The American Civil Liberties Union and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced  that a settlement has been reached in a lawsuit, Alfaro Garcia v. Johnson, filed by the ACLU seeking to compel USCIS to conduct reasonable fear interviews for aliens detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement who are prior deportees who are found in the United States and make Asylum claims. Under the settlement, USCIS will conduct these interviews within ten days of the alien’s being referred to USCIS for such…

An amazing thing about immigration law is that hot topics can be issues that have been festering for years and one would imagine would have been resolved by now. For example, the Supreme Court recently decided a case, Judulang v. Holder, a very important decision about 212(c), a relief statute that disappeared fifteen years ago and involves principally the right to seek forgiveness for  illegal conduct or convictions that took place before it disappeared. The issues in the case have…

Coincident with the speculative bubbles in the general economy in the 2000’s was a speculative bubble in immigration practice. Some of the overlap is easy to explain – the same super-charged, exuberance-reinforcing energy that made the economy grow and grow – for example. easy money for homeowners caused more people to enter the housing market that caused prices to rise that caused people to have more home equity and then more easy money to er-enter the market for more or…