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Biden returns Prosecutorial Discretion to drop deportation cases


☝🏼Recently, big news came out about President Biden bringing something huge back to immigration courts, affecting active ongoing deportation cases in immigration courts today.

President Biden has given ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Immigration Police Attorneys), the prosecutors now have a new power, which is not so new (he just brought it back). Biden gave them the power of prosecutorial discretion to decide which ongoing, active immigration deportation cases to drop or close out.

📄Prosecutors can now dismiss cases for immigrants who have been long time green card holders, or those who may may have had some criminal problems, but they’ve been green card holders for a long time, and the criminal problems are not major.

There are also implications for pregnant women, the elderly, people with serious health conditions or even children with serious health conditions.

🇺🇸People who have been in the United States from a young age who grew up here, speak English without an accent. They’ve become what’s actually DACA-eligible, but maybe they’re not eligible for DACA for other reasons. This is something that’s come back. President Trump got rid of this because there was a big push to deport more people under his administration.

However, with President Biden releasing his blueprint last week to make our immigration system more welcoming, especially immigrants, While becoming a customer-service oriented agency. This brings us back to the ideal of our country being welcoming. This takes us back to the iconic quote: ‘bring me your tired, your poor, your teeming masses yearning to breathe free.’

🧑‍⚖️This enforces the idea of the United States being a refuge for people who come here for a better life. A years of being told by the Trump administration to aggressively pursue most deportations, US immigration (prosecutors, ICE attorneys, trial attorneys) have now been given broad discretion in which cases they decide to pursue to or drop completely. Cancel close out the administratively close or even dismiss. And these are according to the recent government documents obtained by various news agencies and they now have the decision-making power – that’s called prosecutorial discretion – to consider they should dismiss this case.

That means immigration attorneys can now make special motion, which is when we write a big letter and explain the person’s situation. They have, maybe they have a health condition or they have kids or a spouse with serious health conditions. Maybe they had a green card for a long time before having their criminal problem or something like that. We show the documents. We show a letter maybe from a doctor and with guidance written by Chief ICE Attorney, John Trasviña, a President Biden appointee.

📝This memo was sent out to prosecutors on May 27th and there’s an internal memo, and this represents a shift in how ICE pursues the protection orders and immigration court. And now it emphasizes that they have power to decide which cases to drop or not.

Because actually, President Trump took away a lot of power from immigration judges and immigration prosecutors, trial attorneys under his administration. Even when they felt bad, sometimes for our clients in the past, they said, ‘look, he took away our power. We cannot do this anymore.’

👨‍⚖️This brings the power back to the courts, back to the prosecutors and allows people to finally get a chance to close out the cases. The reality is that we now have 1.3 million cases in the immigration court system today, right now. And it is extremely hard to even have a person have a hearing in front of a judge.

New York is just reopening their courts July 6th for individual hearings for trials. This is an ongoing problem made so much worse by COVID. This is finally on the way to maybe making those courts backlog backlogs (the wait times for your court cases) quicker. Maybe this is a way to dismiss your case.

☎️If you have an active, open deportation case today, or you have an old deportation, you already were deported, but something has happened. You have kids who are over 21, you have a spouse in the United States, you have health conditions. Give us a call. We can probably figure out a way to try to help you, and in many cases, help you get the deportation closed.

Shepelsky Law Group
2415 Avenue U,  Ste. 2 Rear
Brooklyn, NY 11229
Tel: 718-769-6352Fax: 718-764-1198
www.ShepelskyLaw.com