Ben Johnson

Shocking that people are being taken into the basement of a building that ICE uses as a detention site that is now doubling as an immigration court. Gratitude to @padilla.senate.gov for uncovering how deportations are happening under a shroud, behind closed doors.

Los Angeles AILA attorneys are reporting that ICE is running the show at this hidden LA court and at previously undisclosed & difficult to access locations.

AILA supports Rep. Chu's letter focused on an issue of upmost concern: demanding answers about rising immigration bond denials, increasingly unaffordable bond amounts, and concerns about the independence of immigration judges under the Trump administration.

At a time when families are struggling with affordability and rising healthcare costs, taxpayers are being asked to foot the bill for the unnecessary detention of people who have lived in our communities for decades.

AILA supports Rep. Chu's letter focused on an issue of upmost concern: demanding answers about rising immigration bond denials, increasingly unaffordable bond amounts, and concerns about the independence of immigration judges under the Trump administration.

The widespread use of bond denials & excessive bonds, regardless of the individual facts of a case, underscores why our immigration courts must be truly independent. Immigration judges should be empowered to independently interpret the law & weigh facts of each individual case.

ICE officers fired multiple rounds at a vehicle during an enforcement operation in NYC, with a 5-year-old child reportedly in the back seat. A system that puts children, families & entire communities in the path of this kind of violence is a system that demands scrutiny. wapo.st/4yHk7qY

As Xi Jinping arrives in Washington, the U.S. is focused on competing with China for technological leadership. But Trump's immigration policies are pushing the scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs we need out & directly to the hands of our competitors.

As the AI race pushes ahead, we need to focus on responsible and safe use of AI. That's why we need the best and brightest minds working to guide us. But Trump Admin policies are continuing to make it harder for the best and brightest build a future here.

Trump has renewed his $100k fee on new H-1B workers & ordered agencies to scrutinize H-1B petitions more heavily. We expect a wave of evidence demands and denials and these policies are already making America less competitive on the world stage.

H1-B restrictions are hampering our competitiveness in AI and boosting China. International students make up 75–80% of full-time grad students in AI-related fields at US universities. We train them here, then slam the door, incentivizing them to go elsewhere.

Trump has renewed his $100k fee on new H-1B workers & ordered agencies to scrutinize H-1B petitions more heavily. We expect a wave of evidence demands and denials and these policies are already making America less competitive on the world stage.

An ICE officer's shooting of Wilber Rafael Garces Perez in Austin is the latest in a disturbing pattern of enforcement actions resulting in serious injury & death: at least 22 people shot by on-duty ICE & CBP agents during the second Trump Administration, 8 fatally.

ICE is operating w/ unprecedented resources, expanded authority & a political mandate that prioritizes aggressive enforcement over transparency & accountability. If Congress is serious about restoring public trust, thorough oversight of ICE's conduct & accountability systems should be top priority.

DHS purposely broke the asylum system and now has the audacity to blame immigration lawyers & AILA for the wreckage. AILA won’t stand for the false claims, rather, we stand for the highest standards of professional responsibility.

Immigration lawyers don't write asylum law. Congress does. They don't decide cases. Judges do. Their job is making sure people get the hearing the law promises.

DHS purposely broke the asylum system and now has the audacity to blame immigration lawyers & AILA for the wreckage. AILA won’t stand for the false claims, rather, we stand for the highest standards of professional responsibility.

An asylum claim isn't meritless or fraudulent because the government doesn't like it. Fraud requires knowing deception, not an adverse ruling, not trauma-related inconsistencies, not translation gaps, not missing evidence from a collapsing state.

DHS purposely broke the asylum system and now has the audacity to blame immigration lawyers & AILA for the wreckage. AILA won’t stand for the false claims, rather, we stand for the highest standards of professional responsibility.

DHS fired immigration judges, pressured their new hires to deny relief faster, restricted judicial discretion, and starved the system of resources (then poured money into detention and mass deportation instead of fixing adjudication).

DHS purposely broke the asylum system and now has the audacity to blame immigration lawyers & AILA for the wreckage. AILA won’t stand for the false claims, rather, we stand for the highest standards of professional responsibility.

Let’s be clear: this is not an official extension or decision by DHS as to the fate of TPS for El Salvador. The Administration is still leaving more than 170,000 people, their families, and their employers in limbo.

Salvadorans have built lives here, worked, started families, gone to school. Even with this extension, there’s no certainty in what tomorrow may bring. This isn’t how our immigration laws should work. That’s why AILA built out our Better Way framework.

Let’s be clear: this is not an official extension or decision by DHS as to the fate of TPS for El Salvador. The Administration is still leaving more than 170,000 people, their families, and their employers in limbo.

Failing to make a timely decision on TPS designations is a cruel pattern that follows the Administration’s failure to make a timely decision for Nicaragua, Honduras, S. Sudan, and Ethiopia.

Let’s be clear: this is not an official extension or decision by DHS as to the fate of TPS for El Salvador. The Administration is still leaving more than 170,000 people, their families, and their employers in limbo.

USCIS’s new public charge guidance is a massive step backward. A policy that discourages families from accessing health care, food assistance, or education support undermines public health, family stability, and long-term economic resilience.

We’ve seen this before. When families fear that using health care, nutrition assistance, housing help, or other support could jeopardize a loved one’s immigration future, many stop seeking help they are legally entitled to receive. That’s bad policy and bad governance.

USCIS’s new public charge guidance is a massive step backward. A policy that discourages families from accessing health care, food assistance, or education support undermines public health, family stability, and long-term economic resilience.

Under a new policy, ICE is detaining massive numbers of people despite federal courts having ruled over 16,000 times that ICE is violating the law. ICE is separating families and flooding courts with emergency cases.

Behind every case is a person: parents separated from children, workers detained after years of building lives here, and families left searching for answers. Due process and fundamental fairness are being thrown out the window.

Under a new policy, ICE is detaining massive numbers of people despite federal courts having ruled over 16,000 times that ICE is violating the law. ICE is separating families and flooding courts with emergency cases.

More than a year ago, ICE and DOJ set a new mandatory detention policy that says immigration judges can no longer release people from detention while they wait for their cases to be heard. Now ICE is detaining thousands more people, many with jobs and families.