Trafficking law helps spur flow of immigrant children to US

Protections for unaccompanied immigrant children in a sex-trafficking law are partly responsible for the surge in children crossing the border alone, according to the Obama administration. The law, backed by a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers, adds procedural protections for children entering the country alone who are not from Mexico or…

Jul 8, 2014 12:35 PM CDT

Poor NYC immigrants facing possible deportation will get free public defenders

New York City lawmakers have approved funding to provide free public defenders to indigent immigrants facing possible deportation. The New York Immigrant Family Unity Project will be the first program to pay the complete costs for public defenders in immigration proceedings, the New York Times and the Associated Press report.…

Jul 1, 2014 11:15 AM CDT

Canada grants asylum to US woman sentenced to 30 years for having sex with teen

A mortgage broker who fled Florida with her family after being criminally convicted in 2008 for having sex with a 16-year-old boy on her son’s baseball team has been granted asylum in Canada. Denise Harvey, 47, won the rare permission to apply for permanent residency because her 30-year sentence was…

Jun 10, 2014 9:40 PM CDT

SCOTUS: Immigrant visa applicants who age out of system can’t ‘ride on their parents’ coattails’

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals in the case of some would-be immigrants who seek visas as minors but “age out” of the system before obtaining one of the limited number of visas granted each year. The court found that the board’s…

Jun 9, 2014 5:50 PM CDT

How 50 children were saved from Nazi Germany by a Philadelphia lawyer and his wife (podcast)

May 29, 2014 5:00 PM CDT

Former supervisor with US prison bureau is shocked to learn he’s not a citizen

Citizenship was a job requirement when Mario Hernandez worked as a federal prison supervisor. But Hernandez is not a U.S. citizen, an issue that wasn’t discovered in background checks conducted every five years when Hernandez worked for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, the New York Times reports. Hernandez discovered the…

May 14, 2014 11:15 AM CDT

Florida lawmakers pass bill allowing noncitizens who stayed in the US illegally to get law licenses

The Florida legislature on Friday passed legislation that would allow some noncitizens who stayed here illegally to become lawyers. The bill would allow noncitizens in Florida to become lawyers if they were brought to the country as a child, if they lived here at least 10 years, if they have…

May 5, 2014 6:18 PM CDT

Some children brought to US illegally qualify for in-state tuition, Va. AG announces

Citing a duty to comply with federal rules and the U.S. Constitution, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring has announced that some students living in the state without legal permission will qualify for in-state college tuition without a change in the law. Herring acted after the state legislature failed to approve…

Apr 30, 2014 1:31 PM CDT

Blog offers immigration help to Nigella Lawson | Celeb podcaster fights patent troll

It was reported by The Daily Mail and other news outlets this week that celebrity chef Nigella Lawson was turned away from boarding a Los Angeles-bound flight from London. A U.S. embassy spokeswoman would not tell CNN why Lawson had been stopped. At Lifted Lamp, the law firm Benach Ragland…

Apr 4, 2014 1:30 PM CDT

Immigrants living in US illegally can’t be lawyers, top Florida court says

Immigrants living in the U.S. illegally cannot practice law in Florida, the state’s top court ruled in a unanimous Thursday opinion. FlascBlog provided an early alert about the 11-page advisory opinion (PDF) by the Florida Supreme Court to the Florida Board of Bar Examiners. Authored by Chief Justice Ricky Polston,…

Mar 6, 2014 8:45 PM CST

Plan to create a national license-plate tracking database is canceled by feds, at least for now

After news broke this week that a contractor was being sought by a Department of Homeland Security agency to create a computerized national database of information gathered by license-plate reading equipment throughout the country, DHS has canceled the plan. It said top officials at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency…

Feb 20, 2014 4:05 PM CST

Where were you yesterday? Uncle Sam may soon know: Feds plan national license-plate tracking system

Update: The Department of Homeland Security ordered that this plan be canceled. The Department of Homeland Security is focusing on immigration law violators as it seeks a contractor to create a national database of license-plate tracking information. But there’s no reason why information about where license plates were photographed couldn’t…

Feb 19, 2014 5:56 PM CST

Seven-minute decisions must be made in this immigration court

The docket is so crowded in an Arlington, Va., immigration court that the judge had only seven minutes per case, on average, to make his decisions one recent morning. A Washington Post reporter sat in the courtroom of Judge Lawrence Burman as he decided 26 matters before lunchtime. His is…

Feb 3, 2014 2:02 PM CST

Undocumented immigrants can practice in Calif. under new law, top state court says

Giving its seal of approval to a new state statute that allows undocumented immigrants to practice law in California if they were brought to the state as children, the state’s top court on Thursday granted permission for the California State Bar to admit Sergio C. Garcia. “In light of the…

Jan 2, 2014 9:15 PM CST

Judge blasts DHS for reuniting smuggled children with parents living in U.S. illegally

A federal judge in Brownsville, Texas, has rebuked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for its handling of children caught being smuggled into the country, saying in a written order that by reuniting them with parents already here illegally the agency aids in “completing the mission of criminal conspiracy,” the…

Dec 20, 2013 6:25 PM CST