by Matthew Hoppock | Mar 25, 2020 | Immigration |
The Immigration Courts are secretly issuing a series of “standing orders” describing their process for handling the coronavirus. Unfortunately, nobody at EOIR is actually announcing these in any formal way. Some are being added periodically to page 234 of...
by Matthew Hoppock | Nov 5, 2019 | FOIA, Immigration, Immigration Practice |
We should have seen it coming. In 2018 the Attorney General ended the ability of immigration judges to administratively close cases, concluding they had in fact never had such authority. As shocking as that was at the time, we’re now seeing pieces of that puzzle...
by Matthew Hoppock | May 9, 2019 | Denaturalization, Immigration |
Today the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas dismissed a denaturalization case against our client. The order is here: U.S. v. Malik – Order Denying Denaturalization The court conducted a two-day bench trial in October, 2018 and we were eagerly...
by Matthew Hoppock | Apr 24, 2019 | Immigration |
I’m writing to share more FOIA records we’ve received from the BIA. For the last year we’ve been working on obtaining records through FOIA to better understand how the Board of Immigration Appeals works from top to bottom. The thought is that with...
by Matthew Hoppock | Apr 24, 2019 | Immigration |
I’m sharing a series of research tools we received today in response to a FOIA request submitted in May, 2018: DOJ Libraries – Public Records GuideDownload DOJ Libraries – Court DocketsDownload DOJ Libraries – Asset SearchingDownload DOJ...
by Matthew Hoppock | Apr 7, 2019 | Immigration |
After an informal policy shift last year led the USCIS to start denying human trafficking visas by misreading the statutory text, creating a requirement that never existed before, we’ve won our first appeal on the issue. I’m posting the unpublished...
by Matthew Hoppock | Apr 7, 2019 | Immigration |
In a published decision on April 3, 2019 the Eighth Circuit granted our appeal in a case involving a pending U Visa, Caballero-Martinez v. Barr. The decision will help provide guidance to immigration judges in the Eighth Circuit, including Kansas City where I...
by Matthew Hoppock | Apr 5, 2019 | Immigration |
In September, 2018 the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) started producing this publication called the “EOIR Morning Briefing.” They’re not quite daily and they look like a collection of news stories. But there’s more. Rather than...
by Matthew Hoppock | Dec 5, 2018 | Immigration |
The Executive Office of Immigration Review (which is responsible for the immigration courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals) has an active Fraud and Abuse Prevention Program (FAPP). I was excited to learn that since May, 2017 the FAPP has been publishing a...
by Matthew Hoppock | Nov 2, 2018 | FOIA, Immigration |
A series of FOIA requests regarding the Attorney General’s decision in Matter of Castro-Tum seem to have revealed something strange about that decision: it was edited after the Attorney General issued it. E-mail messages to and from BIA staff on May 17, 2018,...
