Know-Nothings – Page 71 – immigrationcourtside.com

NQRFPT: Due Process, Administrative Competence, Common Sense MIA From Initial “Return to Mexico” Hearings, Forcing Frustrated Judge Into A Round Of “Aimless Docket Reshuffling!”

NQRFPT = “Not Quite Ready For Prime Time”

MIA = “Missing in Action”

ADR = “Aimless Docket Reshuffling”

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/immigration/sd-me-remain-in-mexico-hearings-20190314-story.html

Kate Morrissey reports for the San Diego Union Tribune:

Two of the three asylum seekers who were supposed to show up for the first immigration court hearings under the “Remain in Mexico” policy did not make it across the border on Thursday to appear.

After the Homeland Security Secretary announced what she called a “historic” program, known officially as Migrant Protection Protocols, in December, many wondered — and worried — about the logistics of shuttling migrants back and forth across the border for court hearings.At least one of the people who had been returned to Tijuana after asking for asylum at the San Ysidro Port of Entry missed the court hearings because of what Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Rico Bartolomei called a “glitch” in the scheduling system.

Court cases for the program were supposed to start next Tuesday, but somehow cases got scheduled for this Thursday, Bartolomei explained. At first, the court tried to reschedule those hearings for Tuesday but realized it wouldn’t have a way to communicate that effectively with the asylum seekers in Mexico.

“At the end of the day, we kept the hearings as scheduled,” Bartolomei explained.

The issue was that when the court rescheduled to March 19, anyone who called its toll-free number to check for court date updates thought that the hearings would be on March 19. That happened in the case of one Honduran woman who had Los Angeles-based attorney Olga Badilla representing her.

Badilla explained to the judge that she had only learned the day before that the hearing had moved back to March 14 and that her client hadn’t found out in time to be at the port of entry at 9 a.m. She arrived a couple of hours later, but Customs and Border Protection officers wouldn’t let her into the U.S. for her hearing.

“She’s present at the port of entry and ready to come in,” Badilla told the judge, asking for the court’s help. “It’s an unusual situation given the circumstances.”

Bartolomei turned to the government attorney, Jason Aguilar, chief counsel for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Aguilar said the judge should order the woman deported in her absence.

Bartolomei denied that motion, saying that the woman had received “insufficient notice” of the hearing. Instead, he scheduled a future date with Badilla to turn in the woman’s asylum application.

Though the woman was given another chance to show up for court, she ran into more problems down at the border. Her permit to stay in Mexico was on the verge of expiring in anticipation of her crossing into the U.S. for court. If she had crossed and returned again, she would likely get a new one. Without entering the U.S., she was about to become deportable from Mexico.

When court ended for the day, Badilla went to try to help her client.

The other person who didn’t show up for court, a 24-year-old man from Honduras, had also had his case rescheduled through the court’s glitch.

ICE attorney Aguilar again moved to have the man ordered deported.

Bartolomei pushed the ICE attorney about whether it made sense to order someone deported from the U.S. while they are still in Mexico. He asked if it made more sense to consider the person’s application for admission withdrawn.

According to immigration attorney Tammy Lin, a withdrawal would limit potential restrictions on the man’s ability to come to the U.S. in the future. A deportation order would make it much more difficult for the man to come to the U.S.

During the conversation, Bartolomei sighed audibly, weighing the options before him.

Then he decided to reschedule his case for the 19th to see if the man showed up then. Since he didn’t have an address to send the new hearing notice to, he gave it to the Department of Homeland Security to pass on to the man.

The one person who did show up did not have an attorney. Also from Honduras, the man arrived at El Chaparral plaza outside the port of entry well before 9 a.m. A volunteer from a legal services organization that supports migrants in the plaza every morning before they ask for asylum saw him and escorted him to the gate inside the port that marks the entry to the U.S.

He waited in line, shuffling down the spiral walkway in a mix of commuters, shoppers and friends returning from trips abroad. When he got to the front of the line, a Customs and Border Protection official held him to the side to wait for the other two who were supposed to come.

He was nervous, he said.

A few minutes after 9 a.m., several CBP officers and two plainclothes officials took him into the U.S. Officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement transported him from the port of entry to the office building in downtown San Diego that houses the immigration court.

He arrived at the court before noon and sat in a corner of the back row of benches, head bowed.

When it was his turn to face the judge, he spoke softly into the microphone and watched attentively as Bartolomei explained each of the documents he had received.

Bartolomei asked him if he wanted more time to find an attorney.

Yes, the man replied.

The judge granted him another month to try to find someone to help him and told him he would likely be taken back to Mexico again.

“I know it will be difficult to try to get an attorney from there,” Bartolomei told him, urging him to try his best to find a lawyer to take his case.

When his turn was over, ICE officers quickly whisked him away, back to the port of entry.

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Notice will continue to be an issue in this ill-designed process. It actually appears that it will be impossible to properly serve anyone at a “last known address” in Mexico. Thus, any in absentia hearings should ultimately be vacated for lack of notice and will have to be re-started. That’s what “ADR” is all about.

The ICE Attorney was both unhelpful and probably unethical when he insisted on frivolously moving for an “in absentia” order given the obvious scheduling and notice issues attributable to his agency’s choice of this “historically” goofed up and perhaps illegal method of proceeding. Unwillingness to assume any responsibility for their own frequent screw ups and predictably bad policy choices is certainly a “hallmark” of the Trump Administration!

Once of the things that made the Arlington Immigration Court run as well as it did during my tenure was the sense of justice, common sense, practicality, and overall cooperation and helpfulness of the ICE Chief Counsel’s Office in working with the Immigration Judges and private bar to “keeping the ball moving down the field.” Apparently deprived of such a professional approach by the mindless “due process and common sense be damned policies” of this Administration, today’s Immigration Judges face additional roadblocks in promoting efficiency and fairness in accordance with the law. No wonder the backlogs are growing exponentially even with more Immigration Judges on the bench!

Here’s how might a “due process and efficiency-oriented system” could have dealt with the same issues:

Work with the private sector to obtain local counsel for individuals who have passed the “credible fear” process;
Find out how long it will take the lawyer to prepare the application for asylum for filing with the Immigration Court;
Choose a compatable date for filing at the “Initial Master” from a computerized list of “available first Master dates” on Judge Bartolomei’s calendar made available by EOIR;
Release the applicant to a local nonprofit who will help insure that he or she understands the system and the importance of keeping attorney meetings and appearing before the Immigration Court as scheduled;
At the first Master, the attorney files the completed asylum application with Judge Bartolomei, and he assigns an Individual Hearing date;
Presto! A system that works, uses court and judicial time wisely, and promotes fair and efficient results.

Contrast that with the mindless system described above. The key: under the current system everybody has wasted time and effort, particularly Judge Bartholomei, but without getting any closer to assigning an actual Individual Hearing date than on the day the applicant passed “credible fear.”

That’s how Government-created “bogus emergencies” happen. It’s really important that folks like Kate keep reporting on the “nitty gritty” of the Trump Administration’s “malicious incompetence” and how it is destroying and degrading our immigration and justice systems on a daily basis.

Undoubtedly, this Administration will attempt to shift blame for its own predictable failures to the victims — asylum seekers, their lawyers, and Immigration Judges. It’s important that the Trump Administration be held fully accountable, both in the present and for history, for the consequences of their terrible White Nationalist restrictionist agenda.

PWS

03-16-19

RADLEY BALKO @ WASHPOST EXPOSES THE RESTRICTIONISTS’ RACIALLY-DRIVEN BOGUS NARRATIVES: The thing to remember here is the only consistent principle behind immigration restrictionism is opposition to immigrants.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/03/13/immigration-opponents-any-old-argument-will-do/

Balko writes:

Opinions

For immigration opponents, any old argument will do

By Radley Balko

Opinion writer

March 13 at 2:03 PM

David Frum’s cover essay in the latest issue of the Atlantic calling for immigration restrictions is generating some well-deserved scorn. Even his central premise — that if liberals don’t enforce immigration laws, the nation will turn to fascists — is bedeviled by reality. President Trump, Fox News and the Republican Party tried with all their might to demagogue immigration before the midterm elections. The GOP got clobbered. Democrats did especially well in elections in New Mexico, Texas, Arizona and California, the states that border Mexico. In fact, all nine members of Congress who represent the districts along the Mexico border oppose funding for Trump’s border wall.

According to Gallup, 67 percent of Americans think immigration levels should either stay the same or increase, and 75 percent think immigration is a “good thing,” an all-time high. Over the past two years, the percentage who want to restrict immigration from current levels has averaged 30 percent, the lowest figure since Gallup began asking this question in 1965. An NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll found that 61 percent of Americans think immigration helps the country more than it hurts, also an all-time high, and an incredible 49-point swing from 2005. There’s virtually no evidence that support for more immigration is a political liability, other than in Frum’s mind. At worst, an immigration supporter will lose the 30 percent of voters he or she would have lost anyway.

Frum’s essay also includes some bizarre, anti-historical observations. This one might be the strangest: “America was built on the revolutionary idea, never fully realized, that those who labor might also govern—that every worker should be a voter.” The United States was, of course, actually founded on the still-revolutionary — but not nearly as revolutionary — idea that every white, male landowner should be a voter. We weren’t even ready to admit that the people doing the most work at the time were full human beings. Not only was slavery thriving at the American founding, not only was it acknowledged and enshrined in the Constitution, but the effort to preserve the institution also formalized the bond between race, second-class citizenship and servitude. Even the Declaration of Independence, the founding document, was altered from Thomas Jefferson’s first draft to omit the word inherent as a descriptor of our rights, a nod to the fact that even the Enlightenment thinkers weren’t quite ready to recognize the existence of inalienable rights outside their immediate social status, much less to slaves.

In another fit of historical ineptitude, Frum pines for the years 1915 to 1975, a period of immigration restrictionism, which he bizarrely describes as the “years in which the United States became a more cohesive nation.” (Frum also conveniently leaves out how those policies were grounded in racism.) The economist Noah Smith obliterated this argument in a pretty devastating Twitter thread. This was a period of Jim Crow, lynching, red scares, the Depression, race riots, labor rights, mass incarceration, racial assassinations, internment camps and domestic terrorism. Under no circumstances would you describe it as an era of broad social cohesion.

If we wanted to look at the single metric most indicative of social cohesion, we’d probably look at murder rates. The U.S. homicide rate began to increase in the mid-1960s, then generally rose until it peaked with the crack epidemic in the early 1990s. Immigration began to increase in the early 1970s, but really began to soar in the 1990s. From about 1994 to about 2014, undocumented immigration soared while violent crime spiraled.

In fact, from about the late 1990s on, nearly every social indicator in the United States began to move in an encouraging direction — dropout rates, teen pregnancy rates, divorce rates, juvenile crime, rape, property crimes, you name it. Meanwhile, immigration boomed. I don’t think immigration caused all of those good things to happen. But Frum’s argument, that immigration unravels social cohesion, is simply contradicted by the data.

Frum goes on to list of a number of consequences of modern immigration, most of which Frum thinks bode ill for the sort of society to which Frum believes we should be aspiring. But most of the negative consequences Frum lists aren’t the result of immigrants themselves, but of people who share Frum’s view that we have too many immigrants. The line I quoted above, for example, is part of a broader argument Frum makes — because undocumented immigrants operated outside of the law, they aren’t afforded the same legal protection, social status and political representation as citizens and legal residents. But undocumented people live outside the law largely because (a) there is demand here for low-skilled workers, (b) it is virtually impossible for low-skilled workers to come here legally and (c) people who share Frum’s policy preferences have made it politically difficult to grant those who do come any sort of legal protection or political representation.

Frum also cherry-picks his data. He argues, for example, that employers in immigrant-heavy industries are shirking their safety obligations because immigrants lack the political power to demand or enforce regulations. He writes:

Forestry, fishing, and farming are three of the most dangerous industries in the United States. They are 46 percent reliant on immigrant laborers, half of them undocumented. (Documented and undocumented immigrants together make up only 17 percent of the U.S. workforce as a whole.) Building and grounds maintenance is surprisingly dangerous work: 326 people died in 2017. Some 35 percent of grounds workers are immigrants. About 25 percent of construction workers are immigrants, but immigrants supply almost half the workers in the most dangerous areas, notably roofing and drywalling. When so many workers in a job category toil outside the law, the law won’t offer much protection.

Note that Frum moves freely between percentages and raw numbers. Building and grounds maintenance may be “surprisingly dangerous work,” but without some other figures for context, 326 deaths is a meaningless statistic. How does that compare to other professions? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the most dangerous class of occupations falls under the heading “transportation and moving materials.” This group of jobs accounted for nearly a quarter of worker deaths in 2017 — over four times as many workers died in that field as in maintenance. Within that field, the most dangerous sub-field is called “heavy tractor and trailer truck drivers.” And according to a 2012 American Community survey, immigrants make up less than 16 percent of truck drivers. If we look at rates, Frum’s argument also falls flat. The highest fatality rate is comparatively immigrant-spare transportation, at 15.9 deaths per 100,000 workers. Immigration heavy maintenance comes in at 6.6 deaths per 100,000.

There is some evidence that immigrant representation in even these fields is growing, as native-born Americans move out of blue-collar jobs and into more lucrative occupations. But Frum’s policy prescriptions will only exacerbate the very problems that allegedly worry him. Remember, Frum also suggests curbing legal immigration. Contrary to the claims of restrictionists, people don’t come to the United States to get free welfare and health care. Undocumented immigrants contribute more to the economy than they take out, and are less reliant on social welfare than native-born Americans. People come to the United States — legally and illegally — when there is demand for their labor. When the jobs dry up, immigrants stop coming. If demand persists, and the number of legal avenues for immigration continue to dwindle, the immigrants won’t stop coming, they will just increasingly stop coming legally. That means more — not fewer — people in the shadows, unrepresented, unprotected and un-franchised.

But I think my favorite bit of Frum-ian logic comes when discussing the opioid epidemic:

Without the immigrant workers less prone to abuse drugs than the native-born, American elites might have noticed the opioid epidemic before it killed more Americans than died in the Vietnam, Korean, and Iraq Wars and the 9/11 attacks combined.

This is nonsense, on a number of levels. First, there’s little evidence that American elites “missed” the opioid epidemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been dutifully publishing overdose statistics each year, as it always has. I’ve talked to several medical examiners in recent years who believe the epidemic may even be overstated. Overdose isn’t always easy to diagnose, and because there’s a nationwide shortage of medical examiners, cause of death isn’t always the product of careful medical analysis so much as a rough guess by an elected coroner with little or no medical training. This isn’t to say that there’s nothing to worry about, but ask any pain patient who is struggling to find treatment — the opioid crisis has certainly not gone unnoticed.

More to the point, Frum’s argument here is a bit of rhetorical jujitsu. The nativist line has long been that immigrants — particularly those who are unskilled and undocumented — are diseased, crime-ridden and drug-addicted. Faced with evidence that immigrants are lesslikely to be addicted to opioids, Frum flips an asset into a liability. Now, the fact that immigrants don’t abuse drugs unfairly distracts elite attention from the native-borns who do.

It reminds me of one of my favorite-ever anti-immigration arguments, from longtime nativist Mark Krikorian. Back in 2004, Krikorian lamented over a Boston Globe story about how dedicated, hardworking immigrants were robbing native-born American teenagers a rite of passage — the privilege of slacking off at their first job. He wrote:

One economist said employers “like the fact that immigrants can work more hours and more shifts than teenagers.” A job counselor said “Typically when kids apply for a summer job they might want a week off to go to camp or do something else. I tell them, ‘You can’t do that. You are up against someone who is going to be there every day and you need to deal with that.’” As a result, the percentage of teenagers holding jobs is the lowest it’s been since statistics started being compiled in the 1940s.

Is it healthy for the future of our society to freeze our children out of low-wage, rite-of-passage jobs? When I was younger, I washed dishes in restaurants, packed tomatoes, did lawn work — this kind of thing is essential if we are to preserve a middle-class society that values work, rather than the Old World model that mass immigration is pushing us toward, where only inferiors ever get their hands dirty.

Of course, Krikorian also regularly argues that the same immigrants employers prefer because of their dedication and work ethic are simultaneously a drain on the welfare system.

The thing to remember here is the only consistent principle behind immigration restrictionism is opposition to immigrants. As a nativist, you’re free to argue that immigrants are both lazy and hardworking. They’re both assimilating too quickly and refusing to assimilate. They’re both violent drug pushers who are crowding our prisons, and they’re teetotaling law-abiders whose good citizenship is unfairly diverting attention from overdose deaths and mass incarceration among the native-born. Pick and chose these points as you need them. Any old argument will do.

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Balko “outs” the kind of racist garbage that dangerous disingenuous dudes like Jeff Sessions, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, Kris Kobach, Steve King, and their many apologists and enablers in the GOP have been spewing forth for years. Only now it’s been elevated to national policy, repeated by Trump, Administration dunderheads like Kristjen Nielsen, Sarah Sanders, L. Francis Cissna, E. Scott Lloyd, and even some supposedly brighter career officials at DHS who should know better. A very sad state of affairs, indeed!

The good news: The “high approval rate” for immigrants shows that the bogus White Nationalist narrative that appears to have helped Trump get elected might be failing this time around. On the other hand, Trump’s approval rate remains high among Republicans. That’s pretty disturbing!

PWS

03-15-19

BETH FERTIG @ THE GOTHAMIST: Mismanaged Immigration Courts’ Failed Technology Results In Cancelled Hearings, More “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” That Needlessly Impedes Due Process & Adds To Already Out Of Control Backlog!

http://gothamist.com/2019/03/12/immigration_court_video_failure.php

Beth writes:

Hundreds of immigration court hearings have been canceled because of video malfunctions in New York City, according to data obtained by WNYC.Detained immigrants often see judges by video when they’re held in remote locations, but last year a court on Varick Street in Manhattan switched to hearing cases through video technology. The immigrants who use that court are held in regional detention centers and were previously transported to Varick Street for in-person hearings.The change prompted a lawsuit by immigration attorneys, who claim the video equipment frequently breaks down and deprives their clients of due process.

New data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request appears to support their claim. A total of 316 hearings in New York were postponed in Fiscal Year 2018 due to video malfunctions, according to the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which runs the immigration courts.

That’s a big jump from a total of 12 postponements due to video malfunctions in the previous two fiscal years combined. Andrea Saenz, supervising attorney at Brooklyn Defender Services, said those numbers seem accurate.

“It just goes to show that the video hearings are not giving our clients due process,” she said. Her group is one of of three public interest law firms suing the government over the use of video in New York.

“People are not getting fair hearings if they cannot rely on the technology to actually connect them to the judge who’s able to correctly hear them and assess their testimony,” she added.

But a spokesman for EOIR said things are actually improving. John Martin said the agency “routinely monitors the effectiveness” of video teleconferencing. “The FOIA statistics suggest that video malfunctions at the New York City immigration courts are decreasing in FY 2019 compared to FY 2018,” he added.

The data show 49 hearings were canceled due to technical problems from October 1st through the end of December, the first quarter of FY 2019.

But Saenz said this number could be falling because detainees from the Bergen County detention center, in New Jersey, have been brought to court in person since December because the technical problems are so serious at that facility.

Immigration courts around the nation have been increasingly relying on video technology, promoting it as an efficiency measure. Last year, the government told WNYC that only around 800 of nearly 126,000 video hearings were postponed for technical problems. But our freedom of information request revealed there were actually more cancellations, totaling 1,090 nationwide.

But EOIR’s Martin explained the discrepancy by noting the original number provided for FY 2018 did not include every type of hearing.

Regardless, the new data show a huge spike in canceled hearings because there were only 403 adjournments due to video problems two years earlier.

Hearings conducted by video are often used for immigrants at detention centers in remote locations. Immigration and Customs Enforcement started using them in New York City last June. The agency originally blamed the decision on safety concerns, citing a large protest by immigration advocates outside the court building on Varick Street. It then said hearings by video are more cost efficient.

Public defenders are also complaining that hearings at Varick Street are now being expedited. They said they were told on Friday that trials scheduled for later this spring will be held as soon as next week because the court is adding more judges. EOIR did not respond to a request for comment.

Saenz said attorneys were caught off guard, and many aren’t prepared to make complicated arguments so quickly, such as asylum cases that require lots of documentation including medical exams and evidence from an immigrant’s home country.

“This is not efficient and this is not a fair way to run a court system,” she said.

Beth Fertig is a senior reporter covering courts and legal affairs at WNYC. You can follow her on Twitter at @bethfertig.

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EOIR has failed after nearly two decades of wasted time, money, and effort, to implement any type of e-filing in a system now plagued with literally millions of “paper files in the aisles” and everywhere else. But, they were able to roll out the totally bogus “Immigration Judge Dashboard” to needlessly up the pressure on already overstressed Immigration Judges by giving them constant reminders on the bench of the utterly sophomoric and totally counterproductive “production quotas” instigated by biased and incompetent non-judicial politicos at the DOJ with the acquiescence of EOIR “managers” who would make jellyfish look like vertebrates by comparison.

When will Congress and/or the Article IIIs finally take the long overdue action to remove the “Keystone Cops” from inflicting even further damage on this parody of court system that they have so thoroughly destroyed with their highly politicized and unethical initiatives and their absolutely mind-boggling management incompetence?

It would be a joke; except that this particular “joke” is endangering and ruining human lives, inflicting needless misery, and squandering scarce resources on a daily basis. As Casey Stengel would say, “Can’t anyone here play this game?” Right now, the answer appears to be “No.” And, that includes Congress and the Article IIIs. Eventually, those in the preceding two groups who allow this situation to continue will become complicit and will go down in history as enablers of a system that preyed on the most vulnerable and needy of legal protections among us.

PWS

03-15-09

“DOJ MISMANAGEMENT CENTRAL:” In Failing U.S. Immigration Courts, Political Interference & Idiotic Quotas Push 1.1 Million Plus Case Backlog Higher!

https://apple.news/ASsFWST9rQTSnqDmrVtuZ2Q

Immigration judges say quotas will increase backlog of cases

LOS ANGELES — Immigration judges say a new quota system threatens to increase an already overwhelming backlog of cases in U.S. immigration courts.

The system pushes for judges to close 700 cases a year and calls for them to be evaluated on that quota.

Immigration Judge Ashley Tabaddor said in a March 12 letter to lawmakers that the change would create a perception of government interference in the handling of cases that will lead more immigrants to file appeals.

Tabaddor, who heads the National Association of Immigration Judges, says the move could also flood federal courts with cases.

It can take years to get a decision in the immigration courts, which have more than 800,000 pending cases.

The letter followed testimony last week before a House subcommittee by James McHenry, who oversees the nation’s immigration courts.

A message sent to immigration court officials was not immediately returned.

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Apparently, it’s going to take a complete collapse of not only the U.S. Immigration Courts but the entire Federal Judicial System (certainly on the horizon as the Immigration Courts’ systematic failure to provide expertise, impartial decision-making, Due Process, and fundamental fairness is pushing more and more cases into the Article III Courts). Unfortunately, to date, both Congress and the Article IIIs seem largely willing to watch disaster unfold, rather than taking the bold remedial action required to wrest the Immigration Court System out of the clutches of a spectacularly unqualified Department of Justice and reconstitute them as an independent court system where the standards of Due Process are taught, applied, and enforced!

In the meantime, lives are being needlessly, sometimes intentionally, endangered each day by our failure to live up to the U.S. Constitution!

PWS

03-14-19

EOIR DIRECTOR McHENRY TRIES TO EXPLAIN TRASHING OF DUE PROCESS TO SKEPTICAL HOUSE DEMS — DOJ Leadership Has Turned “Courts” Into “A DMV For Deportation,” Says Chairman Jose Serrano (D-NY)!— Many Cases From Trump Shutdown Still “MIA” While Lives Hang In The Balance!

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/immigration-court-government-shutdown-immigrants-waiting-for-cancelled-hearings-rescheduled-2019-03-11/

Kate Smith reports for CBS News:

Immigration courts are still wading through the disruptions caused by the government shutdown, which closed the courts and effectively cancelled between 50,000 and 95,000 hearings in December and January.

Many immigrants are still waiting to have those hearings rescheduled, James McHenry, the director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review which oversees the nation’s immigration courts, told lawmakers during a hearing last week. “The courts are in the process of rescheduling those, they’ve been working overtime since the shutdown ended to get that done,” McHenry said.

Congressman Jose Serrano, who chaired the hearing, called the delay “deeply problematic,” in an email to CBS News. The nation’s immigration courts reopened on January 28 after being closed for over a month during the partial government shutdown.

“It is ironic that this Administration’s obsession with building a wall only increased the number of immigrants in limbo, aggravating an already serious crisis,” said Serrano, who represents New York’s 15th district. “There needs to be a serious effort to reschedule these hearings quickly”

Although McHenry estimated that 50,000 immigration cases were cancelled during the shutdown, others say the number could be nearly double that. According to Syracuse University’s TRAC, 80,051 hearings during the shutdown were either outright cancelled or had their status left unchanged — the hearing date simply came and went without acknowledgement, leaving affected migrants to wonder what comes next.

TRAC said the number of cancelled cases rises to more than 94,000 when it includes other factors, like “Docket Management” or “Immigration Judge Leave.”

Many hearings scheduled for the week after the government reopened were also postponed as court clerks waded through over a month’s worth of filings that hadn’t been touched during the shutdown. Rather than processing those documents, court administrators in Charlotte, North Carolina, for example, threw them into brown cardboard boxes for clerks to deal with once the court opened, said Jeremy McKinney, an immigration attorney who serves clients in North Carolina and South Carolina.

The immigration court system, which is overseen by the Department of Justice, handles a range of cases involving non-citizens, including issuing green cards and ruling on asylum claims. The courts also serve as a necessary step toward temporary Social Security cards — needed for work permits and driver’s licenses — making hearings intensely important for immigrants.

The Executive Office of Immigration Review declined to comment on the status of the courts after the shutdown.

CBS News spoke with six immigration attorneys, all of which have at least one client whose cancelled case hasn’t yet been rescheduled. Many of the hearings that were have yet to be rescheduled are for migrants seeking asylum, a legal form of immigration for people fleeing persecution and threats in their home country. One immigrant was waiting on a final hearing on their asylum case, a decision that would determine whether she gets to stay in the United States or be deported.

“The impact on the client is just not knowing,” said McKinney.

The cancellations have also added to the system’s record-high case backlog, which McHenry estimated to be 850,000 during Thursday’s hearing. Once the courts have fully realized the impact from the shutdown, immigration advocates predict it will get even bigger.

For the immigrants with cancelled hearings, getting back in front of a judge could take years. At the Newark, New Jersey immigration court, some cancelled hearings have been penciled in as far back as August 2021, said Alan Pollack, an immigration attorney in New Jersey, in an interview with CBS News. In Houston, the immigration court begun issuing dates in 2022, said Ruby Powers, an immigration attorney.

“We’re getting a bit used to things taking a while and a dose of chaos,” Powers said.

First published on March 11, 2019 / 12:29 PM

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Here’s Subcommittee Chairman Jose Serrano’s (D-NY) “spot on” statement about the DOJ’s “dissing” of Due Process at EOIR.

https://appropriations.house.gov/news/press-releases/chairman-serrano-statement-at-hearing-on-executive-office-for-immigration-0

Chairman Serrano Statement at Hearing on Executive Office for Immigration Review

March 7, 2019

Press Release

Congressman José E. Serrano (D-NY), Chair of the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related AgenciesAppropriations Subcommittee, delivered the following remarks at the Subcommittee’s hearing on the Executive Office for Immigration Review:

The subcommittee will come to order.

For our second hearing of the year, today we welcome James McHenry, the Director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, or EOIR. EOIR primarily functions as our nation’s immigration court system, where it administers and adjudicates our nation’s immigration laws. Thank you for being with us, Director McHenry.

I wanted to hold this hearing because I have deep concerns about how our nation’s immigration courts are operating. Some of those concerns are longstanding, while others have been exacerbated by the decisions of the Trump Administration.

Our nation’s immigration courts handle a wide variety of immigration-related claims, from removal proceedings to asylum claims. These are complex, nuanced proceedings that require time, understanding, and care. In many cases, the consequence—removal from this country—is so severe that we must have significant due process to ensure that no one’s rights are violated in an immigration court proceeding.

Unfortunately, these concerns are increasingly being shoved aside. This, in part, is due to the enormous, and growing, backlog of pending cases before the courts, which is now more than 1 million cases, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. That growth is largely due to the significant increase in immigration enforcement efforts over the past 15 years, which has not been followed by a similar growth in the immigration court system. Although this subcommittee has included significant increases in immigration judge teams for the past two fiscal years, the backlog has actually increased under the Trump Administration. This situation was worsened by the recent government shutdown.

The reasons for that are sadly clear. The leadership at the Justice Department has attempted to turn our immigration courts into a sort of deportation DMV– where immigrants get minimal due process on their way out the door. This Administration has chosen to: impose quotas on immigration judges to limit case consideration regardless of complexity; limit the ways in which immigrants can make valid claims for asylum; increase the use of videoconferencing to reduce in-person appearances; and undermine the discretion of immigration judges to administratively close cases, among many other things. Ironically, these choices, supposedly aimed at efficiency, have actually increased the backlog.

I believe our immigration courts should strive to be a model of due process. A couple of bright spots in that effort are the Legal Orientation Program and the Immigration Court Help Desk, both of which help to better inform immigrants about their court proceedings. We should seek to expand such programs.

Despite these efforts, in our current system, an estimated 63 percent of immigrants do not have legal counsel. We’ve all read stories about children, some as young as 3 years old, being made to represent themselves. That is appalling. Our immigration laws are complicated enough for native English speakers, let alone those who come here speaking other languages or who are not adults. We can, and should, do better than this.

Today’s hearing will explore the choices we are making in our immigration court system, to better understand how the money we appropriate is being used, and whether it is being used in line with our expectations and values. Thank you, again, Director McHenry, for being here.

Now let me turn to my friend, Mr. Aderholt, for any comments he may have.

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

It’s painfully obvious that Director McHenry doesn’t have the faintest idea how many cases are actually “off docket” because of the Trump Administration’s malicious incompetence, a/k/a ”Aimless Docket Reshuffling.”

As Chairman Serrano observed, the vision of the Immigration Courts once was “through teamwork and innovation be the world’s best administrative tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.” That noble vision has been replaced by a “partnership” with DHS Enforcement to misconstrue the law, deny rights, punish those we should be protecting, and reduce “Immigration Judges” to menial “rubber stamps” on cruel, illegal, and unduly harsh enforcement actions in the hopes that the Article III Courts will “take a dive” and “defer” rather than intervening to put an end to this travesty.

Chairman Serrano and others have identified the problem. But they haven’t solved it!

That will require the removal of the Immigration Courts from the DOJ and establishing an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court where Due Process can flourish, fundamental fairness will be the watchword, “best practices” (not merely expediency) will be institutionalized, and all parties will be treated equally and respectfully, thus putting an end to years of preferential treatment of DHS.

PWS

03-12-19

“DUE PROCESS FOREVER, XENOPHOBIA NEVER!” — Here’s An Inspirational Creation By The Courageous Students Of Professor Claire Thomas Of NY Law School, Stalwart Members Of The New Due Process Army!

This is derived from the closing lines of my speech to the 2019 FBA New York Asylum and Immigration Law Conference at NY Law School last Friday, March 8!

“Practicing what they preach,” Professor Claire Thomas of NY Law School and her courageous, smart, and dedicated students are now at the Southern Border saving lives and making a historical record of the cruel, ineffective, illegal, and bias-driven policies of the Trump Administration.

Thanks again to Professor Thomas, who was also one of the primary organizers of the “sold-out” Conference, and her inspiring students for all they are doing to preserve America and our system of justice against the attacks on the rule of law, our Constitution, and simple human decency by the scofflaw and incompetent Trump Administration.

Here’s the amazing Professor Thomas:

Due Process Forever, Xenophobia Never!

PWS

03-11-19

THE ART OF SOCIAL JUSTICE — HON. POLLY WEBBER’S TRIPTYCH “REFUGEE DILEMMA” HITS THE ROAD!

a) “Fleeing From Persecution;” b) “Caught in the Covfefe;” c) “Safe Haven;”
The stories behold each rug by the artist, Hon. Polly Webber;
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase & Hon. Polly Webber admiring “Caught in the Covfefe” during a break at the 2019 FBA New York Asylum & Immigration Law Conference at NY Law School on March 8, 2019;
Closeup of “Caught in the Covfefe.”

Art powerfully expresses the overwhelming need to fight for social justice and human dignity in the age of Trump’s unabashed cruelty, racism, and White Nationalism.

It’s even more powerful when the artist is Retired U.S. Immigration Judge Polly Webber (a proud member of “Our Gang” of retired judges) who has spent her life promoting Due Process, fundamental fairness, justice, and the rule of law in American immigration. She has served as an immigration attorney, former President of AILA, U.S. Immigration Judge, and now amazing textile artist bringing her full and rich life and deeply held humane values to the forefront of her art.

Thanks, Polly, for using your many talents to inspire a new generation of the “New Due Process Army!”

I’m only sorry that my photos don’t do justice to Polly’s art. Hopefully, the “real deal” will come to a venue near you in the future!

PWS

03-10-19

“SHAFTING KIDS” — Reuters’ FOIA “Dig” Exposes How USCIS Wastes Time & Resources Developing New Ways Of Using Bureaucracy To Undermine Public Service & Deny Protection To The Most Vulnerable!

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-abuse-exclusive/exclusive-for-migrant-youths-claiming-abuse-u-s-protection-can-be-elusive-idUSKCN1QO1DS

Mica Rosenberg reports for Reuters:

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Growing up in eastern Honduras, Jose said his father would get drunk and beat him with a horse whip and the flat side of a machete. He said he watched his father, a coffee farmer whose crops succumbed to plague, hit his mother on the head with a pistol, sending her to the hospital for three days.

At 17, Jose said, he hired a coyote to ferry him to the United States, seeking to escape his home life and violent feuding among his relatives, as well as seek better opportunities for himself and his siblings. He was picked up by border agents, then released pending deportation proceedings.

After struggling to get a good lawyer, Jose applied at 19 for special protection under a program for young immigrants subjected to childhood mistreatment including abuse, neglect or abandonment.

But like a growing number of applicants, his petition hit a series of hurdles, then was denied. Now he is appealing.

“It’s like being stuck not going forward or backwards,” said Jose, now 22 and living in New York. He spoke on condition his last name not be used because he is working without a permit and does not want to jeopardize his appeal. “You can’t advance in life,” he said.

As President Donald Trump vociferously pushes for a physical barrier across the country’s southern border, young people claiming to be eligible for protection under the Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) program increasingly face a less publicized barrier: heightened demands for paperwork.

Data obtained by Reuters under the Freedom of Information Act shows that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has recently ramped up demands for additional documents through “Requests for Evidence” and “Notices of Intent to Deny,” which can tie up cases for months.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Mica’s articles, with graphs, at the above link.

Importantly, the restrictionst group CIS’s claim (in the part of the article NOT set forth above) that SIJ status was intended solely for trafficking victims is untrue. I actually worked on the enactment of the original SIJ provision in IMMACT 90 when I was in private practice. It was intended to be used by various states and localities, the largest number of which were in California, who had significant numbers of foreign-born “wards of the court” (some of them foster children) who otherwise would have been denied work and study opportunities upon becoming adults.

The later amendments to SIJ status were not intended to limit the scope in any way to “trafficked individuals.” The emphasis was on those who had suffered domestic abuse. Here is a link to an excellent report on that legislative history from American University. http://niwaplibrary.wcl.american.edu/wp-content/uploads/Appendix-B-SIJS-Legislative-History.pdf

Indeed, there is scant evidence that SIJ was ever intended to be limited to trafficked juveniles as restrictionists claim, although such juveniles often fit within the remedial scope of SIJ status. First, that’s clearly not what the statute says. Second, Congress has other specific provisions for the protection of trafficking victims and victims of crime under the “T” and “U” nonimmigrant statuses which may also lead to permanent status.

Just another example of how the USCIS and the Trump Administration have improperly incorporated many parts of the false narrative promoted by immigration restrictionists into Government policies and procedures.

PWS

03-09-19

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION OUTED AGAIN ON ILLEGAL CHILD SEPARATION — Judge Sabraw Rejects DOJ’s Disingenuous Position!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/08/family-separation-trump-reunification-judge-order?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

From The Guardian:

A federal judge who ordered that more than 2,700 children be reunited with their parents has expanded his authority to potentially thousands more children who were separated at the border earlier during the Trump administration.

Dana Sabraw ruled late Friday that his authority applies to any parents who were separated at the border on or after 1 July 2017. Previously his order applied only to parents whose children were in custody on 26 June 26 2018.

Sabraw said his decision responds to a report by the US Health and Human Services Department’s internal watchdog that said thousands more children may have been separated since the summer of 2017. The department’s inspector general said the precise amount was unknown.

“The court made clear that potentially thousands of children’s lives are at stake and that the Trump administration cannot simply ignore the devastation it has caused,” said Lee Gelernt, the ACLU’s lead attorney in the lawsuit.

The judge says he will consider the next steps on 28 March.

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

Progress. Judge Sabraw is a patient man.

But, here’s the reality:

The parents and children who are victims of the Government’s illegal conspiracy to violate their Constitutional rights are still suffering.
An Administration with billions to waste on unnecessary walls, unneeded troops at the border, and inhumane detention has no time, money, or interest in rectifying their own misconduct.

So, how is this “justice?”

It’s time for some accountability that will prevent such gross misconduct by Government officials from occurring in the future.

PWS

03-09-19

TWO LA TIMES EDITORIALS “SPOT ON” IN CALLING OUT TRUMP’S FAILED BORDER POLICIES, BOGUS EMERGENCY, & ABUSE OF IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITY!

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=d85e48a2-1a59-4182-854b-dfd9a146177c

TThe numbers are sobering. The federal government reported Tuesday that immigration agents apprehended 76,000 people — most of them families or unaccompanied minors — at the U.S.-Mexico border in February, twice the level of the previous year and the highest for February in 11 years. The increase continues a trend that began in the fall, and offers direct evidence that President Trump’s strategy of maximal enforcement at the border is not reducing the flow of migrants.

And no, the answer is not “a big, beautiful wall.” Most of those apprehended weren’t trying to sneak past border agents; instead, they sought out agents once they reached the border and turned themselves in, hoping to receive permission to stay.

Furthermore, the situation isn’t a national security emergency, as he has declared in an effort to spend more on his border wall than Congress provided. It’s a complex humanitarian crisis that appears to be worsening, and it’s going to take creative analytical minds to address.

For instance, the vast majority of the families flowing north in recent months come from poor regions of Guatemala, where food insecurity and local conflicts over land rights and environmental protections are pushing more people off their farms and into even deeper poverty, according to human rights observers and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Just months earlier, gang violence in urbanized areas were pushing people north to the United States; increasingly now, it’s economics.

But Trump’s rhetoric may be playing a role too. The more he threatens draconian enforcement and cutbacks in legal immigration, the more people contemplating moving north are pushed to go sooner, before it gets even harder to reach the U.S. Similarly, more migrants are arriving at more treacherous and remote stretches of the border to avoid getting stuck in Tijuana or other border cities where the U.S. government has reduced the number of asylum seekers it will allow in, claiming an inability to process the requests.

The system is overwhelmed. But the solution isn’t to build a wall, incarcerate more people, separate children from their parents or deny people their legal right to seek asylum. The solution is to improve the efficiency and capacity of the system to deal with the changed migrant demographics. A decade ago, about 1 in 100 border crossers was an unaccompanied minor or asylum seeker; now about a third are.

More judges and support staffs are necessary for the immigration court system, as the Trump administration has sought from Congress. Yet the case backlog there has continued to grow — in part because the increase in enforcement actions, in part because the Justice Department ordered the courts to reopen cases that had been closed administratively without deportations, often because the migrant was in the process of obtaining a visa. A faster and fair process would give those deserving asylum the answer they need sooner, cutting back on the years they spend in limbo, while no longer incentivizing those unqualified for asylum to try anyway.

The Migration Policy Institute, a think tank, has suggested one partial fix. Currently, migrants claiming asylum have a near-immediate initial “credible fear” hearing with an asylum officer from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, who determines whether the migrant has a significant potential to make a successful asylum claim. Most migrants pass that low threshold and are then directed to the immigration courts to make the formal case, a more involved process that can take years. Keeping those cases within the citizenship and immigration branch for an administrative hearing instead of sending them to immigration court could lead to faster decisions for the deserving at a lower cost — a single asylum agent is cheaper than a court staff — while preserving legal rights by giving those denied asylum a chance to appeal to the immigration courts. That’s a process worth contemplating.

More fundamentally, the current system hasn’t worked for years, and under Trump’s enforcement strategy it has gotten worse. It’s a big ask, but Congress and the president need to work together to develop a more capable system that manages the many different aspects of immigration in the best interests of the nation while accommodating the rights of the persecuted to seek asylum.

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=1cbd9b3d-f2d0-4249-b602-37223ff3f407

The U.S. government is reportedly compiling dossiers on journalists, lawyers and activists at the border.

ASan Diego television station recently obtained some troubling documents that seem to show that the U.S. government, working with Mexican officials under a program called Operation Secure Line, has created and shared dossiers on journalists, immigrant rights lawyers and activists covering or involved with the so-called caravans of migrants moving from Central America to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Worse yet, the government then detained some of these people for questioning (one photojournalist was held for 13 hours), barred some of them from crossing the border and interfered with their legitimate efforts to do their jobs. NBC 7 also received a copy of a purported government dossier on lawyer Nicole Ramos, refugee program director for a migrant rights group, that included a description of her car, her mother’s name, and details on her work and travel history. That’s not border security, that’s an intelligence operation and, as the American Civil Liberties Union pointed out, “an outrageous violation of the First Amendment.”

The ACLU noted correctly that it is impermissible for the government to use “the pretext of the border to target activists critical of its policies, lawyers providing legal representation, or journalists simply doing their jobs.”

It’s unclear when the intelligence gathering began, or how widespread it is, but the Committee to Protect Journalists reported in October that U.S. border agents, using the broad power the law gives them to question people entering the country, seemingly singled out journalists for in-depth examinations, including searching their phones, laptops and cameras — all without warrants, because they’re generally not required at the border. These are troubling developments deserving of close scrutiny by Congress and, if warranted, the courts.

The Department of Homeland Security is responsible for controlling the flow of people across U.S. borders and has broad and court-recognized authority to search for contraband. But the government should not use that authority as a pretext to try to gain information to which it would not otherwise be entitled. And it certainly doesn’t give it a framework for harassing or maintaining secret files on journalists, lawyers and activists who are covering, representing or working with activists.

Homeland Security defended the targeting by linking the intelligence operation to the agency’s investigation of efforts this winter by some Central American migrants to cross the wall near San Ysidro, Calif. It said also that all the people entered into the database had witnessed border violence. That sounds an awful lot like a criminal investigation, not a border security operation.

The name of the report leaked to NBC 7 was “Migrant Caravan FY-2019: Suspected Organizers, Coordinators, Instigators, and Media.” The only thing suspect here is the government’s actions.

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

Unfortunately, the second editorial on the “enemies list” shows why the first one on solving the Central American forced migration issue in a sensible, legal, and humanitarian manner simply isn’t in the cards without “regime change.”

First, the Trump Administration simply lacks the competence, professionalism, and expertise to solve real problems. The absolutely stunning incompetence of Nielsen and the rest of the politicos who supposedly run immigration and national security policy these days was on full display this week. America’s “real” enemies must have been watching with glee at this public demonstration of lack of competence and concern for any of the actual national security issues facing our nation.

Career civil servants who have the knowledge, expertise, motivation, and ability to solve migration problems have been forced out, buried in make-work “hallwalker jobs” deep in the bowls of the bureaucracy, or simply silenced and ignored. The Administration has also declared war on facts, knowledge, human decency and scorns the humanitarian expertise available in the private and NGO sectors.

Second, there is zip motivation within the Trump Kakistocracy to solve to the problem. As long as neo-Nazi Stephen Miller is in charge of immigration policy, we’ll get nothing but White Nationalist, racist nonsense. Miller and the White Nationalist restrictionists (like Trump & Sessions) have no motivation to solve immigration problems in a practical, humane, legal manner.

No, the White Nationalist agenda is to use lies, intentionally false narratives, racial and ethnic stereotypes, bogus statistics, and outright attacks on our legal system to further an agenda of hate, intolerance, and division in America intended to enfranchise a largely White GOP kakistocracy while disenfranchising everyone else. It plays to a certain unhappy and ill-informed political “base” that has enabled a minority who cares not a whit about the common good to seize control of our country.

While the forces of evil, division, and Constitutional nihilism can be resisted in the courts, the press, and now the House of Representatives, the reign of “malicious incompetence” can only be ended at the ballot box. If it doesn’t happen in 2020, and there is certainly no guarantee that it will, it might well be too late for the future of our republic.

PWS

03-07-19

GOVERNMENT BY MALICIOUS INCOMPETENTS: Trump Administration’s Latest “Backlog Reduction Plan” — Slow Down Hiring Of U.S. Immigration Judges & Support Staff — Abandon E-Filing (Again) — Barr Wins His First “Five Clown” Rating In Record Time! 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/hamedaleaziz/trump-administration-immigration-judges-hiring-pause?__twitter_impression=true

Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News:

The Trump administration will pause its hiring of immigration judges, slow its procuring of support staff, and cancel a training conference, dealing a setback to the government’s efforts to cut down on a crushing backlog of cases, according to a Justice Department email obtained by BuzzFeed News.

James McHenry, director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, notified immigration court staff in an email Wednesday morning, advising that the timing of the 2019 budget process has left them “considerably short of being able to fulfill all of our current operational needs.”

McHenry cited increases in costs related to transcriptions, operational needs, and interpreters.

“This challenging budget situation has led us to a position where difficult financial decisions need to be made,” wrote McHenry.

As a result of the funding issues, McHenry said, the court does not “anticipate” it will be able to hire additional judges after an already scheduled class of judges is brought on board in April. The budget costs will also impact the court’s hiring of 250 attorneys needed to support immigration judges.

The pause on hiring delivers a blow to an administration that has long complained that the immigration court backlog, which has increased in recent years to more than 800,000 cases, has led to wait times stretching months and years.

The budget signed by President Trump this year had been described as a way for the immigration court to hire an additional 75 immigration judge teams.

A Department of Justice official, Steven Stafford, disputed the notion it would freeze hiring, arguing that it was simply not continuing to hire judges at the same pace. McHenry noted that the administration had hired 174 new immigration judges in the last two years and now has more than 400 judges on staff.

Rebecca Blackwell / AP

A migrant family enters the US near Imperial Beach, Calif., after squeezing through a small hole under the border wall.

The news comes a day before McHenry is set to speak before the House Appropriations Committee and as the court withstands criticisms from the union that represents immigration judges and moves to increase productivity, including quotas.

In recent months, many judges, who oversee asylum claims and deportation cases, have retired or resigned citing interference in how they were handling cases.

“This administration has justified so many of their more draconian policies in terms of ‘we have got to lower the backlog’ and then all of a sudden they don’t have the funds to hire more immigration judges,” said Jeffrey Chase, a former immigration judge. “If their true goal is to provide fair adjudications more quickly, then this is inconsistent with that. More people will wait longer.”

The nationwide rollout of a new online filing system, meant to help improve efficiency, will be frozen, McHenry said, and additional delays on new court spaces will also be possible this year.

“We are doing our best at headquarters to ensure that our funds are spent in the most fiscally responsible manner possible,” he said in the email to staff, “while consistently meeting the needs and mission of the agency.”

Quick takes:

Duh! Who would have thought that hiring more judges would require more interpreters, transcripts, and “operational support.” Certainly not the geniuses at DOJ/EOIR;
After 18 years of fruitless effort, DOJ/EOIR fail yet again to deliver on e-filing (in and of itself enough reason to get this out of DOJ and “can” the EOIR ineffective management structure);
Apparently, building largely useless walls and wasting money on troops at the border are more important “priorities” for reducing the backlog than actually hearing and deciding cases;
Court morale is already at an all time low — this ought to send it even lower;
Count on this touching off yet another round of EOIR’s renowned “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and more vicious and disingenuous “Victim Blame Shaming;”
Bad start for new AG Bill Barr — Sessions “set the bar on the ground,” but you still might not get over it;
On the bright side, since in the “wacky incompetent world” of DOJ/EOIR more judges actually = more backlog, perhaps fewer judges will = less backlog.

The Immigration Court system is a farce, and EOIR doesn’t have the faintest idea of how to fix it (nor does anyone else in the Trump Kaksitocracy for that matter). Unfortunately, lives are at stake here. To quote Casey Stengel again: “Can’t anyone here play this game?”

TODAY’S FIVE CLOWN AWARD GOES TO RECENTLY APPOINTED AG BILL BARR — SELDOM HAS SOMEONE LOOKED SO STUPID WITHIN SUCH A SHORT TIME OF TAKING AN OFFICE (THAT HE PREVIOUSLY HELD):

🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡

PWS

03-07-19

HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST: ADMINISTRATION’S LATEST IMMORAL GIMMICK — A “REGIONAL REPRESSION COMPACT” — FURTHERS PERSECUTION WITHOUT ADDRESSING ROOT CAUSES OF REFUGEE FLOW FROM NORTHERN TRIANGLE!

February 21, 2019

Homeland Security Regional Compact Plan Won’t Address Root Causes of Refugee Crisis

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New York City—In response to today’s announcement that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is discussing the development of a regional compact plan with Central American countries in the northern triangle, Human Rights First’s Eleanor Acer issued the following statement:

The so-called compact announced today sounds like a short-sighted and heavy-handed attempt to stop people in desperate need of safety from finding it in the United States, rather than an actual commitment to address underlying human rights violations in the region. It is yet another move from an administration that has spent the past two years dismantling the systems put in place to protect the world’s most vulnerable people.

This announcement does not reflect any commitment to address the actual root causes pushing people to seek protection—political repression, gender-based persecution, brutal murders, and other human rights violations.

The Trump Administration is enlisting the very countries that people are fleeing to prevent the escape of individuals plagued by this persecution and violence. The United States should certainly work with countries in the region to counter and prosecute smugglers and traffickers who prey on migrants and asylum seekers. This plan, however, aims to stop asylum seekers who do not employ smugglers but travel with other people for safety through dangerous territories.

Human Rights First urges the Trump Administration to implement regional strategies that strengthen the rule of law and human rights conditions in Central America, strengthen refugee protection in Mexico and other countries, and stop its efforts to block refugees from asylum in the United States.

For more information or to speak with Acer contact Corinne Duffy at DuffyC@humanrightsfirst.org or 202-370-3319

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

It’s “Kakistocracy in Action” — malicious incompetence institutionalized. Certainly, Nielsen has to be the worst excuse ever for a DHS Secretary. Indeed, those who actually might threaten our security must be “licking their chops” at her continuous display of idiotic Trump sycophancy and White Nationalist lies and obsessions with bedraggled families seeking refuge while smugglers, drug traffickers, cartels, and gangs reap profits from her failed policies and take delight in her inability and unwillingness to address the real security problems.

While real human rights crises are unfolding, and real human lives are in danger, the Trump Administration dawdles away time and resources on endless “designed to fail” White Nationalist gimmicks that appear intended to enable and encourage persecution rather than addressing the problems that cause forced migration.

The Obama Administration did a genuinely lousy job of addressing the refugee and human rights issues in the Northern Triangle. But, Trump, Nielsen, and McAleenan are making to Obama group look like humanitarian geniuses by comparison.

As the great Casey Stengel once said while attempting to manage the 1962 NY Mets: “Can’t anybody here play this game?” Sadly, in the case of the Trump Administration, the answer is a resounding “No.”

Bad things happen to countries that allow themselves to be run by malicious incompetents (that is, a Kakistocracy).

As I have said before, “We Are diminishing ourselves as a nation, but that won’t stop human migration.”

Join the New Due Process Army and help restore humanity, Due Process, competence, and good government to America before it’s too late!

PWS

03-07-19

IN MATTER OF A-B-, SESSIONS DISINGENUOUSLY SUGGESTED SALVADORAN POLICE COULD PROTECT ABUSED WOMEN – THE TRUTH IS STARKLY DIFFERENT: American-Trained Cops Flee El Salvador Because Gangs Are In Control – Ex-Cops Granted Asylum While Helpless DV Victims Sent Back To Face Deadly Abuse – Trump Administration Continues To Pervert Asylum Law!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/its-so-dangerous-to-police-ms-13-in-el-salvador-that-officers-are-fleeing-the-country/2019/03/03/e897dbaa-2287-11e9-b5b4-1d18dfb7b084_story.html

Kevin Sief reports in WashPost:

SAN SALVADOR — They were given one of the most dangerous tasks in policing: Take down MS-13.

They were bankrolled by the United States and trained by FBI agents. But members of the Salvadoran police have been killed by the dozens in each of the past three years, most in attacks that investigators and experts blame on MS-13, an international street gang. At least nine officers were killed in the first month of this year.

Now, a number of El Salvador’s police officers are fleeing the gang they were tasked with eliminating.

There is no list in either El Salvador or the United States of Salvadoran police officers who have fled the country. But The Washington Post has identified 15 officers in the process of being resettled as refugees by the United Nations and six officers who have either recently received asylum or have scheduled asylum hearings in U.S. immigration courts. In WhatsApp groups, police officers have begun discussing the possibility of a migrant caravan composed entirely of Salvadoran police — a caravana policial, the officers call it.

The exodus of Salvadoran police points to how the country’s security forces have failed to break the stranglehold of organized crime. It also shows that among those seeking refuge in the United States during the Trump administration are some of America’s closest security partners.

“These are among the most vulnerable people in El Salvador,” said Julio Buendía, the director of migration at Cáritas El Salvador, a nonprofit organization that works with the United States and United Nations on refugee resettlement.

The United States has been bolstering the Salvadoran police, part of a regional strategy intended to stabilize Central America’s most violent countries and reduce migration. The State Department spent at least $48 million to train police in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras from 2014 through 2017, according to the Government Accountability Office.

The department opened a law enforcement training academy in San Salvador, where 855 Salvadoran officers were trained by the FBI and other American law enforcement agencies in those four years.

“The Salvadoran government, with U.S. government support, has made significant gains in the area of security, including reductions in homicides and every other category of violent crime measured,” the State Department said in a statement issued in response to an inquiry by The Post.

Citing “privacy reasons,” the department would not comment on whether it was receiving asylum or refugee applications from Salvadoran police officers.

By some measures, the U.S.-backed security efforts appeared to be showing results. In 2018, El Salvador’s murder rate was 50.3 per 100,000 inhabitants. That was still among the highest in the world, but it was down from 60.8 per 100,000 in 2017 and 81 per 100,000 in 2016.

MS-13 was born in Los Angeles in the late 1970s, expanding as more Salvadorans arrived in the United States after fleeing the country’s civil war. The group splintered, with Barrio 18 becoming a chief rival, and both groups grew in American prisons before reaching El Salvador through mass deportations. Between 2001 and 2010, the United States deported 40,429 ex-convicts to El Salvador, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

El Salvador’s government adopted an “iron fist” response to the gangs, including more police operations. When that approach failed, it tried to broach a truce with the gangs in 2014. The pact quickly disintegrated and was followed by another surge in violence. It was then that the gangs began to explicitly broadcast their threats against police officers.

“If you kill a ‘pig,’ or a police officer, you’re more respected in these gangs. That’s the policy — using death as exchange currency,” said Héctor Silva Ávalos, a journalist and researcher who has written a book on the Salvadoran police and has served as an expert witness at several asylum hearings for former police officers in the United States.

A man with an MS-13 tattoo is detained by Salvadoran security forces during an operation in San Salvador in January. (Marvin Recinos/AFP/Getty Images)

With salaries of $300 to $400 per month, the low-level police officers who make up the majority of the force often have no choice but to live in neighborhoods vulnerable to gangs. And so, in the vast majority of the cases, police officers are killed when they are home from work or are on leave.

In August, Manuel de Jesús Mira Díaz was killed while buying construction materials. In July, Juan de Jesús Morales Alvarado was killed while walking with his 7-year-old son on the way to school. In November, Barrera Mayén was killed after taking leave to spend time at home with his family.

The police investigated a number of the killings since 2014 and found members of the major gangs responsible.

“They have more control than we do. When we go home, we’re in neighborhoods where there’s one police to 100 gang members. We’re easy victims,” said one officer in the country’s anti-gang unit, who, after being threatened by MS-13 in his home, is awaiting refugee status from the United Nations. He spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety.

An MS-13 member killed a man on a New York subway platform. The gang dates back to the 1970s.

Police arrested a 26-year-old man, who they said is an MS-13 member, after he fatally shot an alleged rival gang member Feb. 3 in Queens. (Allie Caren/The Washington Post)

Complicating their response to the threats, Salvadoran police are also not legally allowed to take their weapons home with them.

“I bring it home anyway. I sleep with it on my waist,” said a female officer, who is awaiting refugee status from the United Nations and spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear for her safety. “My husband and I take turns sleeping. We know they are going to come for us.”

Many units in the Salvadoran police are forbidden to wear balaclavas to conceal their identities. In anti-gang units, officers are allowed to wear such masks during operations, but they are frequently asked to testify in court, where they must show their faces and identify themselves by name while gang members look on.

In 2017, El Salvador’s attorney general, Douglas Meléndez, urged the government to do more to protect off-duty police, asking the parliament to pass a “protection law” for police and soldiers that would also provide funding to protect their families. The law was never passed.

Last month, security concerns played a central role in a presidential election won by San Salvador’s 37-year-old former mayor, Nayib Bukele. At least 285 people were killed in January, leading up to the vote, which many saw as the gangs’ attempt to leverage their influence amid the election campaign. In a security plan leaked to the Salvadoran news media, Bukele’s campaign wrote: “The expansion of these criminal groups is undeniable, as is the impact on the lives of ordinary citizens.”

In response to the targeting of police officers this year, El Salvador’s police chief introduced a policy: For their own protection, officers were not allowed to return to their homes. The police chief declined multiple interview requests.

Suspects are detained by police in a neighborhood in San Salvador dominated by MS-13. (Marvin Recinos/AFP/Getty Images)

Many officers, feeling unprotected by their own force, have said their only option is to leave the country.

Organizations that work with the United Nations to resettle Salvadoran refugees in the United States say they have found more and more police officers arriving unannounced at their offices. In addition to the 21 asylum seekers and refugees identified by The Post, several others have recently arrived in Spain and Mexico, according to news reports, applying for humanitarian visas or other forms of protection. Lawyers for police officers and many officers themselves say that far more officers are preparing to flee.

One of the cases that Buendía, the migration director of Cáritas, referred to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is an officer who survived two attacks while off duty. First, he was shot eight times by suspected gang members; then, two years later, he was shot four times. The officer pleaded for protection from his commander.

Buendía included a letter from the commander in the officer’s refugee application. “There’s nothing we can do for you,” the commander wrote. “You need to protect yourself.”

A police spokesman declined to comment on the letter.

In one case, concerning a police officer now applying for asylum in U.S. immigration courts, gang members threatened to kidnap the officer’s child at an elementary school in rural El Salvador.

“That’s not what these guys signed up for. It’s one thing to be shot at on the job. It’s another for your family to be targeted while you’re off duty,” said Emily Smith, the attorney representing the officer.

Lawyers such as Smith who are representing the officers typically try to explain to immigration judges that as former police officers, their clients would be persecuted if they were forced to return to El Salvador. But the attorneys are also aware of how narrowly U.S. asylum law can be applied, and that the courts are unlikely to grant asylum to all former officers.

“What we chose to do is focus on the specific threats facing our client,” said Patrick Courtney, who last year represented a Salvadoran officer who had been physically assaulted in his home before fleeing. “We focused on his anti-gang views, on the fact that the threats were directed at him individually.”

Courtney’s client was granted asylum late last year. They discussed where he would live in the United States, and what he would do next. The former officer had only one goal: He wanted to join the United States military.

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Former policemen have been recognized by BIA precedent as a “particular social group” for asylum for many years. Matter of Fuentes, 19 I&N Dec. 658 (BIA 1988). However, in their rush to deny asylum to Central Americans, particularly under this xenophobic Administration, some U.S. immigration Judges and BIA panels simply choose to ignore precedent or to manufacture other reasons to deny asylum.

Granting asylum to endangered former police officers clearly is appropriate; but, granting it to the women targeted because of their gender whom those police cannot protect is equally required. Nevertheless, Sessions simply “streamrolled” the asylum law in Matter of A-B-.

While some U.S. Immigration Judges have recognized that even A-B-, properly read without regard to its pernicious dicta, leaves plenty of room for protecting refugee women who have suffered or fear domestic violence, others, and a number of BIA “panels” have jumped on the “Sessions deportation express.” I wouldn’t count on new AG Bill Barr to restore justice to this system, particularly since he has retained some of Sessions’s worst and most unqualified henchmen on his staff.

That’s why we need a legitimate, independent Immigration Court system not beholden to prejudiced “enforcement only” officials in the DOJ and the Executive Branch. It’s also time for a better and wiser Congress to specifically write gender into the asylum law to guard against this and future scofflaw Administrations who seek to inflict cruelty and injustice on some of the most vulnerable and deserving among us.

PWS

03-04-19

PARENTS VICTIMIZED BY SESSIONS’S CHILD ABUSE RETURN TO BORDER SEEKING THEIR CHILDREN, JUSTICE, & MERCY FROM A SYSTEM RUN BY THOSE WHO MOCK THE CONCEPTS! — Abusers Escape Accountability While Victims Continue To Suffer!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/29-parents-separated-from-their-children-and-deported-last-year-arrive-at-us-border-to-request-asylum/2019/03/02/38eaba7a-2e48-11e9-8781-763619f12cb4_story.html

Kevin Sieff and Sarah Kinosian report for the Washington Post:

Twenty-nine parents from across Central America who were separated from their children by U.S. immigration agents last year crossed the U.S. border on Saturday, demanding asylum hearings that might allow them to reunite with their children.

The group of parents quietly traveled north over the past month, assisted by a team of immigration lawyers who hatched a high-stakes plan to reunify families divided by the Trump administration’s family separation policy last year. The 29 parents were among those deported without their children, who remain in the United States in shelters, in foster homes or with relatives.

At about 5 p.m. local time, the families were taken to the U.S. side of the border by immigration agents, where their asylum claims will be assessed.

Although the Trump administration’s family separation policy has prompted congressional hearings, lawsuits and national protests, the parents have for nearly a year suffered out of the spotlight at their homes in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. They celebrated birthdays and Christmas on video calls, trying to determine whether their children were safe.

Now, they will pose a significant test to the embattled American asylum system, arguing that they deserve another chance at refuge in the United States, something rarely offered to deportees.

Before the Trump administration, families had never been systematically separated at the border. And before Saturday, those families had never returned to the border en masse.

More than 2,700 children were separated from their families along the border last year, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. About 430 of the parents were deported without their children, and at least 200 of them remain separated today. Some waited in the hope that U.S. courts would allow them to return to the United States. Others paid smugglers to get them back to the border. Then came Saturday’s confrontation.

The group of parents walked toward the border here, flanked by local religious officials, and then waited at the entrance to the United States as the lawyers negotiated with U.S. officials. The parents sat on wooden benches, surrounded by their luggage, while officials decided how many of the parents to allow into the country.

Over the past three weeks, the parents stayed in a Tijuana hotel, sharing rooms and preparing for asylum hearings. They showed one another documents that their children had sent them: photos of foster families and report cards from Southwest Key, a company that runs shelters for migrant children.

A woman explained through tears how her daughter had tried to kill herself while in government custody. A man spoke about trying to communicate with his daughter, who is deaf, over a shelter’s telephone. Others carried bags full of belated Christmas gifts for their children.

José Ottoniel, 28, from Guatemala, at the Hotel Salazar in Tijuana, Mexico. Ottoniel was separated from his 10-year-old son, Ervin, and deported. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

Many of the parents, like José Ottoniel, from the tiny town of San Rafael Las Flores, Guatemala, said they had been pressured into signing deportation papers after being separated from their children, before they could begin their asylum claims. When he returned home after being deported in June, Ottoniel was told that his 10-year-old son, Ervin, was still in the United States at a shelter.

Ottoniel and Ervin are seen in a picture taken on Sept. 15, 2017, Guatemala’s independence day. (Daniele Volpe/for The Washington Post)

The family chose to keep Ervin in the United States with an uncle, rather than forcing him to return to the violence and poverty of their home village. It was a wrenching decision that Ottoniel’s wife, Elvia, who had remained in Guatemala when Ottoniel had tried to cross the border, eventually decided she couldn’t live with. In January, she paid a smuggler $8,000 to travel to the United States to reunite with Ervin in Arkansas, applying for asylum in South Texas.

[These migrants were separated from their children — and aren’t sure they should be reunited]

A few days later, Ottoniel received a call from an American immigration lawyer with the Los Angeles-based legal advocacy group Al Otro Lado, which means “to the other side.” The attorney asked him if he was willing to travel the 2,500 miles from his village to the U.S.-
Mexico border to deliver himself once again to immigration agents.

Al Otro Lado had received more than a million dollars in financial assistance from organizations such as Families Belong Together and Together Rising, which mounted fundraising campaigns in the midst of the government’s separation policy. The lawyer told Ottoniel that the organization would pay for his buses, flights and hotels.

“At that point, we were already seeing some of these parents paying smugglers to bring them back to the U.S.,” said Erika Pinheiro, litigation and policy director for Al Otro Lado, which had interviewed deported parents from across Central America who feared for their lives because of violence in their home countries. “We needed to provide them with another option.”

For Ottoniel, who referred to his family as “disintegrated,” it seemed his best shot at a reunion.

“It was a chance to see my son again. How could I say no?” he said.

Ottoniel and other parents converged at a three-story hotel in Tijuana,where lawyers told them to remain quiet about their plans. They rehearsed how they would address U.S. immigration officials. They watched telenovelas. At night, they called their children across the border.

There was Luisa Hidalgo, 31, from El Salvador, whose daughter, Katherinne, 14, is in the Bronx with a foster family. The girl texted her mother the same words over and over: “Fight for me.”

Luisa Hidalgo, 31, from El Salvador, displays a jewelry box she purchased to give her daughter when they reunite. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

Hidalgo sits for a portrait Feb. 14 in Hotel Salazar. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

There was Antolina Marcos, 28, who said she fled Guatemala after gangs began killing members of her family. She was separated from her 14-year-old daughter, Geidy, in May. “How can I live when she’s so far away?” Marcos said.

There was Santos Canelas, 44, who said he fled Honduras with his 16-year-old daughter, Merin, in May after gang members threatened to sexually assault her. She is living in New Orleans with a cousin. “Without my daughter, I’m dead inside,” he said.

In most of the 2,700 cases from when the Trump administration separated families at the border last year, both the parents and children remained in the United States, sometimes held in shelters and detention centers thousands of miles apart. Almost all of those families have now been reunified and are in the process of pursuing their asylum claims.

But the cases of about 430 parents deported without their children were particularly difficult. Often, the government lost track of which child belonged to which parent, and it did not link their immigration cases, sending parents back to Central America without telling them where their children were.

In some of those cases, parents later made the painful decision to leave their children in the United States, typically with relatives, rather than bringing them back to the violence and poverty from which the families fled. In other cases, the U.S. government determined that the parents were unfit to receive their children, often based on their criminal records.

Pablo Mejia Mancia, 53, from Honduras, was separated from his 10-year-old daughter, Monica, when they crossed the border in Reynosa, Mexico. Monica was detained for 3½ months. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

Santos Canelas, 45, from Honduras, was separated from his daughter Merin, 16, who was detained for five months. Back home, gang members had threatened to rape his daughter. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

After Trump signed an executive order officially ending the family separation policy on June 20, lawyers launched a legal battle to reunify many of the deported parents and their children in the United States. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit demanding that the government allow 52 parents back into the United States to pursue their asylum claims, which the lawyers argued had been stymied after the parents were separated from their children at the border.

But the government has not responded to that appeal and later said it needed more information about the parents from the ACLU. It remains unclear when, or if, the U.S. government will invite those parents back to the United States to launch new asylum claims.

“The government has resisted bringing anyone back who was separated and deported without their kids,” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “We hope the government will take a fresh look at these cases.”

[ACLU asks judge to order Trump administration to determine how many children were separated from their parents at border]

But as the government declined to articulate any plan to reunify the families, Pinheiro decided waiting much longer would put the parents at risk. Some had relocated to a safe house in Guatemala City to escape threats in El Salvador and Honduras. Some had already been without their children for more than a year, and those separations were taking a psychological toll.

“We gave them the option — you can wait for the court process, or you can do it this way,” Pinheiro said. Al Otro Lado worked with the ACLU to identify the separated parents in Central America, but the ACLU was not involved in bringing the 29 parents back to the border.

With few other options, Pinheiro said, almost every parent she approached accepted her offer. The parents first gathered in the Guatemalan city of Tecun Uman before crossing into Mexico with humanitarian visas that Al Otro Lado helped arrange. They flew to Mexico City and then to Tijuana, eventually taking a bus to Mexicali.

“We’re traveling back to the border where we lost our children in the first place,” said Pablo Mejia Mancia, 53, of Honduras, who was separated from his daughter, who is now 9 years old, when they crossed the border into Texas in May.

Antolina Marcos said she fled Guatemala after gangs began killing members of her family. She was separated from her 14-year-old daughter, Geidy, in May. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

It’s likely that some of the parents could be detained for months if the government decides to process their asylum claims. The U.S. policy of forcing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico has not yet been put into practice in Mexicali.

“They’re standing right at the border, preparing to reenter a system that traumatized their families months earlier,” Lindsay Toczylowski, executive director of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, who counseled the parents in Tijuana, said before the parents crossed into the United States. “It says a lot about what they’re fleeing, and what they lost.”

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

Folks, we don’t have to look much further than Michael Cohen’s testimony (even if every word isn’t absolute truth), the House Judiciary GOP’s disgusting “head in the sand” performance, and Trump’s totally deranged two-hour litany of lies, distortions, fabrications, and White Nationalist myths before a deliriously giddy audience at CPAC this weekend to see that our country is in deep trouble.

Four out of ten voters and a major party just don’t care if we’re “led” by a congenital liar, racist, and suck-up to the world’s worst dictators, who lacks any trace of human empathy, an essential ingredient for governing for the common good.

In the meantime, your tax dollars are being spent on misguided, wasteful, and counterproductive “immigration enforcement” and a failed Immigration Court system that no longer prioritizes Due Process and fundamental fairness. Never forget that the damage already done to these families and children might well be irreparable and that we are responsible as a nation for the atrocities, deceptions, and mindless cruelty carried out by Trump and his minions in our name. Yes, as these pictures by Carolyn Van Houten show, there are real human beings out there, decent people much more like us than we might choose to believe, who are suffering because of what our Government has become.

It could be a long uphill fight to save our republic. But, that’s what the New Due Process Army is fighting to do every day!

PWS

03-03-19

GREAT NEWS ON THE SIJ FRONT: Legal Aid & Justice Center Reports Major Legislative Change To Help Endangered Juveniles in Virginia — PLUS BONUS COVERAGE: Dan Kowalski Reports On New SIJ Legislative Victory in Colorado! — It’s The “New Due Process Army” In Action Across The Country!

THREE OF THE “DUE PROCESS WARRIORS” FROM THE LEGAL AID & JUSTICE CENTER OF VIRGINIA: Amy Woodard, Tanishka Cruz, & Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg

For Immediate Release

Contact: Amy Woolard, (434) 529-1846, amy@justice4all.org

Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, (703) 720-5605, simon@justice4all.org

NEW VIRGINIA LAWS HELP IMMIGRANT CHILDREN SEEK PROTECTION FROM ABUSE, NEGLECT, AND ABANDONMENT

RICHMOND: On Friday, February 22, the Virginia General Assembly passed SB 1758 and HB 2679, identical bills that will aid immigrant children fleeing abuse, neglect, and abandonment in their home countries in seeking protection from deportation in Virginia.

Across the country, many immigrant children and DREAMers facing deportation proceedings seek a form of immigration relief called “Special Immigrant Juvenile Status” (SIJS). SIJS is unique in that it requires a state court to issue a certain type of order before the child may even attempt to seek SIJS relief from the federal government. In a 2017 case called Canales v. Torres-Orellana, brought by the Legal Aid Justice Center, the Virginia Court of Appeals sharply restricted state judges’ ability to issue these orders, leaving hundreds of Virginia immigrant children without protection. Virginia became one of the most difficult states in the nation to obtain SIJS.

During this year’s General Assembly session, Legal Aid Justice Center worked closely with legislators and the Governor’s office to pass these bills, which would overturn the Canales case and restore Virginia immigrant children’s ability to apply for SIJS. The bills also address the needs of other children before the juvenile courts, easing the way for any Virginia child to seek a state court’s assistance in proving eligibility for other benefits such as adoption assistance, TANF assistance, and timely public school enrollment.

SB 1758 was introduced by Sen. Scott Surovell (D-Mount Vernon). HB 2679 was introduced by Del. Marcus Simon (D-Falls Church). The bills initially took different approaches to fixing this issue, and each passed their respective chambers with an overwhelming bipartisan majority of votes. The bills were then placed into committees of conference in an attempt to gain consensus, and identical bills emerged that combined the approach of both; they garnered unanimous support in the House, and only two dissenting votes in the Senate. The bills now go to Governor Northam’s desk for his signature; once signed, they will take effect on July 1 of this year. The conference report with bill text is available at: http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?191+ful+SB1758S1+pdf

“Immigrant children in Virginia can breathe a little more easily now,” said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, Legal Director of Legal Aid Justice Center’s Immigrant Advocacy Program. “Our agency has represented over 150 children fleeing truly horrific situations of abuse or neglect in their home countries. Fairness dictates that they be afforded the same rights as immigrant children in any other state. Now these new DREAMers will be able to seek protection and apply to remain in the United States with green cards.”

“This excellent result could not have come about without the leadership and hard work of Senator Surovell and Delegate Simon, and the support of Governor Northam’s administration,” said Amy Woolard, Legal Aid Justice Center Attorney and Policy Coordinator. “Virginia’s Juvenile and Domestic Relations courts should exist to protect the best interests of all children in the Commonwealth, and these bills will now make clear that is true for immigrant children seeking safety through SIJS, as well.”

“The United States has a long history of protecting abused, neglected, and abandoned children, and the Commonwealth will continue to play its part,” said Sen. Surovell. “These bills will clarify and restore Virginia courts’ authority to make factual findings necessary to protect children fleeing abuse, neglect, and abandonment from abroad, and I appreciate the broad bipartisan support of legislators who saw this as consistent with Virginia’s longstanding values.”

“I’m so pleased we were able to pass this important legislation to give our courts the authority they need to be able help some of the most vulnerable and powerless people in our Commonwealth,” said Del. Simon. “It is so important that we not let victims of abuse, neglect, and often abandonment fall through the cracks because of a technical deficiency in our code. Those are the common sense problems we are elected to come down here and fix.”

A downloadable PDF of this statement may be accessed here.

# # #

Legal Aid Justice Center is a statewide Virginia nonprofit organization whose mission is to strengthen the voices of low-income communities and root out the inequities that keep people in poverty. We provide legal support to immigrant communities facing legal crises and use advocacy and impact litigation to fight back against ICE enforcement and detention abuses. More information is available at http://www.justice4all.org/.

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

And, here’s the latest from the fabulous Dan Kowalski, “Chief Immigration Guru” at LexisNexis Immigration Community:

Thanks to the efforts of the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network (“RMIAN”).

Passage of HB19-1042: Extension of State Court Jurisdiction for Vulnerable Youth

RMIAN is thrilled to announce the passage of House Bill 19-1042 through the Colorado House and Senate. The bill was sponsored by Representative Serena Gonzales Gutierrez and Senator Julie Gonzales and is now awaiting signature by Governor Polis. This bill will allow immigrant youth who have been abused, neglected, and abandoned to gain access to Colorado State courts for necessary protection and care, and to establish their eligibility for federal immigration relief. Ashley Harrington with RMIAN Children’s Program helped to craft this important legislation with Representative Gonzales Gutierrez, Senator Gonzales, Denise Maes with the ACLU of Colorado, Kacie Mulhern with the Children’s Law Center, Ashley Chase from the Office of the Child’s Representative, Katie Glynn with Grob & Eirich, and Bridget McCann, a RMIAN pro bono family law attorney. Celebrating the law’s passage today Ashley Harrington says, “I am so proud and honored to have been a part of making this law a reality that will impact the lives of many vulnerable immigrant children and ensure that they can find safety and stability in Colorado.”

Denise Maes, Ashley Harrington, Senator Gonzales, Representative Gonzales Gutierrez, Katie Glynn and Kacie Mulhern at the Capitol 3/1/19.

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

Compare this with the Trump Administration’s cruel and shortsighted efforts to mindlessly restrict the scope of these important SIJ protections for some of our most vulnerable youth. Here’s my recent blog featuring WNYC’s Beth Fertig reporting on the Federal Judge’s adverse reaction to the DOJ’s disingenuous arguments “in defense of the indefensible” in his court. Talk about abuse of our court system by our Government! https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/02/27/beth-fertig-wnyc-federal-judge-tires-of-administrations-absurdist-legal-positions-in-court/

SIJ cases also have the huge benefit of being processed outside the clogged U.S. Immigration Court asylum system, thus keeping many cases out of the largely artificially created “backlog” that is handicapping Due Process in Immigration Court.

There are many ways of using and building on current laws to make the immigration and justice systems work better. It’s a national disgrace that the Trump Administration isn’t interested in Due Process, fairness, or making our immigration system function in a more rational manner.

The good news: Eventually, the small minds, incompetence, and “radical White Nationalism” of this Administration and its enablers will be replaced by smarter, wiser, more capable folks like those in the LAJC, the RMIAN, and other members of the New Due Process Army. These are the folks who someday will lead us out of today’s darkness into a brighter and more enlightened future for all Americans!

PWS

03-02-19-

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THREE OF THE “DUE PROCESS WARRIORS” FROM THE LEGAL AID & JUSTICE CENTER OF VIRGINIA: Amy Woodard, Tanishka Cruz, & Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg

And, here’s the latest from the fabulous Dan Kowalski, “Chief Immigration Guru” at LexisNexis Immigration Community:

Thanks to the efforts of the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network (“RMIAN”).

Passage of HB19-1042: Extension of State Court Jurisdiction for Vulnerable Youth

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