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September 2025
Greetings. This installment of immigration disclosures highlights a Wall Street Journal article highlighting the Council’s lawsuit on ICE detention transfers, a new decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) on gender-based asylum, a FOIA request for materials used by ICE to train law enforcement officers from local law enforcement agencies, and new FOIA requests with ICE and EOIR to seek the agencies’ policies for immigration court arrests.
Initial Disclosures:
* Frequent transfers between detention centers, across the country or to multiple locations in a few days, has become commonplace in the second Trump administration. Clients are disappearing into a complicated system that is obstructing their ability to defend themselves in court. The Wall Street Journal discussed the effects of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainee transfers and highlighted the Council’s recent lawsuit to try to get records on any updates to ICE transfer policies. Read the article here [[link removed]] and read about our lawsuit here. [[link removed]]


* A new decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) found that people persecuted solely on account of their sex are unlikely to qualify for asylum because sex alone does not meet the definition of a particular social group, one of the five categories protected from persecution under U.S. asylum law. This finding will ultimately make it harder for people fleeing gender-based violence to gain asylum in the United States. Victims of gendered violence will now have to prove a more specific reason for their suffering. Read more about the ruling here [[link removed]] .


* The Council and Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC) submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for materials used by ICE to train law enforcement officers from local law enforcement agencies, such as sheriff deputies, police department, or university campus police, that have entered into memoranda of understanding with ICE to enforce immigration law under 8 U.S.C. § 1357(g).
Council, LatinoJustice File FOIAs with ICE and EOIR
Between July 28, 2025 and July 29, 2025, the Council and LatinoJustice PRLDEF filed 11 requests under FOIA with ICE and the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR). These requests seek the agencies’ policies for immigration court arrests and dismissal of immigration proceedings, as well as communications between ICE and EOIR leadership about arrests and dismissals.
In May 2025, ICE began arresting noncitizens at their court hearings. Initially, the agency targeted only individuals whose immigration cases a judge had just dismissed at its request. This is presumably because the agency could now attempt to quickly deport them through expedited removal. But ICE has since started to arrest people with pending court cases too.
These arrests are prompting public outcry and concern that ICE and EOIR—the agency that administers immigration courts—are engaged in a coordinated effort to deprive immigrants of due process and deport them. Hundreds of people have been protesting arrests outside immigration courts across the country while others, including clergy and some political leaders, are accompanying noncitizens to immigration court to try to prevent their arrest, document arrests that occur, and help arrestees inform their families before ICE removes them.
Why does this matter?
* Access to these records is critical for informing the ongoing public debate about ICE arrests in immigration courts and these courts’ complicity in the Trump administration’s mass deportation regime.
Read more: Seeking Records about Immigration Court Arrests and Dismissals [[link removed]]
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