"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
EXPOSING SESSIONS’S DEADLY DUE PROCESS SCAM: JUDGE SULLIVAN BLOCKS ANOTHER POTENTIAL DEPORTATION TO DEATH AS SESSIONS-LED DOJ ARGUES THAT THE KILLING LINE NOT SUBJECT TO REVIEW — Pro Bono Counsel Jones Day Saves The Day, At Least For Now — “To be blunt, if she’s killed, there’s no remedy, your honor.” She added: “No remedy at all.”
C. Ryan Barber reports for the National Law Journal:
Judge Who Forced Feds to ‘Turn That Plane Around’ Blocks Another Deportation
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan this month lambasted federal officials for the unauthorized removal of a woman and her daughter while their emergency court challenge was unfolding in Washington, D.C.
Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for D.C. May 27, 2009. Photo by Diego M. Radzinschi/NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL.
A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration not to depart a pregnant Honduran woman as she seeks asylum in the United States, two weeks after demanding that the government turn around a plane that had taken a mother and daughter to El Salvador amid their emergency court appeal challenging removal.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, granted a temporary stay preventing the Honduran woman’s deportation following a hearing on her challenge to the administration’s decision to make it all but impossible for asylum seekers to gain entry into the United States by citing fears of domestic abuse or gang violence.
In court papers filed earlier this week, the Honduran woman’s lawyers—a team from Jones Day—said she fled her home country “after her partner beat her, raped her, and threatened to kill her and their unborn child.” The woman, suing under the pseudonym “Zelda,” is currently being held at a Texas detention center.
“Zelda is challenging a new policy that unlawfully deprives her of her right to seek humanitarian protection from this escalating pattern of persecution,” the woman’s lawyers wrote in a complaint filed Wednesday. The immigrant is represented pro bono by Jones Day partner Julie McEvoy, associate Courtney Burks and of counsel Erin McGinley.
At Thursday’s court hearing, McGinley said her client’s deportation was imminent absent an order from the judge blocking such a move. “Our concern today,” McGinley said, “is that our client may be deported in a matter of hours.”
U.S. Justice Department lawyers on Wednesday filed papers opposing any temporary stay from deportation. A Justice Department lawyer, Erez Reuveni, argued Thursday that the Honduran woman lacked standing to challenge the Justice Department’s new immigration policy, which makes it harder for immigrants seeking asylum to argue fears of domestic violence and gang violence.
After granting the stay preventing the Honduran woman’s deportation, Sullivan made clear he had not forgotten the events of two weeks ago, when he learned in court that the government had deported a mother and daughter while their emergency challenge to deportation was unfolding.
“Somebody … seeking justice in a United States court is spirited away while her attorneys are arguing for justice for her? It’s outrageous,” Sullivan said at the Aug. 9 hearing. “Turn that plane around and bring those people back to the United States.”
Sullivan on Thursday urged Reuveni to alert immigration authorities to his order. Reuveni said he would inform those authorities, adding that he hoped there would not be a recurrence of the issue that arose two weeks earlier.
“It’s got to be more than hopeful,” Sullivan told Reuveni in court Thursday. Reuveni said he could, in the moment, speak for himself and the Justice Department, but not the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“I cannot speak for ICE until I get on the phone with them and say this is what you need to do immediately,” Reuveni said.
Sullivan said he appreciated Reuveni’s “professionalism” and his efforts to “undo the wrong” that had been done to the Salvadoran mother and daughter earlier this month.
Stressing the need for a stay against Zelda’s deportation, McGinley said at Thursday’s hearing: “To be blunt, if she’s killed, there’s no remedy, your honor.” She added: “No remedy at all.”
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When individuals have access to high quality counsel like Jones Day, the courts pay more attention. That’s why Sessions & co. are working overtime to insure that individuals are hustled though the system without any meaningful access to counsel and, perhaps most outrageously, by excluding counsel from participation in the largely rigged “credible fear review process” before the Immigration Court. This isn’t justice; it isn’t even a parody of justice. It’s something out of a Kafka novel.
No wonder the Sessions-infused DOJ attorneys don’t want any real court to take a look at this abusive and indefensible removal of individuals with serious claims to relief without consideration by a fair and impartial adjudicator operating under the Constitution and our Refugee Act rather than “Sessions’s law.”
Judge Sullivan actually has an opportunity to put an end to this mockery of American justice by halting all removals of asylum seekers until at least a semblance of Due Process is restored to the system. The only question is whether he will do it! The odds are against it; but, with folks like Jones Day arguing in behalf of the unfairly condemned, the chances of halting the “Sessions Death Train” have never been better!
(Full Disclosure: I am a former partner at Jones Day. I’ve never been prouder of my former firm’s efforts to protect the American justice system and vindicate the rights of the most vulnerable among us. Congrats and appreciation to Jones Day Managing Partner Steve Brogan, Global Pro Bono Coordinator Laura Tuell, Partner Julie McEvoy, Of Counsel Erin McGinley, and everyone else involved in this amazing and much needed effort!)
1) Need to find a few Senators in the GOP willing to “just say no” to another White Nationalist xenophobe for AG.
2) Not counting the chickens before they are hatched, particularly given the polls in 2016 and the Dems undoubted talent for screwing up elections. But intensive House oversight of the DOJ, EOIR, and even OIL would be helpful. My Congressman, Don Beyer (D-VA), and Elijah Cummings (D-MD) appear well tuned in on Sessions’s lawless agenda as well as his attempts to compromise and destroy the career civil service. A few IG investigations would be in order of the absolutly disgraceful mess over at EOIR and why folks working for the Director reportedly are interfering in the case adjudication system by requiring certain scheduling patterns and demanding explanations for continuances. And some oversight of the totally out of control, money wasting, perversion of honest law enforcement activities at ICE, CBP, and USCIS would also help America and the Immigration Court System. Talk about waste, fraud, and abuse!
What this system truly needs is a court-appointed “Special Master” to oversee the Immigration Courts, restore Due Process, and remove the bias until Congress does its job and creates an independent Immigration Court outside the Executive Branch.
Certainly not counting the Democrats chickens before they hatch November 2018. So far they only “chickens” I see are members of the Chicken Little Climate Change Cult. Just this week the Democratic Governor of Washington was on MSNBC advocating that Democrats make “Climate Change” the centerpiece of their midterm message. If that fails, there is always Transgender Public Bathrooms rights to motivate unemployed Rust Belt residents!
And what do the Dems offer those laid off workers in the Rust Belt? Training classes in using computers for the new economy? Then they can compete with 20 something year-old kids who spend all day online, for a tech job nowhere near where they live. Just what every 50+ years old son of steelworker now working a second job at the gas station to make ends meet wants.
Democrats counted on our slow and steady recovery from the 2007 Financial Crisis to settle the “It’s the Economy, Stupid” issue once and for all. Nonsense. 2007-8 was a Credit Panic like many others, except that it fell on housing, our most widely held financial holding. Blocking Pipelines, saddling small businesses with Obamacare employer mandates, climate change regulations, etc.
The GOP went after the “Losers” from globalization, blamed immigrants and Coastal elites, and with a little help from Putin and social media, got enough of them to the polls November 6, 2016 for Trump to carry Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Wisconsin is the best example. With same day registration at polling places, “experts” were surprised by an extra 10% new voters election day, in a crucial state where Hillary didn’t even bother to campaign, or even spend any money. Hillary spent more money trying to get one electoral vote from Omaha, than in the key Badger state!
The Trumputins found everyone who never got the memo from Jefferson and Lincoln that “all men are created equal”, crafted a message aimed at losers looking for scapegoats, and Trump ran rampant with his steady diet of insults against Mexicans, Muslims, darkies in general. Hillary lost Ohio and Pennsylvania all by herself. After she gave her canned college town “global warming” speech at Kent State University where she promised to destroy the coal industry, coal producing Ohio and Pennsylvania were gone.
Imagine a candidate giving a speech in Madison before a college crowd, promising to end the Cheese industry because some college professors say it causes high cholesterol! Same for speeches in Iowa City promising to end the Corn industry because corn sweeteners make people fat, or in Kentucky promising to end the Whiskey industry because it makes people drunk!
When given a choice between a Crook and a Fool, voters will usually vote for the Crook. Specially voters looking for scapegoats. Easiest way to gain the favor of an ignoramus is to say bad things about people they already do not like. Remember when Florida Senator Smathers won election against Claude (Red) Peppers, telling rural Florida voters that Peppers was a well known Homo Sapiens in Washington DC and that his sister was a reknown Thespian!
I think that health care, rebuilding the roads and bridges we all use, no more tax breaks for the wealthy, and retraining folks to jobs that are available in today’s economy, as well as a more realistic immigration policy should be winners. If all politics are local, then looking at ways of solving local problems should be something that has across the board appeal. I don’t see that Trump has solved anyone’s problems — just given some handouts to the rich and lots of “shame-blame” rhetoric for his base. I actually think that ethnic communities, African Americans, and rural communities have much in common. Rather than just pitting everyone against each other, why not look for ways of working together to improve everyone’s lot?
I’m up in Maine right now. Almost every business I pass or visit has a “help wanted” sign out. Many of the tourist-related business had to cut back on operations this year because lack of their normal legal foreign workforce as a result of Trump.
There has been a resurgence in the small boatbuilding industry. High paying jobs with a good future are vacant. But, the enrollment at the community colleges that teach the necessary courses has actually gone down. Why? As I look around, I see lots of ways in which government that actually cared about solving people’s problems rather than just throwing racist-laced “red meat” at their “base” could make a difference.
Best,
PWS
I agree 100% as to your suggested policies benefiting the USA both midterm and long term. But as even Steve Bannon explained in his interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, we are in a Fourth Turning, and it is always a trying time for as Lincoln explained at Gettysburg that:
” our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are … testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”
Being an optimist I don’t think we are heading towards a “Civil War”, except figuratively. The remaining percentage of “Whites” (as amended post WWII to include Italian and Jewish Americans) that finds unthinkable to share equally from their darker skinned neighbors, is declining rapidly.
I hope Trump Time turns out to be the Farce (in Marx’s lingo), to the 1930s wave of “isms” that gave us the Holocaust, Great Terror, etc. That was the most recent Fourth Turning and USA had FDR, instead of Hitler or Stalin during our Great Depression. 80 years before we had Civil War, 80 years before that we had the War of Independence.
Interesting times, per that famous Chinese curse. Trump Time: Kakistocracy on behalf of the 35% least educated Americans sprinkled with many greedy geezers, and people obsessed with ending gay marriage and abortion.
My concern is that natural sclerosis that historians identify with crisis of the Third Century. Can we survive as a Constitutional Democracy per Jefferson’s Prescription and Lincoln’s Description?
Meanwhile. Enjoy Booth Bay. Looks wonderful from the photos. Me? I’ll just have to put up with 85 degree air temp/low humidity and 80 degree water temp and sunny here in Virginia Beach. Works for me. Gotta go.
Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for D.C. May 27, 2009. Photo by Diego M. Radzinschi/NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL.
That’s why right after the 2018 Midterms the Gang of 20+ may have maximum leverage for Due Process if indeed Sessions is on his way out. Thoughts?
G
1) Need to find a few Senators in the GOP willing to “just say no” to another White Nationalist xenophobe for AG.
2) Not counting the chickens before they are hatched, particularly given the polls in 2016 and the Dems undoubted talent for screwing up elections. But intensive House oversight of the DOJ, EOIR, and even OIL would be helpful. My Congressman, Don Beyer (D-VA), and Elijah Cummings (D-MD) appear well tuned in on Sessions’s lawless agenda as well as his attempts to compromise and destroy the career civil service. A few IG investigations would be in order of the absolutly disgraceful mess over at EOIR and why folks working for the Director reportedly are interfering in the case adjudication system by requiring certain scheduling patterns and demanding explanations for continuances. And some oversight of the totally out of control, money wasting, perversion of honest law enforcement activities at ICE, CBP, and USCIS would also help America and the Immigration Court System. Talk about waste, fraud, and abuse!
What this system truly needs is a court-appointed “Special Master” to oversee the Immigration Courts, restore Due Process, and remove the bias until Congress does its job and creates an independent Immigration Court outside the Executive Branch.
PWS
08-23-18
Certainly not counting the Democrats chickens before they hatch November 2018. So far they only “chickens” I see are members of the Chicken Little Climate Change Cult. Just this week the Democratic Governor of Washington was on MSNBC advocating that Democrats make “Climate Change” the centerpiece of their midterm message. If that fails, there is always Transgender Public Bathrooms rights to motivate unemployed Rust Belt residents!
And what do the Dems offer those laid off workers in the Rust Belt? Training classes in using computers for the new economy? Then they can compete with 20 something year-old kids who spend all day online, for a tech job nowhere near where they live. Just what every 50+ years old son of steelworker now working a second job at the gas station to make ends meet wants.
Democrats counted on our slow and steady recovery from the 2007 Financial Crisis to settle the “It’s the Economy, Stupid” issue once and for all. Nonsense. 2007-8 was a Credit Panic like many others, except that it fell on housing, our most widely held financial holding. Blocking Pipelines, saddling small businesses with Obamacare employer mandates, climate change regulations, etc.
The GOP went after the “Losers” from globalization, blamed immigrants and Coastal elites, and with a little help from Putin and social media, got enough of them to the polls November 6, 2016 for Trump to carry Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Wisconsin is the best example. With same day registration at polling places, “experts” were surprised by an extra 10% new voters election day, in a crucial state where Hillary didn’t even bother to campaign, or even spend any money. Hillary spent more money trying to get one electoral vote from Omaha, than in the key Badger state!
The Trumputins found everyone who never got the memo from Jefferson and Lincoln that “all men are created equal”, crafted a message aimed at losers looking for scapegoats, and Trump ran rampant with his steady diet of insults against Mexicans, Muslims, darkies in general. Hillary lost Ohio and Pennsylvania all by herself. After she gave her canned college town “global warming” speech at Kent State University where she promised to destroy the coal industry, coal producing Ohio and Pennsylvania were gone.
Imagine a candidate giving a speech in Madison before a college crowd, promising to end the Cheese industry because some college professors say it causes high cholesterol! Same for speeches in Iowa City promising to end the Corn industry because corn sweeteners make people fat, or in Kentucky promising to end the Whiskey industry because it makes people drunk!
When given a choice between a Crook and a Fool, voters will usually vote for the Crook. Specially voters looking for scapegoats. Easiest way to gain the favor of an ignoramus is to say bad things about people they already do not like. Remember when Florida Senator Smathers won election against Claude (Red) Peppers, telling rural Florida voters that Peppers was a well known Homo Sapiens in Washington DC and that his sister was a reknown Thespian!
I think that health care, rebuilding the roads and bridges we all use, no more tax breaks for the wealthy, and retraining folks to jobs that are available in today’s economy, as well as a more realistic immigration policy should be winners. If all politics are local, then looking at ways of solving local problems should be something that has across the board appeal. I don’t see that Trump has solved anyone’s problems — just given some handouts to the rich and lots of “shame-blame” rhetoric for his base. I actually think that ethnic communities, African Americans, and rural communities have much in common. Rather than just pitting everyone against each other, why not look for ways of working together to improve everyone’s lot?
I’m up in Maine right now. Almost every business I pass or visit has a “help wanted” sign out. Many of the tourist-related business had to cut back on operations this year because lack of their normal legal foreign workforce as a result of Trump.
There has been a resurgence in the small boatbuilding industry. High paying jobs with a good future are vacant. But, the enrollment at the community colleges that teach the necessary courses has actually gone down. Why? As I look around, I see lots of ways in which government that actually cared about solving people’s problems rather than just throwing racist-laced “red meat” at their “base” could make a difference.
Best,
PWS
I agree 100% as to your suggested policies benefiting the USA both midterm and long term. But as even Steve Bannon explained in his interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, we are in a Fourth Turning, and it is always a trying time for as Lincoln explained at Gettysburg that:
” our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are … testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”
Being an optimist I don’t think we are heading towards a “Civil War”, except figuratively. The remaining percentage of “Whites” (as amended post WWII to include Italian and Jewish Americans) that finds unthinkable to share equally from their darker skinned neighbors, is declining rapidly.
I hope Trump Time turns out to be the Farce (in Marx’s lingo), to the 1930s wave of “isms” that gave us the Holocaust, Great Terror, etc. That was the most recent Fourth Turning and USA had FDR, instead of Hitler or Stalin during our Great Depression. 80 years before we had Civil War, 80 years before that we had the War of Independence.
Interesting times, per that famous Chinese curse. Trump Time: Kakistocracy on behalf of the 35% least educated Americans sprinkled with many greedy geezers, and people obsessed with ending gay marriage and abortion.
My concern is that natural sclerosis that historians identify with crisis of the Third Century. Can we survive as a Constitutional Democracy per Jefferson’s Prescription and Lincoln’s Description?
Meanwhile. Enjoy Booth Bay. Looks wonderful from the photos. Me? I’ll just have to put up with 85 degree air temp/low humidity and 80 degree water temp and sunny here in Virginia Beach. Works for me. Gotta go.
G