FORMER NAIJ PRESIDENT JUDGE DANA LEIGH MARKS SPEAKS OUT AGAINST JUDICIAL QUOTAS! — “The measure of a good judge is his or her fairness, not the number of cases he or she can do in a day.” – This Seems Obvious – So Why Is “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions Being Allowed to Run Roughshod Over Justice In Our U.S. Immigration Courts?

http://fortune.com/2018/04/09/immigration-judge-quotas-department-of-justice/

Judge Marks writes in Fortune:

Immigration judges are the trial-level judges who make the life-changing decisions of whether or not non-citizens are allowed to remain in the United States. They are facing a virtual mountain of cases: almost 700,000 for about 335 judges in the United States. The work is hard. The law is complicated. The stories people share in court are frequently traumatic and emotions are high because the stakes are so dire. Because these are considered civil cases, people are not provided attorneys and must pay for one, find a volunteer, or represent themselves.

In a move that the Department of Justice claims is intended to reduce this crushing backlog, the DOJ is moving forward with a plan to require judges to meet production quotas and case completion deadlines to be rated as satisfactory in order to keep their jobs. This misguided approach will have the opposite effect.

One cannot measure due process by numbers. The primary job of an immigration judge is to decide each case on its own merits in a fair and impartial way. That is the essence of due process and the oath of office we take. Time metrics simply have no place in that equation. Quality measurements are reasonable, and immigration judge performance should be evaluated, but by judicial standards, which are transparent to the public and expressly prohibit quantitative measures of performance. The imposition of quotas and deadlines forces a judge to choose between providing due process and pushing cases to closure without considering all the necessary evidence.

If quotas and deadlines are applied, judicial time and energy will be diverted to documenting our performance, rather than deciding cases. We become bean-counting employees instead of fair and impartial judges. Our job security will be based on whether or not we meet these unrealistic quotas and our decisions will be subjected to suspicion as to whether any actions we take, such as denying a continuance or excluding a witness, are legally sound or motivated to meet a quota. Under judicial canons of ethics, no judge should hear a case in which he or she has a financial interest. By tying the very livelihood of a judge to how quickly a case is pushed through the system, you have violated the fundamental rule of ensuring an impartial decision maker is presiding over the case.

These measures will undermine the public’s faith in the fairness of our courts, leading to a huge increase in legal challenges that will flood the federal courts. Instead of helping, these doubts will create crippling delays in our already overburdened courts. If history has taught us any lessons, it is that similar attempts to streamline have ultimately resulted in an increase in the backlog of cases.

The unacceptable backlogs at our courts are due to decades of inadequate funding for the courts and politically motivated interference with docket management. The shifting political priorities of various administrations have turned our courts into dog and pony shows for each administration, focusing the court’s scant resources on the cases ‘du jour,’—e.g., children or recent border crossers—instead of cases that were ripe for adjudication.

The solution to the delays that plague our courts is not to scapegoat judges. The solution is two-part: more resources and structural reform. We need even more judges and staff than Congress has provided. Additionally, the immigration courts must be taken out of the Department of Justice, as the mission of an independent and neutral court is incompatible with the role of a law enforcement agency. This latest, misguided decision to impose quotas and performance metrics makes that conclusion clear and highlights the urgent need for structural reform. The measure of a good judge is his or her fairness, not the number of cases he or she can do in a day.

Dana Leigh Marks is president emeritus of the National Association of Immigration Judges and has been a full-time immigration judge in San Francisco since 1987. 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.

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For those of you who don’t know her, my friend and colleague Dana is not just “any” U.S. Immigration Judge. In addition to her outstanding service as a Immigration Judge and as the President of the NAIJ, as a young attorney, then known as Dana Marks Keener, she successfully argued for the respondent in the landmark Supreme Court case INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U.S. 421 (1987).

That case for the first time established the generous “well-founded fear” standard for asylum seekers over the objections of the U.S. Government which had argued for a higher “more likely than not” standard. Ironically, it is exactly that generous treatment for asylum seekers mandated by the Supreme Court, which has taken more than four decades to come anywhere close to fruition, that Sessions is aiming to unravel with his mean-spirited White Nationalist inspired restrictionist agenda at the DOJ.

Interestingly, I was in Court listening to the oral argument in Cardoza because as the then Acting General Counsel of the “Legacy INS” I had assisted the Solicitor General’s Office in formulating the “losing” arguments in favor of the INS position that day.

Due Process Forever! Jeff Sessions Never! Join the New Due Process Army and stand up against the White Nationalist restrictionist attack on America and our Constitution!

PWS

04-11-18

DIANNE SOLIS @ DALLAS MORNING NEWS DETAILS GONZO’S ALL-OUT ASSAULT ON INDEPENDENCE OF U.S.IMMIGRATION JUDGES AND DUE PROCESS IN OUR IMMIGRATION COURTS –“Due process isn’t making widgets,” Schmidt said. “Compare this to what happens in regular courts. No other court system operates this way. Yet the issues in immigration court are life and death,” he said, referring to asylum cases.”

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/immigration/2018/04/10/immigration-judges-attorneys-worry-sessions-quotas-will-cut-justice-clogged-court-system

Dianne writes:

“A case takes nearly 900 days to make its way through the backlogged immigration courts of Texas. The national average is about 700 days in a system sagging with nearly 700,000 cases.

A new edict from President Donald Trump’s administration orders judges of the immigration courts to speed it up.

Now the pushback begins.

Quotas planned for the nation’s 334 immigration judges will just make the backlog worse by increasing appeals and questions about due process, says Ashley Tabaddor, Los Angeles-based president of the National Association of Immigration Judges.

Quotas of 700 cases a year, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, were laid out in a performance plan memo by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. They go into effect October 1.

Some have even called the slowdown from the backlog “de facto amnesty.”

“We believe it is absolutely inconsistent to apply quotas and deadlines on judges who are supposed to exercise independent decision-making authority,” Tabaddor said.

“The parties that appear before the courts will be wondering if the judge is issuing the decision because she is trying to meet a deadline or quota or is she really applying her impartial adjudicative powers,” she added.

. . . .

Faster decision-making could cut the backlog, but it also has many worried about fairness.

The pressure for speed means immigrants would have to move quickly to find an attorney. Without an attorney, the likelihood of deportation increases. Nationally, about 58 percent of immigrants are represented by attorneys, according to Syracuse’s research center. But in Texas, only about a third of the immigrants have legal representation.

Paul Schmidt, a retired immigration judge who served as chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals for immigration courts for six years, says he saw decisions rendered quickly and without proper legal analysis, leaving it necessary for many cases to be sent back to the immigration court for what he called “a redo.”

“Due process isn’t making widgets,” Schmidt said. “Compare this to what happens in regular courts. No other court system operates this way. Yet the issues in immigration court are life and death,” he said, referring to asylum cases.

Schmidt said there are good judges who take time with cases, which is often needed in asylum pleas from immigrants from countries at war or known for persecution of certain groups.

But he also said there were “some not-very-good judges” with high productivity.

Ramping up the production line, Schmidt said, will waste time.

“You will end up with more do-overs. Some people are going to be railroaded out of the country without fairness and due process,” Schmidt said.

. . . .

“It doesn’t make any sense to squeeze them,” said Huyen Pham, a professor at Texas A&M University School of Law in Fort Worth. “When you see a lot more enforcement, it means the immigration court will see a lot more people coming through.”

Lawyers and law school professors say the faster pace of deportation proceedings by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spells more trouble ahead. Immigration courts don’t have electronic filing processes for most of the system. Many judges must share the same clerk.

For decades, the nation’s immigration courts have served as a lynchpin in a complex system now under intense scrutiny. Immigration has become a signature issue for the Trump administration.

Five years ago, the backlog was about 344,000 cases — about half today’s amount. It grew, in part, with a rise in Central Americans coming across the border in the past few years. Most were given the opportunity to argue before an immigration judge about why they should stay in the U.S.

This isn’t the first time the judges have faced an administration that wants them to change priorities. President Barack Obama ordered that the cases of Central American unaccompanied children to be moved to the top of docket.

“Our dockets have been used as a political tool regardless of which administration is in power and this constant docket reshuffling, constant reprioritization of cases has only increased the backlog,” Tabaddor said.

The quota edict was followed by a memo to federal prosecutors in the criminal courts with jurisdiction over border areas to issue more misdemeanor charges against immigrants entering the country unlawfully. Sessions’ memo instructs prosecutors “to the extent practicable” to issue the misdemeanor charges for improper entry. On Wednesday, Sessions is scheduled to be in Las Cruces, New Mexico, to speak on immigration enforcement at a border sheriffs’ meeting.

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Judge Ashley Tabaddor, President of the National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ” — for the record, I’m a retired member of the NAIJ) hits the nail on the head. This is about denying immigrants their statutory and Constitutional rights while the Administration engages in “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”) an egregious political abuse that I have been railing against ever since I retired in 2016.

Judge Tabaddor’s words are worth repeating:

“Our dockets have been used as a political tool regardless of which administration is in power and this constant docket reshuffling, constant reprioritization of cases has only increased the backlog,” Tabaddor said.

In plain terms this is fraud, waste, and abuse that Sessions and the DOJ are attempting to “cover up” by dishonestly attempting to “shift the blame” to immigrants, attorneys, and Immigration Judges who in fact are the victims of Session’s unethical behavior. If judges “pedaling faster” were the solution to the backlog (which it isn’t) that would mean that the current backlog was caused by Immigration Judges not working very hard, combined with attorneys and immigrants manipulating the system. Sessions has made various versions of this totally bogus claim to cover up his own “malicious incompetence.”

Indeed, by stripping Immigration Judges of authority effectively to manage their dockets; encouraging mindless enforcement by DHS; terminating DACA without any real basis; insulting and making life more difficult for attorneys trying to do their jobs of representing respondents; attacking legal assistance programs for unrepresented migrants; opening more “kangaroo courts” in locations where immigrants are abused in detention to get them to abandon their claims for relief; threatening established forms of protection (which in fact could be used to grant more cases at the Asylum Office and by stipulation — a much more sane and legal way of reducing dockets); canceling “ready to hear” cases that then are then “orbited” to the end of the docket to send Immigration Judges to detention courts where the judges sometimes did not have enough to do and the cases often weren’t ready for fair hearings; denying Immigration Judges the out of court time necessary to properly prepare cases and write decisions; and failing to emphasize the importance of quality and due process in appellate decision-making at the BIA, Sessions is contributing to and accelerating the breakdown of justice and due process in the U.S. Immigration Courts.

PWS

04-11-18

HON. JEFFREY CHASE: Sessions’s Quotas Attack Fairness, Due Process, Undermine U.S. Immigration Court System!

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2018/4/7/eoir-imposes-completion-quotas-on-ijs

Apr 7 EOIR Imposes Completion Quotas on IJs

Ten years ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit decided Hashmi v. Att’y Gen. of the U.S.1 The case involved a request to continue a removal proceeding which the Department of Homeland Security did not oppose. The respondent was married to a U.S. citizen; he would become eligible to adjust his status in immigration court once the visa petition she had filed on his behalf was approved by DHS. However, the approval was delayed for reasons beyond the respondent’s control. One of those reasons was that a part of the respondent’s DHS file was needed by both the office in Cherry Hill, NJ adjudicating the visa petition and the DHS attorney in Newark prosecuting the removal case.

The immigration judge decided that he could wait no longer. Noting that the pendency of the case had exceeded the agency’s stated case completion goals, the judge denied the continuance and ordered the respondent deported. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed, holding that “to reach a decision about whether to grant or deny a motion for a continuance based solely on case-completion goals, with no regard for the circumstances of the case itself, is impermissibly arbitrary.”

In response to Hashmi, the BIA issued a precedent decision stating that unopposed motions of that type should generally be granted.2 In subsequent decisions, the BIA provided further guidance in allowing IJs to make reasonable determinations to continue such cases,3 and to administratively close proceedings where it would further justice (as in Hashmi, where the need for the DHS file to be in two places at once was preventing the case from proceeding).4

In subjecting immigration judges to strict, metrics-based reviews last week, EOIR’s director, James McHenry, may pressure immigration judges into taking the types of actions barred by Hashmi. Under the newly-announced metrics, individual judges may run the risk of disciplinary action for granting reasonable requests for continuance, or for other delays necessary for reaching a fair result. The combined actions of McHenry (who prior to being promoted to the position of agency director had worked for EOIR for approximately 6 months as an administrative law judge with OCAHO, the only component of EOIR that doesn’t deal with immigration law or the immigration courts), and Attorney General Jeff Sessions in recently certifying four BIA decisions to himself, could erase the above positive case law developments of the past decade, and replace them with an incentive for rushed decisions that do not afford adequate safeguards to non-citizens facing deportation.

Allowing reasonable continuances for the parties to obtain counsel, present evidence, and formulate legal theories, or to allow other agencies to adjudicate applications impacting eligibility, is an essential part of affording justice. Judges also need to fully understand the legal arguments presented. When an issue arises in the course of a hearing, it is not uncommon for a judge to ask the parties for briefs, and for the judge to then conduct his or her own legal research before deciding the matter. A detailed decision is also necessary to allow for meaningful review on appeal. However, all of this takes time, and the performance of individual judges will be found to be unsatisfactory or in need of improvement if they complete less than 700 cases per year, complete less than 95 percent of cases at their first merits hearing, or have 15 percent of their cases remanded on appeal.

Some recently reported actions by immigration judges in the name of expediency are troubling. Last Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (for which my colleague Carol King and I served as subject-matter sources) featured a credible-fear review hearing by an immigration judge that lasted one minute and 43 seconds in its entirety (and was probably doubled in length by the need for an interpreter). The judge asked the unrepresented respondent a total of two questions before reaching this decision: “Well, the government of the United States doesn’t afford you protection for this type of reason. I affirm the Asylum Officer’s decision.” It’s not clear how the judge could have been confident in such conclusion. The respondent was detained and had not yet had an opportunity to consult with counsel. Her claim was only sketched in the broadest outline; upon further development by an attorney, it may well have fallen into the “type of reason” for which asylum may be granted. Her credibility was never doubted; in fact, the program reported that she was assaulted at gunpoint by the man she fled after she was deported to her country.

In another case arising in the Ninth Circuit, C.J.L.G. v. Sessions,5 an immigration judge told the mother of a child in removal proceedings who was unable to retain counsel that she could represent her son, and proceeded with the child’s asylum hearing. Of course, the mother was not qualified for the task. Although the son had been threatened with death for resisting gang recruitment efforts, he was denied asylum in a hearing in which many critical questions that could have helped develop a nexus between his fear and a legally protected ground for asylum were never asked. This occurred because the judge did not feel that he could grant another continuance to provide the respondent an additional opportunity to retain counsel.

All of the above-described actions by IJs occurred prior to last week’s announcement by the EOIR director. Should judges struggling to meet the benchmarks feel their job security to be at risk, will actions such as those described above become the norm?

As previously mentioned, the Attorney General certified four decisions of the BIA to himself shortly before the director’s announcement of the new metrics. In one of those cases, Matter of E-F-H-L-,6 Sessions vacated a 2014 BIA precedent decision requiring immigration judges to provide asylum applicants a full hearing on their claim. In another, Matter of A-B-,7 Sessions chose a case in which the BIA twice reversed an immigration judge’s denial of asylum to a victim of domestic violence, and on certification has made the case a referendum on whether victims of private criminal activity may constitute a particular social group for asylum purposes.

Should Sessions decide this issue in the negative, the two decisions taken together may allow for the type of quick denials of the “Government…doesn’t afford you protection for this type of reason” variety discussed above. Fair-minded judges who will continue to hold full hearings and consider legal arguments in favor of granting relief may find it more difficult to meet all of the above benchmarks.

Copyright 2018 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.

Notes:

531 F.3d 256 (3d Cir. 2008)

Matter of Hashmi, 24 I&N Dec. 785 (BIA 2009).

See Matter of Rajah, 25 I&N Dec. 127 (BIA 2009) (concerning continuances due to pending employment-based visa petitions) ; Matter of C-B-, 25 I&N Dec. 888 (BIA 2012) (requiring reasonable and realistic continuances to obtain counsel); Matter of Montiel, 26 I&N Dec. 555 (BIA 2015) (allowing delaying proceedings for adjudication of criminal appeals).

See Matter of Avetisyan, 25 I&N Dec. 688 (BIA 2012); Matter of W-Y-U-, 27 I&N Dec. 17 (BIA 2017).

No. 16-73801 (9th Cir. Jan. 29, 2018); Pet. for rehearing and rehearing en banc pending.

27 I&N Dec. 226 (A.G. March 5, 2018)

27 I&N Dec. 227 (A.G. March 7, 2018)

JEFF CHASE

JOSEPH TANFANI @ LA TIMES: More Critical Reaction To Sessions’s Immigration Court Quotas — “If you’ve got a system that is producing defective cars, making the system run faster is just going to result in more defective cars.” (PWS)

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-immigration-courts-20180406-story.html

Joseph Tanfani reports for the LA TIMES:

The nation’s 58 immigration courts long have been the ragged stepchild of the judicial system – understaffed, technologically backward and clogged with an ever-growing backlog of cases, more than 680,000 at last count.

But a plan by Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, a longtime immigration hawk, aimed at breaking the logjam and increasing deportations of immigrants in the country illegally has drawn surprising resistance from immigration judges across the country.

Many say Sessions’ attempts to limit the discretion of the nation’s 334 immigration judges, and set annual case quotas to speed up their rulings, will backfire and made delays even worse — as happened when previous administrations tried to reform the system.

“It’s going to be a disaster and it’s going to slow down the adjudications,” warned Lawrence O. Burman, secretary of the National Assn. of Immigration Judges, a voluntary group that represents judges in collective bargaining.

Cases already move at a glacial pace. Nationwide, the average wait for a hearing date in immigration court is about two years, according to data analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research organization at Syracuse University.

But some jurisdictions are much slower. The immigration court in Arlington, Va., where Burman is a judge, has a four-year backlog, meaning hearings for new cases are being scheduled in 2022. Burman says the reality is far worse — the docket says he has 1,000 cases scheduled to begin on the same day in 2020.

. . . .

Another problem: Poorly funded immigration courts still use paper files, slowing access to information, while other federal courts use digital filing systems.

The Executive Office of Immigration Review, the Justice Department office that oversees the courts, started studying the problem in 2001. It has issued numerous reports and studies over the last 17 years, but accomplished little in the way of computerized record keeping.

. . . .

The judges don’t see it that way. Burman and other leaders of the immigration judges’ association, in an unusual public protest, say Sessions’ plan will force judges to rush cases and further compromise the courts’ already battered reputation for fairness.

“Clearly this is not justice,” said the association president, Judge A. Ashley Tabaddor, who sits in Los Angeles, the nation’s busiest immigration court. The plan will “undermine the very integrity of the court.”

Sessions is not the first U.S. attorney general to try to push deportation cases through the system faster.

John Ashcroft, who served under President George W. Bush, unveiled a streamlined approach in 2002, firing what he called softhearted judges from the 21-member Board of Immigration Appeals, the highest administrative body for interpreting and applying immigration laws.

The result was an increase of cases sent back by federal courts, which reviewed the decisions – and more delays.

Under the Obama administration, immigration judges were ordered to prioritize old cases to try to clear the backlog. But after thousands of unaccompanied minors from Central America surged to the southwest border in 2014, they were told to focus on those cases instead. As the dockets were reshuffled, the backlog kept growing.

Last fall, Sessions ordered 100 immigration judges from around the country to travel to courts on the border to move cases quickly. The Justice Department pronounced it a success, saying they finished 2,700 cases.

Some of the judges were less enthusiastic.

“We had nothing to do half the time,” said Burman, who spent eight weeks in border courts. “I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, but they sent more people than they needed to” while his caseload in Virginia languished for those two months.

Immigration advocates say the answer is more resources: more judges, more clerks, and legal representation for immigrants. They also say the courts should be independent, not under the Justice Department.

“Everybody wants to hear there’s some magical solution to make all this fine. It’s not going to happen,” said Paul Schmidt, a former immigration judge and former chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals.

“If you’ve got a system that is producing defective cars, making the system run faster is just going to result in more defective cars,’ he said.

Staff writer Brian Bennett contributed to this report.

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Go on over to the LA Times at the above link for Joseph’s complete article.

Those of us in the Immigration Courts at the time of the “Ashcroft debacle” know what a complete disaster it was from a due process, fairness, and efficiency standpoint. Far too many of the cases were returned by the Article III Courts for “redos” because Immigration Judges and BIA Members were encouraged to “cut corners” as long as the result was an order of removal.

Some judges resisted, but many “went along to get along.” Some of the botched cases probably still are pending. Worse, some of the botched, incorrect orders resulted in unjust removals because individuals lacked the resources or were too discouraged to fight their cases up to the Courts of Appeals. And, the Courts of Appeals by no means caught all of the many mistakes that were made during that period. Haste makes waste. I analogized it to being an actor in a repertory theater company playing the “Theater of the Absurd.” Now, Sessions is promoting a rerun of another variation on that failed theme.

Somebody needs to fix this incredibly dysfunctional system before shifting it into “high gear.” And, it clearly won’t be Jeff Sessions.

PWS

04-07-18

HON. BRUCE J. EINHORN IN WASHPOST: SESSIONS’S BLATANT ATTEMPT TO INTIMIDATE U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGES TO DEPORT INDIVIDUALS IN VIOLATION OF DUE PROCESS SHOWS A SYSTEM THAT HAS HIT ROCK BOTTOM! — Are There Any “Adults” Out There In Congress Or The Article III Courts With The Guts To Stand Up & Put An End To This Perversion Of American Justice? — “Due process requires judges free of political influence. Assembly-line justice is no justice at all.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jeff-sessions-wants-to-bribe-judges-to-do-his-bidding/2018/04/05/fd4bdc48-390a-11e8-acd5-35eac230e514_story.html?utm_term=.770822e8f813

My former colleague Judge Bruce J. Einhorn writes in the Washington Post:

Bruce J. Einhorn, an adjunct professor of immigration, asylum and refugee law at Pepperdine University, served as a U.S. immigration judge from 1990 to 2007.

It’s a principle that has been a hallmark of our legal culture: The president shouldn’t be able to tell judges what to do.

No longer. The Trump administration is intent on imposing a quota system on federal immigration judges, tying their evaluations to the number of cases they decide in a year. This is an affront to judicial independence and the due process of law.

I served as a U.S. immigration judge in Los Angeles for 17 years, presiding over cases brought against foreign-born noncitizens who Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers believed were in this country illegally and should thus be removed. My responsibility included hearing both ICE’s claims and the claims from respondents for relief from removal, which sometimes included asylum from persecution and torture.

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As a judge, I swore to follow the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees that “no person” (not “no citizen”) is deprived of due process of law. Accordingly, I was obliged to conduct hearings that guaranteed respondents a full and reasonable opportunity on all issues raised against them.

My decisions and the manner in which I conducted hearings were subject to review before the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals and U.S. courts of appeals. At no time was my judicial behavior subject to evaluation based on how quickly I completed hearings and decided cases. Although my colleagues on the bench and I valued efficiency, the most critical considerations were fairness, thoroughness and adherence to the Fifth Amendment. If our nativist president and his lapdog of an attorney general, Jeff Sessions, have their way, those most critical considerations will become a relic of justice.

Under the Trump-Sessions plan, each immigration judge, regardless of the nature and scope of proceedings assigned to him or her, will be required to complete 700 cases in a year to qualify for a “satisfactory” performance rating. It follows that only judges who complete more, perhaps many more, than 700 cases per year will qualify for a higher performance rating and, with it, a possible raise in pay.

Essentially, the administration’s plan is to bribe judges to hear and complete more cases regardless of their substance and complexity, with the corollary that judges who defy the quota imposed on them will be regarded as substandard and subject to penalties. The plan should be seen for what it is: an attempt to undermine judicial independence and compel immigration judges to look over their shoulders to make sure that the administration is smiling at them.

This is a genuine threat to the independence of the immigration bench. While Article III of the Constitution guarantees the complete independence of the federal district courts and courts of appeal, immigration judges are part of the executive branch. Notwithstanding the right of immigration judges to hear and decide cases as they believe they should under immigration law, they are unprotected from financial extortion and not-so-veiled political intimidation under the U.S. Administrative Procedure Actor any regulations.

Moreover, federal laws do not guarantee respondents in removal hearings a right to counsel, and a majority of those in such hearings are compelled to represent themselves before immigration judges, regardless of the complexity of their cases. Those who lack representation in removal hearings typically cannot afford it, and the funds to help legal aid organizations fill in for private attorneys are nowhere to be found.

Hearings in which respondents proceed pro se, or unrepresented, are often the most challenging and time-consuming for immigration judges, who must take care to assure that the procedural rights of those facing possible removal are protected and to guarantee that inarticulate relief claims are fully considered.

The Trump administration’s intention is clear: to intimidate supposedly independent judges to expedite cases, even if it undermines fairness — as will certainly be the case for pro se respondents. Every immigration judge knows that in general, it takes longer to consider and rule in favor of relief for a respondent than it does to agree with ICE and order deportation. The administration wants to use quotas to make immigration judges more an arm of ICE than independent adjudicators.

In my many years on the immigration bench, I learned that repressive nations had one thing in common: a lack of an independent judiciary. Due process requires judges free of political influence. Assembly-line justice is no justice at all.

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Thanks, Bruce for speaking out so forcefully, articulately, and truthfully!

Jeff Sessions is a grotesque affront to the U.S. Constitution, the rule of law, American values, and human decency. Every day that he remains in office is a threat to our democracy. There could be no better evidence of why we need an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court!

Due Process Forever! Jeff Sessions Never! Join the New Due Process Army Now! The fight must go on until Sessions and his toxic “21st Century Jim Crows” are defeated, and the U.S. Immigration Courts finally are forced to deliver on the betrayed promise of “guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.” Harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all!

PWS

04-05-18

NAIJ PRESIDENT, JUDGE A. ASHLEY TABADDOR RESPONDS TO DOJ’S UNILATERAL ACTION ON PRODUCTION QUOTAS FOR U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGES — DOJ Spokesperson Bald-Faced Lied To Media! — Quota Memo Is An Attack On Quality Of Judicial Decisions & Due Process – What Other Court In America Imposes Artificial Limits On Its Judges’ Ability To Perform Scholarship & Write Fair, Cogent Decisions? Get My “Inside Look” At The Appalling Dysfunction, Intentionally Inflicted Chaos, & Disregard For Fundamental Fairness Plaguing Our U.S. Immigration Courts In The “Age of Sessions!”

I have permission Judge Tabaddor to release the text of the following e-mail, dated April 2, 2018, that I received from her (solely in her capacity as NAIJ President) because I am a retired member of the NAIJ:

Dear NAIJ Members,

Last Friday we all received the Director’s announcement of his decision to impose quotas and deadlines on immigration judges as a basis of our individual performance evaluations effective October 2018. To clarify any confusion, I would like to re-iterate that at no point has NAIJ ever agreed that quotas and deadlines are an appropriate manner in which to evaluate immigration judge performance. To the contrary, NAIJ has always remained deeply concerned about this unprecedented decision which undermines our independent decision-making authority, invites unnecessary litigation, and adds to the existing burdens and demands on our judges.

I also would like to reiterate that NAIJ is pursuing all available means to ensure that these measures are fairly implemented. We have been engaged with EOIR for the past six months on these very issues and continue to stand in full support of our judges and the integrity of the Court. Prior to the email, NAIJ was pursuing the terms of an MOU with EOIR in an effort to reach a mutually agreeable solution in an informal and more cooperative fashion. However, with the Director’s announcement, NAIJ is now exercising formal bargaining rights.

We invite you to reach out to myself or any of our officers and representatives with any questions, concerns, or suggestions. We will keep you apprised of the ongoing negotiations and developments on this issue.

Thank you
Ashley Tabaddor

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As I had suggested earlier, the claim that the NAIJ had “agreed” to the production quotas was simply another lie by the Sessions DOJ. Lies, mis-representations, distortions, bogus statistics — why is this Dude our Attorney General given his proven record of disdain for truth, our law, our Constitution, and human decency as well as his total lack of any judicial qualifications to be administering perhaps the largest Federal Court system?

Another “under the radar” aspect of this toxic attempt to compromise due process in the Immigration Court system was pointed out to me by my good friend and colleague retired U.S. immigration Judge Carol King of San Francisco. As Judge King points out, by requiring U.S. Immigration Judges to render almost all final decisions at the hearing or within a few days of the hearing, the Attorney General is basically forcing them to use the widely discredited “contemporaneous oral decision” format rather than the preferred “full written decision” format.

Having reviewed thousands of Immigration Judge decisions during my career as an Appellate Immigration Judge on the BIA, and rendered thousands more during my time as a U.S. Immigration Judge in Arlington, I can say that with few exceptions, the “oral decision format” is grossly inadequate to meet the needs of today’s complex asylum litigation, particularly for cases to go to the Courts of Appeals. Oral decisions commonly have factual and citation errors as well as grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors caused by the totally un-judicial format.

Moreover, except in unusual cases, Immigration Judges are not permitted to have a transcript made before rendering a decision! The case is only transcribed by EOIR at the time an appeal to the BIA is actually taken, well after the Immigration Judge has completed his or her decision.

At the beginning of my 45 year legal career, I used “real dictation” in some of my jobs. The basic idea was that the initial draft was a “quick and dirty” that was then reviewed, revised, and corrected numerous times before being issued as a “final.” Indeed, at Jones Day, which had a typing pool back in the 1980s when I was there, I used to leave my dictated drafts when I went home at night for the “overnight typing pool” to have on my desk the next morning. I would never have dreamed of issuing a client letter or brief that hadn’t been reviewed, revised, and retyped (and then probably read by one of my colleagues).

By contrast, a U.S. Immigration Judge must dictate a final oral decision at the conclusion of the hearing, or shortly thereafter, with the parties present (talk about a waste and disrespect for time) and no actual transcriber in the room. If an appeal is taken, the oral decision portion of the digital recording is “separated” and typed in a decision format. While the Immigration Judge does receive an electronic copy of the decision at the time it goes to the Board Panel for adjudication, my experience is that any corrections by the Immigration Judge are seldom in the BIA record file at the time the BIA acts on the case. Moreover, trial judges are specifically limited to making “editorial” changes. Major changes to legal analysis, fact-finding, or even results can’t be made during this review process.

Unlike other Federal and State judges in courts of comparable authority, U.S. Immigration Judges also are forced to work without any individually selected Judicial Law Clerks (“JLCs”). Immigration Judges must share a “pool” of JLCs (occasionally not even in the same court location) selected, assigned, and “supervised” by EOIR Headquarters with minimal, if any, input from the Immigration Judges.

Moreover, the JLCs report to and are “evaluated” by an Assistant Chief Judge who more often than not is in Falls Church, VA, far removed from the actual trial courts! (Immigration Judges are given an option to submit performance comments” to the ACIJ, but never see the final evaluations of the JLCs). Sometimes a JLC may go a year or more without any “in person” interaction with his or her “supervisor.” What other judges, in any system, are forced to work under these types of conditions?

I firmly believe that the clearly inferior work product produced by the “oral decision” format is one of the reasons the U.S. Immigration Judges have an unfortunate “unprofessional” reputation with some of the Courts of Appeals.

Let’s use a “real life” example. My son was a JLC for a U.S. District Court Judge. That Judge actually had sufficient “out of court” time to do some of his own writing. If asked to prepare a draft decision, my son submitted it to his District Judge who carefully reviewed, revised, and commented on the draft. Then my son reworked the decision to his District Judge’s individual specifications and all citations, fact-finding, and other references were carefully checked, as well as spelling, punctuation , style, etc. The end product looked somewhat like a scholarly law review article in judicial decision format. Not surprisingly, that District Judge’s opinions were seldom reversed by the Court of Appeals.

Now imagine a Court of Appeals Judge, just after reading that decision, picks up an immigration file involving a complex life or death asylum case. The decision looks like it was written by a high school student who flunked remedial English. Run on sentences, not many paragraphs, non-standard punctuation, mis-spellings and incomprehensible citations. Moreover, on further examination, the Circuit Court Judge’s personal law clerk has already discovered some glaring factual errors in the Immigration Judge’s “stream of consciousness” recitation of the facts. The BIA “summarily affirmed” the result in a single-Member decision with no reasoning! No wonder the Immigration Courts are often lowly regarded by the reviewing Circuit Courts!

U.S. Immigration Judges are being placed in an impossible position. While Sessions proposes to “grade” them on appellate reversals and remands, he simultaneously will restrict and artificially limit their ability to do research, review actual records and transcripts, and prepare careful, high quality written decisions. Sessions intends to impose new “quotas” without meaningful input from: 1) the ImmigratIon Judges who hear the cases; 2) the Appellate Immigration Judges on the BIA; 3) the parties and attorneys who appear in Immigration Court, or 4) the U.S. Circuit Court Judges who must review the Immigration Court’s work product. What kind of process is that? Why is Sessions being allowed to get away with this? No other court system in America operates in such an intentionally dysfunctional manner.

Instead of working on real reforms that would improve the quality of justice and the ability of already overwhelmed U.S. Immigration Judges to deliver fairness and due process, Jeff Sessions intentionally is further degrading both the Immigration Judges and the process! “Just say no” to the malicious incompetence of Jeff Sessions and his DOJ!

PWS

04-04-18

AS EVIDENCE OF SESSIONS’S BIAS AND INCOMPETENCE TO RUN THE IMMIGRATION COURT SYSTEM MOUNTS, HE “GOES GONZO” ON US IMMIGRATION JUDGES & IMMIGRANTS SEEKING JUSTICE — Dropping All Pretensions That These Are Anything Other Than “Kangaroo Courts,” Gonzo Imposes Assembly Line Quotas That Are Unconstitutional On Their Face!

HERE ARE THE EOIR (SESSIONS) MEMOS:

from Asso Press – 03-30-2018 McHenry – IJ Performance Metrics

03-30-2018 EOIR – PWP Element 3 new

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Both the BIA and the Federal Courts have found that “case completion goals” can’t be used as the sole basis for denying a continuance. , 531 F.3d 256 (3d Cir. 2008); Matter of Hashmi, 24 I&N Dec. 785 (BIA 2009). Rather, continuance decisions must be made case-by-case on the basis of a careful consideration and weighing of all relevant factors. By purporting to make the mathematical formulas mandatory rather than goals, the Attorney General only compounds the problem.
- Here are copies of the Hashmi cases:
- 3rd on case completion 063934p
- 3640–Hashmi
Neither Sessions nor Director McHenry has ever served as a U.S. Immigration Judge. They both are totally unqualified to determine “performance criteria” for judges supposedly exercising “independent judgment and discretion.” Indeed, Sessions was once nominated for a Federal District Judgeship but was found unqualified because of his record of racially tinged bias. He has no business being in change of any judiciary.
Numerical quotas simply have no place in a fair judicial system. Having worked with judges in both a supervisory and a collegial capacity for over two decades, my observation is that all good judges do not work at the same pace. Some simply take more time than others to reach a fair result. That doesn’t mean that they are less qualified, less hard-working, or less fair. Indeed in some cases those who take longer to reach a decision are better and more careful judges than those who are more “productive.”
The use of appeal statistics is particularly bogus. I had some cases where I was reversed by the BIA only to be vindicated by the Court of Appeals. In other cases, I was reversed by the Court of Appeals for faithfully applying a BIA precedent that was found to be erroneous. I also had cases while I was an appellate judge on the BIA where my dissenting view was ultimately found by the Court of Appeals be correct and the majority’s view erroneous .
Justice is not a “widget” that can be subjected to “performance standards” by politicos who are not judges. This is all a “smokescreen.” The real problem plaguing the Immigration Court system starts with unqualified politicos interfering in proper docket management and decision-making by judges. Jeff Sessions is a prime example of all that is wrong with the current Immigration Court system.
Contrary to the DOJ’s claim, the National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”) never agreed to these so-called “performance metrics.” I was actually part of the NAIJ team that negotiated the existing performance evaluation system. We were assured by management at that time that while non-binding “goals and timetables” might be developed by the agency as informal guidance, they were not “numerical quotas” and would not be used in determining individual performance.

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Here’s an article by Tal Kopan @ CNN on the latest memos:

Justice Department rolls out case quotas for immigration judges

By: Tal Kopan, CNN

The Department of Justice has announced it will evaluate immigration judges on how many cases they close and how fast they hear cases, a move that judges and advocates criticize as potentially jeopardizing the courts’ fairness and perhaps leading to far more deportations.

The policy has been in the works for months, as Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Trump administration have been working to assert more influence over the immigration courts, or the separate court system built just for hearing cases about whether noncitizens have a claim to stay in the US.

US law gives the attorney general broad and substantial power to oversee and overrule these courts, as opposed to the civil and criminal US justice system, which is an independent branch of government. In the immigration courts, judges are employees of the Department of Justice.

Sessions has been testing the limits of that authority in multiple ways, and in a memo Friday, the director of the immigration courts informed judges they would now be evaluated on a set of metrics including the speed and volume of cases heard.

The Justice Department says the move is designed to make the system more efficient. The immigration courts have a backlog of hundreds of thousands of cases, and it can take years for an immigrant’s case to work its way to completion. In that time, the individuals build lives in the US, and critics point to the immigration courts’ backlog as a major factor in the number of undocumented immigrants living in the US.

“These performance metrics, which were agreed to by the immigration judge union that is now condemning them, are designed to increase productivity and efficiency in the system without compromising due process,” a Justice Department official said of the memo. The official added that any judges who fail to meet performance goals would be able to present extenuating circumstances to the Justice Department.

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/04/02/politics/immigration-judges-quota/index.html

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There are an estimated eleven million undocumented individuals living in the United States. That population has grown up over decades primarily as the result of poorly designed and unrealistically restrictive laws that failed to recognize the need of U.S. employers for immigrant labor and further threw up artificial roadblocks to individuals already in the U.S. obtaining legal status. To claim that the Immigration Courts are a “major cause” of this accumulated undocumented population is simply preposterous.

PWS

04-03-18

HON. JEFFREY CHASE: Matter of W-Y-C- & H-O-B- & The Unresolved Tension In Asylum Adjudication! – Plus My Added Commentary On EOIR Training!

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2018/2/4/the-proper-role-of-immigration-judges-as-asylum-adjudicators

“Feb 4 The Proper Role of Immigration Judges as Asylum Adjudicators

I would like to expand on the topic raised in my response to the BIA’s recent precedent decision in Matter of W-Y-C- & H-O-B-. In the U.S. system, what tensions exist between an immigration judge’s role as an independent judge within an adversarial system, and his or her overlapping role as an adjudicator of asylum claims?

As we all know, the 1980 Refugee Act was enacted to put the U.S. in compliance with the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees (to which the U.S. acceded through the 1967 Protocol). For that reason, numerous courts through the years have found the UNHCR Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status to provide “significant guidance in construing the Protocol” and a useful instrument “in giving content to the obligations the Protocol establishes,” as the U.S. Supreme Court stated in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca. The BIA has referenced the UNHCR Handbook in at least ten precedent decisions, as have numerous circuit courts.

Paragraphs 66 and 67 of the Handbook state the following:

66. In order to be considered a refugee, a person must show well-founded fear of persecution for one of the reasons stated above. It is immaterial whether the persecution arises from any single one of these reasons or from a combination of two or more of them. Often the applicant himself may not be aware of the reasons for the persecution feared. It is not, however, his duty to analyze his case to such an extent as to identify the reasons in detail.

67. It is for the examiner, when investigating the facts of the case, to ascertain the reason or reasons for the persecution feared and to decide whether the definition in the 1951 Convention is met with in this respect… (emphasis added.)

Not surprisingly, this approach is employed by the USCIS Asylum Office. Created in the implementation of the 1990 asylum regulations, the office’s first director, Gregg Beyer, previously worked for UNHCR for more than 12 years. The Asylum Officer Basic Training Manual (“AOBTM”) on the topic of nexus states that although the applicant bears the burden of proving nexus, the asylum officer has an affirmative duty to elicit all relevant information, and “should fully explore the motivations of any persecutor involved in the case.” The AOBTC therefore directs the asylum officer to “make reasonable inferences, keeping in mind the difficulty, in many cases, of establishing with precision a persecutor’s motives.”

The AOBTC also cites the 1988 BIA precedent decision in Matter of Fuentes.1 In that case, the Board held that “an applicant does not bear the unreasonable burden of establishing the exact motivation of a ‘persecutor’ where different reasons for actions are possible. However, an applicant does bear the burden of establishing facts on which a reasonable person would fear that the danger arises on account of” a protected ground.

In Canada, the Immigration and Refugee Board takes the view that “it is for the Refugee Division to determine the ground, if any, applicable to the claimant’s fear of persecution.” The U.S. is unusual, if not unique, among western nations in not also delegating this responsibility to immigration judges. Also, note that the IRB references the “Refugee Division;” like many countries, Canada’s equivalent of immigration courts is divided into immigration and refugee divisions, in recognition of the special obligations and knowledge that asylum determinations require. The U.S. immigration court system does not have a separate refugee determination division; asylum claims are heard by the same judges and under the same conditions as all other types of immigration cases. Furthermore, as noted above, U.S. immigration judges hear cases in an adversarial setting, in which judges assume a passive, neutral role.

The role of asylum adjudicator carries responsibilities that are at odds with the the role of neutral arbiter. Asylum adjudicators are required to share the burden of documenting the asylum claim; the UNHCR Handbook at para. 196 states that “in some cases, it may be for the examiner to use all of the means at his disposal to produce the necessary evidence in support of the application.”2 And, as discussed above, once the facts are ascertained, it is the adjudicator who should identify the reasons for the feared persecution and determine if such reasons bear a nexus to a protected ground.

During the Department of Justice’s asylum reform discussions in the early 1990s, Gregg Beyer stated that the idea of separate asylum judges was considered, but ultimately rejected. To my knowledge, EOIR has never conducted an in-depth analysis of the conflicts between the judge’s responsibilities as an asylum adjudicator and his or her role as a neutral arbiter in adversarial proceedings. I discussed the Board’s incorrect holding in Matter of W-Y-C- & H-O-B- under which genuine refugees may be ordered returned to countries where they will face persecution because the asylum applicants lacked the sophistication to properly delineate a particular social group, a complex legal exercise that many immigration attorneys (and immigration judges) are unable to do. The problem also extends to other protected grounds. Would an unrepresented asylum applicant (who might be a child) understand what an imputed political opinion is? Would most asylum applicants be able to explain that actions viewed as resisting the authority of a third-generation gang such as MS-13 might constitute a political opinion? Regulations should be enacted making it the responsibility of immigration judges to consider these questions. Additionally, immigration judges, BIA Board Members and staff attorneys should be required to undergo specialized training to enable them to identify and properly analyze these issues.

Notes:

1. 19 I&N Dec. 658 (BIA 1988).

2. See also the BIA’s precedent decision in Matter of S-M-J-, 21 I&N Dec. 722 (BIA 1997), which I have referenced in other articles.

Copyright 2017 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.

JEFF CHASE

GONZO’S WORLD: DRAMA UNFOLDING AT JUSTICE AS FBI DIRECTOR WRAY RESISTS GONZO’S POLITICAL INTERFERENCE!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/tensions-between-sessions-and-fbi-over-senior-personnel-from-comey-era/2018/01/22/c95fc2bc-ffeb-11e7-8acf-ad2991367d9d_story.html

Delvin Barrett & Philip Rucker report for the Washington Post:

“FBI Director Christopher A. Wray has been resisting pressure from Attorney General Jeff Sessions to replace the bureau’s deputy director, Andrew McCabe, a frequent target of criticism from President Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.

The tension over McCabe and other high-level FBI officials who served during James B. Comey’s tenure has reached the White House, where counsel Donald McGahn has sought to mediate the issue, these people said.

As Sessions tried to push Wray to make personnel changes, Wray conveyed his frustration to the attorney general, these people said. Sessions then discussed the matter with McGahn, who advised him to ease off, which he did, these people said.

One person familiar with the discussions said Wray has not addressed FBI personnel matters with the president, but in December, after The Washington Post reported that McCabe planned to retire in Marchwhen he becomes eligible for his full pension benefits, Trump tweeted about his criticisms of McCabe, a target of his since the 2016 presidential campaign.

Much of the discussion between Wray and Sessions about housecleaning at the FBI also came in December, according to people familiar with the matter.

FBI Director Christopher A. Wray speaks at an event at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington on Jan. 15. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)

Axios was first to report the Session-Wray dispute on Monday evening, indicating that Wray had threatened to resign if Sessions did not stop pressuring him to fire McCabe. But several people familiar with the dynamic told The Post that they were not aware of Wray making such an explicit threat. Firing McCabe could be problematic because he has limited civil service protections as a government employee. Such a move, in the aftermath of public criticism from the president and others, could prompt litigation.

. . . .

Sessions, Republican lawmakers and some members of the Trump administration have argued for weeks that Wray should conduct some kind of housecleaning by demoting or reassigning senior aides to his predecessor, Comey, according to people familiar with the matter. These people added that Sessions himself is under tremendous political pressure from conservative lawmakers and White House officials who have complained that the bureaucracy of federal law enforcement is biased against the president.”\

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Read the full article at the link.

Makes me wonder what would happen if EOIR had a Director committed to standing up for individual Due Process and protecting the judicial independence of administrative judges, rather than acting as a “conductor” on Gonzo’s “Deportation Express.”

PWS

01-23-18

JULIA PRESTON: CHAOS IN COURT! – TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S MAL-ADMINISTRATION OF IMMIGRATION COURTS RUINS LIVES, FRUSTRATES JUDGES!

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/01/19/lost-in-court

Julia writes for The Marshall Project:

“. . . .

And so in this gateway city on the Rio Grande [Laredo], inside a building rimmed with barbed wire, past security guards and locked doors, immigration judges on short details started hearing cases in a cramped courtroom that was hastily arranged in March.

But seven months later, the case of Oscar Arnulfo Ramírez, an immigrant from El Salvador, was not going quickly. He was sitting in detention, waiting for a hearing on his asylum claim. And waiting some more.

The court files, his lawyer discovered, showed that Ramírez’s case had been completed and closed two months earlier. Since the case was closed, the court clerk couldn’t schedule a new hearing to get it moving again. In fact, the clerk didn’t even have a record that he was still detained.

“It’s as if he’s non-existent,” his lawyer,, said. “He’s still in a detention center. He’s still costing the government and the American people tax dollars. But there’s no proceeding going on. He’s just sitting there doing completely nothing.”

Ramírez’s case was one of many signs of disarray in the improvised court in Laredo, which emerged during a weeklong visit in late October by a reporter from The Marshall Project and a radio producer from This American Life. Instead of the efficiency the Trump administration sought, the proceedings were often chaotic. Hearing schedules were erratic, case files went missing. Judges were exasperated by confusion and delays. Like Ramírez, detainees were lost in the system for months on end.

For a view of the border crossing in Laredo and the grinding process migrants begin there, check out Kirsten Luce’s photosfrom the gateway on the Rio Grande.

With the intense pressure on the court to finish cases, immigrants who had run from frightening threats in their home countries were deported without having a chance to tell the stories that might have persuaded a judge to let them stay.

. . . .

For Paola Tostado, the lawyer, Ramírez was not the first client to fall through the cracks in Laredo. Even though she is based in Brownsville, three hours away, Tostado was making the pre-dawn drive up the highway as many as three times a week, to appear next to her clients in court in Laredo whenever she could.

Another Salvadoran asylum-seeker she represented, whose case was similarly mislaid, had gone for four months with no hearing and no prospect of having one. Eventually he despaired. When ICE officers presented him with a document agreeing to deportation, without consulting Tostado he had signed it.

“I’ve had situations where we come to an individual client who has been detained over six months and the file is missing,” she said. “It’s not in San Antonio. It’s not in Laredo. So where is it? Is it on the highway?”

In her attempts to free Ramírez, Tostado consulted with the court clerk in San Antonio, with the ICE prosecutors and officers detaining him, but no one could say how to get the case started again.

Then, one day after reporters sat in the courtroom and spoke with Tostado about the case, ICE released him to pursue his case in another court, without explanation.

But by December Tostado had two other asylum-seekers who had been stalled in the system for more than seven months. She finally got the court to schedule hearings for them in the last days of the year.

“I think the bottom line is, there’s no organization in this Laredo court,” Tostado said. “It’s complete chaos and at the end of the day it’s not fair. Because you have clients who say, I just want to go to court. If it’s a no, it’s a no. If it’s a yes, it’s a yes.”

Unlike criminal court, in immigration court people have no right to a lawyer paid by the government. But there was no reliable channel in Laredo for immigrants confined behind walls to connect with low-cost lawyers. Most lawyers worked near the regular courts in the region, at least two hours’ drive away.

Sandra Berrios, another Salvadoran seeking asylum, learned the difference a lawyer could make. She found one only by the sheerest luck. After five months in detention, she was days away from deportation when she was cleaning a hallway in the center, doing a job she had taken to keep busy. A lawyer walked by. Berrios blurted a plea for help.

The lawyer was from a corporate law firm, Jones Day, which happened to be offering free services. Two of its lawyers, Christopher Maynard and Adria Villar, took on her case. They learned that Berrios had been a victim of vicious domestic abuse. A Salvadoran boyfriend who had brought her to the United States in 2009 had turned on her a few years later when he wanted to date other women.

Once he had punched her in the face in a Walmart parking lot, prompting bystanders to call the police. He had choked her, burned her legs with cigarettes, broken her fingers and cut her hands with knives. Berrios had scars to show the judge. She had a phone video she had made when the boyfriend was attacking her and records of calls to the Laredo police.

The lawyers also learned that the boyfriend had returned to El Salvador to avoid arrest, threatening to kill Berrios if he ever saw her there.

She had started a new relationship in Texas with an American citizen who wanted to marry her. But she’d been arrested by the Border Patrol at a highway checkpoint when the two of them were driving back to Laredo from an outing at a Gulf Coast beach.

After Berrios been detained for nine months, at a hearing in July with Maynard arguing her case, a judge canceled her deportation and let her stay. In a later interview, Berrios gave equal parts credit to God and the lawyers. “I would be in El Salvador by this time, already dead,” she said. “The judges before that just wanted to deport me.”

. . . .

We have heard frustration across the board,” said Ashley Tabaddor, a judge from Los Angeles who is the association [NAIJ] president. She and other union officials clarified that their statements did not represent the views of the Justice Department. “We’ve definitely heard from our members,” she said, “where they’ve had to reset hundreds of cases from their home docket to go to detention facilities where the docket was haphazardly scheduled, where the case might not have been ready, where the file has not reached the facility yet.”

Another association official, Lawrence Burman, a judge who normally sits in Arlington, Va., volunteered for a stint in a detention center in the rural Louisiana town of Jena, 220 miles northwest of New Orleans. Four judges were sent, Burman said, but there was only enough work for two.

“So I had a lot of free time, which was pretty useless in Jena, Louisiana,” Burman said. “All of us in that situation felt very bad that we have cases back home that need to be done. But in Jena I didn’t have any of my files.” Once he had studied the cases before him in Jena, Burman said, he was left to “read the newspaper or my email.”

The impact on Burman’s case docket back in Arlington was severe. Dozens of cases he was due to hear during the weeks he was away had to be rescheduled, including some that had been winding through the court and were ready for a final decision. But with the enormous backlog in Arlington, Burman had no openings on his calendar before November 2020.

Immigrants who had already waited years to know whether they could stay in the country now would wait three years more. Such disruptions were reported in other courts, including some of the nation’s largest in Chicago, Miami and Los Angeles.

“Many judges came back feeling that their time was not wisely used,” Judge Tabaddor, the association president, said, “and it was to the detriment of their own docket.”

Justice Department officials say they are pleased with the results of the surge. A department spokesman, Devin O’Malley, did not comment for this story but pointed to congressional testimony by James McHenry, the director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review. “Viewed holistically, the immigration judge mobilization has been a success,” he said, arguing it had a “positive net effect on nationwide caseloads.”

Justice Department officials calculated that judges on border details completed 2700 more cases than they would have if they had remained in home courts. Officials acknowledge that the nationwide caseload continued to rise during last year, reaching 657,000 cases by December. But they noted that the rate of growth had slowed, to .39 percent monthly increase at the end of the year from 3.39 percent monthly when Trump took office.

Judge Tabaddor, the association president, said the comparison was misleading: cases of immigrants in detention, like the ones the surge judges heard, always take priority and go faster than cases of people out on release, she said. Meanwhile, according to records obtained by the National Immigrant Justice Center, as many as 22,000 hearings in judges’ home courts had to be rescheduled in the first three months of the surge alone, compounding backlogs.

. . . .”

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Read Julia’s complete article at the above link. Always enjoy getting quotes from my former Arlington colleague Judge Lawrence O. (“The Burmanator”) Burman. He tends to “tell it like it is” in the fine and time-honored Arlington tradition of my now retired Arlington colleague Judge Wayne R. Iskra. And, Judge Iskra didn’t even have the “cover” of being an officer of the NAIJ. Certainly beats the “pabulum” served up by the PIO at the “Sessionized” EOIR!

Also, kudos to one of my “former firms” Jones Day, its National Managing Partner Steve Brogan, and the Global Pro Bono Counsel Laura Tuell for opening the Laredo Office exclusively for pro bono immigration representation, As firms like jones Day take the “immigration litigation field,” and give asylum applicants the “A+ representation” they need and deserve, I predict that it’s going to become harder for the Article III U.S. Courts to ignore the legal shortcomings of the Immigration Courts under Sessions.

A brief aside. My friend Laura Tuell was a “Guest Professor” during a session of my Immigration Law & Policy class at Georgetown Law last June. On the final exam, one of my students wrote that Laura had inspired him or her to want a career embodying values like hers! Wow! Talk about making a difference on many levels!And talk about the difference in representing real values as opposed to the legal obfuscation and use of the legal system to inflict wanton cruelty represented by Sessions and his restrictionist ilk.

We also should recognize the amazing dedication and efforts of pro bono and “low bono” lawyers like Paola Tostado, mentioned in Julia’s report. “Even though she is based in Brownsville, three hours away, Tostado was making the pre-dawn drive up the highway as many as three times a week, to appear next to her clients in court in Laredo whenever she could.” What do you think that does to her law practice? As I’ve said before, folks like Paola Tostado, Christopher Maynard, Adria Villar, and Laura Tuell are the “real heroes” of Due Process in the Immigraton Court system.

Compare the real stories of desperate, bona fide asylum seekers and their hard-working dedicated lawyers being “stiffed” and mistreated in the Immigration Court with Sessions’s recent false narrative to EOIR about an asylum system rife with fraud promoted by “dirty attorneys.” Sessions’s obvious biases against migrants, both documented and undocumented, and particularly against Latino asylum seekers on the Southern Border, make him glaringly unqualified to be either our Attorney General or in charge of our U.S. Immigration Court system.

No amount of “creative book-cooking” by EOIR and the DOJ can disguise the human and due process disaster unfolding here. This is exactly what I mean when I refer to “”Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”), and it’s continuing to increase the Immigration Court backlogs (now at a stunning 660,000) notwithstanding that there are now more Immigration Judges on duty than there were at the end of the last Administration.

I’ll admit upfront to not being very good at statistics and to being skeptical about what they show us. But, let’s leave the “Wonderful World of EOIR” for a minute and go on over to TRAC for a “reality check” on how “Trumpism” is really working in the Immigration Courts. http://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/court_backlog/apprep_backlog.php

On September 30, 2016, near the end of the Obama Administration, the Immigration Court backlog stood at a whopping 516,000! Not good!

But, now let go to Nov. 30, 2017, a period of 14 months later, 10 of these full months under the policies of the Trump Administration. The backlog has mushroomed to a stunning 659,000 cases — a gain of 153,000 in less than two years! And, let’s not forget, that’s with more Immigration Judges on board!

By contrast, during the last two full years of the Obama Administration — September 30, 2014 to September 30, 2016 — the backlog rose from 408,000 to 516,000. Nothing to write home about — 108,000 — but not nearly as bad as the “Trump era” has been to date!

Those who know me, know that I’m no “fan” of the Obama Administration’s stewardship over the U.S. Immigration Courts. Wrongful and highly politicized “prioritization” of recently arrived children, women, and families from the Northern Triangle resulted in “primo ADR” that sent the system into a tailspin that has only gotten worse. And, the glacial two-year cycle for the hiring of new Immigration Judges was totally inexcusable.

But, the incompetence and disdain for true Due Process by the Trump Administration under Sessions is at a whole new level. It’s clearly “Amateur Night at the Bijou” in what is perhaps the nation’s largest Federal Court system. And, disturbingly, nobody except a few of us “Immigration Court Groupies” seems to care.

So, it looks like we’re going to have to stand by and watch while Sessions “implodes” or “explodes” the system. Then, folks might take notice. Because the collapse of the U.S. Immigration Courts is going to take a big chunk of the Article III Federal Judiciary with it.

Why? Because approximately 80% of the administrative review petitions in the U.S. Courts of Appeals are generated by the BIA. That’s over 10% of the total caseload. And, in Circuits like the 9th Circuit, it’s a much higher percentage.

The U.S. Immigration Judges will continue to be treated like “assembly line workers” and due process will be further short-shrifted in the “pedal faster” atmosphere intentionally created by Sessions and McHenry. The BIA, in turn, will be pressured to further “rubber stamp” the results as long as they are removal orders. The U.S. Courts of Appeals, and in some cases the U.S. District Courts, are going to be left to clean up the mess created by Sessions & co.

We need an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court with competent, unbiased judicial administration focused on insuring individuals’ Due Process now! We’re ignoring the obvious at our country’s peril!

PWS

01-20-18

DISORDER IN THE U.S. IMMIGRATION COURTS: SESSIONS “DECLARES WAR” ON HIS OWN IMMIGRATION JUDGES! — JUDGES’ ASSOCIATION (“NAIJ”) REPORTS MEMBERS REACTING WITH “DISBELIEF, SHOCK, CONFUSION, AND OUTRAGE” TO THE CONDESCENDING “McHENRY MEMO!” — NAIJ DEMANDS BARGAINING ON CASE QUOTAS!

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a retired member of the National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”). In that capacity, I received the following e-mail from our President, The Honorable A. Ashley Tabaddor (who is resident in the U.S. Immigration Court in Los Angeles California), acting in her NAIJ capacity. I republish that e-mail below with Judge Tabaddor’s permission.

“Dear NAIJ Members,

We have been hearing much from our members regarding the recent Director’s email, dated January 17, 2018, publishing purported “Case Priorities and Immigration Court Performance Measures.” Many have expressed their disbelief, shock, confusion, and outrage as to the published standards, in light of the severe backlogs in our courts. We share your concerns. NAIJ has demanded to bargain on implementation of “numeric based performance measures on Immigration Judges”, and the Agency had provided assurances to NAIJ that no individual IJ based quotas and deadlines will be imposed until they have fulfilled their obligation under labor law to bargain with us. And under the law, the Agency is prohibited from imposing such standards until all our bargaining rights have been properly exhausted. NAIJ is also fighting any infliction of quotas and deadlines on Immigration Judges through outreach to the public and Congress, and is investigating the possibility of legal action.

In addition, NAIJ is currently evaluating the memo to determine if there has been any breach in law with the issuance of this memo or any further action we can take under labor law with respect to it.

NAIJ is working diligently to fight the implementation of any “numeric based performance measures” on Judges, and ensure that any future standards that may be imposed on Judges or the Immigration Courts are legally defensible, fair, and would not encroach on our independent decision making authority. Please stay tuned for further development.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to myself or any of our NAIJ representatives.

The Honorable A. Ashley Tabaddor, President

National Association of Immigration Judges

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.”

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I’ve already noted the total preposterousness and tone-deafness of setting arbitrary “case completion goals” for a court system that is already working overtime but crumbling under incredible backlogs and outdated procedures and technology.

Make no mistake about it: those backlogs are not because of Judges, immigrants, or immigrants’ attorneys. They are the direct result of: 1) years of mismanagement and continuing improper political meddling by Sessions and his predecessors going back over several Administrations; and 2) an irresponsible lack of restraint and common sense priorities by DHS enforcement that has been encouraged, aided, and abetted by this Administration.

Under the Trump Administration, DHS line enforcement agents have been freed from any semblance of priorities and given essentially carte blanche to arrest anyone they feel like arresting and placing them into an already overwhelmed and crumbling U.S. Immigration Court System. Meanwhile, the Immigration Judges, who are struggling to provide due process, and have been stripped of any meaningful control over their own dockets, are treated like “assembly line workers” subject to “production quotas.” That’s no way to run a Due Process Court System, and it’s showing in some of the incorrect and unfair results that I report on regularly!

We need an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court, now! But Congress, which can’t perform the basic functions of governance, apparently isn’t interested in cleaning up the mess they created and enabled. So, with the system fast heading for complete collapse, it looks to me like, willing or not, the Article III U.S. Courts will be stuck with effectively placing the U.S. Immigration Courts in “judicial receivership” until some future Congress addresses the situation in a way that insures Constitutional Due Process of law for all.

A very bad day for the U.S. Justice System and for all who care about upholding Due Process under our Constitution.

PWS

01-19-20

EOIR/IMMIGRATION COURTS: AG SESSIONS ANNOUNCES APPOINTMENT OF HON. JAMES McHENRY AS PERMANENT DIRECTOR OF EOIR!

“JUSTICE NEWS

Department of Justice

Office of Public Affairs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Attorney General Sessions Announces Appointment of James McHenry As Director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review

Attorney General Jeff Sessions today announced the appointment of James McHenry as the permanent Director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) at the Department of Justice. McHenry has served as the Acting Director of EOIR since May 30, 2017.

“I am pleased to announce the appointment of James as the permanent Director of EOIR. Since his appointment as Acting Director last May, James has led EOIR in restoring its commitment to the timely and efficient adjudication of immigration cases, and in identifying additional common-sense improvements to the immigration court system,” said Attorney General Sessions. “James is an exceptionally talented and capable leader, and I am confident that he will continue to ensure that EOIR and its components will adjudicate cases in a manner that serves the national interest.”

“Under Attorney General Sessions’ leadership, EOIR has implemented a series of sensible reforms that aim to reduce the pending caseload by realigning the agency towards completing cases, increasing both productivity and capacity, and changing policies that lead to inefficiencies and waste,” said EOIR Director McHenry. “I look forward to building on the success of last year and further realizing our goal of cutting the pending caseload in half by 2020.”

EOIR was created on Jan. 9, 1983, through an internal department reorganization which combined the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) with the immigration judge function previously performed by the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) (now part of the Department of Homeland Security). The Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer (OCAHO) was added in 1987.

EOIR is headed by a director who is responsible for the supervision of the Chairman of BIA, the Chief Immigration Judge, the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer and all agency personnel. EOIR has more than 2,100 employees in its 59 immigration courts nationwide, at the BIA, at OCAHO, and at EOIR headquarters in Falls Church, Virginia.

Director McHenry has previously served in the Executive Office for Immigration Review; he first joined the agency in 2003 through the Attorney General’s Honors Program and returned to the agency in 2016, when he was appointed as an administrative law judge (ALJ) for EOIR OCAHO.

Last year, McHenry served as a Deputy Associate Attorney General working on a variety of immigration-related litigation matters and overseeing multiple components reporting to the Office of the Associate Attorney General. From 2014 to 2016, he served as an ALJ for the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review in the Social Security Administration. Prior to that, he worked for the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security as an Assistant Chief Counsel and, later, as a Senior Attorney where he served as a lead attorney for national security, denaturalization, gang cases, anti-human trafficking operations, and worksite enforcement matters. He also served a detail as a Special Assistant United States Attorney for the Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of Georgia.

Director McHenry earned a Bachelor of Science from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, a Master of Arts in political science from the Vanderbilt University Graduate School, and a Juris Doctor from the Vanderbilt University Law School.”

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PWS

01-19-20

U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGE RODGER P. HARRIS REPORTEDLY STANDS TALL FOR DUE PROCESS AS NEW COURT SUIT ALLEGES THAT HIS COLLEAGUES ON THE IMMIGRATION BENCH IN CHARLOTTE, N.C. ARE SCOFFLAWS WHO FAIL TO HOLD LEGALLY REQUIRED BOND HEARINGS!

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/immigration-law-blog/archive/2018/01/18/lawsuit-challenges-immigration-judges-who-refuse-to-hold-bond-hearings-palacios-v-sessions.aspx?Redirected=true

From LexisNexis Immigration Community online:

“Lawsuit Challenges Immigration Judges Who Refuse to Hold Bond Hearings: Palacios v. Sessions

AIC, Jan. 17, 2018 –

“The government cannot lock people up without giving them access to prompt bond hearings and an opportunity to show that they should be released for the months or years that it takes to adjudicate their removal cases. This lawsuit challenges the actions of immigration judges in Charlotte, North Carolina who have done just that: refused to conduct bond hearings for people who properly file bond motions with the Charlotte Immigration Court. The case was filed as a class action in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina by the American Immigration Council, the CAIR Coalition, and Cauley Forsythe Law Group.”

Complaint

Brief in Support of Motion for Class Certification”

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Go on over to LexisNexis Immigration Community at the link for the complete story.

Check out paragraph 6 of the Complaint which contrasts the conduct of Judge Harris, who holds bond hearing in accordance with the law and established procedures, and the alleged conduct of his judicial colleagues in Charlotte.

Not surprising to me! Judge Harris was my colleague for years at the U.S. Immigration Court in Arlington Virginia where he had a reputation for scrupulously following the law and providing full due process to all who came before him. Just like a U.S. Immigration Judge is supposed to do.

On the other hand, prior to Judge Harris’s arrival, the Charlotte Immigration Court had a reputation among the private bar, commentators, and the press as a place where due process was often given short shrift, particularly in asylum cases.

Of course, these are merely allegations at this time. We’ll see what happens as the case progresses in Federal District Court.

While Sessions, McHenry, and the “Falls Church Crew” are screwing around with imaginary “goals and timetables’ — untethered to reality in a system with a 660,000 backlog and no real plan for resolving it — these are the real due process problems that are festering in the U.S. Immigration Courts and denying individuals their legal right to due process on a regular basis. Where’s the concern from “on high” with a court system that’s failing in its mission to provide due process to individuals under our Constitution? Obviously, the problem starts with a “Scofflaw Attorney General” who cares more about expediting removals and a White Nationalist immigration enforcement agenda than he does about the Constitution, Due Process, and the integrity of the U.S. Immigration Court system.

We need an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court now!

PWS

01-18-18

MORE NONSENSE FROM EOIR: NEW “PRIORITIES & TIMETABLES” WON’T HELP RESOLVE 660,00 CASE BACKLOG, BUT WILL MINDLESSLY INCREASE STRESS, CAUSE MORE “ADR,” & IMPEDE DUE PROCESS!

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/01/17/doj-issues-new-immigration-court-policies-addressing-obama-era-caseload-backup.html

Brooke Singman reports for Fox News:

“The Justice Department issued new measures on Wednesday that will prioritize certain immigration cases in an effort to streamline a system that nearly tripled the caseload of judges during the Obama administration.

A memo listing guidelines for all new cases filed and an order that all immigration court cases that are reopened must establish case priorities was sent by John [sic] McHenry, the director of the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, to the Office of Chief Immigration Judge, all immigration judges, all court administrators and all immigration court staff.

“In 2010, immigration court benchmarks for non-detained cases were abruptly abandoned, and since that time — perhaps non-coincidentally — the caseload has tripled,” Justice Department spokesman Devin O’Malley said in a statement to Fox News, noting that the reintroduction of court-based goals and benchmarks would “assist in properly managing cases, increase productivity, and reduce the pending caseload.”

“Some policies implemented in the immigration court system in recent years have contributed to a three-fold increase of the courts’ pending caseload,” O’Malley said to Fox News, noting that certain “prioritization practices” made the caseload “worse” by continuing cases that could be resolved more quickly in favor of cases that often took longer to complete.

It was “the immigration court equivalent of fiddling while Rome burned,” O’Malley said.

“Some policies implemented in the immigration court system in recent years have contributed to a three-fold increase of the courts’ pending caseload.”

– Devin O’Malley, DOJ spokesman

McHenry’s memo is part of a larger push led by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who issued a broader memo late last year outlining principles to ensure that the “adjudication of immigration court cases serves the national interest,” and gave McHenry the “authority” to set time frames for the resolution of cases, and to evaluate the performance of immigration judges and “take corrective action where needed.”

Currently, less than 10 percent of immigration cases pending meet the definition of “priority,” according to McHenry, leading him to address “confusion” and “clarify” the department’s priorities. That statistic, however, conveys a “potentially mistaken impression” of the importance of completing the other 600,000-plus pending cases that do not bear a “priority” designation, according to McHenry.

“All cases involving individuals in detention or custody, regardless of the custodian, are priorities for completion,” McHenry wrote, but noted that “the designation of a case as a priority is not intended to mandate a specific outcome in any particular case.”

Other measures McHenry ordered were new benchmarks for courts, and for immigration judges.

The new measures require that 85 percent of all non-status detained removal cases be completed within 60 days of filing; 85 percent of all non-status non-detained removal cases be completed within 1 year of filing; and 85 percent of all motions adjudicated within 14 days of the request.

McHenry also required 90 percent of custody redeterminations to be completed within 14 days of the request, and 95 percent of all hearings to be completed on their initial scheduled hearing date.

Another new rule requires 100 percent of “all credible fear reviews” to be completed within seven days.

Fox News’ Jake Gibson contributed to this report.”

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

Thanks to Dan Kowalski over at LexisNexis for sending this item my way.

Inane memos like this, issued without consultation and meaningful input from either the U.S. Immigration Judges who actually decide the cases or the attorneys who litigate in immigration Court, are basically “DOA.” Significantly, both the BIA and the Federal Courts have made it clear that compliance with bureaucratic “timeframes” can’t overrule the legal requirements of Due Process in an individual case. Even assuming that Sessions can “co-opt” the BIA, the Federal Courts will be sending back cases in which it appears that the Immigration Judge has elevated the desire to meet timeframes over the requirements of fundamental fairness and Due Process.

But, quite contrary to Acting Director James (not “John” as the article states) McHenry’s bogus claim that the memo does not suggest any particular outcome, the memo clearly suggests that U.S. Immigration Judges should cut corners and deny Due Process to meet these artificial guidelines or risk having their performance judged “deficient.” For example, most detained cases with asylum applications that go to an “Individual Merits” hearing are going to take more than 60 days for the Respondent to locate a pro bono attorney and for that attorney to complete the application and prepare for what often can be a very complex and hotly contested hearing. It’s an open invitation, if not an actual directive, to engage in sloppy, unprofessional judging.

Moreover, the tone of the memo insultingly suggests that the problem is that in the absence of this type of sophomoric “guidance from above” U.S. Immigration Judges haven’t been working very hard or effectively to complete cases. Therefore, “cracking the administrative whip” — by folks that by and large are not and never have actually been sitting U.S. immigration Judges — will somehow motivate them to “pedal faster.” What a crock! Almost any executive or manager worth his or her salt knows that this type of “scare tactic” applied to a senior professional workforce accomplishes nothing besides ratcheting up already astronomically high stress levels and unnecessarily diminishing already low morale.

This memorandum is, however, yet another key exhibit on how and why the current U.S. Immigration Court is being incompetently administered by the DOJ and their “gofors” over at EOIR Headquarters in Falls Church. With the likes of Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions in charge of the U.S. Immigration Courts, things are only going to get worse. American needs an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court now!

PWS

01-18-18

CHIEF IMMIGRATION JUDGE MARYBETH KELLER’S MEMO DOWNGRADING PROTECTIONS FOR CHILDREN IN IMMIGRATON COURT DRAWS ETHICS COMPLAINT

COMPLAINT AGAINST CHIEF IMMIGRATION JUDGE FOR ORDERING JUDGES TO IGNORE FEDERAL LAWS PROTECTING CHILDREN

by Bryan Johnson on December 22, 2017

The following complaint was filed today against Chief Immigration Judge, MaryBeth Keller for ordering immigration judges to disregard special legal protections for unaccompanied children as mandated by 8 USC 1232(e):

Download [3.33 MB]

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You can download the complaint at the link.

Gotta believe that this one will get a quick coat of whitewash from EOIR, particularly since Chief Judge Keller’s “rise through the ranks” of the HQ bureaucracy was fueled, in part, by her role as the Assistant Chief Judge in charge of Judicial Conduct.

I always liked Chief Judge Keller, who once worked for me at the BIA. She’s a fundamentally decent person working for a bad guy (Jeff Sessions) and just trying to hang onto her job and limit the damage as best she can until she’s eligible to retire. I doubt that the “offending (and offensive) memo” was her idea. She was undoubtedly ordered to write it by Acting Director McHenry and his “handlers” at the DOJ. And, it certainly echoes Sessions’s clear bias against all immigrants, particularly young people of color. Remember the completely uncalled for “smear job” he did on “Dreamers” while gleefully announcing their planned demise as if it were some great achievement, rather than something of which we all should be ashamed?

Dreamers make our country better; Gonzo Apocalyto, not so much.

PWS

12-23-17

Due Process Forever! Jeff Sessions Never! Join the New Due Process Army and stand up against the White Nationalist restrictionist attack on America and our Constitution!

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“JUSTICE NEWS

Attorney General Sessions Announces Appointment of James McHenry As Director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review

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COMPLAINT AGAINST CHIEF IMMIGRATION JUDGE FOR ORDERING JUDGES TO IGNORE FEDERAL LAWS PROTECTING CHILDREN

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