When safety is the dream and terror is the reality,
there is light fighting its way through the cracks.

Migrants are being detained and deported en masse, without regard for due process.

Communities are unraveling.

Harmful immigration policies and mass enforcement actions are tearing families and communities apart. Babies are being pulled from the arms of their mothers. People are being wrongfully detained and suffering abuse in detention where hope is hard to find.

    • In 2025, immigration arrests totaled 328K and deportations totaled 327K. (ICE & CBP)
    • This past year the law changed to cap the number of immigration judges at 800, despite record backlogs in the immigration court system.
  • Immigrants with no criminal record are now the largest group in ICE detention.
  • More than 1.6 million immigrants have lost their legal status in the first 11 months of 2025. That staggering number includes people who applied for and were accepted to come to the country on a wide variety of immigration parole, visa, asylum, and temporary protected status programs. That number exceeds Philadelphia’s entire population. (NPR)
  • American citizens are being arrested and imprisoned:
    • Americans have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased, and shot by immigration agents. They’ve had their necks kneeled on. They’ve been held outside in the rain while in their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them; one of those women had already had the door of her home blown off.
  • About two dozen Americans have reported they were held for more than a day without being able to phone lawyers or loved ones.
  • Videos of U.S. citizens being mistreated by immigration agents have filled social media feeds, but there is little clarity on the overall picture. The government does not track how often immigration agents hold Americans. (ProPublica)

Prison construction is booming.

There are over 200 immigration detention facilities, including cages at Guantanamo Bay, with plans for 200 more under construction nationwide.

In 2025, $45 billion was allocated for building new immigration detention centers, including family detention facilities. This represents a 265% annual budget increase to ICE’s current detention budget. It is a 62% larger budget than the entire federal prison system, and could result in daily detention of at least 116,000 non-citizens—nearly 4 times the average in 2024.

What if your mother or husband is taken away?

Lack of transparency is embedded in the labyrinth of the immigration system. In a constantly shifting landscape, rapid response is crucial.

There is hope. There is help.

Introducing JusticeAid’s 2026 Grantee Partner, the National Immigration Project.

For more than 50 years, the National Immigration Project has worked to advance and protect the rights of all immigrants.

A membership organization of attorneys, advocates, organizers, and community members, the National Immigration Project litigates harmful immigration policies, coordinates regional rapid response hubs, trains thousands of attorneys across the country, educates community members on how to protect themselves and their loved ones, and advocates for affirmative laws and policies.

With thousands of legal representatives and hundreds of rapid response groups in their network, they are building bridges across movements to ensure that those most impacted by the immigration and criminal systems are uplifted and supported.

  • Expanded its membership to include 210 nonprofit organizations, 52 law firms, 20 law school clinics, and thousands of individuals across all 50 states.
  • Filed or continued to litigate 53 lawsuits and legal advocacy initiatives.
  • Created 24 attorney resources and 19 community resources.
  • Conducted 43 trainings, webinars, and courses along with 28 convenings and community conversations.
  • Reached 25,735 individuals through programming and an additional 600+ through technical and strategic support.

Litigation Highlights

The National Immigration Project has deep expertise in immigration law and policy and in federal litigation. They are filing more lawsuits than ever before to seek justice for those whose rights are violated. Highlights include:

In 2025, a baseless “crime emergency” was declared in Washington, DC, turning the vibrant region into a site of chaos and terror as federal agents systematically arrested residents without warrants. The National Immigration Project and its partners at ACLU of DC and Amica Center sued to stop this illegal and inhumane tactic–and won.

In 2025, the National Immigration Project fought relentlessly to secure the release of Cesar and Norelia, a Venezuelan couple with Temporary Protected Status who were unlawfully detained three times. The National Immigration Project’s rapid response advocacy helped expose the government’s unfounded claims, led multiple judges to order the couple’s release, and resulted in a precedent-setting ruling that strengthened due process protections for others detained under the Alien Enemies Act. Today, Cesar and Norelia are home with their children where they belong. 

In mid-2025, to nationwide horror and outrage, ICE secretly detained and deported two mothers and their four children—including three U.S. citizens—to Honduras without notice, consent, or access to legal counsel. One of the children who was deported is a five-year-old boy undergoing treatment for stage-four kidney cancer. ICE disappeared the families into hotel rooms, cut them off from relatives and attorneys, and deported them within days, violating federal law, agency policy, and the most basic standards of human decency. The National Immigration Project worked with local community groups and stepped in immediately to help these families, filing a federal civil rights lawsuit demanding accountability for these extraordinary abuses. Through this litigation, the National Immigration Project is fighting for the families’ safe return, recognition of their rights, and compensation for the harm they have endured.

A broad network.

The National Immigration Project provides critical, timely help to those most vulnerable to detention and deportation.

They ensure our communities are supported, coordinated, and as prepared as possible for moments of crisis. The larger the National Immigration Project grows, the more they can do to empower communities to resist overreach by immigration enforcement. These 2025 numbers speak to their reach:

The National Immigration Project:

  • Equips frontline rapid response triage teams with the information and resources they need when individuals are detained.
  • Files rapid response litigation.
  • Convenes attorneys, organizers, advocates, and service providers to ensure that when ICE targets our neighbors, our communities can respond quickly, effectively, and with care.

17,000+

People registered
for community defender trainings in 2025.

8,500+

Legal professionals attended trainings
on what is working in immigration law now.

600+

Attorneys received technical and strategic
support to assist their clients.

Money is power, and the National Immigration Project needs our help.

Law enforcement is well funded. In 2025, $170 billion was poured into arresting, incarcerating, and deporting people, often with no regard for current law. People are languishing in cities and underserved rural areas throughout the U.S.

For every $1 the National Immigration Project spends* seeking justice in the legal system, ICE spends $34,000 stalking, arresting, imprisoning, and deporting vulnerable people across the United States. 

Anti-immigration actions include:

    • $29.9 billion toward ICE’s enforcement and deportation operations, increasing ICE’s annual budget three-fold
    • $45 billion for detention center construction
    • Caps the number of immigration judges to 800 despite record backlogs in the immigration court system
    • $46.6 billion into border wall construction

* (based on a $5M annual budget)

While the hardships this year have been as harrowing as we feared, the power of our collective resistance has been even more formidable than we imagined. We have shown love in the face of devastation, chosen courage in the face of intimidation, spoken out despite efforts to silence us, and strengthened our solidarity despite attempts to divide us.

—Sirine Shebaya
Executive Director
National Immigration Project

We must all work together to ensure that civil rights and human decency are norms. The National Immigration Project needs our help to create stronger networks of support in places that need it most, offer more legal and community trainings, and work for the freedom of incarcerated people.