The U.S. Immigration Courts are reportedly overwhelmed with immigration cases, but despite President Barack Obama's efforts to ease the border crisis, the courts will see a further backlog of cases. According to National Association of Immigration Judges President Dana Leigh Marks, who has been presiding over immigration cases since 1987, "We are reaching a point of implosion, if we have not already reached it."
The New York City Council on Thursday approved the use of municipal identification cards for undocumented immigrants in a substantial victory for city immigrant rights groups. The program will extend city services to an estimated 500,000 immigrants, regardless of citizenship status, thereby expanding access to services for undocumented immigrants.
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson visited Border Patrol facilities in Arizona Wednesday in an attempt to address the growing issue of unaccompanied migrant children crossing into the United States.
The American Immigration Council obtained more than 800 complaints of physical, sexual, and verbal abuse lodged by detainees between January 2009 and January 2012 and found that 97 percent of complaints resulted in no punishment. More than 80 percent of child detainees claimed receiving inadequate food and water and half reported verbal abuse, while one-in-four reported physical abuse.
A detention quota mandated by Congress is placing LGBT undocumented immigrants directly in harm's way, according to a report from the Center for American Progress. Not only does the Congressional quota require the Department of Homeland Security to maintain bed space to jail 34,000 immigrants each day, at a cost to taxpayers of more than $2 billion every year, the policy puts LGBT undocumented immigrants at a risk of sexual assault that is 15 times higher than that of their heterosexual counterparts.
Overcrowded city and county jails have lead the President Barack Obama and his administration to make changes to the Secure Communities program, which ranks repeat immigration violators as high as violent offenders on the priority list for deportations.
Joe Biden may have arrived late to his scheduled commencement speech at Miami Dade College, but for many of the graduates listening, his message was right on time.
After alluding capture by U.S. authorities in December 2012, the Cuban fugitive, Raonel Valdez, went on the run to the Caribbean before eventually getting arrested in Mexico where he awaited justice for allegedly participating in a $2.8 million gold heist.
Despite the recently launched Affordable Care Act providing limited access for undocumented immigrants to Medicaid and private health insurance companies, the federal law prohibits them from those programs.
State Sen. Leticia Van de Putte is a Democrat running for the lieutenant governor seat of Texas this year. If she wins the election in November, she will be the first Hispanic and the first woman to hold the position in the state.
During a speech event in John Boehner's Ohio hometown on Thursday, the House Speaker reportedly mocked his fellow GOP Congress members for the gridlock that has stalled immigration reform.
