crimmigration.com

The Houston Chronicle reported that the Harris County District Attorney's Office (which serves Houston, Texas) is considering a policy of asking criminal defendants for their immigration status before agreeing to a plea agreement.  Give the correct answer and your case might end without going to trial.  Give the wrong answer and you get scheduled for trial--no matter whether it even merits a trial. On a purely practical level, how is it a good idea to clog already overburdened courts with trials that often don't need to exist. [...]

CIS released a new memo regarding INA 212(a)(6), the provision that concerns 212(a)(6)(A): presence without admission or parole 212(a)(6)(b): failure to appear for removal hearing 212(a)(6)(C): fraud, misrepresentation, or false claim to citizenship 212(a)(6)(D): stowaways 212(a)(6)(E): smugglers 212(a)(6)(F): individuals subject to a civil penalty 212(a)(6)(G): student visa violations. This memo constitutes a new chapter 4.06 of the Adjudicator's Field Manual.  The full memo is available here. Among the interesting highlights of this memo are:Ambiguity Regarding 212(c)The memo [...]

In another of his insightful essays on "Aliens, Crime, and Drugs: Making the Connection," Tom Barry traces the origins of crImmigration to the 1970s and 1980s crackdown on non-violent crime. He argues that the criminalization of immigration stems directly from the popularity of "governing through crime"--that is, using the fear of crime to promote unduly harsh social policies.  According to Barry, senior analyst at the Center for International Policy, "The way we have decided to deal with these outsiders – the 30 million illegal and legal immigrants who live among us – is how we already [...]

The U.S. Supreme Court is on track to answer a question that many immigration lawyers have been wondering about for years--if a criminal defense attorney incorrectly advises a non-citizen about potential immigration consequences of a criminal plea, is that grounds to vacate the plea?  The Kentucky Supreme Court said "no." In Padilla v. Kentucky, the Kentucky Court found that because deportation is a collateral consequence of a criminal plea, a non-citizen who is wrongly advised by a criminal defense attorney is not denied the right to effective assistance of counsel. Criminal pleas [...]

The American Immigration Law Foundation has released its latest Litigation Clearinghouse Newsletter. Always helpful, this newsletter includes a great review of where the federal circuits stand on their jurisdiction to review an Immigration Judge's denial of a continuance. Here's a quick rundown of what AILF found: Cases Finding Jurisdiction: Alsamhouri v. Gonzales, 484 F.3d 117 (1st Cir. 2007); Sanusi v. Gonzales, 445 F.3d 193 (2d Cir. 2006); Khan v. Att’y Gen., 448 F.3d 226 (3d Cir. 2006); Lendo v. Gonzales, 493 F.3d 439 (4th Cir. 2007); Ahmed v. Gonzales, 447 F.3d 433 (5th Cir. 2006); [...]

The BIA released a decision today holding that a Florida conviction for criminal solicitation for the delivery of cocaine is a controlled substance offense. Matter of Juan Carlos Zorilla-Vidal, 24 I&N Dec. 768 (BIA 2009). According to the BIA, "the respondent's Florida conviction for soliciting the delivery of cocaine is a conviction for an offense under State law relating to a controlled substance that makes him removable from the United States under section 237(a)(2)((i) of the Act." This case sounds like more bad news for anyone interested in arguing that a conviction for a [...]

At least 32 guards in the short-staffed Texas prison system are on work visas — immigrant workers from Nigeria and Mexico, officials said Wednesday. Prison officials confirmed the use of visa workers after an East Texas lawmaker inquired about the hiring of several Nigerian visa workers at the Michael Unit near Palestine and after other correctional officers at the Eastham Unit near Huntsville raised questions about the issue. Michelle Lyons, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said the hiring of visa workers has been long-standing policy — and legal — in the 112-prison [...]

Despite ICE's frequent claims that its widespread immigration sweeps target dangerous criminals, a new report issued by the Migration Policy Institute says otherwise. The report Collateral Damage: An Examination of ICE's Fugitive Operations Program, found that a staggering 9 percent of total arrests in 2007 were of people with any kind of criminal conviction. Over the course of the program's entire existence (it was established in 2003), MPI "found that 73 percent of the nearly 97,000 people arrested ... were unauthorized immigrants without criminal records."  So much for ICE's claims [...]