Deportation Tales

Today, the Department of Justice announced, through Twitter, that all non-detained immigration courts without an announced re-opening date, will remain closed through at least August 21, 2020. This means the earliest non-detained hearings will return is Monday, August 24, 2020. For anyone with any hearing scheduled on August 21st or earlier, that hearing is now cancelled. This announcement applies to the immigration courts in our region, including Memphis, Kansas City, and Dallas. It does not apply to the detained courts. The immigration courts in LaSalle and Oakdale remain open and continue to conduct hearings.  Keeping the immigration courts closed is the right decision. COVID continues to rage, particularly in the South and grouping dozens, or more, people together for immigration court hearings and forcing those people to travel hundreds of miles is not a good idea.  Regardless, the DOJ needs to get this situation figured out. There is no reason we should be receiving a ne...

Even though the non-detained immigration courts remain closed to hearings and other in-person services at this time, that does not mean the immigration courts are not making moves. For those following the Memphis Immigration Court in particular, it is common knowledge that a pair of retirements last year had been causing a considerable amount of confusion and delay well before COVID-19. The retirements were not totally unexpected as the immigration courts in general have struggled   to retain judges under this administration. Regardless, chaos and confusion are the natural consequences when a court that has been operating for several years with 4 immigration judges is suddenly reduced down to two. Recently, the Department of Justice has moved to re-staff and re-structure the Memphis court. The first change came shortly into the pandemic when Immigration Judge Renae M. Hansell was promoted to the position of Assistant Chief Immigration Judge (“ACIJ”) for the Memphis court...

I have not been diligent in keeping this blog up to date. Not to make excuses, but I think a lot of that has to do with a desire not to spend my free time talking about the stuff I see every day at the office or on the road. They take a toll and I generally cope with them by pretending they're not happening when I finally get some time away from it though. 2019 was an eventful year. There were oral arguments in front of the circuit courts, at least one involving litigation I had been managing for years. They didn't go so well, but it was a major step forward and a tremendous learning experience. New detention centers opened up in our region, leading me to get to know the state of Louisiana better than I had ever planned on doing. Winning in court got harder. The asylum denial rate in the Memphis and LaSalle immigration courts hovers near 100%. But there were victories too. We won some reversals from the BIA and had success in most of our cancellation of removal cases. ...

Normally, this is a blog about removal defense and, more broadly, immigration-related litigation.  Even so, I wanted to discuss an issue that's been on my mind a lot the last couple of years using an issue I've been seeing in family-based immigration, not litigation. Since Trump took office, there have been numerous immigration-related policies and proposals that have taken the news by fire.  From the Muslim ban to family separation, there are a ridiculous number of cruel actions that justifiably stir up shock and anger.  They have motivated thousands to take to the streets and demand change.  They have inspired lawsuits.  That's a good thing.  We shouldn't be okay with cruelty in any form. Yet, while attention has been focused on these horrific activities, the administration and its employees in the immigration agencies have also silently been implementing changes, policies, presumptions and attitudes that will and do have devastating effects.  Mo...

Jena, Louisiana On Friday, September 28, 2018, the Executive Office for Immigration Review ("EOIR" - pronounced "Eeyore" like the Winnie the Pooh character) announced the hiring and assignment of 46 new immigration judges ("IJ").  Of those 46, four were assigned to the LaSalle Immigration Court in Jena, Louisiana, the middle-of-nowhere location of the GEO run  (for profit) ICE detention center where so many immigrants arrested in Arkansas are separated from their families and detained. The LaSalle court has been operating for well over a year, with EOIR often flying IJs to Jena to manage the docket a few days to a few weeks at a time to begin and then transferring management of the court to the Miami Immigration Court.  The Miami court's IJs would appear via televideo alongside ICE trial attorneys and other court staff, including interpreters. Miami's management ended mere weeks ago and now we have what we presume to be full-time IJ...

Like the Memphis Immigration Court , the LaSalle Immigration Court is not an independent arbiter of the law.  Instead, it is an administrative law court.  It is the sub-agency of another agency tasked with enforcing the laws as that agency sees fit. In this case, it is the local office of the Office of the Chief Immigration Judge , a sub-agency of the Executive Office for Immigration Review , a sub-agency of the U.S. Department of Justice . Practically speaking, what this means is the immigration judges are not judges at all.  Rather, they are attorney employees of the U.S. Department of Justice and they have to do whatever the Attorney General, currently everyone's least-favorite Southern caricature, Jeff Sessions, tells them to do. Looking specifically at the LaSalle court, this agency's sole purpose is to adjudicate the removal proceedings of detained immigrants.  Individuals who have been detained from all over the mid-South, particularly Arkansas, Louisia...

The Memphis Immigration Court is not an independent, Article III, court of law. Rather, it is an administrative law court falling under the jurisdiction of the Office of the Chief Immigration Judge , a component of the Executive Office forImmigration Review under the Department of Justice. The court in Memphis has jurisdiction over all non-detained removal proceedings originating in Arkansas, Tennessee and Northern Mississippi. As we're located in Arkansas, the vast majority of our clients facing removal end up in Memphis. Our cases involving detained immigrants will find themselves before one of the Louisiana courts and we sometimes have clients who find themselves before the Dallas or Kansas City immigration courts either because they are placed there by accident or they live in eastern Oklahoma or southwest Missouri. Regardless, Memphis is the general rule... 80 Monroe Avenue, Memphis, TN Photo courtesy of Google As such, it might be helpful to get to know the...