Immigration Courts
Data Shows Prosecutorial Discretion Grinds to a Halt in Immigration Courts
The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced last month that it now has hired 326 immigration judges, 53 more judges than July 2016, yet during that time the immigration court backlog has grown. According to new data released by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) the reason for… Read More
Refugees Contribute More In Taxes Than They Ever Receive in Benefits
Refugee resettlement has long been a cornerstone of United States foreign policy, but in the first weeks of the Trump administration, the president attempted to suspend the decades-long program in favor of a more isolationist approach. One reason the president gave for wanting to temporarily bar the world’s refugees was… Read More
Why Are the Immigration Courts So Backlogged? Government Findings May Surprise You
Anyone familiar with the immigration system knows that the immigration courts have an enormous backlog which has persisted—and grown—for more than a decade. As of April 2017, the immigration court backlog topped 585,930 cases, more than double the pending cases in fiscal year (FY) 2006 (212,000). The immigration… Read More
President’s Tweets Dim His Prospects for Supreme Court Review of The Travel Ban Case
President Trump reignited discussion around his controversial travel ban through a series of early morning tweets on Monday, in a move legal experts say could ultimately cripple his administration’s chances of restoring the ban through the Supreme Court. In these tweets, the president blew a giant hole in his legal case… Read More
Federal Court Blocks DOJ’s Attempt to Restrict Access to Legal Assistance
On Wednesday, a federal court in Seattle issued a nationwide temporary restraining order allowing nonprofits to continue to provide limited legal assistance to immigrants without being forced to formally represent them in immigration court. The order was issued in a lawsuit brought by the Northwest Immigrants… Read More
The Sad State of Atlanta’s Immigration Court
The Atlanta immigration court is known as one of the worst places to be in deportation proceedings. For years, the judges have been accused of abusive and unprofessional practices and the denial rate of asylum applications alone is 98 percent. The latest effort to document this phenomenon comes… Read More
Attorney General Sessions’ First Orders of Business on Immigration
Jeff Sessions was confirmed as Attorney General this week by a vote of 52-47, following a very contentious confirmation process. As Attorney General and head of the Department of Justice (DOJ), Sessions will oversee key immigration-related functions. The three recently issued executive orders on immigration give the Attorney… Read More
U.S. Mayors Issue Powerful Pro-Immigrant Resolution
The United States Conference of Mayors approved a resolution last week calling for immigration reform, the continuation of programs that protect DREAMers and the need for adopting a more welcoming approach to immigration. The United States Conference of Mayors is a non-partisan organization of cities with populations of… Read More
Weekend Reading: Highlights from this week’s immigration news (August 8-12)
This week, business leaders from across the country voiced their support for our #ReasonForReform campaign, which officially launched on August 3. In an op-ed on Huffington Post, Jalak Jobanputra, Founding Partner of FuturePerfect Ventures, writes: “People from all across the world have great ideas, and… Read More
Belgian Entrepreneur’s Innovation Tracks Vital Health Stats; Company Creates American Jobs
From a young age in Belgium, Pierre-Jean Cobut felt inspired by America’s rags-to-riches stories and was sure he belonged in Silicon Valley. In Europe, he says, “There’s not the same culture of risk taking.” Two years of undergraduate study in the United States confirmed his infatuation, and Cobut got the… Read More
