🤯 🤯🤯 COURTSIDE TRIPLE HEADER! — 1) “Why Is It A Continuing Battle To Get The Biden Administration To Follow Asylum Law, As Promised,” Asks Hon. “Sir Jeffrey” Chase? — “If you’re wondering how the new system is working out, according to one report, it has resulted in asylum seekers on the Mexican side of the Laredo port of entry being robbed, kidnapped, and held for ransom.” — 2) Commentary From The Great Lenni Benson: “Confusion Abounds!” — 3) PLUS BONUS BORDER COVERAGE FROM MICA ROSENBERG @ REUTERS: Biden’s Regs Are A Humanitarian, Legal, & Moral Catastrophe Despite BS “Success” Claims From Disingenuous USG Officials! ☠️

Jeffrey S. Chase
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog
Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2023/7/5/bidens-asylum-bar

Biden’s Asylum Bar

I’m sure many of you remember a childhood game called “Mother, May I?” An authority figure would say, “Jeff, take two giant steps forward!” But before doing so, the player would have to ask “Mother, may I?” Those two giant steps could only be taken if the response was “Yes, you may.” Otherwise, if the player took the steps, they were out.

If we were to take this game, direct the request and reply through an app called CBPOne, and make the stakes life or death, the result would be something very similar to the Biden Administration’s latest regulations governing asylum at the southern border.

The new rules are at odds with U.S. law. Congress has already authorized asylum seekers to take the necessary steps up to the border. The very first sentence of 8 U.S.C. § 1158 (the U.S. asylum statute) says that any noncitizen “whether or not at a designated port of arrival” and irrespective of their immigration status may apply for asylum.

And yet, not Congress but two Executive Branch agencies have now added a “Mother, May I?” type obstacle for those seeking to do what the law has long permitted. Under the new rules, the asylum seeker must first ask through a glitchy government phone app for specific permission (in the form of an appointment) before striding up to the border. Otherwise, the asylum seeker is simply not eligible for asylum, no matter how serious the danger they face if removed to their country.

How can Executive Branch agencies issue regulations that so directly contradict the statute those agencies are charged with enforcing? That question is the basis of a lawsuit filed by the ACLU, the National Immigrant Justice Center, and the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies in U.S. District Court.1

Our Round Table of Former Immigration Judges filed an amicus brief in support of petitioners’ arguments. We are in good company, as the USCIS asylum officers’ union filed a persuasive amicus brief as well.2 This means that groups representing the views of the only government officials authorized to decide asylum claims in this country (i.e. immigration judges and asylum officers) are united in opposing the new rule.

In our Round Table brief, we specifically take issue with the government’s false labeling of the new bar as merely a “rebuttable presumption” of asylum ineligibility.

Real rebuttable presumptions have long existed in our asylum regulations. For example, there is a rebuttable presumption that someone who has been persecuted in the past for reasons that give rise to an asylum claim may be persecuted again, unless major changes have since taken place in their country. There is also a presumption that one whose persecutor is the government of their country can’t find safety by simply relocating within that same country.

As you’ve probably noticed, there is a logic that flows in each of those examples from the known facts to the presumption. It is logical to assume that someone who was harmed before might be harmed again if conditions remain the same. The government may rebut the presumption by showing a fundamental change of the type that would put those fears to rest. There is a similar logic in concluding that a government’s reach extends throughout the country it governs. Again, the government may rebut that presumption through evidence establishing an exception to this general rule. In both of these examples, the fact established increases the likelihood of the fact presumed.

Now let’s return to the new rule. Say that a person faces brutal persecution on account of their political opinion if returned to their country. How does the fact that they couldn’t or didn’t get an appointment through a phone app in any way create a presumption that they are not in need of humanitarian protection? There can’t be a presumption if the fact established (i.e. that the person didn’t obtain an appointment through the app) is completely unrelated to the fact presumed (i.e. the person is not in need of asylum).

I believe it matters greatly whether the rule is considered a bar or a presumption. It is Congress that decides who may apply for asylum in this country. Thus, a regulation that admittedly creates a new bar to asylum (particularly where that bar is in direct contradiction to Congressional intent) is likely to be rejected as ultra vires by the courts. And in fact, a very similar bar to this one published by the Trump Administration was enjoined for just that reason.3 Agencies cannot usurp Congress’s role by legislating in the guise of rulemaking.

By attempting to disguise the new bar as merely a “rebuttable presumption,” the agencies seek to increase the odds of the ban passing muster this time. That is exactly the Department of Justice’s argument in its response brief: that its new rule is completely different from the prior administration’s “bar,” because according to DOJ, the new rule “does not treat manner of entry as dispositive, but instead creates a rebuttable presumption that can be overcome…”4

So the “Mother, may I?” regs clearly overstep the agencies’ legal authority. But do they create an equal barrier for all asylum seekers? The answer is no. As stated, the rules require one intending to apply for asylum to first obtain an appointment. Of course, there are more asylum seekers than there are available appointments. As mentioned, the government app through which one tries to secure an appointment, CBPOne, is full of glitches. As Prof. Austin Kocher recently noted, those glitches have impacted who gets those appointments:

the initial release of CBP One was accompanied by a variety of tech failures that did not necessarily undermine CBP’s ability to fill up its appointments calendar for asylum seekers but did create barriers to entry for migrants who were less tech savvy, could not access high-speed Internet, were part of larger families, or, either directly or indirectly, migrants who were darker-skinned or Black.5

That last point refers to the app’s problems with facial recognition that have caused it to reject applicants who are not white.6 As a result of these and other reported scheduling inequities, Sen. Edward Markey wrote to DHS back in February urging the agency to cease use of the app, due to its inaccessibility to many intending applicants, adding that “we cannot allow it to create a tiered system that treats asylum seekers differently based on their economic status — including the ability to pay for travel — language, nationality, or race.”.7

Instead of “ditching the app” as the Senator requested, the agencies instead added an exception to the bar if the noncitizen “demonstrates by a preponderance of the evidence that it was not possible to access or use the DHS scheduling system due to language barrier, illiteracy, significant technical failure, or other ongoing and serious obstacle.”8

However, there is a big catch. Pursuant to the rule, this exception is only available to those without an appointment who make their claim at an actual port of entry.  But observers at points of entry along the southern border report that “practices by U.S. and Mexican authorities restricted asylum seekers without CBP One appointments from physically reaching U.S. ports of entry to make protection requests.”9 So the exception written into the regs is not available in reality, as one seeking to claim it is restricted from reaching the port of entry where it must be claimed, and is barred from claiming the exception if they cross the border elsewhere.

If you’re wondering how the new system is working out, according to one report, it has resulted in asylum seekers on the Mexican side of the Laredo port of entry being robbed, kidnapped, and held for ransom.10 Another article described how some of  those “lucky” enough to have obtained CBPOne appointments at Laredo claimed “that Mexican officials in Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, Texas, had threatened to hold them and make them miss their scheduled asylum appointments unless they paid them.”11 As a result, CBPOne appointments were temporarily suspended for the Laredo port of entry.

One excluded from asylum under these rules may still seek two types of lesser protections called withholding of removal.12 Oddly, under U.S. law, these alternative protections are much more difficult than asylum to qualify for, yet provide far fewer benefits. Asylum is an actual legal status which extends to the spouse and minor children of the asylee, allows for travel abroad, and puts recipients on a path to permanent residence and then citizenship in this country. By contrast, withholding of removal arises when an individual is ordered deported, and only blocks their deportation to a country in which persecution or torture is likely to occur, but otherwise leaves the recipient in limbo. The protection provides no path to family reunification or permanent status, and no right to travel abroad to visit the family members from whom the recipient is left indefinitely separated.

Nevertheless, withholding of removal does save lives. But not satisfied with simply barring asylum, the new regulations also make these lesser forms of protection far more difficult to access. This is because one must first pass something called a “credible fear interview” in order to even have the right to apply for withholding of removal in this country. As those interviews are conducted within days of the asylum-seeker’s arrival, in custody, often before the applicant has had the opportunity to obtain legal counsel or evidence, and possibly while suffering from the effects of persecution, the credible fear standard was intentionally designed to be a low one. The idea is to allow people who might genuinely be at risk the opportunity to fully develop their cases in a full removal proceeding, while only quickly removing those lacking legitimate claims.

But the new regulations raise the burden of proof by requiring the applicant at this very early stage to demonstrate a “reasonable fear” of persecution, which USCIS describes as the exact same standard required for a grant of asylum – i.e. “well-founded fear.13 Again, the lower credible fear standard being replaced was created solely because it isn’t reasonable to expect someone to prove more under the conditions faced by such recent arrivals. This intended safeguard has thus been completely undermined, as one who might only be a day or two in the country must now present a full-blown asylum claim just to earn the chance to have a hearing.

The new process requires non-lawyers to satisfy a complex legal standard they won’t understand, often without the time to seek legal advice or compile the evidence necessary to meet the heightened burden. I have no doubt that the process will result in genuine refugees being denied protection. And once again, the entire reason for placing applicants at such heightened risk is their not having obtained an appointment on a problematic phone app.

Why does the Biden Administration believe all this is necessary? In a recent column, Jamelle Bouie addressed the vows of some Republican presidential candidates to eliminate the constitutional right to birthright citizenship through executive order.14 In addition to presenting a compelling argument as to why this cannot legally be done, Bouie included in his column a wonderful quote from Frederick Douglass: “The outspread wings of the American Eagle are broad enough to shelter all who are likely to come.”

In case the Biden Administration is wondering if it can champion that same sentiment today, in lieu of its convoluted attempt to ban protection to those deserving of it under our laws, the answer is: “Yes, you may.”

(Much thanks to attorneys Ashley Vinson Crawford and Steven Schulman of the law firm of Akin Gump for representing the group of former Immigration Judges and BIA Members on our amicus brief in East Bay Sanctuary.)

Copyright 2023, Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.

Notes:

  1. East Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Biden, No. 18-cv-06810-JST, N.D. Cal. (Filed May 11, 2023).
  2. See Britain Eakin, “Asylum Officers, Ex-Judges Back Suit on Biden Asylum Rule,” Law360, June 8, 2023.
  3. East Bay Sanctuary v. Barr, 964 F.3d 832 (9th Cir. 2020) (holding that the Trump Administration’s asylum bar was inconsistent with our asylum laws).
  4. Defendants’ Reply Brief, East Bay Sanctuary v. Biden, (June 30, 2023) at 8.
  5. Austin Kocher, “Glitches in the Digitization of Asylum: How CBP One Turns Migrants’ Smartphones into Mobile Borders,” mdpi.com, June 20, 2023, https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/13/6/149, section 4.
  6. Melissa del Bosque, “Facial Recognition Bias Frustrates Black Asylum Applicants to US,” The Guardian, Feb. 8, 2023,
  7. “Senator Markey Calls on DHS to Ditch Mobile App Riddled With Glitches, Privacy Problems, For Asylum Seekers,” https://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/senator-markey-calls-on-dhs-to-ditch-mobile-app-riddled-with-glitches-privacy-problems-for-asylum-seekers.
  8. 8 C.F.R. § 1208.33(a)(2)(ii)(B).
  9. International Rescue Committee, “Limits on Access to Asylum After Title 42: One Month of Monitoring U.S.-Mexico Border Ports of Entry” (June 2023), https://www.rescue.org/sites/default/files/2023-06/Limits%20on%20Access%20to%20Asylum%20After%20Title%2042_1.pdf.
  10. Sandra Sanchez, “Kidnappings, Extortion End CBP Asylum Interviews at Laredo-Nuevo Laredo Border Crossing,” Border Report, June 14, 2023, https://www.borderreport.com/immigration/border-crime/kidnappings-extortion-end-cbp-asylum-interviews-at-laredo-nuevo-laredo-border-crossing/?ipid=promo-link-block1.
  11. Valerie Gonzalez and Julie Watson, “U.S. Halts Online Asylum Appointments at Texas Crossing After Extortion Warnings,” A.P., June 12, 2023, https://apnews.com/article/mexico-border-cbp-one-laredo-bfccf8c3f52d9cec2563b40da905a391.
  12. One form of withholding covers persecution for specified reasons; the other applies to torture.
  13. See Asylum Officer Basic Training Course Lesson Plan, “Reasonable Fear and Torture Determinations,” (USCIS, RAIO, 2017) at 11 (“The ‘reasonable possibility’ standard is the same standard required to establish eligibility for asylum (the ‘well- founded fear’ standard).”)
  14. Jamelle Bouie, “Opinion: What Frederick Douglass Knew That Trump and DeSantis Don’t,” NYT, June 30, 2023.

JULY 5, 2023

***********************

It’s an existential problem for our nation when a Dem Administration claims as “success:” failure to recognize the rights of asylum seekers, intentionally evading asylum law, and endangering the lives of asylum seekers!

Lest anyone think the confusion, unfairness, and disorder caused by the Biden/Harris failure to implement competent, professional, expert leadership on human rights is “overhyped,” here’s an “in person” report from Professor Lenni Benson of NY Law School, founder of Safe Passage Project, and a widely reknowned “practical expert” on asylum and human rights.

Professor Lenni B. Benson
Professor Lenni B.Benson
Distinguished Chair of Immigration and Human Rights Law
New York Law School
Founder, Safe Passage Project
PHOTO: NYLS website

 

Sharing an excellent Blog post by retired IJ Jeff Chase on why the CBP One app may be endangering asylum applicants.  See below.

 

Related to the CBP One app was a hearing I observed last Friday, June 30, 2023 in NY City.

 

A self-represented individual was asked by the IJ “were you admitted or inspected” by the government, the Respondent through a Mandarin interpreter said “Yes, through the CBP app.”  The IJ paused. The OPLA attorney was visible on Webex. She was silent.

 

The IJ said “I will note your statement for the record, I find you removable as charged for not having been inspected or admitted.” [The Respondent had declined an opportunity to find an attorney.]

 

I am sure CBP will argue that entry under the app is not an inspection or admission and I haven’t looked carefully at the regulations but the issue is there to perhaps be litigated.

 

The other interesting twist in this particular case was that the government then told the Judge that she could see the Respondent had already completed biometrics and submitted an asylum application, but no application was in either her file nor the Court’s.

The IJ asked, do you have a copy?

The respondent: “On my phone.”

The IJ set a call-up date hearing to have the respondent print out the application and file it with the court in person.

 

I didn’t get a chance to speak to the Respondent, but I wondered if he had perhaps thought his interview with CBP was his asylum application or if he had filed affirmatively with USCIS.

 

Just sharing with this community.

 

Confusion abounds.

“Confusion abounds!” 🤯Why, rather than clarifying and applying the law, would the Administration intentionally create confusion and a host of unnecessary “litigatable issues?” 

Why would they create delay by supposedly having applications for asylum “filed” but unavailable electronically to either ICE or EOIR? 

Why didn’t the Administration recruit and hire real “practical experts” like Lenni Benson and her colleagues to straighten out the asylum system at the border, restore the rule of law, and reform and repopulate the critically important, currently dysfunctional, Immigration Courts and the BIA with well-qualified progressive judges, merit-selected experts in human rights and practical problem solving?

Pleased to join my friend “Sir Jeffrey” in giving a big “shout out” to our Round Table colleagues and superstar NDPA attorneys Steve Schulman, Ashley Vinson Crawford, and their pro bono team at Akin Gump for representing us on the amicus brief in East Bay Sanctuary!

*********************

Anybody naive enough to believe the “party line” from Administration wonks about “success at the border” should heed this “hot off the presses” report from Mica Rosenberg @ Reuters. It confirms the legal and humanitarian disaster at the border resulting from two plus years of mismanagement of asylum by Mayorkas, Garland, and the rest of the Biden immigration politicos who have  failed to undo the humanitarian and legal mess left behind by White Nationalist Stephen Miller and the rest of the Trumpist scofflaws!

Mica Rosenberg
Mica Rosenberg
National Immigration Reporter, Reuters

Mica writes:

We examined the impact of the Biden administration’s new asylum regulation at the U.S.-Mexico border after it replaced the COVID-era Title 42 expulsion policy on May 11.

 

U.S. officials have said the regulation and other Biden immigration policies, that have opened new legal pathways to the US, have dramatically reduced the number of illegal border crossings.

But in the first month of the new policy, Reuters interviews with more than 50 migrants, U.S. and Mexican officials, a review of court records and previously unreported data found:

More than 100,000 migrants waiting in northern Mexico, many trying to snag an appointment on an oversubscribed government run smartphone app; a sharp drop in people passing their initial asylum screenings; more people in detention and tens of thousands of deportations.

 

My colleagues visited the mile-long migrant camp in Matamoros, across the river from Brownsville, Texas, where conditions are deteriorating, including cases of sexual assault in the camp, and we also spoke to a father who crossed the border but was speedily deported while his family was allowed into the US.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immigration-asylum-border/

 

Please read and share and keep in touch.

The report at the above link has many photos illustrating both the cruel stupidity of the Biden program and the amazing resilience of those still hoping, against the odds, to have their legal rights respected and protected by the USG.

Thanks, Mica, for “telling it like it is” and penetrating the “bureaucratic smokescreen” thrown up by the Administration to cover its misdeeds and human rights abuses!🤮

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-06-23

MICA ROSENBERG @ REUTERS: “NEW Reuters project on the rising numbers of deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border” — Death Is Just “Collateral Damage” From Bad Border & Immigration Policies! — As The Desert Gets Hotter, Expect The Human Toll To Rise! ☠️⚰️

Mica Rosenberg
Mica Rosenberg
National Immigration Reporter, Reuters
Border Death
This is a monument for those who have died attempting to cross the US-Mexican border. Each coffin represents a year and the number of dead. It is a protest against the effects of Operation Guardian. Taken at the Tijuana-San Diego border.
Tomas Castelazo
To comply with the use and licensing terms of this image, the following text must must be included with the image when published in any medium, failure to do so constitutes a violation of the licensing terms and copyright infringement: © Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

 

 

Hi there again,

 

I also wanted to share a multi media project we published yesterday about the rising number of deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immigration-border-deaths/

 

Through our reporting, we exclusively learned that U.S. Customs and Border Protection quietly changed last year how they count deaths on the border to only include deaths in custody, during arrests or when agents were nearby and there were 151 such “CBP-related” deaths in the 2021 fiscal year.

 

We are still reporting on this and other issues of course, so please keep in touch with tips and story ideas!

 

All the best,

Mica

………………………………………………….

Mica Rosenberg

Reuters News

National Immigration Reporter

www.reuters.com

****************************

Thanks, Mica. “Tune in” to the full “multimedia report” referenced by Mica at the above link to Reuters.

No amount of statistical hocus-pocus or nativist BS can hide the stain of these deadly, yet ultimately ineffective, border enforcement policies. It’s important that the names and actions of the politicos, bureaucrats, and bad judges who promote and encourage deadly violations of human rights, and their media apologists, be preserved and documented for history!

As we can see, there are, and will continue to be, concerted efforts to “cover up,” deny, and misrepresent the deadly effects of bad border policies! “Dehumanization of the other,” actively promoted by Trumpists and other White Nationalist GOP pols and their hand picked Federal Judges is a crucial first step!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-27-22

REUTERS: MICA ROSENBERG & TEAM REPORT ON UNACCOMPANIED CHILDREN, FAMILY REUNIFICATION!

Mica Rosenberg
Mica Rosenberg
National Immigration Reporter, Reuters

Hi there all,

 

I wanted to share with you our latest Reuters investigation about unaccompanied minors released to the town of Enterprise, Alabama where the chicken industry is booming and we profiled a teen who easily found work after she was released from federal custody. We detail how last summer U.S. Department of Health and Human Services temporarily halted releases from shelters to the town, as several federal agencies probed whether migrants were at risk. While no child trafficking has been found, labor exploitation of migrants there is being investigated.

Read more, and share, here: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immigration-alabama/

 

This follows our coverage of the reunification of one migrant family separated in 2017 at the U.S.-Mexico border under Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy who was reunited in January. We have been in touch with the family since 2020.

Here is the story with a graphic that shows the scale of the work of the Biden administration’s reunification task force:

https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/split-up-at-the-us-mexico-border-family-finally-reunites

and here is the story with additional photographs of this family’s long and painful journey:

https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-IMMIGRATION/REUNIFICATION/byprjxlnzpe/index.html

 

We also were able to report on another heartwarming reunion, after a family lost their baby in the chaos of the evacuation of Afghanistan. Our story published last November helped lead to tips that located the baby in Kabul so he could be reunited with relatives there and hopefully soon taken to the United States to join his parents who have resettled in Michigan:

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/exclusive-baby-lost-chaos-afghanistan-airlift-found-returned-family-after-long-2022-01-08/

 

We are continuing coverage of all these important issues so please keep in touch with tips and story ideas!

All the best,

Mica

………………………………………………….

Mica Rosenberg

Reuters News

National Immigration Reporter

www.reuters.com

 

3 Times Square, 18th Floor

New York, NY 10036

Cell/signal/whatsapp/telegram: +1 (646) 897-4851

Teams: +1 (332) 219-1353

email: mica.rosenberg@thomsonreuters.com

www.linkedin.com/in/micarosenberg/

 

***********

Thanks, Mica, for giving us an in-depth look at the “human side” of these issues!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-07-22

 

JUDGE HANEN (SD TX) THROWS DACA BACK INTO DOUBT! — Says Original Program Illegal, Bars New Apps, But Rules Gov. Can’t Pull The Rug Out From Under Those Currently Protected, For Now!

Mica Rosenberg
Mica Rosenberg
National Immigration Reporter, Reuters

https://reut.rs/36VDoK9

Mica Rosenberg reports for Reuters:

NEW YORK, July 16 (Reuters) – A U.S. federal judge in Texas on Friday blocked new applications to a program that protects immigrants who were brought to the United States as children from deportation but said the hundreds of thousands of people already enrolled would not be affected until further court rulings.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen sided with a group of states suing to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, arguing it was illegally created by former President Barack Obama in 2012.

Hanen found the program violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) when it was created but said that since there were so many people currently enrolled in the program – nearly 650,000 – his ruling would be temporarily stayed for their cases until further court rulings in the case.

“To be clear,” the judge said, the order does not require the government to take “any immigration, deportation or criminal action against any DACA recipient.”

. . . .

**************

Read the rest of Mica’s article at the link.

The obvious solution is legislation. But, the GOP is likely to oppose any reasonable proposal, and the Dems might not have the votes to “go it alone.”

Stay tuned!

PWS

07-16-21

🏴‍☠️INSIDE A FAILED AND UNJUST SYSTEM: Reuters Report Explains How The Trump Administration Destroyed Due Process, Fundamental Fairness, & Humanity In The U.S. Immigration Courts!

Reade Levinson
Reade Levinson
Reporter, Reuters
Kristina Cooke
Kristina Cooke
Reporter, Reuters
Mica Rosenberg
Mica Rosenberg
National Immigration Reporter, Reuters
Four Horsemen
BIA Asylum Panel In Action
Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-trump-court-special-r/special-report-how-trump-administration-left-indelible-mark-on-u-s-immigration-courts-idUSKBN2B0179

Reade Levinson, Kristina Cooke, & Mica Rosenberg report for Reuters:

(Reuters) – On a rainy September day in 2018, Jeff Sessions, then U.S. attorney general, addressed one of the largest classes of newly hired immigration judges in American history.

“The vast majority of asylum claims are not valid,” he said during a swearing-in ceremony in Falls Church, Virginia, according to his prepared remarks. If judges do their job, he said, “the number of illegal aliens and the number of baseless claims will fall.”

It was a clear message to the incoming class: Most of the immigrants who appear in court do not deserve to remain in the United States.

As U.S. President Joe Biden works to undo many of the restrictive immigration policies enacted by former President Donald Trump, he will confront one of his predecessor’s indelible legacies: the legion of immigration judges Trump’s administration hired.

The administration filled two-thirds of the immigration courts’ 520 lifetime positions with judges who, as a whole, have disproportionately ordered deportation, according to a Reuters analysis of more than 800,000 immigration cases decided over the past 20 years.

Judges hired under Trump ordered immigrants deported in 69% of cases, compared to 58% for judges hired as far back as the administration of President Ronald Reagan. Because hundreds of thousands of immigrants have cases before the court each year, that 11 percentage-point difference translates to tens of thousands more people ordered deported each year. Appeals are rarely successful.

Biden has promised to dramatically expand the courts by doubling the number of immigration judges and other staff. That’s a worthwhile effort, said Stephen Legomsky, a former chief counsel of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services who is now a professor emeritus at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis. “But the challenge is going to be tremendous.”

Although there are no statutory limits on the number of judges who can be hired, expanding the court would be costly and could take years, immigration law experts said.

“The fact that these (Trump-era) judges are already in place inhibits him a great deal,” Legomsky said of Biden.

Stephen Miller, the key architect of Trump’s immigration agenda, told Reuters that the administration had aimed to hire more immigration judges as part of an effort to “create more integrity in the asylum process” and quickly resolve what he termed meritless claims to cut down on a massive backlog.

“Most of the people that are coming unlawfully between ports of entry on the southwest border are not eligible for any recognized form of asylum,” Miller said in an interview. “There should be a very high rejection rate.”

Under U.S. law, immigrants are eligible for asylum only if they can prove they were being persecuted in their home countries on the basis of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or their political opinions. Miller said many migrants arriving at the border are coming for economic reasons and present fraudulent asylum claims.

Sessions, who as attorney general had the final say in hiring immigration judges, told Reuters that “the problem is not with the Trump judges. The problem was with some of the other judges that seemed to not be able to manage their dockets, or, in many cases, rendered rulings that were not consistent with the law.

The Trump administration’s successors to Sessions, who was forced out in 2018, did not respond to requests for comment.

. . . .

“There has been a significant lack of basic understanding of immigration law and policy with many – not all – but many of the new hires under the Trump administration,” said Susan Roy, an attorney and former immigration judge appointed during the administration of President George W. Bush who has represented immigrants before some new judges.

Reuters spoke with eight other former immigration judges, five of whom served under Trump, who generally echoed her view. Sitting immigration judges are not permitted to speak to the media.

Even for judges with immigration backgrounds, the type of experience they have has been controversial. In 2017, a report commissioned by the Justice Department found a lack of diversity of experience among judges hired, due to an excess of former prosecutors here from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

. . . .

******************

Read the rest of the report at the link.

Hon. Sue Roy is a distinguished member of our Round Table of Former Immigration Judges 🛡⚔️ now in private practice representing asylum seekers and other migrants in Immigration Court.

Hon. Charles Honeyman, quoted elsewhere in the article, is also a member of the Round Table who actually was removed from a case for failing to carry out what he believed to be improper instructions from his “supervisors” who were implementing Sessions’s anti-immigrant policies.

Stephen Legomsky is a former USCIS Senior Executive and esteemed retired Professor who generally is acknowledged as one of American’s leading scholar-experts on immigration and human rights.

Judge Dana Leigh Marks, quoted elsewhere in the article, is a former President of the National Association of Immigration Judges who also successfully argued the landmark  Supreme Court  case INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, which established the generous well-founded fear standard for asylum.

Sessions and Miller are notorious White Nationalist xenophobes who have neither represented asylum seekers nor been Immigration Judges. Their efforts to eradicate international norms and legal protections for vulnerable asylum seekers, and their particular bias against female asylum seekers, have been widely criticized and panned by human rights experts throughout the world, as well as enjoined or overruled by some U.S. Courts. They were architects of the widely condemned child separation policy and the New American Gulag (“NAG”).

EOIR is the failed DOJ agency that houses the dysfunctional Immigration Courts.

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever! 

PWS

03-08-21

 

🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️INSIDE ICE’S NEW AMERICAN GULAG (“NAG”) WITH MICA ROSENBERG @ REUTERS! – As COVID Rages, “Civil” Detainees Jailed By ICE In Deadly Conditions For Longer Periods!

 

Mica Rosenberg
Mica Rosenberg
National Immigration Reporter, Reuters

In our most recent story on ICE detention and the coronavirus, we looked at ICE data going back to 2010 and found immigrants are being held now for longer on average than at any time in a decade in the middle of a pandemic, which has now infected more than 6,400 detainees nationwide. We spoke to 20 detainees from Africa and Latin America who have been detained for more than six months. Some were asylum seekers held for long periods as they seek relief in immigration court, others were DACA recipients who have served criminal sentences but are still fighting their deportation orders.

Detainees are locked up for much longer, even as the overall detention population dropped dramatically this year. Part of the reason for that decline: around 150,000 expulsions at the US-Mexico border under new health rules put in place by the Trump administration in March.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-detention-insight/amid-pandemic-sharply-increased-u-s-detention-times-put-migrants-at-risk-idUSKBN26U15Y

 

This follows on our earlier reporting about how ICE transfers of detainees have exacerbated the spread of the virus in some cases and how detainees have died of COVID-19. As well as how the families of detainees are being affected because of their frontline work.

 

Thanks again to everyone who has helped me report these stories and please do keep in touch with future tips. Beyond detention, we are also following the swift pace of immigration policy changes across the board.

 

All the best,

Mica

 

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Thanks Mica and crew for continuing to expose these outrageous violations our Constitution, our international obligations, morality, common sense, and our obligations to our fellow humans by the Trump regime’s white nationalist kakistocracy!

 

Vote ‘em out, vote ‘em out, on every level! Return our nation to the rule of law, common sense, competency, and simple human decency.

 

PWS

10-11-20

MICA ROSENBERG @ REUTERS: “Latest from Reuters — ICE detention transfers exacerbate the spread of COVID-19”🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️

Mica Rosenberg
Mica Rosenberg
National Immigration Reporter, Reuters

In our most recent story (https://reut.rs/2ZFjksB) about the dangers of coronavirus in U.S. immigration detention centers. Using immigration court records and ICE data we found 268 transfers of detainees between detention centers in April, May and June, half that involved detainees who were either moved from centers with COVID-19 cases to centers with no known cases, or from centers with no cases to those where the virus had spread.

At least one transfer resulted in a super-spreading event. On June 2, 74 detainees were transferred to a detention center in Farmville, Virginia from three detention centers in Florida and Arizona, two of which had confirmed COVID-19 cases.  Before the transfer the center only had only 2 positive cases (also from transferees from another nearby detention center). After the transfer, more than half of the detainees moved tested positive for the virus. Now Farmville is the hardest hit detention center in the country, with 315 cases.

 

Previously we reported on how hospital resources are scarce in many rural areas where detainees are held, and how some asylum seekers are giving up their claims because they fear catching the virus in detention and how one couple faced double jeopardy both inside and outside of immigration lock up.

 

Please keep in touch about other stories we should be pursuing in these difficult times!

Best,

Mica

………………………………………………….

Mica Rosenberg

Reuters News

National Immigration Reporter

www.reuters.co

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Than is so much, Mica! Go on over to Reuters at the above links to get all of Mica’s great, very timely reporting on this topic!

The truth is out, and, predictably, it’s ugly for the “malicious incompetents” in Trump’s outrageous immigration kakistocracy. 

While the Administration has falsely claimed that draconian, clearly illegal and unnecessary, immigration restrictions are required to “protect” America from COVID-19 (a threat that they otherwise downplay or deny through false narratives and pseudo-science), it’s actually ICE that is a key spreader of disease, both in the U.S. and in other countries!☠️🤮⚰️👎🏻

This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!

PWS

07-17-20

US DISTRICT JUDGE DANA SABRAW REJECTS ACLU CLAIM THAT DHS HAS RETURNED TO POLICY OF “SYSTEMATICALLY SEPARATING” FAMILIES AT BORDER

Mica Rosenberg
Mica Rosenberg
National Immigration Reporter, Reuters
Kanishka Singh
Kanishka Singh
Political News Journalist
Reuters

 

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-children/judge-rules-in-favor-of-trump-administration-in-family-separation-case-idUSKBN1ZD1LY?il=0

Judge rules in favor of Trump administration in family separation case

(Reuters) – A U.S. federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration’s ongoing separations of families at the U.S.-Mexico border based on parents’ criminal history or health exclusions are being carried out with proper discretion.

Mexican asylum seekers camping near the Paso del Norte international border crossing bridge while waiting to apply for asylum to the U.S. are evicted by the local government, who will move them to a local shelter, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico January 7, 2020. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez

The ruling, by U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego, California, on Monday, was a rare victory for the government in a case that has been ongoing since 2018.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) first brought the case over President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy of criminally prosecuting all border crossers, which led to the separation of hundreds of families and sparked national outrage. Sabraw had ordered the administration to find and reunite separated families.

Trump officially halted the practice with an executive order on June 20, 2018. But the ACLU claimed in court that since then, the government has continued the practice and separated more than 1,000 families in violation of Sabraw’s order.

The government has said it separates families when it suspects the parent has a criminal record, a communicable disease, or when there are questions about the relationship between the adult and the migrant child. It claimed its current practice is no different than prior administrations.

The rights group argued, however, that the administration was taking children from parents when they had only minor infractions like traffic violations or previous illegal border crossings.

Sabraw found government officials were “generally exercising their discretion to separate families at the border” in a manner consistent with migrants’ “rights to family integrity and the Court’s orders.”

The judge added there was no evidence before the court that the government has “returned to systematically separating families at the border.”

Sabraw did say that the government should use its rapid DNA testing technology to confirm parentage and not separate families based on “subjective concerns” alone.

The ACLU highlighted that part of the ruling in a statement: “The court strongly reaffirmed that the Trump administration bears the burden if it attempts to separate families based on an accusation that the adult is not the child’s parent,” ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said.

The group said it was considering its next move in the case.

The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru and Mica Rosenberg in New York; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Matthew Lewis

 

***************************************

While most news commentators to date have viewed this as a “victory” for the Trump Administration,” Judge Sabraw did reaffirm the principles of his original injunction that had forced a change in Government policy. He did, however, reject the ACLU’s request for expanded injunctive relief, except for timely DNA testing. He found no evidence that the DHS had failed to comply with the terms of the prior injunction on a systemic basis.

 

PWS

 

01-14-20

HUMANITY REVILED: THE HUMAN COSTS OF TRUMP’S INTENTIONALLY CRUEL & INHUMAN POLICIES CARRIED OUT BY DHS – Mica Rosenberg @ Reuters & Friends With Three Timely Reports!

Mica Rosenberg
Mica Rosenberg
National Immigration Reporter, Reuters

I wanted to share our latest exclusive reporting that found some 16,000 children, nearly 500 of them infants under 1 year old, have been sent back to Mexico under the “Migrant Protection Protocols” to wait out their U.S. court hearings in often precarious living conditions. The government would not share a demographic breakdown of who was being sent back under the program so we sought the answers ourselves:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-babies-exclusive/exclusive-u-s-migrant-policy-sends-thousands-of-babies-and-toddlers-back-to-mexico-idUSKBN1WQ1H1

 

Separately, we just completed a multimedia project that took months of work and lots of cross-border collaboration to follow the diverging fates of several migrants who travelled with the caravans last year:

https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-IMMIGRATION-PROFILE/0100B2FK1NP/index.html

 

I am also following the developments in the U.S. refugee resettlement program:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-refugees/all-i-can-do-is-pray-a-family-in-limbo-as-us-slows-refugee-admissions-idUSKBN1WI0XV

 

Please read and share and stay in touch with more story ideas!

All the best,

Mica

 

………………………………………………….

Mica Rosenberg

Reuters News

National Immigration Reporter

www.reuters.com

 

 

***********************************************************

Thanks Mica & team for the great in-depth reporting highlighting the human costs of the Trump Administration’s scofflaw policies.

It’s also what “Big Mac With Lies” actually stood for and went along with during his tenure at DHS. Things to remember when, somewhere down the line, Big Mac inevitably tries to “reinvent himself” as “the voice of reason” or an “internal resistor” to Trump’s grotesque anti-human rights campaign and his “political weaponization” of DHS.

DHS actually has a duty to insure that refugee laws are fairly and generously applied, as intended, to protect those fleeing persecution and torture. Not only did Big Mac fail to carry out that responsibility, but he actively undermined, mocked, and further endangered those needing protection under our laws. And, it was all part of a blatantly racist, White Nationalist, restrictionist Trump agenda that Big Mac fully understood and willfully advanced. He presided over a highly corrupt, unprofessional, politicized, weaponization of DHS. By this time, the damage appears to be irreparable.

 

PWS

 

10-13-19

MICA ROSENBERG, KRISTINA COOKE, & DANIEL TROTTA @ REUTERS: Highly Controversial “Under the Radar” Program Funded By US & Run By U.N. Agency Helps Duress Forced Migrants Into Returning To Countries Where They Might Be In Danger — “The court is a lie, they are not going to help us, it’s better if I go back to Honduras.”

Mica Rosenberg
Mica Rosenberg
Reporter, Reuters
Kristina Cooke
Kristina Cooke
Reporter, Reuters
Daniel Trotta
Daniel Trotta
Reporter, Reuters

https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/us-government-funds-free-rides-from-mexico-for-migrants

(Reuters) – More than 2,000 Central American migrants seeking to settle in the United States have given up and accepted free rides home under a 10-month-old program funded by the U.S. government and run by a United Nations agency, according to a U.N. official.

A migrant child stands inside a shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, July 20, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

The “Assisted Voluntary Return” program has paid for buses or flights for 2,170 migrants who either never reached the United States or were detained after crossing the border and then sent to Mexico to await U.S. immigration hearings, according to Christopher Gascon, an official with the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The $1.65 million program, funded by the U.S. State Department, is raising concerns among immigration advocates who say it could violate a principle under international law against returning asylum seekers to countries where they could face persecution.

The returned migrants have not been interviewed by U.S. asylum officers. But Gascon said his agency screens all participants to ensure they are not seeking U.S. asylum and want to go back.

Gascon, head of the IOM’s Mexico mission, said the program provides a safer and more humane means of return than the migrants could arrange on their own.

The effort here, whose scope and controversial aspects have not been previously reported, is the first by the State Department and UN to target Central American migrants in Mexico on such a large scale. The State Department would not comment on the record about its role.

Gascon said the State Department reached out to the IOM last year as caravans of thousands of Central American migrants traveled through Mexico toward the U.S. border.

U.S. President Donald Trump called the caravans an “invasion” and has made stemming immigration a centerpiece of his administration and 2020 re-election campaign.

Migrant advocates are particularly concerned about 347 people returned by the IOM who had been stuck in Mexico under a controversial Trump administration policy known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP).

Under that policy, which began Jan. 29, some migrants who make it across the U.S.-Mexico border are given a notice to appear in U.S. immigration court, then are then turned back to Mexico to wait the months it can take for their court cases to be resolved. In the past seven months, more than 30,000 migrants have been sent back under MPP, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

(For a graphic on the Migrant Protection Protocols, see reut.rs/2MszcsN)

Advocates say that the migrants often face danger and destitution in Mexican border towns, leaving them no good options.

“How can it be a voluntary decision (to return home) given the conditions they face in Mexico? It’s a choice between two hells,” said Nicolas Palazzo, an attorney with El Paso-based Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center.

Besides any danger they might face back home, there is another significant downside to leaving: If migrants do not show up for a U.S. court hearing, they can be ordered deported “in absentia,” reducing their odds of ever being granted refuge in the United States.

AFRAID TO GO, AFRAID TO STAY

Denia Carranza, a 24-year-old Honduran returned to Mexico to await a court hearing set for October, decided instead to board a bus back home last week.

She said she and her 7-year-old son had fled her hometown and a good job at a shrimp packing company after gang members threatened to kill her if she did not deal drugs to fellow employees. She had hoped to apply for U.S. asylum.

But she said she was frightened in Ciudad Juarez – a battleground for drug cartels where the bulk of migrants await their hearings. Also, she had no job and no way to provide for her son.

“I am scared of going back to Honduras. But I am more afraid to stay,” she said.

The U.S.-based nonprofit Human Rights First said it had documented more than 100 violent incidents perpetrated against migrants waiting in Mexico for U.S. court hearings this year, including rape, kidnapping, robbery, assault and police extortion.

The IOM documented 247 deaths of migrants near the US-Mexico border this year through Aug. 15.

In a July 30 letter to the IOM’s Director General, 30 U.S. and international advocacy organizations said they feared the U.N. organization was returning migrants to countries they had fled “out of desperation, not choice, and where they may not fully understand the consequences of failing to appear whenever summoned by a U.S. immigration court.”

There is no way of knowing how many of the migrants who opt to go home with IOM help might have been able to present a successful asylum claim. U.S. courts ultimately deny most such claims brought by Central Americans and the Trump administration has said many are fraudulent.

Migrants who are sent to Mexico under MPP may or may not be seeking U.S. asylum, but they generally have no opportunity to initiate such claims before being sent back across the border. The policy cuts out a traditional asylum screening step in which migrants are interviewed to establish whether they have a “credible fear” of returning home.

Slideshow (35 Images)

SEEING ‘REALITY’

When the U.S. State Department approached IOM last fall, Gascon said, part of the goal was to counter what is saw as misinformation about how easy it was to get into the United States.

IOM set up kiosks at a stadium in Mexico City, which was along the caravan route, and on the U.S.-Mexico border. It also helped spread the word about free rides back in migrant shelters.

“When they saw the reality, some decided to go home,” he said of migrants.

Three quarters of the migrants in the voluntary return program went back to Honduras, a fifth to El Salvador and the rest to Guatemala and Nicaragua, according to IOM figures through July 26 of this year. More than half were “family units” and about 100 were unaccompanied minors. Most of the migrants have been sent back from Mexico, and a small fraction from Guatemala.

The IOM screens all migrants who ask to go home, but those awaiting U.S. hearings in Mexico also undergo an orientation program with Grupo Beta, an arm of Mexico’s National Migration Institute, to ensure migrants understand their options, Gascon said.

So far, Gascon said, two people awaiting U.S. court hearings in Mexico who wanted a ride back were instead referred to the Mexican government to gauge their eligibility for asylum in Mexico.

But advocates said they worried that Grupo Beta is not the best partner for IOM to ensure migrants’ safety.

“Many organizations have documented time and again that Mexican migration officials don’t refer people to (the national refugee office), they don’t register fears of return, and they have even pressured people to withdraw (asylum) claims,” said Kennji Kizuka, a researcher at the nonprofit Human Rights First.

Mexican migration officials did not respond to a request for comment.

More than a dozen migrants awaiting U.S. hearings at the Casa de Migrante shelter in Ciudad Juarez told Reuters the weekly south-bound bus rides held some appeal. Though reluctant to give up on their American dreams, many didn’t have lawyers and saw little prospect for success.

“All that effort we made to get here from Honduras and now we’re going back,” said Angel Estrada, who had hoped to get care in the United States for his 9-year-old son, who has hemophilia. “It’s really sad.”

PHOTO ESSAY: U.S. buys tickets home for Central American migrants – reut.rs/2ZeyOoV

Reporting by Daniel Trotta in Ciudad Juarez, Kristina Cooke in San Francisco and Mica Rosenberg New York; Additional reporting by Julia Love in Ciudad Juarez, Lizbeth Diaz in Tijuana and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Julie Marquis and Brian Thevenot

********************************************
Someday, the full tawdry story will be told of how our rich and powerful nation turned its back on vulnerable forced migrants whose countries we helped destroy.  And, the anti-Latino racism throughout our Central American policies will be fully exposed.
Until then, thanks to Mica and her colleagues, we are learning about highly questionable programs and expenditures that our Government has tried to hide from public view.
PWS
08-21-19

9TH CIRCUIT JUDGES COMPLICIT IN HUMAN RIGHTS & LEGAL VIOLATIONS INFLICTED ON TERRIFIED TEEN ASYLUM APPLICANTS: Reuters Study Exposes How Disingenuous Article III Judges Are Letting Trump Administration “Get Away With Potential Murder” Under Clearly Illegal, Unconstitutional, & Incompetently Administered “Remain In Mexico” Abomination!

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-returns-exclusive/exclusive-asylum-seekers-returned-to-mexico-rarely-win-bids-to-wait-in-u-s-idUSKCN1TD13Z

Mica Rosenberg
Mica Rosenberg
Reporter, Reuters
Reade Levinson
Reade Levinson
Reporter, Reuters
Kristina Cooke
Kristina Cooke
Reporter, Reuters

(Reuters) – Over two hours on June 1, a Honduran teenager named Tania pleaded with a U.S. official not to be returned to Mexico.

Immigration authorities had allowed her mother and younger sisters into the United States two months earlier to pursue claims for asylum in U.S. immigration court. But they sent Tania back to Tijuana on her own, with no money and no place to stay.

The 18-year-old said she told the U.S. official she had seen people on the streets of Tijuana linked to the Honduran gang that had terrorized her family. She explained that she did not feel safe there.

After the interview, meant to assess her fear of return to Mexico, she hoped to be reunited with her family in California, she said. Instead, she was sent back to Mexico under a Trump administration policy called the “Migrant Protection Protocols”(MPP), which has forced more than 11,000 asylum seekers to wait on the Mexican side of the border for their U.S. court cases to be completed. That process can take months.

Tania’s is not an unusual case. Once asylum seekers are ordered to wait in Mexico, their chances of getting that decision reversed on safety grounds – allowing them to wait out their proceedings in the United States – are exceedingly small, a Reuters analysis of U.S. immigration court data from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) shows.

. . . .

*********************************

Read the full description of the Trump Administration’s judicially enabled all out assault on the legal, Constitutional, and human rights of vulnerable asylum seekers at the above link.

A complicit panel of 9th Circuit Judges vacated a proper lower court injunction that was preventing this type of intentional child abuse by the Trump Administration. Here’s that panel’s “head in the sand” opinion in Innovation Law Labshttps://immigrationcourtside.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Innovation-Law-Lab-19-15716.pdf.

It’s worth noting that almost every “ameliorating exception” described in the first paragraph of the panel’s opinion is demonstrably untrue — children and those clearly in danger are being returned and the “discretionary parole” is largely a fraud that seldom is granted — according to the Government’s own data (which likely is also falsified or manipulated to some extent to mask or distort abuses). In other words, a “three-reporter panel” of Reuters is more interested and capable of getting to truth than a panel of life-tenured judges.

Oh, that it could be these judges’ kids or grandkids separated from family and sent to live on the mean streets of Tijuana while pursuing their legal rights under US law. Really, how do these child abusers and human rights scofflaws hiding in judicial robes sleep at night?

Guess the can’t hear the screams and moans of those whose rights they are failing to protect and whose human dignity they reject. I’ve heard eyewitness accounts and seen video evidence from the pro bono lawyers courageously (and sometimes at the risk of their own health and safety) trying to protect the lives and rights of asylum seekers at the Southern Border from these abuses of human rights that are enabled by “Remain in Mexico” (a/k/a the disingenuously named “Migrant Protection Protocols”). The truth is no secret for those who actually seek it rather than to ignore it.

Complicit Article III Judges and Government lawyers are keys to Trump’s “dehumanization” program. History must hold them accountable for their abuses of humanity.

PWS

06-13-19

THREE NEW ARTICLES FROM MICA ROSENBERG & FRIENDS @ REUTERS SHOW SESSIONS’S DEEP MORAL CORRUPTION!I

I wanted to pass along our latest story about the U.S. Mexico border:

EXCLUSIVE: Nearly 1,800 families separated at U.S.-Mexico border in 17 months through February

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-children-exclusive/exclusive-nearly-1800-families-separated-at-u-s-mexico-border-in-17-months-through-february-idUSKCN1J42UE

 

and for a deeper dive on the new “zero tolerance”’ prosecution policy:

Concerns over U.S. court backlog grow with rising border prosecutions

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-prosecutions/concerns-over-u-s-court-backlog-grow-with-rising-border-prosecutions-idUSKBN1IA310

 

Two colleagues also recently dug into the immigration detention squeeze:

Exclusive: U.S. sending 1,600 immigration detainees to federal prisons

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-prisons-exclusi ve/exclusive-u-s-immigration-authorities-sending-1600-detainees-to-federal-prisons-idUSKCN1J32W1

**********************

Corruption takes many forms.

PWS

06-08-18

 

 

 

 

MICA ROSENBERG @ REUTERS ANALYZES GONZO’S LATEST ATTACK ON CHILDREN (OR, IN “GONZOSPEAK” “UNMARRIED INDIVIDUALS UNDER THE AGE OF 18”) IN US IMMIGRATION COURT – No More “Mister Nice Guy” — Show ’em The Ugly Side Of America — These Kids Are Out To Get Us (Even If They Are So Scared, Confused, and Traumatized They Barely Know The Time Of Day)

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-children-exclusive/exclusive-u-s-memo-weakens-guidelines-for-protecting-immigrant-children-in-court-idUSKBN1EH037

Mica reports:

“A Dec. 20 memo, issued by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) replaces 2007 guidelines, spelling out policies and procedures judges should follow in dealing with children who crossed the border illegally alone and face possible deportation.

The new memo removes suggestions contained in the 2007 memo for how to conduct “child-sensitive questioning” and adds reminders to judges to maintain “impartiality” even though “juvenile cases may present sympathetic allegations.” The new document also changes the word “child” to “unmarried individual under the age of 18” in many instances.

An EOIR official said the new memo contained “clarifications and updates” to 10-year-old guidance “in order to be consistent with the laws as they’ve been passed by Congress.” The new memo was posted on the Justice Department website but has not been previously reported.

Immigration advocates said they worry the new guidelines could make court appearances for children more difficult, and a spokeswoman for the union representing immigration judges said judges are concerned about the tone of the memo.

President Donald Trump has made tougher immigration enforcement a key policy goal of his administration, and has focused particularly on trying to curb the illegal entry of children. The administration says it wants to prevent vulnerable juveniles from making perilous journeys to the United States and eliminate fraud from programs for young immigrants.

One changed section of the memo focuses on how to make children comfortable in the court in advance of hearings. The old guidance says they “should be permitted to explore” courtrooms and allowed to “sit in all locations, (including, especially, the judge’s bench and the witness stand).”

The new guidance says such explorations should take place only “to the extent that resources and time permit” and specifically puts the judge’s bench off limits.

The new memo also warns judges to be skeptical, since an unaccompanied minor “generally receives more favorable treatment under the law than other categories of illegal aliens,” which creates “an incentive to misrepresent accompaniment status or age in order to attempt to qualify for the benefits.” It also says to be on the lookout for “fraud and abuse,” language that was not in the previous memo.

‘WOLVES IN SHEEP CLOTHING’

Immigration judges are appointed by the U.S. Attorney General and courts are part of the Department of Justice, not an independent branch. The only sitting immigration judges routinely allowed to speak to the media are representatives of their union, the National Association of Immigration Judges.

Dana Marks, a sitting judge and spokeswoman for the union, said the “overall tone” of the memo “is very distressing and concerning to immigration judges.”

“There is a feeling that the immigration courts are just being demoted into immigration enforcement offices, rather than neutral arbiters,” Marks said. “There has been a relentless beating of the drum toward enforcement rather than due process.”

Former immigration judge Andrew Arthur, who now works at the Center for Immigration Studies, which promotes lower levels of immigration overall, said the new guidelines were needed.

In their previous form, he said, “so much emphasis was placed on the potential inability of the alien to understand the proceedings … that it almost put the judge into the position of being an advocate.”

The courts have had to handle a surge in cases for unaccompanied minors, mostly from Central America, after their numbers sky-rocketed in 2014 as violence in the region caused residents to flee north.

While illegal crossings initially fell after Trump took office, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said that since May, each month has seen an increase in children being apprehended either alone or with family members.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a speech in Boston in September that the special accommodations for unaccompanied minors had been exploited by “gang members who come to this country as wolves in sheep clothing.”

Echoing some of these concerns, the new memo notes in a preamble that not all child cases involve innocents, and that the courts might see “an adolescent gang member” or “a teenager convicted as an adult for serious criminal activity.”

Jennifer Podkul, policy director of Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) said Congress included special procedural protections for immigrant children in a 2008 anti-trafficking bill to “make sure that a kid gets a fair shot in the courtroom.”

“These kids are by themselves telling a very complicated and oftentimes very traumatic story,” said Podkul. “The approach of this memo, which is much more suspicious, is not going to help get to the truth of a child’s story.”

In cases where children are called to testify, the old guidance instructed judges to “seek to limit the amount of time the child is on the stand.” The new guidance says that judges should “consider” limiting the child’s time on the stand “without compromising due process for the opposing party,” which is generally a government prosecutor.

The memo leaves in a range of special accommodations made for children, including allowing them to bring a pillow or booster seat or a “toy, book, or other personal item.” It also maintains that cases involving unaccompanied minors should be heard on a separate docket when possible and that children should not be detained or transported with adults.

Reporting by Mica Rosenberg; Editing by Sue Horton and Mary Milliken”

**************************************

Yes, my dear friend Judge Dana Leigh Marks, Gonzo sees and treats the U.S. Immigration Courts as part of DHS Enforcement — “Just a Whistlestop on The Deportation Express.”

After 35 years of flawed DOJ stewardship and improper political meddling by all Administrations, the U.S. Immigration Courts are largely back in the same hopeless, understaffed, incompetently administered, enforcement-dominated mess that they were in 1983 when the Reagan Administration created EOIR to provide at least some actual and apparent separation between prosecutorial and judicial functions.

The only solution is an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court. Until that happens, failure, inefficiency, ands unfairness will continue to plague the immigration Court system.

Eventually, the Article III reviewing courts are going to have to decide whether 1) to simply put the Constitution and their judicial oaths in the drawer and give the Executive a “free pass” on immigration; or 2) do their duty, stop the train, and essentially take over the administration of the immigration Courts by ordering Immigration Judges and the BIA to conform to certain basic due process requirements or face the prospect of having almost every Petition for Review returned for a “redo.” If you think the backlog is bad now, wait till that happens.

At this point, I hope for #2, but see #1 as a distinct possibility, particularly as Trump continues to co-opt the Article III judiciary with judges for whom loyalty to Trump and his agenda appears a more important qualification that a reputation for scholarship, legal excellence, collegiality, impartiality, and fairness.

I also found the comments of my former colleague Judge (Retired) Andrew Arthur somewhat puzzling. If you are a judge in a courtroom actually trying to carry out your constitutional duty to provide due process and fairness; the DHS is represented by an experienced Assistant Chief Counsel; and you have an unrepresented kid who is scared to return his or her home country, who is going to be that child’s advocate if not the Immigration Judge?

Rather than bogus guidelines, the Administration should be doing the right thing and the smart thing — working with the private bar to insure that cases involving claims for asylum and other protection are docketed and scheduled in a manner that insures that each applicant will have reasonable access to pro bono or low bono counsel before filing the Form I-589 for asylum.

To take the most obvious example, Jennifer Podkul, Policy Director of Kids in Need of Defense (“KIND), and Wendy Young, Executive Director of KIND are as smart as any lawyers around. They want the Immigration Court system to succeed in a fair and efficient manner. They have spent more time thinking about the problems of kids in Immigraton Court and how to solve them than any individual or group of individuals now in the US. Government.

So, instead of “trashing” immigration lawyers, why don’t Sessions and his subordinates at DOJ sit down with Young, Podkul, and some of their other high-powered NGO colleagues, and Judge Marks and the NAIJ and work out a solution for getting kids through the Immigraton Court system in a fair manner consistent with Due Process? Why is Sessions so afraid to venture outside of his little “restrictionist world” in trying to solve problems?

But, unfortunately, this Administration is much more interested in forcing failure on the system and then pointing fingers at the victims, that is, the migrants seeking justice, than it is in achieving the real reforms necessary to get our U.S. Immigration Courts operating in a fair, impartial, and efficient manner, consistent with the law and Constitutional Due Process.

PWS

12-23-17

MICA ROSENBERG ON REUTERS TV: TRUMP TARGETS KIDS!

http://reut.tv/2yqSFn6

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Kids and other vulnerable individuals seem like a logical targets for bullies like Trump, Sessions, and the rest of the GOP White Nationalist Gang.

Good things aren’t going to happen to a country that picks on children and enables cowardly leaders.

But, after all, these Dudes are still defending the Confedracy, rebellion against the USA, and the fight to preserve slavery! I guess once on the wrong side of history, always on the wrong side of history. The real question is where to the rest of us stand, and what are we can do about the steady erosion of law, morality, and humane values by the Trump Administration and its supporters.

PWS

11-03-17

 

 

MICA ROSENBERG, READE LEVINSON, & RYAN McNEILL EXPOSE UNEQUAL JUSTICE & ABUSE OF VULNERABLE ASYLUM SEEKERS FROM “COURT” SYSTEM LACKING BASIC JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE! Sessions’s Chilling Response: Speed Things Up, Establish Deportation Quotas, Strip Asylum Seekers Of Rights To Due Process, Eliminate Professional Judicial Training, & Aimlessly Throw More Inexperienced, Untrained Judges Into This Mess! – Will He Get Away With His Atrocious Plan To Make Immigration Courts The “Killing Floor?” — AN IN-DEPTH LOOK AT THE TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE UNFOLDING IN U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT ON A DAILY BASIS!

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immigration-asylum/

Mica Rosenberg, Read Levinson, & Ryan McNeill report:

“They fled danger at home to make a high-stakes bet on U.S. immigration courts

Threatened by gangs in Honduras, two women sought asylum in the United States. Their stories illustrate what a Reuters analysis of thousands of court decisions found: The difference between residency and deportation depends largely on who hears the case, and where.

Filed

OAKLAND, California – The two Honduran women told nearly identical stories to the immigration courts: Fear for their lives and for the lives of their children drove them to seek asylum in the United States.

They were elected in 2013 to the board of the parent-teacher association at their children’s school in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa. They hoped that mothers working together could oust the violent gangs that plagued the campus.

Instead, they became targets. Weeks apart, in the spring of 2014, each of the women was confronted by armed gang members who vowed to kill them and their children if they didn’t meet the thugs’ demands.

Unaware of each other’s plight, both fled with their children, making the dangerous trek across Mexico. Both were taken into custody near Hidalgo, Texas, and ended up finding each other in the same U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Artesia, New Mexico. There, they applied for asylum.

That’s when their fates diverged.

Sandra Gutierrez joined her husband in California, where her case was heard by a San Francisco immigration court judge. At the end of her asylum hearing in September 2016, she received a one-page form, with an “X” in the box next to “granted.” She was free to settle into life with her family in the United States.

The other woman, Ana, joined her daughter’s father in the southeastern United States, and her case was assigned to an immigration court in Charlotte, North Carolina. The judge denied her petition and ordered her deported. She is now awaiting a court date after new lawyers got her case reopened.

Ana declined to be interviewed for this article. Through her lawyers, she asked that her full name not be used because of her uncertain status and her fear that Honduran gangs could find her.

The women’s lawyers framed their respective cases with some important differences. However, the women said their reasons for seeking asylum were the same: Gangs had targeted them because of their involvement in the parent-teacher association, and for that, they and their families had been threatened.

Taken together, the two cases – nearly indistinguishable in their outlines but with opposite outcomes – illustrate a troubling fact: An immigrant’s chance of being allowed to stay in the United States depends largely on who hears the case and where it is heard.

Judge Stuart Couch, who heard Ana’s case in Charlotte, orders immigrants deported 89 percent of the time, according to a Reuters analysis of more than 370,000 cases heard in all 58 U.S. immigration courts over the past 10 years. Judge Dalin Holyoak, who heard Gutierrez’s case in San Francisco, orders deportation in 43 percent of cases.

In Charlotte, immigrants are ordered deported in 84 percent of cases, more than twice the rate in San Francisco, where 36 percent of cases end in deportation.

Couch and Holyoak and their courts are not rare outliers, the analysis found. Variations among judges and courts are broad.

Judge Olivia Cassin in New York City allows immigrants to remain in the country in 93 percent of cases she hears. Judge Monique Harris in Houston allows immigrants to stay in just four percent of cases. In Atlanta, 89 percent of cases result in a deportation order. In New York City, 24 percent do.

The Reuters analysis used data from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the U.S. Justice Department unit that oversees immigration courts. The count of deportations included cases in which judges allowed immigrants to leave the country voluntarily.

The analysis excluded immigrants who were in detention when their cases were heard because such cases are handled differently. It also excluded cases in which the immigrant did not appear in court, which nearly always end in a deportation order, and cases terminated without a decision or closed at the request of a prosecutor.

About half the cases in the analysis were filed by asylum seekers like the two Honduran women. The rest were requests for cancellation of deportation orders or other adjustments to immigration status.

“GROSS DISPARITIES”

Of course, other factors influence outcomes in immigration court.  For example, U.S. government policy is more lenient toward people from some countries, less so for others.

Also, immigration judges are bound by precedents established in the federal appeals court that covers their location. Immigration courts in California and the Pacific Northwest fall under the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and they rule in favor of immigrants far more often than courts in the 4th Circuit, which includes North and South Carolina, Maryland and Virginia, Reuters found.

Even so, the Reuters analysis determined that after controlling for such factors, who hears a case and where it is heard remain reliable predictors of how a case will be decided. An immigrant was still four times as likely to be granted asylum by Holyoak in San Francisco as by Couch in Charlotte.

The Reuters analysis also found that an immigration judge’s particular characteristics and situation can affect outcomes. Men are more likely than women to order deportation, as are judges who have worked as ICE prosecutors.  The longer a judge has been serving, the more likely that judge is to grant asylum.

“These are life or death matters. … Whether you win or whether you lose shouldn’t depend on the roll of the dice of which judge gets your case.”

Karen Musalo, director of the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies at the University of California Hastings School of the Law in San Francisco

The findings underscore what academics and government watchdogs have long complained about U.S. immigration courts: Differences among judges and courts can render the system unfair and even inhumane.

“It is clearly troubling when you have these kinds of gross disparities,” said Karen Musalo, director of the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies at the University of California Hastings School of the Law in San Francisco. “These are life or death matters. … Whether you win or whether you lose shouldn’t depend on the roll of the dice of which judge gets your case.”

EOIR spokeswoman Kathryn Mattingly said the agency does not comment on external analyses of its data.

Devin O’Malley, a Department of Justice spokesman, challenged the Reuters analysis, citing “numerous conflicting statements, miscalculations, and other data errors,” but declined to elaborate further.

Immigration judges, appointed by the U.S. attorney general, are not authorized to speak on the record about cases.

Dana Marks, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, said each case is like “a 1,000 piece puzzle.” While two cases might look identical on the surface, she said, each judge has to weigh the nuances of immigration law to allow someone to stay in the country, which could lead to different outcomes.

The question of equality of treatment among judges has gained urgency as the number of cases in immigration court has ballooned to record highs. Under President Barack Obama, the courts began efforts to hire more immigration judges to reduce the system’s burgeoning backlog, which now stands at more than 620,000 cases, nearly 100,000 of them added since last December.

The administration of President Donald Trump is continuing the effort. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in April that the Justice Department planned to hire more than 50 judges this year and 75 in 2018, which would put the total number of sitting judges above 400.

Of the 28 immigration judges Sessions has appointed so far, 16 are former ICE prosecutors. That experience, the Reuters analysis found, makes them 23 percent more likely to order deportation. (Neither Holyoak nor Couch worked as an ICE prosecutor, according to their EOIR biographies.)

In a wish list of immigration proposals sent to Congress on Oct. 8, the White House said that “lax legal standards” had led to the immigration court backlog and that “misguided judicial decisions have prevented the removal of numerous criminal aliens, while also rendering those aliens eligible to apply for asylum.” Among the proposals offered in exchange for a deal with Congress on the roughly 800,000 “dreamers” – children brought to the country illegally by their parents – the Trump administration said it wanted to hire even more immigration judges and 1,000 ICE attorneys, while “establishing performance metrics for Immigration Judges.”

Video: High-stakes game of chance in U.S. immigration courts

CRISIS AT THE BORDER

In 2014, an unprecedented 68,000 parents and children, most of them fleeing violence and lawlessness in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, crossed into the United States from Mexico – a refugee crisis that has contributed to the bloated backlog of asylum petitions. Many of the migrants, including Gutierrez and Ana, convinced initial interviewers that they had a “credible fear” of returning home, the first step in filing an asylum claim.

Having come from a country with one of the highest murder rates in the world may have helped establish “credible fear.” But the two women were already at a disadvantage – precisely because they came from Honduras.

Country of origin is a big factor in determining who gets to stay in the United States because immigrants from some countries are afforded special protections. For example, courts ruled in favor of Chinese immigrants 75 percent of the time, the Reuters analysis found. A 1996 law expanded the definition of political refugees to include people who are forced to abort a child or undergo sterilization, allowing Chinese women to claim persecution under Beijing’s coercive birth-control policies.

Hondurans enjoy no special considerations. They were allowed to stay in the United States in just 16 percent of cases, the Reuters analysis found.

The mass exodus from Central America was under way when Gutierrez and Ana were elected to the board of the parent-teacher association at their children’s school in spring 2013.

Two rival gangs – the Barrio 18 and the Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13 – were operating brazenly in the neighborhood. The year before, according to police records in Honduras, gang members killed a school security guard. Now, they were extorting teachers, selling drugs openly and assaulting or killing anyone who confronted them.

The new six-member association board set about trying to improve security at the school, which sits on a dirt road behind a high wall topped with razor wire.

“Before, no one wanted to say anything about the gangs,” Gutierrez said. “We were the brave ones. The previous president was a man, so we thought, ‘We are women, they won’t do anything to us.’ ”

The school’s principal, who asked that he and the school not be identified out of fear of retaliation, worked with the board. They had early success, he said, when they persuaded police to provide officers to guard the school. But the patrols left after a few weeks, probably intimidated by the gangs.

One evening in April 2014, Gutierrez was watching television at home with her two sons, ages 5 and 11, when she heard banging at the front door. Her older boy recognized the three armed and heavily tattooed young men on the stoop as the same ones who had thrown him to the ground earlier that day, telling him, not for the first time, that they wanted him to join their ranks. Now they had come to deliver a message to Gutierrez.

“They said they knew I was involved in the parents’ association,” Gutierrez said. “They said they would kill me and my children.

“I began to panic and shake,” she said. “I thought, ‘I have to go now. I am not going to risk my child’s life.’ ”

She quickly packed some backpacks for her and her children and called the only friend she knew who had a car. They drove all night to her friend’s mother’s house in another town.

“NO POLICE HERE”

Two months later, according to court documents, Ana was walking her 7-year-old daughter home from school when three members of a rival gang confronted them. Two of them grabbed Ana and her daughter, pinned their wrists behind their backs, and pointed a gun at the child’s head. The third pointed a gun at Ana’s head. They demanded that a payment of more than $5,000 be delivered in 24 hours, a huge sum for a woman who sold tortillas for a living.

Ana testified in her asylum hearing that she knew they were gang members “because they were dressed in baggy clothing and they also had ugly tattoos … all over their bodies and faces.”

Ana and her daughter ran home and then, fearing the gang would come after them, fled out the back door. “We had to jump over a wall, and I hurt my foot doing so,” she said in an affidavit. “I was desperate and knew that I had to leave – my daughter’s life and mine were in danger.”

The school principal said he understands why Gutierrez and Ana left Honduras. “Because there were no police here, (the gangs) did what they wanted,” he said. “They said, ‘We’re going to kill the members of the parent-teacher association to get them out of here.’ So the women fled.”

Gutierrez hid for two months at her friend’s mother’s house outside Tegucigalpa. She joined another woman and, with their children, they set out to cross Mexico. On the journey, they were kidnapped – common for Central American migrants – and held for a $3,500 ransom. Gutierrez contacted relatives who wired the money. The kidnappers released her and her two sons near the U.S. border.

There they piled with another group of migrants into an inflatable raft and crossed the Rio Grande, the border between Mexico and the United States. They landed near Hidalgo, Texas.

After walking for an hour and a half, lost and desperate, Gutierrez and her sons sat down in the middle of a dirt road and waited for someone to pass. Two officials in uniforms picked them up. They were eventually transferred to the ICE detention center in Artesia.

Ana fled with her daughter the night the gang members threatened them on the street. “We bought a bus pass to go to Guatemala and from Guatemala to Mexico and to the U.S.-Mexico border,” according to her court testimony. The journey took three weeks. In Mexico, she hired a coyote – a smuggler – to help them cross into the United States and then turned herself in to Border Patrol agents near Hidalgo. She arrived at the Artesia detention center just weeks after Gutierrez.

“The other women in the center told me that there was someone else from Honduras who I might know, but I wasn’t sure who they were talking about,” Gutierrez said. “And then one day we went to lunch, and there they were.”

Gutierrez said that was when she first learned that her fellow parent-teacher association board member had been threatened and had fled from home.

Volunteer lawyers helped the women prepare and submit their applications for asylum.

In late 2014, the two women were released on bond. Gutierrez moved with her boys to Oakland, California, to join her husband, and petitioned to have her case moved to San Francisco. Ana moved with her daughter to live with her daughter’s father and petitioned to have her case moved to Charlotte.

“ASYLUM FREE ZONES”

Many immigrants released on bond before their cases are heard have no idea that where they settle could make the difference between obtaining legal status and deportation.

People familiar with the system are well aware of the difference. When Theodore Murphy, a former ICE prosecutor who now represents immigrants, has a client in a jurisdiction with a high deportation rate but near one with a lower rate, “I tell them to move,” he said.

The Charlotte court that would hear Ana’s case was one of five jurisdictions labeled “asylum free zones” by a group of immigrant advocates in written testimony last December before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The courts in Dallas, Houston, Las Vegas and Atlanta also received the designation.

The advocates testified that, while asylum is granted in nearly half of cases nationwide, Charlotte judges granted asylum in just 13 percent of cases in 2015. The Charlotte court was singled out for displaying a particular “bias against Central American gang and gender-related asylum claims.”

Couch is the toughest of Charlotte’s three immigration judges, according to the Reuters analysis.

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research organization at Syracuse University in New York, first sounded the alarm about disparities in immigration court decisions in 2006. The next year, researchers at Temple University and Georgetown Law School concluded in a study titled “Refugee Roulette” that “in many cases, the most important moment in an asylum case is the instant in which a clerk randomly assigns an application to a particular asylum officer or immigration judge.” In 2008, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found similar disparities in its own study.

In response to the rising criticism, the Executive Office for Immigration Review began tracking decisions to identify judges with unusually high or low rates of granting asylum. Mattingly, the EOIR spokeswoman, said the agency held training sessions for judges to address the disparities in 2008 and 2009. It then created a system for the public to file complaints against immigration judges.

In a 2016 report, the GAO found that little had changed. EOIR held a two-day training session last year. There is no training on the 2017 calendar.

From 2012 to 2016, EOIR received 624 complaints against judges. The 138 complaints lodged in 2016 alone included allegations of bias, as well as concerns about due process and judges’ conduct within the courtroom. Of the 102 complaints that had been resolved when the data were published, only three resulted in discipline, defined as “reprimand” or “suspension” of the judge. “Corrective actions” such as counseling or training were taken in 39 cases. Close to half the complaints were dismissed.

The agency does not identify judges who were the subjects of complaints.

Mattingly, the EOIR spokeswoman, said the agency “takes seriously any claims of unjustified and significant anomalies in immigration judge decision-making and takes steps to evaluate disparities in immigration adjudications.”

DAY IN COURT

Asylum applicants cannot gain legal U.S. residency because they fled their countries in mortal fear of civil strife or rampant crime or a natural disaster. They must convince the court that they have well-founded fears of persecution in their country because of their race, religion, nationality, political opinions or membership in a particular social group. The definition of a “particular social group” has been subject to conflicting interpretations in the courts, but in general, such a group comprises people who share basic beliefs or traits that can’t or shouldn’t have to be changed.

In the San Francisco court, Gutierrez’s lawyers argued that she qualified for asylum because as a leader of the parent-teacher association, she was at risk for her political opinion – her stand against gangs – and for belonging to a particular social group of Hondurans opposed to gang violence and recruitment in schools. The lawyers also argued that she was part of another particular social group as the family member of someone under threat, since the gangs had terrorized her son in trying to recruit him.

Holyoak was convinced. Gutierrez told Reuters that during her final hearing, the judge apologized for asking so many questions about what had been a painful time in her life, explaining that he had needed to establish her credibility.

In the Charlotte court, Ana’s lawyer focused more narrowly on her political opinion, arguing that she was at risk of persecution for her opposition to gangs in her position on the parent-teacher association board.

After hearing Ana’s case, Couch concluded in his written opinion that Ana was not eligible for asylum because she had “not demonstrated a well-founded fear of future persecution on account of a statutorily protected ground.” He wasn’t convinced that she risked persecution in Honduras because of her political opinion.

Well-established law recognizes family as a protected social group, according to the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies. Cases that claim opposition to gangs as a protected political opinion, the center says, have generated fewer precedent-setting decisions, making that argument a more difficult one to win in court, though it has prevailed in some cases.

Ana’s response to Couch’s extensive questioning played a part in the decision. In immigration court, the asylum seeker is typically the only witness.  As a result, “credibility is really the key factor. Persecutors don’t give affidavits,” said Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge who now works at the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonprofit organization that supports lower levels of immigration.

Couch wrote in his opinion that Ana’s difficulty recounting the names of the women on the association board weighed against her credibility. He noted that she testified about her fears of the gang “with a flat affect and little emotion,” displaying a “poor demeanor” that “did not support her credibility.”

The judge also questioned why, in an early interview with an asylum officer, Ana never mentioned threats to the parent-teacher association, and instead said she thought the gangs were targeting her for the money her daughter’s father was sending from the United States to build a house in Honduras.

Ana’s assertion that she learned from Gutierrez in detention about gang threats to the parent-teacher association was not “persuasive,” Couch wrote. “The evidence indicates this is a case of criminal extortion that the respondent attempts to fashion into an imputed political opinion claim.”

“SOMEONE WANTS TO KILL THEM”

Gutierrez said Ana told her in one of their occasional phone conversations that she felt intimidated by the intense questioning of the ICE attorney. Gutierrez also said her friend “is very forgetful. … It’s not that she is lying. It’s just that she forgets things.”

Lisa Knox, the lawyer who represented Gutierrez, said judges where she practices tend to give applicants the benefit of the doubt. “They have more understanding of trauma survivors and the difficulty they might have in recounting certain details and little discrepancies,” she said.

Further, Knox said, asylum seekers aren’t thinking about the finer points of U.S. asylum law when they are fleeing persecution. “People show up in our office (and) they have no idea why someone wants to kill them. They just know someone wants to kill them.”

Ana’s lawyer appealed her case to the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), the first step in the appellate process. This time, her lawyer included arguments about her membership in a particular social group. She lost. In a three-page ruling, one board member said Ana’s lawyer could not introduce a new argument on appeal and agreed with Couch that Ana hadn’t proved a political motive behind the gang members’ attack.

Ana missed the deadline to appeal the BIA decision to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals because her lawyer confused the deadline. She petitioned the BIA through new lawyers to reopen her case and send it back to the immigration court to allow her to present new evidence of her persecution. The new lawyers argued that her previous representation had been ineffective.

In July, the BIA granted Ana the right to a rehearing in immigration court, sending her case back to Charlotte, where it could be heard again by Couch.

Gutierrez can live and work legally in the United States and will ultimately be able to apply for citizenship. The 43-year-old, who worked as a nurse in Honduras, lives in a small one-bedroom apartment with her husband, her two sons – now 15 and 8 – her adult daughter and her grandson. She works as an office janitor and is taking English classes. Her boys are in school. The older one, once threatened by gangs in Honduras, likes studying history and math and is learning to play the cello.

Ana, 31, has had a baby since arriving in the United States and has been granted work authorization while she awaits a final decision on her case. She and her lawyers declined to share more detailed information about her situation because she remains fearful of the gangs in Honduras.

“I am very worried about her,” Gutierrez said. “The situation in our country is getting worse and worse.”

Last February, a 50-year-old woman and her 29-year-old son who were selling food at the school Gutierrez and Ana’s children attended were kidnapped from their home and decapitated, according to police records.

The head of the son was placed on the body of the mother and the head of the mother was placed on the body of the son. The murders, like more than 93 percent of crimes in Honduras, remain unsolved.

Additional reporting by Gustavo Palencia and Kristina Cooke

U.S. immigration courts are administrative courts within the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review. Unlike federal court judges, whose authority stems from the U.S. Constitution’s establishment of an independent judicial branch, immigration judges fall under the executive branch and thus are hired, and can be fired, by the attorney general.

More than 300 judges are spread among 58 U.S. immigration courts in 27 states, Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands. Cases are assigned to an immigration court based on where the immigrant lives. Within each court, cases are assigned to judges on a random, rotational basis.

The courts handle cases to determine whether an individual should be deported. Possible outcomes include asylum; adjustments of status; stay of deportation; and deportation. Decisions can be appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals, an administrative body within the Department of Justice. From there, cases can be appealed to federal appeals court.

The Federal Bar Association and the National Association of Immigration Judges have endorsed the idea of creating an immigration court system independent of the executive branch. The Government Accountability Office studied some proposals for reform in 2017, without endorsing any particular model.

Reade Levinson

Heavy Odds

By Mica Rosenberg in Oakland, California, and Reade Levinson and Ryan McNeill in New York, with additional reporting by Gustavo Palencia in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and Kristina Cooke in San Francisco

Data: Reade Levinson and Ryan McNeill

Graphics: Ashlyn Still

Photo editing: Steve McKinley and Barbara Adhiya

Video: Zachary Goelman

Design: Jeff Magness

Edited by Sue Horton, Janet Roberts and John Blanton”

Go to the link at the beginning to get the full benefit of the “interactive” features of this report on Reuters.

Also, here is an interactive presentation on the Trump Administration’s overall immigration policies:

http://www.reuters.com/trump-effect/immigration

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Great reporting by Mica and her team!

Interesting to note that the Arlington Immigration Court, where I sat for 13 years, has one of the most consistent “grant rates” in the country, ranging from approximately 54% to 60% grants. Compare that with the Charlotte Immigration Court at 11% to 28% grants within the same judicial circuit (the Fourth Circuit). Something is seriously wrong here. And, Jeff Sessions has absolutely no intent of solving it except by pushing for 100% denials everywhere! That’s the very definition of a “Kangaroo Court!”

It’s time for an Article I Court. But, not sure it will happen any time soon. Meanwhile Sessions is making a mockery out of justice in the Immigration Courts just as he has in many other parts of the U.S. Justice system.

PWS

10-17-17