Mary Meg McCarthy, Executive Director, National Immigrant Justice Center Speaks Out On Gonzo’s Attack On The Legal Orientation Program & America’s Most Vulnerable

Department of Justice Program Defunds Legal Orientation and Help Desk Programs for 53,000 Immigrants Per Year, Violating Congressional Requirements and Undermining Efforts to Reduce Immigration Court Backlogs

Statement of Mary Meg McCarthy, Executive Director, National Immigrant Justice Center

Today the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) and immigration legal service providers across the country received the alarming news that the Department of Justice (DOJ) plans to  terminate the Legal Orientation Program (LOP) and the Immigration Court Helpdesk program. LOP is a life line for the more than 40,000 immigrants who face complex deportation proceedings from remote detention facilities every day. Through LOP, legal service organizations provide basic information to men and women in immigration jails about the detention and deportation process. The goals of the bipartisan program  are to improve judicial efficiency and help immigrants in detention without attorneys navigate the immigration court process. Today, LOP services reach 40 detention facilities and over 50,000 detained people in desperate need of legal services.

Terminating the LOP and help desk programs is an affront to Congress. The report language accompanying the 2018 omnibus spending bill explicitly required the Executive Office for Immigration Review to “continue ongoing programs,” adopted language in the House Report providing that funding “sustains the current legal orientation program and related assistance, such as the information desk pilot,” and adopted language in the Senate Report noting the need for expanded LOP services in remote immigration facilities.

Terminating the LOP and help desk program is a deliberate attempt to eliminate due process from the deportation process. News of the legal orientation program termination comes when the administration is forcing unreasonable quotas on immigration judges to accelerate adjudications in the massively backlogged court system, and also pursuing a policy of mass prolonged detention at the border. This is a blatant attempt by the administration to strip detained immigrants of even the pretense of due process rights. Because more than four out of every five detained immigrants are unable to access legal representation, LOP staff are quite literally the last and only line of defense for detained individuals trying to understand how to represent themselves in their claims to asylum and other forms of protection in immigration court.

Terminating the LOP program is an act of flagrant fiscal irresponsibility. A 2012 DOJ study found that detained immigrants who received legal orientation completed their court proceedings more quickly and remained detained for an average of six fewer days, yielding the government a net savings of more than $17.8 million per year.

NIJC calls on Congress to oppose the administration’s affront to due process  by taking any and all steps possible to ensure that DOJ complies with its congressional directives and maintains the LOP and help desk programs as they currently exist.

 

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This is no real surprise, given the overt White Nationalist restrictionist agenda of Trump, Sessions, and their cronies. This isn’t driven by false “fiscal economy.” It’s driven by an agenda biased against immigrants, Latinos, and asylum seekers. Facts and truth are irrelevant when dealing with folks like Trump and Gonzo.

Scott Pruitt wastes taxpayer money left and right, as does Trump. Meanwhile, worthy, essential Government programs like the LOP are being “zero funded.” It’s totally outrageous!

While Gonzo hasn’t achieved the degree of personal greed-based corruption that some other Administration officials have, he makes up for it by grossly misusing the resources of the Department of Justice to decrease justice, fairness, and Due Process in America. It’s mind-boggling how we could end up with an anti-American, xenophobic, racist as Attorney General nearly two decades into the 21st Century. But, it’s happened. Yet, Sessions is for real and he’s recreating the “Jim Crow of his youth” in today’s America.

Due Process Forever. Jeff Sessions Never!

PWS

04-12-18

Related posts:

  1. HON. JEFFREY CHASE: Speaking Out Against The “Notable Minority” Of U.S. Immigration Judges Who Demonstrated Bias Against Women & Asylum Seekers – “Think about that: some federally appointed immigration judges cheered the fact that women who had been violently raped and beaten in their country can no longer find refuge here, and will be sent back to face more violence, and possibly death. Will there be any consequences for their actions? Were the many outstanding immigration judges who have been proud to grant such cases in the past, who were saddened and sickened by this decision, able to openly jeer or weep or curse this decision? Or would that have been viewed as dangerous?”
  2. GONZO’S WORLD: RECENT ARTICLES SHOW HOW SESSIONS’S SHOCKINGLY INAPPROPRIATE REMARKS TO NEW IMMIGRATION JUDGES VIOLATED EOIR CODE OF JUDICIAL ETHICS, SHOWED DISRESPECT FOR THE LAW, AND VIOLATED THE FUNDAMENTAL RULES OF GOOD IMMIGRATION JUDGING BY DIRECTING JUDGES NOT TO BE SYMPATHETIC TO REFUGEES! – TURNING REFUGEE LAW AND HISTORY ON ITS HEAD!
  3. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?”