Last Tuesday, the Trump administration reported that it was replacing the leadership of many Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field offices (ICE’s local branches) and replacing them with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers. This is reported to be the harbinger of even-tougher immigration enforcement ahead. It may seem counter-intuitive that things would get harsher under CBP leadership. ICE, we know is the internal enforcement arm of the immigration system in the United States. Employers are subjected to workplace enforcement…

When Artificial Intelligence (AI) suddenly appeared a couple of years ago, I, like everyone else, played with it. Write me a sonnet in the style of Shakespeare about brushing your teeth without enough tooth paste. Create a cartoon of an elephant in a bikini on a surf board. For a day or two, I was amused. Then, I tried it for work. I had an asylum case to prepare and needed to find information about country conditions to show that…

The news is filled with troubling immigration stories since President Trump ascended the throne. There was the crazy/illegal stuff (though the Supreme Court refuses to take a stand to stop them) like deporting non-citizens as enemy combatants, declaring birth-right citizenship over, deporting people to third countries without warning. Then there is the legal but unique stuff – placing people into expedited removal years after entry, large-scale raids, elimination of discretion to pursue removal or execute removal orders, cancelling protections for…

Immigration enforcement is freaking people out. Permanent residents and citizens keep calling me to ask if they can travel and safely return to the United States. I’ll ask, “Is your social media political? Have you voiced opposition to killing babies and starving people? Posted any caricatures of politicians? If not, you should be fine. Such is the jaundiced world we live in where practicing law is not parsing statutes and cases but parsing government overreach/illegality. While some of what is…