(April 2020) The Trump administration has grown the immigration detention system in the United States to an unprecedented size, at times holding more than 56,000 people per day. Since 2017, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has anchored this growth in places where immigrants are most…
Third Annual Report of the Legal Protection Fund
As the Trump administration ratcheted up attacks on immigrants — including direct threats on the city of Chicago — providing free access to immigration legal services for low-income Chicagoans has become more urgent than ever. People served under…
Designed to ensure profitability for shareholders, private detention largely operates in the shadows, leaving communities in the dark about the operations of new and existing facilities. The U.S. immigration private detention industry is dominated by two notorious companies, GEO Group and CoreCivic…
A Guide for Members of Congress Visiting ICE Jails
The U.S. immigration detention system has grown by nearly 50 percent under the Trump administration.1 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operates approximately 200 facilities under contracts with private prison companies and county…
Prepared by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, the National Immigrant Justice Center, and the National Immigration Law Center
Download this backgrounder as a PDF.
I. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI): An Overview
As the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration…
How should the United States treat asylum seekers and immigrants who seek safety and stability in our communities? The question implicates legal, ethical, moral, and economic considerations. The United States government has answered with wasteful policies rooted in cruelty and at odds with evidence…
In April 2018, agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security entered into an agreement to share information about unaccompanied children in government custody and their prospective sponsors. This agreement, which went into effect in May…
The Trump administration regularly manipulates data to support its anti-immigrant agenda. Two weeks after President Trump shut down the federal government because Congress refused to approve funding to build a wall on the southern border, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen presented a…
Second Annual Report of the Chicago Legal Protection Fund
Providing low-income Chicagoans access to free immigration legal services has been critical as the Trump administration has dismantled immigration protections in the United States and seeks to deport as many people as possible without due…
When the Trump administration implemented its disastrous “zero-tolerance” family-separation policy in spring 2018, Americans took to the streets to protest. But when it comes to the impact of U.S. immigration policy on families, these systemic acts of child abuse by immigration agents—tearing…
