Author: Mary Giovagnoli

Mary Giovagnoli is an immigration attorney and policy expert who has worked for over 25 years in both the federal government and nonprofit advocacy to improve the immigration system. She is a former executive director of the Refugee Council USA. She served as the DHS deputy assistant secretary for immigration policy from 2015 to 2017.

In a Forceful Dissent, Justice Elena Kagan Says the Supreme Court Ignored Evidence of Trump Administration’s Anti-Haitian Bias

For more than 350,000 Haitians and roughly 6,000 Syrians living legally in the United States under Temporary Protected Status (TPS), the Supreme Court’s decision in Mullin v. Doe is not simply another legal ruling. It clears the way for the Trump administration to end TPS while legal challenges continue, leaving hundreds of thousands of people who have built their lives in the United States facing the immediate possibility of deportation.

Writing for the dissenters, Justice Elena Kagan argues that the Court not only insulated the executive branch from meaningful judicial review, but also brushed aside compelling evidence that anti-Haitian bias may have influenced the administration’s decision. Her dissent forcefully rejects the majority’s conclusion that President Trump’s repeated derogatory remarks about Haitians are legally insignificant, calling them plainly infused with racial stereotypes.

For Kagan, the case is about much more than Temporary Protected Status. It asks whether courts will meaningfully examine executive actions that affect hundreds of thousands of lives—or instead allow those actions to proceed before serious constitutional and statutory challenges can be fully heard.

Supreme Court ‘Mullin v. Al Otro Lado’ Decision Hinges Asylum Law on a Single Word

Just days after World Refugee Day, the Supreme Court handed the Trump administration a significant victory on immigration, allowing it to revive a policy that turns away asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border before they have an opportunity to present their claims.

In Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion rests on an isolated reading of the word “in”—an approach the dissenters say ignores decades of asylum law and the realities facing people fleeing persecution.

With Latest Immigration Decisions, the Supreme Court’s Conservative Majority Rewrites Immigration Law, One Word at a Time

Just days after World Refugee Day, the Supreme Court issued two immigration decisions that dramatically narrow protections for asylum seekers and Temporary Protected Status holders: Mullin v. Al Otro Lado and Mullin v. Doe.

Although the cases address different legal questions, they share a troubling approach: The conservative majority isolates individual words from their statutory context to expand presidential authority while limiting humanitarian protections Congress intended to provide.

In one decision, the Court allows the Trump administration to revive a policy that turns away asylum seekers at the border before they can present their claims. In the other, it shields the administration’s termination of TPS for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and thousands of Syrians from meaningful judicial review.

Powerful dissents from Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan argue that the majority ignored both the broader legal framework and the real-world consequences of its rulings.

These opinions are about far more than technical questions of statutory interpretation. By reading immigration law out of context, the Court is reshaping who can seek protection in the United States—and how much power the executive branch has to decide their fate.

The Supreme Court Is Showing Us Why the ERA Can’t Wait

Listening to two recent Supreme Court arguments on immigration, I heard something more than a debate over statutory language or constitutional text. I heard a stark illustration of how precarious rights can be when they depend on interpretation rather than being firmly embedded in the Constitution.

In one case, justices parsed the meaning of a single word—“arrives”—in ways that risked erasing access to asylum altogether. In the other, they confronted a direct challenge to the 14th Amendment and, in doing so, were forced to reckon with the real lives at stake.

That contrast is the point. When a right lives in statute, it can be narrowed, redefined or even functionally denied through legal gymnastics that separate words from their purpose. But when a right is written into the Constitution, it becomes harder—though not impossible—for courts to ignore its human consequences.

The difference isn’t abstract; it shapes whether people can seek refuge, claim citizenship or be recognized as equal under the law.

Taken together, these cases offer a warning—and a roadmap. If we want rights to endure, they must be grounded where they are hardest to dismantle. The Equal Rights Amendment was meant to do exactly that. And in this moment, as courts and lawmakers test the limits of existing protections, the case for finally enshrining it in the Constitution has never been clearer.

Rep. Maxine Dexter and the Girls of San Benito: Investigating the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s Treatment of Pregnant Unaccompanied Minors

U.S. Rep. Maxine Dexter—a physician and member of Congress from Oregon—visited a remote immigration detention center in San Benito, Texas. Her goal: to talk to the girls living there. She wanted to assess for herself a place deemed ill-equipped to handle the potential medical complications faced by pregnant minors and young mothers by immigrant rights and healthcare advocates. 

In an interview with Ms., Rep. Dexter raises urgent concerns about secrecy, missing girls, and inadequate medical care for pregnant unaccompanied minors in federal custody.

“The staff clearly were not helping us speak with them. And that gives me extraordinary concerns that there’s something they’re hiding …”

In the end, Dexter and her group visited a ghost town. They did not see a single child on their tour of the shelter, which currently houses two pregnant girls, two young mothers and their babies and three other girls.

“Just a few months ago they had many more girls. I asked where, where have they gone? Have they been returned to other countries? Are they in foster care? Are they transferred? And they said they couldn’t share that information with us. So, you know, it’s clear they’re trying to limit the number of girls in these facilities now. But where the hell are they?”

The Trump Administration Wants the Supreme Court to Permanently Close the Border to Asylum Seekers

On Tuesday, March 24, the government will ask the Supreme Court to declare that asylum law does not apply at the border. The case—Noem v. Al Otro Lado—was brought by asylum seekers to challenge Trump’s turnback policy.

If the Supreme Court succumbs to Trump’s twisted logic, he will likely consider it carte blanche to keep the border closed permanently to asylum seekers and other people in need of protection. In other words, only people who already have permission to enter the United States could ask for protection.

As the Trump administration has shuttered virtually all other avenues to obtain protection in the United States, this effectively would violate non-refoulement and expose people seeking asylum at the southern border to danger and death.

The Noem v. Al Otro Lado case is both an effort to preserve the right to asylum and a step towards holding the administration accountable for ignoring the human cost of its border policies.

The Cost of Treating Immigration as a War

On Jan. 7, 2026, Renee Macklin Good became the latest person to die because of Donald Trump’s brutal immigration agenda.

She is not the first to lose her life at the hands of immigration enforcement agents—362 people have died during encounters with CBP since 2010. Nor will she be the last, unless we take action to dismantle the power and authority given to ICE and CBP over the last year.

When state-sanctioned violent tactics are used alongside recruitment campaigns encouraging new hires to protect the homeland and help decide who will live in this country; questionable training; and administration rhetoric that comes out of the nationalist movements of the 1930s and ’40s; violence against innocent people—regardless of race or nationality—is inevitable.

As Jennifer Mascia wrote for The Trace: “… Where immigration agents have gone, gun violence has usually followed.”

How the Trump Administration Used a National Guard Tragedy to Accelerate Its Anti-Immigrant Agenda

Months before the lives of West Virginia National Guard Specialist Sarah Berkstrom and Afghan asylee Rahmanullah Lakanwal collided, the Trump administration planned to bring immigration to a halt from countries like Afghanistan, Somalia, and other nations that supposedly threaten American values. When Lakanwal was charged with first-degree murder in Berkstrom’s Nov. 26 death, the administration seized on this tragedy to redouble its rhetoric against Afghans and others and to usher in the next round of immigration restrictions.

As Spojmie Nasiri, an Afghan American immigration attorney points out, “They are using the tragedy to enact the agenda that they already had.”

What Feminist Wins Can Teach Us About Immigration

Past feminist policy victories can guide the way toward more humane and effective immigration reform. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) of 1994 is a prime example—its architects successfully integrated immigration protections for women into a broader effort to combat gender-based violence. By framing immigrant women’s rights as part of protecting all women from abuse, advocates made it harder for opponents to isolate or attack these provisions. That approach, centered on shared values rather than political fault lines, offers a valuable lesson: Immigration reform succeeds when it’s connected to the broader goals of safety, equality and community well-being.

Today, we need a similar framework to move the immigration debate beyond fear and division. A new vision—what I call the RESPECTED framework, for Restoring Economic Opportunity, Protecting Every Community, and Treating Everyone with Dignity—invites us to see immigration policy not as an isolated crisis but as part of building a fairer, safer and more prosperous society.

Legalization, for example, shouldn’t just be about paperwork—it’s about removing barriers that keep women in low-wage, unsafe jobs and making economic opportunity real for everyone.

Ultimately, the RESPECTED approach asks a simple but transformative question: How can immigration policy help us build the future we want together? By embedding immigration reform within shared priorities—economic security, community safety and human dignity—we can replace the politics of exclusion with a politics of belonging.

The struggle is far from over, especially for women fleeing violence and seeking asylum. But if we listen, learn and lead with respect, we can carry forward the feminist lessons that made change possible before—and make them work again today.

Immigration Isn’t a Problem—It’s Part of the Solution

The challenges facing women seeking asylum are just one piece of a much larger immigration crisis decades in the making. Since the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, the U.S. system has skewed toward deportation, introduced new barriers to asylum and limited judges’ discretion.

Advocates say the resulting system fuels chaos, disrupts families and touches every aspect of society—from economic opportunity to civic trust.

Cynthia Buiza, former executive director of the California Immigrant Policy Center, argues that fixing immigration requires a broader vision. “Rather than focus solely on reforming immigration laws, we need to pass laws that incorporate immigration into broader objectives such as improving the economy, promoting opportunities for youth or addressing disparities in the judicial system,” she says.

Programs like Welcoming America show that community-based solutions can help. By fostering inclusion and mutual understanding, local initiatives demonstrate that immigration reform doesn’t have to exist in isolation—it can be part of a larger framework that benefits everyone.