Author: Sponsor

This sponsored column is by Law Office of James Montana PLLC. All questions about it should be directed to James Montana, Esq. and Janice Chen, 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.

[Note to readers: We decided this week to bring you a work of satire. This advertorial is written in the style of C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, in which a senior devil offers his best — that is, worst — advice to a junior devil.]

My dear Stephen,

I have been very pleased — to the extent that we can feel pleasure, here, in the Infernal Realms — by what I read of your team-building efforts aboveground. You have assembled a remarkable lineup. (Inkgibbet’s dispatches concerning your new colleagues have been most intriguing. I look forward, in particular, to reading more about your new Attorney General — a kindred spirit if I ever met one.)

However, as servants of the Archfiend, we are not permitted to rest; we are not granted even a moment of respite. If you do not achieve results, rest assured: I will not suffer, and you will.

You seem happy with your plans. I do not think that you have a reason to be. Here, as I understand it, is what you propose to do.

1. You plan to create a “Warrior Board” to weed out military officers who might oppose you.
2. You then plan to mobilize the National Guard to then start a campaign of mass deportations.
3. Once you’ve arrested the non-citizens, you then, of course, expect to repatriate them promptly. That will, of course, include mothers and children.
4. The last time you tried deporting mothers and children, you ran into a very human problem: sniveling complaints about “breaking up families.” Your proposed solution is to deport the entire family, even if the family includes U.S. citizens. No family separation problem this time!
5. Where do you intend to put all of these people? Well, we read that your team wants to put them in “vast holding facilities that would function as staging centers.” Euphemisms are for childish mortals. Between us, let’s be frank: you intend to open the camps.

You cannot seriously believe that these plans will come to fruition.

First, the humans will instantly understand the nature of your plan, and they will oppose it. It simply will not do to fire all the generals who “lack leadership qualities”; doing so will alienate and irritate the very people you expect to carry out your orders.

Second, the troops that you mobilize will not readily agree to become domestic law enforcement agents. What the humans mean by ‘oath’ is, at the deepest level, a mystery to us, but it seems clear that they mean, by that word, a promise which they find difficult to break. They have all promised to uphold “the Constitution” — mere parchment to be sure — but you may find them to be rather stubborn in their insistence upon following its inky edicts. Moreover, many of those troops are immigrants themselves. Do you expect them to whistle while they work?

Third, you will be checked at every turn by lawyers and judges. Your record, in your first four years of bull-rushing the Constitution, was not impressive. If you invoke the Insurrection Act, open up camps to detain migrants en masse, expect to read a lot about Korematsu v. U.S.. Expect your actions to be enjoined left, right, and center. And expect buckets of habeas corpus predictions.

Federal judges will be ordering you to release people from custody faster than you can say “qualified immunity.” And don’t count on that immunity, either. Qualified immunity protects you, personally, from the suit, as long as you don’t violate that was “clearly established” at the time you took action. Nothing is more clearly established, under the Americans’ silly laws, than the right to have your day in court. You may enjoy it yourself — and what possible evil would that achieve?

Remember, you were granted this awesome power, not because you are a dreamer. Dreams, like the specious dribbling the humans call ‘philosophy,’ are for those who have not embraced the Infernal Realism: What we see is all there is, and we must bend it to our own ends, until the subjects of our experiments are twisted like wire. They must regard plain evil as “policy” and cruelty as “toughmindedness”; they must do our will not because we tell them to, but because they regard it as inevitable.

You cannot expect to achieve low ends without preparing the ground with a proper psychological barrage. Work on that first, or, after your inevitable failure, prepare to meet me in my office. I long to lecture you on strategy and tactics. I feel a certain ravenousness just thinking about it.

As always, I loathe questions — and, especially, comments — and you may not expect a response.

Your Affectionate Uncle,

Screwtape

This sponsored column is by Law Office of James Montana PLLC. All questions about it should be directed to James Montana, Esq. and Janice Chen, 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 didn’t ask for our sponsored column on immigration law to be published less than two days after the election — that’s just the way the cookie crumbled.

The first thing we want to say to our readers — and our clients — is: Don’t panic. As we explained recently in these pages, most of our immigration legal apparatus is statutory or regulatory. Statutes can only be altered via legislation, and regulation can only be promulgated via the regulatory process. Major changes, if they occur, will be slow.

What changes do we expect?

1. DACA may end. The Trump administration tried to terminate DACA in its first term; it will now have the opportunity to try again.
2. TPS may be revoked for individual countries. The Trump administration attempted to revoke TPS for El Salvador in its first term. President Trump has said that he would revoke TPS-Haiti if elected. We believe him.
3. Parole in Place for spouses of U.S. citizens is almost certainly toast. As we said in our article on the subject back in June 2024: “As an executive action, it is subject to a simple revocation by any subsequent President without an act of Congress.”
4. Prosecutorial discretion in the immigration court is going to be severely restricted. The first Trump administration effectively had a “everything is high priority” posture. That means the immigration court backlog is going to get worse, not better.
5. Future asylum claims will be made much more challenging. We expect this to be a highly contentious and litigated area, and will address it in future columns as developments dictate.
6. Public charge determinations may be a big part of family-based immigration law again. Will we see the return of the Form I-944? Maybe!
7. The U and T Visas may be restricted via internal action. These visas, for victims of crime and human trafficking, are authorized by statute. But the Project 2025 blueprint suggests that a future Trump administration uses its executive authority to restrict U and T visa approvals to those who are actively providing significant material assistance to law enforcement. This would restrict approval to those whose U and T visa application processes are running concurrently with the criminal prosecutions — a small fraction of the total.
8. Mass deportations are a real, albeit unlikely, possibility.

What should immigrants do?

1. If you qualify for a benefit today, apply. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, and, in immigration law, possession means having a pending application.
2. Stay out of immigration court.
3. As always, avoid giving your hard-earned money to the crooks who prey on vulnerable people in difficult times like these. Never pay a ‘notary’ for immigration help. Always insist on working with a licensed attorney, and get a quote from more than one. Comparing the possibilities can save you time, heartache, and legal fees.

As always, we are grateful for your questions and comments, and will do our best to respond.