On July 2, the ACLU won a significant victory in our challenge to the Trump administration’s arbitrary and illegal incarceration of nearly 1,000 asylum seekers who came to the U.S. fleeing persecution, torture, or death in their countries of origin. A federal judge has found that the government’s practice of locking up asylum seekers while they await rulings in their cases violates the Department of Homeland Security’s own official policy, which instructs that asylum seekers be released on humanitarian parole if they meet a series of strict requirements.

All of our plaintiffs came to the U.S. seeking refuge. They presented themselves to immigration officers, passed screenings, and were found to have credible asylum claims. Then the government locked them up in immigration jails across the country. Immigration and Customs Enforcement subsequently denied their applications for “humanitarian parole,” or release from detention, despite each asylum seeker presenting evidence that they are not flight risks or dangers to the community.

Federal Judge James E. Boasberg found that by categorically denying our plaintiffs’ requests for release, ICE had failed to follow basic principles of government accountability:

This Opinion does no more than hold the Government accountable to its own policy, which recently has been honored more in the breach than the observance. Having extended the safeguards of the Parole Directive to asylum-seekers, ICE must now ensure that such protections are realized.

Our lawsuit names five ICE field offices that just five years ago were granting parole at rates of over 90 percent. Now the government’s own statistics show that these same field offices are denying parole at rates of over 90 percent, resulting in the mass detention of nearly a thousand asylum seekers across the country. The judge stated that the statistics were “irrefutable” and “troubling” evidence that detention in the five field offices “has become the default option.”

Federal agencies have the fundamental obligation to follow the rules they set forth for themselves. The court ordered ICE to give our class members a case-by-case review of their requests for release. Instead of just rejecting those requests out of hand, ICE must now follow its own policies and give each one a meaningful look.

It’s a potentially life-changing second chance for people like Ansly Damus, the lead plaintiff in our lawsuit. An ethics teacher from Haiti, Mr. Damus feared for his life after being brutally attacked and targeted by gangs after speaking out against corruption by a local official. He fled to the United States, where he presented himself to immigration officers and sought asylum.

An immigration judge has actually granted him asylum — not once, but twice — but the government appealed in both instances. He has not committed any crimes and has shown ICE that he had a safe place to live while his case gets resolved. Despite that, Mr. Damus has now been locked up in prison-like conditions for more than a year and a half.

The arbitrary and blanket imprisonment of people like Mr. Damus is just one facet of the Trump administration’s larger strategy of deterring people from seeking refuge in the United States. Other brutal tactics include separating thousands of children from parents who come to our borders fleeing violence, making plans to detain kids in tent cities, and zealously targeting parents for criminal prosecution over the misdemeanor offense of crossing the border between ports of entry. The president himself has taken to Twitter to attack the very principle of due process itself, saying that, “We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country. When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came.”

The president may very well believe that he can attack the constitutional rights of immigrants and criminalize asylum seekers in any manner he pleases, but he is mistaken. The courts will continue to hold him to account.

For as Judge Boasberg concluded, “To mandate that ICE provide these baseline procedures to those entering our country — individuals who have often fled violence and persecution to seek safety on our shores — is no great judicial leap.”

When two patrons at a Starbucks cafe in Philadelphia were arrested while waiting for a colleague earlier this year, people in Pennsylvania and around the country saw on video what Black people have known for a long time — the mere act of going about our daily lives can lead to harassment, arrest, or worse.

The stakes are ratcheted upward dramatically when we cross paths with law enforcement officers. Even when we comply with an officer’s every request, we can be at risk of violence.

That’s what happened to Sean Williams, a 27-year-old Black man in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on June 28. While trying to comply with police officers’ conflicting commands, Williams was shot in the back with an electronic control device, popularly known as a Taser, after the brand that manufactures the weapon. A video recording of the incident has gone viral across the country.

Williams was a suspect in a dispute with three other people. While a statement from the Lancaster City Bureau of Police claims that the video does not show the full context of the incident and that Williams earlier failed to comply with their commands, the video clearly shows that the situation had deescalated to the point that Williams was seated and prepared to do what the police told him to do. Officer Philip Bernot stunned him with the Taser anyway, sending an electric shock through his body.

When Tasers first became available, they were marketed as an alternative to police using deadly force when they are or someone else is in danger of harm — even though a Reuters' investigation revealed over 1,000 people have died after being shot by Tasers. As this incident and many others have shown, police are not reserving the use of these stun guns only to end potentially harmful situations. Instead, they are using the weapon as a go-to device for control, even when no one is in any danger. Whatever brought Sean Williams to the attention of the Lancaster police, he was clearly not a risk to harm anyone when he was shot with the Taser.

In response to the incident, Lancaster Mayor Danene Sorace pledged a full investigation by the city police and the district attorney. She also said that the incident reinforces her determination to acquire body-worn cameras for the police bureau. While an investigation is warranted and body-worn cameras may sometimes provide valuable information when complemented with policies that demand transparency and accountability, the mayor’s response does not go nearly far enough.

The ACLU of Pennsylvania agrees with our allies at Lancaster Stands Up, a local grassroots community group, in its three demands that the officers involved are suspended immediately, the police and the city participate in a community meeting to address residents’ concerns about excessive force by city officers, and the city create a citizen-police review board. Anything short of this will send the exact wrong message. Police officers in Lancaster need to know that they will be held accountable when they brutalize the city’s residents.

This kind of treatment by law enforcement officers is nothing new for Black and brown people. Yet, people of privilege who are not subject to this kind of harassment and violence tend to believe us only when it’s captured on video. Until that changes, the best tool for police accountability is the smartphone in your pocket.

The Trump administration on Tuesday rescinded federal guidance, including guidelines created in 2011 to promote racial diversity in higher education and end the growing racial isolation in K-12 classrooms. The move reflects the administration’s latest attempt to retreat on the important progress made since Brown v. Board of Education prohibited school segregation 64 years ago and despite Supreme Court rulings protecting affirmative action.

The move is particularly disturbing because the guidelines, put in place by the Obama administration, did not break new ground. Instead, they provided a thoughtful and clear explanation of two Supreme Court cases governing the use of race in K-12 education and higher education. Those two cases, Parents Involved v. Seattle Schools and Grutter v. Bollinger, recognized the importance of promoting diversity in learning environments and established parameters for doing so. While their ruling still stands today, DeVos’ announcement signals a dangerous hostility from the Trump administration towards the idea that promoting racial diversity is in the best interest of America.

The guidance documents were not controversial, as they acknowledged a problem that both education experts and the courts have long recognized: Too many of our nation’s classrooms are racially and economically isolated, and that this isolation is only increasing among students. The guidance also outlined the Supreme Court’s explicit recognition that promoting diversity and avoiding racial isolation in schools are not only compelling governmental interests but also among the nation’s highest priorities. The guidance demonstrated the various ways that efforts to create diverse student bodies in schools and universities can be done effectively, fairly, and in compliance with the existing law in order to improve the quality of education for all students.

Given that the guidance served to accurately describe the current state of the law, the decision to rescind them can only be seen as a repudiation of the idea that diversity is a desirable and achievable goal in education. This is dangerous, considering research shows that school segregation is getting worse. And the impacts of desegregating schools are well-documented, including improved academic performance, reduced involvement in the criminal justice system, and better rates of employment. Revoking the guidelines is a decision that risks the reintroduction of division and segregation in our schools and seeks to pull us back to a time when schools were segregated and opportunity was allocated along racial, ethnic, and economic lines.

Fortunately, no action by the Trump administration can alter the fact that the law is defined by the Supreme Court decisions that the 2011 guidance accurately described. Under those cases, schools, colleges, and universities can take the steps necessary to provide the high quality, diverse education that all of the nation’s students deserve. By continuing to take those steps, the educational institutions will be taking up the mantle so shamefully dropped by the administration today.