A Milbank team serving as co-counsel with and representing Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Los Angeles (AAAJ-LA) entered into a favorable settlement with US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) that marks the end to a recent Notice to Appear (NTA) policy that threatened to harm survivors of trafficking and other immigrants seeking humanitarian relief.
Under the Trump Administration in June 2018, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions instructed USCIS to issue NTAs in immigration court to every immigrant whose application for T Visas, U Visas and other humanitarian forms of relief were denied. The new policy was contrary to decades of practice. The new policy had – and appeared to be intended to have -- a chilling effect on immigrants seeking the forms of relief for which they were eligible while also threatening the safety of survivors of trafficking.
In September 2018, the Milbank team and AAAJ-LA submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Department of Justice, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and USCIS seeking information concerning the genesis of the new policy. When the government agencies failed to timely respond to the FOIA requests, Milbank and AAAJ-LA filed an action in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to compel the government to comply with the requests. The litigation before Chief Judge Beryl Howell was heavily contested, and the respective agencies were ultimately ordered to comply with their obligations to produce documents.
After President Biden took office, the new administration withdrew the NTA policy and the Milbank team entered into a settlement agreement with USCIS in which the agency agreed to (1) publish on its website that it had revoked the NTA policy and (2) provide evidence that its adjudicators were not issuing NTAs in light of the policy change. USCIS performed the obligations mandated by the settlement agreement and the parties accordingly stipulated to a dismissal.
The Milbank team was led by partner Aaron Renenger and senior consulting partners David Cohen and Linda Dakin-Grimm, and included associates Julie Wolf, Kavon Khani, Stephen Benz, Sandhya Ramaswamy, Rachel Wolf.
