Policy Briefs
AILA’s policy briefs provide in-depth insight and analysis on significant issues impacting the practice of immigration law, and offer recommendations to make the immigration law system more fair, efficient, and just. Check out all of AILA’s policy briefs below, with the most recent policy brief appearing first, and make your voice heard by supporting AILA’s advocacy priorities.
Browse the Policy Briefs collection
AILA Policy Brief: USCIS’s “No Blank Space” Policy Leads to Capricious Rejections of Benefits Requests
This AILA policy brief describes how USCIS upended long-standing practice, without notice, and began rejecting forms that left questions blank or did not use specific terminology to indicate that a question was inapplicable, leading to capricious rejections.
AILA Policy Brief: Crisis Level USCIS Processing Delays and Inefficiencies Continue to Grow
AILA’s analysis of USCIS data from FY2019 reveals a continued rise in USCIS processing delays for applications and petitions for immigration benefits. The results of this analysis underscores the importance of robust congressional oversight of USCIS to ensure transparency and good governance.
Policy Brief: Questions Remain After AILA Joins Laredo Tent Court Tour
On January 24, 2020, at DHS invitation, an AILA delegation attended a tour and briefing of the tent facility in Laredo. This policy brief addresses what AILA learned during that tour of the processes and procedures for migrants, attorneys, and observers.
AILA Policy Brief: Restoring Integrity and Independence to America’s Immigration Courts
The U.S. immigration court system suffers from profound structural problems that have severely eroded its capacity to deliver just decisions in a timely manner. This policy brief outlines how the courts have been pushed to their breaking point, and what it will take to fix them.
AILA Policy Brief: Proposed Asylum Rule Blocks Asylum Seekers from Humanitarian Protection
AILA issued a policy brief on the Trump administration’s notice of proposed rulemaking on bars to asylum eligibility, noting that it would undermine the protections currently available to people who flee to the United States to escape persecution, torture, or even death in their home countries.
AILA Policy Brief: Public Access to Tent Courts Now Allowed, but Meaningful Access Still Absent
AILA issued a policy brief following DHS’s announcement that it has opened the Laredo and Brownsville tent courts for court observers. DHS and DOJ have operationalized this directive in a way that fails to allow meaningful access to the tent court facilities and imposes new hurdles to transparency.
AILA Policy Brief: DHS and DOJ Are Opening Secretive Port Courts Along the Southern Border
AILA issued a policy brief that shares the little information regarding the DHS and DOJ port courts that has been made publicly available by media reports and elevates the outstanding operational issues of concern that have yet to be addressed by agencies.
AILA Policy Brief: Effective Border Management Begins with Improving the U.S. Asylum System
AILA issued a policy brief with solutions to the recent increase in migration at the U.S. southern border, which will prove to be more effective in providing a fair, orderly, and efficient system for processing asylum seekers and other migrants.
AILA Policy Brief: Facts About the State of Our Nation’s Immigration Courts
AILA issued a policy brief in response to EOIR’s Myths vs. Fact memo that was disseminated on May 8, 2019. AILA explains that EOIR’s skewed portrayal only demonstrates the urgent need for Congress to create an independent court, separate from DOJ.
AILA Policy Brief: Florida Senate Bill 168 Contains Anti-Immigrant Provisions
On 5/2/19, the controversial Florida Senate Bill (SB) 168 passed 22-18 in the Senate and 68-45 in the House. Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis, is expected to sign SB 168 into law. The law will take effect on 7/1/19, except for the section establishing penalties which will take effect on 10/1/19.
AILA Policy Brief: Seven Ways USCIS Is Defying the Will of Congress
This policy brief examines seven ways in which USCIS is transforming from the immigration benefits service that Congress intended, into another DHS enforcement arm.
AILA’s Policy Brief: FOIA Reveals EOIR’s Failed Plan for Fixing the Immigration Court Backlog
AILA issued a policy brief analyzing EOIR’s failed plan for reducing the immigration court case backlog. Contrary to EOIR’s stated goals, the agency’s “Strategic Caseload Reduction Plan” exacerbated the due process crisis in the immigration courts and in some instances, contributed to the backlog.
AILA Policy Brief: “Remain in Mexico” Plan Sows Chaos, Puts Asylum Seekers at Risk
This policy brief examines how the administration’s cruel and likely illegal “Remain in Mexico” policy will make it nearly impossible for asylum seekers to access the protections they are entitled to under the law and explores the solutions that the administration should implement instead.
AILA Policy Brief: USCIS Processing Delays Have Reached Crisis Levels Under the Trump Administration
AILA’s analysis of USCIS data reveals crisis-level delays in its processing of applications and petitions for immigration benefits under the Trump administration. This brief examines how current USCIS policies lengthen the delays and what steps USCIS and Congress can take to remedy this crisis.
AILA Policy Brief: Trump Shutdown Bill Full of Extreme Restrictionist Provisions
The “End the Shutdown and Secure the Border Act” bill should be rejected as representing hardline restrictionist views, rather than a genuine attempt at compromise. It would provide weak DACA and TPS protections, ramp up funding for enforcement, and all but eliminate asylum for certain minors.