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3/26/18 ICE, the federal agency tasked with Trump’s program of mass deportation, uses backend Facebook data to locate and track suspects, according to a string of emails and documents obtained by The Intercept through a public records request. The hunt for one particular suspect provides a rare window into how ICE agents use social media and powerful data analytics tools to find targets.

1/26/18 The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has officially gained agency-wide access to a nationwide license plate recognition database, according to a contract finalized earlier this month. The system gives the agency access to billions of license plate records and new powers of real-time location tracking, raising significant concerns from civil libertarians.
Those powers are particularly troubling given ICE’s recent move to expand deportations beyond criminal offenders, fueling concerns of politically motivated enforcement. In New York, community leaders say they’ve been specifically targeted for deportation as a result of their activism. With automated license plate recognition, that targeting would only grow more powerful.

2/6/18 9th Circuit Court
Last week, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit issued a truly brutal decision, concluding that the Constitution did not require the government to provide a lawyer to a 15-year-old Honduran boy facing deportation.
It appears to be the first case ever to hold that children can represent themselves in court when important legal rights are at stake. That the ruling came in a deportation case involving asylum – where the stakes are incredibly high, the law notoriously complex, and the government pays a trained prosecutor to advocate the child’s deportation – makes the court’s decision even more extreme. The ruling is the latest, and most disappointing, chapter in our long-running effort to obtain fairness for children in immigration court. Key Words: Unaccompanied Minor, ETHICS

1/31/18 Economists say deporting undocumented immigrants and restricting immigration will remove billions of dollars from economy and cripple labor market. According to multiple independent studies, the United States stands to lose hundreds of billions of dollars, stagnate its workforce and deplete a wealth of intellectual capital if it pursues proposed deportation goals.

10/4/17 State Dept report presented to US Congress containing a description of the nature of the refugee situation and the planned number and allocation of the refugees to be admitted over the next year. Because the US humanitarian support for refugees extends beyond refugee resettlement, this report also contains information on requests for protection from asylum seekers domestically.

10/31/17 The case centers on the treatment of non-citizen soldiers who benefited from the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI) program. MAVNI, established in 2008, was designed to attract “high-quality, multi-lingual, ethnically and culturally diverse recruits, and healthcare professionals…” by providing them with an expedited path to citizenship. Since 2016, however, DOD policies have made the application process more difficult. Increased security screening began to cause lengthy delays in the application process. Most recently, DOD stalled certification of the soldiers’ qualifying military service – a step necessary to complete the naturalization application through a formal policy issued on October 13, 2017 that imposed new certification guidelines.

11/15/17 The exponential increase in ICE courthouse arrests reflects a dangerous new era in enforcement and immigrant rights violations, Immigrant Defense Project attorney Lee Wang said. Immigrants seeking justice in the criminal, family and civil courts should not have to fear for their freedom when doing so.