by Matthew Hoppock | Apr 17, 2018 | Immigration, Removal Defense |
Dimaya v. Sessions – Sessions loses. And the cherry on top? Gorsuch casts the deciding vote and writes a compelling concurrence. So, what does this mean? I will have a lot more to say later, but my quick take: The aggravated felony of “a crime of...
by Matthew Hoppock | Mar 8, 2018 | Immigration, Naturalization |
Yesterday the USCIS rolled out e-filing for its naturalization form for everyone except military members. But in doing so it hid the link to the N-400 form, making it fairly difficult to know what form is the correct one to use if you’re in the military (or...
by Matthew Hoppock | Mar 4, 2018 | Denaturalization, Immigration |
I predict a sea change in Immigration enforcement efforts in the coming year, focusing finite resources on denaturalization at the expense of adjudicating benefits applications for everyone else. This is a summary of that program and how I think it’s going to...
by Matthew Hoppock | Feb 19, 2018 | FOIA, Immigration |
The Department of Justice just can’t make up its mind. Removal of the Immigration Judge Benchbook Sometime in April, 2017 the Department of Justice removed the Immigration Judge Benchbook from the internet without any announcement or warning. The benchbook is a...
by Matthew Hoppock | Aug 18, 2017 | Bond, Immigration |
This work is filled with disappointment and dead ends – good people who have no immigration options under our broken system and honorable families who lose family members to deportation because an arcane admissions system that stopped working many years ago...
by Matthew Hoppock | Jul 3, 2017 | Immigration, Immigration Practice |
April 14, 2018 Update: In response to our FOIA (and following having to appeal an earlier incomplete production), the entire Benchbook is now back online and is at this address: https://fileshare.eoir.justice.gov/benchbook-archived.zip That’s a link to the zip...
by Matthew Hoppock | Jul 3, 2017 | FOIA, Immigration, Immigration Practice |
Sometime in Mid-April, 2017, the Department of Justice removed the “Immigration Judge Bench Book” from the internet. Why? They won’t say. We’ve been trying to figure that out and to reconstruct this book as a resource for practitioners. For...
by Matthew Hoppock | Jun 26, 2017 | Immigration, USCIS Best Practices |
[EDIT – because several people asked, here is a link to the old form] [SECOND EDIT – here are the old instructions as well] Today the USCIS published a revised Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status (Form I-485). While this new...
by Matthew Hoppock | May 24, 2017 | Asylum, Immigration |
In perhaps the most important asylum-related decision in the last 5 to 10 years, the BIA held today that a family unit can amount to a “particular social group” and that if their membership in that nuclear family is at least one central reason they have...
by Matthew Hoppock | May 5, 2017 | Immigration, Immigration Reform |
Since Trump’s election it has sometimes been difficult to describe to people what has actually changed in the immigration field. Aside from the two Muslim bans, both of which were blocked by the courts, very little, on the surface, seems to have significantly...
