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The Economic Costs for U.S. States Who Opt Out of Refugee Resettlement
In late September, the Trump Administration issued an executive order that requires state and local governments to give written consent to accept refugees. If a state or a locality fails to submit such consent before January 21, agencies will be unable to resettle refugees in those jurisdictions. This will ultimately keep U.S. families from reunifying […]
Read MoreUSCIS Plans Massive Fee Hike for Access to Genealogical Records
If you have ever wanted to trace your family’s immigration history, you should do it now—accessing genealogical records from the 1800s and 1900s may soon become far more expensive than ever before. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is planning to increase its fees to access millions of historical records held under the agency’s Genealogy […]
Read MoreAsylum Seekers Ask Court for Protection from Latest Trump Effort to Eviscerate America’s Asylum System
Immigrant rights attorneys filed an emergency motion to block the government from applying another Trump administration rule to asylum seekers forced by a government policy known as “metering” to wait in Mexico to access the U.S. asylum process. The rule — the latest of the administration’s numerous attempts to eviscerate America’s asylum system — sends asylum seekers to third countries, including Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, to seek protection and would deny those previously subject to the government’s metering policy the opportunity to seek asylum in the United States.
Read More‘Zero Tolerance’ Overwhelmed Courts and Diverted Resources From Criminal Investigations
Attorney General Sessions’ orders to prioritize prosecuting people for immigration-related offenses in 2017 and 2018 put a significant strain on law enforcement across the border, diverting resources away from drug and organized crime prosecutions. The increase in immigration prosecutions, which played a primary role in the family separation crisis, also led to overcrowded jails, backed […]
Read MoreThe Government Knew It Didn’t Have the Technology to Track Separated Families. It Did So Anyway.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)—the agency responsible for systematically separating thousands of migrant families in the summer of 2018—lacked the technology or mechanisms to record and track the separations, a government watchdog group recently found. Family separations—done under the Trump administration’s “Zero Tolerance policy”—started before the policy was even announced. The policy was first […]
Read MoreImmigration Courts Further Limit Legal Help Available to People Facing Deportation
Every year, thousands of people are forced to face the complex deportation system without an attorney representing them. Now, the immigration courts are seeking to limit the assistance that these individuals can receive from “friend of the court” attorneys. The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the agency which includes the nation’s immigration courts, released […]
Read MoreICE Revises Its Standards for Some Detention Facilities
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently published an update to its National Detention Standards (NDS), which govern the treatment of people held in facilities that rent some of their beds to ICE, often city or county jails. The new standards may weaken some protections for up to 20% of ICE’s detained population. ICE does […]
Read MoreTalking Turkey About America’s Most Pressing Issues
Each year, we gather around dinner tables at Thanksgiving with people we love—but don’t necessarily agree with—when it comes to politics and the direction of the country. The political discourse of the past several years has left many people feeling that their values are under attack. They disagree with or have lost faith in our […]
Read MoreVolunteer Found Not Guilty After Providing Humanitarian Aid to Migrants
Over the last decade, the remains of more than 1,600 people have been found in the Arizona desert. Groups like No More Deaths, whose mission is “ending death and suffering in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands,” work to decrease that number. Their volunteer-based work is motivated by the slogan “Humanitarian aid is never a crime.” Last week, […]
Read MoreHow Cities Are Building Inclusive Communities
What do you envision when you think of a community that is welcoming? Researchers have developed ways of defining and evaluating how welcoming cities are across the United States. The results are in—Midwestern cities are leading the pack. According to New American Economy, which produced an index of the 100 largest cities based on policies […]
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