May 19, 2021

Rocketdyne Misunderstood ITAR, Pays DOJ $37K to Settle Immigration Discrimination Claim

DOJ, May 17, 2021 "The Department of Justice today announced that it reached a settlement with Aerojet Rocketdyne Inc. (Aerojet Rocketdyne), a rocket and missile propulsion manufacturer. The settlement resolves a charge brought by a lawful permanent resident whom Aerojet Rocketdyne did not consider for a mechanic position because of his immigration status. The department’s investigation concluded that Aerojet...

May 19, 2021

Utah Opens Law Enforcement Jobs to Certain Non-Citizens

On March 16, 2021, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed S.B. 102, the Peace Officer Training Qualifications Amendments  bill, into law, permitting some lawful permanent residents to apply to become peace officers or dispatchers.  Here is a May 18, 2021 Op-Ed by Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown, supporting the new law.

May 17, 2021

NM ACLU Sues CoreCivic Over Treatment of Immigrant Prisoners

Associated Press, May 14, 2021 "The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico and the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center on Friday sued a private prison company over the treatment of nine immigrant detainees at the Torrance County Detention Center.  The  lawsuit  centers on the use of pepper spray by guards last year as the immigrants protested poor living conditions and what they said were inadequate COVID-19...

May 17, 2021

Tech Giants Throw Support Behind H-4 EAD Rule

Chris Mills Rodrigo, The Hill, May 14, 2021 "A group of nearly 30 tech companies and other organizations filed a legal brief Friday to defend a program that gives work authorization to the spouses of high-skilled immigrants.  The Obama-era rule lets nearly 100,000 spouses of H1-B visa holders in the U.S. work. The rule, known as H-4 EAD, is currently being challenged in court by a group of American tech workers...

May 14, 2021

Migratory Notes 212, May 13, 2021

Migratory Notes 212, May 13, 2021 - Harris’ silence on border; shadowy new wave of caravan organizers; opaque network of shelters...and so much more!

May 14, 2021

Documents Show Trump Officials Used Secret Terrorism Unit to Question Lawyers at the Border

Dara Lind, May 14, 2021 "Taylor Levy couldn’t understand why she’d been held for hours by Customs and Border Protection officials when crossing back into El Paso, Texas, after getting dinner with friends in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, in January 2019. And she didn’t know why she was being questioned by an agent who’d introduced himself as a counterterrorism specialist. Levy was part of the legal team representing...

May 14, 2021

The Racist Roots of the Anti-Immigration Tanton Network

Mario H. Lopez, May 14, 2021 "In early April the Center for Immigration Studies—one of America’s principal anti-immigration groups—suggested using American taxpayer dollars to promote “family planning” in Central America, worried that Northern Triangle countries (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) have a younger-than-average population with more women in child-bearing years and that  “the further south one ventures...

May 13, 2021

Addressing the Legacy of Expedited Removal: Border Procedures and Alternatives for Reform

Dr. Yael Schacher, May 13, 2021 "Though he has already revoked some of the former administration’s highly restrictive policies on asylum, President Biden has thus far left in place an expulsion policy first imposed by the Trump administration under Title 42 of the U.S. Code , and based on the unreasonable assertion that public health requires such restrictive measures be essentially directed at asylum seekers....

May 11, 2021

Over 8,000 MPP Cases Transferred Into U.S. Under Biden

TRAC, May 11, 2021 "As of the end of April 2021, a total of 8,387 individuals formerly forced to remain in Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) have been able to enter the United States since President Biden ended this Trump-era program [1] .  TRAC previously reported  that by the end of March 3,911 individuals had been allowed to enter the U.S. under a phased process. During April, the pace picked...

May 11, 2021

ICE Updates "Sensitive Locations and Courthouse Arrests" FAQ

ICE, May 2021 - FAQs: Sensitive Locations and Courthouse Arrests

May 10, 2021

A Doctor Detained by ICE

Merlys Rodriguez-Hernandez, M.D., Tara C. Pilato, B.A., Kayleigh A. Yerdon, B.S., Ian M. Kysel, J.D., L.L.M., Faten Taki, Ph.D., Stephen Yale-Loehr, J.D., Gunisha Kaur, M.D., illustrated by Alison E. Burke, M.A., and Natalie Koscal, M.A., May 8, 2021 "This Graphic Perspective tells the story of a Cuban doctor who, having been targeted by her government as a dissident, seeks asylum in the United States, only to...

May 06, 2021

Title 42: The Misuse of Public Health to Restrict Asylum

Here is a link to the recording of the May 6, 2021 60-minute webinar by PHR, Physicians for Human Rights: " The Trump administration's misuse of a long-forgotten public health statute has turned the Title 42 policy into one of the most restrictive immigration policies ever implemented at the U.S. southern border. President Biden has yet to repeal the policy, sustaining massive expulsions of asylum seekers,...

May 04, 2021

Scholars Ask Garland to Remove Non-Priority Cases from the Active Docket of the Nation’s Immigration Courts

Letter dated Apr. 30, 2021 "As immigration law teachers and scholars, we write to express our opinion on the scope of executive branch legal authority for the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) to utilize well-established administrative tools to address the historic backlog of cases pending in immigration courts. Each case in the backlog involves an immigrant, many waiting for years to have a “day in...

May 03, 2021

US Imposes COVID Travel Ban on India: How Effective Are Such Travel Bans?

Cyrus D. Mehta and Kaitlyn Box*, May 3, 2021 "In  previous blogs  we have discussed the Trump administration’s numerous COVID travel bans that were extended by President Biden, and provided suggestions for overcoming them. On Friday, April 30, 2021, a new COVID-related travel ban was implemented, this time by the Biden Administration. President Biden issued a  Presidential Proclamation  suspending the entry into...

April 30, 2021

Migratory Notes 210, Apr. 29, 2021

Migratory Notes 210, Apr. 29, 2021 - Biden to Congress: Pass it; border kidnappings up; Chinese scientists targeted...and much, much more!

April 29, 2021

Expert: Supreme Court Decision Gives Some Immigrants a "Second Chance"

Andrew Chung, Reuters, Apr. 29, 2021 "The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday offered new hope to thousands of long-term immigrants seeking to avoid deportation in a ruling that faulted the federal government for improperly notifying a man who came to the United States illegally from Guatemala to appear for a removal hearing. The justices, in a 6-3 decision that divided the high court's conservative bloc, overturned...

April 29, 2021

Border Patrol Agrees to Two $35,000 Settlements in Racial Profiling, Unlawful Detention Cases

NWIRP, Apr. 29, 2021 "The United States has agreed to pay two men $35,000 each in settlements after they were wrongfully detained and interrogated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in separate incidents at the Intermodal Center, a bus station in Spokane, Washington. The 2017 and 2019 detentions of Andres Sosa Segura and Mohanad Elshieky were part of a pattern of discriminatory behavior by Border Patrol...

April 29, 2021

DOJ's Contradictory Positions on MS-13 and "Political Opinion"

Jeffrey S. Chase, Apr. 29, 2021 "In a recent blog post , I discussed the difficulty in establishing asylum based on a political opinion expressed against MS-13. In the specific case discussed, the Board of Immigration Appeals reversed the Immigration Judge’s finding that the asylum-seeker had expressed a political opinion to MS-13 members.1 In reversing the Immigration Judge, the BIA specifically stated as...

April 28, 2021

FDR's Unfounded "Fifth Column" WWII Fears Created Today's Immigration Court Mess

Isabela Dias, Mother Jones, Apr. 28, 2021 "During the Trump administration, Alison Peck started to see more of her cases have an outcome she describes as “a door just slammed” in the clients’ faces. A law professor and co-director of the Immigration Law Clinic at West Virginia University College of Law, Peck grew concerned that paths to immigration relief previously available were no longer an option. ... Peck...

April 28, 2021

DOJ Ends Trump-era Byrne JAG Grant Limits

Sarah N. Lynch, Reuters, Apr. 28, 2021 "The U.S. Justice Department has repealed a policy put in place during Donald Trump’s presidency that cut off hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to sanctuary cities that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. In an internal memo seen by Reuters, acting head of the Office of Justice Programs Maureen Henneberg said that prior grant recipients, including...

April 26, 2021

Expert: Biden Brings Hope for International Students

Prof. Stephen W. Yale-Loehr, Apr. 24, 2021 "... Biden’s election was a pivotal moment for international students. Universities are already seeing a spike in international student applications, a phenomenon coined “ the Biden bump .”  A survey of  800 prospective international students  from 40 countries found that 76 percent had improved perceptions of the United States, and 67 percent said they were now more likely...

April 23, 2021

Migratory Notes 209, Apr. 23, 2021

Migratory Notes 209, Apr. 23, 2021 - Could US lead on climate asylum? Coyotes on FB; Just 32 refugees sent to Columbus...and so much more!

April 23, 2021

EOIR and COVID - DOJ OIG Report

DOJ OIG, Apr. 2021 Limited-Scope Review of the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s Response to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic "EOIR has had to balance difficult, sometimes conflicting challenges presented by the pandemic. We found that EOIR took some actions to help mitigate the risk of COVID-19 for staff and parties to immigration proceedings but various factors limited the efficacy of these efforts...

April 22, 2021

Climate Change and Asylum Law

Jeffrey S. Chase, Apr. 22, 2021 "Today, Earth Day, Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, and the University Network for Human Rights released an important White Paper on the issue of climate displacement and its intersection with U.S. immigration laws, including the law of asylum.  The report, Shelter from the Storm: Policy Options to Address Climate Induced Migration from the Northern Triangle , is both a call...

April 22, 2021

Broken Promises...And a New Beginning

David C. Adams, Univision, Apr. 20, 2021 "More than two years after he was deported to Colombia, former Miami businessman, Félix Mauricio Zuñiga, has not given up home of returning to the country he calls home, and where he lived for 40 years.  Immigration agents raided his family medical goods business in Miami in late 2018 and took him into detention under President Donald Trump’s unforgiving ‘zero tolerance...