A federal court in Texas blocked the Biden-Harris administration’s attempt to pause removals for 100 days pending a review of enforcement practices. Texas v. United States, No. 6:21-cv-00003 (S.D. Tex. January 26, 2021). Handing a major win to the Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, Trump appointee Drew Tipton granted a temporary restraining order blocking DHS from implementing the 100-day deportation pause. The TRO applies for 14 days. An appeal is likely. As a preliminary matter, the court found that Texas has standing to sue because it provided evidence “of damage to its public fisc by [...]
Biden-Harris immigration priorities signal big shift, raise many questions
Late yesterday, the Biden-Harris administration ended its first day in office signaling that campaign promises to restructure immigration policy were more than empty words. In a series of executive actions signed by President Biden and a memo issued by the temporary head of the Department of Homeland Security, the incoming administration announced a 100-day pause on removals and new enforcement priorities. President Biden set the stage for the new administration’s meaningful immigration policy shift by rescinding his predecessor’s own prioritization scheme. Making good on a campaign [...]
Biden’s Migration Policy Options
After four years of President Donald J. Trump’s virulent rhetorical attacks on migrants and his administration’s heavy-handed policies, the United States is on the verge of experiencing multiple shifts in the politics of migration and its policies toward migrants. President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris reject the abrasive, racist rhetoric that propelled President Trump into office and which he embraced throughout his tenure. But while the new administration is sure to adopt a dramatically different tenor toward migrants, there remain important questions about the [...]
Migrating to Prison, one year later
After arriving in the United States in October 2015 with his mother Wendy hoping to find safe harbor, one-year-old Diego was quickly moved to an immigration prison in Pennsylvania. Six hundred fifty days later, Diego and Wendy were still there. “Diego’s situation is alarming, but it’s not unique,” I wrote in Migrating to Prison: America’s Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants. Less than two months from Inauguration Day, change is in the air. Just as winter’s bareness recently overtook fall’s bright colors, Biden’s calm humanity will soon replace Trump’s selfish abrasiveness. One year after [...]
With Biden returning to White House, private prison stock falls
As the outcome of Tuesday’s presidential election began pointing toward a Biden-Harris administration, private prison companies took a financial hit. Over a few days, CoreCivic and GEO Group, the two largest private prison companies in the United States, saw their stock prices drop substantially. Both companies had benefited from the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration policies. Noticias Telemundo. November 7, 2020. In just a few days, though, investors seem to have grown concerned about the future of the private prison industry under a Biden presidency. From November 3 to [...]
New York Review of Books
Two weeks before a referendum on the extraordinary presidency of Donald J. Trump, it's easy to imagine that everything that the U.S. government has done under his watch has been new and innovative in its destructiveness. But "in Migrating to Prison César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández shows that the machinery of separation has long stretched deep into the interior, consisting of a vast network of immigrant detention centers that now reach almost every state in the nation," Francisco Cantú writes in the New York Review of Books. Cantú, author of The Line Becomes a River, reveals how present-day [...]
Justice Dept pushes Supreme Court to Imperil Families
By Manuel D. Vargas Against the backdrop of an unprecedented global pandemic endangering the health and well-being of families across the nation and the world, the Supreme Court will hear argument on October 14 in Pereida v. Barr,an immigration case in which Justice Department lawyers are taking an aggressive position that, if adopted by the Court, would further imperil families with immigrant members. The stakes in the Pereida case are high, now more than ever. The petitioner, Clemente Avelino Pereida, has lived in the United States with his family for twenty-five years, working and [...]
Fund Immigrant Defense, Promote Justice
Gritty North Oakland Street in Aurora doesn’t look like the kind of place where justice meets its match. But across from the self-storage and facing a row of battered warehouses, guards parade migrants into courtrooms where judges decide if they will be allowed to remain in the United States. Whether newcomers to the United States asking for asylum or green-card holders with decades in Colorado, most will not have a lawyer walk into court with them. Unlike the criminal justice system, immigration courts in the United States don’t guarantee lawyers. People who can afford a lawyer can hire [...]
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