United States Citizenship and Immigration Services

(USCIS) has requested over $1.2 billion in funding from Congress to support its operations beyond August 31, 2020.  As immigration attorneys, we know how critically important the agency is to families and businesses across the nation because without USCIS adjudicating cases, families cannot reunite and businesses’ ability to retain talent is uncertain. However, before Congress gives USCIS any financial support, guardrails need to be put up to ensure data is shared and the agency doesn’t drive itself into the ground again.

United States Citizenship and Immigration Services
(USCIS) has requested over $1.2 billion in funding from Congress to support its operations beyond August 31, 2020. As immigration attorneys, we know how critically important the agency is to families and businesses across the nation because without USCIS adjudicating cases, families cannot reunite and businesses’ ability to retain talent is uncertain.

However, before Congress gives USCIS any financial support, guardrails need to be put up to ensure data is shared and the agency doesn’t drive itself into the ground again.

First, it is important that USCIS provide more specific data regarding the total number of applications received since March of this year and the exact amount of funds spent on vetting, by USCIS and diverted to other enforcement agencies.

The decrease in application numbers alleged by USCIS seems surprisingly steep. The management of USCIS over the last three years has eroded trust to an extent that its ability to accurately portray the scope of the problem it faces is hard to believe. And if USCIS can’t clearly and accurately describe the scope of the problem, how will it understand the causes of this problem, or the remedy?

The justification provided for the bailout request is the impact of COVID-19. The pandemic has reportedly caused an alarming drop in application numbers, whose filing fees support USCIS operations.

In the initial demand to Congress, made in May, USCIS Deputy Director for Policy, Joseph Edlow, described an “an alarming drop in applications at the end of March” and warned of a “crippling budget shortfall.” He proceeded to indicate that, as a result of COVID-19, USCIS had seen “a 50% drop in receipts and incoming fees starting in March” and predicted that “application and petition receipts will stay well below plan through the end of Fiscal Year 2020.”

Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, sent a supporting letter in which he remarked that “USCIS is in dire need of a one-time infusion of funding to ensure their operations continue past August 3, 2020” and that “USCIS’ annual Immigration Examinations Fee Account fee collections have not met their historical forecasted projections due to the COVID-19 pandemic.” The sentiments of Mr. Wolf were echoed by Russell T. Vought, Acting Director of the Office of Management and Budget, who also sent a supporting letter outlining that USCIS had experienced “a 51 percent year-over-year decline in receipts” when compared with 2019, for “a two-week period in March/April 2020.”

The time period referenced by Mr. Vought will ring a bell with most attorneys who practice employment-based immigration law. At the very beginning of April each year, U.S. petitioners file hundreds of thousands of H-1B cap petitions with USCIS. Of these, at least 85,000 are randomly selected for processing in a lottery, and receipted by USCIS.

Therefore, USCIS receives a significant spike in applications and fees at the beginning of April each year, and did so in 2019. However, the H-1B cap process changed this year. In 2020, for the first time, the lottery took place in March using a registration system. H-1B cap applications could then be filed for the selected registrants at any time in April, May, or June.

Accordingly, a significant discrepancy between the number of applications received at the beginning of April 2020, and the number received at the beginning of April 2019, could be explained by this new process – and may be balanced out by the additional H-1B cap filings through the remainder of April, May, and June.

Certain developments over the last few years also call into question whether such a sudden, significant and sustained decrease in filings is likely. Under Matter of Simeio Solutions, LLC (2015), a change in the worksite to a new metropolitan statistical area requires the filing of an H-1B amendment.

Accordingly, employers will have been required to file many such amendments recently to ensure their H-1B employees, now working from home due to the pandemic, remain compliant. This should have resulted in an increase in filing.

Furthermore, over the last three years persistent immigrant visa backlogs have crept into the EB-1 preference category for individuals born in India and China. This requires employers to file additional H-1B extensions while their employees await until their priority date becomes current.

Unlike H-1B status, L status cannot be extended while a foreign national waits for a green card. There has been a corresponding increase in petitions being filed for individuals seeking a change from L-1A to H-1B, so that they can remain in the U.S. until their EB-1C priority date becomes current.

Additionally, the 2018 Notice to Appear Policy Memorandum, which threatens the issuance of a Notice to Appear in immigration court immediately upon denial of an I-485, has served as a stimulus for the filing of additional applications to ensure foreign nationals maintain their nonimmigrant status until the adjudication of their I-485, even though this is not required. Not to mention the public charge rule, since enjoined, which resulted in a spike in Adjustment of Status filings before October, and again in February before the new rule took effect.

It should also be added that the COVID-19 pandemic has required a number of different groups file applications with USCIS who would not otherwise have done so. This includes, for example, individuals in a non-immigrant status who were planning to leave the U.S. but are now unable or unwilling to do so. Such individuals must file applications with USCIS to remain lawfully inside the country.

Furthermore, a number of nonimmigrant visa categories allow applications to be filed either with USCIS or at an embassy, consulate, or border crossing (for example – TN, E-3, and blanket L petitions). Due to border closures and the risks of travel, these applications must now be filed with USCIS.

In his letter to Congress, Russell T. Vought states that “USCIS continues to analyze available data to refine revenue and spending projections.” For the reasons outlined above, it is imperative that USCIS release this new data as it becomes available.

A substantial drop in applications is not implausible, and USCIS workers and their families should certainly not be held hostage to political maneuvering, but a grant of $1.2 billion cannot be justified through snippets of information and fragments of statistics, especially as now reports are surfacing that the agency may end up with a surplus and furloughs are delayed til at least August 31. There is just not enough good information.

It is welcome news that the House Judiciary Committee will ask tough questions on Wednesday, July 29, 2020 of the agency and hear from witnesses and stakeholders, but this is not enough. We need good information, and at the very least, USCIS should provide a comparison of total applications received in April, May, and June between last year and the current year.

 

 

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To learn more about the need for a more transparent and accountable USCIS, watch video footage from two congressional hearings, featuring then-AILA president Marketa Lindt and Director of Government Relations Sharvari Dalal-Dheini and learn more about how you can take action and urge Congress to #HoldUSCISAccountable.

Source: USCIS to Congress: “Give Us $1.2 Billion,” But Does the Data Pass the Sniff Test?

The federal court ruled that the Trump administration’s so-called public charge rule for green card applicants could not go into effect in New York, Connecticut and Vermont

 

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to deny permanent residency to legal immigrants who make even limited use of public benefits like Medicaid, food stamps or housing vouchers, but restricted the injunction to New York, Connecticut and Vermont.

The 114-page ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed a decision last week by Judge George B. Daniels of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, who said the wealth test could discourage residents from seeking medical care during the coronavirus pandemic. The so-called public charge rule that was introduced last year expanded the number of federal support programs whose enrollment would disqualify applicants from green cards.

Immigration groups have argued that the rule, even before it took effect, had discouraged immigrants in the country legally from seeking medical treatment or financial support.

In the past, only substantial and sustained monetary help or long-term institutionalization counted against immigrants applying for green cards, and fewer than 1 percent of applicants were disqualified on public-charge grounds.

Department of Homeland Security officials have criticized the issuance of nationwide injunctions by district judges, and the three-judge panel of the appeals court indicated it shared the concern that the lower court’s nationwide block would be “imposing its view of the law within the geographic jurisdiction of courts that have reached contrary conclusions.”

The judges also noted that the rule had been the subject of multiple legal challenges, including one that has reached the Supreme Court. The court ruled in January that the Trump administration could move forward with the rule as the court system heard substantive arguments for and against it. At that time, Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas issued a concurring opinion saying that such nationwide blocks caused “chaos for litigants, the government, courts and all those affected by these conflicting decisions.”

The states covered by the new injunction are within the federal appeals court’s jurisdiction.

“We see no need for a broader injunction at this point, particularly in light of the somewhat unusual posture of this case, namely that the preliminary injunction has already been stayed by the Supreme Court,” wrote Judge Gerard E. Lynch, who was appointed by President Barack Obama.

The plaintiffs in one of the two lawsuits considered by the court included New York City, Connecticut and Vermont. Immigrant rights groups brought the second case.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Department officials have argued that the wealth test would prevent the admission of immigrants who would not be able to support themselves in the United States. After announcing the policy, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, the department’s acting deputy secretary and a defendant in the case, promoted the rule by revising the iconic sonnet on the Statue of Liberty by saying the United States would welcome those “who can stand on their own two feet.”

He added that the verses, written by Emma Lazarus, referred to “people coming from Europe where they had class-based societies.”

In his ruling, Judge Lynch challenged the argument from homeland security officials.

“D.H.S. goes too far in assuming that all those who participate in noncash benefits programs would be otherwise unable to meet their needs and that they can thus be categorically considered ‘public charged,’” Judge Lynch wrote.

Source: Appeals Court Blocks Immigrant Wealth Test in the Northeast

 

The United States Border Patrol raided a humanitarian aid camp in Arizona on July 31, detaining volunteers and over 30 people receiving care.

The camp—known as Byrd Camp—is run by No More Deaths (NMD), an organization that works to end the death and suffering of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. The raid follows a pattern of retaliation against humanitarian aid and criticism of the Border Patrol.

The Border Patrol’s Raid

As the sun set, an armored vehicle, three ATVS, two helicopters, and at least 24 marked and unmarked vehicles descended on Byrd camp in over 100-degree weather. The camp has provided humanitarian aid in the Sonoran Desert near Arivaca, Arizona since 2004.

The raid included the Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC), the agency’s SWAT-style team. This is the same team that recently cracked down on protesters in American cities. Agents chased and arrested undocumented individuals who had been receiving medical care and other aid at the camp.

Unmasked agents shouted and pointed rifles at volunteers, whose hands had already been zip tied behind their backs. The agents cut open and ransacked tents, searched vehicles, and disconnected power from the well.

A warrant, which agents refused to show at the beginning of the raid, targeted documents and electronic devices. They confiscated camp medical documents and phones, preventing volunteers from documenting the event.  A Border Patrol cameraman, however, filmed the event.

Border Patrol also brought a cameraman. He filmed the scene as agents chased and arrested people who had sought out humanitarian aid and respite from the 100 degree heat.

More photos and footage exist, but phones are still in custody. pic.twitter.com/2v2VSMWvz8

— No More Deaths (@NoMoreDeaths) August 2, 2020

The day before the raid, Border Patrol agents entered the camp without a warrant and detained one undocumented woman. From that time on, agents kept the camp surrounded. They required volunteers to pass through checkpoints to enter and exit.

Border Patrol’s History of Retaliation Against Humanitarian Aid Workers

This recent raid continues a history of retaliation against No More Deaths. In 2017, agents raided Byrd Camp, violating a written agreement from 2013 between the organization and the Tucson Sector Border Patrol for the first time. That agreement recognizes the camp as a medical facility as defined by the International Red Cross. Those facilities are off-limits for government interference.

Border Patrol and BORTAC arrested people receiving care and ransacked the humanitarian aid station, ripping apart tents and destroying medical supplies. pic.twitter.com/jb5Ov4RwVJ

— No More Deaths (@NoMoreDeaths) August 2, 2020

 

In 2018, NMD published a report on Border Patrol’s interference with humanitarian aid. The organization asked advocates to call the Tucson Border Patrol Station with their criticism. Hours later, agents raided Byrd camp again. This time, they arrested volunteer Scott Warren and two undocumented men.

In 2017 and 2018, the federal government brought charges against a total of nine NMD volunteers related to their humanitarian aid work. The only convictions (for entering a wildlife refuge without a permit and abandoning property (e.g., water and food)) have since been reversed.

Two days before the recent raid, NMD had released evidence related to the 2017 raid obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The documents showed that BORTAC had advised on the raid, and that a leader of the Border Patrol union pressured agents to proceed quickly without a warrant.

“Items” to be seized included human beings. Think about that for a second. https://t.co/bGFyqJZzSA

— Nicole Hallett 💡 (@HallettNicole) August 3, 2020

Greg Kuyendall, an attorney who represented Scott Warren, responded to the recent display of enforcement stating:

“…Humanitarian aid camps are recognized as a basic good and a thing that needs to be provided, normally by either NGOs or governments themselves, and they’re absolutely off-limits from law enforcement. That’s well-established in the International Red Cross guidelines, as well as the United Nations’ guidelines…Every organization that deals with refugees and people that are in crisis situations, whether they’re manmade or not, understands that humanitarian aid stations cannot be places where law enforcement is allowed to go hunting.”

There was no need for the Border Patrol to raid Byrd Camp, especially using paramilitary force during a pandemic. Such actions serve only to retaliate against human rights organizations and intimidate citizens from providing humanitarian aid. No More Deaths’ aid work should be decriminalized and protected.

Source: Border Patrol Raids Camp in Retaliation Against Humanitarian Aid Workers

This “Immigration Nation,” a documentary by Christina Clusiau and Shaul Schwarz, gives a glimpse of the tactics used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.Credit…Netflix

 

 

If you watch only one documentary about immigration, then by all means make it “Immigration Nation,” a six-hour Netflix series that mixes reporting with an impressive amount of vivid ride-along observation.

Parts of it may start to drag or feel padded, but its see-the-whole-elephant approach to one of America’s most divisive issues has inherent value. It will almost certainly leave you better informed than you were before, even if its net effect may be to further entrench people on whichever side of the debate they already occupy.

Immigration to the United States is a story spread across thousands of miles, a variety of faceless government agencies and a tapestry of determined, often desperate petitioners, and “Immigration Nation” tries to cover as many of its facets as it can cram in. This includes the widely known ones, like child separation at the border, as well as less familiar angles, such as the exploitation of migrants who take on the work of natural-disaster recovery and federal attempts to co-opt local law enforcement into immigration agencies.

Much of the time, especially after its more fluid and immersive initial episodes, the series takes a standard television current-affairs approach, and as you watch its segments you may recall sharper or more evocative reports on the same stories by shows like “Frontline,” “Vice” and “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver.”

But the makers of “Immigration Nation,” Christina Clusiau and Shaul Schwarz, benefited from time — they filmed for nearly three years — and a startling degree of access, particularly to agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement as they rounded up immigrants, processed them for (mostly) deportation and spoke to the camera about how it made them feel. And in the series’ first two hours, the results of that embedding, with ICE operations in New York, Charlotte, N.C., and El Paso can be startling and engrossing.

Part of that effect comes from seeing agents push the boundaries of legality — most strikingly, how they routinely enter apartments when “invited” by cowed, uncomprehending immigrants, in a way that’s surprisingly similar to what you’d see in a TV cop drama. (Maybe that’s where they learned it.) Once inside the home of the target, probably an immigrant accused of a crime, they frequently find “collaterals,” additional people who can be rounded up simply because they’re undocumented.

Material like that, and worse — like an agent picking an apartment building’s lock — gained “Immigration Nation” some prerelease publicity, particularly when The New York Times reported that ICE had pressured the filmmakers to delay the release and remove footage.

But the real impact of the show’s early episodes isn’t the outrage you may feel over the thuggish tactics. It’s the wearying, demoralizing depiction of a self-perpetuating bureaucracy, one that churns through the lives of people it takes little notice of — as if your trip to the D.M.V. meant not just standing in an endless line, but then being shackled and put on a plane to Central America.

The scenes inside field offices and detention centers, as agents bluffly banter with the people whose lives they’re destroying and then joke with one another about funny accents and kung pao chicken, might have been written by Kafka, except his dialogue would have been better. The series’ hallmark is not an image but a sound bite — the agents’ endless variations on “I may not like it, but it’s the job.” The human-rights lawyer Becca Heller sums it up nicely: “When you add up all the people just doing their job, it becomes this crazy, terrorizing system.”

“Immigration Nation” provides abundant evidence for things that some might call fake news, like the determination of ICE, under the Trump administration, to remove immigrants from the United States in bulk regardless of whether they pose any danger. As one of the disarmingly honest agents says, “They want to get rid of everybody, I guess.”

That will be the takeaway for those who want to make political points from the series, from either direction. And in the later episodes there are wrenching individual stories, like that of a Guatemalan grandmother seeking asylum and sitting for more than a year in a Texas detention center, though these segments tend to indulge in superfluous scenes of inspiration and tearful condolence.

But what sticks with you from “Immigration Nation” is its up-close depiction of the banality of deportation — of the huge disconnect between the everyday people of ICE and the Border Patrol and the everyday people they detain, arrest and “process.” (In El Paso, a morning meeting at a detention center ends with the chant, “1, 2, 3, processing!”)

Agent after agent expresses an ambivalence about the job that’s given its most extreme expression by an Arizona ICE investigator who says, “I put my personal feelings aside, which, yeah, maybe that’s what every Nazi said, right?” But he immediately adds, “I actually believe in the cause of trying to enforce some sort of sovereignty over our borders, and no one’s figured out a better way to do it yet.”

It’s a nice summation of the schism, within the country at large, that will keep us talking past one another despite the filmmakers’ best efforts.

By Mike Hale

Source: ‘Immigration Nation’ Review: A Deep Dive Into Deportation

 

The Supreme Court on Friday turned down a plea from opponents of President Donald Trump’s border wall to order a temporary stop to construction. By a vote of 5-4, the justices declined to lift a stay, entered just over a year ago, that allowed the federal government to continue to spend federal funds on construction while a legal challenge to the wall continues. The challengers had urged the Supreme Court to intervene last week, telling the justices that if the stay were not lifted, the Trump administration could finish the wall before the court even decides whether to take up the case on the merits.

The brief one-sentence order was the latest in the dispute over the wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. The clash came to the court for the first time last year, after a federal district judge in California agreed with the challengers, the Sierra Club and the Southern Borders Communities Coalition, that government officials did not have the power to spend more than Congress had already allocated for border security. U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam barred the government from using $2.5 billion in funds originally earmarked for military-personnel funds to build the border wall, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit declined to stay that ruling while the government appealed. The Trump administration then went to the Supreme Court, which – by a vote of 5-4 last July — put Gilliam’s order on hold and allowed the government to use the Pentagon funds on the wall.

After the 9th Circuit upheld Gilliam’s decision last month, the challengers asked the Supreme Court to step in and lift the stay. Otherwise, they contended, the government would be able to finish the parts of the wall that are the subject of their challenge before the litigation concludes.

The Trump administration urged the court to leave its year-old stay in place. When the justices rejected the challengers’ arguments last year, U.S. Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall posited, they were “presumably aware that the result would be construction during litigation.” And in any event, Wall added, the government plans to file its cert petition seeking review of the 9th Circuit’s decision on Aug. 7, which would allow the justices to consider it at their first conference after the summer recess.

Justice Stephen Breyer filed a short dissent from the court’s denial of the challengers’ motion to lift the stay, which was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who, the Court’s Public Information Office reported, was discharged from the hospital today after undergoing a non-surgical procedure earlier this week), Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Breyer reiterated that when the court granted the stay last year, he had suggested a middle ground that, he said, would avoid irreparable harm on both sides of the dispute: Put Gilliam’s order on hold as far as it prevented the government from finalizing the contracts for the construction of the wall, but continue to bar the government from actually spending the Pentagon funds or beginning construction. “Now,” Breyer observed, the government “has apparently finalized its contracts, avoiding the irreparable harm” that it said justified the stay last year. Because Friday’s order allowing construction to continue may effectively serve as a final judgment in the case, Breyer explained, he would have lifted the stay of Gilliam’s order.

In a statement issued shortly after Friday’s order, an attorney representing the challengers emphasized that the justices’ “temporary order does not decide the case.” Dror Ladin, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, stressed that the Trump administration “has admitted that the wall can be taken down if we ultimately prevail, and we will hold them to their word and seek the removal of every mile of unlawful wall built.”

This post was originally published at Howe on the Court.

Source: Court Refuses to Halt the Construction of U.S./Mexico Border Wall

A group of voters from several states filed a lawsuit in US federal court Friday to halt enforcement of a presidential memorandum that would alter the census count by leaving out undocumented immigrants.

The US Constitution mandates that a census be carried out every ten years, while section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment requires “counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed.” Courts, including the Supreme Court, have traditionally interpreted the word “persons” to include non-citizens regardless of their immigration status. The July 21 memorandum would make it government policy “to exclude from the apportionment base aliens who are not in a lawful immigration status.”

The number of a state’s representatives in the House of Representatives depends on the population of the state, and not counting undocumented immigrants will radically alter state population totals and therefore the number of representatives each state has in the House.

Voters from California, Nevada, New York, Florida, and Texas, with the support of the National Redistricting Foundation, filed suit in the District Court of Maryland, alleging that the president’s memorandum is part of an “ongoing discriminatory scheme to dilute the voting power of non-whites, Hispanics, and immigrants of color, and to shift political power to non-Hispanic whites.” They claim they will be harmed by the exclusion of undocumented citizens from the census, because the resulting reapportionment of representatives will cause them to lose political representation and lead to an “under-allocation of federal funding to Plaintiffs’ communities.”

Plaintiffs are asking the court to find the president’s memorandum unconstitutional, and they seek to permanently enjoin the president and his administration from taking any action that would limit or exclude the counting of undocumented immigrants in the census.

Source: Voters file lawsuit to prevent President Trump from excluding undocumented immigrants in census

The post Voters file lawsuit to prevent President Trump

from excluding undocumented immigrants in census appeared first on JURIST – News – Legal News & Commentary.

 

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) published 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.

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, including a request for work authorization and travel documents that are filed so that people 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.

Naturalization Applications

The financial burden of becoming a U.S. citizen is now especially high—USCIS increased the total cost of a naturalization application by over 80%.

Online naturalization applications will now run $1,170, up from the previous price of $640. USCIS says the new fee will cover the full cost to process the application as well as some overhead costs.

USCIS is also eliminating almost all fee waivers that it previously provided for low-income immigrants seeking citizenship. Once the rule goes into effect, everyone will have to pay the full fee with few exceptions. Given that almost 40% of Americans don’t even have $400 in the bank, requiring everyone who wants to become a citizen to pay $1,170 will put citizenship out of reach for many.

H-1B Visa Applications

The Trump administration has attacked the H-1B visa category for years, and this new rule is no exception.

This temporary nonimmigrant visa category allows U.S. employers to petition for highly educated foreign professionals to work in “specialty occupations” that require an advanced degree.

Filing fees for employers petitioning for an H-1B worker will increase by 70%. The cost to petition for one worker will total over $3,000. But higher fees will not equal greater service. The agency is also increasing the time it takes to process H-1B visas. Employers who pay for “premium processing” of their petitions will now have to wait almost twice as long to receive a decision.

The fee hike is especially ill-timed given the pandemic. Most people with H-1B visas fill critical vacancies in the science, technology, engineering, and math fields.

Asylum Applications

USCIS will now charge a $50 fee to apply for asylum. This will be the first time the United States has charged a fee since WWII. This makes the United States only the fourth country in the world to charge a fee for asylum applications. Iran, Fiji, and Australia also charge a fee.

The new fee for asylum applications is particularly devastating as people who are fleeing their countries in search of safety often do so with limited resources. There is a strong chance that individuals who would have otherwise qualified for asylum will now be unable to even apply. USCIS also refused to provide any fee waivers for this expense.

In addition, asylum seekers will also now be required to pay a fee for a work permit for the first time, so long as their asylum application is still pending. The cost will be $550. But that too may be out of reach for many. Asylum seekers are not allowed to work before getting a work permit. And if they do work without authorization, under newly proposed asylum rules they could disqualified from asylum if they fail to report even a penny of that income on their taxes.

DACA

The agency also walked back its original plan to increase the fee for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) applications, as a new DACA memorandum signed by Acting Secretary Wolf called for freezing fees.

DACA holders will, however, now have to renew their status every year instead of every other year, so the fees that they pay will be doubled through other means.

USCIS’ History of Financial Issues

These fee hikes, along with others not mentioned above, come as USCIS faces an enormous budget shortfall and impending furloughs of two-thirds of its staff. USCIS requested a $1.2 billion bailout from Congress this summer. The agency claims that the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent office closures wiped out most of the fee-based agency’s revenue.

But USCIS has long suffered from fiscal mismanagement. In reality, the fee hikes represent the culmination of years’ worth of financial recklessness and poor policy changes. These issues have only been exacerbated by the pandemic. The published rule, however, says the agency did not take COVID-19 into consideration when determining the new fees.

Increasing costs to solve USCIS’ financial hardships won’t work when those who would utilize the agency’s services can no longer afford a basic application or petition. The government needs to find another way to save USCIS.

Source: USCIS Fee Hikes Will Go Into Effect for These Applications

An undocumented immigrant who worked for years at President Trump’s luxury golf resort in New Jersey and later revealed that he employed many immigrants who are in the country illegally has been placed in deportation proceedings.

Victorina Morales, 47, worked for more than five years as a housekeeper at the club in Bedminster, N.J., using counterfeit identification that she said her supervisors knew to be falsified. Her revelations, first disclosed by The New York Times in December 2018, prompted undocumented workers at several Trump properties to come forward.

Dozens of others were fired in ensuing months by the Trump Organization, which owns and operates golf resorts in several states, after the company began investigating employee records.

Ms. Morales, a Guatemalan immigrant, was notified by the federal authorities this week that she had been placed in removal proceedings that could result in deportation. She can remain in the country only if an immigration judge approves her petition for asylum.

In a letter reviewed by The Times, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said that the agency had not approved her initial application for asylum because she had not proved that “extraordinary circumstances” had prevented her from making an asylum claim within a year of arriving in the country, as required.

Ms. Morales, who witnessed her father being murdered, crossed the border illegally in 1999. She filed the asylum application jointly with her husband late in 2018, and the latest decision applied to both of them.

The immigration agency emphasized that it was not denying her asylum application but was instead referring her case to the immigration courts for removal proceedings, where a judge will review her asylum status.

Because of the backlog in immigration cases, Ms. Morales almost certainly will be allowed to remain in the United States for several years while her case is under review. She was not available for an interview on Thursday.

Anibal Morales, her lawyer, said that the agency’s ruling this week “is a serious legal matter, and my concern right now is for the safety and well-being of my client.” He said that he would have no other comment.

After Ms. Morales arrived in New Jersey, she worked at warehouses packing consumer goods, such as soap and baby diapers. She was hired at the Trump property in 2013.

During her time at the golf resort, she said, she often cleaned Mr. Trump’s personal quarters and had several personal interactions with him. She said he had praised her for her meticulous cleaning and work ethic, at times dispensing large tips to her.

But Ms. Morales said that she had been hurt by Mr. Trump’s disparaging public comments after he took office about Latin American immigrants, equating them with violent criminals.

It was that, she said, along with what she said were abusive remarks from a supervisor at work about her intelligence and her immigration status, that made her decide that she could no longer keep silent.

“We are tired of the abuse, the insults, the way he talks about us when he knows that we are here helping him make money,” she said at the time.

Ms. Morales was trained by Sandra Diaz, a native of Costa Rica who is now a legal resident of the United States. Ms. Diaz also came forward admitting that she had been in the country without legal permission while employed at Bedminster.

Trump Organization executives have said that they had no way of knowing that the workers had presented false employment documents, and Mr. Trump has said that he was also unaware that his properties had hired undocumented immigrants.

During the presidential campaign, when the Trump International Hotel opened in Washington, Mr. Trump boasted that he used an electronic employment system, E-Verify, to check that only those legally authorized to work there had been hired.

“We didn’t have one illegal immigrant on the job,” Trump said then.

But throughout his campaign and after he became president, Ms. Morales had been reporting for work at his golf course. A fellow employee drove her and other undocumented workers to the resort each day, she said, because it was known that they could not legally obtain driver’s licenses.

After coming forward, Ms. Morales shot to fame. In February last year, she was among 20 immigrants, many of them facing possible deportation, on the list of those seated in the secure gallery for the annual State of the Union address. In December, she visited Las Vegas and received a hug from Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. At a campaign event, she brandished a copy of a certificate of service that she had received from the White House Communications Agency.

After applying for asylum, Ms. Morales received a work permit, which enabled her to secure a housekeeping job as a legal worker at a hotel in Manhattan. She lost that job because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Among nearly 50 undocumented workers identified as having worked at Trump properties since Ms. Morales’s revelations, none are known to have been deported.

Source: Undocumented Housekeeper Who Worked at Trump Property Could Face Deportation

By Miriam Jordan

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 29, 2020

CONTACT
– Juan Gastelum, National Immigration Law Center, (213) 375-3149, media@nilc.org
– Alejandra Lopez, The Legal Aid Society, (917) 294-9348, ailopez@legal-aid.org
– Jen Nessel, Center for Constitutional Rights, (212) 614-6449, –jnessel@ccrjustice.org
– Yatziri Tovar, Make the Road New York, (917) 771-2818, yatziri.tovar@maketheroadny.org

Judge Issues Two Nationwide Injunctions Blocking “Public Charge” Immigration Rules Amid COVID-19 Pandemic

New injunctions will allow immigrant communities across the U.S. to safely access critical health care and public assistance during health crisis

NEW YORK, NY — Today, a Manhattan federal court issued two nationwide injunctions temporarily blocking the Trump administration’s “public charge” rules. An injunction issued against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) prevents DHS from enforcing, applying, implementing, or treating as effective the “public charge” rule for any period during which there is a declared national health emergency in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. The ruling came after immigrant rights attorneys successfully argued that the COVID-19 pandemic has made the DHS public charge rule lethal to immigrant communities by chilling the use of health care and other benefits. The court also enjoined the U.S. State Department from applying its parallel “public charge” rules, including the president’s Health Care Proclamation, to applicants for visas at U.S. embassies and consulates abroad.

“Since the Trump administration announced the public charge rules, it has caused immense harm to our communities — harm that intensified, as our country is in the midst of a health crisis,” said Javier H. Valdés, Co-Executive Director at Make the Road New York. “The public charge rules by both DHS and DOS attacked our loved ones by imposing a racist wealth test on the immigration system, leaving working immigrants to choose between vital services or remaining together with their families. At Make the Road, we have seen the devastating effect this rule has on families scared to seek out healthcare and basic forms of assistance from food pantries and even their children’s schools. We applaud the court’s decision and will continue to fight to stop the Trump administration’s reckless and inhumane attacks on immigrants.”

In January, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the same New York court’s October 2019 decision to block DHS’s “public charge” rule. As a result, DHS began enforcing the rule on February 24, 2020, just before the coronavirus outbreak became a nationwide pandemic. The new injunction against DHS was issued in response to a joint motion filed by lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights, The Legal Aid Society, and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, who joined New York State Attorney General Letitia James, representing the states of New York, Connecticut, and Vermont and the City of New York in arguing that immigrants should not be deterred from accessing health care and government benefits and services, especially during this unprecedented health crisis.

The second nationwide injunction was issued in a separate case challenging the State Department’s public charge rule as well as the president’s Health Care Proclamation requiring visa applicants to show proof of private health insurance. Because of the ruling, immigrants seeking to go through consular processing will not be subject to the public charge test utilized by the State Department. That case was brought on behalf of individual and organizational plaintiffs by the Center for Constitutional Rights, The Legal Aid Society, the National Immigration Law Center, and Paul Weiss. Today’s ruling is the first decision fully addressing these policies, and it enjoined those policies indefinitely.

In his decision today, Judge George B. Daniels wrote: “Much has significantly changed since January 27. Today, the world is in the throes of a devastating pandemic, triggered by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In six months, approximately 16.5 million people around the globe have been afflicted by the disease caused by this virus. That disease (COVID-19) has claimed over 650,000 lives worldwide. In the United States alone, COVID-19 has spread rapidly, infecting over four million people. Close to 150,000 American residents have died. All of these staggering numbers continue to climb on a daily basis…. Thousands continue to die indiscriminately. Attempting to effectively combat this plague has immediately come in conflict with the federal government’s new ‘public charge’ policy, a policy which is intended to discourage immigrants from utilizing government benefits and penalizes them for receipt of financial and medical assistance.”

Susan Welber, staff attorney in the Civil Law Reform Unit at The Legal Aid Society, said: “Today’s decisions are a great victory for our plaintiffs and immigrant communities which have been disproportionately impacted by the public health and economic impacts of the pandemic. Immigrants, especially people serving as essential workers combating the spread of the coronavirus, need access to life-saving healthcare, food assistance, and other essential services in order to both tackle the pandemic and protect their families without fear of immigration consequences. The Court’s nationwide injunction against the Department of State public charge rule also protects immigrant families across the nation. We hope the court’s decisions sends a clear message to the government to withdraw these unlawful, racist, and anti-family rules, and that if they don’t, we will continue to fight them in court.”

Brittany Thomas, Bertha Justice Fellow with the Center for Constitutional Rights, said, “In times like this, today’s decisions signify great victories for the plaintiffs and immigrant communities, who can now access life-saving benefits without fear. The Court’s issuance of a nationwide injunction halting the public charge rule issued by the Department of State signifies a rejection of this administration’s radical position that they are above the law. We are pleased that the Court recognized the public charge rules as yet another attempt by this administration to undermine congressional authority and harm immigrant communities of color in the process. Today, immigrant communities throughout the entire country are protected and can focus on staying healthy and safe.”

Joanna E. Cuevas-Ingram, staff attorney at the National Immigration Law Center, said: “By implementing these regulations, the Trump administration has shown flagrant disregard for both the rule of law and community health in the middle of a pandemic. The Court’s decision recognizes that every member of our communities, including immigrants, must be able to access the tools they need to keep themselves healthy and safe. This is a great victory and we will not rest until these hateful, unlawful, and discriminatory regulations are gone for good.”

BACKGROUND

Make the Road New York v. Cuccinelli challenges changes to the public charge provisions implemented by the Department of Homeland Security and was filed by The Legal Aid Society, Center for Constitutional Rights, and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP on behalf of Make the Road New York (MRNY), African Services Committee (ASC), Asian American Federation, Catholic Charities Community Services (CCCS), and Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC).

Make the Road New York v. Pompeo challenges changes to the public charge provisions of the Department of State (DOS) Foreign Affairs Manual (FAM) and a DOS Interim Final Rule, which changed public charge regulations that affect immigrants who must undergo consular processing before entering the country. The Legal Aid Society, Center for Constitutional Rights, National Immigration Law Center, and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP brought the case on behalf of Make the Road New York (MRNY), African Services Committee (ASC), Central American Refugee Center New York (CARECEN-NY), Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC), Catholic Charities Community Services (CCCS), and individual plaintiffs.

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The post Two Nationwide Injunctions Block “Public Charge” Rules Amid Pandemic appeared first on National Immigration Law Center.

Source: Two Nationwide Injunctions Block “Public Charge” Rules Amid Pandemic

By Michael D. Shear and Caitlin Dickerson

WASHINGTON — President Trump will not try again to immediately terminate President Barack Obama’s program that protects young undocumented immigrants, after the Supreme Court’s decision to invalidate Mr. Trump’s first attempt to make good on a crackdown that is at the core of his political identity.

Instead, the administration announced new restrictions on the program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which has allowed about 650,000 undocumented immigrants to live and work in the country legally.

Amid a “comprehensive review” of the program, Chad Wolf, the acting homeland security secretary, announced in a memo that immigrants who already had protections would be allowed to renew their status under the program for one year, rather than two. The memo, which is intended to replace the one that originally established DACA in 2012, also said that first-time applicants to the program would be rejected.

The announcement appears to directly contradict an order by a federal judge, who ruled last month that the administration must immediately begin accepting new applications for the program. It will most likely face immediate legal challenges.

“We obviously have no choice but to go back to court,” said Mark Rosenbaum, a lawyer on the case against the administration’s move to eliminate DACA that reached the Supreme Court. “It was illegal the first time, and now it’s a constitutional crisis. It’s as if a Supreme Court decision was written with invisible ink.”

Immigrants rights groups saw the revised memo as a first step toward completely eliminating DACA. It could also energize Mr. Trump’s base by suggesting that the program would eventually be scrapped, while helping the president avoid the blowback from images of young people being deported just before the election.

A Pew Research Center poll conducted in June found that three-quarters of Americans support not only allowing so-called Dreamers to remain in the United States, but also providing them a path to permanent residency.

“I think they made the calculation that by deferring the final blow to DACA until after the election that they would be able to escape taking the hardest hit,” said Omar Jadwat, who directs the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project.

Officials declined to say how long the review would take or whether it would be completed before the general election in November, although the decision to allow one-year renewals suggested that Mr. Trump and his aides did not envision making another attempt to end the program before the vote.

Many of the hundreds of thousands of DACA beneficiaries who have felt their futures to be in peril reacted with exasperation to the latest development.

“I was one of the lucky ones,” said Pierre R. Berastaín, whose application for a two-year renewal of his DACA status, which allows him to work at Harvard University, his alma mater, was approved this past month. “I’m very cognizant of the tremendous anxiety of people who are in limbo.”

Mr. Berastaín said that as he waited for a Supreme Court decision on his fate, he dusted off an old safety plan he had developed as a student and updated it with current contact information for his loved ones, his lawyers and any elected officials who might be able to intervene on his behalf if he was arrested by immigration authorities.

“I had this extreme anxiety and depression because of the instability of my situation,” he said.

Groups that favor tighter restrictions on immigration were gratified that the program would at least be curtailed.

“It’s a smart move,” said Jessica M. Vaughan, the director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, one such group. “In this way, he manages to keep the ball in Congress’s court without having to keep the program going on autopilot.”

Ms. Vaughan said she thought Congress should ultimately decide the fate of the program, but that for now lawmakers should remain focused on responding to the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic crisis.

Mr. Trump’s promised assault on immigration, including a pledge to end DACA, was critical to his election victory in 2016 and became a central part of his administration’s agenda as he moved to keep out refugees and asylum seekers, to build a wall across the southwestern border and to reduce legal immigration.

Mr. Trump’s initial move to end DACA in 2017 was blocked for more than two years by federal judges who said he had failed to provide proper justification for ending a program that allowed some young undocumented immigrants to live and work in the United States without the threat of deportation.

The Supreme Court agreed last month.

The president has long argued that DACA was an illegal use of executive authority by his predecessor. But he has wavered about what should be done to the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who benefit from it. At a White House news briefing Tuesday evening, Mr. Trump said, “We are going to make DACA happy and the DACA people and representatives happy, and also end up with a fantastic merit-based immigration system.”

He again said he was working on a merit-based immigration bill that he could enact without Congress, an assertion that is false.

Thousands of undocumented young people who have turned 15 since the original rescission — the minimum age required to apply — had expected the government to begin accepting new applications to comply with the Supreme Court’s decision.

However, the agency that processes DACA applications has been rejecting them, according to immigration lawyers, while it has continued to process renewals for current recipients.

Most legal scholars interpreted the ruling to mean that the original program had been revived and that, therefore, new applications must be accepted. An administration official said on Tuesday that the memo issued that day would legally justify the decision against approving new applications.

Mr. Obama created DACA in 2012 after Congress refused to provide a permanent path to citizenship for the young immigrants. Most of the Dreamers are in many ways indistinguishable from the American citizens with whom they attended elementary, middle and high school.

The program has strict requirements. To be eligible, applicants have to show that they had committed no serious crimes, had arrived in the United States before they turned 16 and were no older than 30, had lived in the United States for at least the previous five years, and were in school, had graduated from high school or had received a General Educational Development certificate, or were honorably discharged from the military.

Mr. Trump has at times expressed sympathy for the immigrants who are protected by the program even as he denounced it as an illegal use of presidential authority.

In 2017, his hard-line advisers — including Stephen Miller, the architect of his immigration agenda; Stephen K. Bannon, his chief strategist; and Jeff Sessions, his attorney general — urged him to end the program, which at the time faced a legal challenge from several conservative attorneys general.

Michael Crowley contributed reporting from in New Haven, Conn.; Zolan Kanno-Youngs from Washington; and Miriam Jordan from Los Angeles.

Source: Trump Delays Effort to End Protections for Immigrant ‘Dreamers’