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 I’m posting the unpublished...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,...
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...
