U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)—the agency responsible for systematically separating thousands of migrant families in the summer of 2018—lacked the technology or mechanisms to record and track the separations, a government watchdog group recently found. Family separations—done under the Trump administration’s “Zero Tolerance policy”—started before the policy was even announced. The policy was first […]

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently published an update to its National Detention Standards (NDS), which govern the treatment of people held in facilities that rent some of their beds to ICE, often city or county jails. The new standards may weaken some protections for up to 20% of ICE’s detained population. ICE does […]

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Over the last decade, the remains of more than 1,600 people have been found in the Arizona desert. Groups like No More Deaths, whose mission is “ending death and suffering in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands,” work to decrease that number. Their volunteer-based work is motivated by the slogan “Humanitarian aid is never a crime.” Last week, […]

In yet another major blow to America’s asylum system, on Wednesday the Trump administration reportedly began sending some asylum seekers from Honduras and El Salvador to Guatemala rather than permit them to seek protection in the United States. Under the “Asylum Cooperative Agreement” deal signed with Guatemala in July, the Guatemalan government will process the […]

The Trump administration is preparing to seize private land in Texas to continue construction of the president’s long-promised border wall. According to government officials familiar with the process, the administration plans to take over the private land before telling property owners how much it will pay them in return. Attorneys for the Department of Defense […]

Nearly 60,000 people seeking asylum in the United States have been returned to Mexico to wait for their U.S. court hearings under the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), also known as the Remain in Mexico program. Last week, I traveled to South Texas to observe the effects of the Trump administration program firsthand. Those subjected to […]

A federal court ruled this week that sweeping policies permitting U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to search personal cell phones, laptops, and other electronic devices without reasonable suspicion are unconstitutional. The policies that the court rejected authorized CBP and ICE officers to search the contents of electronic […]

It’s been nearly a year since the Trump administration announced the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), or the “Remain in Mexico” program. This program forces vulnerable asylum seekers to return to Mexico to await their U.S. immigration court dates. It has since been expanded to six cities along the border. The U.S. Immigration Policy Center (USIPC) […]

The Trump administration began a secretive new asylum process in El Paso, Texas that came to light late last week. It seeks to deter asylum seekers from coming to the United States and to remove them as quickly as possible once they’re here. The process—dubbed the “Prompt Asylum Claim Review” or “PACR”—condenses the asylum process […]

Federal immigration officials are beginning to expand their use of surveillance technology to collect information on immigrants. As officials gather more tools in their arsenal—from DNA collection to cell phone tracking devices—the privacy concerns also grow. The Trump administration proposed a new regulation on Monday that intensified those concerns. The proposed regulation would authorize immigration […]