newsletter 02/21/25

Responding to the Moment

Standing up for immigrants

As the headlines above illustrate, ICAP has been working around the clock over the last month:

On the second day of President Trump’s second term, ICAP challenged the Executive Order purporting to deny citizenship to children born to undocumented mothers and mothers with lawful but temporary presence in the U.S. unless the father is a citizen or lawful permanent resident. Among those we are privileged to represent are pregnant mothers with pending asylum applications, pregnant mothers with temporary protected status, pregnant mothers on student visas, and pregnant mothers who are undocumented. They come from countries around the world. They work in many professions, from medicine to technology to the service industry. Many have U.S. citizen children. All have the expectation, granted by the Constitution, that their children born here will have the privileges and obligations of citizenship. And we’re proud that the judge agreed, granting a nationwide preliminary injunction barring enforcement of the Executive Order. Ruling from the bench immediately after argument, the judge noted that the Order conflicts with the plain language of the 14th Amendment, contradicts 125-year-old Supreme Court precedent, and runs counter to the country’s history of recognizing citizenship by birth.

But our work is not finished. The case is now on appeal in the Fourth Circuit, and we have much work ahead to secure the promise of citizenship to the children born to the pregnant mothers we represent and many others to follow.Less than a week after winning the preliminary injunction against the birthright citizenship Executive Order, we filed suit on behalf of more than two dozen religious denominations and associations, challenging the Department of Homeland Security’s greenlighting of ICE raids and arrests at places of worship. This new policy wipes away more than 30 years of respecting worshipers’ rights under the First Amendment by restricting ICE from interrupting religious services. The plaintiffs, representing millions of Americans from Jewish and Christian faiths, have come together based on their shared religious obligation to embrace and serve immigrants in their communities regardless of their legal status. We will be seeking a preliminary injunction to halt the new policy and look forward to our day in Court.

Educating and Informing about the Rule of Law

At ICAP, we acknowledge the difficulty in making sense of the volume of changes occurring daily at every intersection of the government. We have maintained our commitment to public education and to using advocacy as a resource in the face of these unprecedented challenges.

In January, ICAP’s Executive Director Mary McCord testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the importance of maintaining the independence of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice. Mary also published op-eds in The Atlantic about the damage to the rule of law brought about by blanket pardons and dismissals for the January 6 attackers, and in Just Security urging the Senate to question FBI Director nominee Kash Patel about the firings of senior leadership and threats against FBI employees who worked in any way on the January 6 investigation.
After speaking at the annual conference of the U.S. Conference of Mayors about the impact of the Trump Administration’s mass deportation goals on local communities, ICAP published a fact sheet to explain what cooperation with federal immigration authorities is required by law. And to help churches better understand the laws that potentially could be applied to their provision of services to immigrants, ICAP’s Legal Director, Rupa Bhattacharrya, and Supreme Court Director, Kelsi Corkran, spoke at a recent webinar on the topic. We continue to advise and assist state and local officials, law enforcement, faith organizations, and non-profits seeking to do what is best for their communities consistent with the rule of law.
Also on the education front, in February, ICAP’s Joe Mead and Shelby Calambokidis spoke at William & Mary Law School about the legal tools available to combat the criminalization of homelessness in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson, a case argued by ICAP’s Supreme Court Director last fall.

In other new and existing cases:

In December 2024, ICAP filed suit on behalf of Captain Joy Bledsoe, former West Point valedictorian, who was denied her request to be assigned to noncombatant duties in the U.S. Army as a conscientious objector based on her religious beliefs.
In January, ICAP Counsel Bill Powell argued Ermold v. Davis on behalf of a same-sex couple that won a jury verdict against the Kentucky clerk who denied them a marriage license and now seeks to avoid that judgment on appeal.
In February, Bill argued on behalf of the Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in defense of a lower court’s ruling that denied the Texas Attorney General’s petition to depose a leader of the organization as part of a baseless investigation into its charitable work with immigrants.