Isabelle Taft covers immigration for New York Focus. She's also a corps member with Report for America, a national program that places reporters in local newsrooms. She previously covered national news as a fellow at the New York Times, worked on the health team at Mississippi Today and fell in love with local news at the Biloxi Sun Herald on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Her reporting with ProPublica on Mississippi's involuntary commitment system helped change state laws.
The Department of Justice has terminated more than 100 immigration judges since last year as it has pressured courts to order more deportations.
The legislation comes after months of haggling over how best to protect New Yorkers from President Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Shelter providers have had to lay off staff, while the children’s already uncertain futures have become even murkier.
Trump administration rules are keeping immigrant kids detained, even when their parents are available to care for them. Families are using a new legal tool to free them.
Hochul’s counter would limit informal collusion with ICE only in civil matters.
Some officials and residents in Cheektowaga want a broader overhaul of their cops’ interactions with immigration agents.
In at least one case, police may have violated a state court ruling prohibiting local law enforcement from conducting civil immigration enforcement.
The ruling allows young immigrants who have suffered abuse and neglect to apply for protections from deportation — at least for now.
The conservative Democrat is sounding more like her progressive colleagues as she tries to protect immigrant constituents from the Trump administration.
Working Families Party–backed candidates flipped county legislatures, won big-city mayoralties, and secured an Assembly seat in Elise Stefanik’s backyard.
State officials and local activists may be more influential, but the mayor still has a role to play.
After nearly three months behind bars, Carlos Guerra Leon spent an extra night in a Louisiana detention center after officers and local ICE officials said they didn’t get the court’s order.
The Trump administration is slapping unaccompanied teenagers with fees for crossing the border.
As legislators brace for more ICE arrests, they’re scrambling to figure out how to respond.
Rejected books include a Spanish-English dictionary, a Spanish translation of a George R.R. Martin novel, and “The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.”
Some immigrants held in county jails are struggling to access legal advice, phone calls, and even their own court hearings.
The initiative to resettle asylum seekers outside New York City reached half the targeted number of familes. ICE has deported some participants.
The Migrant Relocation Assistance Program helped families leave crowded shelters and put down roots. Trump’s immigration crackdown is upending that.
Three months after the state legislature ended session without passing immigration protections, 15 elected officials faced down arrest to protest ICE and state inaction.
So far this year, the state’s county jails have held six times more people for federal immigration authorities than they did in all of 2024.