November 18, 2021

Launch Event: "Any Day They Could Deport Me"

End SIJS Backlog Coalition and The Door -  "Any Day They Could Deport Me": Over 44,000 Immigrant Children Trapped in the SIJS Backlog "Please join the End SIJS Backlog Coalition and The Door for the launch of our report on the harms of the Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (“SIJS”) backlog to directly impacted children, child welfare agencies, as well as legal services providers, immigration agencies...

November 17, 2021

How Prof. Michele Pistone Trains Accredited Reps

Lyle Moran, ABA Journal, Nov. 17, 2021 "Michele Pistone, a professor at the Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law, says there are not enough immigration lawyers and attorneys who take on pro bono cases to meet the demand of immigrants seeking legal assistance.  This justice gap is a primary reason that Pistone decided to create a program at her university to train paraprofessionals to become  accredited...

November 17, 2021

Barbarians and Butterflies: Part 1

Melissa del Bosque, The Border Chronicle, Nov. 16, 2021 "How a Texas butterfly sanctuary became the center of the resistance against Trump, Steve Bannon and the right-wing agenda at the border."

November 15, 2021

Immigration Court Backlog Nears 1.5 Million Cases: TRAC

TRAC, Nov. 15, 2021 "Including nearly 50,000 new deportation cases filed in Immigration Court in just October 2021, the total pending cases in the Immigration Courts now reaches 1,486,495 according to  TRAC's updated Quick Facts tools . Immigration Judges completed 21,154 cases in October, less than half of the total new cases coming into the courts, which means the total backlog continues to grow each month...

November 15, 2021

IPTP Update!

IPTP, Nov. 15, 2021 "The Immigration Policy Tracking Project (IPTP) has a new look and a new outlook! IPTP, the go-to source for tracking Trump Administration immigration policies -- ranging from executive orders to policy minutiae -- has shifted focus. We now follow every detail of those policies' fates as they are addressed (or not) by the Biden-Harris Administration, courts, and other actors. Glance at the...

November 15, 2021

Stale ICE Detention Numbers

Austin Kocher, Nov. 15, 2021 "Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is actively undermining Congress by failing to release accurate information about the number of immigrants in detention on a regular basis. While minor data issues with ICE’s regular immigration detention data releases certainly occurred during the Trump administration, ICE’s spreadsheet of detention data has seen more significant errors recently...

November 15, 2021

Expert: Latest Immigration Proposal a "Down Payment" Toward CIR

Daisy Contreras, The World, Nov. 11, 2021 "The newest plan doesn't offer a pathway to citizenship for about 11 million undocumented people. What it does include is work permits and protection from deportation. Still, some immigration experts [including Prof. Stephen W. Yale-Loehr at 2:45] say that even that plan would be historic if passed into law. The World's Daisy Contreras has more."

November 12, 2021

Black Farmworkers in Miss. Bring H-2A Visa Abuse Lawsuit

The amended complaint is here . "Black farmworkers from Mississippi sued Pitts Farms Partnership — one of the largest farms in Mississippi — for discriminating against them in favor of white foreign workers, costing them thousands of dollars in unpaid wages and lost job opportunities. The lawsuit, filed by the Mississippi Center for Justice and Southern Migrant Legal Services, also alleges that Pitts Farms illegally...

November 10, 2021

The Asylum Whirlwind: Where Are We Now? (Video)

Duke Law, Nov. 9, 2021 (link to 48 min. video) "Please join us for a conversation with Karen Musalo, the founding director of the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies (CGRS) at U.C. Hastings College of Law. Drawing on her leadership in landmark gender-based asylum cases, Ms. Musalo will discuss the barriers currently facing asylum-seekers at the border and inside the United States. She will also address the...

November 10, 2021

Major Settlement Changes How USCIS Adjudicates Work Permits for Nonimmigrant Spouses: AILA

AILA, Nov. 10, 2021 "The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and its litigation partners Wasden Banias and Steven Brown, celebrate the historic settlement with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in Shergill, et al. v. Mayorkas , which provides structural changes for nonimmigrant H-4 and L-2 spouses suffering from long delayed processing times for the processing of applications for employment...

November 10, 2021

Major Settlement Changes How USCIS Adjudicates Work Permits for Nonimmigrant Spouses: AILA

AILA, Nov. 10, 2021 "The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and its litigation partners Wasden Banias and Steven Brown, celebrate the historic settlement with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in  Shergill, et al. v. Mayorkas ,  which provides structural changes for nonimmigrant H-4 and L-2 spouses suffering from long delayed processing times for the processing of applications for employment...

November 10, 2021

Asylum Grant Rates Climb Under Biden: TRAC

TRAC, Nov. 10, 2021 "Under the new Biden administration, asylum seekers are seeing greater success rates in securing asylum. While relief grant rates had fallen ever lower during the Trump years to just 29 percent in FY 2020, they rose to 37 percent in FY 2021 under President Biden. However, with the ongoing partial Court shutdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a sustained drop in the number of...

November 09, 2021

Work Permit Delay Class Action Filed Against USCIS

AILA, Nov. 8, 2021 "49 plaintiffs represented by AILA, Farshad Owji, Aaron Hall, Charles Kuck, and Greg Siskind filed a class action lawsuit against DHS and USCIS over the extreme processing delays on applications for EADs for noncitizens who are seeking Adjustment of Status (AOS) and E-2 nonimmigrant spouses."

November 09, 2021

Groups Demand ICE Allow Detained Haitians Access to Legal Services

Innovation Law Lab, Nov. 9, 2021 " ESTANCIA N.M.  –– Last Friday, November 5th, a group of immigrant rights advocates and organizations delivered a  letter  to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) demanding access to legal services for Haitian migrants detained at Torrance County Detention Facility in New Mexico. ICE  has repeatedly denied access despite multiple attempts by advocates to speak and meet with...

November 09, 2021

A Q&A with Carlos Spector, El Paso Immigration Attorney and Human Rights Defender

Melissa del Bosque, The Border Chronicle, Nov. 9, 2021 "For more than 30 years, Carlos Spector has worked as a human rights defender and immigration attorney in El Paso, Texas, where he specializes in Mexican asylum cases. For years, Mexicans fleeing persecution and political violence have viewed Spector’s law office, which he runs with his wife, Sandra, also a longtime human rights activist, as a place of refuge...

November 08, 2021

BALCA Provides Further Guidance on Resume Review in Labor Certification Recruitment

Cyrus D. Mehta & Jessica Paszko*, Nov. 6, 2021 "Under the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”), U.S. employers wishing to sponsor a foreign worker for employment and permanent residence must first prove to the Department of Labor (“DOL”) that there are no sufficient workers who are able, willing, qualified and available for the prospective job and that hiring the foreign worker will not adversely affect...

November 04, 2021

The ‘Third Rail of American Politics’ Is Still Electrifying

Thomas B. Edsall, NYT, Nov. 3, 2021 "Although public polling on immigration shows a strong shift to the left, survey responses in that vein mask a far more complicated reality. Over and over again, immigration has proved to be politically problematic for Democrats. As far back as 2007, when he was chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, Rahm Emanuel warned that immigration had become the new “third rail of American...

November 03, 2021

The Migrant Workers Who Follow Climate Disasters

Sarah Stillman, The New Yorker, Nov. 8, 2021 "In the past year, I followed Resilience Force through more than twenty disaster recoveries during one of the fiercest periods of extreme weather on record. I spoke with more than a hundred workers, storm survivors, advocates, and climate-change experts, and reviewed thousands of pages of Department of Labor records, death-and-injury reports, and documents emerging from...

November 02, 2021

On 'Remain in Mexico' and Leaving the Biden Administration: An Audio Interview with Stephanie Leutert

Melissa del Bosque, The Border Chronicle, Nov. 2, 2021 " Until August, Stephanie Leutert served in the Biden administration as a senior adviser for migration policy at the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. Leutert moved to Washington, DC, with the idea of helping end some of the worst, inhumane immigration policies implemented by the Trump administration, including the Migrant...

November 02, 2021

Rigged by Design: ICE's Detention Algorithm

Aly Panjwani, Inquest, Oct. 29, 2021 "ICE’s policy preferences for carceral inputs meant that “the RCA’s algorithm lost the ability to measure true risk,” turning instead into “a tool of prosecution, pairing detention with enforcement preference regardless of risk.” ... Why did an algorithm that was supposedly designed to limit detention as a final resort continue to detain people in such large percentages? Because...

November 01, 2021

The Facebook Settlement Only Adds Contradictions

Cyrus D. Mehta, Kaitlyn Box, Nov. 1, 2021 "On October 19, 2021, the U.S. DOJ and DOL  announced  that they had reached separate settlement agreements with Facebook regarding the company’s purportedly discriminatory PERM labor certification practices. These settlement agreements stem from a December 2020 DOJ  complaint , in which the government alleged that Facebook had discriminated against qualified and available...

November 01, 2021

S.F. Immigration Court "Conveyor Belt" Fast-Tracks In Absentia Orders

Tal Kopan, Deepa Fernandes, San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 1, 2021 "A San Francisco immigration judge took less than an hour on Tuesday to order 23 people deported. But none of the immigrants was present and it’s unclear whether they knew about the hearing — even as they were deported for missing it. The proceedings are part of a recently enacted effort  the San Francisco Immigration Court  says it’s undertaking...

October 30, 2021

Federal Jury: GEO Group Owes $17.3M in Back Pay to ICE Prisoners

Martin Kaste, NPR, Oct. 29, 2021 "A federal jury in Tacoma, Wash., says the GEO Group, which owns and runs a large detention center for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, owes former detainees $17.3 million in back pay for tasks such as cleaning and cooking meals. The Florida-based for-profit prison company paid detainees $1 a day for such work, a practice the jury determined earlier this week   is a violation...

October 29, 2021

Elisabeth S. "Lisa" Brodyaga, Immigration Law Giant, Dies at 80

Where to begin.  Maybe with her legal briefs.  If you value clarity, power and concision, read her briefs.  Many immigration lawyers (especially those of my advanced age) knew Lisa and basically revered her.  She literally saved the lives of countless immigrants, and inspired a "Due Process Army" of immigration lawyers to keep fighting in the face of seemingly insuperable odds.  Please read Robert Kahn's...

October 28, 2021

Federal Jury Verdict: GEO Must Pay Minimum Wage to ICE Prisoners

Washington State AG Bob Ferguson, Oct. 27, 2021 "In a victory for Washington, a federal jury determined that GEO Group Inc. (GEO), the for-profit operator of the Northwest ICE Processing Center, violates Washington’s minimum wage laws by paying detainee workers only $1 per day. The verdict concludes the first phase of a retrial in Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s lawsuit against GEO. After a two-and-a-half-week...