Congress Archives - Page 2 of 4

The Obama Administration’s Border Disaster

June 30, 2014

Media reports over the weekend indicate that the Obama administration is reacting in the worst way possible to the influx of unaccompanied minors along the Southwest Border. As the prospect of comprehensive immigration reform dies...

Cancellation Victory (well, sort of)

April 23, 2014

A couple of months ago, I got to enjoy my fifteen minutes of fame when my client became the poster child for problems caused for immigrants in immigration court by the government shutdown. I wrote...

Nine Ways Obama Could Make Immigration Law Better Without Bothering to Wake Congress

March 13, 2014

The House of Representatives passed the Enforce Act yesterday. This piece of legislation, which is never going to become law, provides a cause of action to Members of Congress to sue the President for failure...

Strong Presidents are Great Presidents

February 17, 2014

On this President's Day, we wish to add a historical perspective to the robust exercise of executive authority. The President routinely tells audiences that he does not have the power to act unilaterally on immigration...

Does the President Have the Power to Stop All/Most Removals?

November 26, 2013

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXud2p4fQfg&w=420&h=315] As official Washington administers last rites to immigration reform for 2013 only to have it pop up again with a barely detectable pulse, undocumented immigrants and their allies continue to press the President to...

Congratulations to the National Center for Transgender Equality: Let’s Hope ENDA Does Better than CIR!

November 13, 2013

Last night, Jen Cook and I went to the National Council for Transgender Equality's (NCTE) 10th Anniversary event. The evening was themed "Our Moment," reflecting the organization's intention to build upon the successes of the...

A New Fiscal Year and the Same Old Dysfunction

October 1, 2013

The air is noticeably crisper, the baseball playoffs have begun, I have started to see decorative gourds, but the traffic got a whole lot lighter today. It is October 1, 2013, the first day of...

Meet Jim Mowrer, Running Against Steve King of Iowa

August 23, 2013

On Tuesday, August 20, approximately fifty people gathered at Benach Collopy’s offices in Washington, DC to meet and support a 27 year old candidate for Congress from the 4th District of Iowa. Jim Mowrer, born...

CIS Bureaucrats Union Joins ICE Bureaucrats Union in Opposing Immigration Reform

May 23, 2013

The day before the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced the most significant piece of immigration legislation since 1996, the "President of the National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council, the union representing 12,000 United States Citizenship &...

From the Committee to the Senate Floor: The Immigration Bill Survives!

May 22, 2013

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hB4OwHbhsg] Yesterday, by a vote of 13-5, the United States Senate Judiciary Committee passed S. 744, the immigration reform bill. Three Republicans (Lindsey Graham (SC), Jeff Flake (AZ) and Orrin Hatch (UT)) joined...

What’s Happening with the Immigration Bill? What is a mark-up??

May 8, 2013

It has now been a couple of weeks since the Gang of Eight's immigration bill was introduced. We provided a brief rundown of its main points and we give it, overall, good grades. It certainly...

The April 10 Immigrant Rights Rally by Liana Montecinos

April 23, 2013

“¡Obama escucha, seguimos en la lucha!” This shouting was heard from downtown on 14th street as Sandra, Mariela, and I made posters to join thousands of people at the immigration rally held in front...

Things are about to get really interesting

April 10, 2013

As Washington, DC has seemed to jump from winter to summer, the politics of immigration reform are heating up. For the rest of this week, the Capital will be inundated with activists, lawyers, politicians and...

An Open Letter to Rep. Spencer Bachus

March 21, 2013

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgscE9lFZN4&w=560&h=315] Dear Congressman Bachus, Thank you very much for speaking out about the overuse of detention by Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) in civil proceedings to determine the removability of individuals in the U.S. ...

The Leaked White House Immigration Bill: the Legalization Component

February 20, 2013

It took only three years longer than promised—and a leak that may or may not have been intentional—but the White House has finally produced a legislative proposal to fix the immigration system. Dubbed the Comprehensive...