“It is not enough to just say ‘thank you,’” said John. “[The] work that you and your team did for us is beyond simple gratitude. Your help made my family happier, made us sure that tomorrow we will be safe and everything will be all right.” John and his wife fled Russia after he refused to serve in the Russian military and government officials threatened him. Eventually, they made it to the U.S.-Mexico border and sought asylum.

Matter of B-Z-R-, 28 I&N Dec. 563 (A.G. 2022) protects noncitizens by doing away with an unjust rule that prevented adjudicators from considering evidence related to an asylum applicant’s mental illness.

On April 3, 2022, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, Principal Legal Advisor Kerry E. Doyle issued a memorandum to all ICE Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, or OPLA, attorneys providing guidance on exercising prosecutorial discretion in removal proceedings (Doyle Memorandum). The Doyle Memorandum outlines procedures for OPLA attorneys to follow in designating cases priorities or non-priorities. For non-priority cases, OPLA attorneys are encouraged to cancel Notices to Appear or dismiss active proceedings whenever possible.

Immigrants can be particularly vulnerable to certain crimes due to many factors, such as the lack of knowledge around U.S. laws, cultural difference, separation from family and friends, language barriers, and fear of being detained and/or deported. The U Visa was created to help build and strengthen community ties with law enforcement so that immigrants are not afraid to come forward and report crimes.

To tamp down on unconstitutional racial profiling in immigration enforcement, the Castañon Nava settlement requires ICE to implement a nationwide policy regarding vehicle stops and collateral arrests

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas issued immigration enforcement guidelines on Sept. 30, 2021. The guidance retains, with some changes in scope, the enforcement categories previously articulated by the Biden administration of public safety, national security and border security. Rather than prescribe general categories of noncitizens who should be protected from enforcement, the guidance leaves it to individual officers’ discretion to make case-by-case determinations balancing aggravating and mitigating factors.

This guide provides strategies for practitioners seeking a client’s release from immigration detention. It focuses on the nuts and bolts of preparing for and representing a client during immigration court bond hearings. It also provides an overview of the immigration detention system, discusses the legal authority for different types of immigration detention, and covers the process for appealing a bond decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals. Accompanying this guide are sample materials provided by practitioners that may be of use in preparing bond cases.

On May 27, 2021, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, Principal Legal Advisor John D. Trasviña issued a memo to ICE Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, or OPLA, attorneys providing interim guidance on exercising prosecutorial discretion in removal proceedings. The memo encourages OPLA attorneys to focus agency resources on cases that fall within one of three priority categories, and to exercise prosecutorial discretion in non-priority cases.

CLINIC submitted comments on Dec. 23, 2020, opposing the majority of the proposed rules that would limit motions to reopen, reconsider and stay of removal, which would undermine fairness and

CLINIC submitted comments on Dec. 23, 2020, opposing the proposed limitations on continuances in immigration court proceedings and other policy changes that would undermine fairness and due process.

CLINIC has drafted a template comment to assist you to respond to EOIR’s proposed rule, "Motions to Reopen and Reconsider; Effect of Departure; Stay of Removal." The template comment provides you with language you can use to draft your own comments in opposition of this proposed rule.

CLINIC and partners filed an administrative complaint with the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties urging investigation into inadequate medical care for families in detention.

In January 2017, the University of Maryland Carey School of Law Immigration Clinic, Maryland Immigrant Rights Coalition’s, or MIRC, and CLINIC commenced a bond observation project at the Baltimore Immigration Court with the goal of learning if and how immigration judge practices and decisions evolved under the Trump Administration. This report represents a localized, quantitative perspective on those changes and includes analysis of the first set of these observations, collected from Jan. 24, 2017, to Aug. 21, 2017.

DHS Sensitive Locations Policy outlines how and to what extent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can engage in enforcement actions in sensitive locations such as schools, places of worship and hospitals. 

Are you seeing ICE doing anything differently in your community? Tell us here. 

This complaint documents the government’s systematic failure to provide adequate medical care to children in CBP custody in violation of CBP’s own internal guidance and extensive medical guidelines.

The newly released toolkit is based on best practices and lessons learned from communities conducting rapid responses during ICE raids and arrests

CLINIC submitted a comment in opposition to the proposed U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Tip Form, which would collect reports of alleged fraud from the general public without requiring submitters to identify themselves for proper vetting of their claims, or providing sufficient privacy protections for domestic violence or crime victims. CLINIC requested that the proposed form be withdrawn due to the foreseeable negative impacts on immigrant communities without improvement in the ability to combat fraud.

Stanford Law School Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, University of California Davis School of Law Immigration Law Clinic, and CLINIC’s Defending Vulnerable Populations Program collaborated on this factsheet summarizing how foreign nationals who have bonded out of ICE detention may reclaim their immigration bond money. This factsheet is based off of CLINIC’s article, “Immigration Bond: How to Get Your Money Back.”

CLINIC opposes the NPRM which would eviscerate the protections currently in place under the Flores Settlement Agreement.

Como el Servicio de Inmigración y Aduanas (ICE, por su sigla inglés) del Departamento de Seguridad Interna (DHS, por su sigla inglés) sigue a hacer cumplir las leyes de inmigración y un creciente número de inmigrantes están sujetos a detención, los defensores no solo tienen que representar a sus clientes en procedimientos de fianza, pero también tienen que asistirlos a recuperar la fianza.

Maintain detention system standards, letter urges CLINIC joined more than 250 organizations in urging Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly to abandon plans to expand immigration detention. The organizations also called on Kelly to strengthen rather than loosen standards and monitoring of the detention system that endangers the lives and due process rights of asylum seekers and immigrants.

In a three-page April 11, 2017, memorandum, Attorney General Jeff Sessions called for increased criminal prosecution of noncitizens. Living up to his pro-prosecution, anti-immigrant reputation, Sessions’ memo directs federal prosecutors to prioritize bringing criminal charges to “further reduce illegality.”

On Jan. 25, 2017, President Trump issued Executive Order 13767, “Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements.” As justification for new policies, the EO cited an alleged threat to national security and safety posed by noncitizens who have not been inspected and admitted, and the strain on federal and local resources resulting from the “surge of illegal immigration” on the southern border.

The following is a simple summary of the main points of the enforcement guidance issued by the Department of Homeland Security Feb. 20 and DHS fact sheets of Feb. 21. More detailed legal analysis will follow.

The following is a simple summary of the main points of the enforcement guidance issued by the Department of Homeland Security Feb. 20 and DHS fact sheets of Feb. 21. More detailed legal analysis will follow.

The Jan. 25 Executive Order and Feb. 20 memo from DHS change the current enforcement priorities to dramatically increase the detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants living in the United States or seeking entry.

This document is about why immigrant families should not be subject to expedited removal proceedings.

As Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, continues to enforce immigration laws and more immigrants are subject to immigration detention.