The Trump administration’s immigration policies have brought an old court case back to life in defense of immigrant children at the border, often referred to as “the Flores settlement.”
As I wrote in 2009, race and class permeate U.S. immigration law and enforcement. This taint stems in large part from the critically important roles of race and class in the formation and maintenance of the American national identity. Immigration law reinforces and maintains that identity by determining who is admitted to the United States. A history of exclusion of poor and working people of color from the United States reveals both how we as a nation see ourselves and our aspirations for what we want to be.
In the last few years, the Supreme Court has decided a steady number of criminal-removal cases. In light of the Trump administration’s emphasis on the removal of “criminal aliens,” we will likely see even more criminal-removal cases in the future.
On February 27, 2018 the Supreme Court decided Jennings v. Rodriguez, a class-action challenge to provisions of the immigration laws allowing for immigrant detention. After hearing oral argument in the case last term, the court asked for further briefing on the constitutionality of the detention of immigrants. At the end of the term, still shorthanded after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death the previous year, the court ordered reargument.
The program focused on immigration adjudication and its transformation during President Trump's first year in office. The Trump administration has sought to influence immigration adjudication through
President Donald Trump has been in office for almost one year. In that time, he has greatly redirected immigration law and policy and energized immigration enforcement. Even though the Obama administration had deported record numbers of immigrants in his eight years in office, Trump endeavored to keep his promise of dramatically increasing immigration enforcement. That included the pledge to "build a wall" along the U.S./Mexico border.
