Insights and Analyses

• At the start of President Trump’s 2^nd term in January 2025, the administration released a series of executive orders and policies aimed at restricting and reshaping the country’s immigration policy. By June, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other arms of U.S. immigration enforcement intensified immigration-related arrests and deportations dramatically. Many of their efforts have been concentrated in southern California though they have occurred across the state and throughout the nation, as well. According to TRAC analysis of ICE data, as of September 21^st, there are almost 60,000 individuals held in detention—77% were arrested by ICE and 23% were arrested by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). Analysis by the Vera Institute found that the number of people detained peaked in August 2025, at over 61,200 people, which was the highest number recorded in the last 16 years.

• In addition to increased enforcement, the passage of H.R.1, also named the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” by Trump increased resources for detainment and deportation. The bill, signed into law in July 2025, designates $170 billion for immigration and border-enforcement—including $30 billion for the expansion and acceleration of detainment and deportation. The structure of this funding is feared to create a “lopsided” system that focuses mainly on enforcement and either underfunds or completely halts resources for new immigration judges, legal orientation, and support programs for immigrants.

• In January 2025, the Trump administration yet again expanded the use of “expedited removals” which allows for the removal of undocumented immigrations as fast as a few hours post-arrest without judicial review and at the discretion of individual immigration officers. The current administration has already reportedly used this statute—something that had previously been reserved for undocumented immigrants who had very recently entered the country—to remove long-settled immigrants and even those that have temporary protection or pending cases.

• Arrests have also increasingly occurred at immigration hearings where ICE attorneys have asked judges to dismiss noncitizen court cases—which many judges have agreed to, leading immigrants attending their hearing vulnerable to arrest and being tracked into expedited removal. According to an analysis by the American Immigration Council, from May 1^st to July 28^th, there were over 6,500 motions to dismiss in immigration courts. Of these, over 81% were oral motions on the day of the hearing even though court policy typically requires such a motion to happen in writing in advance of the hearing. In California, there is a 2019 law that bans immigration enforcement at courthouses, however, arrests have continued to happen at these locations.

• According to an analysis by the American Immigration Council (AIC), most immigrants placed in removal proceedings actually appear for their court hearings, pointing out the limited nature of the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s (EOIR) metrics on missed court appearances. Data from fiscal years (FY) 2008 through June 2019 showed that 83% of all non-detained immigrants with a completed or pending removal case attended all their court hearings. Moreover, during that same time frame, 97% of all represented immigrants attended all their court hearings.

• According to a TRAC analysis of asylum grant rates, lower proportions of immigrants are being granted asylum by immigration judges in 2024 than they were in 2022, as policies were changed to expedite cases through the courts through the use of “rocket dockets”. In 2023, rates dropped due to these policy changes but had been increasing back to 2022 levels. However, by October 2024, only about 36 percent of cases were granted asylum. There has also been a steady increase in the number of asylum cases backlogged in recent years. By the end of 2024, there were nearly 170,000 asylum cases that were still pending in California. Across the nation, at the end of August 2025, there were over 2.2 million immigrants who have submitted asylum applications and are awaiting their hearing.

The RepresentLA program provides free competent legal representation to diverse immigrant communities in Los Angeles County — that otherwise would not be represented — helping them navigate complex immigration processes.

Research shows that legally represented immigrants are likely to fare better at every stage of the court process, yet challenges to obtaining legal representation exist. This is especially true for vulnerable immigrant populations who may face additional barriers to accessing resources. As such, RepresentLA was designed to assist some of the most vulnerable immigrant populations, including unaccompanied minors, victims of domestic violence, immigrants seeking asylum, immigrants in detention, and LGBTQ+ immigrants. Established in 2017, RepresentLA, formerly known as the Los Angeles Justice Fund (LAJF), is a public-private partnership, created in response to the harmful policy priorities enacted under the first Trump administration, between the County of Los Angeles, the City of Los Angeles, the Weingart Foundation, and the California Community Foundation (CCF). The program was designed with the objective of protecting Angeleno families from the impacts of deportation by providing access to counsel. Although there were some lessons to be learned during the pilot phase of the fund, LAJF played a critical role in ensuring that these immigrant communities were able to navigate a complex court system with adequate support and resources; protected families from separation; and strengthened the capacity of removal defense services in the City and County of L.A.

However, one limitation of LAJF’s design was that the requirements to access the pilot program excluded certain immigrants due to residency requirements and prior criminal backgrounds – an exclusion that disproportionately impacts Black immigrants. In 2021, after much advocacy from numerous stakeholders, including Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees (GCIR), the County passed a motion to build upon LAJF’s foundation and initial success to form RepresentLA, thus sunsetting the LAJF pilot program. This new iteration, based on GCIR’s four-pillar framework, included a “merits-blind” approach to providing representation by removing criminal background requirements. In May 2022, the City voted to do the same and included other recommendations and in November 2023, the City voted to remove the restriction on City funds to also include merit-blind removal defense. Another one of the program’s key focus areas includes representing vulnerable immigrant communities who experience significant barriers in accessing legal services, including immigrants experiencing homelessness, asylum seekers, survivors of labor trafficking and workplace exploitation, as well as Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ immigrants. Since RepresentLA’s launch in April 2022, the program has provided legal representation in removal defense, affirmative representation, and other areas to over 5,000 immigrants at risk of removal, as of November 2024.

Beginning as the LAJF two-year pilot with an initial expiration date set in 2019, as of June 2025, RepresentLA is expected to continue to be part of both the City and County of Los Angeles’ budgets  through 2026. To learn more about RepresentLA, click here. To read ERI’s reports on the bridge funding phases of LAJF, click here. Read the Nonprofit Finance Fund’s report about lessons and recommendations from the LAJF’s pilot phase here. Read the Vera Institute of Justice’s Year 2 evaluation of the program here.

Photo credit: California Immigrant Policy Center

Advocates fight for accountability and the closure of California’s private, for-profit immigration detention facilities, which are known to be abusive and lack humane conditions for those in custody.

California ranks third in the country in total number of migrants held in detention, with an immigrant detention population of over 3,100 people awaiting a determination of their immigration status or deportation. All of California’s six ICE detention facilities are run by the private, for-profit prison companies GEO Group and CoreCivic, which immigrant rights organizations such as ACLU say are prone to a lack of accountability amid repeatedly documented cases of severe abuse and neglect in detention centers. Previous attempts to prohibit private immigration detention facilities in the state were signed with the passage of AB 32 in 2019, until it was federally challenged and found unconstitutional, resulting in the state being unable to ban for-profit ICE detention facilities.

Due to the lack of standards, regulation, and oversight of private detention centers, in June 2025, advocacy organizations such as ACLU, Detention Watch Network, and National Immigrant Justice Center have called for congress to conduct oversight of immigrant detention that is rife with unchecked abuse. This comes amidst years of advocacy from immigrant rights groups like the Asian Law Caucus and senators calling for an end to the abuse, of which most cases are allegedly not investigated. An August 2025 report launched by Senator Jon Ossoff investigated the detention centers and identified 510 credible reports of human rights abuses which include deaths, mistreatment pregnant women, unsanitary living conditions, denial of access to attorneys, and denial of access to necessary follow-up care and doctor appointments for detained children with ongoing treatment for cancer or recovery from brain surgery, and more.

For California specifically, a California Department of Justice report on mental health from April 2025 cited instances of deficient recordkeeping and maintenance of health care files, overuse of force on detainees with mental health conditions, and more found happening at every detention center. A 2023 report by the Shut Down Adelanto Coalition, led by the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice and comprising of over 20 organizations, compiled experiences of abuses and conditions from current detainees at the Adelanto and Desert View facilities. The Shut Down Adelanto Coalition has also exposed and advocated for the improvement of hazardous environmental coalitions inside the detention center, claiming that at least eight people have died in ICE custody at the facility. The Coalition’s advocacy led to an investigation and 2021 report by the US Environmental Protection Agency confirming the use of a harmful pesticide in unventilated spaces within the detention center during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The group has also exposed illnesses caused by poor water and air quality in the facility and broader community, with one detained immigrant calling the local water supply “contaminated.”

As of June 2025, a new facility is planned to be the largest in the state, drawing residents both local and throughout the state to express their opposition. The Dolores Huerta Foundation called out the plans as it redirects investment from addressing the needs of the local community to enabling and profiting off the detainment and dehumanization of people. Read the CA Department of Justice report here. Read Senator Jon Ossoff’s report here.

Photo credit: Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice