Humanitarian Protection

The immigration laws and regulations provide some avenues to apply for lawful status from within the U.S. or to seek relief from deportation.  The eligibility requirements for these benefits and relief can be stringent, and the immigration agencies often adopt overly restrictive interpretations of the requirements.  Learn about advocacy and litigation that has been and can be undertaken to ensure that noncitizens have a fair chance to apply for the benefits and relief for which they are eligible.  

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November 30, 2017

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced last week that it would be ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haiti. 50,000 Haitians, along with hundreds of thousands of nationals...

November 15, 2017

It is an egregious, well-documented reality that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) frequently turns away people seeking asylum along the U.S. southern border. But new evidence presented to...

November 6, 2017

Tonight, the Department of Homeland Security ended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Nicaragua. This decision means 5,300 Nicaraguan nationals will lose their temporary status to live and work...

November 3, 2017

Thousands of immigrants living and working in the United States are poised to learn whether their temporary immigration status will be extended or terminated in the coming days. The 300,000...

October 27, 2017

With its current refugee ban formally expiring, this week the Trump administration announced it will resume the U.S. Refugee Admissions program—with one major caveat: refugees from 11 countries...

October 25, 2017

  The United States is currently home to an estimated 325,000 individuals with Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a temporary immigration status granted to nationals of specifically designated...

October 12, 2017

During a public appearance at the Department of Justice on Thursday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions called on Congress to curb due process for immigrants by making it more difficult for an...

October 10, 2017

The White House released its Immigration Principles and Policies late Sunday night, providing an outline of the Trump administration’s proposals on immigration. The principles were sent to...

October 3, 2017

When the Supreme Court hears arguments in Jennings v. Rodriguez, the Justices will tackle a question eight of them considered in 2016: whether the Constitution allows the government to detain...

October 2, 2017

The White House announced late last week that for Fiscal Year (FY) 2018, beginning Oct. 1, 2017, the United States will only admit a maximum number of 45,000 refugees. This represents the lowest...

October 4, 2019

The Trump administration announced last week that it had signed an “Asylum Cooperative Agreement” with Honduras, following two similar agreements signed with El Salvador and Guatemala. If any of...

October 3, 2019

For many small towns and rural communities, opening their doors to refugees is part of a local strategy to reverse population decline, stimulate their workforce, and build diverse communities....

This lawsuit seeks to uncover information about the government’s troubling new practice of employing U.S. Custom and Border Protection officers to screen asylum seekers.
October 2, 2019
The American Immigration Council and Tahirih Justice Center filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in federal court to compel the government to release records about the Trump administration’s troubling new practice of allowing U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers to screen individuals seeking asylum in the United States. The lawsuit seeks these documents to shed light on changes to the asylum screening process, CBP’s role in conducting interviews and making determinations regarding an asylum seeker’s “credible fear” of persecution, and the measures taken by CBP, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the Department of Homeland Security to implement this new practice.
September 27, 2019

President Trump yesterday proposed a reduction in the annual number of refugee admissions to 18,000 persons for 2020. This is the lowest number ever in the 40-year history of the refugee program,...

September 26, 2019
Immigrant rights attorneys moved to block the Trump administration’s Asylum Ban from affecting tens of thousands of migrants who have already attempted to access the U.S. asylum process before the ban was implemented. With limited exceptions, the Asylum Ban prohibits anyone who traveled through a third country and did not seek protection there from obtaining asylum here. The request filed today is in the ongoing case challenging the Trump administration’s policy of turning back asylum seekers at ports of entry on the U.S.-Mexico border, including the “metering” policy.
September 20, 2019

Five mothers and their children sued the U.S. government on Thursday for forcibly separating them in 2018. The five families are among the thousands of parents and young children who were split...

September 19, 2019
Five asylum-seeking mothers and their children who were torn apart under the Trump administration’s family separation policy filed a lawsuit against the United States for the cruel treatment and agony U.S. immigration agencies inflicted on them. The five parents and their children, who were as young as five at the time of the separation, claim that the U.S. government intentionally subjected them to extraordinary trauma that will have lifelong implications.

The American Immigration Council filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of State (DOS) seeking information regarding the...

September 13, 2019

The Trump administration is considering decreasing the maximum number of refugees accepted into the United States to 10,000 and as possibly low as zero, administration officials confirmed last...

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