Border Enforcement

While updating our immigration system has been a slow process, over the last decade, there have been efforts to pass comprehensive immigration reform legislation and the DREAM Act. Other reform efforts include executive actions such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA). Learn more about the ways America can upgrade its immigration system.

Recent Features

All Border Enforcement Content

November 30, 2018

Thousands of migrant children are currently being held at a tent city in Tornillo, Texas along the U.S.-Mexico border. Most of the children traveled alone in order to flee from violence in their...

November 28, 2018

President Trump wants the Mexican government to turn back the “caravan” of Central American and Mexican asylum-seekers—and he’s threatening to close the U.S.-Mexico border if it doesn’t. In an...

November 26, 2018

The situation in Tijuana, Mexico reached a boiling point on Sunday, after U.S. authorities fired tear gas at hundreds of migrants—including pregnant women and children—who had peacefully gathered...

November 20, 2018

Ruling in a lawsuit late Monday night, a federal judge in San Francisco put the Trump administration’s asylum ban—an unprecedented move that barred asylum to any individual crossing the Southern...

November 19, 2018

After a summer in which almost 3,000 migrant children were separated from their parents at the border, the Trump administration admitted last week that it was holding a record number of children...

November 16, 2018

Ronald Vitiello, President Trump’s nominee to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), had a nomination hearing in front of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee on...

November 2, 2018

On Thursday, President Donald Trump declared his administration would be taking drastic steps to prevent asylum seekers from coming to the United States. In a rambling speech filled with false and...

October 23, 2018

Just two weeks ahead of the midterm elections, much attention is being placed on a migrant caravan of Central Americans making their way north through Mexico. Now reported to include more than 7,...

October 22, 2018

The horrifying and tragic legacy of the Trump administration’s family separation policy—which allegedly ended by executive order in June this summer—is far from over. Even with many children still...

October 19, 2018

  When you think of a national border, you probably think of a defined edge—a place where one country ends and another begins. However, when it comes to federal immigration operations, the border...

U.S. Customs and Border Protection may have mistreated migrant children when implementing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention interim final rule that suspends people from entering the United States due to the COVID 19 pandemic.
October 30, 2020
Children and immigration advocacy groups filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of Illinois against CBP requesting information about the agency’s implementation of the CDC rule suspending people from entering the United States due to the COVID 19 pandemic and its specific impact on unaccompanied migrant children fleeing harm and seeking protection in the United States.
October 29, 2020

Over 60,000 people at the southern border have been forced to return to Mexico under the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), also known as the “Remain in Mexico” program. As...

Given the agency’s history of civil and human rights abuses that have largely gone unchecked, and the possibility of continued deployments, there is an urgent need for further information about CBP’s participation in these law enforcement efforts.
October 19, 2020

As the Trump administration cracked down on migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, it has often invoked the concept of “national sovereignty” to justify drastic policy changes. But a new Senate...

October 15, 2020

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) launched another military-style raid on a humanitarian aid station in the Arizona desert, close to the U.S.-Mexico border. On October 5, Border Patrol...

This Freedom of Information Act request seeks to uncover Customs and Border Protection’s actions and further expose its militarized response to the provision of humanitarian aid.
October 2, 2020

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) plans to destroy thousands of records documenting abuse and misconduct by its agents. The agency has requested that the National Archives and Records...

September 30, 2020

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is attempting to permanently destroy records related to civil rights complaints against the agency, administrative and criminal investigations into...

Publication Date: 
September 30, 2020
This report identifies disruptions throughout the immigration system because of the COVID-19 pandemic and makes recommendations for improvements to the federal government’s response.

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