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Suspended Chinese immigration for 10 years and declared them ineligible for naturalization. First significant law restricting immigration.

https://www.history.com/topics/immigration/chinese-exclusion-act-1882

The Immigration Station on Angel Island (SF Bay, California) opened.

https://www.sftravel.com/article/history-angel-island-ellis-island-west

On September 2, 2015 the body of Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian child, was found. A photo of his body, on a beach in Turkey, went viral and raised awareness of the thousands of individuals who have drowned attempting sea crossings to Europe. (Some spell his name Aylan).

https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/witness-history-end-decade-alan-kurdi-death-refugee-crisis-mediterranean-a9242821.html

ICE authorities took 680 undocumented workers from food processing plants in what is a record setting immigration sweep.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/08/us/mississippi-immigration-raids-children/index.html

Issued by President Franklin Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, this order authorized the forced removal of all persons deemed a threat to national security from the West Coast to "relocation centers" further inland – resulting in the incarceration of Japanese Americans. (from website, link provided)

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/executive-order-9066

The US government deported more than one million people of Mexican heritage, about 60% of those deported were US citizens. Deportations began in October 1929 (need to clarify the first day) and lasted until 1936.

https://www.uscis.gov/about-us/our-history/history-office-and-library/featured-stories-from-the-uscis-history-office-and-library/ins-records-for-1930s-mexican-repatriations

California government officials had previously been deciding who they would and would not allow into the state, and the supreme court ruled that this was unconstitutional because only the federal government could regulate immigration.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/92/275/

After living inside a church in Columbus, Ohio for over three years, Edith Espinal was granted a stay of removal by ICE that allowed her to leave the church.

https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2021/02/18/edith-espinal-leaves-sanctuary-ask-ice-let-her-stay/6788133002/

This allowed people on H1b to extend their stay beyond 6 year. The wait time for employment immigration especially for indian/chinese immigrants started to grow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Competitiveness_in_the_21st_Century_Act

In order to alleviate the suffering of H1b who are waiting on green card , Obama administration passed H4 EAD rule

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2015/02/25/2015-04042/employment-authorization-for-certain-h-4-dependent-spouses

The American Immigration Lawyers Association represents about 12,000 attorneys in the United States who focus on immigration-related areas of law. The organization is a major player in national immigration policy, advocacy, and training.

https://www.aila.org/about

The arrest of Elián González became famous in part due to a photograph that showed the boy being taken at gunpoint from a closet at his family's home in Florida. The event a flashpoint for pre-9/11 immigration issues.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/elian/etc/eliancron.html

President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order that banned foreign nationals from seven predominantly Muslim countries from visiting the country for 90 days, suspended entry to the country of all Syrian refugees indefinitely, and prohibited any other refugees from coming into the country for 120 days.

https://www.aclu-wa.org/pages/timeline-muslim-ban

Physicist Albert Einstein arrived in the United States as a refugee from his native country of Germany after being targeted for persecution by the Nazi government on account of his Jewish identity. Einstein became a US citizen in 1940.

https://time.com/5795646/albert-einstein-birthday-pi-day/

The Naturalization Act of 1790 allows any free white person of “good character,” who has been living in the United States for two years or longer, to apply for citizenship. Without citizenship, nonwhite residents are denied basic constitutional protections, including the right to vote, own property, or testify in court.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalization_Act_of_1790

In 1985, a group of organizations (including American Baptist Churches) filed a lawsuit against the government. They claimed that the government discriminated against certain Guatemalans and Salvadorans who had filed for asylum. In 1990, the attorneys on both sides of the lawsuit agreed to settle the case outside of court. The agreement they made is commonly known as the “ABC Settlement Agreement.” The ABC Settlement Agreement provided some immigration benefits for certain Guatemalans and Salvadorans.

https://www.nationalimmigrationproject.org/PDFs/practitioners/practice_advisories/gen/2011_31Jan_abc-20-years.pdf

Jennifer Ibanez Whitlock (jibanezwhitlock)

In opening entry to the U.S. to immigrants other than Northwestern Europeans, the Act significantly altered immigration demographics in the country for the first time since it was founded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1965

Large numbers of Cubans attempted to migrate from Cuba to the United States on boats that left Cuba's Mariel Harbor.

https://www.history.com/news/mariel-boatlift-castro-carter-cold-war

17 year old Carmelita Torres, who crossed the border daily from Juarez to clean houses in El Paso, refused to take a toxic disinfectant bath. Press accounts estimated that, by noon, she was joined by several thousand demonstrators at the border bridge. The protest became known as the “Bath Riots.”
Mexican border crossers were not considered illegal in the United States until 1917, when a new law imposed formidable barriers to entry: a literacy test, a head tax and a prohibition against contract labor. Mexican nationals for the first time needed a passport to enter the United States. That’s also the year that the U.S. entered World War I.

https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/bath-riots

In 1994, President Bill Clinton established a prevention through deterrence border security strategy as part of Operation Gatekeeper for the Border Patrol that concentrated enforcement resources on major entry corridors.

This made it more difficult for migrants to make illegal entries at those locations. Consequently, many of them went around those areas to make their entries at remote locations that were not patrolled so heavily, such as the Arizona desert.

This resulted in a humanitarian crisis.

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/417994-bill-clintons-attempts-to-secure-the-border-caused-a-humanitarian-crisis/amp/

While the year was 1994, the exact date posted may be wrong.

https://northbynorthwestern.com/clinton-illegal-immigration-reform-and-immigration-responsibility-act-of-1996-iiraira/

While the year was 1996, the exact date may be off.

The SS St. Louis, a ship filled with 900 Jewish refugees sailed for Cuba in May 1939 after visas to enter Cuba were pre-arranged for the passengers. The Cuban government reneged and the ship then attempted entry to Florida only to be denied again. The ship returned to Europe and 227 of the passengers eventually died in the Holocaust.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/voyage-of-the-st-louis

Senator Robert Wagner of New York and Representative Edith Rogers of Massachusetts introduce legislation to allow for the entry of 20,000 Jewish refugee children from Germany, ages 14 and under. The bill failed in committee in the summer of 1939.

https://www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/1939-1941/wagner-rogers-bill

In 1990 Congress eliminated the Judicial Recommendation Against Deportation (JRAD) in the Immigration Act of 1990, Pub. L. No. 101-649, § § 505, 602(b), 104 Stat. 4978, 5081, thereby ending the ability of a state or federal criminal judge from declaring in the judgment of a criminal conviction that it could not be used in deportation proceedings for any purpose against the noncitizen. However, where a JRAD was issued by the criminal court before its 1990 repeal, the JRAD remains valid and enforceable today despite the repeal of the enabling legislation. The JRAD freed the criminal system in the US from concerning itself with the tremendous amount of litigation that developed thereafter including post conviction relief efforts in preventing the use of the conviction for immigration purposes.

https://nortontooby.com/node/18539#booktext.

Bernal Peter Ojeda, AILA Member and Attorney at law.

On this day, the U.S. Supreme Court decided United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), which held that the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution entitled almost all U.S.-born persons to U.S. citizenship.

Wong Kim Ark, born in San Francisco in 1873 to Chinese-born parents, had been prevented from returning to the United States under a law restricting Chinese immigration.

The Fourteenth Amendment, passed in the wake of the Civil War to protect the rights of freed slaves, provides: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

In its decision, the U.S. Supreme Court interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment to extend citizenship to all U.S.-born persons, with the limited exception of those born to diplomats, foreign rulers, or occupying enemy forces.

The right to citizenship based on birth in the United States (sometimes called jus soli) has been criticized by immigration restrictionists over the years. Most recently, in 2018, then-President Donald Trump announced his intention to issue an executive order abolishing birthright citizenship for U.S.-born children of non-citizens. Before that, state legislators in Arizona filed bills to deny birth certificates to U.S.-born children of non-citizens, potentially setting up a test case to overturn Wong Kim Ark.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/169/649

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo brought an official end to the Mexican-American War (1846-48). By its terms, Mexico ceded 55 percent of its territory, including the present-day states California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, most of Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming. Mexico also relinquished all claims to Texas, and recognized the Rio Grande as the southern boundary with the United States.

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/treaty-of-guadalupe-hidalgo

Although this law is best known for its creation of a “barred zone” extending from the Middle East to Southeast Asia from which no persons were allowed to enter the United States, its main restriction consisted of a literacy test intended to reduce European immigration. The bill overcame a veto by President Woodrow Wilson.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1917

https://daily.jstor.org/1917-immigration-law-presaged-trumps-muslim-ban/

On June 15, 2012, the Secretary of Homeland Security announced that certain people who came to the United States as children and meet several guidelines may request consideration of deferred action for a period of 2 years, subject to renewal.

https://www.uscis.gov/DACA

This law criminalized daily interactions with undocumented immigrants, imposed severe penalties on immigrants who failed to carry immigration documentation and, most famously, mandated that police demand “papers” of those they thought might be in the country without authorization.

https://www.nilc.org/issues/immigration-enforcement/sb-1070-lessons-learned/

With the passage of the Homeland Security Act by Congress in November 2002, the Department of Homeland Security formally came into being as a stand-alone, Cabinet-level department to further coordinate and unify national homeland security efforts, opening its doors on March 1, 2003.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/office-of-homeland-security-founded

With the passage of the Homeland Security Act by Congress in November 2002, the Department of Homeland Security formally came into being as a stand-alone, Cabinet-level department to further coordinate and unify national homeland security efforts, opening its doors on March 1, 2003.

https://www.dhs.gov/creation-department-homeland-security

On November 12, 1954, Ellis Island, the gateway to America, shuts it doors after processing more than 12 million immigrants since opening in 1892.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ellis-island-closes

Cesar Chavez, in full Cesar Estrada Chavez, (born March 31, 1927, Yuma, Arizona, U.S.—died April 23, 1993, San Luis, Arizona), organizer of migrant American farmworkers and a cofounder with Dolores Huerta of the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) in 1962. Chavez is controversial in immigrant history because of his fierce opposition to undocumented migration.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cesar-Chavez

Adolph Eichmann, an officer in the German Nazi government was captured and extradited to Israel where he stood trial and was later sentenced to death. One of Eichmann's chief roles in the Nazi government was coordinating the deportation of Jews to extermination camps in the East.

https://israeled.org/adolf-eichmann-trial-begins-jerusalem/

On May 28, 1924, Congress established the Border Patrol as part of the Immigration Bureau in the Department of Labor through the Labor Appropriation Act of 1924.

https://www.cbp.gov/about/history/1924-border-patrol-established

Case challenging the Chinese Exclusion Act, but ruling held that excluding immigrants from entering the country was an extension of sovereignty belonging to the U.S. government. This would come to be known as the “plenary power” doctrine, in which the power to control immigration is conceded to the executive and legislative branches.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/130/581/

Ruling held that expelling immigrants was an extension of sovereignty belonging to the U.S. government (known as the “plenary power” doctrine); and deportation was not punishment for a crime, and therefore, the Constitutional protections did not apply in these procedures. This case has been cited subsequently by the Supreme Court over eighty times.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/149/698/

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), which changed its name in 2016 to CoreCivic, was formed. CCA enters into its first federal government contract for an immigration detention facility in Texas. Immigrants were first detained at a hotel owned by CCA, while the Houston Contract Detention Facility was being built.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoreCivic

On October 1,1994, the Border Patrol launched Operation Gatekeeper under President Bill Clinton during an anti-immigrant wave across the nation much similar to today. Using data collected during Operation Hold the Line, a border enforcement program implemented in El Paso in 1993, Gatekeeper adopted a strategy of ‘prevention through deterrence,’ which was part of a comprehensive national southwest border strategic plan meant to bring migrant apprehensions under “control.

https://www.southernborder.org/operation_gatekeeper

Judiciary Committee Chairman Emmanuel Celler introduced H.R. 2580 on January 15, 1965. The bill would eventually become law as the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1951-2000/Immigration-and-Nationality-Act-of-1965/

Contradicting the logic behind its ruling in Ozawa v. U.S., the Supreme Court found that Bhagat Singh Thind was also ineligible for citizenship even though as an Asian Indian, he would have been categorized as Aryan or caucasian, according the the prevailing racial science of the time. Although Thindwas racially white, the Supreme Court found that he would not be considered “white” in the eyes of the “common man,” despite scientific race categories, and was therefore also ineligible for citizenship. The Thind decision led to the denaturalization of about fifty Asian Indian Americans who had earlier successfully applied for and received U.S. citizenship.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/261/204/

Sanchit Goyal (@sanchitgoyal87)

Restricted total immigration to united states to 350000 and completely excluded immigrants from Asia. It did not, however, establish quotas of any kind for residents of the Western Hemisphere.

https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/immigration-act

Sanchit Goyal (@sanchitgoyal87)

In the summer of 2014 the immigration bar was awakened anew to the traumatic challenges that Central American moms and their children faced in their heroic attempts to escape persecution and keep their families and themselves safe from surging domestic violence and gang violence in their homelands. Attorneys from the American Immigration Lawyers Association, spearheaded by Laura Lichter (Denver) and Stephen Manning (Portland, OR) led the charge to provide pro bono representation, which began by winning the fight to gain access to the ICE detention facility at Artesia, NM, on the premises of the Border Patrol facility where these migrants were being detained.

The Project sounded the call for AILA volunteers to donate their time to help these families. Most responding attorneys were able to donate a week or two; a few committed for months. Attorney Lichter described the Project in its early stages as "guerrilla lawyering," as the volunteers worked from an ill-equipped trailer known, oddly enough, as the "law library," with extremely modest resources. The environment offered little, if any, privacy as lawyers tried to instill trust while coaxing these migrant mothers to reveal the most intimate and chilling details of their experiences and their journeys to flee persecution and violence.

This Project saved untold numbers of lives which were changed forever. In June 2015, the American Bar Association recognized this one-of-a-kind volunteer project by bestowing on it the ABA's Annual Pro Bono Award. The Project spread to Dilley and Karnes in Texas and to Berks County in Pennsylvania; and, its transformative spirit spread throughout the national immigration lawyer community. It became a fresh and effective model for providing attorney services to a population in desperate need of competent legal representation. While the need has never been greater, the creative seeds of this dynamic brand of pro bono legal services were planted in the summer of 2014.

Betty Elena Rendón-Madrid, 53, a part-time pastor at Emaus Lutheran Church in Wisconsin, and Carlos Hincapie-Giraldo, 60, were deported May 28, 2019, to Colombia. They were arrested at their home in Chicago after ICE agents took their 26-year-old daughter, Paula Hincapie, and her 5-year-old daughter into custody during a traffic stop.

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/wisconsin/2019/06/03/lutheran-pastor-husband-deported-ice/1331744001/

Rapper Shyne (formerly Jamal Michael Barrow, now Moses Michael Levi Barrow) was convicted on charges related to shooting in 1999 and served time in prison until 2009, when he was deported to Belize. Shyne returned to the United States in 2021 as a diplomate from the Belize government.

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-shyne-rap-star-redemption-20210829-rko46v4axzd7ndbdiq4nk2dvi4-story.html

Tens of thousands of people--perhaps the largest protest in Minnesota to this date--assembled at the state capitol to demand immigration reform and support for immigrants. Speakers included Archbishop Harry Flynn; Sarah Yehin Diaz; Fatiha Ahmed, Oromo immigrant; Marcelo Selvan, Mexican immigrant; James Graves, owner of Graves Hospitality; Nhia Lee, Hmong immigrant; Sharon Lubinski, Minneapolis police department; Felipe Mancera, Mexican immigrant. Demands for comprehensive immigration reform identified goals of a path to legalization, family reunification, workers rights, education for all, and protection of civil liberties.

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2006/04/09/immigration

Mary Turck (maryturck.com)

Mark Lyttle, an American citizen with mental disabilities, was wrongfully detained and deported to Mexico and forced to live on the streets and in prisons for months. He later returned to the United States.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/04/29/the-deportation-machine

On December 21, 1919, Emma Goldman, along with 248 other radical "aliens," was deported to the Soviet Union on the S.S. Buford under the 1918 Alien Act, which allowed for the expulsion of any alien found to be an anarchist.

https://jwa.org/thisweek/dec/21/1919/emma-goldman

Less than two weeks after his deportation to Haiti — a country he wasn’t born in and had never visited — was halted by immigration enforcement, Paul Pierrilus was sent there anyway.

https://amp.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article248959659.html

The Artesia detention facility opened In the middle of the desert in Artesia, New Mexico. The
United States government used the facility to detained up to hundreds of migrant women and children in a makeshift detention facility.

https://perma.cc/4CU6-WBWY?type=standard

After more than two months at sea, the Golden Venture ran aground off the coast of Queens with several hundred Chinese passengers on board, many of whom were seeking asylum. The Golden Venture passengers were intentionally put in the York County jail in Pennsylvania – an area with very few immigrants and, at that time, no immigration lawyers – to facilitate their rapid deportation. There were explicit instructions to process and deport them quickly which became the subject of class action litigation (Yang You Yi v. Reno). This was the first time that asylum seekers were held in detention centers and possible the first time that migrants were detained in a county jail.

https://www.ydr.com/story/archives/2013/05/31/golden-venture-20-years-later-many-lives-remain/74873348/

On this day, the Circuit Court for the D. of California held that "a native of China, of the Mongolian race, is not a white person within the meaning of the act of congress." In re Ah Yup, 1 F. Cas. 223 (C.C.D. Cal. 1878)

https://smithsonianapa.org/now/this-month-in-history-in-re-ah-yup-rules-chinese-ineligible-for-naturalized-citizenship-on-april-29-1878/

Congress first defined eligibility for citizenship by naturalization in this law, and limited this important right to “free white persons.”

https://immigrationhistory.org/item/1790-nationality-act/

The Immigration Reform and Control Act (Simpson-Mazzoli Act) is signed into law by President Reagan, and all employers are required to request Form I-9 to any employees hired.
The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which granted amnesty to over 3 million undocumented immigrants and established penalties for employers who knowingly hired undocumented workers.
https://guides.loc.gov/latinx-civil-rights/irca

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Reform_and_Control_Act_of_1986

On November 9, 1994, California’s voters passed Proposition 187 (also known as the Save Our State referendum), a ballot initiative proposed by anti-immigrant organizations, which restricted undocumented immigrants from the state’s public services, including access to public education and healthcare. I

https://guides.loc.gov/latinx-civil-rights/california-proposition-187

Interpreter Releases began publication in 1923 and was a publication for libraries, social services providers, and lawyers who needed the up-to-date news on immigration law and quotas. It was sold in the late 1990s.

https://archives.lib.umn.edu/repositories/6/resources/4066

A dozen undocumented Washington State residents and supporters locked themselves together at the entrance of the Northwest Detention Center as part of the national campaign demanding that the President stop deportations and expand deferred action for all.

http://www.notonemoredeportation.com/2014/02/24/seattle/

A hunger strike at the Northwest Detention Center in Washington started with hundreds of participants to protest deportations.

https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/2014/03/tacoma_detention_center_hunger.html

A hunger strike began at the Northwest Detention Center in Washington State with approximately 50 people participating to protest their incarceration at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility. Hunger strikers then spelled out the distress signal, SOS, in the yard of the detention center with their own bodies to reflect the emergency they are facing and demand ICE release them from detention immediately.

https://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/pressroom/releases/2020/people-detained-northwest-detention-center-spell-out-distress-signal-sos