Under the Convention Against Torture, Patterson Belknap attorneys obtained relief for our client and her child who had fled violence in their home country, seeking asylum the U.S. The Patterson team helped our client prepare her affidavit, worked with an expert to prepare a country conditions report, submitted a brief in support of her application, and helped prepare our client and our expert for the merits hearing. The Immigration Judge granted relief under the Convention Against Torture, finding that it was more likely than not that our client and her child would be subject to torture should they be returned. As a result, our client and her child are able to remain in the United States, where they are thriving.

In January 2021, the firm filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council 119, the union representing United States asylum officers, in Wolf v. Innovation Law Lab. In this case, plaintiffs challenged the Trump Administration’s Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP), which required most asylum seekers arriving at the southern border to return to Mexico to wait for their asylum hearing. The firm’s brief argued that the MPP violates our nation’s longstanding history of providing a safe haven for asylum seekers, as re-affirmed by our statutory and treaty obligations to not return migrants to a country where they may be persecuted or tortured.

In May 2023, Patterson Belknap and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) successfully challenged three subpoenas issued by the Louisiana Attorney General to small, local non-profits providing aid to immigrants. The subpoenas sought highly sensitive and confidential information about the organizations’ immigrant clients and threatened attorney-client privilege. The Attorney General withdrew the subpoenas after the firm and CCR argued in a motion that the subpoenas “undermine the guarantees enshrined in the First Amendment.”