Miller Mayer immigration attorney Steve Yale-Loehr was quoted by the Associated Press in The ACLU is Making Plans to Fight Trump’s Promises of Immigrant Raids and Mass Deportations. He said, “The second Trump administration, if there is one, will be better prepared” to overcome lawsuits than the first one was. He noted that the first Trump administration often saw its policies halted by rulemaking and procedural mistakes that it could fix this time around. For example, it could use past legal decisions to find workarounds. “Both sides have seen the litigation battles, and seen how the courts have ruled,” Steve said.
Steve was quoted by Law360 in Exceptions May Help New Border Rules Survive Litigation (available by registration). He said that a new Biden administration policy to restrict entry if unauthorized border crossings exceed a limit—set forth in a presidential proclamation and an interim final rule—will be “a close call if it goes to the Supreme Court. The Biden administration will say that this too has certain exceptions, and it is temporary, and therefore it’s within the zone of deference that should be accorded to the president under [INA §] 212(f). I’m sure the ACLU and others will argue that that is a direct conflict. And therefore, even under Trump v. Hawaii, this new presidential proclamation and executive order are illegal or violate the law.”
Steve was quoted in several news articles about President Biden’s border order, including the Los Angeles Times, Vox, Newsday, Scripps News Service, and Yahoo. For example, in Biden’s Sweeping New Asylum Restrictions, Explained (Vox), Steve said, “Immigrant advocates will say the asylum provision explicitly allows people to apply for asylum even if they enter between ports of entry, and therefore to suspend entry because too many people are entering between ports of entry violates an express provision of the immigration law. Courts will have to decide how much deference to give President Biden and whether his lawyers have crafted the executive order carefully enough.”
Steve was quoted by the Voice of America in On Immigration Reform, U.S. Has Accomplished Next to Nothing in Decades. He said that “immigration reform has always been hard to get through Congress. … Donald Trump wants to make immigration one of his key pillars of his campaign. So he basically killed the efforts in the Senate and the House earlier this year.” According to Steve, there is no possibility of immigration reform legislation until 2025. “And even then, it will depend on who is the president and who controls the House and the Senate.” He said that he does not expect reform any time soon. “We have a broken immigration system. Courts have said that immigration law is as complex as our tax law. And just as it seems impossible for Congress to overhaul our tax system, I don’t think any Congress is likely to be successful in trying to reform all of our broken immigration system. … But there are bits and pieces that Congress could pass as sort of a down payment,” he said.
Steve was quoted by Law360 in Migrant Influx Fuels Push for Right to Immigration Counsel. He said that reforming the immigration system and expanding access to counsel should both happen simultaneously: “We need to do both. We have a broken immigration system, and we do need to overhaul it. But whether we overhaul it or are stuck with the existing system a while longer, we need more immigration lawyers and other navigators to assist immigrants in immigration proceedings.”