Greyhound buses, once a symbol of travel on America’s vast highways, have become rolling traps where U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents routinely board to unlawfully interrogate, detain and arrest passengers.  

The agents, with the agreement of Greyhound, stage surprise boardings without warrants to question riders about their citizenship and travel plans. In many cases, all too reminiscent of police states, the agents demand to see a passenger’s “documents.”

By Britanny Hamama

Tonight, my mom, Nahrain Hamama, is attending the State of the Union in Washington, DC, as a guest of U.S. Congressman Sander Levin.

When my mom told me, I couldn’t believe it. I asked, "The actual State of the Union?” 

I feel so thankful and overwhelmed that my family has not been forgotten, that the heartache and fear we have felt the past seven months matters. 

By: Monica Andrade, Skadden Fellow, and Bonsitu Kitaba-Gaviglio, Staff Attorney, ACLU of Michigan

“What did we do to deserve this?”

“If they’re being deported, why are they still in detention?  And how long will they be there?”

These are just some of the questions haunting hundreds of Iraqi families, whose loved ones have been held in immigration detention for months. Starting in June, Immigration and Customs Enforcement began conducting raids on Iraqi nationals with final orders of removal.

A federal court has again blocked the deportation of Iraqi nationals in the U.S. who could face persecution, torture, and death if returned to Iraq.

In an effort to remind the public about its First Amendment rights and to reassure immigrants that constitutional protections extend to them as well, the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan on Monday launched a public-education campaign that features the First Amendment printed in Arabic, Spanish and English.

The “We the People” campaign rolled out with the unveiling of an electronic billboard featuring the First Amendment in all three languages posted on Cobo Center in downtown Detroit. The ad will appear on the billboard throughout June.

DETROIT – The Arab-American Civil Rights League and the ACLU of Michigan have announced that they will continue their lawsuit challenging the Muslim ban after a revised executive order was signed today by President Donald Trump. The revised order, which still discriminatorily prohibits the travel of some immigrants from designated Muslim-majority countries and halts the refugee resettlement program temporarily, was condemned by the organizations as a transparent attempt to continue the same policies that were already rejected by the courts as unconstitutional.

Originally published by Todd Spangler for the Detroit Free Press

WASHINGTON – A watchdog group is suing U.S. Customs and Border Protection in federal court in Detroit to find out if government agents are racially profiling American citizens and foreigners legally in the U.S. under a law that allows for warrantless searches across Michigan to combat illegal immigration.

Coming from a migrant, farmworker family meant, I spent half the year in Florida and half the year in Michigan.  We were nomads traveling in our wood-paneled station wagon up and down Interstate 75 in the late spring and mid fall every year from the time I was 4 years old until we settled in Michigan in the fall of 1987 when I was 15. 

The ACLU and immigrant-rights activists filed a Freedom of Information Act complaint against U.S.