Results
Date Published: 09/22/2020
2020 has proven to be one of the most tumultuous years in recent history. We have struggled to survive a deadly global pandemic and faced a national reckoning on racial inequity and police brutality. Over the past four years, immigration enforcement tactics have continued to instill fear, and any...
Date Published: 09/18/2020
Date Published: 09/17/2020
In January 2020, the Committee for Review of the Penal Code began convening with the intent of putting forward wide ranging recommendations for reforms to the California criminal legal code. Understanding the significant impact of the process for California’s immigrant population, the ILRC has...
Date Published: 09/09/2020
Across the country, states and localities are increasingly moving to end marijuana prohibition laws. For immigrant communities, despite the changing attitude toward marijuana-related conduct at the state level, an old conviction can still form the basis for immigration-related consequences at the...
Date Published: 12/14/2021
A FOIA request can be an invaluable tool in immigration law to help an immigrant and their representative gain a complete understanding of one’s immigration history. This guide details how to complete a FOIA request for USCIS, ICE, OBIM, and CBP. It provides step-by-step instructions on how to...
Date Published: 09/08/2020
California is in the midst of an historic reform of its Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). Under current plans, failed DJJ facilities will close, creating an opportunity for youth to be cared for close to home through community-based programs and services. But if DJJ closes, it must close justly...
Date Published: 09/02/2020
This brief advisory written by Rose Cahn, ILRC and Anoop Prasad, Asian Americans Advancing Justice Asian Law Caucus, discusses how petitions for relief using PC 1437, the reform to the felony murder rule, can be helpful to immigrants seeking to mitigate immigration consequences.
Date Published: 09/02/2020
A one-page issue spotting decision tree to help screen for potential forms of post-conviction relief. For an in-depth discussion of any of these vehicles, see this guide , created by the ILRC and Californians for Safety and Justice.
Date Published: 08/25/2020
In response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, federal, state, and local governments are creating relief programs to provide services and resources to community members facing health and financial challenges. However, due in part to the overlapping timeline of coronavirus and the implementation of...
Date Published: 08/27/2020
This resource provides helpful charts of the grounds of inadmissibility as applied to special immigrant juveniles (SIJs). It also describes the waiver standard and process for SIJs.
Date Published: 08/24/2020
On July 30, 2020, Attorney General Barr issued Matter of Reyes , 28 I&N Dec. 52 (A.G. 2020), a case involving a longtime lawful permanent resident with a single conviction for violating a larceny statute that criminalizes both theft and fraud, and is indivisible as between these means of...
Date Published: 09/01/2020
On July 28, 2020 the Department of Homeland Security issued a memorandum severely restricting the DACA program. Despite a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision fully reinstating the program, the Trump administration has issued another attack on the program. This community alert gives a brief summary...
Date Published: 08/17/2020
On August 13, 2020, ILRC submitted comments on recent changes to USCIS’s policy manual. The new chapters on discretion will radically alter adjudications of a wide variety of applications for immigration benefits. We recommend that the changes be stricken because they are ultra vires, lack legal...
Date Published: 08/13/2020
In October 2019, Attorney General Barr issued Matter of Thomas & Matter of Thompson , altering the standard for when immigration law will recognize a criminal sentencing modification. Since then, government attorneys from ICE and adjudicators from DHS and DOJ have misused and exploited the...
Date Published: 08/26/2020
This toolkit is designed for legal service organizations who want to engage pro bono attorneys in providing immigrant post-conviction relief screening and services. It contains tools to run a legal clinic to screen for crim/imm issues and post-conviction relief options, tools to perform case-...
Date Published: 08/12/2020
In conservative and anti-immigrant areas, it may not be possible to pass sweeping sanctuary laws that prohibit collaboration between local law enforcement agencies and ICE. This is especially true if anti-sanctuary statutes like Texas’ SB 4 and Florida’s SB 168 prevent such measures by state law...
Date Published: 08/26/2020
This toolkit will help reentry service providers expand services for noncitizens impacted by the criminal legal system. It offers an escalating service menu, starting with tools to provide general information about how a conviction can impact immigration status, advancing to tools to help clients...
Date Published: 09/24/2020
In this interactive webinar we cover concepts, and provide a system, to help advocates analyze immigration cases involving crimes. We will cover the basics such as the difference between inadmissibility and deportability grounds, their relationship to good moral character, the main removal grounds...
Date Published: 09/09/2020
On July 28, 2020, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a new memorandum on DACA that dismantles the existing program while the future of the program is under review. This new memorandum limits who is eligible for DACA in spite of the June 18, 2020 decision from the U.S. Supreme...
Date Published: 10/02/2020
Alert : On September 29, 2020 the Fee Rule was enjoined nation-wide in its entirety by a District court in the Northern District of California, ILRC et al. v. Chad F. Wolf, et al . (ND California) (Case 4:20-cv-05883-JSW) (Sept. 29, 2020). This means that the fee rule will not go into effect on...
Date Published: 12/16/2021
Throughout the Trump Administration, the federal government has sought to undermine sanctuary policies by requiring that cities help ICE with immigration enforcement in order to receive certain federal grants from the DOJ. These policies have spurred a dozen lawsuits, almost all of which have ruled...
Date Published: 08/04/2020
In this quick practice update, we alert practitioners to USCIS' publication of its fee schedule final rule, which proposes to drastically increase most fees, eliminate fee waivers for most applicants, and narrow fee waiver criteria, effective October 2, 2020.
Date Published: 08/04/2020
On November 15, 2019, the ILRC and Public Counsel submitted comments in response to the re-opened comment period on the proposed SIJS regulations, originally published in 2011. The ILRC and Public Counsel each submitted comments on the proposed rule during the original 2011 comment period,...
Date Published: 09/13/2021
This timeline provides a quick, visual summary of the changes to public charge policy at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of State (DOS) from January 2018 through July 29, 2021.
Date Published: 07/30/2020
This practice advisory will update applicants on the changes in interpretation of LRIF since its inception. We also discuss the administrative guidance, advocacy efforts, and hurdles to the application process to date.
Date Published: 09/27/2021
Contact tracing is a public health program that helps slow the spread of infectious diseases, like COVID-19 (coronavirus). Because COVID-19 is very contagious, many states have implemented contact tracing programs to protect communities from the virus. California launched California Connected , its...
Date Published: 12/16/2020
LPRs are often worried about how public charge might impact them or their family members. Importantly, there is no public charge test to naturalize. Nonetheless, LPRs seek guidance about travel, petitioning family members, and possible grounds for deportation. Log in to this webinar to give the...
Date Published: 12/15/2020
Crimes involving moral turpitude is one of the most commonly charged crimes removal grounds. The goal of this webinar is to make it easier to do an accurate analysis of crimes involving moral turpitude. This can be tricky, given that there are at least thirteen different sections in the Immigration...
Date Published: 12/09/2020
Immigrants and nonimmigrants seeking entry to the United States are subject to screening for public charge inadmissibility under INA § 212(a)(4). Implementation of a new rule on public charge began at the State Department (DOS) for persons who are consular processing on the same date that United...
Date Published: 01/01/2017
In light of the continued failure of the U.S. Congress to pass meaningful immigration reform and the continued dysfunction of our immigration system, President Obama announced a series of immigration policy changes though executive action during his presidency. This manual discusses the law, policy...