Trump Administration on Immigration

We’ve seen this movie before.

Scene 1: The President issues a proclamation in reliance on his authority to restrict the entry of certain noncitizens under Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) § 212(f) so long as he asserts that allowing them in would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

Scene 2:

Last week, President Trump held an 81-minute press conference. He traversed wide-ranging territory, including his notions of procedural due process. Discussing the importance of fundamental fairness when trying to distinguish facts from falsehoods, he said:

PRES. TRUMP:

Somebody could come and say 30 years ago, 25 years ago, 10 years ago, 5 years ago

The familiar lines were drawn.  Combatants clashed in a war of words, competing governance philosophies, conflicting laws, and judicial challenges – all in an age-old constitutional battle of federal power versus states’ rights.

This time around, however, the roles were reversed.  Version 2018 is unlike the 1960s when extreme-right southern conservatives, claiming to champion states’

The California legislature and Governor Jerry Brown have once again entered the immigration fray.

This foray is not about its Sanctuary State legislation, recently enacted, and promptly decried  by U.S. Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III as “unconscionable”, and by Thomas Homan, Acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as “[forcing

[Blogger’s Note:  Today’s post is by my colleague, Mahsa Aliaskari, Seyfarth Shaw LLP’s Senior Counsel. Mahsa has advised and defended businesses with up to 100,000+ nationwide employees on U.S. immigration compliance programs and practices.  She and yours truly — along with former USCIS Director, Leon Rodriguez, noted worksite enforcement lawyer, Dawn Lurie

Deciphering the workings of the bureaucratic mind is never easy.  What seems settled practice is often anything but. Abrupt abandonment of longstanding policy can happen in a nanosecond — many times with nary a word of forewarning or explanation. Usually there’s an unstated backstory  — one that can be divined by asking the forensic question

The pattern by now is all too familiar. With the Trump Administration fully ensconced, the rollback of President Obama’s eight-year legacy continues. This time it involves the International Entrepreneur Regulation — an imperfect and burdensome rule that would have become effective last month had the Administration not  imposed a delay. The Obama-era rule created a