February 21, 2023

Immigration Court Case Closures Accelerate, Racing to Catch Up with Growing ICE NTA Filings

TRAC, Feb. 21, 2023 "Immigration Court dispositions are reaching record highs. In FY 2023, Court closures are on pace to grow to nearly half a million cases disposed of by Immigration Judges. Case dispositions in FY 2022 were a record 47 percent higher than the previous high set during FY 2019. During the first four months of FY 2023 (Oct 2022-Jan 2023), Court closures reached 172,180, 85 percent higher than a...

February 20, 2023

Army Veterans, Once Deported, Now Naturalized Americans!

Julie Watson, Associated Press, Feb. 8, 2023 "After fighting in Afghanistan, former U.S. Army soldier Mauricio Hernandez Mata returned home with post-traumatic stress, which he says eventually led to getting in trouble with the law and being deported to Mexico — a country he had not lived in since he was a boy. On Wednesday, he and another deported veteran were sworn in as U.S. citizens at a special naturalization...

February 20, 2023

Cyrus Mehta: Advance the DFF!

Cyrus Mehta, Feb. 19, 2023 "On February 14, 2023, the USCIS issued  updated guidance  to indicate when an immigrant visa number “becomes available” for the purpose of calculating a noncitizen’s age in certain situations under the Child Status Protection Act (CSPA). The guidance became on effective 2/14/23 and comments are due by 3/14/23. Since October 2015, the State Department Visa Bulletin two different charts...

February 15, 2023

Colo. County Pays $25K Settlement to Undocumented Detainee

Sean Rice, KRDO, Feb. 14, 2023 "Attorneys for former El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder, who was being sued in his official capacity, have agreed to pay a $25,000 dollar settlement to someone immigration authorities say was an undocumented immigrant. The immigrant filed a federal lawsuit claiming his rights were violated by being held in the El Paso County Jail solely based on his immigration status. According to...

February 15, 2023

National Interest Waiver Changes for STEM Graduates and Entrepreneurs, Along with Premium Processing, Will Benefit H-4 Spouses Seeking Work Authorization

Cyrus Mehta, Jessica Paszko*, Feb. 13, 2023 "Earlier this year, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)  announced  that as of January 30, 2023, it would accept premium processing requests for all previously filed and newly filed petitions for National Interest Waivers (NIW) under the Employment-Based Second Preference (EB-2) category. For an additional filing fee of $2,500, USCIS will adjudicate these...

February 14, 2023

Statement on CA9 Decision to Rehear Case Against Trump TPS Terminations

ACLU, Feb. 10, 2023 "[T]he full Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted a petition for a rehearing en banc, filed by Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders and their U.S.-citizen children in the case, Ramos v. Mayorkas . The Ninth Circuit dismissed a previous decision from a three-judge panel. “For five years, my family has faced a rollercoaster of emotions – from fear of terminations to elation from...

February 14, 2023

$5M Donation Boosts Immigration Clinic

Fiona Roach, The Daily Northwestern, Feb. 12, 2023 "Harry Seigle (Pritzker ’71) gifted the Pritzker School of Law $5 million to expand the school’s immigration clinic, the University announced Wednesday. The donation will go to the Seigle Clinic for Immigrant Youth and Families , which represents low-income immigrants — specifically children and parents — in court proceedings and aims to...

February 13, 2023

DHS OIG Report: Violations of Detention Standards at ICE’s Port Isabel Service Processing Center

DHS OIG, Feb. 13, 2023 "During our unannounced inspection of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Port Isabel Service Processing Center (Port Isabel) in Los Fresnos, Texas, we found that Port Isabel complied with standards for the voluntary work program, access to legal services, and medical care for detainees. However, Port Isabel did not meet standards for detainee segregation, and we found...

February 10, 2023

New (and Old) from Prof. Nancy Morawetz

One of the great pleasures of editing immigration law publications for Matthew Bender LexisNexis* is the opportunity to rub shoulders with scholars, clinicians and activists such as NYU Law's Prof. Nancy Morawetz .  Back in 1998 we reprinted her magisterial work, Rethinking Retroactive Deportation Laws and the Due Process Clause in the Bulletin .  In 2007 she received the Daniel Levy Memorial Award from Bender: her...

February 09, 2023

Groups Condemn Biden's Asylum Plans

Justice Action Center, Feb. 8, 2023 - "Hours before President Biden delivered his second State of the Union, his administration  filed a brief in  Arizona v. Mayorkas  before the Supreme Court reiterating its intentions of implementing an asylum ban. Below is a statement by   Lauren Wilfong, Justice Catalyst Fellow at Justice Action Center (JAC): “Once again, we remind President Biden that seeking asylum in the...

February 08, 2023

Biden’s Embrace of Trump’s Transit Ban Violates US Legal and Moral Refugee Obligations

Prof. Karen Musalo, Feb. 8, 2023 "The Biden administration is poised to resurrect a Trump-era policy,  the transit ban , which in its most recent form was  repeatedly   struck down  by the courts as unlawful. The new transit ban, the subject of a  notice of proposed rulemaking , would create a “rebuttable presumption of asylum ineligibility” for individuals arriving at the southern border who have not sought “protection...

February 04, 2023

In Case You Wondered Where the "Bender" in Bender's Immigration Bulletin Comes From...

LexisNexis, July 29, 2022 "There aren’t many brands that have been around to celebrate 135 years of business. And those that have are considered classics in their respective domains: soda lovers have Coca-Cola, whiskey-sippers have Jim Beam, luxury car aficionados have Mercedes-Benz. And the legal industry has  LexisNexis® Matthew Bender® . From its founding in 1887 to its newest legal content expansions in 2022...

February 03, 2023

Expert: Immigrants Benefit Our Economy

Michael Slager, Counterpunch, Feb. 3, 2023 "... According to Stephen Yale-Loehr , a professor of immigration law at Cornell University, documented and undocumented immigrants paid $328 billion in federal, state and local taxes in 2014 alone. The Social Security Administration estimates that unauthorized migrant workers paid about $12 billion into the Social Security trust in 2010. As noted [above], they are not...

February 02, 2023

Expert: DACA Affected By Congressional Gridlock

Camilo Montoya-Galvez, CBS News, Jan. 1, 2023 "Nine Republican-controlled states asked a federal judge in Texas on Tuesday   to   shut down the  Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals  (DACA) program in its entirety   over two years, a move that would prevent nearly 600,000 immigrants known as "Dreamers" from renewing their deportation protections and work permits. The request from the coalition of states...

February 02, 2023

Texas’s Legal Challenge to Biden’s Humanitarian Parole Program is Both Flawed and Inhuman

Cyrus D. Mehta and Kaitlyn Box, Jan. 31, 2023 "President Biden’s  humanitarian parole program  is a wonderful example of how executive action can reshape immigration policy in the face of Congressional inaction.  It allows people fleeing troubled spots to come to the US in an orderly manner. The program initially implemented for Ukranian and Venezuelan nationals will allow 30,000 qualifying nationals of Cuba, Haiti...

January 31, 2023

Biden at the Two-Year Mark: Significant Immigration Actions Eclipsed by Record Border Numbers

Muzaffar Chishti and Kathleen Bush-Joseph, MPI Policy Beat, Jan. 26, 2023 "On his first day in office, President Joe Biden announced sweeping plans to reform decades-old U.S. immigration laws, undo many of the restrictive policies of the predecessor Trump administration, and provide a pathway to legal status for the nation’s estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants. Two years later, few of those ambitions have...

January 31, 2023

Missed Opportunities? What To Expect From Future U.S. Private Refugee Sponsorships

Janine Prantl and Stephen Yale-Loehr, Jan. 30, 2023 "On January 19, the U.S. State Department  announced  the launch of  Welcome Corps , a new private refugee sponsorship pilot program. Under Welcome Corps, groups of at least five individuals and community organizations can sponsor refugees to the United States. The State Department’s announcement is a good start, but the pilot should be improved in several ways...

January 31, 2023

Orderly Entry Is Smart Policy

Stuart Anderson, Jan. 26, 2023 "... Trump's policies did not reduce illegal immigration or discourage people from applying for asylum. Pending asylum cases rose by nearly 300 percent between FY 2016 and FY 2020 (from 163,451 to 614,751),  according  to Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Apprehensions at the southwest border (a proxy for illegal entry)  rose  more than 100...

January 27, 2023

Expert Comments on HK DED Extension

Bochen Han, South China Morning Post, Jan. 27, 2023 "With 10 days left before their temporary “safe haven” status was set to expire, President Joe Biden has extended Hongkongers’ refuge in the United States by two years, noting “compelling foreign policy reasons”. ... The memo authorises the Department of Homeland Security to give US-based Hongkongers 24 more months of what is formally known as deferred enforced...

January 25, 2023

Family’s quest to help undocumented Coloradans began long ago, when Mexico saved 6 Jewish refugees

Diane Carman, Colorado Sun, Jan. 25, 2023 Left Behind Workers Fund, created by Mark Newhouse, helped distribute $38 million to people who could not legally collect government aid after the pandemic left them jobless. "When COVID-19 shut down much of the Colorado economy in 2020, Mark Newhouse, an electrical engineer who’d spent his career in the technology industry, was worried. He saw how efforts like the federal...

January 24, 2023

The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America

You heard the interview yesterday on Fresh Air with Dave Davies. You read the NYT book review. Now order and read the book! And choose to remember: Indian Guest Workers Win $14M In Signal Trafficking Case - Law360, February 18, 2015 - "A Louisiana federal jury on Wednesday awarded five Indian guest workers more than $14 million over claims that shipbuilder Signal International LLC, an immigration lawyer and...

January 20, 2023

How the Humanitarian Parole Program at the Border Can Serve as a Template for Further Relief Under the Broken Immigration System

Cyrus D. Mehta & Manjeeta Chowdhary, Jan. 16, 2023 "Restive people at the U.S.- Mexico border for entry into the United States is not the new norm for the United States government. The usual procedure is to seek humanitarian relief through asylum under Title 8 of the United States Code citing a credible fear of persecution or other threats in their home country regardless of the wait period. However, in fiscal...

January 19, 2023

Perseverance Pays Off: The Saga of Jesús Contreras

Dennis Romboy, Deseret News, Jan. 17, 2023 "[F]or 40 years, rain or shine, Contreras has faithfully tended to his duties — except for the 40 months he spent back in Mexico after being wrongfully deported. Poor legal advice and fierce resistance from the immigration bureaucracy to correct some mistakes cast him into a prolonged legal battle to regain what he had lost. Now, more than a decade after becoming a symbol...

January 19, 2023

DOS Launches "Welcome Corps" for Private Refugee Sponsorship

State Department, Jan. 19, 2023 "The Department of State, in collaboration with the Department of Health and Human Services, is pleased to announce the creation of the Welcome Corps, a new private sponsorship program that empowers everyday Americans to play a leading role in welcoming refugees arriving through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) and supporting their resettlement and integration as they...

January 18, 2023

New DHS Guidance on Prosecutorial Discretion for Labor Disputes: NILC FAQ

NILC, Jan. 2023 "... The following FAQ explains both the January 13, 2023, DHS guidance as well as the processes outlined by labor agencies for workers to request their support in seeking prosecutorial discretion from DHS. ..."