Support the ACLU: Protect & Advance Immigrants’ Rights

Protecting immigrants’ rights is a core priority of the ACLU, which was founded amid an outbreak of anti-immigrant government raids during the first “Red Scare.” The ACLU conducts the largest litigation program in the country dedicated to defending the constitutional rights of immigrants and has been at the forefront of almost every major legal struggle on behalf of immigrants’ rights through impact litigation and other advocacy.

Defending our Neighbors Fund: Historic $30 Million Dollar Fund to Scale Up Access to Lawyers for Families Fighting Wrongful Detention, Deportation

This October, the ACLU, United We Dream (UWD), and Abundant Futures Fund (AFF), have joined forces to launch the Defending Our Neighbors Fund: a bold new initiative that will scale up crucial financial support to legal organizations across the country. Housed within AFF, the Defending Our Neighbors Fund will help ensure immigrant families facing the threat of separation, wrongful detention, and deportations have access to lawyers.

Already, the Defending Our Neighbors Fund has raised over $10 million with the goal of raising a total of at least $30 million in emergency response funding. With more than 11 million U.S. citizens living in households with an undocumented family member, countless American families face imminent risk of being torn apart. Many are forced to navigate a complex and punishing system alone, without access to legal counsel.

To learn more and or donate: please visit (defendingourneighbors.org).

When we agitate for our fundamental rights, we can, and in many cases, are winning. Below are additional recent updates on key fights to protect immigrants' rights and to check abuses of power. To learn more about any of the below cases and the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, please visit our website: (https://www.aclu.org/issues/immigrants-rights)

- Fighting the misuse of the Alien Enemies Act (WMM v. Trump):
In an important ruling this past September, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the Trump administration's use of an 18th-century law, the wartime Alien Enemies Act, to rapidly deport Venezuelan immigrants without due process. As ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt, who argued the appeal, noted, this 2-1 decision from one of the most conservative courts "makes clear that the president cannot invoke whatever powers he wants. This is a huge victory for the rule of law."

- Deployment of Military Troops in LA is Unconstitutional (Newsom v. Trump):
When the president is deploying military troops to respond to protests, it's a threat to all our freedoms – which is why we just filed an amicus brief supporting the State of California's lawsuit against the Trump administration. Sending the military to police civilians is an extreme and dangerous measure. The federal military must not be used as a tool of oppression and a means of suppressing political opponents. The Posse Comitatus Act was designed to prevent this and prohibits domestic military policing of civilians. The president's actions in Southern California put our foundational First Amendment rights at high risk and put countless people in direct harm's way.

- Challenging New ICE Policy Mandating Detention of Immigrants without Bond (Gutierrez v. Baltasar):
The ACLU of Colorado, ACLU, and our partners filed a class-action lawsuit challenging a recent Trump administration policy that ends bond eligibility for millions of immigrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In a dramatic departure from existing immigration law, this new policy declares that all people alleged to have entered the country without documentation be denied eligibility for bond during the entirety of their removal proceedings.

- "Alligator Alcatraz" Lawsuit (M.A. v. Guthrie):
The ACLU, ACLU of Florida, and our partners filed a lawsuit on behalf of people detained at the Everglades facility, cruelly named "Alligator Alcatraz." The lawsuit challenges Florida's authority to detain people at the facility, claiming it is unprecedented for a state to claim authority to operate its own independent immigration detention system.

- Fast-Track Deportation Policy (Make the Road New York v. Noem):
In another historic win, the ACLU successfully blocked the Trump administration's fast-track deportation policy. Under Trump's rule, immigrants would get less due process in contesting their deportation than they would in contesting a traffic ticket. The lawsuit and ruling come as ICE stakes out immigration courthouses, arrests people at their scheduled appointments, and then attempts to quickly deport them without any due process. The court's ruling halts the policy as the case continues.

- Family Separation Lawsuit (Ms. L v. ICE):
After ruling not once, but twice, that the Trump administration violated a settlement agreement stemming from the ACLU's 2018 family separation lawsuit, a federal court has now ordered the government to take specific steps to fix the damage it caused. The judge's ruling ordered that the impacted families be provided with additional time to access the services that were delayed due to the breach.

To learn more about the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, please visit our website: (https://www.aclu.org/issues/immigrants-rights).

Thank you for joining us in this critical work and for your continued support.