Enforcement

The enforcement of immigration laws is a complex and hotly-debated topic. Learn more about the costs of immigration enforcement and the ways in which the U.S. can enforce our immigration laws humanely and in a manner that ensures due process.

Recent Features

All Enforcement Content

September 28, 2015

Related Content: Lack of CBP Accountability in Responding to Complaints of Abuse Deported migrants suffer a range of abuses at the hands of Custom and Border Patrol agents, according to a new Kino...

September 24, 2015

Last week, the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) announced changes to the regulations governing legal representation in immigration court and at the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA...

September 23, 2015

Related Content: The Effectiveness of Alternatives to Detention for Asylum Seekers. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently announced a pilot case management program as an alternative...

September 18, 2015

Related Content: Family Detention Resource Page This week, the drumbeat to end family detention got louder when the United States Commission on Civil Rights (the Commission) released a report...

September 17, 2015

A federal judge in Arizona issued a decision on September 4, which some say signals the end of years of legal challenges against Arizona’s SB 1070 law. For the most part, the law has been gutted,...

September 14, 2015

The heated political rhetoric so far in the 2016 presidential campaign has often been at the expense of immigrants. And the policy solutions put forth by some candidates have centered around...

September 9, 2015

  On Friday evening, just before the Labor Day weekend, the government released five mothers and their five children, ranging in age from three to seventeen years old, from the South Texas...

September 4, 2015

The Central American refugee influx along the U.S.-Mexico border, which generated so much press attention in 2014, is not going away anytime soon. The conditions which spur Salvadorans,...

September 1, 2015

A change in topic is desperately needed right now in the political and policy debate over immigration. The most recent public discussions on how to reform immigration—led in large part by the...

August 31, 2015

New data obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) shows that while the government’s use of detainers is decreasing, the number of detainers issued for individuals without...

July 10, 2017

A recent story from ProPublica has revealed an internal February 2017 memorandum authored by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to its employees about the implementation of recent Executive...

July 7, 2017

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals delivered a strong rebuke to the government’s years-long effort to strip detained immigrant children of the right to a bond hearing in immigration court. The 3-0...

July 6, 2017

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials recently confirmed their plans to initiate criminal prosecutions and deportation proceedings against immigrant parents and guardians who help...

July 5, 2017

Thanks to the nation’s dramatically outdated immigration system that values punitive enforcement over family unity, millions of individuals living in the United States suffer as a result of...

June 30, 2017

The House of Representatives passed two harsh immigration enforcement bills this week, both of which had the adamant backing of President Trump. The anti-immigrant bills, which passed largely...

June 28, 2017

Despite being among some of the most vulnerable, children seeking asylum in the United States often fare the worst. Upon entering the United States, children are often detained for extended...

June 28, 2017
A U.S. District Court condemned the federal government for continuing to disregard critical protections for children in detention.
June 27, 2017

Over the past two decades, much of the immigration policy debate has focused on issues related to immigration enforcement. In fact, many argue that “enforcement first”—the notion that we must...

June 22, 2017

Since the Trump administration announced its crackdown on undocumented immigrants, stories of individuals abruptly deported have pervaded the news. The accounts of longtime residents who have...

June 21, 2017

A bare majority of the Supreme Court ruled on Monday that six former immigrants of Arab or South Asian descent—all but one of whom are Muslim—cannot sue high-level U.S. officials over policies...