Law Offices of Michael D. Baker, Chicago Immigration Lawyers.

08/15/2026

A young man from India stood in immigration Court alone. No lawyer. No money. He told the judge he was afraid to go home. The judge gave him a few weeks to find help, then ordered him deported.

Last week the Board of Immigration Appeals said the judge did nothing wrong.

That decision matters to every young immigrant in this country right now.

The Court owes you one thing: at least 10 days between your first paperwork and your first hearing. That is the whole guarantee to find a lawyer. After that, more time is up to the judge. The old rule said judges must give you a real chance to find a lawyer. The Board just erased it.

So if you are in proceedings, or your friend is, or your cousin is, do not wait for a lawyer before that first hearing. File your paperwork on time, even if it is not perfect. Write down every call you make and every door that closes on you. That record can save a case.

The system is moving fast on purpose. Speed is the strategy; a good lawyer is the best defense against it.

Share this with someone who needs to see it.

Read the full post:

In Matter of A-K-R-, the BIA makes the ten-day floor the only firm time to find counsel and withdraws Matter of C-B-. What it means for detained pro se clients.

08/07/2026

FACEBOOK

🗳️ Ask an AI how to register to vote today, and it hands you a link. Register at the DMV, and they ask if you'd like to sign up. Ninety seconds online and you're done.

We spent fifty years making voting easy on purpose. And we were right to.

But here's the contradiction nobody talks about.

That same effortless system has no brakes. It doesn't check who you are, and for one person, walking through the door it holds wide open is a federal offense.

A green card holder stands at the DMV counter. A clerk asks if he wants to register. The whole system is built to make him say yes. Nobody stops him. The form doesn't check his status.

He votes once — because why would the government hand him the card if he wasn't allowed to use it?

Years later,r he finds out that the easiest civic act in America is, for him, a deportable offense. He can be deported over one vote he didn't know was against the law.

📊 And the "crisis" behind all this? It barely exists.

Michigan checked 5.7 million ballots. Found about fifteen.

The Heritage Foundation's own fraud database: 77 cases nationwide — in twenty-four years.

And the one screening tool a federal Court actually examined was wrong 97.6% of the time. Almost everyone it flagged as a noncitizen was a citizen.

✅ So here's the useful part.

If you're a citizen, check your registration. It's free and takes five minutes. Look yourself up, confirm your current address, set a reminder — and check again any time you move, because your registration doesn't move with you.

🛑 And if you're NOT a citizen: please do not register or vote. Not at any counter, not on any website, and no matter who says it's fine. A registration card is not permission. If you already have, talk to an immigration lawyer before you do anything else.

We made voting easy on purpose. Then we built a trap for the one person who trusted that it was — and blamed him for falling in.
👇 Full analysis, with the cases and the numbers:

Registering to vote is effortless for everyone — but for a noncitizen who trusts the counter, one registration can mean deportation. How to check your status, and the hard line if you're not a citizen.

08/06/2026

An ICE arrest at an airport used to mean the government had come for someone with a final deportation order. Not anymore.

Lawyers around the country are reporting a new kind of arrest: people who came here legally and overstayed a visa — many with pending asylum cases or valid work permits — pulled off domestic flights.

How does ICE find them? TSA collects your name and birthdate when you fly, to check you against terrorist watch lists. A May 2025 agreement, kept quiet until a FOIA lawsuit forced it out, now routes that data to ICE.

If your status isn't secure, a domestic boarding pass is no longer neutral ground. Here is what the agreement does, what it can't do, and what to do before you fly:

A TSA–ICE agreement, hidden until a FOIA suit forced its release, routes airline passenger data collected for counterterrorism into immigration enforcement. ICE now pulls legal overstays, asylum seekers, and work-permit holders off domestic flights. What the agreement says, what it can't do, and w...

07/23/2026

⚖️ A man voted once, in 2012. He thought he was allowed to.

He told the government himself — wrote it right on his citizenship application.

No prosecutor ever charged him.

Fourteen years later, he's being deported, and the Board of Immigration Appeals said the judge should have been harder on him.

📋 That decision came down today.

🤐 It also held something that should worry every immigrant with a pending criminal case: if you take the Fifth in immigration Court, the judge can hold your silence against you.

Most people don't know this — immigration Court isn't criminal Court. It's civil. If you ask to stay, you will need to demonstrate that you deserve it. So silence doesn't protect you. It sinks you.

⚖️ I've handled four of these cases. Four people charged with removal for voting unlawfully. I won all four.

Every one had 20+ years here. Citizen ki s. Steady work. Minor problems otherwise.

Under today's decision, I lose all four. 💔

🔍 Now here's the part that should make you angry.

They keep telling you noncitizens are voting in huge numbers.

Michigan checked 5.7 million ballots. Found about 15.
Georgia checked 8.2 million voters. Nine had ever voted.
The Heritage Foundation's own database: 77 cases in 24 years. The whole country.

Last week the government told four states they had 250,000 noncitizens registered. Where'd that number come from? Commercial marketing data. The kind that mails catalogs to people who moved out in 2011.

Nevada did the math out loud: 15,903 claimed — but only 138 people in the entire state have any paperwork gap at all.

📊 And the one screening tool a federal Court actually examined? Wrong 97.6% of the time.

Repeat something long enough,h and people stop asking for proof. That's what's happening, nd real families are paying for a crisis that isn't there.

Full breakdown here 👇

The BIA held unlawful voting is a significant adverse factor and that taking the Fifth can be held against you. One vote in 2012. Fourteen years to removal.

07/10/2026

They found a way to deport people before they ever get a lawyer.
It's called a "mega master" hearing. One immigration judge One morning. More than a hundred people ordered into a single courtroom , 611 in Chicago on one June morning, in a room that runs out of chairs before it runs out of names.

Arrive late because the security line wrapped around the block? Miss a roll call you couldn't hear. You don't get another date. You are ordered deported in your absence.

The crowd isn't a backlash. It's the strategy. And the scheduling data now proves it: the government is hand-picking specific judges and burying them, on purpose, to manufacture removal orders faster than anyone can fight them.

How it works, and how you fight back: https://mikebakerlaw.com/blog/2026/07/09/mega-master-hearings-due-process/

(The numbers come from a new data investigation by Austin Kocher, which confirmed what I'd been arguing: this is deliberate.)

DOJ "mega master" hearings stack 100+ into one setting to speed deportations. The notice and counsel law that fights back, plus a ready-to-file motion.

07/01/2026

They wanted you to watch birthright citizenship. That was the bright object.

The real blast came the day before, in Trump v. Slaughter, 609 U.S. ___ (2026). Six to three, the Court overruled Humphrey's Executor and handed the President at-will command of the executive branch — fire anyone who wields executive power, no cause, no notice, no hearing. Pair it with presidential immunity, and the courts are told to look away from how he uses it.

And Barbara, the birthright "win"? It's really 5–4 on the Constitution, resting on a single vote and a statute Congress can rewrite.

I broke down all four decisions — and why 2026 feels worse than 1976 even though we're richer — on the blog:

The Court overruled Humphrey's Executor and handed the President at-will command of the executive branch. Birthright citizenship? A win one vote deep.

06/30/2026

The Supreme Court Just Saved Birthright Citizenship

The Court ruled today. If you are born on American soil, you are an American citizen. It does not matter whether your parents were here unlawfully or on a temporary visa. The Court struck down President Trump's Executive Order 14160 and upheld the Constitution. Trump v. Barbara, decided June 30, 2026.

Six justices to three. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the main opinion. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Barrett, and Jackson joined him. Justice Kavanaugh agreed the order had to fall, though for his own reasons. Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch dissented and would have let the order stand.

The Fourteenth Amendment says every person born here and "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States is a citizen. That language is more than 150 years old. The Court has read it the same way since 1898 in United States v. Wong Kim Ark. The President argued that the words "secretly" required a parent's permanent home hhere The Court said sohere.. The text means what it has always meant.

The Chief Justice wrote, "Where the dissents see feudalism, the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment saw emancipation." He called citizenship "the right to have rights." He closed with four words. "We keep that promise today."
What it means for families.

The order is blocked nationwide. A child born here remains a citizen regardless of the parents' immigration status.T o clarify,u a newborn's citizenship does not depend on a parent's paperwork.

Read the decision here:

06/23/2026

A green card just got weaker at the airport.

The Supreme Court ruled today, 6–3, in Blanche v. Lau. Here is what changed for green card holders.

The rule. A border officer can now treat a returning permanent resident as someone "seeking admission" based solely on a pending criminal charge. The government does not have to prove the crime when it takes that step. It can prove it later, in immigration court.

Why it matters. Once you are pushed onto the "seeking admission" track, the burden flips onto you. You have to prove you belong here. Your green card can be taken and replaced with a temporary paper one. The man at the center of this case spent fourteen years on a stapled paper card while his case dragged on.

Who should pay attention? If you hold a green card and have any arrest, charge, or open case anywhere in your past, this affects you directly. A charge that later pleads down to nothing can still cost you the card at reentry.

What to do. Talk to an immigration lawyer before you travel, not after you land. Carry certified copies of every disposition. If you have an open case, treat travel as a risk to your status until a lawyer clears you.

Full breakdown here:

blanche-v-lau-charge-enough-green-card-limbo

06/21/2026

The Supreme Court Will Decide How Long Is Too Long

The Supreme Court just agreed to hear a case that asks a simple human question with enormous stakes. How long can the government lock up a green card holder, with no bond hearing at all, while it tries to deport him?

The People

Two lawful permanent residents brought this fight. One sat in detention for about seven months. The other, Keisy G.M., sat for twenty-one months. Neither ever got a hearing to ask a judge for release. A federal law, 8 U.S.C. § 1226(c), requires immigration officials to hold people charged with removability for certain criminal convictions. The law gives them no automatic day in front of a judge and sets no time limit.

The Ruling Being Reviewed

A federal appeals court in New York said the Constitution draws a line. When detention drags on unreasonably long, due process requires a bond hearing. And in one of the two cases, the Court said that the government, not the detainee, must prove that continued detention is justified and do so by clear and convincing evidence.

What the Justices Will Answer

First, is there a point at which this kind of detention becomes too long, such that the Constitution demands a hearing? Second, if so, does the government bear the burden of justifying keeping someone locked up? Third, the Court added a question of its own: whether one detainee's case still counts, given that he was released in 2022.

Why You Should Care

This is about who bears the burden when liberty is on the line. Put the weight on the government, and prolonged detention becomes rare. Leave it on the detained person, and a hearing can become an empty exercise. The Court's answer will reach every person held under this law, in every state.

The case is Genalo v. Black. You can follow it here:

Supreme Court case (25-886) — tracked on SCOTUSblog.

06/18/2026

Today, the government has a way to end an asylum case without a hearing.

The Board of Immigration Appeals ruled this afternoon, changing how asylum can be lost. An asylum claim can now be thrown out on the written paperwork alone. No hearing. No testimony. Picture a judge in an ordinary lawsuit ending a case before trial because he decides there is nothing to try. That power just arrived in immigration court.

The tool is something called an Asylum Cooperation Agreement
It is a deal between the United States and another country, saying that the country will take the asylum claim instead. When the government decides one of these agreements covers your case, it asks the judge to dismiss your application before it is heard and to order you removed to that other country. In today's case, that country was Ecuador, which is living under a declared internal armed conflict and where the State Department warns Americans not to enter parts of Guayaquil.

Why is this radical
Courts have always allowed some cases to end early on paper, but only with strong protections around them. A real chance to gather your evidence. A judge who reads that evidence in your favor. A clear warning to anyone without a lawyer before the case can end. Immigration court just took the power and dropped the protections.

Think about what gets decided this way. One order can wipe out three separate forms of protection at once, asylum, withholding of removal, and protection from torture, in a single paragraph, against a person who often has no lawyer, before the hearing the court itself scheduled. A judge reads a handwritten statement, calls it not enough, and signs the order. A man can be sent toward danger without ever speaking a word in his own defense.
That is the heart of it. The most basic promise of American law is that before the government takes something that matters, you get a real chance to be heard. A claim that you will be persecuted or tortured matters as much as anything can. Deciding it on paper, fast, in bulk, is not a shorter hearing. There is no hearing at all.

Read the full breakdown and the decision here:

The BIA's A-C-M- trilogy lets judges deny asylum and CAT on the papers, pro se, by asking the wrong question. Why the Seventh Circuit should reverse.