As the administration hacks away at immigrants’ rights and rains down policy changes, immigration requests that would usually have been approved are denied, many lawyers told me. They are receiving requests for further evidence that are baffling, with precedents continuously blurring. “Any way the government can have a moment of ‘gotcha’ they do and they will,” Ms. Gupta said. “If they can get you out of the country, they will.”
John Khosravi, an immigration lawyer in Los Angeles, agrees. “These past two years it’s like someone is running around sticking their finger in people’s eyes and I’m an eye doctor,” he said. “Sure, business is good, but those aren’t the injuries I want to treat.”
On his podcast “The Immigration Lawyers Podcast,” he urges his colleagues to have a Plan B and to save their money for a rainy day. Mr. Khosravi is Iranian-American, and when he started practicing nearly a decade ago, all of his clients were Iranian. Since then, he has diversified and now has clients from around the world. “Had I just been starting out when the ban came down, that would have been lights out, just no way,” he said.
