Settled Law: The Role of State Court Judges in Making Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) Judicial Determinations (April 1, 2024) [pdf]

This article surveyed all of the publicly available SIJS cases issued through the date of this article’s publication. Ultimately, this survey demonstrates that the majority of state courts are issuing decisions that have become settled law and that these courts’ decisions are consistent with federal SIJS statutes, the March 2022 USCIS regulations, and USCIS policies and publications on SIJS laws and the SIJS program. Although Congress substantially amended the SIJS statute in 2008 to expand the number of immigrant children eligible for SIJS, this article demonstrates that during the decade and a half after the law passed and before USCIS issued final regulations in 2022, many state courts struggled to issue rulings in SIJS cases that were consistent with the federal SIJS statues and USCIS policies. Despite this fact, as this article documents, many courts did issue rulings that correctly interpreted and applied federal SIJS laws and issued SIJS judicial determinations that immigrant children who had suffered parental maltreatment could use to file their SIJS petitions with USCIS.