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.
Why Going Home First to Get Legal Status (“Touchback”) Makes No Sense
No one is quite sure where Donald Trump stands on immigration anymore. More precisely, experts are trying to divine what Trump would do with the 11 million undocumented immigrants now living in the country. When he first launched his campaign, Trump proposed a “deportation force” that would, presumably, expel undocumented immigrants—and their U.S.-citizen children—from the […]
The Growth of the U.S. Deportation Machine
Why the Department of Homeland Security Should Also End Private Prison Contracts
For two years, women and children from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala have been fleeing to the United States to escape the extreme violence of gangs which control large swaths of territory within their home countries. And for two years the Obama Administration has responded to this humanitarian crisis by locking up the women and […]
Lengthy Detention and Reprehensible Conditions in Border Patrol Facilities, New Evidence Shows
Each year, the Border Patrol—a division of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)—holds hundreds of thousands of individuals in detention facilities near the U.S. southern border. These facilities are meant to hold individuals for a short time while they undergo initial processing and until a decision is made about the appropriate next step in their cases. […]
Court Orders Release of Graphic Photos of Arizona Border Patrol Detention Facilities and Damning Expert Witness Testimony
Immigration Enforcement Still Missing the Mark on Detainers
In November 2014, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the end of the Secure Communities program and the launch of its replacement: the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP). Under PEP, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) claims to focus its efforts on apprehending individuals actually convicted of specified crimes. ICE also replaced many detainers with Request […]
Detained Beyond the Limit
Donald Trump’s Shortsighted Immigration Plans Won’t Secure the Homeland
As any serious national security expert will tell you, trying to find a potential terrorist by treating all immigrants or Muslims as security risks is far too vague to be effective. Accurate intelligence and effective information-sharing across agencies is the key to national security—not profiling. Yet in a bombastic August 15 speech, Republican presidential nominee […]
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 that seek to protect, integrate […]