Detention

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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All Detention Content

May 8, 2015

In 2009, the Obama Administration ended family detention at the infamous T. Don Hutto jail in Texas and cut the number of immigrants in family detention to less than a hundred. However, after the...

April 27, 2015

Estrella is a four-year-old girl who has been locked-up in U.S. detention centers for over eight months or one fifth of her life. She is chronically ill and has been hospitalized for acute...

April 22, 2015

Since 2009, Congress has instructed the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to maintain 34,000 beds in immigrant detention facilities across the country, a policy known as “the bed...

February 9, 2015

The New York Times details the government’s dangerous and expanding practice of detaining women and children who have recently crossed our southwest border in the magazine’s cover story this...

January 30, 2015

When the family detention center in Artesia, New Mexico, was hastily propped up by the U.S. government in order to detain and rapidly process women and children for deportation, immigration rights...

October 2, 2014

By Dree Collopy, partner at Benach Ragland LLP. The inhumanity of family detention and the danger of short-changing basic due process protections are on full display in the detention center in...

August 27, 2014

The lawsuit filed last week by the American Immigration Council, the ACLU, the National Immigration Project, and the National Immigration Law Center challenging government deportation policies at...

August 18, 2014

One of the hundreds of children being held at an immigration detention facility in, New Mexico, was released last week when officials realized the 11-year-old boy was a U.S. citizen. According to...

May 30, 2014

U.S. immigration laws provide only minimal due process protections for even the most vulnerable immigrants facing deportation, and in 59 percent of cases, immigrants are forced to navigate the...

July 27, 2018

The court-imposed deadline of July 26 for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to reunite families separated at the southern border has passed. So far, over 1800 children have been released...

July 26, 2018

The House Appropriations Committee passed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill that provides the agency with its budget for Fiscal Year 2019, which begins October 1, 2018. The...

July 26, 2018
"The government’s failure to comply with the court order to reunify the thousands of separated children and parents confirms the administration’s utter disregard for the humane and fair treatment of families coming to our country in search of protection."
July 23, 2018

The cost of the Trump administration’s family separation policy continues to skyrocket. In order to finance its self-made crisis, the administration has dipped into funds that were reserved for...

July 19, 2018

Among the many questions presented by the separation of immigrant families at the border is whether detained parents are being coerced into signing paperwork ensuring their deportation. Without...

July 16, 2018

President Trump wasted no time after assuming office in signing three executive orders which fundamentally changed the nature of immigration enforcement in the United States: Border Security and...

July 11, 2018

After being order last month by a federal judge to reunite the thousands of children it had separated from their parents under the “zero tolerance” policy, the Trump administration said it would...

July 10, 2018

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) consistently fails to conduct adequate inspections of its detention facilities or to follow up on recommended corrections at facilities that are...

The American Immigration Council filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with ICE and CBP on October 13, 2017, seeking data on enforcement actions and outcomes since January 2016. With this data, the Council will be able to assess who is being targeted for removal and what the consequences are of the current enforcement framework.
July 9, 2018
Leaders of several immigrant and human rights organizations were invited for the first time under the Trump administration to meet with Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen.

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