Due Process and the Courts
Trump Administration Targeting Immigrant Children Is a New Low
The recent trend of broadly labeling unaccompanied immigrant children as criminals and gang members is just the latest in a series of attacks on some of the most vulnerable individuals in the U.S. immigration system. In reality, most immigrant children from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala are fleeing the very… Read More
Data Shows Prosecutorial Discretion Grinds to a Halt in Immigration Courts
The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced last month that it now has hired 326 immigration judges, 53 more judges than July 2016, yet during that time the immigration court backlog has grown. According to new data released by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) the reason for… Read More
Hawaii Judge Rules That Grandparents and Other Close Relatives Are Excluded from the Travel Ban
U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson ruled last week that “grandparents, grandchildren, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins of persons in the United States,” as well as refugees connected to resettlement agencies should be exempt from the Trump administration’s travel ban. This ruling came as a result of a… Read More
Supreme Court Limits Power to Revoke Naturalized Person’s Citizenship
The Supreme Court recently rejected the government’s extreme argument that any false statement given during a naturalization exam—even a misstatement that had no impact on the naturalization decision—could later be a basis for stripping the person of their citizenship. In Maslenjak v. United States, the government’s interpretation of… Read More
Court Rules That Immigration Authorities May Not Deny Bond Hearings to Children
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals delivered a strong rebuke to the government’s years-long effort to strip detained immigrant children of the right to a bond hearing in immigration court. The 3-0 decision, authored by Judge Reinhardt on Wednesday, came in a case involving the 1997 Flores settlement… Read More
Who Will and Won’t Be Impacted by the Travel Ban After the Supreme Court’s Decision
The Supreme Court has decided to hear the Travel Ban case when its fall session begins in October 2017. In the meantime, the Court will allow the administration to implement parts of President Trump’s second executive order (EO-2), which bans the entry of nationals of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria,… Read More
Supreme Court Sends a ‘Dangerous Message’ by Not Finding Bush Officials Liable in Post-9/11 Abuse Case
A bare majority of the Supreme Court ruled on Monday that six former immigrants of Arab or South Asian descent—all but one of whom are Muslim—cannot sue high-level U.S. officials over policies that authorized punitive detention conditions in the wake of September 11, 2001. The six plaintiffs in… Read More
“Immigration, Even for the President, Is Not a One-Person Show”: The Ninth Circuit Rejects Trump’s Travel Ban
Barely three weeks after the Fourth Circuit ruled that President Trump’s travel ban “drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination” and thus violated the First Amendment by discriminating against Muslims, the Ninth Circuit ruled that the travel ban also violated the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). In upholding… Read More
Why Are the Immigration Courts So Backlogged? Government Findings May Surprise You
Anyone familiar with the immigration system knows that the immigration courts have an enormous backlog which has persisted—and grown—for more than a decade. As of April 2017, the immigration court backlog topped 585,930 cases, more than double the pending cases in fiscal year (FY) 2006 (212,000). The immigration… Read More
President’s Tweets Dim His Prospects for Supreme Court Review of The Travel Ban Case
President Trump reignited discussion around his controversial travel ban through a series of early morning tweets on Monday, in a move legal experts say could ultimately cripple his administration’s chances of restoring the ban through the Supreme Court. In these tweets, the president blew a giant hole in his legal case… Read More
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