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Rwu Law Alumni Newsletter April 2024, Roger Williams University School Of Law

RWU Law

No abstract provided.

Changemakers: Juris Doctorate: Saad Ahmad: Immigration Lawyer Saad Ahmad L'00 Shows That Appellate Practice Isn't Just For Large Firms, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

The Immigration Implications Of Presidential Pot Pardons, Jason A. Cade

Scholarly Works

This Essay examines the immigration implications of President Joe Biden’s Proclamation on October 6, 2022, pardoning most federal and D.C. offenders who committed the offense of simple marijuana possession. A late twentieth century interpretive shift by the Board of Immigration Appeals holds that pardons only prevent deportation for certain criminal history categories, which do not include controlled substance offenses, and thus far lower federal courts have deferred to the agency’s approach.Nevertheless, according to the analysis I offer, President Biden’s cannabis pardons should be deemed fully effective to eliminate all immigration penalties. All of the immigrant pardon cases to reach the …

Beyond Legal Deserts: Access To Counsel For Immigrants Facing Removal, Emily Ryo, Reed Humphrey

Faculty Scholarship

Removal proceedings are high-stakes adversarial proceedings in which immigration judges must decide whether to allow immigrants who allegedly have violated U.S. immigration laws to stay in the United States or to order them deported to their countries of origin. In these proceedings, the government trial attorneys prosecute noncitizens who often lack English fluency, economic resources, and familiarity with our legal system. Yet, most immigrants in removal proceedings do not have legal representation, as removal is considered to be a civil matter and courts have not recognized a right to government­appointed counsel for immigrants facing removal. Advocates, policymakers, and scholars have …

Regional Immigration Enforcement, Fatma Marouf

Faculty Scholarship

Regional disparities in immigration enforcement have existed for decades, yet they remain largely overlooked in immigration law scholarship. This Article theorizes that bottom-up pressure from states and localities, combined with top-down pressures and policies established by the President, produce these regional disparities. The Article then provides an empirical analysis demonstrating enormous variations in how Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s twenty-four field offices engage in federal enforcement around the United States. By analyzing data related to detainers, arrests, removals, and detention across these field offices, the Article demonstrates substantial differences between field offices located in sanctuary and anti-sanctuary regions, as well as …

Overstepping: U.S. Immigration Judges And The Power To Develop The Record, Jayanth K. Krishnan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In 1952, Congress established a new federal position to be filled by “special inquiry officers” charged with overseeing deportation cases. These immigration judges—as they eventually came to be called—were assigned to work within the executive branch, namely, the Department of Justice, and they were to be answerable ultimately to a political appointee, the attorney general. Importantly, they received specific statutory authority allowing them to “develop the record” during an immigration case. This power enabled immigration judges to assemble evidence and call, “interrogate, examine, and cross‑examine . . . any witnesses.”

Given that many immigrants who appear in immigration court do …

Virtually Incredible: Rethinking Deference To Demeanor When Assessing Credibility In Asylum Cases Conducted By Video Teleconference, Liz Bradley, Hillary Farber

All Faculty Scholarship

The COVID-19 pandemic forced courthouses around the country to shutter their doors to in-person hearings and embrace video teleconferencing (VTC), launching a technology proliferation within the U.S. legal system. Immigration courts have long been authorized to use VTC, but the pandemic prompted the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) to expand video capabilities and encourage the use of video “to the maximum extent practicable.” In this technology pivot, we must consider how VTC affects cases for international humanitarian protections, where an immigration judge’s ability to accurately gauge an applicant’s demeanor can have life-or-death consequences.

This Article takes a deep dive …

The End Of Deportation, Angélica Cházaro

Articles

This Article introduces to legal scholarship a new horizon for pro-immigrant scholarship and advocacy: deportation abolition. The ever-present threat of deportation shapes the daily lives of noncitizens. Instead of aiming for a pathway to citizenship, most noncitizens must now contend with dodging the many pathways to banishment. Despite growing threats to immigrant survival, most pro-immigrant scholarship and advocacy that aims to reduce migrant suffering assumes deportation as inevitable. The focus remains on improving individual outcomes by aligning the process of deportation with due process and the rule of law. But considered from the point of view of those facing deportation, …

Protecting Stateless Refugees In The United States, David Baluarte

Scholarly Articles

This article proposes a more complete and nuanced consideration of statelessness in asylum adjudication procedures in the United States and the possibility of reopening previously denied asylum claims for this purpose. The article proceeds in four parts, beginning with a discussion of statelessness in the United States. Next, the article describes the international protection frameworks for both refugees and stateless persons and identifies important points of intersection between these frameworks. Then the article argues that discriminatory denationalization that renders a person stateless triggers refugee protection, thereby making victims of such deprivation eligible for asylum in the United States. The article …

Family In The Balance: Barton V. Barr And The Systematic Violation Of The Right To Family Life In U.S. Immigration Enforcement, David Baluarte

Scholarly Articles

The United States systematically violates the international human right to family life in its system of removal of noncitizens. Cancellation of removal provides a means for noncitizens to challenge their removal based on family ties in the United States, but Congress has placed draconian limits on the discretion of immigration courts to cancel removal where noncitizens have committed certain crimes. The recently issued U.S. Supreme Court decision in Barton v. Barr illustrates the troubling trend of affording less discretion for immigration courts to balance family life in removal decisions that involve underlying criminal conduct. At issue was the “stop-time rule” …

Third Country Deportation, Sarah R. Sherman-Stokes

Faculty Scholarship

The large-scale deportation of noncitizens from the United States is not new. However, the speed, and secrecy, by which many of these deportations are carried out is unprecedented. Deportations are, increasingly, executed not through a legal court process, but rather, extrajudicially—in detention centers and at border crossings, outside the purview of judges or neutral adjudicators. One kind of this “shadow deportation” is what I term “third country deportation”—the removal of noncitizens to a country other than that designated by an Immigration Judge, after relief to the designated country has been granted, and after the court proceeding has concluded.

This article …

Rights Disappear When Us Policy Engages Children As Weapons Of Deterrence, Craig Mousin

Mission and Ministry Publications

Although the United States provided significant guidance in drafting the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) it has never ratified the convention. The failure to ratify has taken on critical significance in light of new federal policies that have detained over 15,000 children in 2018, separated families, accelerated removal of asylum seekers, and emphasized deterring families from seeking asylum.This article raises ethical and health implications of these refugee policies in light of the United States’ failure to ratify the CRC. It first examines the development of the CRC and international refugee law. It next lists some of the …

Invoking Federal Common Law Defenses In Immigration Cases, Fatma Marouf

Faculty Scholarship

This Article argues that we should take a deeper look at the applicability of federal common law defenses in immigration cases. In the rare cases where noncitizens attempt to raise common law defenses, such arguments tend to be dismissed offhand by immigration judges simply because removal proceedings are technically civil, not criminal. Yet many common-law defenses may be raised in civil cases. Additionally, immigration proceedings have become increasingly intertwined with the criminal system. After examining how judges already rely on federal common law to fill in gaps in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), this Article proposes three categories of …

A Rising Star: Maria Viveiros, Rwu Class Of 2017 (May 2018), Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Protecting Children? Assessing The Treatment Of Unaccompanied Minors In The U.S., Chiara Galli

Latino Public Policy

In the summer of 2014, unprecedented numbers of unaccompanied minors fleeing violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras arrived in the U.S. seeking refuge. Current U.S. immigration law affords certain legal protections to children who migrate alone from non-contiguous countries, allowing them to be initially admitted to the U.S. To avoid deportation and remain in the country long-term, however, they must successfully apply for humanitarian relief from deportation. This interview-based study traces these children’s experiences navigating this legal process and interacting with different branches of the US immigration bureaucracy.

Newsroom: Fund Lawyers To Fight For The Poor 1-26-2018, Luis Mancheno, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Crimmigration In Gangland: Race, Crime, And Removal During The Prohibition Era, Geoffrey Heeren

Articles

In 1926, local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities in Chicago pursued a deportation drive ostensibly directed at gang members. However, the operation largely took the form of indiscriminate raids on immigrant neighborhoods of the city. Crimmigration in Gangland describes the largely forgotten 1926 deportation drive in Chicago as a means to augment the origin story for "crimmigration." Scholars up until now have mostly contended that the convergence of criminal and immigration law occurred in the 1980s as part of the War on Drugs, with crime serving as a proxy for race for policy makers unable to openly argue for …

Judicial Review Of Disproportionate (Or Retaliatory) Deportation, Jason A. Cade

Scholarly Works

This Article focuses attention on two recent and notable federal court opinions considering challenges to Trump administration deportation decisions. While finding no statutory bar to the noncitizens’ detention and deportation in these cases, the court in each instance paused to highlight the injustice of the removal decisions. This Article places the opinions in the context of emerging immigration enforcement trends, which reflect a growing indifference to disproportionate treatment as well as enforcement actions founded on retaliation for the exercise of constitutional rights. Judicial decisions like the ones considered here serve vital functions in the cause of immigration law reform even …

Chevron's Liberty Exception, Michael Kagan

Scholarly Works

This Article argues that the Supreme Court’s practice in immigration cases reflects an unstated but compelling limitation on Chevron deference. Judicial deference to the executive branch is inappropriate when courts review the legality of a government intrusion on physical liberty. This norm is illustrated by the fact that the Court has not meaningfully applied Chevron deference in cases concerning deportation, and also has seemed reluctant to do so in cases concerning immigration detention. It is a logical extension of the established rule that Chevron deference does not apply to questions of criminal law. By contrast, the Court applies Chevron deference …

Toward Universal Deportation Defense: An Optimistic View, Michael Kagan

Scholarly Works

One of the most positive responses to heightened federal enforcement of immigration laws has been increasing local and philanthropic interest in supporting immigrant legal defense. These measures are tentative and may be fleeting, and for the time being are not a substitute for federal support for an immigration public defender system. Nevertheless, it is now possible to envision many more immigrants in deportation having access to counsel, maybe even a situation in which the majority do. In this paper, Professor Michael Kagan makes no real predictions. Instead, he offers a deliberately-perhaps even blindly optimistic assessment of how concrete steps that …

Newsroom: Center Of The Storm: Rwu Law And Daca 11-21-2017, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law Library Blog (October 2017): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

A Particularly Serious Exception To The Categorical Approach, Fatma E. Marouf

Faculty Scholarship

A noncitizen who has been convicted of a “particularly serious crime” can be deported to a country where there is a greater than fifty percent chance of persecution or death. Yet, the Board of Immigration Appeals has not provided a clear test for determining what is a “particularly serious crime.” The current test, which combines an examination of the elements with a fact-specific inquiry, has led to arbitrary and unpredictable decisions about what types of offenses are “particularly serious.” This Article argues that the categorical approach for analyzing convictions should be applied to the particularly serious crime determination to promote …

Trending @ Rwu Law: Dean Yelnosky's Post: The Path To Commencement: Maria Viveiros '17 05-08-2017, Michael Yelnosky

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Trump, Federalism And The Punishment Of Sanctuary Cities, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] “Historically, liberals have tended to hold more expansive under­standings of the scope of federal power. Conservatives, on the other hand, have tended to embrace stronger theories of federalism -- the term we use to describe the reservation of government power to state and local governments under the Constitution.”

Newsroom: Huffpost: Mancheno '13 Battles Muslim Ban 3-16-2017, Christopher Mathias, Omar Kasrawi, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: Ny Times: Refugee, Immigrant, And Citizen 02-27-2017, Alexandra S. Levine, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Proportionality Lost? The Rise Of Enforcement-Based Equity In The Deportation System And Its Limitations, Jason A. Cade

Scholarly Works

This article briefly explains and critiques the legal framework that has made enforcement discretion the primary means of injecting proportionality and fairness into the modern deportation system. The article provides an overview of shifting approaches to this enforcement discretion under the Obama and Trump administrations, and describes some of the key Supreme Court jurisprudence interpreting this framework.

No Restoration, No Rehabilitation: Shadow Detention Of Mentally Incompetent Noncitizens, Sarah R. Sherman-Stokes

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the burgeoning mental competency regime in immigration removal proceedings, as well as its shortcomings. While some strides have been made in the last six years to identify noncitizen detainees who are incompetent, and to implement safeguards, including appointed counsel, to protect their rights, the current mental competency framework fails to protect some of the most vulnerable. Specifically, this article explains that mentally incompetent, noncitizen detainees for whom no adequate safeguards are available, face a kind of shadow, prolonged and potentially indefinite detention. These detainees’ continued detention is wholly without process – despite their incompetence, they are not …

Judging Immigration Equity: Deportation And Proportionality In The Supreme Court, Jason A. Cade

Scholarly Works

Though it has not directly said so, the United States Supreme Court cares about proportionality in the deportation system. Or at least it thinks someone in the system should be considering the justifiability of removal decisions. As this Article demonstrates, the Court’s jurisprudence across a range of substantive and procedural challenges over the last fifteen years increases or preserves structural opportunities for equitable balancing at multiple levels in the deportation process. Notably, the Court has endorsed decision makers’ consideration of the normative justifiability of deportation even where noncitizens have a criminal history or lack a formal path to lawful status. …