Virginia, District 3

Without Migrant Labor, a Minnesota Resort’s 460 U.S. Workers at Risk
Ben Thuringer is the managing director of Madden’s on Gull Lake, a resort founded by his grandfather in 1929 in the Brainerd Lakes Region of Central Minnesota. The family resort is a seasonal getaway, operating April through October, with more than 1,000 acres and 283 rooms. “Of the 520 people… Read More

Nearly 6 Million Workers Employed at Immigrant-Owned Businesses, New Report Finds
Nearly 6 Million Workers Employed at Immigrant-Owned Businesses, New Report Finds 40.2 Percent of 2016 Fortune 500 Firms Founded by Immigrants or Their Children New York, NY – New American Economy released a report detailing the outsized role immigrants play as entrepreneurs in the U.S. economy. Read More

Georgia Farmer Says Broken Immigration Policy Hurts His Bottom Line
Bill Brim is a lifelong Georgia farmer who’s beyond frustrated with the immigration system’s agriculture guest worker program. Brim relies on the H-2A visa program to hire about 600 migrant workers from Mexico to help harvest the bell peppers, squash, watermelon, broccoli and other produce that grows on his 6,000-acre,… Read More

F- P- v. Holder – Ninth Circuit
Long used in criminal trials, motions to suppress can lead to the exclusion of evidence obtained by the government in violation of the Fourth Amendment, Fifth Amendment, or related provisions of federal law. While the immediate purpose of filing a motion to suppress is to prevent the government from meeting its burden of proof, challenges to unlawfully obtained evidence can also deter future violations by law enforcement officers and thereby protect the rights of other noncitizens. The Supreme Court held in INS v. Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U.S. 1032 (1984), that motions to suppress evidence under the Fourth Amendment in immigration proceedings should be granted only for “egregious” violations or if violations became “widespread.” Despite this stringent standard, noncitizens have prevailed in many cases on motions to suppress. Read More

States Continue to Expand Access to Driver’s Licenses for Undocumented Residents
Currently, ten states and the District of Columbia offer driver’s licenses to undocumented residents of their states who can meet certain requirements. Two additional states, Hawaii and Delaware, passed similar laws this year, with others also beginning their pursuit of this practical public safety and economic policy. For example,… Read More

Annual Review of State-Level Immigration Policy Still Trending Pro-Immigrant
After long legal battles over punitive, state anti-immigration laws like Arizona’s SB1070 and Alabama’s HB56, state governments learned the limits on what types of immigration policies they can set at the local level. Since then, states have begun moving in a new direction by more generally enacting state immigration laws… Read More

Evidence Shows Asylum Seekers Appear for Court with Alternatives to Detention and Legal Assistance
When thousands of Central American families fled violence to the United States last year, the Administration responded by opening family detention centers, which are detaining mothers and children as their asylum-based claims work through the court system. Family detention has since led to complaints of psychological harm, suicide attempts, protests and hunger strikes by detainees, and lawsuits over lack of due process, all at exorbitant cost. Yet a new paper by the American Immigration Council and Center for Migration Studies, A Humane Approach Can Work: The Effectiveness of Alternatives to Detention for Asylum Seekers, suggests that U.S. detention of asylum seekers is not only harmful, but unnecessary. Read More

States Begin New Year by Implementing New Immigration Laws
Many of the positive immigration reforms approved in 2014 happened in the states. Despite federal inaction on federal immigration reform, state and local officials took pragmatic steps to help undocumented immigrants living in their communities better integrate. Connecticut and California were two of 10 states as well as the… Read More

President’s Plan for Border Security Could Make a Bad Situation Worse
The debate surrounding the Immigration Accountability Executive Actions that President Obama announced last month mostly has centered on the millions of unauthorized immigrants already living in the United States who are likely to receive a three-year reprieve from deportation. But there is another aspect of the president’s announcement that… Read More

Could New Jersey Be the 12th State to Offer Driver’s Licenses to Undocumented Immigrants?
Driving is a key component of U.S. culture. People drive to work and school, to run errands and to pick up their kids. Part of being integrated in U.S. culture increasingly means having the ability to get to the grocery store, to church, to community functions, and to health clinics—and… Read More
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