Migration – Page 282 – immigrationcourtside.com

NEW FROM CATO INSTITUTE: Michelangelo Landgrave and Alex Nowrasteh Analyze Crime and Migrants — Conclusion: “Legal and illegal immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated than natives.”

https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/immigration-brief-1_1.pdf

“Legal and illegal immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated than natives. Our numbers do not represent the total number of immigrants who can be deported under current law or the complete number of convicted immi- grant criminals who are in the United States, but merely those incarcerated. This report provides numbers and demographic characteristics to better inform the public policy debate over immigration and crime.”

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The report is called Criminal Immigrants: Their Numbers, Demographics, and Countries of Origin, and it was issued on March 15, 2017. You can read the full report with charts, graphs, and citation of authorities at the link.

Many thanks to Nolan Rappaport for passing this along (although he doesn’t necessarily agree with the report’s conclusion).

PWS

03/15/17

WSJ OPINION: JASON L. RILEY — Steve King & Other White Nationalists Are Wrong — America Is Not Europe — That’s Why Refugee Assimilation Works Here — “Shared Ideals” Are Key (And They Are Not The “Ideals” Spouted By King & His Crowd)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-doesnt-have-europes-immigration-problems-1489530039

Riley writes:

“America doesn’t have that problem because it has done things differently. Here, the emphasis is on shared ideals rather than shared cultural artifacts. The U.S. model for assimilation has been more successful because of the country’s value framework, which is the real immigrant magnet. Longitudinal studies, which measure the progress of the same individuals over time, show that U.S. immigrants today continue to assimilate despite the best efforts of bilingual education advocates and anti-American Chicano Studies professors. As with previous immigrant waves, different groups progress at different rates, but over time English usage, educational attainment and incomes do rise.

Mr. King may fear immigrant babies, but he should be more careful not to confuse his personal problems with America’s. Given the coming flood of baby-boomer retirees over the next two decades, those high birthrates are just what the pediatrician ordered.”

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Generally, Riley is on the right track. His observations match my experience in Immigration Court where most of the individuals coming before me shared the same values I had: stability, safety, a future for their kids, opportunity for political and economic participation, community and often religious involvement. In other words, being part of a society that is generally functional, rather than dysfunctional as in many of the countries migrants flee.

But, I didn’t appreciate Riley’s snide remark about bilingual education. That’s perhaps because my daughter Anna has taught English Language Learners and still works with migrant populations in the Beloit, WI Public School System.

Bilingualism helps families to learn English and communicate, particularly to the older generation and friends and family abroad. Individuals who are bilingual and at home in different linguistic situations have more satisfying lives and better economic opportunities.

Indeed, America is far behind many other developed countries in bi- and tri-lingualism. It was not uncommon in the Arlington Immigration Court to encounter respondents who were fluent in a number of languages, although for obvious reasons most preferred to have their “merits” court hearings in their “best” language.

That’s just one of the reasons why many “Dreamers” with biglingual skills are well-positioned to be our leaders and innovators of the future. And, we’re fortunate to have them contribute their talents to our society. We’re going to need the talent and energy of all of our young people as well as births to continue to prosper in the future.

PWS

03/15/17

NYT WORLD: “Where Refugees Come From” by Adam Pearce

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/06/world/where-refugees-come-from.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_up_20170315&nl=upshot&nl_art=4&nlid=79213886&ref=headline&te=1

“President Trump signed a new executive order on Monday [March 6] to ban all refugees from entering the United States for 120 days. The order also cuts the refugee program in half, capping it at 50,000 people for the 2017 fiscal year, down from the 110,000 ceiling put in place under President Obama.

The United States accepted 84,994 refugees from 78 different countries in 2016. The order also temporarily halts new visas for six countries: Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.”

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There is an “interactive map/chart” in the full article at the link.

PWS

03/15/17

MATT CAMERON IN THE BAFFLER: Trump’s Immigration Policies Promise To Make A Bad System Even Worse

https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/strangers-in-a-cruel-land?utm_campaign=Newsletter&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=45427323&_hsenc=p2ANqtz–SrQwaCmT1prkolHBKrPKHSN4djFsqLNoveeB1BWE10ZO3rscc5BcXMhmwFedKjGnCbzzw56UKYKQ-sIulUP96Hwj8rw&_hsmi=45427323

“Donald Trump’s presidential campaign capitalized on a familiar brand of nativist anti-immigrant slander usually reserved for our nation’s most desperate times. It was an ugly old vein to mine, but now that he’s managed to strike electoral gold there, he is not wrong to view his election as a mandate to carry out his promise to enforce federal immigration law to its fullest extent. This would be alarming to friends of the Constitution under any circumstances, but especially so given Trump’s open embrace of white supremacy—as a concept, if not a movement—in the primaries. We haven’t encountered such an openly bigoted presidential campaign on the right since Pat Buchanan’s last failed insurgent run at the GOP nomination in 1996, and we have never seen an avowedly white-nationalist leader accede to the Oval Office.
Nor should any of us expect the chastening experience of actual governing to temper his outlook. Trump has proven at every opportunity that he is all but ineducable about even the simplest details of how immigration to the United States actually works. And this, it turns out, is probably one of the few things he has in common with a considerable majority of Americans.”

. . . .

The immigration system I keep hearing about from pundits and politicians (all of whom should know better) is almost entirely unmoored from actual fact. It seems to be a chimerical pastiche of the one we had before Ellis Island closed, the one we had just before the moon landing, and some sort of rosy Tomorrowland fantasy in which visas would be awarded to the undocumented if only they would do it the right way. This is not the system I work with every day.
When a white, native-born American says, “my family came here the right way,” what the speaker almost invariably means is that one or more of his ancestors came to the United States without a visa during a time of virtually unrestricted European migration. They boarded a trans-Atlantic ocean liner, stood in line at an immigration inspection station for the better part of a day, answered a standard series of twenty-nine questions, were subjected to a medical exam, and were admitted indefinitely to the United States. That’s how my Scottish great-grandparents did it in 1916. If you were born in the United States with European ancestors, it’s probably how you came to be here too. That system ended in 1924. Its successor, the “national origins” quota system (a more restricted but still relatively open “line”), was abolished in 1965. But I still regularly meet well-meaning fellow citizens who believe that anyone who deserves a chance can simply “fill out the forms,” “get in line,” and “come the right way, like my family did.” At which point, I have to patiently explain that they can’t.

For most of my undocumented neighbors, in East Boston and beyond, there are no forms. There is no line. There never was. Telling an undocumented Mexican dishwasher that he should “wait in line, like my family did” is no more realistic than advising him to switch to the same model of iPhone your great-grandfather used. Yet the lie persists, with nearly every presidential candidate since George H. W. Bush invoking the imaginary “line.”

. . . .

[Bill] O’Reilly was too charitable. There is no reason to believe that Trump has ever understood the basic precepts of due-process protection. Commitment to due process would have been fundamentally incompatible with Trump’s record as a casino magnate, a New York City landlord, or an authoritarian game show host given unlimited license to “fire” contestants at whim.

Trump has signaled the likely place of due process in his immigration system by promising to immediately deport 2 to 3 million “criminal aliens.” This staggering number, nearly the entire urban population of Chicago, would represent more deportations than Obama (the current record-holder) completed in eight years, and more than twice as many as were carried out during Operation Wetback.

. . . .

In fifty-eight immigration courts nationwide, immigration judges are operating (per a recent study) at a degree of mental stress equivalent to that of an emergency-room doctor. “This case,” sneered federal judge Richard Posner in a recent dissent, “involves a typical botch by an immigration judge.” Posner, punching down from the lofty heights of a federal appeals court, went on to concede graciously that the immigration court’s status as “the least competent federal agency,” might have something to do with congressional underfunding and the resultant “crushing workloads.”
Our nation’s roughly 250 immigration judges [now approximately 305] are now responsible for managing a record backlog of more than five hundred thousand pending deportation cases, with thousands more pouring into the system each day. The judges I appear before in the Boston immigration court are humane and learned experts who work long hours, in circumstances that couldn’t be less familiar to Judge Posner, but they are as susceptible to human error as any judge anywhere.

In an executive order signed within days of his inauguration, Trump authorized Congress to triple the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on the ground. He has made no mention of any plans to extend the courts the same courtesy, but this new flow of cases simply cannot be sustained within today’s judicial plumbing.”

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Cameron’s full, hard-hitting article is definitely worth a read. And, as he points out, quite sadly, it’s likely to get much worse from a due process standpoint before it gets better.

I also think he is right that few U.S. Court of Appeals Judges would be able to survive working as U.S. Immigration Judges under today’s incredibly difficult circumstances and conditions.

PWS

03/15/17

WashPost OPINION: EUGENE ROBINSON — Rep. Steve King (R-IA) Is A Self-Proclaimed Racist/White Supremacist — White House Doesn’t Appear To Have A Problem With That

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/white-supremacism-is-ready-to-roar/2017/03/13/883e7570-082b-11e7-b77c-0047d15a24e0_story.html?utm_term=.52288350b631

Robinson writes:

“White supremacism was never banished from American political thought, just shoved to the fringe and hushed to a whisper. Now, in the Age of Trump, it’s back in the mainstream and ready to roar.

Witness the words of Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) on the subject of immigration: “Culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” King offered these sentiments Sunday in a tweet expressing solidarity with Geert Wilders, an openly racist and Islamophobic Dutch politician who has a chance of becoming prime minister in elections this week. Wilders is someone who “understands,” King wrote.

And we understand just what King meant. Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke certainly got the message, using his vile Twitter account to proclaim, “GOD BLESS STEVE KING!!!”

. . . .

“Immigrants — both voluntary and involuntary — have shaped this nation since long before its founding. The first Africans were brought here in bondage in 1619, one year before the Mayflower. Americans have never been a single ethnicity, speaking a single language, bound by the centuries to a single patch of land. We have always been diverse, polyglot and restless, and our greatness has come from our openness to new people and new ideas.

King’s distress about birthrates can be read only as modern-day eugenics. If he is worried about the coming day when there is no white majority in the United States, he has remarkably little faith in our remarkable society — or in the Constitution that he, as a member of Congress, is sworn to support and defend.

President Trump played footsie with the white supremacist movement during his campaign. His chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, waged civilizational war when he ran the Breitbart News site. Trump could definitively denounce King’s racism with a statement or a tweet, but so far his silence is deafening.”

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I’m glad that Robinson makes the point that America literally was developed, founded, and built on the backs, free labor, and talents of African American “involuntary” immigrants. (In my Refugee Law and Policy course at Georgetown Law we referred to them as “forced migrants.”)

In fact, of our first five Presidents, only John Adams was self-supporting. The others owed their livelihood to the free labor provided by enslaved African Americans. Sad, but true.

PWS

03/15/17

THE HILL: Nolan Rappaport Takes Apart Hawaii’s Case Against Travel Ban

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/immigration/323948-hawaiis-case-against-trumps-travel-ban-debunked

After discussing and dismissing the four bases cited by Hawaii, Nolan concludes:

“Hawaii’s four claims against the president’s travel ban are thus unfounded and the state is going to fail in its attempt to stop the travel ban.”

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Read Nolan’s full article with citations in The Hill at the link. The case is State of Hawaii v. Trump, USDC, HI.

PWS

03/14/17

HISTORY: New Ric Burns/Li-Shin Yu Documentary Film Explores Sordid Side Of Our History: “The Chinese Exclusion Act” — “It was democratic,” explains historian Renqiu Yu in the film. “It was legal. But it was wrong.” — “That’s Why I Become a Lawyer,” Says One U.S. Immigration Judge!

http://caamedia.org/blog/2017/03/13/chinese-exclusion-act-a-new-film-about-a-19th-century-law-with-21st-century-lessons/

Julianne Hing writes in CAAM:

“In the last half of the 19th century, as Reconstruction was collapsing and the country slogged through an economic depression in the 1870s, politicians found easy scapegoats in Chinese immigrants. As a statesman, California Governor Bigler “wrangled a working class white rage at the fact that the Gold Rush had not been a stairway to heaven,” Burns says, “and all this transmogrified into hatred of the ‘other.’” Bigler called Chinese immigrants ignorant about and uninterested in joining American society, and described them as inferior, dishonest, and unassimilable in public addresses.

Passionate anti-Chinese sentiment manifested itself in the passage of punitive local ordinances that sought to criminalize or tax everyday Chinese life. San Francisco’s queue ordinances of the 1870s forbade city prisoners from keeping long braids. Pole ordinances prohibited the use of poles to balance vegetables and other wares; the use of a pole to balance heavy loads was a uniquely Chinese practice. Chinese immigrants were even prohibited from testifying in court against whites.

By the time the Chinese Exclusion Act became the law in 1882, Chinese immigrants were firmly established in the popular imagination as villainous culprits responsible for the country’s every economic woe. The law only codified a seething anti-immigrant sentiment that Americans latched on to. The law made it illegal for Chinese immigrants to come to the U.S., it made it illegal for those who left to re-enter the U.S., and it made it illegal for Chinese nationals to become U.S. citizens. The law was overturned only in the 1940s, and it wasn’t functionally dismantled until 1965 during the Civil Rights era — just 50 years ago.

“It was democratic,” explains historian Renqiu Yu in the film. “It was legal. But it was wrong.” That breach between legality and justice is exactly what Burns and Li-shin Yu sought to explore in their film. “Here’s a story that makes you think about how the way that democracy and jurisprudence work is not equal to justice,” Burns says.

The other chapter of the story of the Chinese Exclusion Act is one of resistance. Li-shin Yu says that in the years of making this film, the stories of resistance stood out to her over and over. “The greatest thing to have learned is that across time, the Chinese were standing up every step of the way,” Yu says.”

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Sadly, some of this sounds all too familiar. I could just see a racist/white nationalist politician like Rep. Steve King (R-IA) playing the role of Gov. Bigler. It’s important for the rest of us to say “never again.”

PWS

03/14/17

GIBSON DUNN PUBLIC COUNSEL: Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Recommends That USDC, WD WA Maintain Habeas Jurisdiction Over Detained Dreamer’s Case

From: Manny Rivera <mrivera@wearerally.com>
Date: Tue, Mar 14, 2017 at 2:30 PM
Subject: BREAKING: Federal Court Finds Jurisdiction to Hear DREAMer Case
To: Manny Rivera <mrivera@wearerally.com>
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 14, 2017

Media Contact:

Manny Rivera, mrivera@wearerally.com, (323) 892-2080

FEDERAL COURT FINDS JURISDICTION TO HEAR CONSTITUTIONAL CLAIMS BROUGHT BY DREAMER DANIEL RAMIREZ MEDINA

Magistrate Judge James P. Donohue Recommends Court Hear Arguments on the Constitutionality of Mr. Ramirez’s Arrest and Detention; Denies Petitioner’s Motion for Immediate Conditional Release

Government’s Attempt to Throw Out Petitioner’s Claims Dismissed by the Court

MEDIA ALERT: Press Teleconference Call with Mr. Ramirez’s Legal Team Scheduled for TODAY at 3:30pm Pacific/6:30pm Eastern

Dial-In: (855) 557-3561

Conference ID: 89214839

SEATTLE, Wash. March 14, 2017 — Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge James P. Donohue today issued a recommendation denying the Government’s Motion to Dismiss, specifically acknowledging federal district court jurisdiction in the habeas petition filed by Daniel Ramirez Medina. Because of uncertainty of the impact of DACA, the court did not order the immediate release of Mr. Ramirez, the DACA beneficiary unconstitutionally detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) in Seattle for more than a month, but deferred ruling on the merits of whether he should be released while the merits of the habeas petition is being adjudicated. Mr. Ramirez’s release, called for by immigration advocates, community leaders and Members of Congress from throughout the country, was requested by Mr. Ramirez pending the final determination of the merits challenging his unconstitutional detention. Counsel for the petitioner believes that DACA supports his immediate release.

“We are pleased that the court rejected the government’s effort to evade judicial review,” said Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr., a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and a member of Mr. Ramirez’s legal team. “This is an important ruling because one of the core purposes of habeas corpus is to ensure judicial review of executive detentions and hold the executive branch accountable.”

“But at the same time, Daniel has been wrongfully detained for too long,” added Mr. Boutrous. “We plan to immediately file an objection to the magistrate judge’s denial of our motion seeking immediate conditional release. The government itself has already determined that he represents no threat to public safety or national security. Dreamers like Daniel who have followed the rules and kept their part of the DACA promise deserve to have their rights recognized and vindicated by the court. This is especially true where, as here, the government has failed to keep its promise, and has provided no independent evidence to support its baseless claims.”

In his findings, Judge Donohue noted:

“The Ninth Circuit has not yet decided whether a district court has the authority to conditionally release a habeas petitioner pending a decision on the merits of the petition. United States v. McCandless, 841 F.3d 819, 822 (9th Cir. 2016), pet. for cert. filed (Feb. 16, 2016) (citing In re Roe, 257 F.3d 1077, 1080 (9th Cir. 2001) (per curiam)). Authority from other circuits strongly supports the conclusion that this Court may exercise such authority in the appropriate circumstances.”

The Court also recommended that because Mr. Ramirez remains in custody, and because there are nearly 800,000 DACA beneficiaries who are interested in the outcome of these proceedings, that the merits phase of the case be treated on an expedited schedule.

The case could have broader implications on other DACA beneficiaries, as the lawsuit calls on the court to issue a declaratory judgement that Mr. Ramirez and other Dreamers have constitutionally-protected interests in their status conferred under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (“DACA”) program.

“Our objective all along has been to end this DREAMer’s nightmare so that Daniel Ramirez may return to his family and his three-year-old citizen child,” said Mark Rosenbaum, director of Opportunity Under Law at Public Counsel, and a member of Mr. Ramirez’s legal team. “While the court today has taken one step towards justice, the government’s attempts to delay justice for this young man who has been detained now for over a month and never been charged with any crime sends an unmistakable message that the word of executive branch cannot be trusted, that it can ‘play bait and switch’ with the life of a DACA recipient.”

Mr. Ramirez was brought to this country as a child and knows no home but the United States. He gave the government sensitive personal information, paid a substantial fee, and voluntarily subjected himself to rigorous background checks—twice—as part of the DACA program, most recently in May 2016. He has no criminal history and has not been charged with any unlawful conduct. Despite this, he was arbitrarily arrested without a warrant or probable cause. The U.S. Government has had more than a month to submit any evidence of wrongdoing or criminal activity, yet no evidence has been presented because no evidence exists.

“Daniel has been in detention for more than a month without ever being charged with a crime, and to this day the government has shown us no evidence that he has done anything wrong” said Ethan Dettmer, a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and a member of Mr. Ramirez’s legal team. “No one should be treated that way, and it is unconstitutional. We are arguing the merits of this case in federal court.”

At a hearing in Seattle last Wednesday, counsel for Mr. Ramirez presented oral arguments on why federal court is the only appropriate venue to hear and decide the habeas petition challenging the constitutionality of his arrest and extended detention. In his decision, Judge Donohue agreed with the Petitioner’s arguments that federal court has jurisdiction over this case because of the critical constitutional issues at stake.

Mr. Ramirez has now been subjected to unconstitutional detention for 32 days without being charged with a crime and with no evidence presented to justify his continued detention.

Petitioners will file a written objection to the Magistrate Judge’s Report and Recommendation by no later than March 28, 2017.

A national press teleconference call with members of Mr. Ramirez’s legal team is scheduled for 3:30pm Pacific/6:30pm Eastern. Counsel will be available during this call to discuss today’s decision and answer questions from members of the media. To view the court’s Report and Recommendation, click here.

Press Teleconference with Counsel for Daniel Ramirez Medina—Dial-In Information:

Dial-In: (855) 557-3561

Conference ID: 89214839

###

Public Counsel is the nation’s largest pro bono law firm. Founded in 1970, Public Counsel strives to achieve three main goals: protect the legal rights of disadvantaged children; represent immigrants who have been the victims of torture, persecution, domestic violence, trafficking, and other crimes; and foster economic justice by providing individuals and institutions in underserved communities with access to quality legal representation. Through a pro bono model that leverages the talents and dedication of thousands of attorney and law student volunteers, along with an in-house staff of more than 75 attorneys and social workers, Public Counsel annually assists more than 30,000 families, children, immigrants, veterans, and nonprofit organizations and addresses systemic poverty and civil rights issues through impact litigation and policy advocacy. For more information, visit www.publiccounsel.org.

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP is a leading international law firm. Consistently ranking among the world’s top law firms in industry surveys and major publications, Gibson Dunn is distinctively positioned in today’s global marketplace with more than 1,200 lawyers and 20 offices, including Beijing, Brussels, Century City, Dallas, Denver, Dubai, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Houston, London, Los Angeles, Munich, New York, Orange County, Palo Alto, Paris, San Francisco, São Paulo, Singapore, and Washington, D.C. For more information on Gibson Dunn, please visit our Web site.

Barrera Legal Group focuses on complex immigration issues ranging from family reunification, removal defense and unlawful detention. Barrera legal has represented clients all over the US and in several different countries and maintains committed to represent the immigrant community.

MANNY RIVERA // RALLY

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323-892-2080
626-864-7467

6565 Sunset Blvd. Suite 400
Los Angeles, CA 90028

www.WeAreRALLY.comU.S.

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Thanks to Pilar Marrero of La Opinion for sending this in!

PWS

03/14/17

NEW FROM 4TH CIR: Cantallano-Cruz v. Sessions — 4th Rips BIA’s “Excessively Narrow” & “Shortsighted” Treatment Of “Nexus” Issue In Honduran Family PSG Asylum Case!

http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/Published/152511.P.pdf

“Our decision in Hernandez-Avalos is particularly instructive in the present case. There, the BIA denied asylum to a petitioner who fled El Salvador after gang members threatened to kill her because she prevented her son from joining the gang. 784 F.3d at 946-47. The petitioner had argued that at least one central reason for her persecution was her nuclear family relationship with her son. Id. at 949. The BIA disagreed, holding that she actually was targeted because she did not consent to her son’s criminal activity. Id.

We held that this application of the nexus requirement by the BIA was “excessively narrow,” and explained that there was no meaningful distinction between the existence of a maternal relationship and a mother’s decision to forbid her son from participating in a gang. Id. at 949–50. We held that the record compelled a factual conclusion that the petitioner’s relationship with her son was a central reason for her persecution, because that relationship was the reason “why she, and not another person, was threatened.” Id. at 950.

We likewise conclude in the present case that the BIA and IJ applied an improper and excessively narrow interpretation of the evidence relevant to the statutory nexus requirement. The BIA and IJ shortsightedly focused on Avila’s articulated purpose of preventing Cantillano Cruz from contacting the police, while discounting the very relationship that prompted her to search for her husband, to confront Avila, and to express her intent to contact the police. See Oliva, 807 F.3d at 59-60 (although the applicant’s refusal to pay the gang rent was the “immediate trigger” for an assault, the applicant’s membership in the social group of individuals who left the gang led to threats, and thus the two reasons were linked). The BIA’s and IJ’s focus on the explanation Avila gave for his threats, while failing to consider the intertwined reasons for those threats, manifests a misapplication of the statutory nexus standard.

The full record before us compels a conclusion that Avila’s threats were motivated, in at least one central respect, by Cantillano Cruz’s membership in Martinez’s nuclear family. Although, as the IJ observed, any person interested in Martinez’s disappearance may have confronted Avila concerning Martinez’s whereabouts, this fact does not adequately explain the ongoing threats Avila made against Cantillano Cruz and her children over a period of two years at her home. See Cordova, 759 F.3d at 339-40 (although the applicant was first attacked by the persecutor to force the applicant to join the gang, the BIA failed to consider evidence showing that later attacks were motivated by family ties). Avila persisted in threatening Cantillano Cruz after she promised him that she would not contact the police. Avila placed threatening telephone calls to Cantillano Cruz at her home, the center of life for Martinez and his nuclear family. Also at the Martinez family’s home, Avila and his associates killed the family’s dogs, brandished and fired weapons, and threatened to harm Cantillano Cruz and her children.”

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Read the full opinion at the link.

In too many cases, the BIA appears to strain the law and misconstrue facts to avoid granting protection to deserving applicants from Northern Triangle countries in Central America who clearly face harm upon return. Misapplication of the highly technical concept of “nexus” is a device sometimes used by by the Board and some Immigration Judges to deny claims of vulnerable individuals who could and should be granted protection under U.S. laws.

In doing so, the BIA jettisons the generous spirit of the Supreme Court’s decision in Cardoza-Fonseca and their own precedent decision in Mogharrabi warranting generous treatment of credible asylum seekers in need of protection. Indeed, the BIA often seems more willing to “rote cite” Mogharrabi than to actually follow their own precedent.

The purpose of asylum and other protections laws is to protect individuals facing harm wherever possible, not to find hyper-technical ways to deny or limit protections.

I am pleased that one of the cases cited by the Fourth Circuit is Crespin-Valladares v. Holder, 632 F.3d 117 (4th Cir. 2011). Crespin is one of the “seminal” fourth Circuit cases recognizing family as a “particular social group” for asylum purposes. I had granted the asylum applications in Crespin only to have the BIA reverse those grants after the DHS appealed. However, upon judicial review, the Fourth Circuit agreed with me and reversed and remanded the case to the BIA.

This case also vividly illustrates the absurdity of forcing individuals to pursue these types of claims in Immigration Court without a lawyer. Even the Immigration Judge and the BIA were confused about the proper standards here! Fortunately, this individual not only had a lawyer but a good one.

But, how would an unrepresented individual, without English language skills, and perhaps with minimal education, and therefore no ability to access or understand the important and complicated Fourth Circuit precedents showing the BIA and the IJ to be wrong have any legitimate chance of achieving success? Yet, the Administration proposes to race just such individuals through expedited hearings at inconveniently located and often poorly run detention facilities where chances of getting competent legal assistance are minimal.

PWS

03/13/17

REUTERS: U.S. Immigration Court’s “Night Court” Plan Shows Why Due Process Is A Mirage In A “Captive” Court System — Will EOIR Cave To Administration’s Move To Put “Due Process Veneer” On Assembly Line Removals!

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN16H030

Julia Edwards Ainsley reports:

“The Department of Justice is deploying 50 judges to immigration detention facilities across the United States, according to two sources and a letter seen by Reuters and sent to judges on Thursday.

The department is also considering asking judges to sit from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., split between two rotating shifts, to adjudicate more cases, the sources said. A notice about shift times was not included in the letter.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.”

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Thanks much to Zoe Tillman over at BuzzFeed News for bringing this article to my attention.

“Judges” working “shifts” on the “removal assembly line!” “Come on, man!” A “real” court would be strongly resisting this mockery of justice and due process.

But, because the U.S. Immigration Court is a “wholly owned subsidiary” of the Administration, EOIR leadership will likely “go along to get along” with a transparent scheme to railroad human beings in real danger back to the “death zone” of the Northern Triangle with “rubber stamp” justice. In other words, the Immigration Courts are considered by the Administration and the DOJ to be part of the “enforcement team,” rather than an independent due-process focused judiciary.

Scheduling early in the AM and late at night is likely to make it more difficult to get pro bono lawyers, witnesses, interpreters, etc. It isn’t just judges.

Also, some folks don’t function very well at those hours. Sounds sort of “gulag like” to me.

And, what about court clerks and other support staff? Additionally, by putting courts in out of the way detention locations and scheduling hearings at odd times, DOJ limits transparency. It’s harder for the press and other “outsiders” to observe.

Moreover, what happens to existing dockets of those IJs who “volunteer?” Reassigning 50 currently sitting Immigration Judges to the Southern Border on a rotating basis for one year would require the rescheduling of nearly 40,000 cases from their “home” dockets. Those cases, many already years old, are likely to be sent to the end of the docket, several years out. This is classic “aimless docket reshuffling” which increases backlogs and inhibits fairness and due process.

Finally, what’s going to happen to a “volunteer” Immigration Judge who takes due process seriously, slows down the cases so individuals can get lawyers, takes time for full presentation of the cases by both sides, and writes carefully reasoned decisions granting asylum or alternative forms of protection. Chances are they will be considered “unproductive,” “not with the program,” “not carrying their weight,” or “not committed to carrying out the Attorney General’s priorities” (yes, folks, Immigration Judges actually are given “performance ratings,” and one of the elements has to do with supporting “agency priorities”)? That’s likely to be “career limiting.”

Final question: How would you like to have your life determined by a judge working (for the “chief prosecutor”) under these conditions?

PWS

03/10/17

TIME: Deportation Can Be a Death Sentence — We Should Be Concerned About “Quick Removal Schemes” By The Administration & Continued Deterioration of Due Process And Fairness For Asylum Seekers – Particularly Those Unrepresented — In U.S. Immigration Court!

http://time.com/4696017/deportation-death-refugees-asylum/

Conchita Cruz and Swapna Reddy, co-founders of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project at the Urban Justice Center, write:

“For one immigrant group—asylum seekers already living in the United States—the fear is especially intense: deportation is a death sentence.
While thousands showed up to support refugee families at airports in response to the refugee ban, many Americans do not realize that a different group of refugee families stands to be picked up in raids, detained and wrongfully deported from the United States. These refugees are called “asylum seekers” because they are seeking refugee status from inside the United States instead of abroad.
For many asylum seekers, there is no mechanism to apply for refugee status abroad, which causes them to come to the U.S.-Mexico border and turn themselves in, seeking refuge. Like their counterparts in airports, they have experienced incredible violence in their countries of origin. They have been brutally raped, threatened by gunpoint to join gangs, or witnessed the murder of loved ones.
In response, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) holds asylum seekers in detention centers for weeks or months until they pass a preliminary interview with an asylum officer. If they secure release, they move in with relatives or friends while remaining in deportation proceedings pending a full asylum trial.
Asylum seekers do not have a right to government-appointed counsel though their lives hang in the balance. Instead, families are forced to navigate the complex immigration system alone in a language they do not understand. Many also suffer from trauma-based disabilities such as post-traumatic stress disorder due to the persecution they experienced in the countries they fled.”

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Perhaps contrary to popular perception, we often return individuals to dangerous and life-threatening situations. That’s because of the somewhat arcane “nexus” requirement for asylum that only covers persecution because of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.

By manipulating these definitions, U.S. Government authorities often can deny protection even to individuals who clearly face life-threatening danger upon return. The Government has worked particularly hard to develop technical legal criteria to disqualify those fleeing danger in the Northern Triangle.

Given the complexity and the highly legalistic nature of the system, competent representation by an attorney is a requirement for due process. For example, according to TRAC, for a sample population of Northern Triangle “women with children,” slightly more than 26% of those with lawyers got favorable decisions from the Immigration Court. Without lawyers, only 1.5% succeeded.

And, if the law were interpreted more reasonably and generously, in accordance with the spirit of asylum protection, I think that a substantial majority of those applying for asylum from the Northern Triangle would be granted relief. Pressure for more favorable interpretations will not come from unrepresented individuals who can’t speak English, let alone articulate, document, and support sophisticated legal arguments for better interpretations of protection laws.

PWS

03/09/17

CNN: Is Trump’s Order To Hire 5,000 More Border Agents a “10-Year Plan?”

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/07/politics/border-agents-cbp-hiring-slow/index.html

Tal Kopan reports

“Washington (CNN) — Optimistic internal estimates say that it could still take five to 10 years for Customs and Border Protection to hire all the additional agents President Donald Trump has ordered, even if the agency gets a wish list of requests to make hiring easier, according to documents obtained by CNN.

CBP has long struggled to even keep up with attrition in its ranks, and was staffed below currently targeted levels even before the President’s January executive orders called for 5,000 more agents.
CBP’s acting commissioner spelled out a series of steps the agency would need, either from other agencies, its parent DHS or Congress, in order to hire more agents in a memo for the deputy secretary last month, according to a copy obtained by CNN.
But even those measures would only help so much, the memo makes clear.
The hurdles are just the latest practical difficulty faced by Trump’s attempts to substantially increase immigration enforcement in the US. His moves to vastly increase the number of undocumented immigrants detained and deported have rankled Democrats and spread fear in immigrant communities. In addition to his long-promised border wall, Trump has ordered a substantial increase in personnel, including the CBP surge.”

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Read the full article at the link. Let’s see, if hiring 5,000 additional Border Patrol Agents takes DHS as long as 10 years, how long will it take to hire 10,000 additional ICE Agents? 20 years? 25 years?

As Nolan Rappaport has mentioned to me, it’s critical that high standards be maintained. Not only does lowering standards and training to meet goals increase the chances of due process and human rights violations, but it could be an opportunity for corruption and for international criminal cartels and gangs to penetrate the U.S. law enforcement system.

PWS

03/08/17

CNN: Does Sudden Drop In S. Border Stops Mean Trump’s “Get Tough” Policy Is Working? Only Time Will Tell, But DHS Views News Favorably!

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/08/politics/border-crossings-huge-drop-trump-tough-talk/index.html

Tal Kopan reports:

“Washington (CNN) Illegal Southwest border crossings were down 40% last month, according to just released Customs and Border Protection numbers — a sign that President Donald Trump’s hardline rhetoric and policies on immigration may be having a deterrent effect.

Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly himself announced the month-to-month numbers, statistics that CBP usually quietly posts on its website without fanfare.
According to CBP data, the 40% drop in illegal Southwest border crossings from January to February is far outside normal seasonal trends. Typically, the January to February change is actually an increase of 10% to 20%.
The drop breaks a nearly 20-year trend, as CBP data going back to 2000 shows an uptick in apprehensions every February.
The number of apprehensions and inadmissible individuals presenting at the border was 18,762 people in February, down from 31,578 in January.
It will still take months to figure out if the decrease in apprehensions is an indication of a lasting Trump effect on immigration patterns. Numbers tend to decrease seasonally in the winter and increase into the spring months.
But the sharp downtick after an uptick at the end of the Obama administration could fit the narrative that it takes tough rhetoric on immigration — backed up by policy — to get word-of-mouth warnings to undocumented immigrants making the harrowing journey to the border.”

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Read the full article at the link.

PWS

03/089/17

The Human Costs Of Trumpism — Kids In Danger, Abandoned By U.S.!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/world/americas/trump-refugee-ban-children-central-america.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&_r=0

The NY Times reports:

“SAN SALVADOR — Veronica picked up some modeling clay, molded it into little human figures with her hands — and then dug holes into the sculpture’s face.

“Look,” said Veronica, 9, showing off the creation to her aunt. “That’s how Mamá ended up.”

For more than a year, Veronica and her sister have been in hiding here in El Salvador, hoping to receive refugee status in the United States. The two girls were doing homework at their dining room table when masked men burst in and gunned down their grandparents — the community’s only two health workers — on rumors that the couple had been tipping off the police about gangs in the neighborhood.

Like many thousands of others, Veronica and her sister applied for sanctuary in the United States under a special Obama administration effort to grapple with the violence that has gutted Central America and sent waves of its people on a desperate march toward the American border.

But on Monday, the Trump administration announced a four-month suspension on all refugee admissions to the United States so security procedures can be improved and, perhaps most significantly, cut the number of total refugees allowed into the country by more than half.

“We can’t remain in the same place,” said the girls’ aunt, Reina, who is seeking refugee status for her nieces, witnesses to the double homicide. “We got a call last weekend telling us that they’d find us under whatever rock we were hiding.”

When President Trump first tried to freeze the nation’s refugee program in January, the courts jumped in and thwarted his executive order.

But one vital limit that the courts did allow — and which Mr. Trump’s new order continues — is a drastic reduction in the number of refugees admitted to the United States this fiscal year, from 110,000 under President Barack Obama to Mr. Trump’s revised cap: 50,000.

And those seats are mostly taken already.”

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We supposedly don’t want folks sending their kids on a dangerous journey to the U.S. to escape life-threatening situations in the Northern Triangle. So, the Obama Administration finally creates a very, very modest program for processing refugees (mostly women and children) in the Northern Triangle.

But, the Trump Administration comes along and reduces refugee numbers and suspends refugee admissions. So, why are we surprised that kids continue to make the dangerous journey with the help of smugglers. Basically, what the Trump Administration has done is to 1) endanger kids, and 2) enrich smugglers?

PWS

03/07/17

NY TIMES OPINION: James Traub Says Refugee Issues Are More Nuanced Than Most Of Us Want To Admit!

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/opinion/the-hard-truth-about-refugees.html?emc=edit_ty_20170307&nl=opinion-today&nlid=79213886&te=1&_r=0&referer=

“The situation is different here. Since the United States has no real refugee problem, save one fabricated by Mr. Trump and conservative activists, and no immigrant crime wave, the chief answer has to be on the level of the opinion corridor: Liberal urbanites have to accept that many Americans react to multicultural pieties by finding something else — sometimes their own white identity — to embrace. If there’s a culture war, everyone loses; but history tells us that liberals lose worse.

I believe that liberalism can be preserved only if liberals learn to distinguish between what must be protected at all cost and what must be, not discarded, but reconsidered — the unquestioned virtue of cosmopolitanism, for example, or of free trade. If we are to honor the human rights of refugees, we must find a way to do so that commands political majorities. Otherwise we’ll keep electing leaders who couldn’t care less about those rights.”

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Read the entire thought-provoking op-ed at the link.

PWS

30/07/17

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