Congress may be essentially done for the year, but the Trump Administration is moving forward aggressively to fundamentally reshape the way America treats immigrants and refugees. Just in the past few weeks alone, we’ve seen the Trump administration: Abandon ICE’s presumed release policy that kept most pregnant women out of immigrant detention facilities; Float a radical … Continue reading »
Today's Updates
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Deportation Policy
Immigration 101: What is 287(g)?
In the interior of the United States, the federal responsibility of immigration enforcement is carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). ICE sometimes gets help, however, from local police officers participating in a program known as 287(g). Through the 287(g) program, ICE deputizes local … Continue reading »
President Trump’s War on Immigrants
Washington Post: “Gratuitous cruelty by Homeland Security” “What exactly, did a 7-year-old Congolese girl do to the United States to deserve the trauma that has been visited upon her — including forcible separation from her mother — by Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and her immigration agents? A U.S. asylum officer interviewed Ms. L, as … Continue reading »
ICYMI: CNN’s Tal Kopan on “How Trump Changed the Rules to Arrest More Non-criminal Immigrants”
ICE, the Trump Administration’s interior immigration enforcement agency, is out of control, routinely engaging in political retaliation and indiscriminate arrests that are trampling on American values and separating American families. A close observer of the Trump Administration’s immigration extremism, CNN’s Tal Kopan, today writes a piece assessing ICE’s renewed focus on “low hanging fruit” – including many of the … Continue reading »
ICYMI: Two Must-Read Reflections on Immigration and Trump’s America
Two powerful opinion pieces today capture the disruption to families and futures caused by the Trump Administration, as well as the hopes for an America that remembers its values and reignites the American experiment. In the New York Times, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, an undocumented graduate student at Yale University, writes a op-ed about the American families devastated … Continue reading »
Frank Sharry: “GOP hardliners are using sanitized language to cover up the ugly smell of a radical and, yes, racist agenda”
As the Senate’s immigration debate kicks into higher gear today, there is a concerted effort underway by Republicans to sanitize the immigration agenda and implications of the proposals from President Trump, Stephen Miller, and fellow hardliners. But there should be no mistake: Republicans are using neutral-sounding language and terminology to promote a policy agenda that … Continue reading »
Pew Research Report: ICE Arrests Up 30% Nationwide in FY 2017
According to a new Pew Research report, ICE arrests in FY 2017 were up 30% nationwide over the previous year, marking a three-year high in which the largest percentage increases were in Florida, Dallas, and Oklahoma. According to the report: ICE made a total of 143,470 arrests in fiscal 2017, a 30% rise from fiscal … Continue reading »
The Hidden Dagger in the White House Immigration Proposal: The Plan to Ramp Up Indiscriminate Deportations
While much of the opposition to the White House immigration proposal has been focused on the radical slashing of legal immigration levels and a border wall as wasteful and unpopular as it is insulting, little attention has been paid to how the White House’s immigration framework would turbocharge the administration’s strategy to deport undocumented immigrants … Continue reading »
Family-Based Immigration – How the System Works, and How Trump Administration Proposals to Gut It Would Undermine American Values
A recording of today’s call is available here On a press call today, policy experts analyzed how the family-based immigration system works, and why the Trump Administration’s attempts to destroy this system violate basic American values. A recording of today’s call is available here. After ending protection for Dreamers, some within the Trump Administration are using the crisis … Continue reading »
This is What Mass Deportation Looks Like: 2018
Today, the Trump Administration ended temporary protected status (TPS) for Salvadoran immigrants, impacting 200,000 people who have lived in the US for decades, held jobs, and paid taxes. Contrary to popular belief and general misunderstanding, TPS holders are not undocumented. They’re immigrants who were already in the US at the time a catastrophic event – … Continue reading »