A few times I have written about what appeared to me to be an Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy of taking aliens out of the United States without the aliens availing themselves of their right to see an immigration judge by providing false information about the consequences staying and fighting a case as opposed to leaving. I learned of this through speaking to many aliens and family members of aliens who experienced this. This modus operandi was confirmed by a…

TRAC, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which describes itself as a data gathering, data research and data distribution organization at Syracuse University issues statistical reports about immigration court matters. TRAC reports analyze backlogs in the immigration courts and compared statistics about grant rates for different types of cases in the different immigration courts and by immigration judges. On November 9, 2010, it issued a report, “ICE Seeks to Deport the Wrong People,” which analyzed the results of immigration court proceedings…

Someone called me a couple of weeks ago and asked me about the “new law” they heard about on TV that allows people to bring their families here without delay right away. I explained that there are some new laws under discussion – they have been under discussion since 1996 when “the great triangulator”  signed an immigration reform law, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRAIRA) that made many harsh changes to the law. (Lets hope…

People who study tests, whether they are good tests are not, use the concept of “reliability.” A reliable test is one that measures the knowledge of material consistently across time, individuals, and situations. So for example, if you give a history test on Monday and 20 percent get A’s and 20 percent get F’s, and then you re-test the next Monday and a different 20 percent get A’s and F’s, the test is not reliable. In the immigration context, people…