AILA Presents the Muñoz Litigation Team with the 2024 Jack Wasserman Memorial Award

WASHINGTON, DC - The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) recognizes the Muñoz Litigation Team with the 2024 Jack Wasserman Memorial Award for excellence in litigation in the field of immigration law.

The team has been instrumental in litigating the doctrine of consular non-reviewability through the federal courts to the U.S. Supreme Court, with arguments heard this term.

As shared by their nominators, “These cases are at the forefront of challenging the damaging and frustrating doctrine that allows the Department of State to deny visas without providing any factual basis for doing so. At stake in Muñoz is the question of whether a U.S.-citizen has any constitutional right to live in the United States with her non-citizen spouse, and what type of information (if any) beyond a citation to a statute of inadmissibility the Department of State has to provide when denying an immigrant visa to that spouse. The outcome of the case will literally impact hundreds of thousands of people annually.”

“The doctrine of consular nonreviewability has long frustrated attorneys who wish to challenge visa denials in federal court, but the nominees were among a small group who continued to challenge the doctrine’s application in federal court, who took on the ‘impossible cases’ to try to reunify long-separated families. Regardless of the outcome of Muñoz, they are heroes to the people they have represented, to the loved ones they have reunified. And they are role models to the rest of us of what persistence in litigation looks like.”