Immigration Law Commons^™

Particular Social Groups: Vague Definitions And An Indeterminate Future For Asylum Seekers, Christopher C. Malwitz

Brooklyn Law Review

Victims fleeing their native countries to escape violence, discrimination, or persecution are provided a limited number of mechanisms under current immigration law to gain refuge in the United States. Under the controlling law, aliens entering the United States are eligible for asylum if they qualify under one of five protected grounds, including race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. But the complete lack of statutory guidance surrounding what constitutes a “particular social group” is incredibly controversial and confusing. The immigration statutes provide no language defining this protected ground. Thus, the guiding framework and eligibility criteria …

Equal Protection And Scrutinizing Scrutiny: The Supreme Court’S Decision In Sessions V. Morales-Santana, Jonathan Burt

Utah Law Review

This Note attempts to synthesize the cases on 8 U.S.C. § 1409(c) and provide a workable framework for intermediate scrutiny in the equal protection realm. Intermediate scrutiny, like all levels of scrutiny, is an ends-means balancing test. Under intermediate scrutiny, the ends must be “important.” The interest cannot be “hypothetical” or “invented post hoc in response to litigation.”234 Instead, it must be the actual reason behind the statutory classification and this must be clearly demonstrated by the government. On the other side, the means must “substantially relate” to the asserted interest. The means chosen cannot result from overbroad assumptions about …

Death By Fifty Cuts: Exporting Lunn V. Commonwealth To Maine And The Prospects For Waging A Frontal Assault On The Ice Detainer System In State Courts, Sean Turley

Maine Law Review

As long as the future of federal immigration policy remains unsettled and the use of ICE detainers to capture and deport suspected noncitizens remains widespread, practitioners should focus their attention on waging a frontal assault against the legality of ICE detainers on state law grounds by arguing that they constitute warrantless arrests that are prohibited by state statute. The recent Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision in Lunn v. Commonwealth provides a model for how to wage such an attack—not only in states with similar common law and statutory frameworks that are unlikely to resolve the issue legislatively, like Maine, but …

Distant Voices Then And Now: The Impact Of Isolation On The Courtroom Narratives Of Slave Ship Captives And Asylum Seekers, Tara Patel

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Part I compares the nineteenth century cases of the Antelope and the Amistad to identify why they resulted in different outcomes despite having similar fact patterns. The Antelope concerned the fate of approximately 280 African captives discovered on a slave trade ship upon its interception by a U.S. revenue cutter. Since the slave trade in the United States was illegal at the time, the captives were transported to Savannah for trial through which their status—free or slave—would be determined. After a lengthy trial and appeals process in which Spain and Portugal laid claim to the captives, the Supreme Court determined …

Re-Victimization And The Asylum Process: Jimenez Ferreira V. Lynch: Re-Assessing The Weight Placed On Credible Fear Interviews In Determining Credibility, Alana Mosley

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

No abstract provided.

An Analysis Of Sanctuary Campuses, Jennifer Safstrom

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

"I am originally from Mexico but have lived in Washington State since I was [nine] months old .... In 2006, as a high school sophomore, I discovered my true immigration status in the United States. I was an undocumented Mexican-American and all of my hopes and dreams seemed to shatter at that point . . . . My parents came to the United States to give their children a better life, and that included an education . . . . When immigration reform does happen, I will then have an opportunity to apply my skills in the workforce without having …

Sky Is The Limit: Protecting Unaccompanied Minors By Not Subjecting Them To Numerical Limitations, Deborah S. Gonzalez Esq.

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming

The Privileges And Immunities Of Non-Citizens, R. George Wright

Cleveland State Law Review

However paradoxically, in some practically important contexts, non-citizens of all sorts can rightly claim what amount to privileges and immunities of citizens. This follows from a careful and entirely plausible understanding of the inherently relational, inescapably social, and essentially reciprocal nature of at least some typical privileges and immunities.

This Article contends that the relationship between constitutional privileges and immunities and citizenship is more nuanced, and much more interesting, than usually recognized. Crucially, allowing some non-citizens to invoke the privileges and immunities of citizens often makes sense. The intuitive sense that non-citizens cannot logically claim the privileges or immunities of …

Illness, Injury And Medical Deportations At The Frontier: The Canadian Legal Regime For Health Care Protections For Agricultural Migrant Workers, Constance Macintosh

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This paper explores how health interests and rights play out in the temporary agricultural worker regime. In particular, it illustrates how a system that–as discussed below–is formally positioned as granting such workers the same rights as nationals, may not in practice provide equivalent or meaningful protections. The assessment is not just about the social exclusion challenges that often undermine the ability or possibility of migrant workers to activate their legal rights (which is the usual critique of why post-national citizenship writing is overly optimistic), but about how the legal and regulatory system itself misses the mark.

The Exclusion Trap For Women Refugee Claimants Who Escape Domestic Violence With Children, Katherine Tess Shelley

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Women who escape domestic violence with their children are being denied refugee status in Canada on the grounds that, by fleeing with their children, they have committed the crime of child abduction. Article 1(F)(b) of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which has been imported into Canadian law, specifies that individuals who have committed serious, non-political crimes are excluded from the protections associated with being a legal refugee. Consequently, women who travel to Canada with their children risk the denial of their refugee claims solely because they chose not to abandon their children in an abusive or potentially dangerous situation. In this …

Embracing The Chinese Exclusion Case: An International Law Approach To Racial Exclusions, Lauri Kai

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

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 …

An Attempt To Evade Liability: Australia's Role In Detention Center Abuse And The Refoulement Of Sri Lankan Asylum Seekers In The Context Of The Convention Against Torture, Carson Masters

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The School To Deportation Pipeline, Laila L. Hlass

Georgia State University Law Review

The United States immigration regime has a long and sordid history of explicit racism, including limiting citizenship to free whites, excluding Chinese immigrants, deporting massive numbers of Mexican immigrants and U.S. citizens of Mexican ancestry, and implementing a national quotas system preferencing Western Europeans. More subtle bias has seeped into the system through the convergence of the criminal and immigration law regimes.

Immigration enforcement has seen a rise in mass immigrant detention and deportation, bolstered by provocative language casting immigrants as undeserving undesirables: criminals, gang members, and terrorists. Immigrant children, particularly black and Latino boys, are increasingly finding themselves in …

Rethinking Conspiracy Jurisdiction In Light Of Stream Of Commerce And Effects-Based Jurisdictional Principles, Alex Carver

Vanderbilt Law Review

For decades, some courts have been willing to exercise personal jurisdiction over nonresident defendants based solely on the forum contacts of their coconspirators. This practice, termed "conspiracy jurisdiction," has proven controversial among courts and commentators alike. On one hand, the actions of one member of a conspiracy are ordinarily attributable to other members of the conspiracy, and jurisdiction-conferring acts should arguably be no exception. On the other hand, attributing forum contacts from one actor to another based solely on their joint membership in a civil conspiracy seems to stretch due process protections to the breaking point. This Note provides new …

Making America Safe Again: The Proper Interpretation Of [Section] 1101 (A)(43)(S) Of The Immigration And Nationality Act From Both A Chevron And A Public Policy Perspective, Jon Derenne

Cornell Law Review

The law must give our government every opportunity to protect Americans from the actions of criminal alien residents. This includes interpreting our existing statutes to provide the government with the broadest authority possible to deport resident aliens who violate our laws. As such, the optimal interpretation of the "relating to obstruction of justice" language within the INA is to implement the common sense textual interpretation applied by the Third Circuit, reading the statute broadly to encompass crimes that are listed in the obstruction of justice heading in the U.S. Code, as well as other logically related crimes.

Immigration Defense Waivers In Federal Criminal Plea Agreements, Donna Lee Elm, Susan R. Klein, Elissa C. Steglich

Mercer Law Review

Immigration policy is back on the American public's radar screen. The fields of immigration--a civil-law subject-and criminal law-a public-law subject-are quite distinct in both litigation practice and law school curricula. With exceptions along the U.S.--Mexican border, only in a small minority of federal cases do criminal attorneys need to know more than some very basic premises of immigration law. Aside from some very general information necessary for defense attorneys to provide adequate advisements according to Padilla v. Kentucky to their clients before entering guilty pleas and Continued Legal Education (CLE) training regarding what offenses have severe immigration consequences, the body …

Esan V.The Attorney General (Appeal No. 96/2014) [2016] Zmsc 255, Nicholas Kahn-Fogel

SAIPAR Case Review

No abstract provided.

A Rising Star: Maria Viveiros, Rwu Class Of 2017 (May 2018), Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Due Process And The Right To Legal Counsel For Unaccompanied Minors, Marielos G. Ramos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Unaccompanied minors arriving to the United States fleeing violence and seeking protection are apprehended, detained in facilities, and placed in removal proceedings in accordance with U.S. immigration laws. Like adults, these children have to appear in immigration court to fight deportation and must apply for any form of legal relief for which they may be eligible. However, removal proceedings work as a civil and not a criminal process, and immigration laws have established that while noncitizens have the right to an attorney, they are not entitled to legal counsel at the government’s expense. This thesis examines how the denial of …

Entering The Trump Ice Age: Contextualizing The New Immigration Enforcement Regime, Bill Ong Hing

Texas A&M Law Review

During the early stages of the Trump ICE age, America seemed to be witnessing and experiencing an unparalleled era of immigration enforcement. But is it unparalleled? Did we not label Barack Obama the “deporter-inchief?” Was it not George W. Bush who used the authority of the Patriot Act to round up nonimmigrants from Muslim and Arab countries, and did his ICE not commonly engage in armed raids at factories and other worksites? Are there not strong parallels that can be drawn between Trump enforcement plans and actions and those of other eras? What about the fear and hysteria that seems …

Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Pregnant: The Jurisprudence Of Abortion Exceptionalism In Garza V. Hargan, Kaytlin L. Roholt

Texas A&M Law Review

Since a majority of Supreme Court justices created the abortion right in 1973, a troubling pattern has emerged: The Supreme Court has come to ignore—and even nullify—longstanding precedent and legal doctrines in the name of preserving and expanding the abortion right. And with a Supreme Court majority that is blithe to manipulate any doctrine or principle—no matter how deeply rooted in U.S. legal tradition—in the name of expansive abortion rights, it should come as no surprise that lower courts are following suit. Most recently, the D.C. Circuit fired up the “ad hoc nullification machine,” but this time, its victim of …

The #Buffalo 25 And The New Era Of Immigration Enforcement, Nicole Hallett

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Personal Jurisdiction And Aliens, William S. Dodge, Scott Dodson

Michigan Law Review

The increasing prevalence of noncitizens in U.S. civil litigation raises a funda-mental question for the doctrine of personal jurisdiction: How should the alienage status of a defendant affect personal jurisdiction? This fundamental question comes at a time of increasing Supreme Court focus on personal juris-diction, in cases like Bristol–Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court, Daimler AG v. Bauman, and J. McIntyre Machinery, Ltd. v. Nicastro. We aim to answer that question by offering a theory of personal jurisdiction over aliens. Under this theory, alienage status broadens the geographic range for mini-mum contacts from a single state to the whole nation. …

Unfit For The Constitution: Nativism And The Constitution, From The Founding Fathers To Donald Trump, Jared Goldstein

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

15th Diversity Symposium Dinner 4-27-2018, Michael M. Bowden

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

The Travel Ban And Presidential Power, Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Legal Leaders To Be Honored At 2018 Commencement (04-20-2018), Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Protecting Children? Assessing The Treatment Of Unaccompanied Minors In The U.S., Chiara Galli

Latino Public Policy

In the summer of 2014, unprecedented numbers of unaccompanied minors fleeing violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras arrived in the U.S. seeking refuge. Current U.S. immigration law affords certain legal protections to children who migrate alone from non-contiguous countries, allowing them to be initially admitted to the U.S. To avoid deportation and remain in the country long-term, however, they must successfully apply for humanitarian relief from deportation. This interview-based study traces these children’s experiences navigating this legal process and interacting with different branches of the US immigration bureaucracy.

Involuntary Sterilization Among Hiv-Positive Garifuna Women From Honduras Seeking Asylum In The United States: Two Case Reports, Holly G. Atkinson, Deborah Ottenheimer

Publications and Research

Voluntary sterilization is one of the most widely used forms of contraception by women worldwide; however, involuntary sterilization is considered a violation of multiple human rights and grounds for asylum in the United States. Women have been disproportionately affected by this practice. We report two cases of involuntary sterilization in HIV-positive Garifuna women from Honduras who sought asylum in America and were medically evaluated at the request of their attorneys. Key lessons can be drawn from these cases with regard to the importance of medical evaluations in establishing persecution. These include the need for a detailed account of the events …