🇺🇸⚖️🗽TELLING IT LIKE IT IS! — Calling Out The White Nationalist Kakistocracy @ EOIR!

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

Star Chamber Justice — “Justice”
Star Chamber
Style

Woman Tortured — “She struggled madly in the torturing Ray”
Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Kangaroos — BIA Members Unwind After Harassing Another Expert, Overruling Circuit Court, & Aiding Their “Partners” At ICE In Demeaning Justice
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rasputin243/
Creative Commons License

Four Horsemen — BIA Asylum Panel In Action
Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

‘White Nationalism’ In Immigration Courts Must Go: Ex-Judge
By Jennifer Doherty
Law360 (January 28, 2021, 9:48 PM EST) — A former immigration judge called on the Biden administration to reorient the mission of immigration courts on Thursday, saying that a “white nationalist program” had taken root under the Trump administration and needs to be eradicated.
Speaking on a panel about a new report showing that the vast majority of non-detained migrants appear at their immigration court hearings, retired Judge Paul Wickham Schmidt called out Trump administration officials over “big lies and bogus narratives” promoted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Executive Office of Immigration Review, including claims that detention was necessary to prevent migrants from disappearing.
Judge Schmidt, who used to be the chair of the Board of Immigration Appeals, pointed to former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ intervention in immigration cases to relitigate cases such as whether women who suffer domestic abuse in regions with high rates of femicide qualify for asylum, as well as the former administration’s messaging to immigration judges that their role was an extension of DHS’ enforcement mechanism.
“It’s all been part, I think, of the Stephen Miller white nationalist program, that there is no such thing as a good immigrant; all the immigrants are here to take our jobs or to evade the system,” Judge Schmidt said, referring to one of former President Donald Trump’s senior advisers.
Meanwhile, Thursday’s report from the American Immigration Council, an advocacy nonprofit group, confirmed what many immigration judges have known for years, according to Judge Schmidt.
Relying on a sample of 2.8 million immigration court cases where migrants were either released or were never detained, the report found that 83% of respondents with pending or completed removal cases showed up for every hearing, a share that increased to 96% for immigrants represented by counsel.
“Represented asylum-seekers appearing before fair, knowledgeable judges show up for virtually all of their EOIR merits hearings,” Judge Schmidt said.
Based on those findings, the report recommended four policy reforms, including reducing immigration detention and ending the Migrant Protection Protocols, which have forced over 70,000 people to wait in Mexico for decisions in their asylum cases.
The report also called for additional training for immigration judges and the rollback of a law requiring judges to issue orders of removal for migrants who failed to appear, an occurrence the authors found was frequently due to faulty notices to appear.
Creating an Article I, also called a legislative court, would also give immigration judges more independence in their review of individual cases and relieve them from pressure to meet case quotas, according to the report.
UCLA School of Law professor Ingrid Eagly, co-author of the report, said that additional training would serve to reduce inconsistencies between immigration courts and ensure that judges held the
government accountable for its responsibility to notify migrants of their court dates.

. . . .

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

Those with access can read the rest of Jennifer’s article on Law360.

Jennifer Doherty
Reporter
Law 360
Photo: Twitter

I was talking to a lawyer/reporter this afternoon. Her comment was: “Could anybody have designed a worse system for deciding life or death cases?” She was told in “pro bono training” to observe how certain judges like the chairs arranged in the courtroom because it could affect the outcome of her client’s asylum case!

Another attorney I spoke with who had practiced personal injury law couldn’t believe that no immigration cases ever “settled.” Even those with clear merit bounce around the system for years and then go to full hearings, sometimes with inconsistent results!

How can a system operate like this? It can’t! That’s why doubling the number of questionably qualified “judges” has resulted in at least doubling, perhaps tripling, the “backlog.”

Under pressure from White Nationalists like Miller, Sessions, Hamilton, and Barr, EOIR has generated an artificially created “backlog” consisting largely of : 1] cases that could have easily been granted in a fair, functional, practical system; 2) cases that could be granted or placed in line at USCIS (another broken and dysfunctional agency); and 3) cases that never should have been filed in a rational system!

An incompetent BIA has failed to set forth the precedents for granting asylum and other relief that are necessary to restore the rule of law and common sense to a broken system! And they have totally failed to hold biased anti-asylum and nativist-enabling judges accountable! That’s because the BIA itself has become an organ of White Nationalist restrictionist bias bearing little, if any, resemblance to a “court” within the common understanding of the term. “Judicial independence,” impartiality, expertise, due process, and rationality have become “bad jokes” at EOIR!

And, for the past four years, the folks “running” this godawful system haven’t set foot in a courtroom in years (if ever) and don’t have a clue about asylum law or representing humans (rather than “agencies” or “nativists” as clients). It’s a friggin’ inexcusable disaster. FUBAR+++++++!

Judge Garland must end it!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️👨🏻‍⚖️👍🏼Due Process Forever!

PWS

🤡☠️🤮CLOWN COURTS’ DEADLY REOPENING SCHEME ISN’T A “PLAN AT ALL” —It’s A Recipe For Dysfunction, Disaster, & Potential Death By “Malicious Incompetence” — Are There No “Grown Ups” Left in Congress or The Article IIIs With The Guts To End This Stain Our Nation?

https://immigrationimpact.com/2020/08/04/coronavirus-immigration-court/

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick on Immigration Impact:

COVID-19 Wreaks Havoc on Immigration Courts With No Clear Plan to Stop Spread

Posted by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick | Aug 4, 2020 | Due Process & the Courts, Immigration Courts

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread throughout the United States, immigration courts around the country remain in turmoil.

The Executive Office for Immigration Review (“EOIR”) initially postponed all non-detained hearings when lockdowns began in March. However, EOIR refused to close all courts. Hearings for detained immigrants and unaccompanied children continued, despite the risks. Now, nearly five months later, EOIR still has no public plan to limit the spread of COVID-19 as it slowly begins to reopen courts around the country.

Immigration Courts Reopen Across the U.S.

Beginning in mid-June, EOIR began reopening some immigration courts, starting with the Honolulu immigration court.

Since then, courts have reopened for hearings in Boston, Dallas, Las Vegas, Hartford, New Orleans, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Newark, Baltimore, Detroit, and Arlington. However, following the rise in COVID-19 cases in Texas, the Dallas immigration court was open for less than a week before shutting again. It remains closed.

After the court reopened in Newark, immigration lawyers filed a lawsuit seeking to halt the court reopening. They explained that the court has not provided enough safety protocols. According to the lawsuit, they believe at least two deaths, including an immigration lawyer and a clerk for ICE in Newark, can already be traced to court hearings that occurred before the initial shutdown.

At a town hall, the National Association of Immigration Judges discussed the reopening. The union stated that EOIR doesn’t determine which courts reopen. Those decisions come from the local U.S. Attorney, who are political appointees working for the Department of Justice.

No Concrete Plan for Stopping COVID-19 Spread in Courts

Making matters worse, EOIR has still not explained what the criteria are for opening courts. The only safety guidelines the agency has published are simply those generally applicable to the public, such as asking people to socially distance, wear masks, and not appear in court if they have tested positive for COVID-19.

These limited guidelines do not provide anywhere near enough information to ensure safety for people appearing in court.

For example, EOIR fails to explain how translation services will work, which is but one of many unresolved questions about safety. In many courts, interpreters sit directly next to the person for whom they are interpreting so they can hear every word. But social distancing would be impossible in that scenario.

If EOIR wanted to replace all in-person interpretation with telephonic interpretation, that may not be a viable solution. Some people’s cases could be hurt by lower quality interpretation over what are often noisy phone lines.

Courts that have reopened have mostly been hearing only “individual” merits hearings, the equivalent of a trial in the immigration court system. Master calendar hearings, at which dozens of people wait in a courtroom together to review their immigration charges, are not currently happening in most reopened courts.

The agency has indicated that some master calendar hearings with reduced numbers of participants will move forward. But even with a limited caseload, practitioners report chaos and confusion as court hearings begin again.

Lawyers report having cases advanced or postponed with little notice and almost no input. This can be particularly hard for individuals without attorneys. They may be unable to keep track of rapid changes at the courts.

This chaos underscores the need for a public safety plan. EOIR must ensure the public that it can run the courts safely.

Without that plan, the agency’s actions so far reinforce the White House’s goal of keeping the deportation machine running without taking public health into consideration. Before any further courts reopen, EOIR must make its plans clear, or else public health and the right to a fair day in court will continue to suffer.

FILED UNDER: covid-19, EOIR

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

Wow! Talk about a democracy in meltdown!

Some of those caught up by these “crimes against humanity” won’t survive to tell their stories. So, it’s important that those of us who recognize this unending tragedy both document it and insure that history will not let those responsible escape accountability, be they Supreme Court Justices, political leaders, or lower level bureaucrats repeating the hollow “just doing my job” mantra as they enable or carry out these grotesque acts.

For those who watched “Immigration Nation,” how many times did you hear variations of the latter excuse from Federal bureaucrats as they heaped unnecessary, and in many cases illegal and immoral, carnage on their fellow human beings? How many times did you hear folks who are supposed to understand the system falsely use the “get in line” or “do it the right way” lies?

The ugly stain of the Trump regime’s illegal conduct, cowardice, cruelty, dishonesty, and inhumanity, and that of those who aided and abetted it, will not be wiped away!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-06-20

FELIPE DE LA HOZ @ THE NATION: “The Shadow Court Cementing Trump’s Immigration Policy” — “It’s not a court anymore, it’s an enforcement mechanism,” said Paul Wickham Schmidt, who was himself chair of the BIA between 1995 and 2001 and now writes a popular immigration blog called Immigration Courtside. “They’re taking predetermined policy and just disguising it as judicial opinions, when the results have all been predetermined and it has nothing to do or little to do with the merits of the cases.”

🏴‍☠️⚰️☠️👎

https://www.thenation.com/authors/felipe-de-la-hoz/

Just eight miles from the White House, the Trump administration has quietly opened a new front in its war against immigrants. Inside a 26-story office tower next to a Target in Falls Church, Virginia, the Board of Immigration Appeals has broken with any pretense of impartiality and appears to be working in lockstep with the administration to close the door on immigrants’ ability to remain in the country.

Created in 1940, when the immigration system was moved from the Department of Labor to the Justice Department, BIA serves as the appellate court within the immigration system, where both ICE prosecutors and noncitizen respondents can appeal decisions by individual immigration court judges around the country. It not only decides the fate of the migrants whose cases it reviews; if it chooses to publish a decision, it sets precedent for immigration courts across the country.

Under previous administrations, the BIA was ostensibly impartial and bipartisan, though mainly out of a long-standing tradition of promoting judicial objectivity. Since the entire immigration court system is contained in the Department of Justice—within an administrative agency known as the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR)—immigration judges, including those serving as board members on the BIA, are employees of the DOJ, and, by extension, are part of the executive branch. Unlike their counterparts in the federal judiciary, immigration judges are not independent.

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Since 2018, the Trump administration has exploited its powers over the BIA by expanding the board from 17 to 23 members to accommodate additional anti-immigrant hardliners. Justice Department memos obtained by the American Immigration Council and the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) show that EOIR pushed shorter hiring timelines, which were used to bring on judges with more restrictionist records.

Now the court is stacked with members who have consistently ruled against immigrants, such as one judge who threatened to unleash a dog on a two-year-old boy during a hearing. Numbers obtained by a law firm through a Freedom of Information Request show that the six BIA judges appointed by Attorney General William Barr all had granted asylum in less than 10 percent of cases in fiscal year 2019. (One never granted asylum, despite hearing 40 cases.) An EOIR spokesperson told The Nation in an e-mail that“EOIR does not choose Board members based on prohibited criteria such as race or politics” and that “Board members are selected through an open, competitive, merit-based process.”

The most notable example of the administration’s preference for ultraconservative judges came in late May, when Barr appointed David H. Wetmore as BIA chairman. Wetmore, a former immigration adviser to the White House Domestic Policy Council, was around for some of the Trump administration’s most egregious policies, including the travel ban and family separation policy.

Although only two decisions have been issued since Wetmore was appointed chair, he seems set to pick up where his predecessor, former Acting Chair Garry G. Malphrus, left off. Malphrus, a George W. Bush holdover, became the face of the court’s lurch to curtail immigrants’ legal protections since Trump took office. He had the hawkish bona fides that made him an ideal chairman under the Trump DOJ: From 1997 to 2001, he served as chief counsel to one-time segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he was made associate director of the White House Domestic Policy Council after his roleas a Brooks Brothers rioter during the 2000 Bush v. Gore recount in Florida—during which GOP operatives staged a protest that disrupted a recount and may have handed Bush the presidency.

Malphrus was made acting chair in 2019, and authored 24 of the 78 BIA precedential decisions issued under the current administration. Almost all of these precedential decisions have made it more difficult for immigrants to win their cases. The board made it harder for victims of terrorism to win asylum and raised the bar of evidence needed for several types of protections.

“It’s not a court anymore, it’s an enforcement mechanism,” said Paul Wickham Schmidt, who was himself chair of the BIA between 1995 and 2001 and now writes a popular immigration blog called Immigration Courtside. “They’re taking predetermined policy and just disguising it as judicial opinions, when the results have all been predetermined and it has nothing to do or little to do with the merits of the cases.”

Consider this: In a case decided in January, the BIA was considering whether an immigration judge had erred in refusing to postpone a removal decision for a person awaiting a decision on a U visa application—a visa type reserved for victims of certain crimes or those cooperating with authorities investigating a crime—to be resolved. (ICE had recently changed their policies to make it easier to deport people in this situation.) The BIA sided with the judge, acknowledging that the crime victim was “eligible for a U visa” but was not entitled to wait to receive it, in part due to his “lack of diligence in pursuing” one. The decision signals that immigrants eligible for crime victim visas, and who are willing to cooperate with law enforcement, can still be ordered deported.

While federal courts hear public oral arguments and largely deliberate openly, the BIA typically uses a paper review method, which means they receive briefs from opposing parties and hand down a decision some time later with the whole intervening process shrouded in secrecy. “Unlike federal courts, where unpublished decisions are still accessible by the public, and so you can track what judges are saying in decisions that do not make precedent, the [BIA] only sporadically releases those decisions,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel at the American Immigration Council.

. . . .

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

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

Filipe’s final point in the article is one we should all keep in mind:

For hundreds of thousands of immigrants, it doesn’t matter if the anti-immigrant paper pushers in this obscure administrative body are tossed out and all of the policy is slowly reversed by another administration; for most, one shot is all they get. Whether a case was winnable before or even after the Trump BIA is irrelevant. The chance to stay in the United States will be lost forever.

The damage to our humanity and our national conscience inflicted by Trump’s White Nationalist regime, wrongfully enabled by complicit Supremes, and aided and abetted by a GOP Senate will not be “cured” by inevitable later “reforms,” be they next year under a better Administration or decades from now, as is happening with other racial justice issues. Undoubtedly, as eventually will be established, the current anti-immigrant and particularly the anti-asylum policies of the Trump regime are deeply rooted in racism, xenophobia, and misogyny. One need only look at the well-documented careers of “hate architects” like Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, and Jeff Sessions to see the intentional ignorance and ugliness at work here.

I frankly don’t see how we as a nation ever can come to grips with the racial tensions and demands for equal justice now tearing at our society without recognizing the unconscionable racism and immorality driving our current immigration and refugee policies and the failure and untenability of too many leaders in all three branches who have either helped promote racial injustice or have lacked the moral and intellectual courage consistently to stand up against it. They are the problem, and their departure or disempowerment, no matter how long it takes, will be necessary for us eventually to move forward as one nation.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-30–20

ACLU SUES TO STOP REGIME’S BOGUS USE OF COVID-19 AS PRETEXT FOR ELIMINATING ASYLUM PROTECTIONS – Suit Tests Federal Courts’ Willingness To Stand Up to White Nationalist Regime’s Institutionalized Racism That Continually Invokes Pandemic As Transparently False Justification For Abrogation of Constitutional & Statutory Rights Disproportionately Affecting Those With Brown Skins!

Michelle Hackman reports for the WSJ:

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration, which has used the coronavirus health emergency to expel migrants at the border without allowing them to apply for asylum, faces its first court challenge over the practice in a lawsuit filed on behalf of a 16-year-old boy.

Since President Trump declared a public-health emergency in March, immigration agents have turned back nearly all migrants, including children, at the border without providing a chance to file asylum claims. The government invoked a 1944 public-health law allowing it to expel any noncitizen who poses a threat of spreading disease during an emergency. It extended that provision indefinitely in May.

The new process overrides immigration laws that allow any foreigner on American soil with a credible fear of persecution to apply for asylum, and laws prohibiting migrant children from being deported.

The lawsuit was filed in the district court in Washington by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a 16-year-old boy from Honduras, known only by his initials J.B.B.C. He crossed the border in early June to join his father, who is living in the U.S. and awaiting his own immigration case to be heard, after fleeing what the suit described as “severe persecution” in his home country.

Under the typical process, border agents would have turned over the child to the Department of Health and Human Services, which runs a network of migrant shelters for children across the country and seeks to find them suitable guardians. Instead, border agents detained the boy in El Paso, Texas, and plan to deport him imminently, in accordance with the public-health emergency process.

Late Tuesday evening, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan granted J.B.B.C. a temporary restraining order, ordering the government not to deport him through at least Wednesday at midnight.

The White House and the Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The lawsuit’s supporters acknowledge that the suit is a gamble. If a federal judge rules that immigration laws can be bypassed during an emergency—a novel application of the public-health law—the government would gain broad new authority. But not suing, they say, could allow deportations without due process to continue.

“If the courts don’t step in, the Trump administration will continue to indefinitely strip refugees of the right to seek asylum,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel at the American Immigration Council.

. . . .

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

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

The name of the use is J.B.B.C. v. Wolf.

So far, in showing no genuine concern for human rights, the rule of law, or overt racism in major non-legislative eradications of asylum, refugee, and immigration protections by a scofflaw Administration, which has made only cosmetic efforts to disguise its racist immigration agenda, a Supremes’ majority has sent a strong chilling signal to lower Federal Judges willing to stand up for racial justice, equal justice before the law, and Executive accountability. Will the Trump regime continue to literally “get away with attempted (or actual) murder” of children and other asylum applicants? How far does the Supremes’ majority’s resolve not to give Black and Brown lives and rights their deserved legal protections, and to fold in the face of Trump’s racist bullying, extend?

Due Process Forever! Complicit Courts Never!

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

PWS

06-10-20

1ST CIR. THWARTS BIA’S ATTEMPT TO USE “SUA SPONTE” AUTHORITY TO COVER UP ARBITRARINESS, BIAS, & CLEAR LEGAL ERROR! — Thompson v. Barr

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca1-on-pardons-thompson-v-barr

Dan Kowalski reports on LexisNexis Immigration Community:

Daniel M. Kowalski

22 May 2020

bia

Connecticut

pardon

CA1 on Pardons: Thompson v. Barr

Thompson v. Barr

“Petitioner Richard Marvin Thompson (“Thompson”) appeals the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (“BIA”) denial of his motion to reopen sua sponte his immigration proceedings, alleging that the BIA committed a clear legal error. Thompson asks this Court to exercise jurisdiction to review whether the BIA clearly erred when it determined that he was not entitled to relief from deportation under section 237(a)(2)(A)(vi) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”), 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(2) (A)(vi) (the “Pardon Waiver Clause”), because a pardon issued by the Connecticut Board of Pardons and Paroles is “not effective for purposes of establishing entitlement to” a waiver of deportation. Because we find that this Court has jurisdiction to review this colorable legal question and because, here, the BIA departed from its settled course of adjudication, we vacate the decision of the BIA and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

[Hats off to Gregory Romanovsky, William M. Tong, Attorney General of Connecticut, Jane Rosenberg, Assistant Attorney General, Clare Kindall, Solicitor General, amicus curiae for the State of Connecticut, Trina Realmuto, Kristin Macleod-Ball and Emma Winger!]

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

So, let’s take a little closer look. Thompson immigrated legally to the U.S. in 1997, at age 14. Nearly two decades ago, Thompson was convicted of second degree assault in Connecticut and given a suspended sentence and 3-years probation. In other words, no jail time.

He successfully completed probation, got a GED, and worked as a commercial operator for 10 years. Essentially, Thompson successfully rehabilitated and became a productive member of society.

In 2012, the Obama Administration DHS, in its wisdom, instituted removal proceedings against Thompson based on his 2001 Connecticut assault conviction. After being found removable and losing on appeal, Thompson received a full and complete pardon from the Connecticut State Board of Pardons, the highest pardoning authority in the state. Although established by the legislature, the Board of Pardons’ action was deliberative and based on an assessment of the factors in Thompson’s individual case. It was not an “automatic expungement” pursuant to legislation.

Since the time for filing a motion to reopen had expired, Thompson asked the BIA to reopen his case “sua sponte” — on its own motion — to recognize that the pardon had eradicated the legal basis for removal.

Following its previous rulings, as well as sound policy and common sense, the BIA should promptly have granted Thompson’s motion and terminated proceedings in a two or three sentence order. Instead, the BIA, now operating under the “Trump removal regime in 2018,” denied the motion based on specious reasons that deviated without rational explanation from their prior treatment of substantially identical motions.

The BIA’s action touched off approximately 20 months of furious litigation involving a small army of lawyers on both sides, including the Connecticut Attorney General and the Connecticut Solicitor General, as well as the American Immigration Council, filing briefs in support of Thompson.

Following this 34-page opus by the First Circuit, Thompson’s case is by no means over. It’s been “orbited” back to the “Weird World of EOIR” where Thompson might, or might not, receive justice at some undetermined point in the future. To make matters even worse, Thompson remains detained at the Etowah County Detention Center in Gadsden, Alabama. Alabama is one of the current “hot spots” for COVID-19.

Is it any wonder that a “weaponized,” overtly anti-immigrant “court system” that looks for “reasons to deny” meritorious cases, rather than promoting prompt and efficient due process in deserving cases is running a backlog of approximately 1.4 million “on and off calendar” cases?

The longer the reviewing Circuit Courts keep up the fiction of treating EOIR as a legitimate adjudicative organization rather than the biased, “non-expert,” unconstitutional extension of DHS Enforcement that it has become, the bigger the mess will get and the more injustice that will be done to individuals like Thompson.

Meanwhile, legions of lawyers and judges at all levels, who could and should be devoting their talents to operating a constitutional immigration justice system that provides “due process and fundamental fairness with efficiency and humanity for all concerned” will instead continue to flail as a result of this “designed and operated to fail” system run by a kakistocracy to produce injustice and to squander judicial time and legal resources on a massive scale. When will it ever end?

Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-24-20

😎JUST THE FACTS: The Reality Of Immigrants’ Essential Contributions To America Has Nothing To Do With Trump’s White Nationalist False Narratives & Racist Rants!

https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/immigrants-in-the-united-states

FACT SHEET

Immigrants in the United States

Economics of Immigration State by State

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April 21, 2020

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The United States was built, in part, by immigrants—and the nation has long been the beneficiary of the new energy and ingenuity that immigrants bring. Today, 14 percent of the nation’s residents are foreign-born, over half of whom are naturalized citizens. Nearly 75 percent of all immigrants, who come from diverse backgrounds across the globe, report speaking English well or very well.

Immigrants make up significant shares of the U.S. workforce in a range of industries, accounting for over a third of all farming, fishing, and forestry workers—as well as nearly 25 percent of those working in computer and math sciences. The highest number of immigrants work in the health care and social service industry, with over 4 million immigrants providing these services. As workers, business owners, taxpayers, and neighbors, immigrants are an integral part of the country’s diverse and thriving communities and make extensive contributions that benefit all.

One in seven U.S. residents is an immigrant, while one in eight residents is a native-born U.S. citizen with at least one immigrant parent.

In 2018, 44.7 million immigrants (foreign-born individuals) comprised 14 percent of the national population.

The United States was home to 21.9 million women, 20.3 million men, and 2.5 million children who were immigrants.

The top countries of origin for immigrants were Mexico (25 percent of immigrants), India (6 percent), China (5 percent), the Philippines (4 percent), and El Salvador (3 percent).

In 2018, 39.4 million people in the United States (12 percent of the country’s population) were native-born Americans who had at least one immigrant parent.

Over half of all immigrants in the United States are naturalized citizens.

22.6 million immigrants (51 percent) had naturalized as of 2018, and 8.4 million immigrants were eligible to become naturalized U.S. citizens in 2017.

The majority of immigrants (74 percent) reported speaking English “well” or “very well.”

Immigrants in the United States are concentrated at both ends of the educational spectrum.

Nearly a third of adult immigrants had a college degree or more education in 2018, while over a fourth had less than a high school diploma.

Education Level Share (%) of All Immigrants Share (%) of All Natives

College degree or more 32 33

Some college 19 31

High school diploma only 22 28

Less than a high-school diploma 27 8

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2018 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates.

Millions of U.S. citizens live with at least one family member who is undocumented.

10.7 million undocumented immigrants comprised 24 percent of the immigrant population and 3 percent of the total U.S. population in 2016.

16.7 million people, including 7 million born in the United States, lived in the country with at least one undocumented family member between 2010 and 2014.

During the same period, 1 in 12 children in the country was a U.S. citizen living with at least one undocumented family member (5.9 million children in total).

The United States is home to over 652,000 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients.

Approximately 652,880 active DACA recipients lived in the United States and its territories as of 2019, while DACA has been granted to over 2.5 million people in total since 2012.

As of 2019, 49 percent of DACA-eligible immigrants in the United States had applied for DACA.

An additional 363,000 people in the United States would satisfy all but the educational requirements for DACA, and another 39,000 would be eligible as they grew older.

One in six U.S. workers is an immigrant, together making up a vital part of the country’s labor force in a range of industries.

28.4 million immigrant workers comprised 17 percent of the U.S. labor force in 2018.

Immigrant workers were most numerous in the following U.S. industries:

Industry Number of Immigrant Workers

Health Care and Social Assistance 4,124,557

Manufacturing 3,437,569

Accommodation and Food Services 3,022,991

Retail Trade 2,979,800

Construction 2,858,953

Source: Analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2018 American Community Survey 1-year PUMS data by the American Immigration Council.

The largest shares of immigrant workers were in the following U.S. industries:

Industry Immigrant Share (%)
(of all industry workers)

Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing, and Hunting 26

Construction 23

Administrative Support and Waste Management and Remediation Services 22

Other Services (except Public Administration) 21

Accommodation and Food Services 20

Source: Analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2018 American Community Survey 1-year PUMS data by the American Immigration Council.

Immigrants are an integral part of the U.S. workforce in a range of occupations.

In 2018, immigrant workers were most numerous in the following occupation groups:

Occupation Category Number of Immigrant Workers

Transportation and Material Moving Occupations 2,683,238

Sales and Related Occupations 2,580,721

Management Occupations 2,529,218

Office and Administrative Support Occupations 2,494,354

Construction and Extraction Occupations 2,487,351

Source: Analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2018 American Community Survey 1-year PUMS data by the American Immigration Council.

The largest shares of immigrant workers were in the following occupation groups:

Occupation Category Immigrant Share (%)
(of all workers in occupation)

Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Occupations 38

Building and Grounds Cleaning and Maintenance Occupations 31

Construction and Extraction Occupations 25

Computer and Mathematical Occupations 24

Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations 22

Source: Analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2018 American Community Survey 1-year PUMS data by the American Immigration Council.

Undocumented immigrants comprised 5 percent of the workforce in 2016.

Immigrants in the United States contribute billions of dollars in taxes.

Immigrant-led households across the United States contributed a total of $308.6 billion in federal taxes and $150 billion in combined state and local taxes in 2018.

Undocumented immigrants in the United States paid an estimated $20.1 billion in federal taxes and $11.8 billion in combined state and local taxes in 2018.

DACA recipients and those meeting the eligibility requirements for DACA paid an estimated $1.7 billion in combined state and local taxes in 2018.

As consumers, immigrants add over a trillion dollars to the U.S. economy.

In the United States, residents of immigrant-led households had $1.2 trillion in collective spending power (after-tax income) in 2018.

Immigrant entrepreneurs in the United States generate tens of billions of dollars in business revenue.

3.6 million immigrant business owners accounted for 21 percent of all self-employed U.S. residents in 2018 and generated $84.3 billion in business income.

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

Unfortunately, reality often has less “grabbing power” than the sensationalist White Nationalist BS narratives ☠️🤮👎 peddled by Trump, his toadies, and some of his backers.

The bottom line is actually pretty simple: America was built by immigrants and depends on the essential contributions of new immigrants, regardless of status, for survival and prosperity. 🇺🇸👍

That makes Trump’s dark nativist vision of America look like a “suicide pact” rather than a path to “greatness.” It’s particularly important for members of the younger generation to reject the Trump regime’s dark dishonest plans 🏴‍☠️ that write many of them, their friends, colleagues, and loved ones out of America’s future in favor of a “kakistocracy of corrupt grifters.”

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

PWS

05-23-20

FINDING OPPORTUNITY IN CRISIS: Trump Regime Uses Health Emergency To Up Child Abuse — Ignores Law, Orbits Kids To Harm’s Way Without Due Process As Feckless Dems Protest!

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/coronavirus-unaccompanied-minors-deported

Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News:

In a major departure from previous practice mandated by federal law, the Trump administration has begun quickly deporting immigrant children apprehended alone at the southern border.

Administration officials say they are following public health orders designed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in the US, but opponents say they are using the health orders to skirt federal laws that govern the processing of unaccompanied minors.

The New York Times first reported that the Trump administration would apply to unaccompanied children from Central America a March 20 order issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that bars the entry of those who cross into the country without authorization.

Previously, unaccompanied children from Central America picked up by Border Patrol agents would be sent to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), where they would be housed in shelters across the country as they began officially applying for asylum and waited to be reunited with family members in the US.

On Monday, a US Customs and Border Protection official confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the agency was now applying the CDC order to children.

“All aliens CBP encounters may be subject to the CDC’s Order Suspending Introduction Of Persons From A Country Where A Communicable Disease Exists (March 20, 2020), including minors,” read a statement from CBP. “When minors are encountered without adult family members, CBP works closely with their home countries to transfer them to the custody of government officials and reunite them with their families quickly and safely, if possible.”

The statement noted that there is discretion for the agency to exclude certain unaccompanied children from the order if, for example, they show signs of illness.

Immigrant advocates told BuzzFeed News they were alarmed at the policy shift.

“Children arriving at the border, many of whom have endured unimaginable harm at home and on their journey, are the most vulnerable group encountered by border officials. Unaccompanied children are particularly vulnerable to trafficking,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a policy analyst at the American Immigration Council. “The answer to coronavirus cannot be to put children in harm’s way.”

Eleanor Acer, the refugee protection director at Human Rights First, said the move was proof that the Trump administration was “using” a public health crisis “to advance their long-standing goal of overturning US laws protecting vulnerable children and people seeking asylum.”

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the article at the link.

Like all fascists, the White Nationalist nativists of the regime are always looking for new ways to pick on the most needy and vulnerable. And, what presents a better target for cruelty and abuse than unaccompanied kids, particularly when a health emergency offers “cover?”

The Dems sputter but can’t do anything except write letters that go in the regime’s waste baskets.

PWS

O3-30-20

“LET ‘EM DIE IN MEXICO” UPDATE: SAN DIEGO IMMIGRATION JUDGES STAND UP AGAINST TRUMP REGIME’S LAWLESS BEHAVIOR — Elsewhere Along The Border, Most Judges Appear To “Go Along To Get Along” With White Nationalist Agenda!

https://apple.news/A8ArjPBJHQmSHq_XVgoRjKw

Alicia A. Caldwell reports for the WSJ:

U.S.

Judges Quietly Disrupt Trump Immigration Policy in San Diego

Immigration court terminates more than a third of ‘Remain in Mexico’ cases

SAN DIEGO—Immigration judges in this city are presenting a challenge to the Trump administration’s policy of sending asylum-seeking migrants back to Mexico, terminating such cases at a significantly higher rate than in any other court, according to federal data.

Between January and the end of September, immigration judges in San Diego terminated 33% of more than 12,600 Migrant Protection Protocols cases, also known as Remain in Mexico, according to data collected by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

Judges in El Paso, Texas, the busiest court hearing MPP cases, terminated fewer than 1% of their more than 14,000 cases.

The nine San Diego judges have repeatedly ruled that asylum seekers waiting in Mexico weren’t properly notified of their court dates or that other due process rights were violated.

The high rate of dismissals is undermining the Trump administration’s goal of quickly ordering the deportation of more illegal border crossers who request asylum, including those who don’t show up from Mexico for their court hearings.

The effect is more symbolic than practical. Such a decision doesn’t mean a migrant is allowed to stay in the U.S., even if they show up for their court hearing. Instead, it saves them from being banned from coming to the country for 10 years and makes it tougher for the government to charge them with a felony if they cross the border illegally in the future. Those whose case is dismissed when they aren’t in court might not even know about the decision unless they call a government hotline.

Spokespeople for Customs and Border Protection, which carries out MPP at the border, and the Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to requests for comment.

However, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, whose lawyers represent the government in immigration Court, have filed an appeal with a Justice Department panel. The appeal questions whether judges who terminate cases for migrants who don’t show up in court made a mistake.

A spokeswoman for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the immigration court’s parent agency, said immigration judges don’t comment on their rulings.

Denise Gilman, an immigration lawyer and director of the immigration clinic at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin, said the high number of dismissals in San Diego sends a message that judges there believe many government’s cases don’t meet minimum legal standards.

That stands in contrast to immigration judges elsewhere, experts and advocates said.

“Everywhere but in San Diego, [judges] are going with the flow,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a lawyer and policy analyst with the American Immigration Council, which opposes the Trump administration’s border policies.

Immigration judges are unlike most other judges in that they are civil servants, neither appointed nor elected. In civil courts, some jurisdictions are known as more plaintiff- or defendant-friendly. Some federal appeals courts skew left or right, but most don’t rule so frequently on a single policy as immigration judges on MPP.

The Trump administration has sent more than 55,000 asylum-seeking migrants to Mexico to await court hearings under MPP. Migrants were first turned back in January, and through the end of September, just over 5,000 have been ordered deported. Eleven were granted some sort of relief, including asylum, according to TRAC.

Over two recent days in San Diego, multiple judges made clear that they had concerns about Remain in Mexico program as they dismissed cases.

Judge Scott Simpson terminated cases for a family of three from Honduras after ruling that the government violated their due process rights by not properly filling out their notice to appear. As a result, he said, the migrants didn’t know the grounds on which they could fight their case.

“I found that the charging document was defective on a technicality,” Judge Simpson explained to Belma Marible Coto Ceballos and her two children. “It just means that your court case is over.”

MORE ON IMMIGRATION

• Bipartisan House Deal Opens Path to Citizenship for Illegal Immigrant Farmworkers

• Immigrant-Visa Applicants Required to Show They Can Afford Health Care

• U.S. Immigration Courts’ Backlog Exceeds One Million Cases

• New Trump Administration Rule Will Look at Immigrants’ Credit Histories

Ms. Coto quietly nodded as she listened to an interpreter before her attorney, Carlos Martinez, objected to the government’s plan to send the family back to Mexico while it appeals the termination. She and her children are afraid to return, Mr. Martinez explained, after Ms. Coto was assaulted in Tijuana.

Judge Simpson said he didn’t have the authority to keep the family in the U.S., but sought assurances that authorities would interview Ms. Coto about her fears of being sent back to Mexico.

During a separate hearing that same day, 10 MPP cases were closed by Judge Christine A. Bither, who also raised questions about the migrants’ addresses listed on government documents. She denied a government request to issue deportation orders in their absence.

Judge Simpson, meanwhile, repeatedly questioned how the government would update migrants in Mexico about their cases. Migrants routinely move between shelters or cities and don’t have a fixed address where they can receive mail.

He noted that migrants’ addresses are routinely listed on government documents as “domicilio conocido,” or general delivery in Spanish. In one case, he noted that “domicilio conocido” was misspelled for a migrant family that arrived late to the port of entry and missed the bus to immigration court. The government agreed to dismiss that case.

Write to Alicia A. Caldwell at Alicia.Caldwell@wsj.com

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

As noted in the article, the issues raised by the San Diego rulings are now before the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”). Even if the BIA Appellate Immigration Judges “do the right thing” and reject the DHS appeal, I’m relatively sure that Billy Barr will change the result so that the DHS “wins” (and justice “loses”) no matter what the law says.

Larger question: a system where the biased prosecutor gets to hire and supervise the “judges” and then change the result if the individual nevertheless wins is obviously unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment. So whatever happened to the Article III Courts whose job it is to uphold the Constitution and enforce the Bill of Rights against Executive overreach (which is exactly why the Bill of Rights was included in our Constitution)? Why are those gifted with life-tenure so feckless in the face of clear Executive tyranny?

Some Immigration Judges who lack life tenure and the other protections given to Article III judges are willing to stand up; those who are empowered so they can stand up instead stand by and watch injustice unfold every day in this fundamentally unfair system that is an insult to Constitutional Due Process, a mockery of justice, and a disgrace to their oaths of office!

Constantly Confront Complicit Courts 4 Change!

PWS

FRESH CLAIMS OF CHILD ABUSE BY DHS IN YOUR “NEW AMERICAN GULAG” – Ever Wonder Why YOUR Tax Dollars Are Being Used To Fund What Medical Professionals Say Is An Inherently Abusive & Potentially Permanently Damaging “Kiddie Gulag?” – And, In Cases Like This, The Alleged Abuse Is Actually Individualized & Beyond the “Regular Damage” Intentionally Inflicted By The Trump DHS, Abetted By Complicit Courts!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/25/texas-immigration-detention-guard-assault-child-claims?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Amanda Holpuch reports for The Guardian:

A private prison guard physically assaulted a five-year-old boy at an immigration detention center in Texas, according to a complaint filed with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

She raised her niece like a daughter. Then the US government separated them at the border

Read more

Advocates for the boy and his mother expect the family to be deported on Friday and asked the US government to halt the deportation to investigate the alleged assault. The advocates also said the family, who are anonymous for safety reasons, face imminent harm or death in their home country of Honduras.

The alleged assault occurred in late September, when the boy was playing with a guard employed by the private prison company CoreCivic who had played with the boy before.

The five-year-old tried to give the guard a high-five, but accidentally hit him instead, angering the guard, according to a complaint seen by the Guardian. The guard then allegedly grabbed the boy’s wrist “very hard” and would not let go.

“The boy’s mother told the guard to let go and tried to pull her son’s hand away, but the guard kept holding on,” according to the complaint. “He finally released the boy and threatened to punish him if he hit him again.”

The complaint said the boy’s hand was swollen and bruised and he was treated with pain medication and ice at the South Texas family residential center in Dilley, in a remote part of the state about 100 miles from the US-Mexico border.

The Dilley detention center has been controversial since it opened in 2014. Dilley can hold 2,400 people, the most of any family detention center in the country, and in March 2019 held at least 15 babies under one year old.

“Since the assault, the boy is afraid of male officials at the jail, goes to the bathroom in his pants, bites his nails until they bleed, and does not want to play, sleep, eat, or bathe,” the complaint said.

The Guardian contacted US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the homeland security agency which oversees immigration detention, and CoreCivic for comment, but they had not provided a response at the time of publication.

Katy Murdza, advocacy manager for the Dilley Pro Bono Project, which sends volunteers into the Dilley detention center to help families, met with the mother on Wednesday.

Murdza said the mother is fearful of her imminent deportation and is upset about what happened to her son because she had little power to protect him.

“She was unable to prevent someone from hurting her child and while she has tried to report it, she hasn’t received any information on what the results are, so she still does not have control of whether the detention center let that staff member back in,” Murdza said.

“When people are detained and it’s hidden from the public, these sorts of things happen and there are probably many other cases that we have never learned about that could be similar to this,” Murdza added.

The American Academy of Pediatrics said in March 2017 that no migrant child in the custody of their parent should ever be detained because the conditions could harm or retraumatize them.

The US government can release asylum-seeking families in the US while they wait for their cases to be heard in court, but Donald Trump’s administration favors expanding detention and has tried to extend how long children can be held in detention centers.

Katie Shepherd, national advocacy counsel with the American Immigration Council’s Immigration Justice Campaign, filed the complaint on Thursday with the DHS watchdog, the office of the inspector general, and with its office for civil rights and civil liberties.

“The government has a long history demonstrating it’s not capable of holding people in their custody responsibly and certainly not children who require special protections and safeguards,” Shepherd said. “They require a different environment, not one where guards are going to be physically abusing them.”

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

Ever wonder how things might be different if Article III Judges’ children and grandchildren were being treated this way?

Please think about situations like this the next time you hear sleazy folks like Kelly, Nielsen, or “Big Mac With Lies,”and other former “Trump toadies” tout their “high-level executive experience” and how “proud” they were of their law enforcement initiatives at DHS and other parts of the Trump kakistocracy! What’s the relationship between abusing children and real law enforcement or protecting our national security? None!

Outrageously, these former Trump human rights abusers not only have escaped legal and moral accountability for their knowing and intentional human rights abuses, but they have the audacity to publicly attempt to “leverage” their experience as abusers into “big bucks gigs” in the private sector. How disgusting can it get.

Here’s Professor (and ImmigrationProf Blog guru) Bill O. Hing’s “spot on” description of the “despicable John Kelly:”

Despicable John Kelly – Profits from Detention of Children

By Immigration Prof

Share

I was recently reminded of how John Kelly, former DHS Secretary and former White House Chief of Staff, is now on the board of Caliburn International: the conglomerate that runs detention facilities for migrant children. He is despicable. This was reported in May:

Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly can now count on a second line of income.

In addition to his attempt at scoring paid speaking gigs, Kelly has now joined the board of Caliburn International, the company has confirmed to CBS News. Caliburn is the parent company of Comprehensive Health Services, which operates four massive for-profit shelters that have government contracts to house unaccompanied migrant children.

Kelly’s new job first became apparent when protesters gathered outside Comprehensive Health Services’ Homestead, Florida facility last month — it’s the biggest unaccompanied migrant child detention center in the country. They, along with a local TV station, spotted Kelly enter the facility, and CBS News later confirmed his affiliation. Read more..

When Kelly was DHS secretary, he began the implementation of Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda in the early stages of the administration. Julianne Hing reported on Kelly’s record at DHS on the eve of becoming chief of staff for Trump.

Read here…

bh

October 20, 2019

Apparently, Kelly’s USG pension as a retired 4-star General wasn’t enough to support him in the style to which he aspired (perhaps after rubbing shoulders with the Trump family and its circle of grifters). So, he found it necessary to supplement his income off the misery of families and children in the “New American Gulag” he helped establish.

I had accurately predicted that Kelly wouldn’t leave his “service” to Trump with his reputation intact. Nobody does, except those with no reputation to start with.

Trump runs a kakistocracy. The private sector should treat the steady stream of spineless senior officials fleeing the Trump Circus accordingly.

Or compare the “achievements” of horrible frauds like these guys, who abused their time in the service of Trump by betraying our country’s most fundamental values, with that of a real American hero like the late Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) who was eulogized today. As President Obama said, “he was ‘honorable’ long before he was elected!”

PWS

10-25-19

SUPREME DISGRACE: Instead Of Protecting The Individual Rights Of Our Most Vulnerable Asylum Seekers, The Supremes’ Majority Joins The White Nationalist Assault On Refugee Laws & Human Dignity!

Azam Ahmed
Bureau Chief, Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean
NY Times

https://apple.news/AzVf9gcH2QyOC67VugroXQg

By Azam Ahmed and Paulina Villegas

MEXICO CITY — Thousands of people fleeing persecution, most from Central America, line up at the United States’ southern border every day hoping for asylum. They wait for months, their names slowly crawling up a hand-drawn list until they are allowed to present their case to American immigration authorities.

After the United States Supreme Court issued an order this week, almost none of them will be eligible for asylum.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed the Trump administration to enforce new rules that bar asylum applications from anyone who has not already been denied asylum in one of the countries they traveled through on their way to the United States.

The rule is among the most stringent measures taken by this administration in its battle to halt migration, upending decades of asylum and humanitarian norms. It is likely to affect hundreds of thousands of migrants traveling through Mexico to reach the United States: Eritreans and Cameroonians fleeing political violence. Nicaraguans and Venezuelans fleeing repression.

And the largest group of all: Hondurans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans escaping the twin scourges of poverty and gangs.

“This takes away all hope,” said Eddie Leonardo Caliz, 34, who left San Pedro Sula in Honduras with his wife and two kids three months ago to try to escape gang violence, and spoke from a shelter in southern Mexico. With measures like this, he said, the Trump administration “is depriving us of the opportunity to be safe.”

The new rule, which has been allowed to take effect pending legal challenges, is consistent with the Trump administration’s posture of hostility and rejection for those seeking protection in the United States.

Whether by separating families of migrants, by drastically limiting the number of asylum applications accepted on a given day or by returning those entering the United States to Mexico to await their hearings, the administration has shown a dogged determination to discourage migration.

Central American migrants at the Amar shelter in Nuevo Laredo in July.

Luis Antonio Rojas for The New York Times

And it has put tremendous pressure on Mexico to help meet its goal, threatening months ago to escalate tariffs on all Mexican goods if the nation did not buffer the surge of migrants heading to the United States from Central America and elsewhere.

Mexico responded. This week, when Mexican and American officials met in Washington to discuss progress on the issue, the Mexican delegation took great pains to show how its crackdown along its border with Guatemala and throughout the country has reduced migration flows to the United States by more than 50 percent in the last three months.

Mexico’s actions, though applauded by Trump administration officials this week, have overwhelmed its troubled migration system. The number of individuals applying for asylum in Mexico has already skyrocketed in the last few years, as the United States has tightened its borders.

This rule could add to that burden, with many more applying for asylum in Mexico, despite the danger of remaining in Mexico. Violence there has soared to the highest levels in more than two decades. Stories of migrants kidnapped along the border abound, as criminal organizations await their return from the United States or pick them off as they attempt to cross the border.

Several migrants who are making their way north said in interviews on Thursday that the new rule would not deter them. For most, the hope of a new life in the United States outweighed whatever legal worries might lie ahead.

“I know things are getting more and more complicated in the U.S.,” said Noel Hernández, 21, who was staying at a migrant shelter in Guatemala after leaving his home in Tegucigalpa, in Honduras, a few days ago.

“It’s like flipping a coin,” he said. “I either win or I lose.”

Others said they would try to make it in Mexico, despite the violence, or in Guatemala, a nation with a barely functional asylum system.

Oscar Daniel Rodríguez, 33, from San Salvador, has been in Guatemala with his wife and 3-year-old son for a month now, and says he will apply for asylum there.

He had applied for asylum in Mexico during a previous trek, and was rejected. If he is denied in Guatemala, he will try again in Mexico, he said. If they deny him again, he will try the United States.

Migrants from a caravan, along with organizers and legal observers, at the pedestrian crossing that will lead them to the U.S, in 2018.

Meghan Dhaliwal for The New York Times

“No matter how long it takes, and how long we have to wait, what we want is to give our son a better future,” he said.

Mexican asylum applicants, who don’t have to transit through another country to reach the United States, are not impacted by the new policy.

Like past efforts by the Trump administration to curb migration, Wednesday’s order could prove a burden for Mexico.

A senior Mexican official who spoke anonymously because the government has not addressed the issue publicly said that, for now, individuals who seek to apply will not fall under a previous provision, called Migrant Protection Protocol. That provision sends those applying for asylum in the United States back to Mexico to await their hearings.

Instead, migrants will either have to apply for another form of relief in the United States — with a higher bar for acceptance and fewer protections — or be deported back to their home countries.

Mexico is already playing host to tens of thousands of migrants awaiting their asylum hearings in the United States. Its migrant detention facilities can be overcrowded, unsafe and unsanitary.

Asylum applications there have soared in the last year, reaching about 50,000 through August, compared to fewer than 30,000 applications in the same period a year ago. This has placed a strain on Mexican society and on a system ill-equipped to handle such demand.

“We see detention centers crammed with migrants and children, riots, social problems arising, human rights abuses, and rising xenophobia among Mexicans,” said Jorge Chabat, a professor of international relations the University of Guadalajara. “The Mexican government has then little to no other choice but to design long-term migration policies to deal with the large number of migrants coming and staying now in Mexico.”

“There is not much else we can do,” he added, ruefully, “besides maybe lighting a candle for the Virgin of Guadalupe and praying for Trump not to be re-elected.”

Raftsmen wait for clients at a river crossing between the Guatemala-Mexico border.

Luis Antonio Rojas for The New York Times

The initial rule to block asylum sent shock waves among immigrant rights advocates when it was issued by the Trump administration in July of this year. It was almost immediately challenged in lawsuits.

The initiative was a unilateral move by the Trump administration after failed negotiations with Mexico and Guatemala to reach deals, called safe third country agreements, that would have required those countries to absorb asylum seekers who passed through them on their way to the United States.

Though Guatemala eventually caved to the administration’s pressure, and reached a safe third country agreement with the United States, Mexico remained firm in its refusal.

Now, with the Supreme Court allowing the asylum rule to go into effect, some feel the United States got what it wanted anyway — without the other countries’ consent.

“This is the latest step in terms of Trump’s policies to push Mexico to become a safe third country, and to make a big chunk of the migration flow stay in Mexico permanently and deter them from traveling north,” said Raúl Benítez, a professor of international relations at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

The Mexican government, for its part, insists the move is not the same as a safe third country arrangement, which would require a bilateral agreement and would automatically send the majority of asylum seekers back to Mexico for good.

Neither Mexican officials nor independent experts believe it will lead to an immediate influx of returnees to Mexico. Instead, it could leave those who have been returned to Mexico while they await hearings more likely to stay because they will not be granted protection in the United States.

While the new rules will inhibit most migrants from applying for asylum, there are other forms of protected status that remain open to them, though the bar to entry is much higher.

Under current asylum law, individuals must show a credible fear, which is figured to be a 10 percent chance that they will face persecution if sent back home. The threshold for the two remaining protections now — so-called withholding status and qualification under the convention against torture — is reasonable fear. To qualify, the applicant must show a probability of being persecuted back home that is greater than 50 percent.

“The people affected by this policy are the most vulnerable — those without lawyers and those without knowledge of the system,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an immigration attorney with the Immigration Council. “Those without lawyers are being asked to meet a standard almost impossible for someone uneducated in asylum law to meet.”

Daniele Volpe contributed reporting from Guatemala City.

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

So, just why are Justices like Breyer and Kagan tarnishing their legacies by joining with their White Nationalist enabling brethren in this all out assault on the Refugee Act of 1980, the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the U.S. Constitution, Human Rights, and human dignity?

The latest Trump Administration illegal absurdity encouraged, aided, and abetted by the Supremes: Honduras, one of the most dangerous and corrupt refugee sending countries in the world without a functioning asylum system, as a “Safe Third Country.” Obviously, the actions of an Administration confident that the majority of the Supremes share their corruption and cowardice when it comes to enforcing America’s long-standing human rights obligations.

Although it might not have occurred to the geniuses of the Trump Administration, and certainly not to the Supremes’ majority who apparently believe themselves exempt from the practical consequences of their actions, each of the failed states in the Northern Triangle has a seacoast which would allow ocean transit to the U.S. without touching any other country. So, the Trump White Nationalists and their Supreme enablers could be triggering another “Golden Venture” debacle or the type of even more dangerous sea exodus that happened in the Mediterranean when the EU restricted asylum applicants at its land borders.

Or, it’s possible that smugglers will simply “sell” refugees on the very plausible idea that the U.S. refugee system and our commitment to the “rule of law” is nothing but a joke. In that case, smuggling individuals into the interior of the U.S will become an even bigger business. No way they will ever all be caught, even with ICE acting as Trump’s “New American Gestapo.” Higher risk means more profits for smugglers, more death and exploitation for migrants, and more unscreened “extralegal migration” into the U.S.

Up until Trump, the U.S. had been lucky. Most asylum seekers presented themselves at ports of entry or nearby Border Patrol Stations and trusted themselves to the U.S. asylum system for orderly processing. Even those who managed to enter the U.S. usually “affirmatively applied” through the USCIS Asylum Offices.

The current mess in the legal system was almost entirely self-created by the “malicious incompetence” on the part of the Government’s immigration enforcement authorities. The “new message” is clear: only fools should use the US legal system, which in the case of asylum now more closely resembles a Third World dictatorship.

Once folks abandon the U.S. legal system, all of the land and sea borders and indeed the entire land mass of the U.S. will potentially “come into play” for smugglers and their desperate human cargoes of forced migrants. No wall will be long and high enough, no jail cells big enough, no child abuse severe enough, and no extralegal Supreme Court endorsed racist program nasty enough to control the flow of forced migrants seeking shelter. It might well lead to an internal police force that will trample the individual rights of all Americans. But, it won’t stop human migration until the U.S. downward spiral finally reaches the point where we are no better than the “sending countries” from which people are fleeing.

The other possibility is that conditions in the sending countries improve over time so that most folks will stay put. But, the Administration has shown no interest in investing in long term solutions to forced migration.

Immigration is a sign of a strong country; xenophobia a weak and cowardly one. Unhappily, the Supremes have have abandoned the former vision and become front and center in encouraging and enabling the latter.

PWS

09-13-19

DUE PROCESS: I Speak Out Against Latest DOJ Attack On Due Process & Judicial Independence!

https://apple.news/AF5h6SB1USvW1DbhapvzZLw

Alan Pyke reports for ThinkProgress:

Shakeup of immigration court system threatens migrants’ due process

Migrants may soon have a much harder time finding lawyers and understanding their rights in immigration court, as the Trump administration pursues a major overhaul of the agency that oversees those proceedings.

The crucial office that provides basic legal information to migrants and helps connect some of them to pro-bono immigration lawyers will be merged into a Trump-created unit widely viewed as the nerve center of his immigration power grab. Though Friday’s reorganization rule makes no specific threat to shutter those legal assistance programs, the president has wanted to kill them for more than a year.

The bureaucratic reshuffle leaves the assistance programs “buried deep in the bowels” of an agency that today “never does anything without some ulterior political motive relating to the restrictionist immigration agenda,” retired immigration judge Paul Schmidt told reporters Friday.

The regulations concern the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR), where the work of applying immigration laws to individual human cases gets done. In addition to burying the legal-assistance work in a team Trump created, the rule endows EOIR’s director with vast new power to change how immigration laws are applied.

The proposal “shows [the] Trump Administration’s ‘weaponization’ of EOIR as a means of implementing restrictionist policies by precedent decision without going through legislation or rule making,” Schmidt told reporters in an email.

Immigration courts, despite their name, are not independent judicial forums. And because deportation is a civil proceeding rather than a criminal one, migrants who come before the courts are not guaranteed counsel.

Any given migrant’s ability to vindicate the rights they do have in immigration court therefore ends up resting, in many cases, with the presiding judge. If the law says a given migrant’s case might merit a stay of deportation or other relief, and an immigration judge applies the law accordingly, the system slows down and fewer people are evicted from the country.

The Trump administration has repeatedly pushed immigration judges to set aside those legal niceties in favor of rapid removal orders for almost everyone they see. Judges now face discipline if they fail to clear 700 cases per calendar year, a speed judges have repeatedly said makes a mockery of due process.

The big winner in Friday’s order is EOIR’s new Office of Policy, created at the start of President Donald Trump’s term. That team will take over management of a key legal orientation program for giving migrants a basic overview of the legal process they’re facing and the rights they have within it.

The Office of Policy has become the prime mover behind various Trump efforts to create a deportation assembly line that favors speedy removals over the fuller individual consideration envisioned in immigration law, experts said.

“The Office of Policy… has in many ways led the Trump administration’s agenda to reduce the independence of the immigration court system,” American Immigration Council policy analyst Aaron Reichlin-Melnick said in an interview.

Currently, EOIR’s Office of Legal Access Programs helps link some migrants to pro-bono immigration attorneys as part of its legal orientation work. Having a lawyer “is arguably the single most important factor in determining whether someone is allowed to remain in the United States” at the conclusion of their immigration case, Reichlin-Melnick said.

The new rule moves the pro-bono program into the Trump-created policy office, along with the legal orientation system that’s meant to give migrants without attorneys a fighting chance.

There is nothing in the rule that says the DOJ is killing the pro-bono system or the legal orientation program, Reichlin-Melnick stressed.

“But we know in the past this is something the administration has gone after,” he said, noting that the White House tried to defund the legal orientation work in 2018 only for a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers to insist it continue.

“It’s a popular program with pretty much everybody,” he said, “except those inside the Trump administration who think we shouldn’t be spending money on helping people know their rights, because that slows things down.”

The same Office of Policy is widely blamed for concocting the 700-case-per-year standard that judges and experts view as an intentional demolition of immigrants’ due process rights. It is also seen as the driving force behind a new piece of technology that displays a speed gauge on judges’ desks while they work, glaring red when they take the time to explore factual disputes or delve into process issues of a given case and fall behind the administration’s speed requirements.

“That kind of pressure creates problems, even if it doesn’t mean that people are going to explicitly deny cases because of it,” Reichlin-Melnick said. “Even the most well-minded people are affected by someone essentially standing behind them tapping their watch.”

The case-completion rule in question technically came from a different EOIR office. But Trump’s new policy office is understood to have crafted it and passed it to the appropriate internal authority to promulgate.

Last year, National Association of Immigration Judges union head Ashley Tabaddor urged her colleagues to take whatever time a case requires regardless of the administration’s pressure tactics. This summer, the administration announced its intention to dissolve the NAIJ and strip judges of labor protections.

These maneuvers “create the appearance of coercion” of a professional legal staff who are responsible for applying the law to a complex array of individual circumstances, Reichlin-Melnick said. A political team that isn’t getting the results it wants from immigration courts when they scrutinize the facts is turning to threats – judges can be denied raises or terminated outright over the running-clock rules – and increasing the authority its Office of Policy holds over those judges.

The new rule “raises a number of concerns about conflict of interest that could play out. Maybe they won’t – at this point it’s a little bit premature to panic, or to make large declaratory statements about how this rule will affect the process,” he said. “But it certainly raises concerns.”

Former immigration judge Schmidt was blunter.

The new policy office’s “primary role appears to be to ensure that EOIR functions as an adjunct of DHS Enforcement and that any adjudication trends that enhance Due Process or vindicate Immigrants rights are quickly identified so that they can be wiped out by precedents or policy changes,” Schmidt wrote.

“Look for the [EOIR] Director over time to reinsert himself in the adjudicative activities of EOIR,” he wrote, “for the purpose of insuring subservience to [the] Administration’s political enforcement priorities.”

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

Thanks, Alan, for “telling it like it is.”

Pro bono lawyers have been very successful in both helping asylum applicants vindicate their rights and winning cases. They have also given those who lose before the Immigration Judge the ability to exhaust their remedies before the BIA and challenge wrongful denials in Circuit Courts. Almost every day, one or more Circuit Courts find that the BIA has erred or improperly cut corners in some way.

The success of the pro bono program in achieving asylum and other forms of protection is what the White Nationalists in the Trump Administration hate. They don’t like their immorality and illegality constantly exposed to public view. They would much rather “beat up on” defenseless, unrepresented applicants who can’t even understand English, let alone understand the system and the hyper-technical, intentionally restrictive criteria confronting them. Also, lots of denials, even if completely unfair, bolsters the Administration’s false statistical claim that most asylum claims are without merit.

PWS

08-26-19

SENTENCED TO DEATH WITHOUT DUE PROCESS: Trump’s Legal Shenanigans Kill Innocent People!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/opinion/politics/expedited-deportation-trump-immigration.html

Beth Werlin writes in The NY Times:

The Trump administration’s expansion of the use of fast-track deportations through “expedited removal” will create a “show me your papers” regime nationwide in which people — including citizens — may be forced to quickly prove they should not be deported. This policy allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement to quickly deport someone without going before an immigration judge, undermining American principles of fundamental fairness and putting United States citizens, permanent residents and asylum-seekers at risk of wrongful deportation.

For 15 years, the government has been applying expedited removal in a limited way to those within 100 miles of the Canadian or Mexican border who have been in the United States for less than two weeks. The entire process consists of an interview with an immigration officer during which the burden is on the individual to prove a legal right to remain in the United States. One could be questioned, detained and deported very swiftly with little time to consult a lawyer or to gather evidence to prevent deportation. The extremely short timeline of the expedited-removal process increases the chances that a person who is legally entitled to stay in the United States can end up being removed anyway. The government now says it will apply it across the country for many people who cannot prove they have been present in the United States for two years or more. The expansion could affect thousands of people nationwide.

During just one year of the Trump administration, 27,540 citizens were questioned by ICE — five times more than the last year of the Obama administration. The expansion of the expedited removal process will further increase the number of people questioned, creating a heightened risk that citizens will be arrested, detained and wrongfully deported.

The process has many shortcomings. First, in expedited removal proceedings, immigration officers serve as both prosecutor and judge — charging someone as deportable and making a final decision to deport him, often all within a day. These rapid deportation decisions fail to take into account many critical factors that an immigration judge would consider, including whether the individual is eligible to apply for lawful status in the United States or whether he has citizen family members.

Second, there is generally no opportunity to consult with a lawyer. Having one can make all the difference. With a lawyer, a person is 10 times more likely to prevail in an immigration case. Moreover, there is typically no judicial oversight, with relatively low-level government officers authorized to issue the deportation orders.

Despite the backlogs in the immigration court system and even though the courts often fail to live up to expectations, they can help ensure a basic level of fair process. They safeguard against unlawful removals, afford people the opportunity to obtain counsel, and provide a streamlined appeal process.

This is particularly critical today, given that many people who will be subject to expedited removal are asylum seekers. These particularly vulnerable people could face serious harm or death in their countries of origin if they’re deported.

The lack of safeguards and information in expedited removal is compounded by well-documented abuse of the process. Immigration officers applying expedited removal are obligated to inform individuals of their opportunity to seek asylum and refer a person who expresses a fear of returning to their home country for a “credible fear interview.” Unfortunately, multiple investigations have revealed that officers at the border sometimes fail to fulfill these obligations.

One hallmark of the American justice system is a fair day in court before an impartial decision maker. This is the ultimate distortion of that system. Rather than strengthening the immigration court system, the administration is planning to bypass it entirely, and the human costs will be great.

Beth Werlin is the executive director of the American Immigration Council

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

Trump’s cruel abuse of vulnerable refugees and his wanton destruction of the U.S. Immigration Court system are national disgraces!

PWS

07-27-19

“DUE PROCESS DIES IN DARKNESS” — BIA “STONEWALLS” REQUEST FOR INFORMATION ON CRITERIA FOR LIFE OR DEATH “EMERGENCY STAY” DECISIONS — Lawsuit Follows!

https://psmag.com/social-justice/the-government-has-not-revealed-how-deportation-decisions-are-made

Arvind Dilawar reports for Pacific Standard:

Imagine: You are living in the United States without documentation. Years ago, you were in danger of deportation but were allowed to stay by the federal government through prosecutorial discretion. Suddenly, you are caught in a surprise mass raid of your community by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Your family and lawyer bring your case to the Department of Justice’s Board of Immigration Appeals, petitioning board members to recognize that you should be allowed to stay in the U.S. But in as little as 24 hours, ICE has already deported you back to a country where you have not been in years, where you may have no family or friends, where you may even be in danger from the local government or paramilitary forces. The BIA has yet to make a decision about your case—or, perhaps worse, the board has decided that you should not have been deported in the first place. How do you return to your family and your home in the U.S. now?

It is scenarios like this—which affect a portion of the 256,085 peopledeported each year—that a new lawsuit filed against the BIA hopes to avert by bringing transparency to the procedures, timelines, and other aspects of the board’s inner workings. The American Immigration Council, a non-profit that protects immigrants’ rights, and the Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic, which represents indigent immigrants facing deportation, brought the suit after the BIA failed to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests about their process for granting stays of removal. Such stays allow non-citizens to avoid deportation before their cases are heard by immigration courts.

The advocates behind the suit hope that a court will order the release of information about the BIA’s criteria for granting stays and the full numbers of motions for appeals made, opened, and won. Both groups believe such information can be used to better arm immigrants, their families, and lawyers in their fights against deportation.

Pacific Standard recently interviewed representatives from both the American Immigration Council and Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic—Claudia Valenzuela and Rikke Bukh, respectively—about the motivation behind their suit against the BIA, its aims, and its importance.

Was there a specific incident or general trend that inspired you to file suit against the BIA?

Valenzuela: Both the Council and the Clinic have heard via reports, and experienced via clients, that individuals facing speedy deportation were not getting their motions for a stay of removal decided in time to avoid their physical removal. As we outlined in our complaint to the federal district court, this scenario is quite problematic as it is extremely difficult for individuals to fight their immigration cases once deported.

Bukh: Since [President Donald] Trump took office in early 2017, ICE has become much more aggressive in its enforcement and has begun increasingly apprehending, detaining, and attempting to deport large numbers of people. There have been a number of examples of ICE conducting mass raids on longtime immigrant communities. Many of the targeted individuals have been ordered deported years ago but were given permission by the federal government to remain in the U.S. through prosecutorial discretion. These non-citizens have lived here for years, even decades, and have since built their families and communities here. Now, these people are at risk of deportation to countries where they fear persecution, torture, or even death.

The stay of removal mechanism was intended to serve as a critical, potentially life-saving safeguard, and it should protect many of these people. However, the BIA’s deficient practices surrounding stays have made it ineffective, and the devastating consequences have emerged particularly sharply in the wake of these enforcement actions.

What specific information are you hoping to get out of the BIA?

Valenzuela: We are looking for all policies and procedures regarding stays of deportation filed in conjunction with motions to reopen or reconsider—and in particular how these requests are processed and tracked, timelines for deciding these requests, and how decisions on stays of deportation are communicated to individuals who request them and/or their attorneys. We also requested statistical data on the numbers of stays requested in conjunction with motions to reopen or reconsider, and rates of grants or denials in deciding those motions.

Bukh: We are seeking information that would give us insight into how the BIA makes these decisions, including guidance on adjudicating stay motions and other internal materials, as well as data to show how they make these types of decisions and the impact of current procedures and standards. It is necessary to make this information public so that courts, attorneys, and, most importantly, individuals who do not have representation can meaningfully access and utilize these mechanisms to prevent unlawful deportations.

On what grounds is the BIA refusing to share the information you’re requesting?

Valenzuela: The board claims that its information is protected on law-enforcement and national-security grounds. However, it is our position that the BIA has incorrectly invoked these exemptions.

Bukh: The agency has failed to respond in any substance regarding a significant category of information that we requested. It has also said that it does not track “non-emergency” requests for stays in its system and refused to locate such information in its files because, in its view, it would be “burdensome.”

How do you anticipate the case will proceed? If the BIA prevails, what then?

Bukh: We hope and expect that the court will see the important need for this information and require the agency to produce it expeditiously. However, the agency may recognize that its responses have been deficient and begin producing these records even before a court order. The important thing is that the public has access to this information. If the BIA were to prevail, we would review the basis for a decision and consider next steps from there.

Valenzuela: We are hopeful that the court will agree that the records we have requested are subject to public disclosure and order the BIA to release all records and statistics. Our requests address precisely the type of information that the BIA should make available to the public because it governs procedural due process for individuals in the most dire of circumstances: imminent deportation.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

COURTING DISASTER: NEW AILA REPORT SHREDS DOJ’S “BUILT TO FAIL” IMMIGRATION COURT BACKLOG REDUCTION PROGRAM — “Malicious Incompetence” Turns Tragedy To Travesty! — McKinney, Lynch, Creighton, & Schmidt Do Press Conference Exposing Injustice, Waste, Abuse — Listen To Audio Here!

OUR TEAM:

Jeremy McKinney, Attorney, Greensboro, NC, AILA National Treasurer

Laura Lynch, Senior Policy Counsel, AILA,

Emily Creighton, Deputy Legal Director, American Immigration Council

Paul Wickham Schmidt, Retired U.S. Immigration Judge

Read the AILA Report (with original formatting) at the link below:

19021900

FOIA Reveals EOIR’s Failed Plan for Fixing the Immigration Court Backlog February 21, 2019
Contact: Laura Lynch (llynch@aila.org) 1
On December 19, 2018, AILA and the American Immigration Council obtained a partially redacted memorandum through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), entitled the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s (EOIR) Strategic Caseload Reduction Plan (hereinafter “EOIR’s plan”). EOIR’s plan, which was approved by the Deputy Attorney General for the Department of Justice (DOJ) on October 31, 2017,2 states that the overarching goal was “to significantly reduce the case backlog by 2020.” 3 In the following months, DOJ and EOIR implemented the plan by rolling out several policy initiatives, including multiple precedent-setting opinions issued by then-Attorney General (AG) Jeff Sessions.
Contrary to EOIR’s stated goals, the administration’s policies have contributed to an increase in the court backlog which exceeded 820,000 cases at the end of 2018.4 This constitutes a 25 percent increase in the backlog since the introduction of EOIR’s plan.5 For example, the October 2017 memorandum reveals that EOIR warned DOJ that the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) potential activation of almost 350,000 low priority cases or cases that were not ready to be adjudicated could balloon the backlog.6 Nonetheless, then-AG Sessions ignored these concerns and issued a decision that essentially stripped immigration judges (IJs) of their ability to administratively close cases and compelled IJs to reopen previously closed cases at Immigrations Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) request.7
The policies EOIR implemented as part of this backlog reduction plan have severely undermined the due process and integrity of the immigration court system. EOIR has placed enormous pressure on IJs by setting strict case quotas on and restricting their ability to manage their dockets more efficiently. This approach treats the complex process of judging like an assembly line and makes it more likely that judges will not give asylum seekers and others appearing before the courts enough time to gather evidence to support their claims. People appearing before the courts will also have less time to find legal counsel, which has been shown to be a critical, if not the single most important factor, in determining whether an asylum seeker is able to prove eligibility for legal protection.
The foundational purpose of any court system must be to ensure its decisions are rendered fairly, consistent with the law and the Constitution’s guarantee of due process. Efforts to improve efficiency are also important but cannot be implemented at the expense of these fundamental principles. EOIR’s plan has not only failed to reduce the backlog but has eroded the court’s ability to ensure due process. Furthermore, EOIR’s plan demonstrates the enormous power DOJ exerts over the immigration court system. Until Congress creates an immigration court that is separate and independent from DOJ, those appearing before the court will be confronted with a flawed system that is severely compromised in its ability to ensure fair and consistent adjudications.
I. Background on EOIR’s Inherently Flawed Structure
The U.S. immigration court system suffers from profound structural problems that have severely eroded both its capacity to deliver just and fair decisions in a timely manner and public confidence in the system
AILA Doc. No. 19021900. (Posted 2/21/19)

itself.8 Unlike other judicial bodies, the immigration courts lack independence from the Executive Branch. The immigration courts are administered by EOIR, which is housed within DOJ – the same agency that prosecutes immigration cases at the federal level. This inherent conflict of interest is made worse by the fact that IJs are not classified as judges but as government attorneys, a classification that fails to recognize the significance of their judicial duties and puts them under the control of the AG, the chief prosecutor in immigration cases. The current administration has taken advantage of the court’s structural flaws, introducing numerous policies — including EOIR’s plan — that dramatically reshape federal immigration law and undermine due process in immigration court proceedings.
II. Policies Identified in EOIR’s Plan
Administrative Closure
Stated Policy Goal: To reduce the case backlog and maximize docket efficiency, EOIR’s plan called for the strengthening of EOIR and DHS interagency cooperation.9 EOIR’s plan advised DOJ that “any burst of case initiation by a DHS component could seriously compromise EOIR’s ability to address its caseload and greatly exacerbate the current state of the backlog.”10
Reality: Despite EOIR’s warning, then-AG Sessions issued a precedent decision in Matter of Castro Tum,11 which contributed to a rise in the case backlog. This decision severely restricts a judge’s ability to schedule and prioritize their cases, otherwise known as “administrative closure” and even compels IJs to reopen previously closed cases at ICE’s request.12
Administrative closure is a procedural tool that IJs and the BIA use to temporarily halt removal proceedings by transferring a case from active to inactive status on a court’s docket. This tool is particularly useful in situations where IJs cannot complete the case until action is taken by USCIS or another DHS component, state courts and other authorities. Prior to the issuance of Matter of Castro Tum, numerous organizations, including the judges themselves, warned DOJ that stripping IJs of the ability to utilize this docket management tool “will result in an enormous increase in our already massive backlog of cases.”13 In fact, an EOIR-commissioned report identified administrative closure as a helpful tool to control the caseload and recommended that EOIR work with DHS to implement a policy to administratively close cases awaiting adjudication in other agencies or courts.14
Nonetheless, the former AG issued Matter of Castro Tum15 sharply curtailing IJs’ ability to administratively close cases. The decision even called for cases that were previously administratively closed cases to be put back on the active immigration court dockets.16 In August 2018, ICE directed its attorneys to file motions to recalendar “all cases that were previously administratively closed…” with limited exceptions—potentially adding a total of 355,835 cases immediately onto the immigration court docket.17 Three months later, ICE had already moved to recalendar 8,000 cases that had previously been administratively closed, contributing to the bloated immigration court case backlog.18 In response, members of Congress sent a letter to DOJ and DHS outlining their concerns about ICE’s plans to recalendar potentially hundreds of thousands of administratively closed cases, further clogging the system and delaying and denying justice to the individuals within it.19
Quotas and Deadlines
Stated Policy Goal: To expedite adjudications, EOIR’s plan calls for the development of caseload
management goals and benchmarks.20
Reality: EOIR imposed unprecedented case completion quotas and deadlines on IJs, that pressure judges to complete cases rapidly at the expense of balanced, well-reasoned judgment.21
2
AILA Doc. No. 19021900. (Posted 2/21/19)

At the time EOIR’s plan was issued, EOIR’s collective bargaining agreement with the National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ) prohibited “the use of any type of performance metrics in evaluating an IJ’s performance.”22 Despite opposition from NAIJ,23 DOJ and EOIR imposed case completion quotas and time-based deadlines on IJs, tying their individual performance reviews to the number of cases they complete.24 Among other requirements, IJs must complete 700 removal cases in the next year or risk losing their jobs.25 Disturbingly, DOJ unveiled new software, resembling a “speedometer on a car” employed to track the completion of IJs’ cases.26
Sample Image of “IJ Performance Data Dashboard”
(Source: Vice News)27
AILA, the American Immigration Council, and other legal organizations and scholars oppose the quotas that have been described by the NAIJ as a “death knell for judicial independence.”28 The purported argument for these policies is that it will speed the process up for the judges. However, applying this kind of blunt instrument will compel judges to rush through decisions and may compromise a respondent’s right to due process and a fair hearing. Given that most respondents do not speak English as their primary language, a strict time frame for completion of cases interferes with a judge’s ability to assure that a person’s right to examine and present evidence is respected.29
These policies also impact asylum seekers, who may need more time to gather evidence that is hard to obtain from their countries of origin, as well as unrepresented individuals, who may need more time to obtain an attorney. The Association of Pro Bono Counsel explained that the imposition of case completion quotas and deadlines “will inevitably reduce our ability to provide pro bono representation to immigrants in need of counsel.”30 Unrepresented people often face hurdles in court that can cause case delays, and scholars have concluded that immigrants with attorneys fare better at every stage of the court process.31 Furthermore, these policies compel IJs to rush through decisions may result in errors which will lead to an increase in appeals and federal litigation, further slowing down the process.
Continuances
Stated Policy Goal: To “streamline current immigration proceedings”32 and “process cases more
efficiently,”33 EOIR’s plan called for changes in the use of continuances in immigration court.34
Reality: The restrictions DOJ and EOIR placed on the use of continuances make it far more difficult for immigrants to obtain counsel and interfere with judges’ ability to use their own discretion in each case.
EOIR and DOJ introduced policies that pressure judges to deny more continuances at the expense of due process. In July 2017, the Chief IJ issued a memorandum which pressures IJs to deny multiple continuances, including continuances to find an attorney or for an attorney to prepare for a case.35 Following this policy change, then-AG Sessions issued the precedential decision, Matter of L-A-B-R- et al., interfering with an IJ’s ability to grant continuance requests and introducing procedural hurdles that will also make it harder for people to request and IJs to grant continuances.36
3
AILA Doc. No. 19021900. (Posted 2/21/19)

These policy changes weaken due process protections and contradict the agency’s plan to “improve existing laws and policies.” Continuances represent a critical docketing management tool for IJs and are a necessary means to ensure that due process is afforded in removal proceedings. The number one reason respondents request continuances is to find counsel, who play a critical role in ensuring respondents receive a fair hearing.37 Continuances are particularly important to recent arrivals, vulnerable populations (such as children), and non-English speakers—all of whom have significant difficulties navigating an incredibly complex immigration system. Furthermore, individuals represented by counsel contribute to more efficient court proceedings. NAIJ’s President, Judge A. Ashley Tabaddor, explained, “It is our experience, when noncitizens are represented by competent counsel, Immigration Judges are able to conduct proceedings more expeditiously and resolve cases more quickly.”38
Video Teleconferencing (VTC)
Stated Policy Goal: To expand its adjudicatory capacity, EOIR called for pilot VTC “immigration
adjudication centers.”39
Reality: EOIR expanded the use of VTC for substantive hearings undermining the quality of communication and due process.
A 2017 report commissioned by EOIR concluded that court proceedings by VTC should be limited to “procedural matters” because appearances by VTC may lead to “due process issues.”40 Despite these concerns, EOIR expanded use of VTC for substantive hearings. A total of fifteen IJs currently sit in two immigration adjudication centers—four in Falls Church, Virginia, and eleven in Fort Worth, Texas.41 IJs are currently stationed at these “centers” where they adjudicate cases from around the country from a remote setting.42
For years, legal organizations such as AILA and the American Bar Association (ABA) have opposed use of VTC to conduct in immigration merits hearings, except in matters in which the noncitizen has given consent.43 Technological glitches such as weak connections and bad audio can make it difficult to communicate effectively, and 29 percent of EOIR staff reported that VTC caused meaningful delay.44 Additionally, VTC technology does not provide for the ability to transmit nonverbal cues. Such issues can impact an IJs’ assessment of an individual’s credibility and demeanor, which are significant factors in determining appropriate relief.45 Moreover, use of VTC for immigration hearings also limits the ability for attorneys to consult confidentially with their clients. No matter how high-quality or advanced the technology is that is used during a remote hearing, such a substitute is not equivalent to an in-person hearing and presents significant due process concerns.
IJ Hiring
Stated Policy Goal: In order to increase the IJ corps and reduce the amount of time to hire new
IJs, the former AG introduced a new, streamlined IJ hiring process.46
Reality: Following DOJ’s implementation of the streamlined IJ hiring process, DOJ faced allegations of politicized and discriminatory hiring47 that call into question the fundamental fairness of immigration court decisions.
On its face, the agency “achieved” its goal to quickly hire more IJs, reducing the time it takes to onboard new IJs by 74 percent and increasing the number of IJs on the bench from 338 IJs at the end of FY2017 to 414 IJs by the end of 2018.48 What these statistics do not reveal is that the new plan amended hiring processes to provide political appointees with greater influence in the final selection of IJs.49 In addition to procedural changes, DOJ also made substantive changes to IJ hiring requirements, “over-emphasizing litigation experience to the exclusion of other relevant immigration law experience.”50 Both Senate and
4
AILA Doc. No. 19021900. (Posted 2/21/19)

House Democrats requested an investigation with the DOJ Inspector General (IG) to examine allegations that DOJ has targeted candidates and withdrawn or delayed offers for IJ and BIA positions based on their perceived political or ideological views.51 These allegations are particularly troublesome given the influx in the number of IJs resigning and reports that experienced IJs are “being squeezed out of the system for political reasons.”52
Telephonic Interpreters
Stated Policy Goal: EOIR requested additional funding to support additional IJs on staff and to
improve efficiency.53
Reality: EOIR failed to budget for needed in-person interpreters54 resulting in the use of telephonic interpreters for most hearings, which raises concerns about hearing delays and potential communication issues.55
In April of 2017, an EOIR-commissioned report revealed that 31 percent of court staff reported that telephonic interpreters caused a meaningful delay in their ability to proceed with their daily responsibilities.56 With more than 85 percent of respondents in immigration court relying on use of an interpreter, EOIR’s decision to replace in-person interpreters with telephonic interpreters will undoubtedly make court room procedures less efficient.57 In addition, similar to many of the technological concerns cited with use of VTC, communication issues related to use of remote interpreters can jeopardize an immigrant’s right to a fair day in court. For example, it is impossible for telephonic interpreters to catch non-verbal cues that may determine the meaning of the speech.
III. Conclusion
The immigration court system is charged with ensuring that individuals appearing before the court receives a fair hearing and full review of their case consistent with the rule of law and fundamental due process. Instead of employing policies that propel the court toward these goals, the administration’s plan relies on policies that compromise due process. IJs responsible for adjudicating removal cases are being pressured to render decisions at a break-neck pace. By some accounts “morale has never, ever been lower” among IJs and their staff.58 Moreover, since the introduction of EOIR’s plan, the number of cases pending in the immigration courts has increased 25 percent (from 655,932 on 9/31/17 to 821,726 on 12/31/18). This number does not even account for the 35-day partial government shutdown that cancelled approximately 60,000 hearings while DHS continued carrying out enforcement actions.59 Congress must conduct rigorous oversight into the administration’s policies that have eroded the court’s ability to ensure that decisions are rendered fairly, consistent with the law and the Constitution’s guarantee of due process. But oversight is not enough. In order protect and advance America’s core values of fairness and equality, the immigration court must be restructured outside of the control of DOJ, in the form of an independent Article I court.60
900,000 800,000 700,000 600,000 500,000 400,000 300,000 200,000 100,000
0
792,738 821,726
655,932 521,416
460,021 430,095
356,246
PENDING IMMIGRATION CASES
EOIR Pending Cases
5
Pending cases equals removal, deportation, exclusion, asylum-only, and AILA Doc. No. w1it9hh0o2ld1in9g0o0nl.y. (Po
Source: Department of Justice
sted 2/21/19)

1 For more information, contact AILA Senior Policy Counsel Laura Lynch at (202) 507-7627 or llynch@aila.org.
2 *An earlier version of this policy brief, dated February 19, 2019, incorrectly stated that the memo was signed on October 17, 2017. This typo has been corrected. FOIA Response, see pg. 9.
3 On December 5, 2017, EOIR publicly issued a backgrounder for the EOIR Strategic Caseload Reduction Plan. U.S. Department of Justice Backgrounder, EOIR Strategic Caseload Reduction Plan, Dec. 5, 2017.
4 U.S. Department of Justice, EOIR Adjudication Statistics, Pending Cases, (Dec. 31, 2018). The over 820,000 cases does not account for the 35-day partial government shutdown that cancelled approximately 60,000 immigration court hearings while at the same time, DHS continued carrying out enforcement actions, Associated Press, Partial shutdown delayed 60,000 immigration court hearings, Feb. 8, 2019.
5 U.S. Department of Justice, Adjudication Statistics, Pending Cases, Dec. 31, 2018.
6 FOIA Response, see pg. 6.
7 Jason Boyd, The Hill, “8,000 new ways the Trump administration is undermining immigration court independence,” Aug. 19, 2018.
8 ABA Commission on Immigration, Reforming the Immigration System, Proposals to Promote the Independence, Fairness, Efficiency, and Professionalism in the Adjudication of Removal Cases (2010).
9 FOIA Response, see pg. 6. See also U.S. Department of Justice Backgrounder, EOIR Strategic Caseload Reduction Plan, Dec. 5, 2017.
10 FOIA Response, see pg. 6.
11 Matter of Castro-Tum, 27 I&N Dec. 271 (A.G. 2018).
12 Id.
13 NAIJ Letter to then-Attorney General Sessions, Jan. 30, 2018.
14 AILA and The American Immigration Council FOIA Response, Booz Allen Hamilton Report on Immigration Courts, Apr. 6, 2017, pg. 26, [hereinafter “Booz Allen Report”].
15 Matter of Castro-Tum, 27 I&N Dec. 271 (A.G. 2018).
16 Id.
17 ICE Provides Guidance to OPLA Attorneys on Administrative Closure Following Matter of Castro Tum, June 15, 2018.
18 Hamed Aleaziz, Buzzfeed News, “The Trump Administration is Seeking to Restart Thousands of Closed Deportation Cases,” Aug. 15, 2018.
19 Congressional Letter Requesting Information Regarding Initiative to Recalendar Administratively Closed Cases, Sept. 13, 2018.
20 FOIA Response, see pg. 5.
21 Memorandum from James McHenry, Director, Executive Office for Immigration Review on Immigration Judge Performance Metrics to All Immigration Judges, March 30, 2018.
22 FOIA Response, see pg. 5.
23 Misunderstandings about Immigration Judge “Quotas” in Testimony Before House Appropriations Committee, NAIJ, May 2, 2018.
24 FOIA Response, pg. 5. See also Memorandum from James McHenry, Director, Executive Office for Immigration Review on Immigration Judge Performance Metrics to All Immigration Judges, March 30, 2018; See also Imposing Quotas on Immigration Judges will Exacerbate the Case Backlog at Immigration Courts, NAIJ, Jan. 31, 2018. See also Misunderstandings about Immigration Judge “Quotas” in Testimony Before House Appropriations Committee, NAIJ, May 2, 2018.
25 See Memorandum from James McHenry, Director, Executive Office for Immigration Review on Immigration Judge Performance Metrics to All Immigration Judges, March 30, 2018.
26 C-SPAN, Federal Immigration Court System, Sept. 21, 2018. (“[t]his past week or so, they [EOIR] unveiled what’s called the IJ dashboard…this mechanism on your computer every morning that looks like a speedometer on a car… The goal is for you to be green but of course you see all of these reds in front of you and there is a lot of anxiety attached to that.” NAIJ President, Judge A. Ashley Tabaddor).
27 Ani Ucar, Vice News, “Leaked Report Shows the Utter Dysfunction of Baltimore’s Immigration Court,” Oct. 3, 2018.
28 AILA and the American Immigration Council Statement, DOJ Strips Immigration Courts of Independence, Apr. 3, 2018. See also NAIJ, Threat to Due Process and Judicial Independence Caused by Performance Quotas on Immigration Judges (October 2017).
29 INA §240(b)(4)(B) requires that a respondent be given a “reasonable opportunity” to examine and present evidence.
6
AILA Doc. No. 19021900. (Posted 2/21/19)

30 Association of Pro Bono Counsel (APBCo), Letter to Congress IJ Quotas, Oct. 26, 2017.
31 Ingrid Eagly and Steven Shafer, Access to Counsel in Immigration Court (2016).
32 U.S. Department of Justice Backgrounder, EOIR Strategic Caseload Reduction Plan, Dec. 5, 2017, pg. 2.
33 FOIA Response, pg. 8.
34 FOIA Response, pgs. 7-8.
35 U.S. Department of Justice, Operating Policies and Procedures Memorandum 17-01: Continuances, July 31, 2017. 36 Matter of L-A-B-R- et al., 27 I&N Dec. 405 (A.G. 2018).
37 GAO Report, 17-438, Immigration Courts, Actions Needed to Reduce Case Backlog and Address Long-Standing Management and Operational Challenges, (June 2017).
38 Sen. Mazie Hirono, Written Questions for the Record, U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Apr. 18, 2018.
39 FOIA Response, pg. 3.
40 Booz Allen Report, pg. 23.
41 U.S. Department of Justice, EOIR Immigration Court Listings, Feb. 2019.
42 Katie Shepherd, American Immigration Council, The Judicial Black Sites the Government Created to Speed Up Deportations, Jan. 7, 2019.
43 AILA Comments on ACUS Immigration Removal Adjudications Report, May 3, 2012; ABA Letter to ACUS, Feb. 17, 2012.
44 Booz Allen Report, pg. 23.
45 An EOIR commissioned report suggested limiting use of VTC to procedural matters only because it is difficult for judges to analyze eye contact, nonverbal forms of communication, and body language over VTC. Booz Allen Report, pg. 23.
46 FOIA Response, pg. 3.
47 Priscilla Alvarez, The Atlantic, Jeff Sessions is Quietly Transforming the Nation’s Immigration Courts, Oct. 17, 2018.
48 U.S. Department of Justice, EOIR Adjudication Statistic, IJ Hiring, (Jan. 2019).
49 U.S. Department of Justice, EOIR Announces Largest Ever Immigration Judge Investiture, Sept. 28, 2018; Document Obtained via FOIA by Human Rights First, Memorandum for the Attorney General, Immigration Judge Hiring Process, Apr. 4, 2017.
50 Strengthening and Reforming America’s Immigration Court System, Hearing Before Subcommittee on Border Security and Immigration, of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 115th Cong. 5 (2018) (A. Ashley Tabaddor, President, NAIJ), See also Questions for the Record.
51 Senate and House Democrats Request IG Investigation of Illegal Hiring Allegations at DOJ, May 8, 2018. Problematic hiring practices are not new for this agency. Over a decade ago, the IG and the Office of Professional Responsibility revealed that then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales utilized political and ideological considerations in the hiring of IJ and BIA candidates. U.S Department of Justice IG Report, (2008).
52 Hamed Aleaziz, BuzzFeed News, Being an Immigration Judge Was Their Dream. Under Trump, It Became Untenable, Feb. 13, 2019.
53 FOIA Response, pg. 3.
54 NAIJ Letter to Senators, Government Shutdown, Jan. 9, 2019.
55 Id.
56 Booz Allen Report, pg. 25.
57 Laura Abel, Brennan Center For Justice, Language Access in Immigration Courts, (2010).
58 Hamed Aleaziz, Buzzfeed News, “The Trump Administration is Seeking to Restart Thousands of Closed Deportation Cases,” Aug. 15, 2018.
59 Associated Press, Partial shutdown delayed 60,000 immigration court hearings, Feb. 8, 2019.
60 AILA Statement, The Need for an Independent Immigration Court Grows More Urgent as DOJ Imposes Quotas on Immigration Judges, Oct. 1, 2018. See also the NAIJ letter that joins AILA, the ABA, the Federal Bar Association, the American Adjudicature Society, and numerous other organizations endorsing the concept of an Article I immigration court. NAIJ Letter, Endorses Proposal for Article I Court, Mar. 15, 2018.
7
AILA Doc. No. 19021900. (Posted 2/21/19)

Here’s the link to the audio:

https://www.aila.org/infonet/aila-press-call-on-eoir-memo-obtained-via-foia

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

Here’s “simul-coverage” from LA Times star reporter Molly O’Toole:

https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-immigration-court-backlog-worsens-20190221-story.html

The Trump administration’s controversial plan to shrink the ballooning backlog of immigration cases by pushing judges to hear more cases has failed, according to the latest data, with the average wait for an immigration hearing now more than two years.

Since October 2017, when the Justice Department approved a plan aimed at reducing the backlog in immigration court, the pending caseload has grown by more than 26%, from 655,932 cases to just shy of 830,000, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Access Records Clearinghouse, which tracks data from immigration courts.

Even that figure likely understates the backlog because it doesn’t include the impact of the 35-day government shutdown in December and January. Because the system’s roughly 400 immigration judges were furloughed during the shutdown, some 60,000 hearings were canceled. Thousands were rescheduled, adding to the already long wait times.

The administration “has not only failed to reduce the backlog, but has eroded the court’s ability to ensure due process” by pressuring judges to rule “at a breakneck pace” on whether an immigrant should be removed from the United States, the American Immigration Lawyers Assn. — a nonprofit organization of more than 15,000 immigration attorneys and law professors — said in a statement.

When the Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review, which administers immigration courts, released its plan, officials described it as a “comprehensive strategy for significantly reducing the caseload by 2020,” according to a partially redacted copy of an October 2017 memo obtained by the immigration lawyers group through a Freedom of Information Act request.

“The size of EOIR’s pending caseload will not reverse itself overnight,” the memo said, but by fully implementing the strategy, the office can “realistically expect not only a reversal of the growth of the caseload, but a significant reduction in it.”

Instead, the average wait has grown by a month from January alone, to 746 days — ironically extending the stay of thousands of migrants whom the administration might want to deport from the United States. The Justice Department declined to immediately comment on the growth of the backlog.

The number of pending immigration cases has risen dramatically in recent years, doubling from less than 300,000 in 2011 to 650,000 by December 2017, the end of Trump’s first year in office, according to the Justice Department.

The Trump administration has blamed the ballooning backlog on President Obama’s immigration policies, saying that “policy changes in recent years have slowed down the adjudication of existing cases and incentivized further illegal immigration that led to new cases.”

Administration officials have pointed to Obama’s effort to focus deportation on immigrants with serious criminal records and protecting certain immigrants known as Dreamers who were brought to the U.S. as children as examples of policies that have provided incentives for illegal border crossings.

The administration’s plan to reverse the backlog included a number of controversial steps.

One move restricted the ability of immigration judges to schedule and set priorities for their cases under a process known as “administrative closure.” That change compelled judges to reopen thousands of cases that had been deemed low priority and had been closed. Within three months of the memo, Immigration and Customs Enforcement had moved to reschedule 8,000 cases, prompting concern from lawmakers, according to the immigration lawyers association. Potentially, as many as 350,000 cases ultimately could be added back onto the court dockets.

The administration’s plan also tied immigration judges’ individual performance reviews to the number of cases they complete, calling for them to finish 700 removal cases in the next year.

In contrast to regular courts, immigration judges are not independent; they’re part of the Justice Department. Because of that, the attorney general is both the chief prosecutor in immigration cases and the ultimate boss of the judges, who are classified as government attorneys.

The National Assn. of Immigration Judges, as well as the immigration lawyers association and other groups, have long called for Congress to end what they see as a built-in conflict of interest and create an immigration court separate from the Justice Department.

“As long as we continue to allow the court to be used as a law enforcement tool,” said Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Assn. of Immigration Judges, “you’re going to get these kinds of backlogs and inefficiencies.”

Any speedup that may have resulted from the imposition of quotas on the judges has been overtaken by the administration’s stepped-up enforcement efforts, which have pushed thousands of new cases into the system.

Stepped-up enforcement without a corresponding increase in judicial resources provides the main reason the backlog has gone up so dramatically, said Stephen Legomsky, Homeland Security’s chief counsel for immigration from 2011 to 2013.

“Immediately upon taking office, President Trump essentially advised Border Patrol agents and ICE officers that they were to begin removal proceedings against anyone they encountered that they suspected of being undocumented, without sufficiently increasing resources for immigration judges,” Legomsky said.

Under previous administrations, “the thinking was, ‘Let’s not spend our limited resources on people who are about to get legal status,’” he said, “Taking that discretion away dramatically increased the caseload.”

Some officials warned that could happen when the effort to curtail the backlog began.

“Any burst of case initiation,” by Homeland Security “could seriously compromise” the Justice Department’s “ability to address its caseload and greatly exacerbate the current state of the backlog,” the acting director of the immigration review office wrote in the October memo to Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein.

The quota effort could also prevent attorneys from providing representation to immigrants, according to the Assn. of Pro Bono Counsel, which represents lawyers who handle cases free of charge for the poor.

Whether immigrants have legal representation makes a huge difference in the outcome of cases: Between October 2000 and November 2018, about 82% of people in immigration court without attorneys were either ordered deported or gave up on their cases and left the country voluntarily, while only 31% of those with lawyers were deported or left.

The administration has succeeded in speeding the hiring of new immigration judges by 74%. The number of immigration judges has grown from 338 when the plan was introduced to 414 by the end of 2018.

Lawmakers have raised concerns that some of those new hires have been politically motivated. In May, House Democrats requested an investigation by the Justice Department Inspector General’s office into allegations that candidates have been chosen or rejected for perceived ideological views.

“The current administration has taken advantage of the court’s structural flaws,” the immigration lawyers association wrote, “introducing numerous policies … that dramatically reshape federal immigration law and undermine due process in immigration court proceedings.”

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

My Takeaways:

The DOJ politicos made the already bad situation immeasurably worse;
At no time did any of those supposedly “in charge” seriously consider taking measures that could have promoted Due Process and fundamental fairness in a troubled system whose sole function was to insure and protect these Constitutional requirements;
Sessions was warned about the severe adverse consequences of eliminating “administrative closure” by EOIR, but went ahead with his preconceived “White Nationalist” agenda, based on bias, not law;
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who signed off on this monstrosity, is no “hero” just because he stood up to Trump on the Mueller investigation; he’s just another “go along to get along,” like the rest of the Trump DOJ political appointees (with the possible exception of FBI Director Chris Wray);
No sitting judge, indeed no real “stakeholder,” was consulted about these “designed to fail” measures;
The placement of what purports to be a “court system” dedicated to Due Process within the Justice Department is preposterous;
Congress, which created this parody of justice, and the Article III Courts who have failed to “just say no” to all removal orders produced in this “Due Process Free Zone” must share the blame for allowing this Constitutionally untenable situation to continue;
Once again, the victims of the Trump Administration’s “malicious incompetence” are being punished while the “perpetrators” suffer few, if any, consequences.

PWS

02-21-19

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

UPDATE: Molly’s article was the “front page lead” in today’s print edition of the LA Times.

https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/latimes/default.aspx?pubid=50435180-e58e-48b5-8e0c-236bf740270e

Gotta give the crew at DOJ/EOIR HQ credit for screwing this up so royally that it’s now off the “back pages” and into the headlines where it belongs. You couldn’t buy publicity like this!

First EOIR Director David “No News Is Good News” Milhollan must be rolling over in his grave right now. And his “General Counsel/Chief Flackie,” my friend and former BIA Appellate Judge Gerald S. “No Comment/We Don’t Track That Statistic” Hurwitz must be watching all of this with amusement and bemusement from his retirement perch. Just goes to support the “Milhollan/Hurwitz Doctrine” that “only bad things can happen once they know you exist.”

PWS

02-22-19

PROVING MY POINT: DOJ/EOIR “NO-SHOW” STATS LIE, PARTICULARLY WHEN IT COMES TO ASYLUM SEEKERS!

http://immigrationimpact.com/2019/01/30/asylum-seekers-show-up-for-court/

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick writes for Immigration Impact:

Immigration restrictionists have often repeated a bold and erroneous claim: that there is a serious problem of asylum seekers who come to the U.S. border and disappear once released from detention. But both fact-checkers and independent studies show this is not true. In reality, the vast majority of asylum seekers diligently attend all of their immigration court hearings.

Given that studies consistently show a high appearance rate for asylum seekers, why do some people keep getting this wrong? Boiled down to its simplest answer: the only government measurement on failures to appear in court has been unreliable for years.

If an immigrant fails to appear for a scheduled immigration court hearing, they may be issued an order of removal “in absentia” (or “while absent”). Each year, the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) reports the total number of cases that were “completed” by immigration judges. The government report looks at cases that finished with a grant of relief from removal or an order of removal, as well as the percent of case completions which involved an order of removal for failure to appear.

In Fiscal Year 2017, there were 41,384 orders of removal for failure to appear issued out of 149,436 total cases completed. EOIR reported this as a 28 percent failure to appear rate. However, immigration court cases often require multiple hearings before they can be completed and, due to skyrocketing backlogs in the last decade, the average immigration court case takes almost three years to complete.

The government’s statistic counts failures to appear only against the number of cases that are fully completed. By doing this, it neglects to account for the many immigrants who appeared in court in ongoing cases that have not yet reached completion.

As a result, because tens of thousands of immigrants appeared in court in 2017 but did not have a case completed, EOIR’s number does not represent the rate at which immigrants missed court.

Since there are now more than 800,000 people in immigration court, the failure to include these incomplete cases is extremely misleading.

In addition, by only reviewing initial case completions, the statistic doesn’t consider cases where an immigrant missed court through no fault of their own (like in the event of an emergency) and then successfully overturned a removal order. According to an analysis from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), excluding cases where the immigrant successfully overturned a removal order for failure to appear “significantly impacts and reduces the calculated rates.”

From 2012 to 2017, over 1.25 million new cases were filed in immigration court, but only 151,000 removal orders were issued for failure to appear; 13.5 percent of the total. When looking only at 2017, cases in which an immigrant was ordered removed for failure to appear constituted just five percent of the 802,503 cases pending or completed in immigration court.

Despite the flaws with using the failure to appear rate as a proxy for the rate at which immigrants miss court proceedings, the government continues to use this number to make policy. This is a mistake; good policy can only be made based on good data.

Given this error, what is the actual rate at which immigrants fail to appear in court? Unfortunately, there is no exact answer for this. But a series of studies has made one thing clear: the vast majority of asylum-seekers attend all their immigration court hearings.

The Detaining Families report, for example, reviewed every case between 2001 and 2016 where a family was detained by ICE and then released. It determined that 86 percent of families had not missed a single court hearing. This number rose to 96 percent when a member of the family filed an application for asylum.

Other studies have come to similar conclusions. According to a review of immigration court records by TRAC, only 22.9 percent of the 167,219 women and children who entered the United States between 2014 and 2017 were ordered removed for failure to appear. Those who managed to obtain counsel were the most likely to appear for their hearings; only 2.3 percent of that group were ordered removed for failure to appear.

Even government studies show similar results. In 2018, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services published a study analyzing the outcomes of every person encountered by Customs and Border Protection in 2014. Of the roughly 60,000 individuals who sought asylum at the border that year, only 14 percent had been issued an order of removal that ICE was not able to carry out—likely because the asylum-seeker failed to appear in court and fled.

As long-term studies show, when you actually track individual cases from start to finish, most asylum-seekers diligently appear in court. The government should make policy based on this reality and not their own flawed metrics.

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

Trump, Miller, Nielsen, Sessions, Whitaker, and the rest of the “Band of Sycophants” make immigration policy based on a false White Nationalist agenda incorporating intentional lies, distortions, misrepresentations, and racist myths.

Not only do the stats show that asylum applicants show up for Immigration Court, but the also show a high correlation between represented respondents and appearance.

Rather than disgracefully wasting money on all sorts of expensive, ineffective, and often illegal “gimmicks,” one of the best things the Government could do is work with NGOs, pro bono organizations, and the private bar to achieve “universal representation.” It’s much more “doable” and infinitely more effective than the “Wall folly.” The Government could also help facilitate more trained, non-attorney “accredited representatives” to increase Asylum Office and Immigration Court representation.

Instead, Jeff Sessions slandered and went out of his way to disrespect immigration lawyers and make their already difficult jobs next to impossible. And, Nielsen went out of her way to bar, that’s right, bar, attorneys from initial interviews under her inaptly named “Migrant Protection Protocols.” Those protocols also obviously are a thinly veiled attack on representation at the Immigration Court level.

The Trump Administration and its motley crew of corrupt political officials should be confronted with and held accountable for their tireless lies and White Nationalist distortions that endanger the lives and rights of migrants. Harm to one of the most vulnerable among us is harm to all! And, intentional and unnecessary harm to the most vulnerable is a staple of the Trump Administration!

PWS

01-31-19

Education Level	Share (%) of All Immigrants	Share (%) of All Natives
College degree or more	32	33
Some college	19	31
High school diploma only	22	28
Less than a high-school diploma	27	8
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2018 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates.

Industry	Number of Immigrant Workers
Health Care and Social Assistance	4,124,557
Manufacturing	3,437,569
Accommodation and Food Services	3,022,991
Retail Trade	2,979,800
Construction	2,858,953
Source: Analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2018 American Community Survey 1-year PUMS data by the American Immigration Council.

Industry	Immigrant Share (%) (of all industry workers)
Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing, and Hunting	26
Construction	23
Administrative Support and Waste Management and Remediation Services	22
Other Services (except Public Administration)	21
Accommodation and Food Services	20
Source: Analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2018 American Community Survey 1-year PUMS data by the American Immigration Council.

Occupation Category	Number of Immigrant Workers
Transportation and Material Moving Occupations	2,683,238
Sales and Related Occupations	2,580,721
Management Occupations	2,529,218
Office and Administrative Support Occupations	2,494,354
Construction and Extraction Occupations	2,487,351
Source: Analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2018 American Community Survey 1-year PUMS data by the American Immigration Council.

Occupation Category	Immigrant Share (%) (of all workers in occupation)
Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Occupations	38
Building and Grounds Cleaning and Maintenance Occupations	31
Construction and Extraction Occupations	25
Computer and Mathematical Occupations	24
Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations	22
Source: Analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2018 American Community Survey 1-year PUMS data by the American Immigration Council.

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