😩TIRED OF PANDERING POLITICOS BASHING HUMAN RIGHTS & DEHUMANIZING BORDER COVERAGE BY THE MEDIA? — Here’s Some Straight Talk On The Border From Migration Expert Harvard Law Professor Gerald L. Neuman! ⚖️🗽 — “There is danger that any new legislation would decrease protection, which would mean that we would be taking no steps forward, and several steps backward, and that nonetheless, issues about migration would remain just as divisive as they are now.”🤯

Professor Gerald L. Neuman
J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law
Harvard Law
PHOTO: Harvard Law

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2024/02/immigration-roars-back-in-headlines-time-finally-come-for-reforms/

Liz Mineo, Staff Writer, interviews Professor Neuman in The Harvard Gazette:

. . . .

What should be done about border security, enforcement, and the immigration court backlog?

In terms of enforcement, there is no easy solution. A border fence is merely a symbol and no solution. Clearly, the adjudication system needs more resources, and adjustments to improve both efficiency and fairness. For both sides, justice delayed is justice denied, and that should be an important part of the focus.

Another priority, contrary to some claims, is to reduce reliance on detention. The U.S. is engaged in arbitrary detention of migrants who really don’t need to be detained; they could be subject to surveillance.

The country should also respect its international obligations not to send people back to countries where they will be persecuted, tortured, or killed. It cannot suspend its international obligations on that front, and it should not openly violate them, as it did under COVID.

What measures should be taken to reduce the flow of migrants into the U.S?

In terms of enforcement, the important point to stress is that this is not an issue that the U.S. can solve unilaterally. There must be a regional solution. It’s obvious to anyone who looks at the logistics of the problem that the solutions depend on cooperation with Mexico. Congress can’t just impose a solution and assume that Mexico will go along with it. More broadly, there are other countries that need to be involved in protecting refugees and in solving some of the problems that lead to migration.

Some experts say the asylum system is a parallel immigration system and that it should be revamped. What’s your take on this?

I’d like to use the term asylum broadly, not legalistically, to cover forms of protection from persecution, killing, and torture. The U.S. asylum system is too opaque and too inconsistent: Valid claims may be rejected, and claims that are made in perfectly good faith may turn out to be invalid.

On the other hand, some people seek desperately to come to the U.S. for reasons that are not covered by asylum, such as poverty, loss of livelihood, or to join family members. The system needs to winnow those claims out while remaining open to valid claims for protection. It would also benefit from greater clarity on which claims are valid, and from more consistent adjudication, but now, the system is not meeting its obligations to persecuted people.

Finally, what are your realistic hopes for changes in immigration policies?

For now, my hopes would be that any new legislation would increase funding and would help give the public the sense that the border situation is being addressed.

And meanwhile that the executive would use the authority that it already has to manage the situation better, including by negotiating with other countries. The executive should resist efforts that obstruct its compliance with its obligations.

There is danger that any new legislation would decrease protection, which would mean that we would be taking no steps forward, and several steps backward, and that nonetheless, issues about migration would remain just as divisive as they are now.

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

Read the full (edited) interview at the link.

“Decrease protection” seems to be a toxic bipartisan goal of Congress and the Administration. What’s preventing it? They can’t agree on the amount of cruelty, suffering, and dehumanization to inflict on vulnerable forced migrants who overwhelmingly seek only to have the USG process their legal claims for protection in a fair and timely manner! That reality has clearly been lost in the rancid, one-sided, often secret “negotiations” in Congress; the insipid statements of the Biden Administration promising more border closures, cruel, inhuman, degrading, expensive, and wasteful detention; and treacherous “bipartisan” abrogation of well-established “life or death” legal rights to fair consideration of claims!

Professor Neuman says “this is not an issue that the U.S. can solve unilaterally.” There is general consensus among migration experts on this fundamental truth! Yet, Congress and the Administration keep pretending otherwise, with little critical, informed “pushback” from the media.

Why isn’t Kristen Welker interviewing Professor Neuman and other migration experts, rather than making “Meet the Press” a “Foxlike Forum” for those promoting White Nationalist lies about the border and national security? Welker hasn’t bothered to inform herself about the human lives and human rights involved with forced migration at the border. Therefore, her feeble attempts to stop GOP nativist politicos from rambling on with their border myths are somewhere between ineffective to pathetic, but certainly must be maddening to anyone involved with assisting the actual humans seeking protection under our dysfunctional legal system!

Remarkably, but not surprisingly, many of Professor Neuman’s points relate directly or indirectly to the failure of AG Merrick Garland (amazingly, a former Article III Circuit Judge) and his lieutenants to reform EOIR and get it working in “real time.” The ideas for fixing EOIR and the enlightened expert leadership to do it are available in the private sector. See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2023/12/19/⚖%EF%B8%8F🤯👩🏽⚖%EF%B8%8F👨🏻⚖%EF%B8%8F-as-garlands-backlog-hits-3-million-way-past-time-to-clean/.

Garland’s inexcusable failure to fix EOIR and get it working fairly, professionally, expertly, and in real time is a drag on the Biden Administration immigration policies and an existential threat to our democracy!

Inexcusable indeed! 🤯

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-08-24

⚖️🤯👩🏽‍⚖️👨🏻‍⚖️ AS GARLAND’S BACKLOG HITS 3 MILLION, WAY PAST TIME TO CLEAN HOUSE, 🧹 BRING IN COMPETENT EXPERTS, 🧐 & START IMPLEMENTING THE “MPI PLAN” FOR BACKLOG REDUCTION & DUE PROCESS! — Empower “The Magnificent Seven” To Take The Field & Bring Order From Chaos!

As predicted by experts from the “git go,” AG Merrick Garland’s indolent, half-baked approach to his most important responsibility — bringing justice and functionality to his Immigration Courts, has been a disastrous failure endangering our entire democracy!
PHOTO: Thomas Hawk
Creative Commons
Amateur Night

Here’s the latest report from TRAC documenting how former Federal Judge Merrick Garland’s failure to fulfill his most important duty — reforming and fixing the U.S. Immigration Courts, has built backlog at record paces and undermined our democracy:

https://trac.syr.edu/reports/734

Here’s the “action plan” that’s been publicly available since July 2023 — “Rethinking The U.S. Immigration Court System” — yet largely, and disastrously ignored by Garland, his lieutenants, and the Biden Administration:

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/publications/mpi-courts-report-2023_final.pdf

Executive Summary

The U.S. immigration courts—and the nation’s immigration enforcement system they support—face
an unprecedented crisis. With a backlog of almost 2 million cases, it often takes years to decide cases. Moreover, the recent growth in the caseload is daunting. In fiscal year (FY) 2022, immigration courts received approximately 708,000 new cases, which is 160,000 more than in any previous year. Such numbers, coupled with the courts’ resource constraints and decision-making processes, ensure that the court system will continue to lose ground.

For asylum cases, which now make up 40 percent
of the caseload, the breakdown is even more dire. Noncitizens wait an average of four years for a hearing on their asylum claims to be scheduled,
and longer for a final decision. Those eligible for protection are thus deprived of receiving it in a timely manner, while those denied asylum are unlikely

to be returned to their countries of origin, having
established family and community ties in the United
States during the intervening years. The combination
of years-long backlogs and unlikely returns lies at the
heart of our broken asylum system. That brokenness contributes to the pull factors driving today’s migration to the U.S.-Mexico border, thereby undermining the integrity of the asylum and immigration adjudicative systems, and immigration enforcement overall.

Many of the factors contributing to the dramatic rise in the courts’ caseload have deep and wide-reaching roots, from long-standing operational challenges in administering the courts to new crises in the Americas that have intensified both humanitarian protection needs and other migration pressures. The scale of these twin challenges has made it more urgent than ever to address them together. In the aftermath of lifting the pandemic-era border expulsion policy known as Title 42 in May 2023, the Biden administration is implementing wide-ranging new border policies and strategies that establish incentives and disincentives linking how migrants enter the United States with their access to the asylum system. But timely, fair decisions are also central to the success of this new regime.

While many other studies have outlined wholesale changes in the immigration court system that only Congress can enact, such legislative action seems unlikely, at least in the near term. Thus, this report calls
for changes that can be made by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the agency within the Department of Justice (DOJ) that houses the immigration courts, as it is presently organized. Because the immigration courts are administrative bodies, the executive branch has considerable latitude in determining their policies and procedures. The changes laid out in this report hold great potential to improve the courts’ performance and, in turn, enhance the effectiveness of the U.S. immigration system more broadly.

Some steps in this direction are already being taken. The Biden administration has streamlined certain important policies and procedures at EOIR. Nonetheless, these courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals

2 million

cases in the backlog

About 650

immigration judges nationwide

Less than 500

cases completed per judge in most recent years

1

AT THE BREAKING POINT: RETHINKING THE U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT SYSTEM

(BIA), which reviews appeals from immigration court decisions, fall short of meeting the hallmarks of a well- functioning adjudicatory system: that decisions be accurate, efficiently made, consistent across both judges and jurisdictions, and accepted as fair by the public and the parties in the case.

Related issues of caseload quantity and decision quality have given rise to the difficulties EOIR is confronting. Under the Trump administration, the reopening of thousands of administratively closed cases and increased interior enforcement led to rising court caseloads. And since 2016, increased border crossings have accounted for growing numbers of new cases, many of them involving asylum claims.

Cases are also taking longer to complete. While pandemic-related restrictions played a role in this slowdown, case completion rates had in fact already been declining. In FY 2009, each immigration judge completed about 1,000 cases per year. By FY 2021, the completion rate had decreased to slightly more than 200 cases per year, even as the number of immigration judges grew. Thus, more judges alone are not the answer. Slow hiring, high turnover, and a lack of support staff have resulted in overwhelmed judges whose productivity has decreased as the backlog has grown.

Concerns about the quality of decision-making by immigration courts and the BIA have existed for decades. More than one in five immigration court decisions were appealed to the BIA in FY 2020, and appeals of BIA decisions have inundated the federal courts. Federal court opinions have pointed to errors of statutory interpretation and faulty reasoning when overturning decisions. Policy changes at

the BIA, ever-changing docket priorities from one
administration to the next, and some recent Supreme
Court directives have contributed to the diminished
adjudicative quality. Wide variances in case outcomes among immigration judges at the same court and across different courts around the country further point to quality concerns; for example, the rate at which individual immigration judges denied asylum claims ranged from 1 to 100 percent in FY 2017–22.

EOIR has increasingly turned to technology to manage its dockets, primarily through video-conferencing court proceedings. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated its use of internet-based hearings. Four important, yet at times competing, considerations are central when evaluating how technology—and particularly video-conferencing tools—are used in immigration proceedings: efficiency, the impact of technical difficulties, security issues, and concerns about due process.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attorneys who prosecute removal cases also play an important role in the court system. Their use of prosecutorial discretion, along with judges’ docket management tools, help shape which cases flow through the system, and how.

Legal defense representation—or the lack of it—is a critical issue plaguing the immigration court system. Noncitizens in immigration proceedings, which are civil in nature, are not entitled to free legal counsel, as

The rate at which asylum claims are denied varies widely, from

1% with one judge to

100%

with another in FY 2017-22

2

AT THE BREAKING POINT: RETHINKING THE U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT SYSTEM

defendants in criminal proceedings are. But they can face life-changing, and sometimes life-threatening, circumstances when subject to an order of removal from the United States. Studies have repeatedly found that representation in immigration proceedings improves due process and fair outcomes for noncitizens. It also improves efficiency, as represented noncitizens move more quickly through immigration court. Lawyers, accredited representatives, immigration help desks, and legal orientation programs aid some noncitizens through this process. But many more move through complex proceedings pro se (i.e., unrepresented).

Federal funding for representation of noncitizens in removal proceedings is effectively barred. Public funding at the state and local levels has increased the availability of representation for some noncitizens. A large share of representation is provided by nonprofit legal services organizations and pro bono law firm resources. Nonetheless, representation is fragmented and insufficient, given the scale of need.

One element of this system that has seen notable signs of change in recent years has been how border management feeds into the courts’ caseload. The Biden administration began implementing a new
asylum processing rule at the southwest border in June 2022 that aims to ease the growing pressures on immigration courts.1 The rule authorizes asylum officers, who are part of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to make the final decision in asylum cases instead of immigration judges. Asylum seekers whose claims are denied by an asylum officer can still appeal the decision, but on an expedited timeline. As such, the rule holds the potential to reduce the growth of the immigration court backlog and shorten adjudication times to months instead of years.

Since lifting the Title 42 expulsion policy, the Biden administration has paused implementation of the asylum rule due to competing demands for asylum officer resources. But returning to the rule, and strengthening EOIR’s functioning overall, will be important for managing the flow of cases into the immigration courts and the courts’ ability to keep pace with them. Doing so depends on the court system using technology better, more strategically exercising discretion in removal proceedings, and increasing access to legal representation so that courts deliver decisions that are both timely and fair.

This report’s analysis of the issues facing the nation’s immigration courts and its recommendations for addressing them reflect research and conversations with a diverse group of stakeholders—legal service providers, immigration lawyers and advocates, current and former immigration judges, BIA members and administrators, academics, and other experts who have administered, practiced before, and studied the immigration court system. The report urges EOIR and DHS, in its role as the agency whose decisions and referrals come before EOIR, to work together to:

Strengthen the immigration court system’s management and efficiency

► Schedule new cases on a “last-in, first-decided” basis. Such a reset to the system, which has proven successful in the past, could bring processing times on new cases down to months, rather than years.

1 This rule draws in part on proposals made in an earlier Migration Policy Institute (MPI) report: Doris Meissner, Faye Hipsman, and T. Alexander Aleinikoff, The U.S. Asylum System in Crisis: Charting a Way Forward (Washington, DC: MPI, 2018).

3

AT THE BREAKING POINT: RETHINKING THE U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT SYSTEM

Because this disadvantages cases that have already been waiting for a long time, it should be treated as a temporary, emergency measure alongside policy and procedural reforms that protect fairness and promote efficiency more broadly. Shifting resources back to adjudicating older cases, as timeliness is established with incoming cases, is essential for shrinking the growth and size of the backlog, which should be among the courts’ highest priorities.

► Terminate cases that do not meet the administration’s prosecutorial guidelines, which focus priorities on felons, security threats, and recent entrants. One approach to this would be to task ICE attorneys with triaging backlog cases to determine which could be fast-tracked for grants of relief or for removal. Such efforts would allow the courts and ICE attorneys to focus on more serious cases, especially those involving criminal charges.

► Centralize case referrals from DHS. Instead of the current practice of having all three DHS immigration agencies (ICE, USCIS, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection) refer cases separately to EOIR, ICE attorneys should initiate all cases. As de facto prosecutors, they are best positioned to determine the legal sufficiency and priority for moving cases the government has an interest in pursuing.

► Establish two tiers of immigration judges—magistrate and merits judges—modeled on existing state and federal court systems where judges and staff are assigned to different roles or dockets so that cases move through the adjudication system efficiently and expeditiously.

► Expand the use of specialized dockets or courts that handle cases involving specific groups of noncitizens or require certain subject matter expertise, such as juveniles, families, reviews of credible fear determinations, cancellation of removal, adjustment of status, and voluntary departure.Restart the asylum officer rule and provide the support needed to implement it

► Establish a dedicated docket for the asylum officer rule’s streamlined appeal proceedings. As the most far-reaching reform the Biden administration has introduced for strengthening management of the asylum and immigration court systems, implementing the rule effectively is key to reducing the pace of caseload growth in the court system and discouraging weak claims.

Upgrade how the courts use technology

► Ensure that technology is used to make immigration courts fairer for everyone involved, such as by holding hearings remotely when parties would be unable to attend an in-person hearing. Special attention should be paid to how the use of technology can affect detained noncitizens and vulnerable populations such as children.

Increase access to legal representation

► Establish a new unit within EOIR devoted to coordinating the agency’s efforts to expand representation. The unit should collaborate with nongovernmental stakeholders to make representation of detained noncitizens a priority and to allow partially accredited representatives— some of whom may be non-lawyers—to appear in immigration court for limited functions.

4

AT THE BREAKING POINT: RETHINKING THE U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT SYSTEM

► Develop new and innovative ways to scale up representation by coordinating with lawyers who take responsibility for specific aspects of cases or non-lawyers who are specially trained and supervised
to do so. Legal service providers should build a multi-stage, collaborative online system that enables representation by lawyers or non-lawyers in specific stages of a case for which they have the requisite expertise (e.g., filing forms, attending bond or master calendar hearings, or seeking relief ). This approach requires creating e-files for cases, with files moving from one representative or provider to another as cases progress, resulting in both expert representation at each stage and greater efficiency in moving cases forward overall.

► Encourage efforts by state and local governments to provide and/or increase funding to support representation, especially given current restrictions on federal funding of representation in most removal cases.

Despite efforts by successive administrations to bring
the immigration court system’s unwieldy caseload
under control and to improve the quality of its
decision-making, the courts remain mired in crisis.
And while many of the most pressing problems have
roots that stretch back decades, they have in recent
years reached a breaking point. The measures
proposed in this report hold the potential to reduce
case volumes, increase the pace of decision-making,
and improve the quality of adjudications. They would
also mitigate migration pull factors that result from
years-long waits for decisions. The deeply interconnected nature of the nation’s immigration court system and its immigration enforcement and asylum systems mean that such efforts to modernize and fully resource the courts are critical to the health of the U.S. immigration system overall.

The deeply interconnected nature of the nation’s immigration court system and its immigration enforcement
and asylum systems mean that such efforts to modernize and fully resource the courts are critical to the health of the U.S. immigration system overall.

BOX 1
About the Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy Project

This report is part of a multiyear Migration Policy Institute (MPI) project, Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy. At a time when U.S. immigration realities are changing rapidly, this initiative has been generating a big- picture, evidence-driven vision of the role immigration can and should play in America’s future. It provides research, analysis, and policy ideas and proposals—both administrative and legislative—that reflect these new realities and needs for immigration to better align with U.S. national interests.

The research, analyses, and convenings conducted for MPI’s Rethinking initiative address critical immigration issues, which include economic competitiveness, national security, and changing demographic trends, as well as issues of immigration enforcement and administering the nation’s immigration system.

To learn more about the project and read other reports and policy briefs generated by the Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy initiative, see bit.ly/RethinkingImmigration.

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

Read the full report at the link.

Not the first time I’ve said this, but it’s time for “Amateur Night @ The Bijou” (“A/K/A Merrick Garland’s failed EOIR”) to end! Reassign the EOIR senior management folks who have demonstrated “beyond any reasonable doubt” their inability to provide dynamic, due process with efficiency management and visiononary leadership and to solve pressing problems. (This includes the inability to stand up and “just say no” to bonehead “gimmicks” like Garland’s due-process-denying, quality diminishing, backlog-building, “expedited dockets”).

It’s not an exaggeration to say that the anti-asylum, anti-human rights, anti-reality charade now playing out in Congress is driven in large part by Garland’s three-year failure to do his job by getting functionality and due process focused leadership into EOIR.

Bring in a competent, expert executive team, hand them the MPI Plan, and empower them to move whatever “bureaucratic mountains” need to be moved to get results, including, but not limited to, major personnel changes at the BIA and in Immigration Courts and taking a “hard line” with counterproductive performance by DHS (actually “just a party” before the Immigration Courts, NOT “their bosses!”)

Bring in these experts:

Judge (Retired) Dana Leigh Marks
Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr
Dean Kevin Johnson
Michelle Mendez (NIPNLG)
Professor Michele Pistone
Jason “The Asylumist” Dzubow
Wendy Young (KIND)

Task this “Magnificent Seven” — folks with centuries of practical expertise and creative ideas for actually solving humanitarian problems (rather than making them worse, as per the ongoing travesty on the Hill) — with turning around the EOIR disaster; support and empower them to achieve results and to reject politicized bureaucratic meddling from DOJ and elsewhere! Make the long-unfilled “promise of INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca” — a legitimate, properly generous, practical, efficient asylum and refugee adjudication system that complies with international and domestic law and simple human decency — a reality!

This is about rebuilding America’s most important and consequential court system, NOT running an “government agency!”

This is also the “demand” that Congressional Dems SHOULD be making of the Biden Administration, instead of engaging in disgraceful (non) “bargaining” with GOP nativists that seek an end to asylum and an increase to human suffering and ensure continuing humanitarian disaster at our borders!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-19-23

🗽TIRED OF BORDER BS FROM NATIVIST POLS, MEDIA, & BUREAUCRATS? — Get The “Real Skinny” From The Experts, Yale-Loehr & Chishti on Nov. 7! — Zoom Option Available!

Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr
Cornell Law

Muzaffar Chishti
Senior Fellow
Migration Policy Institute
PHOTO: MPI

The Migrant Surge: What’s Different About It This Time?

Please join us on November 7, 2023, from 12:15 p.m. to 1:15 p.m. in Myron Taylor Hall G85 of Cornell Law School for a lunchtime seminar given by our guest Muzaffar Chishti and moderated by Stephen Yale-Loehr.

Food will be provided during the event, so please RSVP at https://cornell.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bxQgGPjwGJmgu8K

Join Mr. Chishti and Professor Yale-Loehr as they discuss the history of recent migrant flows to the U.S. border, the current migrant surge at the border, the impact on cities and states beyond the border, and possible impacts on federal immigration policy.

Muzaffar Chishti is a Senior Fellow at the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute (MPI) and Director of MPI’s office at New York University School of Law. He received his LLM from Cornell Law School in 1975.

Steve Yale-Loehr teaches immigration and asylum law at Cornell Law School as Professor of Immigration Practice and is of counsel at Miller Mayer in Ithaca, New York.

Can’t make it to our event in-person? You can attend virtually!

We are also livestreaming the event, so you can sign up to attend via Zoom at this link: https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_RwEvxopRTWOfcootUY5-qA

Please feel free to distribute the link to anyone you feel would be interested in the seminar. All are welcome!

This event is co-sponsored by the Cornell Migrations Initiative.

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

Sorry, “zoomers,” but you will have to provide your own food!☹️

“Open borders” is a dangerous myth pushed by GOP nativist pols and “closet nativist” Dems. In fact, the border has never been more fortified, inhospitable, and deadly than it is now. See, e.g., https://www.axios.com/2023/10/17/us-mexico-border-open-borders-myth. Border deaths are up. See, e.g., https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwj2_OP3opGCAxXjElkFHQjFDUUQFnoECBMQAw&url=https://www.voanews.com/a/iom-us-mexico-border-the-deadliest-land-crossing-in-the-world-/7297145.html#:~:text=Fatalities%20double%20in%20fiscal%202023,with%2071%20in%20fiscal%202022.&usg=AOvVaw1VipHkDxFBrakZDiwTcyB9&opi=89978449.

The Title 42 farce instituted by Trump, under false pretenses, to unjustly suspend asylum laws has expired. But, the Biden Administration has come up with its own scofflaw regulations and policies intended to “meter” the flow of legal asylum seekers at ports of entry and to improperly “punish” those who exercise their legal rights by entering and turning themselves in to CBP. Biden’s BIA continues to churn out unrealistic hyper-technical asylum precedents (that actually fly in the face of precedents like Cardoza-Fonseca and Mogharrabi) and wrong, anti-asylum decisions intended to “deter and discourage” asylum seekers from applying and to make it unnecessarily difficult, frustrating, and time consuming for pro bono lawyers to represent them!

Yet, desperate forced migrants continue to come. That’s hardly “rocket science” given that the world is experiencing record forced migration from various causes. See https://www.unhcr.org/sites/default/files/2023-06/global-trends-report-2022.pdf.

Contrary to the nativist myths, the U.S. does NOT bear the brunt of increased forced migration! Even in the Western Hemisphere, Colombia has many times more displaced Venezuelans than the U.S. Indeed, the U.S. experience, no matter how much it’s hyped or distorted by nativists and shallow media alarmists, is only a relatively modest slice of the pie. Over three quarters of the world’s forced migrants end up in low and middle income countries outside the U.S. https://www.unhcr.org/sites/default/files/2023-06/global-trends-report-2022.pdf. Yet, you would never know that from listening to the apocalyptic narrative of GOP nativists and their Dem “fellow travelers!”

Years of cruelty, dehumanization, fortification, imprisonment, prosecution, endangerment, harsh laws, family separations, racist rhetoric, illegal turn backs, and summary deportations of asylum seekers in the U.S. and at the border have demonstrably, and quite predictably, failed to stop or materially deter forced migration stemming from causes outside of U.S. legal policies. Yet, most of our “dialogue” about the U.S. border and immigration start with the bogus assumption that closing the border and unilaterally suspending due process and domestic and international legal obligations will effectively create “Fortress America” where no migrant will dare to tread!

A real discussion of the border and migration must reject nativist myths, racist tropes, and media alarmism by starting with the truth. That is:

Human migration is a real and inevitable worldwide phenominon;
No one nation-state can unilaterally stop or prevent human migration;
Because of climate change and political instability in the world, forced migration is likely to increase in the foreseeable future;
Seeking asylum is a basic legal and human right;
The U.S. will have to accept more migrants, whether legally (preferable) or extralegally (the alternative).

Only by “ditching” and getting beyond nativist myths can we develop solutions that will deal realistically and humanely with human migration. I’m hoping that these two knowledgeable migration and legal experts can get us beyond the myths and to a discussion of practical, achievable actions!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-25-23

☠️👎🏽 UNMITIGATED DUE PROCESS DISASTER! 🤮 — GARLAND’S TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL “COURTS” DAMAGE HUMANITY, DEGRADE AMERICAN JUSTICE!🏴‍☠️

Alexandra Villarreal reports for The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/21/us-immigration-courts-cases-backlog-understaffing?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

. . . .

On the line are millions of futures. Undocumented immigrants who fear being split from their American children and spouses, people facing persecution and death in their countries of origin, or those being sent to countries they haven’t seen in decades are all fighting for fair play and often literally their lives in courts ill-equipped to do them justice.

“Let’s make it absolutely clear: due process is suffering,” said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. “There’s just no way around that.”

Chishti said he sees all the hallmarks of a strong administrative law system suffering in the nation’s immigration courts, which are housed under the Department of Justice in the executive branch of the federal government, not within the judicial branch.

“It is a system in crisis,” he said.

After Trump made hardline anti-immigration policies pivotal to his 2016 presidential campaign, he flooded courts with judges more inclined to order deportations, Reuters reported.

His administration hired so many new immigration judges so hastily that the American Bar Association warned of “under-qualified or potentially biased judges”, many of whom had no immigration experience.

And as officials such as then-attorney general Jeff Sessions made sweeping proclamations that “the vast majority of asylum claims are not valid”, judges simultaneously confronted performance metrics demanding they each race through at least 700 cases a year.

Yet in the roughly 70 US immigration courts across the country, judges are deciding complex cases with potentially lethal consequences.

People ranging from asylum seekers forced to wait in Mexico to unaccompanied children crossing the border on foot, to longtime undocumented residents with families stateside end up appearing in court, often without attorneys to help them parse the country’s byzantine laws.

In a process smacking of a zip code lottery, one judge in New York may grant nearly 95% of asylum petitions while colleagues in Atlanta almost universally deny similar requests, creating a patchwork of standards.

. . . .

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

Read Alexandra’s full report at the link.

Alfred E. Neumann — Garland’s stubbornly indolent approach to racial justice and due process at “Justice” endangers the lives of millions of vulnerable humans! PHOTO: Wikipedia Commons

Not news to Courtside readers or the millions whose lives and futures are caught up in Garland’s totally dysfunctional morass! And, that doesn’t even include hundreds of thousands of migrants orbited to danger under bogus “border closure” gimmicks that Garland and his ethically-challenged DOJ continue to defend!

While Garland and his top lieutenants might be too willfully tone deaf to “get it,” many legislators are “connecting the dots” between the systemic racial injustice and indifference to human life exhibited in Garland’s failed immigration justice system and the endemic problem of racial justice in America. See, e.g., https://www.menendez.senate.gov/newsroom/press/menendez-booker-lead-100-congressional-colleagues-in-urging-president-biden-to-reverse-inhumane-immigration-policies-impacting-black-migrants

There will be no racial justice in America without immigrant justice!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-21-22

⚖️🗽🇺🇸TEA IVANOVIC @ IMMIGRANT FOOD INTERVIEWS ME ON DYSFUNCTIONAL IMMIGRATION COURTS: “They are not the courts that you think of when you think of our judicial system. . . . He’s pretty blunt about the ways in which the immigration court system is highly dysfunctional,” Says Tea In Her Intro!

Editor’s Note – July

Dear Reader,

For this month’s Think Table issue, we delve into the dysfunctional U.S immigration court system. The U.S. constitution states that our judicial system is a ‘separate but equal part’ to our democracy. But immigration courts have nothing to do with that. They fall under the Department of Justice, and immigration judges have a boss, the Attorney General. As we’ve seen in recent times, that can be a highly politicized position. Additionally, the lack of technology and the ever-growing backlog of cases leave many immigrants and asylum seekers waiting an average of two years just to schedule a court proceeding!

For this issue, we spoke with Judge Paul Schmidt, a former federal immigration judge. He’s pretty blunt about the ways in which the immigration court system is highly dysfunctional.

We hope you enjoy this issue as much as we do.

Téa

Here’s a link to the “video short:”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDDV83vSuHY

Here’ the “complete issue” which contains a reprint of an article from Sarah Pierce“Obscure but Powerful: Shaping U.S. Immigration Policy through Attorney General Referral and Review.”

https://immigrantfood.com/the-think-table/

And here’s the terrifically talented Tea:

Tea Ivonovic — Tea Ivanovic
Chief Operating Officer
ImmigrantFood.com
PHOTO: Immigrant Food

Born in Belgium to parents from the former Yugoslavia and recruited to the United States by Virginia Tech’s Division 1 Varsity tennis team, Téa calls herself an immigrant squared. She still can’t figure out if Serbian, Flemish or English is her native language – she speaks all of them equally. Her professional career includes creating and implementing strategic communications for international policy and politics at a Washington D.C. think tank, and global financial matters at a financial public and media relations firm. Téa was the first Washington Correspondent for Oslobodjenje, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s oldest newspaper and leading news outlet in the Western Balkans. She graduated with a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

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

Yeah, I’m pretty blunt! But, this is a totally screwed up system that threatens our democracy!

So, many of us out here in the NDPA think it’s a dire emergency, even if Judge Garland and the Biden Administration prefer to ignore the obvious and shun the immediate solutions!

Judge Garland’s failure to implement basic constitutional, personnel, and management reforms @ EOIR is undermining justice in America and tarnishing his reputation. Also, it’s potentially killing innocent folks. Sure sounds like a “national Constitutional emergency” to me!

Thanks to Tea for making this “accessible” report on a huge, largely unaddressed, democracy threatening problem. Tell Judge G to fix EOIR now!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-01-21

Suzanne Monyak @ Law360: FEDERAL COURTS RECOGNIZE THAT BILLY BARR’S BIA IS A FRAUD! — So Why Do They Let The Unconstitutional Abuse Of Persons Seeking Justice Continue Under Their Noses?

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

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

https://www.law360.com/immigration/articles/1271825/immigration-board-picks-under-trump-to-set-lasting-policy

Suzanne writes in Law360:

U.S. Circuit Judge Frank H. Easterbrook didn’t mince words earlier this year when sharing his thoughts on a recent decision by the immigration courts’ appellate board: “We have never before encountered defiance of a remand order, and we hope never to see it again.”

The Seventh Circuit judge, a Reagan-appointee, said the board had ignored the court’s directions to grant protection to an immigrant fighting deportation, instead ruling against the immigrant again. The rebuke wasn’t the first time the Board of Immigration Appeals has been reprimanded by the federal judiciary for seemingly prejudiced decisions under the Trump administration.

Just a month earlier, a judge on the Third Circuit tackling an appeal from the BIA wrote in a concurring opinion that it didn’t appear the board “was acting as anything other than an agency focused on ensuring [an immigrant’s] removal rather than as the neutral and fair tribunal it is expected to be.”

“That criticism is harsh and I do not make it lightly,” U.S. Circuit Judge Theodore McKee wrote.

While President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees and U.S. Supreme Court picks grab headlines for rtheir potential to shape the judiciary for years to come, the administration is staffing the lesser known BIA with former immigration judges who have high asylum-denial rates and individuals with backgrounds in law enforcement. Some of the picks have prompted advocates for immigrants and lawmakers to claim the hiring process is too politicized.

Documents newly obtained through the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the Trump administration has aimed to fast-track the hiring process while giving the director of U.S. Department of Justice‘s Executive Office for Immigration Review, James McHenry, and the U.S. attorney general more say in who gets the nod.

Unlike the federal and appellate courts, the BIA, an administrative appellate board that hears appeals from immigration trial courts, is not independent but rather is housed with the EOIR.

Yet the board can issue precedential decisions that shape immigration policy — and the lives of immigrants facing deportation — well into the future.

“That the reasonably ordinary citizen has not heard of the BIA does not take away from the fact that it is the most important agency establishing immigration jurisprudence in the country, and when you politicize that, you’re obviously politicizing immigration jurisprudence,” said Muzaffar Chishti, head of the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute’s New York office.

A spokesperson for EOIR told Law360 that the office sped up the hiring process as part of “commonsense changes” and in response to criticism from Congress.

She also said that EOIR “does not choose board members based on prohibited criteria such as race or politics, and it does not discriminate against applicants based on any prohibited characteristics,” and that “all board members are selected through an open, competitive, merit-based process.”

During the most recent hiring cycle, every panelist evaluating candidates was a career employee, not a political appointee, according to the spokesperson.

“Individuals who assert that such changes make the hiring process less neutral are either ignorant or mendacious,” the spokesperson said.

High Rates of Asylum Denials

Since August, the Trump administration has installed nine of the 19 current permanent members of the BIA, and most of the newcomers have asylum-denial rates above 80% and backgrounds in law enforcement or the military.

All but one of the nine were previously immigration judges, and according to data collected by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, the average asylum-denial rate among those eight judges was just over 92%. The denial rate for each of those eight judges ranged from 83.5% to 96.8%.

The average asylum-denial rate for immigration courts nationally is 63.1%, according to TRAC.

Asylum-denial rates aren’t perfect metrics; controlling asylum law varies by circuit, and the viability of asylum claims can vary based on location. New York’s immigration courts for instance, tend to see more asylum claims from Chinese citizens fleeing political oppression, which are more frequently successful, while courts near detention centers may see harder-to-win claims from longtime U.S. residents with less access to counsel.

However, Jeffrey Chase, a New York City immigration lawyer and former immigration judge, told Law360 that no one deciding cases fairly could have a 90% asylum denial rate.

“You’re looking to deny cases at that point,” he said.

The one recent Trump administration BIA hire who wasn’t previously an immigration judge had been a trial attorney at the Justice Department, while many of the other former judges had prior experience at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security or its predecessor agency.

One, V. Stuart Couch, was previously a senior prosecutor for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“There’s overall just a lack of diversity on the immigration judge bench, which is deeply concerning,” said Laura Lynch, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “I think the mark of justice is the idea that decision makers come from a diverse background.”

A hire to the BIA announced earlier this month, Philip J. Montante Jr., has come under fire not only for a sky-high asylum-denial rate — 96.3% — but for a history of ethics complaints.

In 2014, the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that Judge Montante’s handling of an immigration case was “inappropriate” after an attorney accused him of showing bias when deciding a client’s case.

In March, not long before his promotion to the BIA was announced, the New York Civil Liberties Union accused Judge Montante in a proposed class action in federal court of denying detained immigrants’ bond requests nearly universally.

According to the advocacy organization, Judge Montante rejected 95% of bond requests between March 2019 and February 2020, bringing him within the top five lowest bond grant rates among the more than 200 immigration judges nationwide.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Suzanne’s excellent article, with more quotes from my fellow members of the NDPA, Judge Jeffrey S. Chase and Laura Lynch, at the above link. I have been told that this article is “outside” the Law360 “paywall,” so you should be able to read it even if you don’t have a subscription.

I find the Article III Courts’ recognition of the Due Process travesty going on in individual cases, while they ignore the systemic unfairness that makes a mockery out of the Due Process Clause of our Constitution, the rule of law, our entire justice system, and humanity itself, perhaps the most disturbing institutional failure under the Trump regime. While Article III Judges are “shocked and offended” by contemptuous actions directed at them in particular cases, they remain willfully “tone deaf” to the reality of our dysfunctional and biased Immigration Courts and their impact on “real human lives.” ☠️

This is how individuals seeking justice and the courageous lawyers representing them, many serving at minimal or no compensation to inject a modicum of integrity into our system, are treated every day. Not every wronged individual has the ability to reach the Article IIIs.

And, given the Article IIIs failure to take the courageous, systemic steps necessary to stop abuses of migrants, the Trump regime has “taken it to a new level” by coming up with various illegal schemes and gimmicks to keep individuals seeking asylum from even getting a hearing in Immigration Court. Due Process? Fundamental Fairness? Rule of Law? No way!

Yet, this unfolds before us daily as the Article IIIs basically “twiddle their collective thumbs” 👎🏻 and “nibble around the edges” of a monumental Constitutional disaster and blot on the humanity and integrity of our nation and our own souls. The complicity starts with the Supremes who have “passed” on a number of critical opportunities to “just say no” to blatant violations of the Fifth Amendment, the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Refugee Act of 1980, international human rights conventions, and misuse and clear abuse of “emergency authority” to achieve a White Nationalist, racist agenda.

In other words, the Supremes’ majority is knowingly and intentionally encouraging the regime’s program of “Dred Scottification” — dehumanization or “de-personification” before the law — of “the other.” This disgusting and fundamentally un-American “resurrection and enabling” of a “21st Century Jim Crow Regime” might be “in vogue” with the “J.R. Five” and their right-wing compatriots right now. But, they are squarely on the “wrong side of history.” Eventually, the “truth will out,” and they will be judged accordingly!👎🏻

That’s why I say: “Constantly Confront Complicit Courts 4 Change.”

Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-11-20

DORIS MEISSNER @ MPI: Administration’s Failed Border Enforcement Policies Anchored In Past & Distorted By Xenophobia — Most Of Today’s Arriving Migrants Seek & Deserve Safety & Protection Unavailable In “Failed States” Of Northern Triangle!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/03/14/real-border-problem-is-us-is-trying-stop-wrong-kind-migrants/

Doris writes in the Washington Post:

No matter what happens with Thursday’s vote on President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency, the real root of the difficulties at the U.S.-Mexico border won’t be addressed.

The whole approach the U.S. government takes at the border is geared to yesterday’s problem: Our border security system was designed to keep single, young Mexican men from crossing into the United States to work. Every day, more evidence mounts that it’s not set up to deal with the families and unaccompanied children now arriving from Central America — in search not just of jobs, but also of refuge. The mismatch is creating intolerable humanitarian conditions and undermining the effectiveness of border enforcement.

From the 1960s to the early 2000s, the reality of illegal immigration at the southwest border was overwhelmingly economic migration from Mexico. The U.S. responded, especially once the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks prompted tighter security everywhere, by building up a well-resourced, modernized, hardened border enforcement infrastructure, with more staff and more sophisticated strategies. Successive Congresses and administrations under the leadership of both Democrats and Republicans have supported major investments in border security as an urgent national priority. About $14 billion was allocated in fiscal year 2017 for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a steep rise from $9.5 billion a decade earlier.

From a peak of 1.6 million apprehensions in fiscal 2000 — with 98 percent of those apprehended Mexicans — border apprehensions have fallen by about three-quarters, to 397,000 last year. More Mexicans now return to Mexico annually than enter the United States. The turnaround has been dramatic and is due to the combined effects of economic growth, falling fertility rates and improved education and job prospects in Mexico; job losses in the United States surrounding the 2008-2009 recession; and significant border enforcement successes.

At the same time, an entirely different type of migration became more common. Beginning in 2012, the number of unaccompanied minorsfrom Central America — principally El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — crossing the border illegally jumped sharply. Modest numbers of such migrants had been arriving for many years. However, by 2014, the arrival of unaccompanied children spiked to more than 67,000 and, for the first time, the number of non-Mexican apprehensions exceeded those of Mexicans.

By 2016, the Central American flows became predominantly families with young children. Some were fleeing their countries in search of economic opportunity, but many were seeking safety and protection from widespread violence and gang activity that especially targets young people approaching or already in their teens.

Last year, 40 percent of border apprehensions were either of migrant families or unaccompanied minors, as compared to 10 percent in 2012. The proportion has risen to 60 percent in recent months, and just-released numbers show 66,450 apprehensions last month, the highest February total in a decade.

The important story, however, is not so much the numbers, which remain well below earlier peaks, as it is the change in the character of the flow. Today’s migrants include especially vulnerable populations, a large share of whom are seeking safety. As my organization reported recently, more than one in three border crossers today is an unaccompanied child or asylum seeker, up from approximately one in 100 a decade ago.

Yet the U.S. government’s posture has not been recalibrated, remaining pointed toward an illegal immigration pattern that has largely waned.

[Trump isn’t trying to solve border problems. He’s trying to make them look worse.]

Today, many people who cross the border illegally actively seek out and turn themselves in to enforcement officials so they can apply for asylum. Others have been presenting themselves at ports of entry, seeking protection. Ground sensors, camera towers and similar surveillance technology and infrastructure are less helpful as a result.

Border Patrol facilities are designed for holding people only for short periods because that used to be all they needed to do: Most Mexicans who are apprehended are processed and returned across the border within hours. The same is not the case for Central Americans and others from noncontiguous countries, increasing numbers of whom are arriving exhausted and in ill health after lengthy, arduous journeys. They can’t simply be driven back to Mexico, because they’re not from there in the first place.

Border Patrol stations are ill-suited for dealing with these vulnerable populations, as the tragedy of the two young children who died recently in Border Patrol custody sadly illustrates. The situation has been further taxed by the increasing numbers of what the Border Patrol refers to as large-group arrivals: In the first five months of this fiscal year, the Border Patrol encountered 70 groups of more than 100 migrants crossing illegally, up from 13 last year and two the year before.

Asylum officers and immigration judges, not Border Patrol and port-of-entry inspectors, make the decisions in asylum cases. The asylum and immigration court systems don’t have anywhere near the sustained funding spent on border enforcement programs. As larger shares of migrants have arrived claiming asylum, workloads have ballooned into huge backlogs as a result. And even in cases where resources have been provided, they are not always used: Congress has allocated funding for 534 immigration judges, and yet only 427 are serving. Children and families are vulnerable to physical and emotional health dangers that argue for minimal detention periods, but their cases can take months or years to decide. And policies that precipitated the separation of more than 2,700 children from their parents have only added to the trauma.

These and other factors point to the need for dramatically different border management policies and budget decisions from those made in the past, largely successfully, to deter illegal inflows from Mexico.

Testifying in Congress last week, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said the situation at the border has reached a “breaking point.” There is a crisis, but it is a crisis of an asylum system that is severely overburdened by the major uptick in humanitarian protection claims.

The asylum system can only work effectively with timely, fair decisions about who is eligible for protection — and who is not, and therefore must be returned to their country of origin. More broadly, just as improved conditions in Mexico have been key to reducing illegal crossings of Mexicans, the best way to prevent Central Americans from fleeing their native countries must include attacking the violence, corruption and poverty driving them to leave home.

Yet the Trump administration has curtailed access to asylum and ended a program allowing some Central Americans to apply for protection from within the region to keep pressure off the border. Most recently, the administration rolled out a new policy that forces some asylum seekers to stay in Mexico in highly uncertain conditions to await asylum decisions, which they are told may take up to a year. Such measures seem only to be spurring on prospective migrants to journey to the U.S. before policies get even more restrictive.

This is not to say there are easy answers. Dealing with mixed flows is a challenge not only for the United States but for other major migrant destinations in Europe and beyond. Building systems that can sift through mixed flows to fairly and efficiently provide protection to those who truly qualify and identify and remove those who don’t is difficult.

[Trump is right: There is a crisis at the border. But he’s causing it.]

But course corrections are well past due.

Steps that could be taken now include devoting money and applying new strategies to the asylum and immigration court systems so they can effectively handle a burgeoning caseload, rather than greatly narrowing who can access them. Building suitable Border Patrol facilities for receiving children and families and training agents and other staff to spot and act upon medical and other emergencies would also be required. The government could foster networks of community-based monitoring and case management programs with legal representation that provide alternatives to detention so migrants are detained for minimal periods, at less overall expense and are treated more humanely, but still appear for their asylum interviews and deportation hearings.

Ramped-up anti-smuggling initiatives and intelligence cooperation with neighboring countries are a must. Affected communities on both sides of the border need support and new partnerships with government actors, especially in the face of caravans, a method of movement on the rise among Central Americans to gain safety in numbers but posing new logistical and political difficulties for governments. And U.S. policies must give greater priority to our geographic neighborhood in developing longer-term solutions with Mexico and Central America that are in our joint national interests.

Rather than unproductive political fights over walls and national emergency declarations, these steps would go a long way to restoring order at the border. It is past time for policymakers and the public to recognize there are no quick fixes but that, even with migrant arrivals on the rise, the border can be managed through an array of proven policy initiatives.

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

It’s no surprise to me that an Administration committed to a racist, White Nationalist political agenda, rather than governing in the public interest, will consistently fail to solve problems and will govern incompetently.

Families who turn themselves in to the Border Patrol at the first opportunity to apply for asylum are by no stretch of the imagination “law enforcement issues” except to the extent that Trump’s inappropriate unwillingness to process them fairly at ports of entry and to establish a robust refugee program for the Northern Triangle has created a misdirection of law enforcement resources. To claim otherwise is totally disingenuous.

PWS

03-15-19

WHAT IS THE EFFECT OF ICE INTERIOR ENFORCEMENT? — Three Differing Analyses Of Numbers, Trends, Impact

1. MIGRATION POLICY INSTITUTE (“MPI”)

Revving Up the Deportation Machinery: Enforcement under Trump and the Pushback

By Randy Capps, Muzaffar Chishti, Julia Gelatt, Jessica Bolter, and Ariel G. Ruiz Soto

Excerpt:

The study finds that the engine that fueled ICE’s peak effectiveness—the intersection of federal immigration enforcement with state and local criminal justice systems—is being throttled by state and local policies that limit cooperation with ICE. Nearly 70 percent of ICE arrests in the early Trump months originated with local jails and state prisons, a sizeable share that is nonetheless down from more than 85 percent in fiscal 2008-11.

Beyond sanctuary policies, the report finds growing resistance at other levels. Some cities are changing policing practices to reduce noncitizen arrests, such as decriminalizing driving without a license. Immigrant advocates are conducting more “know-your-rights” trainings, teaching people they do not have to open their doors to ICE. And others are mobilizing to monitor ICE operations in the field, or increasing funding for legal representation for those facing removal hearings.

Read the report:

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/print/16178

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

2. NOLAN RAPPAPORT IN THE HILL

ICE report contradicts notion that Trump is using immigration law to ‘keep America white’

BY NOLAN RAPPAPORT, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 12/21/18 10:00 AM EST 150

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

Excerpt:

In fiscal 2018, ICE arrested 105,140 immigration violators who had criminal convictions and 32,977 immigration violators who had pending criminal charges.

Only 20,464 (12.9 percent) did not have convictions or pending criminal charges. A recent Yale study estimates that there are more than 22 million undocumented aliens in the United States, which indicates that the likelihood of deportation is quite low for undocumented aliens who do not become involved in criminal activity.

Moreover, according to MPI’s study, ICE relies heavily on help from state and local law enforcement agencies to identify and arrest removable aliens. In jurisdictions that cooperate with ICE, the police screen aliens when they are arrested and booked into custody and notify ICE if any of them appear to have unlawful status.

Sanctuary cities do not provide this cooperation, which leaves ICE with little choice but to carry out its enforcement activities in neighborhoods and at other community locations, even though this is not an efficient use of its resources. This has resulted in an increase in the arrests of noncriminal aliens and numerous complaints.

Read the article:

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/422331-ice-enforcement-report-contradicts-notion-that-trump-is-using-immigration

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

3. CENTER FOR MIGRATION STUDIES (“CMS”)

Communities in Crisis: Interior Removals and Their Human Consequences

Kino Border Initiative
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Office of Justice and Ecology, Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States

Excerpt:

The Criminalization of Deportation

The Trump administration has regularly portrayed undocumented residents, migrants seeking to request asylum at the US-Mexico border, and deportees as criminals and security threats. Most survey respondents either had not been convicted of a crime or had committed an immigration or traffic offense prior to their deportation. Nevertheless, study participants described a deportation system that treated them as criminals and instilled fear in their communities.

Nearly one-half of respondents said they had not been convicted of a crime prior to their deportation.

Of the 37 respondents (51.4 percent) who reported having been convicted of a crime,[6] more than one-third (35.1 percent) had been convicted of a traffic or immigration offense, 21.6 percent of a drug-related crime (including possession), and another 21.6 percent of a violent crime.[7]

A high percent of respondents (65.2) reported that their deportation began with a police arrest, 30.3 percent reported having been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and less than 1 percent by Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

The majority of apprehensions took place while respondents were driving (36.1 percent), at home (26.3 percent), or at work (6 percent).

Survey respondents spent an average of 96 days in immigrant detention. Most were detained for 30 days or less, and 17 percent were detained for 180 days or more.

Only 28 percent were able to secure legal counsel.

Roughly one-fourth of survey respondents reported spending no time in criminal custody and 22.6 percent spent a week or less prior to their deportation. However, 17.3 percent spent more than one year.

Read the report:

http://cmsny.org/publications/communities-in-crisis/

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

I’ve provided links to all three reports above. Read them and decide for yourself.

PWS

01-02-19

LA TIMES: Immigration Courts Not Only “Broken Piece” Of Trump’s Removal Regime — DHS Can’t Keep Up With Removals Even Now! — “Haste Makes Waste” Rush To Hire More Agents Likely To Dilute Standards, Threaten National Security!” — New IG Report Blasts Current Practices!

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-ice-oig-20170420-story.html

Joseph Tanfani reports:

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, hampered by poor organization and an overworked staff, will have trouble keeping up with the Trump administration’s plans to ramp up deportations of people in the country illegally, government inspectors have concluded.

ICE has “overwhelming caseloads,” its records are “likely inaccurate” and its deportation policies and procedures “are outdated and unclear,” said a report released Thursday by the inspector general of the Homeland Security Department.

“ICE is almost certainly not deporting all the aliens who could be deported and will likely not be able to keep up with the growing number of deportable aliens,” the 19-page report concludes.

The harsh assessment is the latest dash of cold reality for Trump, who was swept into Washington promising vastly tougher enforcement of immigration laws, including more removals, thousands more Border Patrol agents and deportation officers, and construction of a formidable wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

. . . .

An internal memo in February from Kevin McAleenan, acting director of Customs and Border Protection, revealed that Border Patrol was able to vet and hire only about 40 agents a month last year despite aggressive efforts to streamline the hiring process.

Reports this year that Customs and Border Patrol might stop using polygraph tests, intended to ferret out unqualified agents, drew a storm of criticism. So did the reason: Two out of three new applicants had failed the lie detector.

The agency first required polygraph tests for prospective employees in 2012 after an Obama-era hiring surge led to a sharp increase in agents getting charged or arrested for bribery, drug smuggling and other crimes on or near the border.

Moreover, the Border Patrol — the nation’s largest federal law enforcement agency — has more than 2,000 jobs empty even before a Trump-led hiring surge. The force fell below 20,000 agents this year for the first time since 2009, when Obama came to office.

Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly said Sunday that Customs and Border Protection would continue to use the polygraph as a hiring tool, although he added that the agency was considering changes to make the process less “arduous.”

. . . .

Moreover, the latest report from the inspector general’s office at Homeland Security said ICE agents, who are supposed to identify, detain and deport people in the country illegally, are ill-equipped to monitor those on their caseloads.

ICE tries to keep track of about 2.2 million foreigners who are not in jail, including more than 368,000 convicted criminals, the report said. Some officers have more than 10,000 cases, the report said, criticizing agency officials for not managing the problem.

“Although many ICE deportation officers … reported overwhelming caseloads and difficulty fulfilling their responsibilities, ICE does not collect and analyze data” that could be used to ease the pressure.

In one office, according to the report, officers complained that they had to manage so many thousands of cases that they couldn’t keep track of some migrants who had been flagged as risks to national security.

The report faulted ICE for insufficient training and failing to issue “up-to-date, comprehensive and accessible” guidelines on deportation. Resolving the failures, it said, “may require significant time and resources.”

“These management deficiencies and unresolved obstacles make it difficult for ICE to deport aliens expeditiously,” it said.

. . . .

Randy Capps, research director at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, said the Trump administration may have promised more than it can deliver given the systemic problems.

“Sooner or later, they are going to have to narrow down [deportation priorities] or the system is going to be overwhelmed,” he said. “That’s certainly what the Obama administration found. There’s a certain size past which the system is very hard to manage efficiently.”

I think Randy Capps has it exactly right. The system is not “infinitely expandable.” That’s also true of the U.S. Immigration Court system. At some point, reasonable priorities will have to be set. With perhaps as many as 12 million undocumented residents in the U.S., we simply can’t have line agents arresting anyone who “might” be removable.

Seems like it’s high time for some bipartisan congressional oversight of what we taxpayers are getting for our dollars over at the DHS. I say this acknowledging that over the years I have been impressed with the individual talent and dedication of the vast majority of DHS (and “Legacy INS”) employees I have come in contact with in my various “lives” in immigration law. But, management, mission focus, technology problems, and communications difficulties have always been agency-wide issues that in some ways make “the whole less than the sum of its parts.” Sure seems that it would be better to get these problems fixed before adding lots of “new parts.”

PWS

04-21-17

Tag: Migration Policy Institute (“MPI”)

Liz Mineo, Staff Writer, interviews Professor Neuman in The Harvard Gazette:

What should be done about border security, enforcement, and the immigration court backlog?

What measures should be taken to reduce the flow of migrants into the U.S?

Some experts say the asylum system is a parallel immigration system and that it should be revamped. What’s your take on this?

Finally, what are your realistic hopes for changes in immigration policies?

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

Here’s the latest report from TRAC documenting how former Federal Judge Merrick Garland’s failure to fulfill his most important duty — reforming and fixing the U.S. Immigration Courts, has built backlog at record paces and undermined our democracy:

Here’s the “action plan” that’s been publicly available since July 2023 — “Rethinking The U.S. Immigration Court System” — yet largely, and disastrously ignored by Garland, his lieutenants, and the Biden Administration:

Bring in these experts:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

🗽TIRED OF BORDER BS FROM NATIVIST POLS, MEDIA, & BUREAUCRATS? — Get The “Real Skinny” From The Experts, Yale-Loehr & Chishti on Nov. 7! — Zoom Option Available!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

☠️👎🏽 UNMITIGATED DUE PROCESS DISASTER! 🤮 — GARLAND’S TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL “COURTS” DAMAGE HUMANITY, DEGRADE AMERICAN JUSTICE!🏴‍☠️

Alexandra Villarreal reports for The Guardian:

There will be no racial justice in America without immigrant justice!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

Here’s a link to the “video short:”

Here’ the “complete issue” which contains a reprint of an article from Sarah Pierce“Obscure but Powerful: Shaping U.S. Immigration Policy through Attorney General Referral and Review.”

And here’s the terrifically talented Tea:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

Suzanne Monyak @ Law360: FEDERAL COURTS RECOGNIZE THAT BILLY BARR’S BIA IS A FRAUD! — So Why Do They Let The Unconstitutional Abuse Of Persons Seeking Justice Continue Under Their Noses?

That’s why I say: “Constantly Confront Complicit Courts 4 Change.”

Due Process Forever!

PWS

DORIS MEISSNER @ MPI: Administration’s Failed Border Enforcement Policies Anchored In Past & Distorted By Xenophobia — Most Of Today’s Arriving Migrants Seek & Deserve Safety & Protection Unavailable In “Failed States” Of Northern Triangle!

WHAT IS THE EFFECT OF ICE INTERIOR ENFORCEMENT? — Three Differing Analyses Of Numbers, Trends, Impact

1. MIGRATION POLICY INSTITUTE (“MPI”)

Revving Up the Deportation Machinery: Enforcement under Trump and the Pushback

2. NOLAN RAPPAPORT IN THE HILL

ICE report contradicts notion that Trump is using immigration law to ‘keep America white’

3. CENTER FOR MIGRATION STUDIES (“CMS”)

Communities in Crisis: Interior Removals and Their Human Consequences

LA TIMES: Immigration Courts Not Only “Broken Piece” Of Trump’s Removal Regime — DHS Can’t Keep Up With Removals Even Now! — “Haste Makes Waste” Rush To Hire More Agents Likely To Dilute Standards, Threaten National Security!” — New IG Report Blasts Current Practices!

Liz Mineo, Staff Writer, interviews Professor Neuman in The Harvard Gazette:

What should be done about border security, enforcement, and the immigration court backlog?

What measures should be taken to reduce the flow of migrants into the U.S?

Some experts say the asylum system is a parallel immigration system and that it should be revamped. What’s your take on this?

Finally, what are your realistic hopes for changes in immigration policies?

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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Here’s the latest report from TRAC documenting how former Federal Judge Merrick Garland’s failure to fulfill his most important duty — reforming and fixing the U.S. Immigration Courts, has built backlog at record paces and undermined our democracy:

Here’s the “action plan” that’s been publicly available since July 2023 — “Rethinking The U.S. Immigration Court System” — yet largely, and disastrously ignored by Garland, his lieutenants, and the Biden Administration:

Bring in these experts:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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Alexandra Villarreal reports for The Guardian:

There will be no racial justice in America without immigrant justice!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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Here’s a link to the “video short:”

Here’ the “complete issue” which contains a reprint of an article from Sarah Pierce“Obscure but Powerful: Shaping U.S. Immigration Policy through Attorney General Referral and Review.”

And here’s the terrifically talented Tea:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

That’s why I say: “Constantly Confront Complicit Courts 4 Change.”

Due Process Forever!

PWS

Related posts:

Related posts:

1. MIGRATION POLICY INSTITUTE (“MPI”)

Revving Up the Deportation Machinery: Enforcement under Trump and the Pushback

2. NOLAN RAPPAPORT IN THE HILL

ICE report contradicts notion that Trump is using immigration law to ‘keep America white’

3. CENTER FOR MIGRATION STUDIES (“CMS”)

Communities in Crisis: Interior Removals and Their Human Consequences

Related posts:

Related posts: