In the American legal system, landmark court cases can help foreigners, including those with irregular status, avoid deportation and uphold their individual rights. Specific decisions, opinions, and rulings can redefine eligibility criteria or establish new avenues for relief, allowing immigration law firms to challenge removal proceedings and ensure their clients retain specific rights and protections. By reviewing and citing landmark cases, lawyers can bolster strategies that can help their clients remain in the country while pursuing benefits from United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.
What Is Common Law in the United States?
Common law refers to the legal compendium created by judges through written court opinions. Unlike civil law, which focuses on statutory and legislative intent, common law follows the stare decisis principle of legal precedents. Court decisions refine and adapt legal principles pertaining to jurisdictional statutes. In other words, judges have inherent powers to interpret laws and create future outcomes through decisions that become precedents for future cases, including those litigated before the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR).
What Are Immigration Landmark Cases?
Landmark cases are judicial decisions that fundamentally reshape how the law should be interpreted and enforced. In American legal practice, landmark cases alter the interpretation of existing laws, rules, procedures, and orders. The landmark decisions that specifically apply to EOIR cases originate from federal circuits, appellate venues, and the Supreme Court. Depending on their legal circumstances, landmark cases can define constitutional protections, clarify statutory language, and constrain executive branch discretion in deportation and asylum proceedings.
How Do Immigration Law Firms Use Landmark Cases?
Citing landmark cases to keep clients in the U.S. is a strategy often applied by immigration attorneys. After evaluating the circumstances that triggered a Notice to Appear, an immigration law firm can build a case invoking adequate landmark cases to contest the grounds for deportation. For example, an attorney can argue that a client’s prior criminal conviction doesn’t legally qualify as an “aggravated felony” or a “crime involving moral turpitude” under federal precedents. To bolster this argument, the lawyer can cite Moncrieffe v. Holder, 569 U.S. 184, (2013), a case featuring a Jamaican immigrant arrested for possessing 1.3 grams of cannabis. Moncrieffe entered a guilty plea for an offense that treated simple possession as an intent to distribute in Georgia. However, the Supreme Court determined that state prosecutors never investigated the defendant for the alleged commercial dealing, thus invalidating the moral turpitude angle for immigration.
Which Landmark Cases Are Often Cited in Deportation Proceedings?
Wilkinson v. Garland, 601 U.S. (2024) allows federal appeals courts to review immigration court decisions that didn’t consider hardship situations. INS v. Lopez-Mendoza, 468 U.S. 1032 (1984) reversed a deportation order because agents violated a Mexican immigrant’s Fourth Amendment rights by forcing him to confess to an illegal entry. Trump v. Barbara, 609 U.S. (2026) prohibits the removal of a child born in the U.S. to undocumented migrants. If you’re an immigrant in Southern California facing deportation proceedings, seek immediate help from an experienced immigration lawyer in San Diego.
If you need legal help because your rights as an immigrant have been violated, contact the dedicated attorneys at KS Visa Law. We’re among the best immigration lawyers in San Diego, and you can count on us to stand up for your rights. Call us to schedule an appointment with one of our lawyers today.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do landmark cases apply only to deportation?
+
No, they can be cited to defend constitutional rights applicable to all individuals.
When do immigration law firms cite landmark decisions?
+
Typically in court filings. However, they can cite them in written submissions to USCIS adjudicators, thus reminding them that common law can apply to all immigration proceedings.
Is the Supreme Court the only venue issuing landmark opinions?
+
No, the stare decisis principle applies to all federal courts.
Can immigration law firms take deportations to the Supreme Court?
+
Yes. Wilkinson v. Garland allows hardship cases rejected by the Board of Immigration Appeals to be reviewed by higher courts.
