Immigration Law: In the News

6/12/17 US Supreme Court opinion stating that there can be no discrimination between unwed mothers and unwed fathers in granting citizenship to the child.

Sections 1225(b), 1226(a) and 1226(c) of Title 8 of the U.S. Code do not give detained aliens the right to periodic bond hearings during the course of their detention; the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit misapplied the canon of constitutional avoidance in holding otherwise.

1) A Bivens remedy is not available when there are "special factors counselling hesitation in the absence of affirmative action by Congress," and the court recently clarified in Ziglar v. Abbasi what constitutes a special factor counselling hesitation; the court of appeals should consider how the reasoning and analysis in Ziglar bear on the question whether the parents of a victim shot by a U.S. Border Patrol agent may recover damages for his death; (2) It would be imprudent for the Supreme Court to decide Jesus Hernandez’s Fourth Amendment claim when, in light of the intervening guidance provided in Abbasi, doing so may be unnecessary to resolve this particular case; and (3) with respect to Hernandez’s Fifth Amendment claim, because it is undisputed that the victim's nationality and the extent of his ties to the United States were unknown to the agent at the time of the shooting, the en banc court of appeals erred in granting qualified immunity based on those facts.