Category: AMERICA’S REAL IMMIGRATION CRISIS: THE ATTACK ON DUE PROCESS IN THE UNITED STATES IMMIGRATION COURTS

POST EDITORIAL SLAMS INSTITUTIONALIZED CHILD ABUSE BY TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION KAKISTOCRACY! — Human Rights Abuses “Business As Usual” Under Anti-Values Administration!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-trump-administration-traumatizes-children-in-the-name-of-scaring-migrants-away/2018/04/29/fe779b50-4a5a-11e8-827e-190efaf1f1ee_story.html?utm_term=.f866c5f999d8

The WashPost Editorial Board writes:

By Editorial Board April 29 at 7:46 PM

INFANTS, TODDLERS, tweens, teens — Trump administration officials are less interested in the age of an unauthorized child migrant than they are in removing the child from his or her parents as a means of deterring illegal border-crossers. That plan, first floated by White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly last year when he was homeland security secretary, was widely regarded as so callous and such a radical departure from historical practice that it was unthinkable for any U.S. government.

If only.

In fact, not only has the idea of systematically separating undocumented children and parents gained currency among top officials determined to turn the tide on illegal entry, it’s already happening with increasing frequency. The Department of Homeland Security insists it has not adopted the practice as a matter of official policy — despite White House pressure to do so — but administration officials acknowledge that hundreds of children, including scores younger than 4, have been taken from their parents in the past few months.

By now it’s clear that there are few red lines President Trump is unwilling to cross in his crusade to rid the United States of undocumented immigrants. For Mr. Trump, having washed his hands of the “dreamers” — young migrants, most in their 20s, raised and educated in the United States after being brought here as children — it’s hardly a moral leap to inflict lasting psychological damage on younger children by taking them from their parents if it will further his goal of combating illegal immigration.

As reported by The Post’s Maria Sacchetti, top immigration and border officials have recommended that all parents who enter the country illegally with their children be detained and prosecuted, meaning the automatic separation of minors, who cannot legally be held in jails or detention centers designed for adults. Until recently, that was extremely uncommon; most parents who crossed the border with children would be released pending an immigration court hearing, or, in some cases, detained together in a facility designed for families. Prosecuting parents for illegal entry, a misdemeanor under federal law, has been exceedingly rare — specifically because of the harm it would cause blameless children.

In addition, many of the parents who would be prosecuted are eligible under U.S. law to seek and be granted asylum. That’s hardly a stretch for migrants from El Salvador and Honduras, beset by drug cartels, gang violence, domestic abuse and some of the world’s highest homicide rates. In the last three months of 2017, more than two-thirds of the 30,000 asylum seekers crossed into the country illegally — and it is far-fetched to exempt from prosecution only those who announce themselves as asylum seekers at legal ports of entry, as Homeland Security officials propose. Are desperate, impoverished people fleeing violence to be penalized because they enter the United States in the wrong place?

The United States has a legitimate interest in deterring illegal border-crossing. It is within its rights to detain and deport individuals and families who fail to make a persuasive case for asylum. But to splinter families and traumatize children in the name of frightening away migrants, many of whom may have a legitimate asylum claim, is not just heartless. It is beyond the pale for a civilized country.

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

Pretty ugly! Eventually our country, particularly future generations, will pay a high price for abandoning civilized values and human decency. The world is watching and the historical record is being made of the Trump Administration’s cowardly response to humanitarian tragedies and the folks who are enabling him and his White Nationalist cronies.

Get on the “right side of history!” Join the New ‘Due Process Army!”

PWS

04-30-18

Related posts:

  1. MARIA SACCHETTI IN WASHPOST: INSIDE THE “NAG” (NEW AMERICAN GULAG) — CRUEL, INHUMAN, DEGRADING TREATMENT APPEARS TO BE WIDESPREAD IN SO-CALLED “CIVIL” IMMIGRATION DETENTION! — Where’s The Outrage? — Where’s The Congressional Oversight? — Why Aren’t Guys Like “Gonzo” & Homan Who Knowingly Promote Violations Of Legal & Human Rights As (Unlawful) “Immigration Deterrence” Under Investigation For Their Roles In Violating Human, Constitutional Rights!
  2. TRUMP TREATS KIDS AS HUMAN PAWNS IN UGLY POLITICAL CHESS GAME – Administration’s Continued Spreading Of False Narrative On Migration Makes Continuing Migration Outside of Legal System Inevitable!
  3. AMEN: A PRAYER IN THE TIME OF KAKISTOCRACY!
  4. EUGENE ROBINSON @ WASHPOST: KID KILLERS ON THE LOOSE: “Sixteen-year-old Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez died horribly and needlessly. The Trump administration’s policy of deliberate, punishing cruelty toward Latin American migrants killed him.”

RACISM IN AMERICA: WILL YOU OR YOUR FAMILY BE NEXT IN THE “NEW AMERICAN GULAG?” — Think It Can’t Happen Because You Are A US Citizen? — Guess Again! — DHS Has Detained Nearly 1,500 Citizens, & They Are Largely Indifferent To The Problem! Of Course It Will Get Worse Under Trump, Unless You’re A “White Guy!”

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=8d20e42e-cd60-4330-b0f1-f808600e59b5

Paige St. John & Joel Rubin report for the LA Times;

Immigration officers in the United States operate under a cardinal rule: Keep your hands off Americans. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents repeatedly target U.S. citizens for deportation by mistake, making wrongful arrests based on incomplete government records, bad data and lax investigations, according to a Times review of federal lawsuits, internal ICE documents and interviews.

Since 2012, ICE has released from its custody more than 1,480 people after investigating their citizenship claims, according to agency figures. And a Times review of Department of Justice records and interviews with immigration attorneys uncovered hundreds of additional cases in the country’s immigration courts in which people were forced to prove they are Americans and sometimes spent months or even years in detention.

Victims include a landscaper snatched in a Home Depot parking lot in Rialto and held for days despite his son’s attempts to show agents the man’s U.S. passport; a New York resident locked up for more than three years fighting deportation efforts after a federal agent mistook his father for someone who wasn’t a U.S. citizen; and a Rhode Island housekeeper mistakenly targeted twice, resulting in her spending a night in prison the second time even though her husband had brought her U.S. passport to a court hearing.

They and others described the panic and feeling of powerlessness that set in as agents took them into custody without explanation and ignored their claims of citizenship.

The wrongful arrests account for a small fraction of the more than 100,000 arrests ICE makes each year, and it’s unclear whether the Trump administration’s aggressive push to increase deportations will lead to more mistakes. But the detentions of U.S. citizens amount to an unsettling type of collateral damage in the government’s effort to remove undocumented or unwanted immigrants.

The errors reveal flaws in the way ICE identifies people for deportation, including its reliance on databases that are incomplete and plagued by mistakes. The wrongful arrests also highlight a presumption that pervades U.S. immigration agencies and courts that those born outside the United States are not here legally unless electronic records show otherwise. And when mistakes are not quickly remedied, citizens are forced into an immigration court system where they must fight to prove they should not be removed from the country, often without the help of an attorney.

The Times found that the two groups most vulnerable to becoming mistaken ICE targets are the children of immigrants and citizens born outside the country.

Matthew Albence, the head of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, declined to be interviewed but said in a written statement that investigating citizen claims can be a complex task involving searches of electronic and paper records as well as personal interviews. He said ICE updates records when errors are found and agents arrest only those they have probable cause to suspect are eligible for deportation.

“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement takes very seriously any and all assertions that an individual detained in its custody may be a U.S. citizen,” he said.

But The Times’ review of federal documents and lawsuits turned up cases in which Americans were arrested based on mistakes or cursory ICE investigations and some who were repeatedly targeted because the government failed to update its records. Immigration lawyers said federal agents rarely conduct interviews before making arrests and getting ICE to correct its records is difficult.

. . . .

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

Read the complete, very scary, story at the link.

Just more support for my position that DHS should not be given any additional agent positions until they account for how they are using (and in too many cases misusing) their current positions. If there is anything that the Trumpsters have clearly shown it’s their total disdain for the Constitution and laws of the U.S. except as they might advance and protect the parochial interests of Trump and his supporters.

There is little doubt that the Trump/Sessions/Miller/Homan crew see DHS as “Internal Security Police” — largely beyond anyone’s control — that they will use for partisan political purposes. The case for the ultimate abolition of ICE in its current form and leadership looks stronger all the time.

And, as usual these days, Congress is AWOL while this Administration undermines American democracy.

Now, a REAL Attorney General might be concerned about getting to the bottom of this lawless behavior affecting the rights of U.S. citizens. But, White Nationalist Jeff Sessions is too busy creating false narratives, demonizing immigrants, and undermining the rights of Hispanic Americans, LGBTQ Americans, and African-Americans to be bothered with fundamental violations of Constitutional rights particularly where the victims aren’t White Guys. Jim Crow lives! And all of us should be worried about where he will strike next.

PWS

04-29-18

Related posts:

  1. PROFESSOR FITZ BRUNDAGE @ WASHPOST: Can We Regain Our Humanitarian Values In The Age Of Trump? — “We must shine a spotlight on cruel and illegal policies that undermine our national ideals and find the wisdom and the courage to do better.”
  2. LA TIMES: ICE DRAGNET SNARES US CITIZENS — Quick To Arrest, Slow To Release — The “Crime” Of Being Latino & Born In Mexico — How Would YOU Prove U.S. Citizenship If The ICEMEN Cometh?
  3. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  4. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: CLYDE W. FORD @ LA TIMES: “Opinion: The immigration crisis and the racism driving it have roots in Hitler’s ‘bible’”

AMERICAN INJUSTICE: ADVOCATES COMPLAIN ABOUT US IMMIGRATION JUDGE V. STUART COUCH’S BIAS AGAINST CENTRAL AMERICAN WOMEN SEEKING ASYLUM – APPEALS BOARD AGREES, FINDING COUCH’S RULINGS “CLEARLY ERRONEOUS” IN MANY CASES – Now They Fear That Judge Couch Has A “Kindred Spirit” In The Overtly Xenophobic Jeff Sessions!

Judge in case Sessions picked for immigrant domestic violence asylum review issued ‘clearly erroneous’ decisions, says appellate court

By: Tal Kopan, CNN

Jeff Sessions recently used his special authority as attorney general to review an asylum case that could have sweeping implications for how the US treats immigrants fleeing domestic violence.

Newly released records now show that the case he handpicked, which involves a Central American woman fleeing domestic abuse from her ex-husband, comes from a judge who has been repeatedly rebuked by appellate judges for his multiple rejections of asylum claims from victims of domestic abuse.

Advocates and immigration attorneys fear that Sessions could be using the case as an opportunity to reverse case law that has protected Central American women fleeing violence and sexual assault from husbands by granting them asylum in the US.Stuart

Couch, an immigration judge in Charlotte, North Carolina, has sought to justify denying such women the right to stay in the US in multiple cases, even with the appellate body repeatedly ruling that his findings were “clearly erroneous,” according to records released after a Freedom of Information Act request.

Couch’s decision in the case Matter of A-B-, a convention of naming cases in immigration court that protects the individual’s identity, is a rare opinion that Sessions has referred to himself for review. Sessions has been using a little-known authority to refer immigration cases to himself for review, allowing him to almost single-handedly direct how immigration law is interpreted in this country.

In reviewing Couch’s decision, Sessions invited interested parties to comment on the notion of whether being the victim of a crime can count for asylum, a complicated aspect of asylum law.

The case was initially kept secret by the Justice Department and immigration courts on privacy grounds, but was made public by immigration attorneys as a domestic violence case. Input on the case was due to Sessions on Friday.

It was also later revealed that Sessions decided to consider the case over the objections of the Department of Homeland Security, which had asked him to hold off on diving into the case until the Board of Immigration Appeals, the immigration courts’ appellate body, decided on a request from Couch to take the case back up themselves. Sessions denied DHS’s request.

The Department of Justice declined to comment on why or how Sessions chose the case, and it’s not known how he will rule. When Sessions initially referred himself the case, a department official said he was considering it “because of a lack of clarity in the court system on the issue.”

More on Couch’s decisions: http://www.cnn.com/2018/04/28/politics/jeff-sessions-immigration-courts-domestic-violence-asylum/index.html

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

You should read Tal’s entire article for a profile of just how biased Judge Couch — the second most reversed Judge among hundreds in the Immigration Courts — is in asylum cases.  He had 58 cases reversed by the BIA just in 2017, while piling up an “asylum denial rate” 26% above the national average!

And, remember that this “isn’t the Ninth Circuit” by any stretch of the imagination. The BIA is a considered a conservative tribunal with a strong predilection to rule for the DHS to begin with!

I’m glad that the anti-asylum bias that runs through too much of today’s Immigration Court system, and is actually fanned and encouraged by Sessions, is finally being exposed. Even if Congress won’t solve this glaring problem by removing these Courts from the DOJ and creating an independent Immigration Court, with a merit-based hiring system, I hope that the Article III reviewing courts are getting the picture that much of what they are getting from EOIR in the area of asylum denials is the product of an intentionally unfair and biased system.

In this outrageous example, Matter of A-B-, the BIA was actually quite properly trying to “rein in” Judge Couch. Rather than encouraging justice, Sessions actually interfered with the BIA’s actions, even though neither the BIA nor any party had requested his review. What kind of “court system” allows a law enforcement official to control the results? Sounds like something directly out of the DOS Country Report on a Third World Dictatorship!

Judge Couch actually was appointed during the Obama Administration, illustrating the widespread and chronic nature of the problem of anti-asylum biased judging at EOIR. The Obama Administration was not accused of the overtly politicized hiring engaged in by the Bush Justice Department.

Nevertheless, from a statistical standpoint, the opaque, closed, and glacial (two-year average) Obama DOJ selection system was biased in favor of attorneys from government backgrounds and against those with experience representing asylum applicants by an astounding 9 to  1 ratio! Many believe this intentionally produced a BIA and an Immigration Court that would more or less “go along to get along” with construing the law and the facts against asylum applicants from countries considered to be “enforcement priorities” by the Obama Administration.

It’s time to put an end to this charade of justice and Due Process in our Immigration Courts. We need an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court with a merit-based selection system.  If not, we need a “helpful intervention” by the Article III Courts to end this chronically unfair and dysfunctional administration of justice by the Department of Justice! 

PWS

04-28-18

Related posts:

  1. HON. JEFFREY CHASE: Speaking Out Against The “Notable Minority” Of U.S. Immigration Judges Who Demonstrated Bias Against Women & Asylum Seekers – “Think about that: some federally appointed immigration judges cheered the fact that women who had been violently raped and beaten in their country can no longer find refuge here, and will be sent back to face more violence, and possibly death. Will there be any consequences for their actions? Were the many outstanding immigration judges who have been proud to grant such cases in the past, who were saddened and sickened by this decision, able to openly jeer or weep or curse this decision? Or would that have been viewed as dangerous?”
  2. THE EVER-AMAZING TAL @ CNN GIVES US THE “LOWDOWN” ON SESSIONS’S ALL-OUT PLAN TO DISABLE US PROTECTION LAWS – Pulling Out All The Stops In Attempting To Turn US Legal Protection System Into A “Killing Floor” For Most Vulnerable Refugees! – No Wonder Many U.S. Immigration Judges See Looming Conflict With Oath To Uphold U.S. Constitution & Exercise Independent Judgment Coming At Them with Breakneck Speed!
  3. GONZO’S WORLD: WHITE NATIONALIST AG MAKES VICIOUS UNFOUNDED ATTACK ON REFUGEES & THEIR ATTORNEYS THE CENTERPIECE OF HIS SPEECH TO LARGEST CLASS OF INCOMING U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGES — “Good lawyers using all their talents and skills work every day … like water seeping through an earthen dam to get around the plain words of (immigration law) to advance their clients’ interests.”
  4. HALLOWEEN HORROR STORY: Opaque & Biased Politicized Judicial Hiring Denies Migrants The Fair & Impartial Adjudication To Which They Are Constitutionally Entitled – Given The Generous Legal Standards, A Worldwide Refugee Crisis, & Asylum Officers’ Positive Findings In Most Cases, Asylum Seekers Should Be Winning The Vast Majority Of Immigration Court Cases — Instead, They Are Being “Railroaded” By A Biased System & Complicit Article III Courts!

CALL OUT THE CAVALRY, WE NEED REINFORCEMENTS! – “CARAVAN” OF A FEW HUNDRED MEEK REFUGEE WOMEN & CHILDREN REACH S. BORDER, THREATEN TO EXERCISE LEGAL RIGHTS TO APPLY FOR ASYLUM, AS TRUMP, SESSIONS, NIELSEN, HOMAN, & CO. COWER IN FEAR WITHIN “FORTRESS AMERICA” — Trump Administration Views Individual Constitutional Rights As “Dangerous Loopholes” & “Threats To National Security” That Must Be Eliminated – “Grandfathering” Sought For Current & Former Trump Officials, Friends, Family Who Might Need To Assert Fifth Amendment Right Against Self-Incrimination!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/at-the-us-border-a-diminished-migrant-caravan-readies-for-an-unwelcoming-reception/2018/04/27/7946a154-4a52-11e8-827e-190efaf1f1ee_story.html?utm_term=.cd296045d4c6

Nick Miroff reports for the Washington Post:

TIJUANA, Mexico — The American president, a former real estate mogul, does not want Byron Garcia in the United States. But the Honduran teenager was too busy building his own hotel empire this week to worry much about that.

Vermont Avenue and Connecticut Avenue were his. Now he was looking to move up-market.

The mini-Monopoly board on the dusty floor of the migrant shelter was small, but it fit well in the small space beside the tents. His older sister, Carolina, rolled a 2 and landed on Oriental Avenue.

“That’ll be $500,” said Garcia, 15, gleefully extending his hand. “I love this game!”

Garcia is coming to America on Sunday. Or maybe not. His mother, Orfa Marin, 33, isn’t sure it will be a good day to walk up to the border crossing and tell a U.S. officer that her family needs asylum. She knows President Trump wants to stop them.

Marin and her three children are among the 300 or so remaining members of the migrant caravan who have arrived here at the end of a month-long geographic and political odyssey, a trip that has piqued Trump’s Twitter anger and opened new cracks in U.S.-Mexico relations.

Central American migrant children play Monopoly at the Movimiento Juventud 2000 shelter on April 26, 2018 in Tijuana, Mexico. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

The organizers of the caravan say they are planning to hold a rally Sunday at Friendship Park, the international park where a 15-foot border fence splits the beach. From there, activists and attorneys plan to lead a group of the migrants to the U.S. port of entry at San Ysidro, Calif., where they will approach U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers and formally request asylum.

. . . .

Trump has ordered U.S. soldiers to deploy and Homeland Security officials to block the migrants. But the diminished version of the caravan that has arrived here, mostly women and children, has only underscored its meekness.

Migrant families arrive on a bus at the Ejercito de Salvacion shelter on April 26, 2018 in Tijuana, Mexico after driving from Mexicali, Mexico. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

The families are drained after weeks of travel, coughing children and pinto beans. They have crowded here into shelters in the city’s squalid north end, where the sidewalks are smeared with dog droppings and skimpily dressed women hand out drink promotions among the strip clubs and brothels. The tall American border fence is two blocks away.

Children play on the sidewalks outside the shelters, the boredom broken whenever a car with donations arrives to drop off clothes and toys.

Central Americans migrants in Mexico have long been treated as a kind of renewable natural resource, ripe for exploitation by thieves, predators and politicians. The geopolitical importance attached to this particular group was a sign to many here that the U.S. president had recognized an opportunity, too.

“We’re not terrorists or bad people,” Marin said.

Regardless of its size, Trump officials have measured this caravan in symbolic terms, as an egregious example of the “loophole” they want to shut and an immigration system whose generosity is being abused, they say, by hundreds of thousands of Central Americas trying to dupe it.

. . . .

“These people have no option but to seek refuge in another country, and they have every right to seek asylum, they have decided to face the consequences and to be strong in demanding what is their right,” said Leonard Olsen, 26, a law student and one of several caravan organizers from the United States. He wore a tattered Philadelphia Eagles cap and arrived in Tijuana on Thursday with a busload of women and children.

. . . .

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

I can understand why guys like Trump, Sessions, Nielsen, and Homan would be scared by mothers with talented kids who show the kind of courage, honesty, humanity, and respect for law that they themselves so conspicuously lack.

Without 5th Amendment protections, who would join the Trump Administration?

PWS

04-28-18

Related posts:

  1. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  2. CRUEL & UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT: DHS KAKISTOCRACY WANTS TO TARGET FAMILIES WITH CHILDREN FOR SEPARATION AND CRIMINAL PROSECUTION OF PARENTS AS PART OF WAR ON HUMANITY AT OUR SOUTHERN BORDER – Every American Will Bear The Stain Of Our Government’s Actions!
  3. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  4. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”

WITH HELP FROM GIBSON DUNN, “GANG OF 16” RETIRED US IMMIGRATION JUDGES FILES AMICUS BRIEF OPPOSING AG’S INTERFERENCE IN MATTER OF A-B-

HERE’S THE BRIEF:

AB-Brief Amici Curiae of Sixteen Former Immigration Judges and Members of t…

HERE’S THE “STATEMENT OF INTEREST:”

Amici Curiae are sixteen former immigration judges and members of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“Board”). Out of respect for the law to which they have dedicated their careers, Amici feel compelled to file this brief in support of Respondent. Amici are deeply concerned about the procedural violations in this case—in particular the Attorney General’s certification of a question that was not properly considered by the Immigration Judge and was not considered at all by the Board. This complete disregard for established procedure is alarming. It plainly violates binding federal regulations governing the narrow circumstances under which Attorney General certification is permitted and it raises serious due process concerns.

Ultimately, it is within Congress’s authority—not the Attorney General’s—to define the boundaries of asylum. And Congress has already determined that a person can qualify for asylum based on persecution that independently might constitute private criminal activity.

Amici urge the Office of the Attorney General not to take any further action on a question that is not properly before it, and therefore urge that the referral order be vacated.

 

HERE’S THE TOC:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 1 STATEMENT OF INTEREST OF AMICI CURIAE………………………………………………………….. 1 BACKGROUND ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 6 ARGUMENT …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 8

  1. This case is not properly before the Attorney General ……………………………………. 8
    1. Federal regulations require that the Immigration Judge issue a
      decision on asylum before certifying a case to the Board. ……………………. 9
    2. The Attorney General may only review a Board decision, but there
      was none………………………………………………………………………………………. 12
  2. Bypassing the Board nullifies critical procedural safeguards…………………………. 13
    1. The Board, a neutral and independent body, with deep knowledge
      of its own precedent, should consider the effect of new case law on
      that precedent in the first instance. ………………………………………………….. 13
    2. Bypassing the Board raises serious due process concerns…………………… 14
  3. The Attorney General cannot override Congress’s judgment under the
    guise of a procedural mechanism……………………………………………………………….. 16
  4. “Persecution” can be carried out or threatened by private actors that the government cannot or will not control………………………………………………………… 19

CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 21

 

HERE’S THE “GANG OF 16”

  •   The Honorable Steven Abrams served as an Immigration Judge at the New York, VarickStreet, and Queens Wackenhut Immigration Courts in New York City. Prior to his appointment to the bench, he worked as a Special U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York, and before that as District Counsel, Special Counsel for criminal litigation, and general attorney for the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (“INS”).
  •   The Honorable Sarah M. Burr served as an Immigration Judge in New York starting in 1994 and was appointed as Assistant Chief Immigration Judge in charge of the New York, Fishkill, Ulster, Bedford Hills, and Varick Street immigration courts in 2006. She served in this capacity until January 2011, when she returned to the bench full time until her retirement in 2012. Prior to her appointment, she worked as a staff attorney for the Criminal Defense Division of the Legal Aid Society in its trial and appeals bureaus and also as the supervising attorney in its immigration unit.
  •   The Honorable Jeffrey S. Chase served as an Immigration Judge in New York City from 1995 to 2007 and was an attorney advisor and senior legal advisor at the Board from 2007 to 2017. He now works in private practice as an independent consultant on immigration law, and is of counsel to the law firm of DiRaimondo & Masi in New York City. He received the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s (“AILA”) annual pro bono award in 1994 and chaired AILA’s Asylum Reform Task Force.
  •   The Honorable George T. Chew served as an Immigration Judge in New York from 1995 to 2017. Previously, he served as a trial attorney at the former INS.

2

  •   The Honorable Bruce J. Einhorn served as an Immigration Judge in Los Angeles from 1990 to 2007. He now serves as an Adjunct Professor of Law at Pepperdine University School of Law, and is a Visiting Professor of International, Immigration, and Refugee Law at the University of Oxford.
  •   The Honorable Cecelia M. Espenoza served as a Member of the Board from 2000 to 2003 and in the Executive Office for Immigration Review (“EOIR”) Office of the General Counsel from 2003 to 2017 where she served as Senior Associate General Counsel, Privacy Officer, Records Officer, and Senior FOIA Counsel. She now works in private practice as an independent consultant on immigration law. Prior to her EOIR appointments, she was a law professor at St. Mary’s University (1997–2000) and the University of Denver College of Law (1990–97), where she taught Immigration Law and Crimes and supervised students in the Immigration and Criminal Law Clinics. She has published several articles on immigration law. She received the Outstanding Service Award from the Colorado Chapter of AILA in 1997.
  •   The Honorable Noel Ferris served as an Immigration Judge in New York from 1994 to 2013 and as an attorney advisor to the Board from 2013 until her retirement in 2016. Previously, she served as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York from 1985 to 1990 and as Chief of the Immigration Unit from 1987 to 1990.
  •   The Honorable John F. Gossart, Jr. served as an Immigration Judge from 1982 until his retirement in 2013. He is the former president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. At the time of his retirement, he was the third most senior immigration judge in the United States. From 1975 to 1982, he served in various positions with the former INS, including as a general attorney, naturalization attorney, trial attorney, and deputy assistant

3

commissioner for naturalization. He is also the co-author of the National Immigration Court Practice Manual, which is used by all practitioners throughout the United States in immigration-court proceedings. From 1997 to 2016, Judge Gossart was an adjunct professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law teaching immigration law, and more recently was an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland School of Law, also teaching immigration law. He is also a past board member of the Immigration Law Section of the Federal Bar Association.

  •   The Honorable Carol King served as an Immigration Judge from 1995 to 2017 in San Francisco and was a temporary member of the Board for six months between 2010 and 2011. She previously worked in private practice for ten years, focusing on immigration law. She also taught immigration law for five years at Golden Gate University School of Law and is currently on the faculty of the Stanford University Law School Trial Advocacy Program. Judge King currently works as an advisor on removal proceedings.
  •   The Honorable Margaret McManus was appointed as an Immigration Judge in 1991 and retired from the bench this January after twenty-seven years. Before her time on the bench, she worked in several roles, including as a consultant to various nonprofit organizations on immigration matters (including Catholic Charities and Volunteers of Legal Services) and as a staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society, Immigration Unit, in New York.
  •   The Honorable Lory D. Rosenberg served on the Board from 1995 to 2002. She then served as Director of the Defending Immigrants Partnership of the National Legal Aid & Defender Association from 2002 until 2004. Prior to her appointment, she worked with the American Immigration Law Foundation from 1991 to 1995. She was also an adjunct Immigration Professor at American University Washington College of Law from 1997 to

4

2004. She is the founder of IDEAS Consulting and Coaching, LLC, a consulting service for immigration lawyers, and is the author of Immigration Law and Crimes. She currently works as Senior Advisor for the Immigrant Defenders Law Group.

  •   The Honorable Susan Roy started her legal career as a Staff Attorney at the Board, a position she received through the Attorney General Honors Program. She served as an Assistant Chief Counsel, National Security Attorney, and Senior Attorney for the DHS Office of Chief Counsel in Newark, NJ, and then became an Immigration Judge, also in Newark. She has been in private practice for nearly five years, and two years ago, opened her own immigration law firm. She is the New Jersey AILA Chapter Liaison to EOIR and is the Vice Chair of the Immigration Law Section of the New Jersey State Bar Association.
  •   The Honorable Paul W. Schmidt served as an Immigration Judge from 2003 to 2016 in Arlington, VA. He previously served as Chairman of the Board from 1995 to 2001, and as a Board Member from 2001 to 2003. He authored the landmark decision Matter of Kasinga, 21 I&N Dec. 357 (BIA 1995), extending asylum protection to victims of female genital mutilation. He served as Deputy General Counsel of the former INS from 1978 to 1987, serving as Acting General Counsel from 1979 to 1981 and 1986 to 1987. He was the managing partner of the Washington, DC office of Fragomen, DelRey & Bernsen from 1993 to 1995, and practiced business immigration law with the Washington, DC office of Jones, Day, Reavis and Pogue from 1987 to 1992, where he was a partner from 1990 to 1992. He was a founding member of the International Association of Refugee Law Judges (IARLJ), which he presently serves as Americas Vice President. He also consults, speaks, writes, and lectures at various forums throughout the country on immigration law topics.

5

  •   The Honorable William Van Wyke served as an Immigration Judge from 1995 until 2015 in New York City and York, PA.
  •   The Honorable Gustavo D. Villageliu served as a Member of the Board from July 1995 to April 2003. He then served as Senior Associate General Counsel for the EOIR until he retired in 2011. Before becoming a Board Member, Villageliu was an Immigration Judge in Miami, with both detained and non-detained dockets, as well as the Florida Northern Region Institutional Criminal Alien Hearing Docket from 1990 to 1995. Mr. Villageliu joined the Board as a staff attorney in January 1978, specializing in war criminal, investor, and criminal alien cases.
  •   The Honorable Polly A. Webber served as an Immigration Judge from 1995 to 2016 in San Francisco, with details to the Tacoma, Port Isabel (TX), Boise, Houston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Orlando immigration courts. Previously, she practiced immigration law from 1980 to 1995 in her own firm in San Jose, California. She served as National President of AILA from 1989 to 1990 and was a national AILA officer from 1985 to 1991. She also taught Immigration and Nationality Law for five years at Santa Clara University School of Law. She has spoken at seminars and has published extensively in the immigration law field.

HERE ARE THE ATTORNEYS AT GIBSON DUNN WHO MADE THIS HAPPEN:

Amer S. Ahmed

Ronald Kirk

Megan B. Kiernan

Lalitha D. Madduri

Chelsea G. Glover

 

 

Counsel for Amici Curiae

 

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

Thanks to all for making this happen. Great teamwork in the name of Due Process!

Special thanks to our colleague Judge Lory Diana Rosenberg who served as our “Group Leader” in working with Gibson Dunn and to Judge Jeffrey Chase for assembling the group and putting the “finishing touches” on the filing.

PWS

04-27-18

Related posts:

  1. “GANG” OF RETIRED US IMMIGRATION JUDGES IMMEDIATELY CONDEMNS LATEST OUTRAGEOUS ATTACK ON ASYLUM LAW, DUE PROCESS, & HUMAN RIGHTS BY SESSIONS IN MATTER OF A-B-!
  2. HON. JEFFREY CHASE: Speaking Out Against The “Notable Minority” Of U.S. Immigration Judges Who Demonstrated Bias Against Women & Asylum Seekers – “Think about that: some federally appointed immigration judges cheered the fact that women who had been violently raped and beaten in their country can no longer find refuge here, and will be sent back to face more violence, and possibly death. Will there be any consequences for their actions? Were the many outstanding immigration judges who have been proud to grant such cases in the past, who were saddened and sickened by this decision, able to openly jeer or weep or curse this decision? Or would that have been viewed as dangerous?”
  3. NY TIMES: Trump Mocks & Dehumanizes Vulnerable Refugees & His Administration Claims It’s OK To Return Them to Honduras; BUT The Facts Say The Opposite: Honduras Is An Armed Conflict Zone Where Gangs Exercise Quasi-Governmental Control & Those Who Resist Are Severely Punished, Often Maimed, Tortured Or Killed!
  4. ROUND TABLE NEWS:  Getting The Due Process Message Across — 9th Cir. Orders Regime To Respond To Round Table’s Amicus Briefs in Matter of A-B- Challenges!

CRUEL & UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT: DHS KAKISTOCRACY WANTS TO TARGET FAMILIES WITH CHILDREN FOR SEPARATION AND CRIMINAL PROSECUTION OF PARENTS AS PART OF WAR ON HUMANITY AT OUR SOUTHERN BORDER – Every American Will Bear The Stain Of Our Government’s Actions!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/top-homeland-security-officials-urge-criminal-prosecution-of-parents-who-cross-border-with-children/2018/04/26/a0bdcee0-4964-11e8-8b5a-3b1697adcc2a_story.html

Maria Sacchetti reports for WashPost:

The nation’s top immigration and border officials are urging Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to detain and prosecute all parents caught crossing the Mexican border illegally with their children, a stark change in policy that would result in the separation of families that until now have mostly been kept together.

If approved, the zero-tolerance measure could split up thousands of families, although officials say they would not prosecute those who turn themselves in at legal ports of entry and claim asylum. More than 20,000 of the 30,000 migrants who sought asylum during the first quarter — the period from October-December — of the current fiscal year crossed the border illegally.

In a memorandum that outlines the proposal and was obtained by The Washington Post, officials say that threatening adults with criminal charges and prison time would be the “most effective” way to reverse the steadily rising number of attempted crossings. Most parents now caught crossing the border illegally with their children are quickly released to await civil deportation hearings.

The memo sent to Nielsen on Monday — and signed by acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Thomas Homan, Director of Citizenship and Immigration Services L. Francis Cissna and Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin K. McAleenan — said attempted crossings by parents with children increased to nearly 700 a day last week, the highest level since 2016. The officials predicted that the number will continue to rise if Nielsen does not act.

Lee Gelernt, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who has filed a federal lawsuit in California over earlier instances of family separations at the border, said the proposal would make “children as young as 2 and 3 years old pawns in a cruel public policy experiment.”

. . . .

Philip G. Schrag, a Georgetown law professor and asylum expert, said that expanding the forced separation of parents and children could cause severe psychological harm to families that ultimately might have legal grounds under federal asylum law to remain in the United States permanently.

“I think it’s absolutely wrenching psychologically and terrible for both the children and the parents,” he said. “What are we doing to those children psychologically that will haunt us years down the road if they become Americans?”

Federal officials say asylum applications have skyrocketed in recent years, raising concerns about fraud. Advocates for immigrants say those seeking asylum have legitimate claims under federal law and are fleeing some of the world’s most dangerous countries.

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

Read Maria’s complete article at the link.

I associate myself completely with the remarks of my good friend and Georgetown Law colleague Professor Phil Schrag. Cruelty to children is stupid, counterproductive — children are our future — and morally wrong. It will definitely haunt us as a country for generations to come. It’s largely what I said before about the misguided policies of the Obama Administration. But, as with many things, the Trump Administration takes every dumb and wrong immigration policy of the past and multiplies it.

PWS

04-27-18

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. CALL OUT THE CAVALRY, WE NEED REINFORCEMENTS! – “CARAVAN” OF A FEW HUNDRED MEEK REFUGEE WOMEN & CHILDREN REACH S. BORDER, THREATEN TO EXERCISE LEGAL RIGHTS TO APPLY FOR ASYLUM, AS TRUMP, SESSIONS, NIELSEN, HOMAN, & CO. COWER IN FEAR WITHIN “FORTRESS AMERICA” — Trump Administration Views Individual Constitutional Rights As “Dangerous Loopholes” & “Threats To National Security” That Must Be Eliminated – “Grandfathering” Sought For Current & Former Trump Officials, Friends, Family Who Might Need To Assert Fifth Amendment Right Against Self-Incrimination!
  3. TRUMP TREATS KIDS AS HUMAN PAWNS IN UGLY POLITICAL CHESS GAME – Administration’s Continued Spreading Of False Narrative On Migration Makes Continuing Migration Outside of Legal System Inevitable!
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

JUSTICE ON ICE – SESSIONS DOJ’S “AMNESTY FOR WHITE COLLAR CRIMINALS” — BEATING UP UNDOCUMENTED MIGRANTS IN CRIMINAL COURT WHILE DOING A LOUSY JOB ON REAL CRIME – “NUMBERS GAME” CONCEALS WASTE, FRAUD AND ABUSE OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS @ DOJ — “If you’re working on a misdemeanor illegal entry case, as a matter of fact, you are not working on something more serious,” Purdon, who left office in 2015, told HuffPost. “It is a net drain on the scarce resources of U.S. attorneys. Full stop.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jeff-sessions-wants-to-make-the-justice-department-more-like-ice_us_5ae0f3d3e4b02baed1b60aff

Roque Planas reports for HuffPost:

When Tim Purdon became U.S. attorney for North Da kota in 2010, he had a priority: improving public safety on the state’s four Indian reservations. Prosecuting violent crimes on Indian reservations falls to the Justice Department, and Purdon himself had worked similar cases as a public defender before taking on the U.S. attorney job.

But when Purdon took office, he found that more than a third of his criminal caseload consisted of immigration prosecutions, even though North Dakota lies more than 1,000 miles from the border with Mexico. Despite the state’s proximity to Canada, the defendants were by and large Latin Americans who’d been caught in the U.S. after getting deported. The cases were easy to win. All prosecutors needed was to present paperwork proving the prior deportation. But the cases sapped time away from Purdon’s prosecutors, whom he’d have rather tasked with crimes on the reservations or white-collar cases.

That all happened under the Obama administration. But President Donald Trump has doubled down on immigration prosecutions, seeing it as a way to draft the Justice Department into his immigration crackdown. Earlier this month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced what he called a “zero tolerance” policy on immigration crime, directing all U.S. attorneys in the four Southwestern border states to prosecute every misdemeanor illegal border-crossing case “to the extent practicable.”

Purdon was livid.

“If you’re working on a misdemeanor illegal entry case, as a matter of fact, you are not working on something more serious,” Purdon, who left office in 2015, told HuffPost. “It is a net drain on the scarce resources of U.S. attorneys. Full stop.”

Despite Trump’s insistence that the border is in “crisis,” illegal entries from Mexico have hit their lowest level since 1971. But illegal entry prosecutions are still taking up half of the federal criminal courts’ workload. If Sessions gets his way, that percentage will continue to increase: Every U.S. attorney in the country will be doing more of the same work that Purdon complained about, and the five U.S. attorneys whose districts touch the southwest border will take on increasingly petty cases to keep the numbers up.

“We want to achieve this zero tolerance across the border and we are redirecting resources,” Sessions told a House Appropriations subcommittee on Thursday.

. . . .

“Isn’t the reality of the situation that the Justice Department is ICE?” Erendira Castillo, an attorney who has represented defendants facing immigration prosecutions for two decades in Tucson, told HuffPost. “Let’s call a spade a spade.”

. . . .

Doubling down on such small potatoes cases might make sense if the Justice Department did an effective job confronting more serious crimes. But its track record on more complex investigations doesn’t always inspire confidence.

Some 9 million Americans lost their homes in the aftermath of the 2007 housing and financial crisis. Despite widespread allegations that fraudulent and predatory behavior on the part of banks and peddlers of predatory mortgages drove that crisis, the Justice Department secured a conviction in only one major case against an investment banker.

That institutional failure wasn’t a fluke — it’s also a reflection of the Justice Department’s priorities. As the number of immigration prosecutions grew by a factor of 11 over the last two decades, the number of prosecutions for white-collar crime in federal court plummeted by 41 percent, according to data compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. The steady decline continued in 2017, Sessions’ first year as attorney general.

“DOJ’s real amnesty policy,” said Matt Stoller, a fellow with anti-monopolization nonprofit Open Markets Institute, “was for white-collar executives.”

Yes, DOJ under Sessions very clearly has become ICE, or more accurately DHS. That makes it a totally inappropriate place for the supposedly impartial U.S. Immigration Courts.
As the article points out, this trend stretches back over a number of Administrations of both parties.  Certainly, the Obama DOJ misused EOIR as part of its futile “Border Surge Enforcement Strategy” setting off a flurry of “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”) that if not the immediate cause of the unmanageable backlogs certainly was a primary contributor and aggravator of the problem. DOJ simply doesn’t belong in the Immigration Court business — in all honesty, it probably never has.
PWS
04-27-18

Related posts:

  1. MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!
  2. ROQUE PLANAS @ HUFFPOST: TRUMP’S BOGUS CARAVAN THREAT MIGHT BE HIS MOST OUTRAGEOUS SCAM YET! — GOP’S Racist Commercial So Vile That Even Fox Pulls It!
  3. HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM COURTSIDE! — I Take A Look Forward @ 2019’s Big Immigration Stories
  4. PURE BS 💩 — TRUMP’S “BIG LIE” ABOUT MIGRANT APPEARANCES FOR HEARINGS BOGUS AS $3 BILL 🤮👎🏻— Replacing DHS/EOIR With Rational, Qualified, Fact-Based Governance & Real Judiciary Could Bring Appearance Rate Close To 100%!  — Two Items From ImmigrationProf Blog!

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY: Bogus Focus On Harmless Migrants Exercising Legal Rights To Apply For Asylum While Defunding State & Local Response Programs & Ignoring Real Security Threats!

Lawmakers question Trump’s Homeland Security chief over focus on immigrant caravan, border wall

By: Tal Kopan, CNN

The secretary of homeland security faced sharp questioning about agency priorities from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing Thursday, with many expressing deep concerns about whether the Trump administration is properly promoting Americans’ safety.

Democrats in particular questioned Kirstjen Nielsen about the administration’s prioritization of immigration enforcement and the building of a border wall while also seeking to cut funding for state and local governments to prepare for and respond to security threats.

“Tell us how cutting this kind of funding helps America be safer,” demanded Rep. Bill Keating, D-Massachusetts.

The top Democrat on the committee, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, had sharp words for Nielsen in his opening remarks, accusing the department of intentionally attacking non-dangerous immigrants as a distraction.

“Based on your press releases this week, you would think the most important homeland security problem facing the nation is a handful of Central Americans moving through Mexico,” Thompson said, referring to a caravan of mostly women and children asylum seekers that takes place every year to call attention to the plight of Central Americans. “That does not make it so. … Better to distract the American people from the very real issues facing the department and perhaps from the President’s own problems too.”

In one particularly sharp exchange, Florida Democratic Rep. Val Demings, a former chief of police in Orlando, pressed Nielsen on whether she prioritized the wall and immigration over helping local communities.

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/04/26/politics/caravan-border-wall-kirstjen-nielsen-hearing/index.html

 

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/04/26/politics/caravan-border-wall-kirstjen-nielsen-hearing/index.html

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

As I’ve said before, Nielsen is an intellectual lightweight, sycophant, and White Nationalist enabler. She proves it almost every time she opens her mouth in public. Her disingenuousness and toadyism make her a threat to our security every day she is in office.

Fortunately, there appear to still be enough professional civil servants in the ranks of DHS somewhere to have averted a national security disaster to date. But, if we survive this Administration, and it’s toxic focus on immigration to the exclusion of real law enforcement and national security problems, it certainly will be in spite of, not because of, folks like Nielsen.

PWS

04-27-18

Related posts:

  1. TAL @ CNN: TRUMP’S “GONZO” IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT POLICIES LIKELY TO FAIL AND ACTUALLY AGGRAVATE FORCES DRIVING UNDOCUMENTED MIGRATION!
  2. HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM COURTSIDE! — I Take A Look Forward @ 2019’s Big Immigration Stories
  3. AMERICA’S “MASS ATROCITY” — Professor Kate Cronin-Furman Says Don’t Kid Yourself About What The Trump Administration Is Doing In Your Name & How “Ordinary Civil Servants” Carry Out The Unthinkable & Unacceptable!
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

THE HILL: NOLAN ON EOIR’S BROKEN JUDICIAL SELECTION SYSTEM

http://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/384987-when-immigration-judges-get-political-justice-suffers

Family Pictures

Nolan writes in The Hill:

. . . .

How serious is this problem?

A TRAC Immigration study concluded that the outcome at asylum hearings over a recent six-year period depended largely on where the hearing was held and which immigration judge was assigned to the case.

. . . .

Examples of improper hiring practices.

Political considerations. A July 28, 2018 report from the Office of Professional Responsibility and the Office of the Inspector General at the Department of Justice reveals that the office of former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales let political considerations guide the selection of immigration judges.

His chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, claimed that he thought immigration judge positions were “political” and therefore that it was appropriate to consider political factors in assessing candidates.

He solicited candidates for immigration judge positions from the White House’s Office of Political Affairs, its Office of Presidential Personnel, and its Office of the Counsel to the President.

Potential immigration judge candidates were screened at these offices to establish their “political qualifications.” This included searching databases to determine whether the candidates had made monetary political contributions.

Sampson also accepted recommendations from Republican Members of Congress and from colleagues within the Justice Department who were political appointees.

Affirmative action. On October 5, 2004, the Department of Justice, without admitting wrongdoing, agreed to pay $11.5 million to settle a class action lawsuit alleging discrimination against white male applicants for immigration judge positions.

I was a decision-writer at the Board when the discrimination allegedly was occurring.

A close friend who had received EOIR’s Director’s Award twice for being the most outstanding attorney of the year couldn’t even get an interview for a position as an immigration judge, but women and minority applicants with much less impressive credentials were being hired, some of whom had no immigration experience at all.

Acknowledging the problem. In response to rising criticism of the disparities in the decisions in asylum cases, EOIR has begun to track decisions to identify immigration judges who have unusually high or low rates of granting asylum, but that just highlights the problem, it doesn’t solve it.

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

I encourage everyone to go on over to The Hill at the above link for Nolan’s complete article.

  • Nolan is right: the EOIR hiring system is broken and has been for many years.
  • The problem of “Refugee Roulette” was first documented by a group of three scholar-practitioners at Georgetown Law in 2007.
    • Although the situation abated somewhat for a few years after that study’s publication, large disparities seem to have persisted.
  • Perhaps because of space limitations (I believe Nolan told me he had an “800 word limit” — something that doesn’t happen at “Courtside”) Nolan wasn’t able to cover two of the most egregious examples of a broken system:
    • The “Ashcroft Purge” of 2001-2003 that reduced the BIA from approximately 20 Members to 12 by expelling those of us on the BIA duly appointed by prior AG Janet Reno whose views were considered “too liberal” for Ashcroft;
      • The BIA is now seeking to “reconstitute itself” as a 20 judge body, confirming the “political motivations” behind the original purge;
    • The 2017 GAO Study that documented the incredible two-year average hiring cycle for filling Immigration Judge vacancies that evolved under the Obama Administration;
      • That process produced highly skewed results favoring candidates from DHS, DOJ, and other governmental backgrounds by an astoundingly inexplicable ratio of nearly 9 to 1 over qualified attorneys from private practice, academia, and NGOs.
      • At present, judges who have actual experience representing asylum applicants in Immigration Court are grotesquely “underrepresented” in relation to those from prosecutorial or other governmental backgrounds.
    • Jeff Sessions will likely make things even worse.
      • Not surprisingly, Sessions has already drawn credible allegations from Democratic Representatives of political and ideological interference in judicial hiring. See, e.g., https://wp.me/p8eeJm-2rz
    • As Nolan demonstrates, the Immigration Courts need a true merit based hiring system.
      • Systems such as that used for selecting U.S. Bankruptcy Judges and U.S. Magistrate Judges are useful models that have earned praise for being efficient, inclusive, involving the practicing bar, and producing unbiased, merit-based judiciaries.
      • A merit-based system is impossible while the Immigration Courts and the BIA are in the Executive Branch at the DOJ.
      • The only solution is an Article I U.S. Immigration Court or some other type of structure independent of the Executive.

PWS

04-27-18

Related posts:

  1. THE HILL: N. RAPPAPORT SAYS THAT EXPEDITED REMOVAL IS THE ANSWER TO IMMIGRATION COURT BACKLOGS – I DISAGREE!
  2. NO EXPERTISE NECESSARY! – At The “New EOIR,” Immigration Judges No Longer Need to Demonstrate Immigration Experience – Just a Willingness To Send Migrants to Potential Death, Danger, or Misery Without Due Process or Fundamental Fairness – When Your Job Is To Impose Arbitrary “Death Sentences,” Maybe It’s Easier If You Don’t Understand What You’re Really Doing!
  3. THE HILL: NOLAN COMMENTS ON RISING IMMIGRATION COURT BACKLOG!
  4. NOLAN’S LATEST IN THE HILL: “Undocumented immigrants shouldn’t replace legal ones”

GONZO’S WORLD: YIELDING TO BIPARTISAN CONGRESSIONAL PRESSURE, GONZO “TEMPORARILY REINSTATES” LEGAL ORIENTATION PROGRAM (“LOP”) AT EOIR

 

http://www.cnn.com/2018/04/25/politics/immigration-legal-advice-program-resumed/index.html

 

Sessions resumes immigrant legal advice program under pressure from Congress

By: Tal Kopan, CNN

Attorney General Jeff Sessions reversed course on suspending a legal advice program for undocumented immigrants, saying he has ordered the resumption of the program pending a review of its effectiveness.

Sessions announced the move at the opening of a hearing before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that funds the Justice Department, saying he made the decision at the request of Congress, which has consistently appropriated money for the program.

At issue is the Legal Orientation Program, created under President George W. Bush in 2003. Unlike in the criminal justice system, immigrants are allowed to have legal counsel but the government is not obligated to provide it, so many undocumented immigrants have no legal help as they argue their case to stay in the US. The program is administered through outside groups and works with nonprofit organizations to provide immigrants with presentations, workshop sessions and referrals to potential pro bono legal services.

Earlier this month the Justice Department decided to suspend the program as it conducted a review. A 2012 audit by the department found, consistent with previous studies, that the program actually reduced the length of immigration court cases and detention, saving the government nearly $18 million.

Sessions told the subcommittee on Wednesday that while he has “previously expressed some concerns about the program,” he heard from bipartisan members of the committee that led him to reverse course.

“Out of deference to the committee, I have ordered that there be no pause while that review is conducted,” Sessions said. “I look forward to evaluating the findings as are produced and will be in communication with this committee when they are available.”

The top Democrat on the committee, New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, said she was “pleased” to hear that from Sessions but reminded him that the committee still has unanswered questions about the methodology of the review Sessions is conducting.

Advocates and those who work to represent immigrants immediately decried the move when it was announced as a threat to due process rights that could actually make the courts more backlogged, not less.

The move had followed other recent efforts by the Justice Department to, in their words, expedite proceedings in the immigration courts to cut down on the extensive backlog of cases, which result in some immigrants living in the US for years while they await their fate, many of which have similarly been criticized by opponents as a risk to due process rights.

A internal study commissioned by the Justice Department that was made public this week recommended expanding the Legal Orientation Program as a way to make the courts more efficient.

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

Obviously, bipartisan Congressional oversight can work. My question: Where has it been for the last 17 years as a succession of Attorneys General, beginning with John Ashcroft and continuing through Sessions have run EOIR and the U.S. Immigration Courts into the ground?

PWS

04-26-18

Related posts:

  1. TAL @ CNN: TRUMP’S “GONZO” IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT POLICIES LIKELY TO FAIL AND ACTUALLY AGGRAVATE FORCES DRIVING UNDOCUMENTED MIGRATION!
  2. PURE BS 💩 — TRUMP’S “BIG LIE” ABOUT MIGRANT APPEARANCES FOR HEARINGS BOGUS AS $3 BILL 🤮👎🏻— Replacing DHS/EOIR With Rational, Qualified, Fact-Based Governance & Real Judiciary Could Bring Appearance Rate Close To 100%!  — Two Items From ImmigrationProf Blog!
  3. NEW EOIR MEMO ENCOURAGES IMMIGRATION JUDGES TO DUMP ON UNACCOMPANIED CHILDREN (“UACS”) – “When In Doubt, Kick ‘em Out” New Motto Of Gonzo’s “Captive Courts!” — We’ve Come A Long Way From “Guaranteeing Fairness And Due Process For All” In A Short Time!
  4. HALLOWEEN HORROR STORY: Opaque & Biased Politicized Judicial Hiring Denies Migrants The Fair & Impartial Adjudication To Which They Are Constitutionally Entitled – Given The Generous Legal Standards, A Worldwide Refugee Crisis, & Asylum Officers’ Positive Findings In Most Cases, Asylum Seekers Should Be Winning The Vast Majority Of Immigration Court Cases — Instead, They Are Being “Railroaded” By A Biased System & Complicit Article III Courts!

PUBLIC INVITED TO ABA COMMISSION ON IMMIGRATION PANEL ON US IMMIGRATION COURT REFORM: FRIDAY, MAY 4, 2018 9:00 AM – 10:30 AM

final_may_4_program_flyer.authcheckdam

Featured Panelists:

(Ret.) Immigration Judge Paul Schmidt, Adjunct Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law

Center Heidi Altman, Policy Director, National Immigration Justice Center James R. McHenry, Director, Executive Office for Immigration Review Judge Denise Slavin, President Emeritus, National Association of Immigration Judges

James R. McHenry, Director, Executive Office for Immigration Review

Judge Denise Slavin, President Emeritus, National Association of Immigration Judges

Karen Grisez, Special Advisor to the ABA Commission on Immigration; Public Service Counsel, Fried Frank LLP

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

This event is FREE & OPEN TO ALL. I believe there will be a “public comment” opportunity. So, this is your chance to weigh in on the US Immigration Court “Train Wreck” and the Attorney General’s recent actions!🚂🚂🚂🚂🚂🚂🚂🚂🚂

Seating might be limited, and I would expect interest to be high. So, I strongly recommend arriving early!
PWS
04-25-18

Related posts:

  1. MICA ROSENBERG, READE LEVINSON, & RYAN McNEILL EXPOSE UNEQUAL JUSTICE & ABUSE OF VULNERABLE ASYLUM SEEKERS FROM “COURT” SYSTEM LACKING BASIC JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE! Sessions’s Chilling Response: Speed Things Up, Establish Deportation Quotas, Strip Asylum Seekers Of Rights To Due Process, Eliminate Professional Judicial Training, & Aimlessly Throw More Inexperienced, Untrained Judges Into This Mess! – Will He Get Away With His Atrocious Plan To Make Immigration Courts The “Killing Floor?” — AN IN-DEPTH LOOK AT THE TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE UNFOLDING IN U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT ON A DAILY BASIS!
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. GONZO’S WORLD: JUDICIAL REBELLION – Less Than One Year Into Gonzo’s Reign at The DOJ, One of America’s Most Conservative Judiciaries Seeks Protection From His Plans to Politicize The U.S Immigration Courts!
  4. JULIA PRESTON: CHAOS IN COURT! – TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S MAL-ADMINISTRATION OF IMMIGRATION COURTS RUINS LIVES, FRUSTRATES JUDGES!

MICHAEL GERSON @ WASHPOST: ICE IS GETTING DOWN IN THE GUTTER WITH TRUMP – Why Would We Tolerate Either A President Or A USG Agency Who Glories In & Gloats About “Mean & Nasty” Treatment Of Other Human Beings? — By Accepting Trump’s & ICE’s Inappropriate Conduct, We Diminish Ourselves As A Nation & As Human Beings!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ice-has-become-trumps-personal-bullying-squad/2018/04/23/5197541e-472d-11e8-8b5a-3b1697adcc2a_story.html?utm_term=.692cc352c144

Gerson writes:

The attitude of President Trump toward federal law enforcement is, to put it mildly, mixed. The FBI refused to bend to his will. So the special counsel team is composed of “hardened Democrats” engaged in a “WITCH HUNT.” The FBI was, according to Trump, too preoccupied with the Russia investigation to prevent the Parkland, Fla., school shooting. The agency’s reputation “is in Tatters — worst in History!”

But Immigration and Customs Enforcement has passed the loyalty test. ICE’s enforcement surge “is merely the keeping of my campaign promise,” the president tweeted. Referring to ICE acting director Thomas Homan, Trump said, “Somebody said the other day, they saw him on television. . . . ‘He looks very nasty, he looks very mean.’ I said, ‘That’s what I’m looking for!’ ”

This is territory more familiar in political systems of personal rule. The agency that defies the ruler must be discredited. The agency that does his bidding is viewed as a kind of Praetorian Guard.

Most of the professionals working in ICE would surely deny this characterization, pointing to an important legal role independent from any individual president. But they need to understand that their work is now being conflated with Trump’s nativism.

ICE’s 40 percent increase in arrests within the United States after Trump took office is now closely associated with the president’s political priorities. His sweeping executive orders on immigration broadened the focus of enforcement beyond serious threats to public order. Arrests of immigrants without criminal convictions have spiked. Routine “check-ins” with ICE officials can end with handcuffs and deportation. “Sanctuary cities” — a recurring presidential political obsession — are being targeted with additional personnel. Hundreds of children have been removed from parents seeking asylum and detained separately — compounding their terrible ordeal of persecution and flight. ICE recently announced a new policy that makes it easier to detain pregnant women. Asylum seekers have often been denied “humanitarian parole” while their cases are decided, effectively jailing them without due process.

Officials of the agency insist that their nonpolitical mandate hasn’t changed. But Homan has praised the Trump administration for taking “the handcuffs off law enforcement.” Whatever their intention, ICE agents are being used by the president to send a message of callousness. And they are tying themselves to Trump’s political fortunes in the process.

The job performed by ICE is essential to American security, and not easy. Agents must prevent some truly dangerous people from entering and staying in the country — gang members, drug dealers and terrorists. But it is also their job to deal with asylum seekers — men, women and children fleeing from gangs, targeted for death by drug cartels and oppressed by terrorist states. Some of the worst people in the world, and some of the most sympathetic people in the world, are processed by immigration officials. It takes care and discernment to make this distinction.

ICE is not an agency famous for its care and discernment. In releasing an immigration activist detained by ICE early this year, U.S. District Judge Katherine B. Forrest said, “It ought not to be — and it has never before been — that those who have lived without incident in this country for years are subjected to treatment we associate with regimes we revile as unjust. . . . We are not that country.”

Accusations of abuse in ICE custody are numerous and serious, and they preexisted the Trump era. An investigation by ProPublica and the Philadelphia Inquirer reported cases of racial profiling, fabricated evidence and warrantless searches — all given little scrutiny by overwhelmed immigration courts. During the past few years, there have been hundreds of accusations of sexual abuse, racial slurs, abusive strip searches and verbal harassment in ICE jails, prisons and detention centers. For an institution that claims “zero tolerance” for such practices, it seems to get a lot of serious complaints. One asylum seeker, Gretta Soto Moreno, has called the facilities worse than normal prisons because ICE “feels like it can treat immigrants any kind of way.”

This is the bitter fruit of dehumanization — in a facility, in a system, in a country. It is unclear whether Trump would even regard such a reputation as undesirable. He has effectively given permission for bullying.

This is an issue ripe for more rigorous congressional oversight — even an independent commission to investigate charges of physical and sexual abuse in the ICE system. But this would require a critical mass of elected Republicans to give a damn about the rights and dignity of migrants. It is a distant dream.

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

Dehumanization of migrants, who are among the most human of all among us, is certainly one of the most insidious aspects of the Trump/Sessions/Nielsen,/Homan regime. When we allow individuals like these who have both forgotten their proper roles in a democratic republic and arrogantly checked their humanity at the door, we essentially dehumanize ourselves.

Not surprisingly, migrants grow in moral stature as we shrink, individually and collectively. And the restrictionist (occasionally, as in the case of folks like Rep Steve King (R-IA) “neo-Nazi”) wing of the GOP is certainly a prime enabler of this reprehensible conduct. As even some GOP commentators have noted, there is a disturbing “empathy and humanity gap” evident when GOP politicos speak in dismissive and derogatory terms about migrants.

Only time will tell how soon we will be able to remove these unworthy public officials from the positions they now hold and replace them with responsible public servants who treat others with dignity, respect, humanity, and reasonableness. But, the speed and decisiveness with which we act will say much about America’s future prospects as a nation.

PWS

04-25-18

 

 

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. PROFESSOR FITZ BRUNDAGE @ WASHPOST: Can We Regain Our Humanitarian Values In The Age Of Trump? — “We must shine a spotlight on cruel and illegal policies that undermine our national ideals and find the wisdom and the courage to do better.”
  3. MARIA SACCHETTI IN WASHPOST: INSIDE THE “NAG” (NEW AMERICAN GULAG) — CRUEL, INHUMAN, DEGRADING TREATMENT APPEARS TO BE WIDESPREAD IN SO-CALLED “CIVIL” IMMIGRATION DETENTION! — Where’s The Outrage? — Where’s The Congressional Oversight? — Why Aren’t Guys Like “Gonzo” & Homan Who Knowingly Promote Violations Of Legal & Human Rights As (Unlawful) “Immigration Deterrence” Under Investigation For Their Roles In Violating Human, Constitutional Rights!
  4. ICEMEN GONE WILD: MINDLESS, COUNTERPRODUCTIVE, CRUEL, WASTEFUL “GONZO” IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT IS THE ORDER OF THE DAY UNDER THE TRUMP/SESSIONS REGIME! — “Have discretion and humanity been dropped from the attributes that Americans can expect of their law enforcement agencies?”

TAL @ CNN: DENYING DUE PROCESS IN U.S. IMMIGRATION COURTS — Sessions’s Plans & Actions Contravene Many Key Recommendations Of Recent Independent Internal Evaluation – Feuding With Judges, Suspending Legal Orientation Program, Establishing Evaluations Based On “Quotas,” Detailing Judges To Border Detention Centers, Restricting Administrative Closing, Increasing Use Of Televideo Hearings, Emphasis On Increasing Removals Over Due Process All Run Counter To Recent Recommendations!

http://www.cnn.com/2018/04/23/politics/immigration-courts-justice-department-report/index.html

Justice report’s findings clash with Sessions’ actions

By Tal Kopan

 

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has made overhauling the chronically backlogged immigration courts a top priority — but some of his moves seem to run counter to recommendations in a Justice Department-commissioned report made public on Monday.

While some of the recommendations, such as increasing staffing, have been part of his efforts, other steps — such as requiring judges to process a target amount of cases — run contrary to the study’s suggestions.

The report was written by consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton last April after a yearlong analysis commissioned by the Justice Department’s immigration courts division. A redacted version was made public Monday as the result of a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Immigration Lawyers Association and American Immigration Council.

The report looks at the chronic inability of the immigration courts to keep up with the number of cases before them. Cases related to immigration status are handled in a court system separate from the typical criminal and civil courts in the US — a system that is run entirely by the Justice Department and in which the attorney general effectively functions as a one-man Supreme Court.

Because cases can take years to finish, undocumented immigrants can end up living and building lives in the US as they await a final decision on whether they are legally allowed to stay in the US — something the Trump administration has cited as a driver of illegal immigration.

The Booz Allen Hamilton analysis identifies a number of issues that contribute to the backlog, including staffing shortages, technological difficulties and external factors like an increasing number of cases.

Sessions has worked to hire more immigration judges and has ordered other upgrades like the use of an electronic filing system, as the report recommends.

But the American Immigration Lawyers Association expressed concern about a number of other recommendations that seemed ignored or on which opposite action was taken.

Responding to the report, a Justice Department official who requested not to be named said that the efforts of the department are “common-sense.”

“After years of mismanagement and neglect, the Justice Department has implemented a number of common-sense reforms in the immigration court system, a number of them address these issues and we believe that focusing our efforts on these reforms has been an effective place to start,” the official said.

The report’s recommendations include a performance review system for judges, who are hired and managed by the Justice Department, that “emphasizes process over outcomes and places high priority on judicial integrity and independence,” including in dialogue with the union that represents immigration judges. The Justice Department recently rolled out a performance metrics system, though, that requires judges to complete a certain number of cases per year and sets time goals for other procedural steps along the way, which immigration judges have strongly opposed as jeopardizing the ability of judges to make fair, independent decisions.

In a call with reporters, AILA representatives and a retired immigration judge argued that while the report doesn’t explicitly reject a quota system, it’s clear that putting one in place is contrary to the recommendation. They say that judges who are fearful of their job security and opportunity for advancement may be pressured to speed up hearing cases at the expense of due process for the immigrants, which could skew the outcome of the case.

A Justice Department official said the agency rejects the notion of a “false dichotomy” that improving efficiency sacrifices due process and said the agency has also put in place court-based metrics that lend itself to the recommendation of the report.

In another example, the report recommends that the Justice Department consider expanding legal orientation programs for immigrants and increasing their access to attorneys, so they can better navigate the system. The Justice Department recently put on hold a legal advice program for immigrants in the courts, saying it needed to be reviewed, though audits in the past had consistently shown it was productive and had saved the government money long-term. Officials say they may reinstitute the program if the audit shows it is effective.

The report also recommends limited use of video hearings, saying judges are stymied by technical difficulties and also are less able to read the subtle cues and nonverbal communications of witnesses and people involved in the hearings. Sessions’ immigration courts plan includes expanding the use of video hearings.

In another example, one of Sessions’ first moves in taking office was to send a number of judges to the border on a temporary assignment to handle cases there. The report says temporary assignments should be avoided, as they create more delays when judges have to catch up on their workloads back home.

The report also recommends administratively closing cases if they are being adjudicated in some other venue, like a visa petition or another court case. The Trump administration has sought to curtail the administrative closing of cases.

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

DOJ’s ridiculous claim that Sessions’s actions are “common sense” is refuted by virtually everyone with expertise or true understanding of the Immigration Court system including those working in it, those stuck in it, and even ICE!

There can be no effective, Due Process oriented, “actual common sense” Immigration Court reforms so long as Jeff Sessions controls those courts.

PWS

04-23-18

Related posts:

  1. DUE PROCESS UNDER ATTACK: ANOTHER “IMMIGRATION HARDLINER” MOVES OVER TO DOJ TO HELP GONZO TORMENT, TRASH, AND BULLY THE MOST VULNERABLE
  2. EOIR TARGETS UNACCOMPANIED KIDS FOR DEPORATION RAILROAD!
  3. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

PRO PUBLICA: HOW OUR GOVERNMENT HAS CYNICALLY TURNED WHAT SHOULD BE A GENEROUSLY ADMINISTERED, LIFE-SAVING, PROTECTION-GRANTING ASYLUM SYSTEM INTO A “GAME OF CHANCE” WITH POTENTIALLY FATAL CONSEQUENCES FOR THE HAPLESS & VULNERABLE “PLAYERS!” –Play The “Interactive Version” Of “The Game” Here – See If You Would Survive or Perish Playing “Refugee Roulette!”

https://projects.propublica.org/asylum/#how-asylum-works

Years-long wait lists, bewildering legal arguments, an extended stay in detention — you can experience it all in the Waiting Game, a newsgame that simulates the experience of trying to seek asylum in the United States. The game was created by ProPublica, Playmatics and WNYC. Based on the true stories of real asylum-seekers, this interactive portal allows users to follow in the footsteps of five people fleeing persecution and trying to take refuge in America.

The process can be exhausting and feel arbitrary – and as you’ll find in the game, it involves a lot of waiting. Once asylum-seekers reach America, they must condense complex and often traumatic stories into short, digestible narratives they will tell again and again. Their  lives often depend on their ability to convince a judge that they are in danger. Judicial decisions are so inconsistent across the country, success in complicated cases can  come down to geography and luck — in New York City only 17 percent of asylum cases are denied in immigration court; in Atlanta, 94 percent are. Increasingly, many asylum-seekers are held in detention for months or even years while going through the system. The immigration detention system costs more than $2 billion per year to maintain.

The Trump administration has tried to reframe the asylum system as a national security threat and a magnet for illegal immigration. Attorney General Jeff Sessions characterizes the American asylum process as “subject to rampant abuse” and “overloaded with fake claims.” He has aimed recent reforms at expediting asylum adjudications to speed up deportations and at making it more difficult for certain groups to qualify for protection, such as Central Americans who claim to fear gender-based violence or gang persecution.

The narrative that the system is overrun with fraud has long been pushed by groups that favor limiting immigration overall. They point to some 37 percent of asylum-seekers who annually miss their immigration hearings as evidence that people without legitimate fears of persecution game the system. They argue that allowing asylum-seekers to obtain work permits while they wait for a decision on their cases — which sometimes takes years — incentivizes baseless claims.

But another picture emerged when ProPublica spoke with more than 20 experts and stakeholders who study and work in the asylum system, including lawyers, immigration judges, historians, policy experts, an asylum officer, a former border patrol agent and a former ICE prosecutor.

When asked about changes to the system they’d like to see, many suggested providing asylum-seekers with better access to lawyers to support due process, expanding the definition of a refugee to cover modern-day conflicts,providing more resources to help the system process claims in a timely manner, and improving judicial independence by moving immigration courts out of the Department of Justice.

Most acknowledged some level of asylum-claim abuse exists. “In any system, of course, there are going to be some bad actors and some weaknesses people seek to exploit,” said Doris Meissner, the former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1993 to 2000.

But they also argued for the importance of protecting and improving a national program that has provided refuge to hundreds of thousands of people. “If you are going to make a mistake in the immigration area, make this mistake,” said Bill Hing, director of the University of San Francisco’s Immigration and Deportation Defense Clinic. “Protect people that may not need protecting, but don’t make the mistake of not protecting people who need it.”

Victor Manjarrez, a former border patrol agent from the 1980s until 2011, said he had seen human smuggling networks exploit the border over the years, but also many people who genuinely needed help.

“We have a system that’s not perfect, but is designed to take refugees. That is the beauty of it,” he said. “It has a lot of issues, but we have something in place that is designed to be compassionate. And that’s why we have such a big political debate about this.”

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

Read the narrative and play the interactive “Waiting Game” at the above link!

Getting refuge often depends on getting the right:

  • Border Patrol Agent an Asylum Officer to even get into the system;
  • Lawyer;
  • Local Immigration Court;
  • Immigration Judge;
  • DHS Assistant Chief Counsel;
  • BIA Panel;
  • U.S. Court of Appeals jurisdiction;
  • U.S. Court of Appeals Panel;
  • Luck.

If something goes wrong anywhere along this line, your case could “go South,” even if it’s very meritorious.

I also agree with Professor Hing that given the UNHCR guidance that asylum applicants ought to be given “the benefit of the doubt,” the generous standard for asylum established by the Supremes in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca and implemented by the BIA in Matter of Mogharrabi, and the often irreversible nature of wrongful removals to persecution, the system should be designed to “error on the side of the applicant.”

Indeed, one of the things that DHS in my experience does well is detecting and prosecuting systemic asylum fraud. While a few individuals probably do get away with tricking the system, most “professional fraudsters” and their clients eventually are caught and brought to justice, most often in criminal court. Most of these are discovered not by “tough laws” or what happens in Immigration Court, but by more normal criminal investigative techniques: undercover agents, tips from informants, and “disgruntled employees or clients” who “blow the whistle” in return for more lenient treatment for themselves.

Hope YOU get protected, not rejected!

PWS

04-23-18

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  3. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  4. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”

MORE GOOD NEWS FROM PROFESSOR ALBERTO BENITEZ @ GW LAW: Two More Northern Triangle Lives Saved By Asylum Grants in Arlington – Giving Lie To the Trump Administration/Restrictionist Claim That Northern Triangle Refugees Are “Economic Migrants” — No, The Vast Majority Are “Legitimate Refugees” Being Screwed Over By Our Government’s Skewed, Dishonest, Immoral, & Often Illegal Policies

Friends,

Please join me in congratulating GW Immigration Clinic alum Shira Zeman, ’12, who won an asylum grant for a Central American Mom and her 5 year-old son earlier this week.   Please see the attached picture, which I use with permission.  Gang members threatened to kill Mom if she did not allow them to use her son in gang activities. These same gang members murdered one of Mom’s neighbors, a police officer, after he refused to allow a family member to join the gang.  Mom testified for over an hour, after which the ICE trial attorney told the Immigration Judge she did not oppose asylum.  Shira said:  “He’s 5 now, but he had just turned 3 when they tried to ‘recruit’ him so he could be used as a drug mule.”

Intense.  This installation is a must-see.  Being in the ‘hielera,’ and in the ‘desert’ witnessing nighttime arrests by the Border Patrol, was beyond belief.  Visitors were in tears and one fell to her knees.  I read this Washington Post article prior to my visit but I was unprepared for the experience.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/alejandro-g-inarritus-virtual-reality-voyage-is-dcs-most-intriguing-experience-right-now/2018/04/11/d2714380-3c04-11e8-974f-aacd97698cef_story.html?utm_term=.8f8162e02386

**************************************************
Alberto Manuel Benitez
Professor of Clinical Law
Director, Immigration Clinic
The George Washington University Law School
650 20th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052
(202) 994-7463
(202) 994-4946 fax
abenitez@law.gwu.edu
THE WORLD IS YOURS…
**************************************************

rsz_30728884_941047399353163_8911365904409335560_n.jpg

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

Congratulations to Shira Zeman, Esq., of Zeman & Petterson PLLC, Falls Church, VA. I’m awed by the legal accomplishments and lives saved by Shira and her law partner Rachel Petterson! Hard to believe that she’s only six years out of law school!

We hear it all the time from Trump, Sessions, Nielsen, CIS, FAIR, GOP White Nationalist right wingers, right-wing media, and perhaps most disturbingly sometimes officials at EOIR and Immigration Judges. These aren’t “real refugees,” just folks coming here to work.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Make no mistake about it, these are “real refugees” intentionally being given the shaft by our biased and unfair Government and in far too many cases being denied the life-saving protection to which they are entitled under both U.S. and international law!

In my experience, few individuals, particularly women and children, undertake the long, dangerous, and uncertain journey from the Northern Triangle to our Southern Border unless they are forced migrants. Indeed, I found that many of the individuals coming from the Northern Triangle were doing fine economically and would have vastly preferred to stay in their homes, rather than being relegated to sometimes menial “entry-level” jobs even when they are able to be released in the U.S. Successful students sometimes lose credit in U.S. school systems and must “start over again” in lower grades or special programs.

Indeed, perhaps ironically, their success helped make them very visible, distinct, and attractive targets for both persecution by the gangs and sometimes also for extortion and mistreatment by corrupt police and government officials in the Northern Triangle. Others were perceived by the gangs to be actual or potential political leaders in the “anti-gang movement.” Moreover, as gangs increasingly become involved in the political process in the Northern Triangle, opposition to gangs takes on heavy political implications.

No, this case is not an “aberration or an exception.” There are lots of similar or identical “moms and kids” out there from the Northern Triangle fighting every day for their very lives in a system already rigged against them and which Jeff Sessions has pledged to make even more unfair and more “user unfriendly.”

The things that allowed this “mom and child’ to succeed are:

  • Representation by a great lawyer like Shira;
  • Freedom from detention;
  • Adequate time to prepare and document the case;
  • A fair, knowledgeable Immigration Judge not biased against or dismissive of Northern Triangle asylum seekers;
  • An experienced DHS Assistant Chief Counsel committed to a fair application of asylum law and unafraid to recognize when further litigation or appeal would be counterproductive for both the individual and the court system.

An Attorney General truly interested in upholding the rule of law and our Constitution would be working to replicate what happened in this case elsewhere and to look for ways in which refugees like this could be recognized without having to go to a final merits hearing before an Immigration Judge. He or she would also be encouraging others in the Administration to focus on addressing the problems in the Northern Triangle causing this humanitarian migration, instead of focusing solely on fruitless attempts to discourage and deter the vulnerable migrants themselves.

But, that would an Attorney General “OTJS” — “Other Than Jeff Sessions.”

PWS

04-23-18

 

 

 

Related posts:

  1. NY TIMES: Trump Mocks & Dehumanizes Vulnerable Refugees & His Administration Claims It’s OK To Return Them to Honduras; BUT The Facts Say The Opposite: Honduras Is An Armed Conflict Zone Where Gangs Exercise Quasi-Governmental Control & Those Who Resist Are Severely Punished, Often Maimed, Tortured Or Killed!
  2. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  3. MICA ROSENBERG, READE LEVINSON, & RYAN McNEILL EXPOSE UNEQUAL JUSTICE & ABUSE OF VULNERABLE ASYLUM SEEKERS FROM “COURT” SYSTEM LACKING BASIC JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE! Sessions’s Chilling Response: Speed Things Up, Establish Deportation Quotas, Strip Asylum Seekers Of Rights To Due Process, Eliminate Professional Judicial Training, & Aimlessly Throw More Inexperienced, Untrained Judges Into This Mess! – Will He Get Away With His Atrocious Plan To Make Immigration Courts The “Killing Floor?” — AN IN-DEPTH LOOK AT THE TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE UNFOLDING IN U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT ON A DAILY BASIS!
  4. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”