Immigrant Legal Center advocates for immigrants in our communities by providing technical support, analysis, testimony on state and federal legislative matters affecting immigrants, and engaging in impact litigation to monitor and correct errors in immigration law and enforcement.
The ILC board approves staff recommendations of Nebraska legislation priorities that should be addressed to protect the rights of our immigrant neighbors.
Legislative priorities for ILC are determined in January.
Impact litigation involves monitoring the immigration legal environment to identify local and federal cases that fall within gaps in our current immigration system, and then addressing those errors through the laws that were made to protect our clients.
When we fight for the right of our immigrant neighbors through our impact litigation, we do so not only because it its the right thing to do, but because we are defending a tapestry of rights indispensable to the liberty of all within the U.S.-immigrants and citizens alike.
After the Department of Homeland Security unlawfully deported Remberto, the impact litigation team secured his return to the U.S. From now on, when judges within the Eighth Circuit weigh asylum cases, they will be required to consider family ties as a legitimate reason for seeking asylum.
In the case of S.V. vs U.S., a U.S. citizen minor of Guatemalan descent was arrested, detained for over 40 days, and threatened with deportation for nearly a year before immigration authorities acknowledged her to be a U.S. citizen. ILC agreed to represent S.V. in a lawsuit against the U.S. to vindicate those rights and to hold immigration authorities accountable for their failure to follow the law.
Anna Deal, Immigrant Legal Center Director of Legal Strategy, and Jacob Huju, Rural Capacity Building Supervising Attorney, joined a team effort including Shane Ellison (Duke Immigrant Rights Clinic) and Sabrineh Ardalan, Zachar Albun, and Ryen Bani-Hashemi (Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program), to file an amicus brief on behalf of AILA, addressing the BIA and IJ’s misinterpretation and misapplication of the standards for reopening an asylum case when there have been changed circumstances.
The case is still pending.
National JFON signed on to a CCRS-authored amicus brief along with other nonprofit organizations and law school clinics.
The brief was in support of a rehearing en banc seeking to ensure the rights of pro se respondents in immigration court. Specifically to this case, the 9th Circuit panel rejected its previous standard in Jacinto v. INS, 208 F.3d 725 (9th Cir. 2000) (which several circuits now follow) that IJ’s must “fully develop the record” when an unrepresented respondent seeks protection under the immigration laws.
This standard was developed because immigration law has been called “labyrinthine” and second only to tax law in its complexity, leaving the burden on respondents to show their eligibility for relief.
The case is still pending.
