Top 10 Immigration Stories of 2024

  • by Kevin R. Johnson

[Cross-post from the ImmigrationProf Blog]

As 2025 nears, I am taking the opportunity to highlight the biggest immigration stories in 2024. The top 10 immigration stories of 2023 are listed here.

2024 was another year to remember in immigration. Number 1 on the Top Ten List is far-and-away the biggest immigration news of the year.

1.  Donald Trump's Reelection

The road to President-Elect Donald Trump's reelection was one for the history books, with President Biden deciding in July not to pursue reelection and Vice President Kamala Harris becoming the Democratic nominee.

Trump's victory in the 2024 presidential election will likely have a dramatic impact on immigration policy in the United States.  Soon after the election, he named immigration hawks as Attorney General, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and Border Czar. They no doubt will bring great change to immigration policy in Washington.

Among many other initiatives, Trump has promised a "mass deportation" campaign, restrictions on legal immigration, and greatly heightened border enforcement.  With Stephen Miller as one of the President's senior advisors, the nation can expect aggressive immigration actions. including a possible denaturalization campaign and attacks on birthright citizenship guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. The nation may also see an end to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy and Temporary Protected Status for noncitizens from most countries. Stay tuned!

2.  Haitians Eating Pets?

As most of you know, I did not make this one up.

This year, President-Elect Trump continued his attacks on the humanity of immigrants. He falsely claimed during the presidential debate that immigrants were "eating the dogs," a statement that sparked attacks on Haitian Temporary Protected Status recipients in Springfield, Ohio. Click here and here for reports on the President-Elect Trump's false allegations.

NBC News later reported that police in Springfield, Ohio, said that they had received no credible reports of immigrants harming any pets.

3.  Immigrants Take "Black Jobs"?

President Trump tapped into a long history of claims that immigrants take jobs from Americans. Former Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions previously had accused immigrants of taking American jobs. Trump put a finer point on the claim. specifically saying that immigrants take "Black jobs." Besides playing into racial divides, the statement raised many questions, including what "Black jobs" might be.

4.  Immigration in the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court as composed October 27, 2020 to present

Official Picture of the Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court (Credit: Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States)

The Supreme Court again decided a number of immigration cases. Two are particularly memorable.

In Department of State v. Munoz (2024), the Court held that doctrine of consular nonreviewability barred judicial review of the denial of a visa application of a noncitizen married to a U.S. citizen. The Court previously had generally allowed for narrow judicial review of visa denials. The decision fits into the recent revival of the plenary power doctrine of immigration law, which bars constitutional review of immigration decisions.

The Court in Munoz specifically addressed the question was whether a State Department consular officer's denial of a visa application of a U.S. citizen's noncitizen spouse -- the most common immigrant visa -- impinges upon a constitutionally protected interest of the citizen. Such an interest would trigger judicial review of the visa denial. The Court held that a U.S. citizen does not have a liberty interest in her noncitizen spouse being admitted into the United States and refused to review the denial of a visa application of a Salvadoran husband of a U.S. citizen. His tattoos, including one of the Virgin of Guadalupe, led the consular officer to conclude that the applicant was a gang member and to deny the visa.   

The demise of a leading administrative law decision will have a big impact on the judicial review of immigration decisions. In  Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the Court overruled its decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council (1984), which held that courts should defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute. The end of Chevron means that the courts will no longer defer to the Board of Immigration Appeals' interpretations of ambiguous provisions of the immigration statute.

5.  Immigration a Top Issue in the 2024 Presidential Election

Immigration enforcement was once again one of the top issues in the 2024 Presidential campaign. President Trump aggressively advocated for tougher immigration enforcement. Vice President Kamala Harris pivoted toward a more enforcement oriented approach than she previously had taken.

6.  Biden's Keeping Families Together Policy

In June, President Biden announced the Keeping Families Together policy. He did so shortly after announcing a tightening of border controls. The policy would have lifted the threat of removal for many undocumented persons married to U.S. citizens.

As described by the Associated Press, the Keeping Families Together policy would have allowed close to a half million "spouses of U.S. citizens an opportunity to apply for a `parole in place' program, which would shield them from deportations and offer them work permits if they have lived in the country for at least 10 years, . . .  ." A court enjoined implementation of the policy.
 

7.  The Border "Crisis"

On news shows night after night, the flow of migrants to the U.S./Mexico border frequently was characterized as a "crisis." At the same time, there appeared to be little news coverage of the deaths occurring regularly at the U.S./Mexico border.

In response to the border "crisis," Florida and Texas continued to pursue politically motivated immigration enforcement measures.  See here and here.

8.  Laken Riley

The truly sad and tragic story of Laken Riley, the nursing student who an undocumented immigrant was convicted of killing, came up repeatedly in the 2024 presidential campaign. In the wake of the tragedy, Raul Reyes for CNN reminded us that "[s]tudy after study has found no conclusive link between immigrants and crime. In 2023 Stanford University researchers found that such a connection was `mythical' and unsupported by 140 years of data."

9.  Bipartisan Congressional Border Compromise

For months, there had been talk of a bipartisan immigration border bill that would have sped up the admissions process and bolstered border enforcement. The Daily podcast devoted an episode to explaining why Republicans, at the behest of Donald Trump, derailed the border deal. 

10.  Impeachment of DHS Secretary Mayorkas

Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary

Official U.S. Government Photo via Homeland Security

Impeachments, once rare, are now so common that they are not all that newsworthy. In little more than a publicity stunt, Republicans in Congress pressed for the impeachment of Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas for failing to secure the border.

Professor Laurence Tribe, Just Security posted a letter by "Constitutional Law Experts on the Impeachment Proceedings Against Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas" that begins "Senior Republicans in the House of Representatives—including Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Chairman Mark Green of the Committee on Homeland Security—have stated that they intend to pursue an impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. This proceeding will apparently occur in the Committee on Homeland Security on an accelerated timeframe. As scholars of the Constitution, considering the facts currently known and the charges publicly described, we hereby express our view that an impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas would be utterly unjustified as a matter of constitutional law."

The impeachment effort ultimately failed to remove Secretary Mayorkas.