November 04, 2020

CDC Insiders Tried to Stop the Border Blockade, But Politics Trumped Science

Camilo Montoya-Galvez, CBS News, Nov. 2, 2020 "By designating them public health threats who could spread the virus, the Trump administration has expelled  at least 8,800  unaccompanied migrant children, some  as young as 10 , without a court hearing or asylum screening, circumventing safeguards Congress created to shield them from trafficking, exploitation and persecution. In all, more than 204,000 of these expulsions...

November 03, 2020

Another American Citizen Slated for Deportation

John Washington, José Olivares, The Intercept, Nov. 2, 2020 "Alma Bowman, a 54-year-old woman in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, was scheduled for deportation on Monday. For over two years, Bowman has been held at Georgia’s Irwin County Detention Center, the site of growing concern about medical neglect and coerced gynecological procedures performed on nearly 60 women. She has been a key witness...

November 02, 2020

The El Paso Experiment

Melissa del Bosque, The Intercept, Nov. 1, 2020 - A Public Defender’s Lonely Fight Against Family Separation “Can you imagine having your child taken away from you in the middle of the night?” Garcia wondered aloud to his wife over dinner after being assigned the case in late October. He had a daughter from his first marriage, and Jayne had three children, whom Garcia helped raise and thought of as his own. His wife...

November 02, 2020

The Non-Controversy Over Birthright Citizenship

The Non-Controversy Over Birthright Citizenship: Defending the Original Understanding of Jus Soli Citizenship By Margaret Stock* and Nahal Kazemi** November 2, 2020 This article aims to examine and refute arguments against the widely understood meaning of birthright citizenship. Specifically, this article looks at Professor John Eastman’s most recent theory of birthright citizenship and explains why it is neither...

November 02, 2020

Expert: A Biden Win Could Help International Students

Jeremy Bauer-Wolf, Education Dive, Oct. 30, 2020 "The Trump administration's immigration policies  have driven down  international student enrollment in the last few years, policy experts say, a trend  the public health crisis  has exacerbated. Other factors, including rising tuition and more competition from other countries, have also contributed to the drop-off. Joe Biden, if elected president, has  pledged...

October 31, 2020

Lawsuit Seeks to Uncover Secretive Expansion of Judicial Black Sites for Immigration Cases

AILA, AIC, Oct. 30, 2020 "Immigration groups  filed a lawsuit today  in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia against the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR)—which oversees immigration courts—and the General Services Administration (GSA) requesting information on the expansion and creation of immigration adjudication centers, which were established as part of EOIR’s  Strategic...

October 31, 2020

Evidence Shows That Most Immigrants Appear for Immigration Court Hearings

Nina Siulc, Noelle Smart, Vera Institute of Justice, Oct. 2020 "The use of civil immigration detention has expanded exponentially over the past few decades, with a record high of more than half a million people detained in fiscal year 2019.1 The widespread use of civil detention—at a cost to taxpayers of billions of dollars annually—is often justified by the government as being necessary to ensure that immigrants...

October 30, 2020

Migratory Notes 187 (Oct. 29, 2020)

Migratory Notes 187, Oct 29, 2020 - Who really built the cages? The Hmong vote? Anonymous no more...and a whole lot more!

October 30, 2020

22-State Coalition Opposes Trump Administration’s Drastic Limits on International Student Visas

DC Attorney General Karl A. Racine, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, Oct. 27, 2020 "Attorney General Karl A. Racine and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey announced today they are co-leading a group of 22 state Attorneys General in opposing efforts by the Trump administration to severely restrict the amount of time international students are allowed to stay in the United States. In a comment...

October 30, 2020

Expert: Proposed H-1B Wage Rule Will "Hurt Innovation" (Law360)

Suzanne Monyak, Oct 29, 2020, Law360 (subscription) "The Trump administration's proposal to eliminate the H-1B visa lottery and instead award the coveted visa slots to candidates offered the highest salaries will affect startups and cut off a key pathway for international students to work in the U.S. after graduation, experts say. ... "I think it is going to hurt innovation because many times it's...

October 29, 2020

House Report - Trump's Family Separation Policy: Trauma, Destruction and Chaos

House Judiciary Committee, Oct. 29, 2020 "Today, the House Judiciary Committee released the findings of its  21-month investigation  into the development and execution of the Trump Administration’s family separation policy, which resulted in more than 2,500 migrant children becoming unnecessarily separated from their parents. The report,  entitled “The Trump Administration’s Family Separation Policy: Trauma,...

October 29, 2020

TRAC: Asylum Denial Rates Continue to Climb in 2020 - Judge-by-Judge Details

TRAC, Oct. 28, 2020 "Despite the partial court shutdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, this year immigration judges managed to issue the second highest number of asylum decisions in the last two decades. The rate of denial continued to climb to a record high of 72 percent, up from 55 percent during the last year of the Obama Administration in FY 2016. The outcome for asylum seekers continued to depend on which...

October 28, 2020

A Misrepresentation Wrapped in a Misunderstanding about Immigration Adjudication

Prof. Geoffrey Hoffman, Oct. 27, 2020 "The President during the debate last week said immigrants by and large do not "show up" to immigration court hearings after being released from detention.  Not only do the statistics contradict this made-up "1 percent" figure, but the misrepresentation is revealing. It encapsulates a jaundiced view of American justice, as well as a cynical and bankrupt...

October 27, 2020

Immigration Law and the Supreme Court's "Shadow Docket"

Prof. Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, Oct. 27, 2020 "From the travel ban to the border wall, restrictive immigration policies thrive on the shadow docket This article is part of a  symposium  on the Supreme Court’s  shadow docket .   Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia is associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion and director of the Center for Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Penn State Law in University Park.  She has served...

October 27, 2020

DHS Appoints Luke Bellocchi Detention Ombudsman

DHS, Oct. 27, 2020 "Acting DHS Secretary Chad F. Wolf released the following statement on the announcement of Luke Bellocchi as the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Ombudsman for Immigration Detention. “Today, I am pleased to announce Luke Bellocchi as the Department’s Ombudsman for Immigration Detention. Luke’s experience in both the public sector and the federal government has positioned him well for...

October 26, 2020

Round Table Skewers Latest EOIR Proposed Rule

Round Table of Former Immigration Judges, Oct. 23, 2020 Comments in Opposition to Proposed Rulemaking: 85 FR 59692  Procedures for Asylum and Withholding of Removal "The Round Table of Former Immigration Judges is composed of 47 former Immigration Judges and Appellate Immigration Judges of the Board of Immigration Appeals. ... We respectfully request that the Department of Justice withdraw, rather than finalize...

October 23, 2020

Expert: "Ridiculous" for ICE to Threaten DSOs (Law360)

Alyssa Aquino, Law360, Oct. 21, 2020 (subscription) "The U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned Wednesday that universities could face penalties for approving international students' work placements that violate training program requirements for foreign math and science graduates. ... David Ware of Ware Immigration told Law360 that 80% of his clients' students didn't have job offers when they sought...

October 23, 2020

NY City Bar Report Highlights Threats to Independence of Immigration Court System, Calls for Creation of Independent Article I Court

NY City Bar Association, Oct. 21, 2020 "The New York City Bar Association has  released a report  on recent immigration policy changes “to highlight its concerns about their impact on the independence of the immigration court system as well as the due process rights of those who pass through the immigration system.” The “Report on the Independence of the Immigration Courts” responds to an “inherent conflict of...

October 22, 2020

Migratory News 186 (Oct. 22, 2020)

Migratory News, Oct. 22, 2020 - Separated kids stranded in U.S., SCOTUS to review Remain in Mexico, Children learning & working in the fields...and so much more!

October 22, 2020

Court: Trump's Census Gambit Violates "the Constitution, the applicable statutes, and 230 years of history"

City of San Jose v. Trump "Before us are Plaintiffs’ Motion for Partial Summary Judgment and Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss, or in the Alternative, Motion for Partial Summary Judgment regarding the Presidential Memorandum of July 21, 2020, which declared that, “[f]or the purposes of the reapportionment of Representatives following the 2020 census, it is the policy of the United States to exclude from the apportionment...

October 21, 2020

Trump: The $100 Billion Loser?

Dany Bahar, Prithwiraj Choudhury, Britta Glennon, October 19, 2020 An Executive Order worth $100 billion: The impact of an immigration ban’s announcement on Fortune 500 firms’ valuation "Abstract: On June 22, 2020, President Trump issued an Executive Order (EO) that suspended new work visas, barring nearly 200,000 foreign workers and their dependents from entering the United States and preventing American companies...

October 20, 2020

Lawsuits Challenge DOL Prevailing Wage "Midnight Rule"

AILA, Joseph & Hall, Kuck Baxter, Siskind Susser, Oct. 19, 2020 "Today, 17 individual and organizational plaintiffs, including institutions of higher education, nonprofit organizations, and businesses, represented by the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), Jeff Joseph of Joseph and Hall PC, Charles Kuck of Kuck Baxter Immigration LLC, and Greg Siskind of Siskind Susser PC, sued to enjoin, in its...

October 16, 2020

Special Report: USCIS Could Prevent Hundreds of Thousands of Would-Be Citizens from Voting in November’s Elections

ILRC, Boundless Immigration, Oct. 15, 2020 "The Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC) and Boundless Immigration announced today the release of a new special report entitled “ Denying the Right to Vote: Politicization of the Naturalization Process as a Novel Form of Voter Suppression ,” which details how United States Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) willful mismanagement of the naturalization process...

October 16, 2020

Migratory Notes 185 (Oct. 15, 2020)

Migratory Notes 185, Oct, 15, 2020 - Detention times triple, deported by Barrett, cocaine tunnels...and a whole lot more.

October 16, 2020

"Straight Up Dishonesty" - Judge Orders ICE to Depopulate Adelanto

Read Judge Hatter's Oct. 15, 2020 Order here , especially pages 2-3: "The Court has been concerned for some time with the lack of candor exhibited by the Government and its counsel in this case. Counsel for Petitioners-Plaintiffs have, also, raised similar concerns. Until now, the Court has given the Government and its counsel the benefit of the doubt. Now, the Court is concerned with straight up dishonesty on...