The previous version of this post did not have the video attached. That post has been deleted and replaced by this one.
When a person in immigration enforcement proceedings turns out to be the parent, spouse, or child of an active duty service member or veteran, there may be a legal pathway for that family to stay together. The tools exist in immigration law. ICE attorneys have the authority to exercise prosecutorial discretion and may join a motion to reopen a case, and immigration judges have the authority to give these cases more careful review.
The problem is that almost none of this happens in time, because cases are moving so quickly and the federal government does not systematically track which people in removal proceedings have a military family connection. By the time anyone identifies the crucial connection, it is often too late.
Sui Chung is the Executive Director of Americans for Immigrant Justice (AIJ), a statewide legal defense organization in Florida celebrating its 30th anniversary. She started her career reviewing Haitian asylum cases at the Board of Immigration Appeals, where she saw how many people facing removal had no attorney arguing for them, and left the federal government to become a removal defense attorney.
AIJ launched a dedicated veterans initiative after their hotlines began reflecting a scenario they were receiving calls about: family members of service members and veterans, people with a pathway to status, were being arrested without anyone pausing to check the military connection. The administration’s approach to review, Sui says, has moved away from case-by-case assessment and toward volume. “Very broad sweeps, and let’s arrest people and figure it out later,” as she put it today in our live conversation with a virtual audience.
Identifying the military connection is the first barrier, and it falls mostly on private attorneys and organizations like AIJ because no federal agency is systematically tracking which people in removal proceedings have family members who serve. Immigration attorneys need to screen every client for military family connections, because those connections may open doors to relief that would otherwise stay closed. The most common case Sui describes involves someone who received a removal order as a child or young adult, built a life in the United States, and went on to have a son or daughter join the military. But the old order is still on the books with no statute of limitations, which means the person could be picked up at any time.
Parole in Place (PIP) is one tool that is available. PIP grants a one-year parole to the immediate family members of active duty service members or veterans, including spouses, parents, sons, and daughters, and may open a pathway to adjustment of status through an immediate relative petition, depending on the individual facts of the case. A joint motion to reopen, filed with the agreement of ICE’s Office of Principal Legal Advisor, can bring an old case back before a judge with fresh options. None of this requires new law, either; it simply requires identification and the willingness to use the law on the books to support veterans and active duty military.
As Sui explains, the legal concept connecting many of these tools is prosecutorial discretion. The current administration has nearly eliminated that discretion from the standard review process, but the legal authority itself remains. Sui connects the principle to a daily experience everyone already understands. “Prosecutorial discretion, we benefit from it every day. Me, everybody. Driving 59 in a 55. We’re benefiting from prosecutorial discretion every single day in our country.” The Office of Principal Legal Advisor has the authority to join a motion to reopen and may decline to oppose relief for a military family member with no criminal history and a potential path to permanent residency. Cases are not reaching those attorneys in time.
This is the work AIJ is doing inside one of the most enforcement-intensive environments in the country. The Miami Field Office now ranks first in the nation for ICE arrests, with a 2,450% increase in the arrest of people with no criminal history. Florida has more 287(g) agreements than any other state. And yet Florida rarely drives the national immigration news cycle. “What is happening in Florida? Seamlessly and quietly, all these arrests are happening. Florida state troopers, it’s something like 1,800 have been deputized. So many of the arrests are happening with very, very basic traffic stops... The numbers have exploded, but we’re not seeing the images that we see in Minnesota or Chicago.” Local law enforcement, state highway patrol, and federal immigration officials are deeply integrated, which means that there are no dramatic operations to film—you have to understand the systems at work.
I make a similar argument in my current series on the immigration court’s mega master hearings. Read the latest installment below:
Mega Masters: The Definition Question (Part 3)
This is the third post in a series on the phenomenon of mega master calendar hearings, a new tactic used by the Trump administration to dramatically expand the number of people ordered deported at once. You may want to read the first two before continuing here. Those essays introduce the topic and explain the context needed to fully make sense of the an…
What AIJ is pushing for, at minimum, is a pause every time a military connection is identified. Sui describes what that should look like in practice. “If one of our active duty or veteran members or one of their family members is in the process of ICE enforcement, I feel like the sirens have to go off, the flags have to be raised, and everybody has to come to a screeching halt and say, we’re going to stop and look at this carefully, we’re going to listen, and we’re going to process in a civilized and reasonable manner.” The legal authority to do this already exists—the question is whether the people who hold it will use it to do the right thing.
Sui’s closing connects AIJ’s 30th anniversary to the country’s 250th, and to the question of what that history demands of us now. “The immigration story is an American story, and for us to forget that, I think that we’ve really abandoned what this country is about.”
My thanks to Sui Chung and to everyone who joined us live. The recording is available above.
Five Things You Can Do Right Now
Call AIJ’s RAISE hotline if you or someone you know is in an active enforcement situation. This is AIJ’s emergency line for people who have been approached by ICE but have not yet been placed in detention: 1-888-600-5762. Do not wait until after detention.
Call AIJ’s detention hotline if a family member is already detained. AIJ is the only free legal resource for detained immigrants in Florida. The number is 786-454-8554. They received over 20,000 calls last year and are still taking them.
Schedule a consultation if you want to understand your options before an enforcement situation develops.Call AIJ’s family defense line at 305-573-1106, extension 8008, or visit aijustice.org/help. AIJ prioritizes military families, veterans, active duty service members, children, and victims of crime.
Use the federal military helpline. USCIS operates a line specifically for members of the military and their families: 877-247-4645 (877-CIS-4-MIL). Use it before any ICE check-in or enforcement contact if your household has a military connection, and report every interaction so the agency has to document what it is doing to this population.
Contact your member of Congress about Senator Duckworth’s veterans protection package. Ask your representative and senators whether they support the Veterans Visa and Protection Act, the HOPE Act, and the Immigrant Veterans Eligibility Tracking System Act. Find your representative at house.gov and your senators at senate.gov.
Do you prefer to watch or listen to these events?
In the spirit of constant improvement, I would like to understand more about how you prefer to engage with these conversations. It helps me understand how and where I publish these conversations. Please fill out the simple survey below.
Subscribe today to join the next conversation with fellow geographer and photographer Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin of Waypoints on what it’s like to report on migration from the Global South and telling visual stories in places overlooked by the mainstream media. Official announcement out soon!
