Deepa Iyer is a South Asian-American writer and lawyer. She covers issues of race, law and policy, and Muslim, Arab and South Asian communities for Colorlines. Iyer’s writing has appeared in The Nation, The New York Times, The Guardian, Al-Jazeera America, and Huffington Post. Her first book, “We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial Future” (The New Press 2015), received a 2016 American Book Award and was selected as a top 10 multicultural non-fiction books of 2015. Iyer served as executive director of South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) for a decade and previously worked at the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, the Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center and the Asian American Justice Center. She is currently a senior fellow at the Center for Social Inclusion. Iyer immigrated to Kentucky from Kerala when she was 12. She lives in the Washington D.C. area.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit rules that the Muslim and refugee ban is less about national security and more about anti-Muslim bias.
Temporary protected status will last six more months for 58,000 Haitian immigrants in the United States. The loss of this immigration protection could lead to deportation to a country that continues to struggle with the impact of two earthquakes and a devastating cholera epidemic.
Senate Bill 4, which goes into effect on September 1, punishes cities, counties, elected officials and campuses that don’t collaborate with federal immigration enforcement. It also makes it a criminal offense for police chiefs or sheriffs to violate the ban.
