May, 03 2017, 11:15am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Brad Luna | Phone: 202/216.1514,Trevor Thomas | Phone: 202/216.1547
HRC Responds to Rumored License to Discriminate EO
Today, HRC responded to a new media report about a rumored #LicenseToDiscriminate order that puts millions of LGBTQ Americans and women at risk of discrimination.
WASHINGTON
Today, HRC responded to a new media report about a rumored #LicenseToDiscriminate order that puts millions of LGBTQ Americans and women at risk of discrimination.
Earlier this year, a leaked draft of this discriminatory order led to a national outcry from civil rights organizations and millions of LGBTQ supporters. Trump's license-to-discriminate order, would allow hospitals, child welfare providers, and other taxpayer-funded entities to cite religion in denying services or discriminating against LGBTQ people and women.
"Donald Trump's rumored unconstitutional action is nothing more than a license-to-discriminate order that puts millions of LGBTQ people at risk," said Chad Griffin, President of the Human Rights Campaign. "There is no religious freedom crisis in America today, but there is a crisis of hate and discrimination. At a time when two-thirds of all LGBTQ people report having experienced discrimination, Donald Trump is making the problem worse by giving legal cover to perpetrators. By even considering this discriminatory order he has broken his promise to be a president for all Americans."
"The Constitution already protects the ability to exercise one's religion," said HRC Legal Director Sarah Warbelow. "What our Constitution does not permit is wielding religion as a weapon of discrimination against someone else, particularly with taxpayer funds."
Already, more than 50 percent of Americans live in an area of the U.S. where LGBTQ people are at risk of being fired, evicted or denied services because of who they are -- and two-thirds of LGBTQ people report having faced such discrimination in their lives. Trump's executive order could exacerbate these hostile climates and lead to broad, devastating impacts for LGBTQ people.
Donald Trump's license-to-discriminate order has reportedly been circulating within the White House and transition team since January and has been a longtime political priority of anti-LGBTQ organizations including the SPLC-designated hate group Family Research Council.
A preliminary analysis of Trump's order leaked in January indicates that LGBTQ people and women will be at risk in the following:
- An LBT woman suffering from intimate partner violence could be refused screening and
counseling for domestic violence if a provider holds religious objections to same-sex
Relationships - Transgender women could be turned away when seeking preventative care -- including cancer screenings and mammograms
- A Social Security Administration employee could refuse to accept or process spousal or survivor benefits paperwork for a surviving same-sex spouse
- A federal contractor could launch a cyber-bullying campaign against an LGBTQ organization for advocating on behalf of transgender people without losing the contract
- Agencies receiving federal funding, and even their individual staff members, could refuse to provide services to LGBTQ children in crisis, or to place adoptive or foster children with a same-sex couple simply because of their sexual orientation
The Human Rights Campaign represents a grassroots force of over 750,000 members and supporters nationwide. As the largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, HRC envisions an America where LGBT people are ensured of their basic equal rights, and can be open, honest and safe at home, at work and in the community.
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Hundreds Rally in Milwaukee Against Trump Admin's 'Unprecedented' Arrest of Judge
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Apr 26, 2025
Hundreds of people rallied in Wisconsin's largest city on Saturday to protest the Trump administration's arrest of Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan on what critics called "baseless" charges of felony obstruction after she allegedly helped an undocumented immigrant evade arrest during an appearance in her courtroom.
FBI agents arrested Dugan, 65, on Friday following an investigation, accusing her of escorting an undocumented man and his attorney through her courtroom's jury door after learning that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents showed up to arrest him.
Protesters chanted slogans including, "No ICE, No KKK, No Fascist USA!" and "No Hate, No Fear, Immigrants Are Welcome Here!" They held signs with messages like "Liberty and Justice for All" and "Resist Fascism!"
HAPPENING NOW: A HUGE crowd of protesters march through the streets outside an FBI office in Milwaukee in support of Judge Hannah Dugan (Video: @unraveledpress.com)
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— Marco Foster ( @marcofoster.bsky.social) April 26, 2025 at 3:05 PM
"I have never heard of a state court judge being arrested by the federal government because she chose to control her own courtroom. This is unprecedented," Sara Dady, an immigration attorney who traveled more than 90 miles from Rockford, Illinois to attend the demonstration outside the FBI field office in Milwaukee, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Wisconsin state Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-19) told the crowd: "The judiciary acts as a check to unchecked executive power. And functioning democracies do not lock up judges."
"I hope that we can all be as brave as Judge Dugan was," Clancy added.
Janan Najeeb, one of the leaders of the Wisconsin Coalition for Justice in Palestine, told rallygoers: "The courtroom is not a hunting ground for ICE. It is a sanctuary. When our government turns our courtrooms into traps, they are betraying the very laws that they claim to defend."
Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights director Angelica Salas said in a statement that "in an unprecedented move against members of the judicial branch, the Trump administration is exercising authoritarianism to degrees that should alarm us all."
"We reject this lawless escalation against an immigration judge who appears to be showing a commonsense and humane approach to immigrants, and stands for due process for all, and against wanton disregard for our Constitution," Salas added.
Critics have called Dugan's arrest part and parcel of President Donald Trump's attacks on immigrants, the nation's system of checks and balances, and the rule of law.
"The Trump administration deserves zero benefit of the doubt here. It has evinced utter contempt for due process and the rule of law since inauguration day," Ryan Cooper, managing editor of The American Prospect, wrote on Friday. "It has deported numerous legal residents, most notably Kilmar Abrego García, to an El Salvador torture dungeon, and is openly disobeying a 9-0 Supreme Court decision to bring García back."
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Among those pushing back against Dugan's arrest are Wisconsin Circuit Judge Monica Isham, who wrote in an email to other judges: "Enough is enough. I no longer feel protected or respected as a judge in this administration. If there is no guidance for us and no support for us, I will refuse to hold court."
"I have no intention of allowing anyone to be taken out of my courtroom by ICE and sent to a concentration camp, especially without due process as BOTH of the constitutions we swore to support require," Isham added. "If this costs me my job or gets me arrested, then at least I know I did the right thing."
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USA Today—which obtained a copy of the March 14 memo issued by the office of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi—reported Friday that the Trump administration ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to pursue suspected members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua into homes, sometimes without warrants, under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA).
The 1798 law has been invoked to deport hundreds of undocumented immigrants—the majority of whom have no criminal records in the United States—many of whom have been sent to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a notorious super-maximum security prison in El Salvador, regardless of their nationality.
According to the memo:
As much as practicable, officers should follow the proactive procedures above—and have an executed warrant of apprehension and removal—before contacting an alien enemy. However, that will not always be realistic or effective in swiftly identifying and removing alien enemies... An officer may encounter a suspected alien enemy in the natural course of the officer's enforcement activity, such as when apprehending other validated members of Tren de Aragua. Given the dynamic nature of enforcement operations, officers in the field are authorized to apprehend aliens upon a reasonable belief that the alien meets all four requirements to be validated as an alien enemy. This authority includes entering an alien enemy's residence to make an AEA apprehension where circumstances render it impracticable to first obtain a signed notice and warrant of apprehension and removal.
The Trump administration's controversially broad interpretation of the AEA and questionable criteria for targeting immigrants has led to the arrest and wrongful deportation of individuals including makeup artist Andry José Hernández Romero and Kilmar Abrego García, both of whom were sent to CECOT. The Trump administration is defying a U.S. Supreme Court order to facilitate Abrego García's return to the United States.
Earlier this month, the ACLU and allied groups sued to block the Trump administration's AEA deportations, arguing that "no one should face the horrifying prospect of lifelong imprisonment without a fair hearing, let alone in another country."
On Friday, U.S. District Judge David Briones ordered ICE to free a Venezuelan couple detained in El Paso under the AEA, finding that the government "has not demonstrated they have any lawful basis to continue detaining" the pair. Briones also warned ICE to not deport anyone else it is holding as an alleged "alien enemy" in West Texas.
Lee Gelernt, the ACLU's lead counsel in cases challenging use of the AEA, told USA Today: "The administration's unprecedented use of a wartime authority during peacetime was bad enough. Now we find out the Justice Department was authorizing officers to ignore the most bedrock principle of the Fourth Amendment by authorizing officers to enter homes without a judicial warrant."
Monique Sherman, an attorney at the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, expressed alarm over the DOJ memo.
"The home under all constitutional law is the most sacred place where you have a right to privacy," Sherman told USA Today. "By this standard, spurious allegations of gang affiliation means the government can knock down your door."
As Georgetown University Law Center professor Steve Vladeck
said, "There's no Alien Enemies Act exception to the Fourth Amendment."
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Federal immigration authorities deported three U.S. citizen children on Friday—including one with cancer who was reportedly expelled without medication—in a move that critics and one judge appointed by President Donald Trump said was carried out without due process.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) New Orleans field office deported the American children—ages 2, 4, and 7—along with their undocumented mothers, one of whom is pregnant. The ACLU said that both families were held incommunicado following their arrests, and that ICE agents refused or failed to respond to efforts by attorneys and relatives who were trying to contact them.
The ACLU said that one of the children has a rare form of metastatic cancer and was deported without medication or consultation with their treating physician, despite ICE being notified about the child's urgent condition. This follows last month's ICE deportation of a family including a 10-year-old American citizen with brain cancer.
Disappearing mothers and toddlers, denying them access to lawyers, deporting them without due process - this is not what a democracy does to its citizens and families and to their kids.
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— Vanessa Cardenas (@vcardenas.bsky.social) April 25, 2025 at 6:48 PM
According to court documents, the 2-year-old New Orleans native—identified as V.M.L.—was brought by her mother, Jenny Carolina Lopez Villela, to a routine immigration appointment in the Louisiana city on Tuesday when they were arrested.
A habeas petition filed on Thursday states that ICE New Orleans Field Office Director Mellissa Harper told V.M.L.'s desperate father on a phone call that he could try to pick the girl up but would likely be arrested, as he is undocumented. The petition argues that Harper was detaining V.M.L. "in order to induce her father to turn himself in to immigration authorities."
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty—a Trump nominee—ordered a May 16 hearing in Monroe, Louisiana based on his "strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process."
"It is illegal and unconstitutional to deport, detain for deportation, or recommend deportation of a U.S. citizen," Doughty wrote, citing relevant case law. "The government contends that this is all OK because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her. But the court doesn't know that."
The ACLU argued that ICE's actions "represent a shocking—although increasingly common—abuse of power," adding that the agency "has inflicted harm and jeopardized the lives and health of vulnerable children and a pregnant woman. The cruelty and deliberate denial of legal and medical access are not only unlawful, but inhumane."
When historians reflect on this regime, cruelty will be the word most often used to define it. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/25/u...
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— Robert Reich (@rbreich.bsky.social) April 26, 2025 at 6:44 AM
Teresa Reyes-Flores of the Southeast Dignity not Detention Coalition said in a statement Friday: "ICE's actions show a blatant violation of due process and basic human rights. The families were disappeared, cut off from their lawyers and loved ones, and rushed to be deported, stripping their parents of the chance to protect their U.S. citizen children."
Immigration Services and Legal Advocacy legal director Homero López Jr. said that "these deplorable actions demonstrate ICE's increasing willingness to violate all protections for immigrants as well as those of their children."
"These types of disappearances are reminiscent of the darkest eras in our country's history and put everyone, regardless of immigration status, at risk," he added.
The Trump administration—whose first-term immigration policies and practices included separating children from their parents and imprisonment in concentration camps—is once again under fire for its anti-immigrant agenda.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently blocked the deportation of undocumented Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and has also ordered the administration to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego García, a Salvadoran man wrongfully deported to a notorious prison in his native country. On Wednesday, a Trump-appointed judge ordered the administration to take action to return another Salvadoran deported to the same prison.
In a scathing ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge David Briones ordered ICE to free a Venezuelan couple dubiously held in El Paso under the Alien Enemies Act, finding that the government "has not demonstrated they have any lawful basis to continue detaining" the pair. Briones also warned ICE to not deport anyone else it is holding as an alleged "alien enemy" in West Texas.
ICE overreach and abuses—which include wrongful detention of U.S. citizens, arrests of green-card holders who defend Palestine, and warrantless home searches—have fueled renewed calls for the agency's defunding.
ICE abducted a man with a learning disability leaving a hospital after a medical emergency asking for help. They didn’t care that he was a U.S. citizen. They just lied and said he wasn’t. This isn’t “border security.” It’s white supremacy. popular.info/p/us-citizen...
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— Melanie D’Arrigo (@darrigomelanie.bsky.social) April 23, 2025 at 4:38 AM
"A government agency that sequesters and deports vulnerable mothers with their U.S. citizen children without due process must be defunded, not rewarded with an additional $45 billion to continue at taxpayers' expense," Mich P. González, a founding partner of Sanctuary of the South—which provides legal aid to immigrants—said Friday.
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