For Long Delays, Mandamus Works.

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I’ve known this for years because we won one of the first visa-delay cases – ever.  The year was 2005, 4 years after 9/11, which resulted in the creation of a new government security bureaucracy. This bureaucracy has grown exponentially over the years – with more and more agencies and personnel involved in the decision-making process, triggering more and more delays. The recent pandemic made the situation much, much worse – leading to colossal delays in adjudicating petitions and visas.  As a result, the time has never been more ripe than now for the filing of mandamus lawsuits. The last month alone provides testament.  In a B-1 visitor visa case that had been pending under Section 221(g) for more than 5 years, we filed suit against the Department of State.  Within 3 ½ months of the filing of the lawsuit, our client was issued a visa. In an I-829 EB-5…

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Challenging Visa Denials and Revocations after an Interpol Red Notice or a Kangaroo Court Conviction

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Interpol conjures up images of a worldwide police tracking down “bad guys” on the run from home country authorities.  But Interpol is not a law enforcement agency: it does not issue warrants and does not have the authority to make arrests.  While the overwhelming majority of Interpol’s information-sharing capacity is dedicated to tracking down true “bad guys”, many home country governments abuse it. They manipulate Interpol into doing their dirty work, making bogus allegations to locate dissidents, political activists, and whistleblowers. As a result, Interpol issues Red Notices based on bare allegations made by a government – for example, fraud – not evidence, with a view to extraditing that person back to that country. Yet consular, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials erroneously use the Red Notice as shorthand to deny visas, detain individuals at the border, and arrest them inside the United States. It is…

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