Detroit Immigration Lawyers

Seven attorneys work in eight languages between them, our office is a short drive northwest of downtown in Farmington Hills, and most of a Detroit case is handled by phone, video, and secure document sharing rather than by driving anywhere.

Serving Detroit from our Farmington Hills office

Because both the court and the field office are in the city, Detroit clients usually have the shortest travel of anyone we represent — and the least room for a missed deadline. Two agencies, two buildings, two sets of rules: USCIS decides applications such as green cards and citizenship, while the immigration court, part of the Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review, hears removal and bond cases. Confusing the two is one of the most common and most expensive mistakes we see.

Detroit's immigrant communities are long-established and still growing. The Latino community of Southwest Detroit, the Bangladeshi, Yemeni, and Eastern European families of Hamtramck, Banglatown, and Highland Park, students and physicians in Midtown, and newer arrivals across the city all run into the same offices from very different starting points. What follows is how we handle the cases that bring people to us most often.

Detroit is one part of a practice we run across the state. Our statewide immigration practice page explains how representation works when a client lives further out, and which steps can be handled by phone, email, and video rather than a drive to Farmington Hills.

Deportation and removal defense in Detroit

Removal cases for Detroit residents are heard at the Detroit Immigration Court in the Patrick V. McNamara Federal Building, 477 Michigan Avenue, Suite 440. It is a federal administrative court run by the Justice Department — separate from USCIS, separate from ICE, and separate from Michigan's state courts — and it keeps its own deadlines. Our deportation and removal defense practice covers that process end to end, from the first master calendar hearing through an appeal.

Start with the Notice to Appear and the most recent hearing notice. They control the date, the time, and — increasingly — the format, because some Detroit hearings are held in person and others are internet-based on WebEx. Appearing the wrong way without the judge's permission can be treated as a failure to appear, and a missed hearing can produce a removal order entered in your absence. Our guide to the Detroit Immigration Court covers the address, hours, parking, security screening, and how to confirm your judge and hearing format; what happens inside a hearing and how to prepare covers the courtroom itself.

Detroit removal cases run on a long clock. The court is working through a backlog of tens of thousands of pending cases, so a contested matter commonly takes years, and the months between a master calendar hearing and an individual hearing are where the case is actually built: country-condition evidence, hardship declarations, medical and school records, tax and employment history, and criminal court dispositions obtained in certified form rather than from memory. A case is rarely won at the podium. It is won in what was filed beforehand — and lost when an address change is never reported to the court on Form EOIR-33 and the next notice goes to an old address.

When someone is detained the clock is much shorter. ICE's Detroit field office covers Michigan and Ohio, and a detained relative can be transferred before the family has found them, so the first hours matter. What to do if a family member is detained by ICE sets out the immediate steps. Where a case turns on how long someone has been in the United States, the Supreme Court's Niz-Chavez decision is worth reading, because a defective Notice to Appear can change who qualifies for cancellation of removal.

What is actually available depends on the charges, the immigration history, and the criminal record behind them. These are the routes that come up most often in Detroit cases.

Family and marriage immigration in Detroit

Family cases are decided by USCIS, not by a judge, so most of the work happens on paper and at one interview. For Detroit residents that interview is generally scheduled at the USCIS Detroit Field Office, though your Form I-797C notice states the exact office — do not rely on a general address. Our marriage and family immigration practice covers petitions for spouses, parents, children, and siblings, fiancé (K-1) visas, and removal of conditions on a two-year green card.

The first real decision in most Detroit family cases is adjustment of status versus consular processing — whether the relative finishes the case here or at a consulate abroad. It changes the timeline, the cost, the travel, and in some cases whether a waiver is needed at all. How long a marriage green card takes in 2026 walks through the realistic stages, and our green cards and permanent residency page covers the medical exam, requests for evidence, and how we prepare a couple for the interview questions officers here actually ask.

Mixed-status families are common across Southwest Detroit and Hamtramck, and for many of them the case does not turn on the petition at all — it turns on a waiver. Unlawful presence, an old misrepresentation, or a criminal ground can require an I-601A or I-601 waiver built on extreme hardship to a qualifying relative, which is an evidence project rather than a form. Our waivers practice explains what that evidence looks like. Filing the underlying petition without planning for the waiver is how families end up separated by a trip abroad they were told was routine.

Employment-based immigration for Detroit employers and workers

Employment cases in and around Detroit follow who hires here: automotive engineering and supplier companies, health systems and hospitals, the universities, and technology employers recruiting internationally. Our employment immigration practice acts for both sides of these filings — the employer and the worker — because the petition is a joint document and a gap on either side becomes a request for evidence.

A typical path runs from a specialty-occupation work visa, through PERM labor certification where the category requires it, to an employment-based green card. Each stage has its own trap. Cap-subject filings are governed by a registration window months before the intended start date. PERM is a recruitment and prevailing-wage exercise that audits scrutinize line by line. And an approved petition is not a green card: the priority date still has to become current in the Visa Bulletin, which for some countries adds years. Companies opening or expanding a U.S. operation from abroad should start with our business and investor practice instead.

Employment petitions are filed with USCIS service centers rather than locally, so an employer's address does not limit which firm can help. We act for Detroit employers, for workers whose employer's counsel represents only the company, and for out-of-state companies hiring into Michigan sites.

Four things decide most employment cases long before anyone reaches the merits.

Asylum and humanitarian protection in Detroit

Asylum reaches us two ways. An affirmative claim is filed with USCIS by someone not in proceedings; a defensive claim is raised in front of an immigration judge at the Detroit court, usually as a defense to removal. The route changes the evidence, the questioning, and the timeline, but both generally require the application within one year of the last arrival unless an exception applies. Our asylum and humanitarian protection practice also covers withholding of removal and protection under the Convention Against Torture, which have no one-year deadline but a higher standard of proof.

These cases are won on the applicant's own account and on what corroborates it — a detailed declaration, country-condition reporting, medical and psychological records, police and court documents, and witnesses who can speak to what happened. That work takes months, which is one reason the gap between Detroit hearings is not dead time.

Detroit's asylum caseload reflects the city: families from Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, arrivals from Central America and West Africa, and long-standing Eastern European communities. Our attorneys work in eight languages between them, and where we do not share a client's language we use interpreters rather than approximations, because in an asylum case the precise words are the evidence.

Citizenship and naturalization for Detroit residents

Naturalization interviews for Detroit residents are held at the USCIS Detroit Field Office, and for most applicants the N-400 is the most straightforward filing they will ever make. Our naturalization and citizenship practice exists for the applications where it is not.

Before filing, we check the things that turn a routine case into a serious one: arrests and dispositions inside the good-moral-character period, including matters that were dismissed or expunged in state court but still count federally; unfiled or unpaid taxes; selective service registration; child support; and long trips abroad that can break continuous residence or, past a year, physical presence. Naturalization is one of the few filings where the government reopens the whole immigration history, so a green card obtained years ago on a shaky record can surface at the interview — and an applicant who files without checking can end up in removal proceedings instead of at an oath ceremony.

Where a medical or developmental condition makes the English and civics tests impossible, a Form N-648 disability waiver may apply, and applicants who qualify on age and years as a resident can take the civics test in their own language. Both are worth raising before the interview, not at it.

How to choose an immigration lawyer in Detroit

There is no official ranking of Detroit immigration attorneys. Most of the "best of" and "top 10" lists that appear in search results are directories or paid placements, so they tell you who bought a listing rather than who is right for your case.

One thing no Detroit immigration lawyer can honestly offer you is a guaranteed outcome. Those decisions belong to USCIS and to an immigration judge, and a firm that promises a result is telling you something it cannot know. What a consultation should give you instead is a clear read of your options, the risk in each, what the next filing or hearing actually requires, and a realistic timeline.

Our own answers, for what they are worth: George P. Mann founded this firm in 1980, after arriving as a refugee from communist Romania. Seven attorneys work here, in eight languages between them — English, Spanish, Arabic, Romanian, French, Hungarian, Italian, and Serbo-Croatian — and much of this site is published in Spanish and Arabic. The reputation was built on the hard cases: immigration court, agency appeals, difficult waivers, federal litigation, and mandamus actions when the government simply stops. You can read the attorney biographies and the firm's history before you speak to anyone here, and contact the office or call (248) 932-0990 when you want to talk a case through.

Whoever you end up hiring, these are the questions worth asking before you sign anything.

How we help Detroit clients

Other areas we serve

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