February 01, 2022

Robot Border Patrol Dogs?

DHS, Feb. 1, 2022 (What could possibly go wrong?)

February 01, 2022

State Department Continues To Fight Diversity Visa Immigrants In Court

Stuart Anderson, Forbes, Jan. 31, 2022 "Donald Trump blocked the entry of immigrants on Diversity Visas, and the Biden administration has continued to fight in court against issuing and reserving the visas. Even though Joe Biden denounced and  ended the Trump proclamation  against Diversity Visa winners and other immigrants, the Biden administration has appealed court rulings that would allow many Diversity Visa...

February 01, 2022

Driving While Brown: The Rise of Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the Latino Resistance That Defeated Him

Melissa del Bosque, The Border Chronicle, Feb. 1, 2022 " The Border Chronicle  is highlighting a Q&A with journalists  Jude Joffe-Block  and  Terry Greene Sterling  who covered the rise of Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio as he waged a campaign of terror against the state’s Latino community. In their book  Driving While Brown: Sheriff Joe Arpaio Versus the Latino Resistance , the two document the racial-profiling...

February 01, 2022

Blame Congress, Not Biden, For Lack of Immigration Reform

Dean Kevin R. Johnson, Feb. 1, 2022 "[I]f one is truly interested in immigration change, the appropriate measuring stick is not what Biden did in year one but what Congress has failed to do for decades — pass meaningful immigration reform. Democrats and Republicans repeatedly claim that the current immigration system is “broken” but have done absolutely nothing to fix it. Presidents Bush, Obama...

January 31, 2022

America's Competitive Advantage: Immigrants!

Matthew Yglesias, Bloomberg, Jan. 30, 2022 "Opening the doors to people fleeing foreign oppression has long been a winning strategy for the U.S., from the ’48ers such as Carl Schurz who served the Union Army with distinction after fleeing the failure of the Revolutions of 1848, to the European-born Jewish scientists who powered the Manhattan Project."

January 27, 2022

Trump's Travel Ban Forever Changed the Lives of Muslims Around the World

Rowaida Abdelaziz, Amr Alfiky, Huffington Post, Jan. 2022 "A year-long HuffPost investigation found hundreds of cases of Trump’s ban changing the lives of Muslims, both inside the United States and around the world. Families have been ripped apart. Educational and employment opportunities have been denied, maybe forever. People have missed milestones like birthdays, funerals and weddings. Some gave up on coming...

January 26, 2022

20 Years of Improvements Provide Security and Strong Vetting Procedures for Admitting Refugees to the U.S.

Elizabeth Neumann, NFAP, Jan. 25, 2022 "Over the last two decades, security and law enforcement professionals at all levels have worked to establish, improve and utilize robust security and vetting procedures for individuals admitted as refugees to the United States. These policies and procedures have been reviewed, enhanced and strengthened repeatedly. The procedures provide adequate security for the United States...

January 26, 2022

Prof. Anna W. Shavers, R.I.P.

Amber Ediger, Troy Fedderson, Nebraska Today, Jan. 26, 2022 "Anna Williams Shavers, 75, Cline Williams Professor of Citizenship Law and associate dean for diversity and inclusion in the College of Law, died Jan. 22. A tireless advocate for inclusion and justice, Shavers served as a member of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln faculty since 1989. Her primary area of interest was immigration and its intersections...

January 25, 2022

Cyrus Mehta on STEM Expansion, EB Visa Petition Transfers

Bender's Immigration Bulletin Editorial Board Member Cyrus D. Mehta has two new blog posts online: Expansion of STEM Practical Training and Broadening of O-1A Standards Allows Foreign Talented Students to Contribute to the US Even If Rejected in the H-1B Lottery and  Frequently Asked Questions on Transferring the Underlying Basis of an I-485 application from an I-140 petition under India EB-3 to an I-140 under...

January 24, 2022

Expert: STEM Expansion a "Significant Step" for U.S. Competitiveness (Law360)

Nadia Dreid, Law360, Jan. 21, 2022 "The Biden administration has implemented a pair of changes aimed at making it easier for international students in the STEM field to stay and work in the U.S. after graduation by widening the net of careers that fall into the science, technology, engineering or mathematics category and making it easier for those people to qualify as "extraordinary" individuals. ......

January 21, 2022

Águilas / Eagles (Documentary Film)

Águilas / Eagles - "Along the southern desert border in Arizona, it is estimated that only one out of every five missing migrants are ever found. Águilas is the story of one group of searchers, the Aguilas del Desierto. Once a month these volunteers—construction workers, gardeners, domestic laborers by trade—set out to recover the missing, reported to them by loved ones often thousands of miles away. Amidst rising...

January 20, 2022

Biden at the One-Year Mark: A Greater Change in Direction on Immigration Than Is Recognized

Muzaffar Chishti and Jessica Bolter, MPI, Jan. 19, 2022 "While Donald Trump’s presidency is perceived as being the most active on immigration, touching nearly every aspect of the U.S. immigration system, President Joe Biden’s administration has far outpaced his predecessor in the number of executive actions taken during his first year in office. Yet the Biden administration’s pace of change has largely gone unnoticed...

January 20, 2022

Tohono O'odham Woman Found Not Guilty in Border Wall Protest

Danyelle Khmera, Arizona Daily Star, Jan. 19, 2022 "A judge ruled that a Tohono O’odham woman is not guilty of criminal action in protesting border wall construction on her ancestral land, saying the prosecution imposed a substantial burden on the exercise of her religion. In issuing the verdict Wednesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Leslie Bowman reversed her previous ruling that Amber Ortega couldn’t use the Religious...

January 19, 2022

Immigration Court Case Backlog Explodes

TRAC, Jan. 18, 2022 "The U.S. Immigration Court system is currently staring up a mountain of pending cases that at the end of December 2021 reached 1,596,193 — the largest in history. If every person with a pending immigration case were gathered together it would be larger than the population of Philadelphia, the sixth largest city in the United States. Previous administrations — all the way back through at least...

January 17, 2022

EOIR's Flawed IJ Discipline System

Yilun Cheng, Columbus Dispatch, Jan. 16, 2022 "Nationally, EOIR receives about 100 complaints against immigration judges every year, but most of them do not carry serious consequences,  EOIR statistics  show. Sixty-one percent of all complaints closed in the fiscal year 2020 ended up being dismissed. Another 35% ended with additional counseling or training of the judge involved. Three percent concluded with retirement...

January 14, 2022

Texas Gov. Abbott's "Operation Lone Star" Hits Constitutional Wall

Jolie McCullough, Texas Tribune, Jan. 14, 2022 -  Texas judge opens door for widespread constitutional challenges to Gov. Greg Abbott’s border initiative Laurel Calkins, Bloomberg News, Jan. 13, 2022 -  Texas Judge Rules Abbott’s Border Crackdown Unconstitutional Judge Soifer's Order here . Pleadings and Expert Report here .

January 13, 2022

Illinois’ ICE detention ban to take effect within weeks following appeals court ruling

Carlos Ballesteros, Injustice Watch, Jan. 13, 2022 "Two Illinois counties that detain immigrants in federal custody in their local jails will have to terminate their contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement within weeks, an appeals court ruled Wednesday . A three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a temporary pause on the enforcement of an Illinois law passed this summer...

January 13, 2022

ICE Detains 22,000 Immigrants at Start of 2022, Monitors 157,000 on Alternatives to Detention Program

TRAC, Jan. 13, 2022 "According to new data available through TRAC's ' Quick Facts ' tools, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is holding about 22,000 immigrants in civil detention centers across the country at the beginning of January. Over the past several months, the number of immigrants in detention at a single point in time has remained consistently lower than July, when ICE reported over...

January 13, 2022

Biden Administration's "Dedicated Docket" Speeds Up Asylum Hearings – But at What Cost?

Austin Kocher, Jan. 13, 2022 "The Biden administration’s “Dedicated Docket” was created in May 2021 with the goal of accelerating cases that involved recently arrived asylum-seeking families while providing access to legal support and maintaining fairness. 1 But a new report from the  Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC)  at Syracuse University released this morning shows that the program may be...

January 13, 2022

On America's Obsession with Locking up Immigrants: Prof. César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández

Todd Miller, Border Chronicle, Jan. 13, 2022 "When Joe Biden administration took office in January 2021, there were promises of a new direction in border and immigration enforcement, and that the policies of Donald Trump would be left behind. Now a year later, it seems important to look at what has and hasn’t been done, and what’s to come. In terms of the immigrant detention system, I thought there would be no...

January 13, 2022

U.S. Citizen Sues Pierce County for Unlawfully Detaining Him and Violating Constitutional Rights and State Law

NWIRP, Jan. 12, 2022 "Carlos Rios, a United States citizen, filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington today against Pierce County and Pierce County Jail deputies, seeking declaratory relief and damages for his unlawful imprisonment and violations of his civil rights under federal and state law. He is represented in the case by the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP...

January 11, 2022

Experts Comment in Advance of Supreme Court Oral Argument

Jan. 11, 2022 - Today the Supreme Court will hold oral arguments in two immigration cases.  Two expert comment: Prof. Shalini Ray - "The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Tuesday in two related immigration cases ,  Johnson v. Arteaga-Martinez  and  Garland v. Aleman Gonzalez . In both cases, noncitizens who are under deportation orders are challenging their prolonged detention – sometimes many months or...

January 09, 2022

Concerns Grow Over Denials of Afghan Humanitarian Parole Requests

Rebekah Wolf, Immigration Impact, Jan. 7, 2022 "As the United States hastily withdrew its military presence from Afghanistan in August 2021, it began Operation Allies Welcome, a program designed to assist the tens of thousands of Afghans who successfully fled Afghanistan as the Taliban took control. Many of these individuals had previously assisted the U.S. military and its allies throughout the decades-long war...

January 09, 2022

Bob Marley's U.S. Immigration File

Claudia Gardner, DanceHallMag, Jan. 5, 2022 "Reggae legend  Bob Marley  was ordered by United States Immigration officials, to leave the country or be deported, on two occasions, records dating back to 1966 have revealed. The  documents , totaling 95 pages, which were requested by journalist and social justice activist Murv Glass a month after Bob died in 1981 under the Freedom of Information Act, have been online...

January 08, 2022

COVID Surge Triggers Immigration Court Postponements

EOIR, Jan. 8, 2022 "On January 10, 2022, in response to the recent increase in both active cases and community transmission of COVID-19, EOIR postponed certain hearings. Generally, the case categories are as follows, but please continue reading for additional information.   If you have questions or are uncertain whether your hearing has been postponed, please check the  Automated Court Information System  online...