Federal Immigration Authorities Launch Raids Across The Country
Two weeks after the issuance of his controversial travel ban, President Trump set forth a wave of Immigration and Citizenship Enforcement (ICE) raids in line with his executive order which aimed to remove individuals illegally present in the country. Specifically targeted, according to the order, were individuals guilty of a crime. The president has indicated that he plans on deporting 2 to 3 million of such individuals. However, according to the Department of Homeland Security there are 1.9 million removable criminal aliens, and immigration experts estimate the number guilty of felonies or serious misdemeanors to be closer to 690,000. Some have suggested the raids are targeted at sanctuary cities, but there is also a possibility that solely the fact that those sanctuary cities are large metropolitan areas, which tend to have more immigrants, might be motivation for the targeting. One immigration expert was quoted as saying, “Big cities tend to have a lot of illegal immigrants. They’re going to a target-rich environment.” The raids are also leading to the arrests of non-criminals simply because they are in the vicinity of the individuals who are the named targets. Many critics of the new enforcement policy believe that non-criminals are also being targeted.
For more information view the article.
***
More Than 100 Tech Companies Join Forces In Court To Oppose Donald Trump’s Immigration Ban
Some of the most powerful forces in Silicon Valley have unified their voices and have put forth court motions in opposition of President Trump’s executive order banning immigration from seven countries. Since a large proportion of workers in such tech companies are immigrants, the amicus brief put forth before the court asserts that the order, “makes it more difficult and expensive for U.S. companies to recruit, hire, and retain some of the world’s best employees. It disrupts ongoing business operations. And it threatens companies’ ability to attract talent, business, and investment to the United States.” The brief goes on to assert the stark contrast between the ban and American values, describing it as, “a significant departure from the principles of fairness and predictability that have governed the immigration system of the United States for more than fifty years.” The brief also outlines the importance of immigrants in the current economic landscape of the United States, how they are engrained in every facet and level of the economic system of America, “Immigrants are leading entrepreneurs,” Sunday’s brief reads. “Some of these businesses are large. Immigrants or their children founded more than 200 of the companies on the Fortune 500 list … Collectively, these companies generate annual revenue of $4.2 trillion, and employ millions of Americans.”
Below is an alphabetical list of the tech companies that signed the court order
1. AdRoll, Inc. 2. Aeris Communications, Inc. 3. Airbnb, Inc. 4. AltSchool, PBC 5. Ancestry.com, LLC 6. Appboy, Inc. 7. Apple Inc. 8. AppNexus Inc. 9. Asana, Inc. 10. Atlassian Corp Plc 11. Autodesk, Inc. 12. Automattic Inc. 13. Box, Inc. 14. Brightcove Inc. 15. Brit + Co 16. CareZone Inc. 17. Castlight Health 18. Checkr, Inc. 19. Chobani, LLC 20. Citrix Systems, Inc. 21. Cloudera, Inc. 22. Cloudflare, Inc. 23. Copia Institute 24. DocuSign, Inc. 25. DoorDash, Inc. 26. Dropbox, Inc. 27. Dynatrace LLC 28. eBay Inc. 29. Engine Advocacy 30. Etsy Inc. 31. Facebook, Inc. 32. Fastly, Inc. 33. Flipboard, Inc. 34. Foursquare Labs, Inc. 35. Fuze, Inc. 36. General Assembly 37. GitHub 38. Glassdoor, Inc. 39. Google Inc. 40. GoPro, Inc. 41. Harmonic Inc. 42. Hipmunk, Inc. 43. Indiegogo, Inc.44. Intel Corporation 45. JAND, Inc. d/b/a Warby Parker 46. Kargo Global, Inc.47. Kickstarter, PBC 48. KIND, LLC 49. Knotel 50. Levi Strauss & Co. 51. LinkedIn Corporation 52. Lithium Technologies, Inc. 53. Lyft, Inc. 54. Mapbox, Inc. 55. Maplebear Inc. d/b/a Instacart 56. Marin Software Incorporated 57. Medallia, Inc. 58. A Medium Corporation 59. Meetup, Inc. 60. Microsoft Corporation 61. Motivate International Inc. 62. Mozilla Corporation 63. Netflix, Inc. 64. NETGEAR, Inc. 65. NewsCred, Inc. 66. Patreon, Inc. 67. PayPal Holdings, Inc. 68. Pinterest, Inc. 69. Quora, Inc. 70. Reddit, Inc. 71. Rocket Fuel Inc. 72. SaaStr Inc. 73. Salesforce.com, Inc. 74. Scopely, Inc. 75. Shutterstock, Inc. 76. Snap Inc. 77. Spokeo, Inc. 78. Spotify USA Inc. 79. Square, Inc. 80. Squarespace, Inc. 81. Strava, Inc. 82. Stripe, Inc. 83. SurveyMonkey Inc. 84. TaskRabbit, Inc 85. Tech:NYC 86. Thumbtack, Inc. 87. Turn Inc. 88. Twilio Inc. 89. Twitter Inc. 90. Uber Technologies, Inc. 91. Via 92. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 93. Workday 94. Y Combinator Management, LLC 95. Yelp Inc. 96. Zynga Inc. 97. Adobe Systems Incorporated 98. Affirm, Inc. 99. Ampush LLC 100. Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. 101. Bungie, Inc. 102. Casper Sleep Inc. 103. Cavium, Inc. 104. Chegg, Inc. 105. ClassPass Inc. 106. Coursera 107. EquityZen Inc. 108. Evernote 109. Gusto 110. Handy Technologies, Inc. 111. HP Inc. 112. IAC/InterActiveCorp 113. Linden Lab 114. Managed By Q Inc. 115. MobileIron 116. New Relic, Inc. 117. Pandora Media, Inc. 118. Planet Labs Inc. 119. RPX Corporation 120. Shift Technologies, Inc. 121. Slack Technologies, Inc. 122. SpaceX 123. Tesla, Inc. 124. TripAdvisor, Inc. 125. Udacity, Inc. 126. Zendesk, Inc. 127. Zenefits
For more information, check out the article.
***
EOIR Swears in Twelve Immigration Judges
On February 3, 2017, the Executive Office for Immigration Review swore in twelve new immigration judges, bringing the total number of judges above 300 for the first time in history. Below is a brief background description for each of the 12 new members. Below is a list of the 12 new members and where they will be serving.
Victoria L. Argumendo, San Francisco Immigration Court –
Steven D. Caley, Aurora Immigration Court
Ila C. Deiss, San Francisco Immigration Court
Delia I. Gonzalez, Harlingen Immigration Court
Deborah K. Goodwin, Miami Immigration Court
Stephanie E. Gorman, Houston Immigration Court
Richard A. Jamadar, Houston Immigration Court
Julie Nelson, San Francisco Immigration Court
Emmett D. Soper, Arlington Immigration Court
Jem C. Sponzo, New York City Immigration Court
Arwen Ann Swink, San Francisco Immigration Court
Veronica S. Villegas, Los Angeles Immigration Court
For background information on each of these newly appointed judges, view the news release.
***
A Day Without Immigrants Movement Brings Awareness to the Impact Immigrants Have in America.
Businesses across the nation have closed their doors on February 16, in protest of President Trump’s immigration ban. “A Day Without Immigrants” is the movement in which immigrants across the country are encouraged to refrain from shopping, working, going to class, or in this case opening their establishment for business. All efforts are intended to show how invaluable immigrants are to the socioeconomic fabric of America, to show just how much would change if, even for just one day, immigrants were absent from society.
For more information, view the article.
Disclaimer: This newsletter is provided as a public service and not intended to establish an attorney client relationship. Any reliance on information contained herein is taken at your own risk.