March 06, 2025

Expert: Revived 1952 Alien Registration Requirement a "Scare Tactic"

Cassidy Jensen, Documented NY, Mar. 6, 2025 "The Trump administration said it will revive a World War-II era law requiring immigrants to register with the federal government, but law experts say the move is meant to generate fear and it’s too early to say how the process will work. ... [I]mmigration lawyers say the law can’t be enforced yet because the government hasn’t created a form for people...

March 05, 2025

Announcement of a "3C" Visa Restriction Policy (Mar. 5, 2025)

State Department, Mar. 5, 2025 "Securing our nation’s borders is critically important to making America safer, stronger, and more prosperous. Countries along migratory routes must do their part to prevent and deter the transit of aliens seeking to illegally enter the United States. Today, I am announcing a new visa restriction policy that will apply to foreign government officials, including immigration and...

March 04, 2025

Threatened With Trump Tariffs, Vietnam to Accept Deportees

Francesco Guarascio, Reuters, Feb. 27, 2025 "Vietnam has pledged to support the repatriation of a few dozen Vietnamese nationals detained in the U.S. and to quickly handle new requests for deportations after U.S. threats of trade tariffs and visa sanctions, a lawyer briefed on the matter said. The move is part of a broader set of concessions the Communist-run country is considering to avoid duties that could cripple...

March 04, 2025

USCIS Plans to Collect Immigrants' Social Media Information

Andrew Kreighbaum, Bloomberg Law, Mar. 4, 2025 "The Trump administration plans to scrutinize the social media activity of immigrants seeking to enter the US, it said Tuesday. US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which approves visas and other immigration benefits, is proposing to collect that information, arguing it’s necessary to comply with a White House executive order on protecting the US from terrorism...

March 04, 2025

Groups Sue Trump Administration to Halt Transfer of Immigrants from U.S. to Gitmo

ACLU, Mar. 1, 2025 "Immigrants’ rights advocates sued the Trump administration today to halt the transfer of immigrants from the United States to Guantánamo Bay in Cuba under President Trump’s recent order. The American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Constitutional Rights, International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), and ACLU of the District of Columbia filed the lawsuit on behalf of...

March 03, 2025

Birthright Citizenship and the Dunning School of Unoriginal Meanings

Anthony Michael Kreis, Evan D. Bernick, Paul A. Gowder, March 03, 2025 "This essay critically surveys the recent debate surrounding birthright citizenship in the United States, particularly in light of arguments presented by legal scholars Randy Barnett and Ilan Wurman. Under the guise of "originalism," Barnett, Wurman, and others propose an ahistorical, revisionist interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment's...

March 01, 2025

All 67 Fla. Sheriffs Sign ICE 287(g) Task Force Model Agreements

Angie DiMichele, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Feb. 27, 2025 "All 67 county sheriffs in Florida have now entered into agreements with federal authorities that will lead to “street-level” immigration enforcement, Gov. Ron DeSantis said. DeSantis’s announcement Wednesday evening at the Homestead Air Force Base in Miami-Dade County comes days after the Florida Sheriff’s Association said every...

February 28, 2025

CBP "Deputizes" TX National Guard to Arrest, Detain Migrants

Pursuant to a MOU dated Jan. 31, 2025 (original here ; annotated version here ) CBP has "officially deputized Texas National Guard soldiers under Title 8 today, granting them the authority to carry out immigration enforcement duties. Sixty soldiers from the Texas Military Department took the oath to support the U.S. Border Patrol in its mission to enforce immigration laws. With this new designation the Texas National...

February 27, 2025

In Texas, Local and State Police Are Joining Trump’s ‘Deportation Force’

Francesca D’Annunzio, February 27, 2025, Texas Observer "Texas law enforcement agencies and others around the nation are reviving a long-dead "task force" program that led to racial profiling in the past."

February 27, 2025

Trump Administration Bends U.S. Government in Extraordinary Ways towards Aim of Mass Deportations

Muzaffar Chishti and Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, MPI, Feb. 27, 2025 "This article provides an overview of how the Trump administration, in its second term, is seeking to build an entirely new deportation machinery. It puts the recent changes in context and explores challenges the administration is already starting to face, particularly in finite resources and detention capacity."

February 27, 2025

How Sheriffs and Federal Agents Deport American Citizens

Prof. Jacqueline Stevens, Feb. 25, 2025 "... The account above is from episodic interviews with Miguel over the last three years. It tracks precisely the paperwork I finally obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests and litigation, though some records remains withheld in a dispute before a federal district court in Northern Illinois. The protocols ICE and its predecessor INS followed are identical to...

February 27, 2025

Expert: DHS Immigrant "Registration" Plan "Sends a Signal"

Tim Sullivan, Rebecca Santana, Associated Press, Feb. 26, 2025 "Immigration officials say anyone living in the U.S. illegally will soon have to register with the federal government, and those who don’t could face fines, imprisonment or both. The registry will be mandatory for everyone 14 and older who doesn’t have legal status, according to a Tuesday statement from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services...

February 26, 2025

Trump Proposes to Replace EB-5 Investor Visa with "Gold Card"; Experts Dubious

Jasmine Laws, Newsweek, Feb. 26, 2025 "The "Gold Card" visa program, which President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday, could face challenges as this type of scheme is particularly appealing to criminals, according to Transparency International, the German NGO. The gold visa scheme has been revoked in a number of countries, such as Cyprus and the U.K, over concerns about the kinds of people obtaining...

February 26, 2025

DHS Set to Enforce 1952 "Registration" Law: INA Sec. 262, 8 U.S.C. 1302

INA Sec. 262, 8 U.S.C. 1302 , enacted in 1952, reads in full: Registration of aliens (a) It shall be the duty of every alien now or hereafter in the United States, who (1) is fourteen years of age or older, (2) has not been registered and fingerprinted under section 1201(b) of this title or section 30 or 31 of the Alien Registration Act, 1940, and (3) remains in the United States for thirty days or longer, to apply...

February 25, 2025

Can ICE Target Employers? Experts Weigh In

Brendan Rascius, Miami Herald, Feb. 25, 2025 "Earlier this month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents conducted a raid on a Texas business that resulted in the arrest of its owners. ... When can ICE charge employers? Just how rare are these cases? And are they likely to become more frequent in the future, given President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration? McClatchy News has interviewed...

February 25, 2025

Little Empirical Evidence That Arrests and Removals Are Higher Under Trump

TRAC, Feb. 25, 2025 "While ICE has been waging a media campaign on its “stepped up enforcement,” a more careful examination shows little evidence that actual immigration arrests and removals have increased over the Biden administration’s record for FY 2024 through January 2025. ..."

February 25, 2025

ICE Agents Harass Kids on School Bus in New Mexico

Danielle Prokop, Source NM, Feb. 24, 2025 "U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez and teachers union leaders on Monday decried a border patrol agent’s entry last week to a charter bus with Las Cruces students on their way to a swim meet. “We’re here to address an incident that should have never happened,” Vasquez, a Democrat whose district includes border communities in the southern portion of the state...

February 25, 2025

Mercenaries Pitch WH to Privatize Mass Deportation

Dasha Burns, Myah Ward, Politico, Feb. 25, 2025 "A group of prominent military contractors, including former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, has pitched the Trump White House on a proposal to carry out mass deportations through a network of “processing camps” on military bases, a private fleet of 100 planes, and a “small army” of private citizens empowered to make arrests. The blueprint —...

February 24, 2025

Judge Blocks ICE Raids at Some Houses of Worship

Society of Friends, et al. v. DHS, Feb. 24, 2025 Memorandum Opinion: "[T]he Court will ... enter an injunction that bars the application of the 2025 Policy to Plaintiffs' places of worship, including its rescission of the 2021 Policy, such that DHS will be required to abide by the terms of 2021 Policy when pursuing enforcement actions in or near Plaintiffs' places of worship. Thus, pursuant to the 2021...

February 21, 2025

The Fundamental Flaws in the Barnett/Wurman Defense of Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Executive Order

Adam Cox, Pamela Karlan, Marty Lederman, Trevor Morrison and Cristina Rodríguez, February 19, 2025 "... Barnett and Wurman’s apologia for the Trump Executive Order is fundamentally flawed and irresponsible in several critical respects—most importantly, in its contention that a child born in the United States is denied citizenship because his or her parents once violated the law. The wide-ranging...

February 20, 2025

DHS Rescinds Extension of TPS for Haiti

DHS, Feb. 20, 2025 - "Today, Secretary Noem vacated a decision by the previous administration to extend Haiti’s Temporary Protect Status (TPS) by 18 months. As part of this move, Haiti’s TPS will end on August 3, 2025, unless extended. This is part of President Trump’s promise to rescind policies that were magnets for illegal immigration and inconsistent with the law. TPS is a type of immigration...

February 20, 2025

Statue of Liberty, "America's Promise" Gone from USCIS Logo

For a while, USCIS had this as their logo: Now, it's this:

February 19, 2025

Trump pauses immigration applications for certain migrants welcomed under Biden

Camilo Montoya-Galvez, CBS News, Feb. 19, 2025 "The Trump administration has enacted a pause on all immigration applications filed by migrants from Latin America and Ukraine allowed into the U.S. under certain Biden-era programs, citing fraud and security concerns, according to two U.S. officials and an internal [USCIS] memo obtained by CBS News. The application freeze will remain in place indefinitely while government...

February 19, 2025

Spain's Secret Sauce? Immigrants!

Why is Spain’s economy booming? Thanks to migration – which proves xenophobia doesn’t pay - María Ramírez How Spain’s radically different approach to migration helped its economy soar ; As immigration has increased, GDP has surged and unemployment has fallen to lowest level since 2008

February 18, 2025

The Untenable Costs of Operation Lone Star

ILRC, Feb. 13, 2025 "Operation Lone Star (“OLS”) is an unconstitutional and deadly Texas law enforcement scheme that wastes vital state resources to target migrants for arrest, jail, and deportation. Created in March 2021 by Texas Governor Greg Abbott and backed by nearly $11 billion of Texas state funds as of 2024, OLS is designed to criminalize and rapidly deport migrants, many of whom are seeking...