Enforcement

The enforcement of immigration laws is a complex and hotly-debated topic. Learn more about the costs of immigration enforcement and the ways in which the U.S. can enforce our immigration laws humanely and in a manner that ensures due process.

Recent Features

All Enforcement Content

April 29, 2015

On June 7, 2010, Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca, a fifteen-year-old Mexican national, was playing with a group of friends on the Mexican side of the border near the Paso del Norte Bridge in El...

April 27, 2015

Estrella is a four-year-old girl who has been locked-up in U.S. detention centers for over eight months or one fifth of her life. She is chronically ill and has been hospitalized for acute...

April 24, 2015

On Thursday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP’s) Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske answered questions from the House of Representatives’ Appropriations Committee regarding CBP’s budget, and...

April 23, 2015

In the absence of meaningful immigration reform to address the situation of the millions of undocumented individuals living in the United States, state policies have become more and more important...

April 22, 2015

Since 2009, Congress has instructed the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to maintain 34,000 beds in immigrant detention facilities across the country, a policy known as “the bed...

April 17, 2015

This week, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) became the latest candidate to announce his 2016 presidential bid, which he did from the Freedom Tower in Miami, Florida. Known as the Ellis Island of...

April 16, 2015

For decades, the United States has been pursuing an “enforcement-first” approach to immigration control, spending more on immigration enforcement than all other law enforcement combined, but...

April 15, 2015

On Tuesday, new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Sarah Saldaña, responsible for immigration enforcement inside the United States, testified for the first time to the U.S. House...

April 9, 2015

Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) has entered the 2016 presidential race with the campaign slogan “defeat the Washington machine.” Yet his views and past legislative actions on immigration show that...

April 3, 2015

By Daniel Martinez, Assistant Professor of Sociology, The George Washington University and Jeremy Slack, Visiting Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Texas at El...