Immigrant Defense Project
The Immigrant Defense Project (IDP) was founded 20 years ago to combat an emerging human rights crisis: the targeting of immigrants for mass imprisonment and deportation. As this crisis has continued to escalate, IDP has remained steadfast in fighting for fairness and justice for all immigrants caught at the intersection of the racially biased U.S. criminal and immigration systems. IDP fights to end the current era of unprecedented mass criminalization, detention and deportation through a multi-pronged strategy including advocacy, litigation, legal advice and training, community defense, grassroots alliances, and strategic communications.
THE CASE
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In P-V- v. Garland, No. 21-6380 (2d Cir.), and A-J- v. Garland, No. 21-631 (9th Cir.), IDP will challenge federal administrative precedents that discriminate against noncitizens by excluding them from the full benefits of criminal justice reform.
Through a series of administrative opinions issued by the Board of Immigration Appeals and Office of the Attorney General starting in 1999, the federal government has exceeded its statutory authority by declining to recognize criminal justice reform and post-conviction relief laws in federal immigration proceedings. As reflected through the government’s own publicly released data, these decisions are applied almost exclusively against noncitizens who are people of color. The Trump Administration accelerated these ill effects by adding new decisions and standards that discriminate against noncitizens whose convictions and sentences have been eliminated or modified by state criminal procedure laws. Before the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second and Ninth Circuits, IDP is standing up to challenge these acts of discrimination that contribute to mass deportations, family separation, and abuse of the criminal legal and immigration systems against communities of color. In P-V- v. Garland, IDP is before the Second Circuit challenging the BIA’s refusal to give full effect to the One Day to Protect New Yorkers Act, a groundbreaking misdemeanor sentencing reform law. The BIA has relied on a precedent issued under former AG Sessions’s leadership to order the deportation of a green card holder from New York who was resentenced under the law. In A-J- v. Garland, IDP is before the Ninth Circuit challenging a rule begun in 1999 and exacerbated by former AG Barr that creates an often unachievable standard for when a vacated, expunged, or otherwise eliminated conviction may still be regarded as a conviction under immigration law. By participating in coordinated litigation teams and marshaling principles of administrative, constitutional, and anti-discrimination law, IDP will fight the destructive impacts of race and national origin bias in the criminal and immigration systems in the United States.
