Law Commons^™

Sanchez V. Mayorkas: Is This The End Of Green Cards For Temporary Protected Status Holders?, Thalia G. Rivet

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

This Note was inspired by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Sanchez v. Mayorkas. This decision put an end to the decade-long circuit split over whether a Temporary Protected Status (“TPS”) recipient, who entered the United States unlawfully, could still become a Lawful Permanent Resident (“LPR”). Since its inception, TPS holders have been denied an avenue to adjust their status despite their socioeconomic impact on the United States and every TPS-designated country. This Note will break down and analyze the decision in Sanchez v. Mayorkas through (1) the examination of the circuit split cases, (2) the analysis of TPS holder’s …

A Human Rights Approach To Climate-Induced Displacement: A Case Study In Central America And Colombia, Camila Bustos, Juliana Vélez-Echeverri

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The past decade was the warmest decade ever recorded. As climate impacts intensify, numbers of people displaced and in need of relocation increase. International law has yet to adapt to a changing climate and its implications for those most vulnerable. Experts still debate whether the existing refugee regime could provide a solution for those displaced by climate across international borders, while national governments continue to reckon with the domestic implications of internal displacement fueled by climate impacts. In this article, we apply a human rights lens to climate induced displacement, drawing from two case studies to highlight the human rights …

Taking Responsibility Under International Law: Human Trafficking And Colombia’S Venezuelan Migration Crisis, Luz Estella Nagle, Juan Manuel Zarama

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

For more than six million Venezuelans, crossing international borders has become imperative to ensuring security and a livelihood that their country has failed to assure. These migrants and refugees, particularly young women and children, are vulnerable to many depredations, criminal acts, and the risk of becoming trafficking victims for forced labor and sexual slavery. This article focuses on State responsibility for migrant populations and analyzes conditions in Venezuela that caused a massive migration, the conditions in Colombia as a host State, the uncertain status of Venezuelan migrants in Colombia, and human trafficking and its impact on the migrant population.

An Ngo Input For The Special Rapporteur For The Human Rights Of Migrants To The Office Of The United Nations High Commissioner For Human Rights Report On Human Rights Violations At International Borders: Trends, Prevention, And Accountability, Katherine Kaufka Walts, Sarah J. Diaz, Abigail Mitchell

Center for the Human Rights of Children

The Center for the Human Rights of Children, in collaboration with Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) and the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights (“Young Center”) submits this input in response to the call for submissions made by the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants to inform the forthcoming report to the 50th session of the Human Rights Council regarding the United States’ current border management policies that aim to prevent migration atthe southern border. This input will focus on United States’ push back methods, namely the recently reimplemented Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) otherwise known as “Remain …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

“By Accident Of Birth”: The Battle Over Birthright Citizenship After United States V. Wong Kim Ark, Amanda Frost

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

In theory, birthright citizenship has been well established in U.S. law since 1898, when the Supreme Court held in United States v. Wong Kim Ark that all born on U.S. soil are U.S. citizens. The experience of immigrants and their families over the last 120 years tells a different story, however. This article draws on government records documenting the Wong family's struggle for legal recognition to illuminate the convoluted history of birthright citizenship. Newly discovered archival materials reveal that Wong Kim Ark and his family experienced firsthand, and at times shaped, the fluctuating relationship between immigration, citizenship, and access to …

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

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

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” …

The Iccpr, Non-Self-Execution, And Daca Recipients' Right To Remain In The United States, Timothy E. Lynch

Faculty Works

The United States is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Article 12.4 states, “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country.” Citizens clearly enjoy the rights of Article 12.4, but this Article demonstrates that this right reaches beyond the citizenry. Using customary methods of treaty interpretation, including reference to the ICCPR’s preparatory works and the jurisprudence of the Human Rights Committee, I demonstrate that Article 12.4 also forbids states from deporting long-term resident non-citizens – both documented and undocumented – except under the rarest circumstances. As a result, …

Lunchtime Talk With Diana Kearney: Strategic Litigation Against The Administration’S Migration Policies, Cardozo Law Institute In Holocaust And Human Rights (Clihhr)

Event Invitations 2019

CLIHHR will host Diana Kearney for a lunchtime lecture on the Administration's migration policies. Strategic litigation efforts across the US and Mexico are combating policies that strip migrants of their human and refugee rights. We will survey cases protecting these rights, including challenges to the "remain in Mexico" policy, family separation, and expedited deportations without due process. In addition, we will examine how civil society groups are coordinating efforts throughout North and Central America to protect migrants.

Diana Kearney is a Legal and Shareholder Advocacy Advisor at Oxfam America, where she focuses on corporate accountability, land rights, refugee rights, and …

Enter At Your Own Risk: Criminalizing Asylum-Seekers, Thomas M. Mcdonnell, Vanessa H. Merton

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In nearly three years in office, President Donald J. Trump’s war against immigrants and the foreign-born seems only to have intensified. Through a series of Executive Branch actions and policies rather than legislation, the Trump Administration has targeted immigrants and visitors from Muslim-majority countries, imposed quotas on and drastically reduced the independence of Immigration Court Judges, cut the number of refugees admitted by more than 80%, cancelled DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), and stationed Immigration Customs and Enforcement (“ICE”) agents at state courtrooms to arrest unauthorized immigrants, intimidating them from participating as witnesses and litigants. Although initially saying that …

Human Rights, Economic Justice And U.S. Exceptionalism, Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan

Pace International Law Review

On April 5, 2019, PILR held their triennial symposium titled: Revisiting Human Rights: The Universal Declaration at 70. As a reflection of the event, a few panelists composed contribution pieces reflecting on the topic.

Unitary Theory, Consolidation Of Presidential Authority, And The Breakdown Of Constitutional Principles In Immigration Law, Grant Wilson

Immigration and Human Rights Law Review

This paper will argue that beginning with President Reagan the adoption of unitary theory as a central tenet in presidential administrations created a now ongoing consolidation of executive regulatory authority. This consolidation of power has considerably accelerated over the course of the last four decades. As Courts continue to defer to the executive in decisions made within the broad grants of power delegated by Congress, the relevance of the legislative body dwindles. The checks on executive assumption of power have largely been removed. The wall between the executive and the administrative have crumbled, and what were once considered unofficially separate …

Refugees In The European Union: The Harsh Reality Of The Dublin Regulation, Lana Maani

Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law

The refugee crisis is a highly contested and controversial issue. The world, and specifically Europe, has seen a rapid increase in the number of refugees applying for asylum. In fact, the European Union (“EU”) has received well over one million refugees: the highest number of refugees since the Second World War. The crisis is testing the EU’s main building blocks, including, most importantly, its Member States’ notion of an ever-closer union. Some Member States have been more responsive to the crisis than others. For example, Germany is the highest refugee hosting country in the EU. On the other hand, Hungary …

What Does It Mean To Belong In San Antonio? How The Battle Of The Alamo And The Cart Wars Shaped What It Means To Be American Through The Institutionalization Of Discrimination And Violence Toward Those Of Mexican Descent, Madison Endesha Sharp-Johnson

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

The Sprouting Of Human Rights Initiatives In The Midst Of A Storm Of Resistance To Refugees, Sarah Dávila-Ruhaak

Sarah Dávila-Ruhaak

No abstract provided.

The Fifa World Cup, Human Rights Goals And The Gulf Between, Richard J. Peltz-Steele

Faculty Publications

With Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022 on the horizon, the process for selecting hosts for the World Cup of men’s football has been plagued by charges of corruption and human rights abuses. FIFA celebrated key developing economies with South Africa 2010 and Brazil 2014. But amid the aftermath of the global financial crisis, those sittings surfaced grave and persistent criticism of the social and economic efficacy of sporting mega-events. Meanwhile new norms emerged in global governance, embodied in instruments such as the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP) and the Sustainable Development Goals. These norms posit that …

Bilal, Bilal, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Bilal was 23 years old when he drowned in Greece. He was cheerful, intelligent, and full of energy.

He was a journalist in Afghanistan who received a death threat from the Taliban. His family decided that he should flee the country alone for survival since they couldn’t afford for the whole family to go.

He escaped from the camp in Moria by finding a hole in the fence. He outran the police, found a ship in port, and jumped on it as it was leaving. He later had 10 unsuccessful attempts to leave Greece for Germany. He was caught by …

Forced Migration, The Human Face Of A Health Crisis, Lawrence O. Gostin, Anna E. Roberts

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Nearly 60 million refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced persons (IDPs) fled their homes in 2014, predominately from war-torn Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia. The global response to assisting this vulnerable group has been wholly incommensurate with the need given the profound health hazards faced by forced migrants at each stage of their journey. The majority of forced migrants are housed in lower-income countries that do not have the infrastructure to assist the significant numbers of individuals who are crossing their borders and the humanitarian organizations who seek to assist in the response are grossly underfunded and under-resourced.

Countries have varying responsibilities …

Deconstructing And Reconstructing Rights For Immigrant Children, Erin B. Corcoran

Law Faculty Scholarship

Children rights advocates and scholars alike continue to call for the development of innovative and alternative rights models, which specifically provide for an expansive conceptualization of children’s rights. Central to their calls for reform is a simultaneous recognition that children’s rights must embody agency – a child’s voice (a proxy for autonomy) – free from governmental interference, as well as the establishment of certain fundamental “needs” that place an affirmative obligation on the State to ensure the child has, and affirmatively provide, when necessary. Reimagining children’s rights also requires reforming our laws in such a way that reflects children as …

Life After Limbo: Stateless Persons In The United States And The Role Of International Protection In Achieving A Legal Solution, David C. Baluarte

Scholarly Articles

Stateless persons are not recognized as citizens by any country, and as such, their enjoyment of fundamental human rights depends on the good faith of host countries, and their basic human security and dignity are often subject to the whims of immigration authorities. Despite this intense level of vulnerability, U.S. immigration law does not explicitly recognize statelessness, nor does it provide for humanitarian protection to relieve stateless persons of their suffering. Rather, stateless persons are treated like any other unauthorized migrants in the United States; when they are ordered removed, they are mandatorily detained while immigration officials undertake efforts to …

Children And Immigration: International, Local, And Social Responsibilities, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol, Justin Luna

Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

This essay focuses on the human rights of immigrant children, regardless of the legality of their presence within U.S. borders, especially with respect to health, education, and welfare. In that context, the work explores, as the title suggests, the international, local, and social/cultural normative standards that structure the responsibilities -- independently and collectively, that proverbial village -- with respect to children's well-being. We develop these ideas in three parts. First, we address the foundations of the human rights idea and specifically enumerate the particular normative notions, including international treaties that govern children's lives. Next, we discuss immigration in the United …

Nativism, Terrorism, And Human Rights -- The Global Wrongs Of Reno V. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee decision (American-Arab or AADC) is the most recent U.S. Supreme Court pronouncement regarding the intersection of immigration regulations and fundamental constitutional rights enjoyed by foreign subjects present within the United States. In American-Arab, the U.S. government commenced deportation proceedings against two legal permanent residents and six temporary visa holders on the basis of an ideological bias: the plaintiffs were alleged to be members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (Popular Front or PFLP) -- a charge all the plaintiffs denied. The Supreme Court's ruling endorsing the legality of the government's deportation actions wholly …

Getting Kids Out Of Harm's Way: The United States' Obligation To Operationalize The Best Interest Of The Child Principle For Unaccompanied Minors, Erin B. Corcoran

Law Faculty Scholarship

The government estimates by the end of the fiscal year over 90,000 children will enter the United States. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 58% of these children were forcibly displaced and are potentially in need of international protection. However, in U.S. immigration law unaccompanied children are often seen as illegal migrants and law enforcement prioritizes their “alien” status over their status as children. As the crisis escalates, many of these children are being housed at emergency shelters in icebox-cold cells – nicknamed hierleras, Spanish for freezers, with no access to food or medical care, while DHS …

Denying Freedom Rather Than Securing The Country: National Security Is Undermined By Laws Governing Battered Immigrants, Eve Tilley-Coulson

Eve Tilley-Coulson

Relief for battered immigrants is not an obvious national security matter per se, yet remedies are enacted in conjunction with stringent interpretations of immigration law, as though victims pose a security threat. Discrepancies exist between the immigration laws themselves—which attempt to secure the United States from disease, violence, and illegal activity—and the loopholes within remedies under these laws, unnecessarily removing victims and perpetuating a cycle of fear and abuse. By displacing the victim, rather than the abuser, the government allows the cycle of violence to continue, while simultaneously breaking up families and creating disorder and instability. The economic and societal …

Foreign Investment-Induced Migration In Colombia: Rethinking The Legal Schemes Of Protection And Accountability, Marco A. Velásquez-Ruiz

Marco A. Velásquez-Ruiz

This paper intends to explore the relation between foreign investment and forced Migration in the context of Colombian armed conflict. Through the illustration of recent cases, it shows the various forms in which the operation of multinational corporations has generated adverse effects to the vulnerable communities located at their area of influence, thus generating processes of involuntary human mobility. In that way, it is established that there is a symbiotic relation between conflict and development, affecting the structure and scope of the norms for both the protection of forced migrants and accountability for human rights violations. This is so because …

Migration And Disaster-Induced Displacement: European Policy, Practice, And Perspective, Michael D. Cooper

Michael D. Cooper, Esq.

Over the last decade, a series of devastating natural disasters have killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced millions, and decimated the built environment across wide regions, shocking the public imagination and garnering unprecedented financial support for humanitarian relief efforts. Some suggest that disaster migration must be supported by the international community, first as an adaption strategy in response to climate-change, and second, as a matter of international protection. This study surveys the current state of law as it relates to persons displaced by natural disaster, with a specific focus on the 27 member states of the European Union plus …

An End To The Violence: Justifying Gender As A "Particular Social Group", Suzanne Sidun

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Human Rights And The Elusive Universal Subject: Immigration Detention Under International Human Rights And Eu Law, Cathryn Costello

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The right to liberty is ubiquitous in human rights instruments, in essence protecting all individuals from arbitrary arrest and detention. Yet, in practice, immigration detention is increasingly routine, even automatic, across Europe. Asylum seekers in particular have been targeted for detention. While international human rights law limits detention, its protections against immigration detention are weaker than in other contexts, as the state's immigration control prerogatives are given sway. In spite of the overlapping authority of international and regional human rights bodies, the caselaw in this field is diverse. Focusing on the U.N. Human Rights Committee, the European Court of Human …

Human Rights In The United States: Legal Aid Alleges That Denying Access To Migrant Labor Camps Is A Violation Of The Human Right To Access Justice, Reena Shah, Lauren Bartlett

All Faculty Scholarship

It is estimated that there are more than 86 million migrant workers worldwide, the vast majority of whom suffer poor living and working conditions. In the United States, more than 3 million migrant farmworkers, including at least 100,000 children, are estimated to labor in fields every year, many of whom lack access to justice, earn sub-living wages, and exist in dehumanizing circumstances. Farmworkers are among the most exploited and vulnerable populations in the United States; yet, distressingly, they are also the least protected by U.S. law and law enforcement.

Legal aid advocates in the United States attempt to raise awareness …

The Right To Deportation Counsel In Padilla V. Kentucky: The Challenging Construction Of The Fifth-And-A-Half Amendment, Daniel Kanstroom

Daniel Kanstroom

The U.S. Supreme Court’s pathbreaking decision in Padilla v. Kentucky seems reasonably simple and exact: Sixth Amendment norms were applied to noncitizen Jose Padilla’s claim that his criminal defense counsel was ineffective due to allegedly incorrect advice concerning the risk of deportation. This was a very significant move with virtues of both logic and justice. It will likely prevent many avoidable and wrongful deportations. It may also help some deportees who have been wrongly or unjustly deported in the past. However, the apparent exactness of the case, as a Sixth Amendment decision, raises fundamental constitutional questions. For more than a …