Cities all across the United States have been increasingly passing laws that punish people who are forced to sleep outside each night due a lack of available shelter and extreme housing shortages. The Supreme Court will soon decide if doing so violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, in a case that arose out of southern Oregon and is arguably the most significant case on homelessness in decades. The ACLU’s Scout Katovich explains how the case made its way to the highest court in the U.S. and breaks down the stakes – both for the hundreds of thousands of people who are unhoused on any given night and for critical constitutional protections.

Since the early 1990s, our nation has welcomed and assisted people whose countries have been devastated by war and natural disaster through the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program. Today, many TPS holders have established roots in the U.S., raising families and contributing to their communities.

In recent years, the Trump administration tried to terminate TPS for six countries and undermine the program altogether, fueling anti-immigrant sentiment and threatening hundreds of thousands of families. But TPS holders fought back and won relief from the courts in 2018 in Ramos v. Nielsen. Unfortunately, that protection could soon expire.

This week the Supreme Court will hear a case that could entrench the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which forces people seeking asylum to await their court dates in dangerous conditions in Mexico. The Remain in Mexico Policy, misleadingly dubbed the “Migrant Protection Protocols” created a humanitarian disaster at the border and has been the subject of ACLU lawsuits since it was first implemented in 2019.

The Diversity Immigrant Visa Program provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for immigrants seeking to build a future in the United States. Established in 1990, the program aims to “diversify” immigration to the U.S. by providing opportunities for people from countries with low immigration rates who meet certain criteria, such as education and work experience. Each year, about 11 million people apply, and only 55 thousand people are lucky enough to be randomly selected. Applicants have a 1 percent chance of winning.

Every year, people, including families with small children, come to the U.S. seeking safety from violence and persecution. The U.S. is bound by both international and domestic laws — born out of the tragedies of World War II — to allow those with a "well-founded fear of persecution" on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group to apply for asylum. Yet over the last several decades, multiple administrations, guided by political rather than humanitarian considerations, have turned their backs on people fleeing persecution. As a result, countless refugees have been forced to remain outside the U.S. or returned to their countries of origin only to be abducted, tortured, and even killed.

The ACLU has been at the forefront of the fight to defend asylum every step of the way — and we will never back down. Here’s a look at how we’ve shown up to protect this critical right over the years.

He kissed his wife of thirteen years gently. Then, Immigration and Customs Enforcement escorted him out the door. Though they told him they were just taking him in for questioning, Abbas Oda Manshad Al-Sokaini knew he wouldn’t be coming back.