Immigration

The Guardian -   The Trump administration is “ratcheting up every aspect of the immigration system” for people who have been in the US no matter how long they’ve been in the US, said Suchita Mathur, a lawyer at the American Immigration Council.

“At every step of the way, they’re inflicting the maximum punishment on people,” she said. “It’s all part and parcel of the administration’s effort to make this process so punitive and unbearable that people give up.”

The justice department, which oversees immigration courts, adopted the procedure for automatically pausing an immigration judge’s bond ruling in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks amid concerns about national security. At the time, there were concerns about how it could be used to unjustly detain people. Both Mathur and Relles said they had rarely seen the appeal and stay practice used until this summer. Now, they said the practice is widespread.

Lawyers representing the Department of Homeland Security have been instructed to appeal every decision in which someone is granted bond and immediately pause the judge’s ruling while the appeal is pending, according to an agency official familiar with the matter. They have also been told they will be fired if they do not take such action, the person said.