"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.
“Oil-rich Venezuela has been an immigrant destination for much of its history. Now it is a place to flee. Chronic food shortages, rampant violence and the erratic and often paranoid behavior of President Nicolás Maduro have turned the country’s border crossings and beaches into escape valves.”
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I’ve blogged about this unfolding humanitarian disaster before. Go over to ImmigrationProf Blog and the Washington Post at the link to read more.
PWS
01/04/17
“Immigration advocates have repeatedly criticized the Obama administration for its increased reliance on detention facilities, particularly for Central American families, who they argue should be treated as refugees fleeing violent home countries rather than as priorities for deportation.
They also say that the growing number of apprehended migrants on the border, as reflected in the new Homeland Security figures, indicate that home raids and detentions of families from Central America isn’t working as a deterrent.”
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The “enforcement only” approach to forced migration from Central America has been an extraordinarily expensive total failure. But, the misguided attempt to “prioritize” cases of families seeking refuge from violence has been a major contributing factor in creating docket disfunction (“Aimless Docket Reshuffling”) in the United States Immigration Courts. And, as a result, cases ready for trial that should have been heard as scheduled in Immigration Court have been “orbited” to the end of the docket where it is doubtful they ever will be reached. When political officials, who don’t understand the Immigration Court and are not committed to its due process mission, order the rearrangement of existing dockets without input from the trial judges, lawyers, court administrators, and members of the public who are most affected, only bad things can happen. And, they have!
PWS
12/31/16
Some of you have seen this before. But, my good friend and former Georgetown Law colleague Heidi Altman of the National Immigrant Justice Center sent me this article by Christie Thompson of The Marshall Project which describes the dismal atmosphere for asylum applicants and their attorneys at the U.S. Immigration Court located at the Stewart County Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia. Christie interviewed me for the article. Here an excerpt:
“‘When people aren’t represented, how can you do a fair job?’ says Paul Wickham Schmidt, a former immigration judge and former chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals. Isolating a few judges to see only detained cases, Schmidt says, also creates a culture where granting relief is the exception, not the rule. Locating detention centers in rural areas ‘seems more or less designed to discourage people from getting meaningful representation and fighting to stay in the U.S.’”
More on the tough situation for asylum seekers in the U.S. Immigration Courts located in Georgia in the preceding post.
“‘Rainy Night in Georgia’ is a song written by Tony Joe White in 1967 and popularized by R&B vocalist Brook Benton in 1970.” See Wikipedia link below:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainy_Night_in_Georgia
PWS
12/29/16