In a July 7, 2026, decision, Matter of R-A-N-, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) dealt with the issue of people coming to the United States seeking asylum to avoid military service, commonly pejoratively referred to as “draft dodgers.” The BIA issued this decision as a result, obviously, of large numbers of Russian men fleeing to the United States to avoid conscription in the Russian military where there have been war-crime atrocities occurring. Having a well-founded fear death or persecution…

On June 4, 2026, the Board of Immigration Appeals (the Board) issued a decision in Matter of J-O-A-, a case discussing “particular serious crime” and its impact on eligibility for withholding of removal. It also discussed eligibility for Convention Against Torture relief. The Board serves chiefly as the administrative appeals forum for removal cases from immigration courts. It issues 45,000 decisions per year.  A handful are published. In 2025 it published 33 decisions. Published cases explain ambiguities and gaps in…

As I have written about earlier, the Board of Immigration Appeals is issuing precedent decisions by the boatload all facilitating quicker removals of non-citizens. In the first year of President Trump’s reign, 2025, the BIA issued 65 precedent decisions. So far, in the first five months of 2026, the Board has issued 33 precedent opinions. In 2023 and 2024, the last two Biden years, the Board issued 13 and 14 decisions, respectively. Few of the Trump-era decisions commend themselves for…

Recent Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) decisions give the impression DOGE must have fired all the BIA’s clerks and editors. On March 12, 2026, the BIA published a decision in Matter of Z-N-L-. The case is an appeal in a custody determination hearing, which as the name suggests, is an immigration judge determining whether a person should remain detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement or can be released, most often with the posting of a bond to guarantee the non-citizen’s…