Author: James Montana

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.

On April 16 – just yesterday – The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) publicly released its precedent decision in Matter of M-K-, 29 I&N Dec. 556 (BIA 2026), the immigration case of Palestinian activist and former Columbia University graduate student, Mahmoud Khalil. Though the decision was originally issued on April 9, 2026, its designation and publication today as binding BIA precedent makes it significantly more consequential, because the ruling now is binding precedent within the immigration court system. (more…)

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.

In January 2025, we told you that the Trump Administration was trying to abolish birthright citizenship by executive order. We predicted that the order would be subject to an immediate injunction, and we predicted further that the litigation would proceed, through the appellate process, to the Supreme Court, and, once there, the Trump Administration would lose 9:0.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Trump v. Barbara, in which the question of birthright citizenship was placed squarely before the Court. Clearly, this was an important case for the Trump Administration; President Trump put in a personal appearance at the Supreme Court, left in the middle of oral argument, then ‘truthed’ his view that “We are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow ‘Birthright’ Citizenship!” (more…)

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.

Diego Lowe, a high school senior, has joined us as a Law Clerk! We are thrilled to introduce him to the ARLnow readership, and, of course, the commentariat. 

By way of introduction, here is a brief Q&A between Diego Lowe and our august founder. (more…)

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.

American immigration courts are civil, not criminal. Failure to appear in immigration court is not a criminal offense. If you fail to appear in criminal court, you can expect a bench warrant to be issued for your arrest, and you may later be charged with Failure to Appear. Immigration judges lack the power to order arrest, and failure to appear in immigration court is not a crime. So, how are immigrants incentivized to show up in court? It’s simple. If you show up for your court date, you have a chance of winning; if you don’t show up, you will be instantaneously ordered removed in absentia, and your chances of ever getting the case reopened are slim.

Until recently, therefore, the game-theoretical calculus was simple. The upside of appearing in court was that you might win; if you lose, you might be ordered removed. The downside of appearing in court was that, if you lost, you might fear being arrested and detained. But, again, until recently, the risk of detention at immigration court was slight. (more…)

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.

For years, we have told immigrants what any lawyer would: If the police knock on your door, you should not open the door unless the police present a valid warrant. A valid warrant means a warrant issued by an independent magistrate – a judge, not an executive branch official. This is a critical check on the power of the executive branch.

ICE seems to disagree. According to an extremely well-sourced set of whistleblowers, the Acting ICE Director, Todd Lyons, issued a memo stating that administrative warrants may be used to enter homes by force in order to effect an arrest. Here is the text of the leaked memorandum, in relevant part. (Our highlights are in bold below.)   (more…)

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.

ArlNow readers, like the reckless scientists of Jurassic Park, need to be told, occasionally, to hold onto their butts. We told you to do so, and we were right. On January 1, USCIS Director Joe Edlow released another profoundly silly memo adding another twenty countries to the Trump Administration’s domestic immigration freeze. In this advertorial, we’ll tell you (1) what countries have been added, (2) possible reasons why, and (3) how this is affecting our clients. (more…)

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.

Make some dough! (Photo credit, if credit is what the photo deserves: James Montana)

Our little law office is hiring for at least one position: Legal Intern (Spring Semester). The details and tips on how to apply are below, in Q&A style. We are also interested in bringing on another staff member – perhaps a law graduate studying for the bar, or a lawyer who is interested in part time work. For details, see below.

Q: Hiring, eh? How much cash on the barrel?

A: Depends on the position. The Law Clerk position is paid hourly, and the amount depends on your background. (Certain local law schools won’t give you class credit if we pay you. We prefer to pay you $25/hour, but we can forgo paying you if that’s what you need.)

Q: What? I thought that lawyers dove into piles of gold coins all day, like Scrooge McDuck!

A: It depends. On Wall Street, we are reliably informed that big law firm partners can make more than $15,000,000 per year – more than the bankers who pay them! Immigration lawyers are much more modestly compensated.

Q: Why should I work for you? ICE pays a $50K starting bonus and I want to deport illegals with my absolute boys!

A: We offer great benefits and a wonderful place to work.

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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:

1. Interviews are continuing.
2. 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.

1. 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.
2. 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.

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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 Taryn Druge, 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.

With Thanksgiving upon us, we really wanted to write about What We’re Grateful For. Unfortunately, the Trump Administration terminated Temporary Protected Status for Burma this week, so we’ll have to save gratitude for a later date. Right now, we want to make sure that our understand the nature of the termination, so Burmese TPS holders can consider next steps and everyone else understands the Trump Administration’s aggressive approach to TPS terminations.

Burma – also known as Myanmar – suffered a coup d’etat in February 2021. (Those of us who spend too much time on the internet may remember the exercise instructor, Khing Hnin Wai, who demonstrated an exercise routine while a military convoy sped down the highway behind her.) The coup nullified the results of the 2020 elections and put a military government fully in control of the government; the country’s top elected leaders, including Aung Sang Suu Kyi, were jailed on false charges. Protests against the junta mushroomed into a full-scale civil war between the regime and its opponents. The civil war is still ongoing today.

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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.

We think of the state as all-knowing, but, as the anthropologist James Scott pointed out in Seeing Like The State, Leviathan is born blind. In order to impose order, the state must first be able to see its subjects as individuals who can be tracked and categorized. Human nature tosses sand in the state’s eyes. People change names (upon birth, upon marriage, upon divorce, upon whim), occupations, addresses, incomes, and the interpersonal relationships amongst themselves. This creates a massive problem for the state: How can it even know the identities of its subjects?

In the United States, the government has traditionally relied mostly on self-reporting for citizens. Readers of this column will not be surprised to learn that we treat immigrants quite differently: we demand stacks of identifying documents, fingerprints, and biometric information as part of benefits adjudication and deportation proceedings. The Department of Homeland Security has quietly proposed to expand this system by collecting more biometric data, more frequently – including DNA! – and, in parallel, to expand this system by collecting biometric data on U.S. Citizens who interact with the immigration system. The purpose of this article is to explain what the Department of Homeland Security proposes to do, and then to speculate briefly about why.

The Department of Homeland Security proposes to expand its biometrics collection system in the following ways:

1. Expand the types of biometrics collected from immigrants. Currently, only fingerprint, signature, and facial recognition data are collected at biometrics. That’s not enough! DHS proposes to collect “ocular image, palm print, voice print, and DNA” from immigrants.
2. Expand the frequency of biometrics collection. Currently, DHS frequently reuses biometric information when an applicant applies for a subsequent benefit. (For example, if you apply for a green card, DHS collects your biometric information; later, when you apply for citizenship, DHS reuses its electronic records. No longer!) DHS’s view is that the enforcement benefits of “continuous vetting” outweigh the inconvenience and cost of repeated biometric appointments.
3. Expand the population of immigrants subject to biometrics collection. Currently, immigrant applicants under the age of 14 are exempt from biometrics collection. (The fingerprints and faces of children have a remarkable, and from the perspective of Leviathan, irritating propensity for change.) DHS’s view is that these challenges can be overcome, and overcoming them is worth doing for enforcement reasons.
4. Expand the categories of people subject to biometrics collection. Currently, U.S. citizens who interact with the immigration system are generally exempt from biometrics collection. Not anymore! DHS proposes that any U.S. Citizen who participates in an immigration application – as a petitioning spouse, say, or as a financial supporter – must report for biometrics collection, including, potentially, the aforementioned DNA collection.

DHS’s purported justification for collecting biometric data en masse from US citizens is “protecting vulnerable populations.” For example, DHS suggests that in the current system, immigrants are insufficiently protected from convicted sex offenders and domestic abusers – collecting biometric information from every single U.S. citizen involved in the immigration system would help DHS to protect vulnerable immigrants more thoroughly.

DHS’s purported justification for collecting biometrics data repeatedly from non-citizens is that “continuous immigration vetting and […] continued and subsequent evaluation” is meant “to ensure they continue to present no risks to national security or public safety subsequent to their entry.”

The real reasons for this expansion of state power are known only to the Trump Administration. But we would suggest that this new program of biometrics collection is likely to be expensive, duplicative, ineffective, and creepy. The current biometrics system already requires millions of appointments per year, supervised by an army of contractors. Adding millions more appointments will ensure that more contractors get paid, but it is unclear how retaking fingerprints will make it easier to track immigrants over time. Moreover, demanding DNA submission as part of the immigration process is enormously invasive. The Supreme Court, in Maryland v. King, ruled that routine collection of DNA is permissible for those who are “already in valid police custody for a serious offense supported by probable cause.” Subjecting millions of immigrants (and US citizens!) per year to a data collection standard meant for suspected felons strikes us as just one more example of this administration’s hostility to immigrants and their families.

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 purpose of this sponsored post is to introduce Victoria Khaydar, our brilliant new associate. We’re proud to have her! By way of introduction, here are a few questions to Victoria from the Pointy-Headed Boss.

PHB: How did you come to the practice of immigration law?

Victoria: This will sound cheesy, but I was definitely influenced by my own family’s immigration journey. Navigating complex immigration minefields as a child probably left me a few scars and anxieties. I want to lend others a helping hand, at least to the extent that I have figured this immigration thing out.

PHB: Why do you enjoy the practice of immigration law. (“Big assumption there!” – Ed.)

Victoria: I love that immigration law is a human-centered practice. An immigration case is basically a human interest story with a problem you get to solve. This was always my favorite part of law school casebooks before they got to the boring legal principles.

Plus, you get to meet people from all over the world! I have no data to back this up but immigration attorneys are very good at geography and language trivia.

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