McKinney Immigration Law

08/24/2026

BREAKING: Big decision out of the Fourth Circuit today. The court ruled that the government cannot deport someone over a conviction a state court has erased.

Here is what happened. A woman who came to this country from Mexico as a child, and who holds a green card, pleaded guilty in 2006 to possessing a small amount of ma*****na in North Carolina. Years later a North Carolina judge vacated that conviction and the State dismissed the charge. The conviction no longer exists.

The immigration courts said it counted anyway. For 23 years, the Board of Immigration Appeals has claimed the power to decide which state court orders it will respect. A judge erases your conviction, and an immigration "judge" (aka an employee of the Department of Justice) decides whether the erasure is real. I have called that practice unconstitutional for years. It violates the full faith and credit state court judgments are owed.

Today a unanimous Fourth Circuit said the immigration statute does not allow it. If your conviction has been vacated, you are not convicted. That rule now applies in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland.

If you or a family member were denied immigration relief, or ordered deported, because of a conviction that was later vacated, this decision may change your case. Talk to an immigration lawyer.

08/03/2026

"McKinney Immigration Law was extremely professional, supportive, and knowledgeable throughout our entire Green Card process. They guided us through every step, making sure we understood the requirements and helping us complete all the necessary paperwork correctly.

Whenever we needed assistance, they responded promptly and provided clear, detailed guidance. Their dedication and attention to detail made what could have.." says Luis on Google

★★★★★ McKinney Immigration Law was extremely professional, supportive, and knowledgeable throughout our entire Green Card process. They guided us through every step, making sure we understood the requirements and helping us complete all the necessary paperwork correctly. Whenever we needed...

07/27/2026

"Great working with them. Annabelle was on top of everything during the entire process, responding to each of my questions within the same day." says Guido on Google

★★★★★ Great working with them. Annabelle was on top of everything during the entire process, responding to each of my questions within the same day.

07/24/2026

This week the Fourth Circuit (the federal appeals court that covers North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and West Virginia) ruled that a person detained over their speech can ask an independent federal judge to review that detention right away, instead of waiting until their entire deportation case is finished years later. The case is Khan Suri v. Trump.

The man at the center is a Georgetown researcher who was arrested and then moved through several detention centers in different states in a single day, so fast that his own lawyer could not locate him. The court said a challenge like that belongs in front of a federal judge, and the Free Speech challenge should not have to wait.

Here is something many people do not realize. Immigration courts are not real and not part of the independent judiciary. They sit inside the Department of Justice. They are an extension of the White House, regardless of who is sitting in the Oval Office. That is why getting a case in front of a federal judge can matter so much, and why where a case is filed can shape what happens next.

Two other appeals courts, including in the high-profile case of Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, went the other way. That disagreement means the U.S. Supreme Court will likely settle the question for the whole country.

What this means for you is simple. If you or someone you love is facing detention or removal, early decisions matter, the timelines are short, and you should not try to navigate it alone.

We follow these rulings closely because they affect the people we represent every day throughout North Carolina and South Carolina. If you have questions about your situation, we are here to help.

07/13/2026

The Fourth Circuit ruled today in United States v. Belmonte Cardozo that a border officer can pick up your phone, unlock it if you hand over the passcode, and scroll through your photos, messages, and apps without a warrant, without probable cause, and without any suspicion that you did anything wrong. This is now the law in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and West Virginia.

Here is what that means the next time you fly home from vacation.

The border search exception is old and broad. Since the founding, the government has been allowed to inspect people and property entering the country without a warrant. Courts extended that authority to the functional equivalent of the border, which includes every international airport. Charlotte, Raleigh, Dulles, and every seaport and land crossing in the country. Your expectation of privacy is lower there than anywhere else, and the Supreme Court has said so for decades.

For years the open question was whether your phone is different. The Supreme Court held in Riley v. California that police need a warrant to search a phone after an arrest. The Fourth Circuit had already ruled in United States v. Kolsuz that a forensic search at the border, meaning officers plug your device into extraction equipment and copy everything on it, requires at least individualized suspicion. Today the court answered the piece it had left open. A manual search, meaning an officer holding your phone and scrolling through it by hand, requires nothing at all. Routine. No suspicion needed.

That distinction is the whole ballgame. Officer scrolling by hand needs no reason. Officer plugging your phone into a machine needs reasonable suspicion.

This applies to EVERYONE. In the leading case on device searches, Alasaad v. Mayorkas, the eleven people whose phones and laptops were searched were ten United States citizens and one green card holder. A NASA engineer. A journalist. A student. An artist. None was charged with anything. Some got their devices back weeks later.

So know this before your next international trip. Officers can search your phone at any port of entry with no warrant and no suspicion. If you are a citizen, you cannot be denied reentry for declining to unlock it, but they can seize the device and make you wait. If you are a lawful permanent resident, declining carries more risk. If you are on a visa, refusing can cost you entry entirely.

CBP says it can only search what is stored on the device itself, not what lives in your cloud, so logging out of accounts and putting the phone in airplane mode before you land actually matters. The 4th Amendment protects you least at the exact moment you are coming home.

I am an attorney, but I am not your attorney, and this is not legal advice. If you have a specific concern about your own travel, talk to a lawyer about your situation.

The Decision:

06/30/2026

Our very own founder, Jeremy McKinney, breaks down today's landmark SCOTUS ruling in Trump v. Barbara upholding birthright citizenship.

AILA College of Past Presidents Member Jeremy McKinney shares takeaways from today's SCOTUS decision in Trump v. Barbara, writing “Executive Order 14160 is dead. Birthright citizenship is again what it has been since 1898 and what the Fourteenth Amendment has guaranteed since ratification.”

06/30/2026

The Supreme Court ended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haiti and Syria last week in Mullin v. Doe. Six justices read the statute's judicial-review bar as broadly as it would stretch, holding that courts cannot review even a claim that the DHS Secretary skipped a step Congress made mandatory, like consulting other agencies about whether a country is safe. Roughly 350,000 Haitians and several thousand Syrians lose their status and their right to work.

But there is one sliver worth memorializing before the birthright citizenship decision takes all the air out of the room.

Justice Alito wrote the opinion and delivered it for the Court on everything except Part III-A. Gorsuch and Barrett refused to join that section. That refusal matters, because Part III-A is where the Court would have addressed whether Congress can strip the federal courts of jurisdiction over constitutional claims, not just statutory ones. With only four votes, Part III-A is a plurality, not a holding. It binds no one.

Whether a noncitizen can still bring a constitutional challenge to a TPS termination remains OPEN. Two members of the majority would not close that door, and Justice Thomas wrote separately to argue it should be slammed shut, which tells you he counted the votes and came up short.

That is the tiny silver lining. Part III-B is the opinion of the Court, and it is a return to the logic of Jim Crow.

The President called Haitians animals who eat pets. He said they have AIDS. He called their country filthy and disgusting and said Haitian immigration is a death wish for America. The District Court found those words showed racial animus likely drove the termination. SCOTUS looked at the same words and held that none was overtly racial, that each could rest on a race-neutral justification, and that the challengers were unlikely to prove race was a motivating factor. Justice Kagan noted in dissent that the majority could not bring itself to quote the President's words. A court that sanitizes the record to reach its result is telling you what the record actually says.

But the rest of the decision, the part that locks the courthouse doors, is an interpretation of a statute. Congress wrote section 1254a. Congress can rewrite it. Allen Orr, an American Immigration Lawyers Association Past President, made this point last week. When the Court reads a civil rights statute narrowly, the political branches have a remedy. After the Court slammed the window shut on pay discrimination in Ledbetter v. Goodyear, Congress passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the first bill President Obama signed.

A constitutional holding can be undone only by the Court or by amendment. A statutory holding can be undone by an ordinary act of Congress. Mullin is the second kind. The day the political will exists, the fix is a bill, not a generation.

Watch the birthright case today. But do not forget what happened last week.

Decision:

06/15/2026

You can prove you will be tortured if sent home. You can win that case. And the government can still deport you to a country you have never seen. That is a third-country removal, and it is one of the most dangerous things happening in immigration enforcement right now.

Withholding of removal and Convention Against Torture (CAT) protection are country specific. They stop the government from sending you to the place you fled. They do not cover every other country on earth. So when the government cannot send someone home, it looks for somewhere else that will take them. South Sudan. Libya. Places picked for convenience, not safety, and often more dangerous than the one they were protected from.

This Saturday, June 20, I am leading a panel at the Annual Conference in San Diego on understanding and challenging these removals, with legal giants Rebecca Sharpless, Trina Realmuto, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, and Sandra Grossman.

First session of the morning. Removal track. Eight o’clock.