immigrants’ rights

After years of slamming anyone who proposed any sort of “amnesty” for “illegal aliens,” former CNN host Lou Dobbs has apparently changed his tune. On Friday, he told the Spanish-language TV station: “We need the ability to legalize illegal immigrants under certain conditions.”

Human rights experts say there is a serious risk that some of the Guantanamo detainees cleared for release could face persecution or torture.

The federal immigration program that allows local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration laws is becoming a thorn in the side of the Obama administration.
It’s part of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s tough-on-illegal immigrants strategy, and it wins President Obama points from conservatives who fear he’ll go soft on “illegals”. But the abuse [...]

A new report released today by the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, and the law firm of Holland & Knight concludes that the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit has been systematically violating its own standards governing the detention of undocumented immigrants.
Analyzing [...]

More areas will begin allowing local law enforcement to enforce immigration law.

New Department of Homeland Security agreements governing state and local police departments’ enforcement of immigration laws are not relieving their critics’ concerns.
Known as 287(g) authority because of the section of the immigration law that authorizes it, this delegation of federal law enforcement power to local police has sparked strong criticism from immigrants’ rights advocates for [...]

Maybe it’s because I’m relatively new to the immigration beat, but I’m consistently surprised at the twists and turns of immigration policy that lead to absurd and shocking results.
Not only are most immigrants in detention centers imprisoned for months or even years despite not having committed a crime, as I wrote Monday, but, as Glenn [...]

Federal authorities told Maricopa County, Ariz. Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Tuesday that they will investigate his department over allegations of discrimination and unconstitutional searches and seizures — a claim his critics have been making for years.
According to The Associated Press, The Justice Department wrote in a letter that it will focus on alleged patterns of [...]