Over the weekend, I got a WhatsApp message from Mr. A. He and I have been in touch since he was trying to get out of Afghanistan after U.S. troops withdrew in 2021. After finally escaping with his young family, he eventually won his asylum case and is waiting to become eligible for a green card. Except that he was concerned that it was all about to come crashing down. He’d gotten a letter from the U.S. government that began, “It is time for you to leave the United States.” |
Less than a week after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration must “facilitate” the “release from custody in El Salvador” of wrongfully-deported Maryland father Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Trump administration has doubled down on defiance, with administration lawyers telling a federal court that Mr. Abrego Garcia is detained in the custody of El Salvador and White House officials accusing anyone who supports his return of supporting terrorism.
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As the Trump administration moves to accelerate its mass deportation agenda, more U.S. citizens and legal residents are getting swept up in immigration enforcement actions. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has reportedly arrested, detained, and deported thousands of U.S. citizens since its founding in 2003. Wrongful detention and deportations will likely only increase under Trump’s supercharged immigration crackdown, with fewer guardrails to stop or reverse them.
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The Supreme Court announced last week that it would hear arguments over President Trump's executive order to seeking to end birthright citizenship on May 15. The pause on the order—which would deny birthright citizenship to many children of immigrant parents—will remain in place for now.
The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution currently guarantees birthright citizenship to every child born “within the jurisdiction of the United States.” For over a century, anyone born on U.S. soil has automatically been conferred citizenship at birth regardless of their parents’ immigration or citizenship status.
This fact sheet from the American Immigration Council explains birthright citizenship, the Fourteenth Amendment, eligibility, and current challenges to birthright citizenship.
Read more: Birthright Citizenship in the United States |
The Council and our partners filed an amended habeas corpus petition last week on behalf of Edicson David Quintero Chacón. A 28-year-old carpenter, fisherman, and father of two young children, he is one of more than two hundred people the U.S. government has been paying to imprison, incommunicado, at El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) since mid-March.
Despite his pending federal lawsuit challenging his indefinite detention, the U.S. government sent him to El Salvador, where he could remain in prison for the rest of his life. Mr. Quintero’s amended petition seeks his release from CECOT.
Read more: Challenging Illegal Detention of Father of Two in Notorious Salvadoran Prison |
