Enforcement

The enforcement of immigration laws is a complex and hotly-debated topic. Learn more about the costs of immigration enforcement and the ways in which the U.S. can enforce our immigration laws humanely and in a manner that ensures due process.

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May 23, 2017

While campaigning for office, then-candidate Trump threatened to punish so-called sanctuary cities by defunding them. Soon after his inauguration, he released an executive order on interior...

May 19, 2017

California is once again taking a lead on protecting and integrating its immigrant communities and standing up to the enforcement policies of the Trump administration. The state’s governor and...

May 17, 2017

The House and Senate Homeland Security Committees took action this month on two nearly identical bills that seek to fast-track the hiring of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Officers and Agents...

May 16, 2017

The new administration has demonstrated that no one is off limits when it comes to ramping up their deportation policies, and as a result community safety is in jeopardy. Despite the fact that...

May 11, 2017

New government data points to a decline in apprehensions of undocumented immigrants along the U.S.-Mexico border over the past few months. This can be attributed to a range of factors, only one of...

May 10, 2017

Democratic and Republican Members of Congress alike introduce “private immigration bills” designed as a last-minute effort to protect some immigrants facing deportation. This week, Immigration and...

May 9, 2017

The government often relies on “fast track” deportation methods to bypass due process protections in an effort to more rapidly process asylum seekers who come to the United States seeking...

May 8, 2017

After threats of a government shutdown echoed throughout Capitol Hill in early May, Congress finally passed a bill to fund the government through the remainder of the Fiscal Year. Though much of...

May 5, 2017

What can the first 100 days of the Trump administration tell us about how immigration will be handled in the next 100 days and beyond? Since his inauguration, President Trump has prioritized...

May 4, 2017

Texas Governor Greg Abbot is preparing to sign SB4, a fiercely-debated bill that will make it a crime for local law enforcement to refuse cooperation with federal immigration officials. Supporters...

October 16, 2019

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law on Friday that will phase out private prisons—including federal immigration detention centers—throughout the state. The new law, AB 32,...

October 15, 2019
A federal court in San Francisco certified two nationwide classes of immigrants and attorneys claiming that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have a systemic pattern and practice of failing to provide access to immigration case records within deadlines set by the Freedom of Information Act. The case records, known as A-files, contain information about individuals’ immigration history in the United States. This is the first time a court has certified a class in a lawsuit alleging a pattern and practice of violating FOIA
October 11, 2019

People in immigration detention who are represented by an attorney are more likely to receive a positive outcome in immigration court than those that face judges alone. Unfortunately, people who...

October 10, 2019

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested millions of people based on unreliable electronic databases. In a recent court decision with nationwide impact, a federal judge in...

October 8, 2019

Officers from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)—a law enforcement agency with a history of misconduct and abuse—are reportedly conducting screenings of asylum seekers pursuing protection in...

October 7, 2019

Nebane Abienwi, a 37-year-old man who had recently fled war-torn Cameroon, died in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody on Tuesday. His passing—the first of the new fiscal year...

October 2, 2019

A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration’s attempts to significantly undo the Flores Settlement Agreement, which mandates certain protections for children held in immigration...

This lawsuit seeks to uncover information about the government’s troubling new practice of employing U.S. Custom and Border Protection officers to screen asylum seekers.
October 2, 2019
The American Immigration Council and Tahirih Justice Center filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in federal court to compel the government to release records about the Trump administration’s troubling new practice of allowing U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers to screen individuals seeking asylum in the United States. The lawsuit seeks these documents to shed light on changes to the asylum screening process, CBP’s role in conducting interviews and making determinations regarding an asylum seeker’s “credible fear” of persecution, and the measures taken by CBP, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the Department of Homeland Security to implement this new practice.
September 30, 2019

A federal judge blocked the expansion of a fast-track deportation program, known as “expedited removal,” minutes before the government said it would begin implementing its expansion on September...

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