September 11, 2025
Last updated: Thursday, September 11, 2025
This resource provides daily updates from the CWS policy team in your inbox on the latest policy changes; the morning’s headlines on key issues impacting refugees and immigrants; and updated tools to take action. Subscribe now to receive daily updates on the latest developments and ways to support impacted communities.
The latest: The Trump administration’s indefinite refugee ban continues to leave more than 100,000 conditionally approved refugees in limbo. Simultaneously, Afrikaners continue to be resettled through a fast-tracked admissions and resettlement process established by a February executive order.
We await the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling following oral arguments last week in Pacito v. Trump, the lawsuit challenging the refugee ban. We also expect the Court to decide if the compliance framework to review and process the approximately 14,000 refugees who had their flights to the U.S. canceled can proceed.
In the meantime, call on your Members of Congress to support the full restoration of the refugee resettlement program for the most at risk refugees around the world. This morning, you can also check out the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s nomination hearing for Andrew Veprek to lead the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM). The hearing provides an opportunity for Senators to ask questions about the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program and the administration’s plans for the coming year.
Teachers’ unions and impacted preschool community join “protected areas” lawsuit. Yesterday, the National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers, and impacted members of an Oregon preschool community joined PCUN v. Noem to challenge the Trump administration’s revocation of the “protected areas” guidance, which for decades directed ICE to avoid taking enforcement actions at schools, hospitals, and houses of worship. The lawsuit, filed in April by community organizations and faith leaders, seeks to restore these former safe spaces and allow everyone to receive crucial services, attend school, and worship without fear.
The Oregon preschool plaintiffs said that the “violent ICE detention of a preschool student’s father while dropping his child off at our campus earlier this summer has shaken our community to the core.” One study found a 22 percent increase in student absences this year in California’s Central Valley, a community with a high population of immigrants.
Justice Department reverses family reunification claim after nearly deporting hundreds of Guatemalan unaccompanied children. Yesterday in federal court, the Trump administration walked back its previous claim–in court and on social media–that the U.S. was repatriating Guatemalan unaccompanied children at the request of their parents. According to a report produced by a Guatemalan attorney general’s office, none of the contacted parents wanted their children returned, including one daughter who had fled death threats and would be forced to leave again.
In the middle of the night during Labor Day weekend, more than 70 unaccompanied Guatemalan children were put on planes to be removed from the United States. A judge issued an emergency court order temporarily blocking the removals. Lawyers representing the children are now asking for class certification encompassing children of other nationalities and a temporary halt on deportations of unaccompanied children in a similar position. The lawyers have evidence that this effort is a pilot program that the administration intends to replicate with additional countries.
In sworn declarations, several of the children expressed fear of gang violence, racial discrimination, and other persecution if they were deported to Guatemala. The children also described being traumatized by the experience, when they were woken up in the middle of the night and put on a plane. One 16-year-old, whose sister was murdered last year in Guatemala, reached her mother in the frenzy who had no idea she was being returned.
A 2008 law – the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) – provides unaccompanied children the right to an immigration court hearing and requires a judge’s approval for repatriation to their home country to prevent coercion.
Court rules IRS must temporarily halt sharing taxpayer data with ICE. A federal court has temporarily restricted unprecedented mass data sharing between the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and ICE. While litigation proceeds, no confidential taxpayer data can be shared by the IRS to ICE without providing the court and plaintiffs 24 hours advance notice.
Last month, ICE requested the personal information of more than one million individuals that it believes are in the country without valid immigration status. IRS provided this information for tens of thousands of individuals within the week, despite privacy laws and longstanding guardrails to safeguard this private information. A White House spokesperson said it intends to use the IRS data to conduct mass deportations.
Doaa is a single mom with three children who have been forcibly displaced and are currently living as refugees in Cairo, Egypt. She was referred to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program because of her status as a refugee and because she has family already living in New Jersey. She and her children went through the lengthy vetting and screening process and finally had their travel booked to the U.S. – but her flight was among those cancelled by Trump’s indefinite refugee admissions ban. The children are 19, 15, and 13. The case file shows the family as: “Survivors of Violence and Torture.”
The Sung family are refugees from Myanmar who were split up as they fled for safe harbor. Part of the family has been resettled in Texas, and they have been waiting for years as the rest of the family goes through the resettlement process. The flight was scheduled for early February, and the family here bought a four-bedroom home just to accommodate them. Their flight was cancelled at the last minute.
Find stories of impact here, and watch this space for new stories as they arise. Have a story to share? Reach out to programcommunications@cwsglobal.org
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