Happy Immigrant Heritage Month!

This June, the government wants us to celebrate immigrants. But I know many of you are asking the same question I am: Is that really possible right now?

How do we celebrate at a time when our communities are afraid to leave their homes? When folks are being abducted in broad daylight, and children are getting sick in horrific conditions inside detention centers? When allies are losing their lives just for defending their immigrant neighbors?

The Origin Story

Immigrant Heritage Month has been observed every June since 2014. It grew out of an initiative during the Obama years, back when comprehensive immigration reform felt—however briefly—like it might actually happen.

The goal was to shift public sentiment. The hope was that if Americans could see themselves in the immigrant story (and most can, if they go back far enough), the politics would naturally follow.

Twelve years later, we are still making that case.

This year, cities across the country are trying to mark the month with intention:

• New York City themed its celebration “Immigrants Power New York,” using a power grid as a visual reminder that we are the connective infrastructure holding the city together.

• Colorado’s governor formally proclaimed June as Immigrant Heritage Month, highlighting that one in nine Coloradans is an immigrant, contributing an estimated $9.5 billion in state taxes annually.

• Boston’s City Council adopted a resolution officially recognizing June 2026 as Immigrant Heritage Month, honoring the essential role immigrants play in the city’s business ownership, workforce participation, and cultural diversity.

The symbolism is beautiful, and it isn’t subtle. But unfortunately, neither is what’s happening on the streets. The case for our belonging is more urgent—and the audience far more hostile—than the founders of this month ever imagined.

The Reality on the Ground

While America puts up the celebratory bunting, we have to look clearly at the policy landscape we are navigating right now.

• This is a neighborhood story: In fiscal year 2025, ICE recorded more deportations from within U.S. communities than Border Patrol apprehended at the Southwest border. The woman who got picked up at the bus stop while going home from work to her kids, the man behind the counter at the halal cart, and the grandmother who has lived in the same apartment for thirty years.

• A deadly year: 2025 was the deadliest year in ICE custody in two decades. At least 32 people died—matching the all-time highest record previously set in 2004.

• Birthright citizenship under fire: As tent camps operate across the country in brutal conditions, the administration is actively asking the Supreme Court to strike down the 157-year-old guarantee that if you are born on American soil, you are American.

• A slashed safety net: The refugee admissions cap for fiscal year 2026 currently sits at 17,500. Under President Biden, just a year ago, it was 125,000. That is an 86 percent reduction. More than 128,000 refugees who had completed full security vetting—who sold their belongings and gave up their housing—were left stranded when the administration suspended the program on its first day. The few slots that do exist this year are allocated primarily to white South Africans.

Heritage Isn’t Just History

The story of immigration to this country is genuinely, stubbornly beautiful. My parents came to this country in 1983, but America wasn’t their first attempt at finding a life in the Western world. They lived in Germany first—a country where, as Bangladeshi migrants, they had absolutely no pathway to citizenship. The U.S. was the place where they believed true belonging was actually on offer.

The communities Port of Entry is built to serve are the most resilient, creative, and tenacious people I know. That doesn’t stop being true just because the government is actively trying to dismantle the legal architecture that made our arrival possible.

So, here is my ask of you. Let’s celebrate our fierce, beautiful existence, and let’s absolutely refuse to let the celebration become a cover story. The case for immigrants—for the value, humanity, and belonging of people who came here, who are still coming, and who are being detained as you read this—is not a historical claim. It is an urgent, present-tense reality.

The archive is ours to build. Let’s keep building it together.

In college, I had a close friend who was an undocumented immigrant. She'd moved to the U.S. as an international student and, for a bunch of reasons, had to quit college and stay on in New York. As a result, for the time being, she was without papers. To survive, she worked exploitative administrative and customer service jobs that paid her petty wages in cash.

Despite being undocumented, she did something that didn’t make sense to me at the time—she filed her taxes every single year. She was preparing for if and when she had the chance to become a U.S. citizen, her tax history would work in her favor.

Like my friend, millions of undocumented immigrants have quietly contributed to the U.S. economy, trusting the government's assurance that filing taxes was safe. Now, that trust is under threat.

A proposed agreement between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) threatens to dismantle decades of trust. The agreement would allow tax data collected by the IRS to be shared with immigration enforcement agencies, a sharp departure from the long-standing policy of confidentiality. For thirty years, the government has reassured immigrants that filing taxes was safe—that their information would remain private and not be used against them in deportation proceedings. If implemented, this new policy would undermine those assurances and put millions of undocumented immigrants at risk.

The stakes are enormous. About half—possibly more—of the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country have been filing tax returns, believing in the government's promise of confidentiality. My friend was one of them, meticulously documenting her contributions, believing that one day her tax history would offer her a path to citizenship.

But if this trust is shattered, the consequences could ripple far beyond immigrant communities. The New York Times reports that undocumented workers are already afraid of going to work and living their daily lives. The impact is being felt not only in immigrant homes but also in industries that rely heavily on immigrant labor, such as residential construction, agriculture, senior care, and hospitality.

The numbers tell a powerful story:

• Immigrants comprise 19% of the U.S. workforce

• Over 70% of farmworkers are foreign-born (40% are undocumented)

• 25% of domestic workers are immigrants

• Approx. 30% of physicians and surgeons are immigrants

“Businesses across industries know what comes next when their work force disappears — restaurants, coffee shops and grocery stores struggling to stay open, food prices soaring, and everyday Americans demanding action,” Rebecca Shi, chief executive of the American Business Immigration Coalition said in an interview to The New York Times.

Historically, attempts to push out immigrant workers have led to economic disasters. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 marked one of America’s first large-scale efforts to exclude an immigrant group. Chinese laborers, instrumental in building the transcontinental railroad, were targeted by xenophobia and economic anxiety. When Chinese workers were expelled, industries like agriculture, mining, and railroads—which had come to rely on their labor—suffered significant disruptions. Promises that wages for non-Chinese laborers would improve went unfulfilled, and many regions faced severe labor shortages that hindered economic growth.

During the Great Depression, over 400,000 Mexican Americans—many U.S. citizens—were forcibly deported. Farm productivity in California plummeted, directly slowing economic recovery.

More recently, states like Alabama and Georgia implemented harsh immigration enforcement laws aimed at driving out undocumented workers. Georgia’s 2011 law, HB 87, led to substantial economic losses in agriculture as labor shortages left crops unharvested and rotting in the fields. Attempts to recruit American-born workers to fill the gap proved largely unsuccessful.

These past mistakes remind us of the far-reaching consequences of targeting immigrant communities.

If every immigrant disappeared tomorrow, the economic consequences would be catastrophic:

• The U.S. GDP would shrink by an estimated $2 trillion annually.

• Food prices would skyrocket even more than they already have.

• Entire industries like hospitality, construction, and food service would collapse.

From enslaved Africans to Chinese railroad workers to today’s farmworkers and healthcare aides, America’s wealth has been built on the labor of marginalized communities.

So the next time someone claims immigrants are “taking jobs,” ask them a simple question: If all immigrants left tomorrow, would you be willing to step into their shoes?

POLICY WATCH

Farm Workforce Modernization Act: Supporting Agricultural Workers

The Farm Workforce Modernization Act is trying to make life better for the hardworking farmworkers who are often invisible but absolutely essential to our food system.

This bipartisan bill wants to help undocumented farmworkers come out of the shadows. It would create a special worker status that gives these agricultural workers a chance to work legally and potentially become citizens. Imagine working every day, feeding the entire country, but living with constant uncertainty about your own future—that's the reality for many farmworkers right now.

The act would make the agricultural visa system more flexible, especially for industries like dairy farming that need workers year-round. Plus, it helps address the serious labor shortages many farms are experiencing.

Want to help? It's actually pretty simple. You can:

• Send a message to Congress

• Support the United Farm Workers

Just eight weeks into his second term, President Trump is preparing to make good on his campaign promise to bring back and expand his controversial travel ban. But this time, it's set to be much more extensive than the 2017 version.

According to reports, the Trump administration is considering restrictions on citizens from as many as 43 countries. The draft plan includes:

• A "red list" of 11 countries whose citizens would be completely barred from entering the US: Afghanistan, Bhutan, Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen

• An "orange list" with somewhat lighter restrictions on numerous other nations

• Uncertainty about whether people with existing visas or green cards would be protected

The list reads like a who's who of Muslim-majority nations, with a few non-Muslim countries added in—a strategy that helped the original ban survive legal challenges.

During his first term, Trump reportedly asked former New York Mayor Rudy Guliani to "figure out how to do it legally." When Trump first took office in January 2017, he wasted no time implementing his promised "Muslim ban." Within days of his inauguration, he signed Executive Order 13769, triggering chaos at airports nationwide.

That order:

• Suspended entry for travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen

• Halted the U.S. refugee program

• Initially even blocked legal permanent residents from returning home

The travel ban was the fulfillment of Trump's campaign promise for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States." While the administration later modified the language to focus on countries rather than religion, Trump's intent was clear from his numerous public statements.

After multiple legal challenges and revisions, the Supreme Court eventually upheld a version of the ban in 2018 in Trump v. Hawaii. The Court chose to focus on the ban's neutral-sounding language rather than Trump's numerous anti-Muslim statements.

The new travel ban proposal comes on the heels of a troubling case that may signal the administration's approach. Last week, officials detained and revoked the green card of Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born former Columbia University student who led campus protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

This unprecedented move–canceling a green card based on political speech–has already sparked legal challenges. But it suggests the administration may be testing the boundaries of its authority over immigration.

The Deeper Impacts

When we talk about travel bans, we often focus on people trying to enter the country. But the effects reach much deeper into communities already in the United States. For Muslims from targeted countries living legally in America, the first travel ban created a climate of fear and isolation:

• Trapped inside America: Many citizens and green card holders became afraid to travel abroad to visit family, fearing they might not be allowed back in.

• Cut off from loved ones: Communication with family in banned countries decreased as people worried these contacts might flag them as "suspicious."

• Financial lifelines severed: Many stopped sending money to family abroad, fearing accusations of funding terrorism.

• Increased surveillance: Border checkpoints became data collection sites, with information shared between CBP, ICE, FBI, and local police.

America’s Long History of Using Bans to Exclude

Trump's travel bans didn't emerge from nowhere. They're part of a long American tradition of using immigration policy to exclude certain groups deemed "undesirable." The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first law specifically banning an entire national group. It prevented Chinese laborers from immigrating and barred Chinese residents from becoming citizens.

In 1889, the Supreme Court upheld this blatantly discriminatory law in Chae Chan Ping v. United States, establishing what legal experts call the "plenary powers doctrine"–the idea that the government has nearly unlimited power over immigration.

Using the Chinese ban as a blueprint, America continued to expand its exclusionary policies:

• Restricting Japanese immigration (1907)

• Banning people from most of Asia and the Pacific (1917)

• Limiting Southern and Eastern Europeans (1921)

• Targeting political dissidents through the "Anarchist Exclusion Acts" (1903, 1918)

The 1924 Immigration Act essentially codified discrimination and doubled down on exclusion, barring nearly all Asian and Pacific Islander immigration and setting tiny quotas for countries outside the Western Hemisphere. It even created the first Border Patrol, focused mainly on the southern border.

The McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 relaxed some restrictions but added Section 212(f), which gives presidents the power to ban "any aliens or any class of aliens" they deem "detrimental to the interests of the United States." This is the exact authority Trump used in 2017 and plans to use again.

In 2018, when the Supreme Court upheld former President Donald Trump’s first travel ban in Trump v. Hawaii, Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a stark warning: the Court was repeating one of its darkest mistakes. She compared the decision to the infamous Japanese internment cases from World War II—rulings that legitimized state-sanctioned discrimination under the guise of national security.

During the war, the U.S. government forcibly removed and incarcerated over 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens, in internment camps. The Supreme Court, rather than acting as a check on executive overreach, systematically upheld these measures:

• 1943: Hirabayashi v. United States – The Court upheld the government’s curfews targeting Japanese Americans.

• 1944: Korematsu v. United States – The Court validated the forced removal of Japanese Americans from their homes, though it avoided a direct ruling on internment camps themselves.

Throughout, the Court refrained from explicitly ruling on the constitutionality of the camps, allowing them to persist under the broad justification of national security.

Fast forward to 2018, and Trump v. Hawaii followed a disturbingly similar trajectory. The Court:

• Granted extreme deference to the executive branch, just as it did in the internment cases.

• Ignored Trump’s own statements about wanting a "Muslim ban," much like it had ignored the explicit racial discrimination behind the internment orders.

• Focused solely on the neutral-sounding text of the travel ban while disregarding the clear discriminatory intent behind it.

In a remarkable twist, Chief Justice John Roberts used the same decision to claim that Korematsu was officially overruled—while simultaneously employing similar reasoning to uphold the travel ban. This contradiction underscored how the same flawed logic that justified mass incarceration of Japanese Americans was being repurposed to uphold religious discrimination under a different name.

What’s Next

As we wait for the administration to finalize and announce the expanded travel ban, several big questions loom:

• Will people who already have permission to be in the US be protected, or will they suddenly find themselves unable to return if they travel abroad?

• Will the courts step in, or will they continue giving the president nearly unlimited power over who enters the country?

• What will the long-term impact be on Muslim communities who feel increasingly unwelcome and under surveillance?

POLICY WATCH: NO BAN ACT

As Trump gears up for Travel Ban 2.0 targeting a staggering 43 countries, Democrats have dusted off the NO BAN Act– legislation that would finally put checks on the president's sweeping powers under Section 212(f), the same legal loophole Trump exploited for his first Muslim ban. This bill would ban religious discrimination in immigration, demand evidence before restricting entry, rein in presidential overreach, force congressional oversight, and give courts meaningful review power. Rep. Judy Chu calls it common sense that "the president shouldn't have unchecked power to ban people based on their faith or where they're from.”

The first Muslim ban affected over 135 million people, and this expanded version threatens hundreds of millions more. While the White House points to the Supreme Court's 2018 ruling as justification, groups like the ACLU and Muslim Advocates are gearing up for another legal battle.

If you care about this issue, now's the time to call your representatives, support these legal challenges, share affected families' stories, document experiences, and stay vigilant.

If you or someone you know might be affected by these changes, email me at chowdhuryj315@gmail.com or reach me on Signal: JennChowdhury.54. Identities can be kept confidential.

Welcome to the first edition of Port of Entry, a weekly newsletter that brings attention to global news stories long after the world loses interest in them.

Out of the news cycle, out of mind.

As a child of Bangladeshi immigrants, I grew up tethered to two worlds as so many first-generation kids do. My curiosity about my homeland and how people outside of the United States live led me to journalism.

In 2018, I moved to Bangladesh to report on the world’s largest refugee crisis at the time: the Rohingya—a muslim minority in neighboring Myanmar that have been systemetically persecuted for decades by the Myanmar government for being a minority in a Buddhist-majority country. Over 700,000 Rohingya fled across the border to Bangladesh to seek refuge among the hundreds and thousands of refugees that had already been living there during earlier exoduses.

Aid started flowing in, trees were cut down, elephants were displaced so that extended camps could be built to house the now over a million refugees in a country of 170 million people in the global south.

Their stories were horrific. The first person I interviewed was an eight-year-old girl who stared at me stonily as my translator/colleague relayed my question of how she got to Bangladesh. I was not prepared for the answer: she had floated on her dead grandmother’s body in the Naf River, which linked Myanmar and Bangladesh.

Stories like this managed to grab headlines for a short period of time, but eventually the news cycle moved on. The Rohingya refugees, however, are still in limbo, waiting for the international community to help them go home.

It’s important to keep telling the stories of people all over the world, who have left their homes for one reason or another, in search of peace, prosperity and dare I say it, happiness—to hold the powerful accountable, to bring awareness, to keep human empathy alive.

And that’s exactly what you’ll find in Port of Entry, every week.

For tips and story ideas, please reach out to portofentry00@gmail.com or on signal at 646-479-7979.

And hit that subscribe button!

Read some of my past global reporting here:

#Metoo Bangladesh: The Textile Workers Uniting Against Harassment (Guardian)

These Women Make Your Zara Jeans. They’re Demanding to be Paid Fairly (Elle.com)

A Helpline in Nigeria Fights Abstinence-Only Sex Ed (VICE)

Underground sex industry in Greece (MarieClaire.com)

Pakistan’s Women-Only Rickshaw (Refinery29.com)

Speed Sisters: All-Female Race Car Drivers in West Bank (Refinery29.com)