Our dedicated Senior Associate Attorney, Andrea Sweeney, and her family are making a big move from Colorado to the beautiful state of Montana. Andrea has been with Kolko and Casey for nearly seven years and has been an invaluable member of our firm from the start. She began at Kolko and Casey with an early focus on family-based immigration, asylum and removal defense, and lately has been expanding into more employment-based...

  On January 31, 2024, USCIS published a fee rule, increasing the fees on most applications, adding an Asylum Program fee for certain applications, and creating a fee structure for certain employment-based applications, based on the type of organization or the size of the organization. These new fees took effect on April 1, 2024, and can be confusing to understand. This blog will break down some of the FAQs on the...

As outlined in our blog, “Trump Administration Issues New Third Country Asylum Rule,” the new third-country asylum rule bars anyone (other than a citizen of Mexico) who travels from another country to the United States by land from qualifying for asylum unless he or she first seeks asylum in a third country. However, on July 24, 2019, U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar of San Francisco, California issued a preliminary injunction which...

  UPDATE: On July 24, 2019, U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar of San Francisco, California issued a preliminary injunction which has temporarily stopped the Trump administration’s third-country asylum bar from going into effect. Earlier on the same day, a U.S. District Judge in Washington D.C. declined to issue a preliminary injunction in a similar suit. However, the decision of the U.S. District Judge in San Francisco a few hours later temporarily...

Last month, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson made a major announcement regarding the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) policy of detaining women and children asylum-seekers from Central America in family detention centers in remote parts of Texas and New Mexico. Secretary Johnson announced that detained families who have passed the initial step in the asylum process – showing that they have a credible or reasonable fear of persecution in their home...

On December 15, 2014, in a completely unprecedented move, the Colorado Bar Association’s (CBA) Executive Committee met and unanimously voted to provide matching funds of up to $50,000 in order to fund the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network (RMIAN) Children’s Program (http://www.rmian.org/childrens-program/) and to provide legal services to Unaccompanied Children in Immigration Removal Proceedings. CBA President Charles F. Garcia highlights the CBA’s action in his article, “Children on the Run,” published...

The U.S. Immigration Court in Denver, Colorado currently has three active Immigration Judges and a docket of over 8000 cases.  The Denver Immigration Court and the foreign nationals living within its jurisdiction are fortunate to have distinguished, highly competent, and thoughtful immigration judges. Unfortunately, the majority of foreign nationals on the Denver Immigration Court docket are unlikely to have their hearings in front of these judges any time soon.  As we...

Earlier this month, our attorneys had an opportunity to participate in pro bono efforts, assisting detained women and children in Artesia, New Mexico, from the Denver Immigration Court. Women and children refugees, fleeing violence in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, have been approaching the southern border, seeking refuge, in record numbers over the past several months.  Most cross into the United States, and immediately seek Border Patrol officers and request asylum...

Senior Associate Attorney Jennifer Casey was recently published in an opinion piece featured on Fox News Latino. Jennifer recently spent a week volunteering as a pro bono attorney in Artesia, New Mexico, assisting women and children fleeing violence and persecution in Central America. Her opinion piece recapped her observations as a volunteer, and reflected on how the administration of justice has varied since the Artesia facility opened earlier this summer. Significantly,...

  This week, the Board of Immigration Appeals issued a landmark ruling, Matter of A-R-C-G, recognizing domestic violence survivors as a particular social group under American asylum law. The decision expands the domestic violence social group and clarifies the state of the law for other people seeking refuge in the United States when their governments cannot or will not help them. The respondent in A-R-C-G- was a Guatemalan woman who had...