As part of its ongoing war on the nation’s asylum system, the Trump administration declared migrants who travel through a third country before reaching the U.S.-Mexico border are ineligible for asylum. The SPLC filed a federal lawsuit challenging this most recent attempt to ban asylum.
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After Florida voters overwhelmingly passed Amendment 4 in 2018, which restored the right to vote to over 1.4 million residents who had completed their sentences for felony convictions, the Legislature introduced and passed a law known as SB 7066, which requires people with past felony...
Federal immigration authorities detained thousands of people each month in Georgia’s Irwin County Detention Center and Stewart Detention Center, even though many of these individuals were found eligible for release. Hundreds remained in detention because immigration officials refused to set an...
When a group of churches in Phoenix began helping immigrants released from the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), two Arizona-based groups – including an SPLC-designated hate group – began threatening the churches and harassing the pastors and project volunteers. The SPLC...
Under the Trump administration, parole approvals for asylum-seekers have dropped sharply, despite a still-applicable 2009 policy directing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to release asylum-seekers who lawfully present themselves at official ports of entry, establish their identity and...
The city of New Orleans operates a sophisticated video surveillance system throughout town. While city employees frequently provide police and prosecutors with video footage to aid criminal cases, the city will not even provide a simple map of the camera locations to aid attorneys representing...
The Trump administration violated its obligations under both U.S. and international law when it instituted a policy forcing asylum seekers to return to Mexico to wait for their hearings in immigration court. The SPLC and its allies filed a federal lawsuit to end the policy.
The lawsuit,...
Peter Sean Brown was illegally detained in Florida’s Monroe County jail for deportation despite his repeated pleas to authorities that he was a U.S. citizen and the county’s own jail file showing that he was born in Philadelphia. The SPLC filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Brown, whose Fourth...
In 2018, the Duval County School Board in Florida began hiring armed civilians, known as “school safety assistants,” to patrol the district’s elementary schools. The program threatened the safety of thousands of students by opening the door for inadequately trained assistants – who are not law...
Alabama unlawfully suspended the driver’s licenses of thousands of people unable to pay traffic tickets. The SPLC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the state from suspending licenses without considering a person’s ability to pay and finding that the person willfully failed to pay. It also sought...
