This week at the ACLU of Maine: A victory for due process and immigrants' rights at the State House, all bills attacking trans rights are officially defeated in Augusta, and a devastating loss for trans rights at the Supreme Court.

A Victory for Due Process and Immigrants' Rights

In a very close vote, lawmakers passed LD 1971. This bill would strengthen the due process rights of all people in Maine and ensure local taxpayer resources are not used to commit civil rights violations through partnerships with federal immigration authorities. When state and local law enforcement proactively carry out federal immigration enforcement, they support federal practices that often violate due process and undermine community safety. This not only violates a fundamental constitutional protection, but also exposes our towns and cities to costly legal liabilities and undermines community safety more broadly.

The bill is now before Gov. Mills. Read more about LD 1971 here.

ALL Bills Attacking Trans Rights Have been Defeated

Maine lawmakers have officially defeated all eight bills attacking transgender rights. The bills ranged from banning trans student-athletes to entirely removing gender identity protections from the Maine Human Rights Act.

Some of these bills were defeated by margins as small as one vote. Every single phone call, email, and conversation with elected officials made a difference. Your voice is your power, and you truly made this possible.

In Maine, we take our freedoms seriously. Our state's commitment to privacy and individual rights, from reproductive freedom to marriage equality, consistently supports the idea that all people should have control over their bodies and their lives.

Supreme Court Ruling in U.S. v. Skrmetti

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court ruled that Tennessee's law banning gender-affirming care for transgender youth can remain in effect.

The court returned these decisions to the states. This ruling is a devastating loss for transgender people around the country and an affront to the Constitution. But gender-affirming care remains legal in Maine for young people and adults. Just this week, Maine lawmakers upheld state-level protections that will ensure access to care.

The ACLU’s other cases against the president on behalf of trans people can proceed. We will not back down from the fight for trans health care and for trans people’s dignity and freedom.

Read more about the ruling here.

This Mother’s Day was the first one that Jose Antonio Vargas celebrated with his mother in person in 32 years. It was also the first one his grandmother, who immigrated to the states in 1984 and helped raise Vargas from the age of 12, had celebrated with her daughter in as many years.

“I don’t have language for what [the reunion] was like,” says Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and immigrant rights activist. “There are just no words.”

Credit: Jose Antonio Vargas

Born in the Philippines, Vargas was sent to California to live with his grandparents, who were naturalized U.S. citizens. Though raised in America, Vargas remained undocumented and spent more than three decades without legal status. That changed this year after he took the significant risk of leaving the country to be processed for reentry with no guarantee he’d be allowed back in.

Christmas night 2024, Vargas drove from San Diego to Tijuana, Mexico. It was the first time he had left the U.S. since he arrived more than 20 years ago. After risking deportation by leaving, Vargas was eventually granted a temporary non-immigrant O visa for individuals with “extraordinary ability” — the same category once held by former First Lady Melania Trump.

“I would argue that all undocumented people in Trump’s America require extraordinary ability — and resilience — just to survive,” he says.

For Vargas, immigration isn’t just personal, it’s foundational to the American experience. In conversations with people across the country, he has encountered widespread misconceptions about how the immigration system works.

“People ask, ‘Why don’t you just get legal?’ as if it’s as simple as flipping a switch,” Vargas says. But legal pathways are narrow, costly, and often unavailable, even for those with U.S. citizen relatives or long-standing ties to the country.

Below, Vargas shares with the ACLU five common misconceptions that he’s encountered in his experience as an immigrant rights’ advocate – and how he’s fighting for change.

The U.S. offers green cards through just a handful of narrow paths: refugee status, the diversity visa lottery, family or employer sponsorship, or for people with extraordinary skills or wealth. These options are either highly competitive, extremely limited, or out of reach for most people.

For example, the diversity lottery only accepts a small number of applicants and excludes many countries entirely. Most family sponsorships have decades-long wait times. Employer-based green cards are usually reserved for people with advanced degrees. And marriage to a U.S. citizen doesn’t bypass the system—it requires financial sponsorship and, for those who entered unlawfully, can mean a three- or 10-year bar from re-entering the country.

The reality is that even when someone qualifies, long backlogs and strict caps often make immigration impossible. It’s not just difficult; it’s often not an option at all.

It’s a common assumption that people who are undocumented have ignored legal paths. But we know that many legal paths to citizenship are, in fact, blocked, crowded or impractical. When someone’s survival is at risk, waiting years for a visa isn’t realistic. Many come because they have no other option—and they often try to fix their status later, only to face bans, income requirements, or rejection.

Around one in five undocumented people are Dreamers—brought here as young kids, raised in the U.S., and often unaware of their status until they’re older. For them, and for many others, being undocumented isn’t about ignoring the rules, it’s about surviving a system that offers no real way in to the only place they’ve ever known as home.

There’s a common misconception that marrying a U.S. citizen automatically leads to legal residency. It doesn’t. The process is complicated, and for many, it’s filled with risks.

If someone entered the U.S. without a visa and stayed more than six months, they can be barred from returning for three or 10 years if they leave to attend their green card interview abroad. That puts families in an impossible situation: stay together without status, or be separated for years. Even when the bars don’t apply, the process takes time, money, and documentation. The citizen-spouse must prove they can financially support their partner, and both must go through background checks, interviews, and legal filings.

Marriage can be a path, but it’s not simple, fast, or guaranteed. For many mixed-status couples, it’s a stressful, uncertain process with no clear outcome.

Much of today’s anti-immigrant rhetoric is rooted in fear of demographic change, especially when it comes to immigrants from nonwhite countries. After 2016, my nonprofit, Define America, studied top anti-immigration content on YouTube. Many of the most-watched videos promoted the “Great Replacement” theory: the idea that immigration is meant to undermine white political and cultural power. Once a fringe belief, it’s now echoed in mainstream political messaging.

Terms like “invasion” have been used widely in political campaigns and media coverage, fueling fear and dehumanization. This kind of rhetoric shapes public opinion and justifies harmful policies, including mass deportations and family separations. If we want fair and humane immigration policies, we have to address how racism continues to shape the conversation.

Immigrants play a critical role in the U.S. economy and communities. They make up about 18 percent of the workforce, contribute more than $3 trillion to our gross domestic product, and pay more than $500 billion in taxes each year.

They also fill jobs in industries with ongoing labor shortages, like agriculture, construction, and elder care. In health care, immigrants make up a major share of doctors, nurses, and home health aides, keeping essential systems running, especially during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. Beyond the labor force, immigrants open businesses, create jobs, and support public services through taxes. As the U.S. population ages, we’ll increasingly rely on immigrants to sustain economic growth and meet basic workforce needs.

These are not people taking from the country—they’re helping it move forward. Policies that restrict their ability to stay and contribute don’t just hurt them—they hold all of us back.

An updated edition of Vargas’ memoir, “Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen,” which reflects even more deeply on how the rise of mis- and disinformation is reshaping how we think about immigration and fanning of anti-immigration sentiment, is available now.

Four months into President Donald Trump’s second term, he has aggressively pursued efforts to strip entire communities of their rights and circumvent the rule of law.

While many voters expected Trump to ramp up deportations, they did not foresee the hurricane of horrors he has unleashed. The president has attempted to assert war-time authorities to disappear people to foreign prisons without due process based on their tattoos and clothing. He has arbitrarily punished students who are non-citizens, jailing some and forcing others to flee the country. He put U.S. citizen children on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportation flights, including those receiving cancer treatment. Trump’s ICE chief has said he wants to create a deportation system like “Amazon Prime for human beings” in a brutal and dehumanizing drive to deport as many people as quickly as possible, no matter the cost. Trump is now poised to turn the military, plus thousands of federal, state and local law enforcement agents, on entire communities in a hunt for our immigrant neighbors that will put all of our civil liberties in danger.

As we prepare for the fight ahead, here are three key areas to watch:

The Trump administration has unlawfully used the Alien Enemies Act --- a wartime authority that had only been invoked three times in over 200 years and only during a declared war—to disappear people to CECOT, a brutal prison in El Salvador, without due process. The administration has shipped immigrants to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay. Trump is also attempting to swiftly deport people to dangerous countries to which they have no connection, like South Sudan, which is on the brink of civil war; and Libya, which is known for electrocuting and sexually assaulting migrants imprisoned in militia-run detention facilities. Some of those already deported to CECOT had protected status or pending asylum cases, including Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland father the government admits it sent erroneously, but now refuses any ability or responsibility to return to his family. The ACLU has filed more than 10 habeas corpus, arguing that the government must have a just cause for detaining or imprisoning someone, to stop these illegal deportations without due process.

Trump is reportedly seeking to use National Guard troops for immigration enforcement, opening a very dangerous chapter where troops would be patrolling our neighborhoods looking for families, children, and others who they think are undocumented. We have never experienced a moment like this in our lifetimes, when our troops are being turned against our communities, acting in the service of a military police state.

Within weeks of taking control, the Trump administration initiated a new, nationwide registration system requiring that kids as young as 14 and adults who are non-citizens register. Now, millions of our neighbors and family members face a dangerous Catch-22: If they show up to “register” with ICE, they may be taken into custody and swiftly deported from their homes and families. If they don’t, they face criminal prosecution for failing to register. Any encounter with law enforcement – including when people report a crime or seek protection – could lead to police questioning a person about their immigration and registration status.

At the same time, the Trump administration is also seeking 20,000 federal, state and local law enforcement officers and at least 21,000 National Guard troops to join its deportation force. It is re-assigning thousands of federal law enforcement agents from serious crime investigation duties to immigration enforcement. This is straight out a dystopian novel: The president is amassing a massive internal police force under his command, with a mandate to execute a massive round-up of people in our country, who are cast as “criminals” because they have violated a law that makes failing to turn themselves into the government a crime.

Already, we have seen immigrants deported at airports for criticizing President Trump, and students have their visas revoked for expressing their views. We now know that the State Department is asserting that students and others, like ACLU client Mahmoud Khalil, can be expelled purely for their opinions. The administration is also threatening anyone who helps immigrants to defend their rights, including legal services groups, entire cities and states, and even members of Congress. These attacks are transparently about consolidating power, bringing critics to heel, and eliminating the space to fight back.

Still, there are stories of communities working to support their neighbors and loved ones. Communities are standing up for their neighbors and questioning ICE, and Congress, about abusive arrests and the lack of due process. Law enforcement leaders are declining to take part in the Trump deportation drive, knowing it will not make their communities. Elected officials at all levels are creating a firewall for freedom, enacting protections for their community members that counteract the Trump deportation agenda.

Members of Congress are also listening – and knocking on the doors of private prison operators in New Jersey, Louisiana and Colorado, to name a few. These visits, even when members of Congress are denied entry, are powerful rebukes to an administration claiming power to disappear people into prisons and lock the door behind them.

Courts are rejecting Trump’s authoritarian overreach and affirming that immigrants have rights and deserve due process. It’s no coincidence that some of the more outrageous proposals from this administration—suspending habeas corpus, sending U.S. citizens to CECOT—come when the administration is losing in court.

At the ACLU, working with community partners, through the courts, and through lobbying, our work to protect our communities from Trump’s dangerous deportation drive continues.