The Department of Justice (DOJ) is planning on implementing numerical quotas on judges as a way of tracking their and evaluating their performance. Currently, immigration judges are not rated based on the number of cases they adjudicate. The DOJ is currently in negotiations with the National Association of Immigration Judges to remove those safeguards and […]
Due to technical difficulties, the Department of State has closed the DV-2019 entry period, that only began on October 3, 2017. All applications received October 3 -10 are considered not valid and have been excluded from the system. The DOD has since resolved its technical issue and will reopen the entry period at noon on […]
On September, 5 2017 Attorney General Sessions announced on behalf of the Trump administration the phase out and termination in six months of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). The Obama administration had implemented this program back in 2012 and so far 800,000 young people have been protected from deportation and granted employment authorization. […]
USCIS announced its plan to expand in-person interviews for prospective green card applicants. This comes as part of the agencies strategy to improve the detection and prevention of fraud and enhance the immigration system. Beginning October 1, USCIS will begin to phase-in interviews for adjustment of status applicants based on employment and refugee/asylee relative petitions […]
The Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy Act (“Raise Act”) would “amend the Immigration and Nationality Act establishing a skills-based immigration point system to focus family-sponsored immigration on spouses and minor children, to eliminate the Diversity Visa Program, to set a limit on the number of refugees admitted annually to the United States, and […]
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), and the New York Border Enforcement Security Taskforce (BEST) have started Operation Limelight USA to bring attention to Female Genital Mutilation and deter its practice through training, outreach and enforcement initiatives. FGM is the intentional cutting and mutilating of female genitalia, whereby female organs are being […]
On June 26, 2017, the Supreme Court partially lifted the injunctions on President Trumps revised travel ban (“EO-2”). EO-2 attempted to suspend entry of nationals from six predominantly Muslim countries for 90 days, but provided case-by-case waivers. The Supreme Court allowed this ban to go into effect on June 29, 2017 at 8 p.m. EST, […]
A child of a US-citizen father and a child of a US-citizen mother had different requirements to meet in order to qualify for citizenship. Eight Supreme Court Justices unanimously invalidated this difference as unconstitutional (Justice Gorsuch took no part in the case). The issue arose when a child is born abroad to one US-citizen parent […]
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco ruled against President Trump’s revised travel ban. A three-judge panel unanimously made this decision. In a joint opinion, the judges found the President exceeded his authority in issuing the travel ban, because he did “not offer a sufficient justification to suspend the […]
On Thursday, May 25, 2017, the Federal Court of Appeals in Richmond, VA, issued a decision that maintained the injunction on President Trump’s executive order travel ban. The court held that the travel ban, which sought to restrict nationals of six countries from being issued visas and traveling to the U.S, violated the U.S. Constitution’s First […]
