Latest in Immigration and Nationality Act
The Supreme Court’s decision confirmed that the INA does not bar an end to the MPP, but the district court must still determine whether Secretary of Homeland Security Mayorkas’s October 2021 memorandum provided an adequate explanation for the shift under the APA.
The judge held that the rule exceeded the power of both the attorney general and the Department of Homeland Security and issued a nationwide temporary restraining order against the rule’s implementation.
On Oct. 1, a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction against President Trump’s nonimmigrant visa ban. What’s in the decision?
In a new rule, DHS authorizes removal of asylum seekers at the southern border of the U.S. to Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador for asylum processing in those countries, as long as the removed individuals are not nationals of the particular country that will receive them.
The decision highlighted key tensions between the ban on uninsured immigrants and existing law.
On July 29, Attorney General William Barr overruled a Board of Immigration Appeals decision, writing that most nuclear families do not qualify as “particular social groups” for the purposes of the Immigration and Nationality Act. As a result, individuals persecuted based on their family ties no longer qualify for asylum on that basis. The complete ruling is available here and below.
On July 23, the Department of Homeland Security expanded the scope of its expedited removal designation pursuant to its authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Previously, for undocumented migrants who crossed a land border into the U.S., the designation could only be applied if they were found within 100 miles of the border and could not prove a 14-day continuous presence in the U.S. The expanded designation can apply to undocumented individuals throughout the U.S. who cannot prove a two-year continuous presence in the U.S.
Two immigration support and advocacy organizations filed suit over the Trump administration’s latest restrictions on asylum, in addition to the ACLU’s lawsuit. Both the complaint and the plaintiffs’ motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction are available below.
On July 15, the Department of Homeland Security posted an interim final rule (IFR) that limits asylum by barring applications from claimants at the southern border who passed through a third country on their way to the United States but did not seek asylum in that country.
The ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed suit over the Trump administration’s recently announced policy to bar asylum applications from migrants travelling to the United States who have travelled through a third country en route. The complaint argues that the policy violates the will of Congress expressed in the Immigration and Nationality Act. The document is available in its entirety here and below.