Immigration Attorneys throughout the nation join the family, friends, and colleagues of the Honorable Judge William Peter Van Wyke–as well as the larger legal community–in mourning his loss. Judge Van Wyke passed away on Sunday, August 14, 2022. Throughout his storied career, both on the bench and off, Judge Van Wyke was a paragon of fairness and compassion, an exceptional and innovative legal mind, and a tireless champion of the rights of the underprivileged.
Judge Van Wyke was one of the first attorneys to devote his practice to advocacy on behalf of refugees, particularly those from Central America, following the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980. It was a cause to which he would remain committed throughout his life. He worked for non-profit organizations like the Central American Refugee Center and AYUDA, and on behalf of international human rights organizations like the Human Rights Commission of El Salvador. But some of Judge Van Wyke’s most groundbreaking victories were the result of his innovative, often ingenious, advocacy of individual immigrants.
In one especially notable victory from 1990, In Re Santos, Judge Van Wyke argued against the removal of refugees from El Salvador, a country then wracked by civil war. At the time, the US State Department took the position that Salvadoran refugees were not victims of targeted persecution or any action taken by the US-backed Salvadoran government, but of the general lawlessness and violence of the civil war. Many Salvadoran refugees were found ineligible for asylum as a result of State Department reports.
Judge Van Wyke, however, appealed to international customary law to argue that his clients were independently entitled to the right of non-return, which prohibits the repatriation of refugees to countries where armed conflict would subject them to likely injury or death. He distinguished this right from the right of non-refoulment, from which the law of persecution and asylum stems, and successfully argued that non-return provided separate protection against removal for refugees ineligible for asylum. In Re, Santos became the first decision by a US court to acknowledge the right of non-return and the obligations it creates under international law.
In March of 1995, Judge Van Wyke was appointed an immigration judge, a position he would hold for the final twenty years of his career. On the bench, he continued to exhibit his unwavering commitment to the ideals of compassion and equity. From 2001 until his retirement in 2015, Judge Van Wyke heard over 3,200 asylum cases and granted more than 2,700. In total, he granted nearly 85% of the asylum applications that came before him. Judge Van Wyke was praised for the dignity and respect with which he treated all of the attorneys and immigrants who appeared in his court, as well as for the mentorship and advice he offered to younger and less experienced attorneys. Advocates who appeared before him also noted his solicitousness toward the unique difficulties that children and detainees faced during removal proceedings.
Judge Van Wyke was additionally well-known for his resolute adherence to the principles of fairness and the rule of law. One of his more spirited defenses of those principles attracted national attention and coverage in the New York Times in 2001. Judge Van Wyke was asked by the INS to issue an order to deport an alien whose relief from deportation depended on an immigrant visa petition that the INS was simultaneously responsible for adjudicating. Judge Van Wyke accused the INS of unreasonably delaying its approval of the petition to the detriment of the alien’s defense, and he administratively closed the deportation proceedings until the INS completed adjudication. Rather than appeal Judge Van Wyke’s decision to the BIA, the INS contacted the Chief Immigration Judge ex parte to request that the case be reopened. When the Chief Judge complied, Judge Van Wyke recused himself from the case in a decision that publicly denounced the chief judge and the INS for creating the appearance of impropriety and undermining the public’s faith in the independence and objectivity of immigration courts. For his integrity, Judge Van Wyke received the support of the union of immigration judges, who filed a formal protest accusing the Chief Immigration Judge of unethical behavior.
Judge William Van Wyke was a loving husband, father of six, and grandfather of nine. The author, N.M Gehi, Esq., expresses his gratitude to Judge Jeffrey S. Chase, a former immigration judge and senior advisor to the Board of Immigration Appeals, for informing the legal community of the passing of his friend and colleague, Judge William Van Wyke, to the rule of law and immigration reform.
N.M Gehi, Esq., is the founder of My Legal Software, a case management software for immigration attorneys wherein Mr. Gehi assists attorneys and paralegals with questions relating to legal research and the day-to-day legal issues which are encountered by legal professionals. He is also the principal attorney of Gehi & Associates, a New York firm with 3 locations and with more than 75 staff members.
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