Visa Lawyer Blog

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.

We wanted to be the first to report of an alarming trend that we just learned about last month. Over the past month we received calls from family members of detained individuals who were picked up coming into San Diego via domestic flights from NYC, Miami and Atlanta. Most of the individuals were here on expired visas, but with no criminal records. Until now, Immigration officials were not looking for individuals moving in the US on internal flights without a special reason.

We also learned from a TSA official, and from a Delta employee, that the government is acting on a tip connected to a drug enforcement operation from the above referenced destination. We feel that this may be also related to Immigration enforcement at the same time.

In the past, increased border vigilance in Arizona has caused a spike in human smuggling traffic moving through Los Angeles International Airport, but not through San Diego’s Lindbergh Field.

Attorney Andrew Desposito of our office wrote this brief commentary on the split in courts across the country with their application of Padilla v. Kentucky

The U.S. Supreme Court case Padilla v. Kentucky (2010) was an important ruling for many aliens facing deportation. In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court held that an attorney provides ineffective assistance of counsel by failing to inform a client that a guilty plea carries a risk of deportation. The problem with the ruling is that the U.S. Supreme Court failed to clarify whether this decision could apply retroactively with regards to direct and collateral appeals. The main concern is whether the decision announced a new constitutional rule and should not be applied retroactively, unless an exception applies, or whether it is not a new constitutional rule and could therefore be applied retroactively. This distinction has been critical for many Circuits in its decisions on whether to apply Padilla to other cases in their jurisdictions.

Recently, the Seventh Circuit held that Padilla does not apply retroactively. The Court concluded that because Padilla announced a new constitutional rule, that unless there is an exception to retroactively applying the case, Padilla will not apply to cases already resolved on appeal. The Tenth Circuit has also held that Padilla does not apply retroactively for the same reason. In addition, the Third District Court of Appeal of the State of Florida has sided with the Seventh and Tenth Circuits on the issue, leaving it open for the Eleventh Circuit to make a decision on the case if it goes up on appeal to that court.

It is tempting to imagine that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has adopted a kinder and more just approach to its immigration enforcement mission. After all, the department announced in recent days that it will henceforth focus its enforcement efforts on “high priority” immigration cases; that is, those cases involving serious criminals and individuals who are a threat to public safety or national security. While this is a welcome, long overdue announcement, we must keep in mind that there are still DHS enforcement policies in place that are in dire need of repair.

For instance, according to a story in the New York Times earlier this month, U.S. immigration agents stationed along the U.S.-Mexico border have taken to detaining and sometimes arresting unauthorized immigrants as they try to leave the United States and return to Mexico. In other words, after pouring billions of dollars into immigration enforcement programs to make the United States as unwelcoming as possible to unauthorized immigrants, the Obama Administration has decided to make their departure just as difficult and to torment them as they leave. This policy is as nonsensical as it is cruel.

To be fair, the Administration is snaring unauthorized immigrants as it attempts to do what previous administrations have not: stem the flow of drug money and guns from the United States to Mexico, into the waiting arms of drug cartel leaders. But this neither explains nor justifies why immigration agents are arresting immigrants who have no connections to drug money or gun smuggling—and who are leaving the country. As the Times notes, even some vehemently anti-immigrant groups oppose this practice on the grounds that it slows, and perhaps even discourages, the departure of unauthorized immigrants from the country. In a surreal moment last year, the president of the nativist organization Americans for Legal Immigration issued a statement saying that: