Nationwide Class-Action Lawsuit Filed Over Birthright Citizenship Order
Ovrim, CC BY SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Welcome to our news segment: TL;DR of Immigration News, for when the news is Too Long and you Didn’t Read it.
This is a weekly collection of immigration-related news stories. These bite-size summaries will keep you up to date without overwhelming your inbox.
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Next week is Never Again Action’s Movement Building Week!
In celebration, we will not be publishing a newsletter. Instead, we invite you to take the opportunity to join our movement as an official Never Again Action member.
We are grateful to our readers for learning about the violence of the detention and deportation system. Now, take the next step by making a commitment to end it. This powerful member-run newsletter is only possible because of our collective grassroots commitment to ending detention and deportation. Be part of growing our power by joining today.
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Groups File Nationwide Class-Action Lawsuit Over Trump Birthright Citizenship Order
The supreme court majority continues to defy both precedent and rule of law in order to reflect the whims of the current regime. This time around, they’ve twisted law and logic to allow breathing room for Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship. While their latest ruling does not enshrine the EO into law, it makes the order harder to challenge comprehensively. Knowing this was likely to happen, the ACLU immediately filed a nationwide, class-action lawsuit challenging the EO, because class-action suits remain one of the last avenues to comprehensively challenge a heinous order like this.
Karla McKanders, director of the ACLU Legal Defense Fund’s Thurgood Marshall Institute, said “The Trump administration’s executive order is an unlawful attempt to entrench racial hierarchies and establish a second class of citizens in the United States. We will continue working to ensure that birthright citizenship — a right granted by the U.S. Constitution — is protected, and that families are not torn apart because of this executive order.”
This news comes on the heels of the racist backlash around Zohran Mamdani winning the democratic primary of the NYC mayoral election. While right wing influencers and GOP politicians traded racist and islamophobic epithets online about Mamdani’s upbringing, the President jumped into the fray earlier this week by threatening to revoke Mamdani’s citizenship because of his support for Palestinian rights and his promise that if he was elected mayor, he would do everything in his power to stop ICE from terrorizing the people of New York City.
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Florida plan for “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant internment camp sparks chorus of outrage
In Florida this week, the grinning fascists proudly livestreamed the grand opening of an internment camp, inviting Fox news and other pliant media along, as President Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem showed the cameras rows of cages inside of tents surrounded by swamps. They are selling merch of this sick spectacle - a deliberately flimsy and remote tent camp deep inside mosquito infested wetlands. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said he hoped the opening of this facility would spur a race between Red State Governors to build more just like it, a gulag archipelago across the United States.
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‘They're Not Breathing’: Inside the Chaos of ICE Detention Center 911 Calls
[Content warning: article and embedded videos include strong descriptions of violence, SA, SI]
Thoroughly researched and disturbing, this Wired article reviews hundreds of 911 calls placed from immigration detention centers run by GEO Group and CoreCivic, our nation’s two largest private prison companies and providers of immigration detention. As this article makes clear, “immigration detention” is just prison by another name, but for people whose only “crime” was coming to the U.S. in search of stability and safety.
The two private prison companies talk a good game about fulfilling their legal obligations to provide adequate shelter and medical care, but the 911 calls reviewed by Wired tell a different story. Medical emergencies of various kinds, some allegedly caused by facility staff, are either actively downplayed or even dismissed, in some cases while the emergency plays out in the background. Perhaps most disturbing is the high likelihood that 911 calls represent a small percentage of the actual emergencies and abuse that happen at these facilities.
These disturbing phone calls are supplemented by multiply-corroborated reports from detainees, their families, their legal representatives, and advocates who describe overcrowded facilities, lack of basic medical care, terrible (sometimes inedible) food, and more. Most of these reports come from several months ago, before the latest round of pressure from the DHS to push the number of detainees even higher.
Remember: the cruelty is the point.
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In rare move, Catholic leaders issue dueling letters criticizing GOP budget bill
This week, Catholic bishops made the unusual move of signing onto an interfaith letter criticizing the budget bill that narrowly passed the Senate on Tuesday. Their affirmation of the letter took place in addition to a more cautious letter from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops that cited Pope Leo’s admonition to “promote and protect the common good” and faulted the budget for punishing the most vulnerable in society.
The interfaith letter goes further, warning that the proposed budget provides vast resources to target immigrant communities and separate families. Further, with the current administration’s explicit disregard for “sensitive locations” like churches, schools, and hospitals, it is very likely that the regime of dragnet raids and detentions will target faith communities that provide sanctuary and resources to immigrants.
Reverend William Barber teaches us that a budget is always a moral document. The current regime constantly broadcasts its cruelty and immorality. We salute the vital work of faith-based communities in supporting our immigrant neighbors.
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Tisha b'av 2025: Not in Our Name: Our Collective Cry to Rebuild Sanctuary
Tisha b’Av 5785 is drawing near, and this commemorative holiday is the first of President Trump’s second fascist administration. On this saddest day of the Jewish calendar, let us use the moment to mourn the destruction enacted on our communities by the state.
We invite Jews and allies across the country who strive for democracy and justice for all immigrants and communities to take action in all the places where we live. Let’s show up with our local immigrant partners, raise our moral voices as Jews and allies against the government’s oppressive disappearances, detentions and deportations, reject the weaponization of Jewish safety to justify the repression of human rights activists, and rebuild a better world of sanctuary and justice together!
Click the link above for a full toolkit you can use to plan an action in your own community.