HAPPY THANKSGIVING! – TRUMP SCOFFLAWS OUTED AGAIN! – Judge Considers Sanctions Against Administration Officials & Their Lawyers For Lies, Disobeying Court Orders, & Continuous Course Of Unethical Behavior! — “Government Has Acted Ignobly In This Case” — Trumpsters Win “Courtside’s” Coveted Five Turkey Award!

http://www.aclumich.org/article/us-district-court-orders-release-iraqi-detainees

The ACLU reports:

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan applauds the decision of U.S. District Judge Mark A. Goldsmith to order the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to release all Iraqis within 30 days.

“The law is clear that the Federal Government cannot indefinitely detain foreign nationals while it seeks to repatriate them, when there is no significant likelihood of repatriation in the reasonably foreseeable future,” wrote Judge Goldsmith in a 59-page opinion.

Judge Goldsmith also wrote that he will impose sanctions on the Government for “…failing to comply with court orders, submitting demonstrably false declarations of Government officials, and otherwise violating its litigation obligations—all of which impels this Court to impose sanctions.”

“Today’s decision is about accountability,” said ACLU senior staff attorney Miriam Aukerman. “ICE thought it could get away with lying to a federal judge. ICE thought it could get away with using indefinite detention to coerce Iraqis to accept deportation despite the dangers they face in Iraq. Today, Judge Goldsmith made it clear that ICE is not above the law.”

“It is appalling that ICE lied to the Court, and even more appalling that it did so in order to keep people wrongfully incarcerated,” said University of Michigan law professor Margo Schlanger, a cooperating attorney for the ACLU. “The Court made it absolutely clear that it will not tolerate such misconduct, and that ICE cannot simply lock people up and throw away the key.”

“We are delighted that families who have been separated for so long will finally be reunited,” said Kim Scott, an attorney at Miller Canfield who also represents the detainees. “As a result of today’s order, many of those who were unjustly detained will be home with their families for the holidays.”

Today’s ruling is the latest development in Hamama v. Adducci, a nationwide class action filed in June 2017 on behalf of hundreds of Iraqi nationals, who were arrested throughout the country without warning and threatened with immediate deportation. Many came to the U.S. as children and have lived and worked in the U.S. for decades. They now face persecution, torture, or even death in Iraq because of their religion, ethnicity, or the fact that they are Americanized. Approximately 120 Iraqis remain detained.

Read Judge Goldsmith’s order here.

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Thanks to Dan Kowalski over at LexisNexis Immigration Community for passing this along. And, congrats to the ACLU for brightening the Thanksgiving Day of not only these long-abused Iraqi detainees, but also of the substantial number of us who still believe in and cherish real American values — even in the “Dark Ages” of  the Trump Administration!

Great news, and long, long overdue!  Many of us have been calling for some time now for full accountability for Trump officials and their often ethically challenged lawyers who are out to abuse and destroy our precious legal system. There was a time in the not too distant past when U.S.Government lawyers were supposed to be held to a higher standard of promoting fairness, justice, and judicial efficiency. As I used to tell newly hired INS lawyers — “The Government wins when justice prevails — regardless of which party ‘wins’ the case.” That went out the door when Trump and his corrupt cronies like Jeff Sessions stepped in.

Federal Judges finally are losing patience with the types of blatant, “in your face” abuses by the Trump Administration that undoubtedly would have landed private parties and counsel in hot water long ago.  Where’s the justice in a system that imprisons, deports, and otherwise abuses victims while letting the abusers walk free to strike again?

“[T]he Government has acted ignobly in this case, by failing to comply with court orders, submitting demonstrably false declarations of  Government officials, and otherwise violating its litigation obligations—all of which impels this Court to impose sanctions.”  — U.S. District Judge Mark A. Goldsmith

For their shockingly inappropriate and unethical conduct of and in Federal Court litigation, the Trump Administration officials involved in this and many similar abusive cases get “Courtside’s” Thanksgiving “Five Turkey Award.”

 

PWS

11-22-18

🦃🦃🦃🦃🦃

 

ADMINISTRATION SCOFFLAWS CONTINUE TO LIE TO US COURTS! – ACLU PRESENTS DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE THAT ICE AND DOJ GAVE FALSE INFORMATION TO FEDERAL JUDGE IN DETROIT IRAQ CASE — SANCTIONS SOUGHT –“It is appalling that ICE wants to lock these people up and throw away the key, and even more appalling that ICE misled the court in order to do so.”

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/ice-lied-about-detained-iraqis-aclu-alleges

Hamed Aleazez reports for BuzzFeed News:

ICE officials lied when they said that Iraq would take back more than 1,000 citizens of the country that had been ordered deported from the US, including dozens of people who have been detained for months, according to ACLU of Michigan filings in a federal case challenging the removal of Iraqis throughout the country.

The organization cited redacted information in federal court filings in Detroit Wednesday calling for more than 100 Iraqis who have been detained by ICE be released, for the court to sanction the agency for its misrepresentations, and for the secret documents to be made public.

Back in June 2017, the ACLU successfully got US District Judge Mark Goldsmith to block the deportation of around 1,400 Iraqis who had been targeted for removal, most for overstaying their visas or being convicted of crimes, after Iraq agreed to take back certain citizens in exchange for being taken off the Trump administration’s travel ban list.

Hundreds of these Iraqis were arrested in June throughout the country, mainly in Michigan. Goldsmith found that the Iraqis, many of whom are from religious minorities, would face torture or death based on their residence in the US, their publicized criminal records, or their religious affiliation.

In its filings, the ACLU claims that ICE’s declarations that Iraq had agreed to take all of them back were false. The Iraqi government has long had a policy of not accepting those who were being repatriated involuntarily to the country.

The executive order striking Iraq from the travel ban list cites Iraq’s willingness to return those Iraqis who have final orders of deportation but ICE officials ran into complications getting Iraq to take those who did not voluntarily want to go back, according to the ACLU.

In fact, the ACLU claims that ICE officials were so frustrated by Iraq’s unwillingness to take back those who did not voluntarily agree to be deported that it sought sanctions in July 2017 that would restrict certain types of visas given to Iraqi nationals.

“The government has fought for fourteen months to hide the truth,” said Margo Schlanger, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and an attorney assisting the ACLU with the case, in a statement. “We’ve finally gotten the documents, and it turns out that what the government told the court is untrue. We hope the court will allow us to share the truth with the detainees, their families, and the public, all of whom deserve to know what is really happening in this case.”

ICE declined to comment on the filings because the case was ongoing.

Meanwhile, the ACLU pointed to people like Firas Nissan, who has been in the US for 17 years after fleeing Iraq because he had been threatened and locked up there. Nissan missed an asylum hearing in 2004 because of an illness and was ordered deported but was still able to live in the country by agreeing to check in with ICE officials for 13 years, the ACLU said.

Then, in June 2017, he was arrested by ICE officers and has been jailed ever since, one of the 110 Iraqis in detention, according to the ACLU.

“He is locked in solitary confinement 21 hours a day, is not receiving needed medical care, can rarely see his family, and has not been able to provide for them, though he was previously the family’s breadwinner,” attorneys with the ACLU wrote in their filing calling for his and others’ release.

The ACLU, citing the redacted information, believes that Nissan and the rest of the group should be released because prolonged detention is unconstitutional when deportation is unlikely. ICE, the group said, has argued that the detainees should remain in custody because they can be taken to Iraq via a charter flight if the federal injunction is lifted.

ICE has even struggled with deporting the small number of individuals who had agreed to be sent back to Iraq. The agency has only deported 17 of the 37 Iraqis who agreed to be deported, according to the ACLU.

“It is appalling that ICE wants to lock these people up and throw away the key, and even more appalling that ICE misled the court in order to do so,” said Miriam Aukerman, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Michigan, in a statement. “ICE’s dishonesty is the reason the detainees are behind bars, rather than home with their families.”

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I remember that one of my DOJ colleagues who spent a good chunk of his career litigating immigration cases in court was a total stickler for accurate citations. He got very upset if there was so much as an error of a single digit in the page number of a “pinpoint citation.” I asked him about it.  He related how as a young DOJ attorney he once had been publicly chewed out by a Federal Judge for an inadvertent citation error. He never forgot the experience and the value that the Federal Courts put on honesty and the highest quality of work from DOJ Attorneys. And, as any of us who worked in the DOJ in the “old days” knew, an attorney representing the Government was responsible for exercising “due diligence” to verify the truth of any representations made on behalf of an “agency client.”

In this case, apparently the information on the true position of the Iraqi Government was eventually ferreted out by the ACLU from ICE records. Therefore, it also should have been available to the DOJ attorneys representing the DHS. I guess that things have changed in both the DOJ and in the Federal Judges’ expectations for attorneys representing the Government and their agency clients.

PROGRAM NOTE: I am among a group of former Government officials who filed an amicus brief in behalf of the plaintiffs in this case.

PWS

08-31-18

U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith Halts Iraqi Removals

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-iraqi-deportations-20170724-story.html

Melissa Etehad reports in the LA Times:

“A federal judge in Detroit has temporarily halted the deportations of more than 1,400 Iraqi immigrants, ruling that they deserve to have their cases play out in court because of the risk that they could be targeted for persecution in Iraq.

In a ruling Monday, U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith said the immigrants faced a “compelling confluence of extraordinary circumstances” and that the government’s attempt to rush their deportations was a violation of their rights.

Many of the Iraqis arrived in the U.S. as children as far back as the 1980s and have few ties to their native country. The majority are members of religious or ethnic minorities such as Chaldean Christians or Kurds, who have been subjected to torture and other forms of repression in Iraq.

They face deportation because they had overstayed visas or committed crimes, typically misdemeanors such as driving under the influence of alcohol.

They had been allowed to stay in the U.S. because for decades Iraq had refused to take them back. But in March, the Trump administration reached a deal with the Iraqi government to accept them and in June began rounding them up in immigration raids.

As of July 1, 234 had been arrested and detained around the country, including large numbers in Detroit, home to thousands of Chaldean Christians.

Returning the immigrants to Iraq would in some cases be akin to issuing a death sentence, according to civil rights and immigrant rights groups that filed a lawsuit in Detroit federal court in late June to block deportations of those immigrants who had been living in Detroit.

Many had been transferred multiple times to various detention facilities, making it harder for them to get legal representation and prepare their cases, advocates said.”

Here is a full copy of Judge Goldsmith’s opinion in Hamama v. Adducci detailing the Government’s efforts to obstruct and derail due process:

https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/opinion_granting_pi.pdf

 

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Another defeat for the Trump Administration’s gonzo enforcement agenda.

PWS

07-25-17