(Im)migration and Refugee History, Rights & Countering Xenophobia

The President’s own story of ancestral immigration to the US provides a contrast with his approach on the issue since taking office.

By pivoting his focus to legal forms of immigration, Donald Trump has demonstrated that xenophobia is the driving force of his immigration agenda.

Hundreds have been deported in the last week, even as President Biden signed several executive orders Tuesday to undo the Trump administration’s hard-line anti-immigration policies. The orders include a push to reunify families torn apart under Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy and a review of the Trump policy known as “Remain in Mexico” that requires non-Mexican asylum seekers to wait in Mexico as their immigration cases wind through court, leaving tens of thousands waiting in dangerous conditions along the border. Reporter Aura Bogado says that despite the Biden administration’s new “tone,” continued deportations of vulnerable people demonstrate “a continuation of the same practices that happened under President Trump and previously under Obama.” Erika Pinheiro, an immigration attorney and the policy and litigation director of Al Otro Lado, a binational nonprofit helping immigrants on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, says many migrants left waiting in Mexico are losing patience with assurances that the new administration will have a plan for them. “If we don’t have an answer for these people, other groups will fill that information void, like cartels and like smugglers, and ultimately the lack of a plan is going to result in more migrant deaths,” says Pinheiro.

Trump signs executive order freezing refugee visas from predominantly Muslim countries.

President Trump delivered remarks on border security and immigration at a campaign-style event held from an airplane hangar in Yuma, Arizona. The president spoke about the border wall, the…

President Trump spoke with the press in Yuma, Arizona, after being updated on border wall construction. When he was asked about the recently completed Senate Intelligence Committee report…

"On February 15, 2019, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency at America's southern border. He depicted a dire crisis, with criminals and drugs flowing unchecked into the country, unlawful border crossers overwhelming enforcement capacity, and dangerous immigrants disappearing into the nation's interior after being released from detention. With his presidential proclamation, he ordered the military to assist in hardening the border, and he declared his intent to re-direct billions of dollars to build the wall he had promised since he first announced his candidacy. In a striking rebuke, Congress voted to overturn the President's declaration of emergency. Never before had Congress rejected a president's proclamation under the National Emergencies Act. Some members decried the President's move as an unlawful usurpation of Congress's power of the purse. Congress had just rejected the administration's request for funds to build a border wall. In trying nonetheless to re-all ocate military funding to the project, critics contended, the President displayed contempt for Congress's constitutional authority to appropriate federal dollars. Many representatives argued further that the President had manufactured the crisis, emphasizing that adding an exceedingly expensive wall to already ample enforcement would not address the real problems at the border. Illegal crossings, they noted, had been declining for over a decade and were at historic lows during the President's first two years in office. The types of migrants now arriving at the border presented urgent legal and policy concerns, but not the threat the President imagined. They were families fleeing violence in Central America. They often sought out border patrol agents at ports of entry in order to request asylum, rather than cross through the desert to evade apprehension. A new wall would not stop them. President Trump promptly issued the very first veto of his administration and attempted to press forwa rd with his plans. His clash with Congress was partly about partisan disagreement. It reflected the deep gulf that now separates the Democratic and Republican parties on immigration policy. But even the Republican-controlled Senate voted to reject the President's emergency declaration. "The Senate vote," the Washington Post remarked the following day, "stood as a rare instance of Republicans breaking with Trump in significant numbers on an issue central to his presidency." It remains to be seen whether the President or Congress will emerge with the upper hand; as we go to press, the funding fight remains tied up in the courts. But the unfolding conflict has transcended partisanship, pitting Congress against the Executive in a battle for control of immigration policy"--

It was a bold opening salvo from the incoming administration of President Joe Biden: an immigration bill that would open a path to citizenship for roughly 11 million people living in the country illegally. But even the Democratic senator leading the charge acknowledged on...

Immigrants and advocates say it represents a shift away from “dehumanizing” language.

The Biden administration is planning to speed up deportations for some migrant families who cross the US-Mexico border, the Department of Homeland Security said Monday.

President Biden’s decision to maintain a Trump-era refugee cap drew swift blowback from Democrats and immigration advocates, many of whom were baffled by the administration’s move.According to Whit…

Ed Gonzales has served as sheriff of Harris County, Texas, which is the third-largest sheriff's office in the country.

President Biden on Friday signed an order speeding refugee admissions but maintaining fiscal 2021 admissions at 15,000, a cap set by the Trump administration and a number far below the 62,500 figur…

Corrupt local elites thwarted some engagement efforts of the past decade, Biden’s new special envoy wrote.

The Census Bureau cannot meet President Trump’s deadline to report data on the number of undocumented immigrants surveyed in the census before Inauguration Day, The New York Times reported Thursday…

US District Judge Andrew Hanen ruled in favor of Texas and eight other conservative states that sued to halt the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

But the link between the two issues is often ignored. Exclusionary immigration policies are unjust for many of the same reasons as is racial discrimination by the state. Both restrict freedom and o…

First lady Jill Biden and her staff will work with a task force and offer input on a project to help reunite immigrant families that have been separated at the border, according to CNN.Three s…

View on Westlaw or start a FREE TRIAL today, Judge blocks Trump administration's new restrictions on H-1B visas, Business Information & News

The ACLU's Lee Gelernt said he's often asked whether the Trump administration has helped reunite families. He said that rather than help, it has withheld data.

The issue On his first day in office, President Biden announced the highlights of a far-reaching plan to reform the U.S. immigration system. The anticipated bill is expected to feature a path to…

Sen. Amy Klobuchar and 13 colleagues asked the State Department what steps it is taking to support LGBTQ asylum-seekers.

The Texas attorney general filed a lawsuit on Friday that seeks to block U.S. President Joe Biden's move to pause certain deportations for 100 days, a controversial opening-move by the Democratic president that has provoked blowback from some Republicans.

Trump’s shift from demonizing immigrants to targeting leftists is straight out of the fascist playbook.

The White House Friday reversed course on refugee admissions, after an earlier announcement maintaining a controversial Trump-era refugee cap was met with disdain by Democrats and immigration activ…

New Measures Leverage Success of Venezuela Enforcement Initiative to Limit Disorderly and Unsafe Migration While the courts have prevented the Title 42 public health order from lifting for now, the Biden-Harris Administration today is announcing new enforcement measures to increase security at the border and reduce the number of individuals crossing unlawfully between ports of…

By Chair Cecilia Rouse, Lisa Barrow, Kevin Rinz, and Evan Soltas The United States is often described as a nation of immigrants. With the exception of Native Americans, the vast majority of Americans are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants or enslaved people. This diversity has been celebrated for its contributions to American culture through…

"This work explores the conflicts over migration at the center of the social, political, intellectual, and physical landscape of the early United States. Examining the voluntary and forced migrations of Indigenous, African American, and Anglo Americans in the decades immediately following the Revolution, Samantha Seeley argues that the United States took shape as a white republic through contentious negotiations over who could move and where, who could remain and how. Removal was not sweeping, top-down federal legislation. Instead, it was a battle fought on multiple fronts. It encompassed tribal leaders' attempts to expel white settlers from Native lands and African Americans' legal battles to remain within states that sought to drive them out. National in scope, the book is grounded in a close examination of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri--states poised between the edges of slavery and freedom where removal was both warmly embraced and hotly contested"--

Immigration law is unique in its national security applications because, while it may be used as a mechanism for keeping the enemy out, it is also the apparatus for entry into the US. This book examines this topic by conducting a historical overview of using immigration law for national security purposes, and exploring laws and cases themselves.