After 15 months of lawlessness and cruelty, ICE and CBP want even more money

Millions of working Americans across the country finished filing their income taxes on Tax Day this week. Their hard-earned dollars help fund programs essential to our daily lives, including public schools, fire departments, Social Security, Medicare, and SNAP. These services – healthcare and food nutrition, in particular – have become only more critical during a stark economic moment where inflation has surged to a two-year high, gas prices are only getting worse due to an entirely avoidable quagmire, and working families are being squeezed from just about every direction. 

You’d think the administration would stop, take a step back, and focus on improving lives, including how to best use the tax dollars that working Americans send to federal coffers every April 15. 

Nope. They’re only doubling down on their deadly mass deportation obsessions, with Donald Trump and de-facto president Stephen Miller now seeking to push tens of billions more into their mass deportation machine through another reconciliation bill. Some analysts estimate the demand could total at least $50 billion. Keep in mind this comes on top of the $191 billion in mass deportation funding they already funneled to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) last summer.

AMERICA GETS SICKER

Last year’s ugly budget law handed nearly $200 billion over to mass deportation agencies at the expense of our national community’s health, with experts finding that harms to federal Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act – including $990 billion in cuts to the former to help fund mass deportations and tax cuts for the wealthy – will ultimately leave more than 10 million people uninsured by 2034.

Meanwhile, Americans are worried sick – literally – about how to afford a doctor’s visit as mass deportation agents boast about getting bonuses for harassing American teenagers. In one Gallup poll, 61% of Americans said they worry “a great deal” about healthcare affordability, naming it their number one domestic concern. The administration has had the gall to tell Americans to sacrifice amid this economic turmoil but one-third of Americans said they’ve already been cutting back on utilities, driving less, stretching out medications, and even having to borrow money in order to pay for healthcare, Gallup said.

“These financial trade-offs are far more common among Americans who do not have health insurance, with 62% saying they have made at least one sacrifice to pay for healthcare, including 32% who have borrowed money and 24% who have prolonged medication. But even among those with insurance, close to three in 10 have made at least one sacrifice.”

AMERICA GETS HUNGRIER 

Millions of children and families will sit at an empty table during meal times, after the ugly budget law cut $187 billion from the life-saving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) through 2034. It is the largest cut to food assistance in the program’s history, stripping support from 42 million Americans who rely on it for an average of $6.20 a day in grocery help. 

That bears repeating: $6.20 a day – and when the mass deportation arm of the administration has been burning through money like it’s going out of style, including blowing $220 million on a vanity ad blitz and leasing a $70 million luxury jet that “features a bedroom with a queen bed, showers, a kitchen, four large flat-screen TVs and even a bar,” NBC News reported. As the administration has declared that the luxury jet stays, everyday Americans say being able to afford to feed themselves and their families is one of their top worries. 

In Michigan, for example, food banks and shelters say they’re straining to help families that are struggling due to cuts.

“We’re seeing the people who, their benefits have been cut, and they’re coming to us for services,” Chad Audi, president and CEO of the Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries, told the Michigan Independent. “Especially people who are depending on SNAP or people who were getting some type of grant from the state or federal funds, they now don’t receive it, they got cut out. And then they come to the shelter for service.”

AMERICA IN DANGER

 The administration’s anti-immigrant obsessions are making us all less safe, after pulling 23,000 federal officers from the FBI, ATF, DEA, and U.S. Marshals off their core missions and reassigning them to round up our immigrant neighbors. This mass deportation agenda has in fact been a boon to child predators, who may now have a greater chance of being able to evade accountability for their despicable crimes after the administration diverted agents from their investigative work so they can instead help assist in immigration enforcement. 

“The shift has had consequences. Homeland security investigators worked approximately 33 percent fewer hours on child exploitation cases from February through April compared to their average in prior years,” The New York Times reported in November. Hany Farid, a computer scientist who helped create software that aids agents in their investigations, called the diversion of resources heartbreaking. “You can’t say you care about kids when you’re diverting actual resources that are protecting children,” he told The NY Times.

Our communities are less safe in other ways too. “At FEMA, senior staff typically in charge of the nation’s disaster response coordinated a recruitment program for Department of Defense employees to volunteer for southern border assignments, according to internal agency information obtained by NOTUS,” the outlet reported. “FEMA also hosted recruitment activities for DOD officials, and agency staff was paid overtime to work on the coordination effort, according to information reviewed by NOTUS.”

CRUELTY RAGES ON – PAID BY YOUR TAXES

The $45 billion in detention funding is resulting in human rights abuses like those recently documented at Arizona facilities, where federal lawmakers conducting unannounced inspections said detained immigrants awaiting deportation flights were treated worse than “animals.” Families report their detained loved ones sleeping on concrete floors in overcrowded cells reeking of feces and vomit. Federal immigration officials have boldly claimed they don’t need any warrants to forcibly enter homes in order to detain our neighbors and throw them into these facilities.

Immigration officials have also spent over $1 billion in taxpayer funds purchasing nearly  a dozen warehouses to convert into mass detention camps for our immigrant neighbors. In Georgia, one proposed site would be larger than any single jail or prison building in the entire country. Meanwhile, Trump and Miller have detained more than 6,200 children since returning to power, subjecting them to inadequate medical care, poor nutrition and education, and possible lifelong trauma. When experts have said that even short amounts of detention can be harmful to children, nearly half of these kids have been held longer than the 20-day limit set by decades-old court settlements. 

Five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos had been held at the migrant family jail in South Texas, and continues to struggle with the trauma of his abduction and detention, his family and advocates say. “My boy is very different,” said his dad, Adrián Conejo Arias. His mom, Erika Ramos, said Liam Ramos “still lives in fear when he sees law enforcement,” People reported. 

Americans have made clear they want common-sense reforms to these lawless and deadly immigration enforcement agencies. That’s why a majority of voters have said they approve of shutdown demands. And, they want their hard-earned dollars spent wisely and to the benefit of their communities. 

Instead, affordable and quality healthcare will remain out of reach for far too many, children will head to school with empty bellies, and our communities will remain less safe while those in power only embolden our foes – all so mass deportation can rage on.

Kavanaugh claimed wrongful targeting of Americans would be a mild inconvenience. He’s out of touch with the real world, Sotomayor suggested

In her first public remarks concerning last fall’s ruling from the Supreme Court’s conservative majority giving mass deportation agents the green light to carry out state-sanctioned racial profiling, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor singled out the un-American concurrence from colleague Brett Kavanaugh, which shockingly insisted that any wrongful targeting of American citizens by ICE would prove nothing more than a mild inconvenience.

Kavanaugh might be a bit out of touch with the real world, the nation’s first Latina justice suggested at an April 7 event hosted by the University of Kansas School of Law.

“I had a colleague in that case who wrote, you know, these are only temporary stops,” she said, referencing these now-notorious Kavanaugh stops. “This is from a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.”

“Those hours that they took you away, nobody’s paying that person,” Sotomayor continued, pointing to the time that Americans targeted under Kavanaugh stops are ripped from their jobs and lives. “And that makes a difference between a meal for him and his kids that night and maybe just cold supper.”

In the court’s shadow docket ruling last September, Kavanaugh repeatedly claimed that the wrongful targeting of Americans would prove largely inconsequential to their everyday lives, writing that if the targeted person turns out to be a U.S. citizen, “that individual will be free to go after the brief encounter.” Questioning in this situation is “typically brief,” he claimed, “and those individuals may promptly go free after making clear to the immigration officers that they are U.S. citizens or otherwise legally in the United States.” 

Out here in reality, this wasn’t the case at all for Brian Morales, a working American who was targeted in a Kavanaugh stop. Despite being born here, Morales was racially profiled, threatened with bunk felony charges and years of imprisonment, and then summarily kicked out of his own country days ago despite his repeated protestations to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents that he was an American, as the San Antonio Current revealed in an April 13 article titled “Report: DHS deported a U.S. citizen arrested near San Antonio.”

“Morales alleges three separate CBP agents said they didn’t believe him when he told them he had a birth certificate, Social Security card and other ways of proving his citizenship,” the report said. “The officers threatened him with a fraud charge and five years’ imprisonment if he didn’t sign a voluntary departure order, he also maintains.” Mass deportation agents – which the administration continues to refuse to rein in, prolonging this entirely avoidable partial government shutdown – are “often ignoring people when they say, ‘Hey, I am a U.S. citizen here’s the proof,’” remarked Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX).

Other working Americans targeted in these dreaded Kavanaugh stops include George Retes, the disabled U.S. military veteran who was trying to get to his job as a security guard at a California farm when he was attacked with a chemical agent and brutally dragged out of his vehicle at gunpoint, which resulted in his days-long detention despite facing no charges at all. Andrea Velez, a U.S. citizen and Cal Poly Pomona graduate, was also dragged by masked men and subsequently jailed for two days despite trying to tell agents that she had I.D. in her purse. Her arrest was so violent that her mom and sister, who witnessed the incident, thought she was being kidnapped. And in Alabama, American citizen and construction worker Leo Garcia Venegas was targeted in a Kavanaugh stop not once, but twice. During both incidents, agents accused him of faking his REAL ID, continuing a trend where federal officers simply refuse to acknowledge Americans of color are “real” Americans.

Not even U.S. citizen kids have been immune from Kavanaugh stops despite their age. During emotional testimony in a March hearing, 16-year-old Arnoldo Bazan bravely shared how he was physically, verbally, and emotionally assaulted by mass deportation agents who were abducting his father.

“Officers grabbed me and ripped my shirt. One officer put me in a choke-hold. The officer choking me told me, ‘You’re done.’ His grip was so tight that I wondered if I would make it out alive,” Arnoldo testified. “With all of my strength, I screamed that I was underage and from the United States.” When he was finally let go, the teen began yelling to bystanders that he had proof on his phone that agents had tried to flip his family’s car. That’s when the same agent then seized his phone, threw him into a vehicle, and began to verbally abuse him.

“They mocked us,” he continued. “They told me I was ‘gay for crying,’ ‘an illegal idiot,’ a ‘border hopper,’ and other demeaning words. These officers even celebrated that they caught two people and that their bonus would be good.” Arnoldo and his dad were then driven back to their house, where the teen said he was able to pray with his dad for a final time. “I tried to hug him, but he couldn’t hug me back because he was handcuffed.”

“Why are we allowing ICE agents to terrorize our neighbors and traumatize our children?” an educator asked at the hearing. “Why are we watching as laws are broken in broad daylight?”

As Justice Sotomayor said in her remarks, these are stolen hours that threaten Americans’ livelihoods, wellbeing including mental health, and in the case of Morales, their very place in this country. But as legal observers noted, her rare critique also appeared to be an attempt to get some sense into her colleague as rising numbers of Americans are demanding accountability from unchecked federal enforcement agencies.  

“I do think she’s trying to give Kavanaugh a second bite at the apple,” Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern said. “She didn’t just say: He’s wrong and he’s bad. She suggested that he just didn’t really understand what was involved with these detentions because he’s sheltered and privileged. And that leaves open the possibility that if he did understand what they entailed, he would understand that precedent doesn’t actually allow them. So in the future, that precedent could be restored.” For the sake of the constitutional rights of all, we should all hope the same.

Immigrants regardless of legal status contribute their share – and then some

It bears repeating every Tax Day: our immigrant neighbors regardless of legal status are not only essential threads in the fabric of America, they make vast financial contributions that help sustain our public schools, libraries, fire departments, and essential federal programs like Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance to the benefit of us all. 

$651.9 BILLION: The amount that immigrants overall paid through their tax contributions in 2023, including $419.8 BILLION in federal tax contributions and $232.1 BILLION in local and state tax contributions, according to research from the American Immigration Council (AIC). 

“In the United States, immigrants are more likely to be working-age than their U.S.-born counterparts,” researchers said. “This means they are more likely to be active in the labor force, allowing them to contribute to the economy not only as consumers but also as taxpayers, helping fund social services and programs like Medicare and Social Security.”

$215.8 BILLION: The amount that immigrants contributed to Social Security in 2023 according to AIC. Last year, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted a Social Security trustees’ report highlighting how immigration actually “improves the trust fund’s solvency” for all. That report noted that higher levels of immigration “help the trust fund balances” while decreased levels will only “increase the funding shortfall.”

$58.7 BILLION: The amount that immigrants contributed to Medicare in 2023 according to AIC.

$96.7 BILLION: The amount that undocumented immigrants paid through their tax contributions in 2022, including $59.4 BILLION in federal tax contributions and $37.3 BILLION in local and state tax contributions, according to research from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP).

“Six states raised more than $1 billion each in tax revenue from undocumented immigrants living within their borders,” researchers said. “California ($8.5 billion), Texas ($4.9 billion), New York ($3.1 billion), Florida ($1.8 billion), Illinois ($1.5 billion), and New Jersey ($1.3 billion).”

And, unlike the richest Americans in the country, these immigrant workers contribute more than their fair share. ITEP’s research found that across 40 states, “undocumented immigrants pay higher state and local tax rates than the top 1 percent of households living within their borders.”

$25.7 BILLION: The amount that undocumented immigrants contributed to Social Security in 2022 according to ITEP. While these contributors have helped sustain this literal lifeline for millions of elderly Americans, disabled Americans, and American children who have lost one or both parents, they’re ineligible for benefits unless they manage to find a way to adjust their immigration status. 

$6.4 BILLION: The amount that undocumented immigrants contributed to Medicare in 2022 according to ITEP. Despite the billions in annual contributions, these workers are largely blocked from federally-funded healthcare services. U.S. law makes emergency room exceptions “limited only to those needed to stabilize an individual who is at risk of permanent injury or death,” AIC said.

$1.8 BILLION: The amount that undocumented immigrants contributed to unemployment insurance in 2022 according to ITEP. Once again, these contributors are blocked from receiving benefits despite paying into the system and being affected by many of the same factors that affect other workers, such as pandemics and economic downturns.

$11.5 BILLION: The amount that Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)-eligible immigrants paid through their tax contributions in 2023, including $6.6 BILLION in federal tax contributions and $4.9 BILLION in local and state tax contributions, according to AIC. 

$31.2 BILLION: The amount that refugees paid through their tax contributions in 2023, including $19.9 BILLION in federal tax contributions and $11.4 BILLION in local and state tax contributions, according to AIC.

$5.2 BILLION: The amount that Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders paid through their tax contributions in 2023, including $3.1 BILLION in federal tax contributions and $2.1 BILLION in local and state tax contributions, according to AIC.

Among these TPS holders is Ketlie Moise, an entrepreneur who worked two jobs to open her restaurant and is among the thousands of Haitian immigrants who helped revitalize Springfield, Ohio. “New Caribbean restaurants and food trucks have opened across south Springfield where once abandoned neighborhoods are now bustling with residents,” as The Guardian reported in 2024. Across the country, immigrant entrepreneurs have brought in $116.2 BILLION in total income, with nearly half of Fortune 500 companies counting immigrants or children of immigrants as founders, AIC said. 

Ahead of Tax Day, it’s another important reminder that giving immigrants the security and freedom they need to succeed actually lifts up everybody.

State and local government action is helping eliminate “one of the Trump regime’s key tactics for mass deportation and family separation,” one advocate said

Local and state lawmakers all across the country have been taking substantive action to push back against the Trump administration’s brutal mass deportation efforts, in particular proposing and passing legislation to rein in deeply-flawed 287(g) agreements, a controversial federal policy that allows local law enforcement officers to be deputized as ICE agents and that has “exploded in popularity” under Trump’s second term, as Bolts reports.

RESTORING TRUST

In New Jersey, Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s signature late last month makes the state the 10th in the nation to ban 287(g) agreements, which experts have said make communities less safe by perpetuating racial profiling in addition to wasting local law enforcement resources. The Immigrant Trust Directive, which codifies a 2018 directive from then-Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, is notable for “eliminating one of the Trump regime’s key tactics for mass deportation and family separation,” said Make the Road New Jersey.

“Sherrill also signed two other pieces of legislation aimed at protecting New Jersey’s immigrants,” Bolts reports. “The Privacy Protection Act, which restricts when local and state agencies can collect information about immigration status or share it with the federal government; another law requires ICE agents to show their faces and provide identification before making an arrest.”

Make the Road New Jersey’s Nedia Morsy told Bolts that passage of the bills under new state leadership shows “the state legislature and the [Sherrill] administration is recognizing that there is rising authoritarianism and there is a need to act.”

STOPPING HARMFUL DETENTION

New Mexico also moved to ban 287(g) agreements, after Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed into law a sweeping plan that also prohibits localities and the state government from entering into agreements to detain immigrants for civil immigration violations, as well as stops the use of public lands for immigration-related detention, a coalition of groups said.

They said the legislation makes the state a leader in “comprehensively” rejecting “involvement in a deportation system marked by violence, abuse, and death.”

“New Mexico’s three detention centers have facilitated this system of harm, with documented cases of excessive use of solitary confinement, inadequate medical care, lack of clean drinking water and food, and five deaths in custody in recent years,” the groups said following Gov. Lujan Grisham’s Feb. signature. “The Immigrant Safety Act ensures New Mexico will no longer be complicit in these abuses.”

The groups note the alarming rise in deaths in ICE custody, with one expert noting that deaths have been coming at the rate of one every six days.

ICE ACCOUNTABILITY

In Maryland, Gov. Wes Moore signed legislation banning the state’s 287(g) contracts amid “thunderous” chants of “Si, se puede,” or “Yes, we can,” Bolts reported in Feb. “In Maryland, we defend Constitutional rights and Constitutional policing—and we will not allow untrained, unqualified, and unaccountable ICE agents to deputize our law enforcement officers,” Gov. Moore said. “Maryland is a community of immigrants, and that’s one of our greatest strengths because this country is incomplete without each and every one of us.”

More local action to protect immigrant community members came from Maryland’s Montgomery County Council earlier that month, when members unanimously passed “landmark” legislation that largely blocks county employees from inquiring about immigration status, forbids discrimination or intimidation based on immigration status, and ensures country services are accessible to all regardless of legal status.

“As an immigrant who came to this country as a teenager and faced the threat of deportation, I know firsthand the fear many families live with,” said Council President Natali Fani-González. “Montgomery County is my home—a place where I’ve raised my family. Here, we believe in treating everyone with dignity, no matter where they were born, the color of their skin, who they love, or the language they speak. This bill reflects those values.”

PROTECTING FAMILIES

In Virginia, the commonwealth’s legislature has taken “aggressive” action to try to curb the federal government’s destructive mass deportation agenda, including sending to Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s desk a number of bills that would restrict 287(g) agreements, protect sensitive locations like courthouses and schools from raids, and largely ban law enforcement officers from wearing masks, VPM News reports. Those bills have not yet been signed or vetoed as of publishing date.

One local lawmaker said in an op-ed at The Virginian-Pilot that the bills are a reflection of the uncertainty and alarm families are feeling all over the commonwealth.

“Every single day, I hear from families in my district who are terrified: parents afraid to drop their kids at school for fear of being taken; job sites vacant as workers refuse to come to work out of fear of unlawful deportation; kids going hungry because the community centers and libraries where churches hand out food are now ICE targets; and crime victims afraid to call the police,” wrote Delegate Dan Helmer. “This fear does not make communities safer. It makes everyone more vulnerable.”

OTHER LOCAL COMMUNITIES ARE ALSO ACTING

In Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh City Council this week unanimously passed a bill codifying Mayor Corey O’Connor’s position “that no city government employees may ask about a person’s immigration or citizenship status, or cooperate with federal immigration agents,” USA Today reports. In Texas, the Houston City Council approved an ordinance that “will prohibit officers from detaining people or prolonging traffic stops due to civil immigration warrants,” Houston Public Media reported. “It will also require regular reports from Mayor John Whitmire’s administration on local immigration enforcement.” And in California, the Pasadena City Council “directed the drafting of an ordinance to codify local limits on the use of city-owned property by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents,” the Pasadena Star-News reports. Click here for a deeper-dive into how communities all across the country are acting to protect their immigrant neighbors.

 

“I am grateful to the court for recognizing that what happened to me was wrong and for bringing me home,” said Maria de Jesus Estrada Juárez. “But no one should have to go through this”

DACA recipient Maria de Jesus Estrada Juárez – the California mom who was wrongly deported by ICE this past February after following the rules by attending her green card appointment – is finally back home where she belongs. 

The Sacramento Bee and advocates for the family were witnesses to Estrada Juárez’s emotional reunion with her daughter, Damaris Bello, as the pair embraced at the San Ysidro Port of Entry last week. “Estrada Juárez collapsed into her daughter’s embrace,” the report said. “For the next 20 minutes, they exchanged many tears but few words – just a flurry of hugs and kisses, trying to make up for the time apart.” Estrada Juárez – who lived in the U.S. for more than 25 years before her abrupt deportation – said she has no life “if she’s not with me.”

Estrada Juárez’s return “marks a monumental victory in the fight to uphold justice, due process, and the DACA program at a time when close to 300 DACA recipients have been detained and close to 90 deported that we know of,” the Home Is Here Coalition said in a statement. 

“The move makes Estrada Juárez one of the few people to be allowed back into the country after a deportation during President Donald Trump’s second term, according to immigration experts,” The Sacramento Bee noted. “The government does not publish data on how often federal courts order such returns — and how often DHS complies.”

This nightmare that saw Estrada Juárez detained and deported over a 24-hour-period despite holding valid protections from deportation began when she arrived at her green card appointment with paperwork in hand only to be detained by plainclothes mass deportation agents. Bello – who is sponsoring her mom and helped her prepare for the appointment – could only watch in horror and disbelief as ICE took her mom away. 

During a Washington, D.C. press event in the days that followed, Bello said she struggled to understand “how something like this can happen in a country that talks so much about fairness and justice.”

“My mom didn’t hurt anyone,” she told the world. “She showed up because she believed in the promise that if you follow the rules, things will work out. Instead, that trust was used against her. Now I wake up every day in Sacramento without my mom. I go through life pretending to be strong, but the truth is, I feel like a piece of my life has been ripped away.”

But hope for Estrada Juárez and Bello came in the form of a decisive court ruling finding that the mom “‘was removed in flagrant violation of the regulatory protections afforded to her under DACA’ and the Constitution’s Due Process Clause,” Mother Jones reported. “Upon her return, Petitioner shall be returned to the status quo, including that she shall be entitled to all the rights and benefits afforded to her by her DACA status as if her February 19, 2026 removal never occurred,” ordered U.S. District Judge Dena Coggins.

“This case makes clear that the government cannot ignore due process and basic legal protections,” attorney Stacy Tolchin told The Sacramento Bee. But that’s exactly what the federal government has been doing, by deporting close to 90 DACA recipients and detaining at least 261 others despite the fact that they hold protections issued by the same government singling them out. While Kristi Noem claimed in a Feb. 11 letter that hundreds had “criminal histories,” she provided no evidence to back that up. 

Noem has since been fired and replaced with Markwayne Mullin, who served as Oklahoma’s junior senator until his confirmation late last month. However, mass deportation architect-in-chief Stephen Miller remains in charge, highlighting the risks that continue to face Dreamers like Maria de Jesus Estrada Juárez and U.S. military spouse Annie Ramos, who was abducted by ICE last week. While Ramos tried to apply for DACA in 2020, her application “was never processed by the Trump administration because the program was halted for new applicants,” The New York Times reports.

This cog in the mass deportation machinery had its intended result. When Ramos and husband, U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Matthew Blank, traveled to a military office to finish moving into his new base in Louisiana, she instead ended up detained. The 22-year-old – who has no criminal record, teaches Sunday school, and was just months away from finishing up bachelor’s degree in biochemistry – is now at a detention camp. “I grew up here like any American,” she told The New York Times. “This is all I know. My husband and family are here.”

And Juan Chavez Velasco, who was also abducted despite holding valid DACA protections, remains separated from his newborn baby after attempting to deliver milk to her NICU unit last month. “Pulling a healthcare worker out of his job and separating him from his family during a medical crisis is inhumane, destabilizes families, weakens local economies, and once again displays the last thing this administration needs is tens of billions more for ICE and CBP, on top of the $150 billion they already have,” FWD.us said. 

Chavez Velasco’s DACA status expired while in detention and the paperwork he sent in last year to continue his deportation protections for another two years went ignored despite the federal government’s claim it continues to process renewals.

“I feel betrayed,” he told MS Now. “I feel very sad and heartbroken because I would have thought that the Trump administration would be more compassionate towards people like me who contribute to the country and have basically lived here all our lives. I love this country. I love what I’ve been able to accomplish here.”

Stories like these are “why we will not let justice end with Maria’s story,” the Home Is Here Coalition continued. 

“We will continue to fight to ensure Maria is able to stay with her family in the U.S., push for the immediate release and return of all other DACA recipients who have been wrongfully detained or deported, and demand a pathway to citizenship for the millions left vulnerable to violent anti-immigrant attacks. We hope that Maria and her family can begin to heal after surviving this trauma, and we carry her strength with us as we fight for justice and accountability for those who have not yet been able to see their loved ones again.”

“This has been one of the most painful experiences of my life. As a mother, being separated from my child like that—feeling helpless, not knowing if she was okay—broke my heart in a way I can’t fully describe,” Estrada Juárez said. “I am grateful to the court for recognizing that what happened to me was wrong and for bringing me home. But no one should have to go through this.”

The fight around birthright citizenship was at the Supreme Court, where justices on Wednesday heard arguments in Trump v. Barbara, the case around the Trump administration’s blatantly un-American effort to terminate this constitutional right – a protection explicitly guaranteed in the 14th Amendment – through an executive order.

Inside the courtroom, at least four of the conservative justices – including Chief Justice John Roberts – appeared “skeptical” of the government’s arguments, Democracy Docket observed. In a telling moment, the president reportedly left before oral arguments even finished, walking out while American Civil Liberties Union National Legal Director Cecillia Wang began her arguments. Outside the courtroom, hundreds of advocates united to voice one unequivocable message: if you’re born in America, you’re an American – period.

It’s personal for Ruth Delgado, one of the hundreds of rally attendees and Digital Media Manager at America’s Voice. “I am a U.S. citizen because the Constitution said so,” Delgado said.

“While Trump wants to revoke this constitutional right for future generations and decide who in this country gets to be an ‘American,’ we know we belong,” she continued. “I am using my voice and my privilege to #DefendBirthright for future generations to come.” Members of the crowd were heard chanting, “Defend the 14th Amendment, it is ours!’”

Rally attendees also included a descendant of Wong Kim Ark, the San Francisco-born Chinese American cook whose historic Supreme Court battle more than 125 years ago affirmed the constitutional principle that everyone born here is American. Norman Wong, Mr. Ark’s great-grandson, felt it was important to be outside the court to connect his ancestor’s fight to the struggles of today.

His great-grandfather “knew he was an American,” Mr. Wong said. “And he demanded that his citizenship be recognized. He was willing to stand up. Wong Kim Ark didn’t make the rule. He affirmed the rule.”

In his remarks to the crowd, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) said that if you want to know where to stand on birthright citizenship, all you have to do is look at what our Constitution says. “The 14th Amendment: All persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States. If you’re born here, you are a citizen. It couldn’t be more clear,” Sen. Padilla said.

“And yes, this is personal for me,” he continued. “I’m a proud citizen of the United States. And I’m a proud son of immigrants. And the moment I was born on U.S. soil, I was born a citizen.”

In his state-of-play prior to Wednesday’s oral arguments, America’s Voice legal advisor and former American Immigration Lawyers Association President David Leopold noted the far-reaching damage and chaos that will follow should the court ultimately side with the administration’s bunk legal reasoning.

“Would physicians be required to report pregnancy and maternity information to immigration authorities? Would ICE agents be stationed in hospitals? Would existing U.S. citizens face denaturalization? Would Americans be required to produce not only their own papers, but those of their parents? And perhaps most chillingly, would millions of American-born children be rendered stateless?”

Migration Policy Institute notes that over the next 50 years, an average of about 255,000 children born on U.S. soil every single year “would start life without U.S. citizenship based on their parents’ legal status.”

“This is not a serious policy proposal aimed at fixing the immigration system,” Leopold continued. “It is a signal of cruelty directed at the children of immigrants, and it serves a more nefarious goal: relegating those children into a permanent underclass, forever subject to exploitation by unscrupulous employers. It also places children who were born and raised in this country, and who are currently guaranteed citizenship, at risk of denaturalization, detention, and deportation.”

“I myself am a 14th Amendment citizen because my parents had not yet naturalized when I was born,” Wang shared following the conclusion of oral arguments in the case. “So I walked in today with the spirit of my parents, and so many people’s ancestors, in that first generation of Americans, whether they naturalized or not, I consider them all Americans.”

Rally attendee Diego Bartesaghi was also present for his community members, telling HuffPost that he rode a bus for ten hours to show his support for our constitutional values. “It is a long day,” he said. “But we are here because, you know, our democracy is under attack.”

“This is like a good opportunity to show that even though we’re fighting our own battles, we’re here together, and we’re showing that we’re not alone,” he continued. “We’re fighting for the same cause.”

Jackie Carroll-Garcia told HuffPost that her train trip to Washington, D.C. was seven hours. “An African American woman, she said she came to represent her largely Latino community and her grandchildren who have a Mexican dad,” the report said. Chef José Andrés, famed humanitarian and advocate for immigrant families, was also at the rally to argue for longer tables, not higher walls:

America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas said that for 250 years, America has been shaped by immigrants from all over the world – and the 14th Amendment has been “fundamental” to that American story. “That is my story, and the story of every American who is a descendant of an immigrant, including every Justice sitting on the Supreme Court bench today,” she said.

“The fact that the Trump Administration is now taking aim at a 14th amendment that moved America closer to realizing its founding principles that all people are created equal is a disturbing reminder of the motivations of President Trump and Stephen Miller,” Cárdenas continued. “We look to the Supreme Court to rise to the moment and reaffirm our history and our values, and to uphold the concept of a nation built on the premise of E Pluribus Unum – Out of Many, One.”

This is a guest post by David Leopold, America’s Voice Legal Advisor and former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

The debate over birthright citizenship is no longer a theoretical exercise confined to campaign trail rhetoric. What was once a fringe proposal championed by restrictionists in Congress has now become a central legal and political battle reaching the highest court in the land. As the Supreme Court hears oral arguments on the issue in Trump v. Barbara, it is worth examining what is truly at stake — not just for immigration policy, but for the foundational principles of American civil rights.

THE LEGAL AND HISTORICAL BACKDROP

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is unambiguous in its text: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” This provision was enacted during the Reconstruction era to overrule the Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott decision, which held that Black people born in the United States were not citizens but chattel to be bought, sold, and abused. For more than 150 years, the Fourteenth Amendment has shaped the nation’s understanding of citizenship and served as a cornerstone of American civil rights.

The legal precedent supporting birthright citizenship is equally well established. In the seminal 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark, Justice Horace Gray wrote for the majority that the Fourteenth Amendment “affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens.” That ruling has stood unchallenged for over a century.

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S ARGUMENT

Despite this history and precedent, the Trump administration is expected to argue that the children of undocumented immigrant parents are not subject to the “complete jurisdiction” of the United States and are therefore not covered by the Fourteenth Amendment. This tortured legal reasoning seeks to reinterpret the Amendment’s jurisdiction clause to exclude a class of people born on American soil from the constitutional guarantee of citizenship.

Efforts to restrict birthright citizenship are not new. Over the years, restrictionists have attempted to narrow the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment, first targeting Chinese immigrants in the 1800s and more recently focusing on Latino immigrants. Most recently, on January 20, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14160, titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” which aims to end birthright citizenship at birth for unauthorized immigrants as well as immigrants legally but temporarily present in the United States, such as those on student, work, or a military service member.

With the Supreme Court now being asked to weigh in, the effort has escalated from the legislative and executive arenas to the judicial one, with the Supreme Court being asked to reconsider a principle that has defined American identity for generations.

THE ‘MAGNET’ MYTH

Proponents of ending birthright citizenship have long claimed that it serves as the “biggest magnet for illegal immigration,” drawing undocumented immigrants who use so-called “anchor babies” to secure benefits for themselves. This argument is absurd on its face.

In reality, being the undocumented parent of a U.S. citizen bestows no legal right to remain in the country, let alone to obtain a green card or citizenship. Thousands of undocumented parents are deported by the Department of Homeland Security every day. A U.S. citizen child cannot even begin to sponsor a parent until the age of 21, and at that point, a parent who entered the country illegally must leave the United States to apply for an immigrant visa abroad. Once that parent departs, another provision of the law bars his or her return for 10 years due to prior unlawful presence. Add five more years from green card eligibility to citizenship, and the fastest possible path to legal status through a child born in the U.S. is a grueling 36 years.

There is simply no evidence that large numbers of people are crossing the border to give birth as a strategy for gaining citizenship. To illustrate the point, less than 2 percent of Arizona babies in 2010 were born to nonresident mothers.

WHAT IS REALLY AT STAKE

The implications of stripping birthright citizenship from the Constitution are as far-reaching as they are disturbing. If constitutional citizenship were limited to the children of U.S. citizens and green card holders, a cascade of troubling questions would follow. Would physicians be required to report pregnancy and maternity information to immigration authorities? Would ICE agents be stationed in hospitals? Would existing U.S. citizens face denaturalization? Would Americans be required to produce not only their own papers, but those of their parents? And perhaps most chillingly, would millions of American-born children be rendered stateless?

According to the Migration Policy Institute, repealing birthright citizenship would increase the undocumented population by an additional 2.7 million by 2045 and by 5.4 million by 2075. These individuals would be forced into an underclass — denied access to health care and basic services, vulnerable to exploitation and abuse, and subject to constant risk of deportation through no fault of their own.

Far from solving the nation’s immigration challenges, eliminating birthright citizenship would make America’s already fractured immigration system dramatically worse, at an enormous humanitarian cost.

THE TRUE INTENT

The absurdity of the “anchor baby” narrative reveals the true purpose of the assault on constitutional citizenship. This is not a serious policy proposal aimed at fixing the immigration system. It is a signal of cruelty directed at the children of immigrants, and it serves a more nefarious goal: relegating those children into a permanent underclass, forever subject to exploitation by unscrupulous employers. It also places children who were born and raised in this country, and who are currently guaranteed citizenship, at risk of denaturalization, detention, and deportation.

It is also critical to acknowledge the uncomfortable reality that long-standing precedent may not be enough to protect this fundamental right. There is little evidence to suggest that the current Supreme Court’s hard-core conservative majority would approach this issue free of political or ideological bias. The comforting assumption that settled law will hold must be tempered by the recognition that the Court has shown a willingness to revisit and overturn established precedent in recent years.

A DEFINING MOMENT

The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment has very little to do with immigration at its core. It is fundamentally about the preservation of civil rights. Any effort to end birthright citizenship — whether through elimination or reinterpretation of the Citizenship Clause — comes at the grave cost of abridging those rights, echoing the dark era of Dred Scott, when human beings were treated as commodities.

As the Supreme Court takes up this issue, the nation must confront what kind of country it wants to be. The answer to that question will define not only the future of immigration law, but the meaning of American citizenship itself.

“Why are we allowing ICE agents to terrorize our neighbors and traumatize our children?” asked one advocate. “Why are we watching as laws are broken in broad daylight?”

During a Congressional shadow hearing last week, the ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Integrity, Security, and Enforcement said that the federal government’s abusive mistreatment of children was so severe that it merits prosecution of mass deportation agents and compensation for victims.

“We need real accountability, because at the end of the day, the people that have been inflicting this harm need to be prosecuted,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (WA-07) said during the “Kidnapped and Disappeared: Trump’s Attack on Our Children” hearing Friday. “They need to be brought before us, and they need to be held [to] account for the trauma they have created – and we are going to have to have some form of reparation for the kids and the families that have been traumatized through all of this.”

In often-times emotional testimony, Nicole Isern, an educator from Montgomery County Public School system in Maryland, told lawmakers how mass deportation policies are posing a grave harm that traumatize children regardless of legal immigration status. Students and their families are living under “constant fear,” she said.

“We have seen ICE agents use elementary school parking lots as staging grounds. Places meant for morning drop-off have turned into sites of surveillance and intimidation. School parking lots should not be law enforcement bases or immigration checkpoints,” she testified. “We’re talking about young children in pigtails walking to school, witnessing their neighbors getting aggressively taken. Fear enveloping their whole little selves as they sit by the window on the bus, only to see hard-working neighbor put in handcuffs while his wife screams in desperation.”

Isern said this state-sanctioned violence has been having profound psychological effects on children, with parents telling her that their children have been experiencing trouble sleeping, nightmares, crying fits, and panic attacks. She said she knew of one 17-year-old who was admitted to a psychiatric facility following their mother’s abduction, while another child – just five-years-old – expressed suicidal ideations following their mother’s detention.

During his brave testimony to lawmakers, 17-year-old U.S. citizen Manny shared how he worries about family separation every time he watches his parents leave for work. He’s one of 4.7 million American citizen children who have at least one undocumented parent, according to the Center for Migration Studies. Researchers say that an estimated 5.62 million American citizen children overall have at least one undocumented family member.

“At 16, I never thought I would ever need to attend my local city council meeting, but I summoned the courage, with God’s and my family’s help, to share the pain we were feeling in our community and to fight for our rights,” Manny said. “Today, I’m 17-years-old, and never would I have imagined being in the most powerful building in the country, to share the pain that our town is experiencing, and to plead for your help.”

“Instead of messaging their friends,” teens are messaging attorneys following the detention of their family members, Isern continued. “Teens are putting college on hold, and putting all of their savings into exorbitantly high $20,000 bonds. They’re taking on jobs to avoid eviction.” Earlier this month, NBC Washington reported how Maryland teen Mark Briseno has had to get an afterschool job to help his mom with bills following his dad’s abduction by ICE.

“I send her money so she can pay the bills,” he said. “I remind her we have this bill, this bill, and we’re just working together now.” Briseno is also struggling with the reality that his dad may miss one of the most important days of his life. “My biggest thing is to let my parents, both of them, see me graduate,” he said. “That’s almost every kid’s hope, right? All my friends have their parents ready to see them graduate, but unfortunately, it’s just gonna be my mom this year.”

“Why are we allowing ICE agents to terrorize our neighbors and traumatize our children?” Isern continued in her remarks. “Why are we watching as laws are broken in broad daylight?”

During a separate hearing last week hosted by U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and Rep. Robert Garcia (CA-42), ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, 16-year-old U.S. citizen Arnoldo Bazan bravely shared how he was physically, verbally, and emotionally assaulted by mass deportation agents who were abducting his father.

“Officers grabbed me and ripped my shirt. One officer put me in a choke-hold. The officer choking me told me, ‘You’re done.’ His grip was so tight that I wondered if I would make it out alive,” Arnoldo testified. “With all of my strength, I screamed that I was underage and from the United States.” When he was finally let go, the teen began yelling to bystanders that he had proof on his phone that agents had tried to flip his family’s car. That’s when the same agent then seized his phone, threw him into a vehicle, and began to verbally abuse him.

“They mocked us,” he continued. “They told me I was ‘gay for crying,’ ‘an illegal idiot,’ a ‘border hopper,’ and other demeaning words. These officers even celebrated that they caught two people and that their bonus would be good.” Arnoldo and his dad were then driven back to their house, where the teen said he was able to pray with his dad for a final time. “I tried to hug him, but he couldn’t hug me back because he was handcuffed.”

The teen was hospitalized following his release, and to add insult to injury, later discovered that his confiscated phone – which contained video evidence that federal officers had endangered him and his dad – had been resold. “When I finally recovered, I used the application Find My to locate my iPhone 2 miles from where my father was detained,” he said. “My phone was inside a kiosk for people to sell used electronics. Someone sold my phone.”

His attempt to file a report with local police went nowhere – he was told “that they ‘can’t do anything’ to federal officers. I later learned from my dad that he was threatened. Unless he signed papers to self-deport, the government would send me to juvie and federal prison. So my father signed.” Arnoldo is now separated from his dad and continues to be affected by that violent day.

“When I go to school, I pray I come home safely,” he said. “Whenever I hear sirens or see an officer, my heart starts racing. I don’t even know when I will see my father again. I’m sharing my story so that this doesn’t happen to other people. This is not the America that I know.”

Rep. Jayapal pointed to the recent ProPublica report finding that mass deportation agents have detained the parents of more than 11,000 U.S. citizen children, including nursing babies. But the administration is not acting alone in inflicting this government-sanctioned child abuse. Last year, its Congressional allies passed legislation that turned ICE into the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the nation. Taxpayer money that could have gone to funding Head Start, paid for nutritious school meals, or opened up higher education opportunities for kids like Manny and Arnoldo is instead going to traumatize them, possibly for life.

By refusing to pass common-sense reforms to rein in the mass deportation agency it has enabled, those same lawmakers are making a deliberate decision to let this permanent damage against American children rage on.

“Having a parent kidnapped and disappeared is bad enough,” Rep. Jayapal continued during her shadow hearing. “But too often, ICE is using violence to arrest parents right in front of their children or even as ‘bait’ as we saw with the horrific case of 5-year-old Liam Ramos — the young child with the bunny ears hat that galvanized attention across the country. I thank our incredible witnesses for being here today to shine a light on the pain that Trump is causing.”

 “I’m here because of the incredible amount of cruelty that’s going on in the world,” said one rally attendee

Record-breaking “No Kings” events across every single U.S. state and territory this past weekend continued to voice fierce opposition to the Trump administration’s attacks on constitutional freedoms, paychecking-busting policies, and rampant abuses of power, from unjustified war to skyrocketing gas prices to the mass deportation agenda currently ensnaring U.S. citizens and immigrant neighbors alike.

Organizers said that Saturday’s protests – the third iteration of “No Kings” actions so far – attracted more than eight million participants across more than 3,300 events, breaking October’s record of the latest single day political protest in modern American history. For Vermonter Hannah Abrams, her attendance was a matter of affirming the humanity of her neighbors. “I’m here because of the incredible amount of cruelty that’s going on in the world,” she told NPR.

“It’s just cruel conditions for people who are taken by ICE, it’s the cruel way that they’re taken,” she said. “It’s the cruelty of our economy and how we are paying more, even though we’re told that the economy has improved. We’re cruel towards other countries, taking their leaders and deciding those leaders’ fates. I think the people who are in our military are being asked to sacrifice their lives not for freedom, but for money-hungry rulers, and that is cruel.”

See a sampling of these events below.

ALASKA

Americans rallied in roughly two dozen cities across Alaska, including Utqiaġvik, which holds the distinction of being the northernmost cities in the entire U.S. In Juneau, the state’s capital, organizers and attendees called out kitchen table issues plaguing working Americans, including rising food costs, cuts to critical federal programs like Medicare in order to fund tax cuts for billionaires, and ugly mass deportation policies oftentimes based on complete fabrications of its authority.

“ICE’s efforts are a direct attack on workers’ fundamental freedoms to work with dignity, to raise our families without the threat of violence from our government and safely return home to our loved ones at the end of a working day,” Heidi Drygas, executive director of the Alaska State Employees Association AFSCME Local 52, told Alaska Beacon.

CALIFORNIA

In Fresno, demonstrators said they were “protesting the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown for violent tactics, racial profiling and killings of protesters Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minnesota in January,” The Fresno Bee reported.

“I think it’s important to have a presence and to make people aware of all the things that are going on in our country and all the injustices, especially with ICE, and the impact that it’s having not only on our nation, but our local community and on our children in particular,” attorney Crystal Cabrera told the outlet. Many of the roughly 6,000 community members lined the streets near a Home Depot store. The chain’s locations have been the site of immigration arrests in numerous states:

In San Francisco, one rally attendee was Sandra Wong, the great-granddaughter of Wong Kim Ark, a Chinese American cook whose Supreme Court fight more than 125 years ago affirmed that constitutional principle everyone born in America is an American citizen. Norman Wong, Mr. Ark’s great-grandson, told Reuters that his ancestor “knew he was an American. And he demanded that his citizenship be recognized. He was willing to stand up. Wong Kim Ark didn’t make the rule. He affirmed the rule.”

FLORIDA

GEORGIA

ILLINOIS

In Oak Park, a community member who wished to be identified only as Naomi “said her life’s work had been directly impacted by the president taking office,” Wednesday Journal reported. “A counselor for a domestic violence support organization, she said she’d seen federal funding cuts and fear of deportation make it more difficult for her group to serve people impacted by domestic violence in the area.”

Last summer, the relatives of a woman who was murdered by her abusive partner said that she had been afraid to seek help due to fear that she could be deported, The Marshall Project reported in November. “She was not alone,” the report continued. “At least two other women killed by their intimate partners this summer reportedly did not seek police help because they also feared deportation.” One investigation from the AP in February also found that ICE agents themselves have been accused of physical and sexual abuses.

ICE and CBP’s abuses were top of mind for community members who marched through Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport to further condemn the shooting killings of Silverio Villegas González, Good, and Pretti, as well as to continue to call out the federal government’s wasteful stunt deploying ICE agents to airports instead of just agreeing to pay TSA workers:

MAINE

MARYLAND

MINNESOTA

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MISSOURI

14-year-old Leo was among roughly 1,400 community members that gathered in Columbia, the Missouri Independent reported. His mom, Katie, noted how children have not been immune from the chaos of the administration. One recent from ProPublica has found that mass deportation agents have detained the parents of more than 11,000 U.S. citizen children.

During one Congressional shadow hearing last week, 16-year-old American teen Arnoldo Bazan testified how mass deportation agents brutally detained him while in pursuit of his father. “As he sat in the back of their car, Arnoldo says the agents used racial slurs, calling Arnulfo a ‘border hopper,’ ‘beaner,’ ‘dumbass’ and ‘criminal,’” MS Now reported. “At one point, he recalls an agent calling him a ‘son of an alien.’”

“I believe we should stop misusing ICE to deport innocent civilians,” Leo told the Missouri Independent from Columbia’s rally.

NEW JERSEY

NEW YORK

In New York, community members flooded the streets of all five of New York City’s boroughs. One community member, Shawn Haugen, said she was participating for those who didn’t have the ability to speak without fear. “She was carrying a sign from an undocumented student in the Bronx,” NBC New York reported.

These fears are very real. Just days ago, the first public school student in the city to have been abducted by the administration was released after nearly a year in detention. Dylan Contreras, a student at the English Language Learners and International Support Preparatory Academy (ELLIS) in the Bronx, was detained at a routine immigration court appointment last May despite the fact that he was following the rules, staying out of trouble, and had entered the country legally. He was subsequently sent to the abusive Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania.

Following his release from ICE detention, Contreras used his microphone to urge supporters to advocate for the freedom of men he met while in detention as well. “I still have so many friends inside,” he said. “We have to continue fighting for them.” Dylan’s message of unity resonated on Saturday.

“You feel so alone sometimes,” Haugen continued to NBC New York. “These marches are all about solidarity.”

OHIO

OKLAHOMA

OREGON

TENNESSEE

UTAH

WASHINGTON, D.C.

GLOBAL

Demonstrators also took to the streets overseas, with protests taking place in Italy, France, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Greece, Australia, and possibly even in Antarctica. If confirmed, it means rallies were held in all seven continents, in an unprecedented rebuke of disastrous U.S. policies.

The GOP obsession with mass deportation and refusal to break with Trump and de-facto Stephen Miller is especially jarring in contrast to the record attendance and tremendous energy on display throughout the country at No Kings rallies this weekend, reacted Joanna Kuebler, Chief of Programs at America’s Voice.

“Along with demanding the Trump administration and his Congressional supporters reduce inflation, cap high prices and stop foreign wars, the mainstream American consensus also wants to stop the violent, unmasked and out of control federal mass deportation machine and chart an alternative vision to fixing our broken immigration system,” she said. “This means not another dollar for ICE or CBP unless and until real change and accountability are delivered.”

“You would think by now that Trump, Miller, and Speaker Johnson would be ready to listen to the will of the people,” Kuebler continued. “Instead, they will try to message their way out of a moral, economic and political problem of their own making.”

More than 300,000 Haitian immigrants who’ve had permission to live and work in the U.S. but faced being returned to dangerous conditions have received a reprieve from deportation, after the Supreme Court kept in place lower court rulings that blocked the federal government from unjustly ending their temporary protections.

But while these families can continue to live and work here for now, protections could remain fleeting if the justices ultimately side with the administration despite lower courts ruling that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) not because conditions had improved in Haiti, but “because of hostility to nonwhite immigrants” and “racial animus,” as The Marshall Project noted last month.

The right thing to do would be to allow these families to continue to live and work here without fear, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s the smart thing to do. Just look at Springfield, Ohio, which had been steadily declining for years and then saw a sudden reversal thanks to the entrepreneurial spirit and grit of Haitian immigrants.

“For decades, Springfield had been another shrinking Midwestern town with an uncertain future. Manufacturing plants had shuttered, fueling an exodus,” as The New York Times noted in 2024. “The population dwindled to less than 60,000 by 2014, from more than 80,000 in 1960.” Then, Haitian immigrants looking for a fresh start arrived – and gave Springfield its own fresh start as well.

“New Caribbean restaurants and food trucks have opened across south Springfield where once abandoned neighborhoods are now bustling with residents,” The Guardian reported in 2024. Key among these Haitian entrepreneurs are women like TPS holder Ketlie Moise, who said she worked two jobs to save up enough to open her own Haitian Creole restaurant. She’s since been improving her community one delicious plate at a time. She dreams of one day expanding her restaurant, Kèkèt Bongou, to several locations and sharing fusion dishes with her customers.

“For my country — all Haitian know these dishes we make,” Moise said last year. “But only one different thing I make in this business is Italian food. I worked the Italian food restaurant for 15 years. I know how to make it. I make Linguini Alfredo with shrimp. I make spaghetti and meatballs.”

Other Haitian TPS holders who’ve helped revitalize this community include car manufacturing workers, food processing workers, delivery drivers and caregivers, and all together these neighbors have contributed $91 million to the city’s economy, according to research from FWD.us. Roughly 50 miles away in Columbus, TPS holders have contributed $44 million to the region.

Overall, Haitian TPS holders have contributed nearly $6 billion to the national economy, including more than $800 million in federal and payroll taxes, the organization said.

“By most accounts, the Haitians have helped revitalize Springfield,” as The NY Times noted. So it should come at no surprise that anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric targeting these Haitian neighbors aren’t just ugly, they’re just plain bad business that are threatening to claw back at the gains these once-blighted areas have seen in recent years. In 2024, then-Ohio Sen. JD Vance made this community a target when he spread atrocious lies that he later admitted he made up for media attention. But the damage was already done, after Haitian community members faced racist harassment and even bomb threats.

Since then, Trump-Vance administration has steadily attacked protections for Haitian immigrants as part of its mass deportation agenda, further destabilizing the lives of these immigrant neighbors to the point that Moise said “she knows about 10 friends and neighbors who have recently left Springfield, along with several restaurant employees,” CBS News reported.

If attempts to end TPS are successful and program beneficiaries are forced to leave en masse, “we don’t just lose employees, we lose stability,” one employer told The Haitian Times. “Production slows, overtime costs go up and suddenly expansion plans don’t make sense anymore.” Another employer “told The Times how a mass exodus would set the community back. ‘If hundreds or thousands of people leave, that momentum doesn’t pause. It goes backwards,’” the employer said.

Moise fears what could happen if she’s forced to return to Haiti, where she says her previous business was bombed and her mother was shot. The same federal government attempting to end Moise’s protections has itself admitted that conditions are dangerous in Haiti: U.S. citizens are being urged to not travel to the small nation. No matter how the federal government tries to spin this discrepancy, if it’s unsafe for Americans, it’s unsafe for Moise.

“Faith is fueling Moise’s motivation to remain in Springfield and run her restaurant, while her business and her future hang in the balance,” CBS News reported. “We’re hoping that everything works out the way it’s supposed to work out,” she said. “God has a way of working everything out.”

She deserves stability. All of our immigrant neighbors deserve stability. “While the outcome for Haitian TPS holders — and many others with TPS — is yet to be determined, the facts remain,” American Immigration Council said. “Haitians with TPS have invested in their communities, planted roots, and enriched the cultural vibrancy of the country while also making crucial contributions to the workforce and economy.”

Thousands of high school students across dozens of states have been standing up for their classmates, communities, and values by walking out of their classrooms in protest of the federal government’s mass deportation agenda. For countless students across our country, these cruel and chaotic policies have hit close to home.

In Massachusetts, honors student Marcelo Gomes da Silva was abducted by ICE while he was on his way to volleyball practice. In California, 15-year-old special needs student Nathan Mejia fell victim to a dreaded “Kavanaugh stop” when he was handcuffed and held at gunpoint despite being an American citizen. And just last week in New York, high school student Dylan Contreras finally won his freedom after more than 300 days in ICE detention. “But while this is a step towards justice, Dylan will never get back the time he unjustly spent behind bars,” as one of his advocates said.

Students outraged over family-shattering policies that have left desks empty have now spent weeks walking out of school en masse to march, chant, and take a stand for their peers, with many of these participants defying disciplinary threats in the process. Many have already been punished. In Virginia, more than 300 students were suspended after walking to protest ICE. Refusing to have their views silenced, they walked again. In Georgia, Atlanta-area students were warned that walking out of class could also result in suspension, as well as a loss of parking privileges and extracurricular privileges. Like the Virginia students, they stood by their ideals anyway.

“A lot of students here are immigrants, so we had to stand up for them,” Christian Silver, a junior who helped organize the protest, told Atlanta Civic Circle. Another student who asked to not be identified “said he was angered by ICE and Border Patrol agents fatally shooting Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, and news reports of ICE and Border Patrol agents sexually abusing detainees,” the report continued. “We want ICE out of our city,” the student said.

In New Hampshire, Nashua High School North and South students “took turns speaking their minds on the recent events and the current political climate, as well as sharing their own stories and experiences of how they have been personally affected, from having family members detained by I.C.E, to fear for their own, and their family’s, safety,” Nashua Ink Link reported.

“I pay attention to the news, I pay attention to what’s going on in our country, I’ve never been quiet about what I believe and why I believe it,” high school student Keegan Dolan told the outlet. “And when I see everything that we’ve been seeing in the news in the last few months with people being shot in the streets, children being detained, people being ripped from their homes and their families, it is just atrocious.”

New Hampshire residents have already shown what’s possible when ordinary people come together, after local residents stopped an ICE warehouse from opening up in the state. These young people are carrying on that energy. “We are here because we believe in our constitutional right to protest, we believe in the constitution, I.C.E does not,” said high school student Kaylee Hall.

In Massachusetts, Mohawk Trail Regional School and Greenfield High School students said they united to show that they “won’t be silent and that we are the next generation to lead,” the Greenfield Reporter said. Holding signs reading “human rights belong to everyone” and chanting “no hate, no fear, ICE has no business here,” students said they wanted to make clear that young people oppose government-sanctioned cruelty and that people have the right to live their lives in peace.

“Both of us have had our own walkouts at our schools, so we thought it would be great to come together to make a bigger statement,” said Mohawk Trail junior Katie Osterman. “We’re here to protest ICE violence, particularly in the past few months, but in general just all the inhumane and unjust things that are happening in our country right now.” Greenfield High School senior Nate Woodard said that he believed that what the government “is doing is wrong and we just want to stand up against it.” He added that immigrant communities “should feel safe in our city.”

That includes his peers, like Gomes da Silva, who spent nearly a week in ICE detention after being abducted by mass deportation agents last year. While he expressed gratitude after a judge cleared the way for his release, he expressed worry for the people he left behind in detention. “He said he served as a translator for the other men in the room and cried when he informed them that their paperwork said they were being deported,” CBS News reported.

“Nobody should be in here,” he said. “Most people in there are all workers. They all got caught going to work. These people have families.” He shared more about the atrocious conditions detained people face during an interview with MassLive.

These students hoping to effect change should know that they really are making a difference. Not only are their actions inspiring us and so many others during a time when it’s easy to feel defeated and discouraged, but they’re forcing their leaders to listen. In New Jersey, “members of Montclair’s town council, including the mayor, said they are working to provide greater protections for immigrant communities after a student-led high school walkout and calls from residents,” as the Montclair Local reported.

The proposed “Montclair Trust Act” would prohibit local collaboration with mass deportation agents, as well as “bar federal immigration enforcement from access to town property or databases ‘absent a valid and properly issued judicial criminal warrant,’” the report said. While the full town council must still consider the proposal, students are being credited with bringing it to light following their recent walkout.

“Montclair High junior Aria said she joined the walkout, organized by sophomores Jules Di Benedetto, Victoria Luna, and Nola Kim, because ICE has been ‘terrorizing people locally and nationwide,’” as the Montclair Local reported March 11.

“There were hundreds of high school students present at this protest because they felt that ICE’s existence in Montclair was enough of an issue that they had to miss their classes to protest it,” Di Benedetto said following news that the “Montclair Trust Act” was gaining traction among leaders. “You as the town council … have the responsibility to serve this community and make sure it is safe for all members, this includes immigrants.”

In Kansas, state leaders have unfortunately learned the wrong lesson. They introduced legislation to penalize schools if students walk out, the Johnson County Post reports. Students, however, are not hesitating from schooling them. “Sydney Mwangi, a senior who helped organize the walkout at Olathe North, says she’s not deterred,” the Johnson County Post report. “I stand for what I believe in, no matter the consequences,” Sydney said.

Neither of them should have been detained in the first place

A pair of current and former students who were abducted by mass deportation agents in separate incidents at the start of the Trump administration and had remained detained since have finally won their freedom, including a high school student who was the first known New York City public school student to have been kidnapped by the federal government and would subsequently be forced to spend ten months in detention.

“I am incredibly grateful to everyone — from those who sent letters to those who made these beautiful banners — and to everyone who offered support,” Dylan Contreras said at a press event following his release last week. He was flanked by supporters including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and New York’s Gov. Kathy Hochul, who had pushed the administration for his release.

“His mother, who never stopped fighting for his release, held him close,” NBC 4 New York reported.

The high schooler was thankful to be home after more than 300 days, having missed his family, friends, education, and even his 21st birthday. But top of mind for him were also the people he met while in detention, and used his microphone to urge supporters to advocate for their freedom as well. “I still have so many friends inside,” he said Thursday. “We have to continue fighting for them.”

Contreras, a student at the English Language Learners and International Support Preparatory Academy (ELLIS) in the Bronx, had been separated from his family and friends since May, when he was detained at a routine immigration court appointment despite the fact that he was following the rules, staying out of trouble, and had entered the country legally. He was subsequently sent to the abusive Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania, where he expressed frustration at his confinement.

“When I realized what was happening, I felt very confused and irritated,” he told Chalkbeat in June. “They treat us like we are criminals here and the guards yell at us.” ICE also refused to deliver hundreds of letters that supporters had written for the high schooler, ultimately giving him just three of them. “Still, they lifted his spirits,” Chalkbeat noted.

“I was feeling depressed here, but it gave me a lot of hope to see that you all want the best for me,” he said at the time. “With your support I haven’t felt so alone.”

“All New York families belong together,” Murad Awawdeh, President and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, said following his release. “Nearly a year after Dylan was tricked and disappeared by ICE – and shipped to a detention center far away from his family and support system – Dylan is finally home. Dylan is a student, worker, and beloved son. Dylan is a New Yorker. Dylan, his family, and his community at ELLIS Prep high school will now get back to their lives.”

“But while this is a step towards justice,” Awawdeh continued, “Dylan will never get back the time he unjustly spent behind bars.” Nor is he totally out of the woods. While his attorney said that he “still has pending legal cases with USCIS and the immigration court” and is waiting for a decision on his Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, the administration said he “still faces removal proceedings,” according to Gothamist.

Like Contreras, Leqaa Kordia “should have never been detained in the first place,” as Amnesty International USA noted this week. Kordia, a former student visa holder who was in the process of securing legal residency in the United States, was initially detained following a pro-Gaza protest at Columbia University in 2024 but was quickly released and saw the case against her dismissed.

However, she was rearrested the very next year, when the administration and Secretary of State Marco Rubio launched anti-First Amendment attacks that targeted demonstrators over views they simply didn’t like. Kordia would languish at Texas’ privately-operated Prairieland Detention Facility for more than a year, finally winning her freedom last week. “It was the third time that the judge had ordered her release,” The New York Times noted. “But government lawyers had appealed the judge’s earlier decisions, forcing her to remain in detention. On Monday, she was released after the government did not make another appeal.”

“Kordia walked out to cheers with a hand on her heart and a smile that said it all,” CBS News New York reported. “’I just want to say hamdullah, hamdullah, hamdullah, hamdullah,’ Kordia said, referring to the Arabic word for ‘praise be to God.’”

Kordia’s attention also went to individuals still locked away at Prairieland, which Amnesty International USA said has a documented history of human rights violations. “Her lawyers and family said her health had diminished considerably at the center, where she had lost weight and was experiencing fainting spells,” The NY Times reported. Last month, Kordia was hospitalized after experiencing seizures. But because she was still in ICE custody at the time, she was treated in a dehumanizing manner. “The entire time I was chained,” she said. “I felt like an animal.” Instead of being released to recuperate at home, she was sent back to Prairieland.

“I left behind many beautiful, courageous, innocent women and men” whose only crime was “just dreaming,” Kordia said following her release from ICE.

CBS News New York noted that among advocates who rallied to her side following her release were Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, who were similarly targeted by the federal government for exercising their First Amendment rights. Amnesty International USA also noted that members and supporters from around the country sent over 60,000 letters to the federal government in support of her release, and that the organization would continue to monitor her case. Like Contreras, Kordia still faces the risk of deportation.

But at least for this moment, “we celebrate freedom,” said Hamzah Abushaban, Kordia’s cousin. “Tomorrow we continue to fight for justice. Not only for Leqaa, but for all unjustly detained. Law and order need to be restored in this country.”