This sponsored column is by Law Office of James Montana PLLC. All questions about it should be directed to James Montana, Esq., Janice Chen, Esq., and Victoria Khaydar, Esq., practicing attorneys at The Law Office of James Montana PLLC, an immigration-focused law firm located in Falls Church, Virginia. The legal information given here is general in nature. If you want legal advice, contact us for an appointment.
The full court press in the immigration system continues. There are a half-dozen things we could talk about, but for the sake of space, we’ll stick to the Double Freeze announced by USCIS topics: the affirmative asylum system is now frozen solid, and the expansion of the travel ban to domestic immigration applications has frozen most adjudications for every single national of every country covered by the current travel ban.
The Asylum System is Frozen
An Afghan asylee, Rahmanullah Lakanwall, has been charged with shooting two National Guard troopers, Andrew Wolfe and Sarah Beckstrom. Ms. Beckstrom died of her wounds and Mr. Wolfe remains under medical care. Within hours, USCIS reacted to this murder by freezing the affirmative asylum system. According to our understanding, this is the state of play:
- Interviews are continuing.
- No decisions are being made. That means that no one is being granted asylum by the Arlington Asylum Office and its sister offices across the country. But, equally importantly, no one is being denied asylum by the asylum office either. The backlog of asylum cases, already horrific, is going to balloon.
Here are a few key points about USCIS putting the asylum system on ice.
- The Immigration Courts continue to function. They continue to grant, and deny, asylum cases. USCIS lacks the bureaucratic wherewithal to stop this, because the Immigration Courts are housed within the Department of Justice.
- The ‘freeze’ has inadvertently set up a perverse incentive. If you apply for asylum, you have the right to apply for a work permit if your application is pending for 150 days or longer, renewable so long as the asylum application remains pending. A frozen asylum system – assuming it continues indefinitely – equates to work permits for all affirmative asylum applicants. That cannot be their intent, and will quickly become intolerable for DHS’s political leadership.
The Travel Ban: Domestic Implementation Edition
The Trump Administration loves a good travel ban, and the second Trump Administration has crafted its current travel ban more carefully than it did during President Trump’s first term. The current travel ban covers Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen in full; other countries are covered by a “partial ban,” including Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.
In the same policy memorandum that froze the asylum system, USCIS Director Joseph Edlow froze all “benefit applications” for nationals of all of the above countries, until further notice. That means that nationals of all of the countries subject to the travel ban cannot renew their green cards, naturalize, or indeed receive initial green cards until the freeze is lifted.
We have no idea when the freeze will be lifted. It may be lifted by a new policy memorandum or – more likely – by litigation.
Here are two key points about the Travel Ban coming home in this curious, abhorrent way:
- The primary legal justification for the Travel Ban was constitutional – namely, that the President, in his exercise of his foreign policy prerogatives, could take measures which would ordinarily offend the Constitution in a domestic context. We are now fully in the domestic context, and the federal courts are unlikely to like it.
- To quote Jurassic Park: Hold onto your butts. 36 more countries may be added to the list any day.
We live in interesting times. If you have questions about these interesting times, please ask them in the comments – we’ll answer all we can.
