Northwest Immigrant Rights Project
Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP), founded in 1984, promotes justice by defending and advancing the rights of immigrants through direct legal services, systemic advocacy, and community education. Apart from its primary focus on direct legal services, NWIRP actively engages in impact litigation in federal courts to: (1) defend the constitutional and statutory rights of individuals in removal proceedings; (2) challenge the expansion of civil detention of immigrants in removal proceedings; and (3) establish the rights of noncitizens seeking immigration benefits. NWIRP is partnering with the National Immigration Litigation Alliance in their McDowell Foundation-funded litigation.
Since its founding in 2020, the National Immigration Litigation Alliance (NILA) has successfully litigated at least four high-impact cases of national scope. In summer 2020, NILA and NWIRP won a class action challenging USCIS’ failure to prioritize oath ceremonies post-COVID-19, resulting in the naturalization of 2,202 new voters. In December 2020, NILA, NWIRP, and co-counsel won a national class action resulting in a permanent injunction requiring immigration agencies to timely process requests for immigration case files. In July 2021, NILA and NWIRP settled a putative class action challenging USCIS’ rejection of applications because answers to certain questions were left blank, positively impacting 43,500 asylum applicants, and 17,000 survivors of domestic violence. NWIRP and NILA are currently litigating two other nationwide class actions, one challenging delays in processing asylum claims, and the other challenging USCIS’s rescission of a policy which previously allowed some recipients of Temporary Protected Status to seek lawful permanent resident status.
THE CASE
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Garcia Perez v. USCIS is a lawsuit on behalf of asylum seekers filed in the Western District of Washington in June 2022 by the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP) and the National Immigration Litigation Alliance (NILA) challenging U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) and the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s (EOIR) policies and practices that unlawfully deny work authorization for asylum seekers while their claims are pending adjudication beyond six months. Due to USCIS’ and EOIR’s unlawful practices preventing them from qualifying for an employment authorization document (EAD), also called a work permit, these individuals seeking protection from persecution are unable to work and find themselves in dire financial straits.
By regulation, the running of this 180-day waiting period for employment authorization—referred to as “the asylum EAD clock”—may be suspended only for applicant-caused delays in their immigration cases. Plaintiffs challenge defendants’ recent policies and practices implemented in 2020 of stopping the asylum EAD clock without providing any written notice or an opportunity to challenge any inappropriate decisions stopping the clock. In addition, Plaintiffs challenge several specific policies that inappropriately stop the clock, including failing to restart the EAD clock where the applicant prevails on appeal after the asylum application was initially denied.
