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Your weekly summary from the Council
LATEST ANALYSIS
- Immigrants Appear for Their Court Hearings, New Data Shows
As the Biden administration begins its overhaul of the immigration enforcement system, we must ensure that our policies are based on facts. It's now clear that many of our harsh detention policies relied on flawed data that suggested immigrants “disappear” before court hearings. Read More »
- What You Need to Know About Biden’s Deportation Moratorium
In a blow to the Biden administration, a federal judge in Texas ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) not to enforce its 100-day moratorium on deportations. But the decision leaves in place other changes to immigration made on Biden’s first day in office, including new enforcement priorities due to go into effect on February 1. Read More »
- Why Biden Must Dismantle the Migrant Protection Protocols Now
January 29, 2021 marked the two-year anniversary of the Trump administration’s so-called “Migrant Protection Protocols" (MPP). Under MPP, thousands of asylum seekers were sent back to Mexico and are still waiting in dangerous conditions for their U.S. asylum hearings. Building a better asylum process at the border is one of the most important challenges of the Biden administration. Read More »
FACTS YOU SHOULD KNOW
- U.S. immigration agencies use a range of expedited programs to deport certain people from the United States. Under the Trump administration, DHS expanded its avenues for removal. One method—the Electronic Nationality Verification (ENV) program—allowed DHS and its component agencies to quickly deport Central Americans without first receiving their government’s travel documents.
This new fact sheet describes the little-known ENV program, whom it affects, and highlights concerns regarding the program.
Read more: The Electronic Nationality Verification Program: An Overview
ACROSS THE NATION
- Do immigrants attend their court hearings? Contrary to claims by the Trump administration that most immigrants fail to appear in immigration court, the federal government’s own data reveals that 83% of all nondetained immigrants with completed or pending removal cases from 2008 through 2018 attended all of their court hearings. For nondetained immigrants with an attorney, that number jumps to an overwhelming 96%.
This new special report from the American Immigration Council—written in partnership with Ingrid Eagly of the UCLA School of Law and Steven Shafer of the Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project—examines over a decade of proceedings to find that the government continuously undercounts immigrants’ appearance rates in court.
Read more: Measuring In Absentia Removal in Immigration Court
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“The findings of this timely [Council] report confirm what many of us formerly on the immigration bench have known for years: represented asylum seekers appearing before fair, knowledgeable judges show up for virtually all of their immigration court hearings. The findings refute one of the many ‘big lies’ and ‘bogus narratives’ promoted by the last administration to demean and dehumanize asylum seekers and wrongfully deprive them of their legal and constitutional rights.
“The Biden administration should pursue changes that would provide immigration judges greater independence and discretion and support the creation of an independent structure for the immigration courts.”
–Paul Wickham Schmidt, former immigration judge and board member for the Board of Immigration Appeals
FURTHER READING
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