☹️ BLEAK HOUSE II: MATTER OF JARNDYCE (“JARNDYCE IV”) — A 21st Century Dickensonian Tale Of Delay, Dithering, & Dereliction — Featuring “EYORE” & “Judge Garland” — A Sad, But True, Story Of “Aimless Docket Reshuffling On Steroids!” — Illustrated!

Bleak House
Matter of Jarndyce: “The suit does not sleep; we wake it up, we air it, we walk it about. We remand. We reverse. We re-remand. We re-reverse. We reschedule. We order briefs. Thats something.  But, we never, ever come close to completing the case at hand. That’s what ‘Aimless Docket Reshuffling’ is all about. THAT’S how we build a 2 million case backlog!”
Inspired by  “Bleak House” by Charles Dickens (1895).
PHOTO: Public Realm

 

As told to “Courtside” by a leading American lawyer!

CHAPTER ONE: Eighteen Years

18 years ago today, July 21, 2004, ICE put my USC (native-born) client into (non-detained) removal proceedings.  We are now at the BIA for the 4th time.  At the IJ level, I won the first two rounds, lost the third, and won the last round…the IJ ordered termination with prejudice…again.  ICE appealed, again.  Really getting tired of this nonsense.  

There is a structural flaw in the INA if the BIA can evade judicial review by remanding the case back down to the IJ, over and over again, forever.  And as for timing on the last round, the BIA briefing closed in April 2021, well over a year ago.

No need to reply, just venting….

CHAPTER TWO: Count Your Blessings

It could have been worse. Much worse! 

If the brief got lost in Eyore’s disorderly system or was a day late, the BIA might have “summarily dismissed” the appeal! Even now, they might well decide the case without reading the record or considering the briefs!

EYORE
“Eyore In Distress”
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”

But, rest assured, whatever nightmare happens, there will be no accountability from Judge Garland. If the BIA blows it, issues a “final” order, and the Circuit reverses, it will go back to the BIA again. If they get  around to it, they will send it back to the IJ.

This could go on until the client dies, the attorney retires, the file gets lost, EOIR collapses, or all four of the foregoing. 

CHAPTER THREE: Count Your Blessings, The Eyore View

Charles Dickens
He might look like 19th Century writer Charles Dickens. But, 21st Century AG/Judge Merrick Garland knows how to delay, obfuscate, and “churn” cases without achieving results with the best of them. The key is poorly functioning “judges,” incompetent administrators, and lack of guts to end the nonsense and insist on due process, fundamental fairness, and best practices!
Public Realm

This U.S. citizen client is quite lucky. He has been allowed to hang around for 18 years in limbo! So, what’s the problem?

You want “priority treatment?” Get detained! Or, claim that you are an unrepresented Haitian asylum applicant at the Southern border. Then you will see what “expedited handling” is all about!

CHAPTER FOUR: It’s Not Unusual

Witness the 18-year saga of poor Mr. Negusie, previously “low lighted” on “Courtside.” “A microcosm of all that’s wrong with our Immigration Court System — 17 years, 4 Administrations, 5 different tribunals (including the Supremes), 0 Final Resolution!” https://wp.me/p8eeJm-76y

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The INA has its problems. But, I’m skeptical that’s the real issue here.

Poorly functioning judges, a substandard appellate body, weak and/or incompetent judicial administrators, an anti-immigrant “culture,” antiquated “user unfriendly” procedures, political interference, lack of true judicial independence, grotesque inconsistencies, lack of accountability, no discernible values, no commitment to due process, lack of creative problem solving, and unwillingness to stand up to far-right White Nationalists and tell them to “buzz off” is what’s dragging EOIR (“Eyore”) down, inhibiting racial justice, and threatening our democracy. Seriously, this is “big time systemic failure” with existential consequences!

That’s largely within Garland’s power to fix! But, beyond removing a few of the “worst of the worst,” appointing a modest number of “bright lights” to the judiciary, and reversing some of the worst anti-immigrant, legally inane, and practically disastrous “precedents” ever (basically “Day One Stuff”), he hasn’t’ gotten the job done!

Undoubtedly, there are many talented folks — experts in immigration, human rights, due process, and racial justice — who could have correctly and finally resolved this case more than a decade ago. The problem is that they are “out here” and far lesser qualified judges and inept administrators are “calling the shots” at EOIR.

End the nonsense, bring in the talent, and fix the system! Sure, nativists and far right xenophobes are “invested” in a failed justice system — for various reasons, none of them valid. They will go ballistic if it starts functioning and treating individuals fairly and justly.

Great! The more they bluster and spread their White Nationalist BS and outright lies, the better Garland is doing. Up until recently, the far right crowd has been largely indifferent to what’s going on at EOIR. That’s because the Biden Administration has done little at EOIR that would make the “Stephen Miller crowd” unhappy. Their recent absurdist, disingenuous reactions are proof that Garland is finally making a few, long overdue, reforms and personnel changes that “hit home” and advance judicial competence, due process, fundamental fairness, and better practices.

The key is to fix EOIR, and tell the anti-due-process crowd to “go pound sand!” That’s exactly what neo-Nazi activist Stephen Miller and his motley crew would do if the situation were reversed!

There is, of course, a potential happy ending here. Replace the BIA with real judges! Hire real judicial professionals to administer the Immigration Courts. Take Eyore out of the DOJ and turn him into an independent Article I Court.

The alternatives are grim — for our nation and for future generations! Wake up folks, before it’s too late!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-24-22

☹️ 1.82 Million Souls Left In Limbo — Due Process Denying “Gimmicks” & Minor Tinkering Fail To Stem EOIR’s Burgeoning Backlog! — There Is No Substitute For Long-Overdue Practical Progressive Reforms!

Bleak House
Jarndyce v. Jarndyce: “The suit does not sleep; we wake it up, we air it, we walk it about. Thats something.”
From “Bleak House” by Charles Dickens (1895).
Garland has created a “Dickensonian” nightmare @ EOIR — including rushing some arbitrarily selected poor souls through his broken system to deportation orders with little or no process at all, let alone due process of law!

TRAC Immigration reports:

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse

Pace of Immigration Court Processing Increases While Backlog Continues to Climb

The latest case-by-case records show that the Immigration Court backlog reached 1,821,440 at the end of June 2022. This is up 25 percent from the backlog just at the beginning of this fiscal year. These figures are based on the analysis of the latest court records obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.

New Immigration Court cases continue to outstrip the number of cases being closed. So far during the first nine months the court received 634,594 new cases, but has only managed to dispose of 287,711. These closures took 1,130 days on average or more than three years from the date of the Notice to Appear (NTA) to the court’s disposition. Part of the delay represents the time it took from the Department of Homeland Security to actually file the NTA after it was issued. This delay reached record levels during the Trump administration three years ago, but NTAs are being filed much more promptly under the current administration.

The pace of court closures also has been accelerating. After the partial government shutdown in March 2020, court closures averaged just 6,172 per month for the remainder of that fiscal year. During FY 2021, court closures roughly doubled to 12,055 on average per month. By the end of the first six months of FY 2022, monthly closures had again doubled to an average of 23,957 per month. And this last quarter covering just the three-month period from April – June 2022, monthly closures doubled again to 47,991 on average each month.

According to court statistics, immigration judges on board at the beginning of this past quarter had increased just 6 percent over levels at the beginning of FY 2022. Thus, the increase in judge hiring only accounts for some of this speedier pace. A more important factor appears to be the many changes implemented by the Biden administration to increase the speed that court cases get scheduled and decided. However, as TRAC has reported, the increase in speed has come with heightened due process concerns, increasing the number of asylum seekers unable to secure legal representation which then greatly diminishes their opportunity to adequately prepare and present their asylum claims.

For more highlights on the Immigration Court, updated through June 2022, go to:

Immigration Court Quick Facts

For an index to the full list of TRAC’s immigration tools and their latest update go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/imm/tools

If you want to be sure to receive a notification whenever updated data become available, sign up at:

https://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1

Follow us on Twitter at:

https://twitter.com/tracreports

or like us on Facebook:

https://facebook.com/tracreports

TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the US Federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl

David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Syracuse University Peck Hall
601 E. Genesee Street
Syracuse, NY 13202-3117
315-443-3563
trac@syr.edu
https://trac.syr.edu 

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse is a nonpartisan joint research center of the Whitman School of Management (https://whitman.syr.edu) and the Newhouse School of Public Communications (https://newhouse.syr.edu) at Syracuse University. If you know someone who would like to sign up to receive occasional email announcements and press releases, they may go to https://trac.syr.edu and click on the E-mail Alerts link at the bottom of the page. If you do not wish to receive future email announcements and wish to be removed from our list, please send an email to trac@syr.edu with REMOVE as the subject.

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Needed:

  • New, visionary, innovative, creative, due-process-focused leadership @ EOIR;
  • Better judges with established records of fair, practical, scholarship and proven expertise in immigration, due process, and constitutional law;
  • An Attorney General who understands the need for the foregoing and has the backbone to put it in place and then let the “pros” solve the problems!

This broken and failing system and its toxic discredited “culture of denial, fake expediency, and false deterrence” needs a radical overhaul — NOW!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-16-22

🤮SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE:  TRAC SAYS UNDER GARLAND EOIR JUVENILE DATA REMAINS BADLY FLAWED, UNUSABLE!  — “EOIR has continued to ignore its growing data management problems.” — Duh!

Alfred E. Neumann
Garland doesn’t worry about the mess at his EOIR. He leaves the worrying to EOIR’s long-suffering, frustrated, and angry “customers!” PHOTO: Wikipedia Commons

 

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse

Immigration Court’s Data on Minors Facing Deportation is Too Faulty to Be Trusted

After careful analysis and consideration, TRAC is forced to suspend its publication of data on juveniles facing deportation in Immigration Court due to serious, unresolved deficiencies in the EOIR’s data. TRAC’s analyses indicate that the data used by the Immigration Court for tracking and reporting on juveniles who are facing deportation appear to be seriously flawed to the point that we question whether the agency has the ability to meaningfully and reliably report on juveniles in its caseload.

We wrote to EOIR’s Acting Director Jean King on September 22, 2021 to share TRAC’s findings, request feedback from the agency, and offer to share additional details to support the agency’s efforts to identify and resolve the issues. TRAC did not receive any response to that letter. We wrote to the EOIR again on October 15, 2021, this time to Director David Neal who had subsequently been appointed as EOIR’s permanent director by Attorney General Merrick Garland. We reiterated our initial concerns, but TRAC did not receive a response to that letter either.

TRAC is now regretfully withdrawing its own Juvenile App since EOIR’s data are too flawed to be used. Because these significant data problems arose only at the time EOIR implemented a series of changes in the latter part of 2017 impacting how unaccompanied juveniles were tracked, the results compiled before these changes occurred will be retained online for use in historical research.

The Immigration Court’s failure to respond to or address TRAC’s findings of significant data quality issues regarding minors is particularly concerning given the highly sensitive nature of children facing deportation. This data quality problem on tracking juvenile cases adds to EOIR’s earlier refusal to address data quality issues regarding asylum cases that continue to disappear from the agency’s master database which it relies on to manage its workload. Furthermore, TRAC recently uncovered additional data problems leading EOIR to falsely report its asylum backlog had allegedly declined this past year when in fact the backlog had markedly grown.

Taken individually, each specific issue is significant and noteworthy in its own right. But taken together, these now multiple unresolved data quality issues are compounding upon each other. TRAC has repeatedly offered to work with the EOIR to aid the agency as it seeks an understanding of the problem and a meaningful solution—yet thus far EOIR has continued to ignore its growing data management problems.

The public should be increasingly troubled by the indifference that the Immigration Courts have shown to these issues and should push for improved transparency and accountability.

For further information about the problems in the Court’s juvenile data go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/669/

David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Syracuse University
601 E. Genesee Street
Syracuse, NY 13202-3117
315-443-3563
trac@syr.edu
https://trac.syr.edu

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Bogus data “supporting” false claims! Institutionalized sloppiness! Serious legal mistakes! Wildly inconsistent application of basic legal principles and standards! Chronic mismanagement! Backlogs on steroids! Lack of public responsiveness! Wrong personnel in the wrong jobs!

That’s “Garland’s EOIR!” To put it charitably, it’s a godawful mess and a festering cancer on our entire legal system!

Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens would have loved writing about EOIR — the modern day reincarnation of the Court of Chancery from Jarndyce v. Jarndyce!
Public Realm

EOIR is like something out of a Charles Dickens novel! But, it’s a harsh reality for the immigrants, families, and advocates subjected to this publicly financed hotbed of incompetence, indifference, and ineptness!

Obviously, running EOIR in even a minimally competent level is beyond Garland’s skill set and below his interest level! Stunningly, our Attorney General is unbothered by having legal “work product” that would embarrass any self-respecting L-1 churned out in his name by his “delegees.” Feeding false and misleading information to the public? Just “another day at the office” @ Garland’s EOIR!

Where’s the Congressional oversight? Where’s Article I? 

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-04-21

PREVENTABLE HUMAN DISASTER: THE WANTON CRUELTY, WASTEFULNESS, & TOTAL STUPIDITY OF THE TRUMP/SESSIONS “GONZO” IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT PROGRAM PORTRAYED IN GRAPHIC HUMAN TERMS — The Damage To America Of Mistreating Our Families & Our Citizen Youth Will Long Outlive The Misguided Officials Carrying It Out!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/classic-apps/deported-divided-how-a-moms-return-to-el-salvador-tore-her-family-in-two/2017/12/08/70f81724-9a37-11e7-87fc-c3f7ee4035c9_story.html

Maria Sacchetti reports in the Washington Post:

Bermudez works all the time, so Cruz Mendez cares for Steve from afar. She calls the babysitter after school to make sure he arrived safely. She checks on his health insurance and his dental appointments.

Steve no longer asks when the family will be together.

In Falls Church, Cruz Mendez was an independent woman with a salary and dreams for the future. Now she sits inside the little gray house. Bermudez cannot afford to send her money for college, so she has set those plans aside.

Over the phone, he urges her to have faith that they will be together again.

She still wears her wedding ring, and he still wears his.

 

Bermudez works all the time, so Cruz Mendez cares for Steve from afar. She calls the babysitter after school to make sure he arrived safely. She checks on his health insurance and his dental appointments.

Steve no longer asks when the family will be together.

In Falls Church, Cruz Mendez was an independent woman with a salary and dreams for the future. Now she sits inside the little gray house. Bermudez cannot afford to send her money for college, so she has set those plans aside.

Over the phone, he urges her to have faith that they will be together again.

She still wears her wedding ring, and he still wears his.

Bermudez works all the time, so Cruz Mendez cares for Steve from afar. She calls the babysitter after school to make sure he arrived safely. She checks on his health insurance and his dental appointments.

Steve no longer asks when the family will be together.

In Falls Church, Cruz Mendez was an independent woman with a salary and dreams for the future. Now she sits inside the little gray house. Bermudez cannot afford to send her money for college, so she has set those plans aside.

Over the phone, he urges her to have faith that they will be together again.

She still wears her wedding ring, and he still wears his.

Maria Sacchetti reports in the Washington Post:

“Cruz Mendez, 30, made this trip in reverse when she was 18 years old, skipping her high school graduation to flee a neighborhood man who had harassed her in San Salvador. She was detained at the U.S.-Mexico border, released and allowed to join her brother in Virginia. Two months later, an immigration judge in Texas ordered her deported. Cruz Mendez says she never knew about the hearing.

In Fairfax, she was crowned beauty queen at a local Salvadoran festival and met Rene Bermudez, a hazel-eyed laborer who worked construction.

Steve was born in 2007, Danyca in 2012.

Late in 2013, police stopped Cruz Mendez for failing to turn on the lights on her minivan and charged her with driving without a license, an arrest that alerted federal agents to her old deportation order.

While President Barack Obama deported high numbers of undocumented immigrants during parts of his tenure, parents of American citizens with little to no criminal record were not priorities for expulsion. So officials released Cruz Mendez with orders to stay out of trouble and check in with them once a year.

But under President Trump, who campaigned on a promise to crack down on illegal immigration, anyone here without papers can be expelled.

Interior deportations — of people already living in the United States, as opposed to those caught crossing the border — have risen 37 percent since Trump took office. Deportation arrests of non-criminals such as Cruz Mendez — many, like her, with children who were born in this country and are U.S. citizens — surged past 31,000 from inauguration to the end of September, triple the same period last year.

On the May morning when she was scheduled for her yearly check-in, Cruz Mendez lingered in the apartment, which she’d decorated with family photographs, Danyca’s art projects and Steve’s citizen-of-the-month award from elementary school.

She considered the possibility of skipping the check-in, aware of other longtime immigrants who had been deported after similar appointments. But she could not fathom life as a fugitive. Worried, Bermudez warned her that she was going to be late.

“Why are you trying to turn me over so fast?” Cruz Mendez snapped in Spanish.

She eventually walked into the immigration agency’s Fairfax office, accompanied by advocates and loved ones. Agents took her into custody as her supporters shouted.

For a month, her husband and lawyers fought to free her. Steve tried, too, writing letters to Immigration and Customs Enforcement that were full of pleas and questions.

“Plz don’t deport my mom,” one of the letters said.

Who will take me to the doctor, the dentist? Who will take care of me and my sister? Who will I live with?

It didn’t work. On June 14, they sent her back. Bermudez and the kids filled a giant cardboard box with her dresses and shoes, pots and pans, and placed it by the front door, waiting for a courier to take it away.

Steve Bermudez, 10, wrote immigration officials in May to ask them not to deport his mother. For a month, Cruz Mendez’s husband and lawyers fought to free her and stop the deportation. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)

Steve looks out the window of the bedroom he used in his mother’s childhood home in El Salvador. The sign advertises fruit and vegetables his family sells. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
‘How can I go?’
Deportations can shatter a family or a marriage. In one study of the aftermath of six immigration raids, family income dropped an average of 70 percent. Another study, of U.S.-born Latino children, found that those whose parents had been detained or deported experienced significantly higher post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms than their peers.

“That child’s more likely to be poor. They’re more likely to be depend on public benefits,” said Randy Capps, U.S. research director for the Migration Policy Institute. “And then psychologically, you just don’t know. There could be an immediate impact; it could be a long time before that psychological impact shows up.”

In the Falls Church apartment, Steve and Danyca cried all the time after Cruz Mendez was deported. No one wanted to eat.

. . . .

Bermudez works all the time, so Cruz Mendez cares for Steve from afar. She calls the babysitter after school to make sure he arrived safely. She checks on his health insurance and his dental appointments.

Steve no longer asks when the family will be together.

In Falls Church, Cruz Mendez was an independent woman with a salary and dreams for the future. Now she sits inside the little gray house. Bermudez cannot afford to send her money for college, so she has set those plans aside.

Over the phone, he urges her to have faith that they will be together again.

She still wears her wedding ring, and he still wears his.“

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Read Maria’s entire story of this grotesque failure of responsible government, common sense, and human decency at the link!

THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS FUTURE

What kind of country abuses its youth  — our hope for the future —  this way? What kind of county wastes its human capital and potential in this manner? What kind of country empowers leaders who are intentionally cruel, immoral, dishonest, and stupid? What kind of country intentionally turns valued friends and positive contributors into potential disgruntled enemies?

This is the way that a once great nation transforms itself into an “overstuffed banana republic!”

But, it’s not yet too late to change the grim vision of “Christmas Future” being promoted by Trump, Sessions, Kelly, Homan, Bannon, Miller, and their cronies. We can resist the horrible policies of the Trump Administration in the courts of law and the courts of public opinion! Ultimately, totally unqualified officials like Trump, Sessions, and their White Nationalist cronies — who are plotting the end of America as we know it — can be defeated at the ballot box and removed from office.

But, there will come a “point of no return” when the damage done by these corrupt individuals and their enablers (both willing and unwitting) cannot be undone! Are we as smart, human, and capable of leaving behind selfishness and embracing decency and human kindness as Ebineezer Scrooge? Or will the Ghost prove to be the Prophet in this version of the Christmas Carol?

PWS

12-09-17