Humanitarian Protection

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.

All Humanitarian Protection Content

October 2, 2015

The United States plays an important role in protecting thousands of the world’s most vulnerable people fleeing persecution in their home countries. At no point in U.S. history has this role been...

September 10, 2015

As the Syrian refugee crisis mounts, the United States is being pressured both internally and externally to take in more of the nearly 4 million refugees that have been displaced due to ongoing...

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,...

July 28, 2015

Elvis Garcia is a migration counselor at the Catholic Charities Community Services of New York. He is also a former unaccompanied child who fled from his native Honduras in 2005 when he was 15...

July 22, 2015

When thousands of Central American families fled violence to the United States last year, the Administration responded by opening family detention centers, which are detaining mothers and children...

June 24, 2015

On June 24, 2015, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it designated Nepal for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) based on the conditions resulting from the devastating earthquake in...

June 23, 2015

25 years ago, the Board of Immigration Appeals held that people fleeing persecution based on their sexual orientation are eligible for asylum. Just months later, President George H.W. Bush lifted...

May 8, 2015

In 2009, the Obama Administration ended family detention at the infamous T. Don Hutto jail in Texas and cut the number of immigrants in family detention to less than a hundred. However, after the...

May 4, 2015

One form of humanitarian assistance the United States can offer to Nepal, a country now recovering from the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that flattened buildings and killed more than 7,000 people, is...

April 10, 2015

Family reunification has stood as a central pillar of the U.S. immigration system, dating back to 1965. Despite this, a new study by researchers Maria Enchautegui and Cecilia Menjivar shows that...

March 22, 2018

A class action lawsuit was filed on March 15, 2018 challenging the U.S. government’s practice of detaining asylum seekers indefinitely and argues the practice is an attempt to deter future asylum...

March 21, 2018

Legal immigration and the number of foreigners visiting the United States has taken a serious hit within the last year, as the Trump administration makes changes to policies and procedures without...

March 2, 2018

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit this week to demand the immediate release and reunification of an asylum-seeking Congolese mother and her 7 year-old daughter, who had...

February 23, 2018

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) made abrupt and sweeping changes to how the agency will schedule interviews for affirmative asylum applications. Rather than interviewing those...

February 22, 2018

Temporary Protected Status (TPS) is an important humanitarian protection for people who are in the United States when certain natural disasters or civil conflict strike their home countries,...

The American Immigration Council has filed a class action lawsuit against officials at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and U.S. Department of Homeland Security in a federal district court in New York, challenging the government’s unlawful practice of depriving certain Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders with close family relationships or employment in the United States from becoming lawful permanent residents.
Publication Date: 
February 19, 2018
In the case, Attorney General Jeff Sessions referred to himself questions related to administrative closure. This move by Sessions could signal an attempt to end administrative closure altogether—which could force over 350,000 immigrants back into immigration court, exacerbating the challenges of an already overburdened immigration court system.
February 5, 2018

Immigrant women and girls face unique challenges in navigating the U.S. immigration system, their dire circumstances often exacerbated by the gender-based violence they encounter on the journey...

February 1, 2018

For the first time in many months, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) decided to extend a Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation – this time for Syria.  With civil war continuing to...

January 26, 2018

After President Trump ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative, he instructed Congress to pass legislation to protect Dreamers. However, Congress had to wait for...

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