National Immigrant Justice Center

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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” […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]