Immigration News

This update turns from the merits of removability to the procedural posture of the federal court litigation, specifically to the order entered by the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on May 26, 2026. On that date, the court granted Mr. Khalil’s motion to stay its own mandate so that he may remain at liberty while he prepares a petition for a writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court.

On May 14, 2026, the United States Department of Justice announced that Shivam LNU, a twenty-two-year-old Indian national, pleaded guilty in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York to four federal counts arising from a human smuggling operation that moved migrants from India and the United Kingdom across the Canadian border into upstate New York.

On May 21, 2026, the Department of Justice swore in eighty-two new federal immigration judges in Washington, D.C. The department called it the largest class in its history. Seventy-seven of the new judges hold permanent appointments and five are temporary.

On April 27, 2026, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) activated a substantially expanded fingerprint-based background screening protocol that draws on enhanced criminal history record information (“CHRI”) from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Next Generation Identification (“NGI”) system.

On April 28, 2026, a unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit handed down its decision in Barbosa Da Cunha v. Lyons, No. 25-3141 (2d Cir. Apr. 28, 2026), squarely rejecting the Department of Homeland Security’s (“DHS”) sweeping reinterpretation of the mandatory detention provision found at INA § 235(b)(2)(A), 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2)(A).

With the Supreme Court of the United States poised to issue a decision in the coming weeks on the constitutionality of Executive Order 14160, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll released on April 26, 2026, finds that a clear majority of Americans oppose President Donald Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship.

On April 9, 2026, the Board of Immigration Appeals issued its decision in Matter of M-K-, 29 I&N Dec. 556 (BIA 2026), affirming the removability of Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia University graduate student and lead public spokesperson for Columbia University Apartheid Divest (“CUAD”).

On April 13, 2026, Reuters reported that the Trump administration had dismissed nine additional immigration judges over the preceding two weeks, including two Massachusetts-based judges who had ruled against the federal government’s efforts to deport pro-Palestinian university students.

On April 23, 2026, NBC News reported that the Department of Homeland Security is quietly rolling back two of the most aggressive interior enforcement practices that have defined U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations during the second Trump administration: arrests of noncitizens at and outside immigration courthouses, and warrantless arrests effected by entering homes without judicial warrants.