Articles Posted in General Immigration

Yes, absolutely and without a doubt, if you have a pending immigration case, an old immigration case you want to reopen or you are not a U.S. citizen and want to know about your immigration history, you need a FOIA and you need it now. Information is power and FOIA is information. The federal government loves to use acronyms to describe everything, whether its DHS, ICE, USCIS, CBP, LPR or USC, if you can break a phrase down into letters, Uncle Sam will do it. FOIA is just another example of that and stands for “Freedom of Information Act.”   Knowing how to request one and having the right attorney review it could be the key to winning your immigration case or losing and getting deported.

When I worked for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), we had unlimited access to data and the files of everyone who had an A-file (Alien file). We had vast networks of systems that compiled data on individuals in the U.S. who were born overseas or people deported from the U.S. who were trying to come back. If you know where to look, you could find a tremendous amount of information that could help immigrants trying to avoid deportation. However, most of the time, the government immigration attorneys, officers and agents would keep the information to themselves and often use it against the immigrants.

One of the greatest resources that the federal government has, as it relates to immigration, is information. This is not information that is public record like in criminal cases. Federal government immigration information is protected by a variety of privacy laws and policies. This means, usually, only the person that is the subject of the record can request it, and the government can hold back some of the information for a variety of reasons.

In case you have not heard, in what can only be called one of the biggest upsets in U.S. presidential election history, Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton this morning and is now the President-Elect of the United States. As an immigration attorney, many of my clients and prospective clients have been worried about this day for over a year. They have asked me, what happens to immigrants if Trump is elected president? Will I be deported, will they deny my application for citizenship or for a green card? Will I be detained, will they take away my immigration status?

While I mistakenly assured my clients for months that he was not going to win, as any good attorney would, I contemplated the impacts of each candidate’s victory on my current and future clients. In addition, I thought about the other immigration player post-election, that being a lame-duck President Obama, who, depending on who won the election, might take two completely different approaches to immigration in his last months in office.

So on to what would happen with a president Hillary Clinton? The 2014 Jeh Johnson Prosecutorial Discretion Memo would likely remain intact and might have even been expanded. DACA would stay in place and Hillary assured everyone she would try to push through expanded DACA and DAPA again. There would be no wall on the Southwest Border and the acceptance of refugees from the Middle East would continue, or even grow from current numbers. She also pledged to push through comprehensive immigration reform

If you are not a United States citizen and you registered to vote, you could face criminal charges, denial of immigration benefits and even deportation from the country. These possibilities get even worse if you actually voted in an election.

There are federal and state laws that prohibit people who are not eligible to vote (usually non-citizen immigrants) from registering to vote and voting. It is a federal crime for a non-citizen immigrant to vote in a federal election. If you are not a citizen, you can be prosecuted, sent to prison and deported for voting in a federal election, even if you did not know you were not allowed to vote.

The very act of registering to vote requires that a person certify that they are a United States citizen and eligible to vote. Anyone who registers to vote and is not a citizen, has likely made what is known as a false claim to citizenship. A false claim to citizenship can stick with a non-citizen forever and stop someone from getting a green card, getting citizenship and can even lead to detention an deportation from the United States.

Anyone who follows immigration news or politics has probably heard that late last month, the Supreme Court in a 4-4 tie, left in place the lower court’s order freezing DAPA and expanded DACA. What this means is that for the rest of President Obama’s term, there will be no Deferred Action for Parents of Americans or an expansion of the already-in-place Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program begun in 2012.

This does not mean that DAPA and expanded DACA are dead; rather, it means that the Supreme Court has not yet decided if any president has the authority to create and administer expansive immigration policy measures like these. Obviously, if a candidate who does not support DAPA and DACA wins the White House, these programs will never see the light of day. If a candidate who supports these measures or even more ambitious measure reaches the White House, we can expect that we will see a new push for DAPA and DACA or programs like them in 2017.

These programs are not the only way that people in the United States without a lawful immigration status can seek immigration relief. There is always prosecutorial discretion, stays of removal, temporary protected status, asylum, withholding, and cancellation of removal, among others.