Legal Groups Sue to Block Rule Gutting Immigration Appeals

Emergency Filing Seeks Court Order to Halt Implementation of Interim Final Rule that Dismantles Safeguards at the Board of Immigration Appeals

Washington, D.C., Feb. 26, 2026 — The American Immigration Council and a coalition of other legal groups, including the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, Brooklyn Defender Services, Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, HIAS, and National Immigrant Justice Center, filed a lawsuit and emergency motion today to block a new interim final rule issued by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) that would effectively eliminate meaningful appellate review before the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA).

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, challenges the February 6, 2026, Interim Final Rule (IFR) titled Appellate Procedures for the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is set to take effect on March 9, 2026.

As detailed in the complaint, the IFR imposes sweeping changes that would eviscerate noncitizens’ right to appeal decisions in their immigration cases, including:

• Reduce the time to file most appeals from 30 days to 10 days;
• Require summary dismissal of appeals unless a majority of permanent BIA members vote within 10 days to accept the case for review;
• Permit dismissal decisions before transcripts are created or records are transmitted;
• Impose simultaneous 20-day briefing schedules with extensions allowed only in narrow “exceptional circumstances”;
• Eliminate reply briefs unless specifically invited; and
• Impose rigid case completion deadlines and concentrate decision-making authority in agency leadership.

“The BIA Interim Final Rule makes a mockery of due process. In addition to taking away virtually any benefit the BIA could provide immigrants, it will wreak havoc on people with cases in immigration court or federal appellate courts,” said Emilie Raber, Senior Attorney at the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights. “Litigants who are children, are detained, do not have a lawyer, have disabilities, or speak rare languages will be disproportionately harmed by this Interim Final Rule.”

“The Interim Final Rule creates a barrier to appellate review in removal proceedings and strikes at the heart of due process,” said Lucas Marquez, Director of Civil Rights & Law Reform at Brooklyn Defender Services. “The Rule will result in the deportation of people who are eligible for immigration relief — people who have valid legal claims that an immigration judge got it wrong — simply because the Board of Immigration Appeals will no longer be an avenue to fairly review their cases.”

“This interim final rule completely decimates the process to appeal a case in front of the BIA,” said Laura St. John, Legal Director at the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project. “It will render the vast majority of immigrants unable to appeal their cases and will be particularly harmful to those who most need the recourse of an appeal process, including pro se litigants, vulnerable children, Indigenous language speakers, and people in immigration detention. It will be nearly impossible for most detained pro se individuals to submit a notice of appeal in just 10 days, and without the ability to appeal, many people will be unjustly deported back to dangerous or even life-threatening conditions.” 

“Our clients deserve a fair chance in the immigration court system,” said Stephen Brown, Director of Immigration Legal Services at HIAS.  “Without access to a meaningful appeal process, people who have fled persecution and violence could face dangerous consequences, including the risk of being sent back to a place that is not safe for them.  We are proud to join this legal challenge, and to take a stand against a policy change that will have seismic impact on the ability of legal service providers such as HIAS to support immigrants in navigating a complex and ever-changing legal system.

““It is hard to overstate the potential human toll of the changes proposed in this rule,” said Lisa Koop, director of legal services at the National Immigrant Justice Center, which is co-counsel and an organizational plaintiff in the lawsuit. “Curtailing due process in this manner guarantees that legal services providers like ours will be less able to help our clients defend against unjust deportation, and many people who would otherwise be eligible for asylum or other legal status in the United States will never have the opportunity to pursue protection under our laws.”

According to the filings, the IFR was issued without the required notice-and-comment rulemaking period and fundamentally restructures appellate review in removal proceedings. Plaintiffs argue that by requiring summary dismissal unless the full Board acts within 10 days — before transcripts are created — the rule makes meaningful review functionally impossible in most cases.

Plaintiffs argue the rule violates the Administrative Procedure Act, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the Fifth Amendment, which protects people from deprivation of liberty without due process of law. They are asking the court to block the rule’s effective date and prevent implementation while the case proceeds.

The organizations are seeking a preliminary relief to prevent the rule from taking effect on March 9, 2026, and to keep it blocked while the litigation proceeds.

The case is Amica Center for Immigrant Rights v. EOIR.

View the complaint here.

View the stay motion here.

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How to Reclaim Your Lost Canadian Citizenship Under Bill C-3

Many people around the world may now qualify for Canadian citizenship because of recent changes to Canadian law. Bill C-3 corrects past citizenship rules and allows many individuals to reclaim citizenship that was previously lost or denied.

The post How to Reclaim Your Lost Canadian Citizenship Under Bill C-3 appeared first on Canadim.

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Dear Immigrant: The Paperwork Is the First Test

Letter 02

Re: The Paperwork Is the First Test

Dear Immigrant,

The first thing the new country will ask of you is not your skills, not your intelligence, not your character. It will ask for documents. The right documents, in the right order, submitted to the right office by the right deadline, accompanied by the right fee. This is the first test and it is not a test of anything you were trained for.

The paperwork is designed for people who already understand the system — who know which form follows which form, which office handles which application, what the difference between a received receipt and an approved receipt means for your status. If you do not already know these things, you will learn them the way immigrants always learn them: by making mistakes and by asking people who made mistakes before you.

The paperwork is not fair. It is deliberately complex in ways that advantage people with resources — people who can pay lawyers, who have time to navigate bureaucracies, who speak the administrative language of the country fluently. If you do not have these advantages, the system will be harder for you. This is not an accident. Immigration systems are designed to filter. You are being filtered. Knowing this does not make it easier, but it makes it less personal.

Find the organizations that help immigrants navigate the paperwork. They exist in most cities. They are usually underfunded and oversubscribed. Use them anyway. The people who work there have seen your situation before and they know things that you do not know yet.

Keep copies of everything. Every document you submit, every receipt you receive, every letter they send you. Keep them in a folder. Keep the folder somewhere you will not lose it. Your administrative record is your legal existence in the new country. Treat it accordingly.

The paperwork will end. The life will continue. Get through the paperwork.

From someone who learned to keep better records,
A former immigrant

dearimmigrant.com

What to Expect from Canada Immigration in 2026

Canadian immigration is already changing, with new policies and rule updates introduced earlier this year. It comes as no surprise that the start of a new year has brought changes in how people can come to Canada, stay in Canada, and become permanent residents or citizens. Although some Canadian immigration pathways have become more limited, others are expanding depending on who you are and where you are coming from.

The post What to Expect from Canada Immigration in 2026 appeared first on Canadim.

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Report: Immigration Detention Is Bigger, Harsher, and Less Accountable Than Ever

Trump Administration Targets People with No Criminal Record and Uses Detention to Pressure Them to Give Up Their Cases 

Washington DC, Jan. 14 Wednesday — A new report released today by the American Immigration Council shows that the Trump administration is locking up hundreds of thousands of people— most with no criminal record—into a harsh immigration detention system that makes it near impossible to fight their cases or secure release.  

READ THE REPORT HERE.

The report, Immigration Detention Expansion in Trump’s Second Term, reveals how historic funding increases and aggressive enforcement tactics have pushed immigration detention to the highest level in U.S. history. Rather than addressing serious public safety threats, the government is spending billions on mass detention to pressure people who pose no threat to give up their cases and accept deportation. 

As the Trump administration expands its mass deportation agenda, the consequences extend far beyond detention centers. DHS’s aggressive tactics during large-scale enforcement actions in American neighborhoods around the country have already led to tragic, preventable deaths, revealing the human cost of an immigration enforcement system that operates with little oversight or accountability. 

“This has absolutely nothing to do with law and order. Under mass deportation, we’re seeing the construction of a mass immigration detention system on a scale the United States has never seen, in which people with no criminal record are routinely locked up with no clear path to release,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. “Over the next three years, billions of more dollars will be poured into a detention system that is on track to rival the entire federal criminal prison system. The goal is not public safety, but to pressure people into giving up their rights and accepting deportation.” 

READ THE REPORT HERE.

According to the report, the number of people held in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention rose nearly 75 percent in 2025, climbing from roughly 40,000 at the start of the year to 66,000 by the start of December, the highest level ever recorded. And with Congress authorizing $45 billion dollars in new detention funding, the report warns that the system could more than triple in size over the next four years. 

Major findings of the report include: 

• There is a dramatic shift in who is being detained. Arrests of people with no criminal record surged by 2,450 percent in Trump’s first year, driven by increases in tactics like “at-large” arrests, roving patrols, worksite raids, and re-arrests of people attending immigration court hearings or ICE check-ins. The percent of people arrested by ICE and held in detention with no criminal record rose from 6 percent in January to 41 percent by December. 

• The detention system has expanded so rapidly that already deleterious conditions have worsened. Through the start of December, ICE was using over 100 more facilities to detain immigrants than at the start of the year. For the first time ever, thousands of immigrants arrested in the interior are being detained in hastily-constructed tent camps, where conditions are brutal. More people died in ICE detention in 2025 than in the last four years combined. 

• People are stripped of their chance to ask a judge for release. New policies have made prolonged, indefinite detention the norm. The Trump administration is pursuing policies that strip millions of people, if they are detained, of the right to have a bond hearing where they can make a case to be released into their community while their immigration case is under review, including for those with decades of life in the United States.  

• The administration is using detention to drive up deportations. By November 2025, for every person released from ICE detention, more than fourteen were deported directly from custody. This is compared to an approximate one-to-two ratio from a year earlier.   

• As the administration expands detention, it is simultaneously gutting oversight. The rapid growth of detention has been paired with deep cuts to internal watchdogs and new restrictions on congressional inspections. This erosion of oversight has consequences that extend beyond detention facilities themselves: as ICE is operating with fewer checks on its authority, aggressive interior enforcement in cities has led to preventable harm and deaths, underscoring how a lack of accountability is putting lives at risk.  

“The Trump administration continues to falsely claim it’s going after the ‘worst of the worst,’ but public safety is just a pretext for locking up immigrants and pushing them to abdicate their cases.,” said Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council. “Horrific conditions inside detention facilities break people into accepting deportation which fuels the administration’s inhumane deportation quotas and goals.” 

The report profiles three people whose experiences illustrate the real-world impact of this historic expansion of detention: 

• A green card holder and father of two, detained by ICE at an airport because of a past conviction he was told would not jeopardize his legal status. ICE then neglected his medical issues for months while he was detained. 

• An asylum seeker who was granted humanitarian protection by an immigration judge, yet remains detained months later, without explanation, as ICE seeks to deport her to a third country, and who says she was treated better in federal prison when serving time for an immigration offense.  

• A DACA recipient, detained following a criminal arrest, who was transferred repeatedly across the country as ICE searched for available bed space and witnessed consistently poor conditions across multiple different detention centers. 

With billions of additional dollars already approved, the report warns that immigration detention is poised to grow even larger, deepening the human, legal, and financial costs for families, communities, and the country as a whole. 

“This is a system built to produce deportations, not justice,” said Reichlin-Melnick. “When detention becomes the default response to immigration cases, the costs are borne by everyone. Families are torn apart, due process is set aside, and billions of taxpayer dollars are wasted on these unnecessary and cruel policies that do nothing to increase public safety.”

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