Immigrant Defenders Law Center et al. v. Wolf – Innovation Law Lab

Since January 2019, the Trump Administration has caught over 60,000 individuals looking for asylum in deadly conditions in Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols– also referred to as Remain in Mexico. These individuals suffered harm in their home countries, survived traumatic journeys, and looked for defense in the United States, just to be sent out back to dangerous Mexican border towns to await migration court hearings that may never occur.

The Protocols have worked to deport almost every private subjected to them. Their callous efficiency in this regard– as evidenced by the 98 percent deportation rate for afflicted people over twenty months– follows their Orwellian name.

To achieve their everyone-is-deported objective, the Trump Administration has adopted a multi-pronged method. It requires asylum seekers to live forever under perilous conditions in Mexico and prevents them from being able to fulfill basic human requirements. Second, the Protocols has obstructed legal representation for almost 93 percent of impacted people. Third, the Procedures efficiently boundaries asylum-seekers to extreme risk zones, where they are vulnerable to attack, robbery, rape, kidnapping, and other damage at the hands of cartels, gang members, and Mexican authorities, and denies them of access to their basic needs.

On July 17, 2020, MPP hearings were suspended forever, leaving asylum-seekers caught in Mexico.

In February 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit verified a preliminary injunction setting aside the Procedures because they are statutorily unapproved. Innovation Law Lab v. Wolf, 951 F. 3d 1073, 1084 (9th Cir. 2020). The U.S. Supreme Court initially stayed the injunction pending the disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari, 140 S. Ct. 1564 (2020 ), which was later on approved,– S. Ct.– (Oct. 19, 2020). The stay remains in place pending review of the certiorari petition by the Supreme Court. In the meantime, individuals continue to have a hard time to survive in the hope that the U.S. government may one day restore their right to seek defense in the United States.

Through this suit, advocates look for to enjoin the Protocols and begin the restoration of asylum law.

Plaintiffs in the case are Immigrant Protectors Law Center and Jewish Family Service of San Diego, companies offering representation to asylum-seekers, and a number of brave people proceeding under pseudonym. Counsel for Plaintiffs are Development Law Lab, Southern Poverty Law Center, National Migration Job of the National Lawyers Guild, along with pro bono partner, Arnold & & Porter.