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In a surprising unpublished decision the Board of Immigration Appeals, which handles administrative appeals from deportation orders, held that transportation of cocaine under California law is not an aggravated felony.

Recently, the Department of Justice settled in a lawsuit brought against the agency last year by Immigration Judge Ashley Tabaddor. Of Iranian descent, Judge Tabaddor said her superiors at the DOJ ordered her not to hear any cases that involved Iranian nationals.

On Tuesday, November 17, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, in her first oversight hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, fended off hours of tough questions from Republicans who voiced skepticism that the U.S. can effectively screen prospective refugees seeking to enter the country from Syria.

A recent federal lawsuit brings into sharp relief what many Republicans and anti-illegal immigration groups call the “anchor babies” problem.

In Maria Isabel Perales Serna, et al. v. Texas Department of State Health Services, Vital Statistics Unit, et al., Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid challenged Dallas County’s policy of denying birth certificates to United States citizen children, whose parents are “illegal aliens.”

Although in the most recent ruling, on October 2, the district court declined to immediately enjoin Dallas County’s behavior at issue, the trial court expressed, “grave concern” for a policy that denies U.S. citizen children their most basic identification document, a birth certificate. The judge set the matter for further hearings. In the meantime the Dallas County policy will remain.

On October 7th, 2015 Senator David Vitter introduced new legislation, the Stop Sanctuary Policies and Protect Americans Act. The precatory comments frame the legislative purpose as “ [to] hold sanctuary jurisdictions accountable for defying Federal law, to increase penalties for individuals who illegally reenter the United States after being removed

This week on October, 20 2015, in a 54 to 45 vote, the Senate blocked S. 2146, the Stop Sanctuary Policies and Protect Americans Act, from advancing to the Senate floor. If passed, the bill would have limited grants to cities that do not comply with detainers issued by DHS and increase penalties for individual who illegally reenter the United States. Furthermore, funding would have been denied to those cities deemed “sanctuary jurisdictions” where local law enforcement, among other things, did not check immigration status upon arrest.

Last week, in an important ruling, a divided panel of the 9th Circuit in United States v. Chan held that post-conviction relief  is available where an immigrant establishes that s/he entered a guilty plea, even decades earlier, on the strength of criminal defense attorney’s affirmative mis-advice about a broadened range of immigration consequences, not just deportation.

Governor Jerry Brown signed a triptych of immigration bills, the first of which removed the word “alien” from California’s legal code. The second bill allows immigrant high school students to serve as election poll workers.

At oral argument Friday, July 24 in Pasadena, Ninth Circuit Judge Kim Wardlaw admonished a United States Department of Justice attorney for citing a recent Los Angeles Times article entitled, Sex offender accused of assaulting teen was in U.S. illegally.

In Leal v. Holder –F.3d–, No. 12-73381 (9th Cir. Nov. 6, 2014) the panel, according Chevron deference to the BIA (Matter of Leal), effectively held that a conviction under Arizona’s “Endangerment” statute, ARS § 13-1201, is a Crime Involving Moral Turpitude (CIMT), and thus a substantive basis for deportation. There, Leal, an undocumented alien, convicted […]