"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.
Crushing Immigration Judge Caseloads and Lengthening Hearing Wait Times
==========================================
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
==========================================
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The current policies of the Trump Administration have been unsuccessful in stemming the rise in the Immigration Court’s backlog. Overcrowded dockets create lengthening wait times for hearings. At some locations, immigrants with pending cases now wait on average 1,450 days or more – over four years! – before their hearing is scheduled.
Despite promises to reduce the backlog, the latest case-by-case records show that the growth in the backlog has actually accelerated each year since President Trump assumed office. At the start of this administration, 542,411 cases were pending before immigration judges. By September 30, 2019, the backlog had grown to 1,023,767 “active” cases. This rises to 1,346,302 when cases that have not yet been calendared are added. Year-by-year the pace of increase has quickened. The active backlog grew 16.0 percent from January 2017 to the end of that fiscal year, climbed an additional 22.1 percent during FY 2018, and this past year jumped by a further 33.3 percent.
While many sources for this rise are outside the court’s control, policy decisions and practices by the Department of Justice which oversees the Immigration Court have significantly contributed to growing caseloads. For example, the decision to reopen previously closed cases has caused a much greater increase in the court’s backlog than have all currently pending cases from families and individuals arrested along the southwest border seeking asylum.
Despite accelerated hiring of new judges and the imposed production quotas implemented last year, the average caseload Immigration Court judges face has continued to grow. On average each judge currently has an active pending caseload of over two thousand cases (2,316) and over three thousand cases when the additional un-calendared cases are added (3,046). Even if the Immigration Court stopped accepting any new cases, it would still take an estimated 4.4 years to work through this accumulated backlog.
In the New York City Immigration Court which has the largest backlog in the country, hearings are currently being scheduled five years out – all the way into December of 2024. Four other courts are scheduling hearings as far out as December 2023. These include courts in Chicago, Illinois; Houston, Texas; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Arlington, Virginia.
For full details, including the average wait times and pending cases at each hearing location, go to:
TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the U.S. federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse is a nonpartisan joint research center of the Whitman School of Management (http://whitman.syr.edu) and the Newhouse School of Public Communications (http://newhouse.syr.edu) at Syracuse University. If you know someone who would like to sign up to receive occasional email announcements and press releases, they may go to http://trac.syr.edu and click on the E-mail Alerts link at the bottom of the page. If you do not wish to receive future email announcements and wish to be removed from our list, please send an email to trac@syr.edu with REMOVE as the subject.
************************************
Obviously, “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”), stripping Immigration Judges of all authority to manage their individual dockets, the war on Attorney representation, and the complete absence of the type of prosecutorial discretion that all other enforcement systems in America, save for the DHS, use to make reasonable use of the available judicial time are taking a big toll here! A court run by maliciously incompetent political clowns is inevitably going to become “Clown Court.”
Congress and the Article III Courts are heading for an existential crisis in our justice system if they don’t step in and force some Due Process, judicial independence, and normal professional unbiased judicial administration into this corrupt and intentionally broken system that spews out illegal and unconstitutional “removal orders” every day.
Whatever happened to accountability and the supposedly independent role of the Article III Federal Judiciary? Why is a national disgrace like the “Trumped-Up” Immigration Courts operating within the rogue DOJ allowed to continue its daily abuses?
History will judge these failing institutions and those who ignored their sworn duties harshly!
San Ysidro rally focuses on treatment of immigrant women, girls at border
Critics say detention centers deny proper health care, feminine hygiene products
Activists from across the county held a rally Sunday in San Ysidro to highlight the inhumane treatment of immigrant women and girls held at detention centers across the nation’s southern border.
Waving signs saying “stop racism now” and “respect women of color,” the activists chanted “classrooms not cages” and “when immigrant rights are under attack, what do we do — stand up and fight back.”
Gathered on a baseball field near the international border and the Otay Mesa Detention Center, the roughly 60 activists listened to a series of speakers describe reports of poor treatment that women and girls are receiving in detention centers.
“The punishing conditions imposed by the Department of Homeland Security, ICE and Customs and Border Protection on immigrants at the southern border continue to threaten the lives of tens of thousands of vulnerable persons,” said Toni Van Pelt, president of the National Organization for Women, which organized the rally.
Van Pelt said there are an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 immigrants in detention centers along the border and that many are experiencing intolerable conditions.
Women and girls, she said, have experienced sexual assaults, harassment and limited access to feminine hygiene products. In addition, she said they are often not provided interpreters, reproductive health care or mental health care.
Van Pelt drew angry shouts of support from the crowd when she described women and girls being forced to continue wearing soiled undergarments because they aren’t provided proper hygiene products.
Government officials have acknowledged overcrowding and other problems at the detention centers.
President Donald Trump has said conditions are better than they were under the Obama administration. But many reports from immigrant and human rights groups dispute that.
Dolores Huerta, an 89-year-old icon in the feminist and labor movement, was the featured speaker at the rally.
Huerta, who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, led the crowd in a chant of “Who’s got the power, we’ve got the power — feminist power.”
She also said it’s crucial for activists and others concerned about racism and poor treatment of immigrants to become as politically active as possible.
“There is only one way to change the situation,” she said. “We’ve got to get active out there in these next elections. We are the only ones who can make it happen — we can’t rely on anyone else.”
Among those at the rally were two first-year students at Cal State San Marcos.
“We want people to know that everyone deserves rights, not just one specific group,” said Vanessa Span, a Latina who grew up in Redding.
Kimi Herrera, also Latina, said our country was founded on immigration so it’s important to continue to respect the process.
“Coming from a background of immigrants, I think this is something really important to bring attention to,” said Herrera, who grew up in Glendora.
The rally took place at the Cesar Chavez Recreation Center in San Ysidro.
The true “national emergency” at our Southern Border is the Trump Administration’s attack, led by “Big Mac With Lies,” on our legal asylum system, Due Process, and human dignity. Nowhere is that more evident than within the deadly “New American Gulag”administered by Big Mac for Trump & Stephen Miller. How many more innocent women and girls will be abused by Trump & “Big Mac With Lies” before they are rightfully removed from office?
Americans generally take it for granted that the U.S. government cannot restrict freedom of speech. It cannot discriminate on the basis of ethnicity and religion, and it cannot detain people without due process. Though these rights are not absolute, there is at the very least a strong constitutional presumption against such measures. Much of this is thanks to the Bill of Rights and other constitutional protections, particularly the Fourteenth Amendment. But there is an area of public policy in which the government routinely gets away with oppression and discrimination that would be readily recognized as unconstitutional anywhere else: immigration law.
In Dred Scott v. Sandford, Chief Justice Roger Taney infamously wrote that black people “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” Many aspects of immigration policy are unfortunately based on a similar assumption: Immigrants have virtually no constitutional rights that the federal government is bound to respect.
In other situations, the Supreme Court has a much lower bar for what qualifies as unconstitutional discrimination on the basis of religion. Indeed, in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, decided just a few weeks before the travel ban case, the Supreme Court overturned a decision from a state civil rights commission in a case regarding a baker who declined to prepare a cake for a same-sex wedding ceremony for religious reasons. Although the commission had originally concluded the baker had violated state antidiscrimination law, the Court found that two of the group’s seven members had made biased statements against the baker’s religion—meaning that his case hadn’t been afforded the neutral treatment demanded by the First Amendment’s free exercise clause—and invalidated the commission’s decision. The Court reached that decision even though the commission would quite likely have ruled against the baker regardless of the prejudices of the two members (the other five commissioners also supported the ruling). All five of the justices who voted with the majority in the travel-ban case were part of the 7–2 majority in Masterpiece Cakeshop.
Why the difference between the two cases? As Chief Justice John Roberts explained in his majority opinion in the travel ban ruling, the answer is that courts defer to the government far more in immigration cases than practically any other area in which constitutional rights are at stake. As he put it, judicial “inquiry into matters of entry and national security is highly constrained.”
The travel ban is far from the only case in which immigration restrictions have been held to a lower constitutional standard compared with almost any other exercise of government power. In August, the Israeli government was rightly criticized for barring entry to two American members of Congress because of their support for the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. But few recalled that the U.S. also has a long history of banning foreigners with political views that the government disapproves of. Concerns that European immigrants had dangerous political views were a major motivation behind the highly restrictive 1924 Immigration Act, and were also used to justify barring many Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Even today, the law forbids entry to anyone who has been a “member of or affiliated with the Communist or any other totalitarian party.” Meanwhile, the government cannot discriminate against U.S. citizens who share those same views, including by denying them government services available to others.
Similar constitutional double standards pervade many other aspects of immigration policy. Courts have ruled that the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment provides for paid counsel in most cases where the state threatens indigent individuals with severe deprivations of liberty. But indigent migrants targeted for detention and deportation are not entitled to free legal representation, and often have to navigate a complex legal system without assistance. This leads to such horrific absurdities as toddlers “representing” themselves in deportation proceedings. You don’t have to be a lawyer to recognize that this does not comport with the due process of law required by the Fifth Amendment.
Some argue that nothing is wrong with such policies, because immigrants have no constitutional right to enter the United States. But the Constitution undeniably prohibits various types of discrimination with respect to issues that are not themselves constitutional rights. For example, there is no constitutional right to receive Social Security benefits. But it would still be unconstitutional for the federal government to adopt a policy that extended such benefits only to Christians, or only to people who support the president.
Noncitizens are not categorically denied all constitutional rights; far from it. If they are accused of a crime, they get the same procedural rights as citizens. If the government condemns their property, they are entitled to “just compensation” under the Fifth Amendment. Many other constitutional rights cover them as well. But the anti-immigrant double standard applies to virtually all laws and regulations governing entry into the United States, immigration detention, and deportation.
Immigrants are not the only ones who suffer as a result of the immigration-law double standard. Many native-born citizens suffer along with them. A study by the Northwestern University political-science professor Jacqueline Stevens estimates that the federal government detained or deported some 4,000 American citizens in 2010 alone, and more than 20,000 from 2003 to 2010, due to mistakes resulting from the extremely lax procedural safeguards surrounding immigration detention and deportation. Other American-citizen victims of the immigration double standard include the thousands of parents forcibly separated from their children (and vice versa) by measures such as Trump’s travel ban, which would have been invalidated as unconstitutional if not for special judicial deference on immigration policy. Many U.S. citizens also suffer from the extensive racial profiling permitted in immigration enforcement.
There is no basis for the immigration double standard in the text and original meaning of the Constitution. Most constitutional rights are phrased as generalized limitations on government power, not privileges that only apply to specific groups of people, such as U.S. citizens, or to government actions in specific places, such as U.S. territory. The First Amendment, for instance, states that “Congress shall make no law” restricting freedom of speech and religion, not “Congress shall make no law—except when it comes to immigration” restricting those rights.
A few constitutional rights are indeed limited to U.S. citizens or to “the people,” as in the case of the Second Amendment right to bear arms, which might be interpreted as a synonym for citizens. But the fact that a few rights are specifically reserved for citizens highlights the broader principle that most are not. There would be no need to specify such restrictions if the default assumption were that all rights are limited to citizens.
During the founding era, the dominant view, held by Founding Fathers including Thomas Jefferson and James Madison (the “father of the Constitution”), was that the federal government did not even have a general power to restrict immigration. The Supreme Court did not decide that Congress had a general power over immigration until the Chinese Exclusion Case of 1889, a ruling heavily influenced by racial prejudice. It is perverse that the exercise of a federal power that rests on such dubious foundations is largely exempt from the judicial scrutiny that applies to almost all other powers.
Admittedly, since the late 19th century, many Supreme Court precedents have reinforced the so-called plenary power doctrine, which holds that normal constitutional constraints on federal authority largely do not apply to immigration restrictions. For example, a variety of Supreme Court decisions hold that migrants could be excluded based on their political views, and based on restrictive laws whose enactment was in large part motivated by racial and ethnic prejudice. But these precedents are not as clear as is often assumed. Many upheld discriminatory immigration restrictions when similar discrimination was also permitted in the domestic context. For example, some involved racially discriminatory restrictions at a time when courts also upheld domestic Jim Crow laws, and others upheld the exclusion of communists at a time when courts permitted domestic persecution of communists as well.
Still, in addition to rejecting the reasoning of the travel-ban decision, uprooting the plenary power theory entirely would require reconsideration of the traditional interpretations of many earlier precedents, even though it would not require fully overruling those cases. The Court could instead accept that those precedents were justifiable insofar as they upheld discrimination that was also considered permissible in other areas of law at the time, but reject the idea that they require perpetuation of a double standard between immigration law and other fields.
Abolishing constitutional double standards in immigration law would not end all immigration restrictions. But it would ensure that immigration policy is subject to the same constitutional constraints as other exercises of federal authority. The government could still restrict immigration based on a variety of characteristics. For example, it could still discriminate using such criteria as migrants’ education, occupational credentials, and criminal records. But it would no longer be permitted to engage in racial, ethnic, religious, or other discrimination that is forbidden in other contexts.
Ending this double standard will not be easy, and probably cannot be done by lawyers alone. The civil-rights movement, the feminist movement, and the gun-rights movement are all examples of how successful struggles to strengthen protection for constitutional rights usually require a strategy that integrates litigation with political mobilization. The lessons of that history might be useful to those who seek to end one of the most egregious double standards in our constitutional jurisprudence.
It’s actually not that hard to get the Constitution right and to do the right thing. The Republic and Constitutional Government are “on the ropes” as a result of Trump’s White Nationalist corruption and gross abuses of the Rule of Law. And, all current indications are that the Supremes’ complicit majority intends to continue to corruptly and disingenuously destroy our republic. So, who will protect them and their families in the “Post-Constitutional Chaos” they are promoting?
Where, oh where, has judicial courage and integrity gone? Trump is destroying America, but a complicit Supremes’ majority has been a key enabler! What’s wrong with these guys? And, that’s certainly not to minimize the role of prior Supremes in failing to enforce required Constitutional protections for migrants. After all, the unconstitutional U.S. Immigration Courts have been operating under the DOJ for decades.
Think how history might have been different if the Supremes had “just said no” to Trump’s unconstitutional, clearly religiously and politically motivated, “Muslim Ban” instead of “rolling over.” (“The Court did so despite overwhelming evidence showing that the motivation behind the travel ban was religious discrimination targeting Muslims, as Trump himself repeatedly stated.”) Instead of shrinking before tyranny, the Supremes could have made it clear that Trump & Miller and their sycophants would have to act within the Constitution with respect to foreign nationals. The lower courts had it right! The Supremes undermined them and trashed the Rule of Law in the process!
Trump advertised that he could steamroll the Constitution with racism and religious bigotry. And, the feckless Supremes’ majority proved him right, dissing those courageous lower court judges who actually stood up for the Constitution in the process. The utter disaster that has followed, including betrayals of our real national security, can be laid directly at the feet of a complicit Supremes’ majority!
Will John Roberts go down as the “reincarnation of Chief Justice Roger Taney?”
Karen Tumlin is a nationally recognized impact litigator focusing on immigrants’ rights. She successfully litigated numerous cases of national significance, including a challenge to the Trump Administration’s effort to end the DACA program and the Muslim Ban, as well as the constitutional challenge to Arizona’s notorious anti-immigrant law, SB 1070. She formerly served as the Director of Legal Strategy and Legal Director for the National Immigration Law Center, where she built a legal department of over 15 staff who developed and led cases of national impact.
Justice Action Center is a new nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting for greater justice for immigrant communities by combining litigation and storytelling. There is tremendous unmet need in the litigation landscape for immigrant communities. JAC is committed to bringing additional litigation resources to bear to address unmet needs in currently underserved areas. There is also untapped potential in how litigation can be combined with digital strategies to empower clients and change the corrosive narrative around immigrants. Communications content around litigation that focuses primarily on putting forward legal voices to talk about immigrants does not have the same authentic voice as putting forward immigrants as the protagonists. JAC will focus on the creation of original content that amplifies immigrant voices. We believe that real change will come only when a larger base of supporters are activated on immigration issues—only then will courthouse wins pave the way for lasting change. JAC will partner with direct service providers and organizers to leverage the power of the existing landscape of immigrants’ rights organizations and also to fill in holes where impact litigation should be brought (but currently isn’t), or where communications and digital expertise could help reshape the narrative around immigration and immigrants.
The Problem
Urgent, Unmet Legal Need in the Immigrants’ Rights Field
Impact litigation has been an essential tool in blunting the Trump administration’s abuses against immigrants—but capacities are stretched thin and deployed unevenly. As a result, important civil rights abuses are going unchallenged.
Lawsuits attract media attention at key moments, but little planning is done to drive the narrative. Deliberate, client-driven communications plans are needed to maximize these moments to engage new audiences on immigration
Unequal Treatment
Precious impact litigation resources are currently being spread unevenly. While there is a deep bench of attorneys ready to take on high-profile issues, such as the termination of DACA or the latest asylum ban, other issues appear to have no legal advocacy. Examples include the massive worksite raids in underserved states such as Ohio and Texas or the severe abuses immigrants face in the nation’s vast detention system.
Underrepresented in Digital Media
There is a paucity of original, immigrant-centered digital content. The nation’s narrative no longer has to be set only by policymakers—it can be shaped by everyday people, including immigrants. We have not harnessed the power of the current digital landscape to promote pro-immigrant messages and engage new audiences.
JAC’s Solutions
1. Litigate on topics and in locations of unmet need.
2. Create original, immigrant-centered content designed to activate new audiences
3. Partner with direct services providers and organizers to elevate movement impact.
Get Involved
You can be part of helping build Justice Action Center.
Welcome Karen and the JAC to the fight for Due Process, fundamental fairness, and human decency! Nothing less than the survival of our nation, and perhaps civilization, is at stake here!
The litigation angle is so critically important to this all-out war! The Federal Appellate Courts, and particularly the Supremes, have been largely complicit in Trump’s White Nationalist attack on the Rule of Law. There is no excuse whatsoever for the continuing unconstitutional outrages against individuals being committed by a biased Immigration Court System unlawfully controlled by biased and corrupt politicos.
Would a Federal Appellate Court Judge or a Supreme Court Justice agreeto be tried for his or her life in a “court” before “judges” controlled by their prosecutor? Of course not! So why is it “Constitutionally OK” for asylum seekers and other vulnerable individuals to be “tried” (often without lawyers or even “in absentia”) by “judges” controlled by Trump, Barr, and indirectly McAleenan? Why it “Constitutionally OK” for individuals whose only “crime” is asserting their legal rights to be detained indefinitely (sometimes until death) in conditions that would be held unconstitutional in an eyeblink if applied to convicted criminals?
Think I’m making this up? Check out he dissent by Justice Sotomayor (joined by Justice Ginsburg) in Barr v. East Side Sanctuary Covenant. There, seven of her spineless colleagues didn’t even bother to justify their decision lifting a lower court stay of a grotesque attack by the Trump Administration on the legal rights (and lives) of asylum seekers that violated the Constitution, a host of statutes and regulations, and international standards. Not only that, but it also enables a lawless Solicitor General to continue to cynically “short-circuit” the legal system and go directly to what Trump and his followers (contemptuously, but apparently correctly) believe to be a thoroughly compromised Supreme Court.https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/09/11/supreme-tank-complicit-court-ends-u-s-asylum-protections-by-7-2-vote-endorses-trumps-white-nationalist-racist-attack-on-human-rights-eradication-of-refugee-act-of-1980/
Undoubtedly energized by this exercise in “Supreme Complicity,” the Trump Administration has released a dizzying barrage of new attacks on the legal rights and humanity of migrants of all types, from asylum seekers to green card holders and immigrant visa applicants, in the weeks following East Side Sanctuary.
Or, check out this dissenting statement of Eleventh Circuit Judge Adelberto Jose Jordan in Diaz-Rivas v. U.S. Att’y Gen.:
In my view, Ms. Diaz-Rivas’ statistics—showing that from 2014 through 2016 asylum applicants outside of Atlanta’s immigration court were approximately 23 times more likely to succeed than asylum applicants in Atlanta—are disquieting and merit further inquiry by the BIA. See City of Miami, 614 F.2d at 1339. If these statistics pertained to a federal district court, the Administrative Office would begin an investigation in a heartbeat.
So what’s the result of the Eleventh Circuit majority’s cowardly abandonment of the Fifth Amendment? In a spectacular “in your face” move undoubtedly meant to play on the spineless response of the Eleventh Circuit to the “Asylum Free Zone” created in the Atlanta Immigration Court, Billy Barr actually promoted two of the Atlanta judges with the highest asylum denial rates, renowned for their rude and disrespectful treatment of asylum applicants and their lawyers, to the Board of Immigration Appeals as part of his “court packing scheme” to promote worst practices and anti-asylum bias.
In other words, as a consequence of the Eleventh Circuit’s spineless complicity in the face of clear Due Process violations, these unqualified judges have now been empowered to abuse and refuse asylum applicants from coast to coast. Judicial corruption and complicity has real human life consequences for those trying to just survive below the “radar screen” of exalted overprivileged Ivory Tower Federal Appellate Judges.
Every time an Appellate Judge signs off on a removal order produced without a fair and impartial adjudication in the unconstitutional Immigration Courts he or she is violating their oath of office. We’ve had enough! Why have life-tenured judges if they won’t stand up for our individual rights? It’s time to put an end to this cowardly judicial complicity in violation of our fundamental Constitutional rights (not to mention a host of statutory and regulatory violations that go unchecked in Immigration Courts every day).
That’s where the “5 C’s” come into play: Constantly Confront Complicit Courts 4 Change!
At the same time, make an historical record of those judges who “stood small” in the face of Trump’s vicious and corrupt assault on our Constitution and our democratic institutions, not to mention the lives and well-being of vulnerable migrants!
On August 16, 2019, the Executive Office for Immigration Review issued a memo limiting the types of cases that an immigration judge may place on a status docket while a noncitizen is waiting for some event to occur that will impact the removal proceedings. The policy may make it more difficult for some respondents to seek immigration relief while in removal proceedings, especially relief before U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. This practice advisory provides background on status dockets, describes the new policy, and provides tips for practitioners with clients whose cases are currently on a status docket or who would otherwise have pursued status docket placement but may now be found ineligible for status docket placement.
action to avoid increasing the Board’s backlog—it is critically important to make certain that all appeals are processed in a timely manner.
The Board Chairman is required to establish a case management system to manage the Board’s caseload. 8 C.F.R. 1003.1(e). The Chairman, under the supervision of the Director, is responsible for the success of the case management system. Id. The Director is further authorized, inter alia, “to ensure the efficient disposition of all pending cases, including the power, in his discretion, to set priorities or time frames for the resolution of cases; to direct that the adjudication of certain cases be deferred; to regulate the assignment of adjudicators to cases; and otherwise to manage the docket of matters to be decided by the Board.” 8 C.F.R. § 1003.0(b)(1)(ii).
Although the Board has implemented a case management system pursuant to regulation, that system does not fully provide for clear internal deadlines for all phases of the pre-adjudicatory process.1 Similarly, although the regulations evince a clear directive for prompt processing and disposition by the Board, they do not provide specific deadlines for case processing prior to completion of the appellate record. Moreover, as the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General has previously noted, the regulatory deadlines for the adjudication of appeals exclude a significant amount of pre-adjudicatory processing time, skewing the Board’s reported achievements of its goals for appeals and impeding the effective management of the appeals process. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, Management of Immigration Cases and Appeals by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (Oct. 2012), https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2012/e1301.pdf.
To ensure the success of the Board’s case management system and to
Michelle Mendez Defending Vulnerable Populations Director Catholic Legal Immigration Network
better manage the appeals process so that cases are adjudicated promptly, it is appropriate to clearly state EOIR’s expectations regarding the timely processing of appeals. 2 To that end, it is important to have clear deadlines for the movement of cases throughout the entire appellate process, and not just for the adjudication at the end of the process. Accordingly, EOIR now issues the following guidance regarding the case management system for appellate adjudications by the Board.3
Case Processing
All case appeals are referred to the screening panel for review, and appeals subject to summary dismissal “should be promptly dismissed.” 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(e)(1). To ensure prompt initial
1 The pre-adjudicatory process includes, inter alia, screening of notices of appeal, requesting Records of Proceedings (ROPs), ordering transcripts, serving a briefing schedule, and assigning a case for merits review once the record is complete.
2 Although the importance of timely adjudication applies to all types of appeals at the Board, the specific provisions of this PM do not apply to the processing of appeals of decisions involving administrative fines and penalties, decisions on visa petitions, decisions on the exercise of discretion by the Department of Homeland Security pursuant to INA § 212(d)(3), and decisions in practitioner discipline proceedings.
3 For timeframes that are not currently being met, EOIR understands that Board leadership recently changed and that it may take time to adjust Board practices. Nevertheless, the agency is also cognizant that the Board recently hired six new permanent Board members and is also hiring additional support staff. Consequently, EOIR expects that the Board will address inefficiencies in its appellate processing as soon as possible.
2
screening, all cases should be referred to the screening panel within 14 days of the filing of the notice of appeal to determine whether the appeal is subject to summary dismissal. Appeals subject to summary dismissal, particularly appeals subject to summary dismissal under 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(d)(2)(i)(G) for being untimely filed, should be dismissed within 30 days of referral to the screening panel.
In any case that has not been summarily dismissed, the Board “shall arrange for the prompt completion of the record of proceedings and transcript, and the issuance of a briefing schedule.” 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(e)(3). Thus, to ensure prompt completion of the record for case appeals that have not been summarily dismissed, the Board should order the ROP4 if it was not previously ordered and, if appropriate, request a transcript within 14 days of referral to the screening panel.5 If a case does not require the preparation of a transcript and is not subject to summary dismissal, the Board should set and serve a briefing schedule within 14 days of referral to the screening panel. If a case requires neither the preparation of a transcript nor the service of a briefing schedule—e.g. a motion to reopen filed directly with the Board—the Board should forward the case for merits review within three days of the receipt of the ROP.
Every appeal that requires a transcript should be sent to a vendor for transcription within 14 days of referral to the screening panel. The only exceptions are situations in which there is no vendor with available capacity or if there is no available funding for further transcription.6
Upon receipt of the transcript, the Board should set and serve a briefing schedule within three days if the immigration judge’s decision was rendered in writing. If the immigration judge’s decision was rendered orally, the Board should provide the transcript of the oral decision to the immigration judge within three days of receipt of the transcript. The immigration judge “shall review the transcript and approve the decision within 14 days of receipt, or within seven days after the immigration judge returns to his or her duty station if the immigration judge was on leave or detailed to another location.” 8 C.F.R. § 1003.5(a). The Board should then set and serve a briefing schedule within three days of the immigration judge’s review and approval.
4 It is crucial that immigration courts promptly comply with requests for the ROP by the Board, and the Board may remand a case for recovery of the record if an immigration court does not forward the ROP promptly. The Board should decide whether such a remand is appropriate within 21 days of an immigration court’s failure to forward the ROP following the Board’s request. Such a remand will not be counted against an immigration judge for purposes of evaluating that judge’s performance. The Chairman shall promptly notify the Chief Immigration Judge and the Director of any immigration court that has not complied with a request for the ROP within 21 days of that request.
5 Unless the ROP contains cassette tapes requiring transcription, ordering the ROP and requesting transcription should occur concurrently within 14 days of referral to the screening panel. Transcripts are not normally prepared for the following types of appeals: bond determinations; denials of motions to reopen (including motions to reopen in absentia proceedings); denials of motions to reconsider; and interlocutory appeals. Board of Immigration Appeals Practice Manual, § 4.2(f)(ii).
6 The Chairman is directed to immediately notify the Director and the Assistant Director for the Office of Administration in any situation in which it appears that funding for transcription of all cases relative to vendor capacity is insufficient to meet the goals of this PM. Similarly, the Chairman is directed to notify the Director and the Assistant Director for the Office of Administration of any additional resource needs in order to meet the goals of this PM.
3
“In the interest of fairness and the efficient use of administrative resources, extension requests [of briefing schedules] are not favored.” Board of Immigration Appeals Practice Manual, § 4.7(c)(i). Because extension requests are not favored, they should not be granted as a matter of course, and there is no automatic entitlement to an extension of the briefing schedule by either party. Extension requests filed the same day as a brief is due are particularly disfavored and should be granted only in the most compelling of circumstances.
The case should be forwarded for merits review within three days after the expiration of the briefing schedule or the filing of briefs by both parties, whichever occurs earlier. A single Board member may summarily dismiss an appeal after completion of the record. 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(e)(3). An appeal subject to summary dismissal because a party indicated that it would file a brief and failed to do so, 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(d)(2)(i)(E), should be dismissed within 21 days of expiration of the briefing schedule.
The single Board member should determine the appeal on the merits as provided in paragraph 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(e)(4) or (e)(5), unless the Board member determines that the case is appropriate for review and decision by a three-member panel under the standards of 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(e)(6). The single Board member should determine whether the case should be referred to a three-member panel within 14 days of referral of the case for merits review, and the Board should assign the case to a three-member panel within three days of the single Board member’s determination.7 If a case is assigned to a three-member panel, a decision must be made within 180 days of assignment. 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(e)(8)(i). If a case is not assigned to a three-member panel, the single Board member shall adjudicate the appeal within 90 days of completion of the record on appeal. Id.
The Chairman may grant an extension of the 90 and 180-day deadlines of up to 60 days in exigent circumstances. 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(e)(8)(ii).8 “In rare circumstances,” the Chairman may hold a case or cases and suspend the 90 and 180-day deadlines to await an impending decision by the Supreme Court, a U.S. Court of Appeals, or an en banc Board decision or to await impending Department regulatory amendments. 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(e)(8)(iii).9 The Chairman shall provide a monthly report of all cases in which an extension was granted due to exigent circumstances and all cases being held pursuant to 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(e)(8)(iii).
Any appeal not adjudicated within the regulatory time frames shall be handled in accordance with 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(e)(8)(ii). The Chairman shall provide a monthly report of all cases which have exceeded these time frames.
Overall, absent an exception or unique circumstance provided for by regulation or this PM, no appeal assigned to a single Board member should remain pending for longer than 230 days after
7 A single Board member retains the ability to later decide that a case should be assigned to a three-member panel if circumstances arise that were unknown at the time of the initial determination that such assignment was not warranted.
8 Additionally, the 90 and 180-day deadlines do not apply to cases in which the Board holds an adjudication of the appeal while awaiting the results of identity, law enforcement, or security investigations or examinations. 8 C.F.R. §§ 1003.1(d)(6) and (e)(8)(i).
9 As a matter of policy, the Chairman may also defer adjudication of appeals under 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(a)(2)(i)(C) to await an impending decision by the Attorney General.
4
filing of the notice to appeal, and no appeal assigned to a three-member panel should remain pending for longer than 335 days after filing the notice of appeal. The Chairman shall track the progress of appellate adjudications and shall provide a monthly report of all cases which exceed those parameters.
Finally, EOIR does not have a policy restricting or prohibiting the use of summary dismissals of appeals, nor does it have a policy restricting or prohibiting the use of affirmances without opinion. Any appeals amenable to those procedures should be adjudicated consistent with the regulatory requirements for them, 8 C.F.R. §§ 1003.1(d)(2) and (e)(4), and this PM.
III. Interlocutory Appeals
The regulations do not expressly address interlocutory appeals. “The Board does not normally entertain interlocutory appeals and generally limits interlocutory appeals to instances involving either important jurisdictional questions regarding the administration of the immigration laws or recurring questions in the handling of cases by Immigration Judges.” Board of Immigration Appeals Practice Manual, § 4.14(c).
The Board does not normally issue briefing schedules for interlocutory appeals, nor do most interlocutory appeals require transcription. Board of Immigration Appeals Practice Manual, §§ 4.2(f)(ii), 4.14(e). Consequently, interlocutory appeals are not subject to the same processes as typical case appeals on the merits. Nevertheless, it is the policy of EOIR to adjudicate interlocutory appeals promptly and efficiently.
To that end, interlocutory appeals should be reviewed by the screening panel within 14 days of filing. The screening panel should then either decide the interlocutory appeal within 30 days of filing or forward it for merits review.
Assignment and Performance
Regulations authorize the Chairman to designate a screening panel and other merits panels as appropriate. It is the policy of EOIR that panel assignments shall occur no less frequently than the beginning of each fiscal year.
Finally, “[t]he Chairman shall notify the Director of EOIR and the Attorney General if a Board member consistently fails to meet the assigned deadlines for the disposition of appeals, or otherwise fails to adhere to the standards of the case management system. The Chairman shall also prepare a report assessing the timeliness of the disposition of cases by each Board member on an annual basis.” 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(e)(8)(v). Notification pursuant to this regulation should occur no later than 30 days after the Chairman determines that a Board member has failed to meet these standards. The Chairman shall prepare the annual report required by this regulation at the conclusion of each fiscal year.
5
V . Conclusion
In December 2017, Attorney General Sessions provided a list of principles to which EOIR is expected to adhere, including the principle that “[t]he timely and efficient conclusion of cases serves the national interest.” Memorandum to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, Renewing Our Commitment to the Timely and Efficient Adjudication of Immigration Cases to Serve the National Interest (Dec. 6, 2017), https://www.justice.gov/eoir/file/1041196/download. That principle applies to cases at the Board no less than it applies to cases in immigration courts, and EOIR remains committed to ensuring that all immigration cases at both the immigration court and appellate levels are adjudicated efficiently and fairly consistent with due process.
Responsibility for the Board’s case management system and the duty to ensure the efficient disposition of pending cases fall on the Chairman, and Board members themselves are ultimately responsible for the adjudication of individual cases. Accordingly, nothing in this PM is intended to require—or should be construed as requiring—a change in the conditions of employment of any bargaining unit employees at the Board.
The Board maintains a goal developed under the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of completing 90% of detained appeals within 150 days of filing. The instant PM does not alter that goal, and in all cases, it remains EOIR policy that the Board “shall issue a decision on the merits as soon as practicable, with a priority for cases or custody appeals involving detained aliens.” 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(e)(8).
This PM supersedes any prior guidance issued by EOIR regarding the timely processing of cases on appeal.
This PM is not intended to, does not, and may not be relied upon to create, any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person. Further, nothing in this PM should be construed as mandating a particular outcome in any specific case.
Please contact your supervisor if you have any questions. _____________
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) reviewed and analyzed the recent policy memo impacting the workings of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) which serves as the appellate arm of the immigration courts within the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Jeremy McKinney, Second Vice President of AILA noted, “This memo offers significant areas of concern. An earlier rule issued in August describing the reorganization of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) at DOJ delegates authority from the Attorney General to the EOIR director to adjudicate cases ‘that cannot be completed in a timely fashion.’ As a political appointee and not an immigration judge, the director should not have that power. This memo goes even further and pressures BIA members to speed up adjudications without care for due process. Frankly, this latest memo only underscores the need for an independent immigration court to get these proceedings out from under the thumb of the nation’s prosecutor.”
Benjamin Johnson, AILA Executive Director stated, “The purported reasoning behind this memo is that BIA adjudication rates have stalled. What did they expect the appellate situation would look like when immigration enforcement was ramped up and targeted people with longstanding ties to their communities and potential equities in immigration cases? It was inevitable that the appeals caseload would increase. This memo actually urges BIA adjudicators to dismiss appeals, before a transcript of the original hearing is even reviewed. The result of this policy change will be even more federal court litigation as people seek to get their fair day in court. Everything about this system is incongruent with an independent decision-making body.”
It just keeps getting worse and worse, as Congress and the Article IIIs shirk their duties to intervene and enforce Due Process in our broken and “maliciously incompetently” managed Immigration “Courts.”
As one “Roundtable” member noted, in an amazing public ripoff, the Administration is raising the appeal fees by nearly 1000% so abused immigrants subjected to the EOIR “Kangaroo Court” will now “pay more for less justice!”
But, all is not lost! NDPA Lt. General and Roundtable stalwart Judge Lory D. Rosenberg has put out a timely format (below) for filling out a Notice of Appeal (“NOA”) that will be “McHenryproof” and will also highlight to the Article III Courts of Appeals the stunning denial of Due Process and encouragement of sloppy work, “worst practices,” and corner cutting at EOIR. Let’s see whether being flooded with inferior, biased work product by the BIAwill finally spur the Article IIIs to take some long overdue corrective action (as they did during the due process disaster at EOIR that followed the “Ashcroft Purge” at the BIA).
Hon. A. Ashley Tabaddor President, National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”)
Dear NAIJ Members,
On Friday, September 27, 2019, the National Press Club (NPC) convened a Headliners “Newsmaker” Press Conference entitled “Immigration Courts in Crisis.” Moderated by NPC President and award-winning AP Washington Investigations Editor journalist Alison Fitzgerald Kodjak, the panel presentation explored sweeping and controversial changes in the nation’s Immigration Courts. The presentations were led by NAIJ President Ashley Tabaddor, followed by the ABA President Judy Perry Martinez, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) Second Vice President Jeremy McKinney. The trio expressed broad consensus around key concerns undermining the independent decision making authority of Immigration Judges and compromising the integrity of the court.
Judge Tabaddor honed in on the specifics of how the decisional independence of judges and the independence of the court is under attack by the Department of Justice through their actions ranging from the imposition of unrealistic and unreasonable quotas and deadlines to the recent announced DOJ regulation, effective immediately, which collapsed into a single individual the role of the chief policy director with the role of the chief appellate judge. The EOIR Director was previously prohibited from engaging in any judicial role over cases because of the political nature of the position, but has now been given authority to interfere in individual cases, direct the result of cases, and to sit as an appellate judge over immigration judge decisions. Judge Tabaddor also reported on Friday’s filing of two unfair labor practice petitions against the Department of Justice with the Federal Labor Relations Authority. The ULPs stem from the Agency’s efforts to decertify the Association under the guise of reclassifying the Immigration Judges as managers and policy-makers and its subsequent personal attacks on the Association leadership from the podium of the Department of Justice.
ABA President Perry Martinez (Judy) was a powerful voice on a number of important issues ranging from support for fair proceedings and the rule of law to the importance of effective representation for individuals in removal proceedings.
Finally, AILA Vice President McKinney (Jeremy) reported on the impact of the “tent” courts that have been shrouded in secrecy with wholly inadequate operational logistics related to attorney access. He said, “DHS not only has complete control over access to these facilities, but DHS also has complete control over attorney/client representation when migrants are on the U.S. side of the border.” He explained that the program creates insurmountable hurdles to attorney representation, and as a result, as of the end of June, only 1.2% of asylum seekers had been able to obtain counsel.
The three speakers were aligned in the NAIJ’s call for a lasting solution to these and other problems plaguing the Immigration Court system — legislative action to restructure the courts in a manner offering independence from the Department of Justice, and the creation of an independent Article I Immigration Court.
Several national and local news outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, CNN, and others, were present and have reported on the event. To watch the press conference, see:
If you have any questions or comments, or if you would like to have copies of the ULPs or Judge Tabaddor’s remarks, please feel free to reach out to Judge Tabaddor directly atashleytabaddor@gmail.com.
Every day, the Trump Administration is further reducing the Immigration Courts to “Kangaroo Courts” while Congress and the Article IIIs shirk their respective duties to protect Due Process!
Seventeen year-old Josue and his mom, Esperanza, were visibly drained. They had just spent more than four hours at their asylum trial inside an immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan, answering questions from their attorney and a government lawyer. We are withholding their full names to protect their identities because they’re afraid.
“It was exhausting,” said Josue, whose angular haircut was neatly combed for the occasion. In Spanish, he told us the judge seemed nice but, “you feel bad if you don’t know if you are going to be allowed to stay or if you have to go.”
The teen and his mother crossed the U.S. border in California in the summer of 2018. At the time, a rising number of families were entering the country, and the Trump administration wanted to send a message to them by swiftly deporting those who don’t qualify for asylum. But immigration judges are so busy, they can take up to four years to rule on a case. In November, judges in New York and nine other cities were ordered to fast track family cases and complete them within a year.
This is how Esperanza and Josue wound up going to trial just 10 months after they arrived in the U.S. and moved to Brooklyn. They were lucky to find attorneys with Central American Legal Assistance, a nonprofit in Williamsburg that’s been representing people fleeing the troubled region since 1985.
Listen to reporter Beth Fertig’s WNYC story on Josue and Esperanza’s cases.
Play/Pause
Volume
EMBED
Winning asylum was never easy. But in 2018, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions made it tougher for people like Josue and Esperanza when he issued his own ruling on an immigration case involving a woman from El Salvador who was a victim of domestic violence. He wrote: “The mere fact that a country may have problems effectively policing certain crimes—such as domestic violence or gang violence—or that certain populations are more likely to be victims of crime, cannot itself establish an asylum claim.”
Immigration judges were bound to give heavy weight to that ruling. Their courts are run by the Department of Justice, whose boss is the Attorney General. And the AG’s boss, President Trump, frequently asserts that too many migrants lie about being threatened by gangs when they’re just coming for jobs. “It’s a big fat con job, folks,” he said at a Michigan rally this year.
Esperanza and Josue went to court soon after Sessions’ decision. She was fighting for asylum as a victim of domestic abuse; Josue claimed a gang threatened his life. Both would eventually lose their cases.
Josue’s case
Esperanza and Josue are typical of the Central American families seeking asylum these days, who say they’re escaping vicious drug gangs, violence and grinding poverty. The two of them came from a town outside San Pedro Sula, one of the most dangerous cities in the world.
During their trial, Josue testified under oath about how gang members repeatedly approached him outside his high school, asking him to sell drugs to the other students. He tried to ignore them, and gave different excuses for resisting, until one day when they spotted him playing soccer and became more aggressive. That’s when he said the gang leader put a gun in his face.
“He told me that if I didn’t accept what he wanted he was going to kill my whole family, my mother and sister,” he said, through a Spanish interpreter.
“I was in shock,” he said. “I had no other choice to accept and said yes.”
He told his mother and they left Honduras the next day. When Josue’s lawyer, Katherine Madison, asked if he ever reported the threat to the police he said no. “That was practically a suicide,” he said, explaining that the police are tied to the gang, because it has so much power.
Josue said his older sister later moved to Mexico because she was so afraid of the gang.
Winning asylum is a two-step process. You have to prove that you were persecuted, and that this persecution was on account of your race, religion, nationality, social group or political opinion. Madison, Josue’s attorney, argued that in Honduras, defying gangs is a risky political statement.
“They function in many ways as the de facto government of the areas where people like Josue lived,” she told WNYC/Gothamist, summing up the arguments she submitted to the judge. “They make rules. They charge basically taxes, they say who can live there and who can’t.”
And they’re known to kill people who don’t obey.
In her ruling, issued in August, Immigration Judge Oshea Spencer found Josue did experience persecution. But she denied his application for asylum. She said much of what he described “were threats and harm that exist as part of the larger criminal enterprise of the gangs in Honduras and not on the basis of any actual or perceived opposition to the gangs.”
Esperanza’s case
Esperanza’s attorney argued that her life was at risk because the gang member threatened Josue’s family. But Spencer didn’t find that specific enough. She wrote that the gang members “were motivated by their efforts to expand their drug trade, not the family relationship.” Among other cases, she referred to a recent decision by the current Attorney General, William Barr, that makes it harder for the relatives of someone who’s been threatened to win asylum.
Esperanza also lost on a separate claim that she deserved asylum because she was repeatedly beaten by Josue’s father. In court, she testified about years of abuse culminating in an incident in which he chased her with a machete. She said she couldn’t get the police to issue a restraining order, and said he kept threatening her after she moved to another town to stay with relatives.
Madison argued that women like Esperanza belong to a persecuted social group: they can’t get help from the authorities in Honduras because they’re viewed as a man’s property. The country is one of the deadliest places to be a woman; police are known to ignore complaints; and it’s extremely hard for women to get justice.
But Spencer ruled that there is no persecuted social group made up of “Honduran women who are viewed as property” for being in a domestic relationship.
Echoing the Sessions’ ruling, the judge said these categories “all lack sufficient particularity,” and called them “amorphous” because they could be made up of a “potentially large and diffuse segment of society.”
She also cited evidence submitted by the government that showed conditions in Honduras are improving for women. This evidence came from a 2018 State Department report on human rights in Honduras. Immigration advocates claim it’s been watered down from the much harsher conditions described in the last report from 2016. It’s also much shorter in length.
Jeffrey Chase, an immigration lawyer and former New York immigration judge, said it’s not surprising that Esperanza and Josue would each lose asylum. Judge Spencer only started last fall and is on probation for her first two years in the job.
“This was decided by a brand new judge who didn’t have any immigration experience prior to becoming an immigration judge,” he said, referring to the fact that Spencer was previously an attorney with the Public Utility Commission of Texas. He said she went through training which, “These days, includes being told that we don’t consider these to be really good cases.”
Sitting judges don’t talk to the media but Chase noted that they must consider the facts of each individual case, meaning the former Attorney General’s ruling doesn’t apply to all cases. He noted that some women who were victims of abuse are still winning asylum. He pointed to a case involving a Guatemalan woman who was raped by her boss. A Texas immigration judge found she did fit into a particular social group as a woman who defied gender norms, by taking a job normally held by a man.
During Josue and Esperanza’s trial, there was a lot of back and forth over their individual claims. A trial attorney from Immigration and Customs Enforcement questioned why Esperanza didn’t contact the police again after moving to another town, where she said her former partner continued to threaten her. Esperanza said it was because her brother chased him away and the police “don’t pay attention to you.”
The ICE attorney also asked Josue if his father was physically violent with anyone besides Esperanza. Josue said he did fight with other men. San Diego immigration lawyer Anna Hysell, who was previously an ICE trial attorney, said that could have hurt Esperanza’s case.
“The government was able to make the arguments that he didn’t target her because of being a woman that was in his relationship,” she explained. “He just was probably a terrible person and targeted many people.”
Hysell added that this was just her analysis and she wasn’t agreeing with the decision.
Attorney Anne Pilsbury said she believes Esperanza would have won her case, prior to the asylum ruling by Sessions, because she suffered years of abuse. But she said Josue would have had a more difficult time because gang cases were always tough. And like a lot of migrants, Josue had no evidence — he was too afraid to go to the cops. Pilsbury said immigration judges are even more skeptical now of gang cases.
“They’re getting so that they won’t even think about them,” she said. “They aren’t wrestling with the facts. They’re hearing gang violence and that’s it.”
She said Judge Spencer does sometimes grant asylum, and isn’t as harsh as other new judges. New York City’s immigration court used to be one of the most favorable places for asylum seekers. In 2016, 84 percent of asylum cases were granted. Today, that figure has fallen to 57 percent, according to TRAC at Syracuse University. Meanwhile, the government is forcing migrants to wait in Mexico for their immigration court cases or seek asylum in other countries before applying in the U.S., as the national backlog of cases exceeds one million.
Pilsbury, who founded Central American Legal Assistance in 1985, said immigration courts are now dealing with the result of a regional crisis south of the border that’s never been properly addressed since the wars of the 1980s.
“The anti-immigrant people feel it’s broken because people get to come here and ask for asylum and we feel it’s broken because people’s asylum applications aren’t seriously considered,” she explained. “We should be doing more to understand what’s going on in those countries and what we can do to help them address the chronic problems.”
Esperanza and Josue’s cases will now be appealed. Madison said she believes the judge ignored some of her evidence about gangs. She’s now turning to the Board of Immigration Appeals. However, it’s also controlled by the Justice Department — meaning the odds of getting a reversal are slim. If they lose again, the family can go to a federal circuit court which may have a broader definition of who’s eligible for asylum.
But Esperanza and Josue won’t be deported as long as their case is being appealed. On a late summer day, they seemed relaxed while sitting in a Brooklyn park. Esperanza talked about how happy she is that Josue is safe at his public high school, and can even ride a bike at night with his friends.
“He goes out and I’m always trusting the Father that just as he goes out, he comes back,” she said.
Even if they knew they would lose their asylum case, both said they still would have come to the U.S. because the risk of staying in Honduras was too great. Josue said the gang would definitely find him if he ever returned because their networks are so deep throughout the country. He’s now taking the long view. He knows there will be a Presidential election next year.
“It’s like a game of chess,” Josue said. “Any mindset can change at any moment. Maybe Trump changes his mind or maybe not. But I would have always made the decision to come.”
With translation assistance from Alexandra Feldhausen, Lidia Hernández-Tapia and Andrés O’Hara.
Beth Fertig is a senior reporter covering immigration, courts and legal affairs at WNYC. You can follow her on Twitter at @bethfertig.
******************************************
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this posting incorrectly identified Beth’s network affiliation. She reports for WNYC.
By clicking on the link at the top and going to Beth’s article on The Gothamist, you will be able to get a link to the original WNYC audio broadcast of this story.
It’s not “rocket science.” Better, fairer outcomes were available that would have fulfilled, rather than mocked, our obligation to provide Due Process and protection under our own laws and international treaties.
Here’s how:
Esperanza’s claim is a clear asylum grant for “Honduran women” which is both a “particular social group” (“PSG”) and a persecuted group in Honduras that the government is unwilling or unable to protect.
Although the last two Administrations have intentionally twisted the law against Central American asylum seekers, Josue has a clear case for asylum as somebody for whom opposition to gang violence was an “imputed political opinion” that was “at least one central reason” for the persecution. See, e.g,https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2018/6/3/3rd-generation-gangs-and-political-opinion.
In any event, on this record, Josue clearly showed that he faced a probability of torture by gangs with the acquiescence of the Honduran government, and therefore should have been granted mandatory protection by the Immigration Judge under the Convention against Torture (“CAT”).
The Immigration Judge’s assertion that things are getting better for women in Honduras, one of the world’s most dangerous countries for women where femicide is rampant, not only badly misapplies the legal standard (“fundamentally changed conditions that would eliminate any well founded fear”) but is also totally disingenuous as a factual matter. See, e.g.,https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/05/opinion/honduras-women-murders.html.
Additionally, Honduras remains in a state of armed conflict. See, e.g.,https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23740973.2019.1603972?needAccess=true. Under an honest Government, granting TPS to Hondurans (as well as Salvadorans and Guatemalans affected by environmental disasters heightened by climate change) would be more than justified.
Under honest Government following the rule of law, well-documented cases like this one could be quickly granted by the USCIS Asylum Officer or granted on stipulation in short hearings in Immigration Court. Many more Central Americans could be granted CAT relief, TPS, or screened and approved for asylum abroad. They could thereby be kept off of Immigraton Court dockets altogether or dealt with promptly on “short dockets” without compromising anybody’s statutory or constitutional rights (compromising individual rights is a “specialty” of all the mostly ineffective “enforcement gimmicks” advanced by the Trump Administration).
Over time, the overwhelming self-inflicted Immigration Court backlogs caused by the Trump Administration’s “maliciously incompetent” administration of immigration laws (e.g., “Aimless Docket Reshuffling”) would be greatly reduced.
That, in turn, would allow the Immigration Courts to deal with cases on a more realistic timeline that would both aid rational, non-White-Nationalist immigration enforcement and provide real justice for those seeking protection under our legal system.
As I’ve said before, it’s not “rocket science.” All it would take is more honest and enlightened Government committed to Due Process, good court management, and an appropriate legal application of laws relating to refugees and other forms of protection. I doubt that it would cost as much as all of the bogus “enforcement only gimmicks” now being pursued by Trump as part of his racist, anti-migrant, anti-Hispanic agenda.
Poor judicial decision making, as well illustrated by this unfortunate wrongly decided case, not only threatens the lives of deserving applicants for our protection, but also bogs down an already grossly overloaded system with unnecessarily protracted litigation and appeals of cases that should be “clear grants.”
Contrary to the intentionally false “party line” spread by “Big Mac With Lies” and other corrupt Trump sycophants at the DHS and the DOJ, a much, much higher percentage, probably a majority, of asylum applicants from the Northern Triangle who apply at our Southern Border should properly be granted some type of legal protection under our laws if the system operated in the fair and impartial manner that is Constitutionally required. The Trump Administration aided by their sycophants and enablers, all the way up to the feckless Supremes, are literally “getting away with murder” in far, far too many instances.
Consequently, quickly identifying and granting relief to the many deserving applicants would be a more efficient, humane, and lawful alternative to the “Kill ‘Em Before They Get Here” deterrence programs being pursued by Trump, with the complicity of the Supremes, the Ninth Circuit, and some of the other Federal Circuit Courts who have been afraid to put a stop to the extralegal nonsense going on in our Immigraton Courts, detention centers (the “New American Gulag”), our Southern Border, and countries like Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and El Salvador where we are basically encouraging extralegal abuses and gross human right violations against migrants. It will eventually come back to haunt our nation, or whatever is left of our nation after Trump and his gang of White Nationalist thugs, supporters, appeasers, apologists, and enablers, are done looting and destroying it.
It seems perversely appropriate that it was on 9/11 that the Supreme Court removed the legal barrier to the Trump Administration’s most recent deadly attack on the right to asylum in this country. I continue to believe that eventually, justice will prevail through the courts or, more likely, through a change in administration. But in the meantime, what we are witnessing is an all-out assault by the Trump Administration on the law of asylum. The tactics include gaming the system through regulations and binding decisions making it more difficult for asylum seekers to prevail on their claims. But far uglier is the tactic of degrading those fleeing persecution and seeking safety here. Such refugees, many of whom are women and children, are repeatedly and falsely portrayed by this administration and its enablers as criminals and terrorists. Upon arrival, mothers are separated from their spouses and children from their parents; all are detained under dehumanizing, soul-crushing conditions certain to inflict permanent psychological damage on its victims. In response to those protesting such policies, Trump tweeted on July 3: “If illegal immigrants are unhappy with the conditions in the quickly built or refitted detention centers, just tell them not to come. All problems solved!”
How innocent women and children resigning themselves to being severely beaten, raped, and killed in their home countries constitutes all problems being solved is beyond comprehension.
Those in Trump’s administration who have given more thought to the matter don’t seek to solve the problem, but rather to make it someone else’s problem to solve. By disqualifying from asylum refugees who passed through any other country on their way to our southern border or who entered the country without inspection; by forcing thousands to remain exposed to abuse in Mexico while their asylum claims are adjudicated, and by falsely designating countries with serious gang and domestic violence problems as “safe third countries” to which asylum seekers can be sent, this administration is simply outsourcing refugee processing to countries that are not fit for the job in any measurable way. Based on my thirty-plus years of experience in this field, I submit that contrary to Trump’s claim, such policies create very large, long-term problems.
I began my career in immigration law in the late 1980s representing asylum seekers from Afghanistan, many of whom were detained by our government upon their arrival. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Afghans constituted the largest group of refugees in the world. At one point, there were more than 6 million refugees from Afghanistan alone, most of whom were living in camps in Pakistan. Afghan children there received education focused on fundamentalist religious indoctrination that was vehemently anti-western. The Taliban (which literally means “students”) emerged from these schools. The Taliban, of course, brought a reign of terror to Afghanistan, and further provided a haven for Al-Qaeda to launch the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The outsourcing of Afghan refugees to Pakistan was the exact opposite of “all problems solved,” with the Taliban continuing to thwart peace in Afghanistan up to the present.
Contrast this experience with the following: shortly before I left the government, I went to dinner with a lawyer who had mentioned my name to a colleague of his earlier that day. The colleague had been an Afghan refugee in Pakistan who managed to reach this country as a teen in the early 1990s, and was placed into deportation proceedings by the U.S. government. By chance, I had been his lawyer, and had succeeded in obtaining a grant of asylum for him. Although I hadn’t heard from him in some 25 years, I learned from his friend that evening that I had apparently influenced my young client when I emphasized to him all those years ago the importance of pursuing higher education in this country, as he credited me with his becoming a lawyer. Between the experiences of my former client and that which led to the formation to the Taliban, there is no question as to which achieved the better outcome, and it wasn’t the one in which refugees remained abroad.
In 1938, at a conference held in Evian, France, 31 countries, including the U.S. and Canada, stated their refusal to accept Jewish refugees trapped in Nazi Germany. The conference sent the message to the Nazis on the eve of the Holocaust that no country of concern cared at all about the fate of Germany’s Jewish population. The Trump administration is sending the same message today to MS-13 and other brutal crime syndicates in Central America. Our government is closing the escape route to thousands of youths (some as young as 7 years old) being targeted for recruitment, extortion, and rape by groups such as MS-13, while simultaneously stoking anti-American hatred among those same youths through its shockingly cruel treatment of arriving refugees. This is a dangerous combination, and this time, it is occurring much closer to home than Pakistan. Based on historic examples, it seems virtually assured that no one will look back on Trump’s refugee policies as having solved any problems; to the contrary, we will likely be paying the price for his cruel and short-sighted actions for decades to come.
Copyright 2019 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.
The late Maury Roberts, a legendary immigration lawyer and former BIA Chair, wrote in 1991: “It has always seemed significant to me that, among all the members of the animal kingdom, man is the only one who captures and imprisons his fellows. In all the rest of creation, freedom is the natural order.”1 Roberts expressed his strong belief in the importance of liberty, which caused him consternation at “governmental attempts to imprison persons who are not criminals or dangerous to society, on the grounds that their detention serves some other societal purpose,” including noncitizens “innocent of any wrongdoing other than being in the United States without documents.”2
The wrongness of indefinitely detaining non-criminals greatly increases when those being detained are asylum-seekers fleeing serious harm in their home countries, often after undertaking dangerous journeys to lawfully seek protection in this country. The detention of those seeking asylum is at odds with our obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention, which at Article 31 forbids states from penalizing refugees from neighboring states on account of their illegal entry or presence, or from restricting the movements of refugees except where necessary; and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees at Article 9, para. 4 the right of detainees to have a court “without delay” determine the lawfulness of the detention order release if it is not.
In 1996, in response to an increase in asylum seekers at ports of entry, Congress enacted a policy known as expedited removal, which allows border patrol officers to enter deportation orders against those noncitizens arriving at airports or the border whom are not deemed admissible. A noncitizen expressing a fear of returning to their country is detained and referred for a credible fear interview. Only those whom a DHS asylum officer determines to have a “significant possibility” of being granted asylum pass such interview and are allowed a hearing before an immigration judge to pursue their asylum claim.
In 2005, the Board of Immigration Appeals issued a precedent decision stating that detained asylum seekers who have passed such credible fear interview are entitled to a bond hearing. It should be noted that the author of this decision, Ed Grant, is a former Republican congressional staffer and supporter of a draconian immigration enforcement bill enacted in 1996, who has been one of the more conservative members of the BIA. He was joined on the panel issuing such decision by fellow conservative Roger Pauley. The panel decision was further approved by the majority of the full BIA two years after it had been purged of its liberal members by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. In other words, the right to bond hearings was the legal conclusion of a tribunal of conservatives who, although they did not hold pro-immigrant beliefs, found that the law dictated the result it reached.
14 years later, the present administration issued a precedent decision in the name of Attorney General Barr vacating the BIA’s decision as “wrongly decided,” and revoking the right to such bond hearings. The decision was immediately challenged in the courts by the ACLU, the Seattle-based Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, and the American Immigration Council. Finding Barr’s prohibition on bond hearings unconstitutional, U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman issued a preliminary injunction blocking the decision from taking effect, and requiring bond hearings for class members within 7 days of their detention. The injunction additionally places the burden on the government to demonstrate why the asylum-seeker should not be released on bond, parole, or other condition; requires the government to provide a recording or verbatim transcript of the bond hearing on appeal; and further requires the government to produce a written decision with particularized determinations of individualized findings at the end of the bond hearing.
The Administration has appealed from that decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. On September 4, an amicus brief on behalf of 29 former immigration judges (including myself) and appellate judges of the BIA was filed in support of the plaintiffs. Our brief notes the necessity of bond hearings to due process in a heavily overburdened court system dealing with highly complex legal issues. Our group advised that detained asylum seekers are less likely to retain counsel. Based on our collective experience on the bench, this is important, as it is counsel who guides an asylum seeker through the complexities of the immigration court system. Furthermore, the arguments of unrepresented applicants are likely to be less concise and organized both before the immigration judge and on appeal than if such arguments had been prepared by counsel. Where an applicant is unrepresented, their ongoing detention hampers their ability to gather evidence in support of their claim, while those lucky enough to retain counsel are hampered in their ability to communicate and cooperate with their attorney.
These problems are compounded by two other recent Attorney General decisions, Matter of A-B-and Matter of L-E-A-, which impact a large number of asylum claimants covered by the lawsuit who are fleeing domestic or gang violence. Subsequent to those decisions, stating the facts giving rise to the applicant’s fear can be less important than how those facts are then framed by counsel. Immigration Judges who are still navigating these decisions often request legal memoranda explaining the continued viability of such claims. And such arguments often require both a legal knowledge of the nuances of applicable case law and support from experts in detailed reports beyond the capability of most detained, unrepresented, newly-arrived asylum seekers to obtain.
Our brief also argues that the injunction’s placement of the burden of proof on DHS “prevents noncitizens from being detained simply because they cannot articulate why they should be released, and takes into account the government’s institutional advantages.” This is extremely important when one realizes that, under international law, an individual becomes a refugee upon fulfilling the criteria contained in the definition of that term (i.e. upon leaving their country and being unable or unwilling to return on account of a protected ground). Therefore, one does not become a refugee due to being recognized as one by a grant of asylum. Rather, a grant of asylum provides legal recognition of the existing fact that one is a refugee. 3 Class members have, after a lengthy screening interview, been found by a trained DHS official to have a significant possibility of already being a refugee. To deny bond to a member of such a class because, unlike the ICE attorney opposing their release, they are unaware of the cases to cite or arguments to state greatly increases the chance that genuine refugees deserving of this country’s protection will be deported to face persecution
The former Immigration Judges and BIA Members signing onto the amicus brief are: Steven Abrams, Sarah Burr, Teofilo Chapa, Jeffrey S, Chase, George Chew, Cecelia Espenoza, Noel Ferris, James Fujimoto, Jennie Giambiastini, John Gossart, Paul Grussendorf, Miriam Hayward, Rebecca Jamil, Carol King, Elizabeth Lamb, Margaret McManus, Charles Pazar, George Proctor, Laura Ramirez, John Richardson, Lory D. Rosenberg, Susan Roy, Paul W. Schmidt, Ilyce Shugall, Denise Slavin, Andrea Hawkins Sloan, Gustavo Villageliu, Polly Webber, and Robert D. Weisel.
We are greatly indebted to and thankful for the outstanding efforts of partners Alan Schoenfeld and Lori A. Martin of the New York office of Wilmer Hale, and senior associates Rebecca Arriaga Herche and Jamil Aslam with the firm’s Washington and Los Angeles offices in the drafting of the brief.
Notes:
Maurice Roberts, “Some Thoughts on the Wanton Detention of Aliens,”Festschrift: In Celebration of the Works of Maurice Roberts, 5 Geo. Immigr. L.J. 225 (1991).
Id. at 226.
UNHCR,Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status Under the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees at Para. 28.
Copyright 2019 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.
Thanks, Jeffrey, my friend, for courageously highlighting these issues. What a contrast with the cowardly performance of the Trump Administration, Congress, and the ARTICLE IIIs!
I’m proud to be identified with you and the rest of the members of our Roundtable of Former Judges who haven’t forgotten what Due Process, fundamental fairness, refugee rights, and human rights are all about.
Also appreciate the quotation from the late great Maurice A. “Maury” Roberts, former BIA chair and Editor of Interpreter Releases who was one of my mentors. I‘m sure that Maury is rolling over in his grave with the gutless trashing of the BIA and Due Process by Billy Barr and his sycophants.
Mexico’s Capitulation to Trump Has Put Thousands of Lives in Danger
The Mexican foreign minister says his government has nothing to be ashamed of. He’s wrong.
September 20 2019 4:51 PM
In recent months, at least 3,000 immigrants have been sent back to towns along the Mexican border between Tamaulipas and Texas, one of the country’s most dangerous areas. What they have faced there defies the imagination. The city of Nuevo Laredo is a well-known hotbed of extortion and kidnapping. Immigrants make easy targets. “These people have been thrown into the lion’s den,” local journalist Daniel Rosas told me recently.
According to Rosas, President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” program has been particularly harmful, placing thousands of immigrants in imminent danger. “If even us locals are going through a very difficult time dealing with violence here, just imagine what life is like for an immigrant who doesn’t have a home and doesn’t know anyone. This place is completely unsafe,” Rosas told me. In the city of Nuevo Laredo, Rosas described a Dantean scene in which people working for cartels are tasked with identifying and abducting immigrants, who are then taken away to safehouses where they are held for ransom.
“In Tamaulipas, migrants are the most vulnerable. They suffer every kind of abuse imaginable,” he told me. Rosas seemed particularly worried for women and children in Tamaulipas. “They are completely defenseless,” Rosas told me. “When they were waiting and trying to rest under the bridge, there were kids sleeping on cardboard, without any help. They live through sheer horror,” he said.
This nightmare is the predictable result of recent actions by governments on both sides of the border. Three months ago, faced with Trump’s tariff blackmail, Mexico’s government capitulated and agreed to a series of unprecedented measures to reduce the flow of Central American immigrants reaching the United States. Terrified by the possibility of a trade war, President Andres Manuel López Obrador’s administration deployed thousands of troops along Mexico’s southern border, gave control of the country’s immigration authority to an expert in incarceration and enforcement, and pledged full cooperation with some of Trump’s more controversial immigration policies. As part of the deal, Mexican government officials agreed to return to Washington every few months with evidence of results, a recurrent humiliating pilgrimage in search of Trump’s approval and a renewed deferral of the looming tariff threat.
Ten days ago, after his first assessment in Washington with Trump’s inner circle—and, briefly, the president himself—Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard gave a victorious but ultimately unfortunate news conference. Ebrard claimedthat the much-touted downward trend in the number of immigrants reaching the United States would likely be “permanent,” although historical trends suggest the flow of immigrants will likely increase during the fall. Ebrard then said the Mexican government had demanded new and strict gun control measures in the United States. The goal, Ebrard boasted, was to “freeze” gun trafficking along the border. This is disingenuous. Ebrard knows any sort of significant reduction in gun smuggling from the United States would require legislative measures that the Trump administration and the Republican Party will not pursue.
Ebrard then concluded by saying the López Obrador administration had nothing to apologize for on immigration. “We do not regret anything of what’s been implemented,” Ebrard said. “We haven’t done anything we should be ashamed of.”
He is wrong.
The Mexican government’s cooperation with Donald Trump’s punitive immigration strategy has created a calamity along the country’s northern border. Of the many complications, none is more potentially catastrophic than the broad implementation of Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols program, better known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy. The measure forces potential refugees to wait for months (or years) in Mexico for a slim chance at asylum in the United States. It has opened the door to the creation of a massive community of rootless and marginalized immigrants living in perilous limbo in some of Mexico’s most dangerous areas. There are now close to 38,000 immigrants waitingin Mexico because of MPP. After meeting with Ebrard, the White House announcedthe program would be expanded “to the fullest extent possible,” dramatically increasing the number of potential refugees returned to Mexico, many to regions of the country where they face almost certain peril.
No place seems safe, not even shelters run by religious organizations, one of the few reliable options in other border towns like Tijuana. In Nuevo Laredo, organized crime knows no bounds. Just last month, local pastor Aarón Méndez, who runs the “Casa del Migrante AMAR” shelter in the city, reportedly tried to protect a group of Cuban migrants from a group of abductors. They kidnapped Méndezinstead. No one has heard from him since.
Things aren’t much better in Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas. In recent years, the city has seen “open warfare” between rival cartels. American attorneyKristin Clarens, who has been traveling to the region over the past few months to assist potential refugees and make sense of the dire situation in the region, told me she has never met an asylum-seeking immigrant who felt safe in Mexico. “To the contrary,” Clarens said, “most of the people I’ve met described routine and regular acts of violence, such as kidnapping, assault, and extortion.” According to Clarens, migrants in Matamoros, like those in Nuevo Laredo, are facing a full-blown humanitarian crisis. “The heat is intense and unrelenting, and they lack access to sanitation, water, shade, food, and basic shelter,” she told me. “People hike down to the river and use the river to clean themselves, wash their clothes, and occasionally drink. Children and adults are sick and covered with bug bites and lesions.”
Like Rosas, Clarens believes “Remain in Mexico” has complicated the already formidable immigration challenge in the region. “The MPP sends people back to Mexico, where many have been repeatedly victimized by organized criminals or other dangerous groups,” Clarens said. “Their access to the legal system in the U.S.—which had already been severely reduced by the Trump administration—is effectively cut off. MPP will force people to remain for a significant period of time in one of the most vulnerable and dangerous living situations they’ve ever imagined experiencing.” Clarens thinks the crisis will likely worsen. “I know that Mexico can be a safe and stable place for many people, but impoverished and incredibly vulnerable Central Americans who are desperate for security and are leaving their countries of origin for the first time are not able to stay safe,” she told me.
If Mexico continues to quietly go along with the radical expansion of the MPP program, the number of immigrants waiting for asylum in the country could reach the hundreds of thousands. With Mexico’s official refugee agency operating on a ridiculous $1.3 million yearly budget, the López Obrador administration is not remotely ready for such an undertaking. The consequences could be severe. If that happens, Ebrard should be asked again if Mexico really has nothing to be ashamed of.
Those who should really be ashamed are the cowardly life-tenured judges of the Supremes, the Ninth Circuit, and the Fifth Circuit who as a group have utterly failed to protect migrants’ statutory, Constitutional, and Human Rights from lawless, invidious, and very intentional abuse by Trump’s White Nationalist regime and his DHS and DOJ sycophants.
Article III Federal Judges are absolutely immune from liability for their wrongdoing and abuses. But, they shouldn’t be immune from shame and the judgment of history for abandoning our system of justice and the most vulnerable it is supposed to protect at their greatest time of need. That’s basically the definition of legal incompetence and moral cowardice.
Daniel E. Green, Esquire Immigration Attorney Kingston, NY
Here’s a copy of the redacted decision by Judge Howard Hom, NY Immigration Court, as submitted by the respondent’s counsel Daniel E. Green of Kingston, NY:
First, many congrats Daniel for saving this family’s lives and for passing this along. YOU are what the “New Due Process Army” is all about!
A few thoughts:
Note the meticulous preparation, presentation, and critical use of detailed expert testimony by Daniel in developing this case before Judge Hom. This is “textbook,”exactly what it takes to have any chance of winning asylum in an intentionally hostile Immigration Court environment these days.
Yet, how would one of the “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico” refugees, or those subjected to bogus requirements to apply for asylum under barely existent Mexican procedures or virtually non-existent systems in places like El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, some of the world’s most dangerous refugee SENDING countries, possibly have access to this type of life-saving representation?
How could any “unrepresented” applicant, particularly a child or someone with minimal formal education and a non-English speaker, possibly make such a winning presentation?
Yet this is exactly what is being required in today’s Immigration “Courts.”
How are Article III life-tenured Appellate Judges, including the Supremes, letting these absurdly unfair scenarios, clear violations of Due Process and fundamental fairness, unfold before them?
This is a clear dereliction of duty, that has been going on for years, by the Article IIIs. Yet, it has gotten immeasurably worse under the biased White Nationalist racist attack on migrants and asylum seekers by the Trump Administration.
What are these cowardly and indolent Article III Judges being paid for if they are unwilling and or unable to do their jobs of standing up for the legal and Constitutional rights of the most vulnerable in our legal system?
Note the equally meticulous, careful, thorough, and scholarly judicial opinion produced by Judge Hom in this case.
How could judges ordered to produce three or more final decisions after hearing each work day consistently provide this type of quality analysis and writing, particularly with no personally assigned law clerks or other support staff?
Judge Hom happened to have 42 years of judicial and immigration practice experience before his appointment. (He’d actually worked for me as a Trial Attorney when I was the Deputy GC and Acting GC of the “Legacy INS” back in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s). He is also one of a very few recently appointed Immigration Judges who had decades of private practice experience representing foreign nationals before becoming an Immigration Judge.
So, how would the “average” new Immigration Judge, with far less experience, no knowledge of representing asylum applicants or anyone else except the Government, no meaningful training, a wealth of misinformation like Gonzo’s decision in Matter of A-B- thrown at them as “gospel,” unethical and unrealistic production guidelines, and neither personal support nor control over their own dockets, consistently produce this type of quality work?
The answer: They wouldn’t.That’s the whole intent behind the Trump Administration’s “malicious mismanagement”of the U.S. Immigration Courts: To crank out racially motivated rote denials of migrants’ rights, particularly in the asylum area. Then count on the corrupt Supremes’ majority and some complicit and cowardly U.S. Court of Appeals Judges to rubber stamp and enable this systematic and unconstitutional malfeasance.
Just think back to the dishonest and complicit role of the judiciary on both the Federal and State levels following Reconstruction and during the Jim Crow era. They were key participants in “weaponizing” the U.S. legal system against Black U.S. citizens and implicitly or explicitly encouraging, aiding, and abetting lynching, other extra-judicial killings, torture, other abuses, invidious discrimination, and systematic denial of legal and Constitutional rights.
Go on over to the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and learn about the disgusting role of the German Judiciary in assisting, rather than resisting, Hitler and his anti-Semitic ethnic cleansing program. In many instances, the German judges actually appeared anxious to “Out Hitler” Hitler, shockingly, even when it came to persecuting their former Jewish judicial colleagues, suddenly converted to “non-person” status under Hitler’s edicts.
Don’t kid yourself! Led by the Supreme’s totally cowardly and disingenuous performance in Barr v. East Side Sanctuary Covenant, where even in the face of courageous dissents the majority didn’t deign to explain their extraordinary support for a bogus, White Nationalist, Anti-Hispanic program that clearly violates the law and the Constitution, the Supremes are well on their way to joining the Trump Administration’s “Dred-Scottification” Program (that is, conversion to “non-person status” of migrants). Hispanic Americans are next on the list, followed by African Americans (the “usual suspects” who never seem to have “gotten off the list”), LGBTQ citizens, women, and anybody else that doesn’t fit Trump’s announced program of minority White Nationalist rule.
Think it “can’t happen here?” Sorry, it already is happening — every day! And, that’s the “Bad News” for all of us and for our country!
“Women in X Country” is and always has been an obvious“particular social group” for which there is a well-established “nexus” to persecution in many countries that send us refugees. So, why its the U.S. Government and, to a large extent, the judiciary so disingenuously “dug in” against recognizing this very obvious, life-saving truth?
Now, let’s consider a brighter alternative:
We get better Government, including more honest, scholarly, fair, and courageous Federal Judges;
Matter of A-B-and other Trump-era xenophobic atrocities are withdrawn;
Judge Hom’s decision and others like it, showing how asylum can be granted in deserving cases, are made binding precedents;
Asylum applicants are encouraged to apply in an orderly fashion at the U.S. border;
NGOs, pro bono groups, and Government lawyers work together cooperatively to identify asylum grants like this one and either 1) process them through the Asylum Office system, or 2) document and stipulate to the key legal and factual issues so that the cases can be efficiently moved forward and quickly granted by Immigration Judges without disrupting existing dockets;
Experience representing asylum seekers is given equal consideration with Government litigating experience in selecting Immigration Judges;
Judicial candidates like Judge Hom, with experience on both sides of the aisle, and universal reputations for fairness and scholarship, are considered among the “best qualified” to become Immigration Judges;
Individuals with backgrounds like Judge Hom’s become Appellate Immigration Judges and ideally are eventually considered for Article III Judgeships;
Immigration Judges and Asylum Officers are given extensive training in asylum law by professors, NGO representatives, and clinicians with real expertise in determining asylum claims fairly;
Legitimate emergency situations are handled with the assistance of a well-trained corps of experienced volunteer retiredjudges from a variety of Federal and State court systems;
Due Process, fundamental fairness, and meticulous scholarship replace anti-immigrant bias and expediency as the goals and values of a newly independent Article I Immigration Court System;
It’s neither “rocket science” nor “pie in the sky.”
Truth is, the “better system” I just described could and should have been established under the Obama Administration if it had actually “practiced what candidate Obama preached;”
When it finally happens, it will be much cheaper (on a time-adjusted scale) than than the current immigration system involving failed courts, misdirected enforcement, cruel, unnecessary, expensive, and illegal “civil” detention, “show walls,” child separation, frivolous and semi-frivolous Government initiated litigation, and dozens of other “built to fail” gimmicks designed to deter migration through gross mistreatmentrather than process would be migrants of all types fairly, reasonably, and efficiently.
It’s now the mission and job of the “New Due Process Army” to succeed where we and past generations have so miserably failed!
Due Process Forever! The Trump Administration’s White Nationalism With Judicial & Congressional Enablers, Never!
The Trump administration is pushing a proposal to drastically increase fees for immigrants appealing deportation cases or legally attempting to get judges to reconsider their claims in court, according to a draft regulation obtained by BuzzFeed News.
The increase in fees, if instituted, could lead to a substantial shift in how and whether immigrants appeal judges’ decisions in deportation cases. It would also raise due process issues that will likely be challenged by advocates.
In a draft Department of Justice regulation obtained by BuzzFeed News, officials have proposed that immigrants pay $975 to request an appeal of an immigration judge’s ruling and $895 to request a case be reopened or reconsidered with the Board of Immigration Appeals. Proposed regulations are not immediately enacted and require a 60-day comment period.
Currently, the fee to apply for each of these requests is $110.
Such a jump in application prices would represent the latest attempt by the Trump administration to alter the immigration system. Experts believe, if enacted, the increases will impact certain immigrants’ very ability to obtain legal status and protections.
“They are essentially depriving people of the right to appeal — that is big money. It’s a substantial increase of fees that’s beyond the reach of people,” said Rebecca Jamil, a former immigration judge in San Francisco.
A spokesperson for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, an office in the Department of Justice, told BuzzFeed News: “DOJ generally does not confirm or comment on media speculation about regulations. Notably, however, despite inflation and rising administrative costs, EOIR fees have remained the same since 1986—despite increases in fees across many other areas of the federal government over the same period.”
Immigrants would still be able to apply for a fee waiver under the regulation.
Jamil said the fees could have an especially large impact on people currently in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention or who were sent to wait in Mexico while their asylum cases are processed through the US immigration courts. For these two populations, the ability to obtain the appropriate money could be impossible.
“This feels like the fees are being increased as obstacles for aliens to access the courts,” she said. “That’s where it becomes problematic.”
Trump officials have already started a monumental overhaul of the immigration court, placing quotas on the number of cases that judges should complete every year, ending their ability to indefinitely suspend certain cases, restricting when asylum can be granted, and pouring thousands of previously closed cases back into court dockets.
The number of appeals under the administration have increased to more than 30,000 in the 2018 fiscal year.
“The administration has not put an emphasis on the due process of immigrants — these fees seem to be in light with that pattern,” said Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. “I absolutely think this will deter people from appealing decisions, even if they are unjust.”
Of course, injustice and unabashed White Nationalist racism is the whole point!
You can bet that corrupt DOJ politicos and their EOIR sycophants will direct that virtually all fee waivers be denied, or that the fee waiver process will be made so complicated and burdensome that nobody will be able to complete it. Now we know exactly what sent former BIA Chair David Neal into an early (coerced) “retirement.”
As long as many Article III judges refuse to uphold their oaths of office by stopping to this nonsense, and “Moscow Mitch” & his pals control Congress, the Trump Administration and Billy Barr will continue their outrageous, relentless attack on the American justice system.
And, don’t think that just because YOU aren’t an immigrant Hispanic, Black, or LGBTQ, your rights aren’t on the chopping block. They are!
Trump and his disgraceful and existentially dangerous version of the GOP anti-American party mean nothing less than the total annihilation of American democracy and all of the institutions that were supposed to be protecting our individual rights from blatant overreach by a would-be authoritarian neo-fascist regime.
It starts, but doesn’t end, with the tanking of the Supreme Court and the continuing mockery of the U.S. Constitution by “Moscow Mitch.”
WASHINGTON — The nation’s immigration judges lost a key leader this week, the latest in a string of departures at the top of the system amid a backlog of cases and a migrant crisis at the southwestern border.
The official, David Neal, said that he would retire from his position as head of the judges’ appeals board effective Saturday. “With a heavy heart, I have decided to retire from government service,” Mr. Neal wrote in a letter sent to the board Thursday and obtained by The New York Times.
He gave no reason for his abrupt departure and asked his colleagues to “keep true to your commitment to fairness and justice.”
Follow National Security
Follow National Security to get the stories that matter most to you. Updated regularly in For You
.
FOLLOW
NATIONAL SECURITY
Success!You’re following National Security. See new stories in For You
.
FOLLOWING
NATIONAL SECURITY
No replacement has been announced, and a Justice Department spokesman declined to comment, citing a policy to not do so on personnel matters.
Mr. Neal’s decision follows a shake-up at the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the court system that adjudicates the country’s immigration cases, including asylum cases. It is part of the Justice Department, not the judicial branch.
Three of its senior career officials — MaryBeth T. Keller, the chief immigration judge; Jean King, the general counsel; and Katherine H. Reilly, the deputy director — all left their roles this summer. Ms. King stayed at the immigration office in a different post.
Mr. Neal’s departure also comes amid the backdrop of the Trump administration’s efforts to curb both illegal and legal immigration, which have taxed the immigration courts, the criminal courts and border patrols along the nation’s southwestern border and prompted long-running discontent among immigration judges that they are being used to expedite deportations.
As Mr. Trump has sought to suppress immigration and cut down on the number of people who claim asylum in the United States, he has notched two wins at the Supreme Court.
On Wednesday, justices said in an unsigned order that amid an ongoing legal battle, the administration could bar most Central American migrants from seeking asylum in the United States if they passed through another country and were not denied asylum there. That decision will allow the administration to effectively bar migration across the southwestern border by Hondurans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans and others who must travel through other countries to get to the United States.
And in July, the Supreme Court said that the Trump administration could use $2.5 billion in Pentagon money to build a barrier along the border with Mexico, which would help Mr. Trump fulfill a campaign promise to build a wall on the border to stop immigration.
Amid these hard-line policies, a vocal group of immigration judges — part of the larger total of about 400 judges and appeals judges — have been at loggerheads with the Trump administration for more than a year.
Leaders of the judges’ union have pushed back against the imposition of quotas that they have said would expedite deportations at the expense of due process. Under former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, they accused the Justice Department of trying to turn the immigration courts into a deportation machine.
Mr. Sessions treated the judges “like immigration officers, not judges,” said Paul Schmidt, a former judge in the immigration courts.
Some judges have also bristled at a recent Justice Department decision that handed over the power to rule on appeals cases to the director of the office, a political appointee. The judges saw the move as an attempt to undermine their authority.
That decision also directly impacted Mr. Neal, demoting him “in practice,” by transferring his authority to decide appeals cases to the director of the office, said Ashley Tabbador, the president of the union that represents immigration judges.
“This regulation upends the entire system created to decide these cases,” Ms. Tabbador said. Should the new system run into problems, “the chairman would have been held accountable. I would have quit, too, if I were in David’s position.”
Though they are part of the Justice Department, many immigration judges view themselves as independent arbiters of the law and believe they must act within the confines of existing immigration statutes.
They have long deliberated over whether they should be part of the Justice Department — a debate that has intensified under President Trump.
Last month, tensions increased when a daily briefing that is distributed to federal immigration judges contained a link to a blog post that included an anti-Semitic reference and came from a website that regularly publishes white nationalists.
After the episode, the immigration review office said that it would stop sending the daily briefing and would not renew its contract with the service that provided it.
**********************************
The farce taking place as the Trump DOJ politicos “remake” the Immigration Courts into a tool of DHS enforcement and repression of Due Process and fundamental fairness will go down as one of the darkest and most disturbing episodes in American legal history.
The inability or unwillingness of the other two branches of Government, Congress and the Article III Judiciary, to intervene and fulfill their Constitutional duties of protecting Due Process, fundamental fairness, equal protection, First Amendment rights of union members, and separation of powers show a catastrophic failure of American institutions that are charged with protecting and advancing all of our rights.
In the end, nobody including Trump’s tone-deaf supporters and enablers, will escape the adverse consequences of giving in to White Nationalist authoritarianism.
BIA CHAIR DAVID NEAL “RETIRES” — Likely Forced Out For Not Being On “Team Trump”
By Paul Wickham Schmidt
Sources say that the long expected announcement was made by e-mail today. Neal was a Republican with close ties to Senator and then Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas. Interestingly, he was appointed Chair in 2012, during the Obama Administration. Some have claimed that to “grease the skids,” he presented himself then as a RINO (“Republican In Name Only”).
If true, that strategy wouldn’t be career enhancing under the Trump regime at DOJ, where even long term GOP politicos are often considered insufficiently racist and restrictionist on immigration. Witness the fate of long time GOP operative L. Francis Cissna over at USCIS and DHS. Or, the way that the DOJ happily joined Trump in trashing the integrity of former GOP appointees Jim Comey and Bob Mueller.
No word on a replacement. But, we can expect someone who will make Attila the Hun look like a moderate on human rights and Due Process of law.
Next BIA Chair?
Wishful thinking liberals can claim that American legal and Constitutional institutions are “standing up” to Trump’s White Nationalist authoritarianism. In reality, they are rolling over and dissolving before our eyes.
18 YEARS AFTER 09-11, THE “BAD GUYS” ARE WINNING THE BATTLE TO DESTROY AMERICAN JUSTICE & SPLIT THE COUNTRY! — Here’s The Disturbing Proof Of What Passes For “Justice” In America Today!
Immigration judge told 2-year-old to be quiet or a dog would ‘bite you’: report
An immigration judge reportedly threatened a Guatemalan child who was making some noise that a “very big dog” would “come out and bite you” if the undocumented immigrant did not quiet down, according to a report by Mother Jones.
The boy was in the courtroom with his mother for an immigration hearing in March 2016 when the threat happened, Mother Jones reported, citing testimony from an independent observer present at the court.
“I have a very big dog in my office, and if you don’t be quiet, he will come out and bite you,” Judge V. Stuart Couch reportedly told the child, according to an affidavit signed by Kathryn Coiner-Collier.
Coiner-Collier was a coordinator for a Charlotte, N.C.-area legal advocacy group that assisted migrants who could not afford attorneys.
“Want me to go get the dog? If you don’t stop talking, I will bring the dog out. Do you want him to bite you?” the judge continued to tell the boy during the hearing, according to Mother Jones.
Couch later asked Coiner-Collier to carry the boy out of the courtroom and sit with him, she told Mother Jones.
The judge reportedly told Coiner-Collier that he had threatened other children but that it appeared not to be working with this particular child.
Coiner-Collier said she immediately wrote the affidavit after the case, and in a message to the mother’s attorney in 2017, she wrote “I have never lost my composure like I did that day. … I was … red in the face sobbing along with [the boy’s mother.]”
Coiner-Collier also accused Couch of turning off the courtroom’s recording device as he threatened the child, whom she described as being 2 years old even though the judge said he was 5.
The child and her mother appeared again in front of Couch in August 2017, but the case was eventually reassigned. The new judge denied their asylum claim, according to Mother Jones. They are appealing the case.
Couch and five other judges were promoted in August to the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals.
The Hill has reached out to the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review for comment.
“Eyore In Distress” Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, NBC News/AP Reports:
Rollout of ‘soul crushing’ Trump immigration policy has ‘broken the courts’
On the day she was set to see a U.S. immigration judge in San Diego last month, Katia took every precaution.
After waiting two months in Mexico to press her case for U.S. asylum, the 20-year-old student from Nicaragua arrived at the border near Tijuana three hours before the critical hearing was scheduled to start at 7:30 a.m.
But border agents didn’t even escort her into the U.S. port of entry until after 9 a.m., she said, and then she was left stranded there with a group of more than a dozen other migrants who also missed their hearings.
“We kept asking what was going on, but they wouldn’t tell us anything,” said Katia, who asked to be identified by her first name only for fear of jeopardizing her immigration case.
Bashir Ghazialam, a lawyer paid for by Katia’s aunt in the United States, convinced the judge to reschedule her case because of the transportation snafu. Later, staff at the lawyer’s office learned that at least two families in the group were ordered deported for not showing up to court.
Since it started in January, the rollout of one of the most dramatic changes to U.S. immigration policy under the Trump administration has been marked by unpredictability and created chaos in immigration courts, according to dozens of interviews with judges and attorneys, former federal officials and migrants.
The program – known as the “Migrant Protection Protocols” (MPP) – has forced tens of thousands of people to wait in Mexico for U.S. court dates, swamping the dockets and leading to delays and confusion as judges and staff struggle to handle the influx of cases.
In June, a U.S. immigration official told a group of congressional staffers that the program had “broken the courts,” according to two participants and contemporaneous notes taken by one of them. The official said that the court in El Paso at that point was close to running out of space for paper files, according to the attendees, who requested anonymity because the meeting was confidential.
Theresa Cardinal Brown, a former Department of Homeland Security official under presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, said the problems are “symptomatic of a system that’s not coordinating well.”
“It’s a volume problem, it’s a planning problem, it’s a systems problem and it’s an operational problem on the ground,” said Brown, now a director at the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank. “They’re figuring everything out on the fly.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) estimated that 42,000 migrants had been sent to wait in Mexico through early September. That agency and the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which runs the nation’s immigration courts, referred questions about the program’s implementation to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which did not respond to requests for comment.
Huge surge, few courts
The disarray is the result of a surge in migrants, most of them Central Americans, at the U.S. southern border, combined with the need for intricate legal and logistical arrangements for MPP proceedings in a limited number of courts – only in San Diego and El Paso, initially. Rather than being released into the United States to coordinate their own transportation and legal appearances, migrants in MPP must come and go across the border strictly under U.S. custody.
Some migrants have turned up in court only to find that their cases are not the system or that the information on them is wrong, several attorneys told Reuters. Others, like Katia, have received conflicting instructions.
According to court documents seen by Reuters, Katia’s notice to appear stated that her hearing was at 7:30 a.m., while another paper she received said she should arrive at the border at 9 a.m., well after her hearing was set to start. She decided to show up at the border before dawn, according to staff in her lawyer’s office. Still, she wasn’t allowed into the border facility until hours later. Ultimately she was never bussed to the San Diego court and was told her case was closed – a fate she was able to avoid only after frantically summoning her lawyer, Ghazialam, to the border.
Most migrants in MPP – including the two families who were deported from her group at the port of entry – do not have lawyers.
In open court, judges have raised concerns that migrants in Mexico – often with no permanent address – cannot be properly notified of their hearings. On many documents, the address listed is simply the city and state in Mexico to which the migrant has been returned.
Lawyers say they fear for the safety of their clients in high-crime border cities.
A Guatemalan father and daughter were being held by kidnappers in Ciudad Juarez at the time of their U.S. hearings in early July but were ordered deported because they didn’t show up to court, according to court documents filed by their lawyer, Bridget Cambria, who said she was able to get their case reopened.
Adding to uncertainty surrounding the program, the legality of MPP is being challenged by migrant advocates. An appellate court ruled here in May that the policy could continue during the legal battle, but if it is found ultimately to be unlawful, the fate of the thousands of migrants waiting in Mexico is unclear. A hearing on the merits of the case is set for next month.
‘Unrealistic’ numbers
When the MPP program was announced on December 20, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said one of its “anticipated benefits” would be cutting backlogs in immigration courts.
In the announcement, the agency said sending migrants to wait in Mexico would dissuade “fraudsters” from seeking asylum since they would no longer be released into the United States “where they often disappear” before their hearing dates.
But the immediate impact has been to further strain the immigration courts.
A Reuters analysis of immigration court data through Aug. 1 found judges hearing MPP cases in El Paso and San Diego were scheduled for an average of 32 cases per day between January and July this year. One judge was booked for 174 cases in one day.
“These numbers are unrealistic, and they are not sustainable on a long-term basis,” said Ashley Tabaddor, head of the national immigration judge’s union.
To reduce the backlog, DHS estimates the government would need to reassign more than 100 immigration judges from around the country to hear MPP cases via video conferencing systems, according to the attendees of the June meeting with congressional staff.
Kathryn Mattingly, a spokeswoman for EOIR, said that the rescheduling was necessary to deal with the substantial volume of recent cases.
All told, the courts are now struggling with more than 930,000 pending cases of all types, according to EOIR.
As of August 1, 39% of the backlog in the San Diego court and 44% of the backlog in the El Paso court was due to MPP case loads, Reuters analysis of immigration court data showed.
Despite concerns over the system’s capacity, the government is doubling down on the program.
In a July 26 notification to Congress, DHS said it would shift $155 million from disaster relief to expand facilities for MPP hearings, and would need $4.8 million more for transportation costs. DHS said that without the funding “MPP court docket backlogs will continue to grow.”
Tent courts are set to open this month in Laredo and Brownsville, Texas, and so far more than 4,600 cases have been scheduled there to be heard by 20 judges, according to court data.
In Laredo, 20 to 27 tent courtrooms will provide video conferencing equipment so judges not based at the border can hear cases remotely, said city spokesman Rafael Benavides.
Brownsville’s mayor Trey Mendez said last month that about 60 such courtrooms were likely to be opened, though he had few details. City manager Noel Bernal told Reuters that communication with the federal government about the plans has been “less than ideal.”
‘Desperate people’
At her next hearing in San Diego in mid-September, Katia hopes to tell a judge how her participation in student demonstrations made her a target of government supporters.
Meanwhile, she said, she is living with her parents and 10-year-old brother in a fly-infested apartment with broken plumbing outside Tijuana.
The whole group is seeking asylum because of their support for the protests, according to Katia, her mother Simona, her lawyers, as well as court documents.
Recently, family members said they witnessed a shootout on their corner and Katia’s brother is now waking up with night terrors.
“They are playing games with the needs of desperate people,” said Simona, 46, who like Katia requested the family’s last names be withheld to avoid harming their case. “It’s soul crushing.”
Of course, Judge Couch is already well-known for his bias and hostility toward asylum seekers, particularly abused women. Why else would he have been “promoted” to the position of “Appellate Immigration Judge” by “Billy the Sycophant” Barr? Obviously, the idea is to promote bias and “worst practices” as the “nationwide norm.”
And we never should forget the spineless ineptness and complicity of Congress and the Article III Courts who arewatching this travesty unfold every day while essentially looking the other way. Guess that as long as it’s somebody else “in the woodshed” these dudes can “tune out” the screams of the dehumanized. But, chances are when it’s finally their rights (or the rights of someone they “care about”) at stake, there will be nothing left of our legal and Constitutional system to protect them.
Indeed, the lawless and unconstitutional “Let ‘Em Die in Mexico Program” described here is largely the responsibility of the “above the fray” Judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals who have permitted this intentionally abusive and dehumanizing program to torment refugees and their representatives with impunity.
Disgustingly, these life-tenured judges and elected representatives are lining themselves up squarely with the forces of White Nationalism and overt racism, folks like Neo-Nazi Stephen Miller.
The judicial and Congressional complicity in the abuse and torment of the most vulnerable among us and their wanton disregard for the Constitution they swore to uphold will not go unnoticed by history. This, indeed, is how democracies die and the “bad guys of the world” win.
Catherine Rampell Opinion Columnist Washington Post
Catherine writes in the Washington Post:
You’ve heard of the Wars on Drugs, Terror, Poverty, even Women. Well, welcome to the War on Children.
It’s being waged by the Trump administration and other right-wing public officials, regardless of any claimed “family values.”
For evidence, look no further than the report released Wednesday by the Department of Health and Human Services’s own inspector general. It details the trauma suffered by immigrant children separated from their parents under the Trump administration’s evil “zero tolerance” policy.
Thousands of children were placed in overcrowded centers ill-equipped to provide care for them physically or psychologically. Visits to 45 centers around the country resulted in accounts of children who cried inconsolably; who were drugged; who were promised family reunifications that never came; whose severe emotional distress manifested in phantom chest pains, with complaints that “every heartbeat hurts”; who thought their parents had abandoned them or had been murdered.
Such state-sanctioned child abuse was designed to serve as a “deterrent” for asylum-seeking families, as then-Chief of Staff John F. Kelly and other administration officials made clear.
Of course, they failed to recognize just how horrific are the conditions these asylum-seeking children are fleeing — conditions that further decreased HHS’s ability to adequately care for them.
“Staff in multiple facilities reported cases of children who had been kidnapped or raped” back in their home countries, the IG report states. Other children witnessed family members raped or murdered.
But hey, Trump believes these kiddos must be punished further for the crime of seeking refuge — a.k.a., the “invasion” of America.
Despite this and other abundant evidence that government facilities are not able to care for children for extended periods, last month, the administration also announced a new policy that would allow it to keep children (along with their families) in jail-like conditions for longer periods of time.
This is hardly the only way the administration has knowingly enacted policies that harm children.
In August, it finalized a rule that would make it more difficult for immigrants to receive green cards if they have used certain safety-net services they’re legally entitled to — or if government officials suspect they might ever use such services. Confusion and fear about the policy and whom it affects abound. This has already created a “chilling effect” for usage of social services, with immigrant parents disenrolling even their U.S.-citizen children just to be safe.
Last fall, for instance, I interviewed a green-card-holding mother who decided not to enroll her underweight newborn in a program that would have provided free formula (even though the program in question was not mentioned in the rule, and the baby is a U.S. citizen). Huge recent declines in children’s Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program enrollment are also believed to be at least partly a result of fears about this policy change.
If Your Dog Does This, It Could Be Them Signaling A Warning
And lest you think only immigrant or brown children are being targeted in this war: U.S. servicemembers’ children, of all sorts of backgrounds, are being hurt, too.
The Trump administration is siphoning billions from various defense projects to fund border wall construction, despite promises that Mexico would pay for it. This might sound unlikely to affect kids, but somehow the Trump administration found a way. Among the projects losing funds are schools for the children of U.S. servicemembers based in Kentucky, Germany and Japan, and a child-care center at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.
Trump’s proposed federal budgets have likewise axed funding for other programs that serve children, such as subsidized school meals and Medicaid. Indeed, both federal and state GOP officials more broadly are still working to kill the Medicaid expansion, as well as other Affordable Care Act provisions that benefit kids.
The GOP has likewise ignored the pleas of children who want their lives protected from gun violence, or who want their futures protected from a warming planet.
A year ago, I offered a suggestion : that Democrats make children the theme of their midterm campaign. They mostly ignored me and still did okay. Nonetheless, I’m re-upping it.
Because even without Trump’s baby jails and proposed Medicaid cuts, our country’s emphasis on children’s well- being is seriously deficient.
Last year, for the first time on record, we spent a greater share of the federal budget servicing the national debt than we did on children, according to an analysis out next week from First Focus on Children. Spending on children as a share of the federal budget is also expected to shrink over the coming decade, crowded out by both debt service and spending on the elderly.
This is despite the fact that spending on children (especially low-income children) has among the highest returns on investment of any form of government spending.
Whatever the opposite of Trump’s War on Children is, that’s what Democrats should be running on.
*************************************
Thanks, Catherine, for speaking out so clearly and articulately about what has become our #1 National Disgrace: Trump’s War On Human Decency & Future Generations and its sleazy cast of supporting characters like Pence, Kelly, Miller, Nielsen, “Big Mac With Lies,” Homan, Albence, Morgan, “Cooch Cooch,” “Gonzo Apocalypto,” Barr, Cotton, Graham, and others with their glib immorality and disregard for truth, our Constitution, the rule of law, and basic human values.
Who thought the U.S. would ever stoop so low — to use our government’s power and might to abuse defenseless, already traumatized, and highly vulnerable children. (Catherine’s article does’t even get into how, with the help of scofflaw Attorneys General Sessions and Barr and some complacent Article III Judges, the Administration has manipulated asylum law and Immigration “Court” procedures to deny children and other asylum seekers the legal protection to which they are entitled under U.S. and international laws.)
There are many groups out there in the “New Due Process Army” fighting every day against this kind of outrageous behavior by our elected leaders, their corrupt cronies, and their many “go along to get along” enablers in the bureaucracy. Join or donate to one today!
The war to save America and humanity from Trump’s vile and cowardly agenda is one that we can’t afford to lose: For the sake of future generations!
