Case Law

A military appeals court upheld a 10-year prison sentence for a U.S. Naval Academy midshipman convicted of sexual assault and burglary against fellow midshipmen. The Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals issued its ruling in September 2026, rejecting all five defense arguments. For immigrants in or connected to the military, a court-martial conviction can carry serious immigration consequences.

A federal contractor spent years trying to get the Army to hand over records about him — and a federal court shut the case down in September 2026. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the Army had done enough, because the man refused to narrow his sweeping 29-category request. For immigrants who rely on FOIA requests to build their legal cases, the ruling is a clear warning about how not to ask for your own records.

A Vietnamese investor spent years building a paper trail to prove his $500,000 EB-5 investment was legitimate — and a federal court still upheld USCIS's denial of his green card application. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in September 2026 in Tran v. Mayorkas that the agency acted lawfully, setting a clear warning for any foreign investor who uses a third-party intermediary to move money into the United States.

Nazanin Jahani, an Iranian-born citizen of Norway, waited months for a decision on her immigrant visa after the U.S. consulate refused it and placed it in "administrative processing." She sued the State Department to force action. In September 2026, a federal judge in Washington, D.C. dismissed her case — ruling that courts have no power to compel the government to act once a visa has been refused under this process.

You could be deported to a country you have never lived in — and under a new Supreme Court order, the government does not have to let you explain why you fear going there. On September 23, 2026, the Supreme Court's six-justice conservative majority allowed the Trump administration to resume third-country deportations without giving immigrants a chance to claim fear of torture or persecution. The ruling takes effect immediately while the Court prepares to hear full arguments in December.

A federal court in Washington, D.C. dismissed an Indian investor's lawsuit against USCIS in September 2026 after her EB-5 green card petition sat unanswered for more than 19 months. The court ruled it has no power to force USCIS to speed up the review — because Congress gave the agency full discretion over how and when to process these petitions. If you are waiting on an EB-5 application, you may have fewer legal options than you thought.

Luis Dulce pleaded guilty to attempted assault in New York and received a nine-month jail sentence. He later argued his plea was invalid — but in September 2026, the Appellate Division, First Department, upheld the conviction, finding he had consulted with his attorney about immigration consequences before entering the plea. The ruling is a warning: once you plead guilty with legal counsel present, challenging that plea later is very hard.

A federal court in Washington, DC refused in September 2026 to dismiss a lawsuit by David Amadioha, a man born in Atlanta who has been denied a US passport twice by American embassies abroad because his family changed their surname after moving to Nigeria. The US District Court ruled his APA and due process claims can proceed against Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The decision may open a federal court path for other US-born citizens abroad whose passport applications were denied over name or document mismatches.

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a duress defense in a federal illegal reentry case on September 28, 2026, ruling that a man who claimed a drug cartel was trying to kill him still could not use that threat to justify staying in the US unlawfully. The court found he had failed to meet nearly every legal requirement for duress. The decision makes clear just how narrow this defense is — and what immigrants in removal proceedings need to understand about their legal options.

The Justice Department launched the ANGEL Grant Program in September 2026, directing federal funds to local and tribal police to arrest and detain undocumented immigrants with criminal records. The program explicitly targets jurisdictions that have resisted immigration enforcement — and it means local officers, not just ICE, may now be funded to pursue deportation cases. For immigrants with any prior contact with law enforcement, the risk landscape just shifted.

The full Second Circuit denied rehearing in Barbosa da Cunha v. Freden on September 25, 2026, locking in a ruling that ICE cannot indefinitely detain most immigrants inside the US without a bond hearing. The decision, now backed by nine federal circuits, directly affects anyone held in ICE detention in New York, Connecticut, or Vermont — and signals how courts across the country are reading the law.

Genci Voja invested $500,000 in a US business and spent years trying to get an EB-5 investor green card. USCIS denied his application because he could not prove his money came from a lawful source — and in September 2026, a federal court agreed. The ruling is a sharp reminder that for EB-5 applicants, an airtight paper trail is not optional.

What if you believe your immigration court hearing was unfair — can you reopen your case? The Board of Immigration Appeals answered that question directly in September 2026, ruling against a Syrian-born Algerian citizen who argued that judge recusals proved improper influence over his removal proceedings. The BIA found his due process claim entirely speculative, and the decision sets a high bar for anyone trying to reopen a case on similar grounds.

A federal judge in Washington, DC dismissed a lawsuit filed by 42 Diversity Visa applicants on September 24, 2026, ruling they cannot get separate court orders while a larger class-action case already covers them. The State Department and USCIS had indefinitely paused all Diversity Visa processing after a DV recipient allegedly committed a mass shooting at Brown University. With the fiscal year ending September 30, thousands of DV selectees risk losing their visa eligibility entirely.

What happens when police skip basic steps to find a witness — and the prosecution uses her recorded words instead? In September 2026, Oregon's Court of Appeals answered that question by reversing a domestic assault conviction against Mohammad Shafi Zieg, an Afghan immigrant. The court found that officers never exhausted all reasonable measures to serve the victim with a subpoena before declaring her "unavailable" and playing her 911 call to the jury.