Immigrants' Rights

Legal groups that recently won a major Supreme Court victory on birthright citizenship are asking to ensure those children remain protected from the president’s latest attacks.

VICTORY: The Supreme Court ruled that President Trump’s executive order seeking to restrict birthright citizenship is unconstitutional.

Voters in Gorham, Hampton, and Ossipee make clear: local law enforcement should not partner with ICE

On September 28, 2026, immigrants’ rights advocates filed a federal lawsuit challenging President Trump’s new executive order targeting birthright citizenship. The case was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of New Hampshire, ACLU of Maine, ACLU of Massachusetts, ACLU of the District of Columbia, Legal Defense Fund, Asian Law Caucus, and Democracy Defenders Fund on behalf of people subjected to the new executive order. The groups already secured a major Supreme Court victory in June in Trump v. Barbara protecting babies who would have been denied citizenship under Trump’s first failed executive order concerning birthright citizenship. In its ruling, the Supreme Court confirmed that the Constitution’s Citizenship Clause puts “the question of citizenship ‘once and forever [to] rest.’” Despite that, the administration is again trying to restrict birthright citizenship, prompting today’s legal action. The groups had initially sought to block the new executive order in the existing Barbara case, which was filed in New Hampshire. After the judge in that case indicated that he viewed this challenge as a new lawsuit, the groups withdrew their requests in Barbara and filed this new lawsuit. The lawsuit, Nathan v. Trump, was filed in federal district court in Washington, D.C.

On August 25, 2026, the ACLU of New Hampshire filed a lawsuit against the New Hampshire State Police for not complying with New Hampshire's Right-to-Know Law when the State Police failed to timely respond to the ACLU of New Hampshire's request for records concerning the State Police's Section 287(g) agreement, which allows certified state troopers to act as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) agents. Since late April 2025, the State Police has been a party to an agreement with ICE under the Section 287(g) program. The State Police is one of 28 New Hampshire police agencies participating in this program. Through this program, the State Police has agreed to enforce federal immigration law when troopers trained under the program initiate motor vehicle stops. However, even while some other local New Hampshire police departments participating in this Section 287(g) program have timely produced records under the Right-to-Know Law concerning the nature of their enforcement of federal immigration law, the State Police has failed to do so. As a result, the full nature and scale of the State Police’s implementation of this program and how it enforces federal immigration law—including how many people the State Police has detained under the program and what factors a trooper may consider in assessing whether there is reasonable suspicion or probable cause to believe that there has been a violation of federal immigration laws—remains a mystery to the public. Nor does the public know whether the State Police has received any financial compensation or stipends from ICE under the Section 287(g) program. As this lawsuit argues, if the State Police can devote time to enforcing federal immigration law, then it can devote time to timely informing the public about the nature of this enforcement.

On January 15, 2026, the ACLU of New Hampshire filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for failing to respond to its official request for documents that have been used, or will be used, to train the approximately 138 law enforcement officers in 13 New Hampshire law enforcement agencies participating in 287(g) agreements. The lawsuit argues that the public has a right to know how 13 New Hampshire law enforcement agencies—including New Hampshire’s largest police force, the State Police—will enforce a federal immigration program that was previously suspended in 2012 following racial profiling concerns. Especially after the recent killing of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, it is critical to learn how law enforcement officers who are engaging in immigration enforcement are trained. The 287(g) Program is a set of partnerships between ICE and state and local agencies that effectively turns local officials into ICE agents, authorizing selected officers to identify, arrest, and process certain people for immigration enforcement and ultimately deportation. New Hampshire is the only state in New England where local police have entered formal agreements to engage in immigration enforcement. The Troy Police Department, the Colebrook Police Department, the Carroll Police Department, and the Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office have already engaged in immigration arrests under this program.

In September 2025, the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, together with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, the ACLU of New Hampshire, the ACLU of Maine, the law firm Araujo and Fisher, the law firm Foley Hoag, and the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic, filed a class action lawsuit in federal court to challenge the widespread denial of bond hearings to people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. As the complaint demonstrates, this denial upends decades of settled law and established practice in immigration proceedings. The complaint alleges that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice recently and abruptly began to misclassify people arrested by ICE inside the United States. DHS and DOJ started systematically reclassifying these people from the statutory authority of 8 U.S.C. § 1226, which usually allows for the opportunity to request bond during removal proceedings, to the no-bond detention provisions of 8 U.S.C. § 1225, which does not apply to people arrested in the interior of the United States and placed in removal proceedings. This case is brought on behalf of Jose Arnulfo Guerrero Orellana and a putative class of similarly situated individuals. Mr. Guerrero Orellana has been living in the United States for over a decade. He brings this case to vindicate his own right to a bond hearing — where an immigration judge can determine whether his detention is justified to protect the community or ensure his appearance in court — and that of thousands of other detainees in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, and New Hampshire who will be denied the opportunity to seek release on bond under the new legal ruling adopted by the executive branch. The complaint alleges that the government's new policy violates constitutional and statutory due process rights as well as the Administrative Procedure Act. On October 3, 2025, the District Court issued a preliminary injunction for the individual plaintiff. The District Court ordered that "the government release" the plaintiff "unless he is provided a bond hearing that complies with the standards outlined in Hernandez-Lara v. Lyons, 10 F.4th 19 (1st Cir. 2021), within seven business days of the date of this order." On October 30, 2025, the Court granted class certification. On December 19, 2025, the District Court ruled that the Trump administration is unlawfully denying bond hearings to potentially thousands of people in New England who were arrested and detained by ICE and deprived of the opportunity to challenge their ongoing detention. The District Court granted a motion for partial summary judgment and declared that it was unlawful for the government to deny bond hearings to class members. This case was appealed, and we filed our brief at the First Circuit Court of Appeals on March 9, 2026. On August 13, 2026, the First Circuit upheld the District Court ruling declaring that the Trump administration is unlawfully denying bond hearings to thousands of people arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in New England.