🗽🇺🇸R.I.P. DALE SCHWARTZ (1942-2021) — “ORIGINAL DUE PROCESS WARRIOR” — “Dale was a force to be reckoned with.”

Dale Schwartz ESQUIRE
Dale Schwartz, Esquire
1942-2021
PHOTO: avvo.com

 

https://www.aila.org/about/announcements/in-memoriam/dale-m-schwartz

In Memoriam: Dale M. Schwartz

AILA Doc. No. 21083004 | Dated August 30, 2021

Immigration attorney, champion for the underdog, and dedicated family man Dale Marvin Schwartz, 79, of Sandy Springs, died suddenly and peacefully on August 27. Born to parents Florence and Sanford Schwartz on August 20, 1942 in Columbus, Georgia, Dale graduated from Winder Barrow High School, entered college at age 17, and ultimately received a Bachelors and a Law degree from the University of Georgia. He was married for 56 years to his college sweetheart, Susan Ellis Schwartz, and adored his three daughters, Lori (Allan) Peljovich, Leslye Schwartz, and Laine (Greg) Posel, his nine grandchildren, and his sweet puppy, Ruthie.

Dale was a force to be reckoned with. In his early years, he worked with Alex Cooley to promote rock concerts at Lake Spivey, interned for Senator Richard Russell in Washington, DC, before being recruited by Governor Carl Sanders to Troutman Sanders, where he became a partner and head of the immigration group. In 1995 he opened his own specialty immigration law practice, in which he remained active until his death. He was an adjunct professor of law at Emory for many years.

Dale was a tireless advocate for immigrants, refugees, and those without a voice. He joined John Lewis in the lunch counter sit-ins in Nashville, worked tirelessly to acquire a pardon for Leo Frank, represented the Mariel Cubans in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, and started the Secret Santa program for children in the Fulton County DFCS system. Dale lent his heart, voice and leadership skills to a plethora of organizations: He served as President of JF&CS Atlanta, National Board Chair of HIAS, Atlanta Board Chair and National Commissioner at ADL, President of American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), co-founder of the American Immigration Council non-profit, and founder of the Young Democrats chapter at UGA.

Dale’s passing leaves a great hole in the hearts of many. He had friends throughout the world because of his numerous hobbies, including photography, HAM radio, and model train collecting. He will most be remembered for his larger than life personality, wit, storytelling, travel adventures, and his not-for-primetime jokes. He was a leader, advocate, mentor, teacher, colleague, friend. But most importantly, he was a son, brother, husband, father, and proud grandfather.

Dale’s full obituary can be found here.

Cite as AILA Doc. No. 21083004.

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

I knew Dale well. He sued us often during my “Legacy INS” tenure.

Throughout years of spirited and often emotional litigation, we always remained on cordial terms. Eventually, during my “private practice phase,” we ended up “on the same team” on a number of business immigration issues. 

Always generous with his time and advice, Dale loved to “talk immigration law,” and usually had a cite, sometimes to long forgotten, yet right on point, precedents or policy statements.

Dale’s was truly a “life well lived.” And, he inspired many, many members of today’s “New Due Process Army.”🗽⚖️🇺🇸

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-31-21

FEAR AND LOATHING IN ATLANTA: The Worst Place In America To Be Undocumented?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/us/atlanta-immigration-arrests.html

Vivian Yee writes in the NY Times:

“CHAMBLEE, Ga. — Not many notice when the SUVs arrive.

Around 5 a.m., when the immigration agents pull into the parking lot of the Chamblee Heights apartments, 16 miles from downtown Atlanta, only one person is on the lookout.

Cristina Monteros catches sight of the cars with the telltale tinted windows from her small apartment near the front, where she runs a day care, and calls her downstairs neighbor: ICE is here.

The neighbor dials another, who passes it on. It takes less than 15 minutes for everyone in the complex to hear about “la migra,” whereupon they shut their doors and hold their breath. Some show up late to work, and others skip it altogether. The school bus might leave some children behind.

“It’s just us helping each other out,” said Ms. Monteros, 35. “There’s fear every day.”

Few places in the United States have simultaneously beckoned undocumented immigrants and penalized them for coming like metropolitan Atlanta, a boomtown of construction and service jobs where conservative politics and new national policies have turned every waking day into a gamble.

President Trump has declared anyone living in the country illegally a target for arrest and deportation, driving up the number of immigration arrests by more than 40 percent this year. While the Obama administration deported record numbers of undocumented immigrants, it directed federal agents to focus on arresting serious criminals and recent arrivals. The current administration has erased those guidelines, allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to arrest and deport anyone here illegally.

Freed of constraints, the regional ICE office in Atlanta made nearly 80 percent more arrests in the first half of this year than it did in the same period last year, the largest increase of any field office in the country.

It has had help. Local sheriffs and the police have been working with federal agents to identify and detain immigrants, a model of cooperation that the Trump administration is rapidly trying to expand throughout the country.

Every few hours, an unauthorized immigrant is booked into a county jail on charges as serious as assault and as minor as failing to signal a right turn. Then the jail alerts ICE — contrary to what happens in the so-called sanctuary cities repeatedly denounced by Mr. Trump, where local authorities refuse to turn immigrants over to the federal agency except in cases involving the gravest crimes.

Atlanta’s immigrants can do little but hide. At strip-mall taquerias and fruit stands, business has lagged. Word of the arrests flows through neighborhood phone trees, and Facebook has become an early-warning system for people desperate for clues about where ICE is operating. All around the metropolitan area, cabs and Uber cars are picking up immigrants who know driving their own cars may get them no further than detention.

. . . .

An analysis of one month of Gwinnett County jail records from this summer shows that 184 of the 2,726 people booked and charged at the jail were held for immigration authorities. Almost two-thirds of those detained for ICE had been charged with a traffic infraction such as failing to stay in their lane, speeding or driving without a license. Others were booked on charges including assault, child molestation and drug possession.

Advocates for immigrants have accused officers in 287(g) counties of targeting Hispanic drivers, a claim local police have denied.

“Local law enforcement is just chasing Latinos all over the place for tiny traffic infractions,” said Adelina Nicholls, the executive director of the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights.

But to Butch Conway, the longtime sheriff of Gwinnett County, there is no reason his deputies should not turn in immigrants caught driving without a license. They are, after all, doubly breaking the law.

“I find it offensive that they just thumb their nose at our laws and operate vehicles they are not licensed to operate,” Mr. Conway said in a 2010 interview, “on top of the fact that they are here illegally.” (Through a spokeswoman, he declined to comment for this article.)

In nearby Cobb County, Maria Hernandez, a school janitor from Mexico, was arrested while driving home from work one night in May. An officer conducting a random license tag check, a common practice in some police departments, had determined through a state database that the tag had been suspended because the car lacked insurance. After pulling over Ms. Hernandez, the officer then discovered she had no driver’s license.

Her boss tried to bail her out of the Cobb County jail, but was told that the money would go to waste: She was headed to immigration detention, where she would spend three days trying to explain that she was a single mother with a sick child. Estefania, her 13-year-old daughter, was being treated for depression after a suicide attempt.

Ms. Hernandez was released, given an ankle monitor and told to report back with a plane ticket. (A lawyer has helped delay the deportation.)

Her car, in fact, was insured; the officer had called in the wrong license tag, according to a Cobb County Police Department spokesman, Sgt. Dana Pierce.

Sergeant Pierce said it made no difference, given Ms. Hernandez’s lack of a driver’s license. Generally, “there is no singling out of any race, creed, color, religion or anything else,” the sergeant said.

But by the time the mistake was discovered, it was too late. Ms. Hernandez was already being booked into the county jail.”

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

Read Yee’s complete article at the link.

As has been noted before on this blog, the U.S. Immigration Courts in Georgia also have the reputation of being most anti-migrant in the country.

PWS

11-26-17

DEATH WATCH: Average 1/MO Dies In ICE Custody — And It’s Only Just Beginning, As Another ICE Detainee Dies, This Time In Atlanta!

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/17/us/ice-atlanta-detainee-dies/index.html

Catherine E. Shoichet reports for CNN:

“Atlanta (CNN) A man in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody has died after being hospitalized for shortness of breath, officials said Wednesday.

Atulkumar Babubhai Patel was pronounced dead at Atlanta’s Grady Memorial Hospital on Tuesday afternoon.
The 58-year-old Indian national’s death is the second death of a detainee in ICE custody this week — and the second this week in the state of Georgia.
Officials said complications from congestive heart failure were ruled the preliminary cause of death.
Patel arrived at the Atlanta airport on May 10 on a flight from Quito, Ecuador. Authorities denied him entry into the United States because he did not have the necessary immigration documents, ICE said.
He was transferred to ICE custody in the Atlanta City Detention Center on Thursday, according to the agency. An initial medical screening at the time determined he had high blood pressure and diabetes. Two days later, Patel was transported to the hospital after a nurse checking his blood sugar noticed he had shortness of breath, ICE said. He died on Tuesday afternoon.
In its statement announcing Patel’s death, officials said fatalities in ICE custody are “exceedingly rare.”
“ICE is firmly committed to the health and welfare of all those in its custody and is undertaking a comprehensive agency-wide review of this incident, as it does in all such cases,” ICE said.

Second death this week

Patel is the eighth person to die in ICE custody this fiscal year, which began in October.
Authorities are also investigating the death of another immigrant detainee in Georgia. Jean Jimenez-Joseph, 27, was found unresponsive in his cell on Monday with a sheet around his neck. The preliminary cause of death was self-inflicted strangulation.
He’d been in solitary confinement for more than two weeks at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia.
The recent deaths have drawn sharp criticism from immigrant rights activists, who have long decried conditions in immigration detention centers and called on the government to close such facilities.
US President Donald Trump has called for increasing detention as part of his crackdown on illegal immigration. And Congress recently upped its funding for immigrant detention, approving a spending bill that pays for an average of more than 39,000 detention beds per day.
***************************************************
“Exceedingly rare?”  Like in two deaths in one week in ICE custody in Georgia? In addition to ruined lives, the Trump/Sessions/Kelly vision for an “American Gulag” is certain to cause more preventable deaths in DHS custody, in light of the well-documented substandard conditions in such facilities, particularly those run by private contractors and local jailers. I guess each member of the “Triumvirate of Death”  is well enough off so a few million in civil judgments wouldn’t be a problem.  But, the taxpayers are likely to be shelling out megabucks for some tort claims.
PWS
05-17-17