EOIR Director Judge James McHenry – Page 19

HEIDI ALTMAN @ HEARTLAND ALLIANCE: How EOIR & Other Trump Toadies Lie & Distort “Statistics” To Support A White Nationalist Immigration Agenda!

https://immigrantjustice.org/sites/default/files/content-type/research-item/documents/2019-01/NIJC-Policy-Brief_Trump-Data-Manipulation_Jan2019.pdf

The Trump Administration’s Manipulation of Data to Perpetuate Anti-Immigrant Policies

The Trump administration regularly manipulates data to support its anti-immigrant agenda. Two weeks after President Trump shut down the federal government because Congress refused to approve funding to build a wall on the southern border, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen presented a slideshow to the president’s Cabinet that was widely publicized for relying on inaccurate and heavily inflated numbers to create a sense of crisis in the border region.1 But it has long been a tried and true strategy for this administration’s agencies and government officials to misrepresent facts and figures and implement policy changes intentionally developed to gin up data points that prove a pre-established nativist narrative.

This policy brief describes how the administration has corrupted immigration data to fuel its anti- immigrant policy agenda. Particularly alarming examples include its manipulation of information and data to (I) undermine access to asylum; (II) exacerbate the due process crisis in the immigration courts; and (III) escalate the criminalization of migrants.

I. Crippling Asylum Access, then Touting Low Approval Rates

as Evidence of Fraud

The Trump administration made it nearly impossible for many people to get asylum, and now cites low grant rates to claim there are no legitimate asylum seekers.

The administration’s campaign to close the
border to asylum seekers began almost on
day one. President Trump’s February 2017
Executive Order on border security called for
higher standards for screening asylum
seekers’ fear of return.2 At the border,
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has
intentionally reduced the processing of
asylum seekers at ports of entry3 and
doubled down on a so-called “metering”
system that numerically limits the number of
asylum seekers processed.4 Within the
immigration court system, Department of
Justice (DOJ) leadership has upended
longstanding case law to make it even more
difficult for survivors of gang-related and domestic violence to establish eligibility for asylum.5Unsurprisingly, these policies have shut off asylum protections for many applicants in need:

January 2019 immigrantjustice.org

under the Trump administration, denial rates for asylum applicants rose from 54.6 percent in fiscal year (FY) 2016 to 60.2 percent in FY 2017 and to 65 percent in FY 2018.6

The president and his Cabinet officials, after imposing such arbitrary obstacles to asylum, now claim that the resulting low asylum grant rates mean that most asylum seekers are here to “game the system,” as Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker recently stated after asserting that “only 20 percent of aliens have been granted asylum after a hearing before an immigration judge.”7 In his presidential proclamation attempting to ban certain migrants from asylum eligibility, President Trump stated that “only a fraction” of claimants at the southern border “ultimately qualify for asylum.”8

The fault in the president’s logic is so simple it’s easy to miss: the Trump administration made it nearly impossible for even the most bona fide refugee to obtain asylum, and now claims that applicants’ failures to win protection proves they filed applications for nefarious reasons. The administration is cynically using its own cruel policies to create facts designed to further more cruelty.

II. Distorting Immigration Court Representation and Appearance Data

The administration downplays the access to counsel crisis in our nation’s immigration courts, especially for children, and lies about the prevalence of non-appearance rates in immigration court.

Trump’s appointed officials frequently mislead Congress through incomplete and conflated data that obfuscates the due process crisis playing out every day in U.S. immigration courts. Most frequently, these misrepresentations downplay the critical importance of legal representation in immigration court proceedings and falsely suggest that the majority of immigrants do not appear for their scheduled immigration court hearings.

The DOJ Executive Office for Immigration Review’s (EOIR) own data shows that at least 60 percent of immigrant families in deportation proceedings appear for hearings, a statistic that rockets up to 98 percent when families are represented by counsel who can help them understand the court process.9 Among unaccompanied children, 67.6 percent overall and over 95 percent of minors with legal representation appear for their hearings.10

But in one recent hearing before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, EOIR Director James McHenry put forward several problematic representations of immigration statistics that

2

subverted this reality.11 At one point, McHenry cited statistics from a program whose scope is limited to providing children’s parents or sponsors a basic legal orientation to argue that providing full legal representation is ineffective in ensuring children’s appearance in court.12During the same hearing, McHenry also blatantly misrepresented court appearance data, testifying without evidence that children in immigration court proceedings appear in court only 53 percent of the time.13

The president’s mischaracterization of this data has been even further removed from reality, including unsubstantiated claims that immigrants “never show up [to court], it’s like a level of 3 percent. They never show up for the trial.”14

Obfuscation about representation and appearance rates in immigration court is particularly harmful given how powerfully the deck is already stacked against immigrants in deportation proceedings. Although U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is represented in each proceeding by its own federal counsel, there is no right to counsel for indigent immigrants who cannot afford private representation. Nationally, only 37 percent of all immigrants and only 14 percent of detained immigrants are represented in their immigration court proceedings.15Representation is a particularly critical due process safeguard in immigration court, where people face life-altering consequences and need an expert in the law by their side to ensure they understand how to comply with complex court processes.16 Immigrants with attorneys are five times more likely to win their cases than those without attorneys.17 For detained immigrants, it can be nearly impossible to even present a case without counsel; those with attorneys are 11 times more likely to be able to seek a defense to deportation.18

III. Increasing Prosecutions to Inflate the Number of So-Called

“Criminal” Immigrants

The administration employs both the criminal justice and deportation systems to target immigrants, using its discretion to increase already sky-high prosecutions of immigrants and subsequently touting increased convictions to demonize immigrants.

The Trump administration is quite literally creating its own crime statistics by making it impossible for asylum seekers to present lawfully at ports and then choosing to prosecute as many people as possible for crossing the border elsewhere to request protection. In April 2017, the DOJ announced it would prioritize the prosecution of migration-related offenses,19a jarring announcement in light of the fact that migration-related prosecutions already constituted more than half of all federal prosecutions when the Trump administration took office.20 A year later, DOJ established a

3

“zero-tolerance” policy, whereby U.S. Attorneys Offices at the southwest border were instructed to prosecute all migrants entering between ports of entry under 8 U.S.C. § 1325, improper entry.21

Zero tolerance led to a spike of prosecutions along the southwest border, with a 30 percent increase from the month prior to the announcement of the policy.22 As Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker recently noted, in FY 2018, DOJ charged 85 percent more immigrants with unlawful entry than in FY 2017, and increased felony reentry prosecutions by over 38 percent.23Fueling the zero-tolerance policy was the administration’s concerted blockading of the southern border through illegal turnbacks and so-called “metering” of asylum seekers at ports of entry, both still ongoing, forcing many asylum seekers desperate to reach the safety of the United States to attempt to enter between ports.24

The administration utilizes the statistics resulting from these policies to conflate notions of criminality and immigration status in its policy and rhetoric. ICE routinely touts the high percentage of immigration-related criminal arrests and deportations that involve immigrants who enter outside a port of entry, yet increasingly these statistics reveal the extent to which the administration is cooking the books by driving up the rates of migration-related offenses. Most recently, in ICE’s FY 2018 data release, the agency specifically highlighted arrests of immigrants by “Criminality,” arguing that “the largest percentage of aliens arrested by ICE are convicted criminals (66 percent).” Of the categories of underlying criminal conduct, however, immigration-related offenses ranked as third with 51,249 immigrants.25 Similarly, CBP highlights immigrants convicted of both entry and reentry offenses, with statistics as of August 2018 demonstrating they were the leading type of convictions for so-called “criminal aliens,” representing 41 percent in FY 2017 and 47 percent of all convictions in the first eight months of FY 2018.26 While the administration frames these statistics to argue that migrants have become a greater threat, the story they really tell is of a federal agency that has become obsessed with punishing people for crossing the border.

Conclusion

The use of official government resources to paint groups of people as undesirable or criminal mirrors strategies employed by authoritarian regimes throughout world history who have sought to consolidate power, effectuate anti-democratic agendas, and provide a pretext for persecution. During World War II, the Nazi regime published a list of supposed crimes committed by the Jewish population.27 Russia’s current authoritarian regime regularly employs the criminal justice system to prosecute and convict LGBTQ individuals.28 Scapegoating minorities is one of the time-tested tools for dictators.29

Through data manipulation, the Trump administration is deftly employing the various levers of government to implement inherently flawed policy that criminalizes immigrants, subsequently touting that criminalization to vilify them. Collaterally, the administration manipulates or misrepresents data to impugn immigrants and their families as criminals who are undeserving of protection. The endgame is apparent—to build a foundation to enact policies that erode due process, increase incarceration of communities of color, and strip legal protections from immigrants. Congress and other stakeholders must hold this administration accountable and

4

ensure that its anti-immigrant policies are not justified through the use of data or policy inherently designed to undermine basic human and civil rights.

Acknowledgments

This policy brief was authored by Jose Magaña-Salgado for the National Immigrant Justice Center. NIJC’s Heidi Altman and Tara Tidwell Cullen contributed to the report.

For questions, contact NIJC Director of Policy Heidi Altman at (312) 718-5021 orhaltman@heartlandalliance.org.

Endnotes

1 Philip Bump, “The administration is using heavily inflated numbers to argue for a border wall,” Washington Post, Jan. 4, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/01/04/administration-is-using-heavily-inflated-numbers- argue-border-wall/?utm_term=.c72735337b9c.
2 Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements, Exec. Order No. 13,767, 82 Fed. Reg. 8793, Jan. 25, 2017, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/01/30/2017-02095/border-security-and-immigration- enforcement-improvements.
3 Hamed Aleaziz, “The Trump Administration is Slowing the Asylum Process to Discourage Applicants, an Official Told Congress,” BuzzFeed, Dec. 17, 2018, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/the-trump- administration-is-slowing-the-asylum-process-to.
4 Human Rights First, Refugee Blockade: The Trump Administration’s Obstruction of Asylum Claims at the Border, Dec. 11, 2018, https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/resource/refugee-blockade-trump-administration-s-obstruction- asylum-claims-border.
5 Matter of A-B-, 27 I&N Dec. 316 (A.G. 2018), https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1070866/download. This opinion is currently subject to litigation, with a preliminary, nationwide injunction in place as of December of 2018. Lauren Pearle, “Judge blocks Trump administration efforts to restrict asylum for migrants fleeing domestic and gang violence,” ABC News, Dec. 20, 2018, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/judge-blocks-trump-administration-efforts- restrict-asylum-migrants/story?id=59913629; Grace, et al., v. Whitaker, No. 18-CV-01853 EGS (D.D.C. Dec. 19, 2018), available at https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/grace-v-whitaker-opinion. See also Matter of E-F-H-L-, 27 I&N Dec. 226 (A.G. 2018), https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1040936/download (undermining the right to an evidentiary hearing for asylum applicants).
6 TRAC Immigration, Asylum Decisions and Denials Jump in 2018, Nov. 29, 2018,http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/539/.
7 Office of Public Affairs, U.S. Department of Justice, Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker Delivers Remarks on the Importance of a Lawful Immigration System, Dec. 11, 2018, https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/acting- attorney-general-matthew-whitaker-delivers-remarks-importance-lawful-immigration. Asylum denials often have life and death consequences for individuals, with deported asylum seekers facing persecution and even death in their home countries. See Jaya Ramji-Nogales , Andrew I. Schoenholtz and Philip G. Schrag, Refugee Roulette, Disparities in Asylum Adjudication and Proposals for Reform, 2009; Sarah Stillman, “When Deportation is a Death Sentence,” The New Yorker, Jan. 15, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/15/when-deportation-is-a- death-sentence (documenting the harms awaiting immigrants deported back to their home countries, including violent deaths).
8 Proclamation No. 9822, 83 Fed. Reg. 57,661, Nov. 15, 2018,https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/11/15/2018-25117/addressing-mass-migration-through-the- southern-border-of-the-united-states.
9 Human Rights First, Myth v. Fact: Immigrant Families’ Appearance Rates in Immigration Court, July 31, 2016,https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/resource/myth-vs-fact-immigrant-families-appearance-rates-immigration-court.
10 American Immigration Council, Children in Immigration Court: Over 95 Percent Represented by an Attorney Appear in Court, May 16, 2016, https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/children-immigration-court-over-95- percent-represented-attorney-appear-court.
11 Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee, U.S. Senate,Oversight of Efforts to Protect Unaccompanied Alien Children from Human Trafficking and Abuse, Aug. 16, 2018,https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/hearings/oversight-of-efforts-to-protect-unaccompanied- alien-children-from-human-trafficking-and-abuse.

12 Id. (exchange begins at 1:36:40). In this same hearing, Director McHenry also cited an EOIR-produced statistic that the “representation rate for UACs [unaccompanied immigrant children] in proceedings . . . whose proceedings have been pending for over a year is already 75 percent.” By focusing on representation for unaccompanied minors with cases pending for a year or more, Director McHenry excluded representation rates for cases completed in less than a year, namely cases where a judge ordered a minor deported in absentia (e.g. without the minor’s presence in the court) precisely because the minor did not have representation. See Denied a Day in Court: The Government’s Use of In Absentia Removal Orders Against Families Seeking Asylum 15, Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, 2018, https://cliniclegal.org/sites/default/files/Denied-a-Day-in-Court.pdf. Looking at impartial data regarding representation rates provides a more sobering picture; as of November 2018, only 48 percent of unaccompanied minors had representation, regardless of how long their case had been pending. See Juveniles — Immigration Court Deportation Proceedings, TRAC Immigration, Nov. 2018,http://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/juvenile.

13 McHenry Testimony, supra note 11, at 1:47:10.
14 Linda Qiu, “Trump’s Falsehood-Laden Speech on Immigration,” The New York Times, Nov. 1, 2018,https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/us/politics/fact-check-trump-immigration-.html.
15 Ingrid Eagly and Steven Shafer, Access to Counsel in Immigration Court, American Immigration Council, Sept. 28, 2016, https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/access-counsel-immigration-court.
16 Id.
17 Id.
18 Id.
19 Office of the U.S. Attorney General, Memorandum for all Federal Prosecutors, “Renewed Commitment to Criminal Immigration Enforcement,” Apr. 11, 2017, https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/956841/download.
20 TRAC Immigration, Immigration Prosecutions for December 2016, June 4, 2018,http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/bulletins/immigration/monthlydec16/fil/; Cristobal Ramon, Federal Prosecutions of Illegal Immigrants, Bipartisan Policy Center, Mar. 27, 2018, https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/the-prosecution-pipeline/.
21 Office of the U.S. Attorney General, Memorandum for Federal Prosecutors along Southwest Border, “Zero- Tolerance for Offenses Under 8 U.S.C. § 1325(a),” Apr. 6, 2018, https://www.justice.gov/opa/press- release/file/1049751/download.
22 TRAC Immigration, Criminal Prosecutions for Illegal Border Crossers Jump Sharply in April, June 4, 2018,http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/515/.
23 Office of Public Affairs, U.S. Department of Justice, Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker Delivers Remarks on the Importance of a Lawful Immigration System, Dec. 11, 2018, https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/acting- attorney-general-matthew-whitaker-delivers-remarks-importance-lawful-immigration.
24 Human Rights First, Refugee Blockade: The Trump Administration’s Obstruction of Asylum Claims at the Border, Dec. 11, 2018, https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/resource/refugee-blockade-trump-administration-s-obstruction- asylum-claims-border.
25 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Fiscal Year 2018 ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Report , Dec. 14, 2018,https://www.ice.gov/doclib/about/offices/ero/pdf/eroFY2018Report.pdf.
26 U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Criminal Alien Statistics – FY 2018(Oct. 23, 2018), https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistics/criminal-alien-statistics.
27 Amanda Erickson, “Adolf Hitler also published a list of crimes committed by groups he didn’t like,” The Washington Post, Mar. 2, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/03/02/adolf-hitler-also-published-a- list-of-crimes-committed-by-groups-he-didnt-like/ (“There’s a reason Trump’s opponents are so worried. This strategy — one designed to single out a particular group of people, suggesting that there’s something particularly sinister about how they behave — was employed to great effect by Adolf Hitler and his allies. In the 1930s, the Nazis used a similar tactic to stir up anger and hatred toward Jews.”).
28 The Council for Global Equality, The Facts on LGBT Rights in Russia, accessed Jan. 2, 2019,www.globalequality.org/component/content/article/1-in-the-news/186-the-facts-on-lgbt-rights-in-russia.
29 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith, The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics, 2012.

Images from The Noun Project. Credits: Robbe de Clerck, Adrien Coquet, Luis Prado, and SBTS

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

It’s time for some House Oversight of the ridiculous mess at EOIR and the lies, fabrications, and intentional distortions that support the restrictionist enforcement agenda of what once purported to be a “court system” but now is a “CINO” (“Court in Name Only”) — an unapologetic adjunct of DHS Enforcement (their “partner” according to the now departed Sessions). Amazingly, it’s actually much worse than the dysfunction that led to the removal of the Immigration Courts from the “Legacy INS’ and establishment of a supposedly “independent” EOIR within DOJ in the first place, in 1983.

Then, I don’t think INS was intentionally falsifying anything or carrying out a political agenda in the Immigration Courts. Honestly, the “Legacy INS’ was simply ethically and administratively incompetent to run a due process court system.

But, to the credit of all involved during the Reagan Administration, including then Commissioner Al Nelson and General Counsel “Iron Mike” Inman, we recognized the problem and acted to solve it. We also saw that a “level playing field” and a more independent Immigration Court would gain credibility with the Article III courts, which would benefit INS enforcement. We even got then Associate Attorney General Rudy Giuliani to endorse the “divestiture program.”

Although the first Director of EOIR, David Milhollan, who was also the BIA Chair, and the first Chief Immigration, Judge William R. Robie, were both stalwart Republicans, neither brooked interference from “Main Justice” with their operations. They were particularly proud and assertive of their independence from INS. Indeed “we’re not INS” became the “mantra” of the “early EOIR.”

Milhollan, having moved EOIR Headquarters across the river to Falls Church, VA more or less hoped that at some point DOJ would forget that EOIR every existed. He occasionally sent a little “excess money downtown” to ensure that the “Main DOJ” and the Attorney General would have only “kind thoughts” about EOIR and would otherwise leave him alone. Up to a certain point, it worked.

Sadly, for all of its original promise and development during its first two decades, the “EOIR Experiment” has turned out to be a disastrous failure. It’s quite painful for those of us who devoted large chunks of our professional lives and emotionally invested in the effort to make EOIR a “real” court.

The idea that a court system can operate independently and provide fairness, impartiality, and due process within the now thoroughly politicized DOJ is simply a non-starter. It’s basically a “return to the Nixon Administration” which is where I came in, with the hope of “learning the ropes” and eventually being able to help in some small way to create “good government” and a better America.

Unfortunately, a divided Congress and an Administration bent on destroying our Constitution and democratic institutions are unwilling and/or unable to put “Eyore” out of its misery. That means that innocent lives will continue to be wrongfully destroyed and Constitutional Due Process mocked until the next generation can put the “malicious incompetence” of Trumpism behind us and advance our nation and the world to a better, fairer, more realistic and inclusive future. That’s what the “New Due Process Army” is all about!

PWS

02-15-19

CLOWN COURTS: EOIR CONTINUES ASSAULT ON DUE PROCESS, DUMBING DOWN JUDICIARY WITH CREATION OF HAZY “IMMIGRATION ADJUDICATION CENTERS” TO MASS PRODUCE REMOVALS BY TV WITHOUT DUE PROCESS!

http://immigrationimpact.com/2019/01/07/the-judicial-black-sites-the-government-created-to-speed-up-deportations/

Katie Shepard writes in Immigration Impact:

As the Tru. mp administration continues to strip away due process in immigration courts, the recent creation of two “Immigration Adjudication Centers” is cause for concern. The two new facilities are called “Centers,” not “courts,” despite being places where judges decide whether to issue orders of deportation.

The Centers came out of a “Caseload Reduction Plan” devised by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) as one of several mechanisms designed to reduce the number of cases pending before the immigration courts. This initiative first surfaced in December 2017 ostensibly as one of a series of ways to address the record-high backlog within the immigration court system. In fact, EOIR’s caseload has almost tripled since 2011, from fewer than 300,000 pending cases to 810,000 as of November 2018. This is likely to worsen given the current government shutdown.

A total of fifteen Immigration Judges currently sit in the two Centers—four in Falls Church, Virginia, and 11 in Fort Worth, Texas.

It is unclear whether the Centers are open to the public, despite laws stating such hearings must be. All the cases heard by immigration judges in the Centers will be conducted exclusively by video-teleconference (VTC), with immigrants, their lawyers, and prosecutors in different locations.

According to one source, it’s likely that “thousands of immigration cases will be heard with respondents never seeing a judge face-to-face.”

The utter lack of transparency around these Centers is alarming, given the documented concerns with the use of video teleconferencing and the current administration’s commitment to speed up immigration court hearings, even at the risk of diminished due process.

Speeding up cases could benefit detained individuals who often languish for months or even years behind bars before their release or deportation. However, the impact of these Centers overall could be much more ominous.

The Centers raise serious questions about whether detained immigrants will be disadvantaged by the arrangement. These questions include:

How will an individual who is unrepresented and detained in a facility three time zones away from the judge submit critical evidence to the court during a hearing?

How can an immigration judge adequately observe an asylum seeker’s demeanor for credibility without being in the same room?

Will the immigration judges be required to postpone hearings if there are issues with the telephonic interpreters, and could this lead to prolonged detention?

Further, only 14 percent of detained immigrants have attorneys and many may not have the ability to adequately prepare for their cases on an expedited timeframe. A very real outcome of speeding up cases in this manner is that many immigrants are deported even though they may have valid claims to stay in the United States.

Until the government is more transparent with these Centers, there is simply no way of knowing how many detained individuals—including children—have been deported without the opportunity to obtain counsel, and without appropriate safeguards preventing their removal to imminent harm.

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

The degrading “de-judicilization” of the Immigration Courts under the Trump DOJ politicos and their EOIR subordinates continues. I suppose next Immigration Judges will be retitled as “Special Inquiry Officers” or “Removal Adjudicators.”

Hopefully, EOIR will get some much needed oversight and accountability from the House.

PWS

01-11-19

HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”

WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES COULD BACKFIRE

“The Devil is in the Details.” Typical for this group of incompetents, nobody at DHS or in the Mexican Government actually appears to be ready to implement this “historic change.”
Expect chaos. After all, the ink wasn’t even dry on Judge Sullivan’s order in Grace v. Whitaker for USCIS to rewrite its credible fear “Policy Memorandum” to comply with law. Want to bet on whether the “credible fear” interviews in Mexico or at the border will be lawful? How about the reaction of Judge Sullivan if they ignore his order? (Nielsen and her fellow scofflaws might want to consult with Gen. Flynn on that one. This is one judge with limited patience for high level Government officials who run roughshod over the law, are in contempt of court, or perjure themselves.)
By screwing around with procedures, the Administration opens itself up for systemic challenges in more U.S. District Courts instead of being able to limit litigation to Courts of Appeals on petitions to review individual removal orders.
Every “panic attack” by this Administration on the rule of law and the most vulnerable energizes more legal opposition. And, it’s not just within the immigration bar and NGOs any more. “Big Law” and many of the brightest recent graduates of top law schools across the country are getting involved in the “New Due Process Army.”
By concentrating asylum applicants at a limited number of ports of entry, pro bono legal groups could actually find it easier to represent almost all applicants.
Representation of asylum seekers generally improves results, sometimes by as much as 5X.
It could be easier for individuals who are free and authorized to work in Mexico to obtain counsel and prepare their cases than it is for individuals detained in substandard conditions in obscure locations in the U.S.
Freed of the intentionally coercive and demoralizing effects of DHS detention, more applicants will be willing to fully litigate their claims, including taking available administrative and judicial appeals.
As more cases reach the Courts of Appeals (primarily in the 5th & 9th Circuits) more “real” Article III Judges will “have their eyes opened” to the absolute travesty that passes for “justice” and “due process” in the Immigration Courts under Trump.
Shoddily reasoned “precedents” from the BIA and the AG are already failing in the Article III Courts on a regular basis. Three “bit the dust” just within the last week. Expect this trend to accelerate.
The 5th and 9th Circuits will find their dockets overwhelmed with Not Quite Ready For Prime Time (“NQRFPT”) cases “dumped” on them by DOJ and EOIR and are likely to react accordingly.
The last massive assault on Due Process in Immigration Court by the DOJ under Ashcroft basically caused a “mini-rebellion” in the Article III Courts. There were numerous “remands for redos” and Circuit Court rulings harshly reversing and publicly criticizing overly restrictive treatment of asylum cases by Immigration Judges and the BIA, particularly in the area of credibility determinations. Expect the Circuit Courts to “reverse and revise” many of the current anti-asylum precedents from the BIA and the AG.
With almost universal representation, a level playing field supervised by Article III Courts, and all Immigration Judges actually forced to fairly apply the generous standards for asylum enunciated by the Supremes in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, and by the BIA in the (oft cited but seldom actually applied) Matter of Mogharrabi, I wouldn’t be surprised to see grant rates for Northern Triangle applicants exceed 50% (where most experts believe they belong).
Overall, there’s a respectable chance that the end result of this ill-conceived policy will be an exposure of the rampant fraud, intellectual dishonesty, and disregard for the true rule of law in this Administration’s treatment of bona fide asylum seekers.
Inevitably, however, asylum seekers will continue to die in Mexico while awaiting hearings. DHS politicos probably will find themselves on a regular basis before enraged House Committees attempting to justify their deadly, cruel, and incompetent policies. This will be a “culture shock” for those used to the “hear no evil, see no evil” attitude of the GOP House.
The Administration appears to have “designed” another of their “built to fail” systems. If they shift the necessary Immigration Judges to the border, the 1.1 million backlog elsewhere will continue to mushroom. If they work on the backlog, the “border waiting line” will grow, causing extreme pressure from the Mexican Government, Congress, and perhaps the Article III Courts. Every death of an asylum seeker (there were three just within the last week or so) will be laid at DHS’s feet.

NOTE TO THE NDPA:

The outstanding historical analysis by Judge Emmet Sullivan in Grace v. Whitaker illustrates what we already know: For years, the Executive Branch through EOIR has been intentionally applying “unduly restrictive standards” to asylum seekers to artificially reduce the number of grants in violation of both the Refugee Act of 1980 and our international obligations. This disingenuous treatment has particularly targeted bona fide asylum seekers from the Northern Triangle, those asserting claims based on a “particular social group,” unrepresented individuals, women, and children.

Worse yet, this totally cynical and disingenuous Administration is using the intentionally and unlawfully “skewed system” and “illegal denials” as well as just downright fabricated statistics and knowingly false narratives to paint a bogus picture of asylum seekers and their lawyers as the “abusers” and the Government as the “defenders of the rule of law.” What poppycock, when we all know the exact opposite is the real truth! Only courageous (mostly pro bono) lawyers and some conscientious judges at both the Immigration Court and Article III levels are standing up for the real rule of law against a scofflaw Administration and its outrageous plan to send genuine refugees back into harm’s way.

Nowhere in the racially charged xenophobic actions and rhetoric of Trump, Sessions, and Whitaker, nor in the intentionally derogatory and demonstrably dishonest rhetoric of Nielsen, nor in the crabbed, intentionally overly restrictive interpretations of asylum law by today’s BIA is there even a hint of the generous humanitarian letter and spirit of the Refugee Act of 1980 and the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees or the “non-narrow” interpretation of “particular social group” so well described and documented by Judge Sullivan. On the contrary, we can well imagine folks like this gleefully and self-righteously pushing the refugee vessel St. Louis out to sea or happily slamming the door in the face of desperate Jewish refugees from Europe who would later die in the Holocaust.

Now is the time to force the Article III Courts and Congress to confront this Administration’s daily violations of law and human rights. We can develop favorable case precedents in the Article III Courts, block unethical and intentionally illegal interference by the Attorney General with Due Process in Immigration Court, and advocate changes in the law and procedures that will finally require the Executive Branch and the Immigration Courts to live up to the abandoned but still valid promise of “becoming the world’s best tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and Due Process for all.” And, the “all” certainly includes the most vulnerable among us: refugees claiming asylum!

In the end, through a combination of the ballot box, Congress, the Article III Courts, and informed public opinion we will be able to thwart the rancid White Nationalist immigration agenda of this Administration and return honest, reasonable Government that works within the Constitution and governs in the overall best interests of our country to the United States.

Thanks for all you do! Keep fighting the “good fight!”

Go for it!

Due Process Forever! Scofflaw Administration Never!

PWS

12-21-18

EOIR CLIMBS ON TRUMP’S WHITE NATIONALIST DEPORTATION EXPRESS BY UNFAIRLY TARGETING REFUGEE FAMILIES — Read The Latest Analysis From Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase!

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2018/12/13/eoirs-creates-more-obstacles-for-families

Dec 13 EOIR’s Creates More Obstacles for Families

In a November 16 memo to immigration judges, EOIR’s Director, James McHenry, announced that after a nearly two-year reprieve, “Family Unit” cases are again being prioritized, under conditions designed to speed them through the immigration court system, ready or not, with or without representation, due process be damned.

“Family Unit” is a term created by the Department of Homeland Security as an “apprehension classification” which consists of an adult noncitizen parent or legal guardian, accompanied by his or her own juvenile noncitizen child. Of course, many of the highly-publicized cases of children separated from their parents at the border fall within this category.

Under the new procedures, all Family Unit (or in EOIR parlance, “FAMU”) cases must be completed within 365 days of the commencement of removal proceedings. Just as a point of comparison, many immigration judges in New York are presently setting non FAMU cases for hearings in late 2021. So EOIR wants FAMU cases to be completed in a third of the time of other cases.

In order to accomplish this, such cases (at least in the New York court) are to be scheduled for their first Master Calendar hearing before an immigration judge within 30 days of the court’s receipt of the charging document that commences proceedings. The parent and child are then to be given only one continuance of 40 to 45 days in order to try to obtain counsel. After that, the cases are to be set for a final merits hearing another five to six months out. That only adds up to about 8 months, I imagine to allow another four month “safety zone” just in case. Immigration judges are further directed to make sure they complete the cases in 365 days, and to get them done as soon as possible.

To further increase the odds of success, the FAMU cases are being assigned to brand new immigration judges, for the following reasons. First, the new judges are mostly former ICE prosecutors. Secondly, the new judges are on probation for two years, making them more likely to obey rules in a desire to keep their jobs. The new judges have also just been through training at which they were instructed by the Attorney General that sympathy has no place in their work, that those fleeing domestic violence and gang violence are undeserving of asylum, and that it is more important for them to be efficient than fair.

Judges are expected to bump non-FAMU cases if necessary to meet the completion goals. In other words, those who have patiently waited three years or longer for their day in court, and who have their evidence and witnesses lined up in the hopes of finally obtaining legal status in this country, now run the risk of having their hearings bumped for who knows how much longer in order to speed through the case of a parent and child who likely need more time to obtain counsel and prepare their claims.

I have checked with legal service providers in New York City, and have been told that the 40 to 45 days being provided by EOIR is generally not a sufficient amount of time for the respondents in such cases to retain counsel. Outside of large cities like New York, this time frame is even less realistic, due to the fewer number of NGOs receiving funding to do this type of work.

The new policy therefore lessens the likelihood that families will be able to be represented in their removal proceedings. Unfortunately, recent changes in the law achieved through the certification of cases by the Attorney General (which has continued even under interim AG Whitaker) has made the need for legal representation far more important. It is a daunting task for an unrepresented victim of domestic violence to clearly state a detailed particular social group, defined by an immutable characteristic (but not by the feared harm), and establishing the group’s particularity and social distinction in society; to then establish that the persecutor was motivated by her membership in such group; and then demonstrate both that the government was unwilling or unable to protect her and that she could not reasonably relocate within her country

As I noted in an earlier blog post, https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2018/1/26/0sg8ru1tl0gz4becqimcrtt4ns8yjz the UNHCR Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status states at paragraph 28 that “a person is a refugee within the meaning of the 1951 Convention as soon as he fulfills the criteria contained in the definition…Recognition of his refugee status does not therefore make him a refugee but declares him to be one. He does not become a refugee because of recognition, but is recognized because he is a refugee.” So the above requirements for particular social group claims are essentially an obstacle course that someone who is already a refugee must negotiate in order to have our government grant them the legal status to which they are entitled. The recent AG decisions have increased the difficulty of the course, and the new FAMU directive will mean that these most vulnerable refugees will have to negotiate the course at breakneck speed, and likely without the assistance of counsel. It bears noting that whatever particular social group definition the asylum-seeker offers the judge is crucial; if it contains one word too many or too few, pursuant to a recent BIA precedent decision, it cannot be corrected on appeal, even if by that stage the applicant has managed to procure representation.

Through these methods, the present administration is playing a game which will result in fewer grants of asylum. The lower grant rate will then allow the administration to claim that those seeking refuge at our southern border are not really refugees, which in turn will allow them to create even greater obstacles, which will in turn lead to even fewer asylum grants.

Tragically, the stakes in this game are high. A recent Washington Post article https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/local/asylum-deported-ms-13-honduras/?fbclid=IwAR1vLkNYocAUDPMpfHYgCGKq9jgudMgoTZE5_akRomir-Xk-u4US3crFX88&utm_term=.b7a523fb913e reported on an asylum-applicant who, after being deported to Honduras, was killed by MS-13, just as he had predicted during his hearing in immigration court. The same article stated that Columbia University’s Global Migration Project has tracked more than 60 deportees who were harmed or killed upon return to their countries. As the process is sped up, the number of mistakes leading to wrongful deportations will only increase.

As a former immigration judge, I can say with authority that it takes time and effort to reach the correct result in these cases; furthermore, the accuracy of asylum decisions greatly increases with the involvement of those with knowledge of the legal requirements. In its speed over accuracy approach, and its gaming of the system to deny more asylum claims for its own political motives, the present administration is telling refugee families that only the first and last letters of “FAMU” apply to them.

Copyright 2018 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.

JEFF CHASE

Dec 8 Interpreting Pereira: A Hint of Things to Come?

UPI ANALYSIS OF LATEST EOIR ASYLUM STATS ACTUALLY SHOWS THAT MANY FROM NORTHERN TRIANGLE (PARTICULARLY EL SALVADOR) HAVE VALID CLAIMS FOR PROTECTION, BUT SESSIONS’S POLITICAL ACTIONS AND CONTROL OVER U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGES ARTIFICIALLY FORCED THE GRANT RATE DOWN! – It’s Time For An Independent “Article I” U.S. Immigration Court & A Level, Apolitical Playing Field For Asylum Applicants!

https://apple.news/AHg-L3Cy-SEG6Gi9SR1rk_w

Patrick Timmons reports for UPI:

Asylum denials jump; immigration judges’ discretion attacked

MEXICO CITY, Dec. 10 (UPI) — New data about the number of asylum applications granted by the United States this year show how the Trump administration has dramatically narrowed asylum granted to people fleeing persecution in their home countries — though significantly more Central Americans have been admitted over the past decade.

“Asylum acceptance rates are at a 20-year low, and the recent TRAC data confirms that,” said Sarah Pierce, policy analyst for the non-partisan and independent Migration Policy Institute, referring to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

For fiscal 2018, TRAC’s statistics show immigration judges denied 65 percent of asylum claims — up from 42 percent in 2017. There were 42,224 asylum cases decided in 2018, an 89 percent increase over the total number of cases decided in 2016.

Due to a backlog in the immigration system, some asylum seekers have been able to live in the United States for three years to five years while their claims are adjudicated, a situation the administration has tried to address by changing some rules and practices.

“This administration is trying to address people who are trying to take advantage of the system. But unfortunately this administration’s approach tends to punish asylum seekers rather than just specifically looking at those individuals who are taking advantage of the system,” Pierce said.

The administration’s broad approach to all asylum seekers has had the effect of narrowing asylum by increasing immigration judges’ workloads by setting quotas, ending discretionary decision making and rewriting immigration rules to deny relief to asylum seekers fleeing domestic and gang violence.

Immigration experts told UPI the administration’s changes to how immigration judges work has spiked a general increase in asylum denials.

Northern Triangle

There has been an increased flow of asylum seekers from Central American countries, particularly those from the Northern Triangle countries of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

And the fact that more of them are getting approved shows they are “sincere humanitarian migrants,” Pierce said.

A new TRAC tool shows Central Americans now fare better than in previous years. Salvadorans receive asylum in rates higher than Guatemalans or Hondurans. In 2004, Salvadorans’ asylum approval rate was 6 percent. In 2018, it rose to 23 percent. Guatemala’s grant rate in 2018 was 18 percent, the lowest of three countries, with Honduras at 20 percent.

Pierce said that changes in immigration law under the Obama administration help account for significant changes in asylum approval rates for people fleeing the Northern Triangle. Immigration judges over the past decade were more accepting of domestic and gang violence as grounds for asylum, with successes helping to develop case law.

The rise in asylum for Salvadorans has to do with direct violent threats, rather than domestic violence, which is a common claim among Guatemalan asylum seekers, or gang violence, common among Hondurans.

“The circumstantial evidence suggests El Salvador tends to have the most direct violent threats,” said Everard Meade said, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego.

Data comparing the Northern Triangle countries’ asylum seekers’ claims is hard to come by. However, Meade said in 2014 the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees issued its report, “Children on the Run,” about unaccompanied Central American minors highlighting direct violence in El Salvador as a reason for flight. UNHCR interviewed almost 400 children with 66 percent of El Salvadorans reporting flight for threat of direct violence Guatemalans reported 20 percent, Hondurans at 44 percent.

But Central Americans’ asylum approvals might be a blip. Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions this year removed domestic violence and gang violence as grounds for asylum in immigration court proceedings.

“These private acts of violence claims are typically the ones we are seeing from the Northern Triangle,” Pierce said, “including El Salvador.”

Discretionary decision-making

The general picture, however, is that more people are failing to win asylum than ever before because the Trump administration has changed how judges work.

“The asylum decisions and denial data for fiscal year 2018 is really about discretionary relief that used to be available under [President Barack] Obama but is not available under [President Donald] Trump anymore,” Meade said.

Prior to Trump-Sessions, immigration judges used to employ a form of discretionary relief called administrative closure. This was a form of temporary protection against deportation that did not grant any permanent immigration status, unlike asylum, which is a pathway to citizenship.

“Immigration judges had people coming before them who had really compelling stories but those stories did not necessarily cleave close enough to the asylum standard to grant them asylum. But the judges really felt they did not want to return them to dangerous situations, either. They also felt they were people who were credible, who had told the truth, and so they were administratively closing their cases,” Meade said.

The practice of administrative closure ended this year with a Sessions memorandum.

“Administrative closure was a widespread practice and that is exactly what explains how the denial rate can go up so dramatically without the grant rate going down. Actually, the grant rate has gone up. In defense of the institutions, the modest increase in the grant rates suggest people have some really good asylum claims,” Meade said.

The situation in El Paso

Carlos Spector, a veteran El Paso immigration lawyer, said that although the asylum rate has increased nationwide, there is little evidence of successful asylum claims in El Paso’s immigration court.

“This year, I have lost some asylum cases that had really compelling claims,” Spector said, adding that 98 percent of his clients are Mexican.

Mexicans generally do not fare well in immigration court. In 2018, 14.5 percent of Mexican asylum seekers received asylum. Part of the reason is that immigration judges were administratively closing cases, protecting from deportation but stopping short of permanent relief.

For 2018, the latest TRAC data reveal El Paso’s immigration judges reviewed 297 cases, granting asylum 47 times. In 2017, they reviewed 148 cases and granted asylum 12 times. These low asylum rates, some of the lowest in the nation, mean El Paso’s immigration judges have a reputation for enforcing law and order, Spector said.

“I’ve been tracking asylum cases of Mexican nationals for the past few years and it is more or less the same rate along the border from San Diego to Brownsville,” Spector said.

“Because we are on the border and these judges are political appointees and these judges do understand the government’s mandate of holding or guarding the border and they take that law enforcement approach,” Spector said, “the denials are much, much higher on the U.S.-Mexico border, and they always have been.”

TRAC compiled asylum approval and denial statistics for fiscal year 2018, the first full year of Trump’s presidency, based on Freedom Of Information Act requests to the Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review, the agency charged with adjudicating defensive asylum claims in immigration court.

Photoby Ariana Drehsler/UPI : Jose Hernández, 17, styles his hair at El Barretal shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, on Dec. 9, 2018.

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

Just as I have been saying all along! The Trump Administration’s claim that low asylum approval rates indicate the system is being “gamed” by applicants is a bogus cover up. Even taken at “face value,” a 20-25% chance of being granted asylum hardly shows a system being “gamed.” At most, it shows that Immigration Judges are applying a much more restrictive standard than Asylum Officers considering “credible fear” claims at the border. Far from being “gaming,” that would be consistent with (although not necessarily required by) an intentionally much more generous standard for getting a fair adjudication in a removal hearing (“passing credible fear”) than for actually achieving relief (“a favorable order from an Immigration Judge after a full merits hearing”).

But, what really appears to be going on here are artificially restrictive, politically inspired “tweaks” to asylum law and procedures specifically intended to disadvantage those in danger from the Northern Triangle. Additionally, inappropriate detention policies are intended to force many more applicants to proceed without lawyers or to abandon appeals — making it like “shooting fish in a barrel” for those Immigration Judges with a predilection to deny relief who are under great pressure to “produce” more final orders of removal. It also appears that a disturbing number of Immigration Judges along the Southern Border view themselves as agents of DHS and Administration enforcement policies, rather than as fair and impartial decision makers committed to giving asylum seekers the “benefit of the doubt” under the law.

This all adds up to what appears to me to be a significant “cover up” of politicized wrong-doing and a mass denial of Due Process orchestrated by the Administration through the Department of Justice.

Why are the Administration, DHS, and DOJ so afraid of giving asylum applicants fair access to lawyers, time to prepare and document their cases, and timely fair hearings before impartial quasi-judicial adjudicators whose sole focus is getting the right substantive result, rather than achieving some type of assembly line enforcement-related “production quotas?”

Why waste time on “gimmicks” — most of which eventually prove to be illegal, ineffective, or both — rather than concentrating on getting to the merits of these cases in a timely manner and “letting the chips fall where they may.”

Surely, among a largely artificially created 1.1 million case “backlog” there are hundreds of thousands of cases that could be “administratively closed” as an exercise of prosecutorial discretion to allow more recently arrived cases to be timely heard without increasing backlogs or creating further wasteful “Aimless Docket Reshuffling.”

Eventually, the “mask will be ripped off” what’s really happening in our U.S. Immigration Court system. When that happens, the results could be ugly and damaging to the reputations of those orchestrating and enabling what certainly appears to be a disgraceful and intentional miscarriage of justice!

PWS

12011-18

TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION “POLICIES” ARE BASED ON RACISM, CRUELTY, LIES, & KNOWINGLY FALSE NARRATIVES — THE GOP HAS SOMETIMES ENCOURAGED, & OTHER TIMES ENABLED, THESE OUTRAGES AGAINST HUMANITY & THE RULE OF LAW — Now Some Accountability For These Despicable Actions Are On the Horizon!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/11/28/the-true-depths-of-trumps-cruelty-are-about-to-be-exposed/

Greg Sargent writes for the WashPost:

The House GOP’s near-total abdication of any oversight role has done more than just shield President Trump on matters involving his finances and Russian collusion. It has also resulted in almost no serious scrutiny of the true depths of cruelty, inhumanity and bad-faith rationalization driving important aspects of Trump’s policyagenda — in particular, on his signature issue of immigration.

That’s about to change.

In an interview with me, the incoming chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee vowed that when Democrats take over in January, they will undertake thorough and wide-ranging scrutiny of the justifications behind — and executions of — the top items in Trump’s immigration agenda, from the family separations, to the thinly veiled Muslim ban, to the handling of the current turmoil involving migrants at the border.

“We will visit the border,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who is expected to chair the committee, which has jurisdiction over the Department of Homeland Security, told me. “We will hold hearings in committee on any and all aspects of DHS. … We will not back off of this issue.”

This oversight — which could result in calling for testimony from Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration agenda — will include scrutiny of the administration’s justifications for its policies. Importantly, Thompson tells me Democrats will seek to grill officials on what went into Trump’s public statements on various aspects of the issue, many of which are falsehoods.

On asylum seekers, for instance, Trump’s public rationale for his various efforts to restrict their ability to apply (which is their legal right), is based on lies about the criminal threat they supposedly pose and absurd exaggerations about the rates at which they don’t show up for hearings.

Migrant caravan crisis escalates with tear gas at border fence

U.S. authorities fired tear gas at members of a Central American migrant caravan who had rushed the fencing along the U.S. border with Mexico on Nov. 25. (Video: Drea Cornejo , Blair Guild/Photo: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters/The Washington Post)

To be clear, Trump has used these rationales to justify actual policies with real-world impact, such as the effort to cruelly restrict asylum-applications to only official points of entry. Trump has also threatened a total border shutdown. Hearings could reveal that the justifications are nonsense, and spotlight their true arbitrary and cruel nature (putting aside for now that their real motive is ethno-nationalism).

“All this innuendo we hear about criminals coming in the caravan, we just want to know, how did you validate this?” Thompson told me, adding that DHS officials would be called on in hearings to account for Trump’s claims. “Policy has to be backed up with evidence. So we will do rigorous oversight.”

This will also include a look at the recent tear-gassing of migrants, and the administration’s public statements about it and justifications, Thompson said. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has defended the fact that tear gas appears to have impacted children by claiming they were used as “human shields.”

The use of the military as a prop

Thompson said such scrutiny could dovetail with an examination of Trump’s use of the military at the border as campaign propaganda, though that might involve the House Armed Services Committee. “We have to get full disclosure in a public setting or a classified setting,” Thompson said. “Under no circumstances will we not get information.”

By the way: Even if you take some of Trump’s complaints about asylum seeking seriously — there are serious issues with backlogs that have real consequences — you should want this oversight. If done well, it could shed light on actual problems, such as the role of the administration’s deliberate delays in processing asylum seekers in creating the current border mess, to the real need to reorganize the bureaucracy to relieve backlogs and to pursue regional solutions to the root causes of migration surges.

The overall goal, Thompson said, will be this: “As a nation of immigrants ourselves, we want to make sure that our process of immigration that includes asylum-seekers is constitutional and represents American values.”

Family separations and the travel ban

Thompson told me the committee would also look at the process leading up to the travel ban, which proceeded despite the fact that two internal Homeland Security analyses undercut its national security rationale.

Democrats can demand that DHS officials justify that policy. “What did you use to come up with this travel ban? How did you select these countries?” Thompson said, previewing the inquiry and vowing subpoenas if necessary. “We will ask for any written documentation that went towards putting the ban in place, what individuals were consulted, and what the process consisted of.”

Thompson also said the run-up to the implementation of the family separation policy and its rationale would receive similar scrutiny, as well as at the conditions under which children have been held, such as the reported Texas “tent city.” “Somebody is going to have to come in and tell us, ‘Is this the most efficient way to manage the situation?’” Thompson said. But also: “How did we get here in the first place?”

What can Democrats do?

One big question: What will House Democrats do legislatively against such policies? Thompson told me the goal is to secure cooperation with DHS, but in cases where the agency continues policies that Democrats deem terribly misguided or serious abuses, they can try to legislate against them. That would run headlong into Trump and the GOP-controlled Senate, at which point one could see discussion of targeted defunding of certain policies, though whether that will happen or what that might look like remains to be seen.

“As far as I’m concerned, no option is off the table,” Thompson said. Some more moderate House Democrats who won tougher districts might balk at such a stance, but Thompson said: “Every committee has responsibilities, and we have to carry them out.”

The big story here is that Trump has relied on the outright dismissal of his own administration’s factual determinations to justify many policies, not just on immigration, but also with his drive to weaken efforts to combat global warming despite the big report warning of the dire threats it poses.

The administration will strenuously resist Democratic oversight, and I don’t want to overstate what it can accomplish. But House Democrats must at least try to get into the fight against Trump’s war on facts and empiricism wherever possible. And when it comes to the humanitarian crises Trump has wrought on immigration, this is particularly urgent.

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

Finally, some much-needed, long-overdue accountability, fact-finding, and truth about Trump’s intentionally cruel and usually lawless immigration policies and those sycophants and toadies who implement them and egg him on. No, it won’t necessarily change things overnight. But, having some “pushback” and setting the factual record straight for further action is an important first step. And, I hope that the absolutely avoidable politically created mess in the U.S. Immigration Courts, and their disgraceful abandonment of Due Process as their sole focus, is high on the oversight list!

PWS

12-02-18

INSIDE EOIR: LA TIMES: Former EOIR Attorney Reveals Truth Of Sessions’s Ugly, Corrupt, Mean-Spirited, Attack On Judicial Independence & The Totally Demoralizing Effect On Judges & Other Dedicated Civil Servants – No Wonder This “Captive Court System” Is A Dysfunctional Mess Being Crushed Under An Artificially Created “Sessions Legacy Backlog” of 1.1 Million+ Cases With Neither Sane Management Nor Any End In Sight!

https://apple.news/AnkcqK5ITQ76IwHCZq2FnBw

I resigned from the Department of Justice because of Trump’s campaign against immigration judges

Gianfranco De Girolamo November 26, 2018, 3:05 AM

One of the proudest days of my life was Dec. 16, 2015, when I became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

I shed tears of joy as I swore allegiance to the United States at the Los Angeles Convention Center, along with more than 3,000 other new Americans. I was celebrating a country that had welcomed me with open arms, treated me as one of its own and opened doors I hadn’t known existed. Just a few years before, in the remote village in southern Italy where I grew up, this would have been unimaginable.

Another of my proudest moments came just a year later, when I was awarded a coveted position in the U.S. Department of Justice. This happened in late November 2016, a few weeks after President Trump was elected.

Like many, I harbored reservations about Trump. But I did not waver in my enthusiasm for the job. In law school, l had learned about the role of civil servants as nonpolitical government employees who work across administrations — faithfully, loyally and diligently serving the United States under both Republicans and Democrats.

I was designated an attorney-advisor and assigned to the Los Angeles immigration court. There, I assisted immigration judges with legal research, weighed in on the strengths and weaknesses of parties’ arguments and often wrote the first drafts of judges’ opinions.

Soon enough, however, the work changed. In March 2018, James McHenry, the Justice Department official who oversees the immigration courts as head of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, announced a mandate imposing individual quotas on all the judges. Each judge would be required to decide 700 cases per year, he said.

With these new quotas, which went into effect on Oct. 1, immigration judges must now decide between three and four cases a day — while also reviewing dozens of motions daily and keeping up with all their administrative duties — or their jobs will be at risk.

The announcement of the quotas in March was the first in a series of demoralizing attacks on immigration judges this year. In May, Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, since fired by Trump, personally issued a decision that placed limits on the ability of immigration judges to use a practice known as administrative closure, which allows judges to put cases on indefinite hold, and which, in immigration cases, can be a tool for delaying deportation orders.

The Justice Department enforced the decision in July by stripping an immigration judge in Philadelphia of his authority in scores of cases for continuing to use administrative closure.

All this was in addition to a barrage of disparaging comments made directly by the president. In June, Trump tweeted that there is no reason to provide judges to immigrants. He also rejected calls to hire more immigration judges, saying that “we have to have a real border, not judges” and asking rhetorically, “Who are these people?”

The demoralizing effect on immigration judges was palpable. Morale was at an all-time low. I was new to civil service, but these judges, some of whom have served continuously since the Reagan administration, made clear that this was an unprecedented attack on the justice system.

Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute from L.A. Times Opinion »

I’ve long admired the independence and legitimacy that the judiciary enjoys in the United States, so I found the attacks on judges deeply disturbing and troubling. They reminded me of Trump’s Italian alter-ego, Silvio Berlusconi, who spent most of his tenure as Italy’s prime minister fighting off lawsuits by delegitimizing and attacking the judiciary, calling it “a cancer of democracy” and accusing judges of being communist.

I voiced my concerns to my supervisors and directly to Director McHenry in a letter. Seeing no opportunity to make a positive difference and unwilling to continue to lend credence to this compromised system, I submitted my resignation in July, explaining my reasons in a letter.

This was not how I wanted to end my career in government. I had hoped to serve this country for the long haul. But I couldn’t stand by, or be complicit in, a mean-spirited and unscrupulous campaign to undermine the everyday work of the Justice Department and the judges who serve in our immigration courts — a campaign that hurts many of my fellow immigrants in the process.

Gianfranco De Girolamo was an attorney at the Department of Justice from 2017 to 2018.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook

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

Thanks for speaking out Gianfranco! I published an earlier, at that time “anonymous,” letter from Gianfranco at the time of his resignation. I’m sure there are many others at EOIR who feel the same way. But, they are “gagged” by the DOJ — threatened with job loss if they “tell the truth” about the ongoing legal farce and parody of justice within our Immigration Courts.

It’s a “closed system” at war with the public it serves, the dedicated attorneys who represent migrants, the essential NGOs who are propping up what’s left of justice in this system, and the very civil servants who are supposed to be carrying out the courts’ mission. What a horrible way to “(not) run the railroad.”

Someday, historians will dig out the whole truth about the “Sessions Era” at the DOJ and his perversion of justice in the U.S. Immigration Courts. I’m sure it will be even worse than we can imagine. But, for now, thanks to Gianfranco for shedding at least some light on one of the darkest and most dysfunctional corners of our Government!

PWS

11-16-18

WITH SESSIONS GONE, EOIR DIRECTOR McHENRY TAKES POINT IN ALL OUT ATTACK ON DUE PROCESS, ASYLUM SEEKERS, IMMIGRATION JUDGES, AND REALITY!

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.justice.gov_eoir_page_file_1112581_download&d=DwMFAw&c=euGZstcaTDllvimEN8b7jXrwqOf-v5A_CdpgnVfiiMM&r=Wq374DTv_PXfIom65XBqoA&m=vBNdG88wJjdA06Fq_GLujzYMJw5il7nmwzf2YZX_oFg&s=S0-8lFsHprZ1S04dwj_YVFuz8G6q_w-dZPmwquinIzI&e=

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

Read the memo at the above link.

In his last out of touch missive, McHenry said that one year was a “reasonable period” for adjudicating an asylum application in accordance with Due Process. Now it’s six months or less!
The “statutory limit” in section 208 never had any basis in fact. It was a number pulled out of thin air by Congress and has never been achievable.
In any event, Congress’s and EOIR’s attempt to place and enforce statutory limits on adjudication can never contravene Due Process.
Heck, when I was in Arlington, most “affirmative” asylum cases were more than six months from filing before they even got on my docket at Master Calendar.
For “defensive” filings (those asylum applications filed initially with the Immigration Court), there is no way that with 1.1 million cases already on the docket and scheduled, new cases could be fairly completed within six months without massive, massive “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” that will jack up the backlog even further.
Given the “docket overload” in the Immigration Courts, there simply aren’t enough qualified attorneys (particularly pro bono attorneys) available to represent asylum applicants with six months or less to prepare. Many pro bono organizations can’t even schedule “intake interviews” within six months!
In the Sessions mold, McHenry, who has never to my knowledge adjudicated an asylum application in his life, is attempting to “duress” judges into choosing between upholding Due Process and their oaths of office and following unreasonable agency directives aimed exclusively at screwing asylum seekers and promoting more denials.
The cases are more complex than ever. If anything, the DOJ should be promulgating a “blanket exemption” from the six month period given the current overall circumstances.
The obtuse “two standard” interpretation is completely new; although the statute has been in effect for approximately two decades, nobody has ever interpreted that way before!
This is an obvious, heavy handed attempt by non-judicial officials at EOIR and DOJ to interfere with and direct the independent decision making responsibilities of the Immigration Judges.
This system is heading down the tubes! It’s a farce! If the Article IIIs don’t put an end to it, it will go down as one of the most disgraceful mockeries of our Constitution and the rule of law since the days of Jim Crow! Not to mention a total and intentional perversion of international protection standards.

PWS

11-19-18

EYORE FIDDLES WITH DOCKET AS ROME BURNS – Latest Bureaucratic Gobbledygook From Falls Church Shows Why EOIR Must Be Abolished & Replaced By An Independent Court, Run By Sitting Judges, With Professional, Apolitical Administration!

https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1112036/download

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

So, let’s see what’s really going on here, beneath all of the “Tower bureaucratese.”

Bureaucrats at Falls Church “Headquarters,” who are beholden to DOJ politicos, are setting the local Immigration Court docket priorities to the exclusion of sitting Immigration Judges, Respondents’ Counsel, NGOs and the members of the public who actually use the system;
But one party, the DHS, is effectively being given unilateral authority to establish the Immigration Courts’ “docket priorities;”
DHS also unilaterally decides which cases will be designated as “family units” and therefore “prioritized;”
EOIR notes that the prioritization of certain “aliens with children” cases between 2014 and 2017, also at the behest of DHS, was a MASSIVE failure that actually decreased productivity and significantly accelerated the backlog (what I refer to as “Aimless Docket Reshuffling”);
Nevertheless, EOIR inexplicably decides to “double down” on a known failure just because their “partners” (Sessions’s term) at DHS essentially have ordered them to do so;
Why “Baltimore, but not Arlington;” “San Francisco, but not San Diego,” “Denver, but not Dallas,” etc.?
“EOIR remains committed to the timely completion of all cases consistent with due process” — Really?
- Lead by enforcement guru Jeff Sessions and DHS, the Trump Administration has intentionally “artificially jacked” the “backlog” to over 1.1 million cases;
- If the approximately 350 currently authorized Immigration Judges were all on board and each met their 700 case “quota,” the Immigration Court could complete only about 250,000 cases per year;
- If no additional cases were filed, and none of the judges left, the pending cases wouldn’t be completed until the latter half of 2023;
- But of course, under the Trump Administration’s mismanaged and totally undisciplined enforcement program, new cases will be piled into the system without regard to its capacity and judges will continue to burn out and leave;
- So, effectively, there is no cogent program for getting the backlog under control — ever;
What’s missing from this bureaucratic never-never land is any sense of fairness, competence, or meaningful participation by those most affected by the backlogs and “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and who possess the most expertise at arranging dockets for fairness and efficiency: sitting Immigration Judges, Respondent’s Counsel, NGOs, and respondents themselves (along, of course, with the ICE Chief Counsel unencumbered by the “DHS Enforcement Wackos“);
Also glaringly absent: any requirement that the DHS justify their requests to prioritize the dockets or exercise any responsible “prosecutorial discretion” to take “lower priority ” cases off the dockets;
A “no-brainer” in a functioning independent court system would be requiring DHS to remove one (or more) “low priority” cases for each case they wish the court to “prioritize” or otherwise move ahead of other, older pending cases.

The rapidly failing and unfair system needs aggressive oversight and monitoring — from Congress (read the House) and the Article III Courts!

Ultimately, it will continue its “death spiral” until both the EOIR bureaucracy and the Administration politicos who abuse it are permanently removed from the equation and an independent court, run by sitting judges with assistance from other court management professionals with meaningful public input is established. A strong, independent, efficient, unbiased U.S. Immigration Court will also help ICE carry out its law enforcement mission in a professional, legal, non-discriminatory, de-politicized, and humane manner, perhaps bringing enough rationality to the system to save that beleaguered agency from its critics.

PWS

11-18-18

“A new and dark era as Immigration Judges,” Says Judge A. Ashley Tabaddor, NAIJ President!

Dear Colleagues,

October 1^st marked a new and dark era as Immigration Judges. The Agency is now subjecting us to quotas and deadlines as part of our individual performance evaluations, something that is inherently in conflict with our oath of office(which is the very reason why Congress explicitly excluded ANY individual performance measures for Administrative Law Judges). NAIJ has largely concluded the bargaining with the Agency on “impact and implementation” of these quotas and deadlines and continues to express (to the Agency and the public) our strenuous disagreement with the concept of quotas and deadlines as a matter of principle. However, to the extent that we remain a part of the Department of Justice and are treated as DOJ attorneys (in spite of being judges in our duties and responsibilities), our legal recourse of action is confined to labor laws, which are designed for traditional labor/management relationships and do not deal with issues of judicial independence. Thus, unless and until the Agency takes an adverse action against a particular judge (or Congress steps in with the durable solution of removing the Immigration Court from the Justice Department), we cannot file any grievance or complaints (including the suggestion of several of our judges to file for intentional infliction of emotional distress, which appears to be prohibited by the Federal Torts Claims Act). Thus, we have spent many hours in the past months in bargaining and informal discussions to minimize the impact of this ill-conceived program. We have been able to help craft more favorable interpretations of what will satisfy the metrics, improved the content and design of the Dashboard to make it more user friendly, and been able to point out shortcomings and flaws which we still seek to improve or eliminate. The MOU you will see shortly has been negotiated as an adjunct to Article 22 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement which provides protections for judges in the performance evaluation process. We entered into the MOU in the hopes of improving the position of judges by clarifying that the quotas and deadlines do not stand alone, but must be read in conjunction with specific consideration of each judge’s docket and consistent with Article 22.3.h. We expect the MOU will help provide judges with a measure of protection and help reconcile the quotas and deadlines with the individual demands of our individual dockets and courts. Additionally, the MOU provides for a continuing forum for the NAIJ to raise concerns with the Agency about the operation of the Dashboard or application of performance measures, both on a general level and on behalf of any individual judge. So your continued feedback to NAIJ is a critical part of this process.

Meanwhile I cannot emphasize enough that your oath of office should be your guiding principle throughout these challenging times. As I have said many times before, so long as you put in an honest day’s work and stay true to your oath of office, we will stand by you 100% of the time. “Due process” is the beginning and the end of the conversation. Period. Full Stop.

Thank you for those of you who have been sharing with us your experiences with the Dashboard and your ACIJs regarding the CBA Article 22.3.h. Please keep them coming as we want to make sure that any problematic patterns or practices of the Agency are noted and resolved early.

We also understand that many of you are seeking guidance on how to best navigate this new system. We do have some suggestions for you which we plan to share in our upcoming Q&A sessions on the implementation of the Quotas and Deadlines. I have included a couple of attachments that may also be of help to you in identifying the data entry error or track the 22.3.h factors that your ACIJs should be considering. So please mark your calendars, and plan on joining us for at least one of the sessions.

Wednesday, October 10^th 8:00 a.m. PT, 9:00 a.m. MT, 10:00 a.m. CT, 11:00 a.m. ET

Wednesday, October 10^th 9:00 a.m. PT, 10:00 a.m. MT, 11:00 a.m. CT, 12:00 p.m. ET

Wednesday, October 10^th, 10:00 a.m. PT, 11:00 a.m. MT, noon CT, 1:00 p.m. ET

Thursday, October 11^th, 11:00 a.m. PT, noon MT, 1:00 p.m. CT, 2:00 p.m. ET

Thursday, October 11^th, noon PT, 1:00 p.m. MT, 2:00 p.m. CT, 3:00 p.m. ET

The call-in information for each of the scheduled sessions is as follows: (605) 475-4001 & passcode: 765103#

If you have any questions in advance that you would like for us to address during a meeting, feel free to forward it to my attention.

Thank you for all of your hard work.

Ashley

The Honorable A. Ashley Tabaddor, President

National Association of Immigration Judges

606 S. Olive St., 15^th floor

www.naij-usa.org

213-534-4491 (direct office line)

BEST E-MAIL: ashleytabaddor@gmail.com

DISCLAIMER: The author is the President of the National Association of Immigration Judges. The views expressed here do not necessarily represent the official position of the United States Department of Justice, the Attorney General, or the Executive Office for Immigration Review. The views represent the author’s personal opinions, which were formed after extensive consultation with the membership of NAIJ.

P.S. Please let your fellow NAIJ members know about these call-in session. Should you hear of any NAIJ member who may not have received this email, please let me knowasap and feel free to forward to them as well. Thank you.

From: Ortiz-Ang, Susana (EOIR)
Sent: Monday, October 01, 2018 3:07 PM
To: All of Judges (EOIR) <All_of_Judges@EOIR.USDOJ.GOV>
Cc: Keller, Mary Beth (EOIR) <MaryBeth.Keller@EOIR.USDOJ.GOV>; Wilson, Donna L. (EOIR) <Donna.Wilson@EOIR.USDOJ.GOV>
Subject: New Performance Measures (On Behalf of Mary Beth Keller, Chief Immigration Judge)

Judges,

Please see the below and attached.

Today, the new performance measures, as incorporated in Element 3 of your Performance Work Plan, become effective. The new Element 3 is attached to this e-mail and will be appended to each of your PWPs. The implementation of these new performance measures is part of a larger effort to make changes across the Agency to better enable us to meet our mission, to fairly and expeditiously adjudicate immigration cases. You are and always have been a dedicated and professional corps, with the competence and integrity to render decisions that are both “timely and impartial,” as required by the regulations. Historically, IJs have been held accountable in performance Element 3 to make timely rulings and decisions as well as to manage calendars efficiently. These measures simply define these goals more specifically in the present day.

I wanted to emphasize a few important points that you also may have heard from your ACIJ during your court meetings:

-Decisions should not be made on individual matters based solely on the performance measures. We remain committed to ensuring due process in each case.

– I hope that each of you has taken an opportunity to review the IJ Performance Data Dashboard (“Dashboard”), which is linked to the OCIJ intranet page under “Quick Links.” Please keep in mind that the Dashboard is not your performance rating. It displays data from CASE as it relates to your progress towards meeting the established goals and benchmarks in Element 3 of the PWP. The new measures apply to your performance for the second year of this cycle, from Oct. 1, 2018 to September 30, 2019. Your overall performance rating will be determined at the end of the two-year rating cycle (ending September 30, 2019), considering your performance in all three elements of the PWP.

– The Dashboard is one day behind. Therefore today it shows data as of September 30, 2018. Tomorrow, it will “zero out,” and show data as of October 1. As of tomorrow, only actions you take from October 1 forward should appear on the Dashboard.

– In addition to the Definitions document that I circulated on September 10 (and attached again here), with the input of NAIJ, we have developed a Frequently Asked Questions (“FAQ”) document, which I have attached here as well. We continue to tweak the data captured in the Dashboard to ensure that it accurately reflects the Definitions document and the FAQ document. We encourage you to bring data issues to the attention of your ACIJ.

– Please carefully review not only the new PWP Element 3, but also Article 22 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the Agency and NAIJ. In particular, in Article 22.3.h., the Agency has agreed to take into account a number of factors that may affect an IJ’s ability to meet the performance standards, including factors not in control of the IJ.

– We have concluded our discussions with NAIJ, and in the near future, we will publish on the intranet the Memorandum of Understanding that both parties agreed to at the conclusion of bargaining. Please review this document carefully when it becomes available.

– We welcome your input throughout the year. We want to hear about the circumstances you feel are hindering your efforts to reach the goals and benchmarks. We also want to hear your suggestions for making the courts and our processes more efficient, and more generally how the courts can better meet our mission.

– If there is something systemic or frequently recurring that you believe is interfering with your ability to meet the measures, please raise your concern with your ACIJ.

– Please be patient, especially during the rollout and at the end of the first quarter, when numbers are likely to be low due to holidays and leave.

Thank you.

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

So, Chief Immigration Judge Marybeth Keller says decisions shouldn’t be made based “solely on the performance measures.” In other words, performance measures can be a basis for decisions so long as the IJ doesn’t identify them as the “sole” basis.

There would be no need for “performance measures” at all unless those imposing them intended that they influence or control results. What kind of “performance measure” isn’t geared at influencing or shaping the “end product” of the “performance.” Or, perhaps the theory of DOJ/EOIR management is that IJs as a group are a bunch of lazy work shirkers who won’t put in a full day’s effort unless watched and threatened at all times with sophomoric “big brother type performance dashboards.”

Maybe that is the purpose of the “IJ Performance Data Dashboard.” This “Dashboard” is a remarkable achievement for an agency that still hasn’t been able to roll out a finalized version of an e-filing system. Clearly it’s a matter of “priorities;” fair adjudication and service to the public obviously aren’t among them!

The purpose of the Dashboard is appparently to insure that the stress levels build and that “judges” remain focused on achieving their “performance goals” (and hence keeping their jobs) rather than on the merits or justice in a particular case. Indeed, in a “real” court system judges would be encouraged to focus solely on providing fair and impartial adjudications in accordance with Due Process and the technology would be devoted exclusively to that end. “Production data,” while perhaps interesting from an intellectual or self-evaluation standpoint, actually has little or nothing to do with justice in a particular case.

Everyone who loses a case in this amazingly depressing “kangaroo court” system should file a petition for review citing the inherent Due Process flaw in having a “judge” who can’t possibly function as an “impartial” adjudicator as required both by the Constitution and by DOJ regulations. Maybe at some point the Article IIIs will fully understand the judicial farce in which they are complicit and act accordingly.

PWS

10-03-18

“OUR GANG” OF RETIRED US IMMIGRATION JUDGES CONDEMNS SESSIONS’S DESTRUCTION OF DUE PROCESS IN US IMMIGRATION COURTS – Calls On US Chief Immigration Judge Marybeth Keller & Her Colleagues To Stand Up To Sessions & Enforce Due Process Over Mindless “Haste Makes Waste” Quotas!

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/outsidenews/posts/statement-of-former-immigration-judges-and-bia-members-opposing-ij-quotas-oct-1-2018

Oct 1 Statement of Former Immigration Judges and BIA Members Opposing IJ Quotas

As former Immigration Judges and BIA Members, we join our former colleagues in the NAIJ in decrying the imposition of much-criticized performance quotas on sitting Immigration Judges. Experience has demonstrated that it is futile to protest to the present Attorney General and his appointed EOIR Director, who have repeatedly demonstrated a callous disregard for due process, fundamental fairness, or judicial independence in the immigration courts. Jeff Sessions has repeatedly demonstrated his personal bias against both immigrants and judges. With the help of his EOIR Director, James McHenry, Sessions has taken a series of steps designed to strip the judges that he controls of all of the independence and powers that distinguish them as judges, and thus turn them into assembly-line workers. And because of Sessions’s disdain for immigrants, in his mind, those assembly lines should be issuing deportation orders, at faster speeds and in larger numbers. Never before, in our experience, has EOIR so directly and strongly undermined the decisional independence of Immigration Judges.

We therefore appeal at present to the leadership of the Office of the Chief Immigration Judge. Holding the title of “judges” themselves, the Chief, Deputy Chief, and Assistant Chief Immigration Judges are entrusted to protect the integrity of the Immigration Courts and the rights and independence of the Immigration Judges they oversee. At present, the OCIJ leadership has completely abandoned these responsibilities, and have instead become complicit with those seeking to undermine the system they are charged to protect. Now more than ever, our country needs leadership within EOIR with the courage and integrity to stand up for what is right. Courage, integrity, and impartiality from political considerations are hallmarks of good judges. It is time for EOIR’s leadership to live up to the trust placed in them and begin to display such characteristics.

Likewise, individual judges must continue to be guided by the need to do what is just and right, and not what is expedient. We have faith that if forced to choose between meeting randomly imposed quotas and doing justice, those on the bench will choose the latter.

We further call for Congress to take the long overdue but critically needed action of making immigration judges part of an independent, Article I court that is outside of the Executive Branch and free from abuse or pressure by politically-appointed officials.

Lastly, we call on the public to observe and insist on accountability for those who abuse the public trust placed in them to dispense justice to those most vulnerable members of our society.

Hon. Steven Abrams

Hon. Sarah M. Burr

Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase

Hon. George T. Chew

Hon. Bruce J. Einhorn

Hon. Cecelia Espenoza

Hon. Noel Ferris

Hon. John F. Gossart, Jr.

Hon. Rebecca Jamil

Hon. William P. Joyce

Hon. Edward Kandler

Hon. Carol A. King

Hon. Elizabeth A. Lamb

Hon. Margaret McManus

Hon. Charles Pazar

Hon. George Proctor

Hon. Lory D. Rosenberg

Hon. Susan Roy

Hon. Paul W. Schmidt

Hon. Polly A. Webber

How do you uphold your oath of office to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” when the chief “enemy of the Constitution” is Attorney General Jeff Sessions, your so-called “boss?”

PWS

10-01-18

LA TO GET MORE US IMMIGRATION JUDGES: But, Head Of Judges’ Association Says Throwing Bodies At Broken, Politicized, Demoralized Court System Won’t Solve The Due Process Crisis!

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=8c9f4727-d315-41f8-bab7-12cef47a2f5d

Andrea Castillo reports for the LA Times:

Amid huge backlog, L.A. will get more immigration judges

Head of national jurist group says they’re ‘being used … as a political tool.’

By Andrea Castillo

Los Angeles has the nation’s second-largest immigration court backlog, with 29 judges handling 72,000 pending cases.

That’s including four judges who started within the last few months. An additional 10 were expected to be sworn in this week, according to Judge Ashley Tabaddor, who leads the National Assn. of Immigration Judges.

But she says that won’t fix the problem.

“We’re just transparently being used as an extension of the executive branch’s law-enforcement policies, and as a political tool,” she said.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions welcomed 44 new judges earlier this month, addressing them at a kickoff for their training with the Executive Office for Immigration Review. He said the administration’s goal is to double the number of judges active when President Trump took office.

“As you take on this critically important role, I hope that you will be imaginative and inventive in order to manage a high-volume caseload,” Sessions told them. “I do not apologize for expecting you to perform, at a high level, efficiently and effectively.”

There are 351 judges in about 60 courts around the country — up from 273 judges in 2016. These judges manage a backlog of nearly 750,000 cases,a figure that has grown from a low of less than 125,000 in 1999. Last year, Sessions introduced a “streamlined hiring plan” that cut the hiring timefor immigration judge candidates by more than half.

The EOIR has the funding for 484 judges by the end of the year, spokeswoman Kathryn Mattingly said.

Tabaddor said the impending quotas and production deadlines, which take effect next month, have caused severe anxiety among judges. Justice Department directives that were announced in April outlined a quota system tied to performance evaluations under which judges will be expected to complete 700 cases a year to receive a “satisfactory” rating.

Hiring more judges won’t be enough to alleviate the pressure they’re all under, Tabaddor said.

“It’s pitting the judges’ livelihood against their oath of office, which is to be impartial decision-makers,” she said, calling it an “assembly-line formula.”

Tabaddor said there also isn’t enough space for new judges, so some might not start right away. She described the downtown L.A. offices as cramped, with law clerks sharing offices or cubicles. And she said additional support staff members have yet to be hired.

andrea.castillo@latimes.com

Twitter: @andreamcastillo

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

Yup! As long as the Immigration Courts are under DOJ, and particularly under the rule of “Gonzo Apocalypto,” it will be an exercise in “throwing good money after bad.” As I’ve said before (perhaps in the LA Times?), what Sessions is doing is like “taking an assembly line that is producing defective cars and making it run faster so that it will produce even more defective cars.” More or less the definition of insanity, or at least “fraud, waste, and abuse” of Government resources. But, accountability went out the window as soon as Trump took over and the GOP controlled both the Executive and Congress.

For a glimpse of what Immigration Court will look like under the new “Gonzo Quotas,” check out this great video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnbNcQlzV-4

We need regime change!

PWS

09-26-18

INSIDE EOIR: How Sessions’s White Nationalist Anti-Due-Process Agenda Inspires Idiocy @ EOIR!

https://www.hoppocklawfirm.com/post-pereira-the-doj-chooses-harsh-ij-performance-metrics-over-compliance-with-supreme-court-mandate/

Post-Pereira, the DOJ Chooses Harsh IJ Performance Metrics Over Compliance With Supreme Court Mandate

by Matthew Hoppock | Sep 20, 2018 | Immigration, Immigration Practice | 1 comment

It now appears the Department of Justice has chosen not to comply with the Supreme Court’s decision in Pereira v. Sessions solely because doing so would conflict with the agency’s self-imposed deportation quotas it is placing on Immigration Judges, which go into effect October 1, 2018. The story unfolds in a series of e-mail messages obtained through FOIA and involve the interplay of two federal agencies tasked with separate responsibilities in the process of deciding whether to deport a person charged with being removable.

Much Ado About Scheduling Hearings

The basic issue raised by Pereirais that the immigration statute requires an immigration court charging document to list the date and time of the hearing. The Supreme Court said in Pereirathat a Notice to Appear (commonly known by its acronym: “NTA”) that doesn’t contain the date and time “is not a notice to appear” at all, which means arguably the proceedings were invalid and unlawful from the beginning.

Imagine having to go to traffic court even though the police officer wrote your ticket on a napkin, didn’t sign it, and it didn’t tell you when and where your court would be (or what you were being charged with). You or your attorney would march into court arguing this isn’t really a ticket, so why on earth am I even here? You would easily get the proceedings thrown out, because they were started improperly.

The difference here is that unlike traffic court, immigration court can result in lifetime expulsion from the United States, for individuals who may have a good reason to fear being harmed or killed if deported. And not showing up to court means an automatic order of removal.

Solving this problem would be simple. As the Supreme Court observed in Pereira:

As the Government concedes, ‘a scheduling system previously enabled DHS and the immigration court to coordinate in setting hearing dates in some cases.’ Given today’s advanced software capabilities, it is hard to imagine why DHS and immigration courts could not again work together to schedule hearings before sending notices to appear.

If the system already exists, why weren’t they already using it?

The problem results from the decision by Congress in 2003 to separate of INS into two separate agencies: (1) the immigration courts (under the umbrella of the Department of Justice; and (2) the Department of Homeland Security, which is the prosecutor in immigration court cases.

The system for scheduling hearings (called “Interactive Scheduling System” or “ISS”) is owned by the Department of Justice, so it has sole decision-making power on whether the DHS, a separate agency, can access it and schedule hearings on its own. The DOJ ended that access at some point and has never restored it. Without access to that system, DHS has decided to fudge the date and time – issue NTAs with a line for the date and time but simply write “to be determined” on the line. And they have done that on most charging documents filed for the last 20 or so years.

This disconnect has resulted in a number of problems, the most serious of which is that immigrants don’t know when their hearing date is, so they miss the date and get ordered removed in in absentia (as happened to the immigrant in Pereira).

The Pereira decision left the DOJ with a pretty clear command from the Supreme Court: turn your system back on so DHS can schedule hearings. Most who practice in this area thought the Department of Justice would comply. Unfortunately, they haven’t.

Despite Pereira, EOIR Vacillates on Whether to Turn on ISS

Through a series of FOIA requests it has started to become clear what the agency decided to do after Pereira: nothing.

The Pereira decision was issued on June 21, 2018. Early on June 22, 2018 Rene Cervantes, the court administrator for the San Diego Immigration Court, e-mailed Rico Bartolomei Jr, the Assistant Chief Immigration Judge for that area, asking if the court should keep accepting the filing of NTAs by DHS without the date and time, despite what the Supreme court had just quite plainly said.

Bartolome responded that there had been no guidance from the DOJ, so for now they would keep accepting deficient NTAs for filing. By mid-afternoon on the 22nd, the discussion turned to whether the Department of Justice would “turn on ISS ASAP,” meaning enabling the DHS to access its scheduling system so it could file compliant notices to appear.

The answer was received that evening from Print Maggard, Deputy Chief Immigration Judge, that the decision of Director James McHenry was that “at this time we are not turning on ISS.”

By June 25, 2018 it looked like the DOJ had decided to turn the ISS system back on. In an e-mail Christopher Santoro, Principal Deputy Chief Immigration Judge, wrote that the only problem was timing, writing:

“[W]e were also told that, consistent with the benchmarks that went out with the new court performance measures, we need to get detained NTAs their first MC within 10 days of filing and non-detained NTAs their first MC within 90 days of filing. We also cannot be “full” – in other words, if DHS wants to file an NTA, there must be a slot for them to schedule it in within 10/90 days.”

Santoro was referring to the new Immigration Judge quotas going into effect on October 1, 2018. Since President Trump took office, the immigration court backlog has skyrocketed while case processing has slowed.

In response, the Attorney General has ordered draconian benchmarks which will require, among other things, that every judge in the country enter at least 700 orders per year. These measures are designed turn immigration courts into deportation machines – multiple Attorney General opinions have stripped judges of decision-making power while the agency orders more and more decisions to be made.

Relevant here, the new IJ quotas require detained hearings to be scheduled within 10 days of the prosecutor, DHS, filing the NTA with the court.

A June 25, 2018 e-mail from Mark Pasierb, chief clerk to the Immigration Court, explained that the ISS schedule system only has a certain number of slots for hearings with each judge each day. Thus, if the next ten days are “full,” allowing the DHS to access the ISS system will require it to pick a day that is beyond the DOJ’s self-imposed deportation quotas.

On June 27, 2018, Chief Immigration Judge Mary-Beth Keller sent out a timetable for when ISS would be turned on. She wrote that “effective immediately, NTAs filed at the window that do not specify the time and place of the hearing should be rejected.” She added that by July 2, 2018, the DOJ would turn the ISS system back on for non-detained cases and by July 16, 2018 for detained cases. However, that advice did not last long.

By July 11, 2018, the EOIR had decided officially to continue accepting non-compliant NTAs. Santoro e-mailed all court staff writing:

The Department has concluded that, even after Pereira, EOIR should accept Notices to Appear that do not contain the time and place of the hearing. Accordingly, effective immediately, courts should begin accepting TBD NTAs.

The DOJ Chooses Self-Imposed Deportation Quotas Over Complying With the Supreme Court.

What the June 25 Christopher Santoro e-mail reveals is that while the DOJ definitely has the power to turn on its scheduling system to comply with the Pereira decision, it does not want to, because it does not want that process (essentially ordered by the Supreme Court) to affect its new mega-deportation benchmarks that start on October 1, 2018.

The results are already being felt in Immigration Courts around the country. Without being able to access ISS, the prosecutors whose job it is to file these charging documents are just writing made-up dates or “dummy dates” on the charging documents. It’s hard to envision how the agency can get away with that; attorneys who file documents they know to be false (including having a pretend hearing date) are subject to discipline by their state bar.

More urgently, the people who receive these documents are showing up in court, sometimes within days, scheduling to travel across the country at times to attend a court hearing that was never even scheduled and is not going to take place.

Until the EOIR chooses to comply with the Supreme Court’s decision in Pereira (likely after parties are forced to litigate these issues in federal court) it is not clear there is any solution to this problem on the horizon.

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

Four obvious “take-aways:”

Solving this problem isn’t “rocket science,” but it does exceed the collective abilities of the perpetuators of “Clown Court” (as the great Yogi Berra said, “Can’t anybody here play this game?”);
Sessions’s scofflaw, “haste makes waste,” attitude is now the “order of the day” at EOIR, which once purported to be a court system, not an ICE deportation office;
The DOJ & EOIR lack the competence to fairly and effectively administer a court system;
EOIR needs to go and be replaced with an independent court system outside the Executive’s control.

I will be fascinated to see how the DOJ attorneys defend this one before the Article IIIs with a “straight face” (or not).

Another day, another abuse of our justice system by Jeff Sessions and the “go alongs to get alongs” who are unwilling to stand up to him.

Many thanks to Matthew for shedding some much-needed light on the shady practices within EOIR & DOJ.

It would all be funny if people’s lives weren’t at stake.

PWS

09-21-18

INSIDE EOIR: FOIA RESPONSE DOCUMENTS THE BIZARRE FIXATION OF EOIR “MANAGEMENT” ON THE SCHEDULING OF CASTRO-TUM!

https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/castro-tum-judicial-e-mails-55803/#file-212223

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

Clink the above link to enter the weird, wacky world of EOIR in the “Age of Sessions.” Let’s remember, there is nothing whatsoever remarkable about the Castro-Tum case except that Sessions chose, for some reason, to make it a “cause celeb.” Indeed, nobody even knows if this dude is still in the US, is alive, or even existed in the first place.

It’s pretty easy to understand why the taxpayers are being ripped off and our justice system is in tatters under Jeff Sessions as he squanders our money on his White Nationalist agenda! Think what America might be like under a real Attorney General, instead of “Gonzo Apocalypto.” The real problems, Russian interference in our elections, smuggling, police misconduct, human trafficking, voter suppression, hate crimes against vulnerable groups, rampant gun violence, government corruption, and violence against women go largely unaddressed while Sessions chases after non-problems to carry through on his “wing nut, extremist, far-right, immigration restrictionist” agenda that made him an “outlier” even within the GOP during his days in the Senate.

I look forward to the day when Jeff Sessions is no longer Attorney General of the US. It might be the only thing I have in common with Donald Trump.

PWS

08-24-18

INSIDE EOIR: FOIA REVEALS THAT DURING “JUDICIAL TRAINING,” BIA APPELLATE IMMIGRATION JUDGE ROGER PAULEY INSTRUCTED FELLOW JUDGES ON HOW TO FIND INDIVIDUALS REMOVABLE BY AVOIDING THE LAW!

https://www.hoppocklawfirm.com/foia-results-immigration-judges-conference-materials-for-2018/

)

Here’s what Attorney Matthew Hoppock, whose firm made the FOIA request, had to say about Judge Pauley’s presentation:

Developments in Criminal Immigration and Bond Law:

Slides – Developments in Criminal Immigration and Bond Law

This presentation is really striking, because Board Member Roger Pauley appears to be instructing the IJs not to apply the “categorical approach” when it doesn’t lead to a “sensible result.” The “categorical approach” is mandatory, and the Supreme Court has repeatedly had to reverse the BIA and instruct them to properly apply it. So, it’s definitely disheartening to see this is the instruction the IJs received at their conference this summer on how to apply the categorical approach:

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

Can’t say this is unprecedented. I can remember being astounded and outraged by some past presentations that essentially focused on “how to find the respondent not credible and have it stand up in court,” “how to deny claims establishing past or future persecution by invoking ‘no-nexus’ grounds,” and “how to find proposed ‘particular social groups non-cognizable’ under the BIA’s three-part test.”

I also remember a BIA Judge essentially telling us to ignore a previous “outside expert” panel that provided evidence that governments in the Northern Triangle were stunningly corrupt, politically beholden to gangs, and totally incapable of protecting the population against targeted gang violence.

Another colleague gave a stunningly tone-deaf presentation in which they referred to OIL and ICE as “us” and the respondents as “them.”

But, presentations like Judge Pauley’s are particularly troubling in the context of a so-called “training conference” where the “keynote speech” by the judges’ titular “boss” Jeff Sessions touted his decision removing asylum protections from battered women, warned judges to follow his precedents, emphasized increasing “volume” as the highest priority, and otherwise notably avoided mentioning the due process rights of respondents, the need to insure protection for asylum seekers, or the obligation to follow decisions of the Article III Courts (the latter has been, and remains, a chronic problem for EOIR).

Many of the Immigration Judges were recently hired, attending their first national conference. What message do you think they got about how to be successful in the “Age of Trump & Sessions?” What message did they get when a vocal minority of their colleagues improperly “cheered” the removal of protections for vulnerable refugee women? How would YOU like to be a foreign national fighting for your life in a system run by Jeff Sessions?

Right on cue, EOIR provides another powerful example of why Professor Maureen Sweeney was right in her recently posted article: the Article III Courts should NOT be giving the BIA or Sessions “Chevron deference.”

PWS

08-23-18

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Dec 13 EOIR’s Creates More Obstacles for Families

Dec 8 Interpreting Pereira: A Hint of Things to Come?

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

I wanted to emphasize a few important points that you also may have heard from your ACIJ during your court meetings:

– We have concluded our discussions with NAIJ, and in the near future, we will publish on the intranet the Memorandum of Understanding that both parties agreed to at the conclusion of bargaining. Please review this document carefully when it becomes available.

– Please be patient, especially during the rollout and at the end of the first quarter, when numbers are likely to be low due to holidays and leave.

Thank you.

Related posts:

Oct 1 Statement of Former Immigration Judges and BIA Members Opposing IJ Quotas

Related posts:

Related posts:

Post-Pereira, the DOJ Chooses Harsh IJ Performance Metrics Over Compliance With Supreme Court Mandate

Much Ado About Scheduling Hearings

Despite Pereira, EOIR Vacillates on Whether to Turn on ISS

The DOJ Chooses Self-Imposed Deportation Quotas Over Complying With the Supreme Court.

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts: