IMMIGRANTS

The Supreme Court has ruled against immigrants who are seeking their release from long periods of detention while they fight deportation orders.

On Monday, a Metro Detroit psychologist pleaded guilty for her role in a scheme to create fake medical diagnoses to help immigrants fraudulently obtain their US citizenship.

Immigrant advocates say they have reached a settlement with the U.S. government so they can keep operating a free hotline that lets detained immigrants report concerns about custody conditions.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the government can indefinitely detain certain immigrants who say they will face persecution or torture if they are deported to their native countries.

U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis said the government had to post a public notice within three days — including on its website and the websites of all other relevant government agencies — that new DACA applications were being accepted. Garaufis also ordered the government to put together a status report on the DACA program by Jan. 4. “Every time the outgoing administration tried to use young immigrants as political scapegoats, they defiled the values of our nation. The Trump administration had announced the end of the program in 2017, leading to the legal challenges that wound up in front of the Supreme Court. For the second time, a court has ordered the administration to resume processing DACA applications.

The administration cast the effort as a way to free up jobs in an economy reeling from the coronavirus. The ban, while temporary, would amount to major restructuring of legal immigration if made permanent, a goal that had eluded the administration before the pandemic. Trump imposed a 60-day ban on green cards issued abroad in April, which was set to expire Monday. The administration is proposing a new way of awarding H-1B visas, the official said, awarding them by highest salary instead of by lottery. H-1B visas are capped at 85,000 a year for people with highly specialized knowledge and minimum of a bachelors degree, often in science, technology, engineering, teaching and accounting.