With the immigration courts not functioning fairly or well, immigrants and lawyers are taking cases to federal court and the circuit courts of appeals in hopes of finally obtaining justice. Here's what you need to know about the latest court challenges and policy shifts affecting immigrants across the state.

“This is the very definition of stacking the deck against your opponent, and this is why the U.S. immigration courts must be removed from the Executive Branch,” said Lynn Tramonte, Executive Director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance. “Stephen Miller cannot completely eliminate the Board of Immigration Appeals without action by Congress. Instead, his plan is to keep the Board in place to rule against immigrants who win in the lower courts, while denying people who lose their cases the opportunity for a second look. Courts should be independent from political direction. Our immigration courts need to be completely separated from the Executive Branch. That’s fundamental to fairness and due process. Finally making the immigration courts into an independent judiciary is long overdue. Congress must act, today. Anyone who argues against that simply wants to keep an unfair system in place.”

The Butler County Commissioners’ meeting on November 18 was packed with residents opposed to the “dirty money contract” Sheriff Jones has with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). So many people attended, some had to sit on the floor. Over a dozen people spoke against the concept of detaining immigrants for civil immigration purposes, saying things like: “Your ICE facility has created a disgusting stench in our town, and we want it gone,“ and “You are empowering a bounty hunter.” 

Another resident said, “When the sheriff is focused on immigrant capture, his attention is away from other crimes.” That’s true. But also, the ICE contract is a way for Sheriff Jones and his deputies to commit their own crimes against a captive audience of people, who simply want to work and take care of their families. 

“This American Life” interviewed over a dozen U.S. Immigration Judges about how the Trump administration turned their job into a rubber-stamp for mass deportation, and fired those who refused to give up their limited independence — in just a few months.

Ayman was placed into solitary confinement “as a result of targeted harassment due to [his] attempt to practice his religion,” and denied access to counsel. These serious, constitutional violations are part of a daily pattern and practice at this jail.

Today attorney Robert A. Ratliff, with Brennan, Manna & Diamond, LLC, in collaboration with the attorneys Kathryn Brady and Franchel Daniel at the Muslim Legal Fund of America, filed an emergency petition for writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2241 and a request for temporary restraining order (Case No. 25 cv. 556) in federal court.