Archive for November, 2016

Among the many things President-elect Donald Trump has promised is undo President Obama’s executive action protecting young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children, also known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). What happens next is complicated. It’s easy to talk about deporting these young people in the abstract. As Libby […]

A federal judge ordered the Border Patrol to immediately cease its practice of refusing to provide basic amenities to people detained in Border Patrol holding cells in Tucson, Arizona. The judge cited evidence that shows that detainees are kept in freezing holding cells—often called “hieleras” or “iceboxes” —for days without any access to showers or […]

It is well known that immigrants make enormous contributions to the U.S. economy as workers, consumers, taxpayers, and entrepreneurs. As part of the labor force, immigrants are employed in a wide range of industries but tend to be concentrated in some occupations at both ends of the occupational spectrum. At the “lower end” of the […]

President-elect Donald Trump has nominated, Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (R-AL) to serve as the nation’s next Attorney General. Senator Sessions has led the fight against immigration reform at every turn during his 20 years in the Senate. He has urged severe restrictions on visas, called for drastically expanded immigration enforcement, and blocked all practical […]

Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Lynch v. Morales-Santana, a case that will decide whether the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) unlawfully favors mothers over fathers of children born out-of-wedlock when granting citizenship to their children born abroad. In determining whether a U.S. citizen parent may transfer his or her citizenship to […]

For more than a decade, the immigration court system has struggled with an enormous backlog. The latest figures from (TRAC) record the backlog at an all-time high of 521,676 as of the end of October, the first month in Fiscal Year (FY) 2017. The data release coincides with reports of President-Elect Donald Trump’s plan for […]

As President-Elect Donald Trump names his choices for key positions in his administration, it is clear that he intends to include quite a few people who subscribe to fringe, alt-right, racist ideologies. For example, Steve Bannon, named as Chief Strategist, is known for his white nationalist views and anti-Semitism. The people being named to lead […]

On Sunday night, President-Elect Donald Trump repeated his pledge to begin deporting undocumented immigrants but he narrowed in on two to three million immigrants who he dubbed “criminal.” He said: “What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of […]

This year on Veterans Day, over 40 naturalization ceremonies will take place and 7,500 veterans, service members, and military spouses will become the newest Americans. While that may seems like a large number of people, it should come as no surprise as immigrant participation in the U.S. armed services is nothing new. In fact, immigrants […]