Immigrant Legal Resource Center

This practice advisory provides background on the disability waiver of the English and civics requirement for naturalization and describes the June 2025 revisions to the USCIS Policy Manual (PM) on the submission and review of disability waivers. The revised guidance in the PM applies to applications filed on or after the publication date of June 13, 2025. Overall, the PM revisions signal a change in tone that assumes fraud in the disability waiver process is frequent and encourages increased scrutiny by USCIS adjudicators.

Recently, the Department of Justice (DOJ) published a memo listing out its priorities for civil enforcement cases. In that memo, the DOJ states that it will be focusing on denaturalization cases. This memo - along with statements made by administration officials and members of congress - has sparked a lot of attention on denaturalization and questions about who could be denaturalized. This has caused a lot of fear and uncertainty in communities, but denaturalization is not as straightforward as you might think.

Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”) authorized the creation of a program that allows state and local law enforcement agencies to act as immigration enforcement agents.This policy brief reviews the recent history of 287(g) agreements and how they’ve proliferated, describes the three 287(g) agreement models, examines a case study of escalating 287(g) programs in Florida, delves into the programs’ dangers and harms, and provides some recommendations for local communities that want to stop 287(g) agreements in their tracks.

A resource highlighting interior enforcement practices within the Harris county region of Houston, Texas.

Since taking office in January 2025, the Trump administration has aggressively prioritized immigration enforcement and revoked many longstanding protections from prior administrations, including one preventing enforcement action in certain sensitive locations.

Despite the administration’s many attempts to deprive immigrants of their constitutional and legal rights, everyone, regardless of immigration status, has certain constitutional protections and a right to a free public education.

In this Resource Toolkit, we will address recent changes affecting students and school campuses and what students, parents and caregivers, and school administrators can do to prepare for immigration enforcement action at schools while highlighting the constitutional protections that remain a pillar of our democracy.