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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick Profile picture
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick
@ReichlinMelnick
Senior Fellow @immcouncil. Tweeting on immigration policy and data. Formerly immigration lawyer with @IJCorps. Views my own, retweets =/= endorsements.
14 subscribers
Sep 23 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
So far Trump has fired nearly 150 immigration judges, and the purges continue. At the start of his term in office, there were 735 judges. There are now below 580.

The goal is to purge those who believe in due process and replace them with "temporary" judges who won't push back. In some courts, over 75% of the immigration judges have been fired since Trump took office. That this will cause more delay for some cases is no problem for this admin—with more and more people locked in detention, it lets ICE pressure them into giving up.
Sep 19 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
NEW: I got a copy of the H-1B proclamation. It's a 212(f) travel ban proclamation banning the entry into the US of H-1B visa holders who haven't paid the United States $100,000.

It appears to go into effect IMMEDIATELY, despite the US having no system to accept such payments. Image Now it's up on the White House website. whitehouse.gov/presidential-a…
Sep 8 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
🚨The Supreme Court today gives Trump a license to engage in racial profiling, with Justice Kavanaugh writing in concurrence to expressly endorse ICE and Border Patrol targeting any Latinos they observe in Los Angeles speaking Spanish and then demanding their papers. Image
Image Justice Sotomayor is utterly scathing: "We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent." Image
Sep 5 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
🚨NEW: Reversing *generations* of practice, the Board of Immigration Appeals gives ICE exactly what it demanded, ruling that any undocumented immigrant who entered illegally is categorically ineligible to ask a judge for bond — expanding mandatory detention by millions of people. Image The new decision comes after the Trump admin announced in July that it would take the legal position that a 1996 law barred release on bond anyone who crossed illegally — despite no admin having EVER made that claim before. Now the BIA greenlights that completely novel argument.
Sep 3 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
🚨 The Trump admin is moving to de-legalize more than a quarter of a million Venezuelans who have been here for at LEAST four years.

The vast majority entered before Biden took office (often on tourist visas) and were previously granted deportation protections by Trump himself. Trump is now moving to strip protections and deport the same people that he himself granted deportation protections to in his last week in office in 2021.

Trump’s order said protecting noncriminal Venezuelans from being sent back to Maduro was a matter of U.S. national interest. Image
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Sep 3 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
🚨NEW: Declarations filed in the lawsuit against the rushed attempt to deport 600 Guatemalan children reveals the chaotic way the Trump admin carried out the operation.

Children were taken out of bed after midnight to be rushed onto planes. One girl "was so scared she vomited." Image Other declarations directly refute the Trump admin's claims that the children's parents requested their return to Guatemala.

One dad in Guatemala says he got "a strange call" two weeks ago saying that his daughter was about to be deported — despite never having asked for that. Image
Sep 2 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
NEW: The Trump admin plans to double the number of immigration judges, ordering hundreds of military lawyers to serve as immigration judges, despite flimsy legal authority to do so.

Notably, immigration law is infamously complex, and judges normally require months of training. Many former JAGs serve as immigration judges today, having gone through a competitive hiring process. JAGs are often good lawyers, so I am not of the belief that they will all become rubber stampers. But the command pressure to deny will undoubtedly be *enormous.*
Aug 19 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
NEW: McCarthyism returns to immigration law, as @USCIS announces that it will begin screening applicants for immigration benefits for "Anti-America ideologies or activities." The term has no prior precedent in immigration law and its definition is entirely up to the Trump admin. Image The full policy memo is here. The Trump administration says that it will use its discretion to deny immigration benefits to anyone it deems to have supported a group with "anti-American ideologies" or engaged in "ant-American activities." uscis.gov/sites/default/…
Aug 14 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
ICE used your taxpayer dollars to trick out a bunch of trucks in new livery, all painted black with "ICE" and a logo printed in gold on the side (and Trump's name in gold on the back window), then shoot a rap video in DC to post on social media.

I am not making this up. Imagine fitting that thing through narrow streets or alleyways when you’re trying to do an enforcement operation in a city.
Aug 12 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Trump's people at DHS are referencing here "Which Way, Western Man," a book by white supremacist William Gayley Simpson that was published by an American Neo-Nazi organization, the National Alliance.

In the book, Simpson argued that Hitler was right and Jews must be killed. Image To be blunt; the propagandists running @DHSgov are deliberately pushing thinly-veiled neo-Nazi material through the official communications channels of the U.S. government. Their goal is stirring outrage (to which they will express fake outrage) and signaling to their followers.
Aug 4 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
UPDATE: Remember this Venezuelan guy who was imprisoned in El Salvador without trial because some numbskull at @DHSgov thought his Real Madrid tattoo was a gang tattoo?

He's free now, and he confirms that the people the Trump admin paid El Salvador to imprison were all tortured. Image Jerce Reyes Barrios is a soccer player who entered the U.S. legally in September 2024 to seek asylum. A CBP officer at the time made the clearly false accusation that his tattoo made him a gang member, so he was detained.

That was bad enough — but Trump escalated it to torture. Image
Jul 23 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
ALSO NEW: A federal judge in Tennessee just granted Abrego Garcia release on bond with conditions, finding that the DOJ did NOT meet its burden to prove that Mr. Abrego Garcia was a flight risk or such a danger to the community that release must be denied even with conditions. Image Judge Crenshaw in Tennessee finds that the government has failed to meet its burden to prove that Mr. Abrego Garcia is so dangerous that no conditions could justify his release, and therefore upholds the magistrate judge's decision granting release on bond with conditions. Image
Jul 22 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
AWFUL scenario. Border Patrol agents raided a car wash and arrested a DACA recipient working there. He has a REAL ID, but they didn't even let him show his ID, they just grabbed him and threw him in a van.

He was then detained for a MONTH before getting bond. Image It's literally in the first paragraph of the excerpt: no.
Jul 19 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
CRAZY story. An 82-year-old from Chile lost his green card. In June, he went to pick up a new one from @USCIS. While there, he was handcuffed and detained by ICE.

An unknown caller then told family she could help, then later said he’d died. But now he’s turned up in Guatemala! Image This story raises a TON of questions for @DHSgov:

- Why was this lawful permanent resident detained when picking up a replacement green card? He has no criminal record.
- Why was he not in the ICE detainee locator system?
- How did he end up in Guatemala?
- Who called family? Image
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Jul 19 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
Andry Hernández Romero, the innocent make-up artist imprisoned without trial for 4 months in El Salvador by the Trump admin, is FREE.

He was wrongfully accused of being a gang member because of his “mom” and “dad” tattoos, and illegally sent to El Salvador without due process. Image Maduro has indicated that the men will not be immediately detained.

This story has been a major public relations talking point for his government. They are saying that they “rescued” the men in CECOT, so for now they’ll all have public relations on their side.
Jul 17 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
🚨NEW. A horror story emerges from hacked flight logs of the March 15 flight to El Salvador to be imprisoned without trial: mass disappearances.

The data reveals DOZENS of people on the flight whose names were never disclosed before. All may still be locked up there today. Image This new story from @404mediaco provides the first public confirmation of the identity of some of the people who were disappeared by the Trump admin on March 15. In some cases, families knew they were there because they saw their loved one in pictures — but had NO confirmation. Image
Jul 13 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
NEW: @MiamiHerald confirms that 1/3 of the people sent to the Everglades Detention Camp have NO CRIMINAL RECORD, making clear that federal and state officials LIED about who would be detained there.

Of those who do have charges, many have low-level traffic offenses. Image That is FALSE. What you posted below is the criminal charge for improper entry, the act of entering without inspection.

*Entry* is distinct from presence. After all, visa overstays entered legally, but are present unlawfully. The Supreme Court is clear; presence is not a crime. Image
Jul 7 • 14 tweets • 6 min read
NEW: the Trump admin has moved to terminate TPS for Honduras and Nicaragua, covering over 50,000 people

Both of these designations date back to 1999, meaning Trump wants to strip legal status from people who have had a background check every 18 months for the last 26 years. Image That is not how ANYTHING works. You cannot just apply to become a citizen! There is no “line” that people can get in.

To learn the basics of the US immigration system, check out our fact sheet: americanimmigrationcouncil.org/fact-sheet/how… x.com/ldsanty/status…
Jul 3 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
With this vote, Congress makes ICE the highest-funded federal law enforcement agency in history, with more money per year at its disposal over the next four years than the budgets of the FBI, DEA, ATF, US Marshals, and Bureau of Prisons combined. Here is the funding for immigration enforcement in the bill, to be spent through September 30, 2029.

- $74.9 billion for ICE detention and removal
- $65.6 billion for CBP infrastructure, hiring, tech
- $10 billion DHS slush fund
- $3.5 billion for state enforcement

And more! Image
Jul 1 • 35 tweets • 14 min read
Literal cages. Not even metaphorical ones. Literal ones. For those curious, those white things hanging from the ceiling are ventilation and air conditioning (which is seemingly not turned on where the picture was taken). If you count from the foreground, you can see one actively in use 7 down; it's inflated. Air comes out of the holes.
Jun 28 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
If the bill passes, it could make ICE the nation’s largest jailer, with more funding for detention than the entire federal Bureau of Prisons. It would give ICE enough money to have more officers on board than the entire FBI.

This alone could transform American society forever. If the GOP reconciliation bill passes, ICE gets through FY2029:

- $45 billion for detention, on top of the current annual budget of $3.4 billion
- $14.4 billion for transportation and removal, on top of the current annual budget of $750 million
- $8 billion for hiring
- And more