[Blog]

The Supreme Court recently held that the Defense of Marriage Act (section 3) is unconstitutional. In so doing, they took away the only thing standing between same-sex married couples and immigration benefits. Almost immediately after the decision, the Department of Homeland Security, US CIS, and the Department of State all indicated that they would begin…

So to follow up with a previous post, both of these cases were subsequently approved by the Immigration Court after the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Chief Counsel decided not to contest the cases further and in fact agreed to a grant of relief for each of these individuals. We could not be more…

The Senate Bill, titled the “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act,” has just today been introduced and the likely months-long process of committee review, amendments, etc. can begin. The bill is 844 pages long, and because I am only one person, I will take an in-depth look at just a few portions of…

Hearing screams of joy on the other end of the line never gets old. This week we won two appeals from the Board of Immigration Appeals. One is for a detained man who will now get a chance to *hopefully* be approved for cancellation of removal as a permanent resident. In that case, the Judge…

Normally, at the Kansas City Immigration Court, it takes a month or longer to get a trial date scheduled for people who are detained (can be 18 months for non-detained cases). Last week, we had a scheduling hearing on Thursday and asked for the next available time. The Judge graciously gave us her next opening,…

Since this firm started, we have filed emergency motions to stay removal (deportation), appeals, and Motions to Reopen old removal orders based on ineffective assistance of prior counsel or lack of notice of hearings. Sometimes, we have filed these appeals and requests for stays or removal for people with only days or hours before they…

So we have been really busy with people coming in to take advantage of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. I have met with lots of children, young adults, and their parents. So far, we don’t have any decisions, but for what its worth, the receipt notices and biometrics notices are all coming…

On Saturday, August 11, 2012 at 10am we will hold a presentation, free and open to the public, on the new Deferred Action program for DREAMERs. The Obama administrative had indicated that the final rules would be out today, August 1, but so far we have received nothing, we will post updates here. We will…

On President Obama announced a new initiative where some DREAM Act eligible people will be granted deferred action and potentially renewing two-year work cards. This program is lacking is final instructions, and some issues remain unclear, but within 60 days we should all have the final details. What we know so far is that it does not…