Category: Sexual Harassment

WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL BOARD: MALICIOUS DEMAGOGUE SESSIONS LIES & ABUSES CHILDREN IN SUPPORT OF HIS XENOPHOBIC IMMIGRATION AGENDA!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jeff-sessionss-breathtaking-policy-of-malice-toward-migrants/2018/05/08/026d4764-52d5-11e8-9c91-7dab596e8252_story.html?utm_term=.815ff4098582

The Post’s View

Opinion

Jeff Sessions’s breathtaking policy of malice toward migrants

 
A child traveling with migrants from Central America waits to enter the U.S. border and customs facility on April 29. (Jorge Duenes/Reuters)
By Editorial Board May 8 at 7:55 PM

ATTORNEY GENERAL Jeff Sessions is indifferent about whether undocumented immigrants crossing into the United States are simply seeking a better life for themselves and their families or whether they are fleeing domestic abuse, drug cartels, extortion rackets or political violence. It’s all the same to Mr. Sessions, who said Monday that all those who come into the country illegally would be prosecuted — and separated from their children in the bargain. Thus has the top law enforcement official in the United States enshrined callousness as administration policy.

Will babies be separated from nursing mothers? Will toddlers be housed in institutions far from parents? How many children will be traumatized by being carted away from their parents for weeks or months — or longer? The attorney general doesn’t say or, apparently, care.

Mr. Sessions’s policy of separating parents and children is intentionally and unapologetically punitive. There was no talk from him of developing additional detention centers that could accommodate families while parents await prosecution for the misdemeanor of illegal entry. There was no public recognition of the United States’ historical role as a beacon for refugees, nor its obligation in law and international treaty to accept migrants seeking asylum from danger in their native countries. There were no estimates of how many children will be removed from their parents, for how long, and with what long-term damage to their emotional and psychological welfare.

Instead, the attorney general offered indifference. Proclaiming a new policy of “zero tolerance,” he rebranded the United States as a crueler place than the countries from which people are fleeing. And never mind that, in many cases, parents are seeking refuge in this country in order to escape violence and persecution — and to protect their children.

The impetus for the new stance, of course, is President Trump, who has made clear that his crusade against all immigrants, with or without documents, knows no limits. Having washed his hands of the “dreamers,” mainly teenagers and 20-somethings raised and educated in this country after being brought here by their parents, Mr. Trump need not travel a great moral distance to upend the lives of brand-new migrant families by removing children from their parents.

The administration’s stated justification is a surge in migrants in recent months. The number of apprehensions of those coming into the country without papers, especially from Central America, has spiked from a year ago. However, the overall flow of migrants over the southwest border is near a four-decade low.

In other words, Mr. Sessions’s talk of a “massive influx” of undocumented immigrants is a falsehood. Against his incendiary vow that the administration will not allow the United States to be “invaded” and “stampeded ” is the plain truth that the southwest border is more secure, and less frequently breached, than at any time since the Nixon administration.

Yet Mr. Trump and Mr. Sessions propose a breathtaking innovation: wrenching every small child away, as a matter of policy, from his or her family. They have now matched their demagoguery on immigration with malice.

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

YUP! In a highly competitive race, Gonzo Apocalypto gets my vote for “Worst Government Official in America!” Willful ignorance, arrogance, incompetence, cruelty, racism, maliciousness, dishonesty, fake religion, and lawlessness all put together in one toxic package.

PWS

05-11-18

 

 

Related posts:

  1. TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION “POLICIES” ARE BASED ON RACISM, CRUELTY, LIES, & KNOWINGLY FALSE NARRATIVES — THE GOP HAS SOMETIMES ENCOURAGED, & OTHER TIMES ENABLED, THESE OUTRAGES AGAINST HUMANITY & THE RULE OF LAW — Now Some Accountability For These Despicable Actions Are On the Horizon!
  2. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  3. HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM COURTSIDE! — I Take A Look Forward @ 2019’s Big Immigration Stories
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

NO, IT’S NOT “NORMAL DEVIATION:” U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGE V. STUART COUCH’S RECORD ON CENTRAL AMERICAN WOMEN CLAIMING ASYLUM BASED ON A-R-C-G- SHOWS DEVIANT JUDICIAL BEHAVIOR, BIAS, & INSUFFICIENT CONTROL BY THE BIA – These Are The Glaring Problems Demeaning Due Process In Today’s U.S. Immigration Courts!– Yet, Jeff Sessions Appears Determined To Reinforce Bias and Denial Of Due Process Rather Than Solving The REAL Problems!

FOIA results: evidence of Immigration Judge V. Stuart Couch’s shocking prejudgment of all domestic violence asylum claims

by Bryan Johnson on April 20, 2018

At the bottom, readers will find the all of the decisions of Immigration Judge V. Stuart Couch that resulted in BIA remands for the Fiscal Year of 2017.

Time and time again, IJ Couch’s decisions denying victims of domestic violence asylum contain carbon copy language.

Thus, it is clear that IJ Couch’s has been prejudging all claims that have a history of domestic violence, and quite literally copying and pasting language he used to deny other domestic violence victims asylum. The following is one of his favorite passages to copy and paste.

The respondent’s evidence reflects that [the] physical and verbal abuse of her was related to his violent and jealous nature…The evidence in this case is more consistent with acts of general violence and therefore does not constitute evidence of persecution based on a statutorily protected ground.

Immediately below, I have excerpted key parts of the BIA & IJ Couch decisions. A clear pattern has emerged: IJ Couch does not grant asylum to women who are victims of domestic violence, despite clear instructions to the contrary from the BIA.

 

Pages 31-48: 

Immigration Judge’s decision:

“As noted in the particularity analysis supra, Guatemala has significant and troubling

issues related to domestic violence and crimes against women. However, unlike the married

alien in Matter of A-R-C-G-, the respondent lacks an identifiable trait like marriage or

inability to seek assistance from authority that distinguishes her from other women in

Guatemalan society. Similar to the particularity analysis supra, the Court finds the

respondent is an unfortunate victim of violence against women like far too many women in

Guatemala, and thereby renders her past harm indistinct by comparison.”

 

BIA’s holding:

The respondent’s testimony reflects that people in the community knew them as a couple and

made comments reflecting their notions that the respondent could not escape the relationship (Tr. 232 at 66).

The respondent also testified that her parents did not help her leave the

relationship because of ingrained views that women are the property of men (Tr. at 33-35).

Under these circumstances, we conclude under the same reasoning as Matter of A-R-C-G-,

supra, that the proffered social group here is “immutable,” “particular” and “socially distinct.”

To the extent that the Immigration Judge determined that the respondent is not a member of this

particular social group, that determination is clearly erroneous. See Matter of A-R-C-G-, supra,

at 3 91 (the question whether a person is a member of a particular social group is a finding of fact

that we review for clear error).”

Pages 65-80:

Immigration Judge’s decision:

“As noted in the particularity analysis supra, El Salvador has significant and troubling

issues related to domestic violence and crimes against women. However, unlike the married

alien in Matter of A-R-C-G-, the respondent lacks an identifiable trait like marriage or

inability to seek assistance from authority that distinguishes her from other women in

Salvadoran society. Similar to the particularity analysis supra, the Court finds the

respondent is an unfortunate victim of violence against women like far too many women in

El Salvador, and thereby renders her past harm indistinct by comparison.”

BIA decision:

Finally, the record does not support the Immigration Judge’s determination that the past harm

the respondent suffered is “consistent with acts of general violence” which undermines her claim

for asylum (l.J. at 10). Further, even assuming her former partner’s “criminal tendencies and

substance abuse” played a role in his conduct (/d.), the appropriate inquiry is whether the

asserted protected ground was or would be “at least one central reason” for the claimed or feared

harm. See section 208(b)(l)(B)(i) of the Act; Matter of C-T-L-, 25 I&N Dec. 341, 349 (BIA

2010)

Pages 81-96: 

Immigration Judge Decision:

The respondent testified that when was drunk, he would physically and

verbally abuse her. She further testified “he was fine” when he was not under the influence

of alcohol. Thus, ‘s abuse appears related to his own criminal tendencies and

substance abuse, rather than conclusive evidence he targeted the respondent on account of

her proposed particular social group. The evidence in this case is more consistent with acts of

general violence and therefore does not constitute evidence of persecution based on a

statutorily protected ground.

BIA decision:

Upon review of the record, we conclude that a remand is necessary for the Immigration

Judge to further assess whether the respondent established that she is a member of a cognizable

particular social group. The Immigration Judge found that the respondent’s case is factually

distinguishable from Matter of A-R-C-G-, 26 I&N Dec. 388 (BIA 2014), because she was not in

a marital relationship with her former partner and did not seek assistance from authorities

(I.J. at 7-9). While relevant, the distinguishing factors identified do not preclude the respondent

from establishing that her proposed particular social group is cognizable under the Act, and we

find that further fact-finding regarding the respondent’s experiences in El Salvador is necessary

to determine whether she satisfied the elements required to establish a valid particular social

group. See Matter of A-R-C-G-, supra, at 393 (stating that “adjudicators must consider a

respondent’s own experiences, as well as more objective evidence, such as background country

information”).

Pages 102-120: 

BIA decision:

We find clear error in the Immigration Judge’s determination that the respondent was not

abused by her former partner on account of her particular social group. See l.J. at 12; 8 C.F.R.

§ 1003.l (d)(3)(i); Matter of N-M-, 25 l&N Dec. 526, 532 (BIA 2011) (a persecutor’s actual

motive is a matter of fact to be determined by the Immigration Judge and reviewed by this Board

for clear error). The respondent testified that her former partner told her that a woman is not

more intelligent than he is and that the respondent has no value, comments which indicate that he

harmed her because of her perceived lesser status in the relationship (Tr. at 46).

 

Immigration Judge Decision:

The respondent’s evidence reflects that [the] physical and verbal abuse of her

was related to his violent and jealous nature, sometimes accompanied by his use of alcohol.

Thus, ‘s abuse appears related to his own criminal tendencies or substance abuse,

rather than conclusive evidence he targeted the respondent on account of her proposed

particular social group. The evidence in this case is more consistent with acts of general

violence and therefore does not co nstitute evidence of persecution based on a statutorily

protected ground. Huaman-Cornelio v. BIA, 979 F.2d 9 at l 000; Ruiz v. US. Att’y Gen., 440

F.3d 1247, 1258 (11th Cir. 2006).

Pages 137-155

BIA decision:

We disagree with the Immigration Judge that the respondent’s proposed social group, consisting of Honduran women

who are viewed as property and whose domestic partners refuse to allow them to leave their

relationship lacks the requisite immutability, particularity, and social distinction (l.J. at 7-10).

See Matter of M-E-V-G-, 26 l&N Dec. 227, 236-43 (BIA 2014) (outlining factors to be

considered when discerning whether a social group is cognizable under the Act); Matter of

W-G-R-, 26 I&N Dec. 208, 213-18 (BIA 2014) (same).

Immigration Judge Decision:

The respondent’s evidence reflects that ‘s physical and verbal abuse of her

was related to his violent and jealous nature, heavy use of drugs and alcohol, and association

with drug traffickers. Exhibit 3, tab C at 17-19. Thus, ‘s abuse appears related to his

own criminal tendencies or substance abuse, rather than conclusive evidence he targeted the

respondent on account of her proposed particular social group. The evidence in this case is

more consistent with acts of general violence and therefore does not constitute evidence of

persecution based on a statutorily protected ground. Huaman-Cornelio v. BIA, 979 F.2d at

1000; Quinteros-Mendoza v. Holder, 556 F.3d 159, 164-65 (4th Cir. 2009). The Court finds

that the respondent has not established targeted her due to her particular social group,

which is required to prove the requisite nexus for asylum relief. INA§ 208(b)(l)(B)(i).

Pages 157-173

 

Immigration Judge decision:

The respondent’s evidence reflects that Mr. ‘ physical, verbal, and sexual abuse

of her was related to his violent and jealous nature. The respondent testified Mr. ‘

motivation to harm her was anger when she would ask him for money so she could buy food

for her family. She recalled the final argument that led to their separation occurred when the

respondent confronted Mr. regarding his affair with her sister-in-law. Thus, Mr. ‘

abuse of the respondent appears related to his own violent and criminal tendencies, rather than

conclusive evidence he targeted her on account of her membership in a particular social group.

The evidence in this case is more consistent with acts of general violence and therefore does

not constitute evidence of persecution based on a statutorily protected ground.

 

Consistent with its immutability and particularity analysis supra, the Court finds the

respondent is an unfortunate victim of violence against women like far too many women in

Guatemala, and thereby renders her past harm indistinct by comparison. For these reasons, the

Court finds the respondent has not met her burden to show the requisite social distinction

necessary for membership in a particular social group.

 

BIA decision:

The Immigration Judge further concluded that the respondent did not meet the immutability,

particularity and social distinction requirements for a cognizable particular social group (I.J. at 9-

12). We have held that depending on the facts and evidence in an individual case, victims of

domestic violence can establish membership in a cognizable particular social group that forms the

basis of a claim for asylum or withholding of removal. Matter of A-R-C-G-, 26 I&N

Dec. 388 (BIA 2014).

Pages 228-243

Immigration Judge decision:

The respondent’s evidence reflects that Mr. ‘s physical, verbal, and sexual

abuse of her was related to his violent and jealous nature. The respondent testified Mr.

‘s motivation to harm her was anger after she reported his abuse to government

authorities. Thus, Mr. ‘s abuse of the respondent appears related to his own

violent and criminal tendencies, rather than conclusive evidence he targeted her on account of

her membership in a particular social group. The evidence in this case is more consistent with

acts of general violence and therefore does not constitute evidence of persecution based on a

statutorily protected ground. Huaman-Cornelio v. BIA, 979 F.2d at 1000; Quinteros-Mendoza

v. Holder, 556 F.3d 159, 164-65 (4th Cir. 2009). The Court finds that the respondent has not

established Mr. targeted her due to her membership in a particular social group,

which is required to prove the requisite nexus for asylum relief. INA§ 208(b)(l)(B)(i).

BIA decision:

There appears to be no dispute that the verbal, physical and sexual abuse suffered by the

respondent at the hands of her stepfather, which occurred several times per week over a period of

years, rises to the level of past persecution. See, e.g., Barahon v. Holder, 588 F.3d 228, 232,

(4th Cir. 2009) (observing that “[a] key difference between persecution and less-severe

mistreatment is that the former is ‘systematic’ while the latter consists of isolated incidents”).

However, the Immigration Judge rejected as invalid the respondent’s proposed particular social

group of”Mexican children who are perceived as property and lack effective familial protection,”

finding that it lacked the requisite immutability, particularity, and social distinction (I.J. at 7-9).

The question whether a group is a “particular social group” within the meaning of the Act is a

question of law that we review de novo. Matter of A-R-C-G-, supra, at 390. On review, we find

that the particular social group posited by the respondent, under the circumstances of this case, is

valid under the reasoning of our recent decisions clarifying the approach to particular social

groups. See Matter of M-E-V-G-, 26 I&N Dec. 227 (BIA 2014); Matter of W-G-R-, 26 I&N

Dec. 208 (BIA 2014).

Pages 264-283

Immigration Judge decision:

The respondent’s evidence reflects that her former spouse’s physical, sexual, verbal,

and psychological abuse of her was related to his violent and jealous nature, and frequent

intoxication from alcohol. The respondent testified that is an alcoholic whose

motivation to harm her stemmed from his anger, dislike for her, jealous nature, and infidelity

with other women. Exhibit 2, tab C at 12-13. Based upon the respondent’s testimony, it

appears the threats, assault and rape she suffered at the hands of was intended to

intimidate and threaten her to comply his own selfish and criminal demands for sex.

 

Thus, the abuse suffered by the respondent appears related to the violent and criminal

tendencies of her abusive former spouse, rather than conclusive evidence she was targeted on

account of her membership in a particular social group. The evidence in this case is more

consistent with acts of general violence and therefore does not constitute evidence of

persecution based on a statutorily protected ground. Huaman-Cornelio v. BIA, 979 F.2d at

1000; Quinteros-Mendoza v. Holder, 556 F.3d 159, 164-65 (4th Cir. 2009). The Court fmds

that the respondent has not established her former spouse targeted her due to her membership

in a particular social group, which is required to prove the requisite nexus for asylum relief.

INA§ 208(b)( l)(B)(i).

BIA decision:

We additionally conclude that the Immigration Judge’s finding that the respondent was able

to leave her ex-husband is clearly erroneous (l.J. at 10-11).

However, the record reflects that the respondent’s ex-husband continued to threaten and physically abuse the respondent after -their separation,

despite her move to a town over 2 hours away from him, and that he raped her in…2014, after their divorce.

Pages 315-334

Immigration Judge decision:

The respondent’s evidence reflects that Mr. ‘ physical, verbal, and sexual abuse

of her was related to his violent and jealous nature, often fueled by his use of alcohol and

drugs. Exhibit 2, tab H at 1-2. Mr. ‘ motivation to harm her appears to be based upon his

own criminal tendencies and substance abuse, rather than conclusive evidence he targeted

her on account of her membership in a particular social group.

BIA decision:

We also note that even if the evidence and testimony support a finding that the

respondent’s husband has a “violent and jealous nature” (I.J. at 12), this is not clearly separate

from a motive to persecute his wife based on feelings of domination and control, the hallmarks

of domestic violence.

Pages 373-393

Immigration Judge decision:

The respondent’s evidence reflects that her husband’s physical, verbal, and

psychological abuse of her was related to his violent and jealous nature, at times affected by his

use of alcohol. The respondent testimony suggests her husband’s motivation to harm her was

his dislike for her and suspicion she was being unfaithful to him. His motivation also appears

related to the respondent’s desire to leave him because of his infidelity, and his demands for

custody of their son. Based upon the respondent’s testimony, it appears the threats, assaults

and psychological abuse she suffered at the hands of her husband was intended to intimidate

her to obtain some unclear result.

BIA decision:

We conclude, based on the particular facts presented on this record that the respondent

established that she was a member of the particular social group she articulated. We further

conclude that the Immigration Judge erred in concluding that this case is distinguishable from

Matter of A-R-C-G-, supra, based principally on the fact that the respondent was able to separate

and live apart from her husband after he moved out of their home in 2013 (l.J. at I 0-l l ).

The respondent’s ability to live apart from her husband in Honduras is not a distinguishing factor

from the social group rationale articulated in Matter of A-R-C-G-, supra, where the respondent

credibly testified that her husband refused to consent to a divorce and showed up unannounced

and uninvited at her home on several occasions, once touching her in a sexual manner and telling

her that he has a “right” to her as his wife. Additionally, the respondent testified that she was

unable to leave the relationship in Honduras for numerous cultural reasons, including her fear that

would take their son away from her and her belief that she was unable to obtain a divorce

because of ‘s ties to local government officials (l.J. at 3-4; Tr. at 51, 56, 64-73, 99, 105).

See Matter of A-R-C-G-, supra, at 393 (recognizing that “a married woman’s inability to leave the

relationship may be informed by societal expectations about gender and subordination, as well as

legal constraints regarding divorce and separation.”). Further, that domestic violence is prevalent

in Honduras does not mean that the respondent’s proposed particular social group lacks discrete

boundaries, as the Immigration Judge determined (l.J. at 11).

*************************************
EOIR has been known to pass off this type of judicial misconduct as “normal deviations” in judging. But, there is a difference between honest variances in judicial philosophies and approach, which are present to some extent in all diverse judicial systems and might produce differing results, and clearly biased and unfair judging. Judge Couch’s performance clearly fits within the latter.
To state the obvious:
  • All of these incidents were “specifically targeted.” Therefore, Judge Couch’s determination that they were part of “generalized violence” is clearly fiction.
  • Asylum applicants are not required to demonstrate “conclusive evidence” of anything. “Conclusive evidence” is not a legal standard in any part of asylum adjudication.

What should have happened:

  • Judge Couch should have been removed from each of these cases for bias;
  • Like U.S. Courts of Appeals, the BIA should have “outed” Judge Couch, by name, in published opinions to give both applicants and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals notice of his problematic adjudication of asylum cases.
  • If Judge Couch continued his biased and unfair judging he should have been 1) ordered by the BIA not to hear any asylum cases involving women from the Northern Triangle, and 2) told that if his performance in asylum cases did not improve, he would be  referred to the EOIR disciplinary system for Immigration Judges based on actual bias against asylum applicants.

There is simply no room in a true Due Process system, particularly one where many respondents are unrepresented, for a biased, anti-asylum judge like Judge Couch. Is this “being the world’s best administrative tribunals guaranteeing fairness and Due Process for all?” No Way! Jeff Sessions, who often enunciates biased, anti-asylum positions, is part of the problem, not the solution! Due Process can’t be restored to the U.S. Immigration court system until Jeff Sessions and the USDOJ are removed from the process.

We need an independent judiciary capable of telling judges who perform like Judge Couch to correct their behavior immediately — in other words, “shape up or ship out.”

PWS

05-09-18

 

Related posts:

  1. THE HUMAN AGONY OF ASYLUM: SPEND 4 MIN. WITH MS. A-B- & HUMAN/WOMEN’S RIGHTS EXPERT PROFESSOR KAREN MUSALO — Beaten, Raped, & Threatened With Death By Her Husband, Hounded Throughout Her Country, Abandoned By El Salvadoran Authorities, She Sought Refuge In The U.S., Winning Her Case At The BIA — Then She Was Targeted For A Vicious Unprovoked Attack By Notorious Scofflaw Immigration Judge Stuart Couch & White Nationalist Xenophobe Jeff Sessions — She’s Still Fighting For Her Life!
  2. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”
  3. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  4. MORE ARTICLES FEATURE “GANG OF RETIRED JUDGES’ STATEMENT” RE: SESSIONS’S OUTRAGEOUS ATTACK ON SETTLED PRINCIPLES OF PROTECTION LAW! — Media Exposing Corrupt, Inherently Unfair, Biased “Court” System Where The Prejudiced Prosecutor “Cooks” The Results to His Liking! — Jeff Sessions Degrades The American Legal System & Our National Values Each Day He Remains In Office!

ABA NEWS: “Panelists debate how to fix a broken immigration court system”

https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2018/05/panelists_debatehow.html

Expert panelists address immigration court reform at a discussion hosted by the ABA Commission on Immigration

America’s immigration justice system is broken. The case backlog is huge – nearly 700,000 immigrants and asylum-seekers are waiting for hearings or decisions – technology is old and there aren’t enough judges.

All five panelists agreed on that much at a May 4 discussion of how to reform immigration courts. They disagreed on who broke the system and how to fix it.

Several panelists accused Congress of underfunding the courts and the Justice Department of politicizing them. The head of the federal office that oversees immigration courts said he is working to cut down the backlog and hire more judges.

James McHenry, director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), said the agency will hire 150 additional judges and the hiring process will be much shorter than it has been. It previously took two years to hire new immigration judges. It now takes less than a year, McHenry said.

The discussion was sponsored by the ABA Commission on Immigration and held at the Washington, D.C., office of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson.

Three panelists – a sitting judge, a retired judge and an immigrant advocate – criticized EOIR’s handling of the courts. All three said the courts should be removed from the Justice Department and become independent.

Judge Denise Slavin of Baltimore, representing the National Association of Immigration Judges, said the immigration system today deserves a grade of D or D-minus. “The system is failing, there is no doubt about it,” she said.

The two biggest problems, she said, are the backlogs and public perception that the courts are unfair. The backlog, she said, was caused by “years of fiscal neglect” by both political parties. “Enforcement has been funded at levels that the courts have not,” she said.

She also accused Attorney General Jeff Sessions of politicizing the immigration courts. “It does not help matters much when our attorney general states to the press that we are being sent to the border to deport people. Not to hear cases, to deport people,” Slavin said.

She also criticized Sessions’ recent order that all immigration judges must clear at least 700 cases a year to get a “satisfactory” rating on their performance evaluations. No other American courts have such a quota, she said. “The only other court that we found that has that is in the People’s Republic of China,” Slavin said.

Retired immigration judge Paul Schmidt, an adjunct law professor at Georgetown University, accused the Justice Department of “aimless docket reshuffling” and have a “morbid fascination with increased immigration detention as a means of deterrence.” These actions “have turned our immigration court system back into a tool of DHS (Department of Homeland Security) enforcement,” he said.

He said the Trump administration has shown “unprecedented levels of open disdain and disrespect” for pro bono lawyers and immigration judges – “the two groups that are struggling to keep due process afloat in the immigration courts.”

He urged the audience to “join the new due process army and stand up for truth, justice and the American way in our failing, misused and politically abused United States immigration courts.” That earned the only applause of the morning.

Heidi Altman, policy director at the National Immigrant Justice Center, also accused the Justice Department of political interference in the immigration courts. “We are faced today with an administration that, at the very highest levels of leadership, is using rhetoric designed to reframe the goals and mission of our immigration court system,” she said. “The politicization of the immigration court system is particularly harmful because the courts are meant to be neutral bodies.”

McHenry said his agency is fixing the court system. Document e-filing will roll out nationally next year, he said. He denied Slavin’s accusation that judicial hiring is politicized. Merit hiring “will be the standard as long as I’m the director,” McHenry said.

In addition to hiring more judges, EOIR will shorten the backlog by using more teleconferencing, bringing back retired judges and re-examining all its policies, McHenry said. He said he sees no conflict between making the system more efficient and providing due process. “We believe judges can do both.”

The panel was moderated by Karen Grisez, special adviser to the ABA Commission on Immigration and public service counsel at Fried Frank.

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

Couldn’t be clearer: Jeff Sessions is a huge part of the problem and is incapable of being part of the solution. Yes, other Administrations have also helped destroy justice in the Immigration Courts. But, Sessions graphically demonstrates why Due Process can never be safe from attack as long as the DOJ is in charge.

PWS

05-07-18

 

This entry was posted on Mon May 07 12:49:14 CDT 2018 and filed under Top Stories and Commission on Immigration.

Related posts:

  1. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”
  2. HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM COURTSIDE! — I Take A Look Forward @ 2019’s Big Immigration Stories
  3. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

HON. JEFFREY CHASE: EVERYONE IN THE HUMAN RIGHTS/WOMEN’S RIGHTS ADVOCACY COMMUNITY NEEDS TO UNITE AND TAKE AGGRESSIVE ACTION AGAINST JEFF SESSIONS’S PLAN TO PASS DEATH SENTENCE ON FEMALE REFUGEES FLEEING DOMESTIC VIOLENCE –Many Will Be Killed, Raped, Maimed, Disfigured, Or Sentenced To A “Life Worse Than Death” If Sessions Has His Way!

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2018/5/6/7r3izq486dxxtzlrsythpmr2kg35j3

Briefs Filed in Matter of A-B-

Briefs of the parties and amici have now been filed with the Attorney General in Matter of A-B-.  Once again, a group of former immigration judges and BIA members, which this time numbered 16 (including myself) filed an amicus brief (which can be viewed here: http://www.aila.org/infonet/amicus-brief-matter-of-a-b- ).*  The respondent’s brief was submitted by the outstanding legal team of Ben Winograd of IRAC; Karen Musalo, Blaine Bookey, and Eunice Lee of CGRS, and Charlotte attorney Andres Lopez.  DHS’s brief was submitted by Michael P. Davis of ICE, whose reasoned positions are to be commended.

The issue in the case below involved the actions of immigration judge V. Stuart Couch in failing to abide by the decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals, which reversed Couch’s denial of asylum in a particularly strong claim involving a victim of severe domestic violence.  The BIA reversed the judge’s decision, and remanded with instructions to grant asylum following the required updated security clearance by DHS. However, Couch took some nine months to schedule the case for a hearing. When at that hearing, DHS stated that the clearances had been completed, Judge Couch did not issue a new decision (as he was directed to do by the BIA).  Instead, he stated that he was recertifying the case to the BIA, something that he lacked the authority to do without first issuing a new decision.

The case sat for another seven months, during which time it is not clear whether the record actually made its way back to the BIA.  But before the Board could rule on the propriety of Judge Couch’s actions, the case was somehow plucked from wherever it had been by AG Jeff Sessions, who on his own transformed the case into a vehicle to answer a question that no one but himself seems to understand, namely, whether being the victim of private criminal activity constitutes a cognizable particular social group for asylum purposes.  (There is an interesting question of how Sessions even knew that this case existed.)

In response, the Department of Homeland Security appealed to reason.  It requested the AG to hold off until the BIA ruled on the propriety of Couch’s attempted recertification.  DHS also requested Sessions to provide further clarification of his question, and noted that “this question has already been answered, at least in part, by the Board and its prior precedent.”  Sessions denied both requests, adding that he is not bound by BIA precedent, nor is he required to allow briefing on an issue before him on certification. It seems as if Sessions might be saying that as he’s bestowing the privilege of allowing briefs, he doesn’t further need to let everyone know what it is they are being asked to brief.

Depending on how Sessions is choosing to interpret the question, his decision might impact not only domestic violence claims, but any asylum claim based on a particular social group involving private criminal activity (which could include claims based on sexual orientation or sexual identity; as well as victims of female genital cutting, human trafficking, gang violence, blood feuds and honor killings).  Or then again, maybe not. Because if Sessions is asking whether a particular social group delineated as “victims of private criminal activity” is cognizable, his answer wouldn’t impact the outcome of this case, as the respondent never claimed to be a member of such group. Nor would it matter to the outcome if Sessions is asking whether a group which includes the element of victimization by a criminal acting in a private capacity is cognizable, as no element of victimization is included in the respondent’s delineated group of “El Salvadoran women who are unable to leave their domestic relationships where they have children in common.”  Nowhere in the wording of such group is there a mention of being the victim of private criminal activity, nor is the respondent claiming that she was targeted for abuse because of her being a victim of private criminal activity.

But could Sessions be questioning whether any particular social group merits asylum where its members fear persecutors who are not government officials?  If that’s his question, a decision in the negative would run counter to not only more than a half century of BIA precedent, but also to decisions of all eleven Federal circuit courts, and to international law, all of which universally agree that for asylum purposes, persecution may be by private actors that the government is unable or unwilling to control.

Does Sessions himself understand the question he is asking?  Let’s just assume that since this case involves a credible victim of severe domestic violence, and that her particular social group was found by the BIA to be substantially similar to the one it recognized as cognizable in its 2014 precedent decision in Matter of A-R-C-G-, that Sessions is considering invalidating that decision.

The purpose of courts and tribunals is to resolve disputes between the parties.  The issue that Sessions now wishes to address has been settled, and is not being contested by either party.  The Department of Homeland Security itself made this point to Sessions. Had this case been allowed to run its course and result in a grant of asylum, it is far from clear that such result would have been contested or appealed by DHS.  In its brief to Sessions, DHS states more than once that it “generally supports the legal framework set out by the Board in Matter of A-R-C-G-.”  DHS continued that the group in that case of “married women in Guatemala who are unable to leave their relationship” was not defined by the respondent’s being subject to domestic violence.  DHS specifically stated that like the BIA, it “understands ‘unable to leave a relationship’ to signify an inability to do so based on a potential range of ‘religious, cultural, or legal constraints…’”  DHS continued that neither the PSG in A-R-C-G- nor the group offered by A-B- herself violate the principle that such group “must exist independently of the persecution suffered and/or feared.”

In refusing DHS’s request for clarification, Sessions claimed that “several Federal Article III courts have recently questioned whether victims of private violence may qualify for asylum” based on their membership in a particular social group.  However, in responding to such statement in its subsequent brief, DHS noted that “none of the circuit court decision cited by the Immigration Judge questioned the underlying validity of A-R-C-G-.”  In response to Sessions’ statement that he is not bound by the BIA’s precedent decisions, DHS recognized this, but “avers that the Attorney General should not directly or indirectly abrogate A-R-C-G-,” but should “rather…emphasize the importance of case and society-specific analysis.”

There is thus agreement between the parties of the validity of the Board’s holding in A-R-C-G-.  In revisiting the issue, Sessions is not attempting to resolve a dispute, as no such dispute exists.

To me, the most shocking aspect of Sessions’ action is its timing.  Case law concerning human rights (including the law of asylum) and civil rights does not develop in a vacuum.  Much as courts have extended civil rights protections based on race, gender, and sexual orientation throughout the history of this country, the idea of what constitutes persecution and which of its victims are deserving of protection evolves along with the views of society.  Sessions is choosing, unprompted, to challenge whether victims of domestic violence are deserving of asylum just as our society has undertaken a powerful, long-overdue, and much needed correction in the form of the #metoo movement. Many hundreds of thousands of us (“us” of course referring to people regardless of gender, as women’s rights are human rights) have filled the streets of cities all over America (and the world) the past two Januarys in a powerful, emotional rebuke to sexual assault and all forms of sexism.  Powerful men who for years had engaged in all forms of sexual abuse and harassment are for the first time experiencing the consequences of their actions. And it is at this particular time that Sessions seeks to revoke protection to women who are domestic violence victims?

Briefs are good, but more is needed.  The wonderful Tahirih Justice Center collected 60,000 signatures on a petition which it delivered to Sessions in March calling on him to uphold asylum protection for survivors of domestic violence: https://www.tahirih.org/news/tahirih-delivers-petition-on-asylum-for-domestic-violence-survivors-to-the-attorney-general/.  More organizations need to follow Tahirih’s example.  In addition to the briefs submitted, there needs to be a true public outcry addressed to Sessions on this issue.  Asylum protection for victims of domestic violence is not just an immigration issue or a women’s issue. It is a human right, on which all of us should make ourselves heard.

 

*Heartfelt thanks to the law firm of Gibson Dunn (Megan Kiernan, Ronald Kirk, Chelsea Glover, Lalitha Madduri, and Amer Ahmed) for drafting the brief, and to former BIA member Lory D. Rosenberg for organizing and coordinating the effort.

Copyright 2018 Jeffrey S. Chase.  All rights reserved.

 

 

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Jeffrey S. Chase is an immigration lawyer in New York City.  Jeffrey is a former Immigration Judge, senior legal advisor at the Board of Immigration Appeals, and volunteer staff attorney at Human Rights First.  He is a past recipient of AILA’s annual Pro Bono Award, and previously chaired AILA’s Asylum Reform Task Force.

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Jeff Sessions has declared “open season” on bona fide refugees as part of his White Nationalist “Turn American Back to The Bad Old Days” Campaign.

Perhaps attitudes and beliefs like Sessions’s are why there millions fewer women than men worldwide!  Recently, a group led by well-known refugee scholar and expert Professor Debbie Anker of Harvard Lw made a very compelling case that even “landmark” cases like Matter of Kasinga and Matter of A-R-C-G- are far too restrictive. Gender, in and of itself, is the REAL PSG.

Hopefully, in the end, Sessions’s attack on refugee law, scholarship, and human decency will result in a more appropriately generous reading of the PSG category. Sometimes, “restrictionist theories” are so facially absurd, contrived, and lacking in intellectual integrity that they defeat themselves and reinforce the opposite position!

PWS

05-07-18

Related posts:

  1. HON. JEFFREY CHASE: Speaking Out Against The “Notable Minority” Of U.S. Immigration Judges Who Demonstrated Bias Against Women & Asylum Seekers – “Think about that: some federally appointed immigration judges cheered the fact that women who had been violently raped and beaten in their country can no longer find refuge here, and will be sent back to face more violence, and possibly death. Will there be any consequences for their actions? Were the many outstanding immigration judges who have been proud to grant such cases in the past, who were saddened and sickened by this decision, able to openly jeer or weep or curse this decision? Or would that have been viewed as dangerous?”
  2. MORE ARTICLES FEATURE “GANG OF RETIRED JUDGES’ STATEMENT” RE: SESSIONS’S OUTRAGEOUS ATTACK ON SETTLED PRINCIPLES OF PROTECTION LAW! — Media Exposing Corrupt, Inherently Unfair, Biased “Court” System Where The Prejudiced Prosecutor “Cooks” The Results to His Liking! — Jeff Sessions Degrades The American Legal System & Our National Values Each Day He Remains In Office!
  3. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

READ MY SPEECH TO THE ABA COMMISSION ON IMMIGRATION: “CARICATURE OF JUSTICE: Stop The Attack On Due Process, Fundamental Fairness, and Human Decency In Our Captive, Dysfunctional U.S. Immigration Courts!”

CARICATURE OF JUSTICE:

Stop The Attack On Due Process, Fundamental Fairness, and Human Decency In Our Captive, Dysfunctional U.S. Immigration Courts

 

ABA COMMISISON ON IMMIGRATION

         WASHINGTON, D.C.

MAY 4, 2018

 

Thank you, Madam Moderator. I am pleased to be on this distinguished panel. And, I am particularly delighted that EOIR Director James McHenry has joined us.

 

Clearly, this isn’t about Director McHenry, who by my calculations was still in law school when the wheels began coming off the EOIR wagon. Also, as a former Senior Executive in past Administrations of both parties, I’m familiar with being sent out to “defend the party line” which sometimes proved to be “mission impossible.”

 

For me, no more disclaimers, no more bureaucratic BS, no more sugar coating, no more “party lines.” I’m going to “tell it like it is” and what you need to do to reestablish Due Processand fundamental fairnessas the only acceptable missionof the United States Immigration Courts.

 

It’s still early in the morning, but as Toby Keith would say, “It’s me, baby, with your wakeup call!”

 

Nobody, not even Director McHenry, can fix thissystem while it remains under the control of the DOJ. The support, meaningful participation, and ideas of the judges and staff who work within it and the public,particularly the migrants and their lawyers, who rely on it, is absolutely essential.

 

But, the current powers that be at the DOJ have effectively excludedthe real stakeholdersfrom the process. Worse,they have blamed the victims,you, the stakeholders, for the very problems created by political meddling at the DOJ. We’re on a path “designed and destined for failure.”

 

The decline of the Due Process mission at EOIR spans several Administrations. But, recently, it has accelerated into freefallas the backlog largely created by “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”) by political officials at the DOJ over the past several Administrations and chronic understaffing have stripped U.S. Immigration Judges of all effective control over their dockets, made them appear feckless, and undermined public confidence in the fairness, independence, and commitment to individual Due Process of our Immigration Courts.

 

The Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment is there for one, and only one reason. To protect all individuals in the United States, not just citizens, from abuses by the Federal Government. In simple terms, it protects individuals appearing in Immigration Court from overstepping and overzealous enforcement actions by the DHS. It is notthere to insure either maximum removals by the DHS or satisfaction of all DHS enforcement goals.

 

Nor is it there to “send messages” – other than the message that individuals arriving in the United States regardless of statuswill be treated fairly and humanely. It serves solely to protect the rights of the individual, and definitelynotto fulfill the political agenda of any particular Administration.

 

The “EOIR vision” which a group of us in Senior Management developed under the late Director Kevin Rooney was to “be the world’s best administrative tribunals guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.” Sadly, that noble vision is now dead and buried.

 

In fact, when I mentioned it to a recently hired EOIR attorney just prior to my retirement in 2016, she looked at me as if I were from outer space. Indeed, nobody in his or her right mind would seriously suggestthat today’s Immigration Courts are on track to meet that vision or that it motivates the actions of today’s DOJ.

 

No, instead, the Department of Justice’s ever-changing priorities, Aimless Docket Reshuffling, and morbid fascinationwith increased immigration detention as a means of deterrence have turned our Immigration Court system back into a tool of DHS enforcement. Obviously, it is long past time for an independentU.S. Immigration Court to be established outside the Executive Branch.

 

I work with a group of retired colleagues on various Amicus Briefs trying to defend and restore the concept of Due Process in Immigration Court. I doubt that it’s what any of us thought we’d be doing in retirement. As one of those colleagues recently said, it’s truly heartbreaking for those of us who devoted large segments of our professional lives to improving Due Process and fairness in the Immigration Courts to see what has become of those concepts and how they are being mocked and trashed on a daily basis in our Immigration Court system.

 

Those of us watching from retirement treat each day’s EOIR news with a mixture of disbelief, disappointment, anger, and total outrage. But, it drives and inspires us to actionto halt and reverse the travesty of justice now taking place in our US Immigration Courts.

 I am one of the very few living participants in the 1983 creation of EOIR when it was spun off from the “legacy INS” to create judicial independence and better court administration during the Reagan Administration.

And, I can assure you that the Reagan Administration was not filled with “knee jerk liberal.” No, those were tough, but fair minded and practical, law enforcement officials. The other “survivors” who come to mind are former Director and BIA Judge Tony Moscato and then Associate Attorney General Rudy Giuliani, whom I understand is “otherwise occupied” these days.

Sadly, although EOIR appeared to have prospered for a period of time after its creation, it has now regressedto essentially the same problematic state it was in prior to 1983: lack of actual and perceived judicial independence; a weak appellate board that fails to function as an independent judiciary promoting due process; an unwieldy structure, poor administrative support, and outdated technology; a glacial one-sided judicial selection process that effectively has eliminated private sector attorneys with actual experience in representing immigrants and asylum applicants in court from the 21stCentury Immigration Judiciary; and an overwhelming backlog with no end in sight.

Only now, the backlog is multiples of what it was back in 1983, nearing an astounding 700,000 cases! And additional problemshave arisen, including grotesque overuse of detention courts in obscure, inappropriate locations to discourage representation and inhibit individuals from fully exercising their legal rights; a lack of pro bono and low bono attorney resources; and new unprecedented levelsof open disdain and disrespect by Administration officials outside EOIR, at the DOJ, for the two groups that are keeping Due Process afloat in the Immigration Courts: private attorneys, particularly those of you who are pro bono and low bono attorneys representing vulnerable asylum applicants and the Immigration Judgesthemselves, who are demeaned by  arrogant, ignorant officials in the DOJ who couldn’t do an Immigration Judge’s job if their lives depended on it.  

But, wait, and I can’t make this stuff up, folks, it gets even worse! According to recent news reports, the DOJ is actually looking for ways to artificially “jack up” the backlog to over 1,000,000 cases – you heard me, one million cases– almost overnight. They can do this by taking cases that were properly “administratively closed” and removed from the Courts’ already overwhelmed “active dockets” and adding them to the backlog.

Administratively closed cases involve individuals who probably never should have been in proceedings in the first place – DACA recipients, TPS recipients, those waiting in line for U visa numbers, potential legal immigrants with applications pending at USCIS, and long-time law-abiding residents who work, pay taxes, are integrated into our communities, have family equities in the United States, and were therefore quite properly found to be low to non-existent “enforcement priorities” by the last Administration.

Some of you in the audience might be in one of these groups. They are your neighbors, friends, fellow-students, co-workers, fellow worshippers, employees, workmen, child care workers, and home care professionals., and other essential members of our local communities.

And you can bet, that rather than taking responsibility for this unnecessary cruelty, waste, fraud, and abuse of our court system, the DOJ will attempt to falsely shift blame to Immigration Judges and private attorneys like those of you in the audience who are engaged in the thankless job of defending migrants in the toxic atmosphere intentionally created by this Administration and its antics.

Expose this scam! Don’t let the DOJ get away with this type of dishonest and outrageous conduct aimed at destroying our Immigration Court system while disingenuously directing the blame elsewhere.

Basically, respondents’ attorneys and Immigration Judges have been reduced to the role of “legalgerbilson an ever faster moving treadmill” governed by the unrestrained whims and indefensible, inhumane “terror creating” so-called “strategies” of the DHS enforcement authorities. And, instead of supportingour Immigration Judges in their exercise of judicial independence and unbiased decision-making and nurturing and enhancing the role of the private attorneys, the DOJ, inexcusably, during this Administration has undercut them in every possible way.

For the last 16 years politicians of both parties have largely stood by and watched the unfolding Due Process disaster in the U.S. Immigration Courts without doing anything about it, and in some cases actually making it worse. 

 

The notion that Immigration Court reform must be part of so-called “comprehensive immigration reform” is simply wrong. The Immigration Courts can and must be fixed sooner rather than later, regardless of what happens with overall immigration reform. It’s time to let your Senators and Representatives know that we need due process reforms in the Immigration Courts as one of our highest national priorities. 

 

Folks, the U.S Immigration Court system is on the verge of collapse. And, there is every reason to believe that the misguided “enforce and detain to the max” policies being pursued by this Administration, at levels over which Director McHenry has no realistic control, will drive the Immigration Courts over the edge. When that happens, a large chunk of the entire American justice system and the due process guarantees that make American great and different from most of the rest of the world will go down with it.

 

Our Constitution and our protection laws, which adhere to international treaties that we have signed, are not“loopholes.” Treating migrants fairly, humanely, and in accordance with the rule of law does notshow “weakness.” It shows our strengthas a nation.

 

There is a bogus narrative being spread by this Administration that refugees who are fleeing for their lives from dangerous situations in the Northern Triangle, that we had a hand in creating, are mere “economic migrants” not deserving of our protection. Untrue!

 

Migrants should be given a reasonable chance to get lawyers; an opportunity to prepare, document, and present their cases in a non-coercive setting; access to a truly independent, unbiased judge who is committed to guaranteeing individual rights and the fair application of U.S. protection laws in the generous spirit of the Supreme Court’s decision in Cardoza-Fonsecaand the BIA’s oft cited but seldom followed precedent in Matter of Mogharrabi; and a fair decision, preferably in writing, without being placed under duress by unnecessary, wasteful, inhumane detention and separation of families. This Court System should not be run by a Cabinet Member who has already announced his predetermination of the preferred outcomes and his total disdain for migrants and their lawful representatives.

 

Once fully documented, many of these cases probably could be granted either as asylum cases or as withholding of removal cases under the CAT in short hearings or by stipulation if the law were applied in a fair and unbiased manner. Those who don’t qualify for protection after a fair and impartial adjudication, and a chance to appeal administratively and to the Article III Courts, can be returned under the law.

 

This Administration and particularly this DOJ depend on individuals notbeing competently represented and therefore not being able to assert their rights to either legal status or fair treatment. But, there are still real,truly independent Article III Courts out there that can intervene and put an end to this “deportation railroad” and its trampling on our Constitution, our laws, our values, and our dignity as human beings. For, friends, if we are unwilling to stand up against tyranny and protect the legal and Constitutional rights of the most vulnerable among us, like asylum seekers, then our ownrights and liberties as Americans mean nothing!

 

I urge each of youin this audience to join the “New Due Process Army” and stand upfor “truth, justice, and the American way” in our failing, misused, and politically abused United States Immigration Courts and to continue the fight, for years or decades if necessary, until this systemfinally is forced to deliveron its noble but unfulfilled promise of “being the world’s best tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.” Harm to one is harm to all! Due process forever!

 

Thank you, Madam Moderator, I yield back my time.

 

(04-04-18)

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ADMISSION: Notwithstanding the last sentence, I went “overtime,” so there actually was no time to “yield back.”

PWS

05-04-18

 

 

 

Related posts:

  1. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  2. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  3. MICA ROSENBERG, READE LEVINSON, & RYAN McNEILL EXPOSE UNEQUAL JUSTICE & ABUSE OF VULNERABLE ASYLUM SEEKERS FROM “COURT” SYSTEM LACKING BASIC JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE! Sessions’s Chilling Response: Speed Things Up, Establish Deportation Quotas, Strip Asylum Seekers Of Rights To Due Process, Eliminate Professional Judicial Training, & Aimlessly Throw More Inexperienced, Untrained Judges Into This Mess! – Will He Get Away With His Atrocious Plan To Make Immigration Courts The “Killing Floor?” — AN IN-DEPTH LOOK AT THE TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE UNFOLDING IN U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT ON A DAILY BASIS!
  4. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”

CHILD ABUSE: COWARDLY ADMINISTRATION USES FALSE NARRATIVES & DISTORTED FACTS TO ATTACK PROTECTIONS FOR REFUGEE CHILDREN — Our National Morality & Human Decency In Free-fall Under Trump! — “It has been national law and policy that as adults we look out for children …. No longer.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/01/us/immigration-minors-children.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Eli Hager of The Marshall Project in the NY Times:

On April 4, the White House posted a fact sheet on its website warning that legal “loopholes” were allowing tens of thousands of immigrant children who entered the country on their own to remain in the United States.

The next day, another post went up: “Loopholes in Child Trafficking Laws Put Victims — and American Citizens — At Risk.”

And the same week, the Administration for Children and Families, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services not normally known for its politics, announced that it “joins the President in calling for Congress to close dangerous loopholes.”

Over the past month, the Trump administration has taken aim at a set of child protection laws created to protect young people who cross into the United States without a parent or guardian, perhaps aided by smugglers. The administration now sees some of these same youths as a threat, and is portraying the laws as “loopholes” that are preventing the quick deportation of teenagers involved in gangs.

The campaign is aimed at Capitol Hill, but the Trump administration is not waiting for legislation: In a series of at least a dozen moves across multiple federal agencies, it has begun to curtail legal protections for unaccompanied children who cross the border. Many of these safeguards were created by a 2008 law that provided protections for children who might otherwise be forced into labor or prostitution.

The young people affected by the administration’s measures have been fleeing deadly gang violence in Central America since 2014, when civil strife erupted in the region. They are a less politically shielded group of young people than the so-called “Dreamers,” most of whom came to this country as toddlers with their parents.

The new directives appear aimed at detaining more of these youths after their arrival and speeding deportation back to their home countries — where they may face violent reprisals from gangs or other forms of abuse.

“It has been national law and policy that as adults we look out for children,” said Eve Stotland, director of legal services for The Door, a youth advocacy organization in New York. “No longer.”

Endangered Central American Children

Among the many new directives, the State Department in November gave just 24 hours’ notice to endangered children in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador before canceling a program through which they could apply for asylum in the United States before getting to the border. About 2,700 of them who had already been approved and were awaiting travel arrangements were forced to stay behind in the troubled region.

The Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile, has sharply cut back on granting a special legal status for immigrant juveniles who have been abused, neglected or abandoned; the program dropped from a 78 percent approval rate in 2016 to 54 percent last year, according to statistics compiled by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. In New York, Texas and elsewhere, the agency in recent months has also begun revoking this protection for children who had already won it, according to legal aid organizations in the states.

The Justice Department has also issued legal clarification for courts and prosecutors about revoking “unaccompanied child” status, which allows minors to have their cases heard in a non-adversarial setting rather than in immigration court with a prosecutor contesting them. (The White House has said that it intends to remove this protection altogether, but has not yet done so.)

And the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which provides social services to vulnerable immigrant youth, is now placing all children with any gang-related history in secure detention instead of foster care, whether or not they have ever been arrested or charged with a crime, according to an August memo to the President’s Domestic Policy Council.

“It’s law enforcement mission creep, and our office is ill-prepared for it,” said Robert Carey, who was director of the refugee agency under President Barack Obama.

A Focus on Gangs

The Trump administration has said that its actions are necessary to stem the tide of violent crime. It has focused on teenagers belonging to or associated with the Salvadoran-American street gang MS-13, which has been linked by the police since 2016 to at least 25 homicides on Long Island — a testing ground for many of the president’s new policies.

About 99 of the more than 475 people arrested in the New York City area during ICE raids for gang members had come to the U.S. as unaccompanied children, a representative for the agency said.

To fortify the “loophole” narrative, official announcements of these ICE actions often point out that a number of those arrested were in the process of applying for various forms of child protection.

Yet 30 of 35 teenagers rounded up during these ICE raids last year and who later filed a class-action lawsuit have subsequently been released because the gang allegations against them were thin, according to the ACLU. And the Sacramento Bee reported that a juvenile detention center in California recently cut back its contract with the federal government and complained that too many immigrant teens were being sent there with no evidence of gang affiliation.

The refugee agency acknowledged in its August memo to the White House that only 1.6 percent of all children in its care have any gang history.

“The arguments they’re making are just really challenging to basic logic,” said Elissa Steglich, a law professor at the University of Texas who teaches a clinic for immigrant families.

“The arguments they’re making are just really challenging to basic logic,” said Elissa Steglich, a law professor at the University of Texas who teaches a clinic for immigrant families.

. . . .

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Read the complete article at the link.

Yes, folks, it’s way past time to use the correct term for the Trump Administration’s outrageous, and in many cases illegal, policies directed against primarily Hispanic migrant children:  “Child Abuse!”

I met many of these kids and families coming through my court over the years. While there were a tiny number of “bad actors” (which the DHS did a good job of discovering) the vast, vast majority were nothing like what Trump, Sessions and others are describing. They actually much better represented “true American values,” courage, and the “American work ethic” than do Trump and his valueless cronies.

That’s right folks! OUR U.S. Government is using racist-inspired lies to conduct a war against Hispanic children and to illegally return many of them to deadly and life threatening situations! Bad things happen to nations that let bullies and cowards bully, demean, and harm children!

The Trump Administration’s abuse of migrant children and their legal and Constitutional rights could be taken right out of a State Department Country Report on human rights abuses in a Third World Dictatorship. Is this they way YOU want to be remembered by history?

No, Constitutional and statutory protections for children are NOT “loopholes.” What kind of human beings speak such trash?  The Trump Administration’s response to the “rule of law” when, as is often the case, it doesn’t fit their White Nationalist agenda is always to tell lies, rail against it, and look for ways around it.

Stand up against the lawless behavior and immoral actions of Trump, Sessions, and the rest of their “hate crew!” Join the “New Due Process Army” and fight against the Trump Administration’s erosion of our national values, morality, and the true “rule of law” (which is there to protect migrants and the rest of us from abuse at the hands of our Government).

Harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all!

PWS

05-01-18

Related posts:

  1. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  2. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  3. GONZO’S WORLD: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A DIVERSE “NATION OF IMMIGRANTS” ANOINTS A COMMITTED XENOPHOBE AS ITS CHIEF LAW OFFICER? – Gonzo Is Deconstructing Our System Of Justice, One Day At A Time!
  4. AMERICA’S “MASS ATROCITY” — Professor Kate Cronin-Furman Says Don’t Kid Yourself About What The Trump Administration Is Doing In Your Name & How “Ordinary Civil Servants” Carry Out The Unthinkable & Unacceptable!

AMERICAN INJUSTICE: ADVOCATES COMPLAIN ABOUT US IMMIGRATION JUDGE V. STUART COUCH’S BIAS AGAINST CENTRAL AMERICAN WOMEN SEEKING ASYLUM – APPEALS BOARD AGREES, FINDING COUCH’S RULINGS “CLEARLY ERRONEOUS” IN MANY CASES – Now They Fear That Judge Couch Has A “Kindred Spirit” In The Overtly Xenophobic Jeff Sessions!

Judge in case Sessions picked for immigrant domestic violence asylum review issued ‘clearly erroneous’ decisions, says appellate court

By: Tal Kopan, CNN

Jeff Sessions recently used his special authority as attorney general to review an asylum case that could have sweeping implications for how the US treats immigrants fleeing domestic violence.

Newly released records now show that the case he handpicked, which involves a Central American woman fleeing domestic abuse from her ex-husband, comes from a judge who has been repeatedly rebuked by appellate judges for his multiple rejections of asylum claims from victims of domestic abuse.

Advocates and immigration attorneys fear that Sessions could be using the case as an opportunity to reverse case law that has protected Central American women fleeing violence and sexual assault from husbands by granting them asylum in the US.Stuart

Couch, an immigration judge in Charlotte, North Carolina, has sought to justify denying such women the right to stay in the US in multiple cases, even with the appellate body repeatedly ruling that his findings were “clearly erroneous,” according to records released after a Freedom of Information Act request.

Couch’s decision in the case Matter of A-B-, a convention of naming cases in immigration court that protects the individual’s identity, is a rare opinion that Sessions has referred to himself for review. Sessions has been using a little-known authority to refer immigration cases to himself for review, allowing him to almost single-handedly direct how immigration law is interpreted in this country.

In reviewing Couch’s decision, Sessions invited interested parties to comment on the notion of whether being the victim of a crime can count for asylum, a complicated aspect of asylum law.

The case was initially kept secret by the Justice Department and immigration courts on privacy grounds, but was made public by immigration attorneys as a domestic violence case. Input on the case was due to Sessions on Friday.

It was also later revealed that Sessions decided to consider the case over the objections of the Department of Homeland Security, which had asked him to hold off on diving into the case until the Board of Immigration Appeals, the immigration courts’ appellate body, decided on a request from Couch to take the case back up themselves. Sessions denied DHS’s request.

The Department of Justice declined to comment on why or how Sessions chose the case, and it’s not known how he will rule. When Sessions initially referred himself the case, a department official said he was considering it “because of a lack of clarity in the court system on the issue.”

More on Couch’s decisions: http://www.cnn.com/2018/04/28/politics/jeff-sessions-immigration-courts-domestic-violence-asylum/index.html

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

You should read Tal’s entire article for a profile of just how biased Judge Couch — the second most reversed Judge among hundreds in the Immigration Courts — is in asylum cases.  He had 58 cases reversed by the BIA just in 2017, while piling up an “asylum denial rate” 26% above the national average!

And, remember that this “isn’t the Ninth Circuit” by any stretch of the imagination. The BIA is a considered a conservative tribunal with a strong predilection to rule for the DHS to begin with!

I’m glad that the anti-asylum bias that runs through too much of today’s Immigration Court system, and is actually fanned and encouraged by Sessions, is finally being exposed. Even if Congress won’t solve this glaring problem by removing these Courts from the DOJ and creating an independent Immigration Court, with a merit-based hiring system, I hope that the Article III reviewing courts are getting the picture that much of what they are getting from EOIR in the area of asylum denials is the product of an intentionally unfair and biased system.

In this outrageous example, Matter of A-B-, the BIA was actually quite properly trying to “rein in” Judge Couch. Rather than encouraging justice, Sessions actually interfered with the BIA’s actions, even though neither the BIA nor any party had requested his review. What kind of “court system” allows a law enforcement official to control the results? Sounds like something directly out of the DOS Country Report on a Third World Dictatorship!

Judge Couch actually was appointed during the Obama Administration, illustrating the widespread and chronic nature of the problem of anti-asylum biased judging at EOIR. The Obama Administration was not accused of the overtly politicized hiring engaged in by the Bush Justice Department.

Nevertheless, from a statistical standpoint, the opaque, closed, and glacial (two-year average) Obama DOJ selection system was biased in favor of attorneys from government backgrounds and against those with experience representing asylum applicants by an astounding 9 to  1 ratio! Many believe this intentionally produced a BIA and an Immigration Court that would more or less “go along to get along” with construing the law and the facts against asylum applicants from countries considered to be “enforcement priorities” by the Obama Administration.

It’s time to put an end to this charade of justice and Due Process in our Immigration Courts. We need an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court with a merit-based selection system.  If not, we need a “helpful intervention” by the Article III Courts to end this chronically unfair and dysfunctional administration of justice by the Department of Justice! 

PWS

04-28-18

Related posts:

  1. HON. JEFFREY CHASE: Speaking Out Against The “Notable Minority” Of U.S. Immigration Judges Who Demonstrated Bias Against Women & Asylum Seekers – “Think about that: some federally appointed immigration judges cheered the fact that women who had been violently raped and beaten in their country can no longer find refuge here, and will be sent back to face more violence, and possibly death. Will there be any consequences for their actions? Were the many outstanding immigration judges who have been proud to grant such cases in the past, who were saddened and sickened by this decision, able to openly jeer or weep or curse this decision? Or would that have been viewed as dangerous?”
  2. THE EVER-AMAZING TAL @ CNN GIVES US THE “LOWDOWN” ON SESSIONS’S ALL-OUT PLAN TO DISABLE US PROTECTION LAWS – Pulling Out All The Stops In Attempting To Turn US Legal Protection System Into A “Killing Floor” For Most Vulnerable Refugees! – No Wonder Many U.S. Immigration Judges See Looming Conflict With Oath To Uphold U.S. Constitution & Exercise Independent Judgment Coming At Them with Breakneck Speed!
  3. GONZO’S WORLD: WHITE NATIONALIST AG MAKES VICIOUS UNFOUNDED ATTACK ON REFUGEES & THEIR ATTORNEYS THE CENTERPIECE OF HIS SPEECH TO LARGEST CLASS OF INCOMING U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGES — “Good lawyers using all their talents and skills work every day … like water seeping through an earthen dam to get around the plain words of (immigration law) to advance their clients’ interests.”
  4. HALLOWEEN HORROR STORY: Opaque & Biased Politicized Judicial Hiring Denies Migrants The Fair & Impartial Adjudication To Which They Are Constitutionally Entitled – Given The Generous Legal Standards, A Worldwide Refugee Crisis, & Asylum Officers’ Positive Findings In Most Cases, Asylum Seekers Should Be Winning The Vast Majority Of Immigration Court Cases — Instead, They Are Being “Railroaded” By A Biased System & Complicit Article III Courts!

CALL OUT THE CAVALRY, WE NEED REINFORCEMENTS! – “CARAVAN” OF A FEW HUNDRED MEEK REFUGEE WOMEN & CHILDREN REACH S. BORDER, THREATEN TO EXERCISE LEGAL RIGHTS TO APPLY FOR ASYLUM, AS TRUMP, SESSIONS, NIELSEN, HOMAN, & CO. COWER IN FEAR WITHIN “FORTRESS AMERICA” — Trump Administration Views Individual Constitutional Rights As “Dangerous Loopholes” & “Threats To National Security” That Must Be Eliminated – “Grandfathering” Sought For Current & Former Trump Officials, Friends, Family Who Might Need To Assert Fifth Amendment Right Against Self-Incrimination!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/at-the-us-border-a-diminished-migrant-caravan-readies-for-an-unwelcoming-reception/2018/04/27/7946a154-4a52-11e8-827e-190efaf1f1ee_story.html?utm_term=.cd296045d4c6

Nick Miroff reports for the Washington Post:

TIJUANA, Mexico — The American president, a former real estate mogul, does not want Byron Garcia in the United States. But the Honduran teenager was too busy building his own hotel empire this week to worry much about that.

Vermont Avenue and Connecticut Avenue were his. Now he was looking to move up-market.

The mini-Monopoly board on the dusty floor of the migrant shelter was small, but it fit well in the small space beside the tents. His older sister, Carolina, rolled a 2 and landed on Oriental Avenue.

“That’ll be $500,” said Garcia, 15, gleefully extending his hand. “I love this game!”

Garcia is coming to America on Sunday. Or maybe not. His mother, Orfa Marin, 33, isn’t sure it will be a good day to walk up to the border crossing and tell a U.S. officer that her family needs asylum. She knows President Trump wants to stop them.

Marin and her three children are among the 300 or so remaining members of the migrant caravan who have arrived here at the end of a month-long geographic and political odyssey, a trip that has piqued Trump’s Twitter anger and opened new cracks in U.S.-Mexico relations.

Central American migrant children play Monopoly at the Movimiento Juventud 2000 shelter on April 26, 2018 in Tijuana, Mexico. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

The organizers of the caravan say they are planning to hold a rally Sunday at Friendship Park, the international park where a 15-foot border fence splits the beach. From there, activists and attorneys plan to lead a group of the migrants to the U.S. port of entry at San Ysidro, Calif., where they will approach U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers and formally request asylum.

. . . .

Trump has ordered U.S. soldiers to deploy and Homeland Security officials to block the migrants. But the diminished version of the caravan that has arrived here, mostly women and children, has only underscored its meekness.

Migrant families arrive on a bus at the Ejercito de Salvacion shelter on April 26, 2018 in Tijuana, Mexico after driving from Mexicali, Mexico. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

The families are drained after weeks of travel, coughing children and pinto beans. They have crowded here into shelters in the city’s squalid north end, where the sidewalks are smeared with dog droppings and skimpily dressed women hand out drink promotions among the strip clubs and brothels. The tall American border fence is two blocks away.

Children play on the sidewalks outside the shelters, the boredom broken whenever a car with donations arrives to drop off clothes and toys.

Central Americans migrants in Mexico have long been treated as a kind of renewable natural resource, ripe for exploitation by thieves, predators and politicians. The geopolitical importance attached to this particular group was a sign to many here that the U.S. president had recognized an opportunity, too.

“We’re not terrorists or bad people,” Marin said.

Regardless of its size, Trump officials have measured this caravan in symbolic terms, as an egregious example of the “loophole” they want to shut and an immigration system whose generosity is being abused, they say, by hundreds of thousands of Central Americas trying to dupe it.

. . . .

“These people have no option but to seek refuge in another country, and they have every right to seek asylum, they have decided to face the consequences and to be strong in demanding what is their right,” said Leonard Olsen, 26, a law student and one of several caravan organizers from the United States. He wore a tattered Philadelphia Eagles cap and arrived in Tijuana on Thursday with a busload of women and children.

. . . .

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

I can understand why guys like Trump, Sessions, Nielsen, and Homan would be scared by mothers with talented kids who show the kind of courage, honesty, humanity, and respect for law that they themselves so conspicuously lack.

Without 5th Amendment protections, who would join the Trump Administration?

PWS

04-28-18

Related posts:

  1. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  2. CRUEL & UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT: DHS KAKISTOCRACY WANTS TO TARGET FAMILIES WITH CHILDREN FOR SEPARATION AND CRIMINAL PROSECUTION OF PARENTS AS PART OF WAR ON HUMANITY AT OUR SOUTHERN BORDER – Every American Will Bear The Stain Of Our Government’s Actions!
  3. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  4. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”

WITH HELP FROM GIBSON DUNN, “GANG OF 16” RETIRED US IMMIGRATION JUDGES FILES AMICUS BRIEF OPPOSING AG’S INTERFERENCE IN MATTER OF A-B-

HERE’S THE BRIEF:

AB-Brief Amici Curiae of Sixteen Former Immigration Judges and Members of t…

HERE’S THE “STATEMENT OF INTEREST:”

Amici Curiae are sixteen former immigration judges and members of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“Board”). Out of respect for the law to which they have dedicated their careers, Amici feel compelled to file this brief in support of Respondent. Amici are deeply concerned about the procedural violations in this case—in particular the Attorney General’s certification of a question that was not properly considered by the Immigration Judge and was not considered at all by the Board. This complete disregard for established procedure is alarming. It plainly violates binding federal regulations governing the narrow circumstances under which Attorney General certification is permitted and it raises serious due process concerns.

Ultimately, it is within Congress’s authority—not the Attorney General’s—to define the boundaries of asylum. And Congress has already determined that a person can qualify for asylum based on persecution that independently might constitute private criminal activity.

Amici urge the Office of the Attorney General not to take any further action on a question that is not properly before it, and therefore urge that the referral order be vacated.

 

HERE’S THE TOC:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 1 STATEMENT OF INTEREST OF AMICI CURIAE………………………………………………………….. 1 BACKGROUND ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 6 ARGUMENT …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 8

  1. This case is not properly before the Attorney General ……………………………………. 8
    1. Federal regulations require that the Immigration Judge issue a
      decision on asylum before certifying a case to the Board. ……………………. 9
    2. The Attorney General may only review a Board decision, but there
      was none………………………………………………………………………………………. 12
  2. Bypassing the Board nullifies critical procedural safeguards…………………………. 13
    1. The Board, a neutral and independent body, with deep knowledge
      of its own precedent, should consider the effect of new case law on
      that precedent in the first instance. ………………………………………………….. 13
    2. Bypassing the Board raises serious due process concerns…………………… 14
  3. The Attorney General cannot override Congress’s judgment under the
    guise of a procedural mechanism……………………………………………………………….. 16
  4. “Persecution” can be carried out or threatened by private actors that the government cannot or will not control………………………………………………………… 19

CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 21

 

HERE’S THE “GANG OF 16”

  •   The Honorable Steven Abrams served as an Immigration Judge at the New York, VarickStreet, and Queens Wackenhut Immigration Courts in New York City. Prior to his appointment to the bench, he worked as a Special U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York, and before that as District Counsel, Special Counsel for criminal litigation, and general attorney for the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (“INS”).
  •   The Honorable Sarah M. Burr served as an Immigration Judge in New York starting in 1994 and was appointed as Assistant Chief Immigration Judge in charge of the New York, Fishkill, Ulster, Bedford Hills, and Varick Street immigration courts in 2006. She served in this capacity until January 2011, when she returned to the bench full time until her retirement in 2012. Prior to her appointment, she worked as a staff attorney for the Criminal Defense Division of the Legal Aid Society in its trial and appeals bureaus and also as the supervising attorney in its immigration unit.
  •   The Honorable Jeffrey S. Chase served as an Immigration Judge in New York City from 1995 to 2007 and was an attorney advisor and senior legal advisor at the Board from 2007 to 2017. He now works in private practice as an independent consultant on immigration law, and is of counsel to the law firm of DiRaimondo & Masi in New York City. He received the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s (“AILA”) annual pro bono award in 1994 and chaired AILA’s Asylum Reform Task Force.
  •   The Honorable George T. Chew served as an Immigration Judge in New York from 1995 to 2017. Previously, he served as a trial attorney at the former INS.

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  •   The Honorable Bruce J. Einhorn served as an Immigration Judge in Los Angeles from 1990 to 2007. He now serves as an Adjunct Professor of Law at Pepperdine University School of Law, and is a Visiting Professor of International, Immigration, and Refugee Law at the University of Oxford.
  •   The Honorable Cecelia M. Espenoza served as a Member of the Board from 2000 to 2003 and in the Executive Office for Immigration Review (“EOIR”) Office of the General Counsel from 2003 to 2017 where she served as Senior Associate General Counsel, Privacy Officer, Records Officer, and Senior FOIA Counsel. She now works in private practice as an independent consultant on immigration law. Prior to her EOIR appointments, she was a law professor at St. Mary’s University (1997–2000) and the University of Denver College of Law (1990–97), where she taught Immigration Law and Crimes and supervised students in the Immigration and Criminal Law Clinics. She has published several articles on immigration law. She received the Outstanding Service Award from the Colorado Chapter of AILA in 1997.
  •   The Honorable Noel Ferris served as an Immigration Judge in New York from 1994 to 2013 and as an attorney advisor to the Board from 2013 until her retirement in 2016. Previously, she served as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York from 1985 to 1990 and as Chief of the Immigration Unit from 1987 to 1990.
  •   The Honorable John F. Gossart, Jr. served as an Immigration Judge from 1982 until his retirement in 2013. He is the former president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. At the time of his retirement, he was the third most senior immigration judge in the United States. From 1975 to 1982, he served in various positions with the former INS, including as a general attorney, naturalization attorney, trial attorney, and deputy assistant

3

commissioner for naturalization. He is also the co-author of the National Immigration Court Practice Manual, which is used by all practitioners throughout the United States in immigration-court proceedings. From 1997 to 2016, Judge Gossart was an adjunct professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law teaching immigration law, and more recently was an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland School of Law, also teaching immigration law. He is also a past board member of the Immigration Law Section of the Federal Bar Association.

  •   The Honorable Carol King served as an Immigration Judge from 1995 to 2017 in San Francisco and was a temporary member of the Board for six months between 2010 and 2011. She previously worked in private practice for ten years, focusing on immigration law. She also taught immigration law for five years at Golden Gate University School of Law and is currently on the faculty of the Stanford University Law School Trial Advocacy Program. Judge King currently works as an advisor on removal proceedings.
  •   The Honorable Margaret McManus was appointed as an Immigration Judge in 1991 and retired from the bench this January after twenty-seven years. Before her time on the bench, she worked in several roles, including as a consultant to various nonprofit organizations on immigration matters (including Catholic Charities and Volunteers of Legal Services) and as a staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society, Immigration Unit, in New York.
  •   The Honorable Lory D. Rosenberg served on the Board from 1995 to 2002. She then served as Director of the Defending Immigrants Partnership of the National Legal Aid & Defender Association from 2002 until 2004. Prior to her appointment, she worked with the American Immigration Law Foundation from 1991 to 1995. She was also an adjunct Immigration Professor at American University Washington College of Law from 1997 to

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2004. She is the founder of IDEAS Consulting and Coaching, LLC, a consulting service for immigration lawyers, and is the author of Immigration Law and Crimes. She currently works as Senior Advisor for the Immigrant Defenders Law Group.

  •   The Honorable Susan Roy started her legal career as a Staff Attorney at the Board, a position she received through the Attorney General Honors Program. She served as an Assistant Chief Counsel, National Security Attorney, and Senior Attorney for the DHS Office of Chief Counsel in Newark, NJ, and then became an Immigration Judge, also in Newark. She has been in private practice for nearly five years, and two years ago, opened her own immigration law firm. She is the New Jersey AILA Chapter Liaison to EOIR and is the Vice Chair of the Immigration Law Section of the New Jersey State Bar Association.
  •   The Honorable Paul W. Schmidt served as an Immigration Judge from 2003 to 2016 in Arlington, VA. He previously served as Chairman of the Board from 1995 to 2001, and as a Board Member from 2001 to 2003. He authored the landmark decision Matter of Kasinga, 21 I&N Dec. 357 (BIA 1995), extending asylum protection to victims of female genital mutilation. He served as Deputy General Counsel of the former INS from 1978 to 1987, serving as Acting General Counsel from 1979 to 1981 and 1986 to 1987. He was the managing partner of the Washington, DC office of Fragomen, DelRey & Bernsen from 1993 to 1995, and practiced business immigration law with the Washington, DC office of Jones, Day, Reavis and Pogue from 1987 to 1992, where he was a partner from 1990 to 1992. He was a founding member of the International Association of Refugee Law Judges (IARLJ), which he presently serves as Americas Vice President. He also consults, speaks, writes, and lectures at various forums throughout the country on immigration law topics.

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  •   The Honorable William Van Wyke served as an Immigration Judge from 1995 until 2015 in New York City and York, PA.
  •   The Honorable Gustavo D. Villageliu served as a Member of the Board from July 1995 to April 2003. He then served as Senior Associate General Counsel for the EOIR until he retired in 2011. Before becoming a Board Member, Villageliu was an Immigration Judge in Miami, with both detained and non-detained dockets, as well as the Florida Northern Region Institutional Criminal Alien Hearing Docket from 1990 to 1995. Mr. Villageliu joined the Board as a staff attorney in January 1978, specializing in war criminal, investor, and criminal alien cases.
  •   The Honorable Polly A. Webber served as an Immigration Judge from 1995 to 2016 in San Francisco, with details to the Tacoma, Port Isabel (TX), Boise, Houston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Orlando immigration courts. Previously, she practiced immigration law from 1980 to 1995 in her own firm in San Jose, California. She served as National President of AILA from 1989 to 1990 and was a national AILA officer from 1985 to 1991. She also taught Immigration and Nationality Law for five years at Santa Clara University School of Law. She has spoken at seminars and has published extensively in the immigration law field.

HERE ARE THE ATTORNEYS AT GIBSON DUNN WHO MADE THIS HAPPEN:

Amer S. Ahmed

Ronald Kirk

Megan B. Kiernan

Lalitha D. Madduri

Chelsea G. Glover

 

 

Counsel for Amici Curiae

 

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

Thanks to all for making this happen. Great teamwork in the name of Due Process!

Special thanks to our colleague Judge Lory Diana Rosenberg who served as our “Group Leader” in working with Gibson Dunn and to Judge Jeffrey Chase for assembling the group and putting the “finishing touches” on the filing.

PWS

04-27-18

Related posts:

  1. “GANG” OF RETIRED US IMMIGRATION JUDGES IMMEDIATELY CONDEMNS LATEST OUTRAGEOUS ATTACK ON ASYLUM LAW, DUE PROCESS, & HUMAN RIGHTS BY SESSIONS IN MATTER OF A-B-!
  2. HON. JEFFREY CHASE: Speaking Out Against The “Notable Minority” Of U.S. Immigration Judges Who Demonstrated Bias Against Women & Asylum Seekers – “Think about that: some federally appointed immigration judges cheered the fact that women who had been violently raped and beaten in their country can no longer find refuge here, and will be sent back to face more violence, and possibly death. Will there be any consequences for their actions? Were the many outstanding immigration judges who have been proud to grant such cases in the past, who were saddened and sickened by this decision, able to openly jeer or weep or curse this decision? Or would that have been viewed as dangerous?”
  3. NY TIMES: Trump Mocks & Dehumanizes Vulnerable Refugees & His Administration Claims It’s OK To Return Them to Honduras; BUT The Facts Say The Opposite: Honduras Is An Armed Conflict Zone Where Gangs Exercise Quasi-Governmental Control & Those Who Resist Are Severely Punished, Often Maimed, Tortured Or Killed!
  4. ROUND TABLE NEWS:  Getting The Due Process Message Across — 9th Cir. Orders Regime To Respond To Round Table’s Amicus Briefs in Matter of A-B- Challenges!

CRUEL & UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT: DHS KAKISTOCRACY WANTS TO TARGET FAMILIES WITH CHILDREN FOR SEPARATION AND CRIMINAL PROSECUTION OF PARENTS AS PART OF WAR ON HUMANITY AT OUR SOUTHERN BORDER – Every American Will Bear The Stain Of Our Government’s Actions!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/top-homeland-security-officials-urge-criminal-prosecution-of-parents-who-cross-border-with-children/2018/04/26/a0bdcee0-4964-11e8-8b5a-3b1697adcc2a_story.html

Maria Sacchetti reports for WashPost:

The nation’s top immigration and border officials are urging Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to detain and prosecute all parents caught crossing the Mexican border illegally with their children, a stark change in policy that would result in the separation of families that until now have mostly been kept together.

If approved, the zero-tolerance measure could split up thousands of families, although officials say they would not prosecute those who turn themselves in at legal ports of entry and claim asylum. More than 20,000 of the 30,000 migrants who sought asylum during the first quarter — the period from October-December — of the current fiscal year crossed the border illegally.

In a memorandum that outlines the proposal and was obtained by The Washington Post, officials say that threatening adults with criminal charges and prison time would be the “most effective” way to reverse the steadily rising number of attempted crossings. Most parents now caught crossing the border illegally with their children are quickly released to await civil deportation hearings.

The memo sent to Nielsen on Monday — and signed by acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Thomas Homan, Director of Citizenship and Immigration Services L. Francis Cissna and Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin K. McAleenan — said attempted crossings by parents with children increased to nearly 700 a day last week, the highest level since 2016. The officials predicted that the number will continue to rise if Nielsen does not act.

Lee Gelernt, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who has filed a federal lawsuit in California over earlier instances of family separations at the border, said the proposal would make “children as young as 2 and 3 years old pawns in a cruel public policy experiment.”

. . . .

Philip G. Schrag, a Georgetown law professor and asylum expert, said that expanding the forced separation of parents and children could cause severe psychological harm to families that ultimately might have legal grounds under federal asylum law to remain in the United States permanently.

“I think it’s absolutely wrenching psychologically and terrible for both the children and the parents,” he said. “What are we doing to those children psychologically that will haunt us years down the road if they become Americans?”

Federal officials say asylum applications have skyrocketed in recent years, raising concerns about fraud. Advocates for immigrants say those seeking asylum have legitimate claims under federal law and are fleeing some of the world’s most dangerous countries.

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

Read Maria’s complete article at the link.

I associate myself completely with the remarks of my good friend and Georgetown Law colleague Professor Phil Schrag. Cruelty to children is stupid, counterproductive — children are our future — and morally wrong. It will definitely haunt us as a country for generations to come. It’s largely what I said before about the misguided policies of the Obama Administration. But, as with many things, the Trump Administration takes every dumb and wrong immigration policy of the past and multiplies it.

PWS

04-27-18

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. CALL OUT THE CAVALRY, WE NEED REINFORCEMENTS! – “CARAVAN” OF A FEW HUNDRED MEEK REFUGEE WOMEN & CHILDREN REACH S. BORDER, THREATEN TO EXERCISE LEGAL RIGHTS TO APPLY FOR ASYLUM, AS TRUMP, SESSIONS, NIELSEN, HOMAN, & CO. COWER IN FEAR WITHIN “FORTRESS AMERICA” — Trump Administration Views Individual Constitutional Rights As “Dangerous Loopholes” & “Threats To National Security” That Must Be Eliminated – “Grandfathering” Sought For Current & Former Trump Officials, Friends, Family Who Might Need To Assert Fifth Amendment Right Against Self-Incrimination!
  3. TRUMP TREATS KIDS AS HUMAN PAWNS IN UGLY POLITICAL CHESS GAME – Administration’s Continued Spreading Of False Narrative On Migration Makes Continuing Migration Outside of Legal System Inevitable!
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY: Bogus Focus On Harmless Migrants Exercising Legal Rights To Apply For Asylum While Defunding State & Local Response Programs & Ignoring Real Security Threats!

Lawmakers question Trump’s Homeland Security chief over focus on immigrant caravan, border wall

By: Tal Kopan, CNN

The secretary of homeland security faced sharp questioning about agency priorities from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing Thursday, with many expressing deep concerns about whether the Trump administration is properly promoting Americans’ safety.

Democrats in particular questioned Kirstjen Nielsen about the administration’s prioritization of immigration enforcement and the building of a border wall while also seeking to cut funding for state and local governments to prepare for and respond to security threats.

“Tell us how cutting this kind of funding helps America be safer,” demanded Rep. Bill Keating, D-Massachusetts.

The top Democrat on the committee, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, had sharp words for Nielsen in his opening remarks, accusing the department of intentionally attacking non-dangerous immigrants as a distraction.

“Based on your press releases this week, you would think the most important homeland security problem facing the nation is a handful of Central Americans moving through Mexico,” Thompson said, referring to a caravan of mostly women and children asylum seekers that takes place every year to call attention to the plight of Central Americans. “That does not make it so. … Better to distract the American people from the very real issues facing the department and perhaps from the President’s own problems too.”

In one particularly sharp exchange, Florida Democratic Rep. Val Demings, a former chief of police in Orlando, pressed Nielsen on whether she prioritized the wall and immigration over helping local communities.

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/04/26/politics/caravan-border-wall-kirstjen-nielsen-hearing/index.html

 

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/04/26/politics/caravan-border-wall-kirstjen-nielsen-hearing/index.html

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

As I’ve said before, Nielsen is an intellectual lightweight, sycophant, and White Nationalist enabler. She proves it almost every time she opens her mouth in public. Her disingenuousness and toadyism make her a threat to our security every day she is in office.

Fortunately, there appear to still be enough professional civil servants in the ranks of DHS somewhere to have averted a national security disaster to date. But, if we survive this Administration, and it’s toxic focus on immigration to the exclusion of real law enforcement and national security problems, it certainly will be in spite of, not because of, folks like Nielsen.

PWS

04-27-18

Related posts:

  1. TAL @ CNN: TRUMP’S “GONZO” IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT POLICIES LIKELY TO FAIL AND ACTUALLY AGGRAVATE FORCES DRIVING UNDOCUMENTED MIGRATION!
  2. HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM COURTSIDE! — I Take A Look Forward @ 2019’s Big Immigration Stories
  3. AMERICA’S “MASS ATROCITY” — Professor Kate Cronin-Furman Says Don’t Kid Yourself About What The Trump Administration Is Doing In Your Name & How “Ordinary Civil Servants” Carry Out The Unthinkable & Unacceptable!
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

TAL @ CNN: DENYING DUE PROCESS IN U.S. IMMIGRATION COURTS — Sessions’s Plans & Actions Contravene Many Key Recommendations Of Recent Independent Internal Evaluation – Feuding With Judges, Suspending Legal Orientation Program, Establishing Evaluations Based On “Quotas,” Detailing Judges To Border Detention Centers, Restricting Administrative Closing, Increasing Use Of Televideo Hearings, Emphasis On Increasing Removals Over Due Process All Run Counter To Recent Recommendations!

http://www.cnn.com/2018/04/23/politics/immigration-courts-justice-department-report/index.html

Justice report’s findings clash with Sessions’ actions

By Tal Kopan

 

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has made overhauling the chronically backlogged immigration courts a top priority — but some of his moves seem to run counter to recommendations in a Justice Department-commissioned report made public on Monday.

While some of the recommendations, such as increasing staffing, have been part of his efforts, other steps — such as requiring judges to process a target amount of cases — run contrary to the study’s suggestions.

The report was written by consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton last April after a yearlong analysis commissioned by the Justice Department’s immigration courts division. A redacted version was made public Monday as the result of a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Immigration Lawyers Association and American Immigration Council.

The report looks at the chronic inability of the immigration courts to keep up with the number of cases before them. Cases related to immigration status are handled in a court system separate from the typical criminal and civil courts in the US — a system that is run entirely by the Justice Department and in which the attorney general effectively functions as a one-man Supreme Court.

Because cases can take years to finish, undocumented immigrants can end up living and building lives in the US as they await a final decision on whether they are legally allowed to stay in the US — something the Trump administration has cited as a driver of illegal immigration.

The Booz Allen Hamilton analysis identifies a number of issues that contribute to the backlog, including staffing shortages, technological difficulties and external factors like an increasing number of cases.

Sessions has worked to hire more immigration judges and has ordered other upgrades like the use of an electronic filing system, as the report recommends.

But the American Immigration Lawyers Association expressed concern about a number of other recommendations that seemed ignored or on which opposite action was taken.

Responding to the report, a Justice Department official who requested not to be named said that the efforts of the department are “common-sense.”

“After years of mismanagement and neglect, the Justice Department has implemented a number of common-sense reforms in the immigration court system, a number of them address these issues and we believe that focusing our efforts on these reforms has been an effective place to start,” the official said.

The report’s recommendations include a performance review system for judges, who are hired and managed by the Justice Department, that “emphasizes process over outcomes and places high priority on judicial integrity and independence,” including in dialogue with the union that represents immigration judges. The Justice Department recently rolled out a performance metrics system, though, that requires judges to complete a certain number of cases per year and sets time goals for other procedural steps along the way, which immigration judges have strongly opposed as jeopardizing the ability of judges to make fair, independent decisions.

In a call with reporters, AILA representatives and a retired immigration judge argued that while the report doesn’t explicitly reject a quota system, it’s clear that putting one in place is contrary to the recommendation. They say that judges who are fearful of their job security and opportunity for advancement may be pressured to speed up hearing cases at the expense of due process for the immigrants, which could skew the outcome of the case.

A Justice Department official said the agency rejects the notion of a “false dichotomy” that improving efficiency sacrifices due process and said the agency has also put in place court-based metrics that lend itself to the recommendation of the report.

In another example, the report recommends that the Justice Department consider expanding legal orientation programs for immigrants and increasing their access to attorneys, so they can better navigate the system. The Justice Department recently put on hold a legal advice program for immigrants in the courts, saying it needed to be reviewed, though audits in the past had consistently shown it was productive and had saved the government money long-term. Officials say they may reinstitute the program if the audit shows it is effective.

The report also recommends limited use of video hearings, saying judges are stymied by technical difficulties and also are less able to read the subtle cues and nonverbal communications of witnesses and people involved in the hearings. Sessions’ immigration courts plan includes expanding the use of video hearings.

In another example, one of Sessions’ first moves in taking office was to send a number of judges to the border on a temporary assignment to handle cases there. The report says temporary assignments should be avoided, as they create more delays when judges have to catch up on their workloads back home.

The report also recommends administratively closing cases if they are being adjudicated in some other venue, like a visa petition or another court case. The Trump administration has sought to curtail the administrative closing of cases.

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

DOJ’s ridiculous claim that Sessions’s actions are “common sense” is refuted by virtually everyone with expertise or true understanding of the Immigration Court system including those working in it, those stuck in it, and even ICE!

There can be no effective, Due Process oriented, “actual common sense” Immigration Court reforms so long as Jeff Sessions controls those courts.

PWS

04-23-18

Related posts:

  1. DUE PROCESS UNDER ATTACK: ANOTHER “IMMIGRATION HARDLINER” MOVES OVER TO DOJ TO HELP GONZO TORMENT, TRASH, AND BULLY THE MOST VULNERABLE
  2. EOIR TARGETS UNACCOMPANIED KIDS FOR DEPORATION RAILROAD!
  3. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

PRO PUBLICA: HOW OUR GOVERNMENT HAS CYNICALLY TURNED WHAT SHOULD BE A GENEROUSLY ADMINISTERED, LIFE-SAVING, PROTECTION-GRANTING ASYLUM SYSTEM INTO A “GAME OF CHANCE” WITH POTENTIALLY FATAL CONSEQUENCES FOR THE HAPLESS & VULNERABLE “PLAYERS!” –Play The “Interactive Version” Of “The Game” Here – See If You Would Survive or Perish Playing “Refugee Roulette!”

https://projects.propublica.org/asylum/#how-asylum-works

Years-long wait lists, bewildering legal arguments, an extended stay in detention — you can experience it all in the Waiting Game, a newsgame that simulates the experience of trying to seek asylum in the United States. The game was created by ProPublica, Playmatics and WNYC. Based on the true stories of real asylum-seekers, this interactive portal allows users to follow in the footsteps of five people fleeing persecution and trying to take refuge in America.

The process can be exhausting and feel arbitrary – and as you’ll find in the game, it involves a lot of waiting. Once asylum-seekers reach America, they must condense complex and often traumatic stories into short, digestible narratives they will tell again and again. Their  lives often depend on their ability to convince a judge that they are in danger. Judicial decisions are so inconsistent across the country, success in complicated cases can  come down to geography and luck — in New York City only 17 percent of asylum cases are denied in immigration court; in Atlanta, 94 percent are. Increasingly, many asylum-seekers are held in detention for months or even years while going through the system. The immigration detention system costs more than $2 billion per year to maintain.

The Trump administration has tried to reframe the asylum system as a national security threat and a magnet for illegal immigration. Attorney General Jeff Sessions characterizes the American asylum process as “subject to rampant abuse” and “overloaded with fake claims.” He has aimed recent reforms at expediting asylum adjudications to speed up deportations and at making it more difficult for certain groups to qualify for protection, such as Central Americans who claim to fear gender-based violence or gang persecution.

The narrative that the system is overrun with fraud has long been pushed by groups that favor limiting immigration overall. They point to some 37 percent of asylum-seekers who annually miss their immigration hearings as evidence that people without legitimate fears of persecution game the system. They argue that allowing asylum-seekers to obtain work permits while they wait for a decision on their cases — which sometimes takes years — incentivizes baseless claims.

But another picture emerged when ProPublica spoke with more than 20 experts and stakeholders who study and work in the asylum system, including lawyers, immigration judges, historians, policy experts, an asylum officer, a former border patrol agent and a former ICE prosecutor.

When asked about changes to the system they’d like to see, many suggested providing asylum-seekers with better access to lawyers to support due process, expanding the definition of a refugee to cover modern-day conflicts,providing more resources to help the system process claims in a timely manner, and improving judicial independence by moving immigration courts out of the Department of Justice.

Most acknowledged some level of asylum-claim abuse exists. “In any system, of course, there are going to be some bad actors and some weaknesses people seek to exploit,” said Doris Meissner, the former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1993 to 2000.

But they also argued for the importance of protecting and improving a national program that has provided refuge to hundreds of thousands of people. “If you are going to make a mistake in the immigration area, make this mistake,” said Bill Hing, director of the University of San Francisco’s Immigration and Deportation Defense Clinic. “Protect people that may not need protecting, but don’t make the mistake of not protecting people who need it.”

Victor Manjarrez, a former border patrol agent from the 1980s until 2011, said he had seen human smuggling networks exploit the border over the years, but also many people who genuinely needed help.

“We have a system that’s not perfect, but is designed to take refugees. That is the beauty of it,” he said. “It has a lot of issues, but we have something in place that is designed to be compassionate. And that’s why we have such a big political debate about this.”

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

Read the narrative and play the interactive “Waiting Game” at the above link!

Getting refuge often depends on getting the right:

  • Border Patrol Agent an Asylum Officer to even get into the system;
  • Lawyer;
  • Local Immigration Court;
  • Immigration Judge;
  • DHS Assistant Chief Counsel;
  • BIA Panel;
  • U.S. Court of Appeals jurisdiction;
  • U.S. Court of Appeals Panel;
  • Luck.

If something goes wrong anywhere along this line, your case could “go South,” even if it’s very meritorious.

I also agree with Professor Hing that given the UNHCR guidance that asylum applicants ought to be given “the benefit of the doubt,” the generous standard for asylum established by the Supremes in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca and implemented by the BIA in Matter of Mogharrabi, and the often irreversible nature of wrongful removals to persecution, the system should be designed to “error on the side of the applicant.”

Indeed, one of the things that DHS in my experience does well is detecting and prosecuting systemic asylum fraud. While a few individuals probably do get away with tricking the system, most “professional fraudsters” and their clients eventually are caught and brought to justice, most often in criminal court. Most of these are discovered not by “tough laws” or what happens in Immigration Court, but by more normal criminal investigative techniques: undercover agents, tips from informants, and “disgruntled employees or clients” who “blow the whistle” in return for more lenient treatment for themselves.

Hope YOU get protected, not rejected!

PWS

04-23-18

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  3. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  4. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”

GOV’S CRUEL IN ABSENTIA HOAX EXPOSED – NEW CLINIC/URBAN JUSTICE CENTER REPORT SHOWS HOW DHS & EOIR INTENTIONALLY USE BROKEN SYSTEM TO CONSTRUCT A “KNOWINGLY FALSE NARRATIVE” THAT ASYLUM SEEKERS SHIRK HEARINGS – Actually, Representation & Other Very Achievable Reforms Would Raise Appearance Rate Close To 100% — Trump Administration Doubles Down On Obama’s Dishonest Due Process Travesty!

“I answered them that it was not Roman practice to hand over an accused person before he has faced his accusers and had the opportunity to defend himself against their charge.”

Acts 25: 16

HERE’S THE REPORT:

Denied-a-Day-in-Court

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Starting in the summer of 2014, the United States began experiencing an unprecedented influx of Central American families who were fleeing violence and seeking humanitarian assistance and safety. Most of these families were from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. In response, the Obama Administration ordered immigration judges to rapidly adjudicate these cases, often at the cost of

due process. Large numbers of families, unable to obtain legal representation and navigate a complex immigration system, were deported by the federal government, often back to the violence they had fled. Essential to the government’s efforts was the use of in absentia removal orders issued to families upon their missing an immigration court hearing.

In response to the unmet legal needs of this population, the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project
(ASAP) at the Urban Justice Center and the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC) began representing families ordered removed in absentia. In almost every case, ASAP and CLINIC successfully challenged the underlying in absentia order and reopened the case. Concurrently, through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, these organizations obtained previously unreleased immigration court data that reveal key metrics regarding legal representation rates and the use of in absentia removals. Client interviews and data from the FOIA together reveal a startling trend—the government ordered the removal of high numbers of unrepresented families through in absentia orders despite many of those families having passed a credible fear interview with an asylum officer.

This report highlights the high rate of unrepresented families, discusses the obstacles families face in attending their hearings, explains how the immigration system fails families seeking asylum, and provides policy recommendations for how the Administration and Congress can address these shortcomings.

The findings in this report are based on an analysis of the FOIA results regarding representation and removal of 29,808 families from July 2014 to November 2016, as well as the results of the 46 cases in which ASAP and CLINIC provided representation. These findings include the following:

• 22,270 asylum applicants, or 75 percent of the 29,808 families who entered the United States between July 2014 and November 2016, did not have legal representation.

• In 24,862 cases, or 83 percent of the 29,808 families, an immigration judge ordered a family removed. Of those ordered removed, in 21,041 cases, or 85 percent, the order was issued in absentia, i.e. the judge entered the order without the presence of a parent in the court room. Thus, immigration judges ordered the families removed without their having presented their claims for asylum or other defenses to removal.

  • ASAP and CLINIC successfully challenged the in absentia orders of 44 of their 46 clients (96 percent), with either an immigration judge or the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) agreeing to rescind the in absentia order and reopen the case.
  • Contrary to the narrative that families purposely abscond from immigration court, ASAP and CLINIC’s clients all had legitimate reasons for being unable to attend their hearings, including lack of notice, incorrect government information, serious medical problems, language barriers,
    and severe trauma or disabilities. Importantly, ASAP and CLINIC’s clients represented nationals from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras who had received removal orders from 15 different immigration courts. Most of these families were alerted to their removal orders by prior pro bono counsel who represented them while they were in detention, and who then connected them with ASAP and CLINIC’s services. The other families sought general information about asylum from ASAP and CLINIC, leading them to realize they had missed a hearing. Once families became aware of their in absentia removal orders, they overwhelmingly sought to reopen their cases to seek asylum.
  • ASAP and CLINIC’s high success rate suggests the federal government is deporting large numbers of families without providing them a fair opportunity to plead their cases in immigration court.While ASAP and CLINIC’s data runs through the end of the Obama Administration, in absentia removal orders continue to be issued in immigration courts throughout the country.In order to limit the deportation of families with strong asylum claims and other avenues for immigration relief, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and Congress should implement a variety of legislative and administrative changes that would remedy many of the problems identified in this report. These much-needed changes include improving communication between agencies, providing clearer guidance to families, and updating existing immigration court and enforcement practices.

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

This report’s findings certainly match my experience in the Arlington Immigration Court that:

  • The “no-show” rate for represented asylum seekers was pretty close to 0%.
  • More than 95% of “in absentia” orders for juveniles eventually were reopened, usually because of defective notice by DHS and/or EOIR.
  • Almost no unrepresented individuals understood the difference between the “DHS Check-In on Prosperity Avenue” and appearance at the Arlington Immigration Court in Crystal City.  Clearly, it had never been explained to them in understandable fashion upon release from custody.

I also have no doubt that the very achievable recommendations for improvements in this report could be accomplished at a fraction of the cost of today’s cruel, ineffective, policies of militarizing the border, building the “New American Gulag,” prosecuting asylum seekers as criminals, and attempting to curtail important legal and Constitutional rights.

PWS

04-20-18

Related posts:

  1. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  2. TRUMP’S MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE IS THE REAL “SOUTHERN BORDER CRISIS” — AND, A GENUINE HUMAN TRAGEDY — The Legal Tools To Address The Crisis In The Northern Triangle Causing A Refugee Flow Exist; This Administration Stubbornly Refuses To Use Them!
  3. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  4. 🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🤮👎🏻THE TRUMP REGIME & A CORRUPT SOLICITOR GENERAL HAVE CONDUCTED A WAR OF ATTRITION AGAINST AMERICAN LAWYERS ON THE FRONT LINES OF THE BATTLE TO SAVE DEMOCRACY — John Roberts & His GOP Buddies On The Supremes Have Aided, Abetted, & Encouraged It! — Constant Improper & Ethically Questionable Interference With Thoughtful, Legally Correct Lower Court Rulings Holding The Regime Accountable Have Demoralized The Profession’s Best & Bravest! — The Answer Is Better Judges For A Better America!

WASHPOST: SEN DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D-CA) HITS A “HOME RUN” WITH OP-ED — NO, RIGHTS OF CHILD ASYLUM SEEKERS ARE NOT “LOOPHOLES” IN OUR IMMIGRATION LAWS! — What’s Happened To Our Common Sense & Humanity?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/protecting-defenseless-children-is-not-an-immigration-loophole/2018/04/13/11bf9012-3e64-11e8-a7d1-e4efec6389f0_story.html?utm_term=.8c9ed9210908

Sen. Feinstein writes:

Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, represents California in the U.S. Senate.

I remember watching the nightly television news in the 1990s and seeing a 15-year-old Chinese girl trembling before a U.S. immigration judge. Despite having committed no crime, she was shackled and sobbing. She couldn’t speak English, and it was clear she had no understanding of what the judge was saying or what would happen to her.

Her parents had sent her to the United States in the cargo hold of a container ship because she had been born in violation of China’s rigid family-planning laws — and was therefore denied citizenship, access to health care and education.

By the time the girl appeared before the immigration judge, she had already been detained for eight months. Even more shocking: After she was granted political asylum, she was detained for four more months before she was released.

This situation would not be allowed to occur today because Congress has enacted laws to provide basic humanitarian protections to unaccompanied immigrant children.

The Trump administration recently reignited its attacks on these protections, with the president going so far as to call laws that protect helpless children “loopholes.”

The administration says these laws prevent immigrant children from being removed from the country, when in fact the goal is to ensure that these children are detained for as little time as possible and only in an appropriate setting, they receive adequate food and water, and that they are given the opportunity to apply for asylum.

Under these laws, each child has a right to make their case before a trained asylum officer. If the hearing demonstrates the need for protection by admission to the United States, we’re obligated to provide it. And in cases where a child does not qualify for asylum or other forms of relief, they’re returned safely to their home country.

I know the intent of these laws because I authored two of them. They are not loopholes.

It’s important to understand why Congress acted to thus ensure basic human dignity for children.

The story of the Chinese girl I saw on television was not unique — mistreatment of child immigrants was widespread. Another young girl who fled China was detained in a facility that also held minors who had been convicted of murder and rape. Despite never having violated criminal law or been accused of a crime, she was routinely handcuffed and strip-searched.

A young boy who fled Colombia after being targeted for recruitment by Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia guerrillas was held in the same detention facility for six months.

Children as young as 4 were held in secure prisons, isolated and forced to wear prison uniforms and shackles. Some were even placed in solitary confinement, even though they weren’t accused of any crime.

These stories, which were detailed by Human Rights Watch, illustrate decades of government mistreatment of children, and they were the genesis of laws Congress passed to guarantee minimum requirements for treating children humanely.

A key first step toward reform came in 1997, after years of litigation over treatment of unaccompanied minors, with a settlement called the Flores agreement. Among its provisions were requirements that the government release detained children to an adult as soon as possible, hold children who can’t be released in appropriate facilities and ensure that all facilities meet humane standard

Three years later, I introduced the Unaccompanied Alien Child Protection Act and was able to get portions of the bill included in the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008.

The two laws, combined with the Flores agreement, are intended to ensure children don’t fall through the cracks of a system that processes thousands of them each year.

They require that children under 18 be placed in the least restrictive setting that is in their best interests. Rather than holding children in detention facilities that also hold adults or criminal juvenile offenders, preference is given to releasing them to family members or appropriate sponsors, such as a family friend.

Such placements ensure that children aren’t held in indefinite detention pending resolution of their cases, which can sometimes take years. They also mean that taxpayers aren’t paying for that detention.

These aren’t loopholes, they are basic principles of common human decency. And to demonize and politicize these children is appalling.

Contrary to the picture painted by this administration, current policies don’t guarantee a child will be able to remain in the United States. Nor do these policies mean dangerous individuals are being released onto our streets.

The Trump administration’s efforts to repeal protections for children are based on an ignorance of history. The only effect of repeal would be more children held in unsafe conditions at exorbitant costs to the taxpayer.

I will oppose any efforts to change these laws, and I call upon my colleagues in Congress to join me in resisting efforts to roll back protections for immigrant children.

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

Of all the depraved xenophobic, White Nationalist, racist ravings of Trump, Sessions, Homan, Neilsen, Kelly, Miller, Goodlatte, Cotton,  and other GOP restrictionists, the war on defenseless children has to be the most totally despicable! Most of these kids are fleeing genuine dangers in their home countries. The real problem is that the US has intentionally, for political reasons, twisted refugee law so as to not recognize their legitimate status as refugees and asylees.

As someone said at an Asylum Conference I recently attended, the BIA must be the only 15 so-called “asylum experts” in the world who don’t recognize that those fleeing gang recruitment in the Northern Triangle fit squarely within the “particular social group” classification for asylum protection.

Even if they weren’t a direct fit, these children qualify for relief under the Convention Against Torture or should be given another type of humanitarian relief such as TPS or Deferred Enforced Departure. Screening them for background and rapidly admitting them into the U.S. in some status would prevent them from becoming part of the current politically created  Immigration Court “backlog,” actually caused primarily by gross mismanagement, intentionally skewed anti-asylum legal interpretations, and political manipulation by this and past Administrations.

Of course the US could absorb them all, and prosper by doing so! Indeed, we’ve absorbed approximately 11 million individuals outside the system who have largely been a boon to our economy and our society. The real problem here is the White Nationalists who deny the reality of human migration and the inevitability of changing demographics, not the migrants themselves.

PWS

04-14-18

 

 

Related posts:

  1. NEW EOIR MEMO ENCOURAGES IMMIGRATION JUDGES TO DUMP ON UNACCOMPANIED CHILDREN (“UACS”) – “When In Doubt, Kick ‘em Out” New Motto Of Gonzo’s “Captive Courts!” — We’ve Come A Long Way From “Guaranteeing Fairness And Due Process For All” In A Short Time!
  2. TAL @ CNN: TRUMP’S “GONZO” IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT POLICIES LIKELY TO FAIL AND ACTUALLY AGGRAVATE FORCES DRIVING UNDOCUMENTED MIGRATION!
  3. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  4. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”