Articles Posted in Deportation & Removal

As Lawyers specializing in the I-601 Extreme Hardship Waivers, we are happy to report on the upcoming changes in the Waiver process as provided by AILA.

An I-601, Application for Waiver of Grounds of Inadmissibility, is filed to permit an alien who has been denied admission to the United States to gain admission as a lawful permanent resident or fiancé(e) under certain circumstances. This waiver is based on extreme hardship to United States citizen or lawful permanent resident relatives of the alien which would result if the alien’s inadmissibility cannot be waived.

What was announced on January 6?

This is a tough questions to answer isn’t it? On a 1999 fishing trip, two bullies threw a third man into New Jersey’s Sandy Hook Bay, knowing he couldn’t swim. The drowning death of Michael Augulis was ruled an accident, and it stayed that way until a Lebanese immigrant came to cops with the truth seven years later. Police and prosecutors say the tip from Charbel Chehoud, who wasn’t involved in the drowning, was so critical to solving the case, he should be allowed to stay in the United States. The feds disagree.

The S visa is granted to those who act as witnesses or informants to federal or state government agencies. The S visa holder is a person providing information regarding crimes and terrorism.

S visas are granted to individuals who possess critical and reliable information concerning criminal or terrorist organizations. Foreign nationals who are holders of an S visa are willing to share this information with federal or state authorities. S visas are also granted to individuals whose presence in the United States is critical to the success of a criminal investigation or prosecution.

The cost of hiring illegal workers can be great, local bakery owners will have to pay a high price. A La Jolla, Calif., bakery, along with its owner and manager, were sentenced in federal court last week on charges stemming from a four-year probe by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) that the business hired illegal alien workers.

U.S. District Judge Thomas J. Whelan ordered The French Gourmet, Inc. to forfeit $109,200 in illicit proceeds gained from the illegal hiring practices and pay $277,375 for its felony conviction of employing more than 10 illegal alien workers in a 12-month period.

The company owner and president Michel Malecot, 59, was sentenced to five years of supervised probation after pleading guilty earlier this year to knowingly employing numerous illegal alien workers over an extended period of time. Malecot was also held liable to pay the total financial penalty of $396,575.

Next week, the Department of Homeland Security will roll out a pilot program intended to speed up the deportation of immigrants with criminal records by weeding out low-priority cases. It’s a sensible plan, and one that could restore some sanity to a deportation system that wastes time with harmless immigrants and thereby allows dangerous ones to escape its attention.

Under the pilot program, teams of prosecutors in Baltimore and Denver will review all pending immigration cases in those cities and then decide whether to issue temporary reprieves to the elderly, students, children, victims of domestic crimes and those with a close relative who is a U.S. citizen. Reprieves would be limited to those without criminal convictions. If all goes well, the program would be expanded nationwide in January.

Until recently, government attorneys were required, with rare exceptions, to treat immigrants convicted of serious crimes with the same urgency as those who are merely here illegally. The new guidelines will allow them to place the high-priority cases — those involving criminals — on a fast track for a hearing before a judge. At the same time, this could help free up overburdened immigration courts by reducing dockets.

Sad Sad Story, but this is our reality. A talent illegal-immigrant student in Texas killed himself the day after Thanksgiving and left letters saying he felt trapped by his lack of opportunities.

High school senior Joaquin Luna, 18, of Mission, shot himself in the bathroom of his house on Friday. His brother Diyer Mendoza said Joaquin left letters telling of his despair at the chances of the federal Dream Act, which would legalize illegal-immigrant students and young adults, becoming a reality.

The purpose of the Development, Relief and Education of Alien Minors Act, also called the DREAM Act, is to help those individuals who meet certain requirements, have an opportunity to enlist in the military or go to college and have a path to citizenship which they otherwise would not have without this legislation. Supporters of the DREAM Act believe it is vital not only to the people who would benefit from it, but also the United States as a whole. It would give an opportunity to undocumented immigrant students who have been living in the U.S. since they were young, a chance to contribute back to the country that has given so much to them and a chance to utilize their hard earned education and talents.

A new Obama administration policy to avoid deportations of illegal immigrants who are not criminals has been applied very unevenly across the country and has led to vast confusion both in immigrant communities and among agents charged with carrying it out.

Since June, when the policy was unveiled, frustrated lawyers and advocates have seen a steady march of deportations of immigrants with no criminal record and with extensive roots in the United States, who seemed to fit the administration’s profile of those who should be allowed to remain.

But at the same time, in other cases, immigrants on the brink of expulsion saw their deportations halted at the last minute, in some cases after public protests. In other instances, immigration prosecutors acted, with no prodding from advocates, to abandon deportations of immigrants with strong ties to this country whose only violation was their illegal status, a sign that they were following the June memo from ICE.

For President Obama, the political stakes in the new policy are high. White House officials have concluded that there is no chance before next year’s presidential election to pass the immigration overhaul that Mr. Obama supports, which would include paths to legal status for illegal immigrants. Even still, immigration authorities have sustained a fast pace of deportations, removing nearly 400,000 foreigners in each of the last three years.

With Latino communities taking the brunt of those deportations, Latino voters are increasingly disappointed with Mr. Obama. White House officials hope the new policy will ease some of the pressure on Latinos, by steering enforcement toward gang members and convicts and away from students, soldiers and families of American citizens.

In a June 17 memorandum, John Morton, the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, laid out more than two dozen factors that its agents and lawyers should weigh when deciding whether to exercise prosecutorial discretion to dismiss a deportation. The memo called for “particular care and consideration” for veterans and active-duty troops, elderly immigrants and minors, and those brought here illegally as children.

In August, the homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, announced additional measures to put Mr. Morton’s guidelines into effect, including a review of all deportation cases — about 300,000 — currently in the immigration courts, with the aim of closing cases that do not meet the administration’s priorities.

In a report released Wednesday, the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the American Immigration Council collected 252 cases from lawyers across the country who had asked Mr. Morton’s agency, known as ICE, to exercise prosecutorial discretion to spare immigrants from deportation. “The overwhelming conclusion is that most ICE offices have not changed their practices since the issuance of these new directives,” the report found.

“This is a classic example of leadership saying one thing and the rank and file doing another,” said Gregory Chen, director of advocacy for the lawyers association. The report found that training for immigration officers on the new guidelines had been lacking.

Officials at the Homeland Security Department acknowledge the policy’s slow start. Mr. Morton’s June guidelines were followed by a three-month lull, when resistance grew among agents in the field. In late September, Ms. Napolitano and Mr. Morton went on the offensive to press the policy, and since then Mr. Morton has been on the road inaugurating training programs.

“Like any major change in enforcement policy, this is a work in progress,” Mr. Morton said by telephone from Miami, where he was joining in a training session. “I have been handling much of the initial explanation myself, because I feel so strongly about it.”
Officials say they need time to transform federal agencies accustomed to cut-and-dried immigration enforcement, with any illegal immigrant a target for deportation. Ms. Napolitano says immigration agents must become more like other police officers, using “sound prosecutorial practice” to follow priorities. Those priorities are to deport convicted criminals, serial violators of immigration law and recent border crossers, officials said.

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We all have been reading about The Obama administration changing the federal immigration enforcement strategy, in ways that reduce the threat of deportation for millions of illegal immigrants.

The changes focus enforcement on immigrants who have committed serious crimes, an effort to unclog immigration courts and detention centers. A record backlog of deportation cases has forced immigrants to wait an average 459 days for their hearings. But recent statistics paint a slightly different picture.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton said today his agency deported nearly 400,000 individuals during the fiscal year that ended in September, the largest number of removals in the agency’s history.

This is interesting. An illegal immigrant who filed a civil lawsuit over the ownership of a $750,000 lottery ticket has won the right to stay in the country to fight his legal battle. His lawyer, successfully sought a deferred action on Cua-Toc’s removal order from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The deferred action allows Cua-Toc to temporarily remain in the U.S. to have his day in court.

Deportation, also known as removal, is the process of expelling a foreigner from the country. Because it can be tough to fight your case when you’re no longer living in the United States–and because deportation can cause tremendous stress to you and your family–you should ask to have your deportation postponed while pursuing all legal avenues. This postponement is called a stay of deportation or stay of removal. A stay is a temporary suspension of an action. When we talk about a stay of deportation or a stay of removal, it means that the judge or court has postponed a scheduled deportation.

Different government agencies are involved in the immigration process. Each agency handles requests for a stay of deportation differently. Typically, a stay of deportation would be requested while you are appealing your case. An appeal occurs when you ask a higher court to review the decision of a lower court in hopes that the higher court will decide that the lower court made a mistake in its decision.

Using a little-known government program, the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has pushed nearly 160,000 immigrants — many with deep ties to the United States — through an expedited deportation process, sometimes without adequately informing them of their right to a day in court. Federal authorities are increasingly deporting illegal immigrants through a fast-track program that bypasses court hearings, an effort by the federal government to save money, reduce backlogs and clear detention beds. We see this everyday in our practice as well.

The U.S. has deported more than 160,000 immigrants, the vast majority of whom had no legal representation — and signed documents they may not have understood — under a program that carries severe penalties should they reenter the country. According to the National Immigration Law Center and professors at Stanford Law School and Western State University College of Law, immigrants often signed the so-called stipulated removals because they believed it was the only way to avoid prolonged detention. But by agreeing to the removal order, immigrants can be barred from returning to the U.S. and be subject to criminal prosecution for illegal reentry.

According to a new report, the program, which began nearly a decade ago and dramatically expanded in 2003, has been encouraged by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers at various levels of the organization. According to documents reviewed by the authors of the report, field offices were encouraged to use the program to boost deportation numbers and given incentives to increase the number of stipulated orders of removal signed by detainees in their jurisdictions.