Hi, I'm Hilary Walsh, a serial entrepreneur, award-winning immigration lawyer, law professor, TEDx speaker and raving Phoenix Suns fan. Over the past decade, I've helped thousands of immigrants live free in the United States. I'm talking work permits, social security numbers, green cards, their citizenship, VAWA, TV visa, U visa, and lots of successful appeals. Here's the thing, immigration law is super complicated and legal advice, well, it can be pretty expensive.
So I created the immigration law made easy podcast to share my 10 plus years of experience with you for free. So if you're looking for tried and true, no BS, step-by-step strategies and tips on how to win your immigration case and live truly free in the United States, you're in the right place, my friend. Let's get started. The idea of being deported is terrifying.
Let's make sure that through these three tips, we find ways to help you prevent your deportation or your family member's deportation. I'm Hilary Walsh, I'm an immigration attorney with over 10 years of experience helping people stay in the United States. And a lot of my clients have gotten to the very bitter end, called me and said, Hilary, I need help. Please can you make sure that tomorrow I'm not deported.
And I have never had a client go into an ICE check-in and actually be taken into custody and deported. It has never happened and I certainly don't want for it to start with you today. So if you need help after listening to this, please call me at New Frontier Immigration Law. This is a video specific for people, this audio is specific for people who are here in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
So if you're in Arizona or Nevada, California, Washington State, Oregon, California, I think I already said California and Hawaii, those are the states that are really going to be this advice and my experience and the tips I'm going to share with you about how I stop deportations all the time. These are really because I practice in the Ninth Circuit and each circuit, for example, if you're in Texas and you're in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the rules are going to be different for you.
Maybe not vastly different, but they're going to be different enough where I don't know that this advice is really applicable for you there. If you want to have a private consultation with my team, you can definitely reach out to me at New Frontier Immigration Law to see if I can help stop your deportation even if you're outside of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. So today what we're going to talk about are three ways to stop your removal.
This assumes, of course, that you have been ordered removed. So if you're just driving around and you're afraid the ICE is going to come pick you up, that you get an offender bender and they're going to realize you're not here without permission, unless you've been previously deported before, pretty much in every single state in the United States, you're going to be allowed to go see an immigration judge. So I want you to know that your existence doesn't mean that someone can just deport you.
You're like, oh, you don't have permission to be here, you're getting deported right now. Instead, most likely, you would be given what's called a notice to appear and you would be taken to immigration court or rather you would be told when you need to go to immigration court. You might be taken into immigration custody, but the bottom line is that you would have the ability to fight your case. You would have the ability to show that you have legal reasons for being able to stay here.
This video, by contrast, this information today is specific for you if you've already been told, okay, you have presented your case, you want to stay here in the United States, but you've been told no, you don't get to stay by an immigration judge. So if you haven't been told no by immigration judge yet and you are about to be deported, please reach out to me right away because something is wrong in your situation and we can quickly fix that on your behalf, okay?
But if you've been told no, let's start with our first tip on stopping removal, stopping your deportation. The first tip is if you've been told, you know, no, you cannot stay in the United States, you're going to be deported by an immigration judge. What I want to say is the majority of people who go to immigration court are told no that they don't get to stay.
But millions of people every year are ordered removed and they don't have to leave and it's because they find lawyers like me who help them show that the immigration judge made a mistake and they appeal.
And so that's what I would urge you, that's your number one tip is if you've been ordered removed or even granted voluntary departure, you still have a right to appeal and it doesn't disrupt whether or not you get to keep your voluntary departure, you can appeal to what's called the Board of Immigration Appeals. We call that an immigration law, we call them the BIA, the Board of Immigration Appeals, okay?
So you have 30 days from the day that the judge issues his or her decision to when you have to file what's called a notice of appeal. You can find the notice of appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals, you can find this form. You can find it in a three page, four page form, it's very straightforward to fill out. Just Google EOIR, notice of appeal. And you're going to get a form, it's a PDF, you can fill it out.
It's important when you're filling it out to explain all the mistakes that the immigration judge made and to also be sure to check the box that says you're going to submit a brief in support of your appeal. You don't need to ask for oral argument. I have argued at the Board of Immigration Appeals, but it wasn't even like the cases they select are about four a year. They're probably not going to pick your case even if you say you want oral argument.
And in fact, the case that I argued, they didn't even ask for oral argument. So the Board of Immigration Appeals is going to do what they want with oral argument whether or not you want it. So I would just say no on that if I were you, okay?
But you'll mail that in and as soon as the court clerk, the kind of receptionist for the court at the Board of Immigration Appeals in Virginia, as soon as he or she receives that and inputs your information into the system, you immediately have a stay of removal. What is a stay of removal? It means that the government cannot, they have to push pause. They cannot deport you. A stay means everybody freeze. We can't move forward with this deportation.
And I've had clients who, they were going to be deported if we didn't get the Notice of Appeal filed on time. And it came down to the wire and thank God it all worked out because they hired me very, very late. Like as in the next day, the person was slated to be deported. So we had a same day filing service in Falls Church, Virginia, hand carry the Notice of Appeal with the filing fee. There's like $110 filing fee with it.
Hand carry it and they watched this woman input the case information in and then about five minutes later after we, after we had that hand delivered in Falls Church, Virginia at the Board of Immigration Appeals, we got a call from the deportation officer that said a stay has now been put on your client. We cannot deport him. We've released him. He's going to be going home today. It happens that fast.
So if something is really wrong in your situation, you got a, you know, you're facing imminent removal. This is a great opportunity for you. You absolutely should file an appeal. Even if the immigration judge has granted you voluntary departure, I would still appeal because it gives you time to get your affairs in order. You can always withdraw the appeal if you want, but while you're getting everything sorted out, you have a stay of removal.
Now the important thing on this tip is it only works if you file the Notice of Appeal, that form I said you can go Google and get the form to download it and send it in. It only works if the court clerk receives it within 30 days of when the decision was issued. Okay. If the judge hands you the decision on May 1st and the court clerk in Virginia at the Board of Immigration Appeals receives your Notice of Appeal on June 1st, you are a day too late and they may not accept it.
Okay. They have the discretion. They can make the decision about whether or not to accept your late appeal and that can be a really big problem for you down the road. So just do whatever you can to make sure to get it filed within 30 days. Now if you've missed that 30 days and let's say that an immigration judge ordered you remove like five years ago and you never appealed it, you didn't do anything.
The convert and now you're facing removal and you've got a letter called a bag and baggage letter saying bring your stuff and show up at such and such date for your removal from the United States. So I would immediately look at in your situation is can I file a motion to reopen and show the immigration judge that something has changed materially in the past five years. That's for a separate, that's a whole separate conversation. So we're not going to get into that today.
But what I want to say is for those who are listening and they're like, okay, so you're telling me that if I didn't file it within 30 days, this tip doesn't apply to me. What I'm saying is, yeah, this tip may not apply to you, but not all hope is lost. Reach out, maybe we can help you with probably what would be a motion to reopen or even a motion to reissue the decision to restart your 30 days. That's also a possibility. Okay, there's tip number one.
Tip number two is if you filed an appeal, immigration judge denied you said you've got to go. You appeal to the board of immigration appeals and they deny you. And again, just like with most people getting denied at immigration judge level, most people are also denied at the board of immigration appeals level. So don't give up hope. Don't feel like, wow, my case must really suck. Know my friend, it's just that the immigration court system is very strict. The rules are very difficult.
Proving your case is very challenging. But because judges are humans, the judges at the immigration judge level often will make mistakes that we can appeal. And at the board of immigration appeals, those officers also make mistakes. And so we can also appeal those mistakes to the next level. And that's the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The document that you want to file within, again, 30 days of the board of immigration appeals decision is called a petition for review.
This is to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. And as soon as that petition for review is filed, boom, as soon as it's input into the system, you have an automatic stay of removal. So just like how we were talking about with the board of immigration appeals, as soon as the court clerk puts your info in on an appeal, you get a stay. Your deportation cannot happen. Can't touch this kind of a moment. The same thing happens with the Ninth Circuit case.
However, in your petition for review, you have to ask for the stay. I've seen a lot of rookie practitioners, all of us, it's always been our first time at some point where we file our first petition for review and they don't ask for a stay of removal. And so what I'm gifting you is in our show notes, I'm going to include a generic, no client name, my firm name is not on it, but I'm gifting you a sample petition for review that we use in my firm.
It's less than three pages long and we use really big font so that you can see exactly what you need to say, you have to fill in the date information for when the board issued your decision and where the court was, where the immigration court was. But you'll see that it's just basically a sentence. We also ask for a temporary stay of removal. And boom, you're going to have the case open and you're going to have a stay of removal. It's automatic in the Ninth Circuit.
I will contrast this with saying, if you file the same document in Texas with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, there is no automatic stay of removal there.
They can deport you and I have had a client deported from the Fifth Circuit while his case, he was an Indian man, detained, I feel like I can't remember the exact place where he was detained, but he was detained, his petition for review was still pending, his stay of removal was still pending, no judge had made a decision on it and he was deported right out from under my nose. So in the Ninth Circuit, that sort of thing never would have happened.
And I really stress that these tips are helpful, but I'm a Ninth Circuit practitioner for a reason and it's because we can actually get a lot of leverage and really help you win out here in the Ninth Circuit. So you file your petition for review, you get a stay of removal, it's amazing.
Now what if the Board of Immigration Appeals, this is our tip number three by the way, tip number one, file an appeal, notice of appeal within 30 days, tip number two, that's from the immigration judge, tip number two is file a petition for review from the Board of Immigration Appeals to the Circuit Court. A lot of crazy words here, but I promise this is doable. Don't give up on yourself here.
Tip number three is, okay, my case, I appealed it to the Board of Immigration Appeals or I filed a motion to reopen, but I'm about to get deported. What do I do? My motion to reopen hasn't been adjudicated in particular. This is like, this happens a lot. It takes like two years for the Board of Immigration Appeals to make a decision on motions to reopen that's pending before it because there's so many motions to reopen pending that there's a long line.
The problem is when ICE says you need to show up for your removal on May 31st and the Board of Immigration Appeals is just sitting on your motion to reopen. For example, let me use a specific case that I had. I had a client, he entered the country, he was seeking asylum. He came to the border in Arizona, turned himself in and said, I'm here to seek asylum. He was taken to the detention center in Eloi, Arizona.
He lost his case, but we were able to file an appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals and then he paid a bond and got out of the detention center. All good. Fast forward a couple of years and the Board of Immigration Appeals denies his case. Meanwhile, however, he gets married to a US citizen who files a petition and now this gentleman who was ordered removed is now eligible for a green card. We file a motion to reopen the case.
Meanwhile, ICE is saying this guy needs to show up because we're going to deport him. Whoa, big problem because he's clearly eligible to get his green card. It's just I have to go through the court process to help him. But ICE was not caring at all. I was going to say something else. ICE was not giving any you-know-what. They were saying this guy needs to show up. If he doesn't show up, we're going to take his bond money back and we could come to his home and take him directly from his home.
So very stressful situation. So I did tip number three, which is to file a preemptive petition for review. Immigration attorneys, most immigration attorneys have never heard of this, but it is a really cool trick that I have up my sleeve. It is totally on the up and up. Anybody can do it. It's not just me. But I filed a preemptive petition for review basically saying that the Board of Immigration Appeals is likely to deny this motion to reopen and they're going to do it on an erroneous basis.
Therefore, I'm filing this petition for review before they've actually denied it in order to prevent further irreparable harm to my client, which would be his removal from the country that he's eligible for a green card in. So that's your tip number three is a preemptive petition for review. I don't think this works that I'm aware of only the Ninth Circuit allows for preemptive petition for review. And even then it's not very long lived.
Like that case, I was able to prevent my client's removal immediately, which was amazing. And then that case ended up getting closed about eight weeks later because the Board of Immigration Appeals still hadn't issued a decision. Okay. So number one, if the IJ, the immigration judge has denied you, file a notice of appeal. That's going to right away, get you some relief to be able to sleep at night.
If you have missed the 30 day window, you should call me because maybe we can file a motion to reissue or a motion to reopen. Tip number two is if the Board of Immigration Appeals denied your case, act fast because you've got less than 30 days.
You got basically exactly 30 days to get your petition for review filed, which here in the Ninth Circuit is going to help you have a stay of removal, a pause on your deportation, write as soon as that case is open, which is going to help you sleep really good at night. Third, even if the Board of Immigration, maybe you have a motion to reopen pending and the Board of Immigration Appeals hasn't adjudicated your motion to reopen yet, they haven't made a decision.
You can file a preemptive petition for review. And that is a really amazing option for people that I don't think nearly enough people know about. Last but not least, I'm going to give you a bonus tip before we go today is you should look into asking ICE for a stay. And I-246 is the form, just like 2468. It's I-246. It also has $110 filing fee. But what you do is you explain all the reasons that ICE shouldn't deport you right now.
And the best reason is to show that you have another form of relief available to you, that you're actively pursuing. So you never know whether ICE is going to grant it or not. But if they do, that means you've got a final order of removal and they're probably going to give you what's called an order of supervision. And we can then use that in many cases to file for a work permit for you, which will allow you to have a driver's license.
So if you're already in the system and you're already kind of going through some stressful time, reach out because there are so many different options available to you. Do not give up hope. I mean, I have had people pulled off of planes when I have filed petitions for review and stopped their removal. I wasn't able to help my gentleman in India because that it just doesn't work like that in Texas, unfortunately.
But if you're out here in Arizona or California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, I'm sure I'm missing Hawaii and other state. If you're out here, the ninth circuit is such a great circuit to be in and you have a lot of options available. If this has been helpful, I really hope that you'll share it with a friend and I hope you have a really wonderful day. My friend, I'm so glad you joined me today.
If you have a friend or family member who may need some immigration law guidance or even just day-to-day encouragement, please send them a text or email or a DM on social media and say, hey, I think this podcast is going to help you. I sure wish someone had given me the tips I'm sharing here years and years ago when I was starting out as an immigration lawyer. Thank you so much for being here. I'll see you next week. Same time, same place. Adios.