DACA Debate Escalates

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

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 the program was unlawful,” Judge Bates stayed his decision for 90 days to offer the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) the opportunity to provide sound justification for terminating the program.

Should DHS fail to adequately address its reasoning for canceling the DACA program within the timeframe, the government will be ordered to once again accept and process new and renewal DACA applications for eligible applicants.

Read the decision.

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On Wednesday, April 25, 2018, the US Supreme Court will hear argument in Trump v. Hawaii. Mayer Brown’s Legal Update provides background on this challenge to the third in a series of travel bans issued by President Trump and summarizes the questions before the Court in this final oral argument of its current term.

Shadows of people and the American flag, conceptual photography

On Thursday, April 6, 2018, federal and state officials arrested approximately 97 workers at a meat-processing facility in Tennessee.  The charges faced by the individuals primarily relate to immigration-related offenses.

Media reports noted that the federal affidavit submitted in connection with the raid stated that the facility was targeted as a result of an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) criminal investigation related to whether the company had been filing false tax returns and avoiding payment of payroll tax.  The company’s bank reported repeated large cash withdrawals to the IRS, which prompted the investigation.  The IRS contends the funds were used to pay undocumented workers.

Continue Reading ICE Collaboration with IRS a Signal of Intra-Agency Cooperation Across Contexts

Row of columns

On March 27, 2018, ten former officials from the US Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Department of Health and Human Services filed an amicus brief to the Supreme court challenging the government’s misplaced reliance of the “presumption of regularity” in the Trump Travel Ban case.  “The presumption of regularity is founded on the commonsense idea that courts should assume that government officials ‘have properly discharged their official duties’…before entertaining doubts about the integrity of official acts or documents.” As former General Counsel of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, as well as former Executive Associate Commissioner and former Deputy General Counsel of that agency, Paul Virtue was one of the participants in the brief.  The brief was submitted “to make clear that the “presumption of regularity” has never been an obstacle to a court’s consideration of evidence showing that government officials have acted with an improper purpose.”  The brief can be read here.

Wall on the border of the USA

On Tuesday, April 10, 2018, President Donald Trump announced that restrictions on travel would be lifted for citizens of Chad, one of eight countries included in the third version of the administration’s controversial travel ban.   In doing so, the president cited improvement in Chad’s identity-management and information sharing practices. Originally announced on September 24, 2017 in the “Presidential Proclamation Enhancing Vetting Capabilities and Processes for Detecting Attempted Entry Into the United States by Terrorists or Other Public-Safety Threats,” Travel Ban 3.0 imposed restrictions on travel for nationals of Chad and seven other countries: Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen.   Mayer Brown’s Legal Advisory in September 2017 addresses the precise restrictions on each of the countries. Continue Reading President Lifts Travel Ban 3.0 for Chad, But Seven Other Countries Remain Barred

BREAKING NEWS:  USCIS Reaches FY 2019 Cap

USCIS announced today, April 6, 2018, that it has reached the congressionally-mandated 65,000 H-1B visa cap for fiscal year 2019, as well as a sufficient number of H-1B petitions to meet the 20,000 visa U.S. advanced degree exemption, known as the “master’s cap.”  Our Legal Update from April 5, 2018, included below, advises employers on how to prepare for the next stage – selection or rejection notices, and, for selected cases, potential RFEs.

LEGAL ADVISORY:  What Every Employer Needs to Know

The current administration has made US immigration policy a central focus of its “America First” stance, imposing de novo review of all visa petitions; refusing H-1Bs for an increasing volume of early-career IT workers; suspending expedited, premium processing options for H-1B filings; imposing record volumes of Requests for Evidence and audits on employers sponsoring H-1B and L-1 workers; and rolling out an aggressive fraud review process for IT staffing suppliers.  In a Legal Update, Mayer Brown’s Liz Stern, Max Del Rey, and Anthony Tran advise on how to proceed during this disruptive time, when employers must be more prepared than ever.

Read the Legal Update.

The demand for H-1B (specialty occupation) visas normally exceeds the annual 85,000 visa cap by two to three times, thus triggering a random lottery for the available visas. Existing United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) regulations prohibit the filing of multiple H-1B visa petitions that are subject to the annual cap for the same individual by an employer or a “related entity,” unless the related entity filing is justified by a legitimate business need. The purpose of the regulation is to prevent employers from trying to increase their chances of winning the H-1B cap lottery by submitting multiple petitions for the same individual for substantially the same position.  The penalty for violation of the regulation is denial or revocation of all petitions for the common beneficiary.

Continue Reading USCIS to Crack Down on Multiple H-1B Petitions by “Related Employers”

Social Media Cubes
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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

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On the day EU leaders gathered in Brussels to discuss the Brexit transition deal (March 22, 2018), Mayer Brown partners Liz Stern and Nick Robertson, together with Paul Sarauskas and Jad Taha, hosted the latest in our series of interactive workshops, “Preparing for the changes in free movement that Brexit heralds.”  Clients across multiple industries including financial services, consulting, life sciences, and insurance attended, providing a valuable opportunity to discuss the actions that employers should take now.  The slide deck is available here.

Plans are already underway for our next Brexit-focused event.  If you are interested in attending, please contact LON-events@mayerbrown.com.