Category: Judicial Selection

🇺🇸🗽⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️👍🏼BREAKING — THE NDPA STRIKES BACK WITH VIGOR: 70 Human Rights, Civil Rights, Due Process, Good Government, Immigration, Equal Justice, Racial Justice, Progressive, Gender Justice Organizations Rip Garland, Monaco In Letter Protesting Their Abject Failure To Address Due Process, Racial Justice, Rule Of Law Disaster At EOIR — New, Competent, Diverse, Progressive Leadership & Judges Needed To Counteract 4 Years Of White Nationalism, Biased Hiring, “Malicious Incompetence!” — No More “Miller Lite Unhappy Hour” @ DOJ!

Four Horsemen
BIA Asylum Panel In Action
Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons — This picture must be changed @ EOIR NOW! There is no excuse for Garland’s & Monaco’s failure to make the end of White Nationalist bias, immediate progressive reforms, and progressive expert personnel appointments at EOIR their HIGHEST national priority. There can be NO racial and gender justice in America while Garland operates Miller’s White Nationalist Star Chambers @ EOIR! DUE PROCESS FOR MIGRANTS CAN’T “WAIT FOR GODOT!”

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mpZhBGsqCWULOqOVQDw-16lxigY2OTRL/view

May 19, 2021

The Honorable Merrick B. Garland Attorney General of the United States U.S. Department of Justice

950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20530-0001

The Honorable Lisa O. Monaco

Deputy Attorney General of the United States U.S. Department of Justice

950 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington, DC 20530-0001

RE: The U.S. Department of Justice Must Review EOIR Personnel and Install New Leadership

To Attorney General Garland and Deputy Attorney General Monaco:

We, the undersigned immigration, civil rights, human rights, and democracy protection organizations, are deeply concerned that politically motivated personnel installed under the Trump administration remain in key leadership positions at the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR). The prior administration appointed highly problematic personnel in positions of power throughout the EOIR, from Immigration Judges to the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) members to EOIR headquarters staff. After numerous allegations of politicized hiring and mismanagement of the immigration courts, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has launched an investigation into EOIR.i The DOJ plays a critical role in the oversight and management of the immigration court system and we urge you to conduct a review of all EOIR personnel decisions made by the previous administration, immediately install new leadership to all key posts, and diversify the immigration judge corps.

DOJ and EOIR must overhaul the agency’s culture

The prior administration turned the immigration courts into a conveyor belt for deportation, systematically hiring personnel to carry out President Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda and introducing new hiring, training, and courtroom policies.ii Recent reporting has also exposed widespread sexual harassment and sexism within the agency.iii Following this investigation, the Director of EOIR was transferred to another division but DOJ and EOIR have yet to provide any plans to address the rampant misconduct.iv Critical and urgent personnel changes are needed to rehabilitate the radically transformed immigration court system that continues to cause irreparable harm and suffering for immigrants and their families.

EOIR Headquarters

We are deeply concerned that the Trump administration embedded multiple political appointees into career government leadership positions at EOIR headquarters. As Senator Durbin outlined in his recent letter, “Any such conversions to civil positions at EOIR deserve substantial scrutiny given the Trump Administration’s pernicious attempts to implement and enforce an ideological agenda by politicizing the immigration court system.”v Below are examples of Trump administration political appointees that burrowed into career positions in just the last year.

● In May of 2020, David Wetmore was hired to be the Chief Appellate Immigration Judge.vi Prior to this position, he was a political appointee for the Trump Administration, working as the Associate Deputy Attorney General in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General and, in 2017-2018, as an immigration advisor to the White House Domestic Policy Counsel.vii While in these positions, he worked closely with Stephen Miller, the well-known architect of President Trump’s anti-immigrant policies.viii David Wetmore did not have prior experience as a judge or a manager, yet he was installed in a position that serves as the general manager of all aspects of the BIA’s operation, both legal and operational.

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● In June of 2020, Tracy Short was hired to be the Chief Immigration Judge.ix Prior to this position, Tracy Short was a political appointee for the Trump Administration working as the Principal Legal Advisor for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).x While in this role, Tracy Short issued a memo on immigration enforcement, restricting ICE trial attorneys’ ability to exercise prosecutorial discretion, contributing to an immigration court backlog of over 1.3 million cases.xi Tracy Short did not have prior experience as a judge yet the position of Chief Immigration Judge is responsible for running all of the immigration courts and managing more than 500 immigration judges.xii

Appellate Judges, BIA Members, and Immigration Judges

Under the leadership of Trump Administration Attorneys General, the DOJ faced allegations of politicized hiring based on candidates perceived political or ideological views. On April 11, 2017, then-Attorney General Sessions announced that he “implemented a new, streamlined hiring plan” to reduce the time it takes to hire immigration judges.xiii However, the new plan amended the hiring process to provide political appointees with greater influence in the final selection of IJs. In addition to procedural changes, DOJ also made substantive changes to IJ hiring requirements, “over-emphasizing litigation experience to the exclusion of other relevant immigration law experience.” Both Senate and House Democrats requested an investigation with the DOJ Inspector General to examine allegations that DOJ had targeted candidates and withdrew or delayed offers for IJ and BIA positions based on their perceived political or ideological views.xiv Moreover, on March 8, 2019, then-Attorney General Barr approved a redesigned hiring plan for both immigration judges and the BIA which allowed EOIR to pack the courts with judges biased towards enforcement and/or with histories of poor judicial conduct.xv

The effects of such bias are evident in the makeup of the BIA and the immigration courts.

● BIA. Under the Trump administration, EOIR rapidly expanded the BIA from 17 to 23 members and appointed several immigration trial judges with troubling records of bias and/or abusive behavior to serve as appellate judges.xvi EOIR promoted primarily former immigration judges from the harshest immigration court jurisdictions with the lowest asylum grant rates in the nation.xvii According to a Reuters analysis, those appointments had ordered immigrants deported 87% of the time, compared to 58% for all other judges over the last 20 years.xviii

● Immigration Judges. The new hiring policies allowed the Trump administration to hire two-thirds of the more than 500 sitting immigration judges and an investigation by Reuters revealed that “judges hired under Trump ordered immigrants deported in 69% of cases, compared to 58% for judges hired as far back as the administration of President Ronald Reagan.”xix In addition to hiring an excess of former prosecutors, EOIR appointed a former employee of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) – an organization designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) – to be an immigration judge.xx

New EOIR Hires

Despite the Biden-Harris administration’s stated commitment to restoring fairness and balance to the immigration courts, the DOJ continues to rely on Trump-era policies and hiring practices that bias the immigration court system towards prosecution.xxi We are deeply concerned that instead of taking immediate steps to diversify the bench, the DOJ just appointed 17 new immigration judges and all but 1 of these judges come from enforcement-oriented backgrounds.xxii In order to begin to restore credibility to the immigration courts, DOJ and EOIR must take immediate steps to hire diverse judges who have worked for non-profits

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or in private practice. This recommendation is consistent with a 2017 EOIR-commissioned study that advised DOJ to broaden the hiring pools and outreach programs to increase diversity of experience among judges.xxvii

Sincerely,

Advancing Justice – Asian Law Caucus

Alianza Nacional de Campesinas

American Constitution Society

American Immigration Lawyers Association American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) America’s Voice

Arab American Association of New York

Bend the Arc: Jewish Action – Prince George’s County, MD Bridges Faith Initiative

CAIR-SV/CC

Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition

Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington Catholic Charities, NY // Immigrant and Refugee Services Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc.

Catholic Legal Services, Archdiocese of Miami

Catholic Migration Services

Center for Gender & Refugee Studies

Chhaya CDC

Cleveland Jobs with Justice

Farmworker Association of Florida

Free the People Roc

Government Accountability Project

Government Information Watch

Human Rights First

Human Rights Initiative of North Texas

Immigrant ARC

Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project

Immigrant Legal Defense

Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC)

Immigration Center for Women and Children

Immigration Hub

Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice

Interfaith Community for Detained Immigrants International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP)

Jewish Activists for Immigration Justice of Western MA

La Resistencia

League of Women Voters of U.S.

Legal Aid Justice Center

Louisiana Advocates for Immigrants in Detention

Lutheran Social Services of New York

Make the Road New York

Maryland Legislative Coalition

Memphis United Methodist Immigrant Relief

National Equality Action Team (NEAT)

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National Immigrant Justice Center

National Immigration Law Center

National Immigration Project (NIP-NLG)

National Network for Immigrant & Refugee Rights Neighbors Link – Community Law Practice NETWORK Lobby for Social Justice

New Mexico Immigrant Law Center New Sanctuary Coalition’s Northwest Immigrant Rights Project People’s Parity Project

Public Counsel

RAICES

Refugees International

Revolving Door Project

Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network Safe Horizon

Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF)

South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT)

Takoma Park Mobilization, Equal Justice Committee

TASSC (Torture Abolition & Survivors’ Support Coalition) International The Legal Aid Society (New York)

UndocuBlack Network

Unitarian Universalist Service Committee UnLocal

Women Watch Afrika

Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights

CC:

Jean King, Acting Director of the Executive Office of Immigration Review

Margy O’Herron, Senior Counsel, Office of the Deputy Attorney General, Department of Justice Susan Rice, Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy

Tyler Moran, Special Assistant to the President for Immigration, Domestic Policy Council Esther Olavarria, Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council for Immigration

i Senators Announce GAO Investigation of Trump Politicization of Immigration Courts as COVID-19 Crisis Rages, (Sept. 14, 2020), https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/senators-announce-gao-investigation-of-trump- politicization-of-immigration-courts-as-covid-19-crisis-rages.

ii AILA Policy Brief: Why President Biden Needs to Make Immediate Changes to Rehabilitate the Immigration Courts, (Feb. 12, 2021), https://www.aila.org/advo-media/aila-policy-briefs/policy-brief-why-president-biden-needs- to-make.

iii Tal Kopan, Bad Conduct, Leering ‘Jokes’ — Immigration Judges Stay on Bench, San Francisco Chronicle (Jan. 22, 2021), https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Sexually-inappropriate-behavior-runs-rife-in-15889003.php. iv Tal Kopan, Immigration courts director transferred – oversaw judges on bench despite misconduct, San Francisco Chronicle, (Jan. 27, 2021), https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Immigration-courts-director-transferred- 15902142.php.

v Letter from Senator Durbin to Attorney General Garland, (Apr. 20, 2021), https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Letter%20to%20DOJ%20- %20RFI%20Trump%20Appointees%20EOIR.pdf.

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vi Executive Office for Immigration Review Announces New Board of Immigration Appeals Chairman, (May 29, 2020), https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1281596/download.

vii Felipe De La Hoz, The Shadow Court Cementing Trump’s Immigration Policy, The Nation, (June 30, 2020), https://www.thenation.com/article/society/trump-immigration-bia/.

viii Tanvi Misra, Roll Call, Tweet on July 21, 2020, https://twitter.com/Tanvim/status/1285738577087934465.

ix EOIR Announces New Chief Immigration Judge, (Jul. 2, 2020), https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1291891/download.

x Hamed Aleaziz, A Top Immigration Court Official Called For Impartiality In A Memo He Sent As He Resigned, Buzzfeed News, (Jul. 3, 2020), https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/immigration-court-official- called-impartiality-memo.

xi Hamed Aleaziz, An ICE Memo Lays Out the Differences Between Trump and Obama on Immigration Enforcement, Buzzfeed News, (Oct. 8, 2018), https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/trump-ice- attorneys-foia-memo-discretion.

xii Lydia DePillis, How Dozens of Trump’s Political Appointees Will Stay in Government After Biden Takes Over, ProPublica, (Dec. 3, 2020), https://www.propublica.org/article/how-dozens-of-trumps-political-appointees-will- stay-in-government-after-biden-takes-over.

xiii Human Rights First, Immigration Court Hiring Politicization, (Oct. 18, 2018), https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/resource/immigration-court-hiring-polticization.

xiv Congressional Letter to DOJ’s Office of Inspector General, (May 8, 2018), https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/e/f/efd39e65-d848-487c-be07- 903b481046c2/483B788842A2BF3791F0585EBACFD50A.dems-to-horowitz.pdf.

xv AILA and the American Immigration Council Obtain EOIR Hiring Plan via FOIA Litigation, (May 5, 2020), https://www.aila.org/EOIRHiringPlan.

xvi EOIR Interim Final Rule, Expanding the Size of the Board of Immigration Appeals, 85 Fed. Reg. 18105 (Apr. 1, 2020), https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/04/01/2020-06846/expanding-the-size-of-the-board-of- immigration-appeals; EOIR Interim Final Rule, Expanding the Size of the Board of Immigration Appeals, 83 Fed. Reg. 8321, (Feb. 27, 2018), https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/02/27/2018-03980/expanding-the-size- of-the-board-of-immigration-appeals.

xvii Tal Kopan, AG William Barr promotes immigration judges with high asylum denial rates, San Francisco Chronicle (Aug. 23, 2019), https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/AG-William-Barr-promotes-immigration- judges-with-14373344.php; Suzanne Monyak, Immigration Board Picks Under Trump to Set Lasting Policy, Law360, May 8, 2020, https://www.law360.com/articles/1271825/immigration-board-picks-under-trump-to-set- lasting-policy.

xviii Reade Levinson, Kristina Cooke, Mica Rosenberg, Special Report: How Trump administration left indelible mark on U.S. immigration courts, Reuters, (Mar. 8, 2021), https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration- trump-court-special-r/special-report-how-trump-administration-left-indelible-mark-on-u-s-immigration-courts- idUSKBN2B0179.

xix Id.

xx Colin Kalmbacher, Barr Appoints Former Research Director of SPLC-Alleged ’Hate Group’ as Immigration Judge, Law & Crime, (Jul. 18, 2020), https://lawandcrime.com/immigration/barr-appoints-former-research-director- of-splc-alleged-hate-group-as-immigration-judge/.

xxi The White House has issued several Executive Orders and proposed legislation, the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, conveying the Administration’s transformative vision and vision and commitment to building a 21st century immigration system that welcomes immigrants and refugees and keeps families together.

xxii EOIR Announces 17 New Immigration Judges, (May 6, 2021), https://www.justice.gov/eoir/file/1392116/download.

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

Thanks, friends and colleagues, for letting your collective voices for due process, human dignity, humane values, competency, common sense, racial justice, and accountability be heard! Loud and clear!

Restoring some semblance of due process, fundamental fairness, simple human decency, and competent government should NOT be so hard and time consuming in a Dem Administration that ran and was elected on promises too do just that!

The grotesque administrative incompetence and squandering of resources continuing in EOIR’s failed, “bad joke” court system demand IMMEDIATE CORRECTIVE ACTION, NOT more wasteful studying of well-documented problems for which experts have developed clear, straightforward, well-known, readily achievable, fiscally feasible solutions!

We must keep up the fight and not let up the pressure on Garland until the egregious misconduct and gross abuses at EOIR and DOJ end, progressive leadership is brought in and empowered to solve problems, and due process, expertise, and competence are restored, promoted, and honored! That’s what we voted for, not the continuing “Miller Lite” Clown Show @ EOIR! And certainly not totally inappropriate, unjustifiable continuing appointments of “Trump-list judges!” Just beyond outrageous, compounded by the lame, disingenuous, inaccurate explanation put forth by Garland’s DOJ!

Let me make it simple: NOBODY has a “RIGHT” to be an Immigration Judge! Those with legal rights are the MIGRANTS appearing before Immigration Judges. Those legal rights are being trampled every single day at EOIR under Garland just as they were under Trump! It must stop! Now!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-19-21

Related posts:

  1. ☠️🏴‍☠️⚰️🤮NO JUSTICE @ JUSTICE! — GARLAND ISSUES WEAK-KNEED, PERFUNCTORY “NOTHINGBURGER” PROMISING “ACCESS TO JUSTICE REFORMS” WHILE DAILY MOCKING THEM IN PRACTICE IN HIS DYSFUNCTIONAL, ANTI-DUE PROCSS, INTENTIONALLY “USER UNFRIENDLY” IMMIGRATION “COURTS” — Talk About “Lack of Credibility!”
  2. ⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️JUDICIAL REVIEW — C.A. 2 — Brace Of Bad BIA Bobbles On Basics Brings “Culture Of Denial” Into Focus — Justice Will Continue To Be Illusive @ EOIR 👎🏽 Until Garland Steps Up & Replaces His Fatally Flawed BIA With Real Judges Who Are Progressive Practical Scholars In Immigration, Due Process, Human Rights, With A Firm Commitment To Bringing Racial & Gender Equity To Now-Disgraced Immigration Courts!🤮
  3. 🇺🇸🗽⚖️GEORGE W. BUSH INSTITUTE REPORT: GENDER VIOLENCE ☠️⚰️DRIVES CONTINUING REFUGEE FLOW TO U.S. — Dishonesty Of Sessions’s Misogynistic Attack In Matter Of A-B- 🤮 Exposed Again! — Yet, Garland Fails To Take Action To End Misogyny, Anti-Asylum Culture @ EOIR, Even As He Also Fails To Insist On The Restoration Of The Rule Of Law @ Our Borders! —  WHY?🤯
  4. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️”MEDLEY OF INJUSTICE” — CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO LOWER HAMMER 🔨 ON BIA: Anti-Asylum Misogyny; Illegal & Incredibly Stupid “Policies;” “Perplexing” Lack Of Legal Knowledge Highlighted In Latest Batch Of Reversals! — “Attempted rape by a gang of men, in broad daylight on a public street, is especially terrorizing because it powerfully demonstrates the perpetrator’s domination, control over the victim and imperviousness to the law. Requiring evidence of additional harms both minimizes the gravity of the sexual assault and demeans the victim.”

☠️🏴‍☠️⚰️🤮NO JUSTICE @ JUSTICE! — GARLAND ISSUES WEAK-KNEED, PERFUNCTORY “NOTHINGBURGER” PROMISING “ACCESS TO JUSTICE REFORMS” WHILE DAILY MOCKING THEM IN PRACTICE IN HIS DYSFUNCTIONAL, ANTI-DUE PROCSS, INTENTIONALLY “USER UNFRIENDLY” IMMIGRATION “COURTS” — Talk About “Lack of Credibility!”

Star Chamber Justice
“Justice”
Star Chamber Style @ EOIR;  Despite the glaring problems, obvious answers, and wide availability of new progressive leadership who should already be removing the deadwood, changing ill-conceived policies, and actually SOLVING representation and other problems at EOIR — America’s most dysfunctional “court” system —  Judge Garland would like to study (while ignoring) what’s wrong rather than take needed progressive action!

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-general-launches-review-reinvigorate-justice-department-s-commitment-access-justice

You can read it here in all of its glorious bureaucratic nothingness and hollow rhetoric:

Department of Justice

Office of Public Affairs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Tuesday, May 18, 2021

Attorney General Launches Review to Reinvigorate the Justice Department’s Commitment to Access to Justice

U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland today announced that the Justice Department will immediately begin work to reinvigorate its Office for Access to Justice and to restore the Justice Department’s role in leading efforts across government to seek and secure meaningful access to justice.

“Trust in the rule of law – the foundation of American democracy – depends upon the public’s faith that government seeks equal justice for all. That is the Justice Department’s core duty, and the mission upon which it was built. But without equal access to justice, the promise of equal justice under law rings hollow,” wrote Attorney General Garland in a memo to departmental leadership this afternoon.

The Attorney General directed the Justice Department’s leadership offices to immediately begin a review process that will engage all relevant stakeholders, both within the department and beyond. The review will initially explore, among other things, how the Justice Department and partners across federal, state, territorial, and tribal governments can alleviate entrenched disparities in our criminal justice system, address barriers to access in our immigration and civil legal systems, and advance health, economic, and environmental justice efforts. The Attorney General’s memo also charged Deputy Attorney General Lisa M. Monaco and Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta with developing recommendations regarding the resources that will be required to reinvigorate the department’s Office for Access to Justice including a staffing strategy and placement within the department in light of its responsibilities.

The Attorney General will submit a detailed plan to the President for expanding the department’s role in leading access to justice initiatives across government within 120 days.

The Justice Department first launched an access to justice initiative in 2010. Building upon that important effort, the Office for Access to Justice was formally established in 2016 to plan, develop, and coordinate the implementation of access to justice policy initiatives of high priority to the department and the executive branch, including in the areas of criminal indigent defense and civil legal aid. However, during the prior administration, the office was effectively shuttered.

In addition to leading this strategic review within the Justice Department, Attorney General Garland will also help to lead access to justice initiatives across government as co-chair of the Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable, which the President reconvened today. That initiative will bring together more than two dozen federal departments and agencies to address the most pressing legal services challenges that low-income communities, communities of color, and many others across our country face today.

Component(s):

Office of the Attorney General

Press Release Number:

21-456

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

As always, actions speak louder than words or bureaucratic promises to “think about it, and get back to you!” 

So hopefully somebody will ask Garland how the following things going on in HIS EOIR right now “assist access to justice:”

  • Continuous, ongoing “Aimless Docket Reshuffling“ at EOIR that generates an astounding, unnecessary, growing, unaddressed by Garland 1.3 million case backlog that generally disadvantages and wears down the private bar;  
  • Elimination of reasonable continuances @ EOIR for the express purpose of favoring the DHS and making it more difficult to represent individuals in Immigration Court consistent with ethical requirements relating to adequate preparation and verification of claims; 
  • “Courts” improperly located in obscure, out of the way DHS detention centers where lawyers are seldom readily available and substandard conditions are intentionally used to duress individuals into giving up viable claims;
  • Court schedules controlled by unqualified bureaucrats in Falls Church who arbitrarily and capriciously set cases without regard to the needs of parties for preparation time, ethical guidelines, or their workloads;
  • Unreasonable, shortened, cookie cutter “briefing schedules,” designed to expedite removals at the expense of quality and legal excellence and to artificially “stress out” private attorneys, many serving pro bono or low bono;
  • Kids and other vulnerable individuals forced to “represent” themselves in Immigration Courts;”
  • “Judges” who lack immigration expertise and practical experience, therefore forcing already overburdened immigration counsel to “train” these judges, who never should have been appointed in the first place;
  • Hiring of “judges” at the trial and appellate level renowned for their hostility to asylum seekers (particularly women and those of color) and sometimes with established records of bias, rudeness, hostility, and unprofessional conduct toward the private bar; 
  • Systemic exclusion of private bar immigration, human rights, clinical advocates and experts from the Immigration Judiciary;
  • Bogus, due-process-denying “deportation quotas” that discourage scholarship and thoughtful complete litigation of life or death cases in favor of meeting artificial production requirements and timelines designed to keep the “EOIR deportation railroad” running; 
  • Promulgation of “operating produces” for Immigration Courts by Falls Church bureaucrats who have never appeared in Immigration Court, without prior consultation with either sitting Immigration Judges or “stakeholders” in the private bar; 
  • Failure after two decades of wasted effort and false starts to implement even a rudimentary nationwide e-filing system, thereby increasing the burden on private practitioners; 
  • Wrong-headed, anti-immigrant “precedents” intended to discourage individuals from pursuing claims in Immigration Court and to require advocates to appeal to Courts of Appeals to have any chance of obtaining justice for their clients;
  • Following of “worst practices” designed to abuse and increase the stress for advocates in Immigration Court, including failure to follow best health and sanitation practices;
  • Failure to have any qualified progressive immigration practical scholar “on staff” at DOJ who has actually practiced before the Immigration Courts and could credibly lead the reform effort.

Actually, I’m just getting started! But, I have other things on my agenda today, and you get the point! 

Unless progressive immigration advocates “raise hell” with the higher-up in the Biden Administration and on the Hill about Garland’s gross mismanagement of EOIR to date and his lack or expertise or genuine interest in long overdue, badly needed reforms, this is just another Dem “designed to fail” cosmetic effort; yet another insulting attempt by DOJ to fob off immigrants, the private bar, progressives, and their very legitimate needs with more BS “all talk, no action” ineffective policies and plans where immediate, radical progressive, due process reforms are needed, led by progressive experts! 

To state the painfully obvious, Vanita Gupta has enough knowledge and enough contacts in the human rights/civil rights community to have gotten someone from the outside in to take control of EOIR, empowered to knock heads, transfer the Trump/Miller anti-due-process “denial club” crowd and their enablers out, and start recruiting and hiring competent administrators, well-qualified progressive judges, and instituting due process enhancing procedures. Things should already be operating much better; and, as many of us told the Biden Transition Team, having “due process take hold and start acting” would send much needed “shock waves” throughout the “go along to get along” bureaucracy at EOIR who assisted Trump and Miller in putting the “final nail in the coffin” of the already-reeling Immigration Courts.

Advocates and members of the NDPA, the first step in vindicating your clients’ legal rights is to insist that your rights, professionalism, and expertise be respected by those in power. Team Garland is effectively “giving you the big middle finger!” 🖕 If you don’t stand up to this outrageous, dismissive treatment from a Dem Administration, how can you make things better for your clients? 

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-19-21

Related posts:

  1. 🇺🇸🗽⚖️GEORGE W. BUSH INSTITUTE REPORT: GENDER VIOLENCE ☠️⚰️DRIVES CONTINUING REFUGEE FLOW TO U.S. — Dishonesty Of Sessions’s Misogynistic Attack In Matter Of A-B- 🤮 Exposed Again! — Yet, Garland Fails To Take Action To End Misogyny, Anti-Asylum Culture @ EOIR, Even As He Also Fails To Insist On The Restoration Of The Rule Of Law @ Our Borders! —  WHY?🤯
  2. PURE BS 💩 — TRUMP’S “BIG LIE” ABOUT MIGRANT APPEARANCES FOR HEARINGS BOGUS AS $3 BILL 🤮👎🏻— Replacing DHS/EOIR With Rational, Qualified, Fact-Based Governance & Real Judiciary Could Bring Appearance Rate Close To 100%!  — Two Items From ImmigrationProf Blog!
  3. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️CAMILLE J.  MACKLER @ JUST SECURITY “GETS IT!” — How Come Judge Garland & The Biden Administration Don’t? — “If we want to re-build a better, stronger immigration system, we need to start with immigration courts.” — Get Involved! Get Angry! Say No To Institutionalized Racism, Misogyny, & Dehumanization (“Dred Scottification”) @ EOIR! Force Judge Garland To Pay Attention! Demand Change, Now!
  4. ⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️JUDICIAL REVIEW — C.A. 2 — Brace Of Bad BIA Bobbles On Basics Brings “Culture Of Denial” Into Focus — Justice Will Continue To Be Illusive @ EOIR 👎🏽 Until Garland Steps Up & Replaces His Fatally Flawed BIA With Real Judges Who Are Progressive Practical Scholars In Immigration, Due Process, Human Rights, With A Firm Commitment To Bringing Racial & Gender Equity To Now-Disgraced Immigration Courts!🤮

THE GIBSON REPORT — 05-17-21 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group — Continuing To Highlight Garland’s Tone-Deaf Failure To Bring Justice, Due Process, Progressive Expertise To EOIR! — Hey Progressives & Due Process Advocates, Had Enough Of His “Amateur Night At The Bijou” Approach To EOIR? — Get Mad, Make Your Voices Heard, Demand Change, Demand Better! — Much Better!

Elizabeth Gibson
Elizabeth Gibson
Attorney, NY Legal Assistance Group
Publisher of “The Gibson Report”

COVID-19 & Closures

Note: Policies are rapidly changing, so please verify information with the government and colleagues.

 

EOIR Status Overview & EOIR Court Status Map/List:

EOIR plans to resume non-detained hearings on July 6 at the following immigration courts: Dallas, El Paso, Ft. Snelling, Harlingen, Houston, Houston – S. Gessner Road, Houston – Greenspoint Park Drive, Kansas City, Memphis, New York – Broadway, New York – Federal Plaza, New York – Varick, Portland, San Antonio, and San Juan. Hearings in non-detained cases that are scheduled at the aforementioned courts are postponed through July 3. Noncitizens (or representatives who have entered an appearance with the court) who have not received a notice of reset hearing by June 22 should expect scheduled hearings to proceed. As of July 6, 2021, all immigration courts will be holding limited hearings, applying relevant Federal best practices related to communicable disease.

 

For cases scheduled from July 6 through July 30, parties (or their representatives who have entered an appearance with the court in a case) who have not received notice of a reset hearing by June 22 should plan to attend their hearing as scheduled. All parties, including those with cases scheduled after July 30, should continue to rely on official notices from the immigration court as the best source for information regarding their hearings

 

Please note that the option to file by email at the above-listed courts will end on Sept. 4, 2021.

 

 

TOP NEWS

 

From India, Brazil and Beyond: Pandemic Refugees at the Border

NYT: Most of them are from Central America, fleeing gang violence and natural disasters. But the past few months have also brought a much different wave of migration that the Biden administration was not prepared to address: pandemic refugees. They are people arriving in ever greater numbers from far-flung countries where the coronavirus has caused unimaginable levels of illness and death and decimated economies and livelihoods.

 

Biden revokes Trump order on immigrants’ health care costs

Politico: President Joe Biden on Friday shot down a Trump proclamation that blocked potential immigrants deemed to be a “financial burden” on the nation’s health care system from coming to the United States, saying it didn’t align with U.S. interests.

 

Biden ends Trump ban on pandemic aid for undocumented college students

Politico: Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on Tuesday finalized a new regulation that allows colleges to distribute tens of billions in federal pandemic relief grants to all students, regardless of their immigration status or whether they qualify for federal student aid.

 

Biden meets DACA recipients in immigration overhaul push

WaPo: President Joe Biden met Friday with six immigrants who benefited from an Obama-era policy that protected those brought to the U.S. illegally as children. The president is trying to turn attention toward overhauling the nation’s immigration laws, but it’s an issue he has made scant progress on in the first months of his presidency.

 

Feinstein Asks Garland To Review, Expand Asylum Eligibility

Law360: U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., urged U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to overturn his predecessors’ decisions that restricted asylum eligibility for victims of domestic and gang violence, saying those decisions disregarded refugee protections established 40 years ago.

 

Documents Show Trump Officials Used Secret Terrorism Unit to Question Lawyers at the Border

ProPublica: In newly disclosed records, Trump officials cited conspiracies about Antifa to justify interrogating immigration lawyers with a special terrorism unit. The documents also show that more lawyers were targeted than previously known.

 

Border arrests rose slightly in April, but fewer minors crossing without parents eases pressure on Biden administration

WaPo: Immigration arrests and detentions along the U.S.-Mexico border rose slightly in April to 178,622, the highest one-month total in two decades, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data published Tuesday, but a decline in the number of teens and children arriving without parents eased pressure on the Biden administration.

 

Biden admin reroutes billions in emergency stockpile, Covid funds to border crunch

Politico: The Department of Health and Human Services has diverted more than $2 billion meant for other health initiatives toward covering the cost of caring for unaccompanied immigrant children, as the Biden administration grapples with a record influx of migrants on the southern border.

 

Afghans who helped the US now fear being left behind

WaPo: The fate of interpreters after the troop withdrawal is one of the looming uncertainties surrounding the withdrawal, including a possible resurgence of terrorist threats and a reversal of fragile gains for women if chaos, whether from competing Kabul-based warlords or the Taliban, follows the end of America’s military engagement.

 

Many Unvaccinated Latinos in the U.S. Want the Shot, New Survey Finds

NYT: The findings suggest that their depressed vaccination rate reflects in large measure misinformation about cost and access, as well as concerns about employment and immigration issues, according to the latest edition of the Kaiser Family Foundation Covid-19 Vaccine Monitor.

 

“Is Stephen Miller still in charge?”: Biden’s first immigration court appointees are all Trump picks

Salon: Nearly all the judges on the Justice Department list have backgrounds as prosecutors or as counselors at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), while nearly none have any experience defending migrants.

 

Now Over 8,000 MPP Cases Transferred Into United States Under Biden

TRAC: MPP cases assigned to the Brownsville, Texas hearing location continued to show the highest proportion of individuals allowed to enter the U.S.: 45 percent. However, MPP cases from Laredo, Texas which had been scheduled to start its processing over a month later made up a lot of lost ground by the end of April. Only 3 percent of its cases had been transferred into the U.S. at the end of March to await their Immigration Court hearings.

 

LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS

 

New EOIR Memos Dismantling MPP

  • PM 21-19 (PDF) Cancellation of Policy Memoranda 19-02 (Guidelines Regarding New Regulations Governing Asylum and Protection Claims) and 19-03 (Guidelines Regarding the Presidential Proclamation Addressing Mass Migration Through the Southern Border of the United States)
  • PM 21-20 (PDF) Cancellation of Policy Memorandum 19-12 (Guidance Regarding New Regulations Governing Asylum and Protection Claims)
  • PM 21-21 (PDF) Cancellation of Policy Memorandum 20-04 (Guidance Regarding New Regulations Governing Procedures for Asylum and Withholding of Removal and Credible Fear and Reasonable Fear Reviews)
  • PM 21-22 (PDF) Cancellation of Policy Memorandum 21-09 (Guidelines Regarding New Regulations Providing for the Implementation of Asylum Cooperative Agreements)

 

Rescheduling Biometric Services Appointments by Phone 

USCIS: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that applicants, petitioners, requestors and beneficiaries may now call the USCIS Contact Center (800-375-5283) to reschedule their biometric services appointments scheduled at a USCIS Application Support Center.

 

CA3 Holds That IJs and the BIA Have General Authority to Administratively Close Cases

The court held that 8 CFR §§1003.10(b) and 1003.1(d)(1)(ii) unambiguously grant IJs and the BIA general authority to administratively close cases by authorizing them to take “any action” that is “appropriate and necessary” for the disposition of cases. (Arcos Sanchez v. Att’y Gen., 5/5/21) AILA Doc. No. 21051432

 

CA3 Says IJs Have Jurisdiction over Removal Proceedings Started by a Notice of Referral to an IJ Lacking Time and Place Information

Denying the petition for review, the court held that an IJ is not deprived of jurisdiction under 8 CFR §1003.14 over removal proceedings commenced by a Notice of Referral to an IJ that lacks time and place information. (Mejia Romero v. Att’y Gen., 5/5/21) AILA Doc. No. 21051433

 

CA3 Finds Sri Lankan Army’s Mistreatment of Petitioner Did Not Rise to Level of Past Persecution

The court held that petitioner’s 2007 detention and beating by the Sri Lankan army did not constitute past persecution, and that extortion attempts by the Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) of Sri Lanka were not motivated by an imputed political opinion. (Thayalan v. Att’y Gen., 5/10/21) AILA Doc. No. 21051438

 

CA3 Finds That Conviction for Second-Degree Robbery in New Jersey Is an Aggravated Felony Theft Offense

The court held that the petitioner’s 2000 conviction for second-degree robbery in New Jersey constituted an aggravated felony theft offense under INA §101(a)(43)(G), and thus found that the petitioner was ineligible for asylum and withholding of removal. (K.A. v. Att’y Gen., 5/4/21) AILA Doc. No. 21051435

 

CA8 Says a Grant of TPS Does Not Excuse INA §240A(a)’s Admission Requirement for TPS Recipients

The court held that petitioner’s grant of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) did not remove the need for him to show that he was admitted in order to be eligible for cancellation of removal, and that his grant of TPS was not an admission for cancellation purposes. (Artola v. Garland, 5/5/21) AILA Doc. No. 21051439

 

CA9 Bucks Precedent For Immigrants With Citizen Parents

Law360: U.S. residents who are not granted legal permanent residency before they turn 18 can still get citizenship through their naturalized parents, a split Ninth Circuit ruled Thursday in a published en banc opinion that reexamined court precedent.

 

CA9 Defers to BIA’s Permissible Interpretation of Ambiguous “Date of Admission” Phrase in INA §237(a)(2)(A)(i)(I)

The court held that, for purposes of removability for crimes involving moral turpitude (CIMT), the phrase “the date of admission” in INA §237(a)(2)(A)(i)(I) is ambiguous, and the BIA’s interpretation of the phrase in Matter of Alyazji was permissible. (Route v. Garland, 5/6/21) AILA Doc. No. 21051440

 

CA9 Holds That Petitioner’s Asylum Application Was Abandoned Based on Her Failure to Submit Required Biometrics

The court upheld the BIA and IJ’s conclusion that the petitioner’s application for asylum and related relief had been abandoned under 8 CFR §1003.47(c) based on her failure to submit biometrics or establish good cause for her failure to do so. (Gonzalez-Veliz v. Garland, 5/4/21) AILA Doc. No. 21051437

 

CA9 Revives Asylum Case Over Reading Disability

Law360: An El Salvadoran woman who can’t read and whose family mixed up the month and day of her immigration court hearing can seek asylum again, after the Ninth Circuit ruled that her exceptional circumstances warranted a second shot.

 

CA11 Says BIA’s Determination That Petitioner Was Ineligible for Preconclusion Voluntary Departure Was Within Its Independent Discretion

Where petitioner argued that an IJ had failed to inform him he could apply for preconclusion voluntary departure, the court found it lacked jurisdiction to consider his petition, because the BIA had ruled that preconclusion voluntary departure was not warranted. (Blanc v. Att’y Gen., 5/11/21) AILA Doc. No. 21051436

 

Activists Ask 9th Circ. For Enviro Review Of DHS Programs

Law360: Conservation groups backed by an anti-immigration think tank asked the Ninth Circuit Tuesday to revive their claims that certain U.S. Department of Homeland Security immigration programs must undergo environmental review, arguing a review exemption leads to higher immigration numbers, which then drives ecological degradation.

 

Google files legal brief to protect work program for immigrant spouses

Verge: While that ban never came to pass, the ability for people with H-4 visas to work is still under threat from a lawsuit against the federal government. The suit, called Save Jobs USA v. US Department of Homeland Security, was brought by tech workers, who argue that H-4 holders are unfair competition for Americans looking for jobs.

 

Another Twist on Niz-Chavez

ImmProf: The question now arises whether clients with fake-date NTAs can utilize Pereira and now Niz-Chavez to defeat the “stop-time” effect for cancellation of removal, where such fake NTAs existed, even where there is a subsequent notice of hearing with a “real date” from EOIR. The short answer is “Yes”.

 

DHS Announces Process for Identifying Humanitarian Exceptions to Title 42

DHS released a statement noting that it is “working to streamline a system for identifying and lawfully processing particularly vulnerable individuals who warrant humanitarian exceptions” under the CDC Order issued under its Title 42 public health authority. AILA Doc. No. 21051330

 

CIS Ombudsman’s Office Issues Reminder for DACA Renewals

The CIS Ombudsman’s Office issued a reminder that individuals who are eligible to renew their DACA and employment authorization may submit their renewal request between 150 days and 120 days before the expiration on their current Form I-797, Notice of Approval, and on the EAD. AILA Doc. No. 21051035

 

DHS OIG Issues Report on CBP Senior Leaders’ Handling of Social Media Misconduct

DHS OIG found that from 1/1/16 through 6/30/19, 83 CBP employees violated CBP policies and guidance by posting, or commenting on, offensive content on various social media platforms. DHS OIG, however, found no evidence that senior CBP leaders were aware of more than a few of the cases, and determined that CBP and Border Patrol headquarters officials took no action to prevent further misconduct, except when directed to do so by DHS. DHS OIG found no evidence that senior CBP headquarters or field leaders were aware of offensive content posted to a private Facebook group until reported by the media in July 2019. AILA Doc. No. 21051441

 

ACTIONS

 

·         New York For All Virtual Lobby Day 5/20/2021

 

RESOURCES

 

 

EVENTS

 

 

ImmProf

 

Monday, May 17, 2021

Sunday, May 16, 2021

Saturday, May 15, 2021

Friday, May 14, 2021

Thursday, May 13, 2021

Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Tuesday, May 11, 2021

Monday, May 10, 2021

 

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

Thanks, Elizabeth!

Two items of particular interest:  First the article from Igor Derysh in Solon ripping Garland’s inexcusable “Miller Lite” hiring practices at EOIR. I am quoted, among others.

Stephen Miller Monster
What’s the purpose of winning an election if this guy remains in charge of EOIR? Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com

The absolute stupidity and betrayal of awarding the Administration’s precious first 17 Federal Judicial positions to lesser qualified, non-progressive individuals hired under tainted, exclusionary, biased, restrictionist practices established by Sessions and Barr under Miller’s negative leadership should outrage all progressives and members of the NDPA. Progressives must demand that the Biden Administration get some due-process oriented, progressive competence installed at the DOJ to straighten out EOIR — a job that to date has proved to be beyond Garland’s ability!  

They might also replace Garland’s incompetent “immigration PR team” at DOJ which continues to feed us BS and recycled Trump Administration propaganda that anybody with any familiarity with the Immigration Courts could tell you is pure, unadulterated BS! How insulting!

The millions of folks, including lawyers, caught up in EOIR’s web of restrictionist malicious incompetence deserve better than the insultingly tone-deaf Garland has delivered. Much better!

Progressive reform at EOIR is possible, and it isn’t a profound or long term project. Garland obviously isn’t up to the job. But, there are lots of progressive legal stars out here who can get the job done!

This also illustrates the continuing problem of Dem Administrations appointing AGs who are not experts in immigration and due process and who therefore fail to prioritize progressive immigration, human rights, and due process reforms. Far from being an “afterthought” or “low priority” these are the keys to equal justice and racial justice in America and probably the essential reforms on which the future of our entire democracy depends!

It also illustrates my point that in the future, nobody should become Attorney General, Secretary of DHS, an Article III Federal Judge, or an Immigration Judge unless they have represented individuals in Immigration Court — the critically important “retail level” of our justice system where the “rubber meets the road” of American justice. Right now, the “car is running on four flats” while Garland proves unable to change the tires!

We can’t afford any more of Garland’s “Amateur Night at the Bijou” approach to immigration, human rights, due process, personnel, and racial justice in America!

 

Amateur Night
America needs to end “Amateur Night” at Garland’s EOIR and bring in qualified progressive human rights, immigration, due process leaders to fix the deadly mess before more lives are lost and more taxpayer funds wasted supporting and promoting “malicious incompetence!”
PHOTO: Thomas Hawk
Creative Commons
Amateur Night

Second, the article about the grotesquely illegal abuse of the immigration bureaucracy by the Trump DHS to target and harass lawyers defending the due process rights and humanity of migrants shows just how deeply the cancer of the Trump kakistocracy penetrated into the broken immigration bureaucracy. Just another example of how completely broken, corrupt, and dysfunctional that bureaucracy has become.

It also demonstrates the treacherous stupidity of Garland continuing to tolerate problematic Trump/Miller “holdovers” and actually appointing “same old, same old” non-progressives recruited under Barr, Miller, and Trump to key “life or death Federal Judgeships.” 

Additionally, it raises the question of how on earth will Garland’s DOJ effectively and credibly investigate racial justice issues in local policing and elections while Garland is running a White Nationalist, racist, misogynist, grotesquely unfair, regressive, “worst practices court system”at EOIR. Racial justice and competency reform needs to start “at home” — with Garland’s “wholly owned court system” that bears little or no resemblance to a “court of justice!”

Progressives who played a key role in electing Biden and Harris, on the basis of promises to return due process and progressive expertise to the Immigration Courts, and effectively getting Garland his job, need to make their opposition to Garland’s indolent, inexcusable, mis-handling of EOIR known to the Biden Administration and Dem leaders on the Hill! It’s time for progressives and due process advocates to stop letting yourselves be abused by those you have put in power! 

This is NOT OK!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-19-21

Related posts:

  1. 🇺🇸⚖️🗽NY TIMES EDITORIAL MAKES THE CASE FOR ARTICLE I — “It’s hard to imagine a more glaring conflict of interest than the nation’s top law-enforcement agency running a court system in which it regularly appears as a party.” — Garland’s Abject Failure To Fix EOIR, Bring In Experts Highlighted, As Constitutional Due Process, Ethical, Human Rights, Racial Justice, Gender Equity, Diversity, & Management Farce @ EOIR Continues Under His Disgraceful Lack Of Awareness & Failure Of Courageous, Progressive Leadership!  — Progressives Can’t Remain Silent, Must “Raise Hell” 👹With Biden Administration About Garland’s Lousy Performance @ EOIR, As He Continues To Stack Immigration “Judiciary” With “Miller Lite Holdovers” 🤮 To The Exclusion of Progressive Experts Who Helped Put Biden Administration In Office!
  2. THE GIBSON REPORT— 01-02-22 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group — Garland’s Aimless Docket Reshuffling (“ADR”) Squeezes Refugees On Both Ends Of His Ludicrous Backlog, As Those Patiently Waiting Given Court Dates Nearly A Decade In The Future, While Recent Arrivals Mindlessly Rocketed To The “Front Of The Line” Struggle To Find Lawyers & Prepare Cases — Plus Other New Year News From The Dystopian World Of U.S. Immigration!
  3. 🧑🏽‍⚖️⚖️🗽🇺🇸WHO’S JUDGE IS IT ANYWAY? — The Crisis Of Independence In Our Immigration Courts! — Coming April 7, 2021! — Sponsored By The HNBA! — Don’t Miss It!
  4. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️CAMILLE J.  MACKLER @ JUST SECURITY “GETS IT!” — How Come Judge Garland & The Biden Administration Don’t? — “If we want to re-build a better, stronger immigration system, we need to start with immigration courts.” — Get Involved! Get Angry! Say No To Institutionalized Racism, Misogyny, & Dehumanization (“Dred Scottification”) @ EOIR! Force Judge Garland To Pay Attention! Demand Change, Now!

REBEKAH WOLF @ AMERICAN IMMIGRATION COUNCIL ECHOES MY CRITICISM OF GARLAND’S INEXCUSABLE FAILURE TO PROMOTE DIVERSITY, SELECT PROGRESSIVE EXPERTS IN INITIAL IJ PICKS — A Wasted Opportunity That Neither Progressives Nor The Biden Administration Can Afford!

Rebekah Wolf
Rebekah Wolf
Senior Attorney,
Immigration Justice Campaign
American Immigration Council
PHOTO: Linkedin

https://immigrationimpact.com/2021/05/13/immigration-judges-under-biden/

First Round of Biden Immigration Judges Fails to Increase Diversity

Posted by Rebekah Wolf | May 13, 2021 | Due Process & the Courts, Immigration Courts

The Biden administration announced its first round of immigration judge appointments on May 6. Unfortunately, the immigration court appointments do not show the commitment to diversity that President Biden has demonstrated in his federal court appointments.

All of the new judges had received conditional offers from the Trump administration. The current administration was under no obligation to continue with the appointments, however. Advocates expressed disappointment in the hires and lack of balanced perspectives and backgrounds. Most of the 17 new immigration judges have experience as prosecutors and/or working for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—and no experience defending immigrants.

Of the 17 new immigration judges, seven have worked for ICE and five have worked as prosecutors. Only two have worked as immigration defense attorneys, both of whom have also worked for ICE. The perceived bias of having worked for years on one side is concerning enough. But many of the appointees also do not have the substantive knowledge some believe is necessary for the position.

Former Immigration Judge Paul Schmidt commented on the appointments, saying:

“No one on that list is among the top 100 asylum authorities in the country, and that’s the kind of people they should be hiring.”

The appointments include one Assistant Chief Immigration Judge (ACIJ) and six supervisory Unit Chief Immigration Judges (UCIJs), a newly invented position. The UCIJs, only one of whom has a background in immigration law, will be working from a new Immigration Adjudication Center (IAC) in Richmond, Virginia. Like at the two existing IACs, these new immigration judges will hear cases by video-teleconference in office buildings that are closed to the public. Litigation is pending over the government’s failure to provide public information on IACs.

Immigration judge appointments strongly affect immigration court decisions. The Trump administration appointed approximately two-thirds of the 520 current immigration judges. With these new judges and along with significant court policy changes, the asylum denial rate increased from 54.6% in fiscal year 2016 to 71.6% in fiscal year 2020.

The number of immigration judges Biden appoints will also affect the immigration court backlog, currently at 1.3 million cases. Biden’s proposed budget calls for hiring 100 new immigration judges, which many experts say is insufficient. Still, the need for expediency in hiring additional judges cannot outweigh the need for a balance of experience on the bench.

Over a million people are involved in an immigration court system that is inconsistent and unfair. The Biden administration should apply its commitment to judicial diversity to immigration judge appointments, especially a diversity in perspectives and experience.

Ultimately, immigration courts will not be free of the bias inherent to being part of the same branch responsible for prosecution. As advocates have longed called for, Congress must establish Article I immigration courts for immigration proceedings to be truly fair and independent.

FILED UNDER: immigration judges

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

To date, Garland’s lousy performance @ DOJ gets an “F.” Simply not acceptable with lives on the line!

Miller Lite
“Miller Lite” – Garland’s Vision of “Justice @ Justice” for Communities of Color, Women, & Asylum Seekers.”

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-18-21

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️CAMILLE J.  MACKLER @ JUST SECURITY “GETS IT!” — How Come Judge Garland & The Biden Administration Don’t? — “If we want to re-build a better, stronger immigration system, we need to start with immigration courts.” — Get Involved! Get Angry! Say No To Institutionalized Racism, Misogyny, & Dehumanization (“Dred Scottification”) @ EOIR! Force Judge Garland To Pay Attention! Demand Change, Now!
  2. ⚖️FINALLY, HOUSE TO EXAMINE GARLAND’S DYSFUNCTIONAL, MISMANAGED, LEADERLESS IMMIGRATION “COURTS” & NEED FOR DUE-PROCESS-FOCUSED REFORMS! — Tal Kopan Reports For SF Chron!
  3. CATHERINE RAMPELL @ WASHPOST: “Biden has delivered the worst of all worlds: inhumane, immoral, potentially illegal policy — and bad-faith political blowback about “open borders” all the same.”☠️🏴‍☠️🤮🤯👎🏽⚰️🆘
  4. 🆘🤮IS 11TH CIR. GROWING WEARY OF GARLAND’S SCOFFLAW BIA? —Two Trips To The Circuit, & The BIA Still Violates Own Regulations, Ignores Precedent, Spouts Gibberish While OIL’s Defense Of This Nonsense & Malfeasance By EOIR Raises Serious Ethical Questions! — THAMOTAR v. U.S. ATT’Y GEN. — Garland’s Dysfunctional & Systematically Unjust Courts Undermine OUR Democracy☠️ — Demand An IMMEDIATE End To The Scofflaw Nonsense🤡 🧹 At OUR Justice Department! 🏴‍☠️

DEADLY ☠️ EOIR CLOWN SHOW 🤡 PLAYS ON UNDER BIDEN — ACIJ’S “Exit Interview” By SF Chron’s Tal Kopan Reveals Total Dysfunction, Systemic Abuse Of Human Rights, Waste Of Taxpayer Funds By Stunningly Incompetent DOJ — Other Than A Few Cosmetic Changes, Garland Enables Trump’s Abuses & Uses Barr’s Discredited, Politically & Racially Suspect “Judicial” Hiring Practices, Fails To Establish Due Process, Best Practices, Professionalism, Expertise, Respect For Human Dignity As Overriding Values! — Garland Presides Over “A ‘soul-crushing bureaucracy’ . . . shockingly unlike the regular American legal system.”🤮 Why Is He Ignoring Pressing Need For Progressive Reforms, Due Process Dedicated Judges?

EYORE
“Eyore In Distress” — “Help, help, help, help! I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!”
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”
Tal Kopan
Tal Kopan
Washington Reporter, SF Chronicle

From Tal:

Exclusive: Outgoing SF immigration judge blasts courts as ‘soul-crushing,’ too close to ICE

By Tal Kopan

When William Hanrahan decided to take a job managing the San Francisco immigration court last year, he hoped he could “do some good” by bringing his expertise to resolving the legal morass many U.S. migrants must navigate to stay in the country.

He knew the justice system well. He had spent 20 years as a prosecutor and more than a decade as a state judge, including two years as a chief judge, and taught law on the side for 13 of those years. He’d worked in both criminal and civil law.

But Hanrahan said he encountered a “soul-crushing bureaucracy” that he found shockingly unlike the regular American legal system. After little more than a year in the job, he called it quits this month, frustrated, he said, with a system run by the U.S. Department of Justice and subject to its political whims, a top-down management style that throttled innovation and slow-walked modernizing reforms, and a disconcerting proximity to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorneys who act as the court’s prosecutors.

“There needs to be a wholesale reform,” Hanrahan said. “On a daily basis I really felt I was being forced to rearrange the deck chairs on a ship that was going down.”

Hanrahan’s last day as Assistant Chief Immigration Judge was May 7, capping a 14-month tenure as the top manager overseeing the 25 immigration judges and dozens of staff at the San Francisco court. Before that, he was a county assistant district attorney, state assistant attorney general, state circuit court judge and chief circuit court judge during a 30-year career in Wisconsin. He also taught law as an adjunct professor at three Wisconsin colleges and universities.

He spoke with The Chronicle in an exclusive interview about what he said were perplexing management decisions and failures of court administration, exacerbated by seemingly daily “absurdities.” Sitting immigration judges are prohibited by the Justice Department from talking to the press, so Hanrahan’s insights provide a rare account from inside the courts into dysfunction that has long been described by the immigrant advocacy community.

 

More: https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Exclusive-Outgoing-SF-immigration-judge-blasts-16183235.php

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

Thanks, Tal! Those with SF Chron access should read the full article at the link!

Shocking as this is, it’s no surprise to those of us who have been following the unseemly demise of EOIR and its daily perversions of the basics of due process, human decency, and competent government!

The problems are well documented; the solutions well developed and widely distributed; the experts to fix the system available, mostly from the private sector! There is no need for more “study” and dawdling from Garland!

What is stunning and infuriating is Garland’s abject failure to stand up for human rights, human decency, the rule of law, and to bring in the progressive experts who will shake up this national disgrace from top to bottom, get rid of the deadwood, can the bad rules, vile precedents, and bloated unnecessary bureaucracy, and put some humanity, scholarship, fairness, and professionalism back in this ungodly, deadly, and completely unnecessary mess! 

Not rocket science!🚀 So, why hasn’t Garland gotten the job done?

🗽⚖️🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-17-21

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️FINALLY, HOUSE TO EXAMINE GARLAND’S DYSFUNCTIONAL, MISMANAGED, LEADERLESS IMMIGRATION “COURTS” & NEED FOR DUE-PROCESS-FOCUSED REFORMS! — Tal Kopan Reports For SF Chron!
  2. ⚖️🤯🤮GARLAND’S OHIO JUDICIAL MELTDOWN — “High-Asylum-Denying” Immigration Judges Appointed By Barr & Sessions Remain On Garland’s Bench In Cleveland Despite Referring To Migrants As “Illegals” & “Pretty Virgins!” — EOIR Disciplinary System Remains As Opaque As Ever Under Garland!🏴‍☠️ Yulin Cheng Reports @ Columbus Dispatch!
  3. 🆘🤮IS 11TH CIR. GROWING WEARY OF GARLAND’S SCOFFLAW BIA? —Two Trips To The Circuit, & The BIA Still Violates Own Regulations, Ignores Precedent, Spouts Gibberish While OIL’s Defense Of This Nonsense & Malfeasance By EOIR Raises Serious Ethical Questions! — THAMOTAR v. U.S. ATT’Y GEN. — Garland’s Dysfunctional & Systematically Unjust Courts Undermine OUR Democracy☠️ — Demand An IMMEDIATE End To The Scofflaw Nonsense🤡 🧹 At OUR Justice Department! 🏴‍☠️
  4. CATHERINE RAMPELL @ WASHPOST: “Biden has delivered the worst of all worlds: inhumane, immoral, potentially illegal policy — and bad-faith political blowback about “open borders” all the same.”☠️🏴‍☠️🤮🤯👎🏽⚰️🆘

🗽DR. YAEL SCHACHER: The Biden Administration Must Restore The Rule Of Law At The Border — With Recommendations For Action! — Experts Continue To Provide Blueprints For Garland & Mayorkas To Ignore As The Biden Administration Bobbles Chances For Life-Saving, Democracy-Preserving, Racial & Gender Justice Reforms @ EOIR & DHS!

Yael Schacher
Yael Schacher
Historian
Senior U.S. Advocate
Refugees International

https://www.refugeesinternational.org/reports/2021/5/11/addressing-the-legacy-of-expedited-removal-border-procedures-and-alternatives-for-reform

Introduction

Though he has already revoked some of the former administration’s highly restrictive policies on asylum, President Biden has thus far left in place an expulsion policy first imposed by the Trump administration under Title 42 of the U.S. Code, and based on the unreasonable assertion that public health requires such restrictive measures be essentially directed at asylum seekers. Ports of entry have remained closed to asylum seekers except to a select few exempted from Title 42 in response to a lawsuit challenging the policy. This month, the Biden administration moved to expand the humanitarian exemption process further, tasking NGOs with identifying vulnerable migrants in Mexico and getting information about them to U.S Customs and Border Protection officials (CBP) in order to speed processing at ports. In addition, since February, Mexico’s refusal to accept back expelled Honduran, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan families with young children has meant that the Border Patrol has released some families and allowed them to proceed to their destinations—often the homes of relatives—to pursue their claims for asylum there. This is currently a practice borne of the necessity of limiting congregate detention during the pandemic. But a return to the pre-existing policy and practice—a border screening process called expedited removal—will recreate long-standing problems, and the Biden administration should now consider alternatives.

Under expedited removal, border officials are tasked with asking migrants who lack valid travel documents about their fear of return to their home country and with referring them to preliminary interviews with asylum officers if they express this fear. U.S. asylum officers assess whether the migrants have “a credible fear” of persecution—that is, a significant possibility of establishing eligibility for asylum. If they fail this interview, they are removed  or remain detained (without real access to counsel) for a review by an immigration judge within seven days. A negative decision by a judge is final and leads to removal. A positive credible fear decision leads the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to place the asylum seeker in full (non-expedited) proceedings designed to secure the “removal” of unauthorized migrants, and the asylum seeker must then prove to an immigration judge (who works for the Executive Office of Immigration Review in the Department of Justice) that they merit refugee status.

Expedited removal created an entirely “defensive” system—whereby asylum seekers are presumed removable. It is also an adversarial system, and, as applied, has undermined the right to seek asylum at the border and recognition that asylum is a legal pathway to protection regardless of status. For example, prior to a determination of eligibility, U.S. officials have criminally prosecuted those who have sought refuge but have been without travel documents or have entered without inspection. Many arriving asylum seekers get screened out even before credible fear assessments can be made, as they have been unfairly rejected by CBP officers who did not ask them about fear or inform them of their right to seek protection. Those who CBP refer for credible fear interviews are required to show they can meet a complex legal protection standard just after arrival and while detained; those denied at the credible fear stage have inadequate opportunity for appeal. Expedited removal has cut off access to the federal courts for border arriving asylum seekers; as a result, asylum jurisprudence is left to develop without addressing protection issues raised by a large majority of today’s asylum seekers. In practice, expedited removal has limited the ability of Central Americans in particular to obtain access to protection and fair assessments of their asylum claims, and many have been removed to life-threatening danger.

Expedited removal has been justified as a means to promote efficiency in asylum processing. Yet over the last decade, when large numbers of families have come to the border to seek refuge, expedited removal has proven extremely inefficient. President Trump expanded expedited removal—extending its application far beyond the border (anywhere within the United States to anyone present for less than two years without authorization), putting credible fear interviews in the hands of enforcement officers, and raising eligibility standards.

On February 2, 2021, President Biden issued Executive Order 14010 on “Creating a Comprehensive Regional Framework to Address the Causes of Migration, to Manage Migration Throughout North and Central America, and to Provide Safe and Orderly Processing of Asylum Seekers at the United States Border.” The Executive Order called for a review of the use of expedited removal within 120 days. The Order suggests that the Biden administration intends to implement expedited removal in a way that is more efficient and respectful of due process after the lifting of Title 42. For reasons described in this brief, it is highly questionable that such a system will prove to be fair or even effective and workable. Thus, this issue brief suggests alternative ways the United States can have a fair and efficient system that better fulfills its obligation to provide access to protection at the border. A different reception system at the border is an essential component of a new, comprehensive, protection-oriented approach to migration from Central America.

 

. . . .

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

Read Yael’s full paper at the link.

I think the Administration could and should have taken a much quicker and more aggressive approach to restoring the rule of law at the border. In the more than six months since the election, the Biden Administration could have reached out to the private/NGO sectors, as well as  identifying qualified due process and human rights experts already on the USG payroll, who could have re-established legal asylum screening ART USCIS and reinstituted due process and the rule of law at EOIR while longer term reforms and more permanent personnel recruitments and selections were being made.

Why are brilliant experts like Yael and many others still writing papers and making suggestions (that the Administration insultingly ignores or fobs off) instead of leading from the inside and solving problems on a daily basis? What a waste of brainpower and opportunity for immediate improvment, not to mention the human lives and national values being “flushed down the toilet”🚽  at EOIR and DHS every day! 

Why are inferior “Miller Lite Holdover” candidates, recruited under a badly flawed and much criticized process, being selected by Garland at EOIR, when a potentially far superior and more diverse group of experts from the NDPA could be attracted and hired under a legitimate recruitment process that targets the many underrepresented pools of talent for key jobs at DHS and DOJ?

It is a priority, and it’s not rocket science!🚀 But, it will remain beyond the capabilities or priorities at DOJ and DHS unless or until the Biden Administration brings in some better personnel and experts to solve the problems!

Neither Garland nor Mayorkas has put the “A-Team” in place, despite lots of recommendations that they do so and the pools of far better personnel readily available in the private sector and outside the “Miller-Restrictionist In-Team” that systematically abused and disrespected immigrants’ and human rights over the past four years!

It’s frustrating to watch yet another Dem Administration unnecessarily screw up immigration law and policy. It also costs human lives and undermines the future of our national democracy.☠️⚰️👎🏻

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-17-21

Related posts:

  1. 🗽⚖️🇺🇸YAEL SCHACHER @ REFUGEES INTERNATIONAL FILES AMICUS BRIEF ON WHY “REMAIN IN MEXICO” IS A “CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY” — “When I wasn’t visiting border, I was trying to understand how the U.S. government could put in place a policy that seemed the very antithesis of what seeking asylum was supposed to be, as articulated in Refugee Act of 1980.”
  2. ⚖️🇺🇸👍🏼🗽DEAN KEVIN JOHNSON’S SUCCINCT RESPONSE TO GREG ABBOTT’S PREDICTABLE SOUTHERN BORDER BS IS WORTH A READ! — PLUS: ARELIS HERNANDEZ OF WASHPOST WITH SOME MUCH-NEEDED TRUTH & PERSPECTIVE FROM THOSE ACTUALLY LIVING ON THE SOUTHERN BORDER: “We need more lawyers and judges, not more troops or technology.”
  3. DEMS NEED TO STOP REPEATING THE BOGUS 🤥 NARRATIVES ABOUT THE (LARGELY SELF-CREATED & OVERBLOWN) “SOUTHERN BORDER CRISIS:” Channeling “Courtside,” Yale Schacher Sets Forth A Plan For Using Experts To Not Only Reinstitute But Drastically Improve Due Process ⚖️🗽🇺🇸 For Asylum Seekers! — It’s NOT Rocket 🚀 Science!
  4. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!

⚖️👍🏼😎LAW YOU CAN USE: Professor Geoffrey Hoffman Tells Us How To Use Niz-Chavez v. Garland To Fight DHS/EOIR’s “Fake Date NTA” Travesty!

Professor Geoffrey Hoffman
Professor Geoffrey Hoffman
Immigraton Clinic Director
University of Houston Law Center

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2021/05/another-twist-on-niz-chavez-by-geoffrey-hoffman.html

Geoffrey writes on ImmigrationProf Blog:

Geoffrey Hoffman previously has blogged about the recent Supreme Court decision in Niz-Chavez v. Garland.  Here is the sequel.

Another Twist on Niz-Chavez . . . by Geoffrey Hoffman

A fascinating twist on the factual scenario in Niz-Chavez is what to do if your client had an NTA with a so-called “fake date.” The “fake date” problem is one you will remember well if you practice immigration law before EOIR, and it garnered national attention in 2019 when ICE issued these fake dates for thousands of immigrants, many of whom showed up in court only to find that there was nothing on any judge’s docket to indicate they were scheduled for a hearing that day.  Reports of fake dates were prevalent in Dallas, Orlando, Miami, Seattle, and I am sure other places as well. See news articles such as this one. In addition, and as a separate matter, there was a well-known so-called “parking date” (November 29) issued on thousands of NTAs and that was also never a “real date” as everyone knew.

There is an interesting theory about why the “fake dates” were issued in the first place:  that the government was trying to respond to Pereira v. Sessions itself.  Despite its argument in federal court to try to restrict Pereira as much as possible, in practice ICE tacitly was affirming, so the argument goes, that in Pereira the Supreme Court had defined, as we have argued all along, what is and what is not a proper and valid NTA. In an effort to immunize itself from responsibility for defective NTAs without any time or place of hearing, ICE thought it might make sense to input “fake dates” in their NTAs, thus (at least superficially it would seem) immunizing itself from the argument that the NTAs were defective for “lack” of a real date and place. Then the “real date” – according to the argument – could be issued as a follow-up in the form of a notice of hearing by EOIR.

The question now arises whether clients with fake-date NTAs can utilize Pereira and now Niz-Chavez to defeat the “stop-time” effect for cancellation of removal, where such fake NTAs existed, even where there is a subsequent notice of hearing with a “real date” from EOIR. The short answer is “Yes” – and I will discuss in the rest of this article why this should be the case and why it should not come as a surprise for several reasons.

It is arguably a much stronger case for the application of Niz-Chavez because the issuance of a “fake date” that was never intended to be used by EOIR in any way is affirmatively wrong. It is not just mere negligence by leaving “TBA” with a blank date and place of hearing on the NTA.  ICE should not be able to hide behind an NTA where the information is filled in on the NTA but the information is patently false and made up or fabricated.  Just as an asylum seeker who fabricates a date or other information on their forms cannot benefit from such information in applying for relief before the court, the government should get no benefit either from their incorrect and misleading actions.  The counter-argument from the government will be that the NTA was valid “on its face” since it had some “date and place” in the document and therefore (a) stopped time for cancellation purposes and (b) conferred jurisdiction because it was “facially” valid.

This counter-argument is flawed. To embrace such a rationale would exalt form over substance. It also would allow an agency to game the system. It would also defeat the very mechanism that the Supreme Court set out in Pereira and now Niz-Chavez. Respondent should be entitled to reopen their proceedings in all “fake date” cases since a valid NTA was not filed in the immigration court.  The only remaining issue will be proof.  The respondent and his or her attorney will have to prove there was no hearing that was actually held on that day. If no hearing existed at all, then the stop time rule should not apply and the fake NTA cannot be “cured” by a subsequently issued notice by a different agency, that is EOIR, as per Niz-Chavez.

Finally, in reopening a client’s case it would be helpful  if there were  a showing of some effort on the part the respondent to check.  Proof may be difficult and EOIR FOIA and other investigation will be important. Ideally, the client or the their attorney or both went to court but no hearing was on the docket that day, and there was an effort to check that was documented in some way. If there never was receipt of the NTA at all, whether containing a fake date or not, and an in absentia order was issued, then the question becomes whether jurisdiction could have vested at all in such a case.  As I have argued, if the NTA is defective it cannot result in the vesting of jurisdiction. A fake date and place arguably cannot confer jurisdiction, even if the NTA was filed with the court.  Since there was no hearing actually scheduled the NTA should be found defective under Pereira and Niz-Chavez.

K[evin] J[ohnson]

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

Sure sounds to me like ‘affirmative misconduct” by the USG that should stop them from relying on the “fake dates. In the “old days,” INS actually used to settle potential “affirmative misconduct” cases, rather than litigate.

By contrast, today’s DOJ seems perfectly willing shamelessly to defend a wide range of legally and ethically questionable conduct and then “blow off” criticism from the Article III Judiciary. Recently, a frustrated U.S. District Judge referred to Bureau of Prisons officials as “idiots.”

One might have thought that would have spurred some type of apology and corrective action from the DOJ. But, that doesn’t seem to have registered with Garland. He just keeps rolling along with Barr’s “Miller Lite” appointments while dissing advice from progressives who actually helped put him in his current job. About the only thing you can count on from Dems is that when it comes to progressive immigraton reforms and EOIR, they’ll blow it!

Thanks, Geoffrey, for your timely and creative “practical scholarship.” Of course with better leadership, the Biden Administration could solve this problem without protracted litigation that often takes years and produces inconsistent results before the Supremes or Congress can resolve them. In the meantime, lives unnecessarily are ruined and the system becomes more inefficient and unfair.

Garland should appoint progressive practical scholars like Geoffrey to the BIA and senior management at EOIR, OIL, OLP, and the SG’s Office and let them “lead from above” — rather than having to fight bad interpretations and worst practices from the outside. 

In this case, the DHS/EOIR “fake date policy” was both fraudulent and unethical. Remember that some folks actually showed up at Immigration Court buildings, often with families in tow, after having traveled hundreds of miles, @ 3:00 AM on Sunday mornings (or on a Federal Holiday or some other bogus date) only to find out that the “joke” was on them.

And, let’s not forget folks, that thanks to the BIA’s permissive attitude (when it comes to the Government, but not with individual rights), under the now “being phased out” “Remain in Mexico Program” (a/k/a “let “em Die In Mexico”), folks basically got NTAs with the equivalent of this: “Maria Gomez, somewhere on some Calle in Tijuana, Mexico.” But, the BIA said that  this was basically “good enough for Government work.”

We should also remember that the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause guarantees the individual’s rights against the Government, not the other way around! But, you sure wouldn’t know that from reading BIA and AG precedents issued under the Trump kakistocracy.

Meanwhile, IJs and the BIA under Garland continue to “in absentia” folks for being a few minutes late for a hearing or misreading an NTA in a language they can’t understand. Anybody had a problem with their U.S. Mail lately? We have, in our “upper middle class neighborhood” in Alexandria, VA. Yet, EOIR and some Article IIIs continue to promote the “legal fiction” of a “presumption of proper (and timely) delivery” of notices sent by regular U.S. Mail.

Until, Garland has the backbone to restore ethics and the rule of law at EOIR and the rest of the DOJ, particularly by reassigning or otherwise removing those who “went along to get along” and replacing them with ethical, qualified, experts from the NDPA who will speak truth to power and hold immigration enforcement bureaucrats accountable, our justice system will continue its tailspin!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

O5-15-21

Related posts:

  1. PURE BS 💩 — TRUMP’S “BIG LIE” ABOUT MIGRANT APPEARANCES FOR HEARINGS BOGUS AS $3 BILL 🤮👎🏻— Replacing DHS/EOIR With Rational, Qualified, Fact-Based Governance & Real Judiciary Could Bring Appearance Rate Close To 100%!  — Two Items From ImmigrationProf Blog!
  2. 🆘🤮IS 11TH CIR. GROWING WEARY OF GARLAND’S SCOFFLAW BIA? —Two Trips To The Circuit, & The BIA Still Violates Own Regulations, Ignores Precedent, Spouts Gibberish While OIL’s Defense Of This Nonsense & Malfeasance By EOIR Raises Serious Ethical Questions! — THAMOTAR v. U.S. ATT’Y GEN. — Garland’s Dysfunctional & Systematically Unjust Courts Undermine OUR Democracy☠️ — Demand An IMMEDIATE End To The Scofflaw Nonsense🤡 🧹 At OUR Justice Department! 🏴‍☠️
  3. 🏴‍☠️👎🏽🤮 AIMLESS DOCKET RESHUFFLING (“ADR”) ON STEROIDS! — EOIR Dysfunction Shows What Happens When “Captive Court System” Kowtows To Political Handlers Rather Than Serving The Public! — Jason Dzubow, The Asylumist, Reports!
  4. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️”MEDLEY OF INJUSTICE” — CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO LOWER HAMMER 🔨 ON BIA: Anti-Asylum Misogyny; Illegal & Incredibly Stupid “Policies;” “Perplexing” Lack Of Legal Knowledge Highlighted In Latest Batch Of Reversals! — “Attempted rape by a gang of men, in broad daylight on a public street, is especially terrorizing because it powerfully demonstrates the perpetrator’s domination, control over the victim and imperviousness to the law. Requiring evidence of additional harms both minimizes the gravity of the sexual assault and demeans the victim.”

9TH WHACKS BIA ON IN ABSENTIA & DERIVATIVE CITIZENSHIP — Garland’s Losses Continue To Pile Up!

Hernández-Galand v. Garland — In Absentia

https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2021/05/12/17-70538.pdf

SUMMARY BY COURT STAFF:

Immigration

The panel granted a petition for review of a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals affirming the denial of a motion to reopen filed by Patricia Marisol Hernandez- Galand and her minor child, and remanded, holding that exceptional circumstances warranted reopening of petitioners’ in absentia removal orders.

Petitioners, natives and citizens of El Salvador, appeared pro se at their initial hearing. An Immigration Judge (“IJ”) orally informed Ms. Hernandez that her next hearing date was July 12, 2016, and gave her a written notice with a hearing date of “07/12/2016.” Due to chronic memory problems from a childhood head injury, Ms. Hernandez did not remember the date the IJ had told her, and because she cannot read, she asked family members to read the notice. The family interpreted the date as December 7, 2016, based on how numerical dates are typically written in Latin America, with the day appearing before the month.

When Ms. Hernandez did not appear at the July 12, 2016, hearing, the IJ ordered petitioners removed in absentia. Petitioners timely filed a motion to reopen under 8 U.S.C. §1229a(b)(5)(C)(i), contending that that exceptional circumstances warranted reopening. The IJ denied the motion, and the BIA affirmed.

** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

HERNANDEZ-GALAND V. GARLAND 3

First, the panel considered the circumstances that caused Ms. Hernandez’s failure to appear. The panel explained that Ms. Hernandez non-conclusory and unrefuted testimony in her sworn declaration about her memory problems was not inherently unbelievable, and there was no evidence in the record to contradict it. Thus, the panel concluded that the BIA erred to the extent it disregarded this aspect of Ms. Hernandez’s declaration simply because it lacked corroboration, and the panel credited Ms. Hernandez’s statements regarding her memory problems. The panel further concluded that the facts regarding Ms. Hernandez’s inability to read and her family’s misinterpretation of the hearing date were not disputed by the government or inherently unbelievable, and thus must be credited. The panel therefore concluded that Ms. Hernandez’s failure to appear was due not to her choices or a lack of diligence, but to circumstances beyond her control.

The panel further explained that the BIA abused its discretion by concluding that Ms. Hernandez should have confirmed her hearing date through the immigration court’s automated system, noting that the only evidence suggesting that she was advised of the system were the written instructions she could not read, and explaining that she and her family had no reason to suspect that the hearing was not on December 7, 2016.

Next, the panel concluded that the BIA erred in not addressing whether Ms. Hernandez had any motive for failing to appear, and whether petitioners’ in absentia removal orders would cause unconscionable results. Since the BIA made no findings as to either, there were no findings entitled to substantial evidence review, and the panel concluded that both factors weighed in favor of reopening. First, the panel concluded that there was no basis to infer that

4 HERNANDEZ-GALAND V. GARLAND

Ms. Hernandez was attempting to evade or delay her proceedings.

Second, the panel concluded that imposing the removal orders here would present an unconscionable result, explaining that the court has held that such results occur where a petitioner who demonstrated a strong likelihood of relief is removed in absentia. The panel recognized that Ms. Hernandez had not yet established a likelihood of success similar to that made in the relevant precedent, but concluded that her claims to asylum and related relief were not baseless. The panel observed that a likelihood of prevailing is not a sine qua non of exceptional circumstances; the court has made such a finding without a showing of the strength of the petitioner’s case on the merits, and the probability of relief is but one factor in the totality of circumstances to be considered. The panel concluded that Ms. Hernandez had made a compelling showing on the other factors.

Lastly, the panel explained that the IJ also entered an in absentia order against Ms. Hernandez’s minor child (“M.E.”), who was four years old at the time, and whose presence had been waived for the hearing at which he was ordered removed. Noting that an asylum officer had previously determined that M.E. had a credible fear of persecution on account of his family social group, the panel concluded that Ms. Hernandez’s failure to appear also prejudiced M.E.’s opportunity for relief from removal.

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

Cheneau v. Garland — Derivative Citizenship — En Banc

https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2021/05/13/15-70636.pdf

SUMMARY BY COURT STAFF:

Immigration

Remanding to the three-judge panel that previously denied Monssef Cheneau’s petition for review of a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals, the en banc court held that the second clause of the derivative citizenship statute set out at former 8 U.S.C. § 1432(a)(5) does not require that the child have been granted lawful permanent residency prior to the age of eighteen in order to derive citizenship from a parent who naturalized, but the child must have demonstrated an objective official manifestation of permanent residence.

Former 8 U.S.C. § 1432(a)(5) (1994) (repealed 2000) provides two different pathways to child of a naturalized parent to derive U.S. citizenship: 1) a child “residing in the United States pursuant to a lawful admission for permanent residence at the time of the naturalization of the parent” is eligible; and 2) a child is eligible who “thereafter begins to reside permanently in the United States while under the age of eighteen years.”

Cheneau entered the United states lawfully at age thirteen under a non-immigrant student visa. His mother naturalized in 1999, he applied for adjustment of status to lawful permanent resident at age fifteen in 2000, and was granted adjustment of status in 2003, after he turned eighteen. After theft convictions, removal proceedings were initiated, and Cheneau moved to terminate, asserting a claim of derivative

** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

   

CHENEAU V. GARLAND 3

citizenship. The three-judge panel in this case held that it was required to hold that Cheneau was not a derivative citizen under either pathway because this court, in Romero-Ruiz v. Mukasey, 538 F.3d 1057 (9th Cir. 2008), had held that both pathways required the child to have lawful permanent resident status.

Reconsidering Romero-Ruiz in the present context, the en banc court concluded that Congress did not intend to require lawful permanent residency for the second pathway. First, the en banc court observed that Congress chose to use two different terms in the statute, creating a presumption that the terms have different meanings. Second, the en banc court explained that the two terms have different meanings in the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”). Third, the en banc court concluded that construing the second pathway to derivative citizenship as not requiring lawful permanent residence does not render either provision superfluous, as the court suggested in Romero-Ruiz. Rather, each pathway applies distinct requirements to distinct categories of children with distinct timing, and does so with logical reason. Finally, the en banc court explained that Congress’s decision to eliminate the “reside permanently” pathway and narrow the availability of derivative citizenship in 2000 indicates that the previous version of the statute was broader.

The en banc court also explained that the history of the INA (which was enacted in 1952 and established lawful permanent residency as a term of art) and earlier naturalization statutes further buttressed its conclusion that Congress intended “reside permanently” and “lawful admission for permanent residence” to have different meanings. Further, the en banc court concluded that the tenet of statutory construction that repetition of the same language

 

4 CHENEAU V. GARLAND

in a new statute generally indicates the intent to incorporate its administrative and judicial interpretations as well did not apply, because none of the administrative or judicial interpretations preceding the INA had “settled” whether “reside permanently” could mean lawfully residing on a temporary visa with the intent to remain permanently.

Finally, the en banc court agreed with the Second Circuit that, to satisfy the “reside permanently” requirement in the second pathway, an individual must demonstrate “some objective official manifestation of the child’s permanent residence.” Here, the en banc court explained, Cheneau filed an application for adjustment of status after his mother naturalized, expressing such intent to reside permanently.

Dissenting, Judge Bress, joined by Judges Hunsaker, Bumatay, and VanDyke, wrote that the en banc court’s decision adopted the very “unreasonable” reading of the statute that Romero-Ruiz had rejected. Judge Bress concluded that the new interpretation: 1) is an untenable construction of the statutory text; 2) fails to account for decades of statutory history in which derivative citizenship necessarily required lawful permission to reside permanently in the United States—the legal backdrop against which the statutory language “reside permanently” has long existed in our immigration law: and 3) produces significant problems of practical administration, creating confusion as to who qualifies for derivative citizenship while extending derivative citizenship without authorization to a potentially wide range of additional people—including people like the petitioner in this case, who committed crimes in this country and who might otherwise be removable.

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

Congrats to my friend and NDPA superstar Kari Hong, then Director of the Immigration Clinic at BC Law, who was lead counsel in Cheneau.

Professor Kari Hong
Professor Kari Hong
Educator, Litigator, NDPA Superstar
Photo: BC Law Website

Also, it’s worthy of emphasis that in Hernández-Galand, among other legal errors, the BIA tried to “in absentia” an unrepresented 4-year-old whose mother had been found to have a “credible fear” of persecution! Nice touch!

Is this nonsense from Trump holdover BIA “judges” what we elected President Biden to continue to inflict on asylum seekers and other migrants? I doubt it! So, why is AG Garland continuing to inflict this non-expert, un-progressive BIA on us? And, why is he continuing to appoint “Miller-Lite” leftovers from the Trump regime to precious, life or death Immigration Judge positions?

The NDPA needs to take the fight for due process and the human and legal rights of your clients to the Biden Administration! Let your outrage at the lousy performance of Garland and his team in restoring due process, humanity, expertise, and professionalism @ EOIR be known in word and deed!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-14-21

Note 

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️”MEDLEY OF INJUSTICE” — CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO LOWER HAMMER 🔨 ON BIA: Anti-Asylum Misogyny; Illegal & Incredibly Stupid “Policies;” “Perplexing” Lack Of Legal Knowledge Highlighted In Latest Batch Of Reversals! — “Attempted rape by a gang of men, in broad daylight on a public street, is especially terrorizing because it powerfully demonstrates the perpetrator’s domination, control over the victim and imperviousness to the law. Requiring evidence of additional harms both minimizes the gravity of the sexual assault and demeans the victim.”
  2. 😎WIN ONE, LOSE ONE☹️:  9TH CIR. ANNIHILATES MATTER OF ARMENDAREZ-MENDEZ (SUA SPONTE REOPENING), WHILE 11TH  CIR. WOODENLY ENDORSES 👎🏻 MATTER OF L-E-A- (NEXUS)!☠️⚰️
  3. 🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🆘NO JUSTICE @ JUSTICE! — OUTRAGE OF PROGRESSIVE EXPERTS CONTINUES TO GROW AS GARLAND FAILS TO VACATE SESSIONS/BARR RACIST, MISOGYNIST, ANTI-IMMIGRANT, UNETHICAL, BIASED PRECEDENTS — “Garland’s Star Chambers” Careen Further Out Of Control As AG Dithers While Lives Of Vulnerable Refugee Women Hang in Balance & Pro Bono Advocates Are Forced To Exhaust Resources Fighting Trump DOJ’s Misdeeds That Biden Has Failed To Fix, Despite Promises — “Unforced Errors,” Lack Of Competent Progressive Leadership Continue To Plague Flawed Immigration Agenda @ Justice, Offend Dem Supporters! — Expert Professors Karen Musalo & Stephen Legomsky Call For Immediate Vacating Of Repulsive Matter of A-B- Abomination Before More Lives Of Women Of Color Are Lost!
  4. 🆘🤮IS 11TH CIR. GROWING WEARY OF GARLAND’S SCOFFLAW BIA? —Two Trips To The Circuit, & The BIA Still Violates Own Regulations, Ignores Precedent, Spouts Gibberish While OIL’s Defense Of This Nonsense & Malfeasance By EOIR Raises Serious Ethical Questions! — THAMOTAR v. U.S. ATT’Y GEN. — Garland’s Dysfunctional & Systematically Unjust Courts Undermine OUR Democracy☠️ — Demand An IMMEDIATE End To The Scofflaw Nonsense🤡 🧹 At OUR Justice Department! 🏴‍☠️

UNCONFIRMED, BUT “ON THE STREET” — TOTAL INSANITY? — Heard On The “Rumor Mill” — Unconfirmed Reports That Garland Is About To Appoint Trump Tea Party Politico To Top Judicial Post In NYC!

Was this guy

Judge Merrick Garland
Judge Merrick B. Garland
Official White House Photo
Public Realm

Really this guy

Stephen Miller Monster
Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com

In disguise all along?

An anonymous source reports:

As a follow-up to the recent IJ appointments, I thought you might be interested to know that Anna Little is rumored to be the new ACIJ in NYC. I haven’t seen that officially, though, so you would need to confirm before posting about it (and you didn’t hear it from me). I honestly know nothing about her and she might be great, but there’s a little concern given that she was appointed as an IJ by Trump just two years ago, has never worked as an IJ at a NY court, and apparently was a Tea Party political candidate.

 

https://newjerseyglobe.com/national/report-trump-administration-names-anna-little-nj-tea-party-favorite-as-u-s-immigration-judge/

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

Normally, I’d say that this is far, far too insane to be true, even in a Dem Administration! But, given Garland’s incredibly abysmal performance so far at DOJ, I can’t completely rule it out.

Progressives who helped Biden get his job need to start demanding better from this Administration. If true, and I personally don’t want to believe it, this should call into question Garland’s continued tenure @ Justice!

What kind of “Dem” Administration promotes GOP Tea Partiers as judges over better qualified progressive candidates?

True or not, the fact that this rumor is even out there shows a dramatic loss of confidence by progressive Dems in Garland in an amazingly short amount of time! It’s basically the equivalent of a rumor that Joe Biden intends to name Kevin McCarthy as his Chief of Staff. And, where, oh where, is Vice President Harris as Garland is totally undermining the Administration and grotesquely failing to reverse the course of injustice @  Trump’s broken and corrupt “Justice” Department?

We all know who won the 2020:election. So, why is Stephen Miller apparently still in charge of the DOJ?

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-13-21

Related posts:

  1. DEADLY ☠️ EOIR CLOWN SHOW 🤡 PLAYS ON UNDER BIDEN — ACIJ’S “Exit Interview” By SF Chron’s Tal Kopan Reveals Total Dysfunction, Systemic Abuse Of Human Rights, Waste Of Taxpayer Funds By Stunningly Incompetent DOJ — Other Than A Few Cosmetic Changes, Garland Enables Trump’s Abuses & Uses Barr’s Discredited, Politically & Racially Suspect “Judicial” Hiring Practices, Fails To Establish Due Process, Best Practices, Professionalism, Expertise, Respect For Human Dignity As Overriding Values! — Garland Presides Over “A ‘soul-crushing bureaucracy’ . . . shockingly unlike the regular American legal system.”🤮 Why Is He Ignoring Pressing Need For Progressive Reforms, Due Process Dedicated Judges?
  2. ☠️👎🏽BIA GOOFS UP ANOTHER CAT CASE IN 5TH CIR! — 4 Years, 3 BIA Decisions, 2 Circuit Remands, & Back To “Square 1” — What’s Missing? — Only Competence & Justice!
  3. 🏴‍☠️👎🏻🤮“HOUSTON, WE’VE STILL GOT A PROBLEM!” — A HUGE AND GROWING ONE — Garland’s Failure To Restore “Justice @ Justice” Reverberates Throughout Our Nation!🆘
  4. GARLAND/MAYORKAS UNILATERAL “IN YOUR FACE” 🤮 ASYLUM POLICIES CONTINUE TO INFLAME, OUTRAGE, PROGRESSIVE OPPOSITION! — More Haste Makes Waste “Special Asylum Dockets,” Continuation Of “Miller Lite” Racist/Misogynist Anti-Asylum Policies, Unqualified Judges, Likely To Deny Due Process, Create Aimless Docket Reshuffling, Increase Backlogs — Congress Needs To Remove Immigration Courts From Garland’s Dysfunctional DOJ — Now!

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🆘NO JUSTICE @ JUSTICE! — OUTRAGE OF PROGRESSIVE EXPERTS CONTINUES TO GROW AS GARLAND FAILS TO VACATE SESSIONS/BARR RACIST, MISOGYNIST, ANTI-IMMIGRANT, UNETHICAL, BIASED PRECEDENTS — “Garland’s Star Chambers” Careen Further Out Of Control As AG Dithers While Lives Of Vulnerable Refugee Women Hang in Balance & Pro Bono Advocates Are Forced To Exhaust Resources Fighting Trump DOJ’s Misdeeds That Biden Has Failed To Fix, Despite Promises — “Unforced Errors,” Lack Of Competent Progressive Leadership Continue To Plague Flawed Immigration Agenda @ Justice, Offend Dem Supporters! — Expert Professors Karen Musalo & Stephen Legomsky Call For Immediate Vacating Of Repulsive Matter of A-B- Abomination Before More Lives Of Women Of Color Are Lost!

 

Karen Musalo
Professor Karen Musalo
Director, Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, Hastings Law
Stephen Legomsky
Professor Stephen H. Legomsky
Emeritus Professor of Law & Former USG Senior Executive
Washington U. Law
PHOTO: Washington U. Law website

 

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/552539-one-quick-asylum-fix-how-garland-can-help-domestic-violence-survivors

Karen & Steve write in The Hill:

With the stroke of a pen, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland could restore access to life-saving protection for domestic violence survivors and others caught in the crosshairs of his predecessors’ campaign to exclude refugees. Garland can and should immediately vacate Jeff Sessions’ 2018 decision in the case known as Matter of A-B-, which all but eliminated asylum for people fleeing brutal domestic violence.

On the campaign trail Joe Biden pledged to reverse Matter of A-B- and ensure a fair opportunity for survivors to seek asylum. As president, Biden has issued an executive order directing his Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to review their asylum policies and, by August, determine whether our country protects people fleeing domestic violence in a way that’s consistent with international standards. Following this review, the agencies will issue regulations that bring our treatment of asylum seekers into alignment with our treaty obligations, and with basic principles of humanity and fairness.

But this process will span many months, and when lives are on the line, more immediate action is imperative. Every day Matter of A-B- remains in effect, people are being wrongly denied asylum and delivered into the hands of the very persecutors they’ve fled.

How did we get into this mess? In 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions personally intervened in the case of Ms. A.B., a Salvadoran woman. He used her case as a vehicle to overrule a landmark Justice Department opinion recognizing domestic violence as a potential basis for asylum. That ruling was the culmination of 15 years of advocacy and extensive consideration by government agencies and refugee law experts.

The impact of Sessions’ decision was immediate and catastrophic. Immigration judges around the country began denying asylum in cases that — pre-Matter of A-B- — should have been relatively straightforward. Though some survivors could still prevail in immigration court, Trump administration attorneys would often appeal these cases to the Justice Department’s appellate tribunal, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and get them overturned.

. . . .

One of the authors — Professor Musalo — represents a victim of Sessions’ attack on survivors: We’ll call her “Cristina” to protect anonymity. Cristina fled Honduras after enduring nearly two decades of domestic violence so severe it once put her in a month-long coma. Cristina was also terrorized by a politically powerful family that murdered multiple siblings and close relatives. When Cristina received a note threatening her with the same fate, she knew she had no choice but to seek asylum.

Cases like Cristina’s have life-or-death stakes, but with Sessions’ ruling intact they are being denied automatically. Though Cristina presented a strong asylum application, in 2020 the Board of Immigration Appeals denied her case, ruling that Matter of A-B- precluded protection. Cristina now faces imminent deportation to Honduras, where she is terrified she’ll be killed.

Merrick Garland can protect survivors like Cristina by simply vacating Sessions’ decision and related asylum rulings from Trump’s Department of Justice. This would at least bring us back to where we were before — not a perfect world, but one where asylum seekers had a fairer shot — while the Justice Department prepares a more humane and legally defensible set of principles to guide future decision-making in asylum cases.

. . . .

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

Woman Tortured
Tortured & abused refugee women’s lives continue to hang in the balance while Judge Garland diddles and runs “Miller Lite Judicial Selection Happy Hour” at failing DOJ!
Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Read the complete op-ed at the link.

If the current BIA were replaced with competent, expert, progressive, due-process oriented judges tomorrow, as should have happened months ago, this problem could be solved immediately.

I have no doubt that with real asylum experts like Karen as appellate judges at the BIA, Matter of A-B- would rapidly be turned into a blueprint for efficiently granting needed protection to persecuted women. It would also serve as a much needed tool for ending the “asylum free zones” unethically and unprofessionally established by some Immigration Judges throughout the country and starting the long overdue process for removing those unqualified Immigration Judges who are unable or unwilling to fairly grant asylum to qualified applicants and who have created an unacceptable anti-asylum, racist, misogynist culture in some parts of EOIR, in other words the “95% denial club” needs to go! Now!

Disgracefully, that culture was actually encouraged and rewarded by White Nationalist political hacks like Sessions and Barr — folks who never, ever should have had any role in asylum adjudication in America, let alone been permitted to unethically act as “judges” in cases they had “pre-decided” on a mass basis! “Fair and impartial adjudicator,” the core of American constitutional due process, became a sick joke under Sessions and Barr as the Supremes and many Article IIIs disgracefully and spinelessly looked the other way. And, Garland has done nothing to effectively address or reverse this toxic, anti-due-process, racist, misogynist “culture” despite having been told by experts that it was an emergency that could not wait!

Karen and Steve also point out how the BIA disintegrated from a tribunal that was supposed to guarantee fairness and due process for migrants, implement best judicial practices, and protect the most vulnerable from Government overreach into a tool and weapon of DHS enforcement! Yet, 100 days into the Biden Administration, BIA appellate judges who “toadied up” to the Trump regime’s White Nationalist agenda and aided “Dred Scottification” of “the other” by Stephen MIller remain, and experts who should have replaced them remain “on the outside looking in.” 

If the Biden Administration and Garland are incapable of putting diverse, qualified progressive experts into a judiciary that they actually control, what are the prospects for progressive transformation of the Article IIIs? That makes this week’s disclosure that Garland mindlessly appointed 17  “Miller Lite” Immigration Judges left over from Barr’s flawed recruitment and scummy tenure instead of properly using these valuable positions to start building a long overdue progressive, expert judiciary at EOIR all the more infuriating and outrageous!

The unmitigated, entirely unnecessary, and potentially solvable due process disaster at EOIR will prevent any meaningful progressive immigraton reforms, whether by legislation or Executive action! It’s also undermines racial justice, threatens the future of American justice, and undermines our democracy every day that it festers away, unaddressed. 

Garland must fix this problem starting now! Reassigning the 17 judges who should not have been hired and are still in probation, re-competing their positions under merit criteria that encourage applications from all sources and promote diversity, and cancelling the ridiculous plans for the unneeded, due process denying Richmond Adjudication Center (“Star Chamber”) should be just the start. 

Star Chamber Justice
“It’s a long way to Richmond,” as country singer Travis Tritt would say!

“Unit Chief Immigration Judges” are needed like a hole in the head, probably less. They were a bogus idea cooked up by now deposed former Director McHenry to aid in his misguided union busting initiative. What is needed is less bogus judicial supervision (whoever heard of qualified judges needing “supervisors”) and the accompanying time and resource wasting gimmicks, better professional judicial management, and more competent, progressive, independent, expert immigration judges with experience representing asylum applicants and other immigrants in Immigration Courts and judges with NGO and clinical experience who actually know how to manage dockets and solve problems — skills that are in perilously short supply at EOIR.

Garland needs to replace the “gang that can’t shoot straight” @ DOJ and EOIR with some progressive experts and let them start fixing problems and knocking heads of those still stuck in the Sessions/Barr era! Some of us believe that elections should have consequences. Among those is the immediate end of “Miller Lite Justice @ Justice” and the type of promised due process reforms that got Biden and Harris elected in the first place!

Miller Lite
“Miller Lite Justice Hour” is over at DOJ — It’s time for Garland to get on the ball and install progressive judges, competent administrators, and long overdue progressive due process reforms at EOIR — America’s worst and most grotesquely dysfunctional “courts,” that don’t operate as courts at all and which daily destroy the lives of refugee women and other migrants!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-09-21

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️”MEDLEY OF INJUSTICE” — CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO LOWER HAMMER 🔨 ON BIA: Anti-Asylum Misogyny; Illegal & Incredibly Stupid “Policies;” “Perplexing” Lack Of Legal Knowledge Highlighted In Latest Batch Of Reversals! — “Attempted rape by a gang of men, in broad daylight on a public street, is especially terrorizing because it powerfully demonstrates the perpetrator’s domination, control over the victim and imperviousness to the law. Requiring evidence of additional harms both minimizes the gravity of the sexual assault and demeans the victim.”
  2. 🇺🇸🗽⚖️GEORGE W. BUSH INSTITUTE REPORT: GENDER VIOLENCE ☠️⚰️DRIVES CONTINUING REFUGEE FLOW TO U.S. — Dishonesty Of Sessions’s Misogynistic Attack In Matter Of A-B- 🤮 Exposed Again! — Yet, Garland Fails To Take Action To End Misogyny, Anti-Asylum Culture @ EOIR, Even As He Also Fails To Insist On The Restoration Of The Rule Of Law @ Our Borders! —  WHY?🤯
  3. 🇺🇸⚖️🗽HON. JEFFREY S. CHASE: UNETHICAL, 🏴‍☠️WHITE NATIONALIST,⚰️ MISOGYNIST 🤮“WAR CRIMINAL” ☠️JEFFREY ROSEN TAKES COWARDLY🐓 PARTING SHOT AT REFUGEE🦸🏻 WOMEN! — DOJ Clean-Out, 🧹🪠🧻Fumigation, & Restaffing With Ethical Attorneys Can’t Begin Soon Enough!
  4. 🇺🇸⚖️🗽GARCIA HERNANDEZ, MOSKOWITZ, CHEN, & I RIP GARLAND’S CONTINUATION OF BARR’S HORRIBLE IMMIGRATION JUDGE HIRING PRACTICES  🤮👎🏻 — DOJ’s Lame, Disingenuous Defense Of Garland’s Anti-Diversity, Anti-Immigrant, Anti-Due Process, Expertise-Denying Bogus Judicial Hiring Practices @ EOIR Enrages Progressives, Scholars, Experts, Betrays Biden’s Promises, Threatens To Shatter Dem Coalition! — Report By Rebecca Beitsch @ The Hill!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽GARCIA HERNANDEZ, MOSKOWITZ, CHEN, & I RIP GARLAND’S CONTINUATION OF BARR’S HORRIBLE IMMIGRATION JUDGE HIRING PRACTICES  🤮👎🏻 — DOJ’s Lame, Disingenuous Defense Of Garland’s Anti-Diversity, Anti-Immigrant, Anti-Due Process, Expertise-Denying Bogus Judicial Hiring Practices @ EOIR Enrages Progressives, Scholars, Experts, Betrays Biden’s Promises, Threatens To Shatter Dem Coalition! — Report By Rebecca Beitsch @ The Hill!

Rebecca Beitsch
Rebecca Beitsch
Staff Writer
The Hill
PHOTO: pewtrust.org

https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/552373-biden-fills-immigration-court-with-trump-hires

From Rebecca’s article:

. . . .

The first 17 hires to the court system responsible for determining whether migrants get to remain in the country is filled with former prosecutors and counselors for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as well as a few picks with little immigration experience.

Almost none have made their career representing migrants in court.

The Thursday announcement from the Department of Justice (DOJ) initially perplexed immigration attorneys, advocates and even some former immigration judges who wondered why the group so closely mirrored the jurists favored by the Trump administration.

. . . .

It’s also a surprising move for a president that has otherwise sought to quickly reverse a number of Trump immigration policies while calling for a more humane response to migration.

“This is a list I would have expected out of Bill Barr or Jeff Sessions, but they’re not the attorney general anymore. Elections are supposed to have consequences,” said Paul Schmidt, now an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law School after 21 years as an immigration judge. That included time serving as the chair of the Board of Immigration Appeals, the highest administrative body dealing with immigration cases.

“No one on that list is among the top 100 asylum authorities in the country, and that’s the kind of people they should be hiring — not prosecutorial re-treads,” he added.

. . . .

DOJ pushed back against criticism that the new judges would contribute to a pattern of rulings that favor government attorneys over immigrants, saying it “takes seriously any claims of unjustified and significant anomalies in adjudicator decision-making and takes steps to evaluate disparities.”

“Note also that the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) continually evaluates its processes and procedures to ensure that immigration cases are adjudicated fairly, impartially and expeditiously and that its immigration judges uniformly interpret and administer U.S. immigration laws,” the spokesperson said.

But Schmidt said diversifying the attorneys on the bench is what will be needed to have a greater impact.

“You need to get some progressive immigration experts into the system who recognize what good asylum claims are who can establish precedent for granting cases and then move those cases through the system,” he said.

“I haven’t seen much evidence to back up their initial claim they want to be fair and just to asylum seekers. It’s just Stephen Miller Lite.”

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

The DOJ’s response is preposterous, further evidence Garland is the wrong person to bring “justice” back to “Justice!” No, and I mean NO, progressive immigration expert in America would call the DOJ’s judicial hiring practices under the Trump Administration fair and merit-based! These lists and the selection process were tainted by the Trump kakistocracy at DOJ. What kind of Attorney General perpetuates this utter nonsense!

Numerous detailed reports have criticized the Trump hiring plan that Garland mindlessly and insultingly furthered! Garland has access to all of these criticisms, most of which were delivered to the Biden Transition Team in one form or another. No excuses for Garland’s atrocious handling of EOIR to date!

The claim that EOIR takes claims of glaring discrepancies “seriously” is equally ridiculous and intellectually dishonest! Current TRAC Immigration data shows asylum grant rates for currently sitting Immigration Judges varying from more than 90% to 1% with a number of Immigration Judges, including several “rewarded” with appointments to the BIA under Barr, denying 98% or 99% of claims. Duh, you don’t need to be a statistician or have an Ivy League law degree to know that there is a skunk 🦨 in these woods!

These are major, unacceptable discrepancies first highlighted by my colleagues Professor Andy Schoenholtz, Professor Phil Schrag, and Professor and now Associate Dean (Temple Law) Jaya Ramji Nogales in their seminal work “Refugee Roulette” written more than a decade ago at Georgetown Law. The system is actually immeasurably worse now than it was then, as Sessions and Barr filled the Immigration Bench and packed the BIA with unqualified judges notorious for their lack of knowledge of asylum law and their anti-asylum bias. In some cases, they combined those shortcomings with allegations of rudeness and unprofessional behavior lodged by the private bar.

The NY Times figured out exactly what is wrong with the Immigration Courts — that they are not really “courts” at all by any normal measure and are operated by individuals who place immigration enforcement above due process and equal justice. Garland is certainly smart enough to have figured out what the NYT Editorial Writers had no difficulty in documenting and describing!

Neither Biden nor Garland would be in their current jobs without the efforts of progressive immigration litigators and scholars over the past four years and the energy and resources they injected into the Biden-Harris campaign when the chips were down! Progressives can’t allow the Biden Administration and Garland to continue to treat them as “chopped liver” while coddling Stephen Miller, Billy Barr, and, outrageously, even “AG for 5 minutes” “Monty Python” Wilkinson’s clearly unjustified and highly inappropriate judicial picks!

These are NOT bureaucratic jobs. “Conditional offers” aren’t “jobs,” particularly when made in the “excepted service” on the eve of or even after a hotly contested election where immigration and human rights were major issues! Immigration Judge positions are important life or death judicial positions in what is now America’s worst and most broken judiciary. In that context, Garland’s inappropriate judicial selections are totally outrageous and set a tone of continuing disrespect and disregard for some of the Democratic Party’s most loyal supporters, their expertise, and the important communities they represent!

Trial By Ordeal
Woman Being “Tried By Ordeal”
17th Century Woodcut
Public Realm
Source: Ancient Origins Website
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/trial-ordeal-life-or-death-method-judgement-004160
Trial by Ordeal
Woman Being “Tried By Ordeal”
17th Century Woodcut
Public Realm
Source: Ancient Origins Website
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/trial-ordeal-life-or-death-method-judgement-004160Gender-based asylum experts like Professor Karen Musalo, who successfully argued the landmark case Matter of Kasinga before the “Schmidt BIA,” and her protégées are among the many progressive immigration/human rights experts systematically excluded from the “Immigration Judiciary” over the past two decades. Now Garland further demeans these experts by appointing “Billy Barr/Stephen Miller Lite unqualified bureaucrats” @ EOIR rather than reaching out and seeking help from Musalo and other progressive experts in long overdue reforms of the Immigration Courts to end institutionalized racism and a culture of misogyny in asylum adjudication @ EOIR! He then has the audacity to defend his error in judgment with unadulterated BS! Whatever happened to Lisa Monaco and Vanita Gupta, as Garland’s gross mishandling of EOIR turns loyal Biden supporters into vocal, energized opponents?

It’s time for the Biden Administration to pay attention to the progressive immigration/human rights/due process bar! Otherwise, perhaps it’s time for progressives to turn their energies and talents to opposing an Administration that neither represents their views nor values their expertise and tireless efforts in support of American democracy and equal justice for all!

I, for one, did not go to the polls last fall to help more “Billy the Bigot” picks off tainted, exclusionary lists, developed in a culture that actively discouraged progressives and minority attorneys from applying, get jobs as Immigration Judges for which there is no way that they are the best candidates available! And, I’ll bet that neither did other members of the NDPA! Enough is enough! End the EOIR Clown Show!☠️🤡 And, if Garland can’t or won’t do that, then Biden needs a new AG before Garland irrevocably splinters the Democratic base with his gross mishandling of EOIR!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-09-21

Related posts:

  1. 🇺🇸🗽⚖️GEORGE W. BUSH INSTITUTE REPORT: GENDER VIOLENCE ☠️⚰️DRIVES CONTINUING REFUGEE FLOW TO U.S. — Dishonesty Of Sessions’s Misogynistic Attack In Matter Of A-B- 🤮 Exposed Again! — Yet, Garland Fails To Take Action To End Misogyny, Anti-Asylum Culture @ EOIR, Even As He Also Fails To Insist On The Restoration Of The Rule Of Law @ Our Borders! —  WHY?🤯
  2. 🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🆘NO JUSTICE @ JUSTICE! — OUTRAGE OF PROGRESSIVE EXPERTS CONTINUES TO GROW AS GARLAND FAILS TO VACATE SESSIONS/BARR RACIST, MISOGYNIST, ANTI-IMMIGRANT, UNETHICAL, BIASED PRECEDENTS — “Garland’s Star Chambers” Careen Further Out Of Control As AG Dithers While Lives Of Vulnerable Refugee Women Hang in Balance & Pro Bono Advocates Are Forced To Exhaust Resources Fighting Trump DOJ’s Misdeeds That Biden Has Failed To Fix, Despite Promises — “Unforced Errors,” Lack Of Competent Progressive Leadership Continue To Plague Flawed Immigration Agenda @ Justice, Offend Dem Supporters! — Expert Professors Karen Musalo & Stephen Legomsky Call For Immediate Vacating Of Repulsive Matter of A-B- Abomination Before More Lives Of Women Of Color Are Lost!
  3. PURE BS 💩 — TRUMP’S “BIG LIE” ABOUT MIGRANT APPEARANCES FOR HEARINGS BOGUS AS $3 BILL 🤮👎🏻— Replacing DHS/EOIR With Rational, Qualified, Fact-Based Governance & Real Judiciary Could Bring Appearance Rate Close To 100%!  — Two Items From ImmigrationProf Blog!
  4. 😰NO HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR FAMILIES IN “THE NEW AMERICAN GULAG”☠️⚰️ — As Kakistocracy Of War Criminals 🤮🏴‍☠️ Departs, Will President Biden Have The Wisdom & Guts To Move Beyond “The Dem Border Alarmists” & Get The Progressive Leaders 🦸🏽‍♂️⚖️ From The NDPA In Place To Bring Due Process & Order To The Border?🗽🇺🇸

🇺🇸⚖️🗽NY TIMES EDITORIAL MAKES THE CASE FOR ARTICLE I — “It’s hard to imagine a more glaring conflict of interest than the nation’s top law-enforcement agency running a court system in which it regularly appears as a party.” — Garland’s Abject Failure To Fix EOIR, Bring In Experts Highlighted, As Constitutional Due Process, Ethical, Human Rights, Racial Justice, Gender Equity, Diversity, & Management Farce @ EOIR Continues Under His Disgraceful Lack Of Awareness & Failure Of Courageous, Progressive Leadership!  — Progressives Can’t Remain Silent, Must “Raise Hell” 👹With Biden Administration About Garland’s Lousy Performance @ EOIR, As He Continues To Stack Immigration “Judiciary” With “Miller Lite Holdovers” 🤮 To The Exclusion of Progressive Experts Who Helped Put Biden Administration In Office!

EYORE
“Eyore In Distress” — Garland’s failure to set tone of due process, human rights, excellence, independence @ EOIR threatens U.S. Justice System — could led to downfall of American democracy!
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/08/opinion/sunday/immigration-courts-trump-biden.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Because of it’s critical importance and it’s “right on” expose of the most glaring problem in American justice today, this timely editorial is quoted in full:

Immigration Courts Aren’t Real Courts. Time to Change That.

May 8, 2021

Image

By The Editorial Board

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

President Biden took office with a promise to “restore humanity and American values” to the immigration system. If he’s going to succeed, it will take more than shutting down construction on his predecessor’s border wall. The most formidable obstacle to making the U.S. immigration system more humane and functional is invisible to most Americans: the nation’s broken, overwhelmed immigration court system.

Every day, hundreds of immigration judges slog through thousands of cases, unable to keep up with a crushing backlog that has more than doubled since 2016. Many cases involve complex claims of asylum by those who fear for their safety in their home countries. Most end up in legal limbo, waiting years for even an initial hearing. Some people sit in detention centers for months or longer, despite posing no risk to the public. None have the right to a lawyer, which few could afford anyway.

“The system is failing, there is no doubt about it,” one immigration judge said in 2018. As long as the system is failing, it will be impossible to achieve any broad-based immigration reform — whether proposed by Mr. Biden or anyone else.

The problem with these courts isn’t new, but it became significantly worse under the Trump administration. When he took office in 2017, President Donald Trump inherited a backlog of about 540,000 cases, already a major crisis. The administration could have used numerous means to bring that number down. Instead, Mr. Trump’s team drove it up. By the time he left office in January, the backlog had ballooned to nearly 1.3 million pending cases.

How did that number get so high? Some of the increase was the result of ramped up enforcement of immigration laws, leading to many more arrests and detentions that required court attention. The Trump administration also reopened hundreds of thousands of low-priority cases that had been shelved under President Barack Obama. Finally, Mr. Trump starved the courts of funding and restricted how much control judges had over their own dockets, making the job nearly impossible for those judges who care about providing fair and impartial justice to immigrants.

At the same time, Mr. Trump hired hundreds of new judges, prioritizing ideology over experience, such as by tapping former Immigration and Customs Enforcement prosecutors and others who would help convert the courts into a conveyor belt of deportation. In 2018, then Attorney General Jeff Sessions imposed an annual quota of 700 cases per judge. One judge testified before a House committee last year that Mr. Trump’s system was “a widget factory management model of speed over substance.”

By some measures, the plan worked: In 2020, the immigration courts denied 72 percent of asylum claims, the highest portion ever, and far above the denial rates during the Obama and George W. Bush administrations.

If the goal was to empty the United States of all those asylum seekers, Mr. Trump clearly failed, as evidenced by the huge backlog he left Mr. Biden. But the ease with which he imposed his will on the immigration courts revealed a central structural flaw in the system: They are not actual courts, at least not in the sense that Americans are used to thinking of courts — as neutral arbiters of law, honoring due process and meting out impartial justice. Nor are immigration judges real judges. They are attorneys employed by the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which is housed in the Department of Justice. It’s hard to imagine a more glaring conflict of interest than the nation’s top law-enforcement agency running a court system in which it regularly appears as a party.

The result is that immigration courts and judges operate at the mercy of whoever is sitting in the Oval Office. How much money they get, what cases they focus on — it’s all politics. That didn’t used to be such a problem, because attorneys general rarely got involved in immigration issues. Then Mr. Trump came along and reminded everyone just how much power the head of the executive branch has when it comes to immigration.

The solution is clear: Congress needs to take immigration courts out of the Justice Department and make them independent, similar to other administrative courts that handle bankruptcy, income-tax and veterans’ cases. Immigration judges would then be freed from political influence and be able to run their dockets as they see fit, which could help reduce the backlog and improve the courts’ standing in the public eye. Reform advocates, including the Federal Bar Association, have pushed the idea of a stand-alone immigration court for years without success. The Trump administration made the case for independence that much clearer.

In the meantime, there are shorter-term fixes that could help restore a semblance of impartiality and professionalism to the immigration courts.

First, the system must be properly staffed and funded to deal with its backlog. One way to do that is by hiring more judges, and staff members to support them. Today there are about 550 immigration judges carrying an average of almost 3,000 cases each, which makes it nearly impossible to provide anything like fair and consistent justice. Earlier this week, Attorney General Merrick Garland asked Congress for a 21 percent increase in the court system’s budget. That’s a start, but it doesn’t come close to solving the problem. Even if 600 judges were able to get through 700 cases a year each — as Mr. Sessions ordered them to — it would take years to clear up the existing backlog, and that’s before taking on a single new case.

This is why another important fix is to stop a large number of those cases from being heard in the first place. The Justice Department has the power to immediately remove as many as 700,000 cases from the courts’ calendar, most of them for low-level immigration violations — people who have entered the country illegally, most from Mexico or Central America, or those who have overstayed a visa. Many of these cases are years old, or involve people who are likely to get a green card. Forcing judges to hear cases like these clutters the docket and makes it hard to focus on the small number of more serious cases, like those involving terrorism or national-security threats, or defendants facing aggravated felony charges. At the moment, barely 1 percent of all cases in the system fall into one of these categories.

A thornier problem is how to stamp out the hard-line anti-immigrant culture that spread throughout the Justice Department under Mr. Trump, Mr. Sessions and the former president’s top immigration adviser, Stephen Miller. For instance, a 2019 department newsletter sent to immigration judges included an anti-Semitic reference and a link to VDare, an anti-immigrant group that regularly publishes white nationalists.

One of Mr. Biden’s first steps in office was to reassign the head of the immigration court system, James McHenry, who played a central role in many of Mr. Trump’s initiatives. But it’s generally hard to fire career civil servants, like the many judges and other officials tapped to promote Mr. Trump’s agenda. The Biden administration can reduce their influence by reassigning them, but this is not a long-term fix. While these judges are subject to political pressures, there can be no true judicial process.

If there’s any silver lining here, it is to be found in Mr. Trump’s overreach. The egregiousness of his administration’s approach to immigration may have accelerated efforts to solve the deeper structural rot at the core of the nation’s immigration courts.

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

We know that they aren’t “real courts;” but, they could and should be — progressive, due process oriented, model courts to boot! It will never happen, however, with the tone-deaf way Garland has approached EOIR in his first 60 days!

As progressives, immigration, human rights, women’s rights, due process, and racial justice advocates well know, Garland’s incredibly poor, downright insulting stewardship @ DOJ has already made things worse at EOIR! Every day this “fake” court system — a massive “big middle finger” to the integrity of American justice and a shocking betrayal of those who fought to preserve justice and bring the Biden Administration into power — continues is a “bad day” for equal justice, racial justice, and gender justice in America! 

It’s also an inexcusable squandered opportunity for the Biden Administration to “recreate” the broken, biased, lacking in competence “Immigration Judiciary” as an independent progressive judiciary that was promised in rhetoric, but has been mocked in action.

Can any progressive imagine how the Heritage Foundation or the Federalist Society might have reacted if Trump, McConnell, Miller, and the DOJ had treated their recommendations for creating a reactionary far-right judiciary with the callous disregard and total disrespect that Garland has shown for the blueprint set forth by progressives for rapidly reforming the Immigration Judiciary into the model progressive judiciary needed to save American justice (not to mention save the lives of many of the most vulnerable, deserving, and needy among us)?

For Pete’s sake, Garland just gave Stephen Miller, “Billy the Bigot” Barr, and “Monty Python” “deference” on his first 17 totally inappropriate “judicial picks” while telling fighters for due process and human dignity to “go pound sand.” We weren’t even given the courtesy of being informed — Kowalski and I had to “smoke it out” with the help of “DT-21.” 

“Courtesy and deference” for Miller, Barr, and “Monty Python;” total disrespect for the NDPA and the humans (“persons” under the Constitution) we represent? Come on, man! 

The BIA has “restrictionist judges” going all the way back to the Bush II political travesty supplemented by Miller, Sessions, and Barr. Yet, there is not a single, not one, true progressive practical scholar-immigration/human rights expert among this “Gang of 23”  — a group that includes a number of “appellate judges” who distinguished themselves with their overt hostility, to immigrants’ rights, rudeness to attorneys, and denial of nearly 100% of asylum claims coming before them. These are “Garland’s Judges?” 

Worse, yet another totally inappropriate “insider appointment” to the BIA by Garland— bypassing the numerous far better qualified “practical scholars” in the private sector — is rumored to be in the offing! NO! This outrageous, tone-deaf performance and disrespect for progressive human rights experts by Garland must stop!

As the editorial correctly suggests, starting to fix EOIR, even in the absence of long overdue congressional action, is not rocket science! The incompetent senior “management” @ EOIR and the entire membership of the BIA can and should be reassigned. Tomorrow!

Experienced, highly competent, scholarly, creative, courageous, progressive judges already on the EOIR bench — like Judge (and former BIA Appellate Judge and DOJ Senior Executive) Noel Brennan (NY), Judge Dana Marks (SF), and Judge Amiena Kahn (NY) — should be detailed to Falls Church HQ to start fixing EOIR and getting the BIA functioning as a real appellate court — focused on due process, high quality scholarship, best practices, and holding ICE accountable for following the law — until more permanent appointments and necessary due process reforms can be made. 

In the meantime, competent, progressive, temporary leadership can bring in temporary appellate judges at the BIA with sound records of fair asylum adjudication to end “refugee roulette” and eradicate the disgraceful “asylum free zones” being improperly run by unqualified IJs in some Immigration Courts. Reform of this disgustingly broken system can’t “wait for Godot” any longer!

As Judge Jeffrey Chase cogently stated in Law360, further “permanent” judicial appointments @ EOIR should be frozen pending development of merit-based criteria and active recruitment aimed at creating a more diverse, progressive judiciary. All existing “probationary judges” selected by Barr should have their positions “re-competed” under these merit-based criteria, with avenues of public input built into the permanent selection system.

Progressives, colleagues, members of the Round Table, members of the NDPA, if you’ve had enough of Garland’s lousy, insulting, tone-deaf, indolent, due-process-disparaging performance at EOIR let your voices be heard with the Biden Administration! What is going on at EOIR every day under Garland is not acceptable! The life-threatening, demeaning, totally unnecessary EOIR Clown Show must go! Now!

EOIR Clown Show Must Go T-Shirt
“EOIR Clown Show Must Go” T-Shirt Custom Design Concept — Continues to be in demand under Garland!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-09-21

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️”MEDLEY OF INJUSTICE” — CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO LOWER HAMMER 🔨 ON BIA: Anti-Asylum Misogyny; Illegal & Incredibly Stupid “Policies;” “Perplexing” Lack Of Legal Knowledge Highlighted In Latest Batch Of Reversals! — “Attempted rape by a gang of men, in broad daylight on a public street, is especially terrorizing because it powerfully demonstrates the perpetrator’s domination, control over the victim and imperviousness to the law. Requiring evidence of additional harms both minimizes the gravity of the sexual assault and demeans the victim.”
  2. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️CAMILLE J.  MACKLER @ JUST SECURITY “GETS IT!” — How Come Judge Garland & The Biden Administration Don’t? — “If we want to re-build a better, stronger immigration system, we need to start with immigration courts.” — Get Involved! Get Angry! Say No To Institutionalized Racism, Misogyny, & Dehumanization (“Dred Scottification”) @ EOIR! Force Judge Garland To Pay Attention! Demand Change, Now!
  3. ⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️JUDICIAL REVIEW — C.A. 2 — Brace Of Bad BIA Bobbles On Basics Brings “Culture Of Denial” Into Focus — Justice Will Continue To Be Illusive @ EOIR 👎🏽 Until Garland Steps Up & Replaces His Fatally Flawed BIA With Real Judges Who Are Progressive Practical Scholars In Immigration, Due Process, Human Rights, With A Firm Commitment To Bringing Racial & Gender Equity To Now-Disgraced Immigration Courts!🤮
  4. 🆘🤮IS 11TH CIR. GROWING WEARY OF GARLAND’S SCOFFLAW BIA? —Two Trips To The Circuit, & The BIA Still Violates Own Regulations, Ignores Precedent, Spouts Gibberish While OIL’s Defense Of This Nonsense & Malfeasance By EOIR Raises Serious Ethical Questions! — THAMOTAR v. U.S. ATT’Y GEN. — Garland’s Dysfunctional & Systematically Unjust Courts Undermine OUR Democracy☠️ — Demand An IMMEDIATE End To The Scofflaw Nonsense🤡 🧹 At OUR Justice Department! 🏴‍☠️

⚖️HON. “SIR JEFFREY” S. CHASE SPEAKS OUT ON GARLAND’S TONE-DEAF, ANTI-PROGRESSIVE, SLAP IN THE FACE TO IMMIGRATION EXPERTS! — Garland, Who Lived His Life In Privileged “Ivory Tower” Positions Thinks Those Serving In The Trenches Who Actually Know What’s Wrong With American Justice & Live It Every Day Aren’t Important & Don’t Count! — He’ll Blow You Off Until You Yank His Chain!

Jeffrey S. Chase
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog
Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges
Alyssa Aquino
Alyssa Aquino
Immigration Reporter
Law360
PHOTO: LinkedIn

17 New Immigration Judges Largely Held Prior Gov’t Roles – Law360

From an article by Alyssa Aquino @ Law360:

. . . .

However, former immigration judge and current private attorney Jeffrey Chase raised concerns over the apparent speed of the appointments. Immigration law and its administration changed vastly under former President Donald Trump, whose attorneys general used their self-referral powers to issue precedents that, in some cases, restricted the number of people who can qualify for asylum. The Justice Department has also curbed immigration judges’ discretionary powers, such as their ability to administratively close or continue cases, and instituted case completion quotas.

“If you’re looking at this whole system, shouldn’t you put your hirings on hold until you actually figure out your whole needs, how to train them and what law will apply to them?” Chase said.

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

Some seem to “fob off” these “Miller/Barr leftover” picks as just “in the pipeline!” I call BS! 

EYORE
Judge Garland to EYORE: “And you thought I was going to help you get back on your feet! Fool! It “Miller Lite” time @ EOIR! Progressives and due process warriors need not apply!”
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”

Garland has conducted more “outreach” to “Trumpist holdovers” than he has to progressive advocates and the NDPA! Was this election really about giving Garland a chance to continue the Miller, Sessions, Barr White Nationalist, misogynist, anti-asylum, anti-due-process, anti-private-bar regime @ the EOIR Clown Courts under Dem auspices?

You have no right to a Federal job until you take the oath and actually begin work. And that goes for fake “Billy Barr” and absurd “Monty Python” Wilkinson appointments too, unless these folks were in their judicial positions prior to the November elections. 

I know because I actually lived through “hiring freezes” in the Reagan and Carter Administrations. Reagan even cancelled all Federal job offers retroactively to the date of his election on Nov. 5, 1980. And, he got away with it! His action was upheld by a Federal Court even in cases of those who had moved, quit jobs, or made other arrangements in reliance on their offers of Federal employment. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1981/02/26/job-freeze-by-reagan-is-upheld/6ee18e32-b8bf-4fdd-90f1-7180c2cafd9d/?no_nav=true&tid=a_classic-iphone. 

IJs are classified as DOJ attorneys in the “excepted service.” They actually have fewer rights than most of those selected under the civil service competitive system who had job offers retroactively withdrawn by Reagan.

As far as I can tell from the EOIR release, whatever the gobbledygook about “Barr,” “Monty Python,” or “Garland” “appointments,” it appears that none of these folks actually entered onto duty in their judicial jobs until April, well after Biden’s inauguration and well after the election was decided. It was even after Garland’s swearing in. 

Indeed, the “delayed announcement” confirms that the Garland folks knew they were screwing over progressives and individuals caught in the EOIR web of dysfunction and disrespect and were hoping to “slip this in under the radar screen.” Usually, the DOJ can’t wait to tout their new “judicial” hires at EOIR!

Given the mountains of criticism from progressives about the composition of the Immigration Judiciary under Sessions and Barr, the clear efforts by them to redesign the IJ job so that it would be unattractive to most minority attorneys, experts, and due process activists, and the intentional lack of recruitment outreach to “underrepresented communities” of lawyers (basically minority lawyers), there is no excuse for Garland’s actions! These lists were tainted!

Moreover, the Biden Transition Team knew that progressive experts recommended “sea changes” in judicial recruitment, hiring, and training at EOIR and that even those already in EOIR judicial positions under Trump be carefully re-examined under “merit criteria” as to their suitability for judicial positions and their demonstrated commitment to due process for migrants and respect for attorneys. 

Additionally, all newly appointed EOIR “judges” serve a two-year probationary period during which they basically can be terminated “at will” by the AG. Even those with limited “tenure” can be transferred out of their judicial positions and moved to other jobs, as those of us “purged” from the BIA by Ashcroft for political reasons can attest. Not only was it totally inappropriate for Garland to go ahead with these “Miller Lite” hires, but he and his team should re-compete the positions of all Barr probationary appointments under revised merit criteria designed to attract a wider, more diverse, and more qualified group of applicants. 

These are NOT life-tenured appointments! At most, “probationary judges” who fail to achieve merit reappointment and were previously Federal employees might be entitled to a reassignment to another government attorney position (not necessarily an adjudicator position) at the same pay level. That’s essentially what happened to those of us “purged” from the BIA by Ashcroft in 2003. We were’t even invited to apply for or interviewed for our own jobs! The whole process was done without application of any “merit principles” whatsoever! 

The process under which these 17 were selected was intentionally designed to exclude progressives, minorities, and other experts who would be committed as judges to upholding due process and the legal rights of asylum seekers and other migrants! Garland’s message is clear: Immigration expertise, experience representing individuals in Immigration Court, and commitment to enforcing due process and holding ICE accountable DON’T COUNT!

Republicans play “hardball.” Garland, like Dems before him, is a wimp!

Here are the “stats” that should stand out to NDPA members for these 17 tainted “judicial selections:”

Number of known AILA members: 0 (maybe 1)

Number of clinical professors: 0

Number of human rights experts: 0

Number of noted immigration, human rights, immigration scholars: 0

Number of NGO attorneys: 0

Number who represented an individual in Immigration Court in past year: unknown, but max of 2

Number who have been involved in advocating for positive immigration reform: 0

Number who would appear on any list of the “top 100 immigration experts in America:” 0

Number who have won awards for pro bono litigation representing migrants during last 4 years:  0

Number with recently published immigration scholarship: 0

Number with experience administering major pro bono programs: 0

Number with recent community service awards: 0

Number involved with Round Table amicus briefing efforts: 0 

Number who have appeared in video training sessions for immigration advocates in past year: 0

Number who have authored or contributed to “white papers” on improving due process in Immigration Court: 0

Number who applied under “Trump-era” announcements and procedures: 17

Number of progressive judges confirmed and sitting on Article III Courts under Biden: 0

Number of progressive Immigration Judges appointed under Biden: 0

Number of regressive Immigration Judges appointed under Biden: 17

17 Immigration Judges are NOT going to make a statistical difference in eliminating or reducing a largely self-created 1.3 million cases backlog! But, they will make a huge difference in the lives of individuals and their lawyers caught up in this designed to fail system. Moreover, initial appointments set a tone. 

Additionally, as already pointed out by others, Garland’s continued staffing of “Miller Lite Star Chambers” like the unnecessary and due process denying “Richmond VTC ‘Court’” — without any discussion with stakeholders and advocacy groups who have unanimously opposed it — is a total disgrace!

Folks in the NDPA, Garland is sending you a message: GO POUND SAND! I CARE MORE ABOUT “HUMORING” THOSE SELECTED BY STEPHEN MILLER, BILLY BARR, & “MONTY PYTHON” THAN I DO ABOUT YOU, YOUR EXPERTISE, AND THE HUMANS YOU REPRESENT! AND, I FULLY INTEND TO SUBJECT YOU AND YOUR CLIENTS TO THE SAME “DUE PROCESS DENYING, DEMEANING VTC STAR CHAMBERS” THAT THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION DESIGNED, OVER YOUR OBJECTIONS, TO KEEP THE “EOIR DEPORTATION RAILROAD RUNNING!”

Heck, I’m retired. But, if I were out there in the trenches like most of the members of the NDPA, I’d take this personally, as exactly the insult and put down by Garland that it is and react accordingly. After eight years of Bushie political hacks, eight years of Obama’s indolent approach to EOIR, four years of “Gonzo” Sessions, Whitaker, “Billy the Bigot,” and “Monty Python” we deserve better! 

It’s up to you to get energized, get mad, get even, and force Garland and his outrageous “Star Chamber Courts” to their knees! Because if you’re waiting for him to “wake up and get religion on EOIR,” read your letters, act on your “white papers,” respect your achievements, or treat your clients as humans, you’ll be waiting in vain!

Star Chamber Justice
“Judge Garland loves what we do here in the VTC! He wants us to expand! This kind of ‘judging’ gets the quickest results! And, you don’t need to know any immigration law!”

🇺🇸🗽🗽⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-08-21

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️CAMILLE J.  MACKLER @ JUST SECURITY “GETS IT!” — How Come Judge Garland & The Biden Administration Don’t? — “If we want to re-build a better, stronger immigration system, we need to start with immigration courts.” — Get Involved! Get Angry! Say No To Institutionalized Racism, Misogyny, & Dehumanization (“Dred Scottification”) @ EOIR! Force Judge Garland To Pay Attention! Demand Change, Now!
  2. 🇺🇸⚖️🗽NY TIMES EDITORIAL MAKES THE CASE FOR ARTICLE I — “It’s hard to imagine a more glaring conflict of interest than the nation’s top law-enforcement agency running a court system in which it regularly appears as a party.” — Garland’s Abject Failure To Fix EOIR, Bring In Experts Highlighted, As Constitutional Due Process, Ethical, Human Rights, Racial Justice, Gender Equity, Diversity, & Management Farce @ EOIR Continues Under His Disgraceful Lack Of Awareness & Failure Of Courageous, Progressive Leadership!  — Progressives Can’t Remain Silent, Must “Raise Hell” 👹With Biden Administration About Garland’s Lousy Performance @ EOIR, As He Continues To Stack Immigration “Judiciary” With “Miller Lite Holdovers” 🤮 To The Exclusion of Progressive Experts Who Helped Put Biden Administration In Office!
  3. ⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️JUDICIAL REVIEW — C.A. 2 — Brace Of Bad BIA Bobbles On Basics Brings “Culture Of Denial” Into Focus — Justice Will Continue To Be Illusive @ EOIR 👎🏽 Until Garland Steps Up & Replaces His Fatally Flawed BIA With Real Judges Who Are Progressive Practical Scholars In Immigration, Due Process, Human Rights, With A Firm Commitment To Bringing Racial & Gender Equity To Now-Disgraced Immigration Courts!🤮
  4. 🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🆘NO JUSTICE @ JUSTICE! — OUTRAGE OF PROGRESSIVE EXPERTS CONTINUES TO GROW AS GARLAND FAILS TO VACATE SESSIONS/BARR RACIST, MISOGYNIST, ANTI-IMMIGRANT, UNETHICAL, BIASED PRECEDENTS — “Garland’s Star Chambers” Careen Further Out Of Control As AG Dithers While Lives Of Vulnerable Refugee Women Hang in Balance & Pro Bono Advocates Are Forced To Exhaust Resources Fighting Trump DOJ’s Misdeeds That Biden Has Failed To Fix, Despite Promises — “Unforced Errors,” Lack Of Competent Progressive Leadership Continue To Plague Flawed Immigration Agenda @ Justice, Offend Dem Supporters! — Expert Professors Karen Musalo & Stephen Legomsky Call For Immediate Vacating Of Repulsive Matter of A-B- Abomination Before More Lives Of Women Of Color Are Lost!

😎🗽👍⚖️FINALLY, SOME GOOD NEWS FROM THE EOIR TOWER! — Trump “Burrower” 🤮👎 Carl C. Risch Out As Deputy Director!

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Courtside Exclusive

May 7, 2021

Hamed Aleaziz @ BuzzFeed News tweeted https://twitter.com/Haleaziz/status/1390724674825326593?s=20 this afternoon that “Trump burrower” Carl C. Risch has resigned as Deputy Director @ EOIR. This move fulfills a prediction made earlier this week by Courtside source “DT-21.” https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/05/05/🤮👎🏻shocking-betrayal-justice-garland-disses-progressive-experts-with-secret-appointments-of-17-unqualified-immigration-judges-n/

It follows an inquiry from Senate Judiciary Chair Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and others to the Garland DOJ about the much-criticized and obviously questionable last minute appointment of the former DOS politico to a SES job at EOIR. Chairman Durbin, in turn, was no doubt spurred into action by complaints from members of the NDPA and others in the due process advocacy community. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/04/20/⚖%EF%B8%8Fas-garland-dawdles-chairman-dick-durban-d-il-homes-in-on-eoir-deputy-director-illegally-appointed-burrower-carl-c-risch-what-should-have-b/

Risch’s last-minute appointment at EOIR was particularly egregious, since he had no known Immigration Court experience. EOIR currently is in an existential crisis that threatens to topple the entire U.S. Justice System, with a highly politicized “judiciary” and an astounding, largely self-inflicted 1.3 million case backlog.

That  backlog multiplied much faster than the additional Immigration Judges that Sessions and Barr used to “pack” the Immigration Courts with restrictionists and judges sympathetic to ICE enforcdement and often hostile to asylum seekers and their lawyers. As many experts have observed, the Trump era hires often had highly questionable judicial qualifications, many lacking any immigration law expertise or experience. Perhaps, that’s a reason why the backlog continued to grow exponentially even as Sessions and Barr tried gimmick after gimmick, a number of them blatantly illegal and enjoined by Federal Courts, to cut corners and “rev up” the “Trump Deportation Railroad @ EOIR.”

Obviously, throwing an unqualified political hack like Risch into this mess in a senior “management” position was just another example of the Trump Administration’s abuse of government resources and manipulation of personnel practices @ DOJ. It took some time for Judge Garland to get this one right. But, better late than never.

However encouraging the news of Risch’s departure might be, there is still much more “housecleaning” to be done by Garland at the EOIR Tower. That should start with BIA Chair David Wetmore, a Stephen Miller/Gene Hamilton crony with no positive reputation for scholarship or expertise in the immigration/human rights community and no known experience representing asylum seekers or other migrants in Immigration Court.

It’s little wonder that with “appellate judges” who have earned little respect in the legal community at large comprising the BIA, the system is a mess, turning out poor work product and elementary errors, “outed” by the Article IIIs on a regular basis.

Due Process Forever!

 

PWS

05-07-21

 

Related posts:

  1. 🇺🇸⚖️🗽NY TIMES EDITORIAL MAKES THE CASE FOR ARTICLE I — “It’s hard to imagine a more glaring conflict of interest than the nation’s top law-enforcement agency running a court system in which it regularly appears as a party.” — Garland’s Abject Failure To Fix EOIR, Bring In Experts Highlighted, As Constitutional Due Process, Ethical, Human Rights, Racial Justice, Gender Equity, Diversity, & Management Farce @ EOIR Continues Under His Disgraceful Lack Of Awareness & Failure Of Courageous, Progressive Leadership!  — Progressives Can’t Remain Silent, Must “Raise Hell” 👹With Biden Administration About Garland’s Lousy Performance @ EOIR, As He Continues To Stack Immigration “Judiciary” With “Miller Lite Holdovers” 🤮 To The Exclusion of Progressive Experts Who Helped Put Biden Administration In Office!
  2. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️CAMILLE J.  MACKLER @ JUST SECURITY “GETS IT!” — How Come Judge Garland & The Biden Administration Don’t? — “If we want to re-build a better, stronger immigration system, we need to start with immigration courts.” — Get Involved! Get Angry! Say No To Institutionalized Racism, Misogyny, & Dehumanization (“Dred Scottification”) @ EOIR! Force Judge Garland To Pay Attention! Demand Change, Now!
  3. POWER FAILURE @ GARLAND’S DOJ THREATENS LIVES, WASTES MONEY, ENDANGERS BIDEN’S SOCIAL JUSTICE AGENDA, TURNS ALLIES INTO OPPONENTS! — NBC News “Gets It!” — Why Doesn’t Judge Garland? — Unqualified Trump/Miller “Burrower” Carl C. Risch Draws Fat Salary From Judge G. @ EOIR As Asylum Seekers, Battered Women, People Of Color Continue To Be Abused In His “Star Chambers!” — Outrage At Garland’s Lousy Performance On EOIR Reform Grows Among Members Of The Due Process Army!
  4. THE PROBLEM WITH JUSTICE @ JUSTICE, IN A NUTSHELL — Super-Talented Houston Immigration Lawyer Elizabeth J. Mendoza Knows Exactly What’s Wrong @ EOIR & Succinctly Tells Us How To Fix It In This Paper Published By The Baker Institute For Public Policy @ Rice University — So Just Why Are Elizabeth & Other NDPA Talents Like Her Writing Papers, Drafting Letters (Likely To Be Ignored), & Filing Lawsuits Against Garland While Chaos & Incompetence Reigns @ EOIR & Garland Appoints 17 Absurdly Lesser Qualified Individuals Selected By Barr/Miller As His “Initial Class Of IJs?”   

THE PROBLEM WITH JUSTICE @ JUSTICE, IN A NUTSHELL — Super-Talented Houston Immigration Lawyer Elizabeth J. Mendoza Knows Exactly What’s Wrong @ EOIR & Succinctly Tells Us How To Fix It In This Paper Published By The Baker Institute For Public Policy @ Rice University — So Just Why Are Elizabeth & Other NDPA Talents Like Her Writing Papers, Drafting Letters (Likely To Be Ignored), & Filing Lawsuits Against Garland While Chaos & Incompetence Reigns @ EOIR & Garland Appoints 17 Absurdly Lesser Qualified Individuals Selected By Barr/Miller As His “Initial Class Of IJs?”   

Elizabeth M. Mendoza
Elizabeth M. Mendoza, Esq.
Immigration Lawyer
Houston, Texas
Photo: Mendoza Law website

https://www.bakerinstitute.org/media/files/files/42f91a4a/usmx-pub-imm-courts-042721.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3XtP7RfPzZsIfo-OLH3nmAWDDZvjHaPZiZMYXLVWlIGYo9ymcc-KD5IUs

Excerpts from “A New Opportunity to Build a 21st-Century Immigration Court System” by Elizabeth M. Mendoza:

This lack of judicial independence, along with heavy dockets and the vulnerability of the EOIR to the political influence of the administration in power, has created the crisis we have today. It also presents the Biden-Harris administration with the opportunity to course-correct and put the EOIR on a path to effectively, nimbly, and fairly navigate the 21st century and beyond. 

. . . .

Immigration judges need to be able to manage their dockets. A practical tool to help them do so is the use of administrative closure. This tool allows judges to “freeze” cases, or make them inactive, at their discretion or when requested to do so by the UP or the Department of Homeland Security. The case remains in the court system under the control of the immigration judge, but it is not on an active docket requiring hearings in court. This tool is commonly used when the UP has a petition pending with another agency, usually Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS), that if approved would allow the UP to apply for permanent residency in court or with CIS. Through administrative closure, the judge can put the UP’s case on inactive status, allowing the UP to process the petition with another agency. This allows the judge to free up docket slots for other cases and thereby process more cases that do not have collateral relief or are higher priority.

. . . .

It is against this backdrop that the EOIR currently uses quotas. The quota metric imposed by the last presidential administration does little to promote a fair, nimble, effective court system. It is a policy that should be rescinded as soon as possible.

. . . .

Certifying cases without transparency or regard to the reality of the immigration situation at our borders, in our communities, and in the EOIR system itself does not engender confidence that the EOIR is independent. Indeed, case certification is the antithesis of an immigration judge’s judicial independence. And, while an administration may be tempted to use the certification tool to achieve its political and policy goals, it is not appropriate within the judicial context unless it is used to undo precedents clearly at odds with statutes, regulations, or congressional intent.

. . . .

With over 1 million cases pending in its system, the EOIR cannot continue down this path. It should institute reasonable, practical, real-world solutions to manage its docket and afford due process and fairness to those who come before it presenting their cases for relief.

. . . .

The EOIR must be effective, nimble, and fair. The Biden-Harris administration has all the tools at its disposal to recreate an EOIR that embodies these traits. It will require a thoughtful approach, competent management, consistent policy deployment, and transparency to achieve these goals. The last four years saw numerous policy and regulatory changes to the EOIR that fundamentally changed the focus of the immigration court system into what could be considered a “deportation machine.” As noted earlier, the EOIR is a civil court system housed inside a law enforcement agency. It is not an independent court.

. . . .

The people who appear before the EOIR deserve a well-functioning court system. Our communities deserve a court system that promptly adjudicates the cases of bad actors so they can be quickly removed. And our nation deserves an EOIR that reflects the best of American principles—that all people are equal under the law.

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

“Nimble” certainly isn’t a word I’ve ever used to describe EOIR. But, it shows exactly why new thinking and dynamic creative leadership is required @ DOJ and EOIR. And, Elizabeth and others are more than ready to provide it! I just don’t think anyone asked them to come on board.

Something I learned as a Senior Executive in the Government and in private practice: If you want to change the composition of your workforce and attract the”best and the brightest” you must ACTIVELY recruit! It’s also something that I learned from rebuilding the Legacy INS legal program under General Counsel Maurice C. “Iron Mike” Inman, Jr.

Mike told me to treat every law school appearance, public speech, CLE, bar luncheon, or training session as a “recruitment opportunity” and never, never to rely solely on the “USG system” for getting out the word to the folks we wanted to reach to improve our program and provide better legal services to the Commissioner. He also insisted that I deliver that message to each member of our senior legal staff: every engagement was a potential selling and recruiting opportunity!

So, here’s Elizabeth’s “resume” —

About Attorney Elizabeth M. Mendoza

Attorney Elizabeth M. Mendoza practices exclusively immigration law since 1993. She is a graduate of Rice University and the University of Houston Law Center.

 

Attorney Mendoza represents immigrants and their families in family-based immigration, removal defense in immigration court (asylum, CAT, withholding of removal, cancellation of removal, voluntary departure), appeals and motions, consular processing, waivers, citizenship, work permits, TPS, NACARA, VAWA, U and T visas, Deferred Action, widow\er petitions, removal of conditionals of residency, and renewals of residency card.

 

For over two decades Attorney Mendoza has provided pro bono legal assistance to non-profit organizations throughout the Houston area, such as Catholic Charities. She volunteered at Bush Airport in Houston, Texas to assist travelers affected by the travel ban. Attorney Mendoza volunteered in Matamoros, Mexico in a camp along the Rio Grande helping asylum seekers.

 

Committed to supporting fair and just immigration laws, Attorney Mendoza has lobbied at the Texas capitol and in Washington, D.C. for comprehensive immigration legislation.

 

Advocating for immigrants and their families, Attorney Mendoza is a frequent speaker at community know your rights talks in churches and schools.

 

Attorney Mendoza is a speaker at workshops for the University of Houston Law Center and the state bar of Texas where she presents to colleagues about different immigration law topics.

 

Currently, Attorney Mendoza serves as the liaison to immigration courts (Executive Office for Immigration Review) in the Houston area on behalf of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA).

 

Attorney Mendoza is licensed by the state bar of Texas since 1993. She is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association since 1996.

So, here’s someone who not only has intellectual brilliance, comprehensive knowledge of immigration, human rights, and due process, organizational skills, presentation and writing skills, creativity, and demonstrated leadership and inspirational mentoring ability, but has actually used them to represent individuals in Immigration Court and to solve real life problems!
Everything a real judge or a competent judicial administrator should be!

Compare Elizabeth’s qualifications and background with the ridiculously thin qualifications of the “Miller Lite Holdover Gang of 17” that Garland had the audacity to announce publicly yesterday! (Only after “DT-21,” Kowalski, and I “outed” the sordid story.) You can’t compare them because there is no comparison! Elizabeth and other NDPA superstars are the folks we need in charge of EOIR, replacing the existing BIA, and on the Immigration Bench across the country. And, they aren’t hiding under rocks!

For obvious reasons many exceptionally well qualified practical scholars and advocates did not apply for largely fraudulent Immigration “Judgeships” that were more like “Deportation Clerkships” operating under a scofflaw, unethical, xenophobic, racist, misogynistic Trump DOJ.

For Pete’s sake, this is a life or death court system, not a stupid bureaucracy! It’s up to folks like Garland to actively recruit the “best and brightest” from the private sector, NGOs, academia, and minority communities to build a diverse, progressive judiciary that eventually will model “best judicial practices” and “feed” the Article IIIs “battle tested” judicial talent unswervingly committed to due process and equal justice for all. 

Part of that is “repackaging and reinventing” these jobs as independent judgeships, with good working conditions, adequate support, no political interference, and where courage, integrity, and top flight scholarship in pursuit of due process, fundamental fairness, and equal justice for all will be encouraged, respected, and honored! In simple terms, “more Elizabeth Mendozas.” It’s also why all “recruitments” conducted under the Trump DOJ should be considered tainted and inherently suspect!

🇺🇸👩🏽‍⚖️🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-07-21

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