On Thursday, federal district court judge Emmet Sullivan issued a decision ruling that the Biden administration’s use of “Title 42” public health authority to expel migrants at the border (including those otherwise eligible for asylum) is illegal. While the ideological valence of the two cases is very different, the reasons why the Title 42 expulsions […]
Today is Constitution Day. It is an appropriate time to celebrate the accomplishments of American constitutional law. But it is also a good time to consider whether we have been too soft on some of its greatest failures. I suggest three such rulings cry out for far more condemnation than they have so far received: […]
Padma Danturty has been a legal resident of the U.S. since she was 8 months old. Had she come to the country illegally, her future here would likely be more secure. That’s because the 18-year-old does not qualify for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the Obama-era policy that protects individuals from deportation […]
“The Court is not convinced that the transmission of COVID-19 during border processing cannot be significantly mitigated.” The Biden administration can’t keep expelling migrant families under the banner of pandemic precaution, a federal court says. On Thursday, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia struck down the administration’s interpretation of a public health […]
The Biden administration is on target to approach a historical fiscal-year record for apprehending migrants on the U.S./Mexico border. We are likely to have seen 1.64 million such apprehensions by this month’s end of fiscal 2021, even as opponents absurdly accuse the president of pursuing “open borders” policies. Keep that in mind as you see […]
Exactly 10 years ago, economist Michael Clemens published a paper in the prestigious Journal of Economic Perspectives called “Economics and Emigration: Trillion-Dollar Bills on the Sidewalk?” He urged fellow economists to consider a paradigm shift in their research about immigration. Though economists had mostly neglected the global economic losses caused by migration barriers, the existing […]
When President George W. Bush was making the case for creating a new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in mid-2002, his administration assured the public that the new organization “would not ‘grow’ government.” Rather, by cobbling together 22 separate agencies under one cabinet-level secretary, the federal government would be able to respond more flexibly and […]
Earlier today, I participated in a radio program on “What the US Constitution Says About Immigration.” WDET Detroit radio host Stephen Henderson led the discussion, which included Yale Law School Professor Cristina Rodriguez, and myself. The audio is available here. The discussion focused much more on big-picture issues about immigration and constitutional law, than about […]
Today is Labor Day, and—as usual—there is much discussion of what can be done to help workers. But few focus on the one type of reform that is likely to help more poor and disadvantaged workers than virtually anything else: increasing labor mobility. In the United States and around the world, far too many workers […]
In the Heights, a movie musical based on the hit Broadway production by Hamilton mastermind Lin-Manuel Miranda, is set in the heavily Dominican New York City neighborhood of Washington Heights. At heart, it’s the story of an immigrant community coming together to determine its own future. Sometimes that future is forged by fighting with a labyrinthine immigration bureaucracy […]