• Longest Drug-Smuggling Tunnel Discovered under U.S.-Mexico Border

    Last week the DEA announced the discovery of the longest drug-smuggling tunnel ever to be found on – or, rather, under — the U.S.-Mexican border. The tunnel was more than 1.3 kilometers long, and it was dug 21 meters below the surface. It is equipped with rail cart system, elevator, high voltage electrical cables, ventilation, and a drainage system.

  • U.S. Plans to Collect DNA from Nearly a Million Immigrants Despite Charges It Violates Privacy

    The Trump administration is pushing ahead with a project that could lead to the government collecting DNA from hundreds of thousands of detained immigrants, some as young as 14 years old, alarming civil rights advocates. Once fully underway, the DNA program could become the largest U.S. law enforcement effort to systemically collect genetic material from people not accused of a crime.

  • Supreme Court Allows Public Charge Clause that Kept Nazi-Era Refugees from the U.S.

    In the late 1930s, roughly 300,000 additional Jewish refugees could have gained entry to the U.S. without exceeding the nation’s existing quotas. The primary mechanism that kept them out: the immigration law’s “likely to become a public charge” clause. “Many – perhaps most – were forced into hiding, imprisoned in concentration camps and ghettos, and deported to extermination centers,” Laurel Leff writes. “As someone who has studied European Jews’ attempts to escape Nazi persecution and immigrate to the U.S., the administration’s evocation of the public charge clause is chilling.”

  • Greece to Deploy Floating Barrier to Stop Migrants in Aegean Sea

    The Greek government is considering installing a “floating protection system” to stop migrant arrivals from the Turkish coast. The system would involve setting up nets or barriers to stop boats making the crossing. The barrier would be put in place north of the island of Lesbos, where migrants often make the crossing over a relatively short stretch of water. The plan is one more indication that the conservative government, under Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has taken a tougher stand on immigration since coming to power last year.

  • Number of Illegal Immigrants in Europe Declines

    The number of illegal immigrants in Europe (EU states plus Switzerland, Norway, and Iceland), including asylum seekers, increased substantially between 2014 and 2016, reaching about 5 million, but has been declining since, and now stands at about 4.8 million. Pew Research Center notes that the number of illegal immigrants corresponds to less than 1 percent of the European population — compared to the United States, where illegal immigrants account for about 3.4 percent of the U.S. population.

  • DHS Begins MPP Returns at Nogales Port of Entry in Arizona

    The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that on Thursday it started processing migrants for return to Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) at the Nogales Port of Entry south of Tucson, Arizona. This brings the total number of ports of entry where MPP returns will be made to seven.

  • The Trump Administration Knew Migrant Children Would Suffer from Family Separations. The Government Ramped Up the Practice Anyway.

    Newly obtained government documents show how the Trump administration’s now-blocked policy to separate all migrant children from parents led social workers to frantically begin tracking thousands of children seized at the southern border and compile reports on cases of trauma.

  • Social Media Vetting of Visa Applicants Violates the First Amendment

    Beginning in May, the State Department has required almost every applicant for a U.S. visa—more than fourteen million people each year—to register every social media handle they’ve used over the past five years on any of twenty platforms. “There is no evidence that the social media registration requirement serves the government’s professed goals” of “strengthen” the processes for “vetting applicants and confirming their identity,” Carrie DeCell and Harsha Panduranga write, adding: “The registration requirement chills the free speech of millions of prospective visitors to the United States, to their detriment and to ours,” they write.

  • As Government Prepares to Seize More Land for a Border Wall, Some Texas Landowners Prepare to Fight

    In Laredo, border landowners are receiving letters from the federal government, requesting permission to enter their land for surveying. “Hell no, we’re not signing anything,” one recipient said.

  • Sending Refugees Back Makes the World More Dangerous

    The headline-grabbing assertions that the world is witnessing an unprecedented refugee crisis are both misleading and dangerous, Stephanie Schwartz writes in Foreign Policy. The number of refugees worldwide has nearly doubled in the past decade, she says,  but if there is a crisis today, it is one of refugee return, which contributes to the perpetuation of conflict and instability in the country or region of origin.

  • Report: DHS Lacked Technology to Track Separated Migrant Families

    The Department of Homeland Security lacked a technology system to efficiently track separated migrant families during the execution of the zero tolerance immigration policy in 2018, a report released Wednesday by the agency’s inspector general found.

  • DHS OIG’ Report on Family Separation: Summary

    In a report titled DHS Lacked Technology Needed to Successfully Account for Separated Migrant Families, the Inspector General of DHS say that “U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) adopted various ad hoc methods to record and track family separations, but these methods led to widespread errors.” The IG adds: “These conditions persisted because CBP did not address its known IT deficiencies adequately before implementing Zero Tolerance in May 2018. DHS also did not provide adequate guidance to personnel responsible for executing the Zero Tolerance Policy.”

  • Political Preferences Play a Role in Migrants’ Choice of Destination Country

    It may not be just location, location, location that influences where people move to in the United States, but also politics, politics, politics, according to a team of researchers. In a study of county-to-county migration patterns in the U.S., the researchers found that when people migrate, they tend to move to other counties that reflect their political preferences. They added that the pattern also suggests that people moving from moderate partisan counties are just as likely to move to extreme partisan counties as they are to move to other moderate counties.

  • With Gang Violence Rising, Sweden Searches for Answers

    Crime in general in on the decline in Sweden, but violent crime – shooting, explosions, and killing – has been on a stead rise since 2014. Experts note that the violence is not perpetrated by organized gangs. Rather, it is carried out by “loose groups” without a real hierarchical structure or recruitment process: According to the researchers, a majority of the young people involved in the violence are of foreign origin, but most have been born in Sweden.

  • DHS Sued to Obtain Information about Rapid DNA Testing of Migrant Families at the Border

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) earlier this week to obtain information that will shine a light on the agency’s use of Rapid DNA technology on migrant families at the border to verify biological parent-child relationships. Refusing to provide DNA carries threat that children will be separated from families.