Immigration Courts
Immigration courts play a crucial role in ensuring that immigration laws are applied fairly and consistently, providing due process to those facing removal. Learn more about issues facing the courts today and explore the actions we're taking to ensure the rights of immigrants are upheld and legal integrity is maintained.
Why We Are Suing the Government on Behalf of All Children Facing Deportation
The thousands of children fleeing violence and persecution and seeking refuge in the United States have brought to the forefront the issue of how our immigration system deals with children. The current system subjects kids to the same deportation laws as adults. They are ordered to appear in… Read More
Groups Sue Federal Government over Failure to Provide Legal Representation for Children
The American Civil Liberties Union, American Immigration Council, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, Public Counsel, and K&L Gates LLP today filed a nationwide class-action lawsuit on behalf of thousands of children who are challenging the federal government's failure to provide them with legal representation as it carries out deportation hearings against them. Read More
Legal Concerns Push Counties to Limit ICE Detainers
Doña Ana County in New Mexico announced this week it will stop honoring detainer requests from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials at the county jail, becoming the most recent in a string of local jurisdictions across the country to limit their compliance with detainers. Read More
District Court Decides Some TPS Beneficiaries May Finally Become Lawful Permanent Residents
When a massive earthquake leveled much of Haiti, and when civil war broke out in Syria, the U.S. government did not blindly send Haitians and Syrians home to near-certain death. Instead, the government did the humane thing and offered safe haven to nationals of those countries who were here… Read More
Supreme Court Decides Immigrants Can “Age-Out” of Visa Petitions
In Scialabba v. Cuellar de Osorio, a heavily-divided Supreme Court ruled against thousands of aspiring young immigrants who were included on their parents’ visa petitions as minors, but who turned 21—known as “aging-out”—before visas became available. Aging-out is tantamount to someone losing his place in the visa line… Read More
Over 100 Cities and Counties Now Riding the Anti-Detainer Wave
There have been four recent federal court decisions ruling that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents cannot require local jurisdictions to detain someone and that local law enforcement can be held liable for holding someone for no reason other than an ICE detainer. ICE… Read More
Study: Providing Representation for Indigent Immigrants Could Pay for Itself
U.S. immigration laws provide only minimal due process protections for even the most vulnerable immigrants facing deportation, and in 59 percent of cases, immigrants are forced to navigate the byzantine immigration court system without representation, including many unaccompanied children. Many do not… Read More
Immigration Courts’ Computer Malfunction Slows an Already Crowded System
For more than a month, the computer system that manages federal immigration court cases has been down due to a massive malfunction. According to a notice on the website for the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR), which oversees immigration courts, “A hardware failure has resulted in the… Read More
Unaccompanied Children Deserve Fair Representation in Immigration Courts
News stories and NGO reports continue to document the plight of “unaccompanied children,” and their complex legal issues were brought to the attention of Congress when Attorney General Eric Holder told the House Judiciary Committee last month that the Department of Justice needs to do more to address… Read More
Courts Should Hold Border Patrol Agents Accountable for Fourth Amendment Abuses
In October 2010, while Alejandro Garcia de la Paz was returning to San Antonio from his work outside of Vanderpool, Texas, two agents from the United States Border Patrol pulled the truck he was riding in over to the side of the road. Although the driver, Alejandro and… Read More
America's story is an immigrant story.
