May 06, 2020

Lawsuit: CARES Act Discriminates Against Immigrants by Excluding U.S. Citizen Children of Immigrant Parents from Emergency Cash Assistance

ICAP, May 5, 2020 "Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP) and Villanova Law Professor Leslie Book today filed a  complaint  in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland challenging the intentional and discriminatory exclusion of U.S. citizen children from the benefits of emergency cash assistance distributed in response to the coronavirus pandemic, based solely on...

May 05, 2020

Immigration Detention and Release Policies Fatally Flawed

Donald Kerwin, May 2, 2020 "In late March, I argued in an earlier version of this paper that the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should immediately embark on an aggressive program of release, supervised release and alternative-to-detention (ATD) programs for immigrant detainees in response to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.  Since that time, the number of immigrants in Immigration and...

May 05, 2020

Coronavirus Pandemic Exposes Injustice of US Immigration System

Kevin Appleby, May 4, 2020 "The coronavirus pandemic has challenged many commonly-held perceptions about the United States.  We have learned we are not invincible, for one, and are not always the best prepared in responding to crises.  We also have an inequitable health-care system, as we lack the medical resources to care for everyone and too many in our country remain without health-care coverage. The other...

May 04, 2020

Next Trump Immigration Target: OPT For International Students

Stuart Anderson, May 4, 2020 "Despite the peril facing U.S. universities and America’s difficulty in attracting international students, the Trump administration may impose new restrictions on students who want to work in the United States after graduation on Optional Practical Training (OPT). New measures also could be aimed at students from China, by far the largest source of international students for U.S. universities...

May 01, 2020

US Foreign-Born Essential Workers by Status and State, and the Global Pandemic

Donald Kerwin, Mike Nicholson, Daniela Alulema, and Robert Warren, May 1, 2020 "This paper provides comprehensive estimates on immigrant (foreign-born) workers in the United States, employed in “essential critical infrastructure” categories, as defined by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) (DHS 2020). It finds that immigrants in the labor force and age 16 and over, work at disproportionate rates in “essential...

May 01, 2020

Human Rights at Risk: The Immigration Courts Are in Need of an Overhaul

Hon. Mimi Tsankov, Apr. 28, 2020 "From unrealistic performance measures imposed on immigration judges, the unprecedented certification of cases to the attorney general for decision, to allegations of partisanship in the appointment of judges to the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the unparalleled regulatory schema now imposed whereby the director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, itself a political...

May 01, 2020

Virtual Book Chat, Monday, May 4, 2020, 4:00 PM EST

DU Law Prof. César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández writes: "On Monday, May 4, I’ll join two outstanding scholars and advocates, Alina Das and Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, to talk about immigration policing in the United States. Join us! Professors Das and Wadhia both recently published books about various aspects of immigration law and policy. In  No Justice in the Shadows: How America Criminalizes Immigrants , Das describes...

April 30, 2020

Anil Kalhan: Trump's New Immigration Ban Is Potentially More Dangerous, and More Legally Vulnerable, Than You Might Think

Anil Kalhan, Apr. 30, 2020 "When faced with criticism for his responses to the coronavirus pandemic, President Trump has reacted almost reflexively by touting his administration’s immigration restrictions as the centerpiece of its efforts. But long before the pandemic, Trump had amassed a considerable record of manufacturing “ bogus emergencies ” to pursue longer-term immigration policy goals. His latest immigration...

April 30, 2020

Jay Willis: The Supreme Court Buys Into Trump's Anti-Immigrant Fearmongering

Jay Willis, Apr. 29, 2020 "Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to deport more legal permanent residents for criminal convictions that occurred in the distant past. The appalling result in  Barton v. Barr  again demonstrates the five-justice conservative majority’s willingness to defer to the administration’s xenophobia-infused exercises of executive power. It is also a...

April 30, 2020

Migratory Notes 161 (Apr. 30, 2020)

Migratory Notes 161 (Apr. 30, 2020) - Transferring infected detainees, ventilators for presidents...and much, much more!

April 29, 2020

MALDEF Sues Feds Over Denial of COVID-19 Relief to Mixed-Status Married Couples

MALDEF, Apr. 28, 2020 "The federal government’s denial of COVID-19 relief payments to U.S. citizens married to immigrants who do not have a social security number is unconstitutional, according to a class-action lawsuit filed Tuesday in a Maryland federal court. MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund) filed the federal suit on behalf of six U.S. citizens who were denied federal stimulus checks...

April 29, 2020

CBP Responds to Public Comments Regarding the Construction of Border Wall within Certain Areas in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas

This document is scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on 04/30/2020 "On June 27, 2019, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) published a notice in the Federal Register (84 FR 30745), requesting public comments regarding the construction of border wall within the Rio Grande Valley in Starr County, Texas, including within the cities of Roma, Escobares, La Grulla, Rio Grande City, and the census-designated...

April 28, 2020

Immigrant Detention, COVID-19, and Opportunities for Action

Caitlin Patler, PhD, University of California, Davis; Altaf Saadi, MD MSc, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School; Hamid Yazdan Panah, JD, Immigrant Defense Advocates, April 2020 "Conditions of confinement in immigrant detention facilities make them a ticking time bomb for COVID-19 infections. The health risks are dire and urgent, but federal and state governments can still take legal action...

April 27, 2020

Cyrus Mehta: Building the Legal Case to Challenge Trump's Immigration Ban

Cyrus Mehta, Apr. 26, 2020 "President Trump’s latest  Proclamation   is a brazen attempt to rewrite US immigration laws under the guise o protecting Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Proclamation bans most noncitizens who will enter the United States as immigrants for 60 days from April 23, 2020.  Confirming the sham, Senior White House adviser Stephen Miller, according to a  leaked private conference...

April 27, 2020

COVID-19 Resources for Immigration Law

COVID-19 Resources for Immigration Law Compiled by Ron Wada and Stephen Yale‐Loehr, Coauthors, Immigration Law and Procedure , as of April 17, 2020 The response of the U.S. immigration agencies to the coronavirus pandemic has been evolving so rapidly that it is difficult to report relevant information that isn’t rendered immediately obsolete. Instead, the list of online resources below is intended to serve as...

April 27, 2020

Stimulus Check Class Action Filed: Doe v. Trump

Doe v. Trump "This is a class action based upon Defendants’ unconstitutional deprivation of the rights, privileges, benefits and/or protections, provided to United States Citizens, via the enactment and subsequent enforcement of the S. 3548-Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (hereinafter “CARES Act”), both enactment and enforcement of which evidence the discriminatory purpose and intent of said...

April 24, 2020

A Long Time Coming: How the Immigration Bond and Detention System Created Today’s COVID-19 Tinderbox

Hafsa S. Mansoor (J.D. ’20) & Katherine Comly (J.D. ’20), Under Supervision of Professor Lori A. Nessel, Seton Hall University School of Law | Immigrants’ Rights/International Human Rights Clinic, Apr. 20, 2020 "Immigrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement are at increased risk of contracting COVID-19 due to over-inflated jail populations, decreased access to medical care, and inadequate sanitation...

April 24, 2020

COVID-19 and the Remaking of U.S. Immigration Policy? Empirically Evaluating the Myth of Immigration and Disease

Tom K. Wong, USIPC, Apr. 22, 2020 "The myth that immigration brings disease is a centuries-old trope used to heighten anti-immigrant fears and anxieties. To be clear, the myth of immigration and disease is not supported by the academic literature. A recent multi-year study conducted by the UCL-Lancet Commission on Migration and Health provides the most up-to-date review of the academic literature. As one of the...

April 24, 2020

Judge Orders ICE to Reduce Detainee Population Amid Pandemic

Jon Parton, CNS, Apr. 23, 2020 "A federal judge in Los Angeles ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Thursday to reduce the amount of detainees held in its Adelanto processing facility in order to reduce exposure to the coronavirus. In a 7-page  order , U.S. District Judge Terry Hatter Jr. granted a preliminary injunction request to the American Civil Liberties Union, which has  filed  a class action...

April 23, 2020

Migratory Notes 160 (Apr. 23, 2020)

Migratory Notes 160 (Apr. 23, 2020) - Immigration canceled, Covid deportation spread, immigrant nurses on the line...and much, much more!

April 23, 2020

Peter Margulies on the Presidential Proclamation

Peter Margulies, Apr. 23, 2020 "On April 22, President Trump signed a proclamation suspending issuance of certain immigrant visas. The suspension, which will last for 60 days and may be renewed thereafter, includes many exceptions that will limit its impact. Moreover, the suspension features an exceedingly loose fit between ends and means: While the proclamation cites the impact of the novel coronavirus on U.S...

April 23, 2020

Anil Kalhan on the Presidential Proclamation

Anil Kalhan, Apr. 23, 2020 "If you feel like you saw a version of this movie in 2017, you're not imagining things. ... "

April 23, 2020

Steve Yale-Loehr on the Presidential Proclamation

" Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration law expert at Cornell University , said the exemptions would make the order more legally defensible, but that the logic behind the policy was still flawed. “First, if the purpose of the proclamation is to protect against the coronavirus, it makes no sense to temporarily suspend entry of people applying for green visas but not those coming temporarily to the United States...

April 22, 2020

White House Proclamation Suspending Entry of Immigrants Who Present Risk to the U.S. Labor Market During the Economic Recovery Following the COVID-19 Outbreak

White House, Apr. 22, 2020 "The 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) has significantly disrupted the livelihoods of Americans.  In Proclamation 9994 of March 13, 2020 (Declaring a National Emergency Concerning the Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Outbreak), I declared that the COVID–19 outbreak in the United States constituted a national emergency, beginning March 1, 2020.  Since then, the American people have...

April 21, 2020

Trump to "Suspend Immigration" into US via Executive Order

Nick Miroff, Josh Dawsey and Teo Armus, Washington Post, April 20, 2020 "President Trump announced in a tweet late Monday night that he plans to suspend immigration to the United States, a move he said is needed to safeguard American jobs and defend the country from  coronavirus  pandemic, which he called “the Invisible Enemy.”  “In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the...