Border & Immigration

A federal judge on Friday ordered the release of children held with their parents in U.S. immigration jails and denounced the Trump administration’s prolonged detention of families during the coronavirus pandemic.

Eleven detainees at a South Texas family detention center have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported Thursday.

The outbreak was reported at the center near Karnes City, about 50 miles southeast of San Antonio.

In the isolation wing of a U.S. detention center for immigrant families, a woman from El Salvador says her 8-year-old son asks her if they are going to die.

With no toys in their room and no ability to leave the room except to use the bathroom, the boy sleeps much of the day and otherwise watches television news that includes the rising death toll from the coronavirus, according to his mother. 

U.S. Reps. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, and Sylvia Garcia, D-Houston, called on Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Monday to release detainees at risk of catching the new coronavirus and to increase testing at its facilities.

The Supreme Court’s rejection of one of Donald Trump’s key immigration measures reignites a hot-button issue in a presidential campaign already scorched by pandemic, economic collapse and protests over police brutality and racial injustice.

When Josue Tayub gets ready for work, he knows that anything can happen during the 12 hours he’s on duty as an emergency room nurse at El Paso's Del Sol Medical Center. 

The Trump administration on Thursday suspended immigration court hearings for asylum-seekers waiting in Mexico through June 1, bowing to public health concerns while extending a state of limbo those locked down in Mexican migrant shelters.

A national civil rights advocacy group is suing the Trump administration on behalf of U.S. citizens denied government stimulus payments because they are married to undocumented immigrants.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection needlessly spent around $12 million last year to guard, house and feed as many as 2,500 people in a private detention center in Texas that never held more than 68 detainees on any given day, according to a report from a congressional watchdog.

A U.S. Border Patrol agent wouldn’t let Jackeline Reyes explain why she and her 15-year-old daughter needed asylum, pointing to the coronavirus. That confrontation in Texas came just days after the Trump administration quietly shut down the nation’s asylum system for the first time in decades in the name of public health.

Early Friday afternoon, Candelaria Pineda made her way through the U.S. Customs checkpoint in this border city before hurrying north toward the dozens of small shops that line downtown.

She crossed from her native Ciudad Juárez just hours after President Trump and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador agreed to to allow only non-essential travel across the U.S.-Mexico border in an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

The U.S. government says a new rule disqualifying more people from green cards if they use government benefits will not apply to immigrants with coronavirus or virus symptoms if they seek care.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said late Friday that seeking treatment or preventive services won’t affect someone’s immigration status under the new, highly criticized public charge rule, which took effect last month and which punishes immigrants who need public assistance.

After he was involved in a fender bender with a gang member, the Honduran delivery driver was in trouble: The accident wasn’t his fault, but he couldn’t pay the damages, and the other driver threatened to kill him