Judge says lawyer could be sanctioned and client could face charges over 'cut-and-paste lawyering'

Source: Law & Crime

Apr 2nd, 2026, 4:48 pm


A judge in New York City harshly upbraided an immigration lawyer over the quality of their legal services in an atypical ruling on Wednesday.

The three-page order makes exceedingly short work of an ill-fated effort to obtain habeas corpus relief — and a host of additional emergency relief — for three petitioners amid a documented upsurge in such cases across the U.S. court system since summer 2025.

On the same day the petition was filed, the attorney in the case "filed a letter clarifying that the Petition was based on a fundamental error of fact," according to U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, who was appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term.

The case comes amid stepped-up efforts by the Trump administration to indefinitely detain certain immigrants following a reconfiguration of how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) views its relevant statutory authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Over the past nine months, in hundreds of district court disputes, judges have considered the interplay and applicability of two distinct INA statutes that outline the government's detention authority. Many judges have rephrased those statutes using language from a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling penned by Justice Samuel Alito.

Read more: https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/unacceptable-judge-says-lawyer-could-be-sanctioned-and-client-could-face-charges-over-cut-and-paste-lawyering-and-fundamental-error-in-immigration-case/