The anti-birthright citizenship element in the legal academy has all the hallmarks of a high school debate club and none of actual scholarship.

Did I miss an EOIR operational status memo where the courts would be closed today?

The Board of Immigration Appeals kicked off Christmas Eve eve by ensuring someone stayed detained and became ineligible for most forms of protection from deportation: Matter of GHANBARI, 29 I&N Dec. 376 (BIA 2025). links-1.govdelivery.com/CL0/https:%2...

Disgusting language in an official news release by USCIS today: “From fiscal years 2020 to 2024, the overall number of Form I-360 VAWA self-petitions increased by approximately 360% and male self-petitioners increased by 259%. These trends are alarming and unprecedented.”

Fed. judge (Boasberg) holds that the U.S. had constructive custody of the AEA detainees that were deported to CECOT and that they were denied due process. Orders U.S. to facilitate their opportunity to contest their designation as AEA detainees. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

The Olivia Nuzzi story and the Bari Weiss at CBS story are the same story, which is that the upper echelons of legacy media are absolutely rife with people who worship power and don't feel burdened by any sense of responsibility to their profession or the public.

Just fancy that! Time Person of the Year. From the new Private Eye, out now.

This retired CBP officer is on reddit doing an AMA, claiming that they get in trouble if they toss away even trash that people bring in when detained I asked him about when they tossed out all the neurological meds for a family I helped The guy is not answering lol

It's worth remembering that people can seek asylum for official governmental actions persecuting them for their political beliefs, and that this goes beyond electoral participation into beliefs like race and gender equality, or that queer people in terms of gender and/or sexuality have rights

Things are grim, but I want to underline how powerful Americans' love for their neighbors is I've lived in other countries during this worldwide far-right resurgence. In no other place have everyday ordinary people so loudly fought the disappearance of their immigrant fellows. Every action matters

Henry Cuellar, the guy Trump recently pardoned for accepting bribes from other countries to influence U.S. policy. That guy.

Everyone is understandably sharing the Miller quote, but I found this response from photographer Christopher Anderson to be notable, too.

eImmigration's "what shall we integrate next" email reminds me of borg assimilation

I love (*hate*) how certain immigration courts' way of dealing with increasing work and call volume is to just not answer the phone at all. Pair this with increased arbitrary actions from DHS & from DOJ leadership & the people harmed are the humans being fed into the immigration court meat grinder

The BIA's been issuing a raft of absurd decisions that should not be precedential - attempts to legislate at factfinding to erode eligibility for relief Malphrus seems to be on a lot of them. My impression's that the anti-immigrant BIA Appellate IJs (formerly Board Members) got told to just go wild

Very grateful for a good result this morning The existing immigration and nationality act is very draconian, but even without reform a good administration could really move things around to focus on normalizing people’s status

There’s a lot of talk about the Hitler youth types who are turning in their professors and not enough discussion about the ones who are feeling intense despair because they're going to school with the Hitler youth types and immigrants are being kidnapped and trans people are facing genocide &etc

The Board of Immigration Appeals is just issuing awful new decisions like the worst advent calendar ever

The reason people don't like conservative students is that whenever they're inconvenienced or annoyed they throw a tantrum and call in national media to terrorize their peers.

Scrolling TikTok seeing a bunch of videos in which 1) people are convinced they understand the human immune system 2) they absolutely do not

@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social New decision in this case appears to give classwide relief to people the govt now says are not amenable to bond, under the govt's bananas interpretation of everyone as arriving (for bond)* www.courtlistener.com/docket/70895... *but not for CAA relief!

something of interest is that the UK did away with civil trial juries a long time ago, they were kept in the US. Slippery slopes!

This is called “chain refoulment” and it’s illegal under both U.S. and international law. And the State Department and ICE know very well what Ghana is doing and simply don’t care.

US citizen Maria Greeley, a Latina who was adopted, was walking home from work downtown when masked agents zip tied her. They said she “doesn’t look like a Greeley.” This is how the government treats people under current deportation policies. www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/15/l...

In somewhat good news, today the state department website has changed the answer to this question to defer to ICAO policy. Sources still tell me that there is some appetite for invalidation/reversion of passports issued under the injunction, but this message will be welcome to many trans people.

white supremacist norms suffuse immigration carceralism

So on top of being an first class a-hole, he's a British first class a-hole.

I was told there was a crisis of free speech on campus that must be reversed

Somehow it never occurred to me that having a president who only fucked couches would be an improvement

Reality is a fuckin cartoon lol

While this EO is much more subtle in the language they use, their intentions have been laid out in court cases across the country. Earlier this year, a district court judge in Texas blocked the Biden HHS protections in court, allowing prospective foster/adoption by vocally unaffirming parents.

I am often stunned by just how fucking stupid republicans are. this guy is the head of a right wing think tank! he should at least be able to grasp the concept of causal inference, and yet!

Form DS 160 asks people if they’ve misused public office for financial gain or their family members have, as a basis for inadmissibility, yet Trump and his ilk do that flagrantly

BREAKING: The full DC Circuit will NOT rehear the appeal over the contempt proceedings before Judge Boasberg re: the March 15 flights. Three Democratic appointees write to say en banc review isn’t called for here b/c of the lack of “practical or presidential effect” of the panel opinion.

OMG THIS IS SO EXCITING

Again it’s not good that the most prominent leaders of the party keep insisting it’s a trap to talk about “identity” when the Trump administration is pushing white supremacy.

“Experts predict hundreds if not thousands of flights could be canceled. “I’m not aware in my 35-year history in the aviation market where we’ve had a situation where we’re taking these kinds of measures,”” www.latimes.com/world-nation...

Separately, every week we get bad news in immigration law, it's so horrible what this administration is doing just to cause suffering to people due to an accident of birth. It makes nothing better. It's just cruelty for its own sake

OMG it's amazing that Mamdani won!

No. To clear things up, in 1986, as part of IRCA, the Reagan-era amnesty bill, Congress made it unlawful to *hire* someone who not legally authorized to work, creating the I-9 process we all know today. Congress has never imposed any direct consequences on *working* without authorization.

No. But working without authorization can potentially be an issue when applying for a green card later.

For further context to understand the inevitable impact of this policy change, you should know that USCIS only permits people to apply for work permit renewals 6 months before they expire — yet the average processing time for some types of work permits is higher than 6 months!

No, a valid work permit expiring does not make someone deportable if they were not already deportable. It just makes ongoing employment unlawful.

USCIS is funded by fees paid by applicants (as opposed to taxpayer money appropriated by Congress), so it's largely unaffected by the shutdown.

Yeah, this is the kind of bureaucratic bullcrap that drives people mad; you can be someone who is following every rule that you're supposed to, send in the renewal on the first day that you can, and if it falls between the cracks at USCIS now they won't even auto-extend it because they screwed up.

DHS's position is now that if they, the government, take too long to process your work permit renewal application and you have to stop working and lose your job, well, deal with it, that's just the price of security. Federal Register notice here: public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-19702.pdf

Before 2016, if the government was taking too long to process a renewal, you could get an interim work permit. In 2016, this was replaced an auto-extension of 180 days when filing the renewal. In 2022 that raised to 540 days because of COVID backlogs. Now it's going to be 0, and no interim permits.

Mike Johnson: "If the president was a king, then the government would be open." (Trump yesterday said he no longer has a need for Congress.)

This is evil & is being done just to hurt immigrants Work permit renewals based on asylum can take over a year & people end up without work authorization *despite doing everything right* because the government sits on their case for a year or more USCIS asks people to not file >6mo before expiry