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Washington DC, July 1, 2025 — On July 1, the U.S. Senate passed a budget reconciliation bill that includes an unprecedented allocation of funds for immigration detention and enforcement while simultaneously stripping healthcare from millions of Americans.

The bill, passed today with Vice President JD Vance contributing the tie-breaking vote, earmarks some $170 billion for immigration- and border enforcement-related funding provisions. The bill includes:

• $45 billion for building new immigration detention centers, including family detention facilities. This represents a 265 percent annual budget increase to ICE’s current detention budget. It is a 62 percent larger budget than the entire federal prison system and could result in daily detention of at least 116,000 non-citizens.


• $29.9 billion toward ICE’s enforcement and deportation operations, increasing ICE’s annual budget three-fold. 


• Alongside this increased spending in immigration enforcement, between 12 million to 17 million people are at risk of losing their healthcare. 


• Caps the number of immigration judges to 800 despite record backlogs in the immigration court system. 


• $46.6 billion into border wall construction—more than three times what the Trump administration spent on the wall in its first term, despite the failure of the wall to improve or contribute in any meaningful way to border management strategy


• A new $10 billion fund to reimburse DHS for costs related to “safeguard[ing] the borders of the United States to protect against the illegal entry of persons or contraband.” This funding is nearly 50 percent of CBP’s FY 2024 budget. However, unlike a normal budget, this funding would provide very few guardrails and little guidance to DHS on how the funds must be used. As a result, this would become a slush fund for CBP to largely use however it determined.

For full analysis about what is included in the bill, see the Council’s explainer here. 

Altogether, this marks the largest investment in detention and deportation in U.S. history; a policy choice that does nothing to address the systemic failures of our immigration system while inflicting harm, sowing chaos, and tearing families apart.

“This bill will deprive 12 to 17 million Americans of basic health care while investing unprecedented levels of funding in the president’s increasingly unpopular mass deportation agenda, which undermines public safety and creates chaos in American communities,”  said Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council. “At a time when polls show more Americans rejecting mass detention and deportation, this bill ignores what Americans want and doubles down on punitive policies that do nothing to address the real problems in our immigration system including court backlogs, a lack of legal pathways to citizenship, and a broken U.S. asylum system.”

The bill’s enforcement-heavy provisions come at the expense of urgently needed investments in asylum processing, legal representation, community-based alternatives to detention, and support for local governments and nonprofits serving new arrivals.

“Throwing billions at detention centers and enforcement agents is short-sighted. Instead, we should be investing in a system aimed at welcoming immigrants that contribute billions to our economy,” said Adriel Orozco, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Council. “We don’t need more jail beds and indiscriminate raids. We need balanced solutions that strengthen due process and keep families together.”

The bill will now return to the House of Representatives, where members are expected to vote on final passage later this week. Experts at the American Immigration Council are available to talk more in-depth about the specifics of what’s included in the bill, including immigration court, border funding, what happens to unaccompanied children, the increase in ICE agents, and more.

For additional analysis about what is included in the bill, see the Council’s full explainer here.  

The post Senate Approves Unprecedented Spending for Mass Deportation, Ignoring What’s Broken in our Immigration System appeared first on American Immigration Council.

Ilia is a 24-year-old pro-democracy activist who recently fled a threatening environment in his native Russia. But after escaping, he was taken into custody and put into jail-like detention by the very country he believed would protect him: the United States.

“I fled Russia because of increasingly harsh laws, because of a government that started persecuting me for my political views and my sexual orientation,” says Ilia. “I believed the United States would help me.”

Like many critics of the Putin regime, Ilia was outraged when Russian authorities arrested pro-democracy opposition leader Alexei Navalny in January 2021. In response, he joined nation-wide protests and began putting up “Free Navalny” fliers around Krosnodor, the city in southern Russia where he was a university student. The government response was brutal, with thousands of people detained and many beaten or tasered by police. In February 2024, Navalny died under suspicious circumstances in a Russian prison camp.

By then, Ilia had already fled the country, after receiving threats from Russian intelligence officials. Being nonbinary, he faced additional risk under Putin’s increasingly repressive laws; his mere existence could mean persecution or imprisonment.

Ilia made his way to Mexico, where he followed the asylum process to the letter. He spent eight months near the border, waiting for a CBP One appointment. In May 2024, he arrived for his appointment, ready to make his case. Instead, he was taken into custody on the spot and put into detention, ending up at a Louisiana facility known for abuse and neglect.

“I applied for asylum because I believed the U.S. would help me,” Ilia says. “But once I was sent to Winn Correctional Center in Louisiana, I faced horrible treatment. The way officers treat detainees is awful. They yell at them, sometimes go as far as to discriminate, make racist remarks, and even subject detainees to sexual abuse.” Ilia has filed multiple complaints over the year he’s spent at Winn, but they go unanswered.

Though detained before President Trump came into office, Ilia has experienced the Trump administration’s hardline immigration stance firsthand. In March 2025, Ilia won his asylum case after an immigration judge considered 900 pages of evidence, including threats from Russian intelligence and letters of support from people who’d witnessed his activism. At this point, Ilia should have been released from detention and allowed to start building his life here. Instead, the Trump administration is refusing to let him out.

Ilia has no criminal history and does not pose a threat to his community. In fact, he won his asylum case, because he was targeted for upholding the very democratic ideals of free speech—upon which this country was founded. The result is prolonged, needless suffering, even for those the system has already deemed worthy of protection.

“The situation [in the detention centers] has gotten worse,” Ilia says, explaining that the facility where he is being kept has been at maximum capacity since Trump took office. “People have started to realize there’s no way out, that they’re just waiting here to be deported, and they’re losing their minds.”

The post Ilia, young Russian dissident facing never-ending detention appeared first on American Immigration Council.

Last summer, Kaelyn was at a Latin club in Wilmington, North Carolina when a handsome stranger asked her to dance. She wasn’t in the mood, but the man was just so charming. “If anyone else had asked, I would’ve said no, but Yapa is so genuine,” she says, using his pseudonym to ensure his privacy. At the end of the night, they exchanged numbers; over the following months, they dated and developed a deep friendship. They had no idea that what began with a dance would end in a desperate fight for Yapa’s freedom. 

Yapa is an asylum seeker who fled violence in Venezuela in 2022. He attended regular court hearings and had a legal work permit. He drove for a delivery service and hoped to get his commercial trucking license. He was building a life here—one that Kaelyn had become part of.  

They spent Thanksgiving together. Yapa played pool with Kaelyn’s dad. Yapa’s sisters started calling Kaelyn “reina”—queen—what Yapa had called her the night they met. In their spare time, they watched the Fast and Furious movies and coached each other through the language barrier, relying on translation apps and Kaelyn’s college Spanish. Every morning, without fail, Yapa would text to ask about her day.  

Before she met Yapa, Kaelyn rarely thought about immigration policy. She is originally from Connecticut, and had moved to Wilmington to work in film location scouting. But after President Trump was elected and began to crack down on asylum seekers, she began to worry.  

“People would tell me, Oh, you’re overreacting,” she says. “This isn’t 1930s Germany. And I’d say, Yeah, but it’s starting to feel that way. Looking back now, while people were telling me I was being dramatic, I was actually underreacting.” 

On February 22, 2025, ICE showed up without warning in the early morning hours while Yapa was headed to work. ICE officers offered no explanation as they handcuffed him. One agent reached into his pocket and took his ID and work permit, documents that have not been seen since. They didn’t tell him where he was going, only that he was being deported—and soon. 

Kaelyn was gobsmacked when his sister called to tell her ICE had “abducted” Yapa. He’d been staying with Kaelyn until the previous evening, when he’d moved in with friends. Kaelyn hadn’t wanted him to leave; as a U.S. citizen, she felt better positioned to push back against ICE and help ensure his rights were protected. “I couldn’t explain it, but I was so emotional,” Kaelyn says of their final night together. “And he told me, ‘There’s no reason for them to take me.’” Now, her worst fear had happened. They didn’t know where he was, but they knew they had to act fast to save him. 

By then, ICE had already transported Yapa out of state to Georgia’s Stewart Detention Center. It wasn’t until two months later, at his hearing, that ICE first alleged Yapa was part of the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua (TdA). “Shocking is not even the word,” Kaelyn says. “I was shaking.”  

In a recent court filing, ICE admitted it has no evidence linking Yapa to any gang. But a ruling from the Trump administration makes it more challenging for immigrants like Yapa who recently entered the country to make a case for release from detention. Now, Yapa faces up to a year behind bars while his fight for asylum continues, with little control over where he’ll be deported to if he loses.  

That’s why Kaelyn’s reaction to the TdA allegations was so physical—she knew the accusations could land Yapa in CECOT, the brutal El Salvador prison where the Trump administration has sent many Venezuelan asylum seekers accused of gang affiliations. “I thought, I’m going to have to live the rest of my life knowing he’s in there, and there’s nothing that we can do to get him out of there,” she says. The reality that he—and so many other innocent men—could be locked away in what many have called a modern day concentration camp is an “atrocity,” she says. 

All of this has taken a terrible toll on Kaelyn. She’s hired multiple attorneys for Yapa and has gone into debt over legal fees. Meanwhile, Yapa is being held nine hours away from Wilmington and has limited phone access. In April, attorneys with the American Immigration Council and the ACLU took up part of Yapa’s case pro bono; in May, they secured a decision from a judge that says the Trump administration cannot remove Yapa to CECOT or anywhere on the basis of the Alien Enemies Act without a fair chance for him to contest the allegations of TdA membership against him. It’s a relief, but Kaelyn barely recognizes her life these days. 

Every time she talks to her sister, they mostly discuss updates on Yapa’s case and the latest immigration news. “We can’t be happy when there’s literally a member of our family who’s been taken from us,” she says. “I’ll never let this go. The administration thinks they’re sowing fear—but they’re creating activists. You can’t destroy someone’s life and expect us to stay quiet.” 

The post Kaelyn, going into debt to keep her partner from deportation to El Salvador appeared first on American Immigration Council.

In February 2025, a Venezuelan-American lawyer named Beatriz received an order from the Interior Department to the nonprofit where she worked: stop all work. 

Beatriz represents unaccompanied minors: children who are going through immigration proceedings without their parents. These youngsters can be quite vulnerable. They may be living with family members, placed in foster care, or held at detention centers. Some are as young, or younger, than Beatriz herself was when she came here undocumented at the age of eight after her family fled increasing violence and political persecution in Venezuela. 

After seeing her parents sit through countless meetings with immigration lawyers, Beatriz headed to law school in the hope of using her own experiences to help others. “I know how terrifying it is to be a child, alone and unable to speak English, trying to deal with authority figures,” says Beatriz, who is now a citizen. “That’s why I became a lawyer, to bring some empathy to that process.” 

The stop-work order disrupted that effort. “It came completely out of the blue—suddenly, everything changed,” Beatriz says. Federal contracts were canceled, and across the country organizations like Beatriz’s were forced to reduce headcount. “For those of us left, it was all hands on deck,” Beatriz says. 

While the stop-work order was later rescinded, legal fights over canceled contracts are ongoing. In the meantime, the damage has been done. “In practical terms, it left children without anybody to advocate for them,” Beatriz explains. While barred from helping the children, Beatriz and her colleagues attended many hearings simply to observe and take notes; in one heart-breaking case, Beatriz saw a confused six-year-old appear in court with no representation whatsoever. “These young children are being brought to immigration hearings—speaking no English, and without a lawyer—to try to explain why they shouldn’t be deported.” 

Immigration courts also increasingly use “rocket dockets” to cram a dozen or more hearings into a single day. “They started fast-tracking kids through the system at a time when we weren’t able to accompany them,” Beatriz says. “It’s just been an onslaught of attacks, specifically targeting unaccompanied children.” 

Beatriz also saw children’s lives thrown into chaos because their caregivers have been detained by ICE. Some of her young clients were put in detention or the foster system. In some cases, the government has refused to tell Beatriz’s team where the children’s caregivers are being held. “It’s something none of my superiors—including people who worked during Trump’s first term—have ever experienced before,” she says. 

As a result, Beatriz now routinely sees children who are scared to go to school or even leave the house. “So much of my job is now simply dealing with anxious kids,” Beatriz says. “Pretty much every one of these children has a deep sense that the U.S. is no longer a safe place for them.” 

It’s not just the children who feel this way. It’s Beatriz’s whole community. Even before the Trump administration cancelled Temporary Protected Status for some 350,000 Venezuelans, her WhatsApp groups were full of people whose loved ones had disappeared from their American neighborhoods. “I have friends who are scared to step onto the street,” she says. “The demonization of my culture and my community is really hurtful, and really harmful.” 

With officials talking about denaturalizing or deporting U.S. citizens to foreign prisons, or eliminating due process for migrants, Beatriz worries that even her own parents and siblings—all now American citizens—might no longer be safe. “We worked hard to get citizenship, but there’s a real fear that even that won’t protect us,” she says. “For Venezuelans, the feelings of insecurity are always present. It really weighs heavily on us.” 

The post Beatriz, an immigrant lawyer fighting for noncitizen kids  appeared first on American Immigration Council.

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 19, 2025 — After 125 days imprisoned in El Salvador’s notorious “mega-prison,” the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), Venezuelan nationals Edicson Quintero Chacón and Jose Manuel Ramos Bastidas were released yesterday and placed on a U.S.-brokered flight to Venezuela, alongside approximately 250 other Venezuelans whom the United States paid to detain at CECOT. Counsel for both men expressed profound relief at their release and emphasized the urgent need for accountability from the U.S. government for disappearing them to CECOT in the first place. 

The U.S. government sent the men to CECOT on March 15, 2025, where they were held incommunicado and without charges in a facility widely condemned for mass arbitrary detention and inhumane treatment. Both Mr. Quintero and Mr. Bastidas had previously been ordered removed from the United States, after which they told a federal court that they just wanted to return home to Venezuela. The U.S. government sent them to CECOT instead. The terms of the agreement with El Salvador specify that the U.S. would send “members” of a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua (TdA), but there is no evidence linking the men to TdA. Their return to Venezuela was part of a prisoner swap deal that included the release from Venezuela of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents. 

“This news of flights to Venezuela was like being hit with a bucket of cold water because my family had absolutely no idea this was happening,” said a member of Mr. Quintero Chacón’s family, who asked to remain anonymous. “Edicson should never have been sent to CECOT in the first place. No one should. He was treated cruelly and inhumanely when all he wanted was safety. This so-called prisoner swap doesn’t undo the injustice he suffered, nor the pain and terror that my family has had to endure in the past several months with no idea of whether we’d ever see him again.”

“We have been waiting for this moment for months, and I feel like I can finally breathe, knowing that Jose Manuel is now free from CECOT and on his way home,” said Roynerliz Rodriguez, partner of Jose Manuel Ramos Bastidas. “His son, whom he hasn’t seen since he was four months old, is eagerly waiting for him. These last months have been a living nightmare, not knowing anything about Jose Manuel and only imagining what he must be suffering. I am happy he is free from CECOT, but I also know that we will never be free of the shadow of this experience. There must be justice for all those who suffered this torture.”

Serious concerns remain regarding the legality and transparency of the U.S. government’s actions. Many of the individuals sent to CECOT by the U.S. government had pending asylum claims and expressed credible fear of return to Venezuela. Their forced return to Venezuela, without due process to address their requests for asylum in the United States, raises significant questions about the United States’ compliance with domestic and international legal obligations.

Nor has there been any public accounting of how the U.S. government selected individuals for transfer to CECOT or the full scope of conditions they endured. To date, the U.S. government has not released a complete list of names of the people they paid El Salvador to detain, and it remains unclear whether each victim is accounted for. 

The use of foreign detention facilities, particularly those with documented records of systemic abuse, raises serious human rights and due process concerns. The U.S. government should not engage in detention outsourcing arrangements and should not collaborate with regimes that flagrantly violate human rights. There must be a full investigation into these disappearances and clear safeguards barring the Trump administration from doing this again. 

“We are deeply relieved that Mr. Quintero Chacón and Mr. Ramos Bastidas are finally released from CECOT, but this should never have happened in the first place,” said Rebecca Cassler, senior litigation attorney at the American Immigration Council. “The U.S. government paid to detain these men in one of the world’s most notorious prisons, then denied responsibility while they suffered. For months, the Trump administration misled the courts and the public, pretending it had no control over their fate. This deal proves otherwise. There must be a full investigation into how this happened, and accountability for the grave harm inflicted on these men.”

“We celebrate this news, along with the loved ones of  Mr. Quintero Chacón and Mr. Ramos Bastidas and over 250 Venezuelans who returned to Venezuela yesterday after being disappeared and tortured for months at the direction and expense of the United States government. The ‘deals’ made for these Venezuelans’ confinement and transfers between the United States, El Salvador, and Venezuela treat human beings as bargaining chips and underscore the cruel consequences of criminalizing migration and monetizing torture. The U.S. government must stop these abuses and uphold its obligations to protect the rights and dignity of all people,” said CJ Sandley, senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

“It is with great joy and relief that we celebrate Mr. Quintero Chacón’s and Mr. Ramos Bastidas’ safe return to Venezuela and long-overdue reunion with their loved ones. It is unconscionable that they and 250 other Venezuelan men were sent by the United States to be detained at CECOT and forced to endure suffering, the extent of which we still don’t fully know. The administration has tried to wash its hands of the individuals they sent to be tortured, but their release today shows just how involved the government has been throughout this entire process,” said Stephanie M. Alvarez-Jones, Southeast Regional Attorney at the National Immigration Project. “While we celebrate their long overdue release, the government must be held accountable for its outrageous actions.”

The American Immigration Council, Center for Constitutional Rights, and the National Immigration Project represent Mr. Quintero Chacón in his habeas corpus proceeding in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia, where they have been fighting for his freedom from CECOT. National Immigration Project represents Mr. Ramos Bastidas in his habeas corpus proceeding, which is also before the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia.

For more information, contact:

Elyssa Pachico at the American Immigration Council, [email protected] 503 850 8407
Arianna Rosales, National Immigration Project, [email protected]
Jen Nessel, Center for Constitutional Rights, [email protected] 

About the American Immigration Council

The American Immigration Council works to strengthen America by shaping how America thinks about and acts towards immigrants and immigration and by working toward a more fair and just immigration system that opens its doors to those in need of protection and unleashes the energy and skills that immigrants bring. The Council brings together problem solvers and employs four coordinated approaches to advance change—litigation, research, legislative and administrative advocacy, and communications. In January 2022, the Council and New American Economy merged to combine a broad suite of advocacy tools to better expand and protect the rights of immigrants, more fully ensure immigrants’ ability to succeed economically, and help make the communities they settle in more welcoming. Follow the latest Council news and information on BlueSky @immcouncil.org and Instagram at @immcouncil.

About the National Immigration Project: The National Immigration Project is a membership organization of attorneys, advocates, and community members who believe that all people should be treated with dignity, live freely, and flourish. We litigate, advocate, educate, and build bridges across movements to ensure that those most impacted by the immigration and criminal systems are uplifted and supported. Learn more at nipnlg.org. Follow the National Immigration Project on Bluesky, Facebook, Twitter/X, and Instagram at @NIPNLG.

About the Center for Constitutional Rights: The Center for Constitutional Rights works with communities under threat to fight for justice and liberation through litigation, advocacy, and strategic communications. Since 1966, the Center for Constitutional Rights has taken on oppressive systems of power, including structural racism, gender oppression, economic inequity, and governmental overreach. Follow the Center for Constitutional Rights on Facebook, @theCCR on Twitter/X, and @ccrjustice on Instagram, and @ccrjustice.org on BlueSky.

The post After Detaining People in El Salvador Torture Prison for 125 Days, the U.S. Government Must Be Held Accountable for Disappearing Migrants appeared first on American Immigration Council.

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 23, 2025 — A special report released today offers a sweeping analysis of the Trump administration’s first six months back in office, revealing an unprecedented transformation of the U.S. immigration system that strikes at the foundation of American democracy. While some voters may have supported a “tougher” approach on immigration when voting for Trump, the report describes how the administration’s extreme actions go far beyond policy shifts: they are corrosive to the rule of law itself. 

The report, titled Mass Deportation: Analyzing the Trump Administration’s Attacks on Immigrants, Democracy, and America, published on July 23 by the American Immigration Council, lays out how the administration has executed a radical, multi-front attack on immigrants and the immigration system. 

Read the report here.

These actions have included limiting who can come to the United States, stripping legal protections from those already here, and ramping up enforcement to historic levels. And in the process, the Trump administration has dismantled long-standing legal protections, defied the authority of Congress and the courts, and weaponized government power against immigrants and dissenters alike. 

“This isn’t just a hardline immigration agenda,” said Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council and co-author of the report. “It’s a wholesale effort to use immigrants and the U.S. immigration system to attack core tenets of our democracy and exercise unchecked executive power to realign the American government around exclusion and fear.”

Key findings from the report include:

• The end of asylum. Asylum at the southern border is effectively dead. The administration shut down the CBP One application and did not replace it with anything else. Asylum-seekers who approach a port of entry are turned away, and in some cases, asylum-seekers are being detained indefinitely, even after winning their cases.


• Demolishing the refugee program. The administration indefinitely suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program — except for white South Africans who have been fast-tracked via executive order and under dubious persecution claims. Tens of thousands of approved refugees remain stranded abroad.


• Mass revocation of legal status: The administration aggressively revoked humanitarian parole and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from over a million people in just six months, stripping work permits and pushing many into undocumented status.


• Weaponizing bureaucracy: Legal immigration pathways are being jammed by massive fee hikes, processing freezes, and opaque barriers that make it nearly impossible for even lawful applicants to get or maintain status.


• A maelstrom of fear and chaos: The Trump administration’s aggressive enforcement tactics have caused immigrants of all legal statuses to constantly worry about their daily and future safety in the United States. Anyone can be targeted for arrest, detention, and deportation, and people can be targeted anywhere, including at churches, schools and courthouses.


• A radical reorganization of law enforcement resources: The Trump administration is creating an unprecedented, cross-agency immigration operation that draws on manpower across several federal and state law enforcement agencies and the U.S. military — prioritizing immigration enforcement above all other public safety and law enforcement goals.


• Turbocharging an inhumane detention system. Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill Act” enacted in July increases ICE’s detention budget by 308 percent on an annual basis. This sets the government up to radically expand a detention system whose careless and cruel management has already put tens of thousands of immigrants in life-threatening conditions.

The report includes powerful firsthand accounts:

• Ilia, a nonbinary Russian dissident who won their asylum case in court, but nonetheless remained in detention for over a year with no release date. 


• Axel, a DACA recipient and youth leader, is abandoning his job to return to school amid uncertainty over his legal status.


• Beatriz, an immigrant lawyer fighting for noncitizen kids  has seen cases that remind her of her own journey to the U.S. including a confused six-year-old who appeared in court with no representation whatsoever. 


• Kaelyn is going into debt to keep her partner from being deported to El Salvador’s megaprison under the Alien Enemies Act. 

The report warns that while some policies may shift based on legal challenges in court, the administration’s broader agenda is clear: to permanently redefine who belongs in America, and how power is wielded by the federal government.

“The administration’s policies are reshaping the immigration system in ways that are unfair, unlawful, and out of step with core American values,” said Dara Lind, senior fellow at the Council and co-author of the report. “We’re seeing real harm to families, communities, and the rule of law, and the public deserves to understand what’s at stake.”

The full report is available here. Interviews with experts and impacted individuals are also available.

The post New Report: Trump’s Second Term Ushers in Extreme Immigration Overhaul that Threatens Our Democracy  appeared first on American Immigration Council.

$715 Million in Taxes, $2.5 Billion in Spending Power at Risk

WASHINGTON, DC, August 6 — A new report released today by the American Immigration Council details the sweeping economic and humanitarian toll of the Trump administration’s June 2025 travel ban, which restricts immigration from 19 countries. In 2022, nearly 300,000 people from these countries came to the United States, filling critical jobs and paying up to  $715.6 million in taxes.

“Those affected by this travel ban are students, workers, and family members who pay taxes, support local economies, and fill jobs in industries facing massive shortages. We’re throwing all of that away, to the detriment of our communities and the U.S. economy,” said Nan Wu, research director of the American Immigration Council. 

According to 2023 data, of the 300,000 people from countries affected by the travel ban, 82 percent were working, especially in industries already strained by labor shortages, including  hospitality, construction, and manufacturing. The manufacturing industry alone is projected to experience a shortage of 1.9 million workers by 2033. 

“The United States absolutely needs strong screening procedures to protect national security, but this travel ban isn’t how you do that. The Trump administration is trying to sell this policy as a security measure, but when you dig into the justifications, they don’t add up,” said Jeremy Robbins, executive director of the American Immigration Council. “Many of the targeted countries had fewer than 500 visa overstays last year. This isn’t about keeping America safe, it’s about keeping certain people out.”

While the 2017 travel ban prompted a swift and forceful public outcry, the report notes that the 2025 version has been met with a more muted reaction, largely due to its more gradual rollout and expanded exemptions. But that doesn’t mean the damage is any less severe.

“This quieter version of the ban is deeply harmful,” added Robbins. “It separates families, blocks international talent, and hurts communities across the country. The absence of airport protests doesn’t mean the harm isn’t real, it’s just happening more quietly and more bureaucratically.”

With reports indicating the administration is considering adding an additional 36 countries to the travel ban, should this happen, tens of thousands of more people from those countries could be barred from entering the United States, escalating the economic, social, and diplomatic fallout.

Countries affected by the travel ban include:

All travel banned 

• Afghanistan 


• Burma 


• Chad 


• Republic of Congo 


• Equatorial Guinea 


• Eritrea 


• Haiti 


• Iran 


• Libya 


• Somalia 


• Sudan 


• Yemen 

Visas sharply restricted 

• Venezuela 


• Burundi


• Cuba


• Laos


• Sierra Leone


• Togo


• Turkmenistan  

The post New Report Reveals Devastating Impact of Trump’s Expanded Travel Ban appeared first on American Immigration Council.

WASHINGTON, DC, August 21, 2025 — A new analysis of the 2025 Fortune 500 list reveals that 46.2 percent of America’s largest companies (231 out of 500) were founded by immigrants or their children. These companies generated a staggering $8.6 trillion in revenue in fiscal year 2024 and employed over 15.4 million people worldwide, underscoring the essential role immigrants play in driving innovation, economic growth, and job creation in the United States. 

See our findings here. 

This is the highest level recorded since Council researchers started tracking immigrant entrepreneurs in annual reviews of the Fortune 500 list since 2011.   

“Immigrants are a driving force behind America’s prosperity. We need immigration policies that reflect that, instead of investing billions of dollars into detention, deportation, and making it incredibly difficult for foreign workers to come here or even renew their visas. These reckless policies undermine America’s greatest competitive advantage: the talent and drive of immigrants,” said Nan Wu, director of research at the American Immigration Council.  

Businesses founded by immigrants or their children continue to transform entire industries, from technology to retail to media. Companies on the list include Amazon, Apple, NVIDIA, Levi Strauss & Co., Ace Hardware, and Sirius XM Holdings.  

Explore the data here. 

Key findings include: 

• In fiscal year 2024, these Fortune 500 companies founded by immigrants or their children generated $8.6 trillion in revenue—an amount that, if compared with national GDPs, would rank as the third-largest economy globally. 


• Collectively, these companies employed over 15.4 million people worldwide—a workforce comparable to the population of the fifth-largest U.S. state. 


• Immigrants and their children founded 80 percent of the Fortune 500 companies in professional and other services, 65.6 percent in manufacturing, and 57.5 percent in information.   


• Among the 14 companies appearing on the Fortune 500 list for the first time this year, 10 were founded by immigrants or their children.  

“Immigrants built nearly half of our Fortune 500 companies, created millions of jobs, and keep our economy competitive. And yet U.S. political leaders are making it increasingly difficult for foreign talent to come here or stay. It’s economic self-sabotage. If we want to stay the world’s innovation leader, we should be welcoming immigrants, not attacking them,” said Steve Hubbard, senior data scientist at the American Immigration Council.  

The American Immigration Council has experts available to comment further about the benefits that immigrants bring to the U.S. economy, at a national and state level.

The post Nearly Half of Fortune 500 Companies in 2025 Founded by Immigrants or Their Children  appeared first on American Immigration Council.