“PEREIRA II” — SUPREMES TAKE ANOTHER “STOP TIME” IMMIGRATION CASE — Niz-Chavez v. Barr

https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/06/court-grants-immigration-case/

Amy Howe reports for SCOTUS Blog:

Court grants immigration case

This morning the Supreme Court issued orders from the justices’ private conference last week. The court added one new case to its merits docket for the term that begins in October. The justices once again did not act on two groups of high-profile petitions – one involving gun rights and the other involving qualified immunity – that they considered last week.

With the grant in Niz-Chavez v. Barr, the justices added another immigration case to their docket for next term. At issue in the case is the kind of notice that the government must provide to trigger the “stop-time rule,” which stops noncitizens from accruing the time in the United States that they need to become eligible for discretionary relief from deportation. Congress passed the “stop-time rule” to keep noncitizens from taking advantage of lengthy delays in deportation proceedings to continue to accrue time. Under the rule, a noncitizen’s time in the United States, for purposes of relief from deportation, ends when the government sends him a “notice to appear” containing specific information about a scheduled removal proceeding. The question that the justices agreed to decide today is whether all the necessary information must be provided in a single document in order to trigger the stop-time rule, as Agusto Niz-Chavez, who came to the United States from Guatemala in 2005, contends, or whether the government can trigger the rule by providing the information in multiple documents.

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Our Round Table has filed amicus briefs on this issue in a number of similar cases, although not in this particular case, which originated in the 6th Circuit.

At issue here is the BIA’s precedent in Matter of Mendoza-Hernandez, 27 I. & N. Dec. 520 (BIA 2019). There, in a now-rare en banc decision, the BIA majority basically “flicked off” the Supremes’ decision in Pereira v. INS, 138 S. Ct. 2105 (2018) and allowed the DHS to remedy a defective statutory Notice to Appear (“NTA”) with a later-issued EOIR notice of hearing providing the missing information to “fill in the blanks” from the original defective notice.

In an even more unusual and potentially career-shortening move, six of the BIA’s then 15 Appellate Immigration Judges filed a strongly-worded dissent accusing their majority colleagues of ignoring both the words of the statute and the Court’s Pereira decision. Perhaps not surprisingly, three of the dissenting judges have since retired from the BIA and a fourth, the Vice Chair, was passed over for Acting Chair in a highly unusual personnel move by the DOJ, which controls the BIA. (One of the primary reasons for having a designated “Vice Chair” is to be the “Acting Chair” in the absence of the Chairman.) In their places, Barr has appointed some of the most notorious hard-line asylum denying Immigration Judges in the nation.

The Supremes have thus far tiptoed around the glaring unconstitutionality of a so-called “appellate tribunal” that is appointed, wholly controlled by, and answers to the chief prosecutor, the Attorney General. Not surprisingly, upon discovering the Constitution-nullifying power of a “captive court system,” that is not a court at all under any common understanding of the term, the Administration has leveraged it to the max as a tool for their White Nationalist anti-immigrant agenda. Indeed, all the recent BIA and Attorney General precedents have ruled in favor of the DHS position, even where statutory language, Article III court rulings, prior precedents, and common sense strongly supported the opposite results.

And, many Courts of Appeals have continued to fictionalize that the highly politicized and “weaponized” BIA is an “expert tribunal” entitled to “Chevron deference.” Any true immigration law expert would say that proposition is absurd. Yet, it conveniently furthers the causes of both “judicial task avoidance” and the White Nationalist agenda of the Administration.

Because the BIA now occupies itself not with fair and impartial, expert decision-making, but mostly with keeping the “deportation express” running and insuring that DHS prevails over the legal claims of migrants and asylum seekers to fair and humane treatment under the law, the Supremes are finding themselves in the middle of the “statutory and regulatory nitty gritty” of immigration law that was supposed to be the province of a competent and impartial BIA.

While that has occasionally, as in Pereira, worked to the advantage of individuals seeking justice, for the most part, the Supremes have been willing enforcers of the Administration’s abrogation of immigration laws without Congressional participation and “Dred Scottification” of “the other” in violation of our Constitution, and indeed, in violation of both international conventions and fundamental human decency.

Think of how much better and more efficiently the immigration system could run with a constitutionally-required independent Immigration Court utilizing fair and impartial judges selected on the basis of expertise and reputation for fairness and scholarship rather than commitment to DHS enforcement goals. Think of how much better off our society would be if the Supremes stood up for equal justice for all, rather than enabling a far-right would-be authoritarian scofflaw regime following a racially-biased agenda of dehumanization, degradation, and deportation.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-08-20

ROUND TABLE STRIKES ANOTHER BLOW IN SUPPORT OF JUSTICE⚔️🛡: Immigration Detainees Have a Right to Due Process in Bond Hearings — PADILLA RAUDALES V. DECKER, 2D CIR.

CHRISTOPHER T. CASAMASSIMA
Partner
Wilmer Hale
Los Angeles

SOUVIK SAHA
Counsel
Wilmer Hale
Washington, D.C.

INTEREST OF AMICI CURIAE1

Amici curiae have served as Immigration Judges and as members of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”). Amici are invested in the resolution of this case because they have dedicated their careers to improving tghe fairness and

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efficiency of the U.S. immigration system. Through their centuries-long collective experience, amici have adjudicated hundreds—if not thousands—of immigration detention hearings. Amici have substantial knowledge of immigration detention issues, including the practical impact of the burden of proof in such hearings.

INTRODUCTION AND ARGUMENT SUMMARY

Under the Fifth Amendment, “[n]o person” shall “be deprived of … liberty … without due process of law[.]” U.S. Const. amend. V. The “[f]reedom from imprisonment—from government custody, detention, or other forms of physical restraint—lies at the heart of the liberty that Clause protects.” Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678, 690 (2001). This liberty is so fundamental that the law tolerates its restraint only in limited circumstances.

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Amici are invested in the resolution of

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efficiency of the U.S. immigration system. Through their centuries-long collective experience, amici have adjudicated hundreds—if not thousands—of immigration detention hearings. Amici have substantial knowledge of immigration detention issues, including the practical impact of the burden of proof in such hearings.

INTRODUCTION AND ARGUMENT SUMMARY

Under the Fifth Amendment, “[n]o person” shall “be deprived of … liberty … without due process of law[.]” U.S. Const. amend. V. The “[f]reedom from imprisonment—from government custody, detention, or other forms of physical restraint—lies at the heart of the liberty that Clause protects.” Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678, 690 (2001). This liberty is so fundamental that the law tolerates its restraint only in limited circumstances.

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Amici are invested in the resolution of this case because they have dedicated their careers to improving the fairness and

Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”).

Amici have filed substantially similar briefs in other cases involving burden of proof issues in proceedings under 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a). Here, no party or party’s counsel authored this brief in whole or in part, nor contributed money to preparing or submitting this brief. Only amici or their counsel contributed money to prepare or submit this brief. The parties have consented to the filing of this brief.

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A complete list of amici is included in this brief’s addendum.

Case 19-3220, Document 116, 06/03/2020, 2854056, Page13 of 56

Such restraint violates the Due Process Clause “unless the detention is ordered in a criminal proceeding with adequate procedural protections, or, in certain special and narrow nonpunitive circumstances, where a special justification, such as harm-threatening mental illness, outweighs the individual’s constitutionally protected interest in avoiding physical restraint.” Zadvydas, 533 U.S. at 690. Yet, federal law provides far greater protections to criminal defendants than it does to noncitizens in civil proceedings—even though the distinctions between criminal and non-criminal proceedings mean very little to a person sitting behind bars.

Accordingly, noncitizens already face significant hurdles in detention proceedings brought under 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a). At issue in this appeal is whether another, even higher and more fundamental, barrier to due process can be erected in this Circuit: do noncitizens bear the burden of justifying their freedom from detention? For noncitizens, the answer to this question is no mere technicality—it can mean the difference between freedom and confinement. This burden’s allocation, therefore, “reflects the value society places on individual liberty.” Addington v. Texas, 441 U.S. 418, 425 (1979).

Given their collective experience in adjudicating immigration bond hearings, amici are particularly well-suited to address the monumental question in this case. To that end, amici wish to share the following observations for this Court’s benefit:

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First, noncitizens already enjoy fewer procedural protections than criminal defendants. We contrast the procedural rules for detaining criminal defendants and noncitizens to underscore the challenges that noncitizens face in immigration bond hearings, and to highlight the need for a presumption against detention as one of the last remaining bulwarks to protect noncitizens’ liberty.

Second, detention of noncitizens consumes the government’s already- limited administrative and judicial resources. Amici highlight the staggering costs that are associated with immigration detention, as well as the strain on immigration courts resulting from the unnecessary detention of noncitizens.

Third, contrary to the government’s position, placing the burden of proof on the government would not generate fiscal or administrative hardship. Amici advance that position with confidence because the government previously shouldered that exact burden over a fifteen-year period. Several of the amici served as Immigration Judges within that period and found that this older system did not cause additional costs or administrative hurdles.

Fourth, in amici’s experience, detaining noncitizens actually increases the burden on the immigration court system. While in detention, noncitizens face significant challenges in adequately preparing their cases. Further, the Executive Branch now utilizes “performance metrics” to encourage Immigration Judges to accelerate the fact-finding process in detention proceedings. With less time for

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individualized fact-finding, noncitizens will have even less opportunity to marshal the facts needed to satisfy the burden to avoid detention. Reallocating the burden of proof in immigration bond hearings, therefore, would reduce costs.

Fifth, and finally, amici offer alternatives to noncitizen detention that would inject much-needed resources to the immigration court system. The government’s aversion to such alternatives rest on a single statistic suggesting that the vast majority of noncitizens abscond upon release on bond. That statistic, however, is misleading and inconsistent with other available data, and bears little resemblance to the reality that amici encountered in years of adjudicating immigration cases.

Together, these observations should lead this Court to conclude that due process requires the government to make some sort of individualized showing before it may place noncitizens under lock and key.

. . . .

Read the full brief here: AS FILED No. 19-3220 Amici Br. Padilla Raudales v. Decker (2d Cir.)

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Thanks again not only to the signatory members of our Round Table, but especially to CHRISTOPHER T. CASAMASSIMA, SOUVIK SAHA, and the other members of their pro bono team over at WILMER HALE. Without assistance like yours, the “Voices of the Round Table” would not be heard in support of justice in so many cases throughout our nation!

DUE PROCESS FOREVER!

PWS

06-04-20

⚖️👍🏼SUPREMES UPHOLD JUDICIAL REVIEW OF CAT DENIAL, 7-2 — NASRALLAH v. BARR, Opinion By Justice Kavananaugh — Round Table ⚔️🛡 Files Amicus For Winners!

NASRALLAH v. BARR, No. 18-432, June 1, 2020

SUPREME COURT SYLLABUS:

OCTOBER TERM, 2019 1

Syllabus

NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Syllabus

NASRALLAH v. BARR, ATTORNEY GENERAL CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR

THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

No. 18–1432. Argued March 2, 2020—Decided June 1, 2020

Under federal immigration law, noncitizens who commit certain crimes are removable from the United States. During removal proceedings, a noncitizen who demonstrates a likelihood of torture in the designated country of removal is entitled to relief under the international Conven- tion Against Torture (CAT) and may not be removed to that country. If an immigration judge orders removal and denies CAT relief, the noncitizen may appeal both orders to the Board of Immigration Ap- peals and then to a federal court of appeals. But if the noncitizen has committed any crime specified in 8 U. S. C. §1252(a)(2)(C), the scope of judicial review of the removal order is limited to constitutional and legal challenges. See §1252(a)(2)(D).

The Government sought to remove petitioner Nidal Khalid Nasral- lah after he pled guilty to receiving stolen property. Nasrallah applied for CAT relief to prevent his removal to Lebanon. The Immigration Judge ordered Nasrallah removed and granted CAT relief. On appeal, the Board of Immigration Appeals vacated the CAT relief order and ordered Nasrallah removed to Lebanon. The Eleventh Circuit declined to review Nasrallah’s factual challenges to the CAT order because Nasrallah had committed a §1252(a)(2)(C) crime and Circuit precedent precluded judicial review of factual challenges to both the final order of removal and the CAT order in such cases.

Held: Sections 1252(a)(2)(C) and (D) do not preclude judicial review of a noncitizen’s factual challenges to a CAT order. Pp. 5–13.

(a) Three interlocking statutes establish that CAT orders may be re- viewed together with final orders of removal in a court of appeals. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 authorizes noncitizens to obtain direct “review of a final order of re-

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NASRALLAH v. BARR Syllabus

moval” in a court of appeals, §1252(a)(1), and requires that all chal- lenges arising from the removal proceeding be consolidated for review, §1252(b)(9). The Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998 (FARRA) implements Article 3 of CAT and provides for judicial review of CAT claims “as part of the review of a final order of removal.” §2242(d). And the REAL ID Act of 2005 clarifies that final orders of removal and CAT orders may be reviewed only in the courts of appeals. §§1252(a)(4)–(5). Pp. 5–6.

(b) Sections 1252(a)(2)(C) and (D) preclude judicial review of factual challenges only to final orders of removal. A CAT order is not a final “order of removal,” which in this context is defined as an order “con- cluding that the alien is deportable or ordering deportation,” §1101(a)(47)(A). Nor does a CAT order merge into a final order of re- moval, because a CAT order does not affect the validity of a final order of removal. See INS v. Chadha, 462 U. S. 919, 938. FARRA provides that a CAT order is reviewable “as part of the review of a final order of removal,” not that it is the same as, or affects the validity of, a final order of removal. Had Congress wished to preclude judicial review of factual challenges to CAT orders, it could have easily done so. Pp. 6– 9.

(c) The standard of review for factual challenges to CAT orders is substantial evidence—i.e., the agency’s “findings of fact are conclusive unless any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude to the contrary.” §1252(b)(4)(B).

The Government insists that the statute supplies no judicial review of factual challenges to CAT orders, but its arguments are unpersua- sive. First, the holding in Foti v. INS, 375 U. S. 217, depends on an outdated interpretation of “final orders of deportation” and so does not control here. Second, the Government argues that §1252(a)(1) sup- plies judicial review only of final orders of removal, and if a CAT order is not merged into that final order, then no statute authorizes review of the CAT claim. But both FARRA and the REAL ID Act provide for direct review of CAT orders in the courts of appeals. Third, the Gov- ernment’s assertion that Congress would not bar review of factual challenges to a removal order and allow such challenges to a CAT order ignores the importance of adherence to the statutory text as well as the good reason Congress had for distinguishing the two—the facts that rendered the noncitizen removable are often not in serious dis- pute, while the issues related to a CAT order will not typically have been litigated prior to the alien’s removal proceedings. Fourth, the Government’s policy argument—that judicial review of the factual components of a CAT order would unduly delay removal proceedings— has not been borne out in practice in those Circuits that have allowed factual challenges to CAT orders. Fifth, the Government fears that a

Cite as: 590 U. S. ____ (2020) 3 Syllabus

decision allowing factual review of CAT orders would lead to factual challenges to other orders in the courts of appeals. But orders denying discretionary relief under §1252(a)(2)(B) are not affected by this deci- sion, and the question whether factual challenges to statutory with- holding orders under §1231(b)(3)(A) are subject to judicial review is not presented here. Pp. 9–13.

762 Fed. Appx. 638, reversed.

KAVANAUGH, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and GINSBURG, BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, KAGAN, and GORSUCH, JJ., joined. THOMAS, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which ALITO, J., joined.

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Score at least a modest victory for the NDPA over the “Deportation Railroad.”

Once again the Round Table 🛡⚔️ intervened with an amicus brief on the side of justice. Here’s a report from Judge Jeffrey Chase:

Hi All: Our Round Table filed an amicus brief in Nasrallah v. Barr. The Supreme Court issued it’s 7-2 decision in the case today, and we were on the winning side.

Kavanaugh wrote the decision, and was joined by Roberts, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Gorsuch. Thomas wrote a dissenting opinion that was joined by Alito.

The decision reverses the 11th Cir. and holds that federal courts may review factual issues as well as legal and constitutional issues in CAT appeals filed by noncitizens with criminal convictions falling under 8 C.F.R. section 1252(a)(2)(C).

Gibson Dunn assisted us with the drafting of the brief.

Best, Jeff

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

And, of course, as Jeffrey notes, we couldn’t have done it without help from our pro bono heroes 🥇 over at Gibson Dunn! Many, many thanks!

Great that Justice Kavanaugh, Chief Justice Roberts, and Justice Gorsuch “saw the light” on this one! Not sure how often it will happen in the future, but gotta take what we can get.

Also, given the “haste makes waste” policies thrust on EOIR by the DOJ under Trump, and the significant number of fundamental legal and factual errors made by the BIA, judicial review is likely to turn up additional instances of substandard decision-making.

PWS

06-01-20

⚖️👍🏼🗽DUE PROCESS VICTORY: US District Judge Requires Baltimore Immigration Court to Comply With Due Process in Bond Hearings! — Round Table Warrior Judge Denise Noonan Slavin Provides Key Evidence! — Miranda v. Barr!

Miranda v. Barr, U.S.D.C. D. MD., U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake, 05-29-20

Preliminary Injunction Memo

KEY QUOTES:

. . . .

A. Likelihood of success on the merits

i. Due process claim: burden of proof

The lead plaintiffs claim that Fifth Amendment due process entitles them, and all members of the proposed class, to a bond hearing where the government bears the burden of proving, by clear and convincing evidence, dangerousness or risk of flight. As explained above, neither the INA nor its implementing regulations speak to the burden of proof at § 1226(a) bond hearings, and the BIA has held that the burden lies with the noncitizen. See Guerra, 24 I. & N. Dec. at 37, 40. But, as the lead plaintiffs point out, when faced with challenges to the constitutionality of these hearings, district courts in the First, Second, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits have concluded that due process requires that the government bear the burden of justifying a noncitizen’s § 1226(a) detention. See, e.g., Singh v. Barr, 400 F. Supp. 3d 1005, 1017 (S.D. Cal. 2019) (“[T]he Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause requires the Government to bear the burden of proving . . . that continued detention is justified at a § 1226(a) bond redetermination hearing.”); Diaz-Ceja v. McAleenan, No. 19-CV-00824-NYW, 2019 WL 2774211, at *11 (D. Colo. July 2, 2019) (same); Darko v. Sessions, 342 F. Supp. 3d 429, 436 (S.D.N.Y. 2018) (same); Pensamiento, 315 F. Supp. 3d at 692 (same). While jurisdictions vary on the standard of proof required, compare, e.g., Darko, 342 F. Supp. 3d at 436 (clear and convincing standard) with Pensamiento, 315 F. Supp. 3d at 693 (“to the satisfaction of the IJ” standard), the “consensus view” is that due process requires that the burden lie with the government, see Darko, 342 F. Supp. 3d at 435 (collecting cases).

The defendants concede that “a growing chorus of district courts” have concluded that due process requires that the government bear the burden of proof at § 1226(a) bond hearings. (Opp’n at 22). But the defendants also point out that some courts to consider the issue have

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concluded otherwise. In Borbot v. Warden Hudson Cty. Corr. Facility, the Third Circuit analyzed a § 1226(a) detainee’s claim that due process entitled him to a second bond hearing where “[t]he duration of [] detention [was] the sole basis for [the] due process challenge.” 906 F.3d 274, 276 (3d Cir. 2018). The Borbot court noted that the detainee “[did] not challenge the adequacy of his initial bond hearing,” id. at 276–77, and ultimately held that it “need not decide when, if ever, the Due Process Clause might entitle an alien detained under § 1226(a) to a new bond hearing,” id. at 280. But, in analyzing the detainee’s claims, the Borbot court stated that it “perceive[d] no problem” with requiring that § 1226(a) detainees bear the burden of proof at bond hearings. Id. at 279. Several district courts in the Third Circuit have subsequently concluded that Borbot compels a finding that due process does not require that the government bear the burden of proof at § 1226(a) bond hearings. See, e.g., Gomez v. Barr, No. 1:19-CV- 01818, 2020 WL 1504735, at *3 (M.D. Pa. Mar. 30, 2020) (collecting cases).

Based on its survey of the case law, the court is more persuaded by the reasoning of the district courts in the First, Second, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits. “Freedom from imprisonment— from government custody, detention, or other forms of physical restraint—lies at the heart of the liberty that [the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process] Clause protects.” Zadvydas, 533 U.S. at 690 (citation omitted). While detention pending removal is “a constitutionally valid aspect of the deportation process,” such detention must comport with due process. See Demore v. Kim, 538 U.S. 510, 523 (2003). Although the Supreme Court has not decided the proper allocation of the burden of proof in § 1226(a) bond hearings, it has held, in other civil commitment contexts, that “the individual’s interest in the outcome of a civil commitment proceeding is of such weight and gravity that due process requires the state to justify confinement by proof more substantial than a mere preponderance of the evidence.” See Addington v. Texas, 441 U.S. 418, 427 (1979)

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(addressing the standard of proof required for mental illness-based civil commitment) (emphasis added).

Application of the Mathews v. Eldridge balancing test lends further support to the lead plaintiffs’ contention that due process requires a bond hearing where the government bears the burden of proof. In Mathews, the Supreme Court held that “identification of the specific dictates of due process generally requires consideration of three distinct factors”: (1) “the private interest that will be affected by the official action”; (2) “the risk of an erroneous deprivation of such interest through the procedures used, and the probable value, if any, of additional or substitute procedural safeguards”; and (3) “the Government’s interest, including the function involved and the fiscal and administrative burdens that the additional or substitute procedural requirement would entail.” Mathews, 424 U.S. 319, 335 (1976). While the court acknowledges that requiring the government to bear the burden of proof at § 1226(a) hearings would impose additional costs on the government, those costs are likely outweighed by the noncitizen’s significant interest in freedom from restraint, and the fact that erroneous deprivations of liberty are less likely when the government, rather than the noncitizen, bears the burden of proof. (See Decl. of Former Immigration Judge Denise Noonan Slavin ¶ 6, ECF 1-8 (“On numerous occasions, pro se individuals appeared before me for custody hearings without understanding what was required to meet their burden of proof. . . . Pro se individuals were rarely prepared to present evidence at the first custody hearing[.]”))

With respect to the quantum of proof required at § 1226(a) bond hearings, the court notes that “the overwhelming majority of district courts have . . . held that, in bond hearings under § 1226(a), due process requires the government to bear the burden of justifying detention by clear and convincing evidence.” Hernandez-Lara v. Immigration & Customs Enf’t, Acting Dir., No.

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19-CV-394-LM, 2019 WL 3340697, at *3 (D.N.H. July 25, 2019) (collecting cases). As the Hernandez-Lara court reasoned, “[p]lacing the burden of proof on the government at a § 1226(a) hearing to show by clear and convincing evidence that the noncriminal alien should be detained pending completion of deportation proceedings is more faithful to Addington and other civil commitment cases,” id. at *6, “[b]ecause it is improper to ask the individual to ‘share equally with society the risk of error when the possible injury to the individual’—deprivation of liberty—is so significant,” id. (quoting Singh v. Holder, 638 F.3d 1196, 1203–04 (9th Cir. 2011)) (further citation omitted).

Moreover, on the quantum of proof question, the court finds instructive evolving jurisprudence on challenges to prolonged detention pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1226(c). As noted in note 2, supra, § 1226(c) mandates detention of noncitizens deemed deportable because of their convictions for certain crimes. See Jennings, 138 S. Ct. at 846. Although § 1226(c) “does not on its face limit the length of the detention it authorizes,” id., the Supreme Court has not foreclosed the possibility that unreasonably prolonged detention under § 1226(c) violates due process, id. at 851. Indeed, many courts have held that when § 1226(c) becomes unreasonably prolonged, a detainee must be afforded a bond hearing. See, e.g., Reid v. Donelan, 390 F. Supp. 3d 201, 215 (D. Mass. 2019); Portillo v. Hott, 322 F. Supp. 3d 698, 709 (E.D. Va. 2018); Jarpa, 211 F. Supp. 3d at 717. Notably, courts in this district and elsewhere have ordered § 1226(c) bond hearings where the government bears the burden of justifying continued detention by clear and convincing evidence. See Duncan v. Kavanagh, — F. Supp. 3d —-, 2020 WL 619173, at *10 (D. Md. Feb. 10, 2020); Reid, 390 F. Supp. 3d at 228; Portillo, 322 F. Supp. 3d at 709–10; Jarpa, 211 F. Supp. 3d at 721. As the Jarpa court explained, “against the backdrop of well-settled jurisprudence on the quantum and burden of proof required to pass constitutional muster in civil detention

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proceedings generally, it makes little sense to give Mr. Jarpa at this stage fewer procedural protections than those provided to” civil detainees in other contexts. See Jarpa, 211 F. Supp. 3d at 722 (citing United States v. Comstock, 627 F.3d 513 (4th Cir. 2010)).

In light of the above, the court is satisfied that the lead plaintiffs have shown a likelihood of success on the merits of their claim that due process requires § 1226(a) bond hearings where the government must bear the burden of proving dangerousness or risk of flight. As to the quantum of proof required at these hearings, the court is persuaded that requiring a clear and convincing standard is in line with the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Addington, as well as consistent with the bond hearings ordered in cases involving § 1226(c) detention.

ii. Due process claim: ability to pay and suitability for release on alternative conditions of release

The lead plaintiffs also claim that Fifth Amendment due process entitles them, and all members of the proposed class, to a bond hearing where the IJ considers the noncitizen’s ability to pay a set bond amount and her suitability for release on alternative conditions of supervision. The defendants counter that due process does not so require, and also asserts that at Mr. de la Cruz Espinoza’s bond hearing, the IJ did consider his ability to pay, (Opp’n at 26).

As an initial matter, the court considers whether the IJ at Mr. de la Cruz Espinoza’s bond hearing considered his ability to pay. According to the Complaint, there is no requirement that IJs in Baltimore Immigration Court consider an individual’s ability to pay when setting a bond amount. (Compl. ¶ 27 & n.8). The defendants assert that because Mr. de la Cruz Espinoza’s motion for bond included arguments about his financial situation, the IJ did, in fact, consider his ability to pay. (Opp’n at 26). The court is not persuaded. The fact that an argument was raised does not ipso facto mean it was considered. Neither the transcript of Mr. de la Cruz Espinoza’s bond hearing, (ECF 15-11), nor the IJ’s order of bond, (ECF 1-18), suggest that the IJ actually

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considered ability to pay. Accordingly, without clear evidence to the contrary, the court accepts the lead plaintiffs’ allegation that the IJ did not consider Mr. de la Cruz Espinoza’s ability to pay when setting bond.

The question remains whether due process requires that an IJ consider ability to pay and suitability for alternative conditions of release at a § 1226(a) bond hearing. As explained above, detention pending removal must comport with due process. See Demore, 538 U.S. at 523. Due process requires that detention “bear[s] [a] reasonable relation to the purpose for which the individual [was] committed.” See Zadvydas, 533 U.S. at 690 (quoting Jackson v. Indiana, 406 U.S. 715, 738 (1972)). Federal regulations and BIA decisional law suggest that the purpose of § 1226(a) detention is to protect the public and to ensure the noncitizen’s appearance at future proceedings. See 8 C.F.R. §§ 1003.19, 1236.1; Guerra, 24 I. & N. Dec. at 38. But, the lead plaintiffs argue, when IJs are not required to consider ability to pay or alternative conditions of release, a noncitizen otherwise eligible for release may end up detained solely because of her financial circumstances.

Several courts to consider the question have concluded that § 1226(a) detention resulting from a prohibitively high bond amount is not reasonably related to the purposes of § 1226(a). In Hernandez v. Sessions, the Ninth Circuit held that “consideration of the detainees’ financial circumstances, as well as of possible alternative release conditions, [is] necessary to ensure that the conditions of their release will be reasonably related to the governmental interest in ensuring their appearance at future hearings[.]” See 872 F.3d at 990–91. While the Hernandez court did not explicitly conclude that a bond hearing without those considerations violates due process, see id. at 991 (“due process likely requires consideration of financial circumstances and alternative conditions of release” (emphasis added)), the court in Brito did reach that conclusion, see 415 F.

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Supp. 3d at 267. The Brito court held that, with respect to § 1226(a) bond hearings, “due process requires an immigration court consider both an alien’s ability to pay in setting the bond amount and alternative conditions of release, such as GPS monitoring, that reasonably assure the safety of the community and the alien’s future appearances.” Id. at 267. Relatedly, in Abdi v. Nielsen, 287 F. Supp. 3d 327 (W.D.N.Y. 2018), which involved noncitizens held in civil immigration

9

detentionpursuantto8U.S.C.§1225(b), thecourt—relyingontheNinthCircuit’sreasoningin

Hernandez—held that “an IJ must consider ability to pay and alternative conditions of release in setting bond for an individual detained under § 1225(b).” Id. at 338. To hold otherwise, the Abdi court reasoned, would implicate “the due process concerns discussed in Hernandez, which are equally applicable to detentions pursuant to § 1225(b).”10

The court is persuaded by the reasoning of Hernandez, Brito, and Abdi. If an IJ does not make a finding of dangerousness or substantial risk of flight requiring detention without bond (as in Mr. de la Cruz Espinoza’s case), the only remaining purpose of § 1226(a) detention is to

11

that an individual may not be imprisoned “solely because of his lack of financial resources.” See

9 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b) authorizes indefinite, mandatory detention for certain classes of noncitizens. See Jennings, 138 S. Ct. at 842 (citing 8 U.S.C. §§ 1225(b)(1) and (b)(2)).

10 The court notes that both Hernandez and Abdi reference now-invalidated precedent in both the Ninth and Second Circuits requiring the government to provide civil immigration detainees periodic bond hearings every six months. See Rodriguez v. Robbins, 804 F.3d 1060, 1089 (9th Cir. 2015), abrogated by Jennings, 138 S. Ct. at 852; Lora v. Shanahan, 804 F.3d 601, 616 (2d Cir. 2015), abrogated by Jennings, 138 S. Ct. at 852. But Jennings, which was decided on statutory interpretation grounds, explicitly did not include a constitutional holding. See Jennings, 138 S. Ct. at 851 (“[W]e do not reach th[e] [constitutional] arguments.”). And, as the Hernandez court noted, “the Supreme Court’s review of our holding . . . that noncitizens are entitled to certain unrelated additional procedural protections during the recurring bond hearings after prolonged detention does not affect our consideration of the lesser constitutional procedural protections sought at the initial bond hearings in this case.” 872 F.3d at 983 n.8.

11 The defendants offer no purpose for § 1226(a) detention beyond protecting the community and securing a noncitizen’s appearance at future proceedings.

The set bond amount, then, must be reasonably related to this purpose. But where a bond amount is set too high for an individual to pay, she is effectively detained without bond due to her financial circumstances. It is axiomatic

secure a noncitizen’s appearance at future proceeding.

21

Case 1:20-cv-01110-CCB Document 25 Filed 05/29/20 Page 22 of 29

Bearden v. Georgia, 461 U.S. 660, 661–62, 665 (1983) (automatic revocation of probation for inability to pay a fine, without considering whether efforts had been made to pay the fine, violated due process and equal protection); cf. Tate v. Short, 401 U.S. 395, 398 (1971) (“The Constitution[’s equal protection clause] prohibits the State from imposing a fine as a sentence and then automatically converting it into a jail term solely because the defendant is indigent and cannot forthwith pay the fine in full.”). In the pretrial detention context, multiple Courts of Appeals have held that deprivation of the accused’s rights “to a greater extent than necessary to assure appearance at trial and security of the jail . . . would be inherently punitive and run afoul of due process requirements.” See Pugh v. Rainwater, 572 F.2d 1053, 1057 (5th Cir. 1978) (quoting Rhem v. Malcolm, 507 F.2d 333, 336 (2d Cir. 1974)) (quotation marks omitted); accord ODonnell v. Harris Cty., 892 F.3d 147, 157 (5th Cir. 2018); see also Duran v. Elrod, 542 F.2d 998, 999 (7th Cir. 1976); accord Villarreal v. Woodham, 113 F.3d 202, 207 (11th Cir. 1997).

There is no suggestion that the IJs in Baltimore Immigration Court impose prohibitively high bond amounts with the intent of denying release to noncitizens who do not have the means to pay. But without consideration of a § 1226(a) detainee’s ability to pay, where a noncitizen remains detained due to her financial circumstances, the purpose of her detention—the lodestar of the due process analysis—becomes less clear. As the Ninth Circuit explained,

Setting a bond amount without considering financial circumstances or alternative conditions of release undermines the connection between the bond and the legitimate purpose of ensuring the non-citizen’s presence at future hearings. . . . [It is a] common-sense proposition that when the government detains someone based on his or her failure to satisfy a financial obligation, the government cannot reasonably determine if the detention is advancing its purported governmental purpose unless it first considers the individual’s financial circumstances and alternative ways of accomplishing its purpose.

Hernandez, 872 F.3d at 991.

The defendants assert that an IJ need not consider a noncitizen’s ability to pay a set bond

22

Case 1:20-cv-01110-CCB Document 25 Filed 05/29/20 Page 23 of 29

amount because it had a “reasonable basis to enact a statute that grants the Executive branch discretion to set bonds to prevent individuals, whose ‘continuing presence in the country is in violation of the immigration laws,’ from failing to appear,” and that § 1226(a) passes muster under rational basis review. (Opp’n at 25–26 (quoting Reno v. American-Arab Anti- Discrimination Comm., 525 U.S. 471, 491 (1999)). But the appropriate analysis for a procedural due process challenge is the Mathews balancing test, not rational basis review, which is used to analyze equal protection claims, see, e.g., Schweiker v. Wilson, 450 U.S. 221, 234–35 (1981), and substantive due process claims, see, e.g., Hawkins v. Freeman, 195 F.3d 732, 739 (4th Cir. 1999). And, in applying the Mathews test, the court agrees with the Ninth Circuit’s conclusion that “the government’s refusal to require consideration of financial circumstances is impermissible under the Mathews test because the minimal costs to the government of [] a requirement [that ICE and IJs consider financial circumstances and alternative conditions of release] are greatly outweighed by the likely reduction it will effect in unnecessary deprivations of individuals’ physical liberty.” See Hernandez, 872 F.3d at 993.

Accordingly, the court is satisfied that the lead plaintiffs have shown a likelihood of success on the merits of their claim that due process requires a § 1226(a) bond hearing where the IJ considers a noncitizen’s ability to pay a set bond amount and the noncitizen’s suitability for alternative conditions of release.

Y. . . .

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

Thanks and congratulations to Judge Denise Slavin for “making a difference.” It’s a true honor to serve with you and our other colleagues in the Round Table of Former Immigration Judges! Judge Slavin’s Declaration is cited by Judge Blake at the end of the first full paragraph above “17” in the quoted excerpt.

fl-undocumented-minors 2 – Judge Denise Slavin, executive vice president of the National Association of Immigration Judges in an immigration courtrrom in Miami. Mike Stocker, Sun Sentinel

To be brutally honest about it, Denise is exactly the type of scholarly, courageous, due-process-oriented Immigration Judge who in a functioning, merit-based system, focused on “using teamwork and innovation to develop best practices and guarantee fairness and due process for all” would have made an outstanding and deserving Appellate Immigration Judge on the BIA. Instead, in the totally dysfunctional “World of EOIR,” the “best and brightest” judges, like Denise, essentially are “pushed out the door” instead of being honored and given meaningful opportunities to use their exceptional skills to further the cause of justice, establish and reinforce “best judicial practices,” and serve as outstanding role models for others. What an unconscionable waste!

It’s a great decision! The bad news: Because the Immigration Courts remain improperly captive within a scofflaw, anti-immigrant, and anti-due-process DOJ, respondents in many other jurisdictions will continue to be denied the fundamentally fair bond hearings required by Constitutional Due Process.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-30-20

⚖️💰JUSTICE FOR SALE: DOJ ATTEMPTED TO “BUY OUT” “HOLDOVER” BIA MEMBERS TO CLEAR THE WAY FOR AGGRESSIVELY NATIVIST AGENDA — It Failed, But The Anti-Immigrant, Anti-Asylum, Anti-Due Process Tilt Still Took Place!

EYORE — “Eyore In Distress”
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”

https://www.rollcall.com/2020/05/27/doj-memo-offered-to-buy-out-immigration-board-members/

Tanvi Misra reports for Roll Call:

https://www.rollcall.com/2020/05/27/doj-memo-offered-to-buy-out-immigration-board-members/

DOJ memo offered to buy out immigration board members

The buyouts were only offered to Board of Immigration Appeals members hired before Trump took office

The Justice Department memo came from the director of the Executive Office of Immigration Review, a Justice Department agency. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call file photo)

By Tanvi Misra

Posted May 27, 2020 at 5:04pm

The Justice Department offered buyouts to pre-Trump administration career members on its influential immigration appeals board as part of an ongoing effort to restructure the immigration court system with new hires who may be likely to render decisions restricting asylum.

An internal memo viewed by CQ Roll Call shows that James McHenry, the director of the Executive Office of Immigration Review, offered financial incentives to longtime members of the Board of Immigration Appeals to encourage them to retire or resign. The buyouts and “voluntary separation incentive payments” were offered to “individuals whose positions will help us strategically restructure EOIR in order to accommodate skills, technology, and labor markets,” according to the April 17 memo.

EOIR is the Justice Department agency that oversees the Board of Immigration Appeals, a 23-member body that reviews appealed decisions by immigration judges and sets precedent.

According to two knowledgeable sources at EOIR who declined to be identified for fear of retaliation, the memo was sent to the nine board members appointed under previous Republican and Democratic administrations, before Trump took office. No one accepted the buyout offers, according to both sources.

CQ Roll Call reached out for comment on the memo to McHenry, EOIR and the Justice Department and received a statement Wednesday saying that “the Department does not comment on personnel matters.”

“Any insinuation that politicized hiring has become ramped up is inconsistent with the facts,” the statement said.

The memo sheds light on an ongoing debate over BIA hiring. Immigration judges, lawyers and former EOIR employees say the Trump administration has used the board to help meet its goal of reducing immigration, while government officials say they have simply streamlined a lengthy hiring process that was always subject to political judgments.

In October, CQ Roll Call reported on documents showing the Justice Department had tweaked the hiring process to fill six new vacancies on the board with immigration judges with high asylum denial rates and a track record of complaints. Additional memos that CQ Roll Call wrote about earlier this month shed further light on these rule changes that enabled fast-tracking of those and more recent hires.

The three most recent hires to the board include an immigration judge who denied 96 percent of the asylum requests before him and had a history of formal complaints about “bias and prejudice.” The vacancies were created after a flurry of career board members left the BIA.

“EOIR does not select board members based on prohibited criteria such as race or politics, and it does not discriminate against applicants based on any prohibited characteristics,” the Justice Department said in its statement. “All board members are selected through an open, competitive, merit-based process that begins with a public advertisement on the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) federal employment website.”

Recent changes to EOIR hiring procedures “have made the selection process of board members more formalized and neutral,” the department said.

While buyouts are typically offered to soften the blow of workforce reductions, the two sources at EOIR said the agency’s offers were made so that the BIA could be reconfigured entirely, with the positions of “board members” replaced by those of “appellate immigration judges.” The differences go beyond title, extending to pay ranges and leave policy. Appellate immigration judges also hear cases at both the trial and appellate levels, creating potential conflicts of interests.

“Many board members have viewed themselves as appellate immigration judges for years, and EOIR first proposed such a designation in 2000,” according to the Justice Department statement. “Elevating trial-level judges to appellate-level courts is common in every judicial system in the United States.”

The American Immigration Lawyers Association and other critics said the buyout offer is the latest example in a series of moves that have undermined the neutrality of the immigration court system. They point out that BIA is already housed under a law enforcement agency, the Justice Department, whose leadership may have a stake in the outcome of the court process.

“The administration is trying to further politicize the immigration court system by packing the appellate bench and is seeking to make room for more handpicked judges with this buyout,” Benjamin Johnson, AILA’s executive director, told CQ Roll Call.

“These latest actions reveal the severe impact of our nation’s immigration system being housed under the Attorney General and only underscore the real need to create an independent immigration court,” he said.

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

The refusal of the “holdovers” to take the “buyout” just forced the DOJ politicos to use a different “strategy:” creating additional “appellate judgeships” and “packing” them with appointees with established records of hostility to asylum seekers and the due process rights of respondents.

This presents an interesting historical comparison with an earlier GOP Administration’s program for promoting an anti-immigrant agenda at the BIA. Under Bush II, Ashcroft arbitrarily “cut” the size of the BIA to get rid of the vocal minority of judges who dared to speak up (usually in dissent) for the rights of asylum seekers and other migrants to due process, fundamental fairness, and humane treatment. I was one of those judges “exiled” from the BIA during the “Ashcroft Purge of ‘03.”

Fortunately, I got a “soft landing” just down the hill from the “EOIR Tower” at the Arlington Immigration Court where I remained on the bench and (mostly) “below the radar screen” for the following 13 years. And, yes, I was offered a “buyout” in the form of “early retirement,” which would have been a rather bad financial deal for me at the time. So, I rejected it, and eventually got a much better “deal.”

The DOJ’s claim that the current farce is a “merit selection system” is beyond preposterous. But, as long as Congress and the Article IIIs won’t stand up to Trump’s blatant abuses of due process, the “de-professionalization” of the career Civil Service, and the dehumanization of the “other” before the law (“Dred Scottificfation”), the charade will continue.

Of course the problem isn’t, as EOIR would lead you to believe, that some “trial judges” are elevated to the appellate bench. It’s which “trial judges” are being “rewarded” for their records of hostility to asylum seekers, respondents, and their attorneys.

Also, in what has become essentially a “closed system” of Immigration Judges, staffed almost exclusively by government attorneys overwhelmingly with prosecutorial backgrounds, the “elevation” of existing trial judges, basically tilts the system heavily in favor of DHS and against respondents. Indeed, some fine Immigration Judges with broader experience including private practice, who would have made superior Appellate Immigration Judges in a true merit-based system, were instead forced off the bench by the demeaning, biased, restrictionist policies implemented at EOIR.

Also, having served as both a trial and appellate judge, I know that the “skill sets” are related, but by no means identical. Not all good trial judges make good appellate judges and vice versa. While it’s certainly to be expected that some trial judges will be elevated to the appellate bench, that should not be the sole source of appellate judges.

Appellate judging requires scholarship, collegiality, creativity, writing, and a broad perspective that many talented private advocates, academics, and NGO lawyers possess in abundance. The same holds true of the Article III Appellate Bench. From the Supremes on down, it’s basically in various degrees of failure to uphold the rule of law and the Constitution against the attacks by the Trump regime.

It’s a case of far too many former District Court Judges, former prosecutors, and right-wing “think tankers,” and far too few individuals who have litigation, legal, and life experience gained from representing those who actually come before the courts. The Supremes in particular are badly in need of folks with a broader, more practical, more humane perspective on the law.

The institutional failure of today’s Supremes in the face of concerted Executive tyranny threatens to collapse our entire justice system and take our democratic republic down with it. The whole Article III judicial selection system needs careful reexamination and reforms lest it fall into the same type of institutional dysfunction and disrepute as today’s Immigration “Courts” (which aren’t “courts” at all in any normal sense of the word).

Of course, Trump, Barr, and the rest of their anti-democracy gang would love to make the captive, biased, Executive-controlled Immigration “Courts” the “model” for the Article III Judiciary. And, John Roberts and the rest of the “JR Five” seem all too eager to accommodate them. The perception already is out here that Roberts & Co. “work for” Trump Solicitor General Noel Francisco in somewhat the same way as Immigration “Judges” work for Billy Barr. Until Roberts and his gang show the courage to stand up to Trump and enforce the legal, constitutional, and human rights of “the other” in our society, that perception will only deepen.

As generations of African-Americans discovered following the end of Reconstruction, Constitutional and legal rights are meaningless in the face of biased and cowardly legislators, judges, and other public officials who simply look the other way, join the abuses, or “go along to get along” with treating “the other” unfairly under the law.

Due Process Forever, Captive & Complicit Courts, Never!

PWS

05-28-20

UPDATE:

Benjamin Johnson
Executive Director
AILA

AILA Statement on BIA:

AILA: EOIR Director Attempts to Buy Out Remaining Board Members to Solidify Control of Immigration Courts

AILA Doc. No. 20052830 | Dated May 28, 2020

Washington, DC – According to the Roll Call story published May 27, 2020, Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) Director McHenry sent the remaining members of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) a buy-out memo offering them financial compensation in exchange for early retirement or resignation. This memo was sent on April 17, 2020, during the global public health crisis, and highlights the continuing push by this administration to manipulate the functions of the BIA, the appeals court located within EOIR.

AILA Executive Director Benjamin Johnson stated, “This administration has taken numerous steps to alter the composition and role of the BIA, all in an effort to gain more control over the immigration courts and influence court decisions. In recent months, it came to light that the EOIR Director was attempting to pack the immigration bench with more appointees who have among the lowest asylum grant rates in the country. Now, he is attempting to winnow existing members from the BIA and replace them with a roster of Appellate Immigration Judges, despite congressional and stakeholder concerns about politicization of the BIA. Last year, these new appellate judge positions were created out of thin air. They appear to have nearly identical job functions as the BIA members but the Appellate Immigration Judges can adjudicate both trial and appellate level cases at the same time and can be reassigned away from the BIA at the whim of the EOIR Director.”

“This effort shows a complete disregard, or at the very least a failure to appreciate how our judicial system is supposed to work to provide a fair day in court. In 2003, Attorney General Ashcroft purged several members of the BIA, a political move that was severely criticized and ultimately undermined the credibility of our court system. These recent efforts by this administration make it even clearer that our nation urgently needs an immigration court system that is independent, fair and impartial.”

###

The American Immigration Lawyers Association is the national association of immigration lawyers established to promote justice, advocate for fair and reasonable immigration law and policy, advance the quality of immigration and nationality law and practice, and enhance the professional development of its members.

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

The BIA is a travesty, to be sure. But, an even bigger travesty is the continued “deference” given to a biased, unqualified, non-expert tribunal and its political handlers by the Article III Courts! Under Marbury v. Madison, it’s the job of the Article III Courts to say what the law is. To “defer” to the BIA, a body that currently functions not like a independent, expert tribunal, but has become a “shill” for DHS Enforcement and an adjunct of White Nationalist White House Policy Advisor Stephen Miller, is a disgraceful case of judicial task avoidance and dereliction of duty.

If nothing else, the ongoing disaster at the BIA points to an “inconvenient truth” in America’s justice system: We need better, more informed (particularly in the areas of immigrants’ rights and human rights), more courageous judges at all levels of the Federal Judiciary if we are to survive as a democratic republic where the rule of law and equal justice under law have meaning!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-28-20

LAW YOU CAN USE: THE DEVIL👹 IS IN THE DETAILS: JEFFREY S. CHASE — OPINIONS/ANALYSIS ON IMMIGRATION LAW: “Just One More Thing…”

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“Just One More Thing…”

When reviewing asylum applications of late, I find myself thinking of the popular 1970s TV show “Columbo.” After interviewing a suspect, it’s title character, a disheveled homicide detective, would famously stop on his way out to ask “just one more thing.” What he asked next was always critical to proving the case.

Asylum claims are increasingly reliant on nuance. For example, in Hernandez-Chacon v. Barr, the Petitioner’s statement that she had resisted an attempted rape by one of the gang members “because [she had] every right to” was a significant reason for the Second Circuit’s conclusion that her subsequent persecution was on account of an imputed political opinion.

Similarly, in Lopez-Ordonez v. Barr, the Fourth Circuit’s finding of imputed political opinion relied largely on the Petitioner, while a soldier in the Guatemalan army, uttering a warning that he would “call the human rights right now” if a fellow soldier carried out his intent of harming a baby.

And in Orellana v. Barr, the Fourth Circuit found support for the Petitioner’s assertion that the Salvadoran government was unable or unwilling to provide protection from her domestic partner in her testimony that she would call the police when her partner would become abusive and lock herself in a room with her children while the partner paced outside with a machete, but that the police would not show up for hours, and sometimes not show up at all.

In the above examples, the critical statements came out during testimony in court. But under pressure to meet unrealistic case completion goals, immigration judges are increasingly suggesting that respondents forego testimony and rely on their written applications, or waive direct examination and reserve the right to redirect. In some instances, judges have imposed time limits on testimony. There has been even greater pressure to forego the testimony of other witnesses and instead rely on their written submissions alone.

This pressure to make asylum adjudication more administratively efficient conflicts with the process through which such claims develop. While the written evidence explains the claim, an unanticipated response to a probing question may provide a eureka moment that alters the legal analysis. In my first year on the bench in 1995, a response from a female asylum seeker uttered with a certain degree of conviction caused me to make a connection to a 1993 decision of the Third Circuit in Fatin v. INS. That decision, authored by then-circuit judge Samuel Alito, recognized a particular social group consisting of both gender and a refusal to conform to the government’s gender-specific laws. After weeks of subsequent research and analysis, the case before me ended in a grant of asylum, a result that never would have occurred without the extensive testimony that elicited that one critical utterance.

While EOIR management’s present focus is on efficiency, it bears noting that claims for asylum and related reliefs have life-or-death consequences. For example, a February report of Human Rights Watch documented 138 Salvadorans who were murdered after being deported from the U.S., and 70 other deportees who were subjected to beatings, sexual assault, or extortion. And those are just the statistics for one country.

It is therefore extremely important to find a way to anticipate the details that might turn a case from a denial to a grant, and to include those details in the written asylum application. And this can be best achieved through the Columbo method of asking “just one more thing.”

Examples:

Domestic violence claims

Typically, applications describe the brutal mistreatment suffered by the asylum-seeker. But in Matter of A-B-, the Attorney General claimed a lack of evidence that the persecutor “was aware of, and hostile to” a particular social group. The A.G. rather attributed the motive for the attack to the persecutor’s “preexisting personal relationship with the victim.”

In such cases, ask “just one more thing” to establish that the abusive partner was at least partially motivated to harm the asylum seeker because of her gender (which should in turn be argued to constitute her particular social group). For example, the respondent in A-B- described how her ex-husband believed “a woman’s place was in the home, like a servant.” This statement established (1) that the persecutor was aware of a particular social group, consisting of women, and (2) his own hostility towards such group, through his relegating its members to a subservient role in society.

Additional “Columbo” questions would inquire whether the persecutor’s verbal abuse included gender-specific derogatory terms; how he generally spoke of or treated other women in his life; and whether he would have inflicted the same forms of abuse on e.g. his brother, a close male friend, or a male roommate. The answers may well establish that the asylum seeker’s inclusion in a social group defined by her gender was at least “one central reason” for her being targeted for abuse.

“Just one more thing” should also be asked to flesh out imputed political opinion as a possible motive, as in the above-cited Hernandez-Chacon case.

Family-based claims

These claims often arise in the gang context, when gang members unable to target a particular individual target family members of that individual instead. Although courts for decades have held family to be the quintessential example of a particular social group for asylum purposes, two recent administrative decisions have complicated these claims. First, the BIA in Matter of L-E-A- dismissed the threat to the family member as being motivated by financial considerations and not by an actual animus towards the family. The Attorney General then weighed in, questioning whether a family enjoys the required distinction in the eyes of society to constitute a particular social group.

Regarding nexus, the “Columbo” questions should focus on circumstantial evidence of intent. Keep in mind the BIA’s decision in Matter of S-P–. One of the factors set out in that decision for determining when purported criminal prosecution might actually be political persecution is where the abuse is “out of proportion to nonpolitical ends.” For example, if someone accused of jaywalking is sentenced to ten years in prison and subjected to torture and interrogation sessions, it’s safe to assume that it isn’t really about the jaywalking.

With this in mind, the “just one more thing” issue in such cases is to elicit details about the purported motive vs. the seriousness of the threatened harm. Where the issue is extortion, and the Board might therefore view the motive as economic, ask exactly how much money was involved. Under the S-P- test, a threat to rape and kill someone because their family member neglected to pay $20 in renta probably isn’t about the money. The same might be found even where a larger sum is involved where the threats are directed at, e.g., a teenage child who lacks any realistic ability to pay. Or where the family has managed to avoid paying for years, is there a point where a dispute that began purely over money starts to take on some animus towards the family as well?

Regarding social distinction, “just one more thing” should be asked to establish how the asylum-seeker’s family was viewed in the society in which they lived, as well as the general distinctions that all families enjoy in such society. Was it known throughout the community that MS-13 is targeting the client’s family? If so, might that knowledge have caused the family to achieve social distinction? It is also worth asking whether the institution of family is addressed in the country’s constitution, or how kinship is treated regarding the country’s inheritance and guardianship laws.

Unwilling/unable issues:

As in Orellana v. Barr above, ask “just one more thing” about how many times your client turned to the police, and how many times they actually responded. Also, how long did it take them to respond, and what did the response consist of? How did the authorities treat the abuser? Did they take the position that the issue was a “personal matter” not proper for police intervention?

If the client did not bother to call the police because they viewed it as futile, ask “just one more thing” about what caused them to form such a view. Do they know of relatives, friends, or neighbors whose experiences with the authorities support such a view? Can they cite examples in which there were repercussions for those who called on the authorities for protection? Have the authorities asked for bribes, or made statements exhibiting bias or corruption? Or have they gone as far as to admit that they are unable to provide effective protection?

Copyright 2020 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.

Reprinted by permission.

(Disclaimer: The foregoing is meant as “food for thought,” and is not to be interpreted or relied upon as legal advice, or to create an attorney-client relationship. And as the law changes, by the time you read this, the information contained therein might not be up to date.)

MAY 27, 2020

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

Thanks, Jeffrey, my friend!

I’ve always said about asylum litigation in Immigration Court: The Devil 👹 is in the details. And, if you don’t find that Devil, the Assistant Chief Counsel will. And, YOU will burn🔥!

PWS

05-27-20

IT’S HERE! — IMMIGRATION HISTORY AT ITS BEST! — Months In The Making, The “Schmidtcast,” A 7-Part Series Featuring Podcaster Marica Sharashenidze Interviewing Me About My Legal Career “American Immigration From Mariel to Miller” — Tune In Now!

Marica Sharashenidze

Born in 1993, Marica was raised in Maryland and earned a B.A. in Sociology from Rice University. Marica worked in the past as a paralegal at Hudson Legal in Ann Arbor and most recently explored eGovernance based infrastructure projects on the Dorot Fellowship. In the past, she received the Wagoner Fellowship, from the Higher School of Economics in Saint Petersburg, Russia, where she completed a year long ethnographic research project. She is fluent in Russian and proficient in Spanish and Hebrew.

Hon. Paul Wickham Schmidt
U.S. Immigraton Judge (Ret.)
Adjunct Professor, Georgetown Law
Blogger, immigrationcourtside.com

Judge (Retired) Paul Wickham Schmidt

Judge Schmidt was appointed as an Immigration Judge at the U.S. Immigration Court in Arlington, Virginia, in May 2003 and retired from the bench on June 30, 2016. Prior to his appointment as an Immigration Judge, he served as a Board Member for the Board of Immigration Appeals, Executive Office for Immigration Review, in Falls Church, VA, since February 12, 1995. Judge Schmidt served as Board Chairman from February 12, 1995, until April 9, 2001, when he chose to step down as Chairman to adjudicate cases full-time. He authored the landmark decision Matter of Kasinga, 21 I&N Dec. 357 (BIA 1996), extending asylum protection to victims of female genital mutilation. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Lawrence University in 1970 (cum laude), and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Wisconsin School of Law in 1973 (cum laude; Order of the Coif). While at the University of Wisconsin, he served as an editor of the Wisconsin Law Review. Judge Schmidt served as acting General Counsel of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) (1986-1987; 1979-1981), where he was instrumental in developing the rules and procedures to implement the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. He also served as the Deputy General Counsel of INS for 10 years (1978-1987). He was the managing partner of the Washington, DC, office of Fragomen, Del Rey & Bernsen (1993-95), and also practiced business immigration law with the Washington, DC, office of Jones, Day, Reavis and Pogue from 1987-92 (partner, 1990-92). Judge Schmidt also served as an adjunct professor of law at George Mason University School of Law in 1989 and at Georgetown University Law Center (2012-14; 2017–). He has authored numerous articles on immigration law, and has written extensively for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Judge Schmidt is a member of the American Bar Association, the Federal Bar Association, and the Wisconsin and District of Columbia Bars. Judge Schmidt was one of the founding members of the International Association of Refugee Law Judges (“IARLJ”). In June 2010, Judge Schmidt received the Lucia R. Briggs Distinguished Achievement Award from the Lawrence University Alumni Association in recognition of his notable career achievements in the field of immigration law. Since retiring, in addition to resuming his Adjunct Professor position at Georgetown Law, Judge Schmidt has established the blog immigrationcourtside.com, is an Americas Vice President of the IARLJ, serves on the Advisory Board of AYUDA, and assists the National Immigrant Justice Center/Heartland Alliance on various projects, as well as speaking, lecturing, and writing in forums throughout the country on contemporary immigration issues, due process, and U.S. Immigration Court reform.

Here are links:

https://pws.transistor.fm/

https://feeds.transistor.fm/the-life-and-times-of-the-honorable-paul-wickham-schmidt

And here are some “Previews with links to each episode:”

APRIL 23, 2020 • 66 MINUTES

Concluding Remarks

So, what now? Will the intentional cruelty, “Dred Scottification,” false narratives, and demonization of “the other,” particularly women, children, and people of color, by presidential advisor Stephen Miller and his White Nationalists become the “future face” of America? Or, will “Our Better Angels” help us reclaim the vision of America as the “Shining City on the Hill,” welcoming immigrants and protecting refugees, in good times and bad, while “leading by example” toward a more just and equal world?

APRIL 22, 2020 • 48 MINUTES

The Mariel Boatlift Crisis

The Refugee Act of 1980 feels like a huge success…for a short amount of time. The first test of the act comes when Fidel Castro opens Cuba’s borders (and Cuba’s prisons) and hundreds of refugees arrive on Florida shores. The Mariel Boatlift Crisis forced the U.S. government to realize that not all asylum processing can happen abroad. Unfortunately, it also left the public with the impression that “Open arms and open hearts” leads only to crisis.

APRIL 22, 2020 • 25 MINUTES

The Refugee Act of 1980

The year is 1980 and the war in Vietnam has displaced hundreds and thousands of people. The system of presidential parole doesn’t seem like it can handle the growing global refugee crisis. What is the answer to this ballooning need? Process most refugees abroad to streamline their entrance to the U.S. Codify asylum in the U.S. in legislation that puts human rights first. Increase prestige, improve overall government coordination, provide a permanent source of funding, and institutionalize refugee resettlement programs and assimilation. Have Ted Kennedy be the face of the effort. For once, things are actually working out for humanity.

APRIL 22, 2020 • 54 MINUTES

The 1990s BIA

In the 1990s, Judge Schmidt was BIA Chairman Schmidt. With the support of then Attorney General Janel Reno, he aspired to “open up” appellate judgeships to all immigration experts, and to lead the BIA to much-needed progressive steps towards humane asylum law, better scholarship, improved public service, transparency, and streamlined efficiency to reduce the backlog. However, progress seemed to stall at several points and certain types of behavior tended to be rewarded. The Board sits at the intersection between a court and an agency within the administration, which means its hurdles come both from structural issues with the U.S. Justice System and with entrenched government bureaucracy.

APRIL 22, 2020 • 48 MINUTES

Creating EOIR

In the 1980s, critics claimed that the federal agency in charge of immigration enforcement, the “Legacy” Immigration and Naturalization Service (“INS”), could not process quasi-judicial cases in a fair and just manner due to limited autonomy, non-existent technology, insufficient resources, haphazard management, poor judicial selection processes, and backlogs. The solution? Create a sub-agency of the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) just for the immigration courts, focused on “due process with efficiency” and organizationally separate from the agency charged with immigration enforcement. The Executive Office of Immigration Review (“EOIR”) was an ambitious and noble endeavor, meant to be an independent court system operating inside of a Federal Cabinet agency. Spoiler: despite significant initial progress it did not work out that way in the long run.

APRIL 21, 2020 • 36 MINUTES

The Immigration Reform and Control Act

In 1986, the United States was facing an immigration crisis with an overwhelmed INS and a record number of undocumented folks in the country. IRCA, a bipartisan bill, was created to solve the immigration crisis through a three-pronged approach: legalization, enforcement and employer accountability. However, it soon became apparent that some parts of IRCA were more successful than others. IRCA taught us relevant lessons for going forward. Because while pathways to citizenship are self-sustaining, enforcing borders is not.

APRIL 18, 2020 • 43 MINUTES

The Ashcroft Purge

Judges are meant to be impartial; but, U.S. Immigration Judges have political bosses who are willing and able to fire them while making little secret of their pro-enforcement, anti-immigrant political agenda. What are the public consequences of an Immigration Court with limited autonomy from the Executive Branch? We begin the podcast at one of the “turning points,” when Attorney General John Ashcroft fired almost all the most “liberal” Board Members of the BIA, all of whom were appointed during the Clinton Administration. What followed created havoc among the U.S. Courts of Appeals who review BIA decisions. The situation has continually deteriorated into the “worst ever,” with “rock bottom” morale, overwhelming backlogs, fading decisional quality, and the “weaponized”Immigration Courts now tasked with carrying out the Trump Administration’s extreme enforcement policies.

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Many, many thanks to Marica for persuading me to do this project and for doing all the “hard stuff.” I just “rambled on” — her questions and expert editing provided the context and “framework.” And, of course, Marica provided all the equipment (the day her brother “borrowed” her batteries) and the accompanying audio clips and written introductions.

Also, many thanks to my wife Cathy for the many hours that she and “Luna the Dog” (a huge “Marica fan”) spent trying not to listen to us working in the dining room, while adding many helpful suggestions to me, starting with “you sound too rehearsed” and “lose the ‘uhs’ and ‘you knows.’” She even put up with me playing some of the “original takes” while we were “on the road” to Wisconsin or Maine.

Happy listening!

Due Process Forever!

PWS😎

05-19-20

ROUND TABLE MEMBER & FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY, JUDGE (RET.) GEORGE PROCTOR SPEAKS OUT AGAINST BARR’S FLYNN DECISION IN THE SF CHRON!

Honorable George Proctor
U.S. Immigration Judge (Ret.j)
Member, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

San Francisco Chronicle published my Letter to the Editor this AM:

“Regarding the Chronicle’s Editorial on DOJ (May 11), I was in the Department of Justice under five presidents, and Bill Barr when he first served as attorney general. For the second time, I joined some two thousand fellow alumni of the Department in seeking Bill Barr’s resignation. We share shock and sadness over the Department under Bill Barr. As a United States Attorney, initially appointed by President Carter, I served President Reagan’s attorney general, William

French Smith, as his chairman of the advisory committee of US Attorneys. In today’s partisan climate, my role of advising an attorney general of the Republican Party as a Democrat would never happen. Each chapter of Barr’s tenure is more shoddy than the last. My hat is off to those career Justice attorneys who declined to lend their names to the motion to dismiss charges against General Flynn.”

George Proctor

San Francisco

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

My friend and colleague George is a true American hero and one of the most dedicated public servants I have known. We actually go back to my days as the Deputy General Counsel of the “Legacy” INS during the Carter and Reagan Administrations. George is also a Veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. I remember that George and I were in the same “New Judge Training Class” at the National Judicial College in Reno after Ashcroft “exiled” me from the BIA in 2003!

George is a prime example of the nonpartisan career lawyers and civil servants being “ground into the dust” by the shenanigans of the politicized, unethical, and biased DOJ under Sessions and Barr.

Thanks for speaking out, George!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-14-20

DUE PROCESS: Round Table ⚔️🛡 Files Amicus Brief in Yanez-Pena v. Barr (5th Cir.) Cert. Petition — Pereira Issue

Richard W. Mark, Esquire
Partner
Gibson Dunn
New York

Amer S. Ahmed, Esquire
Partner
Gibson Dunn
New York

Read the entire brief here:

Yanez-Pena Amicus Brief TO FILE

Here’s the summary from the brief :

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

It is an axiom of due process that a party charged to defend against a legal proceeding must receive notice of the time and place of the proceeding and an opportunity to be heard. This Court’s ruling in Pereira v. Sessions, 138 S. Ct. 2105 (2018), reflects that axiom in the context of initiating removal proceedings by “notice to appear.”

This petition presents a straightforward question of enormous practical significance that has divided the five courts of appeals to have considered the issue: Must the initial written notice served on noncitizens to commence their removal proceedings provide—in

1 All parties have consented to the filing of this brief. Amici state that this brief was not authored in whole or in part by counsel for any party, and that no person or entity other than amici or their counsel made a monetary contribution intended to fund the preparation or submission of this brief.

2 The appendix provides a complete list of signatories.

2

one document—the “time and place at which the proceedings will be held” (along with charges and other specified information) in order to satisfy the require- ments of 8 U.S.C. § 1229(a), or does the statute allow the government to cobble together the required elements of a “notice to appear” from multiple documents, issued at different times, none of which alone contain all of the statutorily required information?

Resolution of this issue will affect thousands of people in the immigration system. For noncitizens applying for cancellation of removal, service of a valid “notice to appear” triggers the so-called “stop-time” rule, which terminates the period of continuous pres- ence required for cancellation eligibility. For noncitizens ordered removed in absentia, whether that se- vere penalty is proper depends on whether the notice served on the noncitizen satisfied the requirements of § 1229(a).

This Court should grant review to resolve the accelerating circuit split over this issue. The Fifth Circuit, agreeing with the Sixth Circuit, held that a defective “notice to appear” lacking the statutorily required time-and-place information could be “cured” by a subsequent “notice of hearing” containing that information, such that the separate documents considered together become “a notice to appear,” with the stop- time rule being triggered upon later service of the “curative” notice of hearing. See Yanez-Pena v. Barr, 952 F.3d 239 (5th Cir. 2020); Garcia-Romo v. Barr, 940 F.3d 192 (6th Cir. 2019). The Third and Tenth Circuits, based on the plain language of § 1229(a) and this Court’s decision in Pereira, 138 S. Ct. at 2105, have reached the opposite conclusion. See Guadalupe v. Atty. Gen., 951 F.3d 161 (3d Cir. 2020); Banuelos v. Barr, 953 F.3d 1176 (10th Cir. 2020). A divided panel

3

of the Ninth Circuit was in accord with the Third and Tenth Circuits, before that court granted rehearing en banc. See Lopez v. Barr, 925 F.3d 396, 405 (9th Cir. 2019), vacated and reh’g en banc granted, 948 F.3d 989 (9th Cir. 2020).

This Court should bring harmony to federal law by granting certiorari, reversing the Fifth Circuit, and restoring the common-sense interpretation of § 1229(a) as requiring one document that satisfies the statute’s requirements.

I. The question presented affects many thousands of people across the country. As the government told this Court in 2018, “almost 100 percent” of putative notices to appear omit the required time-and-place in- formation. Pereira, 138 S. Ct. at 2111. Hundreds of thousands of notices to appear are served each year; a dispute about validity is embedded in every proceed- ing initiated with a notice that lacks time-and-place information. Indeed, tens of thousands of cancellation applications remain pending, each one requiring an IJ to determine whether the stop-time rule was triggered by § 1229(a) notice. Similarly, tens of thousands of in absentia removal orders are issued every year, each one dependent on whether proceedings began with the noncitizen’s being served a notice to appear that com- plies with § 1229(a).

This case involves the application of § 1229(a) in both the cancellation of removal and in absentia removal contexts, thus presenting an optimal vehicle to address the question presented. See Petition for a Writ of Certiorari (“Pet.”) at 22-24.

II. Deciding the question presented will also pro- mote uniformity in the nation’s immigration laws. Uniformity in this sphere is a foundational principle

4

of American law, with the Constitution explicitly directing Congress “[t]o establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.” U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 4. But there can be no uniform law if basic questions affect- ing the right of an individual to remain in the country get an answer that varies among the circuits. Such a regime would result in divergent outcomes based on geography alone, not the merits of any particular noncitizen’s case.

This unfairness may be exacerbated by the Department of Homeland Security’s (“DHS”) discretion to select the venue for a removal proceeding, and thus the law that governs the case. DHS’s ability to choose the venue, coupled with its ability to transfer detainees wherever it sees fit, opens the door to unfair forum shopping for the circuit law it prefers.

III. Requiring DHS to work with the Executive Office for Immigration Review (“EOIR”) to obtain time-and-place information before serving a notice to appear—and including such information in that document, as § 1229(a) and Pereira require—is practical and will reduce administrative inefficiency and error. Doing so will also achieve the legislative purpose of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act (“IIRIRA”), Pub. L. 104-208, Div. C, 110 Stat. 3009-546, of which § 1229(a) was a part, by instituting a “single form of notice” to “simplify procedures for initiating removal proceedings.” H.R. Rep. 104-469(I), 1996 WL 168955 at *159.

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Many thanks to our GOOD friends Richard W. Mark and Amer S. Ahmed and their team over at the NY Office of Gibson Dunn for their extraordinary pro bono assistance in drafting our brief.

Due Process Forever!👍🏼

PWS

05-12-20

SCRUTINY 🔎: IG to Look Into EOIR’s “Three Ring Circus” 🤡 Operations During Pandemic! — Priscilla Alvarez Reports for CNN

https://apple.news/A_cgrTbprRN6R9noX9DJOuQ

Priscilla Alvarez reports for CNN:

The Justice Department’s inspector general is reviewing the Trump administration’s decision to keep the nation’s immigration courts open while the coronavirus swept through the United States.

The Executive Office for Immigration Review, the agency within the Justice Department that oversees the immigration court system, came under increased criticism from immigration judges, attorneys, and prosecutors for proceeding with immigration hearings despite social distancing guidelines and shelter in place orders.

Eventually, the agency postponed hearings scheduled for immigrants who are not in detention, providing some reprieve and resulting in less traffic at the court, but hearings for immigrants in detention, including children, continue to proceed.

It made incremental changes to court operations in the first weeks of the outbreak, often late at night and through Twitter, frustrating immigration judges and lawyers who repeatedly urged the agency to close courts altogether.

According to the inspector general’s website, the office will “assess EOIR’s communication to staff, parties to proceedings, and the public about immigration court operations; its use of personal protective equipment; its use of worksite flexibilities; and its ability to mitigate health risks while maintaining operations during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

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Read the rest of Priscilla’s article at the link.

Communication with the field and the public hasn’t been a strong point for EOIR in this regime. Nor has getting employee or public input before taking drastic actions been a concern. The disrespect for its own judges is graphically illustrated by EOIR’s frivolous attempt to “decertify” the National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”) when it should be getting input from them (and the public) and working cooperatively to implement “best practices.”

Past IG investigations haven’t turned out particularly well for EOIR. But, the regime has shown a spectacular capacity for “blowing off” the results of independent investigations into its conduct and following up by “punishing” the investigators without consequences for the wrongdoers.

Ironically, then, if the investigation is critical of EOIR, it could be more “career threatening” for the investigators than for the delinquent EOIR management officials carrying out the “party line.”

Due Process Forever! Clown Courts 🤡 Never!

PWS

05-07-20

TANVI MISRA @ ROLL CALL: The BIA’s Biased Hiring Program Is As Bogus As A Three Dollar Bill — Designed To Empower White Nationalist Nation, Deny Due Process! ☠️👎🏻 — “Everyone knows that [EOIR Director James McHenry] 👺 was changing the process along the way to ensure he got the candidates he pre-selected.”

https://www.rollcall.com/2020/05/04/doj-hiring-changes-may-help-trumps-plan-to-curb-immigration/

Tanvi writes for Roll Call:

. . . .

The hiring plan documents show shortened hiring timelines and suggest preference given to judges with records of rulings against immigrants. The documents also demonstrate the influence held over the board by the political leadership of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the Justice Department agency that oversees the nation’s immigration court system, particularly its director, James McHenry.

“The [hiring] processes previously in place were cumbersome and not efficient but what we’re seeing with this hiring plan is that they’ve really eviscerated any protections that were put in place … to create a flexible process to fit their political priorities,” said Laura Lynch, senior policy counsel at AILA. “It’s very unclear and opaque and provides the leeway to manipulate the process.”

An EOIR official, who would only comment if identified as an agency spokeswoman, said its current process is “open, competitive, merit-based.”

“During the most recent hiring cycle, every interview panelist was a career (i.e. not political) employee, which would not have been possible under the previous procedures,” said the spokeswoman after CQ Roll Call reached out to EOIR for comment. “Individuals who assert that such changes make the hiring process less neutral are either ignorant or mendacious.”

New roles

Under the current administration, the Justice Department has rapidly expanded the board. In 2018, it went from 17 members to 21. On March 31, the department announced a new rule, effective the next day, expanding the board to 23 members.

McHenry first advertised for new positions in fall 2018. But instead of referring to them as “board members,” as they had been historically described, he called them “appellate judges,” a reflection of other changes to come. Instead of working out of the board’s office in Falls Church, Va., appellate judges could work from any immigration court in the country.

They also could review cases at both the trial and the appellate level — creating potential conflicts of interest.

EOIR said its office first proposed that designation in 2000.

“Elevating trial-level judges to appellate-level courts is common in every judicial system in the United States,” the agency spokeswoman said.

True, said Ashley Tabaddor, who heads the union, the National Association of Immigration Judges. But she noted judges in an independent judiciary don’t hear cases at the trial and appellate level at the same time.

“They are taking these concepts and they’re mashing them up together to essentially walk away from the traditional court model,” she said, adding that she believes conflating the roles could be a way to dilute union membership.

Tabaddor and others are currently fighting the Justice Department over its move in January to decertify the judges’ union.

Faster hiring process

In 2008, a DOJ Inspector General investigation found widespread political hiring at the board. As a result, to curb future practices, the department implemented a multi-layered process that entailed vetting by both political appointees and career professionals.

The current hiring process appears to chip away at the role career employees play in that process, and instead amplifies that of the EOIR director and other political appointees, according to Lynch and some other experts who reviewed the changes.

McHenry refers several times in one memo that he seeks to streamline the hiring process and make it more efficient. For instance, new openings on the board are now public for only 14 days, as opposed to the previous 30 days, to “begin the application review process more quickly,” McHenry writes in the memo.

In another step, current board members have to submit their evaluations of job candidates within three days, as opposed to a week. McHenry notes other tighter deadlines for other parts of the applicant screening process.

The changes raise concerns by immigration judges, lawyers and court observers about political appointees rushing preferred candidates, including those with unresolved complaints in their records, onto the board.

“Looks like another coverup for ‘expedited,’ predetermined, ideologically-based, ‘insider’ hiring,” Paul Schmidt, a retired immigration judge who headed the Board of Immigration Appeals under President Bill Clinton, told CQ Roll Call via email.

Schmidt, who tracks every board hire and firing on a well-known immigration blog, described the current hiring process as “a fraud and a joke — but not so funny when we consider the human lives at stake.”

According to a former longtime member of the appeals board who served under McHenry, EOIR’s director has manipulated even the newly laid out hiring process. “Everyone knows that he was changing the process along the way to ensure he got the candidates he pre-selected,” said the former board member, who spoke to CQ Roll Call on the condition of anonymity because of fear of agency retribution.

EOIR leaders did not respond to questions posed to agency leaders specifically regarding this allegation.

. . . .

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

Read Tanvi’s full article at the link.

Actually, I’m neither neither “ignorant [nor] mendacious.” I probably know more about EOIR than anyone alive. I”ll certainly put my knowledge of immigration law and due process up against anyone at the DOJ today!

The proof of any merit based hiring system is in the results. Nobody, and I mean nobody, outside the world of DOJ politicos and the restrictionist right would claim that the last half-dozen selections for the BIA are the “best and the brightest.” None of them actually have any recent relevant experience representing migrants or asylum seekers.

There must be hundreds if not thousands of immigration practitioners out there who would be better qualified and more deserving of these jobs. Under current conditions, what would a civil servant not actually involved in Immigration Court practice know about what makes a good BIA Appellate Immigration Judge? What would they know about legal issues facing the immigrant community? Next to nothing, to put it generously. So, what’s the benefit of involving them except to “rubber stamp” and “launder” Director McHenry’s anti-immigrant preselections. That’s exactly what the “inside” source in Tanvi’s article confirms!

What is badly needed and sorely lacking is input from the immigration bar and the NGOs who actually practice before the Immigration Courts and the BIA and have seen the unmitigated due process and fundamental fairness disaster that unfolds every day under this Administration. That’s the way other judicial “merit selection” systems are run — with input from outside Government, indeed some even get input from influential non-lawyers within the community being served by the courts.

Such a system was actually used on a number of occasions during the Clinton Administration. And, hiring then didn’t take anywhere near as long as it has under the bloated, biased, and opaque systems employed by the Bush, Obama, and Trump Administrations. Not surprisingly, every appointment to the BIA since 2000 has been some type of “government insider.”

Today’s BIA is largely White, Male, Anglo, and restrictionist. That bears no resemblance whatsoever to the community that the Immigration Courts are supposed to be serving. Indeed, it bears little resemblance to the composition of today’s America or the attitudes of the majority of Americans toward migrants.

Even with tons of “undue deference” given to the BIA by the Article IIIs, scarcely a week goes by without the Article IIIs highlighting some grossly defective performance in the BIA’s interpretation and application of the basics of immigration law and due process. Yet, the BIA selection process makes no effort to encourage or promote private sector applicants renowned and respected in the larger legal community for their scholarship, professionalism, and problem-solving skills. Indeed, some Immigration Judges with just those skills have prematurely been driven from the bench by this Administration’s racially biased and fundamentally unfair manipulation of the Immigration Court process.

The BIA’s bogus hiring process is a prime example of fraud, waste, and abuse. And the failure of Congress and the Article III Courts to put an end to this ridiculous perversion of justice is a disgraceful act of complicity in the disgusting “Dred Scottification” of “the other.”

INTERESTING HISTORICAL FOOTNOTE: The current 23 Board Members is where the BIA was in 2001 before the “Ashcroft Purge” artificially reduced the BIA to 12 Members to eliminate dialogue, suppress dissent, and skew results to favor DHS without any meaningful deliberation or internal opposition. In other words, creating a false impression of consensus by shutting out dissent. The immediate cratering of the quality of the BIA’s decision making caused an uproar of resistance and criticism in the Circuit Courts of Appeals. Since then, the Immigration Courts have been in a two-decade-long “death spiral” with due process, fundamental fairness, judicial integrity, efficiency, and human lives among the victims.

Here’s more from Laura Lynch over at AILA about the ongoing farce at EOIR and the BIA 🤡☠️:

NEW Roll Call article by Tanvi Misra – DOJ hiring changes may help Trump’s plan to curb immigration

AILA and the American Immigration Council Obtain EOIR Hiring Plan via FOIA Litigation

AILA and the American Immigration Council Press Release, New Documents Reveal Immigration Judge Hiring Plan Designed to Stack the Courts, Prioritize Politics Over Justice

This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!

Due Process Forever! Fraudulent “Clown Courts” 🤡 Never!

PWS

05-05-20

NDPA NEWS: JUST IN: MORE GOOD VIBES FOR THE GOOD GUYS: US District Judge Vince Chhabria “Rips DHS A New One” Over Grossly Deficient Treatment Of Detainees In Gulag: DHS Intransigence “speaks volumes about where the safety of the people at these facilities falls on ICE’s list of priorities.”☠️🤮⚰️☠️🤮⚰️

Hon. Ilyce Shugall
U.S. Immigraton Judge (Retired)
Director, Immigrant Legal Defense Program, Justice & Diversity Center of the Bar Assn. of San Francisco.

Round Table Member Judge Ilyce Shugall & Genna Beier, Deputy Public Defender report:

Hi all,

I write with wonderful news from the Zepeda Rivas crew. Judge Chhabria granted our motion for provisional class certification and motion for temporary restraining order. See attached!

He found that “the plaintiffs have demonstrated an exceedingly strong likelihood that they will prevail on their claim that current conditions at the facilities violate class members’ due process rights by unreasonably exposing them to a significant risk of harm.”

He also faulted the government for failing to be ready with basic information about class members:

“[C]ounsel for ICE asserted that it will take a significant amount of time for the agency to prepare a list of detainees with health vulnerabilities because it is ‘burdensome.’ The fact that ICE does not have such a list at the ready, six weeks after Governor Newsom shut down the entire state and one week after this lawsuit was filed, speaks volumes about where the safety of the people at these facilities falls on ICE’s list of priorities.” (emphasis added). ZING!!

He ordered ICE to provide records. Then, we will begin a process of individualized “bail” applications (“[T]his Court—likely with the assistance of several Magistrate Judges—will consider bail applications from class members over a roughly 14-day period.”). We don’t know yet what that process will look like, and we’ll have an opportunity to discuss it at a case management conference tomorrow. We’ll update you, of course.

If you haven’t already, please fill out the attached form for your clients! At tomorrow’s hearing want to be able to give the judge a survey of the individuals for whom we have clear release plans, for example. (Tips: try to use Adobe; if all else fails, save as PDF and email to me).

Lastly, we’ve got an amazing team of ACLU, SFPD, LCCR and UC Berkeley Law School people ready to take calls from unrepresented people in detention to start gathering info for bail applications. Please tell your clients to spread the following Lyon pin to others in their dorm who do not have attorneys to fill out these forms for them.

NUMBER TO CALL FOR UNREPRESENTED FOLKS: 7654

Folks will be on shifts taking calls from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm. Spread the word!

Genna

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

Congratulations, Team!👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

Thank goodness! Another courageous U.S. District Judge refusing to “buy into” the regime’s disingenuous, immoral “no problem until the bodies start piling up, it’s only the lives of migrants, not ‘real humans’” approach.

Imagine what would happen if all Federal Judges were willing to act on their oaths of office and uniformly reject all aspects of the regime’s unlawful, unconstitutional “Dred Scottification” program directed at “deterrence through death, disease, and dehumanization.” What would it take? What if the families of Federal Judges were treated with the same basic disregard for due process, life, health, and human dignity as the regime inflicts on migrants? What if the corrupt officials carrying out these programs and the lawyers who defend them were actually held accountable for their actions by the Federal Courts rather than largely being given “free passes”?

What if we had a Government that actually respected our Constitution rather than seeking to shred it?

Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-01-20

COMING ATTRACTION: Hear Round Table “Fearless Knightess” ⚔️🛡 Hon. Susan Roy On “NJ Insider — Politically Direct Podcast” — Thursday, April 30, @ 9:00 PM EDT!

Here’s the link:

http://www.insidernj.com/podcast/politically-direct-episode-92-guest-susan-roy-former-immigration-judge/

Podcast: Politically Direct Episode 92 With Guest Susan Roy, Former Immigration Judge

By Insider NJ | April 29, 2020, 12:45 pm

Coming up on Thursday Night April 30th and LIVE at 9:00PM, I welcome Former Immigration Judge Susan Roy to Politically Direct. We will discuss her time working in Federal Immigration Court, the challenges of Immigration Law, the current political climate, the impact of COVID-19 on current immigration cases and much more.

I am proud to partner with Insider NJ and host this weekly informative podcast.

Feel free to call in and chat with us during the program.

818-572-8032

Tell your family and friends about this upcoming episode.

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

Three cheers for Sue!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-20-20

“TILL DEATH ☠️⚰️ DO US PART” — EOIR CAN CONTINUE OPERATIONS DESPITE COVID-19: U.S. District Judge “Stuffs” Immigration Bar’s Pleas For Better Protections!

https://www.law.com/nationallawjournal/2020/04/28/federal-judge-says-he-cant-order-immigration-courts-to-close-over-covid-19/?kw=Federal%20Judge%20Says%20He%20Can%27t%20Order%20Immigration%20Courts%20to%20Close%20Over%20COVID-19&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=breakingnews&utm_content=20200428&utm_term=nlj&slreturn=20200328111724

Jacqueline Thomsen reports for the National Law Journal:

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled Tuesday that he did not have the authority to order immigration courts to temporarily shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, confirmed to the federal bench last year, found he did not have jurisdiction to rule on that matter, and the immigration lawyers and detained immigrants seeking a temporary restraining order against the Justice Department, which oversees the immigration courts, are unlikely to succeed on the merits of their case.

He pointed to the Immigration and Nationality Act, which states legal challenges tied to removal proceedings conducted in immigration courts can only be brought to courts of appeals.

Nichols wrote that “the increased risk of contracting COVID-19 constitutes a cognizable injury sufficient to satisfy Article III, and also that the risk of contracting COVID-19 will increase as a result of being forced to attend in-person hearings.” But he found the detained immigrants named in the suit do not have “an imminent in-person hearing,” and therefore lack standing.

“More generally, there is no evidence in the record that any of the individual plaintiffs has been forced to appear, or will be forced to appear, at an in-person hearing over his or her request for either a continuance or some way of attending remotely, such as by VTC or teleconference. In fact, the evidence is to the contrary. The individual plaintiffs have thus failed to establish that they are likely to suffer an imminent injury to their health that is traceable to EOIR’s failure to take different action,” Nichols wrote.

The judge also took issue with immigration lawyer groups who alleged that detained immigrants are being deprived of counsel due to policies implemented during the pandemic.

Nichols said the lawyers “fail to explain” how the policies have caused the immigrants “to be unable to retain an attorney—especially considering that they had been unable to find counsel even before the pandemic and considering that they were able to retain counsel for this suit.”

He further said the immigration lawyers have failed to show that “immigration judges are regularly refusing to deny requests for continuances or requests for telephonic or VTC hearings.”

. . . .

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Those with access to the NLJ (everyone can get 3 free “non-premium” articles per month by registering) can read Jacqueline’s full article and get Judge Nichols’s full opinion at the above link.

A slight clarification of the last sentence in Jacqueline’s full article: “Nichols, during arguments, was concerned about what options detained immigrants have if an immigration judge, which are Article I judges under the control of the Department of Justice, refused to delay an in-person hearing or hold it remotely.”

Immigration Judges are “administrative judges” who work for the Attorney General. Unfortunately, they are not “Article I Judges,” which would make them a true independent judiciary.

Immigration Judges would like to be Article I Judges. Most immigration and judicial experts agree that they should be. There are a number of legislative proposals circulating to establish an independent Article Immigration Court. But, alas, notwithstanding the obvious and pressing need, Congress is nowhere close to legislating the necessary change.

So, these current blatantly unconstitutional “captive courts” operating under the DOJ will continue to stagger on, taking innocent lives and trampling due process and fundamental fairness in the process. Grimly, as I had predicted, it’s apparently going to take some actual dead bodies⚰️of migrants and perhaps their lawyers piling up on the courthouse steps to get either the Article IIIs or Congress to pay serious attention to this unfolding disaster which seems to operate just enough beneath their “radar screens” to allow them to ignore or, as in this case, paper it over.

Due Process Forever! Captive Courts Never!

PWS

04-28-20

DUE PROCESS/GENDER-BASED ASYLUM WINS: 1st Cir. Slams BIA, Sessions’s Matter of A-B- Atrocity – Remands For Competent Adjudication of Gender-Based Asylum Claim — DE PENA-PANIAGUA v. BARR

DE PENA-PANIAGUA v. BARR, 1^st Cir., 04-24-20, published

OLBD OPINION VACATING AND REMANDING

PANEL: Howard, Chief Judge, Kayatta and Barron, Circuit Judges.

OPINION BY: Judge Kayetta

KEY EXCERPTS (Courtesy of Amer S. Ahmed, Esquire, Gibson Dunn, Pro Bono Counsel for the Round Table of Former Immigration Judges as Amici):

[The BIA] added, however, that “[e]ven if [De Pena] had

suffered harm rising to the level of past persecution,” De Pena’s

proposed particular social groups are analogous to those in Matter

of A-R-C-G, 26 I. & N. Dec. 388 (BIA 2014), which the BIA

understood to have been “overruled” by the Attorney General in

Matter of A-B, 27 I. & N. Dec. 316, 319 (A.G. 2018). The BIA read

A-B as “determin[ing] that the particular social group of ‘married

women in Guatemala who are unable to leave their relationship’ did

not meet the legal standards to qualify as a valid particular

social group.”

…

That conclusion poses two questions to be resolved on

this appeal: First, does A-B categorically reject any social group

defined in material part by its members’ “inability to leave” the

relationships in which they are being persecuted; and, second, if

so, is A-B to that extent consistent with the law?

…

Is it reasonable to read the law as supporting such a categorical

rejection of any group defined by its members’ inability to leave

relationships with their abusers? A-B itself cites only fiat to

support its affirmative answer to this question. It presumes that

the inability to leave is always caused by the persecution from

which the noncitizen seeks haven, and it presumes that no type of

persecution can do double duty, both helping to define the

particular social group and providing the harm blocking the pathway

to that haven. These presumptions strike us as arbitrary on at

least two grounds.

….

First, a woman’s inability to leave a relationship may

be the product of forces other than physical abuse. In

Perez-Rabanales v. Sessions, we distinguished a putative group of

women defined by their attempt “to escape systemic and severe

violence” from a group defined as “married women in Guatemala who

are unable to leave their relationship,” describing only the former

as defined by the persecution of its members. 881 F.3d 61, 67

(1st Cir. 2018). In fact, the combination of several cultural,

societal, religious, economic, or other factors may in some cases

explain why a woman is unable to leave a relationship.

…

We therefore do not see any basis other

than arbitrary and unexamined fiat for categorically decreeing

without examination that there are no women in Guatemala who

reasonably feel unable to leave domestic relationships as a result

of forces other than physical abuse. In such cases, physical abuse

might be visited upon women because they are among those unable to

leave, even though such abuse does not define membership in the group

of women who are unable to leave.

…

Second, threatened physical abuse that precludes

departure from a domestic relationship may not always be the same

in type or quality as the physical abuse visited upon a woman

within the relationship. More importantly, we see no logic or

reason behind the assertion that abuse cannot do double duty, both

helping to define the group, and providing the basis for a finding

of persecution. An unfreed slave in first century Rome might well

have been persecuted precisely because he had been enslaved (making

him all the same unable to leave his master). Yet we see no reason

why such a person could not seek asylum merely because the threat

of abuse maintained his enslaved status. As DHS itself once

observed, the “sustained physical abuse of [a] slave undoubtedly

could constitute persecution independently of the condition of

slavery.” Brief of DHS at 34 n.10, Matter of R-A, 23 I. & N. Dec.

694 (A.G. 2005).

For these reasons, we reject as arbitrary and unexamined

the BIA holding in this case that De Pena’s claim necessarily fails

because the groups to which she claims to belong are necessarily

deficient. Rather, the BIA need consider, at least, whether the

proffered groups exist and in fact satisfy the requirements for

constituting a particular social group to which De Pena belongs.

Amer S. Ahmed

GIBSON DUNN

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

Read the full opinion at the link above.

While Judge Kayetta does not specifically cite our Round Table’s brief, a number of our arguments are reflected in the opinion. Undoubtedly, with lots of help from Amer and our other superstar friends over at Gibson Dunn, we’re continuing to make a difference and hopefully save some deserving lives of the refugees intentionally screwed by our dysfunctional Immigration Court system under a politicized DOJ.

I’ve heard of the bogus rationale used by the BIA in this case reflected in a number of wrongly decided unpublished asylum denials by both the BIA and Immigration Judges. This should make for plenty of remands, slowing down the “Deportation Railroad,” jacking up the backlog, and once again showing the “substantial downside” of idiotic “haste makes waste shenanigans” at EOIR and allowing biased, unqualified White Nationalist hacks like Sessions and Barr improperly to interfere with what are supposed to be fair and impartial adjudications consistent with Due Process and fundamental fairness.

Great as this decision is, it begs the overriding issue: Why is a non-judicial political official, particularly one with as strong a prosecutorial bias as Sessions or Barr, allowed to intervene in a quasi-judicial decision involving an individual and not only reverse the result of that quasi-judicial tribunal, but also claim to set a “precedent” that is binding in other quasi-judicial proceedings? Clearly, neither Ms. De Pena-Paniagua nor any other respondent subject to a final order of removal under this system received the “fair and impartial decision by an unbiased decision-maker” which is a minimum requirement under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

Let’s put it in terms that an Article III Circuit Court Judge should understand. Suppose Jane Q. Public sues the United States in U.S. District Court in Boston and wins a judgment. Unhappy with the result, Attorney General Billy Barr orders the U.S. District Judge to send the case to him for review. He enters a decision reversing the U.S. District Judge and dismissing Public’s claim against the United States. Then, he orders all U.S. District Judges in the District of Massachusetts to follow his decision and threatens to have them removed from their positions or demoted to non-judicial positions if they refuse.

The First Circuit or any other Court of Appeals would be outraged by this result and invalidate it as unconstitutional in a heartbeat! They likely would also find Barr in contempt and refer him to state bar authorities with a recommendation that his law license be revoked or suspended.

Yet this is precisely what happened to Ms. A-B-, Ms. De Pena Paniagua, and thousands of other asylum applicants in Immigration Court. It happens every working day in Immigration Courts throughout the nation. It will continue to happen until Article III Appellate Judges live up to their oaths of fealty to the Constitution and stop the outrageous, life-threatening miscarriages of justice and human dignity going on in our unconstitutional, illegal, fundamentally unfair, and dysfunctional Immigration Courts.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-24-20

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