Attorneys, HIAS can help work through immigration issues | Legal Affairs
Between July 1, 2021, and July 1, 2022, 1 million people immigrated to America, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s the largest increase over one year since 2010, and it brings the total number of immigrants to the United States to 47.9 million, the largest number ever in this country.
Immigration policies have changed since the beginning of the Biden administration. There are 16,000 immigration lawyers and immigration law professors reported by the American Immigration Lawyers Association in the U.S. interpreting those changes and navigating the legal challenges to them.
Every one of those attorneys and teachers faces a significant and telling number.
Lugasy
“The current immigration court backlog has surpassed 2 million cases nationwide,” said Maya Lugasy, associate attorney at Brown Immigration Law in Cleveland. “Last year, the Department of Homeland Security issued a memorandum providing guidance to ICE attorneys (prosecutors for cases in immigration court) regarding how and when to exercise prosecutorial discretion.”
She said the memo encouraged U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorneys to exercise their existing discretionary authority to help alleviate the backlog and focus its limited resources on cases that are deemed enforcement priorities. While the memo was in effect from April to June 2022, Lugasy said many of their clients benefited as cases were dismissed and attorneys worked together to narrow issues in cases, reducing hearing times and caseloads.
Lugasy added a significant however, due to legal challenges in June, 2022, from the states of Texas and Louisiana. A federal judge in Texas issued a decision which canceled the memo, and ICE attorneys could no longer rely on its guidance. The case is now pending with the U.S. Supreme Court, so the memo will remain canceled unless the Supreme Court issues a decision siding with the Biden administration.
HIAS, which was founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, in Silver Springs, Md., is a global Jewish nonprofit that protects refugees, according to its website.
HIAS offers legal help. The ongoing debate over migrants attempting to enter the U.S. from the Mexico border is a front-burner issue and HAIS, too, awaits a legal remedy from the Supreme Court.
“As a Jewish organization that has worked for more than a century to welcome and protect people seeking safety in the United States, HIAS advocates for the right to seek asylum in the United States, and we call for humane, efficient and legal procedures at the U.S.-Mexico border,” said Brian Zumhagen, press officer at HIAS.
“HIAS has consistently advocated against the use of Title 42 to expel asylum seekers at our southern border. The World War II-era emergency public health law has allowed Customs and Border Protection to block people from seeking protection in the U.S. and has led to more than 2 million expulsions under both this and the previous administration since Title 42 was invoked in March of 2020.
“We have long made the case that Title 42 has no public health rationale and has been used improperly to put asylum seekers at risk. What’s needed instead is an asylum system with enough resources and coordination on both sides of the border to ensure due process and equitable treatment.
“We have also welcomed court rulings affirming President Biden’s authority to put an end to the humanitarian disaster caused by the Migrant Protection Protocols, also known as the ‘Remain in Mexico’ program. HIAS’ extensive work on both sides of the border has shown us that forcing people to wait for their hearings in Mexico needlessly exposed thousands of people to danger.”
Lugasy, who has been with Brown since graduating law school in 2018, has received a significant immigration workload in recent years.
“Although I’m based in Cleveland, Ohio, I still get a good number of clients who initially arrived at the southern border seeking asylum and end up in Ohio because of family connections here,” Lugasy said. “But this has been consistent in my cases over the years. I want to also emphasize that the situation at the southern border is complex, and reporting about it is not always clear. There is a migration crisis, but it’s happening around the world as a result of a combination of factors including civil strife, climate change and political instability, which have forced many people to leave their homes in search of safety.
“There are also (COVID-19) pandemic-era policies that have complicated enforcement at the border and added to the humanitarian crisis facing those trying to seek asylum, a form of legal immigration that you can only apply for from within the United States.”
So, like all immigration lawyers in the county, Lugasy is monitoring the U.S. Supreme Court.
“The outcomes of the court challenges could impact my work greatly,” Lugasy said.
HIAS’ Zumhagen echoes this sentiment.
“We are looking forward to seeing the details of the new policies DHS officials say they are preparing to implement at the border. Since President (Joe) Biden came into office promising to end Title 42, we have called on the administration to embark swiftly on the comprehensive repair of the asylum system that we need to meet the challenges at the border, and to reclaim the nation’s tradition of leadership when it comes to protecting the right to asylum.”
Steve Mark is a freelance journalist.
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