July 16, 2024

DHS Announces New Resources to Combat Gender-Based Violence

DHS, July 2, 2024 "The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Council on Combating Gender-Based Violence (CCGBV) has two announcements to share with you. Building on DHS’s commitment to improving how we support survivors of gender-based violence, DHS has issued a Directive and Instruction that address gender-based violence through a victim-centered approach. We have also launched a Combating Gender-Based Violence...

July 08, 2024

Parole-in-Place Will Benefit 455,000 US Families and Improve the US Economy

CMS, July 5, 2024 "President Biden’s recent decision to extend parole-in-place to the undocumented spouses of US citizens who entered the country without inspection is a significant first step in strengthening American families and the US economy. Under the program, the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) estimates that 455,000 undocumented spouses of US citizens with 1) marriages valid before...

July 08, 2024

DHS OIG: USCIS Faces Challenges Meeting Statutory Timelines and Reducing Its Backlog of Affirmative Asylum Claims

DHS OIG, July 3, 2024 "U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) did not adjudicate affirmative asylum applications in a timely manner to meet statutory timelines and to reduce its existing backlog. At the end of fiscal year 2023, USCIS had more than 1 million asylum cases pending determination. Of those, USCIS had more than 786,000 affirmative asylum cases pending determination for a period longer than...

July 08, 2024

Immigration Court Ruling on Statelessness Could Have Wide Impact

Miliyon Ethiopis, July 8, 2024 "I feel like I have been born again, after a U.S. immigration court made a remarkable ruling in my “statelessness” case in June . I hope that my case will have significant, broader implications for other stateless people in America. Being stateless means no country will claim you as a citizen. We don't belong anywhere. Stateless people are military veterans...

July 02, 2024

US, Panama Sign "Removal Flight Program" Memo

Identical DHS and DOS media notes are here and here . Media coverage here , here , here , here , here and here . The intent is to curtail irregular migration through the Darién Gap . [I have not yet obtained the MOU. If you have it, please send me a PDF. Thank you.]

July 01, 2024

Jarkesy and Loper Bright: How the Supreme Court’s Dismantling of the Administrative State Impacts Immigration Law

Cyrus D. Mehta and Kaitlyn Box, July 1, 2024 "The conservative majority Supreme Court recently issued two decisions that will have a major impact on the administrative state by transferring power from administrative agencies to the courts. We discuss both these cases and their impact on immigration law. SEC v. Jarkesy On June 27, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Securities and Exchange Commission v...

July 01, 2024

2024 USCIS Ombudsman Annual Report

CISOMB, June 2024 "I am pleased to present the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman’s (CIS Ombudsman) 2024 Annual Report to Congress. This Report, submitted annually by June 30, details the “most pervasive and serious problems encountered by individuals and employers” in dealing with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and identifies potential solutions to...

June 28, 2024

Expert: Demise of Chevron Doctrine Likely to Spur More Litigation

Gaby Del Valle, The Verge, June 28, 2024 "Chevron deference has given the Department of Homeland Security and its component agencies broad latitude. For example, under Chevron , decisions made by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) — the federal agency that, among other things, issues non-immigrant, work-based visas like H-1Bs — were more difficult to challenge because of the requirement...

June 28, 2024

Prof. Nancy Morawetz on Loper Bright

Prof. Nancy Morawetz said this on today's ImmigrationProf Blog : "In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’ decision in Loper Bright , you might think that everyone would agree that courts of appeals should apply traditional statutory interpretation to legal issues arising in petitions to review removal orders. But the government has already been laying the groundwork to argue that Loper Brigh t does not...

June 28, 2024

LGBTQ+ Migrants Fleeing Abuse Find More in US Custody: Report

Dan Gooding, Newsweek, June 28, 2024 "LGBTQ+ migrants fleeing persecution have reported being subjected to physical and verbal abuse while in U.S. custody, with some being driven to self-harm, left with hives or experiencing panic attacks. A new report from a coalition of immigration and human rights groups focused on a group of LGBTQ+ and HIV-positive migrants who detailed abuse at the hands of Customs and Border...

June 28, 2024

Deportation Defense in George Just Got Harder

Lautaro Grinspan, The Current, June 28, 2024 "People held in Georgia immigrant detention centers will soon face new challenges in their search for lawyers to represent them in immigration court, a development that will likely doom many people’s chances of fighting deportation. Earlier this month, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal and advocacy group, announced it will be unwinding an initiative that...

June 27, 2024

Would You Wait 150 Years For a Visa?

John Manley, June 27, 2024 "As in past campaign seasons, we will hear politicians say that, when it comes to immigration, a person needs to “get in line” and wait his or her turn. But what if that line stretches to infinity? Consider this actual real-life example when you hear about the topic of immigration reform: A Mexican family lives in the United States for a few years. One parent has TN status...

June 27, 2024

MALDEF Sues Property Mgmt. Co. for DACA Discrimination

MALDEF, June 26, 2024 "A Latino civil rights group is suing a Pennsylvania-based property management company for denying a DACA recipient access to rental units based solely on her immigration status. MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund) and Saul Ewing LLP filed the federal lawsuit on behalf of Khrysta De Guzman, a recipient of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). The suit challenges...

June 27, 2024

Streamlining Dreamers’ Access to Employment-Based Visas Using D-3 Waivers: What You Need To Know

Presidents’ Alliance, TheDream.US, Cornell Law School, June 2024 "With Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA)’s future under threat in the courts and continuing stalemate in Congress, many Dreamers with and without DACA face high barriers and great uncertainty about their ability to participate and contribute to our nation’s workforce. Hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients are already...

June 26, 2024

Automating Deportation: The Artificial Intelligence Behind DHS's Immigration Enforcement Regime

Just Futures Law, Mijente, June 2024 "The Department of Homeland Security in conjunction with corporations has aggressively pushed the idea that AI will make immigration processing more efficient, more objective and less biased. Many of the same companies pushing AI hype have won lucrative AI contracts with DHS. As our research shows, AI tools are now pervasive at DHS – agency decision makers use AI to make...

June 26, 2024

Deadly Failures: Preventable Deaths in U.S. Immigration Detention

Eunice Hyunhye Cho, ACLU National Prison Project; Tessa Wilson, Senior Program Officer, PHR Asylum Program, June 25, 2024 "Since January 1, 2017, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has reported that 68 people have died in its custody. This number does not include detained people who ICE released immediately prior to their deaths, which ICE has admitted reduces the number of reported deaths, and allows the...

June 24, 2024

DOJ: Support for Workers’ Deferred Action Requests to DHS

DOJ, June 20, 2024 "To fulfill the Civil Rights Division’s law enforcement mission, witnesses must feel safe reporting violations to the Civil Rights Division and participating in its investigations and enforcement actions without fear of retaliation, including immigration consequences. This fact sheet explains to workers and their advocates how the Civil Rights Division can support a worker’s request...

June 24, 2024

Expert: "Lawyers Are Critical" In Immigration Court Cases

David Olson, Newsday, June 23, 2024 "Julio Zambrano arrived in Manhattan before dawn on Jan. 4 with his two young sons after a months-long trek from Ecuador, three of more than 200,000 migrants who have come to New York City in the past two years. By early this month, Zambrano's future was still as much in limbo as when he arrived. He was awaiting an immigration court hearing to show why he "should not...

June 20, 2024

Cruel Indifference: Family Separation at the U.S.-Mexico Border Before and After Zero Tolerance

Immigrants’ Rights Policy Clinic, Center for Immigration Law and Policy, UCLA School of Law, June 2024 "This white paper addresses two misconceptions. The first is that family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border began under the administration of former President Trump. The second is that they ended with the election of President Biden. Rather, the separation of families has long been a feature of CBP enforcement...

June 20, 2024

Expert: Biden Visa Initiative "Great News For Employers"

Stuart Anderson, Forbes, June 19, 2024 " “The parole in place provisions for undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens will get more press attention, but the other administrative action may be just as important,” said Cornell Law School professor Stephen Yale-Loehr , an advisor to the National Foundation for American Policy. “Employers have been reluctant to use the D-3 waiver because the process...

June 20, 2024

Getting Ready for President Biden’s Immigration Program

Flyer in English and Spanish from the UNLV Immigration Clinic.

June 19, 2024

Experts: Biden Initiative Will Benefit DACA Beneficiaries

Miriam Jordan, New York Times, June 19, 2024 "President Biden on Tuesday announced an initiative that could be life-changing for hundreds of thousands of undocumented young adults, known as Dreamers, whose ability to live and work in the United States has long been tied to a temporary immigration program that has been on life support. The new directive will enable many beneficiaries of an Obama-era program known...

June 18, 2024

Is USCIS Union-Busting?

Dominick Ocampo, KLKN, June 17, 2024 "Union members made their voices heard Monday afternoon outside the local United States Citizenship and Immigration Services office amid impending layoffs. The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America Local 808 Union called upon the federal government to halt mass layoffs occurring nationwide and accused the agency of union busting. In April, 110 USCIS workers...

June 18, 2024

Federal Court Enjoins Iowa Immigration Law: Supremacy Clause Preemption

USA v. Iowa "Dissatisfied with how the United States Government is handling immigration, the Iowa Legislature decided to take matters into its own hands by enacting new legislation (known as Senate File 2340) that, among other things: (i) imposes criminal penalties under state law for certain immigration-related offenses; and (ii) requires state court judges to order noncitizens to return to the foreign countries...

June 18, 2024

Parole in Place: DHS and White House Fact Sheets

The DHS Fact Sheet is here . The White House Fact Sheet is here . At approx. 12:45 Eastern Time, President Biden will host an event marking the 12th anniversary of DACA; live video will be here .