Immigrant detention has been controversial from the days of Ellis and Angel Islands in the late 1800s through the emergence of a for-profit detention system in the 1980s and up until today. Although immigration restrictionists and many DHS officials view immigrant detention as necessary to deter immigration to the United…

Just a quick announcement today related to recent research published by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. The number of immigrants currently held in detention centers by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is the lowest since May 2021, with ICE’s detained population declining to 17,984 at the end…

According to UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi this morning, more than half a million people have fled Ukraine as a result of the Russian invasion of the country and sustained fighting that has taken place over the last several days. The European response to Ukrainians fleeing the…

If you find yourself downloading and organizing a lot of PDF documents, particularly for research purposes, you can save yourself a considerable amount of time by automating parts of this process. After receiving a few curious responses to a post about this yesterday on Twitter, I decided to write up…

Government agencies should stop using tweets as a replacement for issuing clear policy guidance, even in emergency situations. It’s time we talk about the EOIR’s Twitter account. It might seem odd to devote an entire post to this topic, but let me start by explaining why I think it is…

As the end of 2021 approaches, I am reminded of Judith Schalansky’s recent book An Inventory of Losses which asks the question: “Which more terrifying: the notion that everything comes to an end, or the thought that it may not?” Schalansky, whom I first encountered in Atlas of Remote Islands…