Prosecutorial Discretion

The U.S. government’s effort to prioritize the immigration enforcement system has given foreign nationals the chance to obtain green cards.

The Obama Administration established a working group comprised of officials from the Department of Homeland Security, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), as well as representatives from the U.S. Department of Justice (USDOJ), to identify best practices to focus the apprehension and removal of “high priority” aliens by, in part, limiting the initiation or pursuit of low priority cases.

We are thankful for this effort and find it to be invaluable in our immigration practice.  In essence, all immigration attorneys are technically given carte blanche (within reason) to make any request  for a favorable exercise of  the government’s discretion.

We have experience making prosecutorial discretion arguments to ICE, USCIS, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Chief Counsel (OCC).  These requests resulted in deportation/removal cases being administratively (temporarily) closed or terminated (permanently closed) to allow eligible individuals to apply for relief with USCIS and prior removal orders being reopened to allow the individual to apply for relief.  Prosecutorial Discretion requests also allow Notices to Appear (NTAs) to be issued, reissued, or cancelled and Deferred Action or Parole to be granted, among other discretionary enforcement decisions.