Court Rules

 

ICE Violates the Fourth Amendment When It Detains People Without Probable Cause, 

Court Rules

A federal appeals court recently ruled that the Fourth Amendment requires a neutral decisionmaker to review the detention of anyone held based on an U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainer. The decision came after ICE attempted to detain an American citizen without probable cause and flagged him as eligible for deportation from the United States.

In Gonzalez v. ICE, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reviewed ICE’s process for issuing immigration detainers. ICE issues an immigration detainer when it wants state or local law enforcement officers to hold a person after their release date so ICE can arrest and detain them.

Detainers are often issued based on information contained in ICE or other government agency databases. These databases are notorious for their frequent errors.

ICE must have probable cause that a person can be deported before it may detain them. Based on this fact, the judge ruled there must also be a neutral evaluation of probable cause. Such review must occur “promptly,” which is usually defined as 48 hours.

Racism @ the Border

 Institutional Racism Is Rampant in Immigration Enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico Border

A Black former U.S. diplomat recently shared her experience of months of racial profiling by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials while she was stationed at the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. She was tasked with enforcing U.S. immigration law, but nevertheless found herself racially profiled and discriminated against by U.S. immigration authorities.

The problem became so severe that she now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and had to quit her job. Unfortunately, this is just one example of immigration officials’ long history of racism at the border.

CBP Racially Profiles a U.S. Diplomat

In 2018, Tianna Spears was a new diplomat stationed at the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. She frequently crossed the border into El Paso, Texas, as thousands of other U.S. citizens do every day. However, she soon found that she was treated differently than others by CBP officers at the border.

Spears estimates that CBP officers required her to go through “secondary inspection” approximately two out of every three times that she crossed. This outcome should have been extremely rare given her diplomatic passport and SENTRI card allowing for expedited clearance. Her non-Black colleagues never had similar experiences.

Hope for Asylum Seekers

Legal Victory Brings Hope to Asylum Seekers Turned Away at the Border

Asylum seekers got a major win in a lawsuit challenging the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) illegal policy of turning back asylum seekers at ports of entry. In Al Otro Lado v. Wolf, a federal judge decided that the case may proceed as a class action.

This decision means that the named plaintiffs—14 individuals and an organization that assists asylum seekers—can seek relief for both themselves and the thousands of asylum seekers that have been turned away since 2016 or will be turned away in the future. In two ports of entry alone, over 57,640 asylum seekers were turned back in 2018 and 2019.

Asylum seekers’ victory in this case is a welcome development in the face of an otherwise grim situation at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Expelling Asylum Seekers From the Border

The Trump administration has used the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to impose a near-complete shutdown of the U.S.-Mexico border. At the same time, the administration has rapidly “expelled” thousands of unaccompanied minors in the name of public health, even when they test negative for COVID-19.

Over 105,000 adults and children have been expelled through July. Hundreds of those who were not expelled have been sent back to Mexico to wait an unknown period of time for their U.S. immigration court hearings under the indefinitely-suspended “Migrant Protection Protocols.”

COVID-19 Wreaks Havoc

 

COVID-19 Wreaks Havoc on Immigration Courts With No Clear Plan to Stop Spread

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread throughout the United States, immigration courts around the country remain in turmoil.

The Executive Office for Immigration Review (“EOIR”) initially postponed all non-detained hearings when lockdowns began in March. However, EOIR refused to close all courts. Hearings for detained immigrants and unaccompanied children continued, despite the risks. Now, nearly five months later, EOIR still has no public plan to limit the spread of COVID-19 as it slowly begins to reopen courts around the country.

Immigration Courts Reopen Across the U.S.

Beginning in mid-June, EOIR began reopening some immigration courts, starting with the Honolulu immigration court.

Since then, courts have reopened for hearings in Boston, Dallas, Las Vegas, Hartford, New Orleans, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Newark, Baltimore, Detroit, and Arlington. However, following the rise in COVID-19 cases in Texas, the Dallas immigration court was open for less than a week before shutting again. It remains closed.

After the court reopened in Newark, immigration lawyers filed a lawsuit seeking to halt the court reopening. They explained that the court has not provided enough safety protocols. According to the lawsuit, they believe at least two deaths, including an immigration lawyer and a clerk for ICE in Newark, can already be traced to court hearings that occurred before the initial shutdown.

Fee Hikes

USCIS Fee Hikes Will Go Into Effect for These Applications


U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) released an advance copy of a final rule on July 31 that will impose significant fee increases across many facets of the legal immigration system. These changes include an astronomical 80% increase to the cost of becoming a U.S. citizen and a first-time fee for asylum applicants. The rule is expected to be published in the Federal Register on August 3.

With this new rule, the Trump administration demands that immigrants, vulnerable individuals, and American businesses take the brunt of USCIS’ financial mismanagement. This could make the legal immigration system inaccessible to millions of people.

These applications will have increased fees starting on October 2:

Green Card Applications
USCIS is “debundling” several forms in the green card application process.

Applicants previously paid one fee for all the forms but will now have to pay for each form separately. This includes a request for work authorization and travel documents that people file so they can work and travel while their application is being processed. In total, the agency will charge an extra $1,150 to apply for a green card and those other documents. That brings the cost from $1,760 to $2,910.

ICE Publishes

ICE publishes June monthly report on 287(g) enforcement actions


A Salvadoran national with a felony conviction, a Mexican national with an outstanding warrant, and a Mexican national charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon are three of the most egregious cases of detainers placed in June by local law enforcement officials with delegated 287(g) authority from ICE, in the latest monthly report.

The reports, which ICE began publishing in October, detail examples of enforcement actions made as a direct result of  the cooperation agreements between state and local law enforcement partners and the federal agency.

The June report includes significant threats to public safety:

In Arkansas on June 4, the Benton County Sheriff’s Office 287(g) program.
In Florida on June 3, the Collier County Sheriff’s Office 287(g) program.
In Texas on June 15, the Nueces County Sheriff’s Office 287(g) program.
In fiscal year (FY) 2019, the 287(g) program resulted in almost 25,000 law enforcement encounters with aliens in the custody of
participating jurisdictions.

Resume Processing DACA

The Administration Must Immediately Resume Processing New DACA Applications

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration’s first attempt to terminate Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), in September 2017, was unlawful. Today, 25 days after the decision, the Supreme Court will certify its judgement in the case, and—under the law—the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will have an unambiguous obligation to fully reinstate DACA. As a result, not only must the agency continue processing renewal applications by those who currently hold DACA, but it must also reopen the application process to more than 300,000 new applicants who are eligible under the terms of the program, including 55,500 of the youngest DACA-eligible individuals who have aged into eligibility over the past three years and will now be able to apply for the first time.

Notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s decision to vacate the administration’s 2017 DACA rescission memorandum, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has taken no public steps to restore DACA to the way it operated pre-rescission. Rather, the agency has been silent—with exception of a post-decision statement that opened by questioning the legitimacy of the Supreme Court itself. As of the date of publication, the Trump administration is in open defiance of the law.

More than 825,000 immigrants have benefited from DACA’s protections