Immigration Law Commons^™

The Aftermath Of United States V. Texas, Shoba S. Wadhia

Faculty Scholarship

On June 23, 2016, the Supreme Court issued a 4-4 ruling in the immigration case of United States v. Texas, blocking two “deferred action” programs announced by President Obama on November 20, 2014: extended Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA Plus) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Legal Residents (DAPA). The 4-4 ruling by the justices creates a non-precedential non-decision, upholding an injunction placed by a panel of federal judges in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. While the future of these programs remains uncertain in the long term, the immediate effects are pronounced, as millions of …

Sufficiently Safeguarded?: Competency Evaluations Of Mentally Ill Respondents In Removal Proceedings, Sarah R. Sherman-Stokes

Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, I examine the current regime for making mental competency determinations of mentally ill and incompetent noncitizen respondents in immigration court. In its present iteration, mental competency determinations in immigration court are made by immigration judges, most commonly without the benefit of any mental health evaluation or expertise. In reflecting on the protections and processes in place in the criminal justice system, and on interviews with removal defense practitioners at ten different sites across the United States, I conclude that the role of the immigration judge in mental competency determinations must be changed in order to protect the …

Bureaucratic Administration: Experimentation And Immigration Law, Joseph Landau

Faculty Scholarship

In debates about executive branch authority and policy innovation, scholars have focused on two overarching relationships—horizontal tension between the president and Congress and the vertical interplay of federal and state authority. However, these debates have overlooked the role of frontline bureaucratic officials in advancing the laws they administer. This Article looks to immigration law—in which lower-level federal officers exercise discretion delegated down throughout federal agencies—to identify how bottom-up agency influences can inform categorical, across-the-board executive branch policy. In this Article, I argue that decisions by frontline officers can and should be better harnessed to pair local laboratories of executive experimentation …

Remarks On Executive Action And Immigration Reform, Shoba S. Wadhia

Faculty Scholarship

This essay places the President's executive actions on immigration last November into a larger context by providing a brief history of prosecutorial discretion in immigration cases. This essay also describes how law students at Penn State Law School used the President's announcement of executive actions as a platform for local change in the State College community.

The President And Deportation: Daca, Dapa, And The Sources And Limits Of Executive Authority - Response To Hiroshi Motomura, Shoba S. Wadhia

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay is a response to Washburn University School of Law's Foulston Siefkin Lecture, 2015 titled "The President and Deportation: DACA, DAPA, and the Sources and Limits of Executive Authority," delivered by Professor Hiroshi Motomura in March of 2015. Part II of this Essay provides a summary of Professor Motomura's remarks from this author's vantage point. Part III of this Essay analyzes and supports Professor Motomura's conclusion that deferred action is "different" from prosecutorial discretion and elaborates on how deferred action goes one step "further" than prosecutorial discretion.

Beyond Deportation: Understanding Immigration Prosecutorial Discretion And United States V. Texas, Shoba S. Wadhia

Faculty Scholarship

In this article, I place the Supreme Court case of United States v. Texas into a broader context by describing the history and legal authority for prosecutorial discretion in immigration law and highlighting the contents and recommendations in my book, Beyond Deportation: The Role of Prosecutorial Discretion in Immigration Cases. Part I of this article offers a primer on the role of prosecutorial discretion in immigration law and also describes two related programs announced by President Obama on November 20, 2014 and the subject of litigation for nearly two years as of this writing. Part II provides a history …

Is Immigration Law National Security Law?, Shoba S. Wadhia

Faculty Scholarship

The debate around how to keep America safe and welcome newcomers is prominent. In the last year, cities and countries around the world, including Baghdad, Dhaka, Istanbul, Paris, Beirut, Mali and inside the United States - have been vulnerable to terrorist attacks and human tragedy. Meanwhile, the world faces the largest refugee crises since the Second World War.

This article is based on remarks delivered at Emory Law Journal’s annual Thrower Symposium on February 11, 2016. It explores how national security concerns have shaped recent immigration policy in the Executive Branch, Congress and the states and the moral, legal and …

Being Deprived Of The Right To Effective Counsel In Removal Proceedings: Why The Eighth Circuit’S Decision In Rafiyev Must Be Overturned, Charles Shane Ellison

Faculty Scholarship

The situation for immigrants who have received frightfully defective assistance from their attorneys, or non-attorneys masquerading as such, is all too common. For the reasons discussed more fully in this article, immigrant victims are at particular risk in tribunals beneath the Eighth Circuit because of its aberrant precedent in the area of ineffective assistance of counsel in immigration proceedings. In this article, I will first provide an overview of the procedure for making a claim for ineffective assistance of counsel in removal proceedings and give a brief history of this procedure as used since the Board’s seminal decision in Matter …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Federal Courts Scholars And Southeastern Legal Foundation In Support Of Respondents, Kimberly S. Hermann, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Asylum Crisis Italian Style: The Dublin Regulation Collides With European Human Rights Law, Maryellen Fullerton

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Mapping Citizenship: Status, Membership, And The Path In Between, D. Carolina Nuñez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Presidential Legitimacy Through The Anti-Discrimination Lens, Catherine Y. Kim

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

And Ain't I A Woman: Feminism, Immigrant Caregivers, And New Frontiers For Equality, Shirley Lin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Study On Immigrant Activism, Secure Communities, And Rawlsian Civil Disobedience, Karen Pita Loor

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores the immigrant acts of protest during the Obama presidency in opposition to the Secure Communities (SCOMM) immigration enforcement program through the lens of philosopher John Rawls’ theory of civil disobedience and posits that this immigrant resistance contributed to that administration’s dismantling the federal program by progressively moving localities, and eventually whole states, to cease cooperation with SCOMM. The controversial SCOMM program is one of the most powerful tools of immigration enforcement in the new millennium because it transforms any contact with state and local law enforcement into a potential immigration investigation. SCOMM has now been revived through …

Drawing Lines Among The Persecuted, Kate Evans

Faculty Scholarship

Should a victim of persecution be denied protection in the United States if his persecutors forced him to participate in their campaign of terror? In its 2009 decision, Negusie v. Holder, the Supreme Court recognized the “difficult line drawing problems” presented by this question, but failed to offer concrete guidance to the lower courts or the executive agencies charged with drawing those lines. Circuit courts employ a variety of standards, leaving the law in disarray.

This Article offers original historical research to argue that asylum seekers charged with participating in persecution should be afforded a duress defense. It traces the …

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 …

Protecting Syrian Refugees: Laws, Policies, And Global Responsibility Sharing, Susan M. Akram, Sarah Bidinger, Aaron Lang, Danielle Hites, Yoana Kuzmova, Elena Noureddine

Faculty Scholarship

This article provides an excerpt of a report that maps out how the Syrian refugee crisis is being played out in four of the main states hosting the refugees, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Turkey. This excerpt focuses on the laws and policies in the host states and how they are creating particularly devastating consequences for Palestinian refugees. The excerpt sets out the Report’s conclusions and recommendations, primarily the call for a global Comprehensive Plan of Action (cpa), with various components within and outside the Middle East region that build on existing legal obligations to better allocate responsibility for the refugee …

Comparative Perspectives On Statelessness And Persecution, Maryellen Fullerton

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Immigration Policy And The Rhetoric Of Reform: “Deport Felons, Not Families,” Moncrieffe V. Holder, Children At The Border, And Idle Promises, Terri R. Day, Leticia M. Diaz

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Prodigal Illegal: Christian Love And Immigration Reform, Victor C. Romero

Faculty Scholarship

Despite the impasse around immigration reform, most everyone believes the United States’ immigration system is broken. And most agree that the key issue is what to do with the eleven million or so undocumented persons currently residing in the United States. As a Christian immigration law teacher, I have been interested in the debate among the churches as to what such reform should look like. In this Article, I use Professor Jeffrie Murphy’s conception of agapic love as a lens through which to examine reform proposals. I then evaluate the two positions Christian churches have seemed to embrace—permanent legal status …

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

Faculty Scholarship

This Article describes the historical role of prosecutorial discretion in immigration law and connects this history to select executive actions announced by President Obama on November 20, 2014.

Elusive Equality: Reflections On Justice Field’S Opinions In Chae Chan Ping And Fong Yue Ting, Victor C. Romero

Faculty Scholarship

For immigration scholars, Justice Field is perhaps best remembered for his majority opinion in Chae Chan Ping v. United States, the Supreme Court’s decision upholding Chinese exclusion, and credited for introducing the plenary power doctrine to immigration law. Yet, despite the opinion’s xenophobic rhetoric reflecting his personal views of the Chinese, Justice Field dissented in Fong Yue Ting v. United States, reasoning that, once they became lawful residents, the Chinese were entitled to be treated as equals under the law regardless of citizenship, a position supported by his earlier federal circuit court opinion in Ho Ah Kow v. …

Less Enforcement, More Compliance: Rethinking Unauthorized Migration, Emily Ryo

Faculty Scholarship

A common assumption underlying the current public discourse and legal treatment of unauthorized immigrants is that unauthorized immigrants are lawless individuals who will break the law—any law—in search of economic gain. This notion persists despite substantial empirical evidence to the contrary. Drawing on original empirical data, this Article examines unauthorized immigrants and their relationship to the law from a novel perspective to make two major contributions. First, I demonstrate that unauthorized immigrants view themselves and their noncompliance with U.S. immigration law in a manner that is strikingly different from the prevalent view of criminality and lawlessness found in popular and …

Due Process And The Non-Citizen: A Revolution Reconsidered, Joseph Landau

Faculty Scholarship

Mathews v. Eldridge is typically understood to be a ruling limiting due process protections in benefits determinations, but this case of judicial restraint in ordinary domestic law has activist features where non-citizens are concerned. The transplantation of Mathews into the critical areas of immigration and national security has produced a body of law that is slowly ushering in rights-affirming outcomes and weakening conventional doctrines of exceptionalism in immigration and national security. There are two chief reasons for this. First, ever since Mathews required an explicit judicial determination of private interests, courts have used an increasingly particularistic, case-by-case analysis in immigration …

Demystifying Employment Authorization And Prosecutorial Discretion In Immigration Cases, Shoba S. Wadhia

Faculty Scholarship

On November 20, 2014, President Barack Obama announced a series of immigration programs aimed to reform the immigration system. Deferred Action for Parents of Americans or Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) and extended Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) represent two such programs announced by the President. Both programs extend deferred action (one form of prosecutorial discretion) to qualifying individuals. Deferred action has been part of the immigration system for more than 50 years, and has been named explicitly by Congress, federal courts, and the agencies responsible for administering immigration laws. Additionally, regulations list deferred action as one basis for work …

Immigration Separation Of Powers And The President's Power To Preempt, Catherine Y. Kim

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

States And Status: A Study Of Geographical Disparities For Immigrant Youth, Laila Hlass

Faculty Scholarship

This article looks at the legal and practical challenges arising out of a particular immigration protection for abandoned, abused, and neglected child migrants called “Special Immigrant Juvenile Status” (SIJS). This benefit, which is a pathway to legal permanent residence and citizenship, is the only area within federal immigration law that requires a state court to take action in order for immigration authorities to consider an individual’s eligibility for relief. Using an original data set of roughly 12,000 SIJS applications from the Department of Homeland Security in June 2013, this article describes trends over time and by state regarding the number …

Lost At Sea, Daniela Caruso

Faculty Scholarship

A reflection on the existential loss experienced by many young persons in the aftermath of the Euro-zone crisis (often referred to as ‘the lost generation’) must also acknowledge, for the record and for reasons of relative salience, those who have recently drowned in the waters of southern Europe in their quest for a better future. This essay proposes to reconsider, for a moment, the relation between the obstacles that third country nationals (TNCs) encounter at our external frontiers and the increasing permeability of internal EU borders. Normally, one thinks of the two as structurally opposed: within its boundaries, the EU …

Illegitimate Borders: Jus Sanguinis Citizenship And The Legal Construction Of Family, Race, And Nation, Kristin Collins

Faculty Scholarship

The citizenship status of children born to American parents outside the United States is governed by a complex set of statutes. When the parents of such children are not married, these statutes encumber the transmission of citizenship between father and child while readily recognizing the child of an American mother as a citizen. Much of the debate concerning the propriety and constitutionality of those laws has centered on the extent to which they reflect gender-traditional understandings of fathers’ and mothers’ respective parental roles, or instead reflect “real differences” between men and women. Based on extensive archival research, this Article demonstrates …

Border Fixation: The Appearance Of Security And Control In Immigration Reform, Katherine L. Vaughns

Faculty Scholarship

Immigration reform is the subject of intense discussion among politicians, policy experts, analysts, and advocacy groups alike; America’s never-ending debate which today has been infected with shameless demagoguery, rendering sound policy choices virtually impossible. And in this political cauldron, the appearance of border security and control through symbolism and political rhetoric substitute for the practical realities that are essential to inform policymakers about the appropriate administration and enforcement of U.S. immigration laws. For Congress has had an ongoing, unsound focus on sealing the border it shares with Mexico, its southwestern neighbor, seemingly without regard to costs especially in the post-9/11 …