The Legal Aid Society filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit with The Bronx Defenders to assist the Court in understanding the process by which the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) initiates removal proceedings and the unreliability of the information that appears on the case initiating document known as the Notice to Appear (NTA). The amicus brief was filed after a decision was issued, in support of Mr. Sarr’s motion to amend the decision.

To initiate removal proceedings, the Department of Homeland Security is required to serve a Notice to Appear (NTA) to the noncitizen respondent, as well as file the NTA in immigration court. It is mandated by federal statute that an NTA specifies, among other things, the time and place at which the immigration proceedings will be held. However, simple as this sounds, NTAs routinely contain significant errors, often omitting time, date, and court location information. In the case of Mr. Sarr, the NTA named an incorrect court location.

Given the frequency of these errors, we argued that the location listed on the NTA should not be used to determine the case’s venue. Despite the fact that detained respondents frequently appear by videoconference, the case's physical venue is still of significance to non-detained witnesses, family members, experts, and legal counsel. Allowing venues to be determined based on the faulty locations inscribed on NTAs could lead to unjust and inefficient outcomes.

The Second Circuit decided against Mr. Sarr, allowing removal proceedings to commence and asserting that his case had ultimately been venued correctly, even if there was understandable confusion.