Immigration Law Commons^™

The Colonial Borders Within: Racial Profiling, Language, And Civil Juries, Jasmine Gonzales Rose

Faculty Scholarship

This Article builds on the scholarship of Kevin R. Johnson, whose work has long illuminated how immigration law and constitutional doctrine have enabled the subordination of Latines through racial profiling,2 language discrimination,3 and exclusion from civic institutions, like juries.4 His analyses of juror exclusion and the importance of a diverse judiciary underscore how the composition of civil and criminal factfinders shapes both recognition of harm and the remedies afforded.5 Long before the current period of intensified, abusive immigration enforcement, his scholarship traced the historical roots of these practices, examined their contemporary manifestations, and revealed the ways in which the law …

Cardozo Celebrates 34th Inspire! Awards, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

Cardozo Law News Archive

Cardozo School of Law celebrated the 34th INSPIRE! Awards, recognizing alumni, students, and community members for their outstanding commitment to public service. The event honored leaders in immigration advocacy, presented student leadership and service awards, and featured a live recording of the SPARKS podcast focused on careers in public interest law.

Brief Of The American Immigration Lawyers Association And Immigration Law Scholars As Amici Curiae In Support Of Respondents, Lindsay Nash

Amicus Briefs

Amicus curiae brief submitted by the American Immigration Lawyers Association and immigration law scholars in support of the respondents in Mullin v. Doe and Trump v. Miot before the Supreme Court of the United States. The brief argues that the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) statute strictly limits the Executive Branch's authority to terminate TPS designations and requires continuation of protection unless the statutory conditions justifying designation no longer exist. The amici further contend that TPS serves a critical humanitarian function by protecting individuals from removal, detention, and loss of work authorization while conditions in designated countries remain unsafe.

Representation In Removal Proceedings, Emily Ryo, Ian Peacock, Weston Ley, Christopher Levesque

Indiana Law Journal

Millions of immigrants in the United States are facing threats of mass deportation under the second Trump Administration. At the same time, the Administration has sought to end federal programs aimed at providing basic information and guidance to immigrants in removal proceedings. In addition, large numbers of immigration judges have been fired from immigration courts that already face massive backlogs. Amidst these upheavals, deportation defense lawyers have come to occupy a more central role than ever in ensuring fairness and due process in immigration courts. Are certain groups of immigrants more likely to obtain legal representation than others? Among those …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Immigration Law Professors In Support Of Respondent, Peter L. Markowitz, Lindsay Nash

Amicus Briefs

Amicus curiae brief submitted by immigration law professors in support of the respondent in Bondi v. Lau before the Supreme Court of the United States. The brief argues that lawful permanent residents returning from travel abroad may not be treated as seeking admission unless they satisfy the statutory criteria set forth in the Immigration and Nationality Act. It further contends that ambiguities in deportation statutes should be resolved in favor of noncitizens under the longstanding immigration rule of lenity.

Brief For Amici Curiae Immigration Law Scholars In Support Of Petitioners-Appellees' Petition For Rehearing En Banc, Lindsay Nash

Amicus Briefs

Amicus curiae brief submitted by immigration law scholars, including Cardozo School of Law Professor Lindsay Nash, in Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi and Covarrubias v. Vergara before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The brief supports rehearing en banc and argues that 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2)(A) does not authorize mandatory, no-bond detention of noncitizens apprehended within the interior of the United States. Drawing on statutory text, legislative history, and the historical development of immigration detention, the amici contend that such detention authority has historically been limited to individuals seeking admission at the border.

Reason Enough: The Wrongful Extension Of Asylum’S “One Central Reason” Nexus Standard To Withholding Of Removal, Elaine Hernandez Flores

Washington Law Review

Noncitizens often come to the United States seeking protection from violence, persecution, or life-threatening conditions in their home countries. However, upon arrival, many noncitizens are placed in removal proceedings and face deportation back to the very dangers they escaped. U.S. immigration law provides various forms of relief from deportation, most notably asylum and withholding of removal. Both forms require the applicant to show a connection—or “nexus”—between the persecutor’s motive for persecuting them and one of five protected grounds: race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.

Although asylum and withholding of removal both require a noncitizen …

P*Law Week 2026: Student-Led Expert Panels Focusing On Public Service Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

Cardozo Law News Archive

Cardozo School of Law's annual Public Law Advocacy Week (P*LAW), hosted by the Center for Public Service Law, featured student-led panels on disability rights, labor law, LGBTQ+ rights, immigration law, environmental law, and international accountability. The event brought together students, alumni, faculty, and practitioners to discuss pressing public interest issues and careers in public service law.

Brief For Amici Curiae Immigration Law Scholars In Support Of Petitioner-Appellee, Supporting Affirmance, Lindsay Nash

Amicus Briefs

Amicus curiae brief filed by immigration law scholars, including Cardozo School of Law Professor Lindsay Nash, in Herrera Avila v. Bondi. The brief examines the scope of mandatory immigration detention under the Immigration and Nationality Act and argues that 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2)(A) applies to noncitizens seeking admission at the border rather than individuals apprehended within the interior of the United States.

Immigration And Nationality Law: Problems And Strategies | Third Edition (2026), Lenni Benson, Stepehn Yale-Loehr, Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia

Books

The third edition of Immigration and Nationality Law: Problems and Strategies has been updated significantly to capture changing immigration law and policy. The text's overall size has been reduced, but it continues to have in-depth coverage, from expedited removal to constitutional analysis, from nonimmigrant visas to humanitarian relief.

This book uses the "problem method," allowing the reader to focus on a series of problems and to apply statutory, administrative, and case law materials. Ethical considerations are woven throughout the text as is the opportunity to consider policy implications. This book is designed for both law students and attorneys, covering statutory …

The Role Of Prosecutorial Discretion In Criminal Immigration Matters, Brian L. Owsley

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

If the Trump administration’s goal is to remove between fifteen and twenty million undocumented individuals, then it would be far more effective to reduce the incentive of American companies and employers to hire undocumented individuals. Therefore, from a prosecutorial perspective, the federal government should consider whether seeking to charge and prosecute individuals is the most effective approach, or whether they should redirect their effort to the individual’s employer.

In addition to employers engaging in criminal immigration offenses, for several years now, the federal government has notably ignored the action of one person engaged in the smuggling of over 100,000 undocumented …

Catching The Forgotten: Repairing The Safety Net For Cofa Migrants In The United States, Brian Aguilar

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Citizens of the Freely Associated States—the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Republic of Belau—are permitted to live and work in the United States without a visa under the Compacts of Free Association (COFA). Yet, for nearly three decades, COFA migrants were excluded from the federal public benefits safety net. This exclusion, a product of legislative oversight in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, devastated communities like the Marshallese in Springdale, Arkansas, who endured dangerous working conditions, poverty, and severe health vulnerabilities without access to critical federal benefits programs. While …

Betrayal Of Trust, Restoration Of Hope: How To Enforce The Law And Transform The Lives Of Immigrants Ripped Off And Damaged By Bad Lawyers And Scammer Notarios, Vanessa Merton

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Immigrants seeking lawful status, or otherwise facing denial of entry or deportation, have no right to counsel at government expense. Not even the most sophisticated immigrant can effectively navigate the morass of U.S. immigration law, frequently described by federal judges as “labyrinthine,” “baffling,” “arcane,” and “almost as impenetrable as the Internal Revenue Code.” Competent, ethical representation is essential and, in theory, available from lawyers or accredited representatives. Yet, for most, such representation is shockingly hard to locate and prohibitively expensive. While over 200 nonprofit organizations provide low-cost or free representation to noncitizens, they can assist only a small fraction …

The Racialized Retaliatory State: Weaponizing Immigration Law To Criminalize Dissent, Karla Mckanders

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

This Essay examines how systemic racism impacts the ways immigration laws operate to retaliate and criminalize immigrants who dissent. Criminalizing dissent—which recently has become more widespread—is one tool within the immigration system that reinforces America’s racialized caste system. This Essay frames immigration exceptionalism as a continual state that excludes nonconforming bodies and ideologies to instill fear as a means of authoritarian governance. This Essay challenges the history of immigration exceptionalism as an objectively neutral system of governance, arguing that it has historically criminalized racialized migrants to suppress dissent and ideological viewpoints that are not aligned with America’s racialized project. Immigration …

Border Decriminalization As A State Project: Lessons From Marijuana And Assisted Suicide Legalization Across The United States, Victor C. Romero

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

My prior work argued for the decriminalization of border crossings without proof of specific intent to violate another law (like drug trafficking), which is even less likely to happen now than it was when the piece was published, given the current presidential administration’s zealous deportation strategy and Congress’s seeming acquiescence. As such, I advocate for a second-best solution involving federal-state cooperative agreements wherein border states abutting both Mexico and Canada are given the option by the federal government to pass local legislation decriminalizing border crossings into their states as their communities desire. To the extent that the current presidential administration …

The Law Of Livelihoods: How Legal Frameworks Shape Migrants' Financial Journeys, Annie Bright

Presentations - 2025

The financial lives of migrants reveal critical intersections between legal frameworks and socio-economic outcomes. Drawing on the findings of the Journeys Project, a qualitative study examining the financial health and trajectories of migrants in their countries of arrival, this article explores the role of laws and policies in shaping the financial health of migrants, addressing barriers such as documentation, legal status, and access to financial services. It proposes legal reforms and frameworks that foster environments where migrants can achieve financial stability and self-sufficiency, using firsthand accounts from the project’s financial biographies to highlight the human impact of these issues.

Big Words, Questionable Legality: Constitutional Impediments To Restricting Birthright Citizenship, Kristin Hommel

Immigration Law Blog

This article analyzes the nuances of Trump's Day One executive order restricting the grant of birthright citizenship only to children whose parents possess either a green card or U.S. citizenship. The article discusses the constitutional impediments to this executive order, as well as prior caselaw and academic articles, positing that the executive order stands on rather shaky ground constitutionally.

Special Immigrant Juvenile Status And Expanding Relief To Prevent Family Separation, Elaine Ouyang

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

This Note will begin by providing a brief overview of Special Immigrant Juvenile Status and the Congressional intentions behind the creation of this classification and its subsequent amendments, primarily the 2008 TVPRA. It will then delve into the decade after the 2008 TVPRA enactment to explore the overall viability of family unity within the context of the United States’ immigration policy. To do so, this Note will look at cases from 2009–2018 before the Supreme Court of the State of New York and Appellate Division Second Judicial Department involving “one-parent cases,” where a biological parent is granted guardianship as part …

Derailing Deportation Through State Legislation, Stacy Caplow

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

But For Borders: The Protection Gap For Internally Displaced Persons, Anita Sinha

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Internal displacement, the phenomenon of people who are dislocated from their homes but remain within the border of their countries of origin, was once a forced migratory occurrence interchangeable with cross-border migration. This changed after the Second World War with the promulgation of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which was premised on an insistence on drawing a legal line in the sand based on which side of a border displacement transpires upon. Internally displaced persons (IDPs)-both in recent history and in the projected future-far outnumber people displaced across borders. Both rhetorical maneuverings and traditional international legal …

Loyalty Disarmament And The Undocumented, Pratheepan Gulasekaram

Publications

Since the Supreme Court's District of Columbia v. Heller decision in 2008, lower federal courts have wrestled with Second Amendment claims raised by categories of people excluded from gun possession. Among those cases, several have been brought by noncitizens challenging their prosecutions under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(5), the federal criminal ban on possession by unlawfully present noncitizens. In the post-Heller § 922(g)(5) cases, judges have opined on whether unlawfully present noncitizens were among "the people" who had the right to bear arms and whether the government regulation met the appropriate level of constitutional scrutiny. More recently, however, the Supreme Court …

The Economic Cost Of Exclusion: How Trump's Second-Term Immigration Policies Threaten California's Economy, Kit Johnson

Faculty Articles

The second Trump administration has pursued an array of immigration enforcement initiatives—from denaturalization and visa scrutiny to termination of humanitarian programs and aggressive workplace raids. Legal scholars have sharply debated these measures, but almost entirely through constitutional, statutory, and rights-based frames. This Article exposes a critical omission in immigration law scholarship: the economics of large-scale noncitizen removal. Drawing on major empirical studies of historic enforcement episodes—including Mexican repatriation between 1929-1934, Japanese internment during World War II, Arizona’s immigration restrictionism from 2007-2012, and federal immigration enforcement efforts of 2008-2015—this Article demonstrates that broad noncitizen removals may reduce the employment and wages …

We Can't Apply From The Grave: Why The Asylum Standard Of Proof Fails Those Who Need It Most, Hilana Said

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

A woman in Florida sits in front of her TV, unsure if the sound of static is coming from shock or the screen. Her eyes reflect the fires that blaze from within her church in Alexandria, Egypt. Numbly, the pads of her fingers attempt to call family members, praying that, for once, they skipped service. She lets go of a breath she did not know she was holding. The time between now and another attack exists on a clock that she cannot see. But she knows it is ticking.

Accommodating Incompetency In Immigration Court, Elizabeth Jordan

Northwestern University Law Review

In criminal law, an individual must be deemed competent to stand trial, yet our immigration courts routinely order the deportation of incompetent noncitizens. A removal proceeding against a noncitizen—where an outcome of deportation often risks life-threatening harm—continues apace even if the noncitizen has been deemed incompetent by the immigration judge. In place of halting proceedings, the immigration judge imposes “safeguards” pursuant to a provision of the immigration code that neither defines nor explains the term. In practice, judges’ application of the term “safeguards” is often absurd. The implications of continuing a proceeding against a noncitizen with a disability affecting competency …

Precedent, Fairness, And Common Sense Dictate That Padilla V. Kentucky Should Apply Retroactively, William N. Conlow

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

In 2010, the Supreme Court decided the landmark case of Padilla v. Kentucky. The Padilla Court's holding was that failure of counsel to advise a non-citizen criminal defendant about the immigration consequences of a guilty plea constitutes ineffective assistance of counsel. This article addresses whether Padilla applies to convictions that occurred before Padilla was decided, in March 2010.

First, this article provides background on relevant immigration law, Padilla v. Kentucky, and the Supreme Court's retroactivity case law. Then, this article considers how lower courts have addressed the issue of retroactivity in the approximately twenty-seven months after the Padilla decision. This …

Explaining The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Stalemate In Congress, Maryam T. Stevenson

Catholic University Law Review

Historically, congressional policy goals on immigration have vacillated from open to restrictive as various micro and macro level factors have changed both inside and outside the Beltway. While Congress has been subjected to some immigration lobbies over time, it has largely been isolated from a general public opinion on immigration policy until fairly recently. Specifically, while Congress was successful at passing a variety of immigration policies through 1990 without much regard to public opinion, it has since failed even amid bipartisan congressional and presidential support. This article will offer a number of theories in order to explain why Congress has …

Hurricane Katrina: When A Crisis Is An Opportunity In Government Innovation For Migration Solutions, Camilo Mantilla

Refugee Law & Migration Studies Brief

No abstract provided.

The Dubious Validity Of The System Of Deportation Arrests, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

Did you ever wonder how it came to be that people suspected of immigration violations are subject to arrest without a judicially issued warrant? That executive branch immigration enforcement officers themselves have the authority to issue enforceable arrest warrants? And further, how it came to be that alleged immigration law violators can be held in prolonged detention without a probable cause hearing before a neutral magistrate of any kind?

When I first encountered this set of related issues, I quickly learned the conventional wisdom, that based on a longstanding tradition and Supreme Court approval, immigration law is an exception to …

Immigration Detention Abolition And The Violence Of Digital Cages, Sarah Sherman-Stokes

University of Colorado Law Review

The United States has a long history of pernicious immigration enforcement and surveillance. Today, in addition to more than 34,000 people held in immigration detention, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shackles and surveils an astounding 376,000 people under its “Alternatives to Detention” (“ATD”) program. The number of people subjected to this surveillance has grown dramatically in the last two decades, from just about 1,700 in 2005. ICE’s rapidly expanding Alternatives to Detention program is a “digital cage,” consisting of GPS-outfitted ankle shackles and invasive phone and location tracking. Government officials and some immigrant advocates have characterized these digital cages as …

Big Law's Immigration Advocates, Jayanth K. Krishnan, Megan Riley, Vitor M. Dias

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This study examines lawyers working in the federal appellate courts who represent immigrants seeking relief from deportation. By analyzing over 23,000 appellate cases during the Trump and Obama Administrations, the research here uncovers crucial findings. To begin, there was a statistically significant difference in the win rates of lawyers working pro bono and coming from the largest and most profitable corporate “Big Law” firms compared to lawyers based in other, typically more specialized immigration practice settings. Specifically, during the Trump Administration, Big Law lawyers won at nearly three times higher a rate than non-Big Law lawyers in the federal appellate …