Law Offices of Michael D. Baker, Chicago Immigration Lawyers.

05/31/2026

🏛️ One judge. A hundred-plus respondents. One morning.
DOJ has started stacking immigration cases into "mega master" hearings — advancing dockets by years and counting on the people without lawyers to miss the date, then issuing removal orders in absentia. The volume changes nothing about the government's burden. Notice, counsel, and language protections all survive the crowd. ⚖️

New on the blog: how the tactic works, where it breaks, and a motion to continue you can file today.

DOJ "mega master" hearings stack 100+ into one setting to speed deportations. The notice and counsel law that fights back, plus a ready-to-file motion.

05/30/2026

DHS Spent Eight Days Terrorizing the Entire Adjustment of Status Pipeline. Then It Retreated.

In 2024, roughly 820,000 people obtained green cards through adjustment of status. That number tells you the scale of the pipeline — the pending applicants, the future filers, everyone who planned to adjust status inside the United States. Eight days ago, DHS told the entire population to leave the country instead. On May 29, the agency retreated.

That retreat is not good news. The fear has already done its work — and officers are still citing the policy in live interviews right now, with no definition of what the standard actually requires.
The original press release caused applicants to stop filing, reconsider pending cases, and contemplate departure. That damage is done. AILA's executive director said it plainly to the New York Times: it is now harder to figure out what you are even suing for, because DHS has blurred what the policy actually is. Deliberate ambiguity is the litigation shield. When the backlash came, DHS retreated to the memo. That was the play from the start.

Officers are already running the standard in live interviews. The Times reports that immigration attorneys say their clients were asked this week by USCIS officers why they were applying in the U.S. and whether anything prevented them from applying abroad. PM-602-0199 is active in actual adjudications right now — before anyone has defined what it requires.
The walk-back creates a new legal argument. DHS said on May 29 that this authority exists on a case-by-case basis. Any officer who denies an I-485 categorically — without individualized balancing — now contradicts the agency's own public statement. That is a live APA arbitrary-and-capricious argument that practitioners can use today.

The 10-year bar trap has been confirmed from within the agency. Former senior USCIS official Doug Rand: If you leave the country because you were told you had to, and you had unlawful presence, you are barred from returning for 10 years. The Times adds another dimension: nationals of countries where immigrant visa processing has been paused cannot pursue consular processing even if they want to. The trap, in that case, is entirely the government's creation.

Full NYT reporting here:

But details remained scant after officials said last week that, with “extraordinary” exceptions, people seeking permanent residency must first leave the country.

05/23/2026

USCIS just made the green card harder to get — even if you qualify.

A new policy memo (PM-602-0199, issued May 21) says adjustment of status — the way most people get a green card without leaving the country — is now "administrative grace," not a right. Meeting every legal requirement used to put you in line for approval. Now it only gets you to the starting line, and you have to prove that granting your green card is in "the best interest of the United States."

Who this hits hardest: parolees, people who overstayed a visa while waiting for a green card, H-1B and other work-visa holders stuck in long backlogs, and TPS holders with pending applications.

If you have a pending green card case, talk to an immigration attorney before USCIS asks for more evidence. The cases that win under this memo are the ones that prove their value up front. Read the full breakdown:

USCIS Policy Memo PM-602-0199 rewrites adjustment of status as extraordinary discretionary relief. What the new standard means for your I-485 — and the case law USCIS ignored.

05/09/2026

⚖️ The floor just dropped out — three rulings in thirty days have dismantled the deferred action safety net for SIJ and DACA recipients simultaneously.

The BIA ruled in Matter of Santiago-Santiago that DACA alone can't terminate removal proceedings. USCIS issued PM-602-0198, eliminating automatic deferred action for Special Immigrant Juveniles. And the BIA ruled in Matter of C-P-Y- that a green card doesn't reset the serious nonpolitical crime clock.
Diego Hernandez Garcia — Maryville High School graduate, no criminal record, did everything right — is the human face of what these rulings look like in practice. A federal court in Tennessee just denied his habeas petition.

You can find the full analysis, practice advisory, and action steps for practitioners at the link.

The BIA, USCIS, and a federal court each struck a simultaneous blow against deferred action protections for young immigrants in April–May 2026. Santiago-Santiago, C-P-Y-, and PM-602-0198 — analyzed together, with a practice advisory for immigration attorneys.

05/08/2026

Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council, walked into Congress this week and laid out the road forward — and it is a road built for fighters.

Her message: Democrats must take the 2026 midterms, retake both chambers, and pass the reforms this country has owed its immigrant communities for a generation. Real ICE accountability. A modernized immigration code. A genuine pathway to citizenship for the millions of undocumented Americans who pay taxes, raise families, and hold up entire local economies without ever posing the threat the demagogues invented.

Gupta is not asking for sympathy. She is calling for power, properly used — to rebuild trust between immigrant communities and law enforcement, to reunite families the system tore apart, to unleash the economic strength of immigrant neighborhoods, and to crown years of contribution with the legal status that should have come long ago.

AIC moves now. Litigation. Voter drives. Federal challenges. Illinois lawyers ready to wield HB 1312 in court while the bigger fights take shape in Washington.

The future does not belong to the wreckers. It belongs to the builders.

https://medillonthehill.medill.northwestern.edu/2026/02/aic-policy-directors-path-to-shaping-immigration-policy/

American Immigration Council policy director Nayna Gupta discussed her work in immigration, its current policy landscape and the lasting effects of immigration crackdowns under the second Trump administration.

05/01/2026

⚖️ THE COURT JUST SAID NO.
Trump signed a proclamation declaring a border "invasion" and told DHS to deport people without asylum hearings, without screening, without a judge. Just gone.

The D.C. Circuit said the President can block people from entering the United States. He can't set his own rules for removing people who are already here. Congress wrote those rules. They still apply.

Every asylum seeker physically present in the U.S. still has the right to apply. A presidential signature doesn't change that.
🔗 Full breakdown:

04/30/2026

ICE detention has exploded over the last 15 months — and now there's a serious, rebuilt tool to track every facility, every population count, in real time.

DetentionReports.com just launched a major overhaul. New maps. Live population data pulled directly from ICE's own biweekly spreadsheets. Facility contracts. A mobile-friendly interface. Color-coded by size. Sortable by population.

It's been cited by The Guardian, the L.A. Times, PBS, HuffPost — and used by outlets across the political spectrum, which tells you something about how solid the underlying data is.
Attorneys, journalists, advocates, researchers, and family members of detained people use this site every day. If you work in this space, you need to bookmark it.

The detained population is still climbing. Congress may push more enforcement funding through any day now. This is how you keep count.
👉 detentionreports.com

04/28/2026

Miles Taylor served as chief of staff to DHS secretaries under Trump. He visited ICE detention facilities firsthand. Now he's launched G**O ICE — a public alert tool that notifies communities the moment ICE moves to convert a local warehouse into a detention camp, often without any public notice or community input.

The tool at G**Oice.org is simple: enter your zip code, get real-time alerts, and organize early. It's already worked — property owners backed out of ICE deals in New Hampshire, Virginia, and Oklahoma City after community pressure. Where people found out too late, the camps got built.

Trump revoked Taylor's security clearance and launched an investigation into him. He kept going anyway.
G**Oice.org

ICE is rapidly expanding its network of detention centers. We have a playbook to fight back. Sign up to get alerts if a facility is planned near you.

04/24/2026

A lot of people ask me why immigration cases that seem simple turn into nightmares. The honest answer is a 1996 law called IIRIRA that Congress buried in a spending bill and nobody explained to anyone. It is still running. It is still brutal. And most people living under it have no idea it exists. Here is what it says and what it means:

IIRIRA is 28 years old and still runs every removal case in America. What the statute actually says, section by section, for practitioners who need to know it cold.

04/24/2026

In 1790, Madison asked who was "worthy" to immigrate to America. 236 years, a dozen acts of Congress, and we still can't answer him.

In 1790, Madison asked who was "worthy" to immigrate to America. 236 years, a dozen acts of Congress, and we still can't answer him. The Chinese Exclusion Act. The 1924 quotas. IRCA. IIRAIRA.