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.
Reports from We Belong Together and the Brennan Center for Justice critique Trump’s anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim policies and warn of future threats.
Juan Montes says he was deported by Customs and Border Patrol agents at the California-Mexico border despite his valid and unexpired DACA work permit. The Department of Homeland Security disputes his claim. Now he’s suing to get the government records related to his case.
For the first time in 20 years, federal agencies are reviewing how they collect and report race and ethnicity data. This could mean breaking people of North African and Middle Eastern descent out of the “White” category and reporting on Asians and Pacific Islanders with more accuracy.
In light of the current political climate, Odeh believes that she could not receive a fair trial in her legal battle with the federal government over immigration fraud and terrorism charges.
In response to President Trump toying with the idea of a Muslim registry, Bay Area groups pushed for the ordinance to block city from creating or implementing a a database based on religion, national origin or ethnicity.
The Trump Administration’s new executive order removes Iraq from the list of Muslim-majority countries and exempts legal permanent residents from the ban on travel. Activists say the new order still discriminates on the basis of faith and national origin.
In his first joint Congressional address, President Trump advocated for an immigration system that would prioritize high-skilled and educated workers. But that system would stack the deck in favor of young men, penalize women who do domestic work, and unravel the fabric of family-based immigration.
