by Matthew Hoppock | Nov 11, 2021 | Immigration |
In a memorandum dated November 8, 2021, the Director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, David Neal, has rescinded the agency’s formal COVID-19 guidance, leaving a number of questions unanswered on how the courts will handle COVID-19 in the coming...
by Matthew Hoppock | Oct 25, 2021 | Immigration |
A lawsuit filed in June by a former Immigration Judge, Quynh Vu Bain, and exhibits the government has since filed raises a series of concerns about the way the government is managing the immigration courts and its FOIA obligations. [Note: although the aim of her suit...
by Matthew Hoppock | Oct 14, 2021 | Immigration |
The “rubber stamp” is a nefarious metaphor, historically used to accuse judges or legislatures of lacking any real power (or of refusing to exercise it). As it goes, the judge hasn’t made a meaningful decision at all; their signature has merely been...
by Matthew Hoppock | Oct 12, 2021 | Immigration |
For the last four years, we’ve been using the Freedom of Information Act to request records describing the policies and procedures that govern the processing of appeals and motions to reopen at the Board of Immigration Appeals and the Immigration Courts. One...
by Matthew Hoppock | Sep 13, 2021 | Immigration |
In January 2019 we submitted a FOIA request asking for the contents of the EOIR’s “Guidance and Publications” intranet site. The site is part of the EOIR’s intranet, which is accessible to all EOIR employees, and appeared to contain guidance...
by Matthew Hoppock | Jan 20, 2021 | Immigration |
Today, January 20, 2021, “Deferred Enforced Departure” or “DED” is now available for all citizens of Venezuela in the United States. Once it is ready, the order will will last for a period of 18 months. There are some exceptions, so not...
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...
