immigrants Archives - Home Safety Tech Pros

Judge stops Trump from ending protections for Cubans, others

homesafetytechpros — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 20:36:37 +0000

FILE – Former President Donald Trump speaks at the New Hampshire Federation of Republican Women Lilac Luncheon, June 27, 2023, in Concord, N.H. Trump is already laying a sweeping set of policy goals should he win a second term as president. Priorities on the Republican’s agenda include a mass deportation operation, a new Muslim ban and tariffs on all imported goods. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)

A federal judge in Massachusetts has blocked the “unlawful termination of humanitarian parole processes” by the Trump administration for more than a half-million Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who have been allowed to enter the United States and work under an umbrella of deportation protections.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani said in her order Monday that she was siding with immigrants from the four countries — who filed a lawsuit in late February and were seeking a temporary restraining order (TRO) with the groups Justice Action Center and Human Rights First — on account of President Donald Trump’s attempt to revoke “previously granted parole and work authorizations” for individuals currently living in the United States without a “case-by-case review,” which she said was an “unlawful action.”

“Plaintiffs were paroled into the United States by complying with the immigration processes made available to them,” wrote Talwani, a Barack Obama appointee, in a 41-page order filed in Boston.

“As lawful parolees, they did not have to fear arrest for being in the United States, were permitted to legally work if they received work authorization, and could apply for adjustment of status or other benefits while paroled into this country,” Talwani explained. “The immediate impact of the shortening of their grant of parole is to cause their lawful status in the United States to lapse early — in less than two weeks,” the judge said.

An estimated 110,240 Cubans, 211,040 Haitians, 117,330 Venezuelans and 93,070 Nicaraguans have come to the U.S. through the “CHVN” parole program for people from these countries, according to the Miami Herald. The newspaper reports that many of them have been living and working in South Florida after receiving sponsorship from relatives to apply for asylum and other protections.

One of the plaintiffs and immigrants suing President Donald Trump and the Trump administration, identified in pleadings as Lucia Doe, “works cleaning apartments, condominiums, houses, schools, and businesses,” per court filings.

The woman’s alleged plan when seeking parole was to use her two-year grant of parole to work as a way to “support her parents and to save money for the future,” as well as to pay back her sister for the money her sister spent helping Lucia Doe obtain a work permit and secure transportation to the United States, her lawyers say.

“She fears returning to Venezuela, where she says it is especially difficult to find employment over the age of 40,” Talwani said in her Monday order, citing the plaintiff’s prior declarations and allegations, as well as others who are suing. “She has been saving money in case she needs to purchase a last-minute ticket to Venezuela, as to avoid unlawful status in the United States,” Talwani said.

The woman’s attorneys wrote in their emergency TRO motion, which was filed on March 27 — in response to the Department of Homeland Security’s plans to revoke the humanitarian CHVN program on April 24 — that the Trump administration’s actions were “unprecedented” and would result in “hundreds of thousands of individuals losing lawful status and work authorization.”

Talwani said in her order that if their parole status was allowed to lapse later this month, the plaintiffs “will be faced with two unfavorable options: continue following the law and leave the country on their own, or await removal proceedings.”

If they choose to leave the country on their own, Talwani noted how they would allegedly “face dangers in their native countries, as set forth in their affidavits” — and for some, leaving would cause family separation and mean that the immigrants “will have forfeited any opportunity to obtain a remedy based on their APA claims, as leaving may moot those claims.”

“If, in the alternative, Plaintiffs remain in the United States and await removal proceedings, they may be subject to arrest and detention, they will no longer be authorized to work legally in this country and their opportunities to seek any adjustment of status will evaporate,” Talwani added.

The Trump administration has argued that the decision whether to terminate parole by Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, is ultimately “within the Secretary’s discretion” and that the defendants “will have the opportunity to renew their requests for immigration benefits” if placed in removal proceedings, according to Talwani’s order. But at a hearing last week, the Justice Department admitted that the plaintiffs would be unable to renew most of their immigration benefits if selected for removal, regardless of the circumstance.

“Even if Plaintiffs can renew requests for certain benefits, some requests may very well be denied simply because Plaintiffs would no longer be in lawful status,” Talwani said Monday. “Despite claiming Plaintiffs could renew requests in removal proceedings, Defendants: are defending the FRN, which states that the revoking of parole is designed to ensure expedited removal (thereby avoiding removal proceedings); and insist that Plaintiffs can be subjected to expedited removal proceedings while acknowledging, at a hearing before this court, that Plaintiffs could not renew most immigration benefits requests if placed in expedited proceedings.”

Talwani’s ruling comes as immigration and deportations continue to be a heated issue in the courts right now following President Trump’s decision to boot people under an 18th-century wartime authority.

Over the weekend, the Trump administration continued to defy an order from the U.S. Supreme Court instructing the government to provide details about the steps it had taken to “facilitate” the return of a Maryland resident mistakenly deported under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 (AEA) to a notorious work prison in El Salvador. The Department of Justice asserted Sunday in court filings that under the high court’s order — which largely affirmed a lower-court ruling — it was not required to work with Salvadoran officials to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia, so long as the government removed “any domestic obstacles” that would otherwise impede it from happening.

In a seven-page filing, the administration argued that federal courts do not have the authority to direct the administration to engage with the government of El Salvador at all, setting the stage for what is likely to be another eventual showdown at the Supreme Court. The Justice Department further asserted that interpreting the term “facilitate” to require any additional action on behalf of the administration would not be “tenable — or constitutional.”

Since last week, the government has refused to provide any additional information on Abrego Garcia’s status other than to notify a U.S. District Court in Maryland that he was alive and in El Salvador, despite the court requiring daily status reports regarding his return to the country.

In New York, the father of a 19-year-old man came forward this week and said he was allegedly detained by ICE agents in February and mistakenly deported to El Salvador under the AEA.

His dad, Wilmer Gutiérrez, told the nonprofit news outlet Documented that the agents who took his son, Merwil Gutiérrez, were allegedly informed by another person being detained that Merwil was the wrong person.

“The officers grabbed him and two other boys right at the entrance to our building,” Wilmer alleged. “One said, ‘No, he’s not the one,’ like they were looking for someone else. But the other said, ‘Take him anyway.’”

Trump on Saturday evening stated that the fate of Abrego Garcia and all of the “barbarians” deported without due process through the AEA was up to El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele.

On Monday, Trump met with Bukele at the White House and took questions about Abrego Garcia’s situation, per NPR.

Both he and Bukele tried claiming that their country’s hands were tied when pressed by reporters about why Abrego Garcia couldn’t be brought back to the United States.

“The question is preposterous,” Bukele said. “How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don’t have the power to return him to the United States.”

Asked why the U.S. wasn’t complying with the Supreme Court’s order, Trump told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins: “How long do we have to answer this question? Why don’t you just say, ‘Isn’t it wonderful that we’re keeping criminals out of our country?’ Why can’t you just say that?”

Love true crime? Sign up for our newsletter, The Law&Crime Docket, to get the latest real-life crime stories delivered right to your inbox.

Jerry Lambe contributed to this report.

Source link

The post Judge stops Trump from ending protections for Cubans, others appeared first on Home Safety Tech Pros.

States ask SCOTUS to nix Trump on birthright citizenship

homesafetytechpros — Sun, 06 Apr 2025 08:27:40 +0000

President Donald Trump speaks at a reception celebrating Greek Independence Day in the East Room of the White House, Monday, March 24, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin).

Several states who have, so far, kept the Trump administration from moving forward with its expressed plans to ban birthright citizenship are pleading with the U.S. Supreme Court to keep it that way.

In a 50-page response to the Trump administration’s application for a partial stay, the lead plaintiffs in one of three similar efforts to stop the ban say the state of the law is firm and set and that there is “not an emergency warranting the extraordinary remedy of a stay.”

“Many aspects of constitutional interpretation are hotly debated, but not the merits question in this case,” the Friday motion reads. “For over a century, it has been the settled view of this Court, Congress, the Executive Branch, and legal scholars that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause guarantees citizenship to babies born in the United States regardless of their parents’ citizenship, ‘allegiance,’ ‘domicile,’ immigration status, or nationality.”

In Maryland, Washington and Massachusetts, federal judges have issued orders prohibiting federal agencies from implementing or enforcing Trump’s Executive Order 14160.

While the government asked the high court to undo each of the three separate pauses in the same application, each of those three cases is docketed individually — and consecutively. The likely upshot, however, is each case being consolidated into the same general controversy — if and when the justices decide to hear oral arguments.

The Trump administration’s appeal largely eschews the merits of the underlying birthright citizenship policy in favor of fighting over the propriety of the district court injunctions stopping the ban.

The plaintiffs in the case stylized as Trump v. Washington suggest a certain level of laziness because the government’s effort bypasses the merits discussed by the district courts in favor of a “myopic request” that “instead focuses entirely on the scope of relief.”

“Unsurprisingly, every court to evaluate the Citizen Stripping Order has found it unconstitutional,” the motion continues. “And the stay application does not even bother asking this Court to review those correct conclusions.”

Even on the Trump administration’s terms, however, the plaintiffs say there is simply no reason for dissolving the lower court orders.

“Most obviously, the federal government can show no harm from simply being ordered to continue following the law as it has long been understood,” the motion goes on. “Preserving the status quo while this litigation rapidly proceeds cannot plausibly be an irreparable injury, and this Court can deny the stay on this ground alone.”

More Law&Crime coverage: ‘Threaten to fundamentally fracture the country’: Groups tell SCOTUS Trump’s arguments in birthright case could recreate divisions like those ‘between slave and free states’

The plaintiffs rubbish the government for arguing they have and will continue to suffer “irreparable harm” from extant and prospective “universal injunctions.” Especially because this theory is only advanced in general terms, the response motion notes.

“The federal government alleges various harms from overbroad injunctions generally, but offers no evidence whatsoever of irreparable harm from the specific injunctions at issue here,” the motion reads. “And with good reason. There is no plausible argument that the government will be irreparably harmed by continuing to respect a foundational constitutional right that has been established—and accepted by all branches of the federal government—for more than a century.”

In fact, the states predict the procedural gambit will be summarily rejected. A chapter heading in the motion is titled, “There Is No Reasonable Probability that this Court Will Grant Certiorari or Fair Prospect of Reversal.”

The Washington plaintiffs also spend considerable time addressing the merits of the case – including the Supreme Court case long-considered authoritative on birthright citizenship.

“The Fourteenth Amendment’s plain text guarantees citizenship to all born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” the motion reads. “The Citizenship Clause is broad by design, bestowing citizenship on children born in the United States regardless of race, ethnicity, alienage, or the immigration status of one’s parents. Binding precedent confirms that understanding,”

The motion continues like this, at length:

The federal government seeks to distort the term “subject to the jurisdiction” beyond all recognizable bounds. But as a matter of text, history, and precedent, the group of U.S.-born individuals not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States is both extraordinarily small and well defined. As this Court held in Wong Kim Ark, that phrase reflects a narrow and historically grounded exception for groups recognized as exempt from the United States’ jurisdiction as a matter of fact, comity, or practice. In particular, it excludes U.S.-born children who are born to diplomats covered by diplomatic immunity and members of foreign armies at war against the United States. It has never been understood to exclude U.S.-born children based on their parents’ citizenship, immigration status, “allegiance,” or “domicile,” and indeed, the federal government does not point to a single binding case that accepts its strained theory.

The Washington response motion also briefly addresses the Trump administration’s arguments about nationwide injunctions to heart. The motion acknowledges that such relief has increased apace in recent years but stressing that nationwide injunctions do, in fact, have a time and a place.

“The Citizenship Stripping Order shows precisely why nationwide relief is critical in an extraordinary case like this one,” the motion goes on. “Restricting nationwide relief would be particularly inappropriate here, as it would defeat a central guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment to create a uniform, national rule for citizenship. If any injunction warranted a nationwide scope, it is this one.”

Washington strongly admonishes the government for trying to litigate the injunction issue using the birthright citizenship cases.

The motion concludes:

The Citizenship Stripping Order’s attempt to unilaterally amend the Fourteenth Amendment warrants an injunction that preserves the guarantee of birthright citizenship as it has long existed: A uniform right that applies nationwide and is beyond the President’s power to destroy. The federal government has failed to establish any of the criteria necessary to get the extraordinary relief they seek and have not come close to meeting their “especially heavy burden.” These cases are proceeding on expedited schedules in three different courts of appeals—all of which have denied the federal government this very same intervention. The federal government has not shown irreparable harm or a reasonable probability the Court would grant certiorari and reverse the district court’s order. This case is not a vehicle to resolve the question of nationwide injunctions. And the public interest weighs heavily against granting a stay. The Application should be denied.

Love true crime? Sign up for our newsletter, The Law&Crime Docket, to get the latest real-life crime stories delivered right to your inbox.

Source link

The post States ask SCOTUS to nix Trump on birthright citizenship appeared first on Home Safety Tech Pros.

SCOTUS asked to reject Trump in birthright citizenship case

homesafetytechpros — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 23:57:11 +0000

President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks during an Iftar dinner in the State Dining Room at the White House in Washington, Thursday, March 27, 2025 (Pool via AP).

A coalition of immigrant rights and liberal legal advocacy groups is imploring the U.S. Supreme Court to reject President Donald Trump‘s appeal of several lower court orders that bar the government from enacting any of its expressed plans to ban birthright citizenship.

In a 49-page opposition to the Trump administration’s application for a partial stay, the lead plaintiffs in one of three so-far-successful efforts to stop the ban say there is simply “no emergency warranting” the issuance of an emergency stay of the district court’s injunction.

“The government invokes this Court’s emergency docket without identifying any emergency,” the Friday motion reads. “The government can show no harm whatsoever from the district court’s injunction, which merely requires the Executive Branch to continue complying with the settled interpretation of the Citizenship Clause during the pendency of this litigation.”

In Maryland, Washington and Massachusetts, federal judges have issued orders prohibiting federal agencies from implementing or enforcing Trump’s Executive Order 14160.

While the government sued for relief to undo each of the three separate pauses in the same application, each of those three cases is now docketed differently — and consecutively. The likely upshot, however, is that each case is consolidated into the same general controversy — if and when the justices decide to hear oral arguments.

The government says the “universal injunctions” in each of those three cases generally harm the government in various ways unrelated to immigration and have specifically harmed states that want the ban on birthright citizenship enforced.

The plaintiffs in the case stylized as Trump v. CASA say the government’s strategy should not be countenanced because of the “most fundamental right” at stake in the litigation.

“There is nothing ‘modest’ about the government’s request for emergency relief in this case,” the filing reads. “On his first day in office, the President issued an Executive Order that purports to upend birthright citizenship by executive fiat. But birthright citizenship is at the core of our Nation’s foundational precept that all people born on our soil are created equal, regardless of their parentage.”

The opposition motion criticizes the Trump administration for eliding the merits, while premising its request for a stay on the idea that “irreparable harm” will ensue unless the injunctions are dissolved.

“If the Court were to grant the government’s motion, chaos would ensue,” the motion continues. “The President cannot rewrite the Constitution or the Immigration and Nationality Act by executive fiat, and the government has certainly shown no extraordinary need to do so immediately.”

Meanwhile, the plaintiffs say, each of the three district courts that issued the injunctions has grappled with the merits.

“As every court to have considered the issue has concluded, the Executive Order facially violates the Constitution,” the motion continues. “The government does not challenge any of that before this Court. It does not argue that it is likely to succeed in defending the constitutionality of the Executive Order. And yet, the government asks this Court to intervene to lift the injunction so that the government may begin applying the facially unconstitutional Order against nearly everyone. That is not a modest request.”

More Law&Crime coverage: ‘This unlawful impost must fall’: Conservative group sues Trump claiming tariffs are ‘unconstitutional exercise of legislative power’

CASA goes on to argue for the necessity of a universal injunction.

“The universal injunction in this case preserves the uniformity of United States citizenship, an area in which nationwide consistency is vitally important,” the motion continues. “Whether a child is a citizen of our Nation should not depend on the state where she is born or the associations her parents have joined.”

The Trump administration, in seeking relief, reiterated prior arguments that, if the injunctions do stand, they should only apply “to the parties actually before the courts.” Here, that would effectively limit the injunction to a handful of states and members of groups like CASA.

The plaintiffs argue that limiting the injunction as the government proposes would create an untenable state of affairs in the country.

From the motion, at length:

Matters on the ground would be even worse if an injunction were to apply in some states but not others. Such an arrangement would threaten to fundamentally fracture the country. If a child’s citizenship depended on the state in which they were born, it would create a situation much like the one that existed between slave and free states, which produced Dred Scott and ultimately the Civil War. An infant would be a United States citizen and full member of society if born in New Jersey, but a deportable noncitizen if born in Tennessee. The Reconstruction Amendments, including the Citizenship Clause, were intended to prevent that sort of division between the states from ever occurring again. The Court should not now exercise its equitable power to re-create a situation in which a person’s fundamental right to citizenship depends on the state in which they are born.

Love true crime? Sign up for our newsletter, The Law&Crime Docket, to get the latest real-life crime stories delivered right to your inbox.

In contrast to the government’s motion, which avoided arguing the merits, the plaintiffs, led by CASA, used the opportunity to push a broadside argument that birthright citizenship is a constitutional “bedrock” of the United States.

“Congress passed and the States ratified the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to enshrine birthright citizenship in the Constitution, where no President could unilaterally take it away,” the motion goes on. “The Executive Order purports to reinterpret the Fourteenth Amendment to limit citizenship by birth on our soil to only those children who have at least one parent who is a citizen or lawful permanent resident. But that is not birthright citizenship at all. The Order’s rule of citizenship by blood is inconsistent with not only the plain text of the Citizenship Clause, but also common law history, this Court’s precedent, a federal statute codifying the long-settled interpretation of the Citizenship Clause, and well over a century of consistent Executive Branch practice.”

Source link

The post SCOTUS asked to reject Trump in birthright citizenship case appeared first on Home Safety Tech Pros.

Rodrigo Camarena is building tools to help immigrants become citizens and combat wage theft

homesafetytechpros — Sun, 16 Feb 2025 07:27:29 +0000

(Photo by Len Irish Photography/ABA Journal)

Rodrigo Camarena has been advocating for immigrants since he was a child. By the time he was 8, this son of an electrical engineer father and an attorney mother was the family’s translator, navigating the bureaucracy when they immigrated to northern Virginia from Mexico City via a work visa.

“I watched my parents navigate our country’s very broken immigration system,” says Camarena, 40. “Language and accessibility is a real issue, and the laws are difficult to understand and navigate—even by folks that have authorization to be here and have support of advocates.”

With those ideas about immigration swarming through Camarena’s head, he dove into his studies, planning on tackling a legal career immersed in immigration law. He majored in economics and philosophy at New York University, intent on going to law school.

But that was a major stumbling block: Camarena attempted the LSAT, but his score wasn’t as high as he had hoped.

“I knew I needed an advanced degree, but there were a lot of barriers to going to law school,” he says.

So he pivoted, attending the London School of Economics instead. After graduating in 2011, he spent time in Mexico and Brazil. As soon as he returned to the United States in 2012, Camarena took a series of jobs in immigration. He was the executive director of Mixteca, an immigrant-rights organization in Brooklyn, New York; he then became a strategy director at Purpose Campaigns, where he led digital advocacy campaigns for nonprofits; and he is now the interim co-director of Pro Bono Net. There, he is helping the organization scale its tool, Citizenshipworks, which Camarena describes as “TurboTax for becoming a U.S. citizen.” He is also the director of Pro Bono Net’s Justicia Lab (formerly Immigration Advocates Network), a nonprofit that’s helped more than 500,000 immigrants find support.

Citizenshipworks helps permanent residents navigate the naturalization process in English, Spanish or Chinese. It also provides a list of all the nonprofit legal aid advocates in each community who may be able to help with a given case.

“We’re in a moment where being an immigrant is incredibly political when it shouldn’t be,” Camarena says.

In 2019, Camarena was reading a Spanish-language newspaper when he came across an article about wage theft, which costs American workers about $50 billion annually, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute. He and Justicia Lab partnered with other policy work centers to create an app called ¡Reclamo! that has helped hundreds of New York immigrants screen, report and reclaim stolen wages. The app has a wage theft calculator to determine how much has been stolen, and it also streamlines the complaint-filing process. So far, Camarena says, the app has helped recover more than $1.5 million in stolen wages since launching the tool in beta in October 2022.

“Unscrupulous employers often prey on immigrant workers who they believe will be fearful of reporting violations,” explains Elizabeth Jordan, the co-legal director of Make the Road New York, a nonprofit helping immigrants, who worked with Camarena to develop the ¡Reclamo! app.

When he’s not working, Camarena spends time on his Brooklyn patio, tending to fruits and vegetables he grows. His favorite thing to do is take his wife of seven years and their 4-year-old son to not-so-nearby farms, where they can breathe fresh air, pick their own fruits and vegetables, and play with farm animals.

Legal Rebels Class of 2025

Rodrigo Camarena

Roy Ferguson

Joan Howarth and Deborah Jones Merritt

Oregon State Board of Bar Examiners

Swapna Reddy

Jacqueline Schafer

Noella Sudbury

In This Podcast:

Source link

The post Rodrigo Camarena is building tools to help immigrants become citizens and combat wage theft appeared first on Home Safety Tech Pros.

Rodrigo Camarena is building tools to help immigrants become citizens and combat wage theft

homesafetytechpros — Sat, 01 Feb 2025 07:20:33 +0000

(Photo by Len Irish Photography/ABA Journal)

Rodrigo Camarena has been advocating for immigrants since he was a child.

By the time he was 8, this son of an electrical engineer father and an attorney mother was the family’s translator, navigating the bureaucracy when they immigrated to northern Virginia from Mexico City via a work visa.

But that was a major stumbling block: Camarena attempted the LSAT, but his score wasn’t as high as he had hoped.

“I knew I needed an advanced degree, but there were a lot of barriers to going to law school,” he says.

“We’re in a moment where being an immigrant is incredibly political when it shouldn’t be,” Camarena says.

Legal Rebels Class of 2025

Rodrigo Camarena

Roy Ferguson

Joan Howarth and Deborah Jones Merritt

Oregon State Board of Bar Examiners

Swapna Reddy

Jacqueline Schafer

Noella Sudbury

In This Podcast:

Source link

The post Rodrigo Camarena is building tools to help immigrants become citizens and combat wage theft appeared first on Home Safety Tech Pros.