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US justice department sues New York over immigration rules
The US attorney general announced on Wednesday that the Trump administration is suing New York state over its immigration policies, accusing state officials of choosing “to prioritize illegal aliens over American citizens”.Standing in front of federal agents who have been tasked with helping in Trump’s immigration crackdown, Pam Bondi echoed the president’s rhetoric as she vowed the justice department would take on communities that thwart federal immigration efforts.Bondi said she was out to end New York’s “green light” law, which allows people in the state to get a driver’s license without citizenship or legal residency status. The law was enacted partly to improve public safety on the roads, as people without licenses sometimes drove without one, or without having passed a road test. The state also makes it easier for holders of such licenses to get auto insurance, thus cutting down on crashes involving uninsured drivers.“It stops,” Bondi said. “It stops today.”The lawsuit describes the law as “a frontal assault on the federal immigration laws, and the federal authorities that administer them”. It highlights a provision that requires the state’s department of motor vehicles commissioner to inform people who are in the country illegally when a federal immigration agency has requested their information. The justice department is asking the court to strike down the law. (Although the suit is civil, not criminal, Bondi caused confusion by saying that the justice department had “filed charges” against the state of New York.)Bondi made the announcement alongside Tammy Nobles, whose 20-year-old daughter was killed in Aberdeen, Maryland, in July 2022 by someone from El Salvador who had entered the country illegally months earlier in Texas.Bondi’s politically charged rhetoric, unusual for an institution that has historically been wary of aligning itself so directly with the White House, and the selection of legal targets raise fresh concerns that she could seek to use the agency’s law enforcement powers to go after the president’s adversaries. James, the New York attorney general, has drawn Trump’s ire by suing him, leading to a civil fraud judgment that stands to cost Trump nearly $500m.James said in a statement that she’s prepared to defend the state’s laws, which she said “protect the rights of all New Yorkers and keep our communities safe”.The lawsuit comes days after the justice department sued the city of Chicago, alleging that its “sanctuary” laws were thwarting federal efforts to enforce immigration laws. More
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‘An underground thing’: what happens to a pet when its owners are targeted by immigration raids?
On 1 February, Kyle Aaron Reese saw a Facebook post from an old school friend urgently looking for someone to adopt a dog named Benny. Benny’s owners had just been deported after an immigration raid in New York City; faced with high costs and uncertainty, they hadn’t been able to take Benny with them. Reese did not have to stare long at the photo of the jowly bulldog’s silly smile before jumping in his car to go pick him up.“Everything about what I learned about that dog made me want him more,” said Reese, who is 39 and lives in Brooklyn.Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign started just days after his inauguration. Officers from federal law enforcement agencies have carried out raids in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Diego, Denver, Miami, Atlanta and other large cities, stoking fears in communities across the country. More than 8,000 immigrants have been arrested, NBC reported.Undocumented people are staying home from work and school, drawing up plans in case they are separated from their children, and tracking confirmed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) raids on social media. Some are also worrying about what will happen to family pets.View image in fullscreenEnlace Latino, a public service journalism outlet for Latino immigrant communities based in North Carolina, published a piece shortly after Trump took office titled: “How can I plan for my pets’ future if I am detained or deported?” Steps include finding a trusted caregiver who agrees to watch after the pet, setting aside money for the pet’s care, and writing detailed notes about the pet’s breed, diet, medications, vaccinations and veterinarian.Benny’s owners, who declined to comment, left Benny with a close family friend, who used Facebook to permanently place him with Reese.“It’s almost like an underground thing,” Reese said of local efforts to re-home pets after Ice raids. “There’s no network in place, because we didn’t realize this was an issue. But people are really stepping up.”No one knows how many pets have been separated from their families due to Ice raids. A representative for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals wrote in an email that “it’s too soon to identify any specific trends” in animal shelter admissions due to immigration raids.Flatbush Cats, a Brooklyn non-profit that traps, neuters and releases stray cats to reduce the population of street cats, also runs an adoption program; Reese is a volunteer there.“We’re hearing heartbreaking word-of-mouth stories from one neighbor to the next,” said Will Zweigart, the group’s founder. “This morning, one of our volunteers was crying her heart out on the way to the clinic with a cat that belongs to some neighbors she knows are being displaced by a landlord who was creating unfavorable living conditions for them because he knows they’re undocumented and not in a position to fight back.” They made the painful decision to re-home the cat while they look for safe housing.When established immigrant advocate organizations and local-level rapid response groups are focused on preventing detentions, deportations and family separation, concerns about adopting out animals might not seem like a priority. Still, leaving a pet behind can be devastating, and knowing it will be properly looked after may provide some comfort to immigrant owners. “Pets are family,” Zweigard said.View image in fullscreenNaomi Pardasie, 28, is a naturalized US citizen, but her husband is not. In January, five Ice agents came to their apartment door. The couple did not let them in, and the agents waited outside for 45 minutes. Rattled by the encounter, Pardasie’s husband stayed home from his construction job for two weeks.The couple decided to voluntarily head back to Trinidad, where they’re from, in April. They’re bringing their cats – Oatmeal, Olive, Onyx and Zoboomafoo – with them.“They’ve been with us since they were born,” Pardasie, who works as a housekeeper and bartender, said. “I’ve known their moms, their dads, their moms’ moms and dads’ dads. I watched them come into this world, and it would be hard to just leave them here.” She is currently raising money to pay for their airfare and required vet visits.“Animals come into our lives for a reason,” Pardasie said. “It’s scary to know that people who don’t have the money to get their animals into another country have to leave them behind.”The US’s animal shelters are full. Last October, Animal Care Centers of New York, the city’s largest shelter, announced that it would no longer accept dog surrenders due to overcrowding.“Animal shelters should be a lifeline for communities in times of crisis, but with chronic overcrowding, they’re often unavailable when they’re needed most,” Zweigart said. “The same thing happened in Los Angeles with the fires – the animals had to be transported somewhere else because local shelters were full. This highlights where we’re headed: as more and more people are displaced for different reasons, we’re not able to take care of animals.”Reese, who adopted Benny the bulldog, says that when institutions fail, communities can step in. “When people are deported, what happens to their animals is such a small part of the bigger issue,” he said. “But if we can take care of the animals, that’s something we can do when we feel like we have little control over everything else.” More
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How hardline anti-immigrant policies are threatening the right to education
As Donald Trump mounts escalating attacks on immigrants in the US in the first weeks of his second term, schools are increasingly in the crosshairs.He has already revoked protective status for schools and churches, so that immigration authorities can make arrests on school grounds, sending teachers scrambling to figure out ways to protect their students.Now, hardline anti-immigrant stances are being used to attack public education itself. In January, Oklahoma’s board of education voted to require citizenship information from parents enrolling children in school. The move threatens a longstanding constitutional right to public education for all children, regardless of their immigration status, established in 1982 by the US supreme court.Legal and policy experts say that while the rule is likely to be struck down in the courts as unconstitutional, the threat alone will cause damage and cause terrified parents to keep their children out of schools, which undermines a fundamental democratic institution: the right to education.“The purpose of our schools is to educate children, and to educate all our children,” said Wendy Cervantes, director of immigration and immigrant families at the Center for Law and Social Policy (Clasp). “Immigration enforcement of any kind should stay out of our schools, period.”Requiring proof of citizenship for public school enrollment would severely disadvantage American immigrant families, including those with legal status, experts say. The impact would be vast: approximately one in four children (nearly 18 million in total) have at least one foreign-born parent.Most immediately, the rule will scare immigrant parents – especially those without documentation or whose cases may be pending – to the point that they keep their kids out of school entirely. This phenomenon, in which immigrant families turn inward and avoid critical resources when they perceive restrictions are tightening, is known in immigration policy circles as the “chilling effect”, and it is widely documented.“This is exactly the kind of thing that causes parents, very rationally, to hold their kids back and not send them to school,” said Jon Valant, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, emphasizing that the chilling effect will descend whether the rule is adopted or not. “There is harm done just in talking about this,” he said.View image in fullscreenEfrén C Olivares, director of strategic litigation and advocacy at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that the fear component was deliberate, and would disproportionately affect those whose status is in question. “By being put in the position of having to respond to this question, somebody who may not have regular status is going to really be threatened and be in a vulnerable position,” he said.For those children who are kept home out of fear, the effect is detrimental, experts say. Those children may opt to join the workforce. And if a child is not old enough for legal employment, or is not eligible for a work permit, they are more likely to be exploited or to work in an unsafe job, explained Melissa Adamson, an attorney at the National Center for Youth Law.The result is that their entire lives get sidetracked, and their potential – which schools are designed to nurture – quashed. “It cuts off their entire ability to succeed,” Adamson said.Restricting access to education would also deepen social divisions and negatively affect the entire American economy by exacerbating marginalization and impoverishment, explained Kristina Lovato, director of the Center on Immigration and Child Welfare at the University of California at Berkeley. “Educational access empowers our children with the tools to lead productive lives and contribute to the economy and overall wellbeing of our communities, and every child in the US deserves this chance to reach their full potential,” she said.According to Cervantes, it is for these reasons that states have such stringent truancy laws in place.“A basic K-12 education is essential to preventing the creation of a permanent underclass,” she said. “It is in the best interest of not only children, but all of society, for children to be productive and learning.”The Oklahoma effort is spearheaded by Ryan Walters, the Republican state superintendent who has railed against the presence of “woke ideology” in schools, believes that the Bible should be required learning and has claimed that the 1921 Tulsa massacre – in which 300 Black people were murdered by their white neighbors – was not motivated by race.While the proposal is singular in its content, the rule sits squarely within the far-right playbook.Mixed messaging surrounding the measure’s aims contribute to confusion, which experts cite as a core strategy of Trump’s approach to immigration. The text of the Oklahoma rule claims parents’ citizenship information will be used to inform how resources can be better allocated to serve students’ tutoring, language and transportation needs. But Walters has publicly stated that Oklahoma schools would give federal agencies the information so that “families can be deported together”.View image in fullscreen“I don’t see how knowing that a student’s parent holds a passport from a different country helps the state understand that student’s needs in the classroom,” said Adamson, decrying the rationale as nonsensical. “We live in a very diverse world. A parent’s nationality doesn’t necessarily tell you anything about their child’s educational needs.”The measure also politicizes schools, which are already at the frontline of culture wars. “I’m also not surprised that we are seeing some more culture-war battles penetrating schools as they relate to immigration,” said Valant.Perhaps most critically, the proposal represents a tolerance for the undermining of long-held democratic institutions and values – namely, the free and equal right to public education.For Olivares, the crux of the matter lies in the fact that the measure would also deny that right to millions of US-citizen children whose parents are foreign-born. That, he says, reveals the rule’s racist underpinnings. “They’re going to be the children of US immigrants whose skin is a certain shade of dark,” he said. “They were born in this country. What does that say? What values does that reflect about a society?”What’s more, it puts the right to education itself on a slippery slope. Valant said there was no reason to think that students with disabilities or transgender kids wouldn’t become future targets.“Who do we pull out of the community next?” he asked.From a legal standpoint, the feasibility of asking parents for citizenship information remains murky, most notably because the 1982 Plyler v Doe case enshrining the right to education for all children regardless of citizenship creates a substantial constitutional hurdle. For that reason, most legal and policy experts anticipate the Oklahoma measure to be struck down if passed into state law.“It was unwise public policy then to adopt policies that may harm children’s access to schooling, and that has not changed,” said Debu Gandhi, senior director of immigration policy at the Center for American Progress.They also caution against putting too much faith in the constitution, especially given the track record of this supreme court. Although Plyler has been settled law for nearly 43 years, the court has overturned other cases with even longer legacies, such as Roe v Wade, the 1973 landmark case protecting the constitutional right to abortion, Olivares explained.Regardless of whether this particular measure takes effect, the situation unfolding in Oklahoma is probably a preview of similar efforts that will be undertaken in school districts around the nation, warned Valant.“This is a particularly aggressive move when it comes to immigration enforcement in schools, but I don’t think it’ll be the last,” he said. More
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For many Palestinian Americans, Trump’s Gaza plan evokes legacy of displacement
For Palestinian Americans in Dearborn, Michigan, like Zaynah Jadallah and her family, displacement and loss have become central elements of her family heritage.Her family members were teachers in Al-Bireh in what is now the occupied West Bank during the 1948 Nakba, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced from their homes and land by Zionist paramilitaries, and then the Israeli army, in the war surrounding Israel’s creation.“They fled the attacks in two cars for Jordan. One of the cars made it, the other was bombed and they were burned alive,” she says.“None of them survived.”So when Donald Trump, standing alongside Benjamin Netanyahu, suggested last week that Palestinians in the devastated Gaza Strip leave their homes and that it be turned into a “riviera” for “the people of the world”, comments he has since doubled down on, Jadallah was livid.“The president of the United States calling for ethnic cleansing and the continued genocide of Palestinians,” she says.“It’s outrageous.”For many Palestinian American residents of Dearborn such as Jadallah, the responses to the US president’s proposals follow a similar line: defiance, anger, but not much in the way of surprise.“He has a history of being loyal to the Zionist movement of genocide and colonizing [of the] the Palestinian people,” she says.“It wasn’t surprising, but it was outrageous.”A photo on the front cover of the Dearborn-published Arab American News’s 1 February edition portrays thousands of Palestinians walking along a sea front to their destroyed homes in northern Gaza. The caption reads: “The Great March of Return”.“Gaza’s history is one of both pain and pride,” reads the newspaper’s lead article on the topic.It continues: “It stretches back to ancient civilizations and includes great resistance against invasion, such as the three-month siege by Alexander the Great and his Macedonian army in 332 BCE.”Trump’s announcement upended decades of international consensus and threatened fragile talks to extend a delicate ceasefire in Gaza. It was met with glee by much of the Israeli prime minister’s ruling coalition and other far-right elements in Israel.More than half of Dearborn’s 110,000 residents are of Arab heritage, making it home to one of the largest Arab communities outside the Middle East. Many Palestinian American residents have lost family members during Israel’s onslaught on the Gaza Strip, which killed more than 46,000 people.“Nobody is really shocked. Everybody is disgusted,” says Amer Zahr, a Palestinian American comedian and activist whose family was displaced from Nazareth, Jaffa and Akka (Acre) during the Nakba.“I’m really angry at the notion that we’re talking about the thing that Trump said on Tuesday like it’s new or novel or unique. It is not,” he says.“It is the policy of Israel to ethnically cleanse Palestinians, and that policy has been fully supported and funded by the United States.”He also finds that it’s only when Trump makes such comments that liberals and the Democratic party “finally reject the notion of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians”.“I guess it has a different ring to it when Trump says it.”Trump won more votes in November’s presidential election in Dearborn than the Democratic party’s Kamala Harris or Green party candidate Jill Stein, the first time a Republican party candidate won the city in 24 years.While Harris declined to campaign in Dearborn, Trump had lunch at the Great Commoner, a café owned by an Arab American businessperson, just days before the election.“A lot of people [in Dearborn] voted for him secretly,” Zahr says. “They are the ones who have gone silent now.” Zahr voted for Stein.But some are doubling down on their support, not inclined to take Trump’s words at face value. Bishara Bahbah, a Palestinian American born and raised in Jerusalem, campaigned extensively in Michigan and other swing states through the group formerly called Arab Americans for Trump. (The group changed its name last week to Arab Americans for Peace.) He says Trump’s comments were just a “testing of the waters”.“I think the president threw out this idea as a trial balloon. There can never be a displacement of Palestinians from their homeland. It’s counterproductive,” he says.While members of his family were forced to flee Jerusalem during the Nakba in 1948, and he himself has since been banned from living in the city of his birth, Bahbah continues to believe peace in the Middle East is Trump’s main goal.“I know the president wants a legacy of peace and wants to be known as a peacemaker. For him to do that, the only path is a two-state solution which he told me he would support.”He says he has faced a backlash for supporting Trump that has included “messages on X that could be interpreted as death threats”, but that he’s been told by Trump’s advisers that Trump did not mean to suggest that Palestinians in Gaza be forcibly removed from their homes and land.“I believe that the president will come to the conclusion that what he said publicly is just not workable,” he says. He says the rebrand of his group to Arab Americans for Peace, announced hours after Trump’s comments, had been in the works for months.For Jadallah, Trump’s alleged plans for Israel to turn over the Gaza Strip to the US are an obvious contradiction to what he campaigned for president on.“It really shows his intention to serve a foreign government before the American people, right?” she says.“Because if he wants an America first agenda, he would talk about how we can spend our hard-earned tax dollars to improve our healthcare systems and our schools.”She says the resilience Palestinians in Gaza have shown following 15 months of bombardments and continued displacement lead her to believe that it’s highly unlikely that Trump’s plan to remove people from Gaza would succeed.“They’ve endured genocide, hunger, been displaced multiple times from the north to the south,” she says.“There’s still 2 million people residing in Gaza and they’ve told us that they don’t want to leave because they are the rightful owners of the land.” More
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Thousands protest against Trump’s war on immigrants after Ice raids: ‘Fight for our neighbors’
Thousands took to the streets on Wednesday and Saturday last week following a series of dramatic raids by agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) throughout Denver as protesters expressed solidarity with the undocumented and rage at Donald Trump’s war on immigrants.“We’re here to fight for our neighbors, to stand together and say no to the threats from the Trump administration,” Amanda Starks, a local artist at a rally on Saturday who’s been handing out literature to immigrants on their legal rights.She added: “I think this is worse than in 2016, when we thought the GOP would stand up to Trump. Now they’re all Christian nationalist yes-men, and we’re up against something greater this time around. But it’s bringing this community together.”The US president has taken a special interest in the historically immigrant-friendly state of Colorado, calling his deportation plan for alleged gang members Operation Aurora, named for the Denver suburb claimed by him and echoed by conservative media to have been “taken over” by the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua (TdA).One of the executive orders signed on Trump’s first day in office was to cut funding and send a stop-work order to the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network (Rmian), a Colorado non-profit offering free legal services to the undocumented. Due to the large volume of those in need, Colorado has one of the lowest rates of legal representation for undocumented immigrants.Then last week heavily armed Swat teams began storming apartment complexes around Denver and Aurora in the early hours of the morning – sometimes with a Fox News crew embedded with the teams – though with 30 arrests in all, only one gang member has been confirmed to be in custody.View image in fullscreenWith around 155,000 undocumented immigrants in Colorado fearing for their safety, many local residents have rallied to show their support however they can.Despite their setbacks, last week the Rmian was able to offer a crash course in immigration law to 100 Colorado attorneys who, despite not working in that field, have volunteered their legal services.Whenever Ice raids are spotted, volunteers from groups like the Immigrant Legal Resource Center often are on hand to offer literature on the legal rights of those under siege. At Saturday’s rally outside the state capitol building in Denver, activists with megaphones led a call-and-response chant of legal advice, prompting the crowd with “When Ice shows up?” followed by a collective roar: “Don’t open the door!”The protester and artist Starks, along with many others, have been attending weekly gatherings at a local Methodist church on how to best serve the legal needs of immigrants. One organizer placed the turnout at a meeting last Monday at more than 1,500 people.View image in fullscreenMany of the activists speaking at Saturday’s rally expressed contempt for New York-based property management company CBZ Management, which oversee several properties in Aurora and Denver that have been fined or shut down for squalid and neglectful living conditions. Last August, Zev Baumgarten of CBZ Management, accused of being “an out of state slumlord” by the Aurora mayor, claimed one of their Aurora apartment buildings had been overtaken by TdA gang members, which was why they were unable to provide needed repairs and services.This unfolded just in time for Trump to parrot the claims during his presidential debate against Kamala Harris weeks later, eventually making Aurora an unlikely campaign spot for the Republican candidate, since Colorado has been a reliably blue state since 2008.For decades Colorado has cultivated a reputation for welcoming immigrants who have come across the US-Mexico border, especially when they’re under siege from many across the rest of the nation.In the 1990s, when Democrats were being pulled to the right on issues like immigration, Denver’s mayor, Wellington Webb, pushed against that tide, criticizing federal persecution of immigrants in a 1998 executive order and declaring the state capital would “welcome all to share in Denver’s warm hospitality”.He insisted: “We must respect this diversity and ensure the rights of all our residents are protected,” and Denver “would not tolerate discrimination in any form”.However a movement of hard-right, anti-immigrant activists in the Republican party found representation at this time in Colorado, such as in the form of congressman Tom Tancredo, who built his political career attacking Denver libraries for stocking Spanish speaking books, calling for the deportation of a Denver high school student, stripping “sanctuary cities” of their federal funding, and calling on America to reject the “cult of multiculturalism”.View image in fullscreenTancredo’s decade as a congressman from 1999-2009, along with his failed bids for the presidency and governorship, helped build the narrative architecture of what would become the Make America Great Again conservative movement’s anti-immigrant rage.Despite the protests last Wednesday and Saturday in Denver, portions of the state still hold enough conservative voters to keep Trump loyalists like Representative Lauren Boebert in office.Boebert recently joined forces with two other Colorado representatives to pressure the state’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, to repeal a series of laws protecting immigrants rights in Colorado. Often referred to as a “Democratic libertarian”, Polis has endorsed the core of Trump’s deportation plan.“Hey Polis, where are you? We have courage, how about you?” the crowd at Saturday’s rally chanted, as it moved away from the capitol building and through downtown Denver.The march eventually made its way peacefully back to the capitol, where more literature was handed out and future gatherings were announced.“We take these threats [from Trump] very seriously,” said Katie Leonard, one of the days’ speakers and an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which has been documenting Ice raids and posting their locations on social media, leading to the arrival of more volunteers, often shouting advice to residents about their rights through megaphones or blasting the neighborhoods with informative leaflets.“But the decisive factor in what happens here, when these Ice raids come and indiscriminately round up people, is whether the community is prepared, whether the people know their rights,” she said. More
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Relief for immigrants as legal services restored after Trump-induced chaos
Immigrants and asylum seekers caught up in Donald Trump’s mass enforcement crackdown will at least have a better chance at knowing their legal rights – for now – after a court intervened to restore some vital advice services.Last month, the federal government issued a stop-work order targeting programs that provide information and guidance to people facing deportation, via services such as independent legal help desks.But the administration was promptly sued and a temporary court order was issued that restarted four programs that had been abruptly halted by the Department of Justice.Even though short-lived, that unexpected break in legal services took its toll, after a chaotic week and a half of furloughs, cancelled detention visits and general confusion created a domino effect of inefficiencies within the US’s overloaded immigration court system.The temporary court order restoring business as usual may be just that – temporary – as the Trump administration and its allies continue to fixate on attacking the few federal programs that secure some semblance of due process for immigrants.“Often the people providers meet with are fleeing violence. They are just trying to protect their families and stay with their communities. They’re just trying to attend church, they’re just trying to attend school. So I don’t know in what world this makes sense,” said Kel White, associate director of learning and development at the Acacia Center for Justice, which administers the four programs targeted by the justice department’s stop-work order.Across the US, about two-thirds of people fighting in the courts against being forced to repatriate are unrepresented. Some are behind bars in remote, isolated facilities with restricted access to the internet. And they have no right to appointed counsel, like in the criminal court system, which makes hiring an attorney a costly and often untenable prospect.So when contracted legal service providers received the justice department’s order to pause three federally funded legal orientation programs and one legal representation program on 22 January, some of the country’s most vulnerable people lost access to their first or only touchpoints with credible legal advice.“What we’re really concerned about is that this is perhaps more intentional and part of a broader effort to ensure that people don’t have access to information, and don’t have access to counsel,” said Laura St John, legal director for the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project.On the ground, fallout was swift: posters with details about where to receive legal help were pulled down at detention centers. Organizations serving immigrants were denied permission to do group presentations for detainees, even on their own dime.Vulnerable children traveling alone were no longer being assigned lawyers. And even as affected legal service providers sued for reinstatement of the programs – in a separate lawsuit from one that ultimately restored operations – some were also being forced to consider layoffs.“Why create these inefficiencies? Why impact our communities in this way?” White asked. “These are very basic, simple programs that provide essential information about due process.”When, for example, the Florence project gives group legal orientations to detainees in Arizona, presenters start with the fundamentals: why people are detained, what they should expect in the courtroom, and what the judge’s and government attorney’s roles are. They also describe non-citizens’ rights during hearings. Then they explain eligibility requirements for a vast array of immigration pathways – all the way up to US citizenship.“It’s making sure people understand what’s available to them, but also when there is nothing available, which does happen with some regularity, that people don’t waste their time, effort and energy fighting for a case that doesn’t exist,” St John said.Similarly, in Chicago, the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) runs a court help desk – one of many nationwide – where people in immigration proceedings arrive knowing very little. So help desk staff do information sessions, file mandatory forms before deadlines and keep immigrants from being wrongly deported through appeals. Overwhelmed judges and court personnel often refer confused families their way.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Taking away the immigration court help desk, the legal orientation programs, all of this is really engineered to create the kind of chaos that will lead to unlawful deportations,” said Azadeh Erfani, policy director at the NIJC.One of the documents the NIJC’s staffers often help to file updates someone’s outdated or erroneous court location, so that, for instance, a mother with a five-year-old child doesn’t have to drop everything and travel from Chicago to Denver for court – or worse, miss her court date and be ordered to leave the country as a no-show.Without programs like the NIJC’s, untold numbers of immigrants and asylum seekers would probably be deported without ever seeing a judge, all because of an unfiled form.“I think what’s lost sometimes is that people have risked their lives to get to this point,” said Adela Mason, director for two of the targeted orientation programs at Acacia. “They’ve traveled across multiple countries, often in life-threatening circumstances. People aren’t trying to evade their court date. They’ve fought for sometimes years to get before a judge and present their claim.“And so for them to lose that opportunity … because they didn’t know that they had to fill out X form as part of asking to change their case to X city, it’s just so unjust.”During the programs’ freeze, legal service providers got very little information from the justice department. Even now, some detention centers have delayed rescheduling visits. Legal providers are having to renegotiate to get their informational posters back on the walls, and they are still waiting for rosters to know who is new to the facilities where they are contracted for orientations.Meanwhile, some organizations are bringing back whiplashed staff members who were just furloughed, and judges will need to reschedule court dates after missed consultations.“We’re celebrating that we are back providing services to our immigrant community who needs those services, and to our courts who need that efficiency,” White said. “But we are living in a world of uncertainty now.” More
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All the executive orders Trump has signed so far
Donald Trump has signed dozens of executive orders in his first weeks back in office, including ending birthright citizenship, curbing DEI and “gender radicalism” in the military, and pardoning January 6 rioters.The US president promised in his inaugural speech that these orders would amount to a “complete restoration of America”.Here’s what to know about the executive orders Trump has signed since retaking the White House.ICC sanctionsThe order: Trump signed an order authorizing economic sanctions on the international criminal court (ICC), accusing the body of “improperly targeting” the United States and its allies, such as Israel.What Trump said: Trump has been a vocal critic of the ICC and said the court had “abused its power” in issuing warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes. “This malign conduct in turn threatens to infringe upon the sovereignty of the United States and undermines the critical national security and foreign policy work of the United States government and our allies, including Israel,” Trump said.What it means: The order grants Trump broad powers to impose asset freezes and travel bans against ICC staff and their family members if the US determines that they are involved in efforts to investigate or prosecute citizens of the US and certain allies.Read moreEnding ‘anti-Christian bias’The order: Trump signed an executive order attempting to eliminate “anti-Christian bias” in the US government. The president announced the formation of a taskforce, led by the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to end all forms of “anti-Christian targeting and discrimination” in the government.What Trump said: Trump said Bondi would work to “fully prosecute anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society and to move heaven and earth to defend the rights of Christians and religious believers nationwide”.What it means: The order is meant to reverse alleged targeting of “peaceful Christians” under Biden. Critics say it changes the traditional understanding of religious liberty, with Americans United for Separation of Church and State saying in a statement that Trump’s taskforce would “misuse religious freedom to justify bigotry, discrimination and the subversion of our civil rights laws”.Read moreBanning trans athletes from women’s sportsThe order: Trump signed an executive order banning transgender athletes from participating in women’s sport. It directs federal agencies, including the Department of Justice, to interpret federal Title IX rules as the prohibition of trans girls and women from participating in any female sports categories.What Trump said: “With this executive order, the war on women’s sports is over.”What it means: The order is the latest in a slew of Trump actions aimed at rolling back the rights of trans people. Trump also signed orders defining sex as “only male or female” and banning gender transitions for people under the age of 19.Read moreEnding Unrwa fundingThe order: Trump signed an executive order stopping funding for Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, and withdrawing US from the UN human rights council.What Trump said: The president criticized the entire United Nations as “not being well run” and “not doing the job”.What it means: In his first term, Trump cut Unrwa funding and withdrew from the UN’s human rights council. The Biden administration restored Unrwa funding and rejoined the council.Read moreImplementing tariffs on imports from Mexico, China, and CanadaThe orders: Trump signed three executive orders on 1 February placing tariffs on Mexico, China and Canada, to begin on 4 February.What the orders say: the Mexico order says that drug traffickers and the country’s government “have an intolerable alliance” that endangers US security. The China order says the country’s government allows criminal organizations to “launder the revenues from the production, shipment, and sale of illicit synthetic opioids”. The Canada order says that Mexican cartels are operating in that country, claiming the amount of fentanyl imported could kill “9.5 million Americans”.What it means: All three countries announced retaliatory actions. On 3 February, Trump agreed to postpone tariffs against Mexico and Canada for one month after they committed to increasing border enforcement. China has announced retaliatory tariffs on some American imports and an antitrust investigation into Google on 4 February after Trump’s tariffs took effect.Read moreCreation of a sovereign wealth fundThe order: Trump ordered the US treasury and commerce department to create a sovereign wealth fund. Such a fund, which requires congressional approval, would act as an investment fund for the country, operating outside the Federal Reserve and the treasury department.Trump offered few details about the fund, including where the cash would come from. His treasury secretary and the nominee for commerce secretary would spearhead efforts to create the fund. Treasury secretary Scott Bessent told reporters the government would “stand this thing up within the next 12 months”.What Trump said: “We have tremendous potential,” Trump said. “I think in a short period of time, we’d have one of the biggest funds.”Trump also said that the fund could be used to facilitate the purchase of TikTok.What it means: More than 100 countries and 20 US states have sovereign wealth funds. Senior officials in the Biden administration had been quietly working on a sovereign wealth fund before the US election in November, according to multiple reports.Read moreMigrant detention center at Guantánamo BayThe order: Trump signed an executive order to prepare a huge detention facility at Guantánamo Bay that he said could be used to hold up to 30,000 immigrants deported from the US.What Trump said: Guantánamo could “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people”, Trump said during the signing of the Laken Riley Act, another of his administration’s hardline immigration policies.What it means: The order is part of a broader effort to fulfill Trump’s promise to remove millions of people from the country.Read moreGender-affirming careThe order: Trump signed an order that attempts to end gender transitions for people under 19.What Trump said: “It is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures,” reads the order.What it means: The order directs that federally run insurance programs, including Tricare for military families and Medicaid, exclude coverage for such care. The order calls on the Department of Justice to vigorously pursue litigation and legislation to oppose the practice.Read moreReshaping the militaryThe order: Trump signed three executive orders on 27 January that would reshape the military: removing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, eliminating “gender radicalism” from the military, and reinstating soldiers who were expelled for refusing Covid-19 vaccines.What Trump said: “To ensure we have the most lethal fighting force in the world, we will get transgender ideology the hell out of our military. It’s going to be gone,” Trump said in Florida, according to CBS.What it means: Trump’s order does not yet ban transgender soldiers from the military, but directs the Pentagon to create a policy for trans members of the military.Read moreStart a process to ‘develop an ‘American Iron Dome”’The order: Trump signed an executive order on 27 January that would begin the process of creating a “next-generation” missile defense shield, which the administration is referring to as the American Iron Dome.What Trump said: “The United States will provide for the common defense of its citizens and the Nation by deploying and maintaining a next-generation missile defense shield,” the order said.What it means: Creating a short-range missile defense system akin to Israel’s Iron Dome would take years to build. The order calls for a plan from the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, within 60 days.Read moreReview of disaster agency FemaThe order: Trump ordered a review of Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), the disaster response agency, and suggested there is “political bias” in the agency. Trump previously criticized the agency’s response to Hurricane Helene.What Trump said: “Despite obligating nearly $30 billion in disaster aid each of the past three years, Fema has managed to leave vulnerable Americans without the resources or support they need when they need it most,” the order stated.What it means: A review council – which includes the secretaries of defense and homeland security, Pete Hegseth and Kristi Noem – will report to Trump within 180 days.Read moreDeclassifying MLK and JFK filesThe order: Trump ordered the release of thousands of classified documents on the assassinations of John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.What Trump said: “The federal government has not released to the public all of its records related to those events. Their families and the American people deserve transparency and truth. It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations without delay,” the order said.What it means: Trump made this promise during the election campaign and made a similar pledge in his first term, but ultimately heeded appeals from the CIA and FBI to withhold some documents.Read moreRemoving ‘barriers’ to AI innovation and investing in digital financial assetsThe order: During his first week in office, Trump signed an executive order calling for a review of all Biden policies on AI, to remove policies that “act as barriers to American AI innovation”. A second order called for a working group to start work on crypto regulations.What Trump said: “We must develop AI systems that are free from ideological bias or engineered social agendas” to maintain the US’s dominant position in AI technology, the order states.What it means: Former PayPal executive David Sacks has been tasked with leading a group to develop an AI action plan. Meanwhile another working group will start work on crypto regulations.Ending birthright citizenshipThe order: On his first day in office, Trump targeted automatic citizenship for US-born children of both undocumented people and some legal immigrants.What Trump said: The order specifies that it would limit birthright citizenship if a person’s “mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth”, or “when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States at the time of said person’s birth was lawful but temporary”.What it means: Birthright citizenship, which guarantees citizenship to anyone born on US soil, is protected by the 14th amendment and any attempt to revoke it will bring immediate legal challenges. The order was temporarily blocked on 23 January, with the judge calling it “blatantly unconstitutional”.Read moreskip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPut a freeze on refugee admissionsThe order: Trump signed an order suspending the country’s refugee resettlement program starting on 27 January. Refugees maybe only be admitted on a case-by-case basis so long as their entry is in the “national interest”.What Trump said: The order cited “record levels of migration” to the US and said the country did not have the ability to “absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees”.What it means: Advocates say the move put lives in danger and has left families devastated. Thousands of refugees now stranded around the globe.Read moreLeaving the World Health OrganizationThe order: Trump signed an order to have the US exit the World Health Organization (WHO).What Trump said: “World Health ripped us off, everybody rips off the United States. It’s not going to happen any more,” Trump said at the signing. He accused the WHO of mishandling the Covid-19 pandemic and other international health crises.What it means: The US will leave the WHO in 12 months’ time and stop all financial contributions to its work. The US is the biggest financial backer to the United Nations health agency.Read moreRenaming the Gulf of MexicoThe order: Trump ordered two name changes: the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s Mount Denali.What Trump said: “President Trump is bringing common sense to government and renewing the pillars of American Civilization,” the executive order said in part.What it means: Trump ordered the Gulf of Mexico to be renamed the “Gulf of America” and will rechristen Alaska’s Mount Denali as Mount McKinley.It will have no bearing on what names are used internationally.Read moreRevoking electric vehicle targetsThe order: Trump revoked a non-binding executive order signed by Joe Biden aimed at making half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 electric.What Trump said: “The United States will not sabotage our own industries while China pollutes with impunity,” Trump said.What it means: Part of an effort to repeal Biden’s environmental protections, Trump has also promised to roll back auto pollution standards finalized by Biden’s administration last spring.Read moreReclassifying federal employees, making them easier to fireThe order: Trump’s executive order reclassified thousands of federal employees as political hires, making it much easier for them to be fired.What Trump said: Aides to the president have long heralded mass government firings as part of an attack on the so-called “administrative” or “deep” state.What it means: Trump in effect reinstates “Schedule F”, an executive order he signed in the last year of his first term, seeking to reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers. (Biden rescinded the order.)Key aides to Trump have called for mass government firings. Project 2025 made attacks on the deep or administrative state a core part of Trump’s second term. The rightwing playbook called for civil servants deemed politically unreliable to be fired and replaced by conservatives.Read moreDeclaring a national energy emergency and ‘unleash’ oil production in AlaskaThe order: Trump declared a national energy emergency as part of a barrage of pro-fossil fuel actions and efforts to “unleash” already booming US energy production that included also rolling back restrictions in drilling in Alaska and undoing a pause on gas exports.What Trump said: The order means “you can do whatever you have to do to get out of that problem and we do have that kind of emergency,” Trump said. The order also says it is US policy for the country to “fully avail itself of Alaska’s vast lands and resources”.What it means: The declaration would allow his administration to fast-track permits for new fossil fuel infrastructure. It is likely that the order, part of a broader effort to roll back climate policy, will face legal challenges.Read moreCreating a policy recognizing only two gendersThe order: Trump signed an order to remove “gender ideology guidance” from federal government communication, policies and forms. The order makes it official policy that there are “only two genders, male and female”.What Trump said: “Agencies will cease pretending that men can be women and women can be men when enforcing laws that protect against sex discrimination,” the order states.What it means: The order reverses a Biden-era executive action on the acceptance of gender identity.Read morePausing the TikTok banThe order: Trump signed an executive order temporarily delaying the enforcement of a federal ban on TikTok for at least 75 days.What Trump said: “I guess I have a warm spot for TikTok that I didn’t have originally,” Trump said at the White House, as he signed executive orders, according to the New York Times.What it means: Trump ordered his attorney general to not enforce the law requiring TikTok’s sale. Trump says the pause allows for time to chart an “appropriate course forward” to protect national security and not abruptly shut down the popular app. In his first term, Trump favored a TikTok ban, but has since changed his position due to factors including his own popularity on the app.Read moreRescinding 78 Biden-era executive actionsThe order: Trump ordered 78 Biden-era executive actions to be rescinded, including at least a dozen measures supporting racial equity and combating discrimination against gay and transgender people.What Trump said: “I’ll revoke nearly 80 destructive and radical executive actions of the previous administration,” Trump told a crowd in Washington after his inaugural speech. He also said he would end policy “trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life” and push for a “color blind and merit-based” society.What it means: The orders signal a reversal of Biden-era policy that prioritized implementing diversity measures across the federal government. Trump repealed orders signed by Biden advancing racial equity for underserved communities and the aforementioned order combating discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation.Declaring a national border emergencyThe order: Trump signed an order at the White House declaring an emergency at the southern US border, along with several other immigration-related policies.What Trump said: “All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came,” Trump said in his inauguration speech.What it means: The executive action paves the way to send US troops to the southern border and makes good on campaign promises to implement hardline immigration policies. There are limited details about how the administration plans to execute its sprawling set of immigration actions that were all but certain to face legal and logistical challenges.Immigrant communities across the country are bracing for Trump’s promise to carry out the “largest deportation program in American history”, beginning as early as Tuesday morning.Read moreIssuing pardons for January 6 defendantsThe order: Trump issued pardons for offenders and commutations related to the January 6 attack on the Capitol. He will direct the Department of Justice to dismiss cases currently in progress.What Trump said: “I’m going to be signing on the J6 hostages, pardons, to get them out,” Trump said during his rally speech. “We’ll be signing pardons for a lot of people, a lot of people.” Trump said he has pardoned about 1,500 defendants charged in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol and issued six commutations.What it means: Trump made his pledge to issue pardons for those with convictions related to the January 6 Capitol attack a core part of his re-election campaign. On the campaign trail, Trump often featured the national anthem sung by prisoners in a Washington DC jail. There are more than 1,500 people federally charged with associated charges.With Trump back in the White House, justice department investigations into January 6 crimes are expected to cease.Read moreWithdrawing from the Paris climate agreementThe order: Trump issued an executive action withdrawing the US from the 2015 Paris agreement, along with a letter informing the United Nations of the decision.What Trump said: “I am immediately withdrawing from the unfair, one-sided Paris Climate Accord rip-off” Trump said during a rally at the Capital One Arena. In his inaugural speech, Trump said he would use executive action to “end the Green New Deal”.What it means: In 2017, Trump exited the Paris agreement. Upon taking office in 2021, Biden rejoined. Monday’s order makes good on a Trump election promise to withdraw from the 2015 global treaty seeking to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis.Exiting the Paris agreement is part of Trump’s broader efforts to roll back climate protections and policy. Trump has described Biden’s efforts to grow the US’s clean energy sector as “the green new scam”.Read more This explainer was first published on 29 January 2025 and is being regularly updated to ensure that it reflects latest news developments. The date of the most recent update can be found in the timestamp at the top of the page. Any significant corrections made to this or previous versions of the article will continue to be footnoted in line with Guardian editorial policy. This article was amended on 30 January 2025. A previous version said the birthright citizenship executive order affected children of immigrants in the country illegally. It applies to children both of undocumented people and some legal immigrants. The subheading of this article was amended on 6 February 2025. An earlier version incorrectly said Donald Trump had abolished the Department of Education. More
