{"id":459,"date":"2020-12-02T10:58:20","date_gmt":"2020-12-02T18:58:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordofthelaird.com\/?page_id=459"},"modified":"2021-03-15T13:08:37","modified_gmt":"2021-03-15T20:08:37","slug":"opinion","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wordofthelaird.com\/?page_id=459","title":{"rendered":"Opinion"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nOp-Eds<\/a> * Above the Law immigration column<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>Above the Law immigration column<\/h4>\n

\u201cSCOTUS Bars Immigrants From Even Applying To Stay If Law Is Ambiguous<\/a>\u201d March 2021, Above the Law
\nIn my final ATL column, I explain a Supreme Court decision on the modified categorical approach, and more importantly, I urge everyone to keep paying attention. Immigration is not solved just because a Democrat is president.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Biden Administration Is Putting Kids Back Into Temporary Tent Shelters<\/a>\u201d February 2021, Above the Law
\nThe Biden administration reopened temporary shelters for immigrant minors in late February. This column explains why they felt it was necessary and why that’s a problem before essentially begging them to do better.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat Are These Biden Executive Orders Trying To Achieve On Immigration?<\/a>\u201d February 2021, Above the Law
\nThe Trump administration pretty much vandalized federal immigration policy and agencies; Joe Biden issued a bunch of orders trying to clean it up. This is a brief explainer for four executive orders from early February 2021, plus my opinions. I am particularly pleased that one order singled out the Special Immigrant Visa program for Iraqi and Afghan former employees of the U.S. military; I am particularly unpleased that they’re dragging their feet on canceling all the blatantly illegal anti-asylum policies.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrumpism Reaches Out From The Grave To Gum Up The Immigration Works<\/a>,\u201d January 2021, Above the Law
\nOn their way out the door, the Trump DHS (in the persona of the illegally appointed Ken Cuccinelli) created a contract purportedly giving the state of Texas veto power over immigration policy for the entire nation. That’s not how any of this works.<\/p>\n

\u201cJudge Saves United States Asylum Law, With More Than A Little Snark<\/a>,\u201d January 2021, Above the Law
\nIt’s a new year, but the Trump DOJ was still making tired old arguments in a marquee asylum case, and they landed before a district judge who used several colorful metaphors to express his disapproval.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Biden Administration Is Already Breaking Promises On Immigration<\/a>,\u201d December 2020, Above the Law
\nI got to do a bonus column at the end of 2020, expressing my displeasure that certain Biden advisors don’t plan to end \u201cRemain in Mexico\u201d right away, despite having expressly said they would.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbout That Right-Wing Argument That Kamala Harris Isn\u2019t A Citizen<\/a>,\u201d December 2020, Above the Law
\nAt the end of the year, I looked at the legal support for the idea that the Fourteenth Amendment doesn’t mean what it expressly says. Surprise, there isn’t any!<\/p>\n

\u201cJudge \u2018Disturbed\u2019 That Feds Withheld Contact Information For Separated Parents<\/a>,\u201d December 2020, Above the Law
\nJust before Thanksgiving\u2014a convenient time if you’d like to bury some news\u2014the federal government finally thought to check more places for contact information for the parents whose children it stole 2+ years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Trump Administration Is Still Making Immigration Rules<\/a>,\u201d November 2020, Above the Law
\nIn this column, I take a look at what the lame-duck Trump administration can do in the immigration sphere before it leaves.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome Things To Expect From The Biden Administration On Immigration<\/a>,\u201d November 2020, Above the Law
\nThe dust is clearing, the Trump voter fraud lawsuits are a joke, and Joe Biden is our next president. Here’s what the Biden immigration platform says, along with my guesses about how that’s gonna work out for them.<\/p>\n

\u201cLawyers Still Can\u2019t Find Parents Of 545 Children Taken By The Trump Administration<\/a>,\u201d October 2020, Above the Law
\nMore than two years after family separation was supposed to have ended, 545 kids who were stolen by the Trump administration for political purposes are still unable to reunite with their parents.<\/p>\n

\u201cA Whole Bunch Of Anti-Immigrant DHS Rules Might Be Moot Under Federal Law<\/a>,\u201d October 2020, Above the Law
\nThe Government Accountability Office says the last two acting heads of DHS were unlawfully appointed, and the courts are therefore starting to void administrative rules that they passed. As you might imagine, this benefits immigrants.<\/p>\n

\u201cNurse Accuses ICE Doctor Of Performing Hysterectomies At Suspiciously High Rates<\/a>,\u201d September 2020, Above the Law
\nSomehow, this is my ATL column and not a dystopian science fiction story.<\/p>\n

\u201cMuslim ICE Detainees In Florida Given Choice Between Rotten Food And Pork<\/a>,\u201d September 2020, Above the Law
\nMuslims in federal custody, like all people in federal custody, have a right to practice their religion, including by eating halal foods. Prior to the pandemic, this was not difficult, but for months, inmates at the Krome detention center in Miami have been given spoiled halal meals. Those who understandably refuse those meals can eat whatever is being served to others\u2014which not only may contain pork, but is not labeled so they can tell where the pork is. Otherwise, they can starve.<\/p>\n

\u201cICE Is Lying About Its COVID-19 Death And Testing Rates<\/a>,\u201d August 2020, Above the Law
\nU.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency charged with overseeing the immigration jails, claims on its website that it’s had a mere handful of deaths in custody\u2014but journalists and public interest workers say that’s because they discharge people who are seriously ill. They also seem to be claiming widespread testing and compliance with CDC guidelines, even though several local branches of the ACLU have discovered that they are actively refusing to test detainees (or staff members). Lies, damned lies and statistics.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s About To Become A Lot More Expensive To Immigrate Legally<\/a>,\u201d August 2020, Above the Law
\nLed by the guy who tried to rewrite the poem on the Statue of Liberty to add an income requirement, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is planning to increase fees substantially on October 2, 2020. This will make the immigration benefits USCIS administers\u2014things like green cards, naturalized citizenship, asylum and family visas\u2014so expensive that they may be out of reach for many applicants. USCIS rejected numerous public comments pointing this out, because pricing people out of legal immigration is the point.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter SCOTUS Smackdown On Census Question, Trump Tries To Achieve Same Goal Via Executive Order<\/a>,\u201d July 2020, Above the Law
\nRemember in 2019, when the estranged daughter of a Republican operative gave documents to the media showing that the point of the Census citizenship question was racial and political gerrymandering? Remember how that showed that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross lied under oath? Remember how the Supreme Court ultimately said no to the citizenship question? Trump doesn’t follow rulings and laws he doesn’t like, so he announced in late July that he was going to cleanse the Census data, except oops, that’s unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

\u201cImmigration Judges Sue DOJ for Blocking Their Speech<\/a>,\u201d July 2020, Above the Law
\nUnder the Trump administration, immigration judges have had their ability to control their own dockets taken away in multiple ways, seen precedent wiped out for expressly political purposes, and fought an attempt to dissolve their union. In 2020, the administration continued down this path by making a rule that judges can’t speak publicly in their personal capacities about anything related to immigration. They filed a free speech lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Trump Administration Is Trying to Cancel Asylum. Yes, All of It<\/a>,\u201d June 2020, Above the Law
\nOf course, this headline has been true all along, but the column is specifically about the June 2020 proposal to “change the rules” that apply to federal asylum law. Rather than faithfully implementing the statute, the proposal violates it in multiple ways with the goal of gutting U.S. asylum law. If you’re reading this before July 15, 2020 and you think victims of sex slavery should be eligible for asylum, please consider leaving a comment saying so at regulations.gov.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile You Weren’t Looking, Trump Banned Some Chinese Grad Students<\/a>,\u201d June 2020, Above the Law
\nWhile Americans were in the street fighting each other about whether it’s OK for the police to kill people (spoiler alert: it’s not), the Trump administration quietly made a blanket policy denying visas for graduate or postgraduate studies to Chinese nationals with a connection to the Chinese military. The order took effect three days after it was issued, so nobody had any guidance to universities that actually had to implement it. In this piece, I draw some obvious analogies to the Chinese Exclusion Act.<\/p>\n

\u201cFamily Separation Is Back<\/a>,\u201d May 2020, Above the Law
\nThe Trump administration has failed in its attempts to weaken or end the Flores settlement in order to achieve its goal of incarcerating families indefinitely. Their new method for getting around the settlement is a policy called “binary choice”: asylum-seekers who come with their children are given a choice between separating from the children or waiving those children’s right to be released “without unnecessary delay.”<\/p>\n

\u201cFOIA Documents Show Trump Administration Stacked The Immigration Courts With Political Hires<\/a>,\u201d May 2020, Above the Law
\nThe American Immigration Council and the American Immigration Lawyers Association received documents, via a FOIA lawsuit, confirming everyone’s suspicions: The Justice Department is hiring immigration judges according to political criteria. Specifically, they’re looking for judges with a strong record of saying no to immigrants, and their hires reflect that.<\/p>\n

\u201cMerry Excusemas For Racists!<\/a>,\u201d April 2020, Above the Law
\nIn this Above the Law column, I talk about Trump’s April 2020 order to stop issuing green cards on the grounds that immigrants compete with Americans for jobs. Substantial scholarship shows otherwise.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Trump Administration Is STILL Trying To Keep Immigrant Kids In Lockup<\/a>,\u201d April 2020, Above the Law
\nHaving covered the Flores<\/em> case about unaccompanied minor immigrants’ rights a few times, I was interested to see what those plaintiffs were doing to protect unaccompanied immigrant minors in federal custody. As of early April, the answer is everything they can, but of course the Trump administration is trying to keep them locked up despite that being both a violation of the settlement and not medically advised.<\/p>\n

\u201cImmigration Lawyers and Judges Beg to Suspend Court and Open Detention Centers Before People Die<\/a>,\u201d March 2020, Above the Law
\nDid you know that during the time of coronavirus, the White House was deciding whether to close immigration courts on a case-by-case basis? Immigration judges and the lawyers who appear before them\u2014including the DHS attorneys who act as prosecutors\u2014banded together to call for a full closure of the courts, and immigrant advocates are suing to get the most vulnerable out of detention.<\/p>\n

\u201cBill Would End Trump Administration Practice Of Using Therapy Notes Against Immigrant Kids<\/a>,\u201d March 2020, Above the Law
\nI opened my March opinion column with a post trying to bring broader attention to the horrific betrayal of children’s trust committed by the Trump administration when it used notes from their discussions with therapists against the children in immigration court.<\/p>\n

\u201cApplying For A Green Card Will Now Make It Harder To Get A Green Card<\/a>,\u201d February 2020, Above the Law
\nMy second February column is all about the public charge rule, which was rewritten by DHS to ensure that as few immigrants as possible would qualify for visas or green cards.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew Yorkers Kicked Out Of Trusted Traveler Program Because DHS Is Petty AF<\/a>,\u201d February 2020, Above the Law
\nAnother opinion column (the plan is to do this on the regular) explaining that DHS kicked all New Yorkers out of the Trusted Traveler program as a punishment for their refusal to do ICE’s job for it.<\/p>\n

\u201cCBP Burritos Are Making Immigrants Sick, Because Of Course They Are<\/a>,\u201d January 2020, Above the Law
\nThis is an opinion column denouncing the CBP habit of feeding immigrants half-frozen burritos that make a large minority of them sick.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Op-Eds<\/h4>\n

\u201cJustice Neil Gorsuch suggested New York\u2019s COVID restrictions hold back Orthodox Jewish women. The truth is far more complicated<\/a>,\u201d November 2020, Jewish Telegraphic Agency
\nIn his concurrence in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, Justice Neil Gorsuch mentioned offhand that the ruling, which lifted pandemic-related restrictions on occupancy of religious institutions, could be good for Orthodox women. This op-ed explains why I disagree.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Supreme Court May Criminalize Immigrant Advocacy<\/a>,\u201d November 2019, Slate
\nThis is an opinion piece arguing that the Supreme Court case U.S. v. Sineneng-Smith<\/em>, to be decided during the 2019-2020 session, is a threat to the routine work of immigration attorneys and immigrants’ rights activists.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Corporations Are Christians<\/a>,\u201d November 2013, Slate
\nThis article for Slate’s Jurisprudence section is about the contraception mandate for the Affordable Care Act, which has generated a huge amount of lawsuits and split decisions from the federal Courts of Appeal. Some of those courts have found that corporations are entitled to the free exercise of religion because they are \u201cpeople\u201d within the meaning of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. My piece argues that this would be bad for the religious freedom of their employees, because it would give secular-purpose, for-profit corporations the right to cite freedom of religion when they violate civil rights laws.<\/p>\n

\u201cCould a Kansas Grand Jury Really Indict a Sculpture?<\/a>,\u201d October 2013, Slate
\nThis is a piece for Slate’s Jurisprudence section, in which I argue that citizen-empaneled grand juries are a well-intentioned idea that doesn’t work in contemporary society, tagged to an American Family Association effort to indict a Kansas statute it believes is obscene.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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