In the News

A contingent of Democratic lawmakers made a Father’s Day visit to a detention center in New Jersey to meet with men seeking asylum who have been separated from their families because of President Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy toward immigrants.

The shooting of an unarmed Guatemalan immigrant by a U.S. Border Patrol agent has some lawmakers in Congress pushing to bring technology typically reserved for local law enforcement to the U.S.-Mexico border: body cameras.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus is calling for a 9/11-style commission to investigate Hurricane Maria’s death toll in Puerto Rico, as well as the Trump administration’s handling of the disaster.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who sparked a firestorm last week when she said it was a school’s choice to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement to report potentially undocumented students, changed her tune Tuesday, telling a Senate subcommittee she doesn’t think schools can call ICE on undocumented students.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos continues to face a backlash after she told Congress that schools should be able to decide whether to report undocumented students to immigration authorities, an assertion that critics say flies in the face of the law and could stir fear in immigrant communities.

We recently recognized the anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which ruled that separate meant unequal, ruling against segregation for the first time since reconstruction. After the Court’s ruling, future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall -- then head of the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund – warned that “the fight has just begun.”

Immigration advocates are furious at Education Secretary Betsy DeVosafter she told a House panel Tuesday that school officials should determine whether to turn in undocumented students to federal authorities. “If a principal or a teacher finds out that a certain child is undocumented, or his or her family members are undocumented, we must do whatever it takes to ensure the student's safety and protection from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency," said Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) "I am outraged and highly concerned following comments made by Secretary Betsy DeVos during yesterday’s Education and the Workforce Committee hearing.” At the hearing, Espaillat asked DeVos at the hearing whether schools should report undocumented students to federal authorities, to which she responded, “… that’s a school decision. It’s a local community decision.”

Civil rights groups slammed Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for saying Tuesday that schools can decide whether to report undocumented students to immigration enforcement officials, saying her statements conflict with the law and could raise fears among immigrant students. DeVos’s answers came during testimony before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), an immigrant from the Dominican Republic who was at one time undocumented, pressed the secretary for her positions on immigration enforcement. “Inside the school,” Espaillat asked, “if a principal or a teacher finds out that a certain child is undocumented, or his or her family members are undocumented, do you feel that the principal or teacher is responsible to call [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and to have that family reported?”