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.
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 the United States. A new lawsuit aims to find out more about this secretive practice. For decades, these screenings—called credible fear interviews (CFI)—have been under the jurisdiction of […]
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 that began on October 1—follows a string of tragic and unnecessary deaths in ICE detention that illustrate just how poorly the agency operates its facilities. […]
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 detention. The changes to the settlement would have allowed the administration to hold immigrant children and their parents indefinitely in jail-like settings. Federal Judge Dolly Gee repeated that the […]
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 28, 2019. Expedited removal allows the government to deport certain people without basic legal protections. Those who are put in this process are not able to see […]
Immigration enforcement may be a federal responsibility, but state governments have a great deal of power over the conditions under which immigrants are detained. At a time when over-crowded detention facilities are failing to meet even the minimum standards of humane treatment, states must step up and exercise their authority to improve a situation that […]
The mass deportation of immigrants from the United States under the Secure Communities program has had no appreciable impact on local crime rates. Why? Because most of the immigrants being deported do not have serious criminal records. That is the simple yet powerful conclusion of a recent study from the University of California, Davis. The […]
In the Trump administration’s rush to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, 22 archaeological sites could be damaged or entirely destroyed. This warning comes from an internal National Park Service report that details how new border fencing, bulldozers, excavators, and Border Patrol four-wheelers could irrevocably harm ancient remnants of Native American tribes as well as endangered […]
Five mothers and their children sued the U.S. government on Thursday for forcibly separating them in 2018. The five families are among the thousands of parents and young children who were split apart for months under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy. The lawsuit demands accountability and compensation for the families’ significant and long-lasting trauma. […]
In summer 2018, the Trump administration attempted to deter asylum-seeking families from coming to the United States by separating children from their parents at the southern border. It was immediately clear that separated children’s trauma would be long-lasting. Now, the Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) has released a study […]