Federal Court

SCOTUS Upholds DACA, Giving Temporary Victory to Many Undocumented Immigrants

In a landmark decision today, the Supreme Court of the United States narrowly threw a lifeline to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program by holding that the Trump administration sought to end the program in an arbitrary and capricious manner. For now, DACA lives. However, the Supreme Court decision did not say that DACA is legal or that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had to keep...

Victory – SIJS Settlement Final. USCIS Resumes Processing SIJS Applications

After more than a year of holding Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) cases in abeyance and denying many by adding extraneous requirements, USCIS will resume processing them as part of a settlement agreement in J.L. v. Cuccinelli, 18-CV-4914 (N.D. Cal.) A long-time client of Lal Legal filed a class action lawsuit earlier this year alleging that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) imposed a new requirement on SIJ-classification eligibility and...

Conviction for Possession or Sale of Meth Can No Longer Lead to Deportation In The Ninth Circuit

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals continues to get it right on immigration. In Lorenzo v. Sessions, the Ninth Circuit held today that a conviction for either H.S. 11378 (unlawful to possess controlled substance for sale) or H.S. 11379 (unlawful to sell or to transport controlled substance for sale) is not an aggravated felony drug offense that can render a lawful permanent resident deportable from the United States. This...

District Court Orders DHS to Provide Asylum Seekers Notice of One-Year Bar

In Mendez Rojas v. Johnson, District Judge Ricardo S. Martinez has ruled that the United States government’s failure to provide asylum seekers with notice of the one-year asylum application deadline and failure to create and implement procedural mechanisms that guarantee class members the opportunity to timely submit their asylum applications violates the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), governing regulations, and due process. As background,...