Immigration News Resources

Every year, we publish hundreds of reports, blog posts, digital essays and other studies. Here are some of our most noteworthy findings from the past year.

The post 19 striking findings from 2019 appeared first on Pew Research Center.

In this blog post, AILA leaders share insights from the border delegation where they witnessed the terrible impact of the Remain in Mexico policy, urging "more coordination among advocates, more aggressive litigation in each immigration courtroom, more petitions and class actions..."

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recently announced that U.S. employers will have to pay a $10 fee and register to have a chance at filing an H-1B petition subject to the statutory “cap” of 65,000 workers per fiscal year (FY). The annual “cap” filing also includes 20,000 additional visa numbers for foreign workers with […]

The post USCIS Announces Major Change to H-1B ‘Cap’ Filing With Electronic Registration appeared first on Immigration Impact.

As U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has expanded immigration capacity across the country in recent years, the number of people held in its facilities with actual criminal records dropped, according to a new report from Syracuse University’s TRAC Center. Since October 2017, the number of individuals in ICE detention with serious criminal convictions dropped […]

The post The Number of People in ICE Detention with Criminal Records Continues to Drop appeared first on Immigration Impact.

The rate at which U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained pregnant women increased 52% during the first two years of the Trump administration, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released last week. 2,098 pregnant women were detained by ICE in 2018, compared to 1,380 in 2016. The increase aligns with a December […]

The post Detention of Pregnant Women Increases 52% Under the Trump Administration appeared first on Immigration Impact.

If you have ever wanted to trace your family’s immigration history, you should do it now—accessing genealogical records from the 1800s and 1900s may soon become far more expensive than ever before. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is planning to increase its fees to access millions of historical records held under the agency’s Genealogy […]

The post USCIS Plans Massive Fee Hike for Access to Genealogical Records appeared first on Immigration Impact.

Attorney General Sessions’ orders to prioritize prosecuting people for immigration-related offenses in 2017 and 2018 put a significant strain on law enforcement across the border, diverting resources away from drug and organized crime prosecutions. The increase in immigration prosecutions, which played a primary role in the family separation crisis, also led to overcrowded jails, backed […]

The post ‘Zero Tolerance’ Overwhelmed Courts and Diverted Resources From Criminal Investigations appeared first on Immigration Impact.

  Blanca: Please introduce us to Orange County Justice Fund.   Jennifer: The Orange County Justice Fund is a new organization founded in 2017.

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 […]

The post The Government Knew It Didn’t Have the Technology to Track Separated Families. It Did So Anyway. appeared first on Immigration Impact.

Every year, thousands of people are forced to face the complex deportation system without an attorney representing them. Now, the immigration courts are seeking to limit the assistance that these individuals can receive from “friend of the court” attorneys. The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the agency which includes the nation’s immigration courts, released […]

The post Immigration Courts Further Limit Legal Help Available to People Facing Deportation appeared first on Immigration Impact.

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 […]

The post ICE Revises Its Standards for Some Detention Facilities appeared first on Immigration Impact.

Roughly 317,000 immigrants from 10 countries have this status after fleeing dangerous conditions at home. Learn about where these protections stand.

The post Many immigrants with Temporary Protected Status face uncertain future in U.S. appeared first on Pew Research Center.

Each year, we gather around dinner tables at Thanksgiving with people we love—but don’t necessarily agree with—when it comes to politics and the direction of the country. The political discourse of the past several years has left many people feeling that their values are under attack. They disagree with or have lost faith in our […]

The post Talking Turkey About America’s Most Pressing Issues appeared first on Immigration Impact.

AILA Member Sandra Grossman highlights the efforts in Congress to address the abuse of INTERPOL Red Notices in the U.S. immigration context and urges support for the TRAP Act which would move INTERPOL to improve transparency and deter abuse of their system.

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, […]

The post Volunteer Found Not Guilty After Providing Humanitarian Aid to Migrants appeared first on Immigration Impact.

In this blog post, part of the Diversity and Inclusion Blog Post Series, AILA Member L. Patricia Ice explains the reasoning behind shifting the name of the AILA African American Interest Group to the African Diaspora Interest Group and invites interested AILA members to join the group.

What do you envision when you think of a community that is welcoming? Researchers have developed ways of defining and evaluating how welcoming cities are across the United States. The results are in—Midwestern cities are leading the pack. According to New American Economy, which produced an index of the 100 largest cities based on policies […]

The post How Cities Are Building Inclusive Communities appeared first on Immigration Impact.

White House Senior Policy Adviser Stephen Miller is no friend to immigrants—particularly those he views as racially “lesser than.” While this is evident from the anti-immigrant policies Miller has promoted over the past three years, it is also crystal clear in the private messages he sends to other anti-immigrant activists. In these unguarded moments, Miller […]

The post Stephen Miller‘s Racially Motivated Animus Toward Immigrants Is Revealed appeared first on Immigration Impact.

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 post Trump Administration Begins Sending Asylum Seekers to Guatemala appeared first on Immigration Impact.

Greg Chen and Cara Pavlak highlight the positions of the Democratic presidential candidates on immigration and encourage readers to use the AILA 2020 Election Guide, and the accompanying social media toolkit, to engage on immigration during the debate.