New Cohort Selected for the Gateways for Growth Challenge

Round VI of the Challenge Will Support Local Communities in Welcoming Immigrants

WASHINGTON DC & DECATUR, GA, December 15, 2025 — The American Immigration Council (the Council) and Welcoming America, two national nonprofits, are pleased to announce that over 10 local communities have been selected to receive Gateways for Growth Challenge (G4G) awards as part of Round VI of the initiative. Awardees will receive a mix of customized research, technical assistance, and planning support to develop strategies that ensure all residents — including immigrants — can succeed and fully contribute to their communities.

The 2026 awardees span both urban and rural communities across ten states and represent the broad range of welcoming work happening across the country led by local governments, nonprofits, chambers of commerce, and community coalitions. Some of these communities include:

• Arlington County, Virginia
• Charlotte, North Carolina
• Durham, North Carolina
• Fort Bend County, Texas
• Johnson County, Kansas
• Lancaster, Pennsylvania
• Las Cruces, New Mexico
• Mahoning County, Ohio
• St. Louis, Missouri
• Wabash County, Indiana

“For nearly a decade, the Gateways for Growth Challenge has helped local communities quantify the impact of their immigrant populations and invest in welcoming policies and programs. We are excited to work with the new cohort in creating opportunity for all residents,” said Rich André, Director of State and Local Initiatives at the American Immigration Council.

“This cohort represents local leaders who are doing the day-to-day work of making their communities places where everyone can participate and succeed,” said Molly Hilligoss, senior network director of Welcoming America. “We’re proud to support them as they turn their welcoming values into action.”

Since 2016, G4G has supported more than 75 localities across 37 states. Participating communities have developed welcoming plans that address language access, workforce development, civic participation, and social cohesion. Many have gone on to pass welcoming resolutions, launch new programs, join the broader Welcoming Network, and achieve Certified Welcoming status—a national recognition for communities that meet benchmarks for inclusion and welcoming. For more information about Gateways for Growth, visit gatewaysforgrowth.org.

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About the Gateways for Growth Challenge 

The Gateways for Growth Challenge (G4G) is 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. Learn more atgatewaysforgrowth.org.   

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. 

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.

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Federal Court Blocks ICE’s Unlawful Detention of Immigrant Teens Turning 18

Washington, D.C., Dec. 12, 2025 — On December 12, a federal court in D.C. ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to follow a long-standing court order that protects immigrant teens from being placed in adult detention centers. The court’s order blocks a new ICE policy to automatically shuttle unaccompanied children into adult detention once they turn 18.  

Read the court order here and the opinion here.

The order specifically covers children who originally entered the United States as unaccompanied minors and who “age out” of the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) (the federal program that looks after unaccompanied children by placing them in shelters and then later with family and/or guardians).  

This federal court decision enforces a 2021 permanent injunction in Garcia Ramirez v. ICE, which requires ICE to comply with their statutory obligations by considering the least restrictive setting available for every unaccompanied child who turns18 and to make all age-outs eligible for alternatives to detention. 

“This ruling makes clear that ICE cannot secretly flout the law or blatantly ignore court orders,” said Suchita Mathur, senior litigation attorney with the American Immigration Council. “ICE tried to detain newly-18-year-olds as a matter of course. These are kids that ICE officers have found, in almost all cases, do not pose a danger or flight risk, with sponsors, families, and community support waiting for them. This decision puts a stop to that.” 

Under a new policy published October 1, ICE told shelters and attorneys that all unaccompanied children turning 18 would be transferred to adult detention, even when they had safe homes and sponsors waiting to receive them. Adult detention threatens the teenagers’ short- and long-term development. Currently, ICE is holding a record number of people in detention, fueling overcrowding and dehumanizing conditions like lack of adequate medical care, abusive treatment, and restricted access to legal and psychological help. The court found that automatically sending teens into adult detention, without considering safer, age-appropriate alternatives, is a violation of the law.  

“Today’s ruling sends a powerful message: ICE can’t put teenagers in dangerous, overcrowded facilities just because they turned 18,” said Mark Fleming, associate director of federal litigation at the National Immigrant Justice Center. “There are safer, lawful options that keep young people connected to school, family, and community. That’s what the law requires, and that’s what this order restores.” 

The court’s ruling requires ICE to immediately stop following its October 1 guidance and to remove anyone placed under detention as a result.

Read the court order here and the opinion here.

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Supporting Working Families Through Flexible, Affordable Childcare

KidsPark is a national franchise that opened with a simple mission: to provide accessible, responsible hourly daycare for families who can’t—or don’t want to—use full-day childcare. Parents can drop off their kids anytime during operating hours for as little or as much time as they need. No reservations are required, and parents pay by the hour.

The model proved to be a success. Now, 37 years later, KidsPark is a national franchise, with daycare centers operating in nine states. Sisters Beth Christie and Heather Alanis jumped in 17 years ago, opening the first KidsPark center in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.¹

“We have families who use us five days a week. or parents who just drop in as needed,” said Beth.

KidsPark strives to support low- and middle-income parents, for whom standard childcare may be prohibitively expensive—potentially pushing them out of the workforce for years. Many parents manage to juggle conflicting work shifts to ensure one can always be with the kids. Even so, they still need affordable care during the overlap, when both are at work. “The hourly drop-off allows them to minimize their childcare costs,” said Beth.

Currently, parents pay $12 per hour for one child, and an additional $6 per hour for each sibling—less than many independent babysitters. “Having quality staff that can take good care of your children and keeping rates low for parents, it’s definitely a balancing act,” said Beth.

KidsPark typically hires young people, often college students. All the current teachers are in their 20s. The directors are in their 30s.

From the beginning, immigrants have been vital to the success of KidsPark Arlington. “We’ve always relied in the childcare industry on people who have come here from another country, or are first- or second-generation,” said Heather.

Often these young people are studying to become nurses or schoolteachers. Beth said, “It’s just fun to see caregiving as a personality type.”

“The young women who work for us tend to be very family oriented,” she said. “We have, over the years, hired cousins and sisters because we believe they work so well together, and all of them have come from immigrant families.”

Immigrants and children of immigrants also bring bilingual skills, which benefit children from all backgrounds, particularly in a diverse area like Dallas, where immigrant workers serve vital roles in construction, manufacturing, healthcare, and more.² “We want our staff to reflect our customers,” said Beth. “We’ve loved having teachers that are bilingual.”

“The teachers that have come from immigrant families have generally been the kindest, most diligent, hard workers,” said Beth. “I have found myself in awe of some of the young women who have come through the center, their work ethic. And they’ve brought so much love to the center.”

1. Beth Christie and Heather Alanis, interview with author, October 8, 2025. ↩︎
2. American Immigration Council, “Immigration in the Dallas–Fort Worth Area,” accessed November 11, 2025, https://ift.tt/M925okI. ↩︎

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A Life Rebuilt Through Caregiving in Bentonville, Arkansas

It was Laura’s late husband who moved the family to the United States—to help his parents start a ministry in Bentonville, Arkansas. His parents were retired missionaries who had immigrated to the United States years earlier and were, by then, U.S. citizens.²⁴

“I didn’t want to come,” Laura said, but for three years her in-laws kept pushing. “They were insisting.”

Five years after Laura agreed to relocate, her husband was killed in an accident, leaving her with two children who had integrated into their new life in the United States. “I started doing any kind of job I could do because I needed to support myself,” she said. “I knew that not having a social security number I couldn’t apply anywhere.”

Unauthorized to work in the United States, Laura did what so many immigrant women in her situation do: she worked as a babysitter and nanny. There was always plenty of work, and she was, and still is, good at it, she said. “Every single day I show up.” When a family asked if she knew anyone who cleaned houses, she said, “I know no one, but I can do it.”

Laura spent 14 years taking care of other people’s children. Most of the parents, all U.S.-born, worked for Walmart, which has its headquarters in Bentonville.

Last year, when Laura became authorized to work in the United States, she took a full-time job at a friend’s office. But she still works part-time for the family she had been nannying for. “I take my lunchtime at 3:30 p.m., and I pick up the kids from school.” She remains in high demand for her childcare work. “A lot of families know me.”

Laura is grateful for the babysitting work, and to have been able to help these American families. “The family I worked for for many years, that family was a blessing,” she said. “They paid me very well. Every year they gave me a bonus. They valued my work.”

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Immigrant Nannies Make Work Possible for a New York Family

Liz is a fourth-generation New Yorker who found her family’s first nanny through a neighborhood parent group, and their second—after a break during COVID-19 when they lived with her parents—through a nanny co-operative. Both nannies were immigrants, simply because, as Liz put it, “The bulk of nannies who are working in Brooklyn are immigrants.”⁵

“We decided to go with a nanny when my first son was very young because he had pretty serious food allergies, and managing his food was a pretty concerted effort,” she said. Both Liz and her husband work, and both would like to continue doing so.

Liz works in child welfare and philanthropy, helping families across the country care for their children. Her husband is a medical researcher, helping to develop next-generation gene therapies that are already saving lives.

“I like working. I want to be working. I think that the work I do is worth doing,” she said. “If I didn’t have somebody who I thought was safe and caring and aligned with my kids every day then I wouldn’t be working.”

The current nanny, Maria, has worked with the family for four years.⁶ She provides daytime care for their three children, ages 2 through 6, for 42 hours a week. She makes $36 per hour plus overtime, equating to about $80,000 per year.

It’s certainly a substantial sum, and Liz is grateful that she and her husband can afford it. But, said Liz, daycare is also expensive. Three-child families like Liz’s in New York City pay an annual average of $69,000 for daycare.⁷

“The nanny’s work makes all the other work happen. My kids adore her, fully and completely, and they’re legitimately obsessed with her kid,” who the nanny sometimes brings with her, Liz said. “These are essential and important and contributing members to our society and economy.”

Interacting with the nanny gives the children exposure to another culture—over and above the occasional informal Spanish lesson. “We live in a diverse city, and I want my kids to know a variety of people from a variety of places, and to value people from different backgrounds,” Liz said. The family can trust that Maria will devote the personalized attention their children need: “My son with anaphylactic allergies has never had a reaction with her. And I can’t say the same for me.”

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