immigration

Collectively we can do better. Nearly every week, we read a new tragic headline and story of unaccompanied children and youth from Central America meeting some horrific end while attempting to immigrate to the US. In the previous few months alone, there have been reports of mass abductions, a deadly fire at a Mexican migrant detention center, heat stroke deaths in abandoned cargo boxes and videos of tiny children being left at the border wall by smugglers called “Coyotes.”

As a leader of a major project aimed at identifying causation and potential solutions to this challenge, there are two obvious truths we must face. One, the national conversations we are having about this challenge are shaped by wildly inaccurate rhetoric that is frankly not helping. And secondly, the major efforts by both faith-based and government agencies alike are insufficient, dated and in need of fresh and more sophisticated approaches to the challenge.

President Joe Biden said the U.S.-Mexico border may be "chaotic for a while" as Title 42, the 2020 restriction on migrants, expires this week.

Many Christians in Florida worry that they could soon find themselves charged with a crime for participating in outreach events involving the transportation of congregants. A bill being considered in the Florida Senate would make it a third-degree felony for a driver to transport anyone they know or "reasonably should know" is not in the country legally.

Senate Bill 1718, which has passed a committee vote and is now winding its way through the legislative process, includes multiple provisions targeting individuals who cannot "provide proof of lawful presence in the United States." The bill would increase fines for employers who hire such individuals, require hospitals to "collect patient immigration status data information," and crack down on "human smuggling," making it a third-degree felony for "anyone who helps bring or attempt to bring a noncitizen into the U.S. at some non-designated place without inspection by a U.S. official at a border, port, or other point of entry."

The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered pandemic-era restrictions at the border to remain in place.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program is unlawful.

A large majority of evangelicals describe legal immigration as “helpful” to the United States, according to a new Lifeway Research survey that also found that evangelicals support a balanced approach to immigration reform.

Forty-six people were found dead in an abandoned tractor-trailer near San Antonio as they tried to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.

Support for an immigration reform plan that includes a pathway to citizenship for those in the country illegally has plummeted within the past decade among white evangelicals, who are the only religious demographic to oppose a proposal that has been backed by Republican and Democratic presidents, according to a new survey.

President Joe Biden is set to meet with Pope Francis for the first time as president this week.

According to the Department of Justice, a Maryland pastor was indicted last week for allegedly arranging 60 fraudulent marriages in the past seven years in order to give foreigners permanent residence in the United States.