LATEST FROM TRAC: IMMIGRATION COURT SYSTEM COLLAPSING UNDER EXPLODING BACKLOG AS TRUMP/SESSIONS “DISSING” OF DUE PROCESS, BLATANT POLITIZATION, INCOMPETENT ADMINISTRATION, AND “GONZO” ENFORCEMENT POLICIES TAKE HOLD — Backlog Soars By An Amazing 32% In Just Over One Year Since Sessions Assumed Control — Now An Astounding 714,000 – Sessions’s Wrong-Headed Actions Geared To Push It Over ONE MILLION With No Sensible End In Sight!

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Greetings. The Immigration Court’s backlog keeps rising. As of the end of May 2018, the number of cases waiting decision reached an all-time high of 714,067. This compares with a court backlog of 542,411 cases at the end of January 2017 when President Trump assumed office. During his term the backlog has increased by almost a third (32%) with 171,656 more cases added.

The pace of court filings has not increased – indeed, case filings are running slightly behind that of last year at this time. What appears to be driving the burgeoning backlog is the lengthening time it now takes to schedule hearings and complete proceedings in the face of the court’s over-crowded dockets.

For example, cases that ultimately result in a removal order are taking 28 percent longer to process than last year – up from 392 days to an average of 501 days – from the date of the Notice to Appear (NTA) to the date of the decision. And compared with the last full fiscal year of the Obama administration, cases resulting in removal take an average of 42 percent longer.

Decisions granting asylum or another type of relief now take over twice as long as removal decisions. Relief decisions this year on average took 1,064 days – up 17 percent – from last year.

Wait times in Houston, San Antonio, Chicago, Imperial (California), Denver, and Arlington (Virginia) now average over 1,400 days before an immigrant is even scheduled for a hearing on his or her case. At many hearing locations hearings are currently being scheduled beyond 2021 before an available slot on the docket is found.

To read the full report, including how long at each court hearing location current cases are waiting before their hearing is scheduled, go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/516/

In addition, many of TRAC’s free query tools – which track the court’s overall backlog, new DHS filings, court dispositions and much more – have now been updated through May 2018. For an index to the full list of TRAC’s immigration tools go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/imm/tools/

If you want to be sure to receive notifications whenever updated data become available, sign up at:

http://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1&list=imm

or follow us on Twitter @tracreports or like us on Facebook:

http://facebook.com/tracreports

TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the U.S. federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl

David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Syracuse University
Suite 360, Newhouse II
Syracuse, NY 13244-2100
315-443-3563

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Wow! The “One Man Supreme Court” is also a “One Man Wrecking Crew” trying his best to bring down the entire U.S. justice system with his remarkable mix of bias, ignorance, cruelty, political grandstanding, and just plain old incompetence.  To my knowledge, he’s never run anything larger than a modest sized U.S. Attorney’s Office, and not everyone who worked with him then was enamored by the way he handled that job. In fact, he was so bad that members of his own party his own party helped block him from a U.S. District Judge position because of his perceived racial bias and lack of ability to deal fairly with minorities.

All of this while, the GOP Congress just sits back and “ho hums” about the mess they have created and allowed to fester in the DOJ and their lack of meaningful oversight over Sessions’s destructive, often dishonest, actions and gross mismanagement!

And, destroying the U.S. Immigration Courts is by no means the last or least of his efforts. According to Richard Morosi’s “banner headline top story” in today’s Los Angeles Times, Sessions & Co have so overloaded the U.S. District Courts along the border with non-violent misdemeanor immigration offenders that those courts 1) don’t have time for more serious offenders, major fraudsters, and other real criminals; and 2) are abandoning their values and independence to produce what one former senior prosecutor, Charles La Bella, termed “turnstyle justice” (“not what the federal courts were meant to do”). It’s so horrible that one long-time U.S. District Judge has already quit because he couldn’t take the wanton wastefulness, stupidity, and inhumanity of it all.  You can check out Morosi’s full article here: http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=aec32f3c-e756-4d4a-acbc-f7e451bd9d87

In other words, Sessions is compromising the actual safety and security of the United States and threatening the integrity of our U.S. Court System to indulge his own racist, xenophobic desire to punish “regular folks, dishwashers, landscapers . . .people who are coming to pick fruit or find menial work to send money back home.”

At least the Chief U.S. District Judge trying to deal with this mess has included defense attorneys along with judges and prosecutors in his new “case management committee.”  Compare that with the Immigration Courts, where Sessions, his DOJ politicos, and administrative bureaucrats in Falls Church manage the cases from afar, based solely on political and enforcement considerations. The U.S. Immigration Judges who actually hear the cases, the hard-working (largely pro bono) defense attorneys, and even the local ICE prosecutors are effectively “frozen out” of the system for setting priorities and managing cases. I’ll wager that there is no other court system in the United States that attempts to operate in this bone-headed and obviously counterproductive manner!

Under Sessions, more judges = more backlog! That militates against Congress throwing any more judges, money, and personnel into this mess until the Immigration Courts are removed from the DOJ, a long, long overdue move.

How do you build more backlog with more judges? First, by demoralizing and effectively forcing out some of the most experienced and fairest judges and replacing them with “newbies,” Sessions reduces judicial legal expertise, productivity, and independence, at least in the short run.

Second, by trashing the very promising “prosecutorial discretion” program undertaken by ICE prosecutors with the encouragement and cooperation of the Immigration Judges, he forces “low priority” cases into the court system at the expense of the more difficult and complex cases that then get pushed to the end of the line. Astoundingly, Sessions’s recent legally flawed “beat down” of “Administrative Closing” virtually guarantees that several hundred thousand low priority “closed” cases will be returned to the courts’ active dockets in the near future, thus artificially pushing the backlog  beyond 1,000,000!

This is known as “Aimless Docket Reshuffling.” It started under Obama, but has accelerated dramatically under Sessions. This is essentially what is happening with Sessions’s irresponsible prosecution of minor misdemeanants over in the U.S. District Courts along the border.

Third, and this jumped out from the TRAC report, it now takes much longer to complete cases, particularly asylum case and other cases granting relief,  because they are all contested by ICE and Sessions is actively trying to “jack” the law against respondents, particularly asylum applicants. A wise Attorney General actually committed to the job of justice for all in America and responsible use of taxpayer-funded resources would work cooperatively with prosecutors, defense attorneys, and Immigration Judges within existing precedents favorable to asylum applicants to encourage “pretrial” of the many well-documented, meritorious asylum cases and other cases for relief (like cancellation of removal) now unnecessarily clogging the dockets so that they could be granted relief on “short-block dockets” by Immigration Judges. In other cases, they could be closed and removed from the docket to pursue alternative forms of relief at USCIS. This would be a great way of attacking the backlog without running over anyone’s Due Process rights! But, that’s not what Sessions is interested in.

Not only are asylum cases becoming unnecessarily complex and time-consuming under Sessions, but his apparent plan to intentionally misconstrue U.S. asylum law to disadvantage bona fide applicants in favor of his restrictionist agenda and personal biases against asylum seekers, women, and Central Americans is almost sure to result in many “losers” for the Government in the Courts of Appeals. This, in turn, is likely to result in massive returns for “do-overs” — just as happened during the Due Process disaster than occurred following the “Ashcroft Purge” of the BIA in 2003!

PWS

06-08-18

GONZO’S WORLD: WASTE, FRAUD, & ABUSE CONTINUES AT USDOJ: Sessions Effectively Overwhelming U.S. District Court Dockets With “Parking Ticket Citations,” Giving An “Amnesty” To Real Criminals – How Long Will The Article III’s “Go Along To Get Along?”

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ln-immigrant-prosecutions-20180511-story.html

Richard Marosi reports for the LA Times:

The Mexican migrant, slouching in his baggy jail garb, was caught crossing the border and the federal judge in San Diego wanted an explanation.

“I’ll stay in Mexico and won’t come back again,” said Carlos Arizmendi-Dominguez, 34, a former dairy farmer who was trying to return to his family in Idaho.”I ask forgiveness.”

“I’m not here to forgive,” Magistrate Judge William V. Gallo replied.

Across the Southwest border, the crackdown on illegal crossings announced in April 2017 by U.S. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions is gaining traction, as immigration caseloads soar and overburdened judicial districts struggle to keep up. Detention space is reaching capacity, courthouses are scrambling to maintain security, and some judges say they have reached their limit.

On Monday, Sessions expanded the crackdown to include more first-time crossers, asylum seekers and parents who will be separated from the children to face prosecution — a move toward “zero tolerance” that will likely further overload the system.

Nowhere are the changes more noticeable than in California. In the southern federal district in San Diego, 1,275 cases were filed in the first three months of this year. Prosecutors now plan to boost criminal immigration filings to about 1,000 per month, according to district data and attorneys at the Federal Defenders of San Diego, who have been notified of increasing prosecution levels by the U.S. attorney’s office.

At that pace, prosecutions could top 9,000 for the year, triple last year’s total and the most since at least since 2000, according to district data.

Prosecutions have gone up about 70% this fiscal year in Arizona, where the chief U.S. District Court judge said this week that the courts can’t take any more cases without additional judges, attorneys, interpreters, deputy marshals and courtroom space.

“If they want to increase prosecutions to a level more than [the] 75 per day that we’re doing, we need pretty much everything,” Judge Raner Collins said.

Most migrants caught at the border are still sent back to Mexico without being prosecuted. By boosting criminal filings, the Trump administration hopes to deter illegal crossings, even as border arrests remain near historic lows.

Migrants prosecuted in California typically have criminal records or, like Arizmendi-Dominguez, have been previously deported, but more first-time crossers are also being charged. Most recently, prosecutors filed criminal charges against 11 members of the caravan of migrants seeking asylum in the U.S.

Sentences for the misdemeanor violations range from 30 to 180 days, depending on the circumstances.

The surge provides fresh evidence for the Trump administration to claim it is following through on its hard-line anti-illegal immigration rhetoric. But the rapid expansion has shown that the judicial system’s shortcomings could also make it harder for the administration to achieve its “zero tolerance” goals, outlined last month by Sessions in response to what he called a border “crisis.”

The U.S. Border Patrol in San Diego still turns over only a fraction of the 120 migrants, on average, it catches daily along the 60-mile stretch it patrols.

The bottlenecks are many: Bed space is in such short supply that migrants are held in jails as far away as Santa Barbara and Arizona, defense attorneys say. There aren’t enough U.S. deputy marshals to transport defendants and provide sufficient security in courtrooms.

Agents from other federal agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol, have to provide assistance. And recent court rulings have restricted courts from carrying out fast-track, mass prosecutions like one in Arizona a few years ago known as Operation Streamline, which generated protests.

Attorneys in San Diego say more of their clients are being detained outside the county, making it harder for them to provide an effective defense.

“I would guess that a great deal of those cases will be people with no prior criminal record or prior convictions, which is a sad way to spend our resources,” said Kasha Castillo, a supervisory attorney at the Federal Defenders of San Diego.

Some agencies are receiving more resources; Sessions announced this month that border districts will get 18 new immigration judges and 35 new prosecutors, including eight in California.

“The American people made very clear their desire to secure our border and prioritize the public safety and national security of our homeland,” Sessions said in a statement.

The prospect of facing criminal charges causes some migrants think twice about crossing the border, studies have found. In border areas like Yuma, Ariz., where zero tolerance has been the policy for years, the approach has contributed to record decreases in border arrests.

Across the country, migrants who have been prosecuted for illegal crossing are less likely to attempt to cross again than those who were simply sent back, according to a study by the Migration Policy Institute.

But the deterrent effect varies depending on migrants’ motivations. Mexicans coming to the U.S. for economic reasons are more likely to be deterred by prosecution than Central Americans who are fleeing crime and political instability.

“People from Central America aren’t so easily deterred because conditions are worse there than in Mexico,” said Randy Capps, director of research for U.S. programs at the Migration Policy Institute, who co-wrote the 2017 study.

In the past two weeks the Justice Department has moved swiftly to stiffen penalties against Central Americans — by filing charges against the 11 asylum seekers from the caravan, and by threatening parents with arrest if caught crossing with their children.

“If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you as required by law,” Sessions said at a San Diego news conference Monday.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) called the crackdown on families a “cruel” tactic that betrays the country’s values on basic human rights.

“The goal of this policy is to inflict pain and suffering on people who have already put their lives at risk. We’re better than this,” Feinstein said in a statement.

For now, the majority of migrants being prosecuted in San Diego’s downtown federal courthouse are repeat offenders from Mexico. The cases generally result in plea bargains. Migrants are charged with illegally reentering the country — a felony — and plead guilty to the misdemeanor charge of improper entry.

Defendants file into court several times a week, the sketchy details of their cross-border lives elicited in brief exchanges with magistrate judges.

“I’m guilty only because I wanted to see my daughter,” said Jose Espinoza-Rivera, who said he was going to New York City.

“My only intention was to return to my children,” said Hilario Castaneda Avalos, who lived 17 years in Arizona, caring for his three grandchildren, all U.S. citizens.

When a 56-year-old man with eight previous deportations showed up in court one morning in March, Magistrate Judge Mitchell D. Dembin greeted him warmly; he had seen him before in his courtroom.

“Your persistence in coming back is commendable in one respect, but it shows a lack of respect of U.S. laws,” Dembin said.

Defendants wear jail-issued grays but are not shackled. A ruling last year by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals barred the practice, saying defendants shouldn’t be required to “stand before a court in chains without having been convicted.”

The ruling has constrained caseloads because security guidelines require at least one U.S. deputy marshal to guard each unshackled defendant in the courtroom. When defendants were shackled, groups of up to 12 could be processed at a time in each courtroom.

The hearings move quickly, with the key decision-making centered on how long the sentence will be. Judges usually follow prosecutors’ recommendations, but not always.

Arizmendi-Dominguez, the former dairy farmer from Idaho, said through his attorney that since his last deportation he had spent six years working as a farm laborer in corn and bean fields in Mexico, and that he attempted to return because he longed to see his family, including his father, a U.S. citizen.

Prosecutors recommended a 60-day sentence. Gallo, the judge, sentenced him to 75 days, saying a tougher sentence might “get his attention.”

“I hope you can make a life for yourself in Mexico and I hope its a prosperous life, but you can’t keep coming back to the U.S.,” Gallo said. “The penalties are only going to get worse.”

 

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This is what the “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” that has crippled the U.S. Immigraton Courts since at least 2001 looks like. Now, it’s coming to the U.S. District Courts. The difference: The Article III Courts don’t work for Sessions, aren’t evaluated by him and his subordinates, can’t be fired or transferred by him, and aren’t subject to bogus “quotas.” They are actually independent judges.

PWS

05-13-18