Articles Posted in Immigration

On Wednesday, July 24, 2019, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia declined to impose a temporary restraining order which would pause the Trump administration's new rule limiting asylum requests from migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. The new rule requires that migrants and refugees passing through a third country en route to the United States must seek asylum from said third country in order to apply for asylum in the United States. Under the new rule, migrant and refugee Hondurans and Salvadorans must be denied asylum in Guatemala or Mexico before seeking asylum in the United States, and Guatemalans must be denied asylum in Mexico in order to apply for asylum in the United States.

Multiple civil rights groups filed suit today against the Trump administration, challenging its new rule seeking to severely limit the asylum protections that are available under US and international law to migrants at the US-Mexico border. The American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed one of the main legal challenges in California's Northern District Court on behalf of immigrant advocacy groups, alleging that the new rule violates US immigration law as well as administrative law. The lawsuit seeks declaratory relief stating that the interim final rule is invalid and unlawful, as well as preliminary and permanent injunctive relief to block its implementation.

In a new rule that is planned to be effective Tuesday, the Trump administration is seeking to reverse decades of asylum policy by effectively denying protections to most migrants seeking asylum at the southern border of the US. The new policy, which the American Civil Liberties Union plans to promptly challenge in court, would require asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border to prove that they have sought and been denied asylum in a so-called "safe third country" before they can apply for protection in the US. 

Using state driver's license databases, agents are scanning through millions of Americans' faces without their knowledge or consent.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has canceled the deportation of a worker who was arrested and detained in a 2008 immigration enforcement raid on a California factory, ruling that immigration authorities violated federal regulations and the Constitution when they conducted the raid without reasonable suspicion that the approximately 130 people they detained were in the country without authorization.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit found that the administration's policy of blocking abortion services served as an "across-the board ban" on access to the procedure.

The State of California has filed a new lawsuit against the Trump administration, arguing that the Federal Railroad Administration's sudden decision to pull almost $1 billion in funding for a planned high-speed rail connection between San Francisco and Los Angeles was payback for the state's opposition to Trump's plans to construct a wall along the southern border of the US as part of his immigration policy. The state's lawsuit alleges that in the days following certain criticisms made by California Governor Gavin Newsom of Trump's border wall plans, Trump made a series of Tweets criticizing the state's position on his immigration policies as well as its handling of the rail project, demonstrating the link between the funding cancellation and the border wall dispute. 

Immigrants in California can still be deported if they were convicted of a crime involving marijuana before voters approved the legalization of the drug in 2016.

In a new ruling, Judge Dana Sabraw has given the federal government six months to locate children separated from their families at the border under the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" immigration policy. Though many of the more than 2000 children the government took from their families have since been reunited pursuant to a June 2018 court order, reports indicate that there may be thousands more children that are currently unaccounted for. 

This week the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a decision affirming the lower court's decision upholding three California laws against a challenge by the federal government. The federal government challenged the three laws, which all pertain to the state's status as a "sanctuary" state, on the grounds that they are preempted by federal law and that they violate a doctrine known as intergovernmental immunity.