CHICAGO, February 14, 2020—In response to today’s New York Times report stating that the Trump administration is planning to deploy law enforcement tactical units from the southern border to sanctuary cities, including Chicago, the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) issued the following statement: “Chicagoans have heard these threats before from the Trump administration. As a […]
National Immigrant Justice Center
New Way Forward Act challenges racial profiling and mass incarceration in U.S. immigration system
Washington, D.C. Dec. 10, 2019 – The National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) applauds today’s introduction of the New Way Forward Act by Reps. Jesús “Chuy” García (IL-04), Ayanna Pressley (MA-04), Pramila Jayapal (WA-07), and Karen Bass (CA-37). Reps. Garcia and Pressley presented the bill in a press conference alongside co-sponsoring Reps.Judy Chu (CA-27), Adriano Espaillat […]
Nationwide Class Action Challenges ICE Detention of Unaccompanied Immigrant Children who Turn 18
WASHINGTON, D.C. Dec. 2, 2019 – The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is hearing opening testimony today in a nationwide class action lawsuit challenging the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) practice of transferring unaccompanied immigrant children who reach their 18th birthdays to adult ICE detention facilities — federal prisons and county […]
NIJC Launches Partnership with Federal Defenders of San Diego to Defend Migrants
SAN DIEGO, September 16, 2019 — The National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) today launched an initiative with the Federal Defenders of San Diego, Inc., to provide lawyers to asylum seekers and advocate for an end to the criminalization of migration. Over the past decade, the U.S. government has increasingly pursued a policy of criminally prosecuting […]
Mary Meg McCarthy: People Will Die Because SCOTUS Agreed To Block Asylum Seekers
Sept. 12, 2019 – On September 11, 2019, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to bar virtually all asylum seekers entering the country through the southern border. National Immigrant Justice Center Executive Director Mary Meg McCarthy responds: The highest court in the land is allowing the administration to severely roll back protections for people […]
Court Strikes Down Trump Administration Policy Barring Refugees from Asylum
Washington, D.C. August 2, 2019 – The federal District Court for the District of Columbia today ruled in O.A. v. Trump that the Trump administration cannot bar refugees from asylum for crossing between ports of entry. The suit was brought by the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition, Human Rights First, the National Immigrant Justice Center, […]
Mary Meg McCarthy: The Dream and Promise Act Provides Hope to Many, but Needlessly Takes it from Others
CHICAGO, May 22, 2019 — As committee markup of the Dream and Promise Act (H.R. 6) moves forward today in the U.S. House of Representatives, the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) is grateful to members of Congress who have shown their commitment to create permanent protection for members of our communities whose future was thrust […]
Report Calls on Govt. to Abandon Immigration Detention, Use Community-Based Programming
CHICAGO, April 24, 2019 — As the Trump administration seeks to indefinitely detain asylum seekers and continues its rapid expansion of its immigration prison system, a new report from the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) calls on the U.S. government to end the use of immigration detention and adopt community-based models already in use in […]
Mary Meg McCarthy: NIJC Urges Congress to Oppose Proposed DHS Spending Bill
CHICAGO, Feb. 14, 2019 – The National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) urges Congress to oppose the proposed funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which it could vote on as early as today. With this bill, Congress is poised to relinquish its constitutional “power of the purse” to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) […]
Salvadoran Mother and Son Reunited Under Court Order 8 Months after Immigration Agents Separated them at U.S. Border
WASHINGTON, D.C., December 3, 2018 — A Salvadoran mother and her four-year-old son are together again, eight months after U.S. border agents separated them at the border and four months after the Trump administration erroneously deemed them “ineligible” to reunite. A federal court judge in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia ruled […]
NIJC Joins with National Coalition to Launch New Comment Tool to Stop Child and Family Detention
WASHINGTON, D.C. October 9, 2018 – As the U.S. government continues to accept comments on proposed regulations which would allow the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to jail children and families indefinitely and roll back basic requirements for how they are treated in custody, the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) has joined FWD.us and the […]
NIJC Condemns the Latest Attack on Asylum-Seeking Families
WASHINGTON, D.C. Sept. 19, 2018 – The National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) vehemently opposes new legislation introduced by Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), S. 3478, which would require the automatic and indefinite jailing of all asylum-seeking families arriving at the U.S. southern border, permit family separation in a wide variety of cases, and reduce oversight of […]
Salvadoran Mom, Still Separated from Her Son, Takes Legal Action to Demand Reunification
SAN DIEGO, Sept. 14, 2018 – An asylum seeker who remains separated from her four-year-old son and detained in a federal immigration prison nearly six months after immigration officers separated them at the southern border will bring legal action today to demand they be allowed to reunite. The Salvadoran mother, referred to as “Ms. Q” […]
Trump Administration Blows Past Second Court-Ordered Family Reunification Deadline
CHICAGO, July 26, 2018 — With the final deadline only hours away for the Trump administration to reunite 2,500 children with the parents who were taken from them at the border, hundreds of children remain stranded alone in the United States. At least 463 parents have been deported without their children, under traumatic circumstances that […]
Mary Meg McCarthy: Trump Administration Ends Programs that Educates Detained Immigrants About Their Rights
CHICAGO, April 10, 2018 – Today the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) and immigration legal service providers across the country received the alarming news that the Department of Justice (DOJ) plans to terminate the Legal Orientation Program (LOP) and the Immigration Court Helpdesk program. LOP is a life line for the more than 40,000 immigrants […]
NIJC Sues ICE for Unlawfully Jailing Young Immigrants
WASHINGTON, D.C. March 6, 2018 – The National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of immigrant teenagers who came to the United States alone and later were transferred from government shelters to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers when they turned 18. Many, including the lead plaintiffs, came […]
Report Exposes ICE’s Mismanagement, Disregard for Govt. Oversight of Immigration Detention System
Washington, DC, February 13, 2018 — A new report, ICE Lies: Public Deception, Private Profit, released today by Detention Watch Network and the National Immigrant Justice Center, exposes Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) egregious patterns of fiscal irresponsibility, opacity in management, and disregard for congressional oversight in its detention system. Such irresponsible governance results in […]
Mary Meg McCarthy: President’s Immigration Plan Harms U.S. Communities, Betrays Dreamers
CHICAGO, Jan. 31, 2018 – Statement of Mary Meg McCarthy, Executive Director, National Immigrant Justice Center President Trump’s immigration plan is an assault on immigrants, refugees, and the will of American voters. The majority of Americans support a clean Dream Act for the more than one million individuals who arrived in this country when they […]
Internal DOJ Documents Reveal Immigration Courts’ Scramble to Accommodate Trump Administration’s “Surge Courts”
CHICAGO (September 27, 2017) – The Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) has delayed more than 22,000 immigration court hearings to accommodate what the Trump administration called “surge courts,” in an attempt to fast-track deportations at the expense of due process. In at least five of the detention centers where these courts […]
Homeland Security Advisory Council Rejects Notion that Reliance on Private Immigration Prisons is ICE’s Only Option
Dec. 1, 2016 – Heartland Alliance’s National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) applauds members of the Homeland Security Advisory Council who today rejected the finding of a draft subcommittee report which concluded that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has no choice but to continue relying on for-profit private prison companies to detain immigrants. The draft report […]