Immigration Challenges in Family Law: Custody, Visas, and Cross-Border Conflict
A live 90-minute CLE video webinar with interactive Q&A
This CLE webinar will examine the complex intersection of family law and immigration law. The panel will focus on custody disputes, deportation risks, and relief options for noncitizen clients. Unique legal challenges surface when families are affected by mixed immigration status. Practitioners may face advocacy through removal proceedings, international custody conflicts, or barriers to family reunification complicated by current challenges to spousal visas.
Outline
- Introduction: interplay of family and immigration law
- Custody, detention, and risk of removal
- Custody risks and protective strategies
- Judicial balance of parental rights and immigration status
- Domestic violence, VAWA, and immigration relief
- Available legal protections: VAWA self-petitions, U visas, protective orders
- Supporting survivors in family and immigration courts
- International custody disputes and the Hague Convention
- International child custody cases involving immigrant parents
- The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction
- Relevant U.S. Supreme Court decisions affecting habitual residence and return orders
- Spousal visas, deportation, and the right to marry
- Department of State v. Muñoz: courts' approach to liberty interests
- Constitutional arguments and factors affecting deportation
- Ethical and strategic considerations
- Dual representation, conflict checks, client capacity, and communication
- Trauma-informed advocacy and resources for non-citizen clients
- Conclusion
Benefits
The panel will review these and other important issues:
- Relevance of immigration status in family court proceedings
- Assess custody risks and protective strategies for clients facing immigration enforcement
- Evaluate how courts balance parental rights and immigration status in custody decisions
- Eligibility requirements for VAWA and U visa relief
- Integrating family court protective orders with immigration advocacy
- Hague Convention principles and their application in U.S. courts
- Recognize ethical pitfalls when advising on overlapping family and immigration matters
- Develop trauma-informed strategies for interviewing and advocacy
Faculty
Flavio Carvalho, Esq.
Attorney
Flavio Carvalho Law
Mr. Carvalho focuses his practice on Family Law and Immigration. He is the president of the Immigration Law Section for... | Read More
Mr. Carvalho focuses his practice on Family Law and Immigration. He is the president of the Immigration Law Section for the Contra Costa County Bar Association and a member of the American Immigration Law Association (AILA). Mr. Carvalho has successfully represented clients in family court in seven of the nine Bay Area counties and acquired visas for hundreds of clients over the years.
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