😟MONTANA IS “FLYOVER COUNTRY” FOR EOIR BUREAUCRATS: Due Process & Public Service For People Below, Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind! — 1,000 Mile Drives, Required In Person Hearings In Other States, Different Circuits, Different Rules Producing Inconsistent Results, Frustrated Lawyers — Human Lives & Justice In Large, Thinly Populated States Just More “Collateral Damage” From A Failed System! — Quoting Montanan NDPA Superstar 🌟 Kari Hong & Members Of The “Round Table!” 🛡⚔️

Montana
“There’s a whole lotta wide open spaces (and natural beauty) out in Montana as viewed by EOIR “flyover bureaucrats” and their DOJ “handlers.” But, if you look closely, there are real life people living there who deserve decent public service!”
PHOTO: Bird Tail Divide, By “Montanabw” — Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Carrie La Seur reports for the Daily Montanan:

 

https://dailymontanan.com/2023/02/05/without-any-immigration-courts-montana-is-tough-for-immigrants-looking-to-build-new-life/

Carrie La Seur
CARRIE LA SEUR
Carrie La Seur is a Billings novelist and attorney, descended from 1860s Montana settlers and a long line of one room schoolhouse educators. She works pro bono with asylum seekers. She can be found on Twitter @claseur

Without any immigration courts, Montana is tough for immigrants looking to build new life

BY: CARRIE LA SEUR – FEBRUARY 5, 2023 9:58 AM

The drive from Billings to Las Vegas is nearly a thousand miles. That’s 14 to 15 hours of windshield time, winding through some of the roughest, most isolated country in the continental U.S.

Imagine that U.S. forces recently evacuated you from Afghanistan, where the advancing Taliban would have killed you as a member of the Afghan military who fought them alongside Americans. You retreated under orders, unable to reach your wife and children, left behind in hiding in Kabul. Now, alone in Montana, struggling to improve your English, you must make the journey to Las Vegas in winter for your first immigration hearing.

You’ve come through war, exile from the only home you’ve ever known, separation from your family, and imprisonment in the first country you arrived in, but the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service still has a few curveballs for you.

You’ve had only a few weeks’ notice of your hearing, barely time to figure out how to make the trip. You’ve managed to borrow a car, but the owner has to work and can’t come with you. Flights are wildly expensive and you’ve survived first on savings and charity, now on a temporary work permit, so the road is the best option, but the drive is risky.

You’re lucky enough to have a pro bono lawyer appearing for you by video, but you’ve never met her in person. For most people in your situation, there is no lawyer. Although your life and those of your family are on the line, you have no right to representation.

This is the situation for dozens, possibly hundreds, of new Montana residents from Afghanistan, Ukraine, Venezuela, and other nations in crisis, including family members of U.S. citizens. The U.S. allows them to enter and remain in this country because they have credible fears of persecution in their home country and therefore a right under U.S. and international law to seek asylum. Montana nonprofits and religious organizations are scrambling to respond.

Since the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan in 2021, more than 76,000 Afghan nationals have arrived in the U.S., the largest wave of wartime evacuees since the fall of Saigon during the Vietnam War. The New York Times recently published a map of the distribution of Afghan refugees, with a few pinpoints in Montana, compared to thousands of arrivals in San Diego, Houston, and D.C. Many more are waiting for permission to come. In most cases, their lives are in danger from the Taliban.

Until 2016, a Montana resident in immigration proceedings could go to Helena, where a traveling immigration court staff heard cases several days a month. Budget cuts eliminated the court toward the end of the Obama administration. There was pressure to shift resources to the southern border, so staff relocated from more northern locations.

“Detailing” judges, as it’s called when judges move to different locations to hear cases, is expensive (travel, hotel, office space). According to the agency, immigration judges handle about 700 cases a year – the backlog is approaching 2 million – so Montana’s relatively light caseload makes the Helena court low on the priority list.

Now, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, and Denver are common immigration court assignments for Montana residents. Personal appearances are usually mandatory. Travel is a costly burden for displaced people struggling to adapt to a new country. The distance is also a burden for lawyers, who often can’t spare the time to travel for brief hearings that are frequently rescheduled at the last minute. There can be jurisdictional problems, too. Montana is in the Ninth Circuit, a huge appellate region that includes all the states on the west coast, Nevada, and Idaho.

In the 9th Circuit, judges must give greater weight to testimony about what happened in other countries, and case law makes it more difficult to find that an immigration witness isn’t credible. That’s fine if a Montana resident goes to a hearing in Las Vegas, also in the 9th Circuit, but Salt Lake City and Denver are in the 10th Circuit. If a judge rules against a Montana resident using 10th Circuit law, when 9th Circuit law would have given a more favorable result, that’s just bad luck.

Many Montana lawyers may not be familiar with 10th Circuit law, making it that much more difficult for Montana residents to find a qualified attorney.

Montana lawyers with expanding immigration practices are beginning to ask, why Helena’s immigration court couldn’t be restored? Kari Hong, a Missoula attorney with the Florence Project, an immigration rights organization, points out that many clients have trouble finding qualified lawyers where multiple jurisdictions are involved, and differences in appellate law give some Montana residents worse judicial outcomes based on a random court assignment.

As a practitioner, Hong notes, it’s harder to show documents in a remote hearing, or be sure that everyone is looking at the same document. Interpretation is more difficult. Not being in the courtroom with a client makes it hard to establish rapport, and make sure that the judge is hearing everything. Attorneys are legitimately concerned, says Hong, about providing effective counsel in remote hearings that could be located anywhere in the country.

The U.S. Customs and Immigration Service has office space in Helena, where it handles immigration biometrics checks. so the cost of bringing in an itinerant immigration judge to handle Montana residents’ cases might be only a staffing and travel expense. But the appointment of more immigration judges and their assignments have become political issues wrestled over in Washington, D.C.

Paul Wickham Schmidt, a Wisconsin native, served as a career immigration lawyer and judge, chaired the Board of Immigration Appeals in the 1990s, and is now a law professor at Georgetown and formerly at George Mason University. He writes about dysfunction in the U.S. immigration system on his blog, Immigration Courtside. In an interview, he’s outspoken about how immigration courts have become a disgrace to the fundamental American value of justice for all.

“Today’s DOJ has allowed immigration courts to become weaponized as a tool of immigration enforcement,” says Schmidt. “For example, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions unethically and improperly referred to supposedly fair and impartial immigration judges as ‘in partnership’ with DHS enforcement. Attorney General (Merrick) Garland has done little to dispel this notion.”

Schmidt talks about the “Dred Scottification” of refugees, referring to the US Supreme Court’s 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, holding that all people of African descent were not U.S. citizens and therefore could not sue for their rights in U.S. federal court.

The current U.S. immigration system, k says, treats refugees as sub-human, unworthy of rights long enshrined in U.S. and international law. It uses the court system to send political messages (for example, “Don’t come”) to refugees, turning the courts into political weapons.

Americans, says Schmidt, should be disgusted.

Part of the problem in maintaining the integrity of immigration courts is that immigration judges are appointed by the Attorney General and serve at his or her pleasure. They don’t have the independence of federal judges confirmed by the U.S. Senate under Article III of the Constitution, or the protections of Article I judges, like bankruptcy judges. They don’t control their dockets. Scheduling is done by non-judicial administrators, who book judges and lawyers so tightly that there’s no way, according to Schmidt, to do their jobs competently.

Immigration courts also lack necessary administrative support.

Hiring court administrators is done through a slow, difficult hiring process, and administrators struggle with inadequate space and tech support, which handicaps the whole immigration court system. In one example of the slow pace of progress in the immigration system, cases handled by the Executive Office for Immigration Review finally went electronic in 2022 – a quarter century after the U.S. federal courts transitioned to electronic filing, using a different system.

Many immigration judges are shouting for reform. Judge Dana Leigh Marks of the San Francisco Immigration Court, a past President of the National Association of Immigration Judges, says: “Immigration judges often feel asylum hearings are ‘like holding death penalty cases in traffic court.’”

Highly qualified people continue to leave the agency rather than uphold a farce.

“There are many of us who just feel we can’t be part of a system that’s just so fundamentally unfair,” said Ilyce Shugall, who quit her job as an immigration judge in San Francisco in 2019 and now directs the Immigrant Legal Defense Program at the Justice & Diversity Center of the Bar Association of San Francisco. “I took an oath to uphold the Constitution.”

Schmidt writes on his blog about the U.S.’s “disgracefully dysfunctional immigration courts,” which offer no right to legal representation. Having an attorney in immigration proceedings makes a huge difference, statistically speaking. For recently arrived women with children fleeing violence, the success rate of represented applicants is 14 times higher.

To fix the major problems with the system, Schmidt has a short list of big changes he’d like to see:

 

  • Create an Article I immigration court system. Article I courts are legislative courts created by Congress, without full judicial power to decide Constitutional questions, but with enough independence not to be controlled by political appointees.
  • The Board of Immigration Appeals needs to become a true appellate court.
  • Reverse reforms put in place by Attorneys General William Barr and John Ashcroft, intended to reduce the capacity of the immigration courts to do the work assigned to them by Congress.
  • Remove judges who deny 100% of asylum applications.
  • At the management level of the agency, hire professional court managers focused on providing due process and making the system work efficiently.
  • Improve automation, e-filing, and information-technology capability.

Montana residents are a tiny constituency of perhaps hundreds in the vast U.S. immigration system, processing millions of people, but they demonstrate what’s broken. Somewhere under the Big Sky is an Afghan evacuee who saved military aircraft from falling into the hands of the Taliban during the U.S. retreat from Kabul. He’s desperately worried about his wife and children trapped in Kabul, where the Taliban have identified them as the family of a soldier who supported the Americans.

They exist in hiding, while the Taliban-controlled passport agency charges thousands of dollars to produce a legal travel document. As his asylum application winds its way through the system, he texts his wife every day.

“All I can think about is making them safe,” he says.

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Carrie La Seur is a Billings novelist and attorney, descended from 1860s Montana settlers and a long line of one room schoolhouse educators. She works pro bono with asylum seekers. She can be found on Twitter @claseur

MORE FROM AUTHOR

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Thanks, Carrie! 

“All I can think of is making them safe.” Given the facts in Carrie’s article, this Afghan case should have been a “no-brainer” asylum grant at the USCIS Asylum Office. Having made it to EOIR, it would be a candidate for a 30 minute “stipulated grant” in a properly functioning and professionally led Immigration Court system.

That cases like this, clear asylum grants that shouldn’t even reach EOIR, linger in the system, is symptomatic of the endemic dysfunction in America’s Immigration Courts. It also illustrates the failure of the Biden Administration and America’s “top lawyer,” A. G. Merrick Garland, to aggressively stand up for the legal rights of immigrants and to apply common sense, expertise,  and practical scholarship to our dysfunctional immigration and human rights bureaucracy.

But, all EOIR can think about is how human lives — and justice —  in Montana and elsewhere really aren’t very important in the overall bureaucratic scheme. And, it’s not not like A.G. Merrick Garland and his minions, safely ensconced in their offices at 10th & Penn in downtown DC, are thinking about the human carnage left in EOIR’s dystopian wake, in Montana and elsewhere!

We all “get” that Montana’s problems are “small potatoes” in the context of EOIR’s ever-expanding 2.1 million case backlog! Yet, EOIR could serve Montana in a way that preserves due process, promotes consistency, encourages representation, and delivers “good public service” without materially affecting their backlogs elsewhere or “breaking the bank.” 

EOIR’s approach to the “real problems” of the “small-population” State of Montana and its very human residents is sadly reflective of Washington’s overall approach to immigration and human rights: We won’t solve the “little problems” that could improve individual lives because we can’t solve the “big problem” of so-called “comprehensive immigration reform.”

I don’t buy it! There are plenty of ways that DOJ/EOIR could successfully address many of the “little problems” that would improve administration and public service in places like Helena. DOJ/EOIR does not have a “stellar record” for competent management or fiscal responsibility, to say the least.

For example, the DOJ Office of Inspector General recently found that EOIR had for years mismanaged multi-million dollar technology contracts.https://wp.me/p8eeJm-87P.

They have also wasted money on so-called “Immigration Judge Dashboards” so that they could monitor IJ “performance” under much-criticized and now abandoned “production quotas.” 

Certainly, with a little administrative ingenuity, EOIR could scrape together the modest amount of resources it would take to conduct periodic hearings in Helena and thereby provide due process to Montanans caught up in EOIR’s dysfunctional system. 

Without affecting overall backlogs or big budget increases, EOIR could:

  • Bring back one or more retired IJ’s as “rehired annuitants” to work part time on the Helena docket; or
  • Designate one or more IJs at the numerous so-called “EOIR Adjudication Centers” to hear cases in Helena by Televideo; or
  • Use Helena for piloting an authorized (but, to my knowledge, never implemented) “phased retirement” program for training and mentoring new IJ’s by those seeking to reduce their work hours as they move toward retirement; or
  • “Slim down,” or better yet eliminate, the unnecessary and duplicative “Office of Policy” created at EOIR HQ under Trump (why would an agency comprised of supposedly independent quasi-judicial officials need a “Bureaucratic Politburo?”) and allocating the resources to case adjudication — supposedly the ”lifeblood of EOIR;” or
  • Reprogram some of the unnecessary, non-adjudicating, fancy-titled “spear carrier” positions wandering the halls of the bloated, yet inept, EOIR bureaucracy in Falls Church.

Those are just for starters. Like its failed counterpart, USCIS, EOIR needs an independent re-examination of processes, quality control, and accountability —all of which currently are failing the public — in Montana and elsewhere! EOIR also needs new, dynamic, professional, problem-solving judicial administration by experts appointed from OUTSIDE the dysfunctional EOIR bureaucracy and the hapless gang of politicos at “Main Justice.” 

The only kind of “equal justice” that seems to be an objective at EOIR today is to make sure that public service is equally bad across America. 

Notably, as shown in Carrie’s article, the EOIR debacle is affecting virtually every county and every nook and cranny in America. No American community is too far removed from the DOJ/EOIR “bureaucracy of pain and failure” to avoid the adverse consequences of this monumental, and unnecessary, meltdown at the “retail level” of American Justice; even those humans residing in “EOIR Flyover Country!”

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-08-23

9TH WHACKS BIA ON IN ABSENTIA & DERIVATIVE CITIZENSHIP — Garland’s Losses Continue To Pile Up!

Hernández-Galand v. Garland — In Absentia

https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2021/05/12/17-70538.pdf

SUMMARY BY COURT STAFF:

Immigration

The panel granted a petition for review of a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals affirming the denial of a motion to reopen filed by Patricia Marisol Hernandez- Galand and her minor child, and remanded, holding that exceptional circumstances warranted reopening of petitioners’ in absentia removal orders.

Petitioners, natives and citizens of El Salvador, appeared pro se at their initial hearing. An Immigration Judge (“IJ”) orally informed Ms. Hernandez that her next hearing date was July 12, 2016, and gave her a written notice with a hearing date of “07/12/2016.” Due to chronic memory problems from a childhood head injury, Ms. Hernandez did not remember the date the IJ had told her, and because she cannot read, she asked family members to read the notice. The family interpreted the date as December 7, 2016, based on how numerical dates are typically written in Latin America, with the day appearing before the month.

When Ms. Hernandez did not appear at the July 12, 2016, hearing, the IJ ordered petitioners removed in absentia. Petitioners timely filed a motion to reopen under 8 U.S.C. §1229a(b)(5)(C)(i), contending that that exceptional circumstances warranted reopening. The IJ denied the motion, and the BIA affirmed.

** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

HERNANDEZ-GALAND V. GARLAND 3

First, the panel considered the circumstances that caused Ms. Hernandez’s failure to appear. The panel explained that Ms. Hernandez non-conclusory and unrefuted testimony in her sworn declaration about her memory problems was not inherently unbelievable, and there was no evidence in the record to contradict it. Thus, the panel concluded that the BIA erred to the extent it disregarded this aspect of Ms. Hernandez’s declaration simply because it lacked corroboration, and the panel credited Ms. Hernandez’s statements regarding her memory problems. The panel further concluded that the facts regarding Ms. Hernandez’s inability to read and her family’s misinterpretation of the hearing date were not disputed by the government or inherently unbelievable, and thus must be credited. The panel therefore concluded that Ms. Hernandez’s failure to appear was due not to her choices or a lack of diligence, but to circumstances beyond her control.

The panel further explained that the BIA abused its discretion by concluding that Ms. Hernandez should have confirmed her hearing date through the immigration court’s automated system, noting that the only evidence suggesting that she was advised of the system were the written instructions she could not read, and explaining that she and her family had no reason to suspect that the hearing was not on December 7, 2016.

Next, the panel concluded that the BIA erred in not addressing whether Ms. Hernandez had any motive for failing to appear, and whether petitioners’ in absentia removal orders would cause unconscionable results. Since the BIA made no findings as to either, there were no findings entitled to substantial evidence review, and the panel concluded that both factors weighed in favor of reopening. First, the panel concluded that there was no basis to infer that

4 HERNANDEZ-GALAND V. GARLAND

Ms. Hernandez was attempting to evade or delay her proceedings.

Second, the panel concluded that imposing the removal orders here would present an unconscionable result, explaining that the court has held that such results occur where a petitioner who demonstrated a strong likelihood of relief is removed in absentia. The panel recognized that Ms. Hernandez had not yet established a likelihood of success similar to that made in the relevant precedent, but concluded that her claims to asylum and related relief were not baseless. The panel observed that a likelihood of prevailing is not a sine qua non of exceptional circumstances; the court has made such a finding without a showing of the strength of the petitioner’s case on the merits, and the probability of relief is but one factor in the totality of circumstances to be considered. The panel concluded that Ms. Hernandez had made a compelling showing on the other factors.

Lastly, the panel explained that the IJ also entered an in absentia order against Ms. Hernandez’s minor child (“M.E.”), who was four years old at the time, and whose presence had been waived for the hearing at which he was ordered removed. Noting that an asylum officer had previously determined that M.E. had a credible fear of persecution on account of his family social group, the panel concluded that Ms. Hernandez’s failure to appear also prejudiced M.E.’s opportunity for relief from removal.

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Cheneau v. Garland — Derivative Citizenship — En Banc

https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2021/05/13/15-70636.pdf

SUMMARY BY COURT STAFF:

Immigration

Remanding to the three-judge panel that previously denied Monssef Cheneau’s petition for review of a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals, the en banc court held that the second clause of the derivative citizenship statute set out at former 8 U.S.C. § 1432(a)(5) does not require that the child have been granted lawful permanent residency prior to the age of eighteen in order to derive citizenship from a parent who naturalized, but the child must have demonstrated an objective official manifestation of permanent residence.

Former 8 U.S.C. § 1432(a)(5) (1994) (repealed 2000) provides two different pathways to child of a naturalized parent to derive U.S. citizenship: 1) a child “residing in the United States pursuant to a lawful admission for permanent residence at the time of the naturalization of the parent” is eligible; and 2) a child is eligible who “thereafter begins to reside permanently in the United States while under the age of eighteen years.”

Cheneau entered the United states lawfully at age thirteen under a non-immigrant student visa. His mother naturalized in 1999, he applied for adjustment of status to lawful permanent resident at age fifteen in 2000, and was granted adjustment of status in 2003, after he turned eighteen. After theft convictions, removal proceedings were initiated, and Cheneau moved to terminate, asserting a claim of derivative

** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

   

CHENEAU V. GARLAND 3

citizenship. The three-judge panel in this case held that it was required to hold that Cheneau was not a derivative citizen under either pathway because this court, in Romero-Ruiz v. Mukasey, 538 F.3d 1057 (9th Cir. 2008), had held that both pathways required the child to have lawful permanent resident status.

Reconsidering Romero-Ruiz in the present context, the en banc court concluded that Congress did not intend to require lawful permanent residency for the second pathway. First, the en banc court observed that Congress chose to use two different terms in the statute, creating a presumption that the terms have different meanings. Second, the en banc court explained that the two terms have different meanings in the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”). Third, the en banc court concluded that construing the second pathway to derivative citizenship as not requiring lawful permanent residence does not render either provision superfluous, as the court suggested in Romero-Ruiz. Rather, each pathway applies distinct requirements to distinct categories of children with distinct timing, and does so with logical reason. Finally, the en banc court explained that Congress’s decision to eliminate the “reside permanently” pathway and narrow the availability of derivative citizenship in 2000 indicates that the previous version of the statute was broader.

The en banc court also explained that the history of the INA (which was enacted in 1952 and established lawful permanent residency as a term of art) and earlier naturalization statutes further buttressed its conclusion that Congress intended “reside permanently” and “lawful admission for permanent residence” to have different meanings. Further, the en banc court concluded that the tenet of statutory construction that repetition of the same language

 

4 CHENEAU V. GARLAND

in a new statute generally indicates the intent to incorporate its administrative and judicial interpretations as well did not apply, because none of the administrative or judicial interpretations preceding the INA had “settled” whether “reside permanently” could mean lawfully residing on a temporary visa with the intent to remain permanently.

Finally, the en banc court agreed with the Second Circuit that, to satisfy the “reside permanently” requirement in the second pathway, an individual must demonstrate “some objective official manifestation of the child’s permanent residence.” Here, the en banc court explained, Cheneau filed an application for adjustment of status after his mother naturalized, expressing such intent to reside permanently.

Dissenting, Judge Bress, joined by Judges Hunsaker, Bumatay, and VanDyke, wrote that the en banc court’s decision adopted the very “unreasonable” reading of the statute that Romero-Ruiz had rejected. Judge Bress concluded that the new interpretation: 1) is an untenable construction of the statutory text; 2) fails to account for decades of statutory history in which derivative citizenship necessarily required lawful permission to reside permanently in the United States—the legal backdrop against which the statutory language “reside permanently” has long existed in our immigration law: and 3) produces significant problems of practical administration, creating confusion as to who qualifies for derivative citizenship while extending derivative citizenship without authorization to a potentially wide range of additional people—including people like the petitioner in this case, who committed crimes in this country and who might otherwise be removable.

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

Congrats to my friend and NDPA superstar Kari Hong, then Director of the Immigration Clinic at BC Law, who was lead counsel in Cheneau.

Professor Kari Hong
Professor Kari Hong
Educator, Litigator, NDPA Superstar
Photo: BC Law Website

Also, it’s worthy of emphasis that in Hernández-Galand, among other legal errors, the BIA tried to “in absentia” an unrepresented 4-year-old whose mother had been found to have a “credible fear” of persecution! Nice touch!

Is this nonsense from Trump holdover BIA “judges” what we elected President Biden to continue to inflict on asylum seekers and other migrants? I doubt it! So, why is AG Garland continuing to inflict this non-expert, un-progressive BIA on us? And, why is he continuing to appoint “Miller-Lite” leftovers from the Trump regime to precious, life or death Immigration Judge positions?

The NDPA needs to take the fight for due process and the human and legal rights of your clients to the Biden Administration! Let your outrage at the lousy performance of Garland and his team in restoring due process, humanity, expertise, and professionalism @ EOIR be known in word and deed!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-14-21

Note 

⚖️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

ROUND TABLE 🛡⚔️ SPEAKS OUT ON ACQUIESCENCE IN 9TH CIR, WITH HELP FROM PROFESSOR KARI HONG🦸‍♀️🌟

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

Here’s the brief:

Ramos Mendoza Amicus Roundtable 17 71841

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Thanks, Kari!

Knightess
Knightess of the Round Table

Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-02-20

GONZO’S WORLD: PROFESSOR KARI HONG EXPLAINS SIX WAYS THAT TRUMP, SESSIONS, & CO. ARE THE REAL SCOFFLAWS IN THEIR MISGUIDED CRUDSADE AGAINST SO-CALLED “SANCTUARY CITIES!”

https://thecrimereport.org/2018/01/08/sanctuary-cities-vs-trump-whos-really-breaking-the-law/

Professor Hong writes in The Crime Report:

“As we start a new year, the status of “sanctuary cities” promises to be a continuing flashpoint in the immigration debate. The Trump Administration cites the “rule of law,” and immigrants’ supposed failure to follow it, to justify its crackdown on cities that fail to refer undocumented immigrants who are arrested to federal immigration authorities.

But the president’s attempt to withhold funds from sanctuary jurisdictions doesn’t meet that rule-of-law standard.

Here’s some background. Since 2008, the federal government has sought state and local cooperation in enforcing immigration law under a program originally named Secure Communities, which allows police to check a person’s immigration status in a database maintained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), after he or she is stopped for a traffic violation or arrested for a state crime.

If there is a match, ICE asks the local entity to detain the individual until ICE determines whether an immigration hearing is required, and a judge will then decide if deportation is merited.

Those who support this program, including Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, claim states and cities must use Secure Communities to catch murderers and rapists. Trump issued an executive order deputizing state and local officers to make immigration arrests, and threatened to withhold money from any city and state that does not cooperate.

But ironically, according to four federal judges and a growing number of state courts, it’s Trump’s request that fails to follow the law.

The request flouts the rule of law on six counts.

First, the president seeks to punish “sanctuary jurisdictions.” But only Congress—not the president—can give or withhold federal funds.

The federal government’s lawyers understand the flaws in Trump’s order to withhold funding from jurisdictions. In one of the California cases, the Department of Justice argued that the federal judge should not enforce its order because Trump’s request is unenforceable and should just be ignored. (The judge didn’t buy that argument.)

Second, no one knows what the term “sanctuary jurisdictions” means. When John Kelly, currently the president’s chief of staff, headed the Department of Homeland Security and was tasked with penalizing such jurisdictions, he testified that he “do[esn’t] have a clue” on how to define a “sanctuary city.”

Generally, the term is understood to apply to cities and states that cooperate with the federal government on immigration arrests. But there are no means to define what a failure to act means. It could arise from a decision not to cooperate, but it could also be the result of a lack of opportunity.

That’s like penalizing a backup quarterback for not scoring touchdowns every time the starter plays; it’s simply not his job.

Third, the ICE database is filled with errors. In 2010, ICE detained an individual for three days who was in fact born in Puerto Rico, and therefore a U.S. citizen. This year, ICE agents erroneously detained Mohammed Ali’s son questioning his citizenship. They also detained a visiting Holocaust scholar for violating his visitor’s visa by accepting payment for a speech, not knowing that academics are exempt from that rule.

Fourth, the program is expensive. The federal government requires states and cities to pay for the detention of the non-citizen. Los Angeles stopped doing it after paying $26 million in one year. And when mistakes occur, ICE will not indemnify states or cities.

That means if a state or local police officer detains someone ICE has mistakenly determined is deportable, the state and city will be exposed to a civil lawsuit that seeks monetary compensation for that wrongful detention.

Fifth, even when predicated on correct information, a growing number of stateand federal courts are finding ICE’s requests unlawful and unconstitutional because they do not relate to any ongoing or prospective criminal activity.

Living in the country without status is not a crime. ICE’s requests thus run afoul of the Fourth Amendment’s requirement that the government detain only people who are suspected of committing crimes.

Sixth, the program is ineffectual.

In the nearly 10 years Secure Communities has existed, only a minority of the millions identified have a prior conviction for violent crime. Around 12 percent of the millions of non-citizens identified in this program had been convicted of “serious crimes”, which is a category that includes both violent crimes and non-violent crimes of forgery, fraud, and non-violent drug offenses. Another 25 percent had minor crimes or traffic infractions, such as driving their child to school without a license.

And approximately 40 percent of non-citizens who were picked up in this program had no criminal record.

Under Trump, although the number of immigration arrests increased 40 percent from last year, no more than six percent of those arrested had criminal records.

That low number should not be surprising.

If someone truly is a murderer, rapist, or posed a real danger, they would be rotting in a prison cell. They would not be in the streets, afraid that an ICE officer could somehow discover that they overstayed their visa 20 years ago.

This logic plays out in fact. A recent study concluded that residents in sanctuary cities experience lower crime rates than their counterparts. The case of Kathryn Steinle, 32, who was killed while walking in San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf area in 2015, was used by Trump and immigration opponents as an example of the dangers posed to Americans by undocumented immigrants.

But while the perpetrator was a man who had already been deported five times because of criminal convictions, he proved to be the wrong symbol. Last month, a jury concluded that her death was a tragic accident from a gun misfiring and rejected both murder and manslaughter charges.

Editor’s Note: In response to the acquittal, the Justice Department announced it would file federal charges against the man, and issued an arrest warrant.

Worse, requiring local communities to enforce immigration law is harming its citizenry.

Police chiefs and commissioners have been outspoken in their support of sanctuary policies, arguing they are critical tools to encourage crime victims and witnesses in the immigrant community to cooperate with the police.

Their concerns were well-founded. In the first three months of 2017, the Los Angeles Chief of Police reported that among all ethnicities, only Latino individuals had a 25 percent drop in reporting rapes and domestic violence.

Keep in mind that those with criminal records are not always the so-called “bad hombres,” to use the president’s notorious phrase. Minor crimes have been used to deport combat veterans. A drug crime was the reason to deport a 9/11 volunteer who helped clean up the rubble of the World Trade Center.

Misdemeanors, expunged convictions, and even pardoned state crimes are deportable offenses. And immigration law sweeps in old convictions, so that green card holders who are middle-aged become deportable, regardless of years of proven rehabilitation.

It is too bad that “sanctuary” is the term to describe the jurisdictions that opt out of this program, because it wrongly implies that cities and states are providing amnesty. It would be unimaginable for local police—while issuing speeding tickets or investigating murders—to double check if the driver, the suspects or witnesses had properly filed their respective taxes with all the appropriate deductions, and then detain them until an IRS agent could review their past tax returns.

But that is exactly what is happening with immigration, or at least it was, until four federal judges—and counting—stopped Trump for failing to follow the law.

Kari Hong

Kari Hong

The lesson is clear. Actual criminals are best apprehended and punished by state criminal justice systems. Congress should focus on fixing the broken immigration system that had last seen reform over 20 years ago, and local cities should spend their time and money on local matters.

Casting blame on cities doesn’t solve anything. Forcing cities to do the work of the federal government is truly making things worse.

Kari Hong, an Assistant Professor at Boston College Law School, teaches immigration and criminal law. She founded a clinic representing non-citizens with criminal convictions in the Ninth Circuit, and has argued over 100 Ninth Circuit cases and 50 state criminal appeals.”

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The concept that Scofflaw Gonzo is “restoring the rule of law” at Justice is a cruel joke. “Gonzo’s law” has no real room for the rights of Blacks, Hispanics, Gays, Immigrants, Women, Muslims, or others who don’t fit his “Bannon-Miller” White Nationalist restrictionist agenda.

PWS

01-14-18