Category: Hon. Jeffrey Chase

🇺🇸🗽⚖️🦸🏼‍♀️🎖RECOGNIZING AN AMERICAN HERO & DUE PROCESS MAVEN, ANNE PILSBURY! — Hon. “Sir Jeffrey” Chase’s Heartfelt Tribute — “Those of us who care about people on the wrong side of history just have to help case by case, person by person.” (Corrected Version)

Anne Pilsbury ESQUIREAmerican Legal Superhero PHOTO: Courtesy of Jeff Chase
Anne Pilsbury ESQUIRE
American Legal Superhero
PHOTO: Courtesy of Hon. Jeffrey Chase

UPDATE & CORRECTED WITH PICTURE OF THE “REAL” ANNE PILSBURY — THANKS TO SIR JEFFREY!

Jeffrey S. Chase
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog
Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2023/1/18/thanking-anne-pilsbury

JEFFREY S. CHASE | OPINIONS/ANALYSIS ON IMMIGRATION LAW

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Thanking Anne Pilsbury

“Those of us who care about people on the wrong side of history just have to help case by case, person by person.” – Anne Pilsbury, quoted in Francisco Goldman, “Escape to New York,” The New Yorker, Aug. 9, 2016.

Anne Pilsbury is well; she continues to work at Central American Legal Assistance (“CALA”), the organization she founded almost four decades ago. She was recently awarded the Carol Weiss King Award by the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild. She remains most generous in sharing her knowledge with the immigration law community in New York.

However, as of January 1, Anne has stepped down from CALA’s helm, passing the Directorship of the organization to the extremely talented Heather Axford.

It thus seems like an appropriate time to honor Anne’s extraordinary career. Her path from Washington, D.C. to Maine “country lawyer” to representing asylum-seekers in Williamsburg, Brooklyn is a fascinating one. It began with Anne’s role as plaintiff’s counsel in Hobson v. Wilson,1 a remarkable case having nothing to do with immigration law.

Hobson involved a top-secret FBI operation of the late-1960s to early-1970s called COINTELPRO, which targeted civil rights groups seeking racial equality, and another set of organizations actively opposing the Vietnam war. COINTELPRO specifically listed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee as primary targets.

In the words of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, COINTELPRO focused on “(1) efforts to create racial animosity between Blacks and Whites; (2) interference with lawful demonstration logistics; (3) efforts to create discord within groups or to portray a group’s motives or goals falsely to the public; and (4) direct efforts to intimidate the plaintiffs.”2

Regarding the degree of those efforts, according to a 1976 Senate Select Committee Report

From December 1963 until his death in 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was the target of an intensive campaign by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to “neutralize” him as an effective civil rights leader. In the words of the man in charge of the FBI’s “war” against Dr. King:

No-holds were barred. We have used [similar] techniques against Soviet agents. [The same methods were] brought home against any organization against which we were targeted. We did not differentiate. This is a rough, tough business.3

Beginning her work on the case as a law student in D.C. and continuing with the case while in private practice in D.C., Anne and her co-counsel brought suit against the FBI for systemically violating their clients’ “constitutional rights, individually and through conspiracies, while plaintiffs engaged in lawful protest against government policy in the late 1960’s and in the 1970’s in the Washington area.”4   After a 17 day trial, Anne and her colleagues won the suit. In my view, that case alone earned Anne membership in the Due Process Army Hall of Fame.

During the time Hobson was being litigated, Anne moved to Maine, opening her own practice there in the town of Norway (pop. 5,000), traveling back and forth to D.C. for the Hobson trial. So then how did she end up in Brooklyn representing asylum seekers?

Anne explained to me that the government appealed the Hobson decision to the D.C. Circuit (in 1982), after which Anne began traveling to the New York City offices of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who served as her co-counsel on the appeal. And finding some time on her hands during the two-year pendency of that appeal allowed Anne to pursue her interest in helping those fleeing civil war in Central America, which was an issue very much in the news at the time. Although Anne found groups dedicated to the issue itself, she was less successful in locating organizations actually providing representation to immigrants from Central America.

Anne continued that INS was detaining Central Americans at that time in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.5 Anne learned that a local Catholic priest and nun, Father Bryan Karvelis and Sister Peggy Walsh, were visiting those detainees, sometimes paying the bond for their release; they even housed those who had nowhere to stay in the rectory of their Brooklyn church. And Sister Peggy had obtained accredited representative status, allowing her to represent individuals before the government.

In Anne’s words, after litigating against the FBI in Hobson, she naively thought that by comparison, dealing with INS “would be a piece of cake.” Between briefs in Hobson, Anne  organized a group of pro bono lawyers to represent Central Americans in applying for asylum under the brand-new 1980 Refugee Act. Anne spent the first year working out of her car, after which Father Bryan offered her space in the Transfiguration Church on Hooper Street, where CALA remains located to this day.

Anne thus began CALA with no funding, paying a secretary herself, and working without a salary for about two years. In a wonderfully ironic twist, CALA’s first funding came from Anne’s attorney fees in Hobson, thus making the FBI CALA’s first major benefactor.

Interestingly, Anne explained that it took a few years before the newly created EOIR began to hear Central American cases in earnest; in the early 1980s, the federal government somehow believed that the problems in the region would be over in a year or two.

Once they did begin hearing Central American cases, the Immigration Judges of that time denied virtually all of their asylum claims, generally doing so by incorrectly classifying the feared harm as “random violence.” In spite of the new asylum law intended to make adjudications fairer and free of political influence, it took years before Anne won her first asylum case.

And yet Anne persevered, building a model program and recruiting and mentoring outstanding lawyers. Anne also challenged EOIR’s misguided decisions and policies in the federal courts.

I want to make it clear that I had not included this next anecdote in my initial draft; it is being added at Anne’s own request. But while fighting to prevent the deportation of factory workers illegally arrested in a workplace raid, a March 1988 conference before U.S. District Court Judge Mark A. Constantino apparently became quite heated, resulting in the judge holding Anne in criminal contempt of court. That order was overturned by the Second Circuit in Matter of Pilsbury.6 The Second Circuit decision contained the following quote directed at Anne by Judge Constantino:

You go practice your shabby law somewheres [sic] else. Don’t you dare practice it in the Eastern District. You no longer will be permitted to practice in any part of this court. You will not be able to practice in this court or the immigration service. This court will see to it.7

Judge Constantino’s words turned out to be about as accurate as the Department of Justice’s belief that the turmoil in Central America would settle down after a few months. Some thirty-five years later, Anne’s impact on asylum case law has been nothing less than remarkable.

In 1994, in the case of Osorio v. INS,8 Anne prevailed in challenging the BIA’s determination that a labor union leader’s fear of persecution in Guatemala was not on account of his political opinion because, as a labor union leader, his point of dispute with the Guatemalan government was economic, not political.

In reversing the BIA’s conclusion, the Second Circuit quoted a statement made by Anne at oral argument, which became one of the most famous lines in asylum law history: that according to the BIA’s view, the Nobel Prize winning Soviet novelist and renowned dissident “Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn would not have been eligible for political asylum because his dispute with the former Soviet Union is properly characterized as a literary, rather than a political, dispute.”9

The court agreed with Anne that “Regardless of whether their dispute might have been characterized as a literary dispute, it might also have been properly characterized as a political dispute.”10 The Osorio decision remains extremely relevant today for its expansive view of what constitutes “political opinion” for asylum purposes, and for recognizing that nexus can be satisfied where the persecution is on account of mixed motives, a concept later codified by Congress.

A month earlier, in the case of Sotelo-Aquije v. Slattery,11  Anne had won a Second Circuit victory for a community leader from Peru who was denied asylum by the BIA in spite of being at risk of violence for speaking out against the Shining Path.

Also in 1994, Anne prevailed before the Ninth Circuit in a case called Campos v. Nail,12 challenging an Immigration Judge’s pattern or practice of denying all motions for change of venue filed by Salvadoran and Guatemalan asylum seekers who had not established a U.S. address prior to their arrest by the INS.  In applying this policy without consideration of the individual’s circumstances, the IJ forced respondents who had long settled thousands of miles away to return at no small expense to Arizona for their hearings, or face an in absentia deportation order if unable to do so. The Ninth Circuit agreed with Anne that the policy violated the petitioners’ “statutory and regulatory rights to be assured a reasonable opportunity to attend their deportation hearings and to present evidence on their own behalf,” which “in turn interfered with the plaintiffs’ statutory and regulatory rights to apply for asylum and to obtain representation by counsel at no expense to the government.”13

Anne later won two cases before the Second Circuit creating important protections for asylum seekers in establishing their credibility before Immigration Judges. The precedent decisions in Alvarado-Carillo v. INS,14 and Secaida-Rosales v. INS15 rejected the application of an inappropriate standard relying on speculation or conjecture in rejecting an asylum applicant’s credibility, and required that such determinations be based on facts material to the claim. However, in noting how difficult keeping such gains can be, Anne pointed to the fact that both of these decisions were specifically cited with disapproval by Congress in its subsequent amendments contained in the 2005 REAL ID Act giving Immigration Judge greater leeway to deny asylum based on credibility or corroboration.

In 2006, Anne won an important case recognizing that a different standard applies when determining persecution to children. In Jorge-Tzoc v. Gonzales,16 the Second Circuit held that harm that had not been found to rise to the level of persecution to an adult “could well constitute persecution to a small child totally dependent on his family and community.” The court also cited INS’s asylum guidelines for children recognizing that “The harm a child fears or has suffered, however, may be relatively less than that of an adult and still qualify as persecution.”17

I’ve just mentioned some of the highlights from Anne’s career. From her office inside the Transfiguration Church, the entity Anne founded has assisted thousands of immigrants over the years. And CALA has very much remained focused on the community it serves; as Anne says, that is very much by choice. Among those serving on the organization’s Board of Directors are early clients of CALA, along with former staff.

The community connection is not limited to people. The CALA website lists among its staff, photo and all, “Oscar Gerardi Caceres the Cat,” an actual cat rescued by Anne (as opposed to an attorney with a cat filter), whose responsibilities are listed as “greeting clients, inspecting files, and prowling the office as our security guard.” It must be pointed out that this whimsical entry also carries a far more serious meaning, as the office cat has been named to honor the memory of three fallen leaders of the decades-long violence in Central America:  Msgr. Oscar Romero (killed in 1980 in El Salvador), Berta Caceres, an environmental activist and indigenous leader killed in Honduras in 2016, and Bishop Juan Gerardi, killed in Guatemala in 1998 right after releasing the church’s devastating truth commission report on military atrocities.

Over the years, I have left every conversation with Anne having learned something important. Anne has a casual, often direct way of speaking; her words can be simultaneously remarkably simple and deeply profound.

I offer as an example this quote of hers from the same 2016 New Yorker article quoted above:

“I never expected it to take so long for our government to wake up to what was happening in Central America, and to stop funding militaries and wars, and stop blaming immigrants for trying to save their own lives….Thirty years later, I’m no longer so optimistic, I don’t expect people here to learn from history anymore. Of course, you never stop hoping they will, when the lessons are so obvious.”

In 2006, the block of Marcy Avenue on which the Transfiguration Church sits was named “Msgr. Bryan J. Karvelis Way.” I found online remarks made by City Council Member Diana Reyna during the meeting at which the naming was voted upon. Those remarks included the following:

Brooklyn parishes, like their neighborhoods, have gone through a lot of changes over the years. But one thing remains constant: in a Diocese of Immigrants, they continue to reach out to the latest newcomers, and make a home for them. Transfiguration parish is a superb example of this, and today is a good day to celebrate its history.

In paying tribute to Father Bryan, those remarks are no doubt also a tribute to the work of Anne and CALA over the past 40 years.

Please join me in thanking Anne Pilsbury profoundly, and wishing her all of the best  her future pursuits.

Notes:

  1. 737 F.2d 1 (D.C. Cir. 1984).
  2. Id. at 11.
  3. Senate Select Committee, Book III: Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports, 94th Cong., 2d sess., 1976, S. Rep. 94-755 at 81; https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_III.pdf
  4. Hobson v. Wilson, 556 F. Supp. 1157, 1163 (D.D.C. 1982).
  5. Just to give out-of-town readers a sense of change over Anne’s career, the Brooklyn Navy Yard presently includes the largest movie studio outside of Hollywood; a large number of innovative tech start-ups, and a Wegman’s Supermarket.
  6. 866 F.2d 22 (2d Cir. 1989).
  7. Id. at 22.
  8. 18 F.3d 1017 (2d Cir. 1994).
  9. Id. at 1028-29.
  10. Id. at 1029.
  11. 17 F.3d 33 (2d Cir. 1994).
  12. 43 F.3d 1285 (9th Cir. 1994).
  13. Id. at 1291.
  14. 251 F.3d 44 (2d Cir. 2001).
  15. 331 F.3d 297 (2d Cir. 2003).
  16. 435 F.3d 146 (2d Cir. 2006).
  17. Id. at 150.

Copyright 2023 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved. Republished by permission.

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Congratulations, Anne, on an amazing career — one that continues on in a different role! You are what real leadership and courage are all about! 

Building a better America, “case by case, person by person.” I used to say that to folks in court during my days on the bench. It was a “team effort” that included everyone in the courtroom.

Also, thanks to Jeffrey for such a moving and elegantly written portrait of a real American patriot. Giving thanks and recognizing those who have “paved the way” and supported our common values and ideals is an oft-overlooked value in and of itself.

The Biden Administration and Dems generally are notoriously bad in this area. That’s particularly and painfully evident when it comes to those who “held the line” on our Constitution, democracy, and human rights — at a time when many of those leaders and politicos who would benefit were nowhere to be found “in the trenches” of defending and promoting social justice in the face of the Trump/GOP onslaught.

This is my favorite quote from Jeffrey’s profile of Anne:

“I never expected it to take so long for our government to wake up to what was happening in Central America, and to stop funding militaries and wars, and stop blaming immigrants for trying to save their own lives….Thirty years later, I’m no longer so optimistic, I don’t expect people here to learn from history anymore. Of course, you never stop hoping they will, when the lessons are so obvious.”

Clearly, Biden, Harris, Mayorkas, Garland, a number of Dem politicos, Federal Judges at all levels, and many members of the so-called “mainstream media” neither learned nor heeded the obvious lessons of history. They also ignored the law in their disgraceful “rush to reject rather than protect!”

They keep “blaming the victims” for saving their own lives, ignoring our nation’s failure to live up to our humanitarian commitments, and violating our statutes and Constitutional guarantees of the right to apply for asylum and receive a fair adjudication of claims. It’s as if World War II, Hitler, the Holocaust, and its aftermath  have been “written out” of our history — mainly by the GOP but also disturbingly by some Democrats and members of the Biden Administration.

Also, many congratulations to “rising NDPA superstar” Heather Axford on her appointment as the new Director of CALA! Heather has already “creamed” the DOJ in the notable case of Hernandez-Chacon v. Barr. See, e.g., https://wp.me/p8eeJm-52n. That case is basically a compendium of why EOIR is failing, both legally and operationally. 

Heather Axford
Heather Axford
Director
Central American Legal Assistance
Brooklyn, NY

Yet, disgracefully, rather than “tapping into” the expertise and organizational talents of Heather, Anne, and their NDPA colleagues, Garland and his team are presiding over the “death spiral” of EOIR — endangering our entire U.S. justice system and threatening and degrading human lives!

I’m proud to say that Heather “got her start” practicing before the “Legacy” Arlington Immigration Court with the Law Offices of Alan M. Parra following her graduation from UVA Law! I know that Heather will carry on and build upon Anne’s humanitarian legal legacy and leadership example at CALA!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-19-23

  

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🎊HAPPY NEW YEAR 2023 FROM COURTSIDE — A RETROSPECTIVE — From The 12-26-16 Edition Of “Courtside” — The NDPA Has Gotten Stronger; Our Political, Judicial, & Bureaucratic Officials, Not So Much!

Starving Children
If these kids survive, what will they think about a rich nation that turned its back on the world’s most vulnerable in their hour of need?
Creative Commons License

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/newsheadlines/archive/2016/10/18/saving-child-migrants-while-saving-ourselves-hon-paul-wickham-schmidt-ret.aspx?Redirected=true

Originally published by LexisNexis Immigration Community on Oct. 18, 2016:

SAVING CHILD MIGRANTS WHILE SAVING OURSELVES 

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

They cross deserts, rivers, and territories controlled by corrupt governments, violent gangs, and drug cartels. They pass through borders, foreign countries, different languages and dialects, and changing cultures.

I meet them on the final leg of their trip where we ride the elevator together. Wide-eyed toddlers in their best clothes, elementary school students with backpacks and shy smiles, worried parents or sponsors trying to look brave and confident. Sometimes I find them wandering the parking garage or looking confused in the sterile concourse. I tell them to follow me to the second floor, the home of the United States Immigration Court at Arlington, Virginia. “Don’t worry,” I say, “our court clerks and judges love children.”

Many will find justice in Arlington, particularly if they have a lawyer. Notwithstanding the expedited scheduling ordered by the Department of Justice, which controls the Immigration Courts, in Arlington the judges and staff reset cases as many times as necessary until lawyers are obtained. In my experience, retaining a pro bono lawyer in Immigration Court can be a lengthy process, taking at least six months under the best of circumstances. With legal aid organizations now overwhelmed, merely setting up intake screening interviews with needy individuals can take many months. Under such conditions, forcing already overworked court staff to drop everything to schedule initial court hearings for women and children within 90 days from the receipt of charging papers makes little, if any, sense.

Instead of scheduling the cases at a realistic rate that would promote representation at the initial hearing, the expedited scheduling forces otherwise avoidable resetting of cases until lawyers can be located, meet with their clients (often having to work through language and cultural barriers), and prepare their cases. While the judges in Arlington value representation over “haste makes waste” attempts to force unrepresented individuals through the system, not all Immigration Courts are like Arlington.

For example, according to the Transactional Records Clearinghouse at Syracuse University (“TRAC”), only 1% of represented juveniles and 11% of all juveniles in Arlington whose cases began in 2014, the height of the so-called “Southern Border Surge,” have received final orders of removal. By contrast, for the same group of juveniles in the Georgia Immigration Courts, 43% were ordered removed, and 52% of those were unrepresented.

Having a lawyer isn’t just important – it’s everything in Immigration Court. Generally, individuals who are represented by lawyers in their asylum cases succeed in remaining in the United States at an astounding rate of five times more than those who are unrepresented. For recently arrived women with children, the representation differential is simply off the charts: at least fourteen times higher for those who are represented, according to TRAC. Contrary to the well-publicized recent opinion of a supervisory Immigration Judge who does not preside over an active docket, most Immigration Judges who deal face-to-face with minor children agree that such children categorically are incompetent to represent themselves. Yet, indigent individuals, even children of tender years, have no right to an appointed lawyer in Immigration Court.

To date, most removal orders on the expedited docket are “in absentia,” meaning that the women and children were not actually present in court. In Immigration Court, hearing notices usually are served by regular U.S. Mail, rather than by certified mail or personal delivery. Given heavily overcrowded dockets and chronic understaffing, errors by the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) in providing addresses and mistakes by the Immigration Court in mailing these notices are common.

Consequently, claims by the Department of Justice and the DHS that women and children with removal orders being rounded up for deportation have received full due process ring hollow. Indeed a recent analysis by the American Immigration Council using the Immigration Court’s own data shows that children who are represented appear in court more than 95% of the time while those who are not represented appear approximately 33% of the time. Thus, concentrating on insuring representation for vulnerable individuals, instead of expediting their cases, would largely eliminate in absentia orders while promoting real, as opposed to cosmetic, due process. Moreover, as recently pointed out by an article in the New York Times, neither the DHS nor the Department of Justice can provide a rational explanation of why otherwise identically situated individuals have their cases “prioritized” or “deprioritized.”

Rather than working with overloaded charitable organizations and exhausted pro bono attorneys to schedule initial hearings at a reasonable pace, the Department of Justice orders that initial hearings in these cases be expedited. Then it spends countless hours and squanders taxpayer dollars in Federal Court defending its “right” to aggressively pursue removal of vulnerable unrepresented children to perhaps the most dangerous, corrupt, and lawless countries outside the Middle East: El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. The Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”), the institution responsible for enforcing fairness and due process for all who come before our Immigration Courts, could issue precedent decisions to stop this legal travesty of accelerated priority scheduling for unrepresented children who need pro bono lawyers to proceed and succeed. But, it has failed to act.

The misguided prioritization of cases of recently arrived women, children, and families further compromises due process for others seeking justice in our Immigration Courts. Cases that have been awaiting final hearings for years are “orbited” to slots in the next decade. Families often are spread over several dockets, causing confusion and generating unnecessary paperwork. Unaccompanied

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children whose cases should initially be processed in a non-adversarial system are instead immediately thrust into court.

Euphemistically named “residential centers” — actually jails — wear down and discourage those, particularly women and children, seeking to exercise their rights under U.S. and international law to seek refuge from death and torture. Regardless of the arcane nuances of our asylum laws, most of the recent arrivals need and deserve protection from potential death, torture, rape, or other abuse at the hands of gangs, drug cartels, and corrupt government officials resulting from the breakdown of civil society in their home countries.

Not surprisingly, these “deterrent policies” have failed. Individuals fleeing so-called “Northern Triangle” countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras have continued to arrive at a steady pace, while dockets in Immigration Court, including “priority cases,” have mushroomed, reaching an astonishing 500,000 plus according to recent TRAC reports (notwithstanding efforts to hire additional Immigration Judges). As reported recently by the Washington Post, private detention companies, operating under highly questionable government contracts, appear to be the only real beneficiaries of the current policies.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We could save lives and short-circuit both the inconsistencies and expenses of the current case-by-case protection system, while allowing a “return to normalcy” for most already overcrowded Immigration Court dockets by using statutory Temporary Protected Status (known as “TPS”) for natives of the Northern Triangle countries. Indeed, more than 270 organizations with broad based expertise in immigration matters, as well as many members of Congress, have requested that the Administration institute such a program.

The casualty toll from the uncontrolled armed violence plaguing the Northern Triangle trails only those from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. TPS is a well- established humanitarian response to a country in crisis. Its recipients, after registration, are permitted to live and work here, but without any specific avenue for obtaining permanent residency or achieving citizenship. TPS has been extended among others to citizens of Syria and remains in effect for citizens of both Honduras who needed refuge from Hurricane Mitch in 1998 and El Salvador who needed refuge following earthquakes in 2001. Certainly, the disruption caused by a hurricane and earthquakes more than a decade ago pales in comparison with the very real and gruesome reality of rampant violence today in the Northern Triangle.

Regardless, we desperately need due-process reforms to allow the Immigration Court system to operate more fairly, efficiently, and effectively. Here are a few suggestions: place control of dockets in the local Immigration Judges, rather than bureaucrats in Washington, as is the case with most other court systems; work cooperatively with the private sector and the Government counsel to docket cases at a rate designed to maximize representation at the initial hearings; process unaccompanied children through the non-adversarial system before rather

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than after the institution of Immigration Court proceedings; end harmful and unnecessary detention of vulnerable families; settle ongoing litigation and redirect the talent and resources to developing an effective representation program for all vulnerable individuals; and make the BIA an effective appellate court that insures due process, fairness, uniformity and protection for all who come before our Immigration Courts.

Children are the future of our world. History deals harshly with societies that mistreat and fail to protect children and other vulnerable individuals. Sadly, our great country is betraying its values in its rush to “stem the tide.” It is time to demand an immigrant justice system that lives up to its vision of “guaranteeing due process and fairness for all.” Anything less is a continuing disgrace that will haunt us forever.

The children and families riding the elevator with me are willing to put their hopes and trust in the belief that they will be treated with justice, fairness, and decency by our country. The sole mission and promise of our Immigration Courts is due process for these vulnerable individuals. We are not delivering on that promise.

The author is a recently retired U.S. Immigration Judge who served at the U.S. Immigration Court in Arlington Virginia, and previously was Chairman and Member of the Board of Immigration Appeals. He also has served as Deputy General Counsel and Acting General Counsel of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, a partner at two major law firms, and an adjunct professor at two law schools. His career in the field of immigration and refugee law spans 43 years. He has been a member of the Senior Executive Service in Administrations of both parties.

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Recently, NDPA stars have achieved important senior positions in the Congress, the judiciary, and the immigration bureaucracy. We will need many, many more in such positions to finally turn around the limping ship of state on human rights, immigration, racial justice, smart economics, and values-based practical leadership! In the end, it’s going to be up to the “newer generations” to overcome the mistakes of my generation and create a better America and a better world — one in which individual rights and human dignity are respected and everyone can achieve their fullest potential.

Here’s a New Year’s greeting from New York courtesy of Round Table leader, talented photographer, and proud new granddad, Hon. “Sir Jeffrey” Chase:

Happy New Year in NY 2023
Happy New Year in NY 2023
PHOTO: Jeffrey Chase

😎🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-01-23

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👩🏻‍⚖️👨🏽‍⚖️ FIVE ATTORNEYS WITH RECENT EXPERIENCE REPRESENTING INDIVIDUALS IN IMMIGRATION COURT AMONG GARLAND’S ELEVEN NEW JUDICIAL APPOINTMENTS

In addition to these five, two other recently appointed Immigration Judges had private practice experience in immigration before becoming Government attorneys.

Round Table maven (and VERY proud new grandfather 😎) “Sir Jeffrey” S. Chase gave a special “shout out” to Judge Gioia M. Maiellano, now of the NY Federal Plaza Immigration Court.

Gioia M. Maiellano, Immigration Judge, New York – Federal Plaza Immigration Court

Gioia M. Maiellano was appointed as an Immigration Judge to begin hearing cases in December 2022. Judge Maiellano earned a Bachelor of Science in 1994 from Fordham University and a Juris Doctor in 1998 from Brooklyn Law School. From 2021 to 2022, she was a solo practitioner handling immigration cases. From 2017 to 2021, she served as an Administrative Law Judge with the Department of Finance, City of New York. From 2015 to 2016, she served as an asylum officer with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In 2015, prior to joining USCIS, she served as pro bono counsel for the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project. From 2013 to 2015, she worked in private practice with the Law Office of Carmen DiAmore-Siah in Honolulu representing individuals before the immigration courts, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and USCIS. From 2003 to 2013, she served as an assistant chief counsel, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, DHS, in New York. In 2002, she worked with the Law Office of Amir Alishahi in New York. From 2000 to 2001, she served as a staff attorney with the European Roma Rights Center, in Budapest, Hungary. Prior to that, she served as a law clerk with the Office of the Prosecutor at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, The Netherlands. Judge Maiellano is a member of the New York State Bar.

Here are the bios of all the new judges:

https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1558986/download

Congrats to all!👏

As experts like my friends Judge Chase, Professor Debbie Anker, and LexisNexis Guru Dan Kowalski say, EOIR is an organization where positive change is more likely to “come from below than from above.” Unfortunately, that makes it a painfully slow process for those still suffering in the substandard conditions that Garland permits in his Immigration Courts. 

Nevertheless, as more and more judges join the bench with recent experience actually working their way through this dysfunctional system to obtain justice for their clients, the resistance to mis-applying BIA and Circuit precedents favoring individuals will grow. Additionally, the legal standards will be correctly applied at the “first level,” unrealistic requirements on individuals and their lawyers will diminish, due process, fundamental fairness, and efficiency will advance, and the disgraceful anti-immigrant, anti-asylum, deny, deport, and deter “culture” at EOIR — actively promoted under Sessions and Barr — will diminish over time.

Moreover, when Article I eventually comes, a more diverse and better-qualified group of IJs likely will be initially “grandfathered.” That’s another reason why Garland’s “slow moving train” in improving the quality of EOIR Judges at all levels has been so totally frustrating.

Should have and could have happened over the past two years with better leadership and vision from Garland and his subordinates. But, given the dismal state of immigration institutions and policies over the past six years, I’ll treat anything that isn’t “bad news” as “good news!”

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-21-22

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⚖️ TWO MORE CAT REMANDS FROM 2D CIR. 

Dan Kowalski
Dan Kowalski
Online Editor of the LexisNexis Immigration Law Community (ILC)

Dan Kowalski reports for LexisNexis Immigration Community:

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca2-on-cat-honduras-garcia-aranda-v-garland#

CA2 on CAT, Honduras: Garcia-Aranda v. Garland

Garcia-Aranda v. Garland

“Karla Iveth Garcia-Aranda petitions for review of two decisions of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) denying asylum, withholding of removal, and relief under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). Garcia-Aranda, a native and citizen of Honduras, testified before an Immigration Judge (“IJ”) that she and her family had been threatened, kidnapped, and beaten by members of the Mara 18 gang while a local Honduran police officer was present. Garcia-Aranda sought asylum and withholding of removal, arguing that the gang had persecuted her because she was a member of the Valerio family, which ran its own drug trafficking ring in Garcia-Aranda’s hometown. She also sought protection under CAT based on an asserted likelihood of future torture at the hands of the gang with the participation or acquiescence of the local Honduran police. Having reviewed both the IJ’s and the BIA’s opinions, we hold that the agency did not err in finding that Garcia-Aranda failed to satisfy her burden of proof for asylum and withholding of removal, but that the agency applied incorrect standards when adjudicating Garcia-Aranda’s CAT claim. Accordingly, the petition for review is DENIED IN PART and GRANTED IN PART, the decisions of the BIA are VACATED IN PART to the extent they denied Garcia-Aranda’s claim for CAT protection, and the case is REMANDED to the BIA for further proceedings consistent with this decision. … Because of these legal errors, we grant the petition as to Garcia-Aranda’s claim for protection under CAT and vacate the BIA’s decisions regarding CAT protection. See Rafiq v. Gonzales, 468 F.3d 165, 166–67 (2d Cir. 2006) (remanding a CAT claim for proper application of Khouzam). On remand, we direct the agency to consider, in light of all testimony and documentary evidence, whether Garcia-Aranda will more likely than not be tortured by, or at the instigation of, or with the consent or acquiescence of, any public official (or other person) acting under color of law. As more fully described above, that means considering questions such as whether it is more likely than not that the gang will torture Garcia-Aranda, including meeting all the harm requirements for torture under section 1208.18(a), and whether it is more likely than not that local police acting under color of law will themselves participate in those likely gang actions or acquiesce in those likely gang actions. The BIA is also instructed to remand to the IJ for any additional factfinding that is necessary for the BIA to make its determination.”

[NOTE: This PFR was filed in 2018!  Hats off to Heather Axford and team!]

Heather Axford
Heather Axford
Senior Staff Attorney
Central American Legal Assistance
Brooklyn, NY

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

https://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/460814d0-f0ab-44e7-aa08-3e5c9842322a/3/doc/19-228_so.pdf

Lopez De Velasquez v. Garland

“Petition for review of a December 26, 2018 decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) vacating a July 27, 2017 decision of an Immigration Judge (“IJ”) granting Petitioners’ application for asylum and protection under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). UPON DUE CONSIDERATION, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that the petition for review is GRANTED in part and DENIED in part. Accordingly, the decision of the BIA is VACATED in part, and the case is REMANDED for proceedings consistent with this summary order. … Remand is required in this case because the BIA did not give consideration to all relevant evidence and principles of law, as those have been detailed by this Court’s recent decision in Scarlett v. Barr, 957 F.3d 316, 332–36 (2d Cir. 2020). … Because Mejia did not fear torture at the hands of the Guatemalan authorities, the relevant inquiry is whether government officials have acquiesced in likely third-party torture. To make this determination, the Court considers whether there is evidence that authorities knew of the torture or turned a blind eye to it, and “thereafter” breached their “responsibility to prevent” the possible torture. Scarlett, 957 F.3d at 334 (quoting Khouzam v. Ashcroft, 361 F.3d 161, 171 (2d Cir. 2004)); see 8 C.F.R. § 1208.18(a)(7). … Here, record evidence raises questions as to the Guatemalan government’s inability to protect Mejia, insofar as it indicates that Mejia sought assistance from Guatemalan police and was told that they could not protect her and she should simply hide in her home. … Insofar as the BIA ruled without the benefit of Scarlett, a remand is warranted before this Court conducts any review. We therefore remand for the sole purpose of allowing the BIA to decide, after reasoned consideration of the record, whether the Guatemalan police’s inability to protect Mejia constituted acquiescence.”

[Hats off to Mike Usher!]

Mikhail Usher, Esq. Senior Partner
Mikhail Usher, Esq.
Senior Partner
The Usher Law Group PLLC
My & New Jersey
PHOTO: Usher Law Group


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

Congrats to NDPA superstars Heather and Mike!

Here’s commentary from my Round Table colleague Hon. “Sir Jeffrey” Chase on Heather’s performance on Garcia-Aranda v. Garland:

“Heather is a remarkable litigator who did a remarkable job on this case – it was a tough panel that had basically ruled out asylum from the start; it was most impressive to hear Heather persuade the judges over the course of oral arguments as to the CAT standard (during which one of the judges repeatedly referenced proposed Trump regs that had never taken effect, but were nevertheless listed on the government’s eCFR as if it had).

Best, Jeff“

And, here’s my response:

“Heather is truly an NDPA superstar. And, I’m proud that she got her start appearing at the Arlington Immigration Court!

DPF

P”

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-27-22

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⚖️ “SIR JEFFREY” CHASE & CAMILA BUSTOS TAKE ON TOPIC OF CLIMATE REFUGEES IN LATEST “JUST SECURITY!”

Camila Bustos Clinical Supervisor in human rights practice at the University Network for Human Rights, Visiting Assistant Professor of Human Rights at Trinity College. PHOTO: Just Security

Jeffrey S. Chase
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog
Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

https://www.justsecurity.org/84092/tackling-climate-change-displacement-at-cop27/

As severe weather patterns intensify, climate change will continue to displace communities across the globe. The World Bank estimates that there could be more than 143 million people internally displaced by slow-onset disasters in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia by 2050. Populations with the least capacity to respond and adapt to a changing climate are more likely to suffer from the worst impacts.

States have a responsibility to ensure that individuals displaced because of climate change impacts are treated with respect and dignity. Yet international law does not recognize climate displacement as a subject warranting special protection or status. The 1951 Refugee Convention only recognizes persecution on account of five protected grounds (nationality, race and ethnicity, political opinion, religion, or particular social group), leaving those fleeing environmental disasters under circumstances not attributable to those specified reasons without protection.

Despite the urgent need for action, governments have been slow in creating pathways to protect climate-displaced people. If anything, increasing militarized approaches to migration flows and national security rhetoric has permeated mainstream discourse on climate migration. Discussions about “economic migrants” and which groups are deserving of international protection distract from real solutions that can provide relief and uplift the dignity of individuals displaced by climate. Also concerning is the fact that authoritarian governments have leveraged the ongoing United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) to either greenwash their image or exclude environmental advocates from accessing the climate talks.

Although climate migration is not on its official agenda, COP27 offers an opportunity for international climate negotiators and advocates to tackle the issue in three ways: (1) promote changes in domestic legal frameworks that will protect internally displaced populations; (2) raise awareness of how existing legal protections under asylum frameworks intersect with climate change; and (3) guarantee climate finance pledges are met by mobilizing funds dedicated to adaptation and mitigation.

. . . .

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

Read Jeffrey’s and Camila’s article “at the link.” Another classic example of timely “practical scholarship” written in plain English and accessible to a wide range of readers.

It’s discouraging, but not surprisingly, that nations, including ours, wasting billions on gimmicks to AVOID their obligations under the existing, inadequate Geneva Refugee Convention and Protocol are not anxious to engage on the real effects of climate migration. But individuals facing death under sand or under water as our climate changes are NOT going to go quietly and submissively into the night. 

Nations, like ours, whose politicians think that power, cruelty, denial, and misinformation — the “head in the sand” approach — will win the future eventually must confront the realities of climate change and human migration whether they find it convenient and politically advantageous or not. On the other hand, those nations that are able to recognize both the power and inevitability of migration, and are smart enough to “go with the flow,” rather than futilely attempt to “dam it up” or divert it will eventually gain the upper hand.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-21-22

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🏴‍☠️☠️🤮 CONVENTION AGAINST TORTURE (“CAT”) — For More Than Two Decades, The BIA Has Let Stand Its Legally Wrong & Highly Misleading “Precedent” Matter of S-V- — Now, “Sir Jeffrey” Chase Of The Round Table 🛡⚔️ Tells You How To Use The Real Law To Force Garland’s Scofflaws To Follow The Rule Of Law In A Failed System!

Jeffrey S. Chase
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog
Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2022/11/17/understanding-government-acquiescence

JEFFREY S. CHASE | OPINIONS/ANALYSIS ON IMMIGRATION LAW

Blog Archive Press and Interviews Calendar Contact

Understanding Government Acquiescence

I would like to discuss a concept related to asylum, involving protection under Article 3 of the U.N. Convention Against Torture (commonly referred to as “CAT” for short). Although lacking the benefits afforded to those granted asylum or admitted as refugees, the importance of CAT as a protection from deportation has increased in recent years due to the complex nature of current asylum claims, which require greater effort to interpret causation than claims that were more commonly decided decades ago.

Whereas asylum requires a connection between the persecution and the applicant’s race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, CAT protects those who are at risk of torture for any (or no) reason. CAT therefore can (and has) saved lives where the person at risk could not demonstrate to the adjudicator’s satisfaction a sufficient connection to one of the five mandatory asylum grounds.

While not requiring specific causation, CAT does require that the torture be “by, or at the instigation of, or with the consent or acquiescence of, a public official…”1 When (as is often the case) the torturers are a gang or drug cartel, what is required of an applicant to establish government acquiescence?

According to federal regulations, “Acquiescence of a public official requires that the public official, prior to the activity constituting torture, have awareness of such activity and thereafter breach his or her legal responsibility to intervene to prevent such activity.”2 Thus, the regulations make it clear that acquiescence is a two-step test for (1) awareness, and (2) breach of responsibility to intervene.

Back in 2000, the BIA addressed the meaning of “acquiescence” in a precedent decision, and managed to get it very wrong. In its en banc decision in Matter of S-V- , the majority defined “government acquiescence” as a government’s willful acceptance of the torturous activity.3 How it managed to look at the above two-step test and come up with “willful acceptance” (which, incidentally, is only one step) is anyone’s guess.

Not surprisingly, the Board’s standard was universally panned by the circuit courts. With the recent decision of the First Circuit in H.H. v. Garland 4, nine circuits have now outright rejected the BIA’s take as overly restrictive, holding that the proper test is satisfied where the government in question remained “willfully blind” to the commission of torture. The remaining two circuits, while not directly overruling the Board’s take, have nevertheless applied the “willful blindness” standard. No circuit has deferred to the BIA’s interpretation.

However, until just recently, only one circuit – the Second – clarified that acquiescence requires a two-step test as described above. The remaining circuits were content to correct the language of the Board’s one-step standard from “willful acceptance” to one including “willful blindness” and then leave it at that.

Last year, Prof. Jon Bauer at the Univ. of Connecticut Law School wrote an excellent article that did a wonderful job of explaining the proper standard and the shortcomings of existing case law on the topic.5 I believe that Prof. Bauer’s article (available at the above link) should be required reading for Immigration Judges.

In summary, Bauer’s article flagged several flaws in the common view of acquiescence. The first is the mistaken belief that “willful blindness” is the entire test for acquiescence. Bauer points out that the circuit courts have held that the “awareness” step (step one) may be met either through a government’s willful blindness or through its actual awareness. But willful blindness is neither an absolute requirement nor a minimum standard for establishing both awareness and breach of legal duty elements; it simply expands the manner in which the awareness prong may be satisfied.

Importantly, in most cases, actual awareness can be established without the need to rely on a government’s willful blindness. As Bauer points out in a footnote, at least two circuits recognize government awareness as being satisfied where the government is “aware that torture of the sort feared by the applicant occurs.”6 In other words, awareness doesn’t require the government to have specific knowledge of a plan to torture the CAT applicant; it is enough that ts agents are aware that, e.g., MS-13 is engaging in this sort of conduct within the country to satisfy the awareness prong.

Bauer additionally emphasized that acquiescence remains a two-step test, and that “willful blindness” is relevant to only the first step. The standard for satisfying step two, the breach of duty to intervene, remains a blank slate. Neither the BIA nor the circuit courts have stated what is required to establish a likelihood that the government will breach its responsibility to intervene.

Bauer points out that the confusion concerning willful blindness has caused some adjudicators to view any action (no matter how ineffectual) by the government in question as precluding a finding of acquiescence, regarding even a minimal response as proof that the government was not being “willfully blind” to the torture. But as Bauer notes, willful blindness has nothing to do with the obligation to intervene. Once awareness is established (either through actual awareness or willful blindness), the focus turns to the separate question contained in step two of whether the duty to intervene was breached.

As to the breach prong, Bauer opined that the test applied under international law, requiring states “to exercise ‘due diligence’ to prevent, investigate, prosecute, and punish acts of torture by non-State actors,” is the correct one for adoption as the domestic standard for step two. Bauer explains how this interpretation is consistent with the CAT’s text and drafting history, as well as the legislative history of US ratification and implementation of the treaty.7

The confusion cited by Bauer as to the proper standard to be applied is exacerbated by the fact that the Board has never vacated its precedent decision in S-V- setting out the incorrect standard. And it was that failure to fix what was obviously broken that led to the First Circuit’s recent lesson on the topic in H.H. In that case, an Immigration Judge denied CAT by applying the Board’s incorrect “willfully accepting” standard. And perhaps because the case arose in the First Circuit, which at the time had yet to directly refute the Board’s approach in a published decision, the BIA affirmed the Immigration Judge’s decision applying the erroneous standard.

Fortunately, the petitioner in that case was represented on appeal to the First Circuit by SangYeob Kim and Gilles Bissonnette of the ACLU of New Hampshire. Petitioner’s counsel did an excellent job of explaining the state of confusion on the topic, and of presenting the clear solution in line with Bauer’s approach. Counsel also enlisted the Round Table of Former Immigration Judges to weigh in on the topic with an amicus brief drafted for us by the law firm of Cooley LLP.8

The result was an excellent published decision deserving of our attention. First, the circuit panel found that the BIA “failed to meaningfully address H.H.’s alternative theory that MS-13 itself is a de facto state actor.” The court found that in simply labeling the argument “unpersuasive,” the Board provided an insufficient degree of analysis to facilitate appellate review. That argument remains one that practitioners should continue to raise in both the CAT and asylum contexts.9 And practitioners may now wish to cite to the language in H.H., which is the first published decision to demand a detailed explanation from adjudicators as to why they find such argument unconvincing.10

In addressing Matter of S-V-, the court joined the list of circuits rejecting the Board’s standard. Specifically, the court found the term “willful acceptance” to clash with Congress’s clear intent for awareness to be satisfied through both actual knowledge and willful blindness. As the court pointed out, willful acceptance “necessarily includes knowledge of the matter one is ‘accepting,’ and excludes the concept of willful blindness.”

Finding that the BIA applied an improper standard of review by treating the acquiescence issue as clearly factual, when the inquiry regarding “‘whether the government’s role renders the harm ‘by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official,”’ is legal in nature and is subject to de novo review,” the court remanded for the Board to consider under a de novo review standard “the question of acquiescence, understanding that a showing of willful blindness suffices to demonstrate an “awareness” of torture under the CAT.”

However, the court did not stop there.  It continued on to the question of the breach of obligation, observing that the regulations set out a two-step inquiry, yet noting that “most of the courts that have adopted the willful blindness standard have not consistently distinguished between the ‘awareness’ and ‘breach of duty’ steps.”

On remand, the court left it to the Board to address the proper standard for the breach requirement in the first instance.  But the court advised “that we join the Second Circuit in expressing skepticism that any record evidence of efforts taken by the foreign government to prevent torture, no matter how minimal, will necessarily be sufficient to preclude the agency from finding that a breach of the duty to intervene is likely to occur….Rather, on remand, the agency’s determination about breach of duty, to the extent such a determination is necessary, must be made after carefully weighing all facts in the record.”11

It is puzzling why it took 22 years for the Board to be given that direction by a circuit court. And from experience, it will take the Board some time to respond in the form of a precedent decision. As many lives will be on the line in the meantime as claims are heard by Immigration Judges (and in some instances by USCIS asylum officers, under new procedures for claims arising at the border), those deciding CAT cases are respectfully urged to reference the full decision in H.H. as well as Prof. Bauer’s article, which practitioners should also file, cite, and discuss in their briefs and arguments. Litigants and judges should work together towards getting this important standard right. Lives depend on our doing so.12

Copyright 2022 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.

Notes:

  1. 8 C.F.R. § 1208.18(a)(1).
  2. 8 C.F.R. § 1208.18(a)(7).
  3. 22 I&N Dec. 1306 (BIA 2000) (en banc). I am happy to announce that all three members of the Round Table of Former Immigration Judges who participated in that decision disagreed with the majority’s interpretation of acquiescence in separate opinions. See Concurring Opinion of Board Member Gustavo D. Villageliu; Concurring and Dissenting Opinion of BIA Chair Paul W. Schmidt, and Dissenting Opinion of Board Member Lory D. Rosenberg.
  4. Nos. 21-1150, 21-1230; ___ F.4th ___ (1st Cir. Oct. 21, 2022).
  5. J. Bauer, “Obscured by Willful Blindness: States’ Preventive Obligations and the Meaning of Acquiescence Under the Convention Against Torture,” 52 Col. Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 738 (2021).
  6. Id. at 749, fn. 34 (quoting Diaz-Reynoso v. Barr, 968 F.3d 1070, 1089 (9th Cir. 2020) (citing two earlier decisions in agreement); and additionally citing Myrie v. Att’y Gen., 855 F.3d 509, 518 (3d Cir. 2017) (similar statement).
  7. Id. at 750.
  8. The Round Table expresses its appreciation to attorneys Adam Gershenson, Zachary Sisko, Marc Suskin, Valeria M. Pelet del Toro, and Samantha Kirby of Cooley LLP for expressing our arguments so articulately in their brief on our behalf. Our brief can be read here.
  9. For an overview of this topic in the asylum context, see my 2018 blog post on 3rd-Generation Gangs and Political Asylum.
  10. For persuasive presentations of the de facto state actor argument, see Deborah E. Anker, Law of Asylum in the United States (Thomsen Reuters) at § 4:9; and Anna Welch and SangYeob Kim. “Non-State Actors ‘Under Color of Law’: Closing a Gap in Protection Under the Convention Against Torture,” 35 Harvard Hum. Rts. J. 117 (2022).
  11. The Second Circuit case cited to was De La Rosa v. Holder, 598 F.3d 103, 110-111 (2d Cir. 2010) (holding that the preventative measures of some government actors does not foreclose the possibility of government acquiescence).
  12. My sincere thanks to Jon Bauer and SangYeob Kim, who provided valuable input in reviewing this article.

NOVEMBER 17, 2022

Republished by permission.

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

I’m proud to say that, as kindly noted by “Sir Jeffrey” in FN 3, Round Table ⚔️🛡 members, Judge Gustavo D. Villageliu, Judge Lory D. Rosenberg, and I, each filed separate opinions distancing ourselves from various aspects of our majority colleagues’ specious, and eventually proved to be wrong, views in Matter of S-V-, 22 I & N Dec. 1306 (BIA 2000) (en banc). My BIA colleagues Judge John Guendelsberger and Judge Anthony C. Moscato also joined my separate opinion, in addition to Judges Villageliu and Rosenberg.

As a hint to what’s wrong with this politically-biased “charade of a court,” operating within a prosecutorial agency, I note that all of us except Judge Moscato were ultimately “exiled” from the BIA by John Ashcroft. Our “offense” was doing our jobs by standing up in dissenting opinions for correct interpretations of law and the legal and constitutional rights of migrants in the context of a “go along to get along” BIA majority who too often chose job security over justice for the individuals coming before us.

That a number of our dissents, particularly Judge Rosenberg’s, were prescient as to what Federal Circuit Courts and the Supremes would hold, and also predicted some of their vociferous criticisms of EOIR’s poor performance under Ashcroft, are also telling of the lack of legitimacy and impartiality that Ashcroft ushered in. That has continued to plague EOIR over subsequent Administrations of both parties, including the present Administration.

In my conclusion, I highlight the majority’s unseemly haste to “get to no, with the interpretation least favorable to the respondent.”

The issue whether the respondent’s situation fits within Article 3 of the Convention Against Torture requires factual determinations about conditions in Colombia and the respondent’s own situation considered in the con- text of international legal principles. We have little United States jurisprudence to guide us in this area. Before deciding such important and potentially far-reaching issues, we should have a fully developed record and the benefit of the Immigration Judge’s informed ruling on the positions of the parties.

The respondent has established a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits so as to make it worthwhile to develop the issues at a hearing under Matter of L-O-G-, supra. His motion to reopen and remand should therefore be granted. Consequently, I respectfully dissent from the decision to deny the motion.

Over the years, the pro-government/anti-immigrant bias and “haste makes waste gimmicking” has progressively gotten worse at the BIA, culminating in the disgraceful “packing” of the BIA with notorious asylum deniers and “hard liners” during the Trump Administration. 

Poll human rights experts on how many of the Trump holdover BIA judges would be considered “leading asylum experts?” How many have ever represented an asylum seeker in Immigration Court? So, why would this body have a “stranglehold” over American asylum law and be given deference by the Article IIIs to boot?

One would have expected Garland to address this obviously unacceptable situation on an urgent basis by reassigning most holdover BIA Appellate Judges and replacing them with real, expert judges from the deep private sector talent pool. EOIR needs qualified appellate jurists who will correct the many mistakes of the past, change the one-sided, overwhelmingly anti-immigrant and often misleading “precedential guidance,” enforce some consistency, eliminate disreputable “asylum free zones” pretending to be “courts,” and lead EOIR (and indeed the entire Federal Judiciary) into high-quality, best-scholarship, 21st century jurisprudence. 

That means a body of scholarly, practical, transparent precedents that properly guide and advise Immigration Judges on the correct and efficient adjudication of many cases stuck in this dysfunctional system where individuals deserve to win. Instead, Garland has allowed EOIR to continue its downward spiral with sloppy work, bad decisions, and incompetent judicial administration in a system where all of these problems are potentially life threatening. Not surprisingly, this failure to fundamentally reform and improve EOIR has also led Garland to increase the backlog to a jaw-dropping almost two million cases.

Lack of judicial excellence, grotesque inconsistencies, worst practices, and administrative incompetence have also unfairly, unprofessionally, and unnecessarily increased the difficulty and already sky-high stress levels for immigration practitioners, many serving the system in a pro bono or low bono capacity. With lack of adequate immigration representation one of the festering problems undermining our entire American justice system, Garland’s poor stewardship over EOIR can (charitably) be described as totally unacceptable.

So, in answer to Jeffrey’s question as to why after 22 years legally  wrong precedents still rule at EOIR and correct guidance remains elusive, I have the answer. Because, Merrick Garland has ignored the advice of experts and failed to make achievable, long-overdue reforms and critical upgrading of judicial quality at EOIR. 

That’s a growing cancer on our justice system that won’t be cured without better, due-process-dedicated, leadership — at all levels!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-19-22

Related posts:

  1. 🛡⚔️👍🏼“SIR JEFFREY” CHASE — Garland’s Immigration “Judges” Pull The Ol’ “Bait & Switch” — They Only Are “Judges” When “OIL” Is Trying To Convince Ethically & Legally Challenged Article III Courts To “Defer” To EOIR Decisions — Otherwise, They Are Expected To Act Like DOJ ”Grundoons” Mindlessly Carrying Out The Executive’s Agenda Cloaked In Quasi-Judicial Disguise!
  2. 🆘🤮IS 11TH CIR. GROWING WEARY OF GARLAND’S SCOFFLAW BIA? —Two Trips To The Circuit, & The BIA Still Violates Own Regulations, Ignores Precedent, Spouts Gibberish While OIL’s Defense Of This Nonsense & Malfeasance By EOIR Raises Serious Ethical Questions! — THAMOTAR v. U.S. ATT’Y GEN. — Garland’s Dysfunctional & Systematically Unjust Courts Undermine OUR Democracy☠️ — Demand An IMMEDIATE End To The Scofflaw Nonsense🤡 🧹 At OUR Justice Department! 🏴‍☠️
  3. ☹️👎🏽BUMBLING BIA BADLY BUNGLES BASICS, AGAIN! — Applies Wrong Standard In Seeking To Reverse Valid CAT Grant — Obviously Frustrated 3rd Cir. Reinstates IJ Decision Following BIA’s Inept Attempt @ Appellate  Review! — Arreaga Bravo v. A.G.
  4. ☹️HE BEAT THE GOVERNMENT TWICE IN COURT — But, After Three Years In Jail Without Being Charged With Any Crime, Omar Ameen Still Can’t Get A Bond From Garland’s Courts —  How Can A System Where The Prosecutor Makes The Rules & Picks The Judges, Mostly From The Ranks Of Former Prosecutors, Provide The “Fair & Impartial Judging” Required By Due Process?

☠️ GARLAND’S QUASI-JUDICIAL TORTURE CHAMBERS — FROM COAST TO COAST, EOIR APPLIES WRONG LEGAL STANDARDS, IGNORES EVIDENCE IN EFFORT TO ILLEGALLY SEND PEOPLE TO TORTURE!  

Star Chamber Justice
If he survives Garland’s EOIR, this guy faces more torture if wrongfully removed to torture elsewhere. “Justice”
Star Chamber
Style

“Sir Jeffrey” Chase reports on H.H. v. Garland, a case in which the Round Table filed an amicus brief in behalf of the respondent. Many thanks to our friends Adam Gershenson, Zachary Sisko, Marc Suskin, Valeria M. Pelet del Toro, Samantha Kirby, and Cooley LLP on the brief for amici curiae Former Immigration Judges and Former Members of the Board of Immigration Appeals.

H.H. V. Garland

 

For the reasons detailed above, we conclude that the BIA erred by: (1) applying the incorrect standard of review to uphold the IJ’s denial of CAT relief as to Honduras, in a misguided effort to accommodate the IJ’s error of law in requiring a showing of willful acceptance rather than willful blindness; (2) improperly failing to address H.H.’s argument that he would likely be tortured by or at the instigation of Honduran officials; and (3) failing to meaningfully address H.H.’s argument that MS-13 members may act under color of law.21 Accordingly, we grant the petition for review, vacate the BIA’s decision insofar as it denied H.H. deferral of removal to Honduras, and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

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

Meanwhile, Dan Kowalski at LexisNexis Immigraton Community reports on another CAT rebuke from the 9th Circuit. 

CA9 on CAT, Guatemala: De Leon Lopez v. Garland

https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2022/10/21/20-71529.pdf

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca9-on-cat-guatemala-de-leon-lopez-v-garland#

“Risvin Valdemar De Leon Lopez (“De Leon”), a native and citizen of Guatemala, petitions for review of a Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) decision dismissing his appeal of an Immigration Judge’s (“IJ”) order denying his application for relief under the Convention Against Torture. We conclude: (1) the record in this case compels the conclusion that two of De Leon’s attackers were police officers during a July 2011 incident; (2) De Leon showed acquiescence on the part of the Guatemalan government with respect to that incident because government officials— namely, the two police officers—directly participated in the incident; and (3) the record indicates that the IJ and BIA’s conclusion that De Leon is not likely to be subjected to torture with government acquiescence if returned to Guatemala disregards several important circumstances pertinent to evaluating the likelihood of future torture. In light of these errors, we grant the petition and remand for the agency to reconsider De Leon’s application for relief.”

[Hats off to Karla Kraus!]

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—

Daniel M. Kowalski

Editor-in-Chief

Bender’s Immigration Bulletin (LexisNexis)

cell/text/Signal (512) 826-0323

@dkbib on Twitter

dan@cenizo.com

Free Daily Blog: www.bibdaily.com

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

Almost every time I “feature” the ongoing legal and operational disaster @ EOIR, Garland furnishes me with concrete examples. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2022/10/22/%e2%98%a0%ef%b8%8f%e2%9a%b0%ef%b8%8f%f0%9f%92%80garlands-star-chambers-slow-violence-on-people-of-color%f0%9f%a5%b5-bias-bad-law-bungling-bureaucracy/

These are two “doozies” from last Friday!

These aren’t “minor bureaucratic matters,” no matter how much Garland and his “clueless crew” over @ DOJ might want to treat them that way and hope they will go away! They won’t! Not if the thousands of us involved in the due process, fundamental fairness, and racial justice for all movement have anything to say about it (e.g., the “NDPA”)!

And we will continue to speak out against the parody of justice @ Garland’s EOIR! It’s a disingenuous and disgraceful performance by a Democratic Administration that will have “down the line” consequences! 

While the Trump Administration admittedly left EOIR in complete shambles, that doesn’t excuse the Biden Administration’s failure to fix it. It’s not “rocket science!”  But, there is no way that the “Clown Show” 🤡 that Garland has chosen to run and staff EOIR (many inexplicably “held over” from the Sessions/Barr debacle) can fix it!

These are literally life and death cases in which Garland’s “faux expert” BIA “pretzels” the law, misconstrues facts, and “selectively reads” records to reach wrong results that deny protection and decree deportation! How is this acceptable performance from any tribunal, let alone one that is supposed to insure justice for those whose lives are on the line? How is this acceptable performance from a Democratic Administration that claimed fealty to human rights and racial justice, but takes neither seriously when it comes to EOIR?

There are plenty of “practical scholar experts” out here in the non-governmental sectors who would make much better appellate and trial judges, and administrators, than many of those Garland is inflicting on migrants and their attorneys. 

What’s wrong with the Biden Administration? What’s “right”  about failed justice @ Justice?” 

The poor performance of Garland as the “steward” of the Immigration Courts at EOIR is a threat to humanity, democracy, and a colossal waste of judicial and litigation resources at all levels of our justice system!

Alfred E. Neumann
Maybe Merrick Garland SHOULD worry about running “America’s worst courts” and inflicting life-threatening injustice on his fellow humans!
PHOTO: Wikipedia Commons

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-23-22

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️”MEDLEY OF INJUSTICE” — CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO LOWER HAMMER 🔨 ON BIA: Anti-Asylum Misogyny; Illegal & Incredibly Stupid “Policies;” “Perplexing” Lack Of Legal Knowledge Highlighted In Latest Batch Of Reversals! — “Attempted rape by a gang of men, in broad daylight on a public street, is especially terrorizing because it powerfully demonstrates the perpetrator’s domination, control over the victim and imperviousness to the law. Requiring evidence of additional harms both minimizes the gravity of the sexual assault and demeans the victim.”
  2. 🏴‍☠️👎🏽🤮 AIMLESS DOCKET RESHUFFLING (“ADR”) ON STEROIDS! — EOIR Dysfunction Shows What Happens When “Captive Court System” Kowtows To Political Handlers Rather Than Serving The Public! — Jason Dzubow, The Asylumist, Reports!
  3. ⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️JUDICIAL REVIEW — C.A. 2 — Brace Of Bad BIA Bobbles On Basics Brings “Culture Of Denial” Into Focus — Justice Will Continue To Be Illusive @ EOIR 👎🏽 Until Garland Steps Up & Replaces His Fatally Flawed BIA With Real Judges Who Are Progressive Practical Scholars In Immigration, Due Process, Human Rights, With A Firm Commitment To Bringing Racial & Gender Equity To Now-Disgraced Immigration Courts!🤮
  4. 🏴‍☠️“ANY REASON TO DENY ASYLUM” BIA HITS ROUGH SLEDDING FROM COAST TO COAST — 1st Cir. (Bogus Adverse Credibility) & 9th Cir. (Ludicrous “Not Persecution” Finding) — But, EOIR’s “Asylum Denial Assembly Line” Wins Love From Trumpy 9th Cir. Judge!

⚖️ “HON. SIR JEFFREY OF CLAIRVOYANCE” — The Day After His Blog On “Ineffective Assistance,” The 3rd & 10th Cirs “Blow Out” Garland EOIR’s Inept Approach!

Jeffrey S. Chase
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog
Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges
Dan Kowalski
Dan Kowalski
Online Editor of the LexisNexis Immigration Law Community (ILC)

Dan Kowalski reports for LexisNexis Immigration Community:

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca3-on-ineffective-assistance-saint-ford-ii#

https://www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/211729p1.pdf

https://www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/211729po.pdf

“The need for effective assistance of counsel applies in immigration law just as it does in criminal law. Aliens, many of whom do not speak English and some of whom are detained before their immigration hearings, can be particularly susceptible to the consequences of ineffective lawyers. Petitioner Arckange Saint Ford paid a lawyer to represent him in removal proceedings, but Saint Ford’s requests for relief from deportation were denied after the lawyer failed to present important and easily available evidence going to the heart of Saint Ford’s claims. Saint Ford retained new counsel, and his new lawyer asked the Board of Immigration Appeals to reopen his case because of his former attorney’s ineffective assistance. The Board declined to do so. Because Saint Ford presents a meritorious ineffective-assistance claim, we will vacate the Board’s decision and remand. … AMBRO, Circuit Judge, concurring Arckange Saint Ford will get a second shot at seeking withholding of removal—that’s what matters. The majority is remanding because of his former counsel’s deficient performance at Saint Ford’s removal hearing. I agree with that and concur in full. But former counsel was not the only one who made significant missteps at the hearing. The Immigration Judge did as well. I therefore would have granted Saint Ford’s initial petition for review and remanded on that basis. I write separately to explain these errors in the hope that similar ones will not be made at Saint Ford’s new hearing. [Emphasis added.]”

“The opinion and judgment filed on May 16, 2022 [34 F.4th 201 (3d Cir. 2022)] are hereby vacated. The Clerk is directed to file the amended opinion and re-enter the judgment contemporaneously with this order.” – Saint Ford v. Atty. Gen.

[Hats off again to Robert Andrew Painter!]

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

https://www.ca10.uscourts.gov/sites/ca10/files/opinions/010110752008.pdf

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/unpub-ca10-mtr-remand-singh-v-garland#

“Singh argues the BIA committed legal error in denying his motion to reopen because it failed to cite or apply the prejudice standard from Matter of Lozada and its progeny—i.e., that the alien “show a reasonable likelihood that the outcome would have been different,” Molina, 763 F.3d at 1263 (internal quotation marks omitted)— and instead applied an elevated standard of prejudice from Matter of F-S-N-, 28 I. & N. Dec. 1, 3 (B.I.A. 2020)—i.e., that the alien “overcome” a prior adverse credibility determination. We agree. … The BIA applied an incorrect legal standard in deciding whether Singh had been prejudiced by his attorney’s alleged ineffective assistance because it required him to “overcome” the adverse credibility determination to show prejudice. The BIA therefore abused its discretion in denying Singh’s motion to reopen. See Qiu, 870 F.3d at 1202 (“[C]ommitting a legal error . . . is necessarily an abuse of discretion.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). On remand, the BIA should consider whether there is “a reasonable likelihood that the outcome would have been different but for counsel’s deficient performance.” Mena-Flores, 776 F.3d at 1169 (internal quotation marks omitted).”

[Hats off to Jessica K. Miles of El Paso!]

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

Wrong legal standards, mistakes at both trial and appellate levels, sloppy work, unfair results in “life or death” cases. Why is this “acceptable quasi-judicial performance” in the Biden Administration? Why isn’t Garland being held accountable for his life-threatening, ongoing, anti-due-process “clown show” @ EOIR?🤡☠️

EOIR Clown Show Must Go T-Shirt
“EOIR Clown Show Must Go” T-Shirt Custom Design Concept
Lady Injustice
“Lady Injustice” has found a home at Garland’s dysfunctional EOIR!
Public Realm

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-13-22

Related posts:

  1. 🏴‍☠️GARLAND’S FAILED BIA REAMED BY 3RD CIR. ON ANTI-ASYLUM BIAS, LACK OF BASIC COMPETENCE! — “First, the Board’s conclusion ignores overwhelming evidence that Ghanem was persecuted on account of political opinion. Second, it erroneously treated familial relationships as disqualifying and failed to give the proper weight to the substantial record evidence that a protected ground remains one central reason for Ghanem’s persecution.” — Ghanem v. AG
  2. 🏴‍☠️👎🏽🤮 AIMLESS DOCKET RESHUFFLING (“ADR”) ON STEROIDS! — EOIR Dysfunction Shows What Happens When “Captive Court System” Kowtows To Political Handlers Rather Than Serving The Public! — Jason Dzubow, The Asylumist, Reports!
  3. ☠️🤮 “TEFLON MERRICK” — GROTESQUE DUE PROCESS MELTDOWN @ GARLAND’S EOIR CONTINUES UNABATED, WHILE AG AVOIDS ACCOUNTABILITY — 3RD CIR. CASTIGATES GARLAND’S BIASED & INCOMPETENT “STAR CHAMBERS” — “It is more akin to the argument of an advocate than the impartial analysis of a quasi-judicial agency.”
  4. ⚖️🗽🇺🇸🦸‍♂️ NDPA SUPERLITIGATOR RAED GONZALEZ DRUBS GARLAND AGAIN! — “Who else could persuade CA5 to agree with CA9, and get an award of costs,” asks Dan Kowalski of LexisNexis Immigration Community? — When will the unconscionable failure of immigrant justice at Garland’s Department of “Justice” finally end? When our nation’s democracy goes down in flames?🔥 ♨️

⚖️ HON. “SIR JEFFREY” CHASE ON LOZADA/INEFFECTIVE ASSISTANCE OF COUNSEL— Reviving My “Rivera Dissent,” While Highlighting More Than A Decade Of EOIR/DOJ Failure To Provide Effective Guidance!

Jeffrey S. Chase
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog
Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

 

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2022/10/11/amending-lozada

Amending Lozada?

October 11, 2022

In 1984, the Supreme Court in Strickland v. Washington announced the standard for determining when the Constitution’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel requires the overturning of a criminal conviction due to ineffective assistance of counsel.1 Strickland involved a death penalty case; on its winding path to the Supreme Court, a circuit court panel found in the defendant’s favor. That ruling was later overturned; the defendant was executed two months after the Supreme Court’s decision established a standard that the defendant could not satisfy.

A commentator writing years later could find no record of a malpractice claim or disciplinary complaint of any type having been filed against the attorney impugned in that case.2 The commentator cited this example in making the point that attorneys who are found to be Constitutionally deficient in criminal defense cases very rarely face disciplinary complaints.3 And the standard for establishing ineffective assistance laid out in Strickland does not require the filing of any such complaint.4

By contrast, the requirements for claiming ineffective assistance of counsel in immigration proceedings were set forth by the Board of Immigration Appeals in its 1988 decision Matter of Lozada.5 As immigration proceedings are civil in nature, the Sixth Amendment right to counsel was found not to apply; the Board determined that a right to counsel in the removal context “is grounded in the fifth amendment guarantee of due process.”6The BIA thus created its own standard in Lozada that requires (1) filing an affidavit attesting to the relevant facts; (2) informing prior counsel of the allegations, and providing any response received; and (3) if claiming “a violation of ethical or legal responsibilities” by prior counsel, indicating “whether a complaint has been filed with appropriate disciplinary authorities regarding such representation, and if not, why not.”7

A practice advisory of the American Immigration Council points out that requirement number three “on its face…does not require filing a bar complaint in all circumstances.”8 The AIC advisory cites circuit decisions excusing the filing of disciplinary complaints, including Fadiga v. Att’y Gen., 488 F.3d 142, 156-57 (3d Cir. 2007) (allowing no bar complaint “where counsel acknowledged the ineffectiveness and made every effort to remedy the situation”), and Correa-Rivera v. Holder, 706 F.3d 1128, 1131-32 (9th Cir. 2013) (holding that Lozada only requires an explanation of whether a bar complaint was submitted, not proof that the complaint was filed).9

Nevertheless, a 1996 BIA precedent, Matter of Rivera,10 underscores the risk of not filing a bar complaint. In that case, the requirements of Lozada were satisfied. As to the third requirement, new counsel indicated that a disciplinary complaint was not filed against prior counsel because “if any error was made in this case it was a postal error or an error of inadvertence by [former counsel].”11 Although this explanation accorded with Lozada, as it was explained both whether a bar complaint was filed and why, the Board rejected the explanation as insufficient.

The majority opinion in Rivera went on to provide a list of reasons why it considered “[t]he requirement of a bar complaint” important in ineffective assistance claims. A dissenting opinion written by then-BIA chair Paul Schmidt addressed the issue far more sensibly:

I do not need a Lozada motion or a state bar complaint to find that ineffective assistance has occurred here. The respondent’s affidavit and that of former counsel are sufficient to establish that former counsel’s duties to the respondent were not properly discharged. There is no hint of collusion between former counsel and the respondent. Under these circumstances, I see no basis for making the filing of a state bar complaint the determinative factor…12

Thus, in Rivera (and in a subsequent precedent, Matter of Assaad,13 the Board reframed the need to file a disciplinary complaint as a categorical requirement under Lozada. But in its circumstance-specific approach, Judge Schmidt’s dissent raised the question of whether this requirement is really necessary.

Nearly six years after Rivera, the answer to that question came from an unlikely source. Matter of Lozada was briefly vacated in the final days of the Bush Administration by then Attorney General Michael Mukasey.14His decision reframed ineffective assistance claims from a due process right into a discretionary agency action, and in doing so, created a new, tougher standard for establishing ineffective assistance that far fewer respondents would be able to satisfy. But interestingly, the A.G.’s decision felt the need to rethink the Board’s disciplinary complaint requirement:

By making the actual filing of a bar complaint a prerequisite for obtaining (or even seeking) relief, it appears that Lozada may inadvertently have contributed to the filing of many unfounded or even frivolous complaints. See, e.g., Comment filed by the Committee on Immigration & Nationality Law, Association of the Bar of the City of New York (Sept. 29, 2008), in response to the Proposed Rule for Professional Conduct for Practitioners—Rules and Procedures, and Representation and Appearances, 73 Fed. Reg. 44,178 (July 30, 2008) (“Under the Lozada Rule, an ineffective assistance of counsel charge is often required in order to reopen a case or reverse or remand an unfavorable decision. The practice of filing such claims is rampant, and places well-intentioned and competent attorneys at risk of discipline.”). Such unfounded complaints impose costs on well-intentioned and competent attorneys, and make it harder for State bars to identify meritorious complaints in order to impose sanctions on lawyers whose performance is truly deficient. The new approach is intended to avoid these problems by requiring only that the [noncitizen] submit to the Board a completed and signed but unfiled complaint…15

In light of these concerns, the new Compean standard still required the preparation of a disciplinary complaint against prior counsel, but (perhaps in a bizarre nod to Moses E. Herzog) added that the respondent “need not actually file the complaint with the appropriate State bar or disciplinary authorities, as Lozada had required.”16

Less than five months after its issuance, Compean was vacated by Mukasey’s successor, Attorney General Eric Holder, thus restoring the Lozada standard, along with its mandatory bar requirement.17 Holder’s decision further directed EOIR to draft proposed regulations on the topic for public comment “as soon as practicable.”18

When the agency finally published those proposed regulations more than seven years later, they retained Rivera’s mandatory complaint requirement.19 In its comments to the proposed rule, the American Immigration Lawyers Association opined that the mandatory complaint requirement should be eliminated, stating that “rather than centering on attorney discipline, the rules governing ineffective assistance of counsel should focus on assisting and protecting the noncitizen victim…” The comment continued that “EOIR already has ample existing procedures to police the immigration bar without requiring the filing of a formal complaint.”20As no final rule was ever published, we don’t know EOIR’s reaction to the comment.

Another six years later, the question first raised in the Rivera dissent, and to which a Bush Administration Attorney General and leading bar groups seem in agreement on the answer, remains unresolved.Recently, immigration law experts have revived the issue.21As those experts again point out, the purpose of reopening a proceeding in which attorney error occurred is to remedy a harm that was beyond the respondent’s ability to control. The focus on correcting the harm (as opposed to punishing the lawyer) is why in the criminal context bar complaints rarely if ever accompany ineffective assistance claims. The lack of sucha requirement allows attorneys to admit to their occasional errors without fear of retribution.

In its unique approach to the contrary, the BIA discourages attorneys from being forthcoming about their errors, and further forces counsel to turn on their own colleagues for acts that would not warrant the extreme action of a bar complaint in any other context. It seems remarkable that even an Attorney General decision issued during the Bush Administration acknowledged that most bar complaints filed pursuant to Lozada are “unfounded” and “impose costs on well-intentioned and competent attorneys,” while also hampering state bars from identifying and disciplining genuine incidents of malpractice.

According to one proponent of amending the standard, attorney Rekha Sharma Crawford, the current Lozada requirement pits members of the private bar against one another in a very destructive way, and adds unnecessary stress on the immigration removal defense counsel who are often at the forefront of these claims-many which are meaningless and done only to comply with Lozada.22

Hopefully, this will be the year that the agency finally gets around to resolving this issue by removing the mandatory complaint requirement of Lozada, and thus bringing the standard in immigration proceedings into alignment with those required in other civil and criminal courts and tribunals.

Copyright 2022 Jeffrey S. Chase.All rights reserved.

Notes:

  1. 466 U.S. 668 (1984).
  2. Joseph H. Ricks, Raising the Bar: Establishing an Effective Remedy against Ineffective Counsel, 2015 BYU L. Rev. 1115, 1120 (2016).
  3. Id.
  4. The Strickland standard requires a finding that (1) counsel’s performance fell below an objective standard of reasonableness; and (2) there was a reasonable probability that the result would have been different if not for counsel’s inadequate performance.
  5. 19 I&N Dec. 637 (BIA 1988).
  6. Id. at 638.
  7. Id. at 639.
  8. American Immigration Council, Practice Advisory, “Seeking Remedies For Ineffective Assistance of Counsel in Immigration Cases,” (Jan. 2016), https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/sites/default/files/research/seeking_remedies_for_ineffective_assistance_of_counsel_in_immigration_cases_practice_advisory.pdf, at 11.
  9. Id.
  10. 10.21 I&N Dec. 599 (BIA 1996) (en banc).
  11. 11.Id. at 606.
  12. 12.Id. at 608. It bears noting that Judge Schmidt, and two of the three Board Members who joined in his dissent (Lory Rosenberg and Gustavo Villageliu) are presently members of the Round Table of Former Immigration Judges.
  13. 13.23 I&N Dec. 553 (BIA 2003).
  14. 14.Matter of Compean, Bangaly, & J-E-C-, 24 I&N Dec. 710 (A.G. Jan. 7, 2009).
  15. 15.Id. at 737-38.
  16. 16.Id. at 737. Moses E. Herzog, the fictional protagonist of Saul Bellow’s novel Herzog, authored numerous strongly-worded letters that he never sent.
  17. 17.Matter of Compean, Bangaly, & J-E-C-, 25 I&N Dec. 1 (A.G. June 3, 2009).
  18. 18.Id. at 2.
  19. 19.81 Fed. Reg. 49556, 49565 (July 28, 2016), https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/07/28/2016-17540/motions-to-reopen-removal-deportation-or-exclusion-proceedings-based-upon-a-claim-of-ineffective.
  20. 20.Comment filed by the American Immigration Lawyers Association (Sept. 26, 2016), in response to the Proposed Rule for Motions Reopen Removal, Deportation, or Exclusion Proceedings Based Upon a Claim of Ineffective Assistance of Counsel, 81 Fed. Reg. 145 (July 28, 2016).
  21. 21.See, e.g., an October 3 AILA Roundtable, “Changing the Bench: A New Narrative on Lozada and Bar Complaints.”
  22. 22.Private email to the author.

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

Republished by permission.

As “Sir Jeffrey points out,” in Matter of Compean, Bangaly, & J-E-C-, 25 I&N Dec. 1 (A.G. June 3, 2009), AG Eric Holder directed EOIR to promulgate new regulations providing guidance on ineffective assistance of counsel. More than seven years later, in 2016 — essentially the entire Obama Administration — DOJ/EOIR issued flawed “proposed” regulations. Not surprisingly, no final regulations were ever issued. A dozen yers after the AG directed EOIR to take action — a big “nothingburger.”

This by no means is the only example of EOIR/DOJ’s unsuitability to the task facing it. It’s reminiscent of the tortured history of the “gender based asylum” regulations ordered by former AG, the late Janet Reno, but issued only as a badly flawed proposal and never finalized.

Additionally, incoming President Joe Biden made issuing “gender based regulations” one of his Administration’s highest priorities, ordering action by October 2021. A year later — nothing! 

Meanwhile, EOIR Judges’ applications and interpretations of the governing precedent on gender-based asylum — Matter of A-R-G-G- — are wildly inconsistent. Beyond that, the 5th Circuit has taken the right-wing misogynistic “liberty” of simply ignoring the law on gender-based asylum. 

“Lozada reform” is long overdue. But, so is meaningful EOIR reform! 

Ultimately, America needs and deserves an independent U.S. Immigration Court with exceptionally well-qualified judges, at all levels, who are recognized experts in asylum law and unswervingly committed to due process and best judicial practices.

Until then, those appearing in Immigration Court — disproportionately individuals of color and women — and their hard-working attorneys — will continue to receive grossly substandard “justice” from “Justice!”

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-12-22

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🗽🛡RECOGNIZING WOMEN REFUGEES: Professor Karen Musalo @ ImmigrationProf Blog — Don’t Add A “6th Protected Ground” To The Statute; Get Some Better-Qualified Judges 🧑🏽‍⚖️ Who Will Respect & Follow Existing Law To Protect Those Already Covered, But Wrongfully Denied Refuge By Bad Judging & Restrictionist Policies!
  2. ‘SIR JEFFREY” CHASE: Garland’s “First Steps” To Eradicate Misogyny & Anti-Asylum Bias @ EOIR Are Totally Insufficient Without Progressive Personnel Changes — Regulations Will Only Be Effective If Drafted By Progressive Human Rights Experts Of Which There Currently Are NONE @ DOJ Save For Some Immigration Judges In The Field Whose Expertise, Intellectual Integrity, & Moral Courage Has Been Ignored By Team Garland! — There Will Be No Gender, Racial, Or Immigrant Justice @ Justice As Long As Garland Mindlessly Lets “Miller’s Club Denial” Operate @ BIA! — Progressives Must Turn Up The Heat On Garland To Reform & Remake EOIR With Qualified Expert Judges & Dynamic, Independent, Progressive Leaders!
  3. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️”MEDLEY OF INJUSTICE” — CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO LOWER HAMMER 🔨 ON BIA: Anti-Asylum Misogyny; Illegal & Incredibly Stupid “Policies;” “Perplexing” Lack Of Legal Knowledge Highlighted In Latest Batch Of Reversals! — “Attempted rape by a gang of men, in broad daylight on a public street, is especially terrorizing because it powerfully demonstrates the perpetrator’s domination, control over the victim and imperviousness to the law. Requiring evidence of additional harms both minimizes the gravity of the sexual assault and demeans the victim.”
  4. ⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️JUDICIAL REVIEW — C.A. 2 — Brace Of Bad BIA Bobbles On Basics Brings “Culture Of Denial” Into Focus — Justice Will Continue To Be Illusive @ EOIR 👎🏽 Until Garland Steps Up & Replaces His Fatally Flawed BIA With Real Judges Who Are Progressive Practical Scholars In Immigration, Due Process, Human Rights, With A Firm Commitment To Bringing Racial & Gender Equity To Now-Disgraced Immigration Courts!🤮

🤮 GARLAND’S EOIR HITS ANOTHER LOW! — Local Immigration Judges Barred From Participating In CLE Event! — For No Particular Reason! — The Round Table 🚀 ⚔️ Again Steps Into The Breach Caused By EOIR’s Failure!

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Courtside Exclusive

Oct. 4, 2022

Immigration Judges as Galley Slaves
Garland’s bureaucratic minions keep close watch over their “captive” Immigration Judges.
“Galley Slaves”
Public Realm

As one of my esteemed colleagues says, “You can’t make this stuff up!”

I got this message from one of my Round Table colleagues involved in planning in a well-respected CLE event where local Immigration Judges had been invited to participate. “Things [for local IJ’s participation in CLE conference] were going pretty smoothly until EOIR Ethics came back with a NO. NO, the Judges cannot participate, and NO we’re not going to tell you why.”

One Round Table member noted: “As [Hon. “Sir”] Jeff [Chase] has said, our main legacy will be to educate the next generation of immigration lawyers.” 

“EOIR in Exile” (“a/k/a “The Round Table”) appears to be “the only game in town” when it comes to educating practitioners about what really happens in Immigration Court. 

Under Garland, EOIR inflicts unprofessional and humiliating treatment not only on the parties and lawyers appearing it, but also on its own judges!

Way back in the “good ol’ days @ EOIR,” Immigration Judges were actually allowed, even occasionally encouraged, to participate in CLE and other educational events. Of course, advance permission, at several levels, extensive disclaimers, and an occasional dose of censorship (had to stick to the “party line” – no criticism of EOIR) were part of the equation. That was enough to discourage a number of my judicial colleagues from engaging in public speaking. But, I was one of those who accepted as many invitations as possible.

I remember being on a panel with a U.S. District Judge. I delivered my “standard elaborate disclaimer” — basically providing “plausible deniability” for my remarks for everyone in the universe. Then, the USDJ got up and said something like this: “I asked nobody’s permission to be here today, although I did notify the Chief Judge of my whereabouts as a matter of professional courtesy.” That summed up the difference between “independent” and “captive” judges, and why an independent Article I Immigration Court is long, long overdue. But, in the meantime, there is no excuse for the ongoing and worsening disorder and dysfunction in Garland’s “courts!“

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-03-22

Related posts:

  1. 🇺🇸⚖️🗽NY TIMES EDITORIAL MAKES THE CASE FOR ARTICLE I — “It’s hard to imagine a more glaring conflict of interest than the nation’s top law-enforcement agency running a court system in which it regularly appears as a party.” — Garland’s Abject Failure To Fix EOIR, Bring In Experts Highlighted, As Constitutional Due Process, Ethical, Human Rights, Racial Justice, Gender Equity, Diversity, & Management Farce @ EOIR Continues Under His Disgraceful Lack Of Awareness & Failure Of Courageous, Progressive Leadership!  — Progressives Can’t Remain Silent, Must “Raise Hell” 👹With Biden Administration About Garland’s Lousy Performance @ EOIR, As He Continues To Stack Immigration “Judiciary” With “Miller Lite Holdovers” 🤮 To The Exclusion of Progressive Experts Who Helped Put Biden Administration In Office!
  2. 🛡⚔️👍🏼“SIR JEFFREY” CHASE — Garland’s Immigration “Judges” Pull The Ol’ “Bait & Switch” — They Only Are “Judges” When “OIL” Is Trying To Convince Ethically & Legally Challenged Article III Courts To “Defer” To EOIR Decisions — Otherwise, They Are Expected To Act Like DOJ ”Grundoons” Mindlessly Carrying Out The Executive’s Agenda Cloaked In Quasi-Judicial Disguise!
  3. 😎🗽⚖️👩‍⚖️ FLASH: JUDICIAL MAVEN HON. DANA LEIGH MARKS RETIRES, JOINS ROUND TABLE! 🛡⚔️ — “Founding Mother” Of U.S. Asylum Law Successfully Argued INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca @ Supremes, Led Immigration Judges’ Association, Spearheaded “Article I”  Movement For Judicial Independence, Saved Thousands of Lives Over Career On Bench Spanning More Than Three Decades!
  4. 🇺🇸⚖️🗽AN AMERICAN LEGAL HERO LEAVES BEHIND LEGACY OF COURAGE, SCHOLARSHIP, INNOVATION, COMPASSION: A HEARTFELT TRIBUTE TO HON. WILLIAM VAN WYKE BY HON. “SIR JEFFREY” CHASE!

DOJ’s IMITATION OF DHS “SERVICE CENTERS” IN VA MIGHT OFFER LITIGANTS A CHANCE AT BETTER LAW!  😎 — Hon. Jeffrey Chase Points Out How DOJ’s Efforts To “Dumb Down” 😩 Immigration Courts & Replace Judicial Decision-Making With “Rote Adjudication” Could Unintentionally Give Individuals A Better Due Process Option!

Jeffrey S. Chase
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog
Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2022/8/16/the-4th-circuit-on-jurisdiction

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The 4th Circuit on Jurisdiction

On June 30, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued a decision that might not have received the attention it deserved.  The end result of the court’s published decision in Herrera-Alcala v. Garland was to affirm an Immigration Judge’s denial of asylum based on a lack of credibility.1

But before reaching the merits, the court addressed a jurisdictional issue, and that is where our interest lies.  At his removal proceeding, the petitioner was detained at a Louisiana correctional facility, which placed him physically within the territory of the Fifth Circuit.  For some reason, the Administrative Control Court (which is where the administrative record for the case was created and maintained, and where documents were filed by the parties) having jurisdiction over that Louisiana correctional facility was in Fort Snelling, Minnesota, which is physically located within the Eighth Circuit’s jurisdiction.

However, the immigration judge who conducted the hearing remotely by video and rendered the decision was sitting at the Immigration Adjudication Center in Falls Church, Virginia, which is within the geographic jurisdiction of the Fourth Circuit.  So after the BIA dismissed the petitioner’s appeal, his counsel sought review with the Fourth Circuit.  The Department of Justice moved to change venue to the Fifth Circuit, arguing that the petitioner’s location was determinative. And an amicus brief filed by an immigrants’ rights group took the position that venue properly belonged in the Eighth Circuit, where the control court was located.

The Fourth Circuit resolved the question of jurisdiction using the language of the relevant statute.  Since 8 U.S.C. section 1252(b)(2) states that the “petition for review shall be filed with the court of appeals for the judicial circuit in which the immigration judge completed the proceedings,” the court interpreted that to mean it is the location of the judge that determines jurisdiction.  And as the judge in this case was in Virginia, it found proper jurisdiction to be with the Fourth Circuit.

The decision yields an immediate benefit, as there are presently nineteen Immigration Judges sitting in the two Immigration Adjudication Centers that are located within the Fourth Circuit’s jurisdiction (in Falls Church and Richmond, VA).  Based on the Fourth Circuit’s ruling, any of the thousands of noncitizens whose cases were heard by one of these Virginia-based judges now have the option of seeking judicial review in the Fourth Circuit.

The impact of this becomes apparent when we look at the BIA’s precedent decision in Matter of L-E-A-.2  In that case, the Board held that the respondent’s family constituted a valid particular social group for asylum purposes, but then denied asylum by finding that a nexus had not been established between that family membership and the feared persecution.  In fact, the decision created an unreasonably high standard for nexus in a commonly occurring type of asylum claim.   But the decision contains a footnote recognizing that the Fourth Circuit holds a significantly different view of nexus in such cases, adding that L-E-A- did “not arise in the Fourth Circuit.”3

Although the Board doesn’t go as far as saying so, applying Fourth Circuit case law to the facts of L-E-A-  would have resulted in a grant of asylum.  As I discussed in far greater depth in this blog post in December, the Fourth Circuit has repeatedly reversed the Board on nexus, citing the latter’s error of focusing on why the persecutor targeted the group in question, instead of asking why they targeted the asylum applicant themself.  For example, if the group in question is a family, it doesn’t matter if the persecutor is targeting that family for an unprotected reason such as money, revenge, or self-preservation.  Per the Fourth Circuit, if the asylum seeker themself wouldn’t be targeted if not for their membership in that family, then nexus has been established, regardless of the reason the family is at risk in the first place.4

In addition to its more favorable take on nexus, the Fourth Circuit is also among the handful of circuits to consider verbal death threats to constitute persecution.5  This is  important, because one who has been threatened in those circuits has thus established past persecution, causing burdens of proof regarding future fear and internal relocation to then shift to the government to rebut, and further opening the possibility for humanitarian grants of asylum even where the government meets its burden of rebuttal.6

The Fourth Circuit has also imposed on Immigration Judges a strong obligation under international law to fully develop the record in hearings involving asylum claims, particularly (but not exclusively) where the respondent is pro se, and considers an IJ’s failure to meet this obligation to be “presumptively prejudicial.”7   Any attorney who is representing on appeal an asylum applicant who appeared pro se below where the IJ had been sitting in Virginia might want to review the record to see if the duties imposed by the Fourth Circuit to develop the record, which includes a “broad and robust duty to help pro se asylum seekers articulate their particular social groups,” was satisfied.8

In spite of the above-listed benefits, advocates have identified a potential downside to the ruling in Herrera-Alcala should the Fourth Circuit’s view on jurisdiction be adopted nationwide.  To illustrate this concern, I’ll use a hypothetical example arising in a circuit such as the Fourth with a body of case law favorable to asylum applicants.  Let’s imagine that after briefing and documenting the claim in line with that circuit’s law, the presiding judge in Baltimore is out sick on the day of the merits hearing.  A deserving asylum seeker could have a likely grant of asylum upended if a judge stationed in a jurisdiction with far less favorable case law is enlisted to hear the case by video under EOIR’s “No Dark Courtrooms” policy.9  While the intent behind substituting in a remote judge might be an innocent one, the impact on the asylum seeker of unexpectedly having to overcome a much tougher standard for nexus or a narrower definition of persecution could be devastating, as the Matter of L-E-A- example illustrated.

The Fourth Circuit’s view is presently limited to the Fourth Circuit.  But should it come to be the universal rule, while whether a particular circuit will accept jurisdiction over a petition for review is beyond EOIR’s control, the agency may itself still choose which circuit’s case law its own Immigration Judges should apply in individual cases before the Immigration Courts.  EOIR would do well to look to the example of USCIS, which advises its asylum officers conducting credible fear interviews that where there is disagreement among the circuits as to the proper interpretation of a legal issue, “generally the interpretation most favorable to the applicant is used when determining whether the applicant meets the credible fear standard.”10

I mentioned above the Fourth Circuit’s recognition of the duty of Immigration Judges to ensure that the record is fully developed in asylum claims.  Scholars credit that obligation to the legal requirement on nations to implement treaties in good faith.  For example, in discussing the adjudicator’s duty to develop the record in asylum cases, two leading international refugee law scholars explain the duty to implement treaties in good faith as holding states “not simply to ensuring the benefits of the Convention are withhold from persons who are not refugees, but equally to doing whatever is within their ability to ensure recognition of genuine refugees.”11

But shouldn’t that same obligation apply to not only developing the evidence of record, but also to deciding which law to apply when, as in Herrera-Alcala, there is more than one option?  If there is an obligation on our government to do everything in its ability to ensure recognition of genuine refugees, then isn’t that obligation breached where an individual sitting in a geographic area in which the law deems her deserving of asylum is then denied protection because the judge being beamed into that courtroom is sitting in a place with less enlightened precedent?

Copyright Jeffrey S. Chase 2022.  All rights reserved.

Notes:

  1. Herrera-Alcala v. Garland, Nos. 20-1770, 20-2338, ___ F.4th ___ (4th Cir. June 30, 2022).
  2. Matter of L-E-A-, 27 I&N Dec. 40 (BIA 2017).
  3. Id at 46, n.3.
  4. Perez Vasquez v. Garland, 4 F.4th 213, 222 (4th Cir. 2021).
  5. See Sorto-Guzman v. Garland, No. 20-1762, ___ F.4th ___ (4th Cir. Aug. 3, 2022) (restating the court’s repeated holding that “the ‘threat of death’ qualifies as persecution.”); Bedoya v. Barr, 981 F.3d 240, 246 (4th Cir. 2020) (emphasizing that “under our precedent, as we have repeatedly explained, a threat of death qualifies as past persecution”).
  6. 8 C.F.R. §§1208.13(b)(1), 1208.13(b)(3)(ii), and 1208.13(b)(1)(B)(iii); see also Matter of D-I-M-, 24 I&N Dec. 448 (BIA 2008); Matter of L-S-, 25 I&N Dec. 705 (BIA 2012).
  7. Arevalo Quintero v. Garland, 998 F.3d 612, 642 (4th Cir. 2021) (italics in original).
  8. Id. at 633.
  9. March 29, 2019 Memo of EOIR Director, “No Dark Courtrooms,” OOD PM 19-11.
  10. USCIS Asylum Division Officer Training Course, Credible Fear of Persecution and Torture Determinations (Feb. 13, 2017), at 17.
  11. James C. Hathaway and Michelle Foster, The Law of Refugee Status (2d Ed.), Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014, at 119.

AUGUST 16, 2022

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Jeffrey S. Chase is an immigration lawyer in New York City.  Jeffrey is a formerImmigration Judge and Senior Legal Advisor at the Board of Immigration Appeals.He is the founder of the Round Table of Former Immigration Judges, which was awarded AILA’s 2019 Advocacy Award.Jeffrey is also a past recipient of AILA’s Pro Bono Award.He sits on the Board of Directors of the Association of Deportation Defense Attorneys, and Central American Legal Assistance.

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

At the “Legacy INS,” the acronym for what were then called “Remote Adjudication Centers” was “The RACK” — with good reason! Once upon a time, EOIR went out of the way to emphasize the differences with, and independence from, INS —  it ran “courts” not “adjudication centers,” and it was comprised of “judges” NOT “adjudicators.”

Indeed, I can remember a past (in person) IJ National Conference where a senior DOJ official received a rather chilly reception for referring to the IJs in the room as “highly paid immigration examiners who worked for the AG.”

But, times change, and passage of time does not always bring progress. In many important ways EOIR is going backwards. Over the years, particularly 2017-2021, it probably has become more “politicized, compromised, weaponized, and subservient to immigration enforcement” than it was when it operated within the “Legacy INS.” Now, its bloated hierarchical bureaucracy, unmanageable backlogs, lousy public service, and emphasis on “productivity” and carrying out DOJ policies, looks more and more like DHS — the successor to the agency from which it declared “independence” back in 1983. What an unforgivable mess!

Star Chamber Justice
The “RACK” “processes” another “adjudication.”

Here’s a recent post with my “take” on Herrera-Alcala. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2022/07/02/⚖%EF%B8%8Fvenue-venue-whos-got-the-venue-the-4th-circuit-herrera-alcala-v-garland/

As a “vet” of thousands of Televideo Hearings during my 13+ years on the bench at Arlington, I can definitively say that they are inferior to in person hearings, for many reasons. But, sometimes bureaucratic attempts to “depersonalize” justice, cut corners, and achieve bureaucratic goals produce unanticipated outcomes!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-28-22

Related posts:

  1. 🏴‍☠️👎🏽🤮 AIMLESS DOCKET RESHUFFLING (“ADR”) ON STEROIDS! — EOIR Dysfunction Shows What Happens When “Captive Court System” Kowtows To Political Handlers Rather Than Serving The Public! — Jason Dzubow, The Asylumist, Reports!
  2. 🛡⚔️THE ROUND TABLE RIDES AGAIN! — INJECTING A DOSE OF REALITY INTO 1ST CIR. LITIGATION — No, “Briefing Completed” Doesn’t Mean That A BIA Decision Is Imminent — With An 80K+ Appellate Backlog, No Leadership, No Coherent Plan, Many Appellate Judges “Programmed To View Only Removals With Urgency,” & “Priorities” That Change On Political Whim, It’s A Grave Mistake To View EOIR “Through The Lens Of A ‘Normal’ Court System!”  🤯
  3. 🏴‍☠️👎🏻🤮“HOUSTON, WE’VE STILL GOT A PROBLEM!” — A HUGE AND GROWING ONE — Garland’s Failure To Restore “Justice @ Justice” Reverberates Throughout Our Nation!🆘
  4. ☹️HE BEAT THE GOVERNMENT TWICE IN COURT — But, After Three Years In Jail Without Being Charged With Any Crime, Omar Ameen Still Can’t Get A Bond From Garland’s Courts —  How Can A System Where The Prosecutor Makes The Rules & Picks The Judges, Mostly From The Ranks Of Former Prosecutors, Provide The “Fair & Impartial Judging” Required By Due Process?

🎭 HON. JEFFREY S. CHASE ASKS: CAN LIFE IMITATE ART IMITATING LIFE?  — Lessons From The Play/Movie “The Courtroom!”

Jeffrey S. Chase
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog
Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2022/8/16/can-keathley-be-applied-more-broadly

JEFFREY S. CHASE | OPINIONS/ANALYSIS ON IMMIGRATION LAW

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Can Keathley Be Applied More Broadly?

The Off-Broadway play The Courtroom is now a film; it recently screened as part of the Tribeca Film Festival.  I think it is excellent, and would highly recommend that all those interested in immigration law see it.  As you might know, the film depicts the actual immigration court case that culminated on appeal in the Seventh Circuit’s 2012 precedent decision in Keathley v. Holder.1

While there is so much artistic talent to applaud among the film’s cast (especially the excellent Kristin Villanueva as the respondent, Elizabeth Keathley), director Lee Sunday Evans, and Arian Moayed (who created the script from actual court transcripts), as a lawyer and former judge, I was particularly impressed with the legal theory employed in the case by the real-life attorney Richard Hanus.

To summarize the facts of the case, Ms. Keathley went to the Illinois Department of Motor Vehicles to obtain a state identification card while in non-immigrant status, having been admitted to the U.S. on a fiancee visa.  In processing her application, the DMV official asked (as he was required to do) whether she wanted to be an organ donor, and more consequentially, whether she wanted to register to vote.  Having just shown the DMV official her non-U.S. passport and non-immigrant visa, Ms. Keathley took the question to mean that she was eligible to vote.  And an Illinois law designed to deter discrimination in voter registration precluded the DMV official from offering her further guidance to dispel that belief.  When at her adjustment of status interview with DHS, Ms. Keathley answered honestly that she had voted in the 2006 midterm election, she soon found herself in removal proceedings before an immigration judge.

Furthermore, her situation appeared hopeless.  Section 237(a)(6)(A) of the Immigration & Nationality Act requires only a finding that a noncitizen voted in violation of any Federal, State, or local statute in order to make the individual deportable; it does not require a criminal conviction for having done so.  Ms. Keathley readily admitted that she had voted.  And of course, a federal statute, namely, 18 U.S.C. section 611, prohibits non-citizens from doing so.

But Ms. Keathley’s attorney argued that she was not in fact deportable, because there was a legal defense for her action, called “entrapment by estoppel.”  As Judge Frank Easterbrook, writing the Seventh Circuit’s decision in the case, explained, criminal defenses are relevant in removal proceedings.  He provided the example of a noncitizen who kills another in self-defense, raising the question of whether that person would then be deportable for having committed the crime of murder.  While Judge Easterbrook explained that the statute might define murder as the intentional killing of a human being, a person who kills in self defense is not guilty of murder, and would thus not be deportable.2  The same logic applies to voting.

Judge Easterbrook further explained that while its name is confusing, the defense of entrapment by estoppel can be better described as “official authorization.”  In his oral argument, Hanus offered the analogy of a police officer waving a driver through a red light; because the officer authorized the action, the driver could not be ticketed for their action.

Judge Easterbrook provided another example: if a Secret Service agent authorizes someone to distribute counterfeit currency as part of a criminal investigation, the person doing so cannot then be criminally charged for such action.

But the judge also emphasized an important requirement for the defense: the person authorizing the action must have the authority to do so.  As Judge Easterbrook pointed out, a Secret Service agent can authorize someone to pass counterfeit bills, but (choosing a seemingly random example) a high school principal, in spite of being a government employee, would have no authority over who is qualified to vote.

He continued that in Ms. Keathley’s case, while Department of Motor Vehicle officials lack the authority to specifically register non-citizens to vote, they are authorized to register people for federal elections.  In the words of Judge Easterbrook, “The power to register someone supposes some authority to ascertain whether legal qualifications have been met,” meaning that such officials “thus are entitled to speak for the government” on the subject of eligibility to vote.3

The Seventh Circuit remanded the matter, advising that “If the IJ does credit Keathley’s statements about what occurred, the Department of Homeland Security should give serious consideration to withdrawing its proposal that she be declared inadmissible and be removed from the United States. A person who behaves with scrupulous honesty only to be misled by a state official should be as welcome in this country in 2012 as she was when she entered in 2004.”4

On remand, Immigration Judge Craig Zerbe determined that the charge of removability was not sustained in light of the Seventh Circuit’s decision; Ms. Keathley’s application for adjustment of status was thus granted.  As those who saw the movie or play know, she has since become a U.S. citizen.

I hold Richard Hanus in the highest regard, and find his arguments in litigating this case to be brilliant.  I’ve also wondered if his argument might have broader applications.

With that thought in mind, I have heard of a disturbing position being taken by DHS in response to the increasing number of states legalizing marijuana, which presently remains a controlled substance under federal law.

The issue is that a noncitizen seeking to adjust their status to that of a lawful permanent resident must demonstrate that they are not inadmissible to the U.S.  (It was in this same posture that Ms. Keathley was also found inadmissible at her adjustment of status interview).   But section 212(a)(2)(C)(i) of the Act makes inadmissible not only any noncitizen who “is or has been an illicit trafficker in any controlled substance,” but also one who “is or has been a knowing aider, abettor, assister, conspirator, or colluder with others in the illicit trafficking in any such controlled or listed substance…or endeavored to do so.”

Like the voting provision, this exclusion ground does not require a criminal conviction.  But while whether or not someone voted is a clearcut question, what constitutes aiding, abetting, assisting, or colluding with marijuana-related businesses that are operating legally at the state level is far less obvious.

For example, DHS has taken the position that those providing accounting and payroll services to marijuana-related businesses constitute aiding or assisting with drug trafficking within the meaning of the Act.  It’s not clear how far that theory can be extended.  What about those providing banking services?  Or the landlords renting to such businesses? Or those providing them with phones, electricity, or internet service?  And in at least one case, USCIS has applied the trafficking bar to an individual who maintained video surveillance equipment in a marijuana collective.5

My question is whether the “entrapment by estoppel” defense successfully raised in Keathley could also apply to someone such as an accountant who performed services typical of their profession for a client who happened to be in the marijuana business, and who is then charged by DHS of aiding or assisting in marijuana trafficking.  I’m posing this and all that follows as thoughts for discussion; they certainly are not an authoritative opinion.  I am curious to hear what readers think.

First, in terms of “official authorization,” legalizing states have set up agencies to closely regulate the marijuana industry. In Colorado, even non-employees providing support services that require them to be unescorted in what the state has termed “limited access areas” within marijuana-related businesses must be issued a license by the state’s Marijuana Enforcement Division.6  Would the application process and  issuance of such authorization by the relevant state agency be sufficient to trigger an entrapment by estoppel defense?

There is a question of whether a state agency can provide authorization that would carry any weight at federal level.  As noted above, the DMV official in Keathley, although working for the state, had the authority to register individuals to vote in federal as well as state elections; in the view of the Seventh Circuit, that authority carried with it an entitlement to speak to issues of eligibility.

I would here point to an August 29, 2013 memo to all U.S. Attorneys from then Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole, titled “Guidance Regarding Marijuana Enforcement.”  Importantly, this memo refers to a “traditional joint federal-state approach to narcotics enforcement,” adding that this approach has been affected by “[t]he enactment of state laws that endeavor to authorize marijuana production, distribution, and possession by establishing a regulatory scheme for these purposes…”

The Cole Memo listed the federal government’s specific enforcement priorities as follows:

  • Preventing the distribution of marijuana to minors;
  • Preventing revenue from the sale of marijuana from going to criminal enterprises, gangs, and cartels;
  • Preventing the diversion of marijuana from states where it is legal under state law in some form to other states;
  • Preventing state-authorized marijuana activity from being used as a cover or pretext for the trafficking of other illegal drugs or other illegal activity;
  • Preventing violence and the use of firearms in the cultivation and distribution of marijuana;
  • Preventing drugged driving and the exacerbation of other adverse public health consequences associated with marijuana use;
  • Preventing the growth of marijuana on public lands and the attendant public safety and environmental dangers posed by marijuana production on public lands; and
  • Preventing marijuana possession or use on federal property.

The memo continues by stating that outside of the above-listed priorities, “the federal government has traditionally relied on states and local law enforcement agencies to address marijuana activity through enforcement of their own narcotics laws.”

So if the federal government views state governments as partners in a “traditional” joint approach, in which the federal government limits its own enforcement to the above-listed priorities, and leaves the rest to its enforcement partners at the state level, then could someone authorized by the state to engage in activity of the type that the federal government has announced it was ceding to the state to enforce have a valid argument that state permission covered them at the federal level as well?

It also bears noting that subsequent to the Cole Memo, a division of the U.S. Department of Treasury called the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (or “FinCEN” for short) issued guidance “ to clarify Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”) expectations for financial institutions seeking to provide services to marijuana-related businesses.”7

It is noteworthy that this federal government guidance does not warn that providing banking or other financial services to MRBs constitutes aiding, assisting, or abetting in the commission of a federal crime.  The guidance does require such institutions to exercise due diligence, and to file suspicious activity reports with FinCEN if it believes activity it observes might violate the federal government’s enforcement priorities.  In doing so, those institutions are actually aiding and assisting the federal government in its enforcement.

So in providing such guidance, is FinCEN “waving through” businesses who provide supporting services to marijuana-related businesses, providing that they adhere to the guidance?  Could the FinCEN guidance be interpreted by non-financial institutions for the premise that it’s OK to provide services to marijuana-related businesses as long as one keeps their eyes open for suspicious activity, and reports all suspect activity to the authorities?

Copyright 2022 Jeffrey S. Chase.  All rights reserved.

Notes:

  1. 696 F.3d 644 (7th Cir. 2012).
  2. Id. at 646.
  3. Id. at 646-47.
  4. Id. at 647.
  5. Voronin v. Garland, No. 2:20-cv-07019-ODW (AGRx) (C.D. Cal. Apr. 20, 2021).  Thanks to Marie Mark at the Immigrant Defense Project for flagging.
  6. 1 Code of Colorado Regulations 212-3 at Section 1-115.
  7. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, “BSA Expectations Regarding Marijuana-Related Businesses,” FIN- 2014-G001, Feb. 14, 2014.

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Jeffrey S. Chase is an immigration lawyer in New York City.  Jeffrey is a former Immigration Judge and Senior Legal Advisor at the Board of Immigration Appeals.  He is the founder of the Round Table of Former Immigration Judges, which was awarded AILA’s 2019 Advocacy Award.  Jeffrey is also a past recipient of AILA’s Pro Bono Award.  He sits on the Board of Directors of the Association of Deportation Defense Attorneys, and Central American Legal Assistance.

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The DHS position described by Jeffrey appears to fall on a scale somewhere between “bizarre and incredibly stupid!” But, that doesn’t mean immigrants and their lawyers shouldn’t be concerned and prepared to respond! 

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-26-22

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🗽⚖️ REMEMBERING JUDGE WILLIAM VAN WYKE — Tributes Pour In From His Round Table Colleagues! 🛡⚔️

Judge William Van Wyke
Judge William Van Wyke (D – Aug. 14, 2022)
U.S. Immigration Judge (Ret.)
Member Round Table of Former Immigration Judges
“A True Due Process Visionary”
PHOTO: the world.com

Remembering William

From his fellow former Immigration Judges:

This news is very sad.   William appeared before me years ago when he was an attorney for CARECEN and I was the sole Immigration Judge in Washington DC. Before the 1986 Amnesty, my docket was largely persons from El Salvador, who were the bulk of his case load.   I saw him close to daily in those years.   Ironically, once he became a colleague -sitting in Philly,  York and New York, I saw much less of him.

            Passionate is indeed the word that describes him.   His death is truly a loss to society.

            – Joan Churchill, Immigration Judge, Washington, D.C./ Arlington, VA – 1980 – 2005

So sad to hear. I worked my first legal job with William at CARECEN in Washington DC, we were two attorneys representing hundreds of clients in what at the time a no- win environment where all court cases were being denied. William was a tireless advocate for justice and the little guy and relished playing David to the system’s Goliath.

I later followed his lead in becoming an IJ, meeting with him at York detention court where he assuaged my doubts and concerns about an IJ’s ability to be effective in achieving our goals of putting the respondent first.

Golden Slumbers, William.

            – Paul Grussendorf, Immigration Judge, Philadelphia and San Francisco, 1997-2004

William was both an honorable man and an honorable judge. Before he became an immigration judge, he often appeared in the Baltimore Immigration Court. I would ask, how much time do you need to present your case in chief, and he would say , at least 1 day, judge! He taught me so much about El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras…he was a passionate advocate who believed in fundamental fairness, the right to be heard, due process. He cared so much about the vulnerable people who came before us.

Rest In Peace, William.

            – John Gossart, Immigration Judge, Baltimore, 1982-2013

William was an inspiration. So devoted to justice and uncompromising despite the personal costs.  His memory will be a blessing to us all, as well as a reminder to hold true to our beliefs. He will be sorely missed.

            – Dana Leigh Marks, Immigration Judge, San Francisco, 1987-2021

So shocking to hear about William.  I’m so sorry for his family.  Paul Grussendorf, you had it right when you said he relished playing David to the system’s Goliath.  He was brilliant, thoughtful and tireless, and a warm and collegial colleague.

            – Terry Bain, Immigration Judge, New York, 1994-2019

I echo what Terry said. He was a great colleague. I am so sad for his young children.

            – George Chew, Immigration Judge, New York, 1995 – 2017

This is so shocking! William was a rare combination of a legal scholar, a genuinely caring human being and a compassionate judge. I’m very sorry for his family.

            – Sarah Burr, Assistant Chief Immigration Judge and Immigration Judge, New York, 1994-2012

I concur with Terry and the others. I just saw William on 7/31 at Steve Morley’s retirement celebration in Philadelphia. He was as animated and passionate as ever-among the most powerful and persuasive advocates to have ever served as an IJ. William will be  missed.

            – Charles Honeyman, Immigration Judge, New York and Philadelphia, 1995-2020

I am so saddened by Bill’s untimely passing. I practiced before him in York and for his brief stint in Philadelphia before his return to NY.  It was always a pleasure and refreshing to see an IJ so passionate about immigrant rights. And, I spoke with him in NY shortly before I took the bench 12 years ago.  It was a pleasure to reconnect with him at my retirement party 2 weeks ago.  Just so sad.

            – Steve Morley, Immigration Judge, Philadelphia, 2010-2022

I cant get over this shocking and sad news about William’s passing. He is someone Ive known for so long – back to the times in the 80s when  I’d come to DC from Boston for marches for Salvadoran and Guatemalan asylum rights! I knew William  from the National Lawyers Guild Immigration Project.  Such a devoted warrior and thinker for civil and human rights!

As I said elsewhere, we had a lot of contact when he was at York and I was at the BIA. We shared a commitment to fairness and justice. He is such an honorable person and an inspiring and humane advocate for those he represented and whose cases he adjudicated. l’ll miss him.

            – Lory D Rosenberg, Appellate Immigration Judge, Board of Immigration Appeals, 1995-2002

After I met William during my new Immigration Judge training, we quickly became good friends.  He was one of the most brilliant lawyers I’ve ever known, a staunch warrior for justice, and a lovely person.  He will be terribly missed.  I really can’t believe he is gone.

            – Carol King, Immigration Judge, San Francisco, 1995-2017

William was a very caring and compassionate judge. He was also a terrific human being who touched so many lives in a positive way!

            – Robert D. Weisel, Assistant Chief Immigration Judge, Immigration Judge, New York, 1989-2016

I always admired his devotion to justice and especially his bravery and righteousness.  I wish I had known William well enough to share that I also had a son named Camilo. We would have gotten to  know each other so much better.

            – Laura Ramirez, Immigration Judge, San Francisco, 1997-2018

  He really was a wonderful advocate for immigrants.  I always remember government counsel complaining to Judge Creppy and I that he was too nice and too helpful to detained clients.  Such an indictment.  We needed more Judges like him.

            – William P. Joyce, Immigration Judge, Boston, 1996-2002

I will always remember him as someone who put his duties to the law, human dignity, and his country above “career comfort.” Compare that with the many “go along to get along” appellate judges on the BIA — unwilling to properly review records and enforce Mogharrabi and Cardoza because it might rock the boat and slow down the deportation assembly line. William laid his career on the line for higher values of humanity and fairness.

Like Bill Joyce, I say we we need more of that from our judges from EOIR to the Supremes!

            – Paul W. Schmidt, Chairperson and Appellate Immigration Judge, Board of Immigration Appeals, 1995-2003; Immigration Judge, Arlington, VA, 2003-2016

My experiences with William were mostly after he left York. We became friends and spoke freely of our similarly being derailed because others didn’t approve of how we viewed our duty to the sacred office we held. I tried to give him some of my silly humorous advice based on Alexander Zholtenis advice that when in exile tend to your craft. Later he expressed his appreciation for that silly advice I got from my kid brother. William, as everybody noted was a first class mind individual and legal scholar. I’ll always miss him.

            – Gus Villageliu, Appellate Immigration Judge, Board of Immigration Appeals, 1995-2003; Immigration Judge, Miami, 1990-1995

I also echo all that has been said. I knew William from our IJ conferences in addition to periodically speaking with him by phone. Whatever the issue, he was always the voice of experience, respect and sensitivity.

He was a good judge. He was a good man. May he RIP.

            – Alberto Gonzalez, Immigration Judge, San Francisco, 1995 – 2005

I did not know William well, perhaps having run into him at AILA conferences before we each became IJs in 1995. There were a few times that we connected on seemingly humorous events, such as EOIR having Bernadette Dohrn present at our national training one year. (She had been known maybe 20 years earlier as a leader in the Weather Underground). I had immense respect for him and his forthrightness about what was fair and just. A powerful voice that will be missed.

            – Polly Webber, Immigration Judge, San Francisco, 1995-2016

Very, very sad news…A warrior for Justice.  May his memory be a blessing.

            – Bruce J. Einhorn, Immigration Judge, Los Angeles, 1990-2007

He will be missed. One of the best we had.

            – Steve Abrams, Immigration Judge, New York, Varick St., and Queens Wackenhut, 1997-2013

The descriptions are apt. and I concur on the great loss that his passing represents and feel very sad about this news.

I first met him when I was sitting on the ABA’s Coordinating Committee on Immigration  – I believe that was in the late 80’s. We were on the commission when Pro Bar was created. He was such a knowledgeable person.  He was also committed to justice and due process and he will be missed.

            – Cecelia Espenoza, Appellate Immigration Judge, Board of Immigration Appeals, 2000-2003

Saddened to hear of William’s death.

            – Patricia Sheppard, Immigration Judge, Boston, 1993-2006

That’s shocking!  So sad.

            – Denise Slavin, Immigration Judge, Miami, Krome, and Baltimore, 1995-2019

I will remember William for his intellect, his courage, and his compassion. He will be greatly missed.

         – James R. Fujimoto, Immigration Judge, Chicago 1990-2019

I knew William primarily through appearing before him as an attorney, and then through the work of the Round Table. William’s legal acumen, compassion, and dedication to justice has been reflected in his work both on and off the bench. I had just seen him in person at Steve Morley’s retirement party, where we talked about many things, and got to know each other better.  I am very thankful for that opportunity, because I very much enjoyed our conversation, and especially our discussion of how much he was enjoying retirement and the time he was able to spend with family and friends.

            – Sue Roy, Immigration Judge, Newark, 2008-2010

William had a mind like no one else, a really deeply-held sense of right and wrong, a scholarly grasp of the law, and patience to take as long and go into as much detail as humanly possible to get to the correct result.  We won’t see another like him.  I am honored to have known him.  He will be greatly missed.

            – Jeff Chase, Immigration Judge, New York, 1995-2007

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Many thanks to our colleague Hon. “Sir Jeffrey” S. Chase for compiling, organizing, and formatting the many e-mails that circulated among the Round Table paying tribute to our friend and colleague.

A life dedicated to serving humanity through due process. RIP our friend!

🇺🇸  Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-24-22

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  3. 🛡⚔️👍🏼“SIR JEFFREY” CHASE — Garland’s Immigration “Judges” Pull The Ol’ “Bait & Switch” — They Only Are “Judges” When “OIL” Is Trying To Convince Ethically & Legally Challenged Article III Courts To “Defer” To EOIR Decisions — Otherwise, They Are Expected To Act Like DOJ ”Grundoons” Mindlessly Carrying Out The Executive’s Agenda Cloaked In Quasi-Judicial Disguise!
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🇺🇸⚖️🗽AN AMERICAN LEGAL HERO LEAVES BEHIND LEGACY OF COURAGE, SCHOLARSHIP, INNOVATION, COMPASSION: A HEARTFELT TRIBUTE TO HON. WILLIAM VAN WYKE BY HON. “SIR JEFFREY” CHASE!

Judge William Van Wyke
Judge William Van Wyke (D – Aug. 14, 2022)
U.S. Immigration Judge (Ret.)
Member Round Table of Former Immigration Judges
“A True Due Process Visionary”
PHOTO: the world.com

 

 

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2022/8/22/william-van-wyke-2

William Van Wyke

On August 14, the immigration law community lost a true giant. William Van Wyke, a former Immigration Judge, advocate, and scholar unexpectedly passed away.

How does one capture William’s essence? I’m going to attempt to do so through his own words (in bold), taken from both public sources and emails he wrote to his former Immigration Judge colleagues in conversations after his retirement from the bench.

“The fearful and crude ideas get put into practice by reflex; compassionate and thoughtful ones wait around until everyone agrees with them. – William” – April 1, 2021 email.

My first real impression of William came from reading his 1992 article “A New Perspective on ‘Well-Founded Fear,” which appeared in AILA’s conference handbook that year.1 In very simple, easy to understand language, WIlliam turned the existing method of asylum adjudication on its head, using an easy to apply concept that correctly brought the process in line with international law. It was absolutely brilliant. Thirty years later, we are still waiting around for the government agencies overseeing asylum adjudication to agree with it.

Prior to authoring that article, WIlliam had spent nine years pioneering the representation of Central American refugees before the Immigration Courts in Washington and Baltimore, beginning this work when the 1980 Refugee Act was still new.

“’We have a law that was intended to be generous, that, when it is well understood, would cover many cases — many, many more cases — than those that are granted,’ Van Wyke says.” –  Quote in Eyder Peralta, “Why A Single Question Decides The Fates Of Central American Migrants,” NPR, Feb. 25, 2016.

In one 1990 case in which his clients were denied asylum, William succeeded in persuading the Immigration Judge to rule that those clients could not be deported to their native El Salvador as long as the civil war continued there. William achieved this result by arguing customary international law, and analogizing a refugee’s flight from war to the customary practice of allowing a ship in distress the right to enter a port without authorization. The Washington Post quoted an immigration law authority who called the decision “one of the most impressive victories ever in an immigration court.” The decision was the subject of a law review article the following year.3

“My own experience is that people with anti-immigrant sentiments, whether in INS, DHS, EOIR or anywhere else, have always cringed at the idea of an IJ giving an unrepresented person sufficient information to make genuinely informed decisions… I remember a talk by Janet Reno at one of our conferences 20 years ago when she mentioned ‘compassion’ 12 times — I counted them. But try to actually be compassionate in specific cases in a legally appropriate and consequential way and you’re accused of overstepping judicial bounds. Didn’t I know that compassion is supposed to be a decoration, not something that actually helps the people before us?”  – Email, Sept. 18, 2019

William’s appointment as an Immigration Judge in March, 1995 sent a message of hope to the immigration law community. On the bench, William maintained his methodical, detail-oriented approach.  Early in his career on the bench, William reported that the INS trial attorneys had given him the nickname “the Van Wyck Expressway,” a reference to the similarly named NYC roadway that most know from traveling to or from JFK Airport. When William pointed out to one of those INS attorneys that his courtroom actually moved quite slowly, the attorney responded: “So does the Van Wyck Expressway.”

While we were both on the bench, I heard that William had developed a highly unique seating plan for his courtroom, and asked him about it one day. He showed it to me, explaining in detail his deeply thought out reasoning for the placement of every chair in the room. I don’t remember the specifics so many years later, but it was a perfect example of the strong sense of responsibility WIlliam felt towards all who set foot in his courtroom.

That sense of responsibility became even more heightened when WIlliam transferred from the court in New York to what he used to call “plain old York,” meaning the detained immigration court in York, Pennsylvania, located inside of the York County Prison.4

In one case he heard there, a non-citizen sat in jail awaiting approval of a green card petition filed by his U.S. citizen wife that could have saved him from deportation. But approval of visa petitions is not something an immigration judge can do; that power lies with the same government agency that was seeking the non-citizen’s deportation (at the time, that was INS; it is now DHS). After continuing the case multiple times to allow for a decision on the visa petition, WIlliam was repeatedly informed by INS’s attorney that no action had been taken.  The INS attorney further refused to inquire as to when a decision might be expected, and insisted that rather than wait, the non-citizen should be ordered deported.

Although at the time such action required the consent of both parties, WIlliam took the bold step of administratively closing the case over the government’s objection, writing a detailed decision explaining the necessity of doing so under the facts presented.

Remarkably, rather than appeal William’s denial to the Board of Immigration Appeals, the INS attorney privately and most improperly contacted the Chief Immigration Judge by phone, who in turn improperly reopened the matter and placed it back on for hearing.

In a decision that should be required reading for all EOIR management, WIlliam fired back at both INS and his own higher-ups, stating that it would be a “manifest injustice” to deport the respondent “simply because INS has not performed its Congressionally-mandated adjudication in a timely fashion.”

Detailing the extensive efforts he had undertaken to get INS to adjudicate the visa petition, WIlliam further noted that “[t]he asymmetry of ordering one party, but asking, begging, pleading and cajoling the other party hearing after hearing without effect, can only diminish the court as an authoritative and independent arbiter in the public’s eyes.”

WIlliam took the INS and the Office of the Chief Immigration Judge to task for their unethical ex parte communication, and the latter’s unauthorized action in response to such conversation:

The Chief Immigration Judge is an administrative and policy officer without appellate or other legal authority to overrule the immigration judge’s procedural decisions in the case, see 8 CFR 3.9, 3.1(b), and ethical rules require the Chief Immigration Judge as well as immigration judges to refrain from taking action in a specific case following an ex parte communication about the case by one of the parties.

William further noted that his “decision to close the case temporarily was not a mere administrative one subject to OCIJ’s general direction, but a legal decision made as an integral part of the adjudicatory process in an individual case.” William cautioned that the private communication, which denied opposing counsel the right to be heard, protected INS from having to defend its position in an appeal to the BIA, thus giving

a procedural and tactical advantage to the INS by demonstrating to respondent, rightly or wrongly, that an INS call to the Office of the Chief Immigration Judge may be enough to undo what the immigration judge does in open court, while encouraging the INS to continue to seek results from the OCIJ privately that it might not be able to get from the BIA publicly.

William concluded:

Unable to establish or enforce the standards of conduct that this judge believes must apply, he will recuse himself from further consideration of the case. In the court’s view, only the OCIJ, which went beyond mere administrative action to direct a particular course of action in this case, is in a position to cure the appearance of impropriety its intervention has produced. The court will therefore refer this case back to the Chief Immigration Judge for whatever action he may deem fit and appropriate.

The extraordinary nature of the matter was reported in an article in the New York Times.5

In retirement, William was a member of our Round Table that filed an amicus brief in an important case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Velasco-Lopez v. Decker.  The case challenged the practice of requiring a detained non-citizen to themself prove that they would not pose a flight risk or danger to the community in order to warrant their release from detention. In its precedent decision, the circuit court agreed that such burden should be borne by the government, and not the detainee.

I share here part of William’s response to the decision

In this decision, the important starting point is that due process applies to every person in their relation to the power of government. This principle humanizes immigrant “others” and shows that when Big Government (i.e. the kind that wields power in favor of the already rich and already powerful) treads on anyone, everyone’s rights are in jeopardy. The principles relevant in bond decisions –– having ties to our communities and not being a danger to others –– are strong values that most of us honor and share, whether recent immigrants or earlier-generation immigrants, and should make all of us resist limitations on our freedom by the coercive power of jailing people.

I don’t know if they still staple those little yellow cards with red print onto files of jailed immigrants that used to say, “RUSH: detained at government expense.”  Years ago when I was at York I wrote to… EOIR General Counsel, to ask if we couldn’t change those cards to be more humane, to say, “RUSH: person deprived of liberty,” or at least more neutral: “person deprived of liberty at government expense.” A change, of course, was “unnecessary” because everyone already knew the immigrants’ hardship, even if our boss’s reminder focused only on the government’s. Maybe they’ll change the cards now to remind adjudicators: “Rush: this person should not be deprived of freedom unless the government quickly decides he/she lacks any community ties AND is dangerous.” I won’t hold my breath, though.

I will conclude by saying that just recently, I set about researching a narrow legal issue that I would imagine most Immigration Judges would resolve in a few pages at most. I came across a decision that William had written on the topic shortly before his retirement from the bench that was exactly what I was looking for. It was 39 pages single spaced, and of course, absolutely brilliant.

On behalf of your fellow judges, and of all who have appeared in Immigration Court, thank you, William, for being you, for never lowering your standards. You restored the hope of so many in the power of law to make a positive difference in people’s lives, and so often showed that there was a way forward when we thought there was none. You are already greatly missed.

Notes:

  1. William Van Wyke, “A New Perspective on Well-Founded Fear,” 1992-93 Immigration & Nationality Handbook(AILA, 1992) at 497.
  2. Carlos Sanchez, “Lawyer’s Persistence Helps Reshape Immigration Law,” Washington Post, March 31, 1991.
  3. Cookson, II, Charles W. “In Re Santos: Extending the Right of Non-Return to Refugees of Civil Wars.” American University International Law Review 7, no. 1 (1991): 145-171.
  4. The York Immigration Court was closed on July 31, 2021.
  5. Eric Schmitt, “Two Judges Do Battle in an Immigration Case,” NYT, June 21, 2001.
  6. 978 F.3d 842 (2d Cir. 2020). The author recognized the outstanding representation in this matter by the petitioner’s counsel, Julie Dona (who argued the case) and Aadhithi Padmanabhan of the Legal Aid Society, and to Souvik Saha of Wilmer Hale for his remarkable assistance in drafting our amicus brief.

AUGUST 22, 2022

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Jeffrey S. Chase is an immigration lawyer in New York City.  Jeffrey is a former Immigration Judge and Senior Legal Advisor at the Board of Immigration Appeals.He is the founder of the Round Table of Former Immigration Judges, which was awarded AILA’s 2019 Advocacy Award.Jeffrey is also a past recipient of AILA’s Pro Bono Award.He sits on the Board of Directors of the Association of Deportation Defense Attorneys, and Central American Legal Assistance.

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My first real impression of William came from reading his 1992 article “A New Perspective on ‘Well-Founded Fear,” which appeared in AILA’s conference handbook that year.1 In very simple, easy to understand language, WIlliam turned the existing method of asylum adjudication on its head, using an easy to apply concept that correctly brought the process in line with international law. It was absolutely brilliant. Thirty years later, we are still waiting around for the government agencies overseeing asylum adjudication to agree with it.

. . . .

William spent those years trying to persuade the government of the proper application of the new law.  However, INS and the newly created EOIR remained largely mired in the Cold War-influenced view of asylum that preceded the 1980 changes. And under that Cold War approach, Central Americans fleeing pro-U.S. regimes had nearly no chance to obtain asylum

A 1991 Washington Post article documented how this institutional resistance only caused William to be more persistent and creative in his legal approach.2

Kind of says it all about the entrenched, continuing, institutional resistance at EOIR to correct, generous, fair, practical interpretations of asylum law and other immigration and human rights laws! That’s what helps generate uncontrollable backlogs and brings our entire justice system into disrepute! Worst of all, it threatens the lives of those denied justice by its legal misinterpretations and mis-applications of the law!

What does it say about an institution that no longer touts or actively pursues its noble one-time-vision of “through teamwork and innovation, be the world’s best administrative tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all?” Ironically, William’s life and achievements embody that now-defunct “EOIR vision.” But, nobody in “management” actually acknowledged that during his often-difficult tenure there.

Encouragingly, a number of Garland’s recent judicial appointments are distinguished, expert, widely respected “practical scholars” in the “Van Wyke mold.” Unfortunately, it’s going to take immediate and dramatic changes in moribund, uninspired EOIR leadership and in the “any reason to deny” BIA to overcome the “Cold War mentality,” anti-immigrant bias, assembly line procedures, “institutionalized go along to get alongism,” and unacceptably poor performance of EOIR. Right now, it’s still drag on our entire justice system that puts the future of our nation at risk!

No wonder we already miss William, his outspoken courage, and his wisdom so much. There is a void in our justice system right now where fierce due-process-focused, creative, humane, practical scholars should be leading the way in our institutions of justice! 

It’s up to the “new generation” of the NDPA to break down the walls of official resistance by Garland and other short-sighted bureaucrats and politicos who lack the vision to make racial justice, immigrant justice, and equal justice for all realities rather than disingenuous unfulfilled rhetoric! Guys, your lives and those of your descendants might depend on it! So, dial up the pressure on the intransigents, many of them in the Biden Administration you helped to elect and who expect your support and votes again this Fall!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-24-22

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  2. 🆘🤮IS 11TH CIR. GROWING WEARY OF GARLAND’S SCOFFLAW BIA? —Two Trips To The Circuit, & The BIA Still Violates Own Regulations, Ignores Precedent, Spouts Gibberish While OIL’s Defense Of This Nonsense & Malfeasance By EOIR Raises Serious Ethical Questions! — THAMOTAR v. U.S. ATT’Y GEN. — Garland’s Dysfunctional & Systematically Unjust Courts Undermine OUR Democracy☠️ — Demand An IMMEDIATE End To The Scofflaw Nonsense🤡 🧹 At OUR Justice Department! 🏴‍☠️
  3. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️”MEDLEY OF INJUSTICE” — CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO LOWER HAMMER 🔨 ON BIA: Anti-Asylum Misogyny; Illegal & Incredibly Stupid “Policies;” “Perplexing” Lack Of Legal Knowledge Highlighted In Latest Batch Of Reversals! — “Attempted rape by a gang of men, in broad daylight on a public street, is especially terrorizing because it powerfully demonstrates the perpetrator’s domination, control over the victim and imperviousness to the law. Requiring evidence of additional harms both minimizes the gravity of the sexual assault and demeans the victim.”
  4. ‘SIR JEFFREY” CHASE: Garland’s “First Steps” To Eradicate Misogyny & Anti-Asylum Bias @ EOIR Are Totally Insufficient Without Progressive Personnel Changes — Regulations Will Only Be Effective If Drafted By Progressive Human Rights Experts Of Which There Currently Are NONE @ DOJ Save For Some Immigration Judges In The Field Whose Expertise, Intellectual Integrity, & Moral Courage Has Been Ignored By Team Garland! — There Will Be No Gender, Racial, Or Immigrant Justice @ Justice As Long As Garland Mindlessly Lets “Miller’s Club Denial” Operate @ BIA! — Progressives Must Turn Up The Heat On Garland To Reform & Remake EOIR With Qualified Expert Judges & Dynamic, Independent, Progressive Leaders!

🔌👎🏽GARLAND MUST “PULL THE PLUG” ON HIS FAILED APPELLATE COURT — BIA “DEFIES” EVIDENCE TO MOCK DUE PROCESS & DENY ASYLUM, SAYS 3RD CIR! — OGEE v. AG (Ghana)

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What kind of “judges” would “defy” the evidence of record to wrongfully deny asylum?
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Read the 3rd Circuit’s (unfortunately) unpublished decision here:

https://www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/202423np.pdf

Key quote:

The IJ credited Bimpong’s testimony, and the BIA did not disturb this finding. Yet the BIA concluded that Bimpong’s persecution was a personal land dispute that lacked any nexus to his membership in the Ashanti tribe. In doing so, the BIA deferred to the IJ’s conclusion that “the record is devoid of any evidence indicating that the [Enzema] Tribe targeted the applicant because of membership in the Ashanti Tribe.” AR 97 (emphasis added). That conclusion defies the record, which is replete with evidence that Bimpong’s tribal affiliation was a central reason for his persecution. See, e.g., AR 157, 162-63, 167–68, 185, 596, 598. For example, Bimpong testified that members of

the Enzema “did not want the land that [he] possessed to be owned by non-members of 4

the Enzema tribe,” AR 596, and that he “was a target of persecution because of [an] intertribal dispute between the Enzema tribe and Ashanti tribe.” AR 598.

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

Typical BIA BS prejudged, form denial “boilerplate.” “Devoid of evidence” — gimmie a break! We tried (obviously unsuccessfully) to eliminate this type of non-analytical nonsense several decades ago. It’s indicative of a totally broken system that is unfair and biased against migrants! Why is Garland allowing this continuing systemic injustice?

Demand that Garland replace his inept, unprofessional, unconstitutional, “Trump holdover” BIA with real judges who are experts in immigration, asylum, human rights, and fully committed to due process and fundamental fairness! 

To quote my good friend and Round Table 🛡 colleague, Hon. “Sir Jeffrey” Chase:

At the IJ level, the ACIJs have to be charged with determining if the IJ actually doesn’t know the law, or if they are choosing not to follow it.  Of course, you need ACIJs who actually know immigration law, which isn’t always the case anymore.  If it’s the former, you schedule additional training; if it’s the latter, they may need to suspend or remove the IJ.  That should be a priority for the next Chief IJ.

But why isn’t this being caught at the BIA level?  They continue to act as a rubber stamp.  There have been a few cases just in the past couple of weeks where the errors were really major and apparent.
A BIA that would “rubber stamp” denials without question or meaningful analysis so that OIL could then argue “deference” to railroad refugees and other individuals entitled to relief out of the country is precisely what Barr and Sessions intended to create. In other words, a “parody of justice” that would carry out the White Nationalist restrictionist agenda without giving it any thought. And, it’s no coincidence that this unconstitutional agenda falls hardest on the backs of  asylum seekers and other migrants of color. It also serves to reinforce the vile concept that individuals of color in the U.S. are not equal under the law.
The real question here is why Garland hasn’t effectively changed the system by bringing in real judges who are experts in immigration and human rights and who would be fair to all coming before his Immigration Courts regardless of race or status? “Gradual change” is unacceptable when individuals (and their conscientious representatives) are being subjected to deadly quasi-judicial incompetence on a daily basis. Tell Garland you’ve had enough!  
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🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-16-22

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️JUDICIAL REVIEW — C.A. 2 — Brace Of Bad BIA Bobbles On Basics Brings “Culture Of Denial” Into Focus — Justice Will Continue To Be Illusive @ EOIR 👎🏽 Until Garland Steps Up & Replaces His Fatally Flawed BIA With Real Judges Who Are Progressive Practical Scholars In Immigration, Due Process, Human Rights, With A Firm Commitment To Bringing Racial & Gender Equity To Now-Disgraced Immigration Courts!🤮
  2. 🆘🤮IS 11TH CIR. GROWING WEARY OF GARLAND’S SCOFFLAW BIA? —Two Trips To The Circuit, & The BIA Still Violates Own Regulations, Ignores Precedent, Spouts Gibberish While OIL’s Defense Of This Nonsense & Malfeasance By EOIR Raises Serious Ethical Questions! — THAMOTAR v. U.S. ATT’Y GEN. — Garland’s Dysfunctional & Systematically Unjust Courts Undermine OUR Democracy☠️ — Demand An IMMEDIATE End To The Scofflaw Nonsense🤡 🧹 At OUR Justice Department! 🏴‍☠️
  3. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️CAMILLE J.  MACKLER @ JUST SECURITY “GETS IT!” — How Come Judge Garland & The Biden Administration Don’t? — “If we want to re-build a better, stronger immigration system, we need to start with immigration courts.” — Get Involved! Get Angry! Say No To Institutionalized Racism, Misogyny, & Dehumanization (“Dred Scottification”) @ EOIR! Force Judge Garland To Pay Attention! Demand Change, Now!
  4. 🔮PROPHETS: MORE THAN SEVEN MONTHS AGO, “SIR JEFFREY”🛡 & I SAID IT WOULD TAKE MORE THAN HOLLOW PROMISES IN AN E.O. TO BRING JUSTICE  FOR VICTIMS OF GENDER VIOLENCE! — Sadly, We Were “Right On” As This Timely Lament From CGRS Shows!