Law Commons^™

Deportation Arrest Warrants, Lindsay Nash

Articles

The common conception of a constitutionally sufficient warrant is one reflecting a judicial determination of probable cause, the idea being that the warrant process serves to check law enforcement. But neither the Constitution nor the Supreme Court has fully defined who can issue arrest warrants within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment; the constitutional significance of arrest “warrants” that are not; or when (if ever) warrants of any type are constitutionally required for deportation-related arrests. In that void, the largest federal law enforcement agency—the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—is on pace to issue over 150,000 administrative “warrants” annually, authorized by …

A 6-3 Supreme Court Could Allow The Government To Openly Discriminate In Its Policies, Katherine A. Shaw, Leah Litman

Online Publications

Over the past few days, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear challenges to hot-button Trump administration policies involving the border wall, an attempt to exclude noncitizens from the census breakdown used for allocating seats in Congress and limits on who can apply for asylum from Mexico.

Universal Representation, Lindsay Nash

Articles

In an era in which there is little good news for immigrant communities and even holding the line has become an ambitious goal, one progressive project has continued to gain steam: the movement to provide universal representation for non-citizens in removal proceedings. In the immigration field, “universal representation” refers to a system of appointed counsel that provides representation to indigent non-citizens facing deportation regardless of the apparent merits of their case. This model has proven a transformative change, particularly given the absence of any recognized right to government-funded counsel. In recent years, cities and counties throughout the nation have launched …

Unpacking Doj’S New Claim That Dhs Can Legally Detain Migrant Children With Their Parents For Longer Than Twenty Days, Deborah Pearlstein, Marty Lederman, Ryan Goodman

Online Publications

The Trump administration recently claimed it could not reunite migrant children with parents who are being held in ICE detention due to a court order requiring the government to release such children from custody within (at most) 20 days. The government now claims, however, that it can legally detain the children with their parents in ICE detention for much longer than 20 days. How did the government come to this position? In this post we’ll answer that question, and address a central flaw in the government’s logic.

Child Separation In The Courts, Deborah Pearlstein

Online Publications

Developments in the ongoing child separation crisis have come so quickly in the past week it is nearly impossible even for experts to keep track. Donald Trump’s executive order requiring an end to the child separation policy, his administration’s subsequent announcement that it would halt its “zero-tolerance” policy of prosecuting the misdemeanor offense of illegal entry, the California federal court’s Tuesday decision halting further separation and requiring currently separated families be reunified — all of these are positive developments for those concerned about the catastrophic effects of the policy on children and families. But the legal battle here is far …

Pardoning Immigrants, Peter L. Markowitz, Lindsay Y. Nash

Articles

In the waning days of the Obama Administration, with Trump’s promised immigration crackdown looming, over one hundred advocacy organizations joined forces to urge President Obama to permanently protect hundreds of thousands of immigrants from deportation by pardoning their breaches of civil immigration law. That pardon never materialized and, as expected, the Trump enforcement regime is sowing terror and devastation in immigrant communities nationwide. While it seems unfathomable that the current president would use his pardon power to mitigate even the most extreme applications of our nation’s immigration laws, there is unfortunately no indication that the harshest aspects of the immigration …

Prosecutorial Discretion Power At Its Zenith: The Power To Protect Liberty, Peter L. Markowitz

Articles

On November 20, 2014, President Obama, frustrated by congressional inaction on immigration, announced an ambitious and potentially transformative prosecutorial discretion policy to forego the deportations of millions of low priority undocumented immigrants. That announcement immediately sparked legal challenges, which quickly wound their way to the Supreme Court, and a nationwide debate about the limits of the President’s prosecutorial discretion authority. President Obama’s actions are part of a larger trend whereby modern presidents have increasingly used robust assertions of prosecutorial discretion powers to achieve policy goals that they could not realize through legislation.

There are clear dangers in allowing a president …

Accessing Justice: The Available And Adequacy Of Counsel In Removal Proceedings, Peter Markowitz, Jojo Annobil, Stacy Caplow, Peter V.Z. Cobb, Nancy Morawetz, Oren Root, Claudia Slovinsky, Zhifen Cheng, Lindsay C. Nash

Articles

The immigrant representation crisis is a crisis of both quality and quantity. It is the acute shortage of competent attorneys willing and able to competently represent individuals in immigration removal proceedings. Removal proceedings are the primary mechanism by which the federal government can seek to effect the removal, or deportation, of a noncitizen. The individuals who face removal proceedings might be: the long-term lawful permanent resident (green card holder) who entered the country lawfully as a child and has lived in the United States for decades; or the refugee who has come to the United States fleeing persecution; or the …

Barriers To Representation For Detained Immigrants Facing Deportation: Varick Street Detention Facility, A Case Study, Peter L. Markowitz

Articles

There is an evolving crisis in the immigration courts and federal courts of appeals caused by the lack of quality representation for immigrants facing deportation. The problem is particularly acute for immigrants who are detained during their removal proceedings. As part of the Study Group on Immigrant Representation (Katzmann study group), the Subcommittee on Enhancing Mechanisms for Service Delivery undertook a case study of the institutional and legal barriers to quality legal representation for immigrants held at the Varick Street Detention Facility in New York City. Through this lens we hope to offer some useful insights into the core factors …

Constitution On Ice: A Report On Immigration Home Raid Operations, Bess Chiu, Lynly Egyes, Peter L. Markowitz, Jaya Vasandani

Articles

No abstract provided.

From The Chair, Lela P. Love

Articles

No abstract provided.

Straddling The Civil-Criminal Divide: A Bifurcated Approach To Understanding The Nature Of Immigration Removal Proceedings, Peter L. Markowitz

Articles

No abstract provided.