May 31, 2024

Border Vigilantes Are Blurring The Lines Of Law Enforcement

FRANCESCA D’ANNUNZIO and AVERY SCHMITZ, Texas Observer, MAY 23, 2024 "All along the border, a monthslong investigation by the Observer and Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting has found, organized vigilante groups are filming themselves conducting patrols, taking photos of themselves alongside law enforcement, and sharing footage online to solicit donations, promote their work, and recruit new members...

May 31, 2024

Immigration and America's Workforce Shortage

Nebraska Chamber Foundation, Jan. 2024 "Workforce is the top competitive issue facing business in America. First, there is a lack of workers with specific skills that has created severe shortages in critical occupations. Across the country, states and communities are struggling to staff positions such as teachers, mechanics, nurses, police officers, childcare workers, brick masons, carpenters, and engineers. Second...

May 28, 2024

DOJ, DOL Settle "Whites Only" Hiring Case For...Under $40K?

DOJ, May 23, 2024 "The Justice Department and the Department of Labor announced today separate agreements with Arthur Grand Technologies Inc. ( Arthur Grand ), an information technology services firm based in Virginia. The Justice Department’s agreement [$7,500] resolves the department’s determination that Arthur Grand violated the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) by posting a discriminatory job...

May 27, 2024

Perchance to DREAM...Now in Paperback!

You have the hardcover and/or the ebook. (I have both.) Now buy the paperback! Perchance to DREAM: A Legal and Political History of the DREAM Act and DACA, by Michael A. Olivas Foreword by Bill Richardson Published by: NYU Press

May 27, 2024

Who Are the Targets of Trump’s Deportation Army If He Gets Reelected?

Cyrus D. Mehta, May 27, 2024 "If Trump gets reelected, he has hinted that his administration will create a deportation force that would deport 15 million undocumented immigrants. Radley Balko’s newsletter on Substack, Trump’s Deportation Army , provides chilling details on how this deportation would be executed, which would be an unmitigated disaster for families, the US economy and the standing of...

May 27, 2024

Six UK Rockers Walked Into The American Embassy in London

Rock guitarist extraordinaire Chris Buck details, to the penny , what it costs to get visas for the band ( Cardinal Black ) to tour in the USA .

May 23, 2024

TX Gov. Abbott's Operation Lone Star: $11 Billion Dollar Failure

ACLU of Texas, May 22, 2024 "The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and ACLU Analytics published a report today that reveals Governor Greg Abbott’s state immigration enforcement program, Operation Lone Star (OLS), has failed its mission . The $11.2 billion program was created in 2021 to prevent migrants from allegedly bringing drugs and crime into Texas from across the border. But the state’s...

May 23, 2024

Raiding the Genome: How the United States Government Is Abusing Its Immigration Powers to Amass DNA for Future Policing

Georgetown Law, May 21, 2024 "The U.S. government has a message to immigrant communities: we’re watching you, at the genetic level. A new report by the Center on Privacy & Technology, Raiding the Genome: How the United States Government Is Abusing Its Immigration Powers to Amass DNA for Future Policing, is the first in-depth analysis of the drastic expansion, after a DOJ rule change in 2020, of a...

May 22, 2024

Justice Department Files Lawsuit Against the State of Oklahoma Regarding Unconstitutional State Immigration Law

DOJ, May 21, 2024 "The Justice Department today filed suit against the State of Oklahoma to challenge House Bill 4156 (HB 4156) under the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause and Foreign Commerce Clause. The Constitution assigns the federal government the authority to regulate immigration and manage our international borders. Pursuant to this authority, Congress has established a comprehensive immigration...

May 22, 2024

Court Blocks Florida Immigration Law (SB 1718)

Farmworker Assoc. of Fla. v. Moody "[W]e remain bound by the pronouncements of our Circuit, which has held that the “unlawful transport and movement of aliens” is a fully preempted field. Ga. Latino, 691 F.3d at 1264 ... Bound by Eleventh Circuit precedent, we hold that the Plaintiffs are likely to prevail on their claim that Section 10 of SB 1718 is preempted by federal law—and that they have...

May 22, 2024

Cornell Law Professors Receive $1.5 Million Grant for DACA Legal Assistance Initiative

Christine Savino, Cornell Daily Sun, May 21, 2024 "Amid pressing calls for immigration justice from President Joe Biden , philanthropies and beyond, a pioneering solution is taking place in Ithaca. Prof. Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer , law, and Prof. Stephen Yale-Loehr , law, have secured a $1.5 million grant from Bay Area humanitarian foundation Crankstart to fund Path2Papers , an innovative non-profit designed to provide...

May 21, 2024

OK Immigration Law Faces Lawsuits

Jordan Gerard, The Oklahoman, May 21, 2024 "In a war of words and threats of litigation, Oklahoma's new anti-immigration law faces two potential lawsuits. The U.S. Department of Justice addressed a May 15 letter to Gov. Kevin Stitt and Attorney General Gentner Drummond saying the federal government intends to file a lawsuit to stop the enforcement unless Oklahoma agrees in advance not to take such action. The...

May 20, 2024

A Match Made in New York: Job Openings and Immigrants

Prof. Stephen W. Yale-Loehr, May 17, 2024 "New York has over 470,000 open jobs across all sectors. The health care industry is still reeling from the pandemic, when 20% of all health care workers left the field. The number of jobs available in that field is outpacing the number of people available to fill them. According to a report from the Center for Health Workforce Studies at the University of Albany , there...

May 17, 2024

Two-Thirds of Court Asylum Applicants Found Legally Entitled to Remain

TRAC, May 17, 2024 "The latest Immigrant Court records show that over the past decade (FY 2014 to April 2024) Immigration Judges have adjudicated just over one million removal cases in which the immigrant filed an asylum application. Out of these 1,047,134 cases, Judges determined that 685,956 immigrants were legally entitled to remain in the United States because they merited asylum or another form of relief from...

May 17, 2024

‘The Case for Open Borders’: A Book Review from the Banks of the Rio Grande

Todd Miller, The Border Chronicle, May 16, 2024 "John Washington’s new book attempts to break open the political discourse on borders, showing us that another world is possible."

May 17, 2024

DHS, DOJ Hope to Speed Up Immigration Court Docket

DHS, May 16, 2024 "Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas and Attorney General Merrick B. Garland announced a new Recent Arrivals (RA) Docket process to more expeditiously resolve immigration cases of certain noncitizen single adults who attempt to cross irregularly between ports of entry at the Southwest border. This effort will allow DHS and DOJ to more swiftly impose consequences, including removal...

May 17, 2024

Increased Legal Immigration Boosts American Wealth, Freedom, Safety

David J. Bier, Congressional testimony, Apr. 16, 2024 "For nearly half a century, the Cato Institute has produced original research showing that a freer, more orderly, and more lawful immigration system makes the United States a wealthier, freer, and safer place to live. Our view is inspired by America’s founding principles: in a free society, people, whatever their background, ancestry, or birthplace, are...

May 17, 2024

Immigrant Veterans in the United States

Jeanne Batalova, MPI, May 9, 2024 "Immigrants have served in the U.S. military since the nation’s founding. Their share of overall military enlistment has fluctuated over time in response to recruitment needs and other factors, yet the foreign born have been a constant presence in the U.S. armed forces. As of 2022, nearly 731,000 U.S. veterans had been born outside the United States, representing 4.5 percent...

May 15, 2024

A Century Later, Restrictive 1924 U.S. Immigration Law Has Reverberations in Immigration Debate

Muzaffar Chishti and Julia Gelatt, MPI, May 15, 2024 "The Immigration Act of 1924 shaped the U.S. population over the course of the 20th century, greatly restricting immigration and ensuring that arriving immigrants were mostly from Northern and Western Europe. It closed the door on almost all new Asian immigration and shut out most European Jews and other refugees fleeing fascism and the horrors of the Holocaust...

May 15, 2024

America’s Misunderstood Border Crisis, in 8 Charts

Nicole Narea, Vox, May 12, 2024 "For all the attention on the border, the root causes of migration and the most promising solutions to the US’s broken immigration system are often overlooked."

May 14, 2024

“Unbuild Walls”: Detention Watch’s Silky Shah on Debunking Immigration Myths & Embracing Abolition

Democracy Now! - May 14, 2024 "Amid an intensifying crackdown on asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border, we speak to the author of the new book Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition about U.S. immigration policy under the Biden administration. Author Silky Shah is the executive director of Detention Watch Network and a longtime immigration rights advocate whose new book aims to “debunk the...

May 12, 2024

Feds, Groups Sue Iowa

Justice Department Files Lawsuit Against the State of Iowa Regarding Unconstitutional State Immigration Law Civil Rights Groups File Lawsuit to Block Iowa’s Unconstitutional SF 2340

May 10, 2024

Expert: Biden Between a "Rock and a Hard Place" on Asylum

Aline Barros, VOA, May , 2024 "President Joe Biden on Thursday proposed a new regulation to expedite the asylum claims process for specific migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, but the plan drew objections from both immigrant advocates and administration critics. ... The Biden administration is between “a rock and a hard place,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr , a professor of immigration law at Cornell Law...

May 10, 2024

CBP FOIA Lawsuit Filed

CIVIL RIGHTS EDUCATION AND ENFORCEMENT CENTER, AL OTRO LADO and TEXAS CIVIL RIGHTS PROJECT v. CBP "This is an action seeking to compel U.S. Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”), a component of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”), to comply with the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”), 5 U.S.C. § 552, et seq. Defendant CBP has failed to abide by FOIA’s...

May 10, 2024

Lawsuit Challenges Iowa's State Deportation Law

AIC, May 9, 2024 "Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice, a membership-based immigration legal services and advocacy organization, and two Iowa residents challenge Iowa’s new criminal reentry and removal law, Senate File 2340. S.F. 2340 attempts to replace federal immigration law and set up an independent, punitive state immigration scheme. S.F.2340 purports to give Iowa state officials broad power to arrest,...