By now, you’ve probably heard that the Trump Administration is not a fan of immigrants. They have been making changes to detain and deport more non-citizens, more quickly, and with fewer due process protections. To that end, the Administration is pressuring Asylum Officers and Immigration Judges to adjudicate more cases. These civil servants are already stretched thin, and so the additional work is likely to reduce decision quality, as well as damage morale. It will also make litigating cases more difficult for asylum seekers and other non-citizens, as they will have less time to present their cases, and–most probably–less time to prepare.
Last week, 13 of 28 members of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) were purged. Those targeted include appellate judges appointed by the Biden Administration, some of whom were still on probation (BIA judges have a two-year probationary period) and others who had completed their probation. The firings, which go into effect next month, seem not to have complied with proper legal procedures, and are likely to be challenged in court by at least some of the terminated judges.
Having talked with people on the inside, this mass firing sounds like it is only the beginning. I’m told that the Trump Administration plans to radically re-make the Immigration Court system in order to dramatically reduce due process protections for non-citizens.
An organization that claims to watch the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice has published a list of government employee “targets” who would supposedly stand in the way of Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. These include the head of the Asylum Division at USCIS, several Immigration Judges, and the Director of the Legal Access Program at EOIR (the Executive Office for Immigration Review – the office that oversees our nation’s Immigration Courts). The clear purpose of the list–which includes personal photos (presumably taken from social media), salary information, and job histories–is to intimidate the “targets” and force them out of government.
While I am certainly not a big fan of our dysfunctional immigration system, I find the idea of targeting individual government employees to be repugnant and cowardly, and in this case, dishonest and misogynistic. (more…)
For asylum seekers in Immigration Court, the Individual Hearing is where they tell their story to the judge and get a decision. Even with a kind Immigration Judge (IJ) and a reasonable DHS Attorney (prosecutor), testifying in court can be intimidating and stressful. Here, we’ll talk about the Individual Hearing and what is expected from respondents (non-citizens seeking protection) and witnesses.
There’s a scene in the iconic 1994 movie Clerks where Dante Hicks says to his friend and fellow slacker Randall Graves: “You hate people!” Randall responds, “Yes, but I love social gatherings–isn’t it ironic?” This is basically the opposite of my feelings towards the Asylum Office. The people are (mostly) great, but the organization is a disaster. Interviews are routinely delayed for years on end, decisions are delayed for months or years after that. The Asylum Offices rarely give sufficient notice before the interview, so there is little time to prepare, and the interviews themselves are often inefficient and interminably long.
In a recent post, I discussed Faiza W. Sayed’s bold ideas for reforming the Asylum Office and reducing the backlog (which currently stands at well over 1.3 million cases). But the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the Asylum Office cannot be saved. It should be eliminated. (more…)
The Republican Party has released its Platform for 2024. As usual with these things, it is short on specifics and long on political rhetoric. The first issue mentioned in the Platform is immigration: “Common Sense tells us clearly, in President Trump’s words, that ‘If we don’t have a Border, we don’t have a Country.'” It continues: “We must not allow Biden’s Migrant Invasion to alter our Country.” “Under the Trump Administration and a Republican Congress, it will be defeated immediately.” But how?
The Platform has a six-part plan “to stop the open-border policies that have opened the floodgates to a tidal wave of illegal Aliens, deadly drugs, and Migrant Crime.” Here, we’ll take a look at the plan and I will offer some thoughts. (more…)
Sometimes, the evidence you leave out of an asylum case is as important as the evidence you include.
Here, we’ll look at what evidence is best kept out of a case, how to decide whether to submit evidence that has harmful and helpful components, and how to evaluate the risks inherent in excluding unhelpful evidence. (more…)
I recently prepared an asylum case for a married lesbian woman. The case was complicated by the fact that my client had multiple nationalities, and I was concerned about one country where she held citizenship, and where conditions were less bad for LGBT people (at least when compared with her other countries of nationality). My focus was on gathering evidence about country conditions to support her claim, and I forgot to look at another key aspect of the case–my client’s wife had a pending asylum application of her own.
As these things often go, I was reviewing the case prior to the Immigration Court hearing when I noticed the issue. I spoke to my client and learned that the wife’s case included information that would have been helpful for my client’s case. So now I had a dilemma: Should we amend our case at the last minute and risk harming my client’s credibility (when she tried to explain the change) or say nothing and forgo the opportunity to include helpful evidence? (more…)
It’s nearly impossible to win an asylum case if the Asylum Officer or Immigration Judge does not believe your story. But how do decision-makers determine whether an applicant is telling the truth or lying? In other words, how do they decide whether the applicant is credible?
There are a number of methods to evaluate credibility: Whether the applicant’s story is plausible (i.e., whether it makes sense in the context of country conditions), whether the person can describe details that we would expect her to know (for example, if she was a political activists, she should know something about her political party), and whether the applicant’s statement is consistent with the other evidence and testimony in the case. Today, I want to discuss “consistency,” since inconsistent statements are probably the most common basis for concluding that an applicant is not credible. (more…)
Data from the Executive Office for Immigration Review–the office that oversees our nation’s Immigration Courts–is notoriously unreliable. Nevertheless, we have to use what’s available. In that spirit, let’s take a look at EOIR’s statistics for Fiscal Year 2023 (which cover the period from October 1, 2022 to September 30, 2023) and see what we can learn. (more…)
Welcome to 2024! What better way to start off the New Year than with some predictions!
Just so you know, if some of these prognostications seem a bit negative, there is no need to worry: My success rate with prophesying is quite low, and so hopefully, I will be wrong. With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s get started. And remember, if any of these predictions happen to come true, you heard it here first! (more…)
For years, the asylum backlogs in Immigration Court and the Asylum Office have been growing rapidly. But lately, they’ve been growing RAPIDLY–with a capital “R”. And a capital “APIDLY”. Probably I should add a few exclamation marks (!!!) after that and at least one “very” before it. What I’m trying to say is, of late, the backlogs have been growing at an insane rate.
Here, we’ll talk about what is happening and why, and try to guess what it all means for asylum seekers. (more…)
The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the organization that oversees our nation’s Immigration Courts, has released new data about asylum grant rates by country of origin. While EOIR deserves credit for trying to be more transparent, it is difficult to know what to make of these numbers. They are confusing, poorly organized, and–for lack of a better word–strange.
Here, we’ll take a look at the data and try to parse some meaning from EOIR’s madness. (more…)
It is the job of a lawyer to learn about your situation and then advise you of your options. You want to know, “If I do X, what will happen?” In many areas of the law, attorneys can provide this type of advice. If you rob a bank and get caught, you will go to jail. If you sign a contract and then breach your agreement, you will be liable for damages. If you fail to pay taxes, you will face criminal and civil penalties.
But in immigration law–and particularly in asylum law–it is often impossible to provide precise advice. The unfortunate fact is that asylum seekers must live with significant uncertainty. (more…)
The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) surveyed more than 300 immigration lawyers (including yours truly) about asylum and has issued a new report with findings and recommendations: High-Stakes Asylum: How Long an Asylum Case Takes and How We Can Do Better.
The report makes some useful suggestions for improving the system, and it is well worth a look. It also has some significant flaws (at least in my opinion). As I see it, though, the biggest problem–as usual for these types of things–is how to prevent the U.S. government from simply ignoring the report and continuing on its merry way. (more…)