New Report Shows Immigrants in Northeast Indiana Paid $453.1 Million in Taxes and Held $1.3 Billion in Spending Power in 2024

Immigrants in Northeast Indiana contributed $3.7 million to the region’s GDP.

Wabash County, IN, October 22^nd 2026—A new report, Immigrants in Northeast Indiana, released on September 18^th by the American Immigration Council—in partnership with Community Connections: A Wabash County Diversity Coalition underscores the crucial role immigrants play in the region’s labor force, business creation, and consumer spending power.

Although immigrants made up 4.9 percent of the region’s total population, they represented 6.2 percent of its employed labor force and 8.0 percent of its workers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields in 2024.

The new report was awarded to Community Connections: A Wabash County Diversity Coalition as part of the Gateways for Growth Challenge, a competitive opportunity for localities to receive research support and technical assistance from the American Immigration Council and Welcoming America to improve immigrant inclusion in their communities.

The report and strategic welcoming plan for Wabash County will launch on Thursday, November 5^th at the N Manchester Public Library from 4-6pm in the Blocher Community room. The event will showcase the new plan with a time for questions, it will also include food and drinks by local New American entrepreneurs, a song performance by students in our local DLI program, and testimonials from both kids in the DLI program as well as newcomers to our community about their experiences here.

“Each of the statistics in this report represents a child, a family, a friend, and a member of our community that helps make Wabash County the vibrant community that it is. Gateways for Growth and the Strategic Welcoming plan helps us to understand our area through data and illustrates how EVERYONE here contributes to our communities. With this plan, it is our responsibility to listen to what makes people feel welcome, to remove barriers to belonging, and to be a bridge between our community members and the resources they need to thrive and put down roots. As we work to grow Wabash County and reverse population decline, we want every person here to feel that they belong and have a place in the future of Wabash County.”

“Immigrants are an integral part of Northeast Indiana’s communities, contributing their talents, skills, and experiences in ways that strengthen the region every day. As this report demonstrates, immigrants help drive economic growth as entrepreneurs, workers, and community leaders while also enriching the social and cultural fabric. Their contributions are helping build a more vibrant, connected, and prosperous future in Northeast Indiana,” said Micaela McConnell, policy manager of state and local initiatives at the American Immigration Council.

“Communities like Wabash County are showing what welcoming looks like when it’s grounded in data and driven by the people who live there — neighbors and local leaders who want to understand what residents need and build a place where everyone can put down roots. The Gateways for Growth Challenge was designed to support communities ready to do that work, and we’re proud to be part of it,” said Briana Broberg, Director of the Welcoming Network at Welcoming America.

The new research report, Immigrants in Northeast Indiana, finds:

• Immigrants are helping the region meet its labor force demands. In 2024, immigrants were 37.8 percent more likely to be of working age than their U.S.-born counterparts.
• Immigrants support the federal safety net. Immigrants contributed $291.4 million to federal taxes and $161.7 million to state and local taxes in Northeast Indiana in 2024.
• Immigrants are helping the area meet its rising labor needs in key industries. While making up 4.9 percent of the region’s total population in 2024, immigrants represented 10.6 percent of transportation and warehousing workers, 8.2 percent of manufacturing workers, 7.2 percent of hospitality workers, and 6.9 percent of construction workers.
• Immigrants can build deep roots in the region. As of 2024, 83.0 percent of immigrants in Northeast Indiana had resided in the United States for more than five years.

Read the full research brief at the Council’s website.

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About Community Connections: A Wabash County Diversity Coalition

Community Connections: A Wabash County Diversity Coalition helps connect newcomers with resources in Wabash County to help them thrive. Our mission is to inspire a safe and nurturing environment by building relationships, educating, and celebrating the uniqueness of every person. With a commitment to growth, we are broadcasting this as a welcoming community where industry is growing, education is a high priority, and new housing is going up. The invitation is out to come to Wabash County, put down roots here, and enrich the quality of life in the county.

About the American Immigration Council

The American Immigration Council works to strengthen America by shaping how America thinks about and acts towards immigrants and immigration and by working toward a more fair and just immigration system that opens its doors to those in need of protection and unleashes the energy and skills that immigrants bring. The Council brings together problem solvers and employs four coordinated approaches to advance change—litigation, research, legislative and administrative advocacy, and communications. Follow us on Bluesky@immcouncil.org and on Instagram @immcouncil.

About Welcoming America

Welcoming America is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that leads a movement of inclusive communities becoming more prosperous by ensuring everyone belongs. Through the Welcoming Network, we work to change systems and culture by providing communities with the roadmap they need to create welcoming policies and share new approaches to inclusion to create an environment where everyone can truly thrive. Learn more at www.welcomingamerica.org.  

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Dear Immigrant: The Language Inside the Language

Letter 11

Re: The Language Inside the Language

Dear Immigrant,

You learned the language before you came. You studied it in school, you practiced it, you passed the test. You arrived and discovered that the language you learned is not quite the language people speak.

The language inside the language is the informal register — the idioms, the slang, the references, the humor that depends on shared cultural knowledge, the things that are said between the lines, the way that the same words mean different things depending on who is speaking and to whom and in what context. This language cannot be learned from a textbook. It is learned by being in the country, listening carefully, and making mistakes.

The language gap is not just about vocabulary. It is about cultural access. When your colleagues make a joke and everyone laughs and you do not understand why it is funny, the gap is not just linguistic. The joke references something — a television show, a historical event, a shared cultural experience — that you were not present for. The laughter marks a boundary between people who share that cultural knowledge and people who do not. You are, for now, on the outside of that boundary.

The way through is patience and observation and the willingness to ask. When you do not understand a reference, ask about it. Most people will explain cheerfully if you ask sincerely. The asking is not weakness. It is the fastest way to close the gap.

Your accent is not a deficit. It is information about where you have been. There will be people who hear it as inferior and people who hear it as interesting. The people who hear it as inferior are telling you something about themselves, not about you. Your voice carries your history. Carry it with accuracy, not with apology.

From someone who still learns new idioms,
A former immigrant

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New Lawsuit Seeks Information About ICE’s Efforts to Restrict Public Access to Records

WASHINGTON, D.C., October 28, 2026 — The American Immigration Council, the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC), and researcher Meghan Conley filed a lawsuit today seeking information about what ICE is telling local police and sheriffs about sharing immigration enforcement records with the public. 

The lawsuit, filed in Tennessee, seeks details of ICE’s instructions to state and local law enforcement agencies about whether to release records requested under state laws. The requested records would shed light on what ICE tells state police and other local law enforcement to do when they receive public record requests regarding their collaboration with ICE.  

According to the lawsuit, ICE has told local police and sheriffs they need to check with federal officials before sharing certain records with the public, even when state transparency laws say otherwise. This raises concerns that ICE may be making it harder for journalists, advocates , and the general public to find out how local police and sheriffs are working with federal immigration authorities.

In August, the plaintiffs in this lawsuit filed a FOIA request with ICE seeking records of the instructions ICE gave to state and local law enforcement. ICE did not produce the records sought.  

The lawsuit comes as ICE is working with a growing number of police and sheriff departments across the country to carry out the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda, an effort that is increasingly unpopular with Americans and is inflicting enormous harm on families and communities across the country. 

“As ICE works with more local police and sheriffs across the country, more people are going to have questions about what these partnerships mean for their communities. How is taxpayer money being spent? What role are local police officers playing in immigration arrests? How are people being treated in detention? The public deserves answers to these questions, and ICE shouldn’t be making it harder to get them,” said Raul Pinto, deputy legal director for transparency at the American Immigration Council.  

In Tennessee, the push for answers is particularly urgent. ICE has rapidly expanded its partnerships with local law enforcement across the state, with 163 agreements in place as of September 2026. This has led to a four-fold increase in immigration arrests and detentions, the majority involving people with no criminal record.  

“Families across Tennessee are living with the consequences of this horrific immigration crackdown. Longtime U.S. residents are being arrested in their neighborhoods, families are being separated, mothers pulled away from their children, and local police and sheriffs are playing a growing role in making it all happen. Tennesseans deserve to know what their local law enforcement agencies are doing and who is being affected. We can’t hold our government accountable if we can’t even get basic information about what’s happening in our communities,” said Spring Miller, Senior Legal Strategy Director at TIRCC.  

 READ THE COMPLAINT HERE

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In Major Setback for Due Process, Fifth Circuit Ruling Denies Immigrants the Opportunity to Challenge Their Detention

Oct 23 Friday, Washington DC — In response to today’s U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruling in Sosnava Rodriguez v. Ortega, a case concerning noncitizens’ constitutional right to challenge their detention when they are held without access to a bond hearing, the American Immigration Council and the National Immigration Project issued the following statements: 

“Today’s ruling is an affront to the U.S. Constitution. The principle at stake here is simple: if the government wants to detain someone, it has to explain why depriving them of their liberty is necessary. And anyone who is detained has the right to ask a judge for review of that detention. Instead, this ruling allows the government to lock people up when detention plainly serves no purpose, and without any way to challenge it,” said Rebecca Cassler, senior litigation attorney at the American Immigration Council, who argued the case before the Fifth Circuit. “The right to due process is a fundamental constitutional protection, and it is meant to protect every person in this country.  Because of today’s decision, that right is hollow for immigrants in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. But the logic of the Fifth Circuit’s decision threatens everyone in this country: when courts degrade the meaning of liberty for some, we all suffer the consequences. We will continue fighting to ensure that no one, not even this administration, is above the Constitution.” 

“Due process only means something if courts are willing to uphold it, and today the Fifth Circuit refused to. The consequences of this ruling will be felt by families and communities across Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, as well as the countless individuals the government intentionally transfers to immigration jails in these states to strip them of their rights,” said Ellie Norton, Supervising Attorney at the National Immigration Project. “This case is about three fathers who have lived in the United States for years, contributing to their communities and supporting their U.S. citizen children. They were torn from their families and locked up without ever being given the chance to go before an immigration judge to seek release. Their circumstances are far from unique. At a time when conditions in immigration detention are increasingly dangerous, this ruling opens the door to more people being locked up for no reason, with devastating consequences for them, their loved ones, and their community.” 

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Renée Good’s Family Files Lawsuits Challenging Federal Immunity as ICE Shootings Continue

The increasingly violent reality of the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda came into sharp focus again last week when plainclothes ICE officers opened fire on a car in New York City within seconds of surrounding the vehicle, wounding 28-year-old Oscar Belgal while his terrified 5-year-old son sat in the back seat. This alarming use of force, echoing across the country as communities grapple with a sharp rise in immigration enforcement violence, provides context for a major legal battle unfolding in Minnesota.

Just days before the New York shooting, the family of Renée Good, a 37-year-old mother of three who was shot and killed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis earlier this year, filed two significant federal lawsuits against the U.S. government and top administration officials.

Good’s family and lawyers seek to use two distinct legal paths to force accountability through the U.S. federal courts, even though doctrines such as qualified and sovereign immunity usually protect federal law enforcement officers and the administration’s top political leaders from facing civil rights lawsuits. The twin lawsuits target both the officer that killed Good and the systemic policies that the lawsuit claims made her death inevitable and near-guaranteed impunity for the officer’s deadly use of force.

Minneapolis deadly encounter

On January 7, 2026, during a tense confrontation between protesters and federal immigration officers deployed to Minneapolis as a part of the administration’s “Operation Metro Surge,” ICE officer Jonathan Ross fired three shots into Good’s car as she attempted to drive away. One bullet struck her in the head, killing her.

While the Trump administration initially claimed that Good was a “domestic terrorist” trying to run over the officer, the lawsuit argues that video footage clearly shows Good steering her vehicle away and talking to the officers using deescalating language. Good was a U.S. citizen and had no criminal history. After Good’s death, the administration neither indicted nor fired Ross and he is still in the agency as an active ICE officer.

A double attack on impunity

To overcome the significant legal doctrines that protect ICE officers and the federal government from liability, the lawsuits — filed by Good’s partner and her brother — rely on a two-part approach primarily via two legal statutes.

Federal Tort Claims Act

The first claim uses the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) and names the United Sates as the sole defendant. It accuses the government of battery, assault, false imprisonment, negligence, and intentional infliction of emotional distress that directly caused Good’s wrongful death. By using the FTCA, Good’s family and attorneys seek to hold the Trump administration liable for torts committed by federal immigration officers acting within the scope of their federal employment.

Typically, sovereign immunity protects the U.S. government from lawsuits; but Congress’ enactment of the FTCA provides an exception giving victims injured by government actions a mechanism for filing a lawsuit to seek damages. In the Good lawsuit, the FTCA legal claim focuses primarily on the mechanics of the shooting itself and the immediate liability of the government.

Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871

Parallel to the FTCA claim is the second and more politically explosive lawsuit, which uses a provision of the Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. Congress designed the law to protect citizens from organized and systemic civil rights violations. At that time, local and state authorities routinely refused to prosecute Ku Klux Klan members for violence they inflicted upon newly freed Black Americans. Congress responded by enacting this law to explicitly enforce the newly ratified Fourteenth Amendment and ensure protection of civil and voting rights.

The Good lawsuit brings claims under two provisions of the statute, 42 U.S.C. Section1985(3) and 1986, to allege a broad Trump administration conspiracy to violate civil rights, naming not only Officer Ross, but also senior administration officials including Stephen Miller, Tom Homan, and former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

The Section 1985(3) claim alleges that these officials conspired with private actors, including far-right online provocateurs whose allegations against the Somali community in Minnesota led directly to the administration’s Operation Metro Surge, as well as private corporations whose technology was used to target neighborhoods for enforcement and track observers and protestors. The Section 1986 claim arises from the officials’ failure to prevent the wrongs of the alleged conspiracy.

At the core of the Ku Klux Klan Act claim, Good’s lawyers argue that her death was not an isolated operational error, but the “predictable result” of an unconstitutional campaign driven by racial animus targeting Hispanic and Somali communities. The family alleges that Trump administration officials deliberately structured federal immigration crackdowns to encourage aggressive, hostile confrontations, while signaling to rank-and-file officers that they would never face legal consequences for using excessive force.

Bringing claims under Sections 1985 and 1986 avoids the strict legal limitations of “Bivens actions” which in the past allowed individuals to sue federal enforcement officers for Fourth Amendment violations but which the Supreme Court has heavily curtailed in recent decades.

Systemic reckoning or indefinite impunity?

By linking executive policy to field-level operations, the lawsuit seeks to provide an alternative route to challenge immunity for high-ranking political appointees. If the federal court moves the case forward, it could establish a major precedent for holding top level administration officials accountable for the actions of ICE field officers. If the court does not allow the lawsuit to proceed, then the only way to ensure individual officials’ accountability for unlawful immigration enforcement violence will be for Congress to make overdue changes to outdated immigration laws which for decades have permitted immigration agent officers and agencies to operate with significant impunity.  Congress could pass a law that would create a clear cause of action so that victims of constitutional violations committed by federal law enforcement officers can sue in federal court. When local police officers violate the Constitution, they can be sued in federal court; but when federal law enforcement agents commit the same violations there is no parallel recourse.

While the Good family seeks unspecified compensatory damages, their primary focus is public accountability. At an emotional Minneapolis press conference, Renee Good’s partner Becca Good stated: “The whole world had to watch as our entire universe was destroyed. We were all robbed.”

Following so closely on the heels of the recent New York City ICE shooting, the Renee Good lawsuits will test whether the federal judiciary is willing to hold federal officers accountable or continue to allow them to operate with near impunity on American soil.

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