https://www.hoppocklawfirm.com/foia-results-immigration-judges-conference-materials-for-2018/
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Here’s what Attorney Matthew Hoppock, whose firm made the FOIA request, had to say about Judge Pauley’s presentation:
Developments in Criminal Immigration and Bond Law:
Slides – Developments in Criminal Immigration and Bond Law
This presentation is really striking, because Board Member Roger Pauley appears to be instructing the IJs not to apply the “categorical approach” when it doesn’t lead to a “sensible result.” The “categorical approach” is mandatory, and the Supreme Court has repeatedly had to reverse the BIA and instruct them to properly apply it. So, it’s definitely disheartening to see this is the instruction the IJs received at their conference this summer on how to apply the categorical approach:
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Can’t say this is unprecedented. I can remember being astounded and outraged by some past presentations that essentially focused on “how to find the respondent not credible and have it stand up in court,” “how to deny claims establishing past or future persecution by invoking ‘no-nexus’ grounds,” and “how to find proposed ‘particular social groups non-cognizable’ under the BIA’s three-part test.”
I also remember a BIA Judge essentially telling us to ignore a previous “outside expert” panel that provided evidence that governments in the Northern Triangle were stunningly corrupt, politically beholden to gangs, and totally incapable of protecting the population against targeted gang violence.
Another colleague gave a stunningly tone-deaf presentation in which they referred to OIL and ICE as “us” and the respondents as “them.”
But, presentations like Judge Pauley’s are particularly troubling in the context of a so-called “training conference” where the “keynote speech” by the judges’ titular “boss” Jeff Sessions touted his decision removing asylum protections from battered women, warned judges to follow his precedents, emphasized increasing “volume” as the highest priority, and otherwise notably avoided mentioning the due process rights of respondents, the need to insure protection for asylum seekers, or the obligation to follow decisions of the Article III Courts (the latter has been, and remains, a chronic problem for EOIR).
Many of the Immigration Judges were recently hired, attending their first national conference. What message do you think they got about how to be successful in the “Age of Trump & Sessions?” What message did they get when a vocal minority of their colleagues improperly “cheered” the removal of protections for vulnerable refugee women? How would YOU like to be a foreign national fighting for your life in a system run by Jeff Sessions?
Right on cue, EOIR provides another powerful example of why Professor Maureen Sweeney was right in her recently posted article: the Article III Courts should NOT be giving the BIA or Sessions “Chevron deference.”
PWS
08-23-18