federal advocacy
VAAP’s Federal Litigation and Advocacy 2025
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Learn about the historic Vermont Immigration Legal Defense Fund campaign being led by Mohsen Mahdawi, Grace Oedel, Jesse Bridges, Sue Minter, Patti Komline, Brian Lowe, Treasurer Mike Pieciak, Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale — and countless others whose ICE detentions and deportations go unchallenged and unreported — to invest in VAAP’s immigration legal defense efforts.
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Read about our lawsuit for a TRO and PI here.
Read about the TRO grant here.
Read about the PI: coming soon!
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Tracking federal immigration law and policy changes
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Access the Nationla Immigration Project’s public comment about DHS’s new USCIS registration requirement here or download it in English here.
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American Immigration Lawyers Association: A Complete List of Day One Immigration-Related Executive Actions
American Immigration Lawyers Association: A High Level Analysis of Trump’s First Executive Actions
Access their press release here.
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National Immigration Law Center: Unconstitutional, Illegal, and Cruel (coming soon in Spanish)
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Subscribe to the American Immigration Council’s Immigration Impact blog for weekly analysis of policy changes
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Subscribe to Immigrant Legal Assistance Project (ILAP) Maine for rolling analysis of immigration law and policy updates
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Subscribe to Lawfare and to its sibling publication Just Security for national law and policy analysis and updates
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Review the National Counsel of Nonprofits' Analysis of Executive Orders Affecting Charitable Nonprofits
Follow Common Good VT’s analysis of 2025-26 legislative changes at the state and national levels here:
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The Protecting Sensitive Locations Act would bring back the list of protected locations for immigration enforcement as we have had since 2011 that includes courts. This will help reduce no shows, reduce default judgements, and ensure courts are trusted places for all the communities they serve.
https://www.clasp.org/protecting-sensitive-locations-act/
If anyone here has connections with other groups in the justice arena/Courts, please consider sharing,
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American Immigration Lawyer’s Association’s New England Chapter members including VAAP understand that the Senate is currently pursuing a Congressional Review Act resolution that would end the 540-day automatic extension for certain pending Employment Authorization Document renewals, which would overturn the Biden administration regulation that formalized the automatic extension. This would cause a significant negative impact to not just the immigrants and their families but also U.S. employers of all industries and sizes. We have reached out to Vermont’s Congressional Delegation to offer technical expertise on these matters.
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Signed into law in 2025, the Laken Riley Act expands mandatory detention and state power to override immigration authorities’ exercise of discretion to not detain individuals.
Read the national experts’ analysis:
Resources about how immigration law is made
Resources about seeking immigration remedies in federal court
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Access the course here, or contact Jill to explore the possibility of partnering on undertaking training with a view to taking on pro bono litigation work in the coming years.
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