- On Friday, the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston sided with plaintiffs against the Trump Administration’s efforts to deny birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment. The court was clear that this was not a hard decision to reach, despite the fact that the opinion was 100 pages long. This is the second federal appeals court to rule against the administration, joining the 9th Circuit which had reached a similar conclusion in July. The administration had already appealed the 9th Circuit decision to the Supreme Court with oral arguments expected in late winter or early spring with a decision likely to come out in early summer.
- With the start of a new federal fiscal year at the beginning of the month, the Trump Administration is set to announce new refugee admission figures for fiscal year 2026. While nothing official has been announced, media reports indicate that the government is looking to limit the number of refugee admissions to only 7,500, a significant drop from the 125,000 admissions set in the last year of the Biden Administration. There are also worries that the administration will focus on admitting members of the Afrikaner minority in South Africa ahead of those who have already been approved for refugee status after two years of thorough vetting by the US government and various NGOs.
- Since early in the Trump Administration, developers have been creating phone apps to track ICE enforcement activities as a way to warn our communities. On Thursday, both Apple and Google announced that they were removing such apps from their webstores following pressure from the Trump Administration. While these apps still exist and work as normal for those who already have them installed, new users will be unable to download and use them.
- In Chicago, federal immigration officials continue to use violent tactics in going after those suspected of civil violations. Many are already familiar with the raid last week on an apartment building on the city’s South Side where DHS used blackhawk helicopters and flashbang grenades in an operation that looked more like a military assault than a civil law enforcement action. That operation resulted in 37 arrests and a number of US citizen children being zip-tied and taken into custody. DHS has also been using such tactics against peaceful protesters, even going so far as to tear gas officers with the Broadview, IL police department.
- The Trump Administration has expanded its attacks on immigrant children with operation “Freaky Friday”. Under this new practice, unaccompanied children started receiving letters from ICE threatening them with indefinite detention after they turn 18 unless they withdraw their applications for humanitarian relief and self-deport. This is only the latest in a long list of actions removing protections for unaccompanied minors under both Trump Administrations and comes as a federal judge blocked the administration from detaining unaccompanied minors once they turn 18.