Two years ago, Georgia passed one of the most stringent immigration laws in the country, House Bill 87. Both supporters and opponents of the bill now agree that it has a major flaw which needs to be fixed quickly. As written, the law subjects U.S. citizens renewing a professional license...

In light of the major federal immigration reforms proposed this winter, I sat down with Dan Kesselbrenner, director of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild (NIPNLG), to talk about their implications and the work and history of the project.

What would the National Immigration Project...

From college campuses to community centers across the country, students and other activists have faced orchestrated and aggressive attacks when speaking in support of Palestinian rights. Many have had their viewpoints shut down and have even been called anti-Semitic. Once vibrant forums for free speech are becoming restrictive places where...

More than 30,000 immigrant men and women were separated from their families during the holiday period. They were detained in the more than 250 facilities across the U.S. including the largest: the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin.

In the last 15 years, we have witnessed a dramatic expansion in the...

by Susan Scott and Azadeh Shahshahani

As part of an eight-member delegation from the National Lawyers Guild, we spent the week leading up to the October 7 Venezuelan presidential election in Caracas, learning about the electoral system that Jimmy Carter has called "the best in the world."

On...

In 2006, Marlyn, a mother who lives in Gwinnett County with her children, was surprised to hear that her son Kyle, a senior at Brookwood High School, had taken the ASVAB test. ASVAB or the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test is the military's entrance exam, given to recruits to...

By blocking Georgia's attempts to criminalize acts of hospitality, faith, and conscience, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals delivered a decision that affects the daily lives of many people in Georgia.

One of these individuals is Everitt Howe, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, a caseworker...

Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Georgia (ACLUGA) was joined by more than a dozen organizations in issuing a letter to Immigration Enforcement Review Board (the Board) Chairman Benjamin J. Vinson, laying out concerns with how the Board may apply the powers granted to it...

By Suzanne Adely, Corinna Mullin and Azadeh Shahshahani

As world leaders met in New York last month to negotiate a first-ever international arms trade treaty, many human rights activists focused on the deteriorating situation in Syria and continued arms sales by Russia to the Assad regime as an...

In late June, the ACLU delivered a statement to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in response to the United Nations Special Rapporteur's report on detention of migrants. The report sets out the international and regional human rights legal framework applicable to the detention of...

Over the past decade, there has been an alarming increase in the use of immigration detention in the United States. From 2001 to 2010, the number of immigrants held in immigration detention each year nearly doubled from 209,000 per year to over 363,000.

The increasing use...

One year has passed since the signing into law of Georgia's racial profiling law, House Bill 87. Although parts of HB 87 were temporarily enjoined as a result of the lawsuit brought by the ACLU and other organizations, the law's harmful effects are already...

Just when it seemed that Georgia was coming to grips with the damage caused by HB 87, the state's Arizona-inspired anti-immigrant law, some lawmakers are again attempting to rush through new measures that would further marginalize and exclude immigrants from our community.

SB 458...

Co-authored with Corinna Mullin.

Despite the recent flurry of news coverage of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) report's release, the story of the Bahraini pro-democracy uprising has been one of the least reported amongst those of the 'Arab spring.' This goes for the...

True or false: No child in this country can be denied a public education. The answer is true, thanks to the Supreme Court's 1982 Plyler v. Doe decision, which held that schools could not exclude children based on their immigration status. This is settled law, but not for...

One of the freedoms that was most appealing to me when I came from Iran to the United States at age 16 was the right, free from governmental interference, to practice one's religion, or no religion at all. In my trips back to visit family and friends, I often boasted...

Last week, the ACLU of Georgia submitted comments to the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to ask that the agency not renew its contract with Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) for operation of the McRae Correctional Facility.

McRae is located in Telfair County, Georgia. The prison is owned by...

Co-authored with Corinna Mullin

Though the dramatic events of the last few months have provided much cause for hope in Tunisia, many obstacles remain along the path to constructing a new polity capable of addressing not only Tunisians' political and individual grievances, but their socio-economic and collective grievances as...

Co-authored with Omar Jadwat, ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project

This week the ACLU and ACLU of Georgia along with a coalition of other civil rights groups filed a class action lawsuit challenging Georgia's discriminatory anti-immigrant law inspired by Arizona's notorious S.B. 1070. The Georgia law authorizes police to...

Co-authored by Georgeanne Usova, ACLU Washington Legislative Office

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" It's one of the most common questions we ask our children. And no matter what answer they give -- veterinarian, astronaut, president -- we tell them the same thing: work hard in...