September 26, 2020

Calling it "Migration," State Dept. Blacks Out Refugee Data

State Department, Sept. 25, 2020 "The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) will begin migrating its Refugee Processing Center case processing system to a new IT system on October 9, 2020. This is part of a multi-year process to upgrade and modernize the system used to ensure the safety, security, and integrity of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. Due to this migration...

September 25, 2020

Jean v. Nelson at 35: A Virtual Convening, Oct. 22-23, 2020

Immigration, Equal Protection, and the Promise of Racial Justice: The Legacy of Jean v. Nelson "The year 2020 marks the 35th anniversary of Justice Thurgood Marshall's groundbreaking dissent in Jean v. Nelson, wherein Justice Marshall called for equal protection to apply to Haitian immigrants, and to prohibit the government from discriminating on the basis of race or national origin.  The NAACP Legal Defense...

September 25, 2020

Trump Loses Border Wall Money Fight

U.S. House of Representatives v. Mnuchin, CADC, Sept. 25, 2020 "The United States House of Representatives brought this lawsuit alleging that the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, the Treasury, and the Interior, and the Secretaries of those departments violated the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution as well as the Administrative Procedure Act when transferring funds appropriated for other uses to...

September 24, 2020

Migratory Notes 162 (Sept. 24, 2020)

Migratory Notes 162, Sept. 24, 2020 - Cleaning Covid; Undoc TV Takeover; Ginsburg’s passing...and much, much more!

September 23, 2020

Whistleblowers Say CBP Knowingly Broke The Law As It Turned Back Asylum-Seekers

Max Rivlin-Nadler, KPBS, Sept. 18, 2020 "A new filing in federal court claims that Customs and Border Protection knew it was breaking the law when it began turning away asylum-seekers at the southern border. The filings are part of a class-action lawsuit that centers on the thousands of asylum-seekers who have been turned away at Ports-of-Entry across the southern border since late 2016. The asylum-seekers are...

September 23, 2020

Indigenous Border Activists Arrested, Thrown in Immigration Jail, Chained, Denied Lawyers

Ryan Devereaux, The Intercept, Sept. 16, 2020 "Two indigenous women who were arrested by federal agents while attempting to block border wall construction in southern Arizona last week say they were chained and held incommunicado by the government without access to a phone call or lawyer for nearly 24 hours. Nellie Jo David and Amber Ortega visited the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument early Wednesday morning...

September 22, 2020

ICE Detention Facilities: Failing to Meet Basic Standards of Care

UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Committee on Homeland Security MAJORITY STAFF REPORT September 21, 2020 "OVERSIGHT FAILURES: DHS Oversight of ICE Detention Facilities Fails to Effectively Identify and Correct Deficient Conditions 1. Oversight programs are too broad, too infrequent, and preannounced; 2. ICE’s contractor is ill-equipped to conduct inspections in a manner that successfully identify deficiencies;...

September 21, 2020

Lawsuit: ICE Brutally Assaulted Prisoner at JFK Airport

CAIR, Sept. 20, 2020 "The New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NY) and the New Haven Legal Assistance  Immigrant Rights Clinic today announced the filing a lawsuit in the Eastern District of New York against the United States and three Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents for assaulting the plaintiff (Bakhodir Madjitov, a native of Uzbekistan) and violating his  constitutional...

September 21, 2020

Turing Award Laureates, Citing Trump Immigration Crackdown, Endorse Biden/Harris

Cade Metz, New York Times, Sept. 19, 2020 "Two dozen award-winning computer scientists, in a rebuke of President Trump’s immigration policies, said on Friday that they were endorsing Joseph R. Biden Jr. in November’s presidential election.  The scientists, including John Hennessy, the executive chairman of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, are all winners of the Turing Award, which is often called the Nobel Prize...

September 19, 2020

In Honor of Justice Ginsburg: Disfavoring "Piepowder Courts" Against Permanent Residents in Vartelas v. Holder

Cyrus Mehta, Sept. 19, 2020 "Saddened by the death of Justice Ginsburg, I searched through the blogs I have written on her opinions in immigration cases. I was again reminded not only about her brilliance but how forcefully she advanced the rights of immigrants that was consistent with the Constitution and the Immigration and Nationality Act. I wrote  Justice Ginsburg’s Observation on Piepowder Courts in Vartelas...

September 19, 2020

N.Y. Horse Trainer to Pay $425K in H-2B Back Wages, Penalties, Damages

DOL, Sept. 16, 2020 "After an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD), Weaver Racing Inc. and owner George R. Weaver paid a total of $425,000 in court-ordered back wages, liquidated damages and civil penalties for violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the labor provisions of the H-2B visa program. WHD investigators found that the thoroughbred horse racing...

September 18, 2020

COVID-19 Pandemic Drives up Immigration Court Backlog and Delays: TRAC

TRAC, Sept. 18, 2020 "The partial shutdown of the Immigration Court in the wake of COVID-19 continues to impact hundreds of thousands of immigrants awaiting their day in court. The current active court case backlog as of the end of August 2020 has grown to  1,246,164 —up 11 percent from the beginning of March when the backlog was 1,122,824. Average wait times have already jumped 12 percent just in the past 6 months...

September 18, 2020

TRAC Releases New Asylum Data...With a Warning

TRAC, Sept 16, 2020 "TRAC will begin once again releasing asylum data received from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR). After repeatedly uncovering issues in the quality of EOIR's data, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a research data center at Syracuse University that studies the federal government,  published its first report  describing the problems it had uncovered...

September 17, 2020

Migratory Notes 181 (Sept. 17, 2020)

Migratory Notes 181 (Sept. 17, 2020) - Sterilizations in detention, TPS blocked, spy warfare...and much, much more!

September 16, 2020

The Man Who Refused to Spy

Laura Secor, The New Yorker, Sept. 14, 2020 "The F.B.I. tried to recruit an Iranian scientist as an informant. When he balked, the payback was brutal."

September 16, 2020

Whistleblower: DHS Suppressed Reports on Central America and Inflated Risk of Terrorist Border-Crossers

Prof. Susan Gzesh, Sept. 16, 2020 "Earlier this month, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Whistleblower Brian Murphy’s  complaint  received substantial  news coverage  for his revelations about pressures from the White House to repress or alter intelligence reports about Russian meddling in U.S. internal security matters. What received less press attention, until reported by  New Yorker  journalist Jonathan...

September 15, 2020

Cyrus Mehta on The Future of Work and Visa Rules in the Age of COVID-19

Cyrus Mehta, Sept. 14, 2020 "Since COVID-19 afflicted the world, people have learned to work remotely from home and the  office seems to be less relevant . Most white collared work can be carried out remotely through Zoom Video or Microsoft Teams. Jack Dorsey, the head of Twitter, said that the company’s employees can work from home “forever.” This view may not be shared by all. 85% of French office workers are...

September 15, 2020

Advocates Ask Court to Rule on Legality of DACA Memo

MALDEF, Sept. 11, 2020 "Civil rights organizations have filed a motion for summary judgement in a lawsuit that seeks to block the Trump administration from unlawfully implementing new limits on DACA, according to papers filed in federal court today. The motion was filed by MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund) and Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, representing immigrant-serving organizations...

September 11, 2020

Trump Loses Again: All People Count for Census (NY v. Trump)

State of New York v. Trump "In a Presidential Memorandum issued on that date (and entered into the Federal Register two days later), the President declared that, “[f]or the purpose of the reapportionment of Representatives following the 2020 census” — which, as of today, is still ongoing — “it is the policy of the United States to exclude from the apportionment base aliens who are not in a lawful immigration status...

September 10, 2020

Migratory Notes 180 (Sept. 10, 2020)

Migratory Notes 180, Sept. 10, 2020 - Latinx and the census; Central American cover up; working the fires...and so much more!

September 10, 2020

Furloughs of USCIS Private Contractors Will Trigger Delays, Backlogs Nationwide

Daniel C. Vock, Kansas Reflector, Sept. 10, 2020 " Members of Congress from the Kansas City region scored a victory last month when a federal immigration agency backed off plans that would have led to thousands of layoffs of government employees in the metro area. But their relief was short lived, as the agency now intends to furlough 800 of its local private contractors instead — a move expected to set off immigration...

September 10, 2020

TRAC Documents EOIR's Lies re Admin. Closure

TRAC, Sept. 10, 2020 " The Life and Death of Administrative Closure In August 2020, the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR) [1]  proposed a new rule that would effectively eliminate administrative closure as a docket management tool for Immigration Judges. The EOIR justified this proposed rule by claiming that administrative closure has "exacerbated both the extent of the existing backlog of immigration...

September 09, 2020

"We Are Like Slaves, And The Master is ICE"

Joe Penney, NYRDaily, Sept. 8, 2020 "Over the last couple of years, Louisiana has become  a national hub of immigrant detention , with eleven facilities that hold more than 15 percent of the total population in ICE custody. Normally, an average stay for an asylum-seeker held at Pine Prairie would be  forty-five days , but the detentions of many of the African immigrants seeking refugee status now range from eleven...

September 09, 2020

Another Crack in CDC's Border Blockade?

Hamed Aleaziz, BuzzFeed News, Sept. 8, 2020 "The Trump administration is considering changing a pandemic-related border policy to no longer quickly return unaccompanied immigrant children to four countries that require them to test negative for the coronavirus before entering, according to a draft of the order obtained by BuzzFeed News.  The draft would amend an unprecedented order issued by the CDC earlier this...

September 08, 2020

The Nightmare of Video Immigration Court Hearings

Gaby Del Valle, The Verge, Sept. 8, 2020 "... Samuel had traversed 12 countries across three continents to get to his family in Boston. In Tijuana, within spitting distance of the US, he was forced to stop. While he waited, other migrants explained what would happen to him on the other side. He would be detained. He would have to go before a judge and explain everything: his long, roundabout journey to the United...