Illinois Expungement and Sealing: What You Can Clear in 2026 Illinois Expungement and Sealing: What You Can Clear in 2026 Illinois criminal records · Updated September 22, 2026 An old arrest can keep showing up long after the case is … Continue reading →
Continue Reading Your Old Arrest Can Finally Disappear: Illinois Expungement and Sealing in 2026

An aggravated felony now closes off a green card by itself. Not through the criminal grounds of inadmissibility Congress actually wrote for felons. Through a definition Congress wrote in 1952 for men who dodged the draft. The Board of Immigration … Continue reading →
Continue Reading The Board Just Turned a 1952 Draft-Dodger Law Into a Permanent, Unwaivable Bar for Aggravated Felons

By Michael D. Baker Ifeanyi Diji showed up to collect his green card and learned he had already lost. On June 3, 2025, he walked into his marriage-based adjustment interview, married to a United States citizen, and found out an … Continue reading →
Continue Reading Matter of Diji: The Board Killed a 25-Year Notice Rule It Didn’t Need To

A protected man, a blank space on a removal notice, and a government working down a list of countries until one says yes. Nabil reports to a federal building on a morning he expects to be routine. He has done … Continue reading →
Continue Reading Protected From Deportation, Deported Anyway

No Interview, No Hearing, No One Watching By Michael D. Baker Immigration Equality v. Mullin, No. 1:26-cv-02921 (D.D.C. filed Aug. 19, 2026). It challenges Affirmative Asylum Referrals Without Interview, 91 Fed. Reg. 47101 (July 28, 2026). On July 28, the … Continue reading →
Continue Reading USCIS Can Now Send Asylum Seekers to Immigration Court Without an Interview

By Michael D. Baker On September 18, 2026, the government widens the public charge test for green cards. USCIS will weigh nearly any government benefit an applicant uses, not just cash welfare. The USCIS policy alert that spells this out … Continue reading →
Continue Reading The Public Charge Net Widens on September 18, 2026

In Matter of A-K-R-, the BIA holds that a single ten-day cushion is the only hard time the statute owes you to find a lawyer. Everything after it is a favor. By Michael D. Baker A detained man from India … Continue reading →
Continue Reading The Board Cuts the Right to Counsel Down to Ten Days

The Board of Immigration Appeals just took away the only clean path a whole category of DACA recipients had left. Matter of Delcarmen-Lara, 29 I&N Dec. 830 (BIA Aug. 13, 2026) (Interim Decision #4233), overrules Matter of Arrabally and Yerrabelly, … Continue reading →
Continue Reading BIA Overrules Arrabally: Advance Parole Travel Is Now a “Departure” — And DACA Recipients Just Lost Their Last Clean Path to a Green Card

By Michael D. Baker Tarpon Springs is a Greek town because sponge divers came from the Dodecanese to work the Gulf a century ago and stayed. New Bedford holds Portuguese and Cape Verdean families because whaling ships took on crews … Continue reading →
Continue Reading Chicago Is a City of Neighborhoods. The Law Drew the Lines

Every institution in American life is built to make voting easier. One institution is built to make a single wrong vote catastrophic. The same person stands in front of both. By Michael D. Baker Ask Claude how to register to … Continue reading →
Continue Reading Registering to Vote Is Easy. For Immigrants, It Can Be a Trap.

By Michael D. Baker For years the rule at the airport was simple. ICE took the people who had already lost — final orders of removal, names already in a system, no appeal left to file. You could tell a … Continue reading →
Continue Reading A Boarding Pass Is Now a Search: The Hidden TSA–ICE Agreement Behind the Airport Arrests

By Michael D. Baker The Migration Policy Institute says the Mexican-born population of the United States is getting smaller. Nationally, that holds. The count peaked above 11.7 million in 2007 and had slipped to roughly 11.1 million by 2024, even … Continue reading →
Continue Reading Chicago’s Mexican-Born Population Grew in 2024. Then Came the Raids.

The Board made unlawful voting a significant adverse factor and held that taking the Fifth can be used against you. Fourteen years between the ballot and the order. Matter of Lopez Rico, 29 I&N Dec. 780 (BIA 2026), Interim Decision … Continue reading →
Continue Reading ⚖️ Matter of Lopez Rico: One Ballot, Counted Twice — and the Fifth Amendment Trap