"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
Gary Sampliner Senior Consultant for Advocacy Shoulder to Shoulder
The Evacuate our Allies Coalition of faith, veterans’, and human rights groups has been advocating for an Afghan Adjustment Act (AAA), to allow our Afghan evacuees (many of whom have only been admitted as “parolees” whose status will expire 1 or 2 years from entry) to be treated equivalently to “refugees,” and thereby made eligible to apply for permanent residence in the U.S. after 1 year here (with the requisite vetting). We now have a good shot to have AAA language passed by Congress, as part of the Ukraine Supplemental appropriation now being sought by President Biden. The AAA has solid Democratic support as well as notable and increasing Republican support, but proponents can use assurances of additional Republican support to assure that AAA language remains in a bill that gets passed by Congress.
If any of you are veterans, can characterize yourself as front line workers with Afghans resettling in the U.S., or are constituents of the Republican Senators you’ll see listed in this toolkit(or have friends who fall into these categories that you can circulate this message to), we urge that you make calls to any of the listed Senators (by cob May 9), at the numbers indicated, using the script you’ll also see in the toolkit, Thanks very much for your help!
***********************
This message comes from Gary Sampliner, an executive director of JAMAAT — Jews and Muslims and Allies Acting Together, a DC area organization that is a member of the Evacuate our Allies Coalition. Thank you Gary, for all that you, the veterans in AfghanEvac, and the Evacuate our Allies Coalition does for America and humanity!
“Like this gentleman of yore, AG Garland takes a rather “laid back” approach to the ongoing due process disaster in his Immigration Courts.”Scott Bixby National Reporter The Daily Beast
As the immigration court system strains under the weight of its biggest case backlog in history, the Biden administration is racing to fix it before it breaks entirely.
But breaking the system might be the only way to save it.
On the campaign trail, Joe Biden repeatedly vowed to create a “fair and humane immigration system,” replacing a faltering and faceless bureaucracy with swift due process. the Biden administration has since announced measures intended to alleviate the increasing pressure on a strained system once deemed “death penalty cases in a traffic court setting.”
But the sweeping, by government standards, tactics announced by the administration last month—which include adding as many as 100 new immigration court judges to the bench under Biden’s latest budget proposal, allowing asylum officers to evaluate some cases instead of those same overburdened judges, and encouraging Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorneys to clear “low priority” cases—may still not be enough to make a real dent in the backlog of cases that has reached its highest point ever.
“Trial dates that used to be scheduled out two, three, even five years sometimes, now don’t even get a hearing or a judge assigned,” said Michael Wildes, a second-generation immigration attorney who has represented high-profile clients from Pelé to Melania Trump. “My litigation team leader was in court this past Monday in Newark, where a judge there advised that she has cases open from the ’90s!”
One hundred new judges, Wildes said, “will be a drop in the bucket compared to the problem.”
“The current structure of the system is fatally flawed,” said Judge Dana Leigh Marks, the former president of the National Association of Immigration Judges who served for 35 years on the bench. “In the immigration removal system, any violation of law, no matter how minor and no matter how strong counterbalancing equities are, has resulted in placing people in removal proceedings. As long as that situation persists, it would be reasonable to anticipate that the court will be unable to clear its backlog or stay current.”
Marks, who coined the “traffic court” description of the immigration legal system, joined nearly a dozen other leading figures in the immigration law space in telling The Daily Beast that the long-term solution to the backlog of cases pending before immigration courts lies not in hiring more judges, but in removing the courts from the Department of Justice’s jurisdiction entirely.
“The cases are growing in complexity, the average judge is less experienced than ever, and every new surge of filings results in a new prioritization system imposed on the courts,” said David Bier, a research fellow with a focus on immigration at the Cato Institute and an expert on the immigration legal system, who said that even doubling the number of judges, as Biden once promised, wouldn’t be sufficient to stop the growth in the backlog.
“Staffing matters,” Bier said, “but the courts need structural reforms to improve their efficiency.”
With a little more than six weeks until the end of Title 42, the much-maligned public health order that has effectively barred asylum admissions at the U.S. southern border since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, the administration is bracing for a massive uptick of crossings at the U.S. southern border.
That surge—estimated by the Department of Homeland Security to reach as many as 18,000 people apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border a day—will further heap cases on top of the largest backlog in immigration cases in history, now at 1.7 million cases and counting. That’s more than double the number of pending cases half a decade ago.
The Biden administration has taken steps to reduce the pressure on immigration judges to reduce the backlog at the expense of due process, eliminating a Trump-era requirement that judges clear at least 700 cases per year and requesting that more than 80 percent of a requested budget increase for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services go towards caseload and backlog reductions.
But increasing the number of immigration judges by 15 percent, as Biden did in his first year in office, has yet to change the stalled pace of case clearance. The estimated processing time for asylum cases—which make up roughly one in four cases in the backlog—is now at longer than 63 months, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
“It’s basically a big mess,” summed up Jason Dzubow, an immigration attorney in Washington, D.C., “and so far, throwing more immigration judges at the problem has not reduced the backlog.”
….
*****************************
Read Scott’s full article at the link.
One could tire of saying the same things over and over. But, with “Team Garland” the obvious becomes the unattainable.
White Nationalists Jeff“Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions and “Billy the Bigot” Barr more than doubled the number of IJs while tripling the already out of control backlog.
As every expert told the Biden Administration from the “git go,” more judges without drastic personnel changes and major structural, procedural, “cultural,” attitude, and quality control reforms won’t solve the problem. Indeed, all empirical indications are that it will make things worse!
While Garland hasn’t accomplished much in his time in office, he did prove the truth of the latter statement. While increasing the number of IJs by a modest 15%, he has built new backlog at the fastest rate ever, with more than 1.8 million pending cases!
But, that’s not all folks. Even in the “garden days” of EOIR “off docket” cases were an issue. Now, following four years of “maliciously incompetent” Trump regime meddling with EOIR, I’ve got to believe that there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of “off docket” cases floating around the bowels of EOIR, maybe never to be heard of again. So, it’s almost certain that EOIR’s “official numbers” (ask TRAC experts about the reliability of EOIR stats) understate the real scope of the problem.
One essential reform that was needed right off the bat that Garland ignored was better judges, not necessarily more judges!It should be obvious, even to someone as willfully blind as Garland, that the Sessions/Barr program of “packing” the BIA and the Immigration Courts with judges who lacked immigration and human rights expertise, were biased against asylum seekers, would “go along to get along” with stomping due process and immigrants’ rights, or all of the foregoing was a prescription for disaster.
What “moves” a system is expert, “practical scholar” judges, operating with some independence and courage, who can recognize the many pending grantable cases on the docket, also identify those that don’t belong on the docket, group them using “practical precedents” on what a successful case looks like, and motivate, or if necessary cajole or force the parties to get together and complete these cases. Many of them could be completed, without appeals, on “short dockets” or returned to DHS for completion.
Then, the courts could concentrate on the much smaller number of cases that actually have issues needing litigation and requiring expert decision-making.
Instead, the EOIR system, from top to bottom, screws around trying to come up with specious ways of limiting relief, avoiding jurisdiction, creating procedural and evidentiary hurdles, or denying grantable cases. Additionally, gimmicks like “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and “expedited dockets” are mis-used to “max out” the number of in absentia orders. But, as many of those latter must be reopened, some only after protracted litigation all the way up to the Courts of Appeals, that only adds to the chaos, false narratives, and squandered resources. Not to mention that it makes the entire system chronically unfair — a parody of justice!
There is absolutely no reason why Garland shouldn’t have installed a merit-based “re-competition” system for many of the judges hired or promoted during the Trump regime — starting with the precedent-setting BIA — a gang of “Dr. Nos and Don’t Buck the Party Liners” if I’ve ever seen one!
There are plenty of “other” attorney positions in the DOJ or elsewhere in the Executive branch for attorneys who can do certain types of legal work, but aren’t “best qualified” to be Immigration Judges under today’s conditions. IJs are DOJ attorneys in the so-called “excepted service;” they certainly are not entitled to “life tenure” in any particular attorney position. At most, those who aren’t selected after merit re-competition could expect “reassignment” to another government attorney position at the same pay. Happens all the time, particularly at the DOJ!
A merit selection system for Immigration Judges at both the trial and appellate levels requires substantial outside expert participation. That’s a marked change from the opaque, highly bureaucratic, too often “insider tilted” system used by DOJ and EOIR.
Fortuitously for Garland, there are good “models” out there for such a merit system that could be “tweaked” for EOIR. The DC Courts, U.S. Magistrate Judges, and U.S. Bankruptcy Judges merit-selection systems are among them. Sadly, however, Garland has been “asleep at the wheel” as hisbroken “court” system veers off the road and goes down the embankment.
It’s not just immigrant justice that is dying here. While Garland and his lieutenants might choose to be “in denial,” the Immigration Courts are the “retail level” of today’s American justice system. When they finally give way and crumble, as they surely will do without Congressional intervention or better-performing Attorney General, the rest of our legal system is likely to come crashing down with them.
But, you’ve heard it all before on Courtside. Just tragic for our nation that the right folks aren’t paying any attention while there is still time to rescue the system.
Family Pictures Nolan Rappaport Opinion Writer The Hill
Senators say they’re interested in bipartisan immigration plan; here are some suggestions
Nolan Rappaport, opinion contributor
Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) plan to bring together a group of senators interested in trying to revive immigration discussions after the April recess. They “want to sit at a table and ask members who have immigration, bipartisan immigration bills, to come and propose those bills to us and see if we can build a 60-vote plus margin for a group of bills.”
Are they serious about immigration reform, or are they just doing this so they will be able to say in the upcoming midterm elections that they sponsored a number of immigration reform bills?
It won’t take much effort to repackage bills that have already been introduced.
In any case, they seem at least to be open to a variety of approaches to immigration reform, so I will take this opportunity to offer them a few suggestions.
Registry — The Democrats tried to include a registry provision update in a reconciliation bill in September 2021, but the Senate parliamentarian made them remove it. That was unfortunate. The registry provision has not been updated since 1986.
The registry provision grants lawful permanent resident status to certain undocumented immigrants who have resided continuously in the United States since before Jan. 1, 1972. This means that registry currently is available only to undocumented immigrants who have lived here continuously for half a century, which greatly reduces the value of the provision.
The Democrats went too far in the other direction with the update they put in the reconciliation bill. It would have changed this date to Jan. 1, 2011, which would make legalization available to approximately 6.7 million undocumented immigrants.
At some point, an undocumented immigrant has been here so long that it would be unconscionable to make him leave. It’s just a matter of reaching an agreement on when that point has been reached.
I encourage the senators to include the registry provision in their bipartisan discussion to see if there is a date that would be acceptable to both parties.
Nolan Rappaport was detailed to the House Judiciary Committee as an Executive Branch Immigration Law Expert for three years. He subsequently served as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims for four years. Prior to working on the Judiciary Committee, he wrote decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals for 20 years. Follow him at https://nolanrappaport.blogspot.com
****************
Read Nolan’s full article at the link.
Nolan doesn’t claim that enactment of these provisions would “solve all problems” — an ambitious task. But, the package would be a very significant improvement, building on legal and administrative mechanisms that have been successful in the past.
Here are some major things that could be accomplished:
Dramatically cutting into the unmanageable backlogs at both USCIS and EOIR in a way that should actually be “self-funding” and relatively free of litigation;
Reducing pressure on the border without the type of “gimmicks” that have proved unsuccessful in the past and giving individuals the ability toapply and get an answer without making the journey to the border;
Combatting employer exploitation of undocumented workers and maintaining an adequate wage scale for all American workers;
Increasing the pool of legally authorized employment (including employment in “essential occupations”) at a time when it is badly needed; and, incidentally,
Substantially increasing tax revenues.
It would be great to believe that folks on the Hill and in the Administration are actively thinking about such timely, achievable, practical solutions to ongoing problems.
Subject: [bog] PLEASE SHARE: New AILA Think Immigration video blog post with Jeremy McKinney and Greg Chen regarding immigration court reform (includes sample tweets and posts).
Good afternoon everyone,
We are really excited that this week the House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to mark up the Real Courts, Rule of Law Act of 2022 – introduced by Rep. Lofgren to establish an independent immigration court system which we’ve been working for steadily for years now. The markup hearing will cover a lot of different bills so we may see the bill come up today, or more likely tomorrow. To watch the hearing, keep an eye on the hearing livestream page: https://judiciary.house.gov/calendar/eventslisting.aspx?EventTypeID=216
The AILA Comms Team produced a video in which Jeremy McKinney and Greg Chen talk through the immigration court’s problems and the need for a real solution in order to ensure judicial independence and due process. We have embedded the video as a blog post and would love to have you amplify it to your networks on social media.
I’ll be watching to see the House Judiciary Committee mark up the Real Courts, Rule of Law Act which would create an independent #immigration court this week. WATCH this video with @MckJeremy and @GregChenAILA for a helpful intro: http://ow.ly/oqap50IB7Cp @AILANational
Simply put, the history of politicization and turmoil make it clear that we need an independent #immigration court – WATCH @AILANational’s @MckJeremy and @GregChenAILA explain: http://ow.ly/oqap50IB7Cp
Sample Facebook/LinkedIn posts:
I’ll be watching to see how the Real Courts, Rule of Law Act introduced by Rep. Lofgren fares as the House Judiciary Committee discusses how to create an independent #immigration court but in the meantime, this video with AILA President-Elect Jeremy McKinney and Greg Chen serves as a helpful intro: http://ow.ly/oqap50IB7Cp
Simply put, the history of politicization and turmoil make it clear that we need an independent #immigration court – WATCH AILA’s President-Elect Jeremy McKinney join Greg Chen to explain:
Waves of migration through Mexico and Central America, and people who go missing, will increase in 2022 due to high levels of violence in the region, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.
Battle-scarred ghost town bears mute witness to Mexico’s drug wars
“In many countries, violence is wreaking more and more havoc, and that’s why there are more and more migrants,” ICRC representative Jordi Raich told Reuters in an interview Wednesday. “And it’s not a situation that is going to improve or slow down, not even in the years to come.“
Immigration authorities in Mexico detained 307,679 migrants in 2021, a 68% increase compared with 182,940 detentions in 2019, according to government data.
Shelters in Mexico were completely overwhelmed last year, filled with frustrated migrants unable to continue their journey to the United States, Raich said.
Many migrants get “stuck” along Mexico’s southern or northern borders, Raich said, where they face “enormous economic constraints” and are able to find only basic services.
The administration of Joe Biden has faced record numbers of migrants arriving at the southern border and has implored Mexico and Central American countries to do more to stem the wave.
Disappearances in the region have not slowed either, the Red Cross said in a report released Thursday. Mexico recently surpassed 100,000 people reported missing in the country.
In El Salvador, 488 missing person cases remain unsolved, and in Guatemala, the number of missing women rose to six a day, the Red Cross report said.
Raich said it will be difficult to respond to the root causes of migration immediately. A joint effort among countries like El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras is necessary, he added.
“Migration is not going to stop,” Raich said. “If you try to prevent it or strictly regulate it, people start to pile up at the borders, which is happening in Mexico and other countries.”
Meanwhile, the Biden administration on Thursday rolled out a sweeping new regulation that aims to speed up asylum processing and deportations at the US-Mexico border, amid a record number of migrants seeking to enter the US.
The announcement of the new rule came as US officials are debating whether to end a separate Covid-era policy that has blocked most asylum claims at the border. The asylum overhaul could provide a faster way to process border crossers if the Covid order is ended.
. . . .
*****************
Read the full article at the link.
Cruelty, walls, detention, family separation, border militarization, expedited hearings — they aren’t going to stop human migration.We will be able to increase border deaths, expand the scope of “black market migration,” increase our “underground population,” and enrich human smugglers. Good policy?
Meanwhile, it’s obvious that the “disingenuous internal debate” on Title 42 has nothing whatsoever to do with public health and everything to do with whether continued illegal and immoral suspension of asylum protections at the border will prove politically advantageous to the Biden Administration. It won’t! It might, however, cost Dems support among progressives.
There is, of course, no known medical evidence that “single males” present a greater COVID threat than families! Indeed, there is no known medical evidence to suggest that any potential asylum applicant is a threat to the health and safety of the US.
The whole thing is a deadly farce! Why aren’t Hill Dems calling for oversight of Garland’s sitting by and watching while the law and ethics are pulverized around him? Or worse yet, what about his Department’s defense of abrogation of our laws? Believe it or not, we actually have asylum and protection laws on the books, duly enacted by Congress, although you’d never know it from Garland’s feckless performance!
Meanwhile, WashPost and other so-called “mainstream media” continue to hype stories about increased border pressure. So, continuing to violate asylum law is a viable alternative “strategy?” Give me a break! How is violating the law going to stop folks from fleeing deadly conditions in their home countries? It won’t, as the ICRC points out above!
What it will do, as also pointed out above, is kill more asylum seekers, subject them to rape, torture and other harm, enrich smugglers, and increase the extralegal population in the U.S.!
Blaine Bookey Legal Director Center for Gender & Refugee Studies @ Hastings Law Photo: CGRS website
It also will increase those waiting in vain at the Southern Border for the reopening of a legal asylum system that has abandoned them! In the words of one expert:
“The conditions are squalid,” said Blaine Bookey, the legal director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at University of California, Hastings College of the Law, who led a team interviewing dozens of families waiting in Tijuana for the federal government to lift Title 42. “There is real lack of access to sanitation, medical care, adequate food, all of the real basic fundamental necessities.”
. . . .
“There have been some exceptions made for Ukrainians, which we’re happy to see, but the policy should be ended for everyone,” Bookey said. “There was never a public health justification, and there certainly isn’t now.” (WashPost, supra).
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) babbles nativist nonsense:
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said at a committee hearing last week that the influx has “completely derailed” efforts to discuss improving legal immigration to the United States, which he said states such as Texas need to staff hospitals and fill jobs. Border states such as Texas and Arizona are bracing for higher numbers of unauthorized immigrants in coming weeks, he said.
“Rather than deter would-be migrants with weak asylum claims from taking the dangerous journey to the southwest border, the administration has rolled out the welcome mat and created new incentives to illegally immigrate to the United States,” he said at the March 15 hearing before the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, citizenship and border safety.
To my knowledge, neither Cornyn nor any of his other GOP nativist buddies have ever adjudicated an asylum application. Nor have they represented asylum seekers before the Asylum Office or in our broken Immigration Courts. So, how would that have any idea whether certain asylum claims are “weak” or not? They wouldn‘t!
Moreover, we haven’t had a functioning asylum system at our Southern Border for years. So, how would anyone know how many of the claims are “weak?” They wouldn’t?
Remarkably, apparently unknown to Cornyn and his scofflaw buddies, we actually have laws to deal with his concerns. When the legal system is “open for business” — which it isn’t now — those claiming asylum at the border are subject to “summary exclusion” by DHS officers. Their claims are then expeditiously reviewed by Asylum Officers for a “credible fear” of asylum. Those who don’t establish credible fear, subject only to cursory review by an Immigration Judge, can be immediately removed by DHS.
Historically, when the system was at least nominally functional, those “passing” credible fear have been turned over to the now dysfunctional Immigration Courts. Under Trump, these “parodies of courts” were “weaponized” into “asylum killing grounds.”
Sessions and Barr packed their non-independent “captive courts” with “judges” perceived to be “enforcement oriented” and “anti-asylum” — willing to skew the law and facts as necessary to deny and deport. This mess is “led” by an appellate body, the BIA, which contains some of the most notorious members of the “Asylum Deniers’ Club” — folks who got their appellate jobs under Barr specifically because as Immigraton Judges they denied almost every asylum case that came before them! In other words, even when there was some semblance of a legal asylum system, it was redesigned under Trump to be systemically unfair to asylum seekers, particularly women and applicants of color. For sure, racism and misogyny played into this unseemly scenario.
Remarkably, Garland has chosen to maintain this dysfunctional, biased, and broken system largely in the form it existed and with almost all of the same unqualified or questionably qualified “judges” he inherited from Session and Barr!
Our broken asylum system can’t and won’t be fixed without dealing head-on with the overarching problem — systemic anti-asylum bias, poor quality decision-making, grotesque inconsistencies, and beyond incompetent administration of our Immigraton Courts by the DOJ!
Remarkably, Garland’s proposed solution is yet another “designed to fail” gimmick — expedite cases in his broken and biased, anti-asylum system! So the solution to a defective court system, infected with anti-asylum bias and poorly qualified judges turning out defective decisions is to make it “go faster!” The new regulations also fail to deal with the huge due process issue of lack of competent representation in the asylum system, particularly the Immigration Courts. Come on man!
We don’t need over 500 pages of new regulations and sophomoric, alternate universe “time limits” for an agency that can’t even find its files! What we need is for Garland to do the job he was hired to do more than a year ago! That’s “clean house” at the Immigration Courts, bring in competent, fair judges who have experience in Immigration Court and are legitimate, well-recognized asylum experts — starting with a new BIA (save for their one qualified Appellate Immigration Judge Andrea Saenz, a Garland appointee).
Get expert judges, intellectual leaders, and competent judicial administrators into the broken Immigration Court system to provide coherent, practical asylum legal guidance and work with advocates, the Asylum Office, and DHS to get a functional and fair legal asylum system in place and operating smoothly and efficiently at the border. It should already be in place by now. That it isn’t, is entirely “on Garland!”
Then, with experts who actually are committed to fairly and impartially applying asylum law in place, we’ll see, for the first time, how many of the asylum claims are valid and how many aren’t! And, while we’re at it, we might find that many of the “legal” immigrants Texas and the rest of America needs are right there at our borders — just waiting for our legal system to do justice and admit them. Asylum seekers are seeking legal immigration! It the USG that’s acting “illegally” here!
“Oh, Great and Exalted Masters at DHS Enforcement, how high would you like your humble servants here at the BIA to jump?” https://www.flickr.com/photos/rasputin243/ Creative Commons License
U.S. Department of Justice Executive Office for Immigration Review Board of Immigration Appeals
When the Department of Homeland Security raises the mandatory bar for filing a frivolous asylum application under section 208(d)(6) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1158(d)(6) (2018), an Immigration Judge must make sufficient findings of fact and conclusions of law on whether the requirements for a frivolousness determination under Matter of Y-L-, 24 I&N Dec. 151 (BIA 2007), have been met.
FOR THE RESPONDENT: Elias Z. Shamieh, Esquire, San Francisco, California
FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY: Jennifer L. Castro, Assistant Chief Counsel
BEFORE: Board Panel: WILSON and GOODWIN, Appellate Immigration Judges. Dissenting Opinion: GREER, Appellate Immigration Judge.
WILSON, Appellate Immigration Judge: [Opinion]
For those interested in what the law actually says (clearly an “endangered minority” @ Garland’s BIA), here’s key language from Judge Greer’s dissent:
In my view, when an Immigration Judge elects to undertake the analysis set forth in our precedent under Matter of Y-L-, either independently or at the request of the DHS, and determines that the application is frivolous, then the plain statutory language requires the entry of a frivolousness finding as part of the Immigration Judge’s decision. But whether the Immigration Judge must conduct that analysis in the first place because the DHS requests it is a different question. This key distinction was recognized by the Second Circuit in stating that Immigration Judges “regularly exercise discretion when deciding whether to initiate a frivolousness inquiry.” Mei Juan Zheng, 672 F.3d at 186.
Requiring the adjudicator, either independently or at the request of the DHS, to engage in this analysis because the respondent made a material misrepresentation upends current practice by creating a rigid structure not mandated by statute. It equates adverse credibility with frivolousness, which I view as conflicting with the case law. It also removes discretion from the Immigration Judge and transfers it to the DHS. Accordingly, the majority’s interpretation constitutes an unwarranted expansion of the frivolousness provisions.
Although the majority casts this question in terms of whether an Immigration Judge may “ignore” a mandatory bar to asylum, the question is whether the Immigration Judge has the authority to make a judgment about pursuing a frivolousness inquiry. This Immigration Judge did not ignore a request from DHS to consider frivolousness. Rather, she entertained it and made an independent judgment not to proceed based on particular facts and circumstances in this case after deliberation. As discussed, the DHS did not question the judgment she made, which is a critical distinction; rather the DHS questions the ability of the Immigration Judge to make this judgment at all.2
I interpret the language and structure of the statute and development of relevant case law, combined with the sequencing of the frivolousness inquiry and its consequences, to demonstrate the discretionary nature of the frivolousness inquiry. And, absent any challenge to how the Immigration Judge exercised her discretion in this case, which I consider to have been waived, I would dismiss the appeal.
2 The relevant factors for the Immigration Judge to assess in making a threshold determination whether to invoke the frivolousness inquiry are a separate issue not implicated by the posture of this case.
*********************
BIA to IJs: “When our overlords @ DHS tell you to jump, your duty is to say ‘how high, my masters!’”
Here, a correct (basically, uncontested on the merits, as Judge Greer points out) grant of a waiver was reversed just because DHS wanted “control” over the judges. “How dare a ‘mere employee’ of the AG exercise discretion in the face of the ICE ACC’s demand? Do these guys think they are ‘real’ judges? Let’s tell our buddy Merrick to get his toadies back in line like they were under Sessions and Barr!” How does the “holdover” BIA’s steady stream of incorrect decisions, institutionalized bias, and “worst practices” advance justice?
The “Biden-Era BIA” is building a legacy of bad law, poor judging, and unnecessarily broken lives. Not exactly what the Biden Administration promised during the election! And, it goes without saying that requiring a fact-heavy “full Y-L- analysis” at the unilateral demand of the DHS will increase the backlog as Garland “shoots for 2 million” in his dysfunctional and chronically misdirected “courts.”
The whole issue is devoted to addressing the critical due process, fundamental fairness, and ethical issues in Immigration Court with articles by NAIJ President Judge Mimi Tsankov, Judge Samuel B. Cole, Professor Michele Pistone of the VIISTA Villanova Project and others in addition to Joan.
Few Americans favor mass deportations, and with good reason — a large majority of the estimated 10.5 million undocumented immigrants in the United States have been here for at least a decade, including more than 4 in 5 Mexican migrants. Many are fixtures in their community, with U.S. citizen spouses and children; the vast majority are employed, and some own their homes and businesses.
So it was not a radical idea when Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued new enforcement guidelines last fall that urged deportation agents to focus their efforts on actual threats to public and national safety, as well as border security. As for long-term migrants, the bulk of whom are law-abiding, Mr. Mayorkas urged Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to use some common sense. “The fact that an individual is a removable noncitizen should not alone be the basis of an enforcement action against them,” he said.
. . . .
Despite the resistance, however, they appear to be having a preliminary and positive effect of tailoring enforcement to unauthorized immigrants who are dangerous. In the first 13 months of the Biden administration, 44 percent of deported migrants had been convicted of felonies or aggravated felonies, compared with just 18 percent during the Trump administration, according to internal ICE figures. For the same period, there was also a sharp jump, compared with under the Trump administration, in the number of arrests of migrants who had earlier convictions for aggravated felonies.
At the same time, the number of migrants held in ICE detention facilities has dropped sharply. At the end of February, roughly 18,000 migrants were detained, and the vast majority had no criminal record or had committed only minor offenses, such as traffic violations, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. By contrast, nearly three times as many migrants were held for much of 2019, when the Trump anti-immigrant blitz was in full force.
. . . .
It’s not lax enforcement to refrain from arresting very old or very young migrants, or to think twice about a deportation that would tear apart a family. It’s an intelligent application of the law.
*********************
Read the full editorial at the link.
The Post is right. But, unfortunately, by not making this “smarter PD” part of an overall plan to reduce backlogs, reform the Immigration Courts, re-establish the legal asylum and refugee systems, and end unnecessary detention, the Biden Administration has failed to take full advantage of this promising development.
By “running” from immigration improvements rather than embracing them, they also fail to to get credit for replacing the “maliciously incompetent,” demonstrably not in the national interest Trump/Miller/Homan White Nationalist nativist policies with a functioning system that actually serves the national interest and works as well as can be expected without legislative reforms.
A major problem remains the underperformance of DOJ and EOIR under AG Garland. Without the enlightened leadership and better personnel that should now be in place, Garland has failed to “leverage and build upon” improvements in DHS enforcement priorities to slash backlog and advance due process at EOIR.
Indeed, disturbingly, Garland has actually built new Immigration Court backlogat a record pace, while inexplicably relying on a “holdover Miller Lite” BIA that continues to deliver bad precedents, resulting in increased wasteful litigation and backlog-building remands from Circuit Courts. He has also ignored the many opportunities for harnessing the innovative ideas and high-level pro bono advocacy skills developed by the private sector in response to the “Trump onslaught” to dramatically advance and increase quality representation before the Immigration Courts.
The grotesque mismanagement of EOIR by the Trump DOJ resulted in a backlog of approximately 12,000 pending BIA appeals at the end of FY 2017 exploding to more than 84,000 by the end of FY 2020 — a mind-boggling 700% increase!https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1248501/download
Yet, curiously, there has been no major personnel shakeup at EOIR under Garland. The Trump-era “hand selected” BIA whose skewed anti-asylum, anti-immigrant “jurisprudence” helped create this mess remains largely intact.
Most of the EOIR senior managers who helped DOJ engineer this unmitigated disaster remain in their jobs. Garland has sent a message that there will be no accountability for “going along to get along” with the White Nationalist war on immigrants and that he isn’t interested in expertise, fundamental fairness, creativity, or dynamic leadership by example in his reeling “court system!”
Yet, Garland continues to “blow off” and “lock out” the private/NGO sector experts who could bring rational professional docket management, higher representation rates, and resulting reductions in detention to his dysfunctional system. Instead, he continues the “Amateur Night at the Bijou” approach of unilateral “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and endless “built to fail gimmicks” designed by bureaucrats to meet political agendas without meaningful input from and consideration of the views of those who have actual private sector experience litigating in his broken system.
How does the make sense? It doesn’t!
Of course, effective, dynamic, courageous management of EOIR to focus on constitutionally required due process would provoke reactions from the GOP nativist right, including obstructive litigation. That’s why Garland also needs better litigators at DOJ: Tough, experienced “due process warriors” who will aggressively and expertly defend and advance the Executive’s authority to rationally administer the law, allocate resources wisely and prudently, and to recognize and vindicate civil and constitutional rights that have been suppressed by GOP politicos and some of their reactionary Federal Judges.
Bottom line: Probably the majority of those 1.6 million individuals rotting in EOIR’s largely self-created backlog fit the Post’s “lead-in” description above: “Many are fixtures in their community, with U.S. citizen spouses and children; the vast majority are employed, and some own their homes and businesses.”
Many could be granted asylum or other protection under proper interpretations of the law or granted “cancellation of removal” but for the unrealistic, anachronistic 4,000 annual “numerical cap” imposed by Congress decades ago. Others could be granted Temporary Protected Status (“TPS”) just as it recently was extended to Ukrainians in the U.S.
Very few are “criminals” or others who should be “priorities” for removal. Most are actively contributing to our society and many are paying taxes. In most cases, removing individuals in the EOIR backlog from the U.S., even if possible, would be a net loss for our society.
Yet, the uncontrolled, undifferentiated EOIR backlog prevents the Immigration Courts from working in “real time” on more recent cases that might actually be proper priorities.What’s the good of a more rational and professional system at DHS Enforcement if the Immigration Courts under Garland remain discombobulated? The system will not change without dynamic expert leadership at the top and an infusion of better judges, particularly at the appellate level where precedents are set and “best practices” and some measure of fair and consistent adjudication can be established and enforced.
Immigration is a complex, often convoluted system. Without a comprehensive plan led by outside experts that fixes the Immigration Courts and restores a robust functional asylum system at our borders, the positive enforcement changes initiated by Mayorkas will continue to have limited impact. And, ironically, that will play right into the hands of the Millers and Homans of the world who would like to see democracy fail, irrationality prevail, and cruelty rule!
Elizabeth Gibson Managing Attorney National Immigrant Justice Center Publisher of “The Gibson Report”
Weekly Briefing
Note: The briefing is back after a short hiatus while I transitioned to a new position at NIJC. It will be coming from my gmail for a few weeks while I set up a more long-term distribution system. In the meantime, please add egibson@heartlandalliance.org to your trusted contact list so that any future messages do not go to spam.
CONTENTS (click to jump to section)
PRACTICE ALERTS
NEWS
LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES
RESOURCES
EVENTS
PRACTICE ALERTS
eROPs: EOIR has begun digitizing some paper records of proceedings (ROPs). Once an ROP is an eROP, only ECAS electronic filing will be permitted on that case. However, this will be a lengthy process and it sounds like EOIR is prioritizing conversion of smaller records first.
DHS: Individuals eligible for TPS under this designation must have continuously resided in the United States since March 1, 2022. Individuals who attempt to travel to the United States after March 1, 2022 will not be eligible for TPS.
USCIS: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services today announced that it is updating the USCIS Policy Manual to consider deferred action and related employment authorization for noncitizens who have an approved Form I-360, Petition for Amerasian, Widow(er), or Special Immigrant, for Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) classification but who cannot apply to adjust status to become a lawful permanent resident (LPR) because a visa number is not available.
AP: A federal appeals court on Friday upheld sweeping asylum restrictions to prevent spread of COVID-19 but restored protections to keep migrant families from being expelled to their home countries without a chance to plead their cases. Almost simultaneously, a federal judge in another case ruled that the Biden administration wrongly exempted unaccompanied children from the restrictions and ordered that they be subject to them in a week, allowing time for an emergency appeal.
Bloomberg: The estimated wait time for a work permit has risen to eight to 12 months, up from about three months in 2020, according to data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Law360: Texas’ Operation Lone Star border security initiative has expanded over the past year despite courtroom setbacks revealing cracks in its legal foundation, and it appears poised to grow further unless the federal government steps in to confront it.
SCOTUS: “Wooden committed his burglaries on a single night, in a single uninterrupted course of conduct. The crimes all took place at one location, a one-building storage facility with one address. Each offense was essentially identical, and all were intertwined with the others. The burglaries were part and parcel of the same scheme, actuated by the same motive, and accomplished by the same means.”
SCOTUSblog: The Supreme Court on Wednesday [in oral arguments] returned to the scope of the right to sue federal officers for damages under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, in a case arising from events surrounding an (unfairly) disparaged inn and suspicious characters near the U.S.-Canada border.
Lexis: As we noted above, while (b)(4) requires “changed country conditions,” (b)(3) does not. Thus, the BIA’s reference to a “material change in country conditions” and the analysis that followed shows that the BIA applied § 1003.23(b)(4). In applying the standard of § 1003.23(b)(4) to a timely filed motion, the BIA acted contrary to law.
Lexis: . After he pled guilty to first-degree home invasion, the Department of Homeland Security initiated removal. But the removal didn’t go as planned: DHS failed to show that Jasso was in fact removable, and the immigration judge terminated the proceeding. So DHS tried again. It started a second removal proceeding based on a new legal theory but the same underlying facts. The problem? The doctrine of claim preclusion prevents parties from litigating matters they failed to raise in an earlier case. Because claim preclusion barred the second removal proceeding, we grant the petition for review, vacate, and remand.
Reuters: A federal appeals court on Monday declined to dismiss an “unprecedented” criminal case filed during the Trump administration against a Massachusetts judge accused of impeding a federal immigration arrest of a defendant in her courtroom.
Law360: Sixteen attorneys general of Democratic-led states, including the District of Columbia, are defending a new Illinois law phasing out immigrant detention contracts and urging the Seventh Circuit to dismiss a challenge by two Illinois counties, saying the policy does not interfere with federal enforcement of immigration law.
NYT: People with health conditions that place them at high risk from Covid-19 have been denied access to coronavirus vaccine booster shots while in federal immigration detention, the American Civil Liberties Union said in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday.
Reuters: The U.S. Embassy in Havana announced on Thursday it would increase staffing and resume some visa processing in Cuba several years after the Trump administration slashed personnel at the facility following a spate of unexplained health incidents.
AILA: EOIR will open immigration courts in Hyattsville, Maryland, and Laredo, Texas, today, February 28, 2022. The Hyattsville and Laredo immigration courts will have 16 and 8 immigration judges, respectively. Both courts will hear transferred cases; EOIR is notifying parties whose locations have changed.
AILA: Due to conflict in both regions, DHS will extend and redesignate South Sudan for TPS for 18 months, and designate Sudan for TPS for 18 months. The extension and redesignation of South Sudan is in effect from 5/3/2022, through 11/3/2023. The memo details eligibility guidelines.
AILA: USCIS announced that its website will now feature a Lockbox Filing Location Updates page, where customers can track when lockbox form filing locations are updated. Updates will also be emailed and announced on social media.
USCIS: USCIS has clarified Form I-9 guidance related to Native American tribal documents. We also published new guidance regarding T nonimmigrants (victims of human trafficking) and U nonimmigrants (victims of certain other crimes) in the M-274, Handbook for Employers. USCIS has provided these updates to respond to customer needs.
Thanks for all you do for due process and fundamental fairness in America, Liz! And congrats again to both you and NIJC/Heartland Alliance on your new position!
My good friend Heidi Altman, Director of Policy at NIJC, should be delighted, as Liz is a “distinguished alum” of both the CALS Asylum Clinic at Georgetown Law (where Heidi was a Fellow) and my Refugee Law & Policy class. Liz also served as an Arlington Intern and a Judicial Law Clerk at the NY Immigration Court. Liz has been a “powerful force for due process, clear, analytical writing, and best practices” wherever she has been! So, I’m sure that will continue at NIJC! Clearly, Liz is someone who eventually belongs on the Federal Bench at some level.
Heidi Altman Director of Policy National Immigrant Justice Center PHOTO: fcnl.org
Liz’s mention under “Litigation” of the Supremes’ decision in Wooden v U.S., where Justice Kagan for a unanimous Court interpreted the term “single occasion” broadly in favor of a criminal defendant, raises an interesting immigration issue.
Two decades ago, in Matter of Adetiba, 20 I&N Dec. 506 (BIA 1992), the BIA basically “nullified” the INA’s statutory exemption from deportation for multiple crimes “arising out of a single scheme of criminal misconduct.” Rejecting the 9th Circuit’s contrary ruling, the BIA essentially read the exception out of the statute by effectively limiting it to lesser included offenses.
How narrow was this interpretation? Well, in 21 years on the immigration appellate and trial benches, I can’t recall a single case where the “scheme” did not result in deportation under Adetiba. Taking advantage of the outrageous “doctrine of judicial task avoidance” established by the Supremes in the notorious “Brand X,”the BIA eventually took the “super arrogant” step of nullifying all Circuit interpretations that conflicted with Adetiba! Matter of Islam, 25 I&N Dec. 637 (BIA 2011).
Surprisingly, in my view, in his concurring opinion in Wooden, Justice Gorsuch actually applied the “rule of lenity” — something else the “21st Century BIA” has basically “read out of the law” in their haste to deport! Here’s what Justice Gorsuch said:
Today, the Court does not consult lenity’s rule, but neither does it forbid lower courts from doing so in doubtful cases. That course is the sound course. Under our rule of law, punishments should never be products of judicial conjecture about this factor or that one. They should come only with the assent of the people’s elected representatives and in laws clear enough to supply “fair warning . . . to the world.” McBoyle, 283 U. S., at 27.7
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase Jeffrey S. Chase Blog Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges
As the ongoing (“backlog enhancing”) “Pereira fiasco” shows, the BIA has had little problem “blowing off” or distinguishing the Supremes to deport or deny when asked by DHS Enforcement to do so. Today’s BIA “rule” for interpreting supposedly “ambiguous” statutes is actually straightforward, if one-sided: Adopt whatever interpretation DHS Enforcement offers even if that means “taking a pass” on a better interpretation offered by the respondent. So, I’m sure that Garland’s current “Miller Lite” BIA will simply distinguish Wooden as dealing with statutory language different from the INA and ignore its broader implications if asked to do so by “their partners” at DHS Enforcement.
But, whether all Circuits will see it that way, and/or allow themselves to continue to be humiliated by “Brand X,” or whether the issue will reach the Supremes, are different questions. In any event, immigration advocates should pay attention to Wooden, even if the BIA is likely to blow it off.
The current Supremes don’t seem to have much difficulty jettisoning their own precedents when motivated to do so! Why they would continue to feel bound by the bogus “Chevron doctrine” or its “steroid laden progeny Brand X” to follow the interpretations of Executive Branch administrative judges on questions of law is beyond me! Somewhere Chief Justice John Marshall must be turning over in his grave!
Living 120 miles apart, family shares hopes and anxieties while navigating ‘chaotic’ resettlement process
Lamha Nabizada spent nearly six months at Fort McCoy, a 60,000-acre Army base in Monroe County, Wis., before she was relocated with part of her family to Rockville, Md. Here, she looks through the window of a hotel room on Feb. 22, 2022, during the family’s search for permanent housing. She is among 76,000 Afghans evacuated to the United States during the country’s largest resettlement operation since the Vietnam War. (Eman Mohammed for Wisconsin Watch)
By Zhen Wang February 28, 2022 Wisconsin WatchIn her final hours living at Fort McCoy, an Army base in rural Monroe County, Wisconsin, Lamha Nabizada searched for an interesting place to pose for a photo at this reporter’s request. The task wasn’t easy.“Everywhere is the same thing, same barrack,” the 27-year-old told Wisconsin Watch.Venturing outside into frigid air, she posed in front of a flagpole and gun turret.It was Feb. 6, the day before Nabizada and her 22-year-old brother Masroor would travel to Maryland — continuing a resettlement journey that began last August when the Taliban took over Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul. They were among tens of thousands airlifted from the country with passports, legal documents and little else.Nearly six months later, the siblings were among the last to leave Fort McCoy, which housed as many as 12,600 Afghans.
Lamha felt mixed emotions as she prepared to leave: hope for new opportunities and anxiety about moving to an unfamiliar place.
“I don’t know what will happen in the future,” she said.
On Feb. 15, Fort McCoy became the seventh of eight U.S. military installations to send its final evacuees to host communities. Four days later, the eighth base cleared out the last of the 76,000 total evacuees who arrived for the largest resettlement operation since the Vietnam War.
Through Feb. 23, Wisconsin had resettled about 820 of the 850 Afghan evacuees currently slated for the state, according to Bojana Zorić Martinez, director of the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families’ Bureau of Refugee Programs.
Zorić Martinez said serving so many people at once was difficult. Aside from housing, they need Social Security numbers, jobs, food and other basic items.
Evacuees are eligible to apply for benefits available to refugees, according to the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement. That includes job preparation, English language training and medical aid. They may also be eligible for other federal benefits such as Medicaid and food assistance.
Zorić Martinez said the system shrunk under Trump, who slashed the country’s refugee cap each year he was in office, which meant less money for resettlement agencies.
“We are now seeing the consequences of that,” she said.
Zhen Wang joined Wisconsin Watch as a reporting intern in May 2021. At UW-Madison, she is pursuing a master’s degree in journalism, honing her investigative journalism skills, and preparing herself for a career in health care journalism. She previously worked for the Guardian Beijing bureau and China Daily. Before joining the journalism industry, she worked in various sectors and obtained a master’s degree in international relations in New Zealand. She speaks Chinese and is a member of Asian American Journalists Association.
More by Zhen Wang / Wisconsin Watch
**********************
Reprinted from Wisconsin Watch under Creative Commons License. Full story available at the link. Nice reporting by Zhen Wang!
Here are some additional quotes from Zhen’s article from my good friend and NDPA superstar Professor Erin Barbato of the U.W. Law Immigration Clinic, among the many clinical teams who have “stepped up” for Afghan refugees:
“The government has to provide more resources, if we’re going to ensure that everybody has their basic needs met during this transition time, and it’s wonderful to see people in the community coming together,” said Erin Barbato, director of the Immigrant Justice Clinic at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “But that’s not going to solve the problem for everybody.”
The legal clinic is helping evacuees file for asylum and training attorneys to represent them in that process — positions that are in short supply. Barbato and other immigration experts fear some people will fall through bureaucratic cracks unless the federal government takes action to stabilize the system.
. . . .
Barbato, the UW legal clinic director, said the two-year parolee status leaves evacuees vulnerable to future deportation — a potentially deadly proposition. The U.S. asylum program last year faced a backlog of nearly 413,000 applications.
Congress has historically passed such laws to protect evacuees from U.S. military conflict zones, including in Vietnam and Iraq.
Echoing immigration advocates and veterans, Barbato said an Afghan Adjustment Act, which has yet to be introduced in Congress, could pave a safer, quicker path to citizenship. Lawmakers must also inject more resources into the immigration bureaucracy, she added. How these resources are allocated will shape the fate of applicants who have waited years in the queue — as well as new Afghan arrivals.
Professor Erin Barbato Director, Immigrant Justice Clinic UW Law Photo source: UW Law
The CLAWmobile — America’s First Due Process Powered Vehicle, Piloted by Attorney Yousof “Joe” Nesari, will be spreading the message to the Commonwealth and beyond!
CANCELLATION & LIFE AFTER WINNING: The CLAW Campaign Kicks Off
Delivered by Paul Wickham Schmidt
CLAW Headquarters, Reston, Virginia
February 27, 2022
Thank you for inviting me this afternoon. I’m honored to be here. Beyond that, I wish to congratulate and thank Neela Nesari and the rest of you for your courage, dedication, and humanity in standing up and speaking out for social justice in America.
Of course, I will start out by giving you my “standard comprehensive disclaimer.” What I’m about to tell you represents solely my views and not the views or opinions of any individual, institution, organization, or group with which I am associated, have been associated in the past, or might associate with in the future!
My time on the stage is winding down. But yours, my friends, is just beginning. You are the ones who control your destinies and must decide what kind of world you want to live in and what you want to leave behind for the next generations.
Relief for families granted cancellation of removal is a “just cause” that should be a “no-brainer” in a fair, well-functioning, human-values-based society. That neither such badly-needed specific remedial changes nor long overdue “big picture” reforms to fix our broken and dysfunctional Immigration Courts, restore fairness and functionality to our shattered refugee and asylum programs, and make our legal immigration system robust, realistic, workable, and serving the national interest says something about our current national mood and our political leadership that should be quite concerning to you as the upcoming generation!
My friends, both our Immigration Courts and our democratic republic are in a grave existential crisis. There are powerful and well-organized forces with a very dark, exclusive, intolerant, sometimes belligerent vision of America’s future: one that reverses generations of human progress and knowledge and actively promotes intolerance, misinformation, dehumanization, and deconstruction of our democratic institutions and fundamental human values.
They actively promote an intentionally “whitewashed” version of American history: One that denies the ingenuity, creativity, and forced labor of generations of African Americans who literally built our country!It disregards the courage, tenacity, skill, and strength of Asian Americans who built our Transcontinental Railroad and literally brought our nation together. And, of course, it dismisses the legions of Hispanic Americans who have been “making America great” since before “America was America,” with their culture, hard work, determination, and commitment to the “real” American dream, not the “whitewashed” version. It basically devalues the essential contributions of almost all non-Western-European immigrants!
The future envisioned by these dark forces “x’es out” many, probably the majority, of you in this room. It says that their so-called individual rights to do as they please outweigh the common interests of society and humanity as a whole. Yet, few seem willing to challenge them and stand up for the rights and human dignity of“the others” which are being demeaned, devalued, and, in some cases, erased. Don’t let their darkness, willful ignorance, and often threatening demeanor be your future and that of generations to come.
Look around you here at the real history and the real America represented by this audience. The future is yours! Don’t let the forces of darkness and a “past that never was” deny your destiny!
Now is the time to take a stand for Due Process, fundamental fairness, human rights, human dignity, social justice, and human decency! Become the “next generation leaders” of the New Due Process Army and fight to make equal justice under law and the constitutional and human rights of everyone a reality rather than an unfulfilled promise! Due process forever!
Thanks again for inviting me and for listening.
********************
It was great to see in the audience some of the former students from my last “pre-pandemic in-person speech” to Professor Dree Collopy’s class at Washington College of Law at American University there as lawyers in the ranks of the NDPA!
One Year In: The Biden Administration and Asylum Policy
Developments in Fourth Circuit Case Law
Increasing Access to Pro Bono Counsel in Underserved Areas: Virginia as a Case Study
Working Across Disciplines: Best Practices for Attorneys and Mental Health Professionals in Asylum Seeker Evaluations
Country Conditions: From Page to Practice
CLE Credit and DOJ Accredited Representative Certifications
This event has been approved for 6.5 credit hours of CLE credit from Virginia and North Carolina. Attorneys seeking CLE credit must purchase tickets indicating that CLE credit is provided (indicated by “CLE” listed by the ticket type).
Attorneys from other jurisdictions who are not seeking CLE credit from Virginia or North Carolina are welcome to attend.
DOJ Accredited Representative certifications will be provided to those who register as DOJ Accredited Representatives seeking certification.
Zoom Webinar Information
Zoom information for the event will be sent to the email address used to register. For security reasons, we do not post the Zoom link information. All Zoom registration information will be provided in a separate email closer to the date of the event.
We would like to cordially invite you to the launch party of CLAW, “Cancellation and Life after Winning” at the CLAW headquarters located at 11710 Bowman Green Drive, Reston, VA 20190 on Sunday, February 27, 2022 at 4 pm.
What is CLAW?
CLAW is a campaign initiated by teenager and immigration activist, Neela Nesari. The campaign aims to bring about a change to increase the 4000 limitation cap on 240A cancellation cases.
Neela is initiating an awareness month about this issue in March of 2022 and needs your help. The goal is to educate, organize and advocate for legislative changes to the immigration system with respect to the defense of cancellation of removal.
We are very excited to announce that CLAW has secured the enthusiastic support of renowned former immigration judge and former chairman of the BIA, Honorable Judge Paul Schmidt, who will be the guest of honor at CLAW’s launch party.
We look forward to your support for this worthy cause. As immigration attorneys and advocates, we know too well that a 42b cancellation case doesn’t just end at the Individual Hearing and our clients face a long road ahead before they can become permanent residents. Why not do something about it?
*Practice outside of NY limited to Federal Immigration Law.
***********************************
Unfortunately, in the bizarre and counterintuitive world of U.S. immigration law and our broken Immigration Courts, winning your case, no matter how satisfying, is “only half the battle!” These amazing young people understand how unfair and counterproductive that is and are “walking the walk, not just talking the talk.” Come be inspired by folks who believe in and act for a “Better America” for all of us!
The Dehumanizing Work of Immigration Law is an analysis piece authored by immprof Jennifer M. Chacón (Berkeley) for the Brennan Center for Justice. It was part of a series of articles examining the “punitive excess that has come to define America’s criminal legal system.”
In her article, Chacón acknowledges that “our immigration laws are exceptionally harsh in ways that frequently defy common sense.” She notes that for many migrants “the notion that there is a ‘right way’ to immigrate is just not true.” Moreover, “our country has not always honored its own legal processes when immigrants are doing things ‘the right way.’” And, for those “long-time lawful permanent residents who have contact with the criminal legal system are often denied the chance to do things ‘the right way.’”
“Again and again,” Chacón writes, “notions of the rule of law are invoked to justify the sundering of families and communities that would, in other circumstances, seem unthinkable.”
Jennifer elegantly articulates a theme that echoes what “Sir Jeffrey” Chase and I often say on our respective blogs: It’s all about gratuitous cruelty and intentional dehumanization of “the other” — primarily vulnerable individuals of color!
But, it need not be that way! Undoubtedly, the current legislative framework is outdated, unrealistic, and often self-contradictory. Congress’s failure to address it with bipartisan, humane, common sense, practical reforms that would strengthen and expand our legal immigration system is disgraceful.
But, there are plenty of opportunities even under the current flawed framework for much better interpretations of law; more expansive, uniform, and reasonable exercises of discretion; creation and implementation of best practices; advancements in due process and fundamental fairness; drastic improvements in representation; improved expert judging; rational, targeted, “results-focused” enforcement; promoting accountability; and teamwork and cooperation among the judiciary, DHS, and the private/NGO/academic sectors to improve the delivery of justice and make the “rule of law” something more than the cruel parody it is today.
Historically, as Jennifer points out, courts have often aided, abetted, and sometimes even disgracefully and cowardly encouraged lawless behavior and clear violations of both constitutional and human rights. But, it doesn’t have to be that way in the future!
Folks like Trump, Miller, Sessions, Barr, Wolf, “Cooch,” Hamilton, McHenry, et al spent four years laser-focused on banishing every last ounce of humanity, fairness, truth, enlightenment, kindness, compassion, reasonableness, efficiency, rationality, equity, public service, racial justice, consistently positive use of discretion, practicality, and common sense from our immigration and refugee systems.
Biden and Harris promised dynamic change, improvement, and a return to a values-based approach to immigration. Once in office, however, they have basically “gone Miller Lite” —preferring to blame and criticize the Trump regime without having a ready plan or taking much positive action to bring about dynamic systemic improvements. In fact, as pointed out by Jennifer, Garland and Mayorkas have continued to apply, defend, and to some extent rely on the very vile policies they supposedly disavowed. Talk about disingenuous!
Drastic improvements in the current system are “out there for the taking,” with or without Congressional assistance. But, the will, skill, and guts to make the “rule of law” something other than an intentionally cruel, failed “throw away slogan” appears to be sorely missing from Biden Administration ldeadership!
Maybe, the beginning of Jennifer’s essay “says it all” about the abject failure of Garland and others to “get the job done:”
During his confirmation hearing to be attorney general, when asked about the Trump administration’s policy of separating children from their parents at the U.S.–Mexico border, Merrick Garland repudiated the policy, stating “I can’t imagine anything worse.”
Yet, now that he is confirmed, Attorney General Garland presides over an agency that represents the U.S. government in court arguing every day that parents should be separated from their children, brothers from sisters, grandchildren from grandparents.
Obviously, that’s the problem! Garland actually “can’t imagine” the human impact of government-imposed family separation! Nor can he “imagine” what it’s like to be caught up in his unfair, biased, and broken Immigration “Courts” as a party or a lawyer. The “retail level” of our justice system “passed him by” on his way to his judicial “comfort zone.”
“Justice” Star Chamber Style — “AG Garland ‘can’t imagine’ what it’s like to be caught up in the dysfunctional, abusive, and unfair ‘court system’ that he runs!”
Unless and until we finally get an Attorney General who has either experienced or has the actual imagination necessary to feel the daily horrors and indignity that our unnecessarily broken immigration justice system inflicts on real human beings, American justice and human values will continue to spiral downward! ☠️🤮
And, there will be no true racial justice in America without justice for immigrants!
The thread running through Whitehouse’s spoken essays is that the current 6-3 conservative majority on the court is no accident but the product of special interests and dark money – hundreds of millions of dollars in anonymous hidden spending.
The special interests are able to groom young judges, promote them in advertising campaigns and then try to influence them in legal briefs, all lacking in transparency. The outcome is a dire threat to the climate, reproductive rights and myriad issues that touch people’s everyday lives.
Whitehouse chose his title carefully. “It implies that this is not random,” he says. “This is not just, ‘Oh, we’re conservatives, and so we’re going to appoint conservative thinking judges,’ which is the veneer. They would like to maintain this is just conservatives being conservatives.”
Whitehouse suggests that the model of “agency capture”, when an administrative agency is co-opted to serve the interests of a minor constituency, was applied to the supreme court. “Once you’re over that threshold of indecency, it actually turned out to be a pretty easy target. The other construct to bear in mind is covert operations, because essentially what’s happened is that a bunch of fossil fuel billionaires have run a massive covert operation in and against their own country. And that’s a scheme.”
. . . .
Democrats have been criticised for being complacent as Republicans unspooled their 50-year campaign to capture the courts. Whitehouse agrees. “It’s way late. It’s really embarrassing how we let this dark money crowd steal a march on us.”
He observes: “From a political perspective it never mattered as much to the Democratic base as it did to the Republican base because we did not have the history of Roe versus Wade, Brown versus Board of Education [desegregating public schools] decisions that provoked massive cultural objections on the far right.
“So they got highly motivated and we did not but then once we saw this machinery begin to go in operation to capture the court, we never bothered to call it out either. It’s not just that our base didn’t care as much. It’s that we were sleeping sentries.”
Whitehouse is planning at least three or four more speeches about The Scheme. Like his climate series, he hopes that the message will get through: it is time to wake up.
“I hope there’ll be a more general understanding that what’s going on at the court has a lot less to do with conservatism than it has to do with capture and, with any luck, it might cause a bit of an epiphany with some of the judges that they don’t want to be associated with what they’re actually associated with. And the American public will see it for what it is and give us in politics more opportunities to administer a repair.”
***************************
Read the complete report at the link.
Sen. Whitehouse’s reference to “agency capture” is a perfect descriptor of what has happened at EOIR and in our Immigration Courts. Remade, co-opted, and weaponized by Miller, Sessions, Barr, and Gene Hamilton during the Trump regime, the Immigration Courts now represent a nativist/restrictionist culture, philosophy, and approach to justice, including racial justice, that is far, far out of the legal mainstream.
It’s so far out of the mainstream that even the most conservative circuits and Trump judicial appointees occasionally hand Garland’s poorly performing BIA “its head” on sloppy, poorly reasoned, substandard performance. It’s also light years away from the restoration of the rule of law and humane values promised by Biden and Harris during their 2020 campaign!
“Agency capture” appears to be a “GOP specialty,” that Democrats lack. How many key immigration officials, political or “career,” at DHS and DOJ were “Obama holdovers?” How long did the few who weren’t replaced at the outset last? How much influence did they retain or exercise? Yet, Garland continues to operate the Immigration Courts with largely the same toxic culture and badly flawed personnel he inherited from Sessions and Barr. Nonsensical? Disgraceful? Dumb? You bet!
The situation is aggravated many times over because these aren’t “normal agency decisions.” No, they are essentially life or death decisions in a “traffic court setting” that affect humanity, our future as a nation, and often “dribble over” into discriminatory and biased approaches to minority populations and rights outside the field of immigration!
Another serious aggravating factor is the astoundingly dysfunctional and incompetent “Byzantine Empire Style” agency bureaucracy at EOIR which bears no resemblance to competent, professional court management and administration.
Not surprisingly, the latter are outside the DOJ’s skill set. Shockingly, however, A.G. Garland failed to “recognize the obvious” and to bring in the needed outside professional experts to straighten it out.
Even worse, although he essentially “wholly owns” the broken, anti-due-process immigration “judiciary,” Garland has ignored experts’ calls for replacement of the current precedent-setting BIA with judges who are recognized leaders and role models in due process and human rights in the immigration context.
Nor has he actively recruited and appointed enough experts with NGO, clinical, and other private sector backgrounds to Immigration Judge positions. Further, he has failed to develop and implement a transparent, merit-based judicial selection and retention program to “re-compete” the many “new” IJ positions that were created and maliciously used by Sessions and Barr to “pack” EOIR with anti-asylum bias, often involving judges without expertise or with disturbingly thin due-process/fundamental fairness credentials.
Developing a fair, transparent, merit-based system, with outside input, to weed-out underperforming judges in a competitive process and, where warranted, to replace them with some of the brilliant and high-achieving immigration/human rights potential judicial talent now “out there in the market place” but largely ignored by the Biden Administration should have been high on Garland’s list. The process and criteria by which these life or death judicial positions are filled remains largely a mystery shrouded in opaque bureaucracy and with no input from those who actually have to practice before EOIR or who have been researching and documenting the abject, deadly failures of the current system!
With due respect, I think Senator Whitehorse needs to focus some of his attention and ire on the disgraceful performance of the U.S. Immigration Courts under Garland. Unlike the Article IIIs, this Federal Court system could and should have been majorly reformed, restructured, and vastly improved with a more enlightened, courageous, due-process oriented approach by DOJ.
Why doesn’t Senator Whitehouse call up his former Senate colleague VP Harris, who has done a “disappearing act” on immigration and human rights following her tone-deaf excursion to the Northern Triangle? Is he teaming with Chair Lofgren to introduce the Senate version of her Article I Immigration Court Bill? Some of the foregoing could be even more effective in “raising consciousness” and promoting constructive reform than giving speeches to an empty Senate Chamber!
The result of a reformed U.S. Immigration Court should be a “Model Federal Judiciary” — one laser-focused on fairness, scholarship, timeliness, respect, teamwork, due process, fundamental fairness, and best practices! Indeed, that’s what all Federal Courts should be, but are not right now. Not by a long shot!
The Immigration Courts could and should be a training and development ground for a diverse, high-functioning, practical, due-process-oriented Federal Judiciary all the way up to the Supremes — where failure by right-wing ivory-tower jurists who live “abovethe fray” to understand the reality of our broken Immigration Courts and to courageously vindicate the legal, constitutional, and human rights of abused and vulnerable migrants is literally destroying our republic.
That Garland and the Biden Administration generally are squandering this opportunity is as inexplicable as it is inexcusable! Perhaps Sen. Whitehouse can “light a fire!” 🔥
