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.

Children of Undocumented Parents Tell the Trump Administration: You Won’t Break Up Our Families

Standing in the shadow of the White House Thursday afternoon, children from around the country gathered to deliver one unified message to President Trump: don’t break our families apart. This heartbreaking plea came from the dozens of American children that spoke at the We Belong Together Kid’s Caravan rally, the final stop of a four-city […]

ICE’s Public Shaming Detainer Reports Were So Inaccurate They Had to Stop Publishing Them

After issuing only three weekly declined detainer reports, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will temporarily cease publishing them. Initiated by President Trump’s January executive order on interior enforcement, ICE had begun to release weekly lists of jurisdictions that declined immigration detainers. These lists—proposed as a means to track which law enforcement agencies had refused ICE’s […]

Immigration Arrests Increase While Weapon and Drug Arrests Decline, Federal Data Shows

Attorney General Jeff Sessions decried drug dealers and armed cartels at the U.S.-Mexico border on Tuesday, but rather than announcing a crackdown on those elements, he instead declared war on undocumented immigrants and those who defend them. Sessions announced that he was instructing U.S. Attorneys to prioritize criminal immigration enforcement around the country as opposed […]

Sessions Reveals Plan to Ramp up Prosecutions of Low Level Immigration Offenses

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a shift in policy for the Department of Justice on Tuesday, directing U.S. Attorneys to prioritize criminal immigration enforcement and drastically expand federal court prosecutions of immigration violators across the nation. Operation Streamline and other border enforcement programs—where some border crossers are referred by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to […]

What You Need to Know About ICE’s Arrests at Courthouses

According to their own guidance on the subject, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is supposed to practice restraint when it comes to arresting people at “sensitive locations” such as schools, churches, and hospitals—as well as “any organization assisting children, pregnant women, victims of crime or abuse, or individuals with significant mental or physical disabilities.” […]

Congress Grills Homeland Security Secretary Kelly in Contentious Oversight Hearing

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary John Kelly testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee this week. During the hearing Secretary Kelly attempted to clarify some of DHS’s controversial positions as they relate to immigration enforcement, extreme vetting, family separation, and the building of a border wall. Secretary Kelly noted early […]