TOP UPDATES
Sessions says he plans a 50 percent surge in immigration judges
Politico: Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that he plans to increase the number of immigration judges by 50 percent by the end of the year, as he welcomed a new class of such judges on Monday…James McHenry, the director of EOIR, said the addition of 44 immigration judges and two new supervising judges makes for the largest class of judges in the department’s history and reiterated the attorney general’s pledge, saying the department will “keep hiring until we run out of space or money.” See also Attorney General Sessions Delivers Remarks (EOIR).
In Immigration Courts, It Is Judges vs. Justice Department
NYT: Judges are being monitored on a performance dashboard on their court computers, which indicates if they are keeping up their pace. Judge Tabaddor called the new policies “huge psychological warfare,” and said judges were being pushed to move faster at the expense of denying immigrants their rights in court… As part of its efforts to speed up the court, the Justice Department added four New York judges, bringing the total to 30. Another three start next month, and new courtrooms are being built. Overseeing them will be a new presiding judge, Daniel J. Daugherty, a former chief trial judge for the Navy and a Marine Corps veteran who still sits on the bench in Las Vegas. [Loprest has returned to serving as an IJ and is no longer the NY ACIJ.]
Trump detention move on immigrant families promises to draw court challenge
The Hill: Under the proposed rule issued Thursday by the Departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services (HHS) [83 FR 45486, 9/7/18], the administration said it plans to issue new regulations that would terminate and replace the Flores agreement, which has governed the detention of migrant children since 1997. The proposal would allow immigration officials to keep children and their parents detained together for the entire length of their court proceedings, which could take months.
Early Arrival: New Yorkers in Jeopardy As Immigration Cases are Reopened
Documented: Around 350,000 cases are being reopened under Sessions’ dictation, and over 50,000 of them could come from New York. Nearly 8,000 New York cases have already been re-calendared.
Brett Kavanaugh’s Record on Immigration Raises Questions
AIC: Because the D.C. Circuit rarely hears cases directly involving immigration law, Kavanaugh has only written three opinions in cases involving immigrants. All three opinions were dissents, where Kavanaugh stated that he believed the immigrant should have lost the case.
As Months Pass in Chicago Shelters, Immigrant Children Contemplate Escape, Even Suicide
ProPublica: The documents reveal the routines of life inside the shelters, days punctuated by tedium and fear as children wait and wait and wait to leave. They spend their days taking English lessons and learning about such peculiarities as American slang, St. Patrick’s Day, the NFL and the red carpet fashions at the Academy Awards. They complain about the food and mistreatment by staff. And they cry and write letters and hurt themselves in despair.
Bill making it easier to deport criminals passes House
NBC: A bill that would redefine the crimes for which someone could be deported was approved Friday by the U.S. House of Representatives on a 247-152 vote and praised by President Donald Trump…The proposal by U.S. Rep. Karen Handel, R-Georgia, would close what backers describe as a loophole in U.S. law after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that the current “crime of violence” standard for deportation was “unconstitutionally vague.”
Across the country, basements, offices and hotels play short-term host to people in ICE custody
Texas Trib: The basement of a federal building in downtown Austin, 10 floors below U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s office. Space in a “fashionable” South Carolina office park. Branches of major hotel chains in Los Angeles, Miami and Seattle. These facilities rarely appear together on government lists, but they all have something in common: They’re nodes in a little-known network of holding areas where people in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spend hours or even days on their way to other locations.
Con artists are preying on undocumented immigrants in detention
Harper’s: The runners are the first, and sometimes only, line of communication between lawyers and detainees. Schaufele calls Jessica’s type of scheme, in which runners scam detainees by using the credentials of absentee or unscrupulous attorneys, notario fraud 2.0. “That’s the new trend,” Curiel told me. “And it’s really hard to prosecute.”
A reporter detained: On life inside ICE camps
CJR: Emilio Gutiérrez Soto, a Mexican journalist based in the United States, has twice been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In late July, he was released from his second round of detention. For the first time, he has written a first-person account of the experience.
Hunger strike at immigrant jail is protected speech, ACLU says
Crosscut: The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington sent a warning letter on Thursday to authorities after officers at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma allegedly threatened to get a court order to force-feed detainees on a hunger strike.
New Government Study Attempts to Undermine Legal Orientation Program for Detained Immigrants
AIC: The study is the first phase of a three-phase review to be completed by the end of October 2018. Among other findings, it alleges that LOP participants spend more time in detention, costing the government more money; that LOP participants are less likely to get attorneys; and that their cases take longer to resolve…The Vera Institute of Justice (Vera), the nonprofit organization who contracts with EOIR to run the LOP program, says this new study has “insurmountable methodological flaws in EOIR’s analysis.”
LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS
DHS/HHS Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Flores Settlement Agreement
DHS/HHS notice of proposed rulemaking to amend regulations related to the apprehension, processing, care, custody, and release of undocumented juveniles and would terminate the Flores Settlement Agreement. Comments are due by 11/6/18. (83 FR 45486, 9/7/18) AILA Doc. No. 18090600
BIA Holds Florida Statute Is Not a CIMT
Unpublished BIA decision holds that transaction with a minor under Kent. Rev. Stat. 530.065 is not a CIMT. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of E-T-, 9/13/17) AILA Doc. No. 18090572
BIA Holds that Permanent Bar Does Not Apply to Unlawful Presence Accrued Before IIRIRA
Unpublished BIA decision holds that INA 212(a)(9)(C)(i)(I) does not apply retroactively to periods of unlawful presence accrued prior to IIRIRA effective date of April 1, 1997. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Urias Aguilar, 9/5/17) AILA Doc. No. 18090573
CBP Announces Family Units and UACs Continue to Flow Into the Rio Grande Valley
CBP announced that U.S. Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley continue to encounter large groups of family units and unaccompanied children. AILA Doc. No. 18090530
RESOURCES
- IDP Hylton v. Sessions Practice Note (IDP subscription required, contact IDP)
- Filing DACA Applications in the Wake of Federal Court Rulings
- ICYMI: Asylum Law Updates on Particular Social Groups
EVENTS
- 9/7-9/18 NOVA Frontier Film Festival – showcases films that are centered around the theme of Identity and Immigration, supporting the artistic development of filmmakers of African Descent
- 9/10/18 NYIC 40 Hour Training: Albany
- 9/12/18VICE Media: Separated by Birth & Zero Tolerance at Lincoln Center
- 9/12/18 Fighting Where We Can Win: Successful Campaigns Against Local Immigration Enforcement
- 9/16/18 Arts Framing the Struggle: The Intersection of Art, Immigration & Activism
- 9/20-21/18 2018 Federal Court Litigation Conferences: Join Us in Washington, D.C. or Remotely via Webcast
- 9/20/18 Consequences of War: A Refugee and Immigrant Mental Health Crisis in the Middle East
- 9/20/18Standby Guardianship Training (see attached)
- 9/21/18AILA Removal Litigation
- 9/25/18 Reviving I-130 Petitions with Consular Processing and INA §204(l)
- 9/26/18 On the Frontlines Defending Immigrant Families: A Conversation with Lee Gelernt, Lead ACLU Attorney Challenging Trump’s Family Separation Policy
- 9/26/18Representing Children in Immigration Matters 2018: Effective Advocacy and Best Practices
- 10/1/18 MPI: Immigration Law & Policy Conference
- 10/9/18 Citizenship in an Era of Record Migration and Growing Nationalism
- 10/10/18 National Context: The Legal Fights over Sanctuary Policies
- 10/10/18 Immigrant Women, Labor, and the Quest for Gender Justice
- 10/13/18 The Economics and Ethics of Immigration
- 10/26/18 A Nation of Immigrants? 50 Years of the New Immigration
- 11/26-28/18 CLINIC & NITA “Advocacy in Immigration Matters”
- 2/8/19 Asylum, Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, Crime Victim, and Other Immigration Relief 2019
ImmProf
Monday, September 10, 2018
- Brett Kavanaugh’s Record on Immigration
- Immigration Article of the Day: Equity in Contemporary Immigration Enforcement: Defining Contributions and Countering Criminalization by Alia Al-Khatib and Jayesh Rathod
Sunday, September 9, 2018
- Migrant Children in US also Suicidal
- Immigration Article of the Day: Sanctuary and the Contested Ethics of Presence by Linda S. Bosniak
Saturday, September 8, 2018
- NYT on Immigration Courts, Immigration Judges, Case Quotas and Due Process
- City of Atlanta Ends Jail Contract with ICE
- Immigration Article of the Day: ICEOffOurCampus: The Liability and Responsibility of Colleges and Universities for the Educational Attainment of DREAMers by David H.K. Nguyen
Friday, September 7, 2018
Thursday, September 6, 2018
- “Apprehension, Processing, Care, and Custody of Alien Minors and Unaccompanied Alien Children”
- The Trump Administration Seeks to Weather the Storm
- Immigration Article of the Day: Article II and Antidiscrimination Norms by Aziz Z. Huq
Wednesday, September 5, 2018
Tuesday, September 4, 2018
- Immigration Article of the Day: The Travel Ban Decision and the Twilight of Judicial Craft: Taking Statutory Context Seriously by Peter Margulies
- MALDEF’s Update on DACA after the August 31, 2018 Court Decision in Texas v. U.S.
- For forced migrants, smartphones are key to their survival
- Immigrants Chilled from Accessing Public Benefits Programs — Even Benefits for Which the Law Makes Immigrants Eligible
Monday, September 3, 2018
- Center for Reproductive Rights Opposes Kavanaugh
- Happy Labor Day! And don’t forget immigrant workers
- Picture Books Tell Children the Harsh Stories of Migrants and Refugees
- Will Trump’s biometric entry-exit system be as controversial as his travel ban?
AILA NEWS UPDATE
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Thanks, Elizabeth!
Advocates should pay particular attention to the re-definition of “crime of violence” for removal purposes that has passed the House and is now pending in the Senate.
PWS
09-13-18