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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.
Apr 15 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
The accused assailant is a British immigrant who became a U.S. citizen in 2022, meaning he got his green card in 2017 or earlier.

The idea that Biden or his policies had anything to do with this is purely inflammatory political messaging divorced from any facts. From FY 2021 through FY 2024, roughly 3.5 million people became U.S. citizens through naturalization. The idea that Biden is somehow personally responsible if any of them later went on to commit crimes is beyond stupid; it's willfully ignorant and deliberately inflammatory.
Apr 11 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Wait, sorry, so now the Trump admin is attempting to strip green cards from people just because of who their families are?! And people are cheering this on? Our government just threw someone in jail because their grandfather was a spokesperson for the Iranian government half a century ago.

We are now openly punishing people for the sins of their ancestors and for no other reasons. We have lost the goddamn plot. Just outrageous.
Apr 10 • 21 tweets • 8 min read
People with DACA came here as children. Every one of them has been here for a minimum 19 years. They grew up here. They went to school here. Many speak English with no accent. They are working legally, paying taxes, doing everything right.

And Trump's ICE is still jailing them. Because that's not something a President can do. Only Congress can provide a path to permanent legal status for most DACA recipients. And Congress has sat on its ass for years, even though huge majorities of the American public supports the DREAM Act.
Apr 9 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
SEVEN whole law professors?!?!

Here I was thinking that what mattered was every single judge who has ruled on the issue, 125+ years of accepted understanding of the 14th, and centuries of common law on the contours of jus soli. But if you have SEVEN law professors, man, WOW. Less sarcastically, this article has a GLARING flaw: dual citizenship. Many children of U.S. citizens acquire foreign citizenship at birth under jus sanguinis and so would not have an "exclusive" allegiance to the US under this theory. That can't be right.
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Apr 6 • 13 tweets • 6 min read
The overwhelming majority of Americans (polls show over 80%) oppose the deportation of people like this woman. In every previous administration, including Trump's first, this woman would not have been a priority for enforcement.

What are we doing here? This is wrong. You can't get a fiancé visa from inside the country, and thanks to failed laws Congress passed 30 years ago, getting a green card through her husband could be either near-impossible or could take 3-5 years minimum. It's not as simple as most people think.
Feb 25 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
A truly AWFUL situation; last week Border Patrol dropped a “nearly blind” Burmese refugee off in front of a random donut shop in Buffalo, five miles from his house.

He was just found dead, having never made it home. Image Story here. investigativepost.org/2026/02/25/bli…
Feb 9 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
ICE has now spent over half a BILLION dollars just on purchasing warehouses around the country to convert into detention camps.

If these mega-camps are utilized to the full capacity ICE intends, they'll be the largest prisons in the country, with little to no real oversight. Right now Rikers Island, the physically largest jail in the entire United States, is holding under 7,000 people.

ICE's warehouse plans include detention camps which will hold between 8,500-10,000 people in buildings not designed for human habitation.
Feb 5 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
🚨HOLY CRAP. The Trump admin just took a SLEDGEHAMMER to due process, largely eliminating the Board of Immigration Appeals process and MANDATING DISMISSAL of ALL appeals (which cost $1,000 thanks to OBBBA) filed after March 9 unless a majority of the BIA votes to hear the case. Image The Trump admin is ALSO changing the rules so that rather than 30 days to file a Notice of Appeal, people will now only have 10 days in most cases.

That's just 10 days to find $1,000 and appellate counsel for an appeal the government says it will likely automatically deny! Image
Feb 3 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
This is a LIE. The most recent Haitian TPS grants began in August 2021, after President Moïse was assassinated by mercenaries, plunging Haiti into chaos. Thousands were killed in an earthquake two weeks later.

Since then, it’s been redesignated twice as the situation worsened. Only about 1 in 7 people with Haitian TPS were protected in 2010 or 2011 after the earthquake. The Obama admin extended TPS for those ~50,000 people in 2012, 2014, and 2015, given the slow recovery. Here's Judge Reyes summarizing it.

In 2017, the Trump admin tried to end it. Image
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Feb 3 • 20 tweets • 9 min read
NEW: Judge Reyes blocks the Trump admin from ending Temporary Protected Status for roughly 350,000 Haitians granted protection in the years following the assassination of President Moïse in July 2021.

She begins with a comparison: President Washington versus Kristi Noem. Image Judge Reyes begins by explaining who the plaintiffs are: not "killers, leeches, or entitlement junkies" as Kristi Noem suggested.

They are a neuroscientist, a software engineer, a laboratory assistant, a registered nurse, and an economics major. All were facing deportation. Image
Jan 30 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
BIG news from Bloomberg, which confirms that ICE has gone ahead and *purchased* some commercial warehouses with the aim of converting them into mass detention camps.

This is likely to be the big detention story of 2026 — the literal warehousing of people in converted buildings. Image ICE has already spent $172 million to purchase two warehouses, one in Hagerstown, MD and one in Surprise, AZ.

ICE will then have to pay more to convert them into makeshift detention camps. Leaked reports suggest each of these two warehouses will hold 1,500 people each. Image
Jan 21 • 9 tweets • 5 min read
🚨HOLY CRAP. An ICE whistleblower just revealed a secret memo authorizing ICE officers to break into homes without a judicial warrant, which DHS's own legal training materials say is unconstitutional!

ICE then hid the memo from the public, passing it along by word of mouth. Image ICE secretly told its officers that any time someone has been ordered removed, ICE can break down their door.

It has been accepted for generations that the only thing which can authorize agents to break into your home is a warrant signed by a judge. No wonder ICE hid this memo! Image
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Jan 18 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
Noem's claim is FALSE. Here is ICE's own data on the detention population among those arrested by ICE:

- 43% no criminal record (up from 6% last January)
- 29% one or more prior conviction*
- 28% one or more pending charge

*two most common are traffic and immigration offenses Image Noem was confused by the question and defaulted to a different claim ICE makes; that 70% of people *arrested* by ICE have a prior criminal record or pending charges (also way down from January 2025).

As I've documented, that hasn't been true for MONTHS. Image
Jan 13 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
HOLY CRAP. A real scandal; ICE sent a job offer to @LauraJedeed even though:

- A quick Google search would reveal who she was
- She hadn’t completed basic background check paperwork
- She should have failed the drug test

Signs of a total breakdown in the recruitment process. Image Link to the article here, which lays out the entire shocking story; a full-blown job offer was extended despite @LauraJedeed never completing any of the required paperwork.
Dec 25, 2025 • 14 tweets • 7 min read
There is nothing more inimical to the principles that our country was founded on than a government official declaring that due process should be tossed aside.

Everyone is entitled to due process. Everyone. We thought it so important we wrote it into the Constitution TWICE. Of course the Constitution doesn’t spell out what “due process” means in every context. It doesn’t do that for ANY process. That’s why we have laws passed by Congress and judicial precedent.

And in this context, there are laws, rules, and regulations that must be followed.
Dec 8, 2025 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
In every single major immigration raid so far, the MAJORITY of people arrested by DHS officers have no criminal record whatsoever — not even any traffic violations or misdemeanors.

In Washington, DC, it was 84% of all those arrested. In Los Angeles, 57%. In Illinois, 66%. Image That is simply not true. Not only is being undocumented not a crime, but to have a criminal record requires someone to have been arrested for an offense in the past.
Dec 7, 2025 • 10 tweets • 5 min read
This is FALSE. As the Supreme Court spelled out very clearly 125 years ago, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” refers to three categories of exceptions, two ancient and one uniquely American.

- Children of diplomats
- Children of occupying soldiers
- Native Americans Image Mr. Wong’s parents were ineligible for citizenship in a way today’s permanent residents are not. And the Court was clear that the 14th Amendment codified the ancient rule of birthright citizenship.

Also, Trump’s EO claims to bar citizenship even for children of ppl here legally.
Dec 3, 2025 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Obviously I have little sympathy for this guy, given his offenses. But I do want to explain why it is that this man was still in the country and not deported under any previous admin, including the first Trump admin.

In short - because for 50+ years, Cuba refused deportations. Florida's sex offender registry says that Mr. Milian has two convictions relating to a single court case from 1996. So he's been deportable for at least 29 years.

But from 1965 to 2017, Cuba refused to accept any deportations of people who were inside the United States. Period. Image
Nov 20, 2025 • 15 tweets • 6 min read
THREAD: Judge Ellis is the first federal judge to review extensive body cam video of DHS's actions in Chicago. She finds that DHS *repeatedly* misled the public and made claims that were disproven by agents' own videos.

I'll go through some of the most egregious ones here. Image On October 28, @DHSGov claimed that days earlier "rioters" had "shot at agents with commercial artillery shell fireworks," thus forcing agents to deploy tear gas and riot munitions.

Judge Ellis reviewed the video. This was completely false. The explosions were DHS's flashbangs! Image
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Nov 4, 2025 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Rep. Jayapal is correct -- it is not a crime to be undocumented. Here's the Supreme Court saying as much.

Plus, less than 10% of the undocumented population has a removal order, and would only be chargeable if they had willfully disobeyed it, and many don't know they have one. Image As for 8 USC 1325, illegal entry applies only to the undocumented population that crossed illegally, meaning visa overstays or people who came via humanitarian parole commit no crime -- and the statute of limitations is 5 years, so most people couldn't even be criminally charged.
Nov 4, 2025 • 13 tweets • 5 min read
🧵Today a federal judge is looking into horrific conditions inside ICE holding cells in Chicago, which until January were for stays under 12 hours absent exceptional circumstances.

People are now held for days — and ICE uses the threat of longer stays to get deportation orders. Image The excerpts I'm posting are taken from over a dozen sworn declarations submitted in a lawsuit seeking to force ICE to improve conditions. I'll link to the docket at the end of the thread.

One thing comes through clearly in these declarations: the cells are FILTHY. Image