U.S. District Judge John D. Bates – immigrationcourtside.com

👨🏻‍⚖️JUDICIARY: GOP Appointed Senior USD Judge John D. Bates Shows What We Used To Expect From Our Federal Judiciary Before The Era Of Biased Righty Zealots — Slams Trump/Billy Bogus Racist “Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice,” Stuffs Release Of Trump White Nationalist Political Propaganda In Guise Of “Report!”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-law-enforcement-task-force_n_5f75fd84c5b6c35a64194768

Ryan J.Reilly reports for HuffPost:

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration not to release a report by the Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice, finding that the group ― comprised entirely of current and former members of law enforcement ― had been “far from transparent.”

Senior U.S. District Judge John Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, issued a 45-page ruling finding that commission ― which President Donald Trump announced with fanfare at a police conference last year ― had violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), which requires that committees be “fairly balanced” in the viewpoints represented.

Attorney General William Barr said there was a need to hear from a “diversity of backgrounds and perspectives,” but the commission was full of law enforcement officials. Bates’ order requires Barr “to ensure the Commission has a fairly balanced membership.”

Last month, as HuffPost previously reported, an elected prosecutor quit one of the commission’s working groups because he worried that it was “providing cover” for a predetermined law-and-order agenda that “will only widen the divisions in our nation.”

Bates wrote that the commission’s membership “consists entirely of current and former law enforcement officials” and that no commissioner “has a criminal defense, civil rights, or community organization background.”

“Especially in 2020, when racial justice and civil rights issues involving law enforcement have erupted across the nation, one may legitimately question whether it is sound policy to have a group with little diversity of experience examine, behind closed doors, the sensitive issues facing law enforcement and the criminal justice system in America today,” he wrote.

. . . .

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

Read the full article at the link.

YOUR tax dollars being squandered by corrupt AG on White Nationalist political propaganda. But, given that Billy the Bigot is siphoning off money from the public to fund the campaign of a racist President and his racist GOP “party,” that should be little surprise!

Billy is a one-man illegality machine. 🏴‍☠️ But, rarely does a Federal Judge call out his personal illegal and unethical conduct this clearly!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-02-20

BUZFEED NEWS: PRESENT AND FORMER US IMMIGRATION JUDGES CHALLENGE SESSIONS’S UNETHICAL AND IMPROPER INTERFERENCE IN WHAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE A FAIR ADJUDICATION SYSTEM! — “As a democracy, we expect our judges to reach results based on what is just, even where such results are not aligned with the desired outcomes of politicians.”

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/retired-immigration-judges-protest-deportation-case

Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News:

The Justice Department replaced an immigration judge who’d blocked the deportation of a man who failed to show up for a hearing. The new judge ordered the man deported.

Hamed Aleaziz

BuzzFeed News Reporter

Reporting From

San Francisco, California

Posted on July 31, 2018, at 6:47 p.m. ET

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

A Philadelphia immigration judge was removed from a high-profile case and replaced with a judge who would order the man in the case immediately deported, a move that smacks of judicial interference by the Trump administration, according to a letter signed by a group of retired judges this week.

Advocates call the removal of a judge in the middle of a case the latest in a line of steps by the Trump administration to undercut the independence of immigration judges, further a political agenda, and accelerate deportations.

“As a democracy, we expect our judges to reach results based on what is just, even where such results are not aligned with the desired outcomes of politicians,” read the letter, signed by 15 former judges and members of the immigration appeals board, and circulated Monday.

It all began when Judge Steven Morley presided over a case involving Reynaldo Castro-Tum — a man who’d failed to show up at his immigration court hearings. Morley suspended the case using a procedure known as “administrative closure,” citing the fact that the notice sent to Castro-Tum may have been sent to the wrong address. “Administrative closure” has been used in hundreds of thousands of cases across the country.

In his position overseeing the immigration court, Attorney General Jeff Sessions referred the case to himself and wrote an opinion in Mayrestricting the use of “administrative closures,” a decision that could dramatically alter the way deportation cases are handled and potentially add hundreds of thousands of cases to an already backlogged court system.

Sessions said that “administrative closures” lacked legal foundation and undermined the court’s ability to quickly hear cases.

In the meantime, Sessions sent the case back to Morley’s court, writing that if Castro-Tum did not appear for his hearing, he should be ordered deported. He didn’t show up but an attorney advocating on his behalf, Matthew Archambeault, argued that Castro-Tum didn’t have enough notice and that he wanted to file a brief on the case.

Morley then scheduled a hearing in late July to go over those issues. But before the hearing, Morley was replaced with a supervising judge by the Executive Office of Immigration Review, the Department of Justice body that oversees the immigration courts, according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

The new judge, whom Archambeault identified as Deepali Nadkarni, an assistant chief immigration judge, ordered Castro-Tum deported.

Ashley Tabaddor, an immigration judge who heads the judges’ union, the National Association of Immigration Judges, said her organization was “deeply concerned” about the incident and that they were exploring “all available legal actions.”

The Department of Justice declined to comment on the letter or Morley’s removal. Nadkarni did not respond to a voicemail requesting comment.

Tensions have increased in recent months between the union and Sessions, who has warned that immigration judges, who are Justice Department employees, will be evaluated on the basis of how many cases they’ve heard. His referring cases to himself to establish policy also has rankled the immigration judges’ union.

Former immigration judge Jeffrey Chase, who was among those signing the letter, said that Morley is an experienced and well-respected judge who served as a private attorney before being appointed to the immigration bench in 2010. Morley, Chase said, was pushed off of the case “because he had the courage to exercise his independent judgment in the pursuit of a fair result.”

César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, a University of Denver law professor, said the case would be remarkable if it turns out that a judge was pushed off the case for another judge who would rule the way the Justice Department wanted.

“Judges should never be assigned to a case because of how they are likely to rule,” he said.

He noted that unlike other federal judges, whose positions can only be second-guessed by appeals courts, immigration judges report to Sessions. “Regrettably, the immigration courts are susceptible to this type of manipulation,” he said. “Immigration judges are not protected from internal pressures or politics in the same way that other federal judges are.”

CORRECTION

July 31, 2018, at 7:38 p.m.

Ashley Tabaddor’s name was misspelled in an earlier version of this post.

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

Sessions’s interference with what purports to be a “court system” is stunningly brazen and totally unethical. Of course, intentionally changing judges in a system known for grotesque discrepancies in outcomes is going to have a substantive effect on justice.

The difficulty is that both Congress and the Article III courts are effectively letting Sessions “rob the bank in broad daylight and stroll away counting his stolen cash!” Outrageous! But, as long as we as a country accept and fail to correct this type of blatant misconduct by public officials, it will continue — until we have no country left at all!

PWS

08-04-18

SCOFFLAWS OUTED AGAIN: FEDERAL COURTS DELIVER “DOUBLE BODY SLAM” TO TRUMP & SESSIONS ON CHILD SEPARATION, DACA!

Judge slams Trump admin for suggesting ACLU, others should find deported parents

By Tal Kopan, CNN

A federal judge called the Trump administration’s slowness to track down migrant parents it had separated from their children and then deported “unacceptable,” saying the responsibility is “100%” on the government.

The stern admonishment from District Judge Dana Sabraw came a day after the administration argued that immigrant advocacy groups — not the government — should be responsible for tracking down the more than 500 parents it had separated from their children at the border and deported without them.

Sabraw said during a Friday phone hearing that if the government doesn’t track down the parents, it will have “permanently orphaned” their children.

“The reality is there are still close to 500 parents that have not been located, many of these parents were removed from the country without their child, all of this is the result of the government’s separation and then inability and failure to track and reunite,” Sabraw said.

“And the reality is that for every parent who is not located, there will be a permanent orphaned child, and that is 100% the responsibility of the administration,” he added.

Sabraw instructed the administration to name one or two officials to be a single point of command in the reunification effort, and to submit a detailed plan for how they will reunify children with parents either deported or, in a smaller number of cases, released into the US.

“In reviewing the status report it appears that only 12 or 13 of close to 500 parents have been located, which is just unacceptable at this point,” Sabraw said.

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/08/03/politics/trump-administration-aclu-deported-parents/index.html

Judge again says DACA must be restored

By Tal Kopan and Dan Berman

A federal judge on Friday again said the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program should be fully restored.

Judge John Bates said the Trump administration still has failed to justify its proposal to end DACA, the Obama-era program that has protected nearly 800,000 young undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children from deportation.

Bates agreed to delay his ruling for 20 days to give the administration time to respond and appeal, if it chooses.

More (being updated):http://www.cnn.com/2018/08/03/politics/daca-ruling/index.html

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

Basically the Administration is “flicking the middle finger” at Judge Sabraw and his family reunification order. And, they are also doing the same thing to Judge Bates by nonchalantly screwing 800,000 young people, American’s future, without providing any legal rationale.

As a former judge, I actually understand why these judges are letting this “roll off their backs” and focusing on making the Administration solve the problems they created. Judges have to be the “adults in the room” even in an Administration of infantile minds.

But, at some point, a lawyer like Sessions who thumbs his nose at judicial orders and fails to provide any legal support for a litigating position that affects 800,000 American residents should face disciplinary proceedings. Not only has the Administration’s response been unacceptable, but so has the professional and ethical performance of Sessions and his DOJ lawyers. What about “Bivens liability” for Sessions and other Administration officials who knowingly and intentionally violated Constitutional rights in the child separation program, had their attorneys lie to the court about the very existence of the policy, and refused to take responsibility for fixing it.

Perhaps when this is over. But, then again, maybe not.

PWS

08-03-18

DACA: SCOFFLAWS TRUMP & SESSIONS OUTED AGAIN — USD Judge John Bates (DC) Finds Administration’s Rationale For Terminating DACA Was Bogus – But, Gives Trumpsters 90 Days To Explain Before Restarting Program! – NAACP v. Trump!

NAACP v. Trump, U.S.D.C., D.D.C., 04-24-18 (Judge John D. Bates)

Read Judge Bates’s 60 page decision invalidating the Trump Administration’s decision to “rescind” DACA and ordering the restart of the program, but delaying the order for 90 days to give the Administration a chance to come up with a legal rationale for recision:

JugeBatesDACA

Key Quote From Judge Bates:

Executive Branch officials possess relatively unconstrained authority to enforce the law against certain violators but not others. Ordinarily, the exercise of that authority is subject to review not in a court of law, but rather in the court of public opinion: members of the public know how their elected officials have used their enforcement powers, and they can hold those officials accountable by speaking out, by petitioning their representatives, or ultimately at the ballot box. When an official claims that the law requires her to exercise her enforcement authority in a certain way, however, she excuses herself from this accountability. Moreover, if her view of the law is incorrect, she may needlessly forego the opportunity to implement appropriate enforcement priorities and also to demonstrate those priorities to the public.

Fortunately, neither Supreme Court nor D.C. Circuit precedent compels such a result. Rather, the cases are clear that courts have the authority to review an agency’s interpretation of the law if it is relied on to justify an enforcement policy, even when that interpretation concerns the lawful scope of the agency’s enforcement discretion. See Chaney, 470 U.S. at 832–33; OSG, 132 F.3d at 812; Crowley, 37 F.3d at 676–77. Under this rule, an official cannot claim that the law ties her hands while at the same time denying the courts’ power to unbind her. She may escape political accountability or judicial review, but not both.

Here, the Department’s decision to rescind DACA was predicated primarily on its legal judgment that the program was unlawful. That legal judgment was virtually unexplained, however, and so it cannot support the agency’s decision. And although the government suggests that DACA’s rescission was also predicated on the Department’s assessment of litigation risk, this consideration is insufficiently distinct from the agency’s legal judgment to alter the reviewability analysis. It was also arbitrary and capricious in its own right, and thus likewise cannot support the agency’s action. For these reasons, DACA’s rescission was unlawful and must be set aside.

For the reasons given above, then, the Court will vacate the Department’s September 5, 2017 decision to rescind the DACA program. The Court will stay its order of vacatur for 90 days, however, to afford DHS an opportunity to better explain its view that DACA is unlawful. The Court will also deny the government’s motion to dismiss for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, its motion to dismiss plaintiffs’ APA claims on reviewability grounds, and its motion to dismiss plaintiffs’ substantive APA claim; grant the government’s motion to dismiss plaintiffs’ procedural APA claim, the NAACP plaintiffs’ RFA claim, and plaintiffs’ information-sharing claim; and defer ruling on the government’s motion to dismiss plaintiffs’ remaining constitutional claims.

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

So, who “won” under Judge Bate’s order? The plaintiffs won a smashing victory on all the significant legal issues. And, Judge Bates appears prepared to not only halt the termination of DACA for those already approved under the program, as other courts have done, but also to order the DHS to resume accepting new applications for those who meet the DACA criteria.

On the flip side, nothing happens for the next 90 days while the DHS searches for a rationale for terminating DACA. I think that’s going to be hard to develop. But, you never know.

This case follows a disturbingly familiar pattern. Trump, Sessions, & Co. institute actions against immigrants based on bias, racism, xenophobia, and campaign promises. They are promptly rejected by the courts as illegal.

Then, the Administration goes “to the drawing board” (they never seriously considered the law in the first place) in an attempt to come up with a legal rationale (usually a fairly obvious pretext) for their original actions.

That’s why it’s so infuriating to hear an intellectually dishonest scofflaw like Jeff Sessions constantly pontificating about a “rule of law” that actually represents only his own distorted and biased view of the law — likely drawn up for him by one of the restrictionist or White Nationalist groups he likes to hang around with.

Of course, even if Judge Bates eventually rules against the Administration, there no doubt will be an appeal to the DC Circuit. But, without a further stay pending appeal (which seems unlikely given the Supreme Court’s declination to give one in other DACA litigation) DACA would be restarted while the case is working its way through the lower courts, perhaps to the Supremes.

The Administration could easily have avoided this mess by agreeing to a “clean” DACA bill. They likely could even have gotten some “Wall” funding and other enforcement enhancements (short of more unneeded agents or more inhumane and unnecessary detention) thrown in with the deal. But, Trump blew the chance.

So now the fate of DACA is likely to be tied up in the Federal Courts for the indefinite future.

PWS

04-24-18

DACA: IS THE ADMINISTRATION ON THE VERGE OF ANOTHER BIG COURT DEFEAT? — US District Judge Bates Signals He Might Order Restart Of Program!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/federal-judge-in-dc-weighs-ordering-administration-to-restart-dreamers-program/2018/03/14/883b5178-27a7-11e8-bc72-077aa4dab9ef_story.html?utm_term=.b70de8a39e92

Spencer Hsu reports in the Washington Post:

“A federal judge said Wednesday that he is considering ordering the Trump administration to restart the “dreamers” program and accept new applications for protection from deportation by undocumented immigrants brought here as children.

Such a ruling by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates in Washington would go further than federal district judges in California and New York have when they issued nationwide injunctions blocking the government’s plan to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, this month.

The injunctions, issued after lawsuits by several states and organizations, require the Department of Homeland Security to continue to accept DACA renewal requests from about 800,000 people in the program but not to process new applications.

Bates spoke near the end of a two-hour-long hearing Wednesday on two lawsuits seeking to overturn the administration’s ending of DACA in cases brought by the NAACP, Microsoft, Princeton University and a student.

The judge’s remarks came as White House officials told key Republican leaders that President Trump is open to cutting a deal in an upcoming spending bill to protect the dreamers in exchange for border-wall funding.

[Trump is open to short-term DACA deal, White House tells GOP leaders]

No appellate court has reviewed the earlier court decisions, and the Supreme Court last month declined to enter the national controversy for now when it turned down a Trump administration request to immediately consider the decisions.

[Supreme Court declines to enter controversy over ‘dreamers’]

In Washington on Wednesday, Bates appeared skeptical of Justice Department arguments that he dismiss the lawsuits because immigration authorities have discretion and do not need a court review when it comes to deciding to halt a “non-enforcement” policy.

Bates said, “You have been unsuccessful in three other courts with this argument, correct?”

“Yes, your honor,” Justice Department trial attorney Brinton Lucas replied.

A federal judge in San Francisco ruled in January that challengers to the administration probably were correct in their contention that ending DACA violated the Administrative Procedure Act, because it is arbitrary and capricious. A federal judge in Brooklyn reached a similar finding in February. Both judges issued injunctions.

[With three months left in medical school, her career may be slipping away]

Justice Department trial attorney Kathryn Davis told Bates that the administration ended the program because of the threat of legal challenges from a coalition of states led by Texas and a belief that the program created in the Obama administration could not be successfully defended in court.

Noting that explanation, Bates then asked why the change was presented to the government as a policy shift and not a legal conclusion by the Homeland Security and Justice departments. Bates questioned that legal conclusion given a 2014 Justice Department decision.

Noting the Washington court’s expertise in federal regulatory law, Bates sounded skeptical about whether issuing another nationwide injunction would be appropriate.

Local Crime & Safety Email Alerts

Breaking news about public safety in and around D.C.

Rather, Bates said it might be better to strike down or vacate DHS’s attempt to end the program — which would oblige the government to continue to accept new DACA applications while the administration decides whether to try again to cancel DACA but with a fuller justification for the change in position.

Davis, the Justice attorney in court, opposed taking that course of action, saying it would create “undue chaos.”

Lindsay C. Harrison and Joseph M. Sellers, the plaintiff’s attorneys, said allowing new applications would not be disruptive because it would simply restore the status quo.”

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

The Administration’s legal problems here start, not surprisingly, with AG Jeff Sessions.

Sessions told then Acting DHS Secretary Elaine Duke that the Obama Administration’s DACA program “an open-ended circumvention of immigration laws was an unconstitutional exercise of authority by the Executive Branch.” Without any meaningful legal analysis, he summarily concluded that the program inevitably would be successfully challenged in Federal Court by some of his White Nationalist cronies serving as state Attorneys General.

The problem is that the DACA program had never been invalidated on legal grounds. The Fifth Circuit’s order invalidating the different although somewhat related “DAPA Program” was affirmed without opinion by an “equally divided Supreme Court” (a decision having no precedential effect).

There certainly was a strong legal basis for defending DACA that was totally ignored by Sessions. This includes a lengthy DOJ Office of Legal Counsel memorandum prepared during the Obama Administration that certainly was more thoughtful and thorough than the “Sessions letter.” Indeed, even the single U.S. District Judge who upheld the Administration’s DACA termination found that the legal issue was one upon which reasonable minds could differ.

So, basically, Sessions was arguing that the Federal Courts should hold that the Executive Branch is legally without authority to exercise so-called “prosecutorial discretion” in immigration cases. That’s facially absurd as a legal proposition, and a stunningly dumb argument for an Executive Branch official to make. This Administration, like all others, exercises large-scale “prosecutorial discretion” daily. How many actions is Scottie “Make Me AG If You Don’t Fire Me First” Pruitt at EPA taking to enforce existing environmental laws and regulations? How’s Ol’ Gonzo himself doing on enforcing those Civil Rights laws to protect minorities? How about the enforcement of those ethics laws applicable to Cabinet members and other Trump politicos?

Realizing the problem, it appears that in defending the Administration’s actions the DOJ lawyers “subtly switched” their argument to say that the Administration had “discretion” to terminate the DACA program. That’s actually a better argument than the one Sessions made to Duke. After all, if the Obama Administration had essentially unreviewable prosecutorial discretion to institute DACA, why can’t the Trump Administration exercise the same prosecutorial discretion negatively to terminate the program?

But, that position also raises some big problems.

First, it requires the Administration to admit, at least inferentially, that DACA was a proper exercise of prosecutorial discretion by the Obama Administration. That’s hard for them to do, since Sessions’s position was based on a bogus White Nationalist political argument and Trump campaign rhetoric that DACA was “unconstitutional” rather than on any careful objective analysis of the law (something that as far as I can tell, Jeff Sessions has never engaged in during his public career).
Second, it ignores the facts of the case. The “Sessions letter” to Duke did not purport to be based on a different “policy determination” regarding DACA. Rather it contained typical unsupported disingenuous Sessions’ pontificating about the law and his duty to uphold it. This is a joke on its face from probably the most “lawless” Attorney General since John Mitchell.
Third, no Federal Court to date has found that this exercise of prosecutorial discretion is totally unreviewable. And, given that almost everybody in America except Jeff Sessions has acknowledged the merit of the “Dreamers” as a group, it’s doubtful that the Administration could come up with even a “minimally rational” reason for terminating the program.

Several weeks ago, Judge Roger Titus of the US District Court in Maryland basically “tossed the Administration a lifeline.” He effectively “re-jiggered” the facts to find that the Sessions letter combined with Duke’s reaction constituted a “reasonable discretionary determination” to terminate DACA in light of the possible legal difficulties it might face in court.

The only problem with Judge Titus’s ruling is that’s not what Sessions and Duke actually did. We should also remember that even in upholding the Administration, Judge Titus basically found that the Administration had probably chosen the least palatable of the policy choices available to it. Hardly a “ringing endorsement,” despite the “favorable spin” put on the ruling by the DOJ.

So, stay tuned! But, don’t be shocked if Judge Bates hands the Administration another DACA defeat — this time one with potentially larger impact since it would require the Administration to allow new DACA registrations, not just adjudicate renewals of existing ones.

PWS

03-16-18

Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

CORRECTION

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts: