Gasparian Spivey Immigration

11/02/2026

If these people are sticking their necks out to vote tomorrow, we can too.

While many young voters are focused on the cost of living in the election, for some from immigrant families, the political calculation — and their votes — is often about even more than the economy.

10/30/2026

One concern has been that DHS would send ICE to voting locations to discourage immigrants and people who look like they might be immigrants from voting. Yesterday the Justice Department said that ICE and FBI agents will not serve as poll monitors.

There could be poll monitors from Federal Bureau of Prisons, the Bureau ‌of ⁠Alcohol, To***co, Fi****ms and Explosives (ATF) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), but they won't be acting in any law enforcement activity and won't be armed. They're supposed to be up to speed on voting procedures and take notes.

The Justice Department said Wednesday that agents and employees from the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will not serve as poll monitors in the upcoming midterm elections. The dep…

10/27/2026

From the The GW Hatchet, on the impact of the current administration's efforts to target and discourage international students at The George Washington University specifically and American higher learning institutions in general.

"University President Ellen Granberg said during a September Faculty Senate meeting that GW enrolled nearly 1,000 fewer international students this year — a number she said she anticipates to continue declining over the coming years. Vice President and Dean of Enrollment Management and Student Success Jay Goff told the Faculty Senate in December that GW enrolled 392 fewer international students in fall 2025 than in 2024, which came after he said in August 2025 the University could face a $10 million decrease in revenue because of declining international student enrollment."

Changing visa rules and uncertainty around post-graduation work authorization have prompted some international students to consider pursuing jobs and degrees abroad.

10/22/2026

"Anti-ICE Supper Club" presents a series of dinners or opportunities to have drinks next week to benefit ISLA Immigration Services and Legal Advocacy. I particularly love the idea of a family style Vietnamese dinner with Chef Nini Nguyen at Đặc Biệt Supper Club, and I'm there for anyone working to make sure immigrants get the legal representation they need.

Is that art on a t-shirt?

The Anti-ICE Supper Club is a series of fundraising dinners in support of local organizations defending communities under attack.

10/16/2026

"'We should consider the fact that when the president honored six Americans with these technology and science medals, five of the six had come to the United States as immigrants,' Smith told Decoded on the sidelines of the International AI Summit in Dublin, Ireland. 'And those five individuals, if you put them and their companies together, have companies that have a market value equal to more than 25% of the market value of the total S&P 500.'

He continued, 'Think about what those five individuals have done for the well-being, even the wealth and standard of living, of Americans across the country. Let’s not put that at risk.'”

In an exclusive interview, Brad Smith said discouraging skilled immigrants could undermine the “wealth and standard of living” of all Americans.

10/08/2026

DHS has proposed a regulation that would level a $70,000 fee on schools that offer optional practical training for international students. It's hard to see it as anything but another attempt to discourage international students from coming to the US. We've got the story including the insane degree to which ICE claims instances of fraud have gone up in the last five years. If you're concerned, this is the public comment period when people can ask questions, make suggestions, and point out the impact of such a change. DHS's poor responses to public questions helped to doom their previous attempt at targeting international students, so good responses count.

Recently, we wrote about the courts issuing a temporary injunction against the Department of Homeland Security ’s (DHS) effort to change the regulations governing international students and their “duration of status.” Perhaps because that change was blocked, they’re back with another. “The...

10/02/2026

The state has expanded its role in the human misery business. According to The New York Times:

"Roughly 30 percent of all deportation flights from the United States leave from Alexandria. From January through August, 579 flights departed from the airport, putting it on pace to surpass 657 flights in all of 2025 and 357 in 2024, according to Human Rights First, a nonprofit that tracks the flights.

The detention expansion would add to a huge statewide system. Louisiana already hosts a sprawling network of at least nine immigration detention centers, primarily operated by private, for-profit prison corporations under federal contracts."

The site in Alexandria, La., a major expansion of the Trump administration’s busiest deportation hub, will streamline and accelerate removals.

09/28/2026

It's not news, but yet another group finds our government's anti-immigration position harmful to Americans.

"The administration has repeated claims of targeting immigrants with criminal histories, but recent data suggests more than half of those arrested in July had not been convicted of any crimes and were not facing any criminal charges. Less than a quarter of those arrested had been convicted of a crime.

Members of the Kansas Livestock Association are urging federal officials to conduct more targeted enforcement actions and provide more transparency."

Meatpacking industry groups are raising concerns about recent immigration operations in Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma.

09/24/2026

Studies consistently show the value of international students to the economy, which made the current administration's efforts to make it harder for those students to attend American institutions mystifying (except not really, unfortunately). We were glad to see DHS' recent effort to blocked by the court.

As we reported earlier this summer, the proposed change would have limited international students and scholars on F-1 and J-1 visas to four years, during which time they had to complete their programs of study. But DHS never demonstrated why those instances were fraudulent, as the duration-of-stay.....

09/16/2026

Recently, we alerted people (see Comments) to the government's efforts to change the "duration of status" rules for those of F-1 and J-1 visas - primarily international students. On Monday, Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts issued a preliminary injunction preventing them from going into effect.

We'll have more analysis on this posted this week, but Saylor roasted the DHS argument in his ruling. Exhibit A: "The holder of an F or J visa who requires more than four years to complete his or her studies or work—such as, for example, nearly all students in Ph.D. programs—will need to submit an extension-of-stay request to DHS, using a Form I-539. The rule contains limited
guidance, at best, for the exercise of discretion by DHS in considering such a request. The government has provided no indication as to how the immigration system will be expanded,
or funded, to accommodate a large influx of such requests. Worse yet, any decision by DHS to deny a request for an extension is entirely discretionary and unappealable, even within
DHS itself.

In other words, a DHS official—based on limited and vague criteria, and with no possibility of appeal—will have the power to cut short the academic, research, or teaching activities of any non-U.S. citizen for no reason or any reason. Thus, for example, an international student who is one credit short of graduating could be required to leave the United States without a degree and without any recourse. That introduces, at a minimum, a high degree of uncertainty into the educational process, which will have an obvious deterrent effect on student enrollment. Moreover, it is not difficult to imagine how that system might
be abused to punish those whose viewpoints or research are disfavored by the officials." (I'll put a link that in the Comments as well)
making the decision—or, indeed, punish disfavored institutions.