🛡⚔️👩🏽‍⚖️⚖️🗽MAKING A DIFFERENCE: AS GARLAND’S EOIR DEGRADES DUE PROCESS AND HIS DOJ ATTORNEYS BABBLE DISINGENUOUS NONSENSE IN DEFENSE OF THE INDEFENSIBLE, ARTICLE IIIs LOOK TO ROUND TABLE FOR PRACTICAL INPUT AND HONESTY REGARDING GARLAND’S INCREDIBLE MESS!

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

From our leader and spokesperson “Sir Jeffrey” Chase:

Round Table Brief cited today in Oral Argument

Hi all:To end the week on a positive note, in oral arguments today before the Second Circuit, one of the judges asked the OIL attorney the following:

“What are we to make of the amicus brief filed by so many former IJs who stress the importance of in person hearing in the special role of Immigration Judges in developing the facts before rendering an opinion, particularly in something as factually heavy as this, as undue hardship to the children?They emphasize the importance of hearing in person testimony and suggest that it is an abuse of discretion to not permit it when it is requested.How do you respond?”

The case is Martinez-Roman v. Garland.

. . . .

The IJ wouldn’t let two witnesses testify: the medical expert, and a 13-year-old child of the respondent.So when the judge asked that question, the OIL attorney claimed that the IJ was trying to protect the child from the psychological trauma of testifying.The judges pointed out that the IJ had actually said he wouldn’t allow the testimony only because it would be duplicative.In the child’s case, it was supposedly “duplicative” of a one-page handwritten statement written by the child.In the expert’s case, the IJ admitted that he hadn’t actually read the expert’s written statement, causing the circuit judges to ask how the IJ could have known the testimony would be duplicative of a statement he hadn’t read.

Wishing all a great, safe, and healthy weekend! – Jeff

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

Kangaroos
Garland’s “amazing” EOIR “judges” can divine the content of statements they never read, while Prelogar’s “equally amazing” DOJ lawyers just “make it up as they go along” when arguing before Article IIIs!
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rasputin243/
Creative Commons License

So, Merrick, it’s an “A-OK” judicial practice for your judges to deem live testimony “duplicative” of a statements they never read! That’s some feat of clairvoyance!  

“Clairvoyance” appears to be more of a qualification for your “judges” than actual expertise and experience vindicating due process in Immigration Court!

Also, when your attorneys are confronted with the defects in your judges’ performance by Article IIIs who have actually read the record and familiarized themselves with the evidence, (something you apparently deem “optional” for both your IJs and the attorneys defending them) it’s also “A-OK” for your attorneys to fabricate any bogus pretextual excuse, even one that is clearly refuted by the record.

Perhaps, SG Liz Prelogar should take a break from losing cases before the Supremes and pay attention to what nonsense DOJ attorneys are arguing before the lower Federal Courts. What, Liz, is the legality and the morality of defending a broken system, wholly owned and operated by your “boss,” that dishonestly denies due process to the most vulnerable among us? 

Elizabeth Prelogar
Harvard Law might have spared Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar from having to work in the “legal trenches” of Immigration Court, unlike the lawyers who have been fighting to keep democracy alive over that past five years! Apparently, she took a pass on the Ethics class too, as DOJ lawyers under her overall direction “make it up as they go along” in defending the dysfunctional Immigration Courts before the Article IIIs!
PHOTO: Twitter

Is this what they taught you at Harvard law? Did you miss the required course on ethics and professional responsibility? Why is the Round Table doing the work YOU should be doing as a supposedly responsible Government official who took an oath to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law?

Yeah, I know that Prelogar, like her other elitist political appointee colleagues, operates in the “legal stratosphere,” has clerked for two liberal Supremes, and otherwise “punched all the right tickets” in Dem politics. But, the problem here is that like it or not, Immigration Courts are the “retail level” of American justice that affects everything else! Right now, that effect is stunningly and unacceptably adverse!

The GOP White Nationalist nativists, like Sessions, Barr, and their hand-selected toadies, “got that.” That’s why they used their time in office to weaponize EOIR and degrade due process and humanity, while using “Dred Scottification” developed in immigration to diminish and degrade the rights of “the other” throughout our legal and political systems! The dots aren’t that hard to connect, unless, apparently, you’re a Dem Politico serving in the DOJ!

For whatever reason, perhaps because Dems keep appointing politicos who haven’t had to personally confront the mess in Immigration Court, folks like Garland, Monaco, Gupta, Clarke, and Prelogar entertain the elitist belief that standing up to the “nativist appeasers” in the Biden White House, getting rid of bad judges and incompetent administrators at EOIR, and bringing our dysfunctional (“killer”) Immigration Courts into conformity with Constitutional Due Process, international standards, and simple human dignity are “below their pay grade.” Not so!

Have to hope that the Chairman Lofgren and her staff are paying attention and will start throwing more light on Garland’s deficient handling of EOIR and the disgraceful, intellectually dishonest, arguments his attorneys are making before the Article IIIs! 

This system is BROKEN, and going into the second year of the Biden Administration, Garland has NOT taken the necessary bold, decisive, yet quite obvious and realistically achievable, steps to FIX it! What gives?

Since Liz has never been a judge, let me provide an insight.  No judge, life-tenured or “administrative,” liberal, conservative, or centrist, likes being played for a fool, misled, or “BS’ed” 💩 by counsel. (I actually remember “chewing out” attorneys in open court for failing to acknowledge controlling precedent in arguing before me.)

They particularly hate such conduct when it comes from lawyers representing the USG! Because Federal Judges often come from a bygone generation, many still retain the apparently now long outdated concept that DOJ attorneys should be held to a “higher standard.” Your predecessor, Trump shill Noel Francisco, certainly mocked that belief during his disgraceful tenure at the DOJ, particularly in his disingenuous and aggressive defense of the White Nationalist, anti-immigrant, anti-asylum agenda! Do you REALLY want to follow in HIS footsteps? Sadly, At this early  point in time, that answer appears to be “yes.”

So, that leads to another question. Why do progressive human rights and immigration advocates continue to turn out the vote and loyally support a Dem Party that, once in office, considers them, their values, and the human souls they represent to be “expendable” — essentially “fungible political capital?” It’s something I often wondered when I was on the inside watching Dem Administrations screw up EOIR and immigration policy. I still don’t know the answer, and perhaps never will.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-15-22

🧑🏽‍⚖️👨🏻‍⚖️⚖️BIDEN & WARREN BELIEVE IN A DIVERSE, PROGRESSIVE FEDERAL JUDICIARY — JUDGE GARLAND CONTROLS PERHAPS THE MOST IMPORTANT FEDERAL JUDICIARY NEXT TO THE SUPREMES — So, What’s He Waiting For? — Will He Reverse The Dems’ Maddening Failure To Grasp & Act On The Cosmic Importance & Game Changing Potential Of A Progressive Immigration Court, That Gets Beyond The Often White, Male, Enforcement, “Go Along To Get Along” Stereotypes & Showcases Diverse, Progressive “Practical Scholars,” Many Of Them Women & People Of Color?

Jennifer Bendery
Jennifer Bendery
Journalist
HuffPost
PHOTO: Twitter

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elizabeth-warren-professional-diversity-federal-judges_n_605cbde5c5b67ad3871d9095o

Jennifer Bendery in HuffPost:

The Democratic senator has spent years calling for more public defenders and fewer corporate attorneys getting federal judgeships. Now Joe Biden agrees.

For years, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has been a lonely voice in the Senate on the need to put people with all kinds of different legal backgrounds into lifetime federal judgeships.

“We face a federal bench that has a striking lack of diversity,” she said at a 2014 event on this topic, hosted by Alliance for Justice, a progressive judicial advocacy group. “President Obama has supported some notable exceptions but … the president’s nominees have thus far been largely in line with the prior statistics.”

Warren wasn’t talking about diversity in terms of demographics like race or gender; Obama made history on those fronts with his judicial nominees. She was talking about the problem with presidents and senators ― in both parties ― routinely picking corporate attorneys and prosecutors who went to Ivy League schools to be federal judges.

If you want the nation’s courts to reflect the people they serve, Warren has argued, we need judges who have been public defenders and civil rights attorneys, people familiar with the legal needs of everyday Americans who may be living on low incomes or otherwise marginalized. A diversity of legal professionals on the federal bench means more informed decisions on issues related to economic justice and civil rights.

At last, the times are catching up with Warren.

President Joe Biden is signaling he’s ready to make professional diversity central to his judicial selection process. He hasn’t nominated anyone yet, but White House counsel Dana Remus wrote to Democratic senators in December urging them to recommend court picks to the White House as soon as possible, and said that Biden is “particularly focused on nominating individuals whose legal experiences have been historically underrepresented on the federal bench, including those who are public defenders, civil rights and legal aid attorneys, and those who represent Americans in every walk of life.”

Top Democrats in the House are putting a spotlight on the issue too, even though they don’t have a say in confirming federal judges.

“Unfortunately, we have a lot of work to do when it comes to judicial diversity,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said in a Thursday subcommittee hearing on this subject. “There are ways in which the federal judiciary of 2021 looks uncomfortably similar to the federal judiciary of 1921 … Somehow, despite all our progress, today’s federal judges remain, for instance, overwhelmingly male, white, former prosecutors or corporate lawyers who went to a handful of law schools.”

. . . .

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

Read the complete article at the link.

Biden is “particularly focused on nominating individuals whose legal experiences have been historically underrepresented on the federal bench, including those who are public defenders, civil rights and legal aid attorneys, and those who represent Americans in every walk of life.”

That’s basically a description of scores of immigration/human rights experts out here in the New Due Process Army (“NDPA”). Yes, they should be a primary source of appointees to the Article III Judiciary! Absolutely! But, they should also be appointed to the BIA and the Immigration Courts — now! 

At present, the Immigration Courts are “administrative courts,” not part of the Article III Judiciary; therefore, Senate confirmation isn’t necessary. They are “administered” by a now “evil-clown-like” 🤡🦹🏿‍♂️ DOJ bureaucracy called “EOIR.” We need to get the right progressive scholars and “disciples of due process” on the Immigration Bench — immediately, without further delay! 

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

Immigration Courts are one of most powerful tools in American law. Also, Constitution be damned, until we get a long overdue Article I independent Immigration Court, they are completely controlled by the AG — Judge Merrick B. Garland. This is a big, big deal — nearly 600 judgeships, almost the size of the entire U.S. District Court system, are at stake!

Sessions and Barr quickly figured: Why not aggressively weaponize EOIR to undermine American democracy, institutionalize racism and misogyny, and promote White Nationalist authoritarianism? And, that’s exactly what they did — to the max. Using EOIR judgeships to reward some of their unqualified, white, nativist buddies in the process was an “added bennie.” 

Grim Reaper
G. Reaper Approaches ICE Gulag With “Imbedded Captive Star Chamber” Run By EOIR, For Their “Partner” Reaper
Image: Hernan Fednan, Creative Commons License

Even the totally incomprehensible incompetence with which they administered EOIR fulfilled their “negative dream.” Dysfunctional Immigration Courts became an important tool for debilitating the entire U.S. justice system and “Dred Scottifying” (dehumanizing) persons of color before the law. 

Those with compelling cases for relief, many pending for years, were shuffled off to the end of the docket. Or, if they did get a hearing, incompetent or compromised “judges” at the trial and appellate levels often arbitrarily denied their claims for bogus reasons. This disgraceful mess of a “court” actually penalized those with strong cases for relief — many who should have been done and joined our society years ago instead linger in the largely self-created EOIR “backlog” of 1.3 million cases. Or, they  are condemned to endless litigation to vindicate their rights in a system intentionally rigged against them. 

Star Chamber Justice
“Justice”
Star Chamber
Style

Looking for the underpinning for the idea that people of color have reduced rights to vote, political participation, and that their lives don’t really matter? Look no further than the ongoing “Dred Scottification” of asylum applicants and other people of color in Immigration Court, now enshrined in a number of bogus “precedents” issued by White Nationalist AGs and their wholly-owned BIA!  

Four Horsemen
BIA Asylum Panel In Action
Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

And, their job was “easy as pie” following the indolent stewardship of their Dem predecessors. When the latter finally got around to filling judicial vacancies at EOIR, every couple of years, they handed them out almost exclusively to government “insiders” — like they were “length of service” pins! Better-qualified progressive, due-process-oriented, experts, scholars, advocates, and others in the private/NGO/academic sector — folks who actually could have brought badly needed professionalism, excellence, and order to a system careening out of control — were basically “shut out” by the Dems. Interesting way to reward your potential allies!  

The Dems’ “diverse recruiting program” for the Immigration Judiciary was to advertise the positions for about 10 minutes on the “insider online bulletin board” known as “USA Jobs.” Then, after an average two-year long, excruciatingly wasteful and mindless “Rube Goldberg-designed evaluation” by layer after layer of bureaucrats — few, if any of them actual sitting Immigration Judges — participating, in most cases they basically just selected “the next ICE prosecutor, EOIR staffer, or OIL litigator up.” But, the “beauty” of this system is that with so many layers of bureaucracy involved, nobody could be held accountable for the actual selections! Talk about a “finger-pointers’ dream.”

Oh yeah, and of course there was no room for public input and/or participation in this process. Some of the newly anointed judges actually had rather less-than-stellar reputations in the immigration community at large. Many would have drawn blank stares if mentioned to a panel of acknowledged immigration and human rights experts. Few were “household names,” except perhaps in a negative sense. No matter to the Obama folks!

During the Obama Administration, I attended a so-called “training-session” at an Immigration Judge Conference — this was “in person,” although for a number of years we got “home-video grade” training CDs. There, curiously, one of these “newbies” was selected to “educate” a group of us, many of us with decades of experience in the field and some with actual teaching credentials under their belts. Our “instructor” referred to the Government as “us,” to the respondent and counsel as “them,” and bragged that “our big wins from OIL” would make it easier to deny asylum. 

Other “instructors” parroted cringingly mind boggling mis-statements of asylum law — apparently designed to fit into OIL’s preferred litigation positions. And, incredibly, this was with the “founding mother” of U.S. Asylum Law, Judge Dana Leigh Marks, who had argued and won the landmark “well-founded-fear” case INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca before the Supremes, effectively muzzled and holding her head in the audience. 

In 21 years on the bench, during “EOIR training,” I was lectured to by a variety of BIA Attorney Advisors, OIL Attorneys, politicos, DHS Officials, State Department Officials, Ethics Officers, stress managers, and an occasional NGO advocate. Never, did I get to hear my colleague Judge Marks’s views on the development of asylum law since Cardoza. Sure, that didn’t stop us from carrying on a dialogue elsewhere, as we did. But, we were pretty much “on the same page.” The folks who needed to hear what Judge Marks had to say didn’t.

Hon. Diana Leigh Marks
Hon. Dana Leigh Marks
U.S. Immigration Judge
San Francisco Immigration Court
Past President, National Association of Immigration Judges

And, we wonder why Dems inevitably screw up immigration law, and end up defending highly regressive actions and “designed to fail” policies — try “baby jails,” indefinite detention, and non-English-speaking toddlers “representing themselves” in Immigration Court. I kid you not! Each of the foregoing were things that the Obama DOJ vigorously advanced and defended before Federal Courts!🤮

Will Judge Garland figure it out before it’s too late? Or, as his Obama predecessors did, will he fritter away his time with “more sexy,” but actually far less important initiatives and lofty ideals that will be effectively undermined by failing to create a progressive, expert, well functioning, professional Immigration Judiciary. 

Judge Merrick Garland
Judge Merrick B. Garland, U.S. Attorney General
Official White House Photo
Public Realm

Racial justice, equal justice, and due process for all persons in America start in the Immigration Court. And, right now they are dying there! If Judge Garland doesn’t pay attention, grasp the moment, aggressively clean house, and take the long overdue, radical, courageous actions to build a better Immigration Judiciary, the whole U.S. justice system might well come crashing down upon him! And, he will have only himself to blame!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever! A Better EOIR for A Better Federal Judiciary! A Better Federal Judiciary For A Better America! Not rocket science! But, it does require vision, recognition of the problem, and the courage to solve it! 

PWS

3-28-21

⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️THE FEDERAL COURTS ARE BROKEN — PRESIDENT BIDEN WANTS TO FIX THEM! — He Should Start With The Immigration Courts! — “There Is Nothing To Be Gained From Half Measures!”

Dahlia Lithwick
Dahlia Lithwick
Supreme Court Reporter
Slate
Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain
Russ Feingold
Russ Feingold
President, American Constitution Society
Photo: JD Lasica, Creative Commons License

 

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/02/russ-feingold-american-constitution-society-judges.html

Dahlia Lithwick interviews Russ Feingold @ Slate: 

While Donald Trump failed to pass much signature legislation and largely failed to remake the federal government in ways that cannot be immediately corrected, his landmark achievement will be his lasting contributions to the federal judiciary. Breaking the records of his predecessors, Trump seated 234 judges on the federal courts in four years, including three at the Supreme Court. That means that whatever Biden and the Democrats try to do in the coming months and years, most of the efforts will ultimately be in the hands of life-tenured judges, 30 percent of whom were named by Trump. Those judges are overwhelmingly very young, very white, and very male. A preview of what’s likely to come happened just last week, when a federal judge tapped by Trump blocked Biden’s 100-day deportation “pause” with a nationwide injunction.

The question is what Biden and the Democrats can and will do in response to Trump’s enduring legacy. The new president is already making moves that indicate he understands that some of the norms and conventions that guided Barack Obama in building the judiciary are dead and gone. This week the Washington Post reported that the Biden administration is doing away with the formal American Bar Association vetting process that Democratic presidents used to abide by, because it was jettisoned by Republican presidents and because it simply lengthened the process. Biden is also hustling to put together the bipartisan commission he pledged would examine structural reforms for the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary. Former Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold is a leading Democrat attempting to strengthen the left’s ability to appoint judges, to match the pace the right has set. He is the president of the American Constitution Society, the left’s answer to the Federalist Society (we spoke last year when he assumed the post). Given the potential of the current moment for big changes in the judiciary, I wanted to ask him what happens next. Our conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the interview at the link. 

The disgraceful mess that Trump and McConnell made out of our Federal Judiciary has been a constant theme here @ Courtside over the past four years!

What’s missing from this interview are these fundamental realizations that those of us in the world of immigration and human rights know well but seem to escape most of the others looking to fundamentally change and improve the Federal Judiciary:

  • There are few things that go on in the Federal Judiciary, at any level, as important to human lives and the future of our nation as what takes place in Immigration Court every day;  
  • The Immigration Courts have hit stunning new levels of dysfunction, incompetence, and intentional injustice over the past four years  — they are truly an ongoing national disgrace (“America’s Star Chambers” or “Clown Courts”🤡) and a stain on the humanity of our nation, as well as an abomination that threatens to collapse our entire justice system;
  • Immigration law and “weaponized” Immigration Courts have been the key to the Trump regime’s attack on American democracy and our Constitutional institutions culminating in the deadly Capitol insurrection;
  • The Biden Administration has complete authority to fix the Immigration Courts now — no waiting for Justices or Judges to retire, “negotiating with Mitch and the Federalist Society,” waiting for the scheduling of Senate Confirmation hearings, or humoring home state Senators;
  • Some of the lawyers and advocates who led the legal fight to preserve American democracy over the past four years would be outstanding choices for the Immigration Judiciary (as well as the Article III Judiciary — there is no shortage of diverse progressive talent with “real life retail experience” out here in the NDPA, Russ); 
  • A well-functioning, diverse, independent Immigration Judiciary would not just help advance and enforce the Administration’s progressive, humane, due-process-focused immigration and human rights policies, but also should become a model of “best practices” for the Article III Judiciary, and an extraordinary source of well-trained, experienced, progressive, “practical scholar jurists” for filling positions in the Article III Judiciary;
  • Better understanding of, and commitment to, humanely and properly administering immigration and human rights laws by Federal Judges — and the total elimination of “Dred Scottification of the other” under law — is the absolutely essential “now-missing key” to achieving racial justice and social justice in America;
  • America can’t afford the astounding absence of true immigration scholarship, human understanding of immigrants, practical decision making and problem solving, and an overriding commitment to due process for all persons, including asylum seekers and migrants, that now infects the Federal Court system at all levels;
  • Those seeking to undermine American democracy will continue to exploit the Federal Judiciary’s overall lack of understanding of immigration and human rights laws and their willing abrogation of Constitutional due process and basic concepts of fundamental fairness and human dignity for some of the most vulnerable persons among us — we must fix this problem before it destroys us!

🇺🇸🗽⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️👍🏼Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-05-21

⚖️BC PROFESSOR KARI HONG’S BIG WIN IN 10TH CIRCUIT HIGHLIGHTS YET ANOTHER FAILURE OF BASIC ASYLUM ANALYSIS BY EOIR JUDGES! — This Time They Failed To Follow The Rules On “Reasonably Available Internal Relocation!” — ADDO v. BARR — “[B]ecause the purpose of the relocation rule is not to require an applicant to stay one step ahead of persecution in the proposed area, th[e] [new] location must present circumstances that are substantially better than those giving rise to a well-founded fear of persecution on the basis of the original claim.”

 

Professor Kari Hong
Professor Kari Hong
Boston College Law
Photo: BC Law Website

Addo Opinion

Addo v. Barr, 10th Cir., 12-14-20, published

PANEL: HARTZ, PHILLIPS, and CARSON, Circuit Judges.

OPINION BY: Judge HARTZ 

KEY QUOTE:

On this record we think it was unreasonable for the BIA and the IJ to decide that the government successfully rebutted the presumption that Petitioner has a well-founded fear of future persecution in Ghana. Their finding that Petitioner could safely relocate within Ghana is not supported by substantial evidence. See Arboleda v. U.S. Atty. Gen., 434 F.3d 1220, 1226 (11th Cir. 2006) (concluding that relocation “would not successfully shield [an asylum applicant from] persecution” because, although the applicant “relocated from his farm . . . to the capital city,” “the [persecutors] continued to threaten [the applicant] and his family . . . , [including through] frequent notes and telephone calls detailing the family’s activities and threatening them with death,” and by “burning down [the applicant’s] farm house”).

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

Yet another in the steady stream of documented failures of basic asylum analysis — the X’s and O’s — by a supposedly “expert” tribunal that is anything but!  

This decision would be an outstanding “teaching tool” for instructing Immigration Judges on the proper analysis of a “reasonably available internal alternative.” The word “reasonable” is often “read out” of the analysis by EOIR judges in their rush to find “any reason to deny” claims to please their nativist political handlers. 

In my more than two decades of experience at both the trial and appellate levels of the Immigration Judiciary, I observed that it is very difficult for DHS to properly rebut the presumption of future persecution by showing “that there is a specific area of the country where the risk of persecution to the respondent falls below the well-founded fear level,” as accurately described by the 10th Circuit. Indeed, it appears that many EOIR Judges lack the skills and training necessary to grant asylum with cogent analysis that would cut off many of the semi-frivolous appeals that ICE now takes. This is truly a “judiciary in shambles” under current  grossly defective leadership.

I daresay that if all Immigration Judges held the DHS to their legal burden under this standard, the presumption would seldom be rebutted, in either asylum or withholding cases. But, the lack of real asylum expertise at today’s “dumbed down” EOIR and the clear “any reason to deny and deport” message sent by corrupt regime politicos to “their captive judiciary” undoubtedly results in numerous miscarriages of justice and wrongful removals. 

Note that the respondent in this case was actually removed pending appeal! Had the case been handled properly in June 2017, the respondent would have been granted asylum, be a green card holder, and on his way to achieving citizenship. Instead, Professor Hong has to hope that she can get him back to the U.S. while he’s still alive!

The costs of EOIR’s deficient “judging” and unethical “weaponization” go far beyond what meets the eye. Someday, historians and sociologists will uncover and document the true human and moral costs of this disgraceful period in American history when we let grossly unqualified and immoral leaders and their accomplices lead us down the path to inhumanity and the abuse of the rule of law. 

Unnecessary escapades like this, where cases that should be granted at “first instance review” instead linger in the system, moving from level to level and back again, for years, without proper resolution, make it easy to understand why EOIR builds “artificial backlog” while failing to provide basic justice.  It also shows why the solution is “better judges” at EOIR and more prosecutorial discipline at ICE, rather than just shoving yet more additional judges into a broken, dysfunctional, and intentionally inefficient system that has been run into the ground by “malicious incompetents” over the past four years. NDPA expertise at EOIR and DHS are the answers!

Perhaps the “new EOIR” should hire Professor Hong to provide some real expert training on asylum law. Or, better yet, appoint her to an Appellate Judgeship at the BIA where she can lead a “renaissance of competence” in due process and fair asylum adjudication at EOIR and “teach by example!”

Or, even better, given her outstanding credentials, practical litigation experience, scholarship, courage, and proven leadership, appoint her to an Article III Judgeship where she can help improve the performance of the entire Federal Judiciary on what is one of the key issues in the fight to achieve social justice for all in America.

We need some new faces and better “practical scholarship” at ALL levels of the Federal Judiciary, from the “retail level” of the Immigration Courts to the Supremes. Better Judges for a Better America for all! Biden-Harris Administration take note!

Thanks, Professor Hong to you and your dedicated  “crew” @ BC Law for all you do for the NDPA and for American Justice! You are making a difference!

In addition to Professor Hong’s stellar efforts, I am also reminded by my good friend, and another NDPA Superstar 🌟 Michelle Mendez @ CLINIC, of the key “behind the scenes” role played by the CLINIC BIA Pro Bono Project . Brad Jenkins and Rachel Naggar helped Professor Hong prepare for oral argument. (In the “small world” category, Brad did a “textbook presentation” of an asylum case before me in Arlington while he was serving as an Accredited Representative and a fellow at CAIR. I only found out later that he was a “ringer” on his way to Harvard Law and a distinguished career in social justice!) Additionally, Tania Linares Garcia (from NIJC) was part of the “team of experts” advising Professor Hong.

This is just another example of the great teamwork and mutural support that is the hallmark of the NDPA and the pro bono immigration/human rights community.  As those who have had me for a teacher at Georgetown Law or have heard me speak know, I always “preach five things:” fairness, scholarship, timeliness, respect, and teamwork. Those were once “what EOIR was suppposed to be about” before the precipitous decline and total loss of values.

But, if the Biden-Harris Team takes bold and decisive action to eliminate the current kakistrocracy and replace it with “NDPA pros,” the vision of “through teamwork and innovation becoming the world’s best tribunals guaranteeing fairness and due process for all” can become a reality!  Things don’t have to be the way they are now at EOIR!

Due Process Forever!⚖️🗽😄

PWS

12-17-20

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🤮👎🏻THE TRUMP REGIME & A CORRUPT SOLICITOR GENERAL HAVE CONDUCTED A WAR OF ATTRITION AGAINST AMERICAN LAWYERS ON THE FRONT LINES OF THE BATTLE TO SAVE DEMOCRACY — John Roberts & His GOP Buddies On The Supremes Have Aided, Abetted, & Encouraged It! — Constant Improper & Ethically Questionable Interference With Thoughtful, Legally Correct Lower Court Rulings Holding The Regime Accountable Have Demoralized The Profession’s Best & Bravest! — The Answer Is Better Judges For A Better America!

Marcia Brown
Marcia Brown
Writing Fellow
American Prospect
Photo source: American Prospect

https://prospect.org/justice/loneliness-of-the-immigration-lawyer/

Marcia Brown Reports in American Prospect: 

Susan Church, an immigration attorney in Boston, ended the first week of the Trump administration arm in arm with protesters at Logan Airport, resisting an executive order banning travel from several predominantly Muslim countries. But what happened the next day, away from the public chants of “Let them stay!” was more typical of what the life of the former chair of the New England chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) was to become under the Trump administration.

Church and an associate filed an emergency lawsuit to secure the release of immigrants from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody. “I got a federal judge on the phone, you know, on a Saturday night at eight o’clock.” The judge told Church to go to court immediately. An hour later, the attorneys were in court defending their clients.

“For me, that was the canary in the coal mine about what the rest of my four years under the Trump administration was going to be like,” Church said. “It’s just a nonstop series of emergency litigation filed to try to rescue one or 10 or 100 or 1,000 people, depending on which issue it is.” Eventually, the speed of the work, and the physical and mental exhaustion it triggered, landed Church in the hospital. “I thought I was having a heart attack,” she said.

More from Marcia Brown

Church stayed with the fight to reunite parents with their children. She described the process of taking affidavits from clients, which require she learn every harrowing detail of a client’s trauma. In one instance, CBP ripped away one woman’s eight-year-old daughter at the border. “She had to comb her daughter’s hair and change her daughter’s clothes and put her on a bus and say goodbye to her,” Church said through tears. The two were separated for nearly two months, even after the mother was released from detention.

Church was able to reunite her client with her child, but the episode—like many, many other cases—weighs heavy on her shoulders. “I don’t think I’ll ever be quite the same person that I was beforehand,” she said.

Four years into this migration crisis, there’s a parallel migration under way—of immigration lawyers out of the profession. Survey data and interviews the Prospect conducted with more than a dozen lawyers around the country reveal the physical, mental, and financial toll endured by members of the bar. Given the extreme violence, trauma, and inhumanity their clients often endure, immigration attorneys don’t like to talk about how it affects them. But secondary trauma also leaves a mark, making it impossible to continue for some attorneys. Although numerical data is limited, there is evidence that some attorneys are cutting back on some types of cases, such as deportation defense work, or even leaving immigration law altogether. Removal defense casework is one of the most time-intensive, emotional, and exigent parts of lawyers’ loads. It’s also where the administration has aimed much of its cruelest policymaking, severely limiting lawyers’ efficacy.

Under the Trump administration, immigration law has changed not only profoundly, but also so rapidly that it’s hard for immigration attorneys to keep up. Susan Church—and several other attorneys interviewed for this article—described combating Trump’s policies as a game of whack-a-mole.

. . . .

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Read Marcia’s full article at the link.

Forget all the right wing BS and the “originalist hoax!” This is about “democracy (or the destruction thereof) in action.” 

Remember, all of these cosmic “immigration law changes” have taken place without a single piece of major legislation enacted by Congress! Indeed, the Trump regime’s ham-handed attempt to force it’s nativist agenda down the throats of the Congress as part of the “Dreamer fiasco” fell flat on its face in both Houses!  But, the Supremes have both encouraged and enabled Trump (actually notorious white supremacist Stephen Miller) to rewrite the law through. “Executive fiat.” Totally inappropriate, not to mention glaringly unconstitutional.

The Supremes’ majority has time and again improperly sided with the unethical, immoral, and Constitutionally bankrupt “Dred Scottification” of migrants, particularly asylum seekers. It’s not much different from what has happened to African Americans, Latinos, and other minorities following the Civil War. But, this is supposed to be the 21st Century where we have put “Jim Crow” behind us. Obviously, we haven’t!

Failing to protect “officers of the court” (lawyers) and their clients from a scheme of abuses heaped upon them by a corrupt, biased, out of control, overtly racist Executive and his sycophants is a gross dereliction of duty by the Supremes. It’s basically like allowing, and even encouraging, the badgering of a witness during trial! 

It’s painfully obvious that we have many of the wrong folks on the bench — from the Immigration Courts to the Supremes. Indeed, the nation and the world would be much better served if many more of those courageous lawyers who serve the immigrant community and human rights experts were on the Federal Bench at all levels. 

Trump, Roberts, and the GOP judicial misfits have also shown us first-hand the profiles of individuals who should not be serving in judicial positions. Let them litigate their “originalist,” “unitary Executive,” and other “far out” righty philosophies as lawyers appearing before real judges —“practical scholars” who live in the 21st Century and are committed to problem solving rather than problem creating. As Joe Biden has noted, the entire judicial selection system and particularly the Supremes need a thoughtful re-examination and reform. 

Never again should we have Justices like Amy Coney Barrett and Clarence Thomas performing highly inappropriate and unethical televised “campaign stunts” for an incumbent President during an ongoing election. Geez! What kind of “impartial jurists” are they? 

Most first year law students could tell you that’s a “no-go!” Why have we “normalized” and “accepted” such obvious bias, misbehavior, and lack of sound judgment at the highest levels of our (not Trump’s or Mitch’s personal) Judiciary?

It’s not “Rocket Science!” The fundamental building blocks of our society are immigration, human rights, and equal justice! Any lawyer who who doesn’t embody those virtues and doesn’t publicly embrace them should not in the future be given a lifetime appointment as a Federal Judge — at any level!

We need better judges for a better America! We will never achieve constitutionally-required “equal justice for all” for African Americans, Latinos, or anyone else, nor can we reach our diverse nation’s full potential, if we don’t start “pushing back” against Roberts and the GOP’s right wing judicial oligarchy, their obtuse legal gibberish, and their anti-democratic “jurisprudence.”

It starts with voting to take back our country from the far right. But, that’s just the beginning of the changes needed if equal justice for all is to become a reality, rather than an ever unfulfilled promise, limited to certain privileged (predominantly White) groups within our society!

And, all of society owes a debt of gratitude to Ms. Church and other brave lawyers like her who represent the best our country has to offer and have actually suffered for standing up for the rule of law and the legal and human rights of the most vulnerable among us. In other words, standing up for all of our rights against a tyranny! 

Compare that with the utterly dismal composition of the “Trump kakistocracy” and its “Dred Scottification” of “the other.” 

Due Process Forever!

PWS

1–29-20

🏴‍☠️“BIZARRO COURTS” — THE CONSTITUTION APPLIES TO ALL PERSONS IN THE U.S., YET ICE & THEIR “PARTNERS” AT EOIR HAVE ESTABLISHED A CONSTITUTION-FREE “COURT SYSTEM” THAT OPERATES BEYOND THE LAW & MORALITY IN A LEGAL NEVER-NEVER LAND 🧚‍♂️ — How Do They Get Away With It Under The Noses Of Congress & Article III Courts? — An Outrageous Story of Gross 🤮 Institutional & Personal Failures & Ethical Lapses Across All Three Branches of Our Federal Government ☠️👎🏻!

Paul Moses
Paul Moses
Reporter
The Daily Beast
Tim Healy
Tim Healy
Reporter
The Daily Beast

 

Paul Moses and Tim Healy report for The Daily Beast:

‘The Bizarro-World’ Immigration Courts Where the Constitution Isn’t Applied Detainees can be held for weeks or months before seeing a judge. The Justice Department gave “the word of the agency under penalty of perjury” that it would fix that—but only in NY

 

·         ICE officials acknowledged that they couldn’t handle the volume of arrests their own agents made; the major clog was in getting a legal review from the agency’s understaffed legal unit.

 

·         In 11 of the 55 venues that heard more than 500 cases last year, detainees spent six weeks or more in jail before an initial hearing. Such long waits would be unconstitutional in criminal cases; the right to due process requires authorities to not only get a case filed but also to provide an arraignment promptly, generally in no more than 48 hours.

 

·         Among the 55 venues that handled 500 or more detainee cases last year, the longest waits from arrest to initial hearing were in hearing locations at privately run lockups under contract with ICE: Winn Correctional Center in Winnifield, Louisiana, a median of 140 days; T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas, 72 days; Richwood Correctional Center in Richwood, Louisiana, 64 days…

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

Ironically, by his own overt corruption and open disdain for our Constitution and the rule of law, Trump has exposed the deep flaws, grotesque derelictions of duty, and unethical complicity throughout our Constitutional institutions that are supposed to protect all of us, particularly the most vulnerable among us like civil immigration detainees and asylum seekers, from abuses by would-be authoritarian tyrants like Trump!

Here’s a gem:

 

“The larger question behind this mass of numbers is why DHS is detaining so many people when both its legal office and the court lack the staffing—not only judges but support staff as well—to handle them.

‘I would just say, they are the prosecuting agency and in this context, they have complete control over the timeline,’ said Aaron Hall, an immigration lawyer who practices at the court in Aurora, Colorado, which has had substantial delays. ‘If the charging document isn’t ready to go, why are they arresting them?’”

Good question! But don’t expect a straight answer from the “malicious incompetents” at DHS. Nor will today get anything except misleading nonsense from their “partners” at EOIR (“ICE Jr.”).

DOJ was forewarned of this disaster by an independent consultant back in 2017. But, rather than solving the problem, then AG Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions intentionally made things even worse at EOIR. You might remember “Gonzo” as the “mastermind” behind the regime’s unconstitutional child separation policy. His victims were returned to abuse, scarred for life, or imprisoned for the “crime” of asserting their Constitutional and legal rights to fair treatment.  

All of this is wrong, plain and simple! It’s part of “Dred Scotiffication” — now playing out across our nation in many ways. Finally, the systematic “dehumanization of the other” as aided, abetted, and actually encouraged by a majority of the Supremes, is getting some much-needed and long overdue “pushback.”

But the abuses of our Constitution and our values, and the unaccountability of corrupt public officials, present and former, of the Trump immigration kakistocracy, won’t cease until we get “regime change.” That requires substantial personnel and attitude changes across all three branches of our reeling Federal Government! And that definitely includes accountability for those who have failed to insure “equal justice for all” and instead permitted and sometimes aided and abetted the existence of “Constitution-Free Zones” right under their noses!

Due Process Forever! Complicit Officials & Institutions, Never!

PWS

6-04-20

Judge Mimi Tsankov @ ABA JOURNAL: 🆘 Immigration Courts Now A Human Rights Catastrophe Threatening The Heart ❤️ & Soul 😇 Of American Justice!

Honorable Mimi Tsankov
Honorable Mimi Tsankov
U.S. Immigration Judge
Eastern Region Vice President
National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”)

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/immigration/human-rights-at-risk/

Judge Tsankov writes solely in her capacity as Eastern Region Vice President with the National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”) in the ABA Journal:

April 28, 2020 HUMAN RIGHTS

Human Rights at Risk: The Immigration Courts Are in Need of an Overhaul

The views expressed here do not represent the official position of the United States Department of Justice, the attorney general, or the Executive Office for Immigration Review. The views represent the author’s personal opinions, which were formed after extensive consultation with the membership of NAIJ.

by Hon. Mimi Tsankov

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“While immigration courts reside within the executive branch, they should not be merely a tool to achieve desired policy outcomes.”

—Senator Sheldon Whitehouse

So wrote Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) in his February 13, 2020, letter to Attorney General William Barr, in which he and eight members of the Senate Judiciary Committee called upon Barr to take action against, what he termed, an increasingly troubling politicization of the immigration court adjudication process.

The stakes couldn’t be higher for those seeking human rights protection in the form of asylum and other forms of relief from persecution and torture. Individual liberty and personal safety interests are often at stake in immigration court proceedings where immigration judges have the authority to grant protection from persecution. Id.; see also, 8 U.S.C. 1158. Whitehouse gave voice to what is becoming an alarming trend—the increasing political influence over individual immigration cases. This action, he explained, is undermining the public’s confidence in the immigration courts and creating an impression that “cases are being decided based on political considerations rather than the relevant facts and law. The appearance of bias alone is corrosive to the public trust.” Whitehouse Letter, supra, at 5; see also, 8 U.S.C. Section 1229a(b)(4)(A) and (B); 8 C.F.R. 1003.10(b).

Whitehouse recounted a sentiment articulated previously by a host of legal community leaders for more than a decade, not the least of which was ABA President Judy Perry Martinez, who in a recent statement before the U.S. Congress explained that housing a court within a law enforcement agency has exacerbated an inherent conflict of interest undermining “the basic structural and procedural safeguards that we take for granted in other areas of our justice system.” See, Am. Bar. Assoc., 2019 Update Report: Reforming the Immigration System, Proposals to Promote Independence, Fairness, Efficiency, and Professionalism in the Adjudication of Removal Cases (Mar. 2019). As she explained, “this structural flaw leaves Immigration Judges particularly vulnerable to political pressure and interference in case management.” Martinez Testimony, supra, at 1.

It is important to note that these concerns are being expressed on the heels of what some see as growing impunity within the executive branch, focused almost single-mindedly on the speed of removal hearings at the risk of diminished due process. See Statement of Jeremy McKinney, Secretary, American Immigration Lawyer’s Association, NPR, Justice Department Rolls Out Quotas for Immigration Judges (April 3, 2018). The Justice Department is being charged with implementing a host of policies that diminish the primary responsibility of ensuring a fair hearing. For the past three years, the attorney general has used a process known as “certification,” a power historically used sparingly, to overrule decisions made by the Board of Immigration Appeals and set binding precedent. Id. Some have argued that the frequency with which this procedure has recently been employed borders on abuse as it seeks to severely limit the number of immigrants who can remain in the United States. Whitehouse Letter, supra, at 5. Equally troubling is the charge that the attorney general is using certification as a way to overrule immigration judges whose decisions don’t align with the administration’s immigration agenda. Id.

One area of particular concern is the recent encroachment by the agency into judicial independence. The National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ), which is the union representing sitting immigration judges, argues, alongside many others in the legal community, that these incursions into judicial independence are part of a broader effort to fundamentally alter how immigration removal cases are adjudicated, and that such actions are having deleterious effects. See Statement of Judge A. Ashley Tabaddor, President of the National Association of Immigration Judges, Before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Border Security and Immigration Subcommittee Hearing on “Strengthening and Reforming America’s Immigration Court System” 2 (Apr. 18, 2018).

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An overcrowded, fenced area holds families at a border patrol station in McAllen, Texas.

Thomas Cizauskas from Flickr

Among the new measures implemented by the Justice Department are unrealistic and impractical one-size-fits-all case quotas and deadlines that squeeze immigration judges where they are most vulnerable—their status as “employees.” If an immigration judge provides one too many case continuances, even though related to a valid due process concern, she risks being terminated. Every pause for judicial reflection, or break for much needed legal research, risks slowing down the “deportation machinery” that the adjudication process is veering toward and threatens to eviscerate procedural due process, even though such due process is mandated by the U.S. Constitution. Id.

These controversial new policies have become so pervasive and so threatening to judicial independence that they have raised alarms. What began in 2018 as a few dramatic instances involving the abrupt removal and reassignment of cases from an immigration judge’s docket previewed the agency’s more recent alarming actions where the shuffling of scores of cases and entire dockets sometimes multiple times within a single day has become the norm. The endless docket shuffling, and the chasing of performance “completions” that correspond to a job-preserving metric, seems designed to make political statements rather than ensuring victims of human rights abuses are afforded due process. A complex, multi-witness, multi-issue hearing is afforded the same value as an order of removal for failure to appear at a hearing. See Mimi Tsankov, Judicial Independence Sidelined: Just One More Symptom of an Immigration System Reeling, 55 Cal. W. L. Rev. 2 (2019).

.  .  .  .

Mimi Tsankov serves as eastern region vice president with the National Association of Immigration Judges and has been a full-time immigration judge since 2006.

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Read Judge Tsankov’s complete article at the link.Thanks Judge Tsankov. You are a “True American Hero!” 🗽🎖👩‍⚖️👍🏼

The situation in the Immigration Courts is totally out of control and unacceptable. Both Congress and the Article III Courts have failed in their duties to require and enforce the “fair and impartial adjudication” required by the Fifth Amendment to our Constitution.

These grotesque derelictions of duty are inexcusable. They call not just for an independent Immigration Court but also for “regime change” in both the Executive and the Senate and a total rethinking of what qualities should be required for the privilege of serving for life in the Article III Judiciary.  

While there are many Article III derelictions of duty out there (and some courageous performances, particularly among the ranks of U.S. District Judges), I’m specifically highlighting the disgraceful performance of the “J.R. Five” ☠️🤮👎🏻 on the Supremes, who have been AWOL on Due Process, immigration, human rights, and humanity itself when our country needs them most. Never again! We need a better Supreme Court, one that lives up to its role as America’s highest tribunal entrusted with protecting our Constitutional, individual, and human rights! John Marshall must be turning over in his grave with the wimpy performance of John Roberts in the face of Executive tyranny and contempt for our Constitution!

Due Process Forever! Complicit Courts & Star Chambers, Never!

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

PWS

05-02-20

CLEAR AS MUD: Politicized Immigration “Courts” Continue To Bobble The Message In The Time Of Plague, Endangering Their Own Employees, Attorneys, & The Public!  — America’s Clown Courts 🤡☠️ Enter A Deadly New Phase As Feckless Article III Courts Watch The Show Go On! —“I don’t know who’s making the calls, but they’re wrong.” — DUH!

Dara Lind
Dara Lind
Immigration Reporter
Pro Publica

https://apple.news/Af7cWvYFbT5CO7qZKyldm3w

Dara Lind reports for Pro Publica:

Interviews with 10 workers at immigration courts around the country reveal fear, contradictory messages and continuing perils for the employees.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

On Tuesday night — over a day after several Bay Area counties issued shelter-in-place orders barring most people from leaving their homes — the San Francisco immigration court sent an email to staff: Hearings were being postponed nationwide for most immigrants, so the court would be closed starting Wednesday. (The text of the email was provided to ProPublica.)

On Wednesday, however, employees were directed to get onto a conference call, according to two participants. There they were told the Tuesday night email was wrong. The court wasn’t closed. They would have to come into the office — or use their vacation time to stay home. When staff asked about the shelter-in-place orders, the response was that the Department of Justice, which runs immigration courts, took the position that those were local laws and didn’t apply to federal employees.

The Trump administration has reduced immigration court operations in the past week, by postponing hearings for non-detained immigrants and closing a handful of courts to the public. Those actions came after the unions representing immigration prosecutors and judges issued a rare public call for courts to close.

The reduced court operations came after weeks of employees raising concerns privately and, they say, receiving few and unhelpful answers. And because the closures are determined solely by whether a court is hearing cases of detained immigrants, rather than by the level of health peril, employees still feel they’re putting their health at risk every time they come into the office as instructed.

That’s the picture that emerges from interviews with 10 federal employees who work at immigration courts across the country. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity. Many said they had raised concerns internally about their exposure to COVID-19 to their managers or hadn’t been informed of potential exposures.

“When I signed up for this job, I thought it might be morally compromising at times,” one immigration court employee told ProPublica, “but I never thought it would be compromising of my health and safety.”

The Executive Office for Immigration Review, the DOJ agency that oversees immigration courts, told ProPublica that agency headquarters was responsible for deciding when courts closed, but it did not confirm or deny specifics of the employees’ allegations, saying, “We do not comment on internal communications or internal personnel operations.”

In Denver, one prosecutor interviewed by ProPublica was alarmed by a judge’s frequent coughs during a hearing last Friday. “Don’t mind my coughing,” the judge said, according to the prosecutor. “I don’t think it’s coronavirus.” The following Tuesday, the prosecutor noticed that the judge was out for the rest of the week and emailed a court staffer in concern: Was it the coronavirus? Should she be taking precautions? The staffer’s reply: For privacy reasons, the prosecutor’s questions couldn’t be answered.

Only after news broke to the public on Tuesday night that a judge at the Denver immigration court had been diagnosed with COVID-19 (the disease caused by the new coronavirus) did court officials follow up with the prosecutor and confirm her suspicions. Other attorneys the judge had been in close contact with were notified the next day. The court remained open through Thursday, when the entire building it was housed in was shut down for deep cleaning by the General Services Administration. (It’s currently set to reopen Monday.)

In New York, legal aid groups sent a letter to immigration court officials saying that two of their attorneys had symptoms of COVID-19 and a third had been exposed to someone who’d tested positive. All three attorneys had appeared in court the past week, and all had hearings scheduled the following day. The courts didn’t say anything to their employees about the letter, according to multiple sources.

Since taking office, the Trump administration has pressured the immigration courts to process as many immigrants as quickly as possible — pressuring judges to hear more cases and complete them within a year, and making it harder for immigrants or attorneys to postpone hearings. Now, they face a public health crisis that requires everyone to reduce person-to-person contact.

Immigration court workers have two concerns. The first is that the courts are often crowded and require close contact with members of the public. The second is that, like most employees of any type, especially those who take public transit, they are exposed every time they leave their homes to work.

Employees remain concerned about their exposure over the past few weeks, while courts were running as usual. Employees in New York and California — the states hardest hit by the pandemic to date — told ProPublica that their requests for “deep cleaning” were rejected by managers, and that they were bringing their own Clorox wipes and disinfectant spray to the office.

Most immigration court business happens in person. Even trying to postpone an immigration hearing (for example, due to illness) requires an attorney to file a paper form with a clerk. And if an immigrant doesn’t show up for a hearing, they’re at risk of getting ordered deported in absentia. In at least one New York court, according to two people who work there, the chief judge told employees Monday to issue absentia deportation orders if immigrants weren’t showing up, even if the coronavirus was the suspected cause.

Policies the Trump administration introduced before the COVID-19 pandemic put considerable pressure on judges and prosecutors not to allow immigrants to postpone their hearings. Judges face a “performance standard” of completing 80% of their cases within a year — a standard over 90% of judges don’t meet, according to the National Association of Immigration Judges. But the more than 150 judges who have been hired in the past two years are still in their probationary period, where they could be fired for failing to meet performance standards.

While many judges have been lenient in granting coronavirus-related postponements, others have not. Last week, according to one California immigration court employee, a judge took a break from a hearing to tell colleagues that the immigrant’s attorney claimed to be sick, but because he wasn’t coughing, the hearing would move forward.

One email sent by the chief prosecutor at the Miami court Tuesday, read to ProPublica, told prosecutors that if an immigrant or her attorney claimed to be sick, any postponement should be counted against the immigrant (preventing them from requesting another postponement). If the immigrant didn’t want to postpone, and the judge wasn’t willing to hold the hearing by phone, the prosecutor was instructed to contact her manager — who would assess the claim of illness himself before deciding what to do. (A call to the chief prosecutor in Miami was not immediately returned.)

Most communication, though, has been oral. In at least two courts, chief judges were asked to put policies in writing and declined.

Employees have been in the dark about who, exactly, is making the decisions about which courts are open and when employees are allowed to work from home or take leave to stay home. “The word is that it’s out of their hands. Everything is out of everybody’s hands,” Fanny Behar-Ostrow, president of the union representing immigration prosecutors, told ProPublica Wednesday. “I don’t know who’s making the calls, but they’re wrong.”

An email obtained by the Miami Herald, written by the assistant chief immigration judge in charge of the Miami immigration court on Wednesday, said that closure decisions were ultimately being made by “the White House” — something that employees at other courts also said their managers had suggested. But chief judges gave conflicting explanations about which decisions were subject to White House approval; one chief judge told employees that the White House had to be involved in decisions about remote work, while other chief judges made those decisions themselves.

It’s not clear who at the White House is involved or how. Immigration officials told the Herald that the ultimate decision was made by the Office of Management and Budget. However, according to the employees ProPublica spoke to, some immigration court officials used “White House” to refer to policies set by the Office of Personnel Management. The assistant chief immigration judge (the judge in charge of a given immigration court location) for one California court told employees on March 12 that they’d had a phone call with staff for Vice President Mike Pence, who’s running the official coronavirus task force.

But to many employees, the specter of “White House” involvement raised concerns that the administration’s immigration policy priorities were getting in the way of its public health obligations.

. . . .

Read Dara’s full article at the link.

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

The confusion engendered by politicized immigration enforcement in support of a White Nationalist agenda doesn’t end with the Immigration Courts. Despite, or perhaps because of, a number of public statements by DHS political hacks, there’s still plenty of uncertainty and angst about DHS’s enforcement and detention policies. Chloe Hadavas over at Slate sets out what happens when politicos take over law enforcement and justice.

Chloe Havadas
Chloe Hadavas
Intern Reporter
Slate

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/ice-halts-immigration-enforcement-coronavirus.html

Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced on Wednesday that it will halt most arrests and deportations, focusing only on individuals who are “public safety risks” and who are “subject to mandatory detention based on criminal grounds,” as the coronavirus sweeps across the U.S. and public health officials scramble to limit the virus’ spread.

Undocumented immigrants are often afraid to seek medical care for fear of deportation. And even as state and local officials encouraged anyone who needed medical treatment to seek help, ICE officers continued to make arrests, including in areas hit hard by the virus. But in the temporary change in enforcement, ICE also said that it won’t carry out operations near health care facilities, including hospitals, doctors’ offices, and urgent care facilities, “except in the most extraordinary of circumstances,” the agency said in a statement. “Individuals should not avoid seeking medical care because they fear civil immigration enforcement.”

Immigration experts said ICE’s decision was somewhat unexpected, though they remain cautious about how to interpret it. “I’m always surprised to hear that they’re going to scale back on their efforts,” said Jennifer M. Chacón, a UCLA law professor who focuses on immigration. ICE’s statement marks a distinct shift from the agency’s operations under the Trump administration. Both Chacón and Karla McKanders, a law professor who directs the Immigration Practice Clinic at Vanderbilt University, said that it reminded them of the “felons, not families” immigration policy of the Obama administration. “You read it and it basically looks like the Obama-era enforcement priority statement, and you just wonder why it takes a pandemic to get ICE to think about prioritizing resources and focusing efforts on public safety,” said Chacón.

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

You can read the rest of Chloe’s article at the link.

“I don’t know who’s making the calls, but they’re wrong.” Kind of “says it all” about how the regime treats its own employees and the public good.

Meanwhile, Article III Courts, which have had more than ample opportunity to put an end to the constitutional farce taking place in Immigration Court and also to direct the DHS to take overdue steps to release non-dangerous (that is, most) immigration detainees before the epidemic sweeps chronically health-endangering immigration prisons in their New American Gulag (“NAG”), have once again “swallowed the whistle.” The Gulag, where kids are caged and put in “iceboxes,” families separated, and folks sometimes left to die, all for no reason other than “we can do it and nobody’s going to stop us” will haunt not only those corrupt public servants who established and operated it, but also those like legislators, judges, and public health officials who failed in their duties to end the human rights abuses.

Perhaps the Article IIIs are “running scared” because without the ongoing clown show in the U.S. Immigration Courts, the Article IIIs would be in line for the title of “Americas’s Most Dysfunctional Courts.”

Also, I think it’s time for Slate to take “Intern” off Chloe Hadavas’s title and ink this “up and coming talent” to a full time contract covering immigration and justice issues.

Due Process Forever. Dysfunctional Courts That Endanger The Public, Never!

🤡☠️

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

PWS

03-21-20

 

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

UPDATE: Gullible, complicit U.S. Judges in their ivory tower bubbles with plenty of hand sanitizers might be willing to believe DHS’s claims that everything is “hunky dory” in the New American Gulag,  but the truth is stark, ugly, and predictable for anyone familiar with the regime’s immigration antics, lies, and cover-ups:

“The cells stink. The toilets don’t flush. There’s never enough soap. They give out soap once a week. One bar of soap a week. How does that make any sense?”

Read the latest from Vice News, as hunger strikes break out in three New Jersey detention facilities:

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pkew79/immigrants-are-now-on-hunger-strike-in-3-ice-detention-centers–fears

Meanwhile, Courtside has been receiving reports from multiple sources in New Jersey about rapidly deteriorating conditions in Immigration Courts and the Gulag, failure to follow Federal health guidelines, possible positive coronavirus tests among ICE employees, and efforts by the the regime to keep the truth about about the growing health risks for detainees, judges, lawyers, and other personnel forced to deal with this dangerous, broken, and totally dysfunctional system “under wraps.”

I have also received disturbing, yet credible, reports of continuances for “at risk” attorneys being denied by some Immigration Judges, while other judges have received “no assurances” from their management “handlers” that the regime’s due-process-mocking “production quotas” will be waived during the health emergency! ☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️

PWS

03-21-20

 

 

 

 

AMERICA’S KANGAROO COURT SYSTEM: EOIR HELPING DHS COME UP WITH WAYS TO DUMP ON UNACCOMPANIED KIDS! — THE “THE FACADE OF JUSTICE AT JUSTICE” CONTINUES WHILE CONGRESS AND ARTICLE III COURTS ABDICATE RESPONSIBILITY FOR A SYSTEM THAT MOCKS DUE PROCESS AND THE CONSTITUTION! — CNN’S Tal Kopan With The Scoop!

http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/11/politics/trump-administration-dhs-immigration-policies/index.html

Tal reports:

“Washington (CNN)Even as the Trump administration is asking Congress to approve a tough overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws, the Department of Homeland Security is also quietly exploring ways it could transform the US immigration system on its own.

The department has been examining a range of subtle modifications to immigration policies that could have major consequences, including limiting protections for unaccompanied minors who come to the US illegally, expanding the use of speedy deportation proceedings, and tightening visa programs in ways that could limit legal immigration to the US, according to multiple sources familiar with the plans.
None of the policies being explored are finalized, according to the sources, and are in various stages of development. Any of them could change or fall by the wayside. Some of them are also included at least in part in the wish list of immigration priorities that President Donald Trump sent to Congress this week, and it’s unclear whether the administration will wait to see the results of negotiations over the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that President Donald Trump has chosen to end.

Still, the proposals under consideration illustrate the extent to which the administration could attempt to dramatically change immigration in the US through unilateral executive action.
“Do you think Obama did a lot? That’s my answer,” said one former DHS official when asked how transformative the change could be. “They could do quite a bit.”
DACA itself was an example of how former President Barack Obama, frustrated with congressional inaction, sought to use executive authority to take action on immigration, putting in place the program to protect young undocumented immigrations brought to the US as children from deportation in 2012.
But the administration is now exploring rolling back more Obama-era policies, and changing even older systems.
DHS did not respond to a request for comment about the policies being explored or its process.
Targeting protections for unaccompanied minors
One effort underway is exploring what can be done about unaccompanied children (UACs), a category of undocumented immigrants who are caught illegally crossing the border into the US, are under age 18, and are not accompanied or met by a parent or guardian in the US. Those UACs, by law and legal settlement, are handed over to the Department of Health and Human Services for settling in the US, given protections from expedited removal proceedings and given special opportunities to pursue asylum cases in the US.
DHS and the Department of Justice have been exploring options to tighten the protections for UACs, including no longer considering them UACs if they’re reunited with parents or guardians in the US by HHS or once they turn 18.

In a previously unreported memo, obtained by CNN, the general counsel of the Executive Office of Immigration Review, which manages the nation’s immigration courts, wrote in a legal opinion that the administration would be able to decide a UAC was no longer eligible for protections — a sea change in the way the 2008 law granting those protections has been interpreted.
The Trump administration has portrayed the UAC protections as a loophole in the law that can be exploited by gangs, though experts have testified before Congress that the minors under the program are more likely to be victimized by gangs in the US due to a lack of a support network than to be gang members. The administration also has sought to crack down on parents who pay smugglers to bring their children into the US illegally, even to escape dangerous situations in Central America.
The White House also asked Congress to amend the 2008 law to restrict UAC protections.
In previously unreported comments made last month at a security conference in Washington, acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan said that ICE is actively looking at the adults HHS places UACs with, and if they are in the US illegally, they will be processed for deportation — and if a smuggler was paid, they could be prosecuted for human trafficking.
DOJ touts effects of surge of immigration judges sent to border
DOJ touts effects of surge of immigration judges sent to border
“You cannot hide in the shadows, you can’t be an illegal alien in the United States, have your undocumented child smuggled at the hands of a criminal organization, and stay in the shadows,” Homan said. “We’re going to put the parents in proceedings, immigration proceedings, at a minimum. … Is that cruel? I don’t think so. Because if that child is really escaping fear and persecution, he’s going to stand in front of an immigration judge to plead his case, his parents should be standing shoulder to shoulder with him. I call that parenting.”
DHS is also continuing to weigh its options to expand the use of expedited removal more generally — a speedier process of deportation that bypasses a lengthy court process in particular cases — as authorized by Trump’s January executive order on immigration.
Legal immigration tightening
Other efforts in the works include ways to tighten legal avenues to come to the US.
Two policies being looked at are the subject of litigation in the DC Circuit court — work authorizations for spouses of high-skilled visa holders and an expansion of a program that allows STEM students to stay in the US an extra two years for training.
Both policies were challenged in the courts, and now the administration is considering whether to roll them back.
On the spousal authorizations, DHS told the court as much in a filing last month, asking for extra time for the DHS review to finish.
That filing points to a DHS review of “all” of the agency’s immigration policies, citing the President’s Executive Order to “buy American and hire American.”
“Executive Order 13,788 is an intervening event necessitating careful, considered review of all of DHS’s immigration policies to ensure that the interests of US workers are being protected,” the attorneys wrote, citing the order’s instructions to create new rules, if necessary, “to protect the interests of United States workers in the administration of our immigration system.”
Trump admin quietly made asylum more difficult in the US
Trump admin quietly made asylum more difficult in the US
DHS has also moved to tighten asylum claim credibility thresholds, and is exploring asking Congress for more authority to do so. Another target is reportedly cultural exchange visas, which according to The Wall Street Journal are also under scrutiny after the “hire American” order.
Further unilateral moves wouldn’t even require policy changes, immigration attorneys fear. Attorneys who represent immigration clients fear that simply by slowing down the visa process, DHS could substantially decrease the number of immigrants admitted to the United States. US Citizenship and Immigration Services announced this summer it would begin requiring interviews for all green card applicants on employment and refugee grounds, and that it would roll out required interviews for other categories over time, adding a substantial and potentially lengthy hurdle to achieving legal permanent residency.
“If the wait time for naturalizations increases by three months, USCIS can naturalize 25% fewer people per year, which would mean millions of people over a four-year period,” said Leon Fresco, an immigration attorney and former Obama administration DOJ official. “Even without a policy change, the administration (can accomplish) dramatic reductions to legal immigration through increases in processing times and taking a hawkish approach to finding reasons for denials of immigration applications.”
DHS pointed CNN to statistics showing no increase in the rate of denials of immigration applications, though the backlog of pending applications has grown steadily over the past two years.
Internal jockeying
One-quarter of DACA renewals not in on deadline day
One-quarter of DACA renewals not in on deadline day
Sources familiar with the inner workings of DHS describe an environment where political appointees and policy staff with strongly held opinions circulate ideas that sometimes reach the press before front office and secretarial staff are even aware of the discussions.
While political appointees and career officials are not described as butting heads, some of policy ideas do end up moderated by career employees on practical grounds. One source also described some employees of USCIS, which administers DACA, as getting emotional when the plan was made to end the program.
“Once it gets to a senior level, there are pretty robust discussions,” another source familiar said. “And once it gets to that level there are folks with ideas, and then folks who have been around for a while who say, ‘That won’t work.'”
Those competing ideas are then ultimately decided on by the secretary and high-level decision makers, though sources say political appointees are sometimes in a position to have influence over what information flows to the front office and top officials.
“The secretary and the decision makers end up with that (dynamic),” the source said.”

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Immigration “Courts” run and controlled by Political Enforcement Officials and actively engaged in looking for ways to diminish the rights of individuals coming before them are not “real courts” and are not capable for delivering fair, unbiased, and impartial justice in accordance with the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution. This kangaroo court system, operating under false premises, is unconstitutional (in addition to be incompetently administered)! 

Will the Article III Courts ever do their duty, put this corrupt and unlawful system out of its misery, and restore at least some semblance of due process and justice for immigrants? Or, will they “go along to get along” and thus make themselves part of one of the most shameful charades of justice In American Legal History?