ICYMI: At Supreme Court, a Once-Fringe Birthright Citizenship Theory Takes the Spotlight

2025/05/20 Leave a comment

Useful analysis of some of the usual suspects of “fringe” legal theories:

Shortly after the Supreme Court announced in April that it would consider the nationwide freeze on President Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship, he gleefully spoke to reporters in the Oval Office.

Mr. Trump said that he was “so happy” the justices would take up the citizenship issue because it had been “so misunderstood.” The 14th Amendment, he said — long held to grant citizenship to anyone born in the United States — is actually “about slavery.”

“That’s not about tourists coming in and touching a piece of sand and then all of the sudden there’s citizenship,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “That is all about slavery.”

For more than a century, most scholars and the courts have agreed that though the 14th Amendment was added to the Constitution after the Civil War, it was not, in fact, all about slavery. Instead, courts have held that the amendment extended citizenship not just to the children of former slaves but also to babies born within the borders of the United States.

The notion that the amendment might not do so was once considered an unorthodox theory, promoted by an obscure California law professor named John Eastman and his colleagues at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank — the same professor who would later provide Mr. Trump with legal arguments he used to try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

The story of how the theory moved from the far edges of academia to the Oval Office and, on Thursday, to the Supreme Court, offers insight into how Mr. Trump has popularized legal theories once considered unthinkable to justify his immigration policies.

“They have been pushing it for decades,” said John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law and a top lawyer in the George W. Bush administration. “It was thought to be a wacky idea that only political philosophers would buy. They’ve finally got a president who agrees.”

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

President Trump promoted the theory during his first campaign but did not act on it until his second term. He signed an executive order on his first day to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants and some temporary foreign residents.

Legal challenges were swift and emphatic. Challengers pointed to the text of the 14th Amendment, which states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Proponents of the policy have pointed to birthright citizenship as a cornerstone of what it means to be an American, part of the national ethos of the country as a place that is open to everyone, regardless of faith, color or creed. Of the world’s 20 most developed countries, only Canada and the United States grant automatic citizenship to children born within its borders. 

In a brief to the Supreme Court, an immigrant advocacy group argued that “birthright citizenship is at the core of our nation’s foundational precept that all people born on our soil are created equal, regardless of their parentage.”

State attorneys general who are challenging the policy weighed in with a brief that argued that the Supreme Court had already settled the question in the landmark 1898 case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark, when the court found that a man born in San Francisco to Chinese parents was a citizen.

So far, courts have agreed. Judges in Washington State, Massachusetts and Maryland quickly instituted nationwide pauses on Mr. Trump’s policy.

In oral arguments this week, the justices will primarily consider whether federal judges have the power to order these temporary pauses, known as nationwide injunctions. But the question of birthright citizenship will form the backdrop.

In an interview, Mr. Eastman said he developed his views on birthright citizenship after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Back then, Mr. Eastman, who had clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas, was a law professor at Chapman University in Orange County, Calif., and director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence at the Claremont Institute.

In late November 2001, a man named Yaser Esam Hamdi was taken into custody by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and transferred to the U.S. military base/prison at Guantánamo Bay.

Officials learned Mr. Hamdi was an American citizen. His mother, a Saudi national, had given birth to him while the family was living in Baton Rouge, La., where Mr. Hamdi’s father was working as a chemical engineer.

Because Mr. Hamdi was a U.S. citizen, the authorities believed they could no longer hold him as an “enemy combatant” in Guantánamo Bay, where he was considered beyond the reach of the full legal protections of federal courts. They transferred him to a naval brig in Norfolk, Va.

In a 2004 friend-of-the-court brief in the case, Mr. Eastman argued that the idea that citizenship was automatically conferred on all children born on American soil was a “generally accepted though erroneous interpretation” of the 14th Amendment that was “incorrect, as a matter of text, historical practice and political theory.”

Mr. Eastman drew on the work of a California State University, San Bernardino political science professor affiliated with the Claremont Institute, Edward J. Erler, who had offered the same theory in books published in 1997 and 2003.

Mr. Erler, who did not respond to a request for comment, arguedthat the children of people in the country illegally, or temporarily, are not automatically citizens.

Although the idea that children born in the United States automatically become citizens has deep roots in the common law, it was not adopted in the text of the Constitution until 1868, as part of the 14th Amendment. It came in a sentence that overturned Dred Scott, the 1857 Supreme Court decision that affirmed slavery and helped prompt the Civil War.

Mr. Eastman claimed that nowhere during the debate over the 14th Amendment had lawmakers agreed to include temporary visitors.

The justices rejected this view, finding that the Constitution’s due process protections applied to Mr. Hamdi.

Still, for years afterward, Mr. Eastman and Mr. Yoo publicly debated the issue, with Mr. Eastman arguing his theory that birthright citizenship was not in the Constitution and Mr. Yooarguing it was.

For much of that time, the debate felt abstract, Mr. Yoo said, of interest mostly to legal scholars.

“Never has an abstract idea had such enormous policy effects,” he said. “It’s like it almost just jumped from law review articles to the White House.”

That leap happened when Mr. Trump ran for president in 2015.

In an interview with the Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly in August 2015, Mr. Trump outlined his plans to overhaul the immigration system. Mr. O’Reilly seemed skeptical at first, and then increasingly frustrated.

Mr. O’Reilly pointed to the 14th Amendment as an impediment to Mr. Trump’s plan. But Mr. Trump responded, “I think you’re wrong about the 14th Amendment.”

“I can quote it — do you want me to quote you the amendment,” Mr. O’Reilly said, nearly shouting. “If you’re born here, you’re an American — period! Period!”

“But there are many lawyers, many lawyers are saying that’s not the way it is,” Mr. Trump responded.

Mr. Eastman said Mr. Trump was “likely” referring to him but also to other academics who had published on the issue. He said he was not sure how his views had reached the presidential candidate.

Mr. Trump did not pursue a plan to end birthright citizenship in his first term. Mr. Eastman said that in 2019 he met with Attorney General William P. Barr at Mr. Barr’s invitation to discuss a possible executive order on birthright citizenship but that nothing came of it. Mr. Barr did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Eastman said he was “very happy” when Mr. Trump announced he would end birthright citizenship on his first day back in office.

By then, Mr. Eastman and Mr. Trump had a close association. Mr. Eastman was one of the architects of a plan to create fake slates of pro-Trump electors in states that Joseph R. Biden Jr. won and to urge Vice President Mike Pence to accept those slates while presiding over the certification of the 2020 election.

A California judge recommended that Mr. Eastman be disbarred over the episode. He said he was appealing, though his California law license is currently inactive as a result. He is also fighting criminal charges that are slowly making their way through state court in Arizona. (A case against him and other defendants in Georgia appears unlikely to go forward.)

Mr. Eastman said that the president did not directly consult him about the birthright citizenship order but that several of his friends, whom he declined to name, were involved. “They knew that my scholarship was kind of at the forefront of this,” he said.

Mr. Trump’s order fueled new interest in examining the underpinnings of birthright citizenship, said Ilan Wurman, a law professor at the University of Minnesota and author of a book on the 14th Amendment.

“President Trump has a rather uncanny ability to move Overton windows — issues that people thought were off the table are on the table,” Mr. Wurman said.

Mr. Wurman argues that a close read of the 1898 case and the historical record reveals that the Supreme Court has never firmly held that children born to those illegally present are citizens.

A flurry of friend-of-the-court briefs have brought some of these ideas to the justices, including one from Mr. Eastman.

In a brief to the justices in late April, he argued that although the justices had agreed to hear arguments only about the nationwide pause on the president’s policy, that they should also decide the merits and end birthright citizenship.

“There are a lot of people in the country waiting for resolution of this issue,” he said. “Is the executive order valid or not? And the longer we wait, the more consternation it’s caused.”

Source: At Supreme Court, a Once-Fringe Birthright Citizenship Theory Takes the Spotlight

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MPI: Repealing Birthright Citizenship Would Significantly Increase the Size of the U.S. Unauthorized Population

2025/05/20 Leave a comment

Of note. Canadian non-resident self-pay births for temporary residents and those on visitor visa suggest equivalent Canadian numbers of those who could be affected would be around 5,000:

Ending birthright citizenship for children born on U.S. soil to unauthorized immigrants or certain other non-citizens would have a contrary result from its stated aim of reducing the unauthorized immigrant population. New estimates from the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) and Penn State’s Population Research Institute demonstrate how repeal would significantly swell the size of the unauthorized population—now and for generations to come. 

The new projections show that ending birthright citizenship for U.S.-born children with parents who are either unauthorized immigrants or temporary visa holders (or a combination of the two) would increase the unauthorized population by an additional 2.7 million by 2045 and by 5.4 million by 2075. 

Each year, an average of about 255,000 children born on U.S. soil would start life without U.S. citizenship based on their parents’ legal status, the research shows. 

President Donald Trump on his first day back in office signed an executive order ending birthright citizenship for children born to certain non-citizens. The order, which has been stayed by the courts amid questions over its constitutionality, specifies that going forward, only children born to at least one U.S.-citizen or lawful permanent resident parent would automatically acquire U.S. citizenship. The Supreme Court on Thursday will hold an oral argument on the issue. 

Beyond significantly adding to an unauthorized immigrant population that MPI estimates stood at 13.7 million as of mid-2023, the end of birthright citizenship for many children would create a self-perpetuating, multi-generational underclass—with U.S.-born residents inheriting the social disadvantage borne by their parents and even, over time, their grandparents and great-grandparents. By 2075, there would be 1.7 million U.S. born who were the children of two parents who had themselves been born in the United States, yet would nonetheless lack legal status, the authors estimate. 

“This creation of a class of U.S.-born residents deprived of the rights that citizenship conveys to their neighbors, classmates and work colleagues could sow the seeds for significant disruption to economic mobility and social cohesion in the years and decades ahead,” Jennifer Van Hook, Michael Fix and Julia Gelatt write in the analysis published today. 

The researchers’ projections use assumptions that in-migration, out-migration and fertility rates will hold steady. Yet even if the U.S. government fully sealed the border against illegal entries and ramped up deportations significantly, changes to birthright citizenship would still result in an unauthorized population that is 1.3 million larger in 2045 than it would be if current birthright citizenship interpretations held. 

Read the analysis here: www.migrationpolicy.org/news/birthright-citizenship-repeal-projections. 

Source: Repealing Birthright Citizenship Would Significantly Increase the Size of the U.S. Unauthorized Population

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Trump Immigration Order Could Cost Americans $3,000 Per Baby

2025/04/04 Leave a comment

When the Harper government made a push for ending birthright citizenship, initial analysis included a cost estimate of $300,000 that would be absorbed by the government, not additional fees for those applying (the documents that I received from ATIP did not indicate any cost recovery plans). Given provincial opposition and the smaller numbers known at that time, the government dropped any change to current birthright citizenship.

Much simpler to do in Canada as the previous analysis indicated but like anything in government, always some complications to address:

Ending birthright citizenship would be chaotic and costly for many Americans due to new fees, paperwork requirements and other issues. So far, the constitutionality of Donald Trump’s executive order, which would no longer guarantee a child born on U.S. soil is an American citizen, has dominated the discussion. While critics and supporters of birthright citizenship have highlighted the legal issues, few people have examined the practical effects. Implementing the policy would create significant financial burdens for U.S.-born and immigrant parents. If the Trump administration succeeds in ending birthright citizenship, it will turn each birth in America into a federal event.

The Immigration Order Would Bring The Federal Government Into The Delivery Room

A National Foundation for American Policy analysis finds the Trump administration would impose a $3,000 or higher “birth tax” for each baby born in the United States to carry out the executive order ending birthright citizenship. The cost includes Form N-600, the 14-page Application for Certificate of Citizenship, which has a $1,385 government filing fee, and the attorney fees related to the form that range from $1,500 to $10,000. Parents also would need to submit biometrics to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (or another agency), and the parents and baby would likely need to appear in person at a Social Security Administration office. Those actions could entail additional expenses. Costs could differ based on a parent’s details.

NFAP developed the updated estimates with Margaret Stock, an attorney at Cascadia Cross Border Law Group, who has helped many military families with the time-consuming process of documenting that a child born abroad is a U.S. citizen at birth. Stock authored a 2012 NFAP report that explained why changing the Citizenship Clause would be expensive and burdensome for individuals.

Unless the Trump administration intends their new birthright citizenship policy to operate on the “honor system,” which is unlikely, U.S.-born and foreign-born parents will spend considerable time and money if they want the federal government to certify their newborn is a U.S. citizen…

Practical Problems For Americans If The Government Implements The Immigration Order

Trump officials have not explained the new burdens the executive order would create for Americans or the process they intend to impose on new parents if judges ruled the administration’s new birthright citizenship policy constitutional.

Receiving a birth certificate after a child is born would no longer suffice to prove a baby is a U.S. citizen at birth. At a minimum, new parents would need to endure a process like when starting a new job: “Use Form I-9 to verify the identity and employment authorization of individuals hired for employment in the United States,” according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. “All U.S. employers must properly complete Form I-9 for every individual they hire for employment in the United States. On the form, an employee must attest to their employment authorization. The employee must also present their employer with acceptable documents as evidence of identity and employment authorization.”

Margaret Stock believes the process for parents would be more complicated than the current I-9 process companies use to document employment eligibility. “It will have to be much more extensive than the I-9 process,” she said. “Birth certificates showing birth in the United States will no longer prove U.S. citizenship. Someone at the Social Security Administration will need to collect several documents before issuing a Social Security number.”

She said SSA would demand to see a birth certificate with a time stamp on it that shows the time, date and location of birth. The government would also ask for the birth and immigration records of the biological mother and potentially DNA tests to establish the biological father. Officials would also need to see the birth and immigration records of the biological father.

“Only an immigration law expert can do the legal analysis because people’s statuses are a moving target,” according to Stock. “Here’s an example: What if USCIS approves a green card at a Service Center for a pregnant mother a few minutes before (or after) she gives birth? That’s the difference between the baby being a U.S. citizen under the executive order or the baby being an undocumented immigrant.” The Social Security Administration would need an army of expert immigration law adjudicators.

Stock notes that Alaska and Hawaii have federal statutes that do not include the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction.” She believes the executive order may not apply to births in those states.

Today, states, not the federal government, issue birth certificates. SSA relies on state records to issue Social Security numbers to U.S.-born citizens, and the State Department uses those records to issue passports.

“If the fact of someone’s birth within the U.S. is no longer sufficient to prove the person’s claim to U.S. citizenship, all of these bureaucratic systems must be re-tooled,” wrote Stock in the NFAP analysis. “At a minimum, it will require each state to establish a system for verifying claims to U.S. citizenship. More logically, a change to the Citizenship Clause will lead to the creation of a central and authoritative Federal citizenship records system that will register all U.S. citizens—and ultimately, this would likely, in turn, lead to a National Identification card.”

The Trump administration’s effort to end birthright citizenship would add deadweight costs to the economy and financially harm people least likely to possess spare resources. It would also likely create a two-tier caste society with a child’s success in life determined by whether they were born a U.S. citizen at birth.

Margaret Stock said changing birthright citizenship should only appeal to individuals who have not considered the cost and implications of verifying the immigration and citizenship status of every parent of every child born in America.

Source: Trump Immigration Order Could Cost Americans $3,000 Per Baby

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USA: A new study quantifies how a #citizenship question would likely hurt census accuracy

2025/03/27 Leave a comment

Contrast with Canada where citizenship has been part of the census for many years. But in current US political context, understandable how this would affect response rates:

Adding a citizenship question to U.S. census forms — a change that many Republicans in Congress and President Trump have wanted — would likely undermine the accuracy of the country’s population counts, a new peer-reviewed study shows.

The findings, published last week in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, build on earlier research by the Census Bureau and quantify longstanding concerns among opponents of the question, who fear it could derail the once-a-decade tally of U.S. residents that’s used to redistribute political representation and federal funding to communities.

Census participation levels have long varied among different demographic groups. For example, in the 2020 census, those differences helped drive the overcounting of people who identify as white and not Hispanic and the undercounting of Latinos.

Source: A new study quantifies how a citizenship question would likely hurt census accuracy

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Lawyers advise Canadians working in U.S. to avoid travel amid border crackdown

2025/03/27 Leave a comment

Of note (one of our children is working in the USA and hearing from others whose travel plans being affected):

U.S. immigration lawyers are warning foreigners working and studying in America – including Canadians – to refrain from international travel, saying that crossing the U.S. border has become significantly more unpredictable since U.S. President Donald Trump took office and that they run the risk of being detained or refused entry.

The Trump administration has issued a series of broad executive orders over the past two months that aim to “secure” the American border by expediting the removal of undocumented migrants. But immigration lawyers say the overall hostile tone from the White House toward non-U.S. citizens is emboldening border agents to become more heavy-handed with travellers leaving and entering the country, even those who hold valid work and study visas.

In some cases lawyers are advising clients to prepare for increased scrutiny of their personal histories, including possible searches of their cellphones for evidence of their political leanings.

Earlier this month, New York-based immigration law firm Dyer Harris LLP, which helps foreigners secure work visas in the U.S., sent an e-mail to their clients residing and working in the country recommending that they hold off on international travel altogether, unless in an emergency.

“The hostile chaos emanating from the White House should make everyone cautious on international travel for the time being,” the e-mail read. “Make arrangements with family and friends to be in touch on a daily basis [if crossing the border]. It is crucial someone knows where you are, and that action is taken if you are taken into custody.”

Recently, there have been multiple incidents of business travellers and tourists arbitrarily being stopped at U.S. border crossings and sometimes held for weeks at U.S. immigration detention centres….

Source: Lawyers advise Canadians working in U.S. to avoid travel amid border crackdown

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L’exode américain LGBTQ+ vers le Canada a commencé

2025/03/26 Leave a comment

To note (early signs from immigration lawyers):

Pendant que Donald Trump courtise les millionnaires pour leur offrir une carte dorée d’immigration à 5 millions de dollars, un exode certain des familles LGBTQ+ a déjà commencé. Les demandes d’Américains souhaitant déménager ont explosé depuis son retour à la Maison-Blanche, selon des avocats et des organisations, et le Canada s’impose comme une destination de choix.



« Je n’ai jamais rien vu de tel », admet d’emblée David LeBlanc, avocat en immigration et directeur de Ferreira-Wells Immigration. Il dit recevoir une centaine de demandes par semaine.



La forte hausse se dessinait déjà à la veille de l’élection décisive de novembre dernier, mais il constate que les gens sont maintenant prêts à bouger réellement, et vite.

Jusqu’à 90 % de ses clients admissibles à un programme d’immigration au Canada ont déjà commencé le processus, affirme-t-il.

Cette firme, basée à Toronto, se considère comme une « pionnière » dans l’immigration des personnes issues des communautés LGBTQ+ depuis trois décennies. Plusieurs se demandent s’ils peuvent en fait demander l’asile au Canada, rapporte-t-il, ce qui est pour l’instant improbable. « Ça devient vite le sujet le plus chaud de notre profession en ce moment », dit M. LeBlanc.


En ce moment, parmi ceux qui sont le plus susceptibles de passer de l’idée à la réalisation, les familles LGBTQ+ sont les numéros 1 », confirme aussi depuis Toronto Evan Green, avocat spécialisé en immigration et associé principal de la firme Green and Spiegel. Son équipe reçoit « considérablement plus » de demandes depuis le retour de l’équipe Trump au pouvoir, même en comparaison avec son mandat précédent, et « l’urgence » est beaucoup plus palpable.

Aucun État ne semble épargné : « Même ici, en Californie, le climat politique est de plus en plus hostile avec des attaques claires contre les droits trans de tous les ordres de gouvernement », remarque Kathie Moehlig, directrice générale de TransFamily Support Services, un organisme basé à San Diego. La plupart des familles sont trop « tétanisées » pour parler aux médias, rapporte-t-elle. Seules les plus fortunées ou privilégiées peuvent aussi entamer les démarches, notamment vers le Canada, rappelle-t-elle.

Celles dont l’un des parents possède la nationalité canadienne sont les plus rapides à pouvoir franchir la frontière, dit M. Green….

Source: L’exode américain LGBTQ+ vers le Canada a commencé

While Donald Trump is courting millionaires to offer them a $5 million golden immigration card, a certain exodus of LGBTQ+ families has already begun. Requests from Americans wishing to move have exploded since his return to the White House, according to lawyers and organizations, and Canada is emerging as a destination of choice.

“I have never seen anything like this,” admits David LeBlanc, immigration lawyer and director of Ferreira-Wells Immigration. He says he receives a hundred requests a week.

The sharp increase was already emerging on the eve of last November’s decisive election, but he notes that people are now ready to move really, and quickly.

Up to 90% of his clients eligible for an immigration program in Canada have already started the process, he says. This Toronto-based firm has considered itself a “pioneer” in the immigration of people from LGBTQ+ communities for three decades. Many are wondering if they can actually seek asylum in Canada, he reports, which is unlikely at the moment. “It quickly becomes the hottest subject of our profession at the moment,” says Mr. LeBlanc.

At the moment, among those who are most likely to move from idea to realization, LGBTQ+ families are number 1, “also confirms from Toronto Evan Green, immigration lawyer and principal partner of the firm Green and Spiegel. His team has received “significantly more” requests since the Trump team’s return to power, even compared to his previous mandate, and “the urgency” is much more palpable.

No state seems to be spared: “Even here in California, the political climate is increasingly hostile with clear attacks on trans rights of all levels of government,” notes Kathie Moehlig, executive director of TransFamily Support Services, a San Diego-based organization. Most families are too “tetanized” to talk to the media, she reports. Only the most wealthy or privileged can also start the steps, especially to Canada, she recalls.

Those whose parents have Canadian citizenship are the fastest to cross the border, says Mr. Green.

Filed under Immigration, LGBTQ Tagged with , ,

Mooney: I’m the Canadian who was detained by Ice for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped

2025/03/20 Leave a comment

Horrific example of bureaucracy at work, implementing the cruel and flawed policies of the Trump administration:

There was no explanation, no warning. One minute, I was in an immigration office talking to an officer about my work visa, which had been approved months before and allowed me, a Canadian, to work in the US. The next, I was told to put my hands against the wall, and patted down like a criminal before being sent to an Ice detention center without the chance to talk to a lawyer….

And that’s when I made a decision: I would never allow myself to feel sorry for my situation again. No matter how hard this was, I had to be grateful. Because every woman I met was in an even more difficult position than mine.

There were around 140 of us in our unit. Many women had lived and worked in the US legally for years but had overstayed their visas – often after reapplying and being denied. They had all been detained without warning.

If someone is a criminal, I agree they should be taken off the streets. But not one of these women had a criminal record. These women acknowledged that they shouldn’t have overstayed and took responsibility for their actions. But their frustration wasn’t about being held accountable; it was about the endless, bureaucratic limbo they had been trapped in.

The real issue was how long it took to get out of the system, with no clear answers, no timeline and no way to move forward. Once deported, many have no choice but to abandon everything they own because the cost of shipping their belongings back is too high.

I met a woman who had been on a road trip with her husband. She said they had 10-year work visas. While driving near the San Diego border, they mistakenly got into a lane leading to Mexico. They stopped and told the agent they didn’t have their passports on them, expecting to be redirected. Instead, they were detained. They are both pastors.

I met a family of three who had been living in the US for 11 years with work authorizations. They paid taxes and were waiting for their green cards. Every year, the mother had to undergo a background check, but this time, she was told to bring her whole family. When they arrived, they were taken into custody and told their status would now be processed from within the detention center.

Another woman from Canada had been living in the US with her husband who was detained after a traffic stop. She admitted she had overstayed her visa and accepted that she would be deported. But she had been stuck in the system for almost six weeks because she hadn’t had her passport. Who runs casual errands with their passport?

One woman had a 10-year visa. When it expired, she moved back to her home country, Venezuela. She admitted she had overstayed by one month before leaving. Later, she returned for a vacation and entered the US without issue. But when she took a domestic flight from Miami to Los Angeles, she was picked up by Ice and detained. She couldn’t be deported because Venezuela wasn’t accepting deportees. She didn’t know when she was getting out.

There was a girl from India who had overstayed her student visa for three days before heading back home. She then came back to the US on a new, valid visa to finish her master’s degree and was handed over to Ice due to the three days she had overstayed on her previous visa.

There were women who had been picked up off the street, from outside their workplaces, from their homes. All of these women told me that they had been detained for time spans ranging from a few weeks to 10 months. One woman’s daughter was outside the detention center protesting for her release….

The reality became clear: Ice detention isn’t just a bureaucratic nightmare. It’s a business. These facilities are privately owned and run for profit.

Companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group receive government funding based on the number of people they detain, which is why they lobby for stricter immigration policies. It’s a lucrative business: CoreCivic made over $560m from Ice contracts in a single year. In 2024, GEO Group made more than $763m from Ice contracts.

The more detainees, the more money they make. It stands to reason that these companies have no incentive to release people quickly. What I had experienced was finally starting to make sense.

This is not just my story. It is the story of thousands and thousands of people still trapped in a system that profits from their suffering. I am writing in the hope that someone out there – someone with the power to change any of this – can help do something.

The strength I witnessed in those women, the love they gave despite their suffering, is what gives me faith. Faith that no matter how flawed the system, how cruel the circumstances, humanity will always shine through.

Even in the darkest places, within the most broken systems, humanity persists. Sometimes, it reveals itself in the smallest, most unexpected acts of kindness: a shared meal, a whispered prayer, a hand reaching out in the dark. We are defined by the love we extend, the courage we summon and the truths we are willing to tell.

Source: I’m the Canadian who was detained by Ice for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped

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HESA: Nobody is Coming to Save Us, But

2025/03/18 Leave a comment

Sensible and ambitious, with potential medium and long-term benefits:

…Now, there just happens to be one kind of change that is suddenly going very cheap, and that is the ability to add top-class academic talent. The carnage down south, with the National Institutes of Health NIH being at least partially dismantled and entire universities being threatened with loss of hundreds of millions of dollars unless they submit to an unspecified number of random administrative fiats from the trump administration, is about to start hemorrhaging talent. It’s not just foreign scholars who are going to leave; top American talent is suddenly footloose, too, because it has become apparent that the damage being done to American science is unlikely to be fully reversible. And even if it could be reversed, you’d never be more than 4 years away from another group of anti-Enlightenment jackals coming and taking another wrecking ball to the whole system. The age of American Science is over, and it’s not coming back any time soon. The opportunity exists, therefore, for ambitious universities to scoop up a fair bit of top new talent.

But wait a minute, you say. Talent requires salaries, and salaries are under pressure, and Big Philanthropy doesn’t cover that. Well, actually, it can, but only if you package it and structure it correctly.

It would indeed be hard for a university to get a philanthropist to pick up the tab in order to grab a new talent across a range of disciplines. There’s nothing “new” about hiring additional profs to plug holes or provide upgrades to an institution’s existing staff. But some philanthropists probably could be persuaded to cover the costs if a university presented a structured package of targeted hires. That is, a set of hires that built on a set of existing strengths and moved the institution closer to world-class status in a specific discipline (e.g., Hegelian Philosophy, Dentistry) or cluster of related disciplines (Human and Animal Health/Vaccines, Water protection, etc.). 

Basically what you would want to do is create a package that encompassed: i) a half-dozen or so fully-funded named chairs, some of which could go to existing staff, others to new star hires, which would mean no net charges to the operating budget ii) money for whatever new space, laboratory or otherwise, was required to house these new scholars and their work, iii) funding for a reasonable number of graduate students, iv) at least some funds for ongoing innovative activities and v) some kind of collective identity. Wrap the whole thing in a bow, name it the [Philanthropist name here] Centre for [Discipline/Grand Challenge name here], hire ambitiously from across the United States to create a cluster of excellence on a level that can really make a mark on a global scale. Normally, this kind of thing would not be possible. But with chaos south of the border, I think right now, it is. And it could be game-changing for a few universities if they could pull it off….

Source: Nobody is Coming to Save Us, But

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How a Columbia Student Fled to Canada After ICE Came Looking for Her

2025/03/17 1 Comment

Another example of over-reach and where legal system will be tested (Canadian woman who was detained in U.S. immigration jails returns to Vancouver provides another example of over-reach and stupid or incompetent administration):

…Unlike Mr. Khalil, Ms. Srinivasan said she was not an activist or a member of any group that organized demonstrations on campus.

Ms. Srinivasan said she was an architect who came to the United States from India as part of the Fulbright program in 2016 and that she enrolled at Columbia in 2020. She said she was in the fifth year of an urban planning doctoral program at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and was supposed to graduate in May.

She said that her activity on social media had been mostly limited to liking or sharing posts that highlighted “human rights violations” in the war in Gaza. And she said that she had signed several open letters related to the war, including one by architecture scholars that called for “Palestinian liberation.”

“I’m just surprised that I’m a person of interest,” she said. “I’m kind of a rando, like, absolute rando,” she said, using slang for random.

It was March 5 when she received an email from the U.S. Consulate in Chennai, India, indicating that her visa had been revoked. The notice did not provide a reason, saying only that “information has come to light” that may make her ineligible for a visa….

Source: How a Columbia Student Fled to Canada After ICE Came Looking for Her

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How reliable is the government’s economic data? Under Trump, there are real concerns

2025/03/12 Leave a comment

Legitimate worry and consistent with the apparent “wrecking ball” approach to policy and programs:

Every month, the federal government serves up a steady diet of economic reports on everything from the price of groceries to the unemployment rate. These reports are closely followed: They can move markets — and the president’s approval rating.

Businesses and investors put a lot of stock in the numbers, which are rigorously vetted and free from political spin.

Now the Trump administration is calling that trust into question.

The government recently disbanded two outside advisory committees that used to consult on the numbers, offering suggestions on ways to improve the reliability of the government data. 

At the same time, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has suggested changing the way the broadest measure of the economy — gross domestic product — is calculated.

Those moves are raising concerns about whether economic data could be manipulated for political or other purposes. 

Among those raising the alarm is Erica Groshen. She’s one of the outside experts who received a terse email last week saying her services were no longer needed, because the committee she’d served on — the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee — had been folded.

Groshen cares deeply about the reliability of government data, having previously overseen the number crunching as commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

“Statistical agencies live and die by trust,” she says. “If the numbers aren’t trustworthy, people won’t use them to make important decisions, and then you might as well not publish them.”

Source: How reliable is the government’s economic data? Under Trump, there are real concerns

Filed under Government Tagged with , , ,

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