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Ten years ago, Jesus Adan Rico sighed in a huge relief. That was when a dreamer, Chino High School student, learned that an immigration judge had effectively shelved his deportation proceedings. Maria Torres, who came to the United States at the age of two, also recently married a US citizen and suspended the deportation procedure by an immigration judge.
However, just eight weeks ago, Adan Rico, who married a new child now 29, discovered that the Trump administration had revived his deportation case despite having renewed his DACA status at least four times. Torres learns that the government is preparing for a Green Card interview and wants to get her case back.
“No matter what we do, no matter how far we are from school, work or family, it doesn’t matter. It’s all hanging in the thread,” he said.
Adan Rico and Torres are among the thousands of migrants who have built their lives assuming they are safe in detention and deportation. Now they face that threat at the hands of the Department of Homeland Security. This brings new life to administratively closed cases in order to strengthen immigration enforcement.
Some lawyers have been undergoing dozens of moves on the recalendar. This is the first step to reopening an old case. If lawyers do not succeed in opposing these claims, immigrants could return to courts that have become the hub of arrests in recent months.
“Ten years have passed,” Adan Rico said. “And suddenly, our lives are put on hold again, with the mercy of these people who think I have no right to be here.”
DHS aide to Tricia Mclaughlin and Todd Lyons, with Madison Sheahan lined up to the left, will speak at a press conference at Ice headquarters in May.
(Jose Luis Magana/Applications)
When asked about the government’s push to reopen old lawsuits, Homeland Security spokesman Tricia McLaughlin refused to address questions about the administration’s policy change or to address lawyers’ complaints about the process. She issued a similar statement to others who provided the media about immigration inquiries.
“Biden chose to release millions of illegal aliens, including criminals, into the country, and, using the discretion of the prosecutor, delayed their case indefinitely, allowing them to remain illegally in the United States,” she said. “Now, President Trump and Secretary Noem are following the law and are resuming the removal process for these illegal aliens so that their cases are heard by judges.”
The lawyers handling these cases say the government is overwhelming the courts and immigration lawyers. Most of these happened over 10 years ago. In some of these, the client or former lawyer has passed away. Otherwise, immigrants have achieved legal status and were surprised to learn that the government is trying to revive deportation procedures.
Since the 1970s, immigration judges have administered deportation procedures to ease the docket’s massive backlog and prioritize more urgent cases. The operation essentially delayed the case, but did not dismiss it entirely, giving both court and immigrant wiggling rooms. The idea was that immigrants could pursue other forms of relief, such as waiver of hardships or postponed status. The government can resume cases if necessary.
Nationwide, immigration attorneys meet requests from key homeland security legal advisors offices to revive the case. The attorneys say the movement is similar in language and lacks analysis or reference to changes that prompted the decision. In their allegations, Trump administration lawyers argue that the targeted immigrants are not legally positioned here because they are not awarded a green card.
The allegations urge immigration judges to use discretion to revive the case and consider whether a person has been detained or not, or to consider the “ultimate outcome or potential for success” of pending applications.
What distinguishes immigration cases from federal or state court cases is that both lawyers and judges are part of the administrative division rather than the judicial division. They answer Chief Christy Noem and Atty. General Pam Bondi each.
Lawyers and clients compete against the clock to oppose these moves. Many are essentially private investigators and are tracking clients they have never seen in years. Other retired lawyers are picking up client cases with other immigration lawyers.
“We’re accused of the Wilson Law Group in Minneapolis,” said David L. Wilson, immigration lawyer for Wilson Law Group in Minneapolis. He first received a batch of 25 government moves at the end of May. And they kept coming every few weeks. One case involved a client from El Salvadoran who was granted temporary protected status and was managed in 2006.
Adan Rico, a new father studying to become an HVAC engineer in the Inland Empire, is unsure that the government is trying to revive the deportation lawsuit.
The lawyer who originally represented him has passed away. “If his daughter hadn’t called, I would never have known that my lawsuit had resumed,” he said. “The Department of Homeland Security has never sent me anything.”
Attorney Patricia M. Corrales will speak at the Coalition of the Office of Humanitarian Immigration Rights Los Angeles in April.
(Allen J. Scheven/Los Angeles Times)
His new lawyer, Patricia Corrales, said that Adan Rico’s postponed actions on childhood arrival status will not be updated until 2027 and will adhere to deportation procedures. However, Corrales, who received about 12 allegations, said it appears the government has not checked whether the individual is alive or not.
One of her cases is the case of construction worker Gerario Romero Alciniga. Seven years ago, the judge closed the deportation proceedings of Romero Arciniega after being badly beaten with the head of a metal sprinkler and qualifying for a visa for a victim of crime.
This year, government officials filed a motion to reclaim deportation lawsuits against construction workers despite his death six months ago.
“They don’t do their homework,” Corrales said of the government’s lawyers. “They are very negligent in the way they’re dealing with these moves with recallenders.”
Some lawyers have reported delays in their ability to file opposition claims because the courts are so overwhelmed.
When asked about the backlog, Kathryn Mattingly, a spokesman for the Federal Immigration Court, known as the Immigration Examination and Enforcement Office, confirmed that the court must “receive the initial underlying motion before accepting a response to that motion.”
Some of the immigrants currently in legal scope were immigrants a little further away from the final decision on the green card application.
Maria Torres, a LA County resident and mother of two, said she was only two years old when she was taken to the US by her family. She grew up undocumented and was applied to obtain work approval when postponed behaviour for early childhood arrival programs became available.
However, in 2019, at the age of 21, she was arrested on suspicion of a misdemeanor DUI, and was deported. She took the class and paid her tickets. With deportation proceedings open to her, she was able to close the lawsuit in 2022, but she sought a visa through her husband, a US citizen.
With her visa approved and one interview appointment still remaining, Torres felt blind when she received a call from the lawyer’s office and told her the government wanted to resume deportation proceedings against her.
“I felt my heart sink and I started crying,” she said. Her lawyers have filed a motion against the reorganization of the case, and they are waiting to hear how the judge will control. In the meantime, she said she hopes to do her final interview for a previously approved visa.
“People don’t get legitimate procedures,” said Attorney Mariella Caravetta. “These cases have been sleeping for 10 years, which is very unfair to our clients.”
(Carlin Steel/Los Angeles Times)
Mariela Caravetta, immigration lawyer for Van Nuys, said that since early June, about 30 clients have been targeting government motions to resume their lawsuits.
By law, she must reply in 10 days. This means she needs to track clients who may have moved out of state.
“It’s awful faith doing that,” said Caravetta, who accused the federal government of flooding immigration courts to meet deportation quotas.
“People don’t get the right process,” she said. “These cases have been sleeping for 10 years, which is very unfair to our clients.”
Caravetta persuaded some judges to deny the government’s allegations as they wanted a way for their clients to stay in the country legally. In only a handful, she couldn’t reach her clients.
The government has not made any effort to reach out to lawyers to discuss the case where necessary, she added. “It’s going to save a lot of time for everyone,” she said. Her clients may have U-Visas. This gives relief to immigrants who are victims of crimes and help investigators or prosecutors. But the government move says, “These people have done nothing to legalize their status, so they need a final resolution.”
Matt O’Brien, a former federal immigration judge and deputy director of the fair, who advocates stricter immigration laws, said the Trump administration will “enforce immigration and nationality acts in the way Congress wrote it.”
He questioned why lawyers complained that the case was being reorganized, saying it was “similar to the move to resume lawsuits in other courts.”
But for many migrants who are reviving the incident, the risks are high. The judge has the discretion to refuse to file an action to resume the case, and in some circumstances it does, the lawyers say. However, the judge also approved the government’s request if there was no objection from the immigrant or their lawyers.
At that point, the case will be placed in the calendar. If it is scheduled and immigrants do not appear in court, they could ultimately be ruled in “absence”, which would make them vulnerable to immediate deportation and prohibit them from entering the country legally for years.
According to many immigration lawyers and former staff, it all fits the Trump administration’s goal of increasing the number of deportations.
“They’re getting the largest possible pool of people they can remove and removing them from the country,” said Jason Hauser, former chief of staff at Immigration Customs Enforcement. “And what gets in the way from then on is the practical, legitimate process of the immigration system.”
In April, Sirce E. Owen, acting director of the Bureau of Enforcement for Immigration Review, issued a memo criticizing the use of administrative closures, calling it a “de facto amnesty program” to provide job permits and deportation protections. Former immigration judge Owen has revoked guidance from the previous Biden administration, which offered a more aggressive approach to closures of management.
Owen said about 379,000 cases had been administratively closed in immigration courts as of April, citing them as a contributing factor in the 4 million court system backlog.
In immigration courts in Los Angeles and San Diego, lawyers have already seen these cases come before immigration judges. Many clients express their shock and despair at being pulled back to court.
Sherman Oaks’ lawyer Edgard Quintanira has seen around 40 cases recently, including those dating back to the 2010s. The client is surprised not only by the government’s legal manipulation, but also by the recent prospect of entering the federal government building, he said.
“When they go to court, there’s always a fear that they might get arrested,” he said. “It’s a reasonable fear because everything is going on.”
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