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Immigration Law

‘It’s Time for You to Leave’: More immigration lawyers get notices to self-deport

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 25, 2025, 9:32 am CDT

Immigration lawyers outside Massachusetts are also receiving notices to self-deport, despite their U.S. citizenship.

Among the lawyers receiving notices are Austin, Texas, lawyer Hubert Montoya and Salt Lake City lawyer Carlos Trujillo, according to Fortune, KTVX and the Utah News Dispatch.

“It’s time for you to leave,” the notices said.

Immigration lawyers in Ohio, Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania have also reported receiving the notices, according to the Utah News Dispatch.

Montoya told Fortune that he laughed when he received the notice.

“I just thought it was absurd,” he said.

Trujillo told the Utah News Dispatch that he has advocated for the immigrant community, but he refuses to think that it is the reason for the notice.

“It probably was a mistake, and I love this country so much that I think my first inclination is just to believe that and leave it at that,” he said.

The notices are part of a what appears to be a mass email campaign telling immigrants that the immigration parole allowing them to temporarily live in the United States has been revoked, according to the Utah News Dispatch.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is canceling paroles that allowed people who entered the United States using an online appointment app to remain in the country for two years, according to previous reporting by the Associated Press. The Trump administration has suspended use of the app.

The Department of Homeland Security sent notices to email addresses provided by the immigrants, including, in some cases, email addresses of U.S. citizens they listed as contacts, according to a statement by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Some of the notices may have been sent to lawyers and other unintended recipients, the agency told Fortune.

The notices being sent are not limited to people who used the appointment app, according to a Customs and Border Protection statement cited by the Utah News Dispatch.

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A Pennsylvania man’s longtime “thievery” has been punished with a substantial stint in prison, according to Keystone State authorities.

Matthew Patrick Gay, 34, was recently convicted on multiple offenses related to a string of diamond thefts that occurred at a Walmart Supercenter near Athens Township — a small community along the New York State border — throughout 2022, according to a press release issued by the Bradford County District Attorney’s Office.

In sum, the defendant stole seven diamond rings — valued at $7,362.50 — from the same store on several separate occasions.

This was not, however, the first time Gay was convicted.

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After his arrest in October 2022, the defendant was found guilty and slated to be sentenced in August 2024, according to the prosecutor’s office. But Gay did not attend his sentencing hearing; instead, he fled the county, and a warrant was eventually issued for his arrest.

“While on the run, Gay committed similar offenses in Berks County,” the press release says — a county located some 130 miles south — leading to a sentence of five to 24 months behind bars, plus two years of probation.

In April 2025, the defendant made his way back to Bradford County, where he then faced charges of retail theft and default in required appearance — the second charge due to skipping his original sentencing date. Both of those charges are considered felonies in the third degree.

A Pennsylvania man is behind bars for allegedly taking a clothes iron and burning 60% of his girlfriend’s body because he thought she was cheating on him.

Burton L. Byrd proceeded to hold the woman captive in their Pittsburgh appointment from Saturday to Tuesday, not allowing her to leave to seek medical attention, a probable cause arrest affidavit obtained by Law&Crime said. When he did release the alleged victim, he told her to make up a story about being assaulted near a Wendy’s and threatened to hurt her family if she spoke the truth, according to the affidavit.

More from Law&Crime: ‘Hanging down his face’: Man rips out stranger’s eyeball after victim asks ‘how are you doing’ while walking past him, police say

Pittsburgh cops responded to the hospital around 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday about a report of a possible domestic violence situation. The woman told police she and Byrd were at their apartment on Saturday when he accused her of infidelity.

“He figured he would punish me,” she told cops.

Byrd allegedly forced the woman to strip naked and tied her hands together with shoelaces. He began beating her with a belt and punching her in the face, cops said. Officers noted the woman had bruising around her eye and broken blood vessels in her right eye, suggesting she had been struck several times in the face.

Two Pennsylvania women were accused of horrifically abusing a 12-year-old girl — and the alleged abusers were her own mother and grandmother.

Stacey Ann Louder, 52, and Amanda Lynn Gregorio, 35, were arrested on Monday following an investigation that began in September 2024. According to arrest reports obtained by local news outlet The Citizen’s Voice, the girl was first taken into custody by Luzerne County Children, Youth and Families after she was hospitalized for seizure-like symptoms. During the visit, Gregorio — the girl’s mother — allegedly admitted to giving the girl 50 mg of Benadryl and 60 mg of melatonin before she began showing symptoms.

From there, investigators uncovered more about the girl’s home life.

The parents of a newborn baby in Pennsylvania have been arrested in connection with the child’s tragic death after authorities say they didn’t set up a bassinet or crib, instead letting the child sleep in their bed where he died. Ashley Susana Usadel, 31, and Travis Scott Smart, 34, were arrested Thursday morning and charged with one count each of child endangerment in the tragic death of young Zane Scott Usadel-Smart, records reviewed by Law&Crime show.

Usadel is also facing an additional charge of involuntary manslaughter.

According to court documents obtained by NorthCentralPA, officers with the Sunbury Police Department responded at about 2:30 a.m. on April 10 to a home on North Sixth Street in regard to a call about an unresponsive infant. Upon arriving at the address, first responders said they saw the father performing CPR on the child, who was face-up on a bed in the living room of the home, and took over performing lifesaving procedures.

Emergency medical personnel arrived a short while later but were not able to provide any assistance. Zane was pronounced dead at the scene and authorities contacted the Northumberland County Coroner’s Office as well as the county office of Children and Youth Services.

Both parents were reportedly transported to the police station, where they underwent interviews with detectives.

According to a report from PennLive, Usadel said that she laid down in bed at about 9:30 p.m. the previous evening with the baby. She was allegedly holding Zane in her right arm and breastfeeding him while using her left hand to hold her phone and scroll through her TikTok feed. At some point, she said she fell asleep and believed Zane rolled out of her arms and onto the bed. She said she awoke to find him unresponsive next to her on the bed.

A 58-year-old former magistrate judge in Pennsylvania will likely spend decades behind bars for trying to kill her boyfriend, shooting the 55-year-old man in the head while he slept in his home last year. A jury in Lancaster County on Wednesday found Sonya M. McKnight guilty on charges of attempted murder and aggravated assault in the attack that left Michael McCoy permanently blind in one eye, authorities announced.

Jurors heard two days of testimony before deliberating and convicting McKnight, who previously shot her estranged husband in the groin in an incident that was determined to be self-defense.

According to a news release from the Cumberland County District Attorney’s Office, the shooting took place in the early morning hours of Saturday, Feb. 10, 2024, at McCoy’s home in the 200 block of Saddle Ridge Drive in Dauphin County.

“McKnight shot the victim in the head while the victim was sleeping in bed,” prosecutors wrote in the release. “The bullet entered the right side of the victim’s face, traversed through his head in a straight line behind and slightly below his eyes and exited the left side of his face. The victim survived the gunshot wound but is blind in one eye as a result.”

While the shooting took place in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, the Cumberland County DA’s Office assumed jurisdiction of the investigation at the request of Dauphin County DA Fran Chardo. Chardo explained that his office had a conflict of interest and could not prosecute the case because McKnight was a magisterial district judge in the county.

Chardo had initially requested that the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office take jurisdiction over the case, but the AG’s office also said it had a conflict of interest in prosecuting McKnight.

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Trials & Litigation

Storage company contends it has no obligation to sort through client files allegedly left by defunct law firm

By Debra Cassens Weiss

February 6, 2025, 9:36 am CST

A records management company is asking a court to declare that it has no obligation to clients of a defunct Pittsburgh law firm that allegedly left more than 7,500 boxes in its warehouse that likely contain numerous client files.

In a Jan. 29 lawsuit, the Access Information Management Corp. said shuttered firm Rothman Gordon is asking the company to deliver the files to clients, even though the Access Information Management Corp. “has no authority whatsoever to relocate, handle, deliver or otherwise provide the files to any person or entity aside from Rothman.”

Indeed, the suit said, rifling through large unlabeled boxes could expose the Access Information Management Corp. to liability.

Law360 has the story on the suit, which also contends that Rothman Gordon owes the storage company more than $91,000 in unpaid bills, an amount that increases daily.

Rothman Gordon stopped operating in October 2024, but it has not filed articles of dissolution and remains obligated to fulfill its contractual obligations, the suit said. The firm allegedly stopped paying storage fees around June 2023.

The initial contract was between the firm and Business Records Management, a company acquired by the Access Information Management Corp. when it was known as Retrievex.

The firm agreed in the contract that it is the owner of the stored records, and that the storage company can’t destroy “useless records” absent written instruction and payment of the “standard published rates,” the suit said.

The Access Information Management Corp. filed the suit in Pennsylvania state court in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.

The Access Information Management Corp. is seeking a declaratory judgment regarding its obligations, an injunction requiring Rothman Gordon to take back or destroy the files and to stop telling clients to contact the storage company, and damages of more than $91,000 for the unpaid bills.

Law360 identified the lawyer for Rothman Gordon as Matthew M. Herron of Herron Business Law. He did not immediately respond to an ABA Journal voicemail requesting for comment. Rothman Gordon’s former managing partner, Frank Salpietro, also did not immediately respond to a voicemail message.

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Law Professors

Penn Law is quicker to discipline whites than minorities, controversial prof alleges in lawsuit

By Debra Cassens Weiss

January 21, 2025, 12:29 pm CST

The University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School is facing a lawsuit alleging that the school violated First Amendment principles and anti-discrimination laws when it disciplined a professor for her controversial remarks.

Tenured law professor Amy Wax filed the Jan. 16 suit in federal court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, report Reuters, Law.com and Law360.

The law school had suspended Wax with half pay and full benefits for the 2025-2026 school year because of alleged “discriminatory and disparaging statements.” She also lost her named chair position and summer pay “in perpetuity.”

Wax’s alleged controversial comments included assertions that Black law students rarely graduate in the top half of their class and warnings about dominance by the “Asian elite” and the loss of bourgeois culture.

Wax’s suit says the school’s disciplinary proceedings against her are “grossly deficient” and “kangaroo-court-like.”

The school’s speech policy “discriminates based not only on the content of speech but also the racial identity of the speaker,” the suit says.

Professors like herself who are white or Jewish are far more likely to be disciplined for their speech than speakers who are racial minorities, the suit claims.

In addition, the suit says, “some races may not be criticized while other racial or ethnic groups can be—and routinely are—subjected to virulently racist speech without consequence.”

As an illustration, the suit says, the school declined to initiate disciplinary proceedings against a male lecturer who created a cartoon labeled “the Anti-Semite” that depicted three Jewish people drinking glasses of blood labeled “Gaza.” The school did criticize the lecturer, however.

The speech policy also punishes speech based on harm, which means that the school punishes speech based on disapproval and emotional reaction to statements, the suit says. That violates the school’s contractual promise to abide by First Amendment principles, according to the suit.

The suit asks the court to ban discipline against Wax and future enforcement of the speech policy, to declare that the policy violates anti-discrimination laws and the First Amendment, and to award damages.

The suit alleges breach of contract, violation of anti-discrimination laws, and false light invasion of privacy for alleged “cherry-picked” depictions of Wax’s speech that cast her as a “virulent racist.” The suit also reserves the right to sue for violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act for the school’s alleged refusal to delay disciplinary proceedings during her cancer treatments.

The university declined to comment when contacted by Law.com, Reuters and Law360.

The case is Wax v. University of Pennsylvania. Wax is represented by Holtzman Vogel.

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Donald Trump implored a federal judge in Pennsylvania to toss out the defamation lawsuit filed against him by members of the Central Park Five over comments the president-elect made during last year’s presidential debate, claiming the falsely-accused quintet are portraying his “substantially true” comments out of context.

The 12-page reply motion seeking to have the suit dismissed was filed Wednesday in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and reiterated many of Trump’s previous arguments about the case, mainly, claiming the plaintiffs rely on “misrepresentations of President-elect Trump’s arguments” that could only be defamatory if one were “reviewing the at-issue statements out of context.”