President and Administration
Last week, President Joe Biden called for a 22% increase in funding to investigate complaints of white supremacist beliefs at U.S. immigration enforcement agencies in his “skinny” budget request to Congress, but officials have offered no explanation for what prompted his request…
President Biden named Tucson, Arizona Police Chief Chris Magnus to be commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (CBP)…
On 3/24, President Biden announced he was tasking Vice President Kamala Harris with leading diplomatic efforts to stem the flow of migrants at the Southern border…
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is defending President Biden’s immigration strategy amid recent criticism and claimed that the U.S. southern border is secure…
On his first day in office, President Biden delayed billions of dollars from being spent on his predecessor’s long-touted U.S.-Mexico border wall while his administration figured out next steps for the money…
The majority of Americans disapprove of how President Biden is handling the influx of unaccompanied migrant children arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, and approval of his efforts on larger immigration policy falls short of other top issues - suggesting it could be a weak point for the new administration…
Last week, the White House announced that Ambassador Roberta Jacobson will “retire from her role” as special assistant to the president and coordinator for the Southwest Border at the National Security Council at the end of April…
The Courts
Last week, a California federal appeals court refused to permit 14 states led by Republican governors to challenge the overturning of a Trump-era immigration rule affecting hundreds of thousands of people…
Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice dropped its challenge to a court decision stating the federal government could not force two Rhode Island cities to require local police to cooperate federal immigration agents…
Since February, the parents of 61 migrant children who were separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border by the Trump administration have been located, but lawyers still cannot find the parents of 445 children, according to a court filing last week…
Congress
House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) plans to hold a boarder crisis hearing in April, though a date is not yet set…
In the coming months, congressional Democrats and the White House could use budget reconciliation - which requires only a simple Senate majority vote - to advance a sweeping infrastructure package that may include immigration provisions…
Lawmakers from both parties are calling on the Biden administration to allow reporters into facilities housing unaccompanied migrant children who have sought asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border…
House Democrats are looking to pass the No Ban Act this week, a bill that seeks to prevent future presidents from reissuing the so-called Muslim travel ban, which former President Trump enacted against individuals from several majority-Muslim countries early in his administration…
Escalating Border Crisis
The Biden administration is under intensifying pressure to expand its capacity to care for as many as 35,000 unaccompanied minors that are expected by June, part of a wave of people crossing the border…
The administration is searching for new ways to control migration at the southern border, dispatching officials to Mexico and Guatemala to seek their governments’ help, sending sterner warnings to would-be migrants not to come, and devising alternative pathways to apply for legal entry without showing up in person…
The federal government does not have a centralized system for tracking or responding to COVID-19 cases among the surge of migrants crossing the U.S.’ southern border…
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are releasing migrant families on the Mexican border without notices to appear in immigration court or sometimes without any paperwork at all - time-saving moves that have left migrants confused…
People have long left Honduras for the U.S., fleeing gang violence, economic misery and the indifference of a government run by a president accused of ties to drug traffickers…
Migration and Mexico
Mexico is increasingly straining to cope with the influx of migrants flowing up through Central America and down from U.S. expulsions…
The States
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich is hoping to use federal environmental laws to force the Biden administration to resume construction of the border wall…
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt sued the Biden administration Tuesday, 4/13, in an attempt to restore a President Trump policy that forced migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. to wait in Mexico for claim processing…
Last week, Texas Governor Greg Abbott sent a letter to Vice President Harris demanding to shut down the San Antonio facility for unaccompanied minors....
Legislation
New legislation includes…