Law Commons^™

Executive Estoppel, Equitable Enforcement, And Exploited Immigrant Workers, Angela D. Morrison

Faculty Scholarship

Unauthorized workers in abusive workplaces have found themselves in a tug-of-war between federal agencies. On one side are federal prosecutors with the Department of Justice or Immigration and Customs Enforcement--who seek to criminally prosecute or deport the workers and treat the workers as defendants. On the other side are agencies like the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Department of Labor, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services who have determined the workers are victims of workplace exploitation and deserve protection. This mixed message—protection from one federal agency and prosecution by another—is contrary to Congressional intent and undermines the enforcement of …

Response To Professor Holper's Article, "Redefining 'Particularly Serious Crimes' In Refugee Law", Fatma Marouf

Faculty Scholarship

An individual who faces a significant risk of persecution in her home country is barred from asylum in the United States if she is convicted of a “particularly serious crime” (“PSC”). Despite the grave consequences of such a conviction, there is relatively little scholarship exploring how a PSC should be defined. The term, which comes from the UN Refugee Convention, was incorporated into the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1980.

Professor Holper’s article, Redefining “Particularly Serious Crimes” in Refugee Law, makes an important contribution to the literature by showing how the historical trajectory of the PSC definition mirrors the “severity …

Whole Other Story: Applying Narrative Mediation To The Immigration Beat, Carol Pauli

Faculty Scholarship

If Donald Trump, kicking off his campaign for the White House, was saying “what everyone is thinking,” about illegal immigration, it must be that his message mirrored a narrative that already existed in the minds of his audience. That fearful story of criminals invading the U.S. borders has long been a dominant theme in the mainstream news immigration story. Like all news stories, this one focuses attention on some facts at the expense of others. Like many news stories, it draws its power from earlier, well-known tales — some as old as the Flood. This article recommends that the news …

Alienage Classifications And The Denial Of Health Care To Dreamers, Fatma E. Marouf

Faculty Scholarship

In the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), passed in 2010, Congress provided that only “lawfully present” individuals could obtain insurance through the Marketplaces established under the Act. Congress left it to the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) to define who is “lawfully present.” Initially, HHS included all individuals with deferred action status, which is an authorized period of stay but not a legal status. After President Obama announced a new policy of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (“DACA”) in June 2012, however, HHS amended its regulation specifically to exclude DACA recipients from the definition of “lawfully present.” The revised …

State-Created Immigration Climates And Domestic Migration, Huyen Pham, Pham Hoang Van

Faculty Scholarship

With comprehensive immigration reform dead for the foreseeable future, immigration laws enacted at the subfederal level -- cities, counties, and states -- have become even more important. Arizona has dominated media coverage and become the popular representation of the states' response to immigration by enacting SB 1070 and other notoriously anti-immigrant laws. Illinois, by contrast, has received relatively little media coverage for enacting laws that benefit the immigrants within its jurisdiction. The reality on the ground is that subfederal jurisdictions in the United States have taken very divergent paths on the issue of immigration regulation.

Compiling city, county, and state …

Measuring State-Created Immigration Climate, Huyen Pham, Pham Hoang Van

Faculty Scholarship

The phenomenon of subfederal immigration regulation, in which state and local governments enact laws regulating immigrants within their jurisdictions, has become an enduring part of the American legal landscape. Though still the subject of occasional legal challenges, the focus of the national conversation has shifted from whether to have subfederal immigration regulation, to what form that regulation should take. States have taken widely varying approaches to immigration regulation; some like Arizona and Alabama have enacted restrictive, negative laws, while other states like Illinois and California have enacted laws to benefit the immigrants within their jurisdictions. Thus, in order to understand …

Update On Legal Relief Options For Unaccompanied Alien Children Following The Enactment Of The William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection, Deborah Lee, Manoj Govindaiah, Angela D. Morrison, David Thronson

Faculty Scholarship

This practice advisory will discuss recent developments in legal relief for unaccompanied alien children brought about by the enactment of the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (P.L. 110-457; “TVPRA”) on December 23, 2008. In addition to expanding protections for trafficking victims generally, the TVPRA made procedural and substantive changes to immigration legal relief for unaccompanied alien children. Specifically, section 235 of the TVPRA increased many protections for unaccompanied alien children seeking relief from removal, including Special Immigrant Juvenile status and asylum. This section of the TVPRA also provides more child-sensitive procedures for those in immigration custody …

Categorical Approach Or Categorical Chaos? A Critical Analysis Of The Inconsistencies In Determining Whether Felony Dwi Is A Crime Of Violence For Purposes Of Deportation Under 18 U.S.C. § 16, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Faculty Scholarship

This Note addresses whether felony DWI constitutes a crime of violence for purposes of deportation. Part II of this Note surveys Congress's broad power over immigration and the government's role in deportation. Part III identifies the standard categorical approach to felony DWI offenses employed by both the courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) in removal proceedings and analyzes the various conclusions that the courts have reached when interpreting a "crime of violence" under 18 U.S.C. § 16(b). Part IV evaluates an apparent departure from the implementation of this categorical approach in Dalton v. Ashcroft, proposing that this departure …