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 extends many miles into the country. While those whose daily lives are negatively impacted by this overreach of federal immigration authority have […]

Thousands of migrants—many of whom are mothers, fathers, and children fleeing their homes in violence-stricken areas of Central America—are traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border as part of an impromptu caravan. A majority of the estimated 4,000 migrants left last week from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, which has long ranked as one of the most violent […]

Insurers have always depended on large numbers of participants to pay into a pool so that those with the highest rates of usage are covered by those with lower rates. In other words, everyone in an insurance pool is interdependent on one another. In the case of private health insurance, immigrants are often helping shore […]

Eight new asylum seekers joined a lawsuit last week that challenges U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials’ widespread and well-documented practice of turning back asylum seekers at U.S. ports of entry (POE) along the U.S.-Mexico border. The plaintiffs also amended the complaint in the lawsuit with new facts documenting an official “Turnback Policy” that […]

A new report alleges that the Trump administration (and partially Obama administration) may have separated thousands more families than previously reported and also details how thousands of asylum seekers have been illegally turned away at the U.S.-Mexico border. Amnesty International released the report last Thursday which reveals that upwards of 1,000 more families than originally […]

Overwhelmed immigration courts and massive court backlogs have long been a nation-wide problem. Hearings are regularly scheduled years in advance—in some jurisdictions, judges are scheduling hearings into 2022. This means that many immigrants are held in limbo for years, unable to move forward, while living with the uncertainty of whether or not they will be […]

Senators grilled Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen about the Trump administration’s harsh immigration policies, including its practice of detaining migrant children and families, at a hearing on Wednesday. The most jarring moment of the hearing was when Secretary Nielsen repeatedly refused to admit that her agency detains children. During the “Threats to […]

If the U.S. government closes the door to highly skilled foreign workers, other countries stand ready to embrace their contributions. For instance, while the Trump administration contemplates an overhaul of the H-1B temporary employment visa, a process that would make it more difficult to obtain them, the Canadian government is offering the opposite. Canada is […]

For years, the federal government has attempted to partner with local communities on immigration enforcement, raising a host of problems. This form of collaboration steers limited local resources away from community safety and toward punitive federal immigration enforcement goals. The biggest criticism of these partnerships is the chilling effect they have on community members who […]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) issued a special report this week revealing its findings following an investigation into the Trump administration’s contentious family separation policy. The OIG’s primary finding is that DHS was “not fully prepared to implement the Zero Tolerance Policy.” Further, the OIG found that DHS […]