Immigration News

On April 24, 2026, a divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed a District Court judgment holding that President Donald J. Trump’s Inauguration Day proclamation suspending asylum access at the southern border exceeds the authority Congress has granted the President under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

Asylum law in the United States rests on a deceptively simple proposition: the government will offer refuge to a person who cannot safely return home because of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.

The foundational legislation is Federal Law No. 53-FZ “On Military Duty and Military Service” (adopted 28 March 1998, with dozens of amendments). It governs conscription, mobilization, reserve service, age limits, and fitness categories. Significant amendments in the last approximately ten years—especially post-2022—expanded the draft pool, introduced digital tools, and shifted to year-round processes amid the Ukraine conflict.

A Reuters report published on April 10, 2026 states that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement circulated an internal email directing investigative personnel nationwide to focus on a new “Birth Tourism Initiative.”

On April 10, 2026, the family of Anadith Danay Reyes Alvarez — an eight-year-old Honduran girl who died while in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in May 2023 — filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the United States government in federal court.

When we published our initial analysis in January 2026, the dismissal of immigration judges across the country was already unprecedented in scope. Since then, the transformation of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) has accelerated, deepened, and — thanks to an extensive investigative report published by The New York Times on April 9, 2026 — become substantially better documented in quantitative terms.

In one of the most extraordinary forty-eight hours in recent removal-enforcement history, a federal deportation aircraft carrying an Egyptian mother and her five U.S.- resident children was ordered turned around mid-flight on Saturday, April 25, 2026, after two federal district judges entered emergency orders blocking the family’s removal.

On March 24, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in Noem v. Al Otro Lado, one of the most important asylum-access cases the Court has taken up in years. The case centers on whether the federal government may stop asylum seekers on the Mexican side of a port of entry and refuse to process their claims when officials say the port is too overburdened to handle more people.

An Afghan asylum-seeker who worked alongside U.S. Army Special Forces and fled his country after the Taliban takeover died on March 14, 2026, less than 24 hours after being taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Dallas, Texas.