Your fact-checks will appear here
American immigration law
The U.S. Constitution never expressly barred Muslims from holding federal office; and was adopted to prevent exactly that kind of exclusion . Historical records show debates in the 1780s acknowledged ...
U.S. federal law defines “alien” simply as “any person not a citizen or national of the United States,” a statutory definition found in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and codified in Title ...
Interfering with ICE (a federal agency) and interfering with local police carry different legal risks, practical consequences, and political meanings: federal law treats obstruction of federal officer...
ICE’s ability to ask for identification during encounters traces to its immigration enforcement authority under federal law and agency practice; ICE says officers must identify themselves and show cre...
U.S. law does not use a single plain‑English definition for “illegal immigrant”; federal statutes define categories of alien presence and conduct—such as unlawful entry, unauthorized presence, and vis...
Federal immigration officers generally cannot force entry into the nonpublic areas of a private home in Minnesota without a judicially issued warrant; ICE’s so‑called “administrative” or agency-issued...
ICE’s statutory authority to arrest and detain flows primarily from the Immigration and Nationality Act and related DHS policies, giving the agency broad administrative power over “aliens” believed re...
ICE coordinates with local police, Customs and Border Protection (including Border Patrol), state National Guard units and other federal agencies through formal deputization programs, memoranda of agr...
The Biden administration’s border and asylum policies have faced a steady stream of from states, advocacy groups, and federal judges, resulting in a mix of rulings that both reinstated and struck down...
ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) focuses on administrative arrests of people it believes are removable and also can execute criminal warrants; historically many arrested have convictions...
The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) defines “alien” in section 101(a) as “any person not a citizen or national of the United States,” a plain statutory definition repeated across official codifi...
INA §287 is a cluster of statutory provisions in the Immigration and Nationality Act that define the substantive powers of immigration officers—ranging from interrogation, arrest, warrantless stops ne...
Federal courts since 2009 have repeatedly constrained ICE’s use of detainers, treating most detainers as non‑mandatory requests and requiring Fourth Amendment safeguards such as probable cause and not...
ICE’s delegated authority intersects with local police mainly through the 287(g) program, which lets ICE train and authorize state and local officers to perform specific immigration-officer functions ...
Removal, expulsion, and voluntary return/departure are distinct legal mechanisms that result in a noncitizen leaving the United States: "removal" is a formal order of the immigration system typically ...
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) treats "removals" as formal, ordered expulsions while "returns" bundle several non‑order departures — including voluntary departures, voluntary returns, and w...
Federal appellate and district courts have split on whether ICE may enter homes without judicial warrants and what remedies victims may obtain: many lower courts and district judges have held warrantl...
ICE says it detains noncitizens to secure their appearance in immigration proceedings or to effect removal, and it also detains people subject to mandatory detention under the Immigration and National...
ICE applies a form of to initiate immigration stops, brief detentions, and some warrantless arrests, but courts and policy materials impose limits on what factors officers may rely on and how suspicio...
The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) explicitly defines the statutory term in 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a): any person who is not a United States citizen or national, a definition reiterated in legal refer...