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 I’m posting the unpublished...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,...
by Matthew Hoppock | Sep 20, 2018 | Immigration, Immigration Practice |
It is starting to appear the Department of Justice has chosen not to comply with the Supreme Court’s decision in Pereira v. Sessions because doing so would conflict with the agency’s self-imposed deportation quotas it is placing on Immigration Judges,...
by Matthew Hoppock | Sep 19, 2018 | FOIA |
About two months ago I received a document called the “BIA Style Guide” in response to a FOIA request and saw multiple references in the Style Guide to something called the “BIA Webpage” which appeared to be an intranet of sorts, with...
by Matthew Hoppock | Aug 21, 2018 | FOIA, Immigration, Immigration Practice |
Every summer the Immigration Judges from around the country meet in suburban Washington D.C. for a training session. The training materials are interesting, because they help us understand the IJs’ thinking on specific issues. The 2018 conference was held at the...
by Matthew Hoppock | Jul 16, 2018 | BIA Best Practices, FOIA |
I received a final response on my FOIA request for any memoranda or guidance directed to BIA members. I was surprised by how much we received. Here they are: BIA Style Manual_redline_Redacted (242 pgs) 15-05 Handling Cases Involving Certain Applications for...
by Matthew Hoppock | Jun 22, 2018 | Immigration, Motions to Reopen, Removal Defense |
Although the Supreme Court’s decision in Pereira v. Sessions appears fairly technical and narrow, it isn’t. It casts a light on a practice by the DHS dating back to 1996. In nearly all cases the DHS has served a deficient charging document, called a...
