Immigration Law Commons^™

Immigration And Naturalization, Stewart Chang, Sabrina Damast, Anju Gupta, Pooja Mehta, Samantha Rumsey

Scholarly Works

Immigration law has always been interesting and controversial. Yet in 2018, it became disproportionately so. Law and policymakers identified issues such as unlawful migration, the border between the United States and Mexico, Muslim immigration, and even high-skilled worker visas as critical election issues in anticipation of the 2018 midterm election. Additionally, the current U.S. Executive Branch has taken a hardline approach to immigration, pursuing opportunities to limit, rather than expand, access by non-citizens to U.S. opportunities. As a prime policy example, the fact that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), that is responsible for processing immigration and naturalization applications and …

Withholding Protection, Lindsay M. Harris

Journal Articles

In June 2018, President Trump wrote a pair of tweets en route to his golf course, calling for “no Judges or Court Cases” at our border and swift deportation of immigrants, essentially without due process. While immigrant advocates were quick to explain the myriad constitutional problems with this proposal, elements of Trump’s dream are already a reality. This Article reveals how a single Customs and Border Protection officer can short-circuit the checks and balances prescribed by U.S. and international law to protect refugees from being returned to harm, and cast a long shadow over a future, meritorious asylum claim. In …

The Mythology Of Sanctuary Cities, Kit Johnson

Faculty Articles

Sanctuary jurisdictions — be they cities, counties, or states — employ various means of disentangling local law enforcement from federal civil immigration enforcement. Much of the criticism directed at these “sanctuary cities” revolves around a set of myths — such as that these jurisdictions are lawless or dangerous. This Essay identifies nine myths about sanctuary cities and subjects each to a fact-based shakedown.

The Travel Ban Decision, Administrative Law, Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Rwu Law News: The E-Newsletter Of Roger Williams University School Of Law January 2019, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Punishing Families For Being Poor: How Child Protection Interventions Threaten The Right To Parent While Impoverished, David Pimentel

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Critiquing Matter Of A-B-: An Uncertain Future In Asylum Proceedings For Women Fleeing Intimate Partner Violence, Theresa A. Vogel

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The #MeToo movement has brought renewed attention to the impact of gender inequality on our society’s ability to provide protection to women from physical and sexual violence, including intimate partner violence. Despite advances in legal protections and increased resources to prevent, prosecute, and bring an end to intimate partner violence, in the absence of true efforts to combat gender inequality as a whole, intimate partner violence will continue to pervade our society. The discussion of gender inequality’s impact on the treatment of intimate partner violence must expand beyond the violence that occurs in the United States to gender inequality’s impact …

Searching For Humanitarian Discretion In Immigration Enforcement: Reflections On A Year As An Immigration Attorney In The Trump Era, Nina Rabin

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article describes one of the most striking features of the Trump Administration’s immigration policy: the shift in the way discretion operates in the legal immigration system. Unlike other high-profile immigration policies that have been the focus of class action lawsuits and public outcry, the changes to the role of discretion have attracted little attention, in part because they are implemented through low-visibility individualized decisions that are difficult to identify, let alone challenge systemically. After providing historical context regarding the role of discretion in the immigration system before the Trump Administration, I offer four case studies from my immigration practice …

Pereira V. Sessions: A Jurisdictional Surprise For Immigration Courts, Kit Johnson

Faculty Articles

On June 21, 2, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a bombshell opinion regarding immigration court procedure: Pereira v. Sessions. On its face, the case is a boon for certain noncitizens seeking relief from deportation. Yet, as this Essay explains, Pereira’s implications are far greater. Although the Court’s opinion never mentions jurisdiction, Pereira necessarily means that immigration courts lack subject-matter jurisdiction over virtually every case filed in the last three years, plus an unknown number of earlier-filed cases. This situation arises from the chronic failure of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to comply with the law in commencing deportation proceedings. …

How The Raise Act Promotes Urban America's Economic Growth Over Rural America's, Robert Koons

South Carolina Journal of International Law and Business

No abstract provided.

Legislating Morality: Moral Theory And Turpitudinous Crimes In Immigration Jurisprudence, Abel Rodríguez, Jennifer A. Bulcock

Faculty Publications

Congress could have framed the country’s immigration policies in any number of ways. In significant part, it opted to frame them in moral terms. The crime involving moral turpitude is among the most pervasive and pernicious classifications in immigration law. In the Immigration and Nationality Act, it is virtually ubiquitous, appearing everywhere from the deportability and mandatory detention grounds to the inadmissibility and naturalization grounds. In effect, it acts as a gatekeeper for those who wish to enter and remain in the country, obtain lawful permanent residence, travel abroad after admission, or become United States citizens. With limited exceptions, noncitizens …

Chutes And Ladders: Nonrefoulement And The Sisyphean Challenge Of Seeking Asylum In Hungary, Ashley B. Armstrong

Faculty Publications

Recent developments in Hungary’s asylum law and policy demonstrate an extraordinary subversion of the refugee rights regime and serve as a case study of how a State can pervert its national laws to shirk its international and regional treaty obligations. This Article has two major goals. First, it traces the devolution of Hungarian asylum law from the height of the 2015 refugee crisis to July 2018 through a critical lens. Second, it argues that Hungary is in violation of its nonrefoulement obligations, which prohibits States from returning refugees to countries where they will likely face harm. This Article focuses its …

Immigrant Sanctuary As The 'Old Normal': A Brief History Of Police Federalism, Trevor George Gardner

Scholarship@WashULaw

Three successive presidential administrations have opposed immigrant sanctuary policy, at various intervals characterizing state and local government restrictions on police participation in federal immigration enforcement as reckless, aberrant, and unpatriotic. This Article finds these claims to be ahistorical in light of the long and singular history of a field this Article identifies as “police federalism.” For nearly all of U.S. history, Americans within and outside of the political and juridical fields flatly rejected federal policies that would make state and local police subordinate to the federal executive. Drawing from Bourdieusian social theory, this Article conceptualizes the sentiment driving this longstanding …

Right At Home: Modeling Sub-Federal Resistance As Criminal Justice Reform, Trevor George Gardner

Scholarship@WashULaw

Over the past two decades, state and local governments have crippled the federal war on marijuana as well as a series of federal initiatives designed to enforce federal immigration law through city and county police departments. This Article characterizes these and similar events as sub-federal government resistance in service of criminal justice reform. In keeping with recent sub-federal criminal reform movements, it prescribes a process model of reform consisting of four stages: enforcement abstinence, enforcement nullification, mimicry, and enforcement abolition. The state and local governments that pass through each of these stages can frustrate the enforcement of federal criminal law …

Immigration Litigation In The Time Of Trump, Shoba Wadhia

Faculty Scholarship

A number of immigration policies have been announced, implemented, or challenged in courts during the first half of Donald J. Trump's presidency. This Essay provides an update on ongoing litigation on a handful of these policies and was inspired by keynote remarks delivered at the Emerging Immigration Scholars Conference at Brigham Young University in June 2019. The topics covered by this Essay include: litigation affecting those covered by the travel or "Muslim Ban," asylum policy changes, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals ("DACA"), unlawful presence rules, and the border wall. This Essay also discusses lessons and common themes emerging from the …

Americans In Waiting: Finding Solutions For Long Term Residents, Shoba Wadhia

Faculty Scholarship

For more than a century, U.S. immigration law has recognized long-term residence as a primary factor in granting formal relief or protection. The rationale for regularizing the status of long-term residence is both clear and multifaceted. Over time, long-term residents in the United States build families, buy homes, and integrate into their communities. These equities, coupled with long-term residence, are reflected in the laws used to legalize and protect noncitizens. Many of these laws include a discretionary component, which is itself a powerful sword used by judges and officers when making immigration decisions.

This paper explores the history and role …

Using Restorative Dialogue As An Assimilation Technique For Unaccompanied Children Escaping Gang Violence, Naomi Jawahar

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

This Note will first give background on the Northern Triangle area and background on the asylum process in Part I. Part II of the Note will discuss the negative government response in Section A. Section B will delve into the influence of gangs, Section C will discuss the relation between juvenile stigmatization and crime, and Section D will discuss the current resettlement process for UACs that is in place. Finally, Section E, of Part II, will discuss how ADR will help with the resettlement process. Part IH will offer a solution, with Section A showing how restorative dialogue specifically can …

Abolishing The Private Prison Industry's Evolving Influence On Immigrant Oppression, Antonio Iglesias

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note argues that the private prison industry significantly influences immigration policies, leading to increased detention and oppression of immigrants. It advocates for abolishing private prison contracts, citing the negative social and humanitarian impacts, and suggests that states like Arizona should adopt legislation similar to Illinois and New York to protect immigrants' rights.

Alternative Remedies For Undocumented Workers Left Behind In A Post-Hoffman Plastic Era, Rachel S. Steber

Catholic University Law Review

Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in 1935 in order to level the bargaining power of employees and employers to prevent burdening the flow of commerce and depressing workers’ wages. The NLRA vests the administration of promulgating the goals of the NLRA in the National Labor Relations Board (Board), broadly stating that the Board should take such affirmative action as necessary to effectuate the policies of the Act.

In 1935, however, Congress could not predict the future demographic makeup of the American workforce, and in its definition of an “employee” as covered under the NLRA, the statute makes …

Precarious Citizenship: Asian Immigrant Naturalization 1918 To 1925, Angela M. Banks

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

During the height of the exclusion era, when Asian immigrants were prohibited from naturalizing and becoming United States citizens, state and federal court judges around the country naturalized at least 500 Asian immigrant servicepersons and veterans. Between 1918 and 1925, Federal Bureau of Naturalization officials and state and federal court judges had to determine whether the military naturalization provisions enacted in 1918 included the same racial restrictions that the general naturalization provisions included. This Article tells the story of how these officials and judges navigated statutory text, congressional intent, and the reality of Asian immigrant membership in the United States …