Border & Immigration News

The number of immigrants living illegally in the United States has leveled off in recent years, but those who remain are staying much longer than they did a decade ago, according to a recent study. The number of people living in the U.S. illegally last year was steady at 11.3 million, the Pew Research Center…

As the backlog of cases in immigration courts grows, the Department of Justice announced it has awarded $1.8 million in grants to legal aid organizations to help move  cases through the system. A prominent proponent of stronger border security, however, denounced the move as an effort to force taxpayers to “underwrite a costly and dysfunctional system.”…

U.S. immigration courts are backlogged with nearly 400,000 cases, and experts say the Obama administration is to blame. The 396,552 cases awaiting adjudication represent a 22 percent increase over last year, according to Syracuse University researchers. Not surprisingly, wait times are up, too. The average case in Imperial, Calif., currently lingers 857 days before resolution….

With the midterm elections two months away, it remains uncertain if—or when—President Obama will use executive action to alter the country’s immigration laws. 63 percent of Americans oppose executive action from Obama on immigration. But a recent poll conducted by Investors Business Daily shows that a majority of Americans believe the president should not act alone on…

ARLINGTON, Va.—Scores of Central American children here illegally skipped their second day of school for their turn in Judge John Milo Bryant’s courtroom yesterday morning. “You get one day in school and another one out; that’s a pretty good deal,” Bryant says to one boy, who missed class at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria,…

A Texas lawmaker says if President Obama were to try to revamp immigration law on his own, it would change the course of November’s midterm elections and effectively hand-deliver control of the Senate to Republicans. There has to be checks and balances against a president who is overreaching, says @RepKevinBrady In an interview with The…

Just 10 miles north of Boston is Lynn, Mass., an industrial city once was known for its shoe-making. In fact, a colonial boot graces the official city seal. Lynn’s blue collar base made it a logical place for affordable housing, which has attracted a large immigrant population. “Lynn has always been an immigrant community and…

The television screen captures a boy with a buzz cut swiveling in a chair at a table in an otherwise empty white room inside a detention center in an isolated New Mexico desert town. The 7-year-old, Anthony Damian Ramos Sanchez, sits next to his mother, Jessica Ramos Sanchez, who initiated their journey from El Salvador…

“It is my favorite docket, the juveniles,” Immigration Judge John Milo Bryant says, unprompted, as he hears the case of 15-year-old Christian Hernandez, a recent illegal arrival from Honduras. Bryant, the gregarious judge overseeing 38 juvenile cases in Arlington, Va., Immigration Court on a Tuesday morning, commends Christian for his “perfect English.” Christian, a good-looking…

The flood of illegal immigrants across the U.S.-Mexico border has made immigration a top issue for Americans, new polling shows. Job-seeking U.S. citizens are increasingly unhappy about competing for work with illegal immigrants. During a panel discussion at The Heritage Foundation today on the border crisis and immigration debate, Kellyanne Conway, president of the Polling…

SANTA FE, N.M.—A new school year is about to start for kids across New Mexico. That includes the children staying in the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Artesia, which has been remodeled to house up to 700 immigrants, nearly all of whom came to the United States from Central America. But who has been contracted…

OMAHA, Neb.—In an office building near Omaha’s airport, stern-faced, gray-haired immigration judge Jack Anderson presides over removal hearings in a courtroom filled with juveniles, most of them from Central America, all of them hoping to be allowed to stay in the United States. Josue, 13, sits in the front row with his mother and two…