Monthly Archives: September 2019

If you feel hopeless in the face of today’s outrages, know that you can act and you can make a difference. Action takes many forms, from calling your political representatives to filing comments opposing new and awful regulations to financial … Continue reading →

Biggest, baddest news: Trump has cut refugee admissions for 2020 to 18,000, the lowest ever. Thursday’s announcement is devastating news for  refugee families trying to reunite with loved ones still languishing in camps around the world, refugee agencies that will … Continue reading →

Last week was Welcoming Week, built around September 17—Citizenship Day. During the first weeks of September, thousands of Minnesotans became citizens, in St. Paul and across the state. Immigrants, including refugees and asylum seekers, contribute skills and talent and hard … Continue reading →

Seems like terrible immigration stories often break late on Friday, when they may be buried in the weekend news cycle. This week’s Friday night outrage: a not-quite-safe-third-country agreement signed with El Salvador, and an administration plan to force vulnerable asylum … Continue reading →

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me,” says the old children’s rhyme. That’s not true today, if it ever was. “In a post-El Paso America, the words we choose have real consequences in people’s … Continue reading →

Did you know that the vast majority of immigrants in the United States are here legally? That more than half of the immigrants living in the United States have already become U.S. citizens? Or that most unauthorized immigrants have lived … Continue reading →

Cancellation of deferred action for immigrants receiving treatment for serious medical conditions is only the latest manifestation of the Trump administration’s total lack of compassion and medical maltreatment of immigrants. They have also confiscated prescription meds carried by asylum seekers … Continue reading →

A judge threatening a frightened two-year-old. The U.S. government shutting the door on asylum seekers. Border officials separating a twelve-year-old survivor of Hurricane Dorian from her family.  The two-year-old Guatemalan boy was in immigration court with his mother, and he … Continue reading →

Earlier this year the Trump administration ordered that anyone who passed through a “third country” on their way to ask for asylum in the United States was barred from applying for asylum here. That’s kind of a travesty of the … Continue reading →

Getting into Harvard is hard, but 17-year-old Ismail Ajjawi did it. As a native of Lebanon, he prepared for four years away from home in one of the most elite universities in the world, and boarded a plane for Boston … Continue reading →