April 11, 2022

Differential Treatment at the Border

CBP is quickly and easily admitting Ukrainian asylum-seekers at the southern border, while most others are turned away, in violation of law.  Elliot Spagat (Associated Press) reports here ; Camilo Montoya-Gálvez reports here .

April 07, 2022

Protection Delayed is Protection Denied: Factsheet on Title 42 Expulsions, Haitian Asylum Seekers in Tijuana, and the U.S. Government’s Ongoing Evasion of Duty

HHP, CGRS, Haitian Bridge, Apr. 7, 2022 "An estimated 10,000 Black migrants, predominantly asylum seekers from Haiti, currently reside in Tijuana where they face discrimination and violence. Since the imposition of Title 42, the United States has refused to permit nearly all individuals their legal right to seek asylum and has instead conducted mass expulsions. Title 42 has had a particularly devastating impact...

April 06, 2022

Starving for Justice: The Denial of Proper Nutrition in Immigrant Detention

California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, Apr. 6, 2022 "Imagine spending months, sometimes years without a single homemade meal. Imagine eating more than 400 meals out of a tray. Imagine having to eat in a dining hall that smells like dirty dishrags. This is what immigrants in detention have to face every single day due to the abysmal food conditions inside the facilities they're locked in. Due to multiple...

April 06, 2022

Russian Asylum Seekers Admitted to US Via Secret Deal With Mexico

David Noriega, David Mora, Gabriela Martínez, VICE, Mar. 28, 2022 "A group of Russian citizens who fled their country after the invasion of Ukraine and spent a week camped out at the U.S.-Mexico border was quietly admitted to the U.S. in a secret deal with Mexican officials, VICE World News has learned. The group of 35 asylum seekers were whisked away in the predawn hours of March 20 and driven to a part of the...

April 05, 2022

Expert: Litigation Could Prolong Title 42 Border Blockade

Jorge Cancino, Univision, Apr. 4, 2022 "Last week, after news of the CDC's withdrawal of Title 42, Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law at Cornell University School of Law in New York, warned that conservative states ... would "challenge the termination of Title 42 in court for encouraging more asylum claims." ... Yale-Loehr further said that “the perception that lifting Title 42 will...

April 04, 2022

Texas' Operation Lone Star Has Not Slowed Migration

Jolie McCullough, Texas Tribune, Apr. 4, 2022 "Texas’ border operation is meant to stop cartels and smugglers. More often, it arrests migrants for misdemeanor trespassing. The largest share of Operation Lone Star arrests were of people accused only of trespassing on private property. Many spend months in prison, but the strategy does not appear to have slowed immigration." [ This article is co-published...

April 04, 2022

Advocates Push Back Against Rosy ICE Access to Counsel Report

National Immigrant Justice Center, American Immigration Council, ACLU of Southern California, Southern Poverty Law Center, March 22, 2022 "Our organizations provide legal services or represent organizations that provide legal services to individuals in ICE detention facilities throughout the United States, and work closely in coalition with many other organizations that do the same. We write to share our concerns...

April 04, 2022

Immigration Relief for Ukrainian Refugees: What the United States is Currently Offering

Cyrus Mehta, Apr. 2, 2022 "I conducted  a  one hour presentation on immigration relief for Ukrainians under the aegis of the Practicing Law Institute on March 29, 2022, and spoke about options for Ukrainians in the US as well as for those who have fled Ukraine or considering fleeing as a result of the unprovoked Russian invasion. This presentation  should assist attorneys who wish to represent Ukrainians impacted...

April 01, 2022

Expert: Extra H-2B Visas "Not Nearly Enough"

Aishvarya Kavi, New York Times, Mar. 31, 2022 "The Biden administration, responding to an  increasing demand  for temporary workers, announced on Thursday that it would make an additional 35,000 seasonal worker visas available for American businesses to hire foreign workers ahead of the coming summer months. The visa program being expanded, known as the  H-2B visa program , allows American businesses to hire foreign...

March 31, 2022

Under Legal Pressure, Navy Resumes Sec. 329 Expedited Natz

[As Margaret Stock notes, this is due more to the Samma litigation than to executive action.] Brandie Nix, DVIDS, Mar. 29, 2022 "For the first time since 2017, Recruit Training Command (RTC) held a naturalization ceremony March 17, in which 25 recruits from 17 countries recited the Naturalization Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America and officially became U.S. citizens. The ceremony, held in the...

March 30, 2022

Expert: Congress Unlikely to Act on Immigration Reform This Year

Andrew Kreighbaum, Bloomberg Law, Mar. 30, 2022 "To secure a bipartisan deal on immigration in Congress, a coalition of employers and faith groups is thinking small. The Alliance for a New Immigration Consensus is pressing lawmakers to pass legislation centered around protections for farm workers, Dreamers, and recipients of Temporary Protected Status that’s paired with investments in border security. The emphasis...

March 29, 2022

Beyond the Bridge: Documented Human Rights Abuses and Civil Rights Violations Against Haitian Migrants in the Del Rio, Texas Encampment

RFK Human Rights, Haitian Bridge Alliance, March 2022 "From approximately September 9th to September 25th, 2021, more than 15,000 Black Haitian migrants, desperate to save their lives and the lives of their families, waited under the Del Rio International Bridge. Under triple digit Texas heat, thousands of asylum seekers sought protection in the United States from persecution and torture. Instead, they were met...

March 29, 2022

Cornell Project Helps Refugees Claim Health Care Rights

Jackie Swift, Cornell Chronicle, Mar. 29, 2022 "A Cornell collaboration crossing medicine, law, technology and communication is aiming to encourage the use of health care benefits by refugees in the United States – who often suffer poor health but are using these entitlements less than they have in the past. “Many of them believe – wrongly – that if they take any public benefits they will become deportable or...

March 29, 2022

Using U.S. Immigration Law to Undermine Putin

Cyrus D. Mehta and Kaitlyn Box, Mar. 28, 2022 "Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022, there has rightly been much discussion of how to assist the Ukraine and its citizens. The United States’ immigration laws can plainly be employed to assist Ukrainian nationals who wish to seek refuge in the United States, including  extending  Temporary Protected Status for them. However, immigration can serve...

March 29, 2022

Access to Counsel: Did ICE Lie to Congress?

Suzanne Monyak, Roll Call, Mar. 22, 2022 "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement claimed in a new report to congressional appropriators about detention that immigrants had “unabated” access to lawyers during the pandemic — though the agency admitted it does not track legal visits or access violations at its facilities. The report, submitted to the House and Senate Homeland Security appropriations subcommittees...

March 29, 2022

Is Congress Failing Afghan Evacuees?

Abigail Hauslohner, Washington Post, Mar. 29, 2022 "Most Afghan evacuees fled with few, if any, belongings. Some were separated from immediate family members in the chaos. Many remain   deeply traumatized. Then there is the larger, looming crisis that military veterans groups and refugee advocates are urging Congress to consider. About 95 percent of those brought to the United States were admitted under what the...

March 28, 2022

ICE Attorneys: Foreign Students at Fake College "Victims of Fraud"

Rich Schapiro, NBC News, Mar. 27, 2022 "[T]he University of Northern New Jersey wasn’t a real school.  The university was an elaborate ruse set up by the Department of Homeland Security to lure brokers and recruiters suspected of engaging in student visa fraud. ... A group of students filed a federal lawsuit alleging that they were collateral damage in the sting, duped by both the brokers and the undercover agents...

March 25, 2022

Law Students Win Asylum for Nigerian Voting Rights Activist

IHRC, Mar. 25, 2022 "Students in the  Immigration and Human Rights Clinic  (IHRC) worked to obtain asylum for a voting rights activist from Nigeria. This case prompted the Clinic to develop a resource to assist asylees in understanding their rights. The clinic took on the case of a Nigerian woman, Chioma*, who had been active in organizing women and youth in the Delta region to vote against corrupt political...

March 25, 2022

Asylum and Public Charge

Immigration and Human Rights Clinic, UDC Clarke School of Law, Feb. 17, 2022 Hats off to Prof. Lindsay M. Harris for creating this useful tool!

March 24, 2022

Cruelty as Border Policy: The Biden Administration Keeps in Place CBP’s “Consequence Delivery System”

Todd Miller, The Border Chronicle, Mar. 24, 2022 "In June 2021, U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued a  guide  to determine the effectiveness and cost efficiency of the punishments meted out to unauthorized border-crossers. According to documents  received  by the immigration rights organization the  National Immigrant Justice Center  (NIJC) under the Freedom of Information Act, Border Patrol agents used this...

March 24, 2022

USCIS Agrees to Restore Path to Permanent Residency for TPS Beneficiaries

CARECEN, Mar. 22, 2022 "U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agreed to restore a path to permanent residency for many Temporary Protected Status (TPS) beneficiaries blocked by then-acting USCIS Director Ken Cuccinelli—an illegally appointed Trump official . Because of today’s agreement, TPS beneficiaries impacted by this policy will be able to reopen and dismiss their removal orders and...

March 22, 2022

Operation Lone Star: A Hard Look

Lomi Kriel, Perla Trevizo, Andrew Rodríguez Calderón, Jolie McCullough, The Marshall Project, Mar. 21, 2022 "[T]he state’s claim of success has been based on shifting metrics that included crimes with no connection to the border, work conducted by troopers stationed in targeted counties prior to the operation, and arrest and drug seizure efforts that do not clearly distinguish DPS’s role from that of other agencies...

March 22, 2022

The EB-5 Regional Center Program: Rise of the Phoenix

Nicolai Hinrichsen, Stephen Yale-Loehr and Adam Schaye, Mar. 21, 2022 "...Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the regional center program has been resurrected.  On March 15, 2022, President Biden signed a $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill that included the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 (the “2022 EB-5 Act”).3 The 2022 EB-5 Act extends the regional center program for five years, until September 30, 2027...

March 21, 2022

AILA Partners with Nonprofit Lender to Help Immigrants Pay Legal Costs

Jessica Folker, Law Week Colorado, Feb. 18, 2022 "Earlier this month, the American Immigration Lawyers Association and nonprofit lender Capital Good Fund announced a partnership to help immigrants pay for legal costs. Under the new program, Capital Good Fund became AILA’s preferred immigration loan partner for funding immigration legal services. Capital Good Fund currently offers small personal loans in nine states...

March 17, 2022

Immigration Reform: What Needs To Happen

On March 15, 2022, Prof. Stephen H. Legomsky , The John S. Lehmann University Professor Emeritus, Washington University School of Law, testified before the United States Senate Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, and Border Safety, Committee on the Judiciary. The nutshell: "Section I of this testimony examines ways to raise the worldwide caps on the admission of LPRs. Section II recommends reclassifying...