A federal judge has barred President Trump’s recent asylum ban, now forcing the administration to accept all migrants crossing the southern border who seek protection, rather than limit asylum requests to U.S. ports of entry. As of last evening, Judge John Tigar of the U.S. District Court of Northern California issued a temporary restraining order
Lisa Pino
Top 10 NTA Takeaways: USCIS Goes Live to Reveal Implementation Plans of New DHS Deportation Policy
On September 27, the USCIS Office of Public Engagement hosted a live teleconference to inform the public how the agency will implement its new policy, or policy memorandum (PM), issued on June 28, 2018, “Updated Guidance for the Referral of Cases and Issuance of Notices to Appear (NTAs) in Cases Involving Inadmissible and Deportable Aliens.” The policy aligns USCIS operations with Executive Order 13768: Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States.
The NTA requires the recipient to appear in court before an immigration judge, and is the first step in removal, or deportation, proceedings. After a brief overview of the new NTA policy, which supersedes previous 2011 USCIS guidance on the same topic, USCIS presented a Q&A series from more than 100 questions received by stakeholders. The USCIS teleconference participants represented a broad spectrum of the agency’s divisions including USCIS Field Operations, Policy, and Office of Chief Counsel. USCIS also announced that the agency will soon host a public webpage about the new NTA policy implementation, and that information conveyed during the teleconference would soon be available in the USCIS electronic reading room.
The top 10 takeaways of the USCIS teleconference regarding its new NTA policy implementation include the following points:
Continue Reading Top 10 NTA Takeaways: USCIS Goes Live to Reveal Implementation Plans of New DHS Deportation Policy
USCIS Soon Reveals NTA Implementation Plans
As anticipated by an earlier blog post, and after a couple of months of internal planning, USCIS is ready to announce its implementation plan related to the agency’s new Notice to Appear (NTA) policy guidance. On Thursday, September 27, Mayer Brown’s Global Mobility and Migration practice will eagerly join a live USCIS teleconference entitled…
USCIS Delays New NTA Guidance Until Further Notice
On July 30, 2018, US Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that it will postpone its June 28, 2018 guidance for the issuance of Notices to Appear (“NTA”) to commence removal proceedings in certain cases. For the time being, USCIS will delay activating the new NTA policy until the agency determines an implementation plan. USCIS did…
USCIS Expands Categories for Deportation
USCIS Broadens Categories for Deportation Under New Policy Guidance and Will Issue Notices of Appearance
On June 28, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) issued new policy guidance that expands the circumstances under which an adjudicator will generate a Notice to Appear (NTA), a charging document that commences removal proceedings and the deportation process,…
Texas and Six States Sue to Abolish DACA
The Texas Attorney General, joined by six other states, filed suit against the federal government yesterday to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program on the basis that DACA derives from an executive overreach by President Obama in 2012. The suit was filed in the Fifth Circuit in Brownsville, Texas, where a November 2015 decision overruled President Obama’s plans to protect more than 4 million individuals from deportation.
The lawsuit further complicates the fate of DACA recipients, also known as Dreamers, as other district court rulings remain active. Most recently, a Washington, DC district judge ordered that DACA renewal applications should continue, and that new applicants may be eligible to apply if the federal government fails to justify within 90 days why DACA should cease altogether.Continue Reading Texas and Six States Sue to Abolish DACA
Federal Judge Orders the Resumption of DACA Applications
On April 24, 2018, Judge John D. Bates of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia ruled against the Trump Administration’s “unlawful” rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (“DACA”) program. Arguing that the decision to end DACA was “arbitrary and capricious because the department failed adequately to explain its conclusion that…
5 Ways Your Social Media Use Might Impact Your Immigration Journey
In light of recent news regarding data breaches affecting Facebook users, data-mining apps are not the only entities monitoring social media use these days.
Last fall, the Department of Homeland Security expanded its digital monitoring policy in the Federal Register to include immigrant “social media handles, aliases, associated identifiable information, and search results”. While DHS describes the announcement as a policy clarification rather than a policy change, the news escalates the debate concerning government use of social media and the tension between privacy rights, free speech, and public safety. Concurrently, DHS issued broader access to public-source data in concert with the intelligence community. Whereas these 2017 adoptions indicate recent change, DHS has instituted new practices in the digital domain over the last two decades. For instance, the Department began to evaluate social media more closely in the aftermath of the 2015 San Bernardino mass shooting by two attackers who had exchanged private online messages, and added optional requests for social media use under the Visa Waiver Program in late 2016.Continue Reading 5 Ways Your Social Media Use Might Impact Your Immigration Journey