"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, Music, Politics, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals PAUL WICKHAM SCHMIDT and DR. ALICIA TRICHE, expert brief writer, practical scholar, emeritus Editor-in-Chief of The Green Card (FBA), and 2022 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year. She is a/k/a “Delta Ondine,” a blues-based alt-rock singer-songwriter, who performs regularly in Memphis, where she hosts her own Blues Brunch series, and will soon be recording her first full, professional album. Stay tuned! 🎶 To see our complete professional bios, just click on the link below.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_6gbFPjVDoxS2F5M2NJYkFMbURsWmxkMWFRMWJYdGdSSHR3/edit
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The “good faith marriage standard” for waiver is a legal determination subject to de novo (rather than “clear error”) review.
PWS
02/27/17
Sonia Nazario writes:
“Last year 7-year-old Kendra Cruz Garcia and her 10-year-old-brother, Roberto Guardado Cruz, crossed the Rio Grande alone. When their tiny boat reached the shore, they started walking into Texas.
The Border Patrol agents who soon caught the Salvadoran siblings deemed them “unaccompanied” because no parent was with them. Children with this designation are granted special, well-deserved protections.
They aren’t subject to quick deportation and are entitled to a full hearing before an immigration judge. They can’t be held for long periods in immigration jails. Instead, they are transferred to child-friendly shelters operated by Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, and released, usually within a month, to a parent, relative or sponsor while their court hearings proceed. Instead of facing cross-examination by adversarial prosecutors, children are interviewed by an asylum officer trained to gently probe whether they qualify to stay in the country legally.
In other words, they are treated with kindness and decency by our government because they are innocent children.
But President Trump has decided to get tough on many of the 60,000 Central American children who arrive at our border each year begging for safety after fleeing some of the most dangerous places on earth. His executive orders, and memos from the Department of Homeland Security on how to interpret them, could strip this special treatment from the roughly 60 percent of unaccompanied children who have a parent already living in the United States. If Kendra and Roberto were just entering the United States now, they would fall into this group; instead they kept their protections and were eventually united with their mother, a house painter in Los Angeles.
Parents like her, the argument goes, are exploiting benefits established to help children who really are alone here. The administration has threatened to deport parents who send for their children or prosecute them for hiring smugglers.
Last week Mr. Trump’s press secretary said the president’s intention was to prioritize the deportation of immigrants who “represent a threat to public safety.” Supporters say he’s upholding the law. But these children are not threats, and there are many ways to preserve the integrity of our immigration laws while treating them humanely.”
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I have written on a number of occasions that turning our collective backs on families and children in need of protection will come back to haunt us as a nation.
PWS
02/26/17
Harbeck – BondArticle for Dissemination
The article is entitled
“A NEW CALCULUS FOR THE MEASURE OF MERCY: DOES THE NEW JERSEY BAIL REFORM AFFECT THE IMMIGRATION COURT BOND HEARINGS?” It’s published in the Rutgers Law Record.
Judge Harbeck writes:
“[T]he New Jersey Bail Reform will not directly affect how the immigration courts determine immigration bonds. However, while the state criminal system is wholly distinct from the federal immigration system, there are increasing intersections of state law having unintended consequences in immigration proceedings. Under the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution, federal law is the “Supreme Law of the Land,” and states have no authority to regulate immigration enforcement. That said, there are a number of similar rationales between the new state bail reform and the existing bond determination criteria in the immigration court. This article outlines those similarities as well as the differences between the two. It is also important to note from a practical point of view that New Jersey bail reform has no impact on immigration detainers. An immigration detainer is the process by which Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may detain a non-citizen without a warrant, but only if ICE has “reason to believe” that the non-citizen “is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained for his arrest.”
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Read the full article at the link. While Judge Harbeck’s timely scholarship is of particular interest to New Jersey lawyers, it is also helpful for any lawyer seeking to understand the bond setting process in U.S. Immigration Courts. With the Administration’s new enforcement initiatives underway, bond is sure to be a “hot topic.”
PWS
02/26/17
Nolan writes:
“Knowing that an alien in the United States who is charged with being deportable has a statutory right to a hearing before an immigration judge and that there is a backlog crisis in our immigration courts, I predicted that President Donald Trump would not be able to deport millions of undocumented immigrants.
Since then, the backlog has gotten even higher. As of the end of January 2017, it was 542,411 cases and the average wait time for a hearing was almost 700 days.
Even if the immigration judges did not receive any additional cases, it would take them more than two-and-a-half years to catch up.
But President Trump has finessed his way around this problem by implementing a little-known expedited removal provision in his executive order (EO), “Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements.” The provision is section 235(b)(1)(A)(iii)(II) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 established expedited removal proceedings to deal with fraud and willful misrepresentations at ports of entry and to stop aliens with bogus asylum claims from being admitted for asylum hearings before an immigration judge. Many of them absconded instead of appearing at their hearings.
Under expedited removal proceedings, which are conducted by immigration officers, an alien who lacks proper documentation or has committed fraud or willful misrepresentation of facts to gain admission into the United States is inadmissible and may be removed without a hearing before an immigration judge. Aliens subject to expedited removal must be detained until they are removed and normally may only be released due to a medical emergency.”
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I agree with Nolan that the intent of the Trump Executive Order is to reduce the number of individuals who will be entitled to “full” removal hearings before an Immigration Judge. But, even if the Administration applies expedited removal in its broadest permissible form under the statute — to individuals who have been in the U.S. for less than two years, the vast majority of individuals in the U.S. without documentation will still be entitled to hearings in U.S. Immigration Court.
First, for a number of reasons, and quite contrary to the Trump Administration’s alarmist rhetoric, illegal entries have been declining over recent years. The overwhelming number of the estimated 11 million undocumented migrants in the U.S have been here at least two years and would therefore be entitled to full hearings.
The estimated number of undocumented migrants in the United States has actually dropped by one million, from approximately 12 million around 2007 to approximately 11 million today. And, although neither the Trump Administration nor most Republican legislators are willing to admit it, at least some of the credit belongs to the Obama Administration for increased border enforcement.
Moreover, the bulk of the undocumented arrivals over the past several years have been children, women, and families fleeing violence and corruption in the Northern Triangle of Central America. Most turn themselves in to the authorities at the border or shortly after crossing the border and seek asylum. The majority of those have been determined to have a “credible fear” of persecution and therefore have already been placed in removal proceedings.
As Nolan points out in his article, individuals who have not applied for asylum within one year of entry are prima facie barred from seeking asylum. However, there are exceptions to this rule for those who can demonstrate fundamentally changed circumstances or extraordinary circumstances directly related to the delay in filing.
Perhaps even more significantly, the one year bar does not apply to claims for protection under the withholding of removal provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act, nor does it apply to claims under the Convention Against Torture. Other forms of relief under the Act also remain available to individuals who failed to timely file for asylum.
Additionally, even where an individual is subject to “expedited removal” she or he is still be entitled to a full removal hearing before an Immigration Judge if a DHS Asylum Officer finds that such individual has a “credible fear” of persecution.
As Nolan also points out, even where an Asylum Officer finds “no credible fear,” an individual may seek review by an Immigration Judge. Such reviews should take precedence over other types of detained hearings. Consequently, a dramatic increase in “credible fear” denials could well result in Immigration judges spending more time on such hearings and therefore having less time to conduct actual individual hearings on removability and relief.
While to date, the Article III Courts have seemed to accept the statutory limitations on their ability to review expedited removal and credible fear determinations, the Administration’s attempt to “ratchet up” summary removals is almost certainly going to draw more sophisticated constitutional challenges to the process from the advocacy community. And if, as is likely, the Administration “pushes the envelope” by attempting to remove individuals on an expedited basis without giving them a fair chance to obtain evidence that they have been present for two or more years, the Article III Courts are at some point likely to intervene to force at least some procedural due process into the system.
Consequently, notwithstanding efforts by the Trump Administration to circumvent the Immigration Court process, the new enforcement initiatives are still likely to put more than enough new cases before the Immigration Courts to crush an already overwhelmed system.
PWS
02/26/16
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/doj-private-prisons-sessions_us_58af529ce4b0a8a9b780669a
Ryan J. Reilly a Ben Walsh report:
“WASHINGTON ― Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday withdrew an Obama-era Justice Department memo that set a goal of reducing and ultimately ending the Justice Department’s use of private prisons.
In a one-page memo to the acting head of the Bureau of Prisons, Sessions wrote that the August 2016 memo by former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates “changed long-standing policy and practice, and impaired the Bureau’s ability to meet the future needs of the federal correctional system.”
A Justice Department spokesman said Sessions’ memo “directs the Bureau of Prisons to return to its previous approach to the use of private prisons,” which would “restore BOP’s flexibility to manage the federal prison inmate population based on capacity needs.”
BOP currently has 12 private prison contracts that hold around 21,000 inmates. Yates had said that private prisons compared “poorly” to BOP prisons. Her memo followed a damning report from the Justice Department’s inspector general which found that privately run facilities were more dangerous than those run by BOP.
The two largest private prison companies have told investors that they have room to accommodate increased use of their prisons by federal or state and local authorities. On an earnings call with stock analysts this week, executives at GEO Group emphasized that their company has a total of 5,000 spots in its prisons that are presently either unused or underutilized.
GEO senior vice President David Donahue put it fairly bluntly, telling analysts that their idle and underutilized cells are “immediately available and meet ICE’s national detention standards.”
CoreCivic, formerly known as CCA, told investors on Feb. 17 that the company has nine idle prisons that can hold a total of 8,700 people. Those prisons are ready to accept inmates on short notice. “All of our idle facilities are modern and well maintained, and can be made available to potential state and federal partners without much, if any capital investment or the lead-time required for new construction,” CEO Damon Hininger said.
Indeed, Haninger said that CoreCivic was already holding more detained immigrants for the federal government than they anticipated. “Our financial performance in the fourth quarter of 2016 was well above our initial forecast due, in large part, to heightened utilization by ICE across the portfolio,” he said.
And, Haninger said, the Trump administration’s actions could boost financial performance even further. “When coupled with the above average rate crossings along the Southwest border, these executive orders appear likely to significantly increase the need for safe, humane and appropriate detention bed capacity that we have available in our existing real-estate portfolio,” he said. “We are well positioned,” to get more business from ICE, Haninger said.
David C. Fathi, who directs the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, said that giving for-profit companies control of prisons is “a recipe for abuse and neglect.” He said the Sessions memo was a further sign the U.S. “may be headed for a new federal prison boom” under the Trump administration.”
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The disaster of Jeff Sessions as U.S. Attorney General continues to unfold. Contrary to what he told Senators during his contentious confirmation hearings, he’s the same old tone-deaf, insensitive, hard-liner he’s always been. There will be wrongful death suits in Sessions’s future naming him personally. While these so-called “Bivens actions” are usually a steep uphill climb for plaintiffs, given that Sessions acted with knowledge of both the Inspector General’s highly negative findings and his predecessor’s resulting action to curb private prison use, there could be a case there. I hope he took out personal liability insurance and got the highest amount of coverage. He might need it before his tenure is up.
And, as for the inmates and civil immigration detainees who are going to be kept in substandard conditions, I guess it’s just “tough noogies” as far as Sessions is concerned.
PWS
Zoe Tillman reports:
“ARLINGTON, Va. — In a small, windowless courtroom on the second floor of an office building, Judge Rodger Harris heard a string of bond requests on Tuesday morning from immigrants held in jail as they faced deportation.
The detainees appeared by video from detention facilities elsewhere in the state. Harris, an immigration judge since 2007, used a remote control to move the camera around in his courtroom so the detainees could see their lawyers appearing in-person before the judge, if they had one. The lawyers spoke about their clients’ family ties, job history, and forthcoming asylum petitions, and downplayed any previous criminal record.
In cases where Harris agreed to set bond — the amounts ranged from $8,000 to $20,000 — he had the same message for the detainees: if they paid bond and were set free until their next court date, it would mean a delay in their case. Hearings set for March or April would be pushed back until at least the summer, he said.
But a couple of months is nothing compared to timelines that some immigration cases are on now. Judges and lawyers interviewed by BuzzFeed News described hearings scheduled four, five, or even six years out. Already facing a crushing caseload, immigration judges are bracing for more strain as the Trump administration pushes ahead with an aggressive ramp-up of immigration enforcement with no public commitment so far to aid backlogged courts.
Immigration courts, despite their name, are actually an arm of the US Department of Justice. The DOJ seal — with the Latin motto “qui pro domina justitia sequitur,” which roughly translates to, “who prosecutes on behalf of justice” — hung on the wall behind Harris in his courtroom in Virginia. Lawyers from the US Department of Homeland Security prosecute cases. Rulings can be appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is also part of the Justice Department, and then to a federal appeals court.
As of the end of January, there were more than 540,000 cases pending in immigration courts. President Trump signed executive orders in late January that expanded immigration enforcement priorities and called for thousands of additional enforcement officers and border patrol officers. But the orders are largely silent on immigration courts, where there are dozens of vacant judgeships. And beyond filling the vacancies, the union of immigration judges says more judges are needed to handle the caseload, as well as more space, technological upgrades, and other resources.
Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly acknowledged the immigration court backlog in a memorandum released this week that provided new details about how the department would carry out Trump’s orders. Kelly lamented the “unacceptable delay” in immigration court cases that allowed individuals who illegally entered the United States to remain here for years.
The administration hasn’t announced plans to increase the number of immigration judges or to provide more funding and resources. It also isn’t clear yet if immigration judges and court staff are exempt from a government-wide hiring freeze that Trump signed shortly after he took office. There are 73 vacancies in immigration courts, out of 374 judgeships authorized by Congress.
“Everybody’s pretty stressed,” said Paul Schmidt, who retired as an immigration judge in June. “How are you going to throw more cases into a court with 530,000 pending cases? It isn’t going to work.”
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Zoe Tillman provides a well-reaserched and accurate description of the dire situation of justice in the U.S. Immigration Courts and the poorly conceived and uncoordinated enforcement initiatives of the Trump Administration. Sadly, lives and futures of “real life human beings” are at stake here.
Here’s a “shout out” to my good friend and former colleague Judge Rodger Harris who always does a great job of providing due process and justice on the highly stressful Televideo detained docket at the U.S. Immigration Court in Arlington, VA. Thanks for all you do for our system of justice and the cause of due process, Judge Harris.
PWS
02/24/17
Click Here for my 3-page treatise “Practical Tips for Presenting An Asylum Case In Immigration Court” (Rev. Feb. 2017); PRACTICAL TIPS FOR PRESENTING AN ASYLUM CASE-02-17-17
Click here for my accompanying lecture, “Practical Tips, UDC Law Version:” Practical Tips for Presenting an Asylum Case in Immigration Court-UDCVersion-02-21-17
Click here for Judge Harbeck’s “The Commonsense of Direct and Cross-Examinations In Immigration Court” (NJ Lawyer @ 30): NJLFeb2017
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PWS
02/22/17
“Unfortunately, this growth in case completions has been insufficient to stem the growing backlog of cases still waiting for resolution before the Immigration Court. At the end of January 2017, the court’s backlog had increased to a record 542,411. Even if no additional cases were filed, the backlog now represents over a two and a half year workload for the court’s judges, based upon its current capacity to handle the matters before it.”
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Needless to say, the Trump Administrations’s ill-conceived “max enforcement – no common sense or judgment” program — as announced by DHS today — will completely “tank” what remains of due process in the U.S. Immigration Courts. Unless Congress steps in (highly unlikely) with legislation to establish an independent Article I Court which sets its own priorities, the entire immigration justice system is headed for collapse. Then, it will be up to the Article III courts to decide what, if anything, the Constitution requires for due process in immigration and what, if anything, the Executive Branch must do to reform the system. Stay tuned.
PWS
02/21/17
http://immigrationimpact.com/2017/02/15/trump-immigration-enforcement-policies/
“The Trump administration is quickly unraveling the last administration’s efforts to prioritize those for deportation who pose a serious threat over those who don’t. The new administration is ignoring priorities that were put into place by the Obama Administration as a way to manage limited law enforcement resources. The priorities recognized that there is a finite budget available for immigration enforcement, thus making prioritization important. The approach now being pursued by the Trump Administration casts a wide net and will result in an aggressive and unforgiving approach to immigration enforcement moving forward.
The most significant indications of this shift came through the “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the U.S.” executive order, issued January 25, 2017, which prioritizes for deportation those noncitizens who:
Have been convicted of any criminal offense;
Have been charged with any criminal offense;
Have committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense;
Have engaged in fraud or willful misrepresentation in connection with any official matter or application before a government agency;
Have abused any program related to the receipt of public benefits;
Are subject to a final order of removal but have not departed;
Otherwise pose a risk to public safety or national security.
In addition, unauthorized immigrants with no criminal history will likely fit under the third bullet because entering without inspection is a chargeable criminal offense (illegal entry or re-entry). And since the executive order states that many immigrants without immigration status or who overstayed their visas are a risk to public safety and national security, it appears the final bullet is a catch-all category for many others. In other words, the president has “prioritized” everyone, which means in reality he’s prioritized no one, making everyone a target for enforcement. Furthermore, legal immigrants—even green card holders–who are convicted of aggravated felonies or crimes of moral turpitude could also be subject to deportation.
Yet despite the more aggressive approach, it is still unclear from where the resources to identify, arrest, detain, and deport all of these individuals will come. For example, the U.S. is already over-capacity in detention, and immigration courts are seriously backlogged.
In the past, the government has stated that budget realities make it impossible to remove everyone who is in the country without authorization or who is otherwise deportable. This meant the agency had to set priorities and focus on a subset of deportable immigrants.
The Obama administration released a series of memos designed to prioritize those who pose a threat to public safety and national security and other categories of individuals.”
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The Obama Administration made a total mess out of the already stressed U.S. Immigration Court dockets by unwisely and unnecessarily “prioritizing” cases of recently arrived unaccompanied children, women, and families fleeing violence and corruption in the Northern Triangle.
Nevertheless, thorough programs such as DACA, stateside processing, closing cases with possible relief pending before USCIS, and frequent wise use of prosecutorial discretion (“PD”) in “clean” cases with difficult legal issues but strong humanitarian factors, the Obama Administration was the first Administration I have seen make progress on developing a system that could eventually have helped “rationalize” Immigration Court dockets. If freed from politicized and unrealistic “priorities” from above, this eventually could have allowed the courts to focus on cases that really needed to be litigated, as is the case with almost all other high-volume court systems.
By contrast, the Trump Administration seems intent on “torquing” the Immigration Court system until it breaks apart. Even the Obama Administration used an overly broad concept of “criminal alien.” They included too many individuals who, while technically removable under the law, were doing useful things in the community and presented no real threat to the safety or security of the U.S.
Certainly the Trump Administration could have focused on those whose removals should be prioritized by “fine tuning” the Obama enforcement priorities. Instead, they have embarked on an expensive and ill-planned “mission impossible” to make everybody a priority (and, hence, nobody a priority) without any regard to the capacity or the best uses of court time and resources within our judicial system.
Additionally, the Trump Administration seems to be going out of its way to “disempower” those who are closest to the problem and are actually in the best position to determine which cases should be prosecuted: the local Offices of Chief Counsel of the DHS (the “immigration equivalent” of the U.S. Attorney). In Arlington, the Office of Chief Counsel was well-respected by all and had an excellent grasp of how to make the justice system work for all involved. Their main problem, like that of the Immigration Courts, was unrealistic priorities and directives imposed on them by political officials “up the chain.”
Sadly, the Trump Administration seems determined not to build on those things that have been successful in the past and instead to embark on a new “blunderbuss” approach to immigration enforcement that is almost guaranteed to get tied up with both legal challenges and practical impossibilities.
PWS
02/19/17
“Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly has signed sweeping new guidelines that empower federal authorities to more aggressively detain and deport illegal immigrants inside the United States and at the border.
In a pair of memos, Kelly offered more detail on plans for the agency to hire thousands of additional enforcement agents, expand the pool of immigrants who are prioritized for removal, speed up deportation hearings and enlist local law enforcement to help make arrests.
The new directives would supersede nearly all of those issued under previous administrations, Kelly said, including measures from President Barack Obama aimed at focusing deportations exclusively on hardened criminals and those with terrorist ties.
. . . .
The memos don’t overturn one important directive from the Obama administration: a program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals that has provided work permits to more than 750,000 immigrants who came to the country illegally as children.”
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Here are the two memos signed by Secretary Kelly (thanks to Professor Alberto Benitez):
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Looks like everything is a “priority,” almost everyone will be detained, and DHS Assistant Chief Counsel won’t be offering PD or other negotiated “deals” except in extraordinary situations.
It’s not even clear from this whether the ACCs will still have authority to “waive appeal” in cases where the DHS loses. If not, that means that the BIA could also be overwhelmed with marginal DHS appeals.
While one of the memos notes the 534,000 Immigration Court backlog, there is a total disconnect in putting all these new priorities into Immigration Court without any plan for dealing with the 534,000 already there. (Most folks already here arrived at least two years ago, so even the greater use of expedited removal will leave hundreds of thousands of potential new filings for the Immigration Courts.)
When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority! Looks to me like another ill-conceived, “built to fail,” scheme. Over time, these plans are likely to be taken apart by the Article III Courts, bit by bit, piece by piece, until we have total chaos in the immigration enforcement system. Haste makes waste.
PWS
02/18/17
JUGAL K. PATEL, ALICIA PARLAPIANO, HAEYOUN PARK and SARAH ALMUKHTAR report in the NYT:
Last week, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials arrested more than 680 people in at least 12 states, shown below, stoking fears that the Trump administration is increasing the arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants.
But a comparison of last week’s arrests and similar ones during the first four years of the Obama presidency show that the recent level of enforcement activity is not unprecedented.
It is unclear, however, if the numbers are an actual increase in enforcement, because information on operations in only 12 states was disclosed.”
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Read the full article with analysis, charts, and maps.
PWS
02/16/17
Rachel Weiner reports:
“’Judge Brinkema spells out a lot more; she really fleshes out one of the possible claims, and that’s the religious discrimination claim,’” said David Martin, a professor at the University of Virginia who, for many years, helped shape immigration policy inside the government. ‘That may well prove to be the strongest or more fruitful line of inquiry for the plaintiffs in these various cases, particularly if they’re trying to reach past green-card holders or people on immigrant visas. It’s hard to get there without a religious discrimination case of some kind.’”
. . . .
“’It was a very well-reasoned, thoughtful decision. Frankly, I think, a more careful decision than the 9th Circuit decision,’ said Steve Legomsky, former chief counsel for immigration services in the Department of Homeland Security. In her opinion, Legomsky said, Brinkema ‘pretty methodically went through the various statements by Trump. . . . They put great weight on the opinions of the former national security officials to show the absence of counterevidence from the Trump administration. For both of those reasons, I think the Virginia opinion is very important.’
Brinkema also brings to the case extensive national security experience. She presided over the trial of Sept. 11, 2001, conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, among other high-profile cases.
‘It was a thoughtful opinion, it’s well considered, it wasn’t hastily done like some of these other decisions had to be in light of circumstances,’ said Justin Cox of the National Immigration Law Center. His group is involved in several lawsuits against the ban, including one filed in Maryland last week focused on refugees. That case is specifically focused on religious discrimination.
‘Legally [the Virginia ruling] is actually quite significant because it’s the first court to squarely hold that the executive order violates the establishment clause,’ Cox said.
The danger for opponents of the ban is that, should the Justice Department appeal Brinkema’s decision, they will face the more conservative 4th Circuit rather than the left-leaning 9th Circuit.
‘It would be a close call,’ Legomsky said. ‘There is such strong evidence of religious discrimination — it’s really hard to know.’”
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As noted in this article, in addition to being leading academic “immigration gurus,” both Professor Martin and Professor Legomsky have lived in the “real world” of shaping Government policies and managing programs that actually implement those policies.
As they point out, while many of the objections to the “travel ban” could be eliminated by applying it just prospectively to those outside the U.S. who have not previously been admitted, that wouldn’t necessarily overcome Judge Brinkema’s finding that the “national security” reasons asserted by the Government in her court were merely “pretext” for unconstitutional religious discrimination.
While Justin Cox might be correct that the Fourth Circuit is not as liberal as the Ninth Circuit, that distinction probably would apply to every other Circuit Court of Appeals. Having spent 13 years as an Immigration Judge in Arlington, where my decisions ultimately could be reviewed by the Fourth Circuit and Fourth Circuit law applied, I found their immigration rulings very balanced. Indeed, they sometimes cited Ninth Circuit precedent and even were ahead of the Ninth in recognizing some migrants’ rights.
While the Fourth Circuit affirmed the overwhelming majority of BIA and Immigration Judge decisions in unpublished, non-precedential decisions, when they spoke in published precedents they always had important guidance to offer. The Fourth Circuit also was not afraid to stand up to the Government and “call them out” when necessary in the field of immigration.
And, at least in the Arlington Immigration Court, we trial judges paid close attention. I think that the Fourth Circuit’s very fair and well-reasoned asylum jurisprudence, in some significant ways more faithful to the asylum law and regulations than rulings of the BIA, was one reason why asylum applicants were often successful in Arlington. That’s also why many asylum cases in Arlington could be resolved by the parties in “short hearings” based on extensive written documentation and application of the Fourth Circuit law.
There is also a wonderful pastel portrait of Judge Brinkema in her court with the full article at the link. Check it out!
PWS
02/16/17
What Are The Odds Of The U.S. Immigration Courts’ Survival?
by Paul Wickham Schmidt
Despite the campaign promises to make things great for the American working person, the Trump Administration so far has benefitted comedians, lawyers, reporters, and not many others. But there is another group out there reaping the benefits — oddsmakers. For example, Trump himself is 11-10 on finishing his term, and Press Secretary Sean “Spicey” Spicer is 4-7 to still be in office come New Year’s Day 2018.
So, what are the odds that the U.S. Immigration Courts will survive the next four years. Not very good, I’m afraid.
Already pushed to the brink of disaster, the Immigration Courts are likely to be totally overwhelmed by the the Trump Administration’s mindless “enforcement to the max” program which will potentially unleash a tidal waive of ill-advised new enforcement actions, detained hearings, bond hearings, credible fear reviews, and demands to move Immigration Judges to newly established detention centers along the Southern Border where due process is likely to take a back seat to expediency.
While Trump’s Executive Order promised at least another 15,000 DHS immigration enforcement officers, there was no such commitment to provide comparable staffing increases to the U.S. Immigration Courts. Indeed, we don’t even know at this point whether the Immigration Courts will be exempted from the hiring freeze.
At the same time, DHS Assistant Chief Counsel are likely to be stripped of their authority to offer prosecutorial discretion (“PD”), stipulate to grants of relief in well-documented cases, close cases for USCIS processing, and waive appeals.
Moreover, according to recent articles from the Wall Street Journal posted over on LexisNexis, individual respondents are likely to reciprocate by demanding their rights to full hearings, declining offers of “voluntary departure” without hearing, and appealing, rather than waiving appeal of, most orders of removal. Additionally, the Mexican government could start “slow walking” requests for documentation necessary to effect orders of removal.
Waiting in the wings, as I have mentioned in previous posts, are efforts to eliminate the so-called “Chevron doctrine” giving deference to certain BIA decisions, and constitutional challenges that could bring down the entire Federal Administrative Judiciary “house of cards.”
The sensible way of heading off disaster would be to establish an independent Article I Court outside the Executive Branch and then staff it to do its job. Sadly, however, sensibility so far has played little role in the Trump Administration. Solving the problem (or not) is likely to fall to the Article III Courts.
So, right now, I’m giving the U.S. Immigration Courts about 2-3 odds of making it through 2020. That’s a little better chance than “Spicey,” but worse than Trump himself.
To read the WSJ articles on the “clogging the courts” strategy, take this link over to LexisNexis:
PWS
02/14/17
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Interest of amici curiae………………………………………………. 1 Introduction and summary ………………………………………… 2 Argument…………………………………………………………………… 5
II
Table of Contents—Continued:
C. Aliens ordered removed are generally detained until the removal order is
executed ………………………………………………….. 21
III. The bond hearing process provides limited procedural rights, which vary across the circuits………………………………………………………….. 22
III
Table of Contents—Continued:
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………33 Appendix…………………………………………………………………..1a
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This is an absolutely fantastic resource for anyone litigating, writing, speaking, or reporting on immigration detention written by two of the “best in the business.”
Rodriguez could be a problem for the Administration and the Immigration Courts. President Trump’s Executive Orders ramp up border enforcement, interior enforcement, immigration detention, and will further clog the already overwhelmed U.S. Immigration Courts.
If the Supreme Court places time limits on the Government’s ability to detain individuals without individual bond hearings pending the completion of Removal Hearings on the merits in Immigration Court, it could lead to an increase in the number of bond hearings conducted by U.S. Immigration Judges. Combined with pressure from the Administration to complete Removal Hearings before bond hearings are required, it likely will lead the Administration to “torque up” the pressure on Immigration Judges to cut corners and expedite hearings without regard to the requirements of due process. This is likely to force the issue of due process in Immigration Court into the Article III Federal Courts for resolution .
PWS
02/14/17
Check out the Table of Contents:
FEATURES
Raising the Bar for Immigrant Representation in New Jersey 10
by Farrin Anello and Lori A. Nessel
A Step Toward Justice—Universal Representation
and Access to Counsel for New Jersey Immigrants 14
by Amy Gottlieb and Nicole Polley Miller
Naturalization, Jersey Style—
The Process, the Perks, and the Pitfalls 20
by Angie Garasia
Born as Equals and Subject to Lady Liberty 26
by Cesar Martin Estela
A View from the Bench—The Commonsense
of Direct and Cross-Examinations in Immigration Court 30
by Hon. Dorothy Harbeck
Immigration and Mental Health Forensics—
An Unexpected Interdisciplinary Connection 37
by Lauren Anselowitz and Daniel L. Weiss
Lessons Learned from the Trenches—Best Practices
for Immigration-related Federal Investigations 42
by Valentine Brown
Tips to Effectively Recruit, Retain and Terminate
Foreign Workers 46
by Scott R. Malyk and Anthony F. Siliato
Responding to the Child Migrant Crisis 54
by Joanne Gottesman, Anju Gupta, and Randi Mandelbaum