In July 2008, the Australian government announced that it would relax its mandatory detention policy for arrivals to Australia who lacked proper documents to enter the country. The government’s new policy is based on the following principles: 1. Mandatory detention would apply to: a. all unauthorized arrivals, for management of health, identity and security risks to the community; b. unlawful non-citizens who present unacceptable risks to the community; and c. unlawful non-citizens who have repeatedly refused to comply with their…

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s daughter’s partner As reader’s of this blog may have noticed, the “What if he was a foreigner?” entries in this blog address the immigration impact of what would happen if a non-U.S. citizen committed an act or crime that a prominent person has committed. The entire point of these postings is to point out how harsh the immigration laws are and how it could impact people of prominence if they did not have the good fortune…

Should an alien lose his or her case in immigration court and after he or she exhausts all appeals, comes the moment when a removal order becomes final and needs to be executed. In the past, the alien, or his attorney, would receive a letter ordering the alien to report to an ICE office for deportation. ICE, claiming few people showed up for deportation in response to these letters, and often move after receiving the letter to avoid being arrested,…

To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Just as in Newton’s Third Law of Motion, so it seems to be with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. By way of background, a problem with immigration law administration is that there are huge numbers of people seeking great numbers of different benefits. There are infinite ways that a case becomes unusual, hard to easily categorize, and hard to adjudicate. Things get complicated fast. Cases sometimes get mis-categorized, misunderstood, and…