxpayer dollars each year on immigration-enforcement measures that wouldn’t be necessary if not for the chronic inability of Congress to reform our badly outdated immigration system. In other words, there is a strong fiscal case to be made for immigration reform. Were the U.S. immigration system to be given a 21st century overhaul, we would likely increase the tax dollars flowing from the immigrant community, and we would spend far less taxpayer money on immigration enforcement. Read More
Colorado, Hawaii and Delaware Progress on Tuition Equity for Undocumented Students
Legislation intended to make college education more affordable for undocumented students continues to work its way through state legislature across the U.S. Last week, the Colorado Senate approved SB 15 (or ASSET), a tuition equity bill that would provide a standard tuition rate to qualifying students regardless of immigration status. Likewise, bills in Hawaii and Delaware which provide in-state tuition and financial aid to eligible students regardless of status are also moving through their respective legislatures. Currently, twelve states have laws on their books that permit certain undocumented students who have attended and graduated from their primary and secondary schools to pay the same tuition as their classmates at public institutions of higher education. Read More
Non-Deportable Immigrants Languish in Alabama Detention Center at Taxpayers’ Expense
Immigration violations are civil, not criminal infractions. But for many non-criminal immigrant detainees living alongside criminal inmates at the Etowah County Detention Center in Alabama, that distinction carries little meaning. Far removed from families and legal orientation programs, many of the 350 immigrant detainees housed at the Etowah Detention Center have received deportation orders, but for various reasons cannot be deported. Many are serving the maximum allowable time in detention, and are doing so under poor living conditions at a great cost to American taxpayers. In fact, a recent report by the Women’s Refugee Commission reveals that ICE continues to operate facilities like Etowah that fail to meet even its own detention standards. Read More
Does the Punishment Fit the Crime? Experts Examine “Proportionality” and “Discretion” in Our Immigration System
As immigration becomes an ever more controversial part of the American debate, conversations often turn to details about legislation and court battles rather than questioning whether fundamental principles of justice are being applied throughout our immigration system. Two new reports released today, however, address some of these key principles, such as the idea of proportionality (whether the punishment fits the crime in immigration court) and the idea of discretion (how and when immigration law is applied). While these reports probe different areas of immigration law, they both represent a new way of thinking about how our immigration system functions, or at least should be functioning, today. Read More
DHS Inspector General Issues Disappointing Reports on ICE’s Secure Communities Program
Keeping to its tradition of releasing controversial reports on holidays and Friday afternoons, the DHS Office of Inspector General issued two reports on the controversial Secure Communities program last Friday. These reports had been anticipated for months by immigrant advocates, law enforcement officials, local elected officials, and others who hoped they would address serious concerns about the program and issue a series of recommendations aimed at reforming it. Unfortunately, the reports were disappointing and failed to investigate many aspects of the flawed Secure Communities program. Read More
Alabama Lawmakers Propose Extensive Changes to State’s Immigration Law, HB 56
Yesterday evening, lawmakers in Alabama introduced a bill proposing extensive changes to HB 56, the state’s notorious immigration enforcement law. The proposed bill follows extensive criticism from civil and immigrants’ rights leaders about HB 56, as well as numerous lawsuits that prevented more than a dozen of the law’s provisions from taking effect. While passage of the proposed bill—dubbed HB 658—may not reduce the anti-immigrant climate in Alabama, many of the amendments would modify what are widely seen as the most pernicious aspects of the law. Read More
Human Rights Abuses Along U.S.-Mexico Border Underscore Need for Reform
U.S. immigration and border-enforcement policies have precipitated a litany of human-rights abuses along the U.S.-Mexico border, from the needless deaths of border-crossers to inhumane conditions in immigration detention to the racial profiling of entire Latino and indigenous communities. That was the principal finding of the human rights groups which presented testimony at a recent hearing of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). It was also the main conclusion of a recent report by Amnesty International. Both the hearing and the report underscore the urgent need for the U.S. government to abide by the human rights treaties to which it is a signatory. Read More
Mississippi Lawmaker Kills State’s Extreme Immigration Bill, Although Immigration Provisions May Loom
Today, Mississippi’s extreme immigration bill, HB 488, died after a state senate committee chairman decided not to bring the bill up for a vote. The Mississippi Senate had until today to consider HB 488, a bill that would have, among other things, allowed police officers to determine the immigration status of individuals they “reasonably suspect” are in the country without documents. While HB 488 is dead, however, state House members may still be looking to keep these immigration enforcement measures alive by inserting them in other bills. Read More
ICE Deported More Than 46,000 Immigrants with U.S. Citizen Children Last Year, Report Finds
Immigration enforcement and deportation have a particularly devastating impact on mixed status families, that is, families who have one or more direct members who are undocumented. When parents are deported, families face impossible decisions about whether their family will be separated or whether U.S. citizen kids will be de facto deported along with their parents. New numbers released in a report by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) show the extent of the issue. The new report finds that, between January and June 2011, ICE deported over 46,000 immigrants who claimed to have at least one U.S. citizen child. Read More
DHS Review of Immigration Cases Expands to Half Dozen New Cities
The Washington Post and Huffington Post are reporting that ICE’s ongoing review of existing deportation cases will expand to six new cities in the coming months. Initially launched in Baltimore and Denver in 2011, the initiative will soon expand to Seattle, Detroit, New Orleans and Orlando, followed by Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City. The idea behind the initiative is to clear historic backlogs in the immigration courts by administratively closing cases that ICE considers to be low priority. Read More
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