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The One-Year Asylum Deadline And The Bia: No Protection, No Process, Penn State Law Immigrants' Rights Cliinic, Human Rights First, National Immigrant Justice Center Oct 2010

The One-Year Asylum Deadline And The Bia: No Protection, No Process, Penn State Law Immigrants' Rights Cliinic, Human Rights First, National Immigrant Justice Center

Center for Immigrants' Rights Clinic Publications

The right to seek asylum from persecution is a fundamental and long-recognized human right. The United States committed to protecting refugees in 1967 when it signed the Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees and later enacted legislation to incorporate the Protocol’s key provisions into domestic law. Despite these commitments, in 1996 Congress enacted a filing deadline for asylum applications which has resulted in potentially denying protections to thousands of legitimate refugees.


Reading The Morton Memo Federal Priorities And Prosecutorial Discretion, Shoba Wadhia Jan 2010

Reading The Morton Memo Federal Priorities And Prosecutorial Discretion, Shoba Wadhia

Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

On June 30, 2010, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), John Morton, issued a memo to the agency that reflected the Obama administration’s oft repeated intent to focus removal efforts on serious offenders. Morton noted: In light of the large number of administrative violations the agency is charged with addressing and the limited enforcement resources the agency has available, ICE must prioritize the use of its enforcement personnel, detention space, and removal resources to ensure that the removals the agency does conduct promote the agency's highest enforcement priorities, namely national security, public safety, and border security. …


The Role Of Prosecutorial Discretion In Immigration Law, Shoba S. Wadhia Jan 2010

The Role Of Prosecutorial Discretion In Immigration Law, Shoba S. Wadhia

Journal Articles

The concept of "prosecutorial discretion" appears in the immigration statute, agency memoranda and court decisions about select immigration enforcement decisions. Prosecutorial discretion extends to decisions about which offenses or populations to target; whom to stop, interrogate, and arrest; whether to detain or release a noncitizen; whether to initiate removal proceedings; and whether to execute a removal order; among other decisions. Similar to the criminal context, prosecutorial discretion in the immigration context is an important tool for achieving cost-effective law enforcement and relief for individuals who present desirable qualities or humanitarian circumstances. Yet there is a dearth of literature on the …


Decriminalizing Border Crossings, Victor C. Romero Jan 2010

Decriminalizing Border Crossings, Victor C. Romero

Journal Articles

An international border crosser should only be deemed a criminal if the United States government can prove that, with requisite criminal intent, she engaged in an act aside from crossing the border that would constitute a crime. No longer should crossing the border be a strict liability criminal offense. Doing so will restore balance to the civil immigration system, conserve scarce enforcement resources to target truly criminal behavior, enhance our standing abroad, and help heal our racially-polarized discourse on immigration policy.


Christian Realism And Immigration Reform, Victor C. Romero Jan 2010

Christian Realism And Immigration Reform, Victor C. Romero

Journal Articles

Drawing upon President Barack Obama’s admiration of Reinhold Niebuhr’s work, this Essay outlines a Protestant, Christian realist approach toward immigration policy, with specific focus on the role of the executive in providing providential leadership. Embracing realism in its political, moral, and theological dimensions, Christian realism offers a pragmatic, yet optimistic, alternative to secular liberalism’s faith in reason by striving instead to adhere to God’s guidance on matters, taking into account the fundamentally flawed nature of man. The specific policy prescriptions described here mirror the twin virtues of Christian realism by promoting the hope in pursuit of the peaceable kingdom and …


Interrogating Iqbal: Intent, Inertia, And (A Lack Of) Imagination, Victor C. Romero Jan 2010

Interrogating Iqbal: Intent, Inertia, And (A Lack Of) Imagination, Victor C. Romero

Journal Articles

In Ashcroft v. Iqbal, the Court reaffirmed the long-standing equal protection doctrine that government actors can only be held liable for discriminatory conduct when they purposefully rely on a forbidden characteristic, such as race or gender, in promulgating policy; to simply know that minorities and women will be adversely affected by the law does not deny these groups equal protection under the law. This Essay interrogates this doctrine by taking a closer look at Iqbal and Feeney, the thirty-year-old precedent the majority cited as the source of its antidiscrimination standard. Because Feeney was cited in neither of the …