"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
Maria Sacchetti Immigration Reporter, Washington PostArelis R. Hernandez Southern Border Reporter Washington Post
Maria Sacchetti & Arelis R. Hernandez report for WashPost:
United States immigration authorities will temporarily halt enforcement across the United States except for its efforts to deport foreign nationals who have committed crimes or who pose a threat to public safety. The change in enforcement status comes amid the coronavirus outbreak and aims to limit the spread of the virus and to encourage those who need treatment to seek medical help.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement said late Wednesday that its Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) will “delay enforcement actions” and use “alternatives to detention” amid the outbreak, according to a notification the agency sent to Congress.
ICE told members of Congress that its “highest priorities are to promote lifesaving and public safety activities.”
[[Mapping the spread of the coronavirus]]
“During the COVID-19 crisis, ICE will not carry out enforcement operations at or near health care facilities, such as hospitals, doctors’ offices, accredited health clinics, and emergent or urgent care facilities, except in the most extraordinary of circumstances,” according to the notification. “Individuals should not avoid seeking medical care because they fear civil immigration enforcement.”
The agency, which is a part of the Department of Homeland Security, did not immediately respond to questions about how many of the approximately 37,000 detainees it has in custody will remain there. Nearly 20,000 in ICE custody have some sort of criminal history, but it remained unclear how many of those people have serious criminal violations in their past.
. . . .
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Read the complete article at the link.
Finally, a ray of sanity and humanity from DHS!Still no definitive word from EOIR.
We’ve actually gotten to the sad point where DHS occasionally acts more rationally than EOIR. Nothing to write home about. But, shows how totally perverted justice has become under Barr and the toadies at EOIR. Also says loads about those in Congress and the Article III Judiciary who have allowed EOIR to continue to heap abuses on migrants in clear violation of the Due Process Clause of our Constitution.
Anger builds over virus dangers in immigration courts
After protests, Trump administration makes late-night move to scale back deportation hearings
Prior to the curtailment announced Tuesday night, a spokeswoman for the DOJ unit said: “EOIR continues to evaluate the information available from public health officials to inform the decisions regarding the operational status of each immigration court. “
However, individual scheduled hearings were not covered by the Sunday announcement nor were those for those in detention. “All other hearings proceeding,” the twitter message that night said.
One immigration judge dismissed the limitation announced Sunday as a “drop in the bucket.”
Immigration court participants complained that they were being notified by late-night Twitter posts rather than a more detailed public announcement of how the risks and benefits were being weighed.
“The immigration courts need to close. Period,” said Jeremy McKinney of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “Most of these hearings can wait in order to put the safety of the public first….Close the courts for a few weeks until screening and proper testing can be done.”
Closing the immigration courts altogether would create thorny issues, particularly for immigrants who are being held in custody. Such a move would likely trigger legal challenges on due process grounds.
However, immigration lawyers said there are workarounds for many of the issues, including handling bond hearings via written filings and conducting hearings by video or teleconference. Video conferencing is already used to beam detainees into hearings in many courts.
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Still, some of the steps being promoted by lawyers for immigrants could be viewed as undermining aspects of the Trump administration’s aggressive enforcement policies.
Immigrant advocates are urging the administration to “parole” into the U.S. asylum applicants sent back to Mexico under the remain-in-Mexico policy. That would be similar to the prior policy that administration officials derided as “catch and release.”
Several court participants said they found it ironic that immigration courts were largely shuttered during a government shutdown last year when their personnel were deemed non-essential, but the same personnel were told this week they are essential and must report to work despite officials at all levels of government urging Americans to remain home if at all possible.
“What is outrageous is that our non-detained courts were shut down for the government furlough, for political reasons,” said Dana Leigh Marks, a San Francisco immigration judge and former president of the judges’ union. “Yet, here we have a health emergency and no action.”
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Gee, it’s not like there aren’t thousands and thousands of us out here who have been pointing out for years the outrageous unconstitutionality and threat to our country presented by these “captive courts” under the Trump regime! It’s also not that they haven’t already killed folks: certainly their politicized misapplication of asylum and other protection laws have done just that! But, do we really have to have them mindlessly spreading an epidemic to have folks take notice!
We need regime change in November! We also need a re-examination of the composition of our Article III Judiciary, specifically on the Supremes and Courts of Appeals, to determine why so few Federal Appellate Judges have had the guts and integrity to stand up for the Constitution, the rule of law, and human decency in the time of crisis and in the face of patent Executive incompetence and tyranny. The “institutional failures” go well beyond the continuing farce in the Immigration Courts and the inexcusable failure of the regime to be better prepared for crisis.
WASHINGTON — Seattle’s immigration court will close down as the nation continues to grapple with managing the coronavirus pandemic, and several other large immigration courts will postpone certain hearings for immigrants who are not detained that often involve large groups.
The court in Seattle was temporarily shut down earlier this week over a report of a second-hand exposure to the virus and will remain shut until April 10. Seattle is among the areas hardest hit so far, with a cluster of deaths and dozens sickened. The number of cases in the U.S. was put at around 1,700 Friday, with about 50 deaths. But by some estimates, at least 14,000 people might be infected.
According to a statement obtained by The Associated Press from the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which manages the immigration court system, other courts will remain open where the virus has struck, including Boston, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Newark, New Jersey, and Sacramento, California. But “master calendar” dates for those who are not detained will be postponed. Those hearings can include dozens of people in a single courtroom.
“The agency continues to evaluate the dynamic situation nationwide and will make decisions for each location as more information becomes available,” according to the statement from EOIR, which is a division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
There are 68 immigration courts nationwide; the others will operate as scheduled but officials with EOIR said they are evaluating and will adjust as needed.
There have been no confirmed cases of COVID-19 within the immigration system, but it’s not clear how frequently tests are being performed, if at all.
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Associated Press Writer Cedar Attanasio contributed to this report from El Paso, Texas.
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I suppose some action is better than none.
But, let’s take a more rational and practical look at this. The regime’s own expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and other public health experts have been all over the media this weekend with a straightforward message: This is going to get worse before it gets better, so take advance precautions.
There is a “zero percent” chance that those appearing in Immigration Court have had access to coronavirus testing. Consequently, there is no way of knowing who or how many might be infected.
We also know that a significant number of those appearing in Immigration Court will be seniors or those with pre-existing conditions.
Therefore, closing down the non-detained dockets at all Immigration Courts right now shouldbe a “no brainer.” There are few, if any, genuine “emergencies” on an out of control “non-detained docket” of over one million cases with hearing dates stretching into 2024 and beyond in some locations.
By moving too slowly, EOIR virtually guarantees that by the time it finally gets around to the inevitable, many individuals and their families, fearing EOIR’s often mindless penchant for “in absentia hearings,” will not get the news in time. They will have already traveled and made arrangements to stay near Immigration Courts. Also, a disproportionate number of those appearing in Immigration Court must rely on public transportation, another health risk in addition to the disruption or curtailing of service in many localities.
Thus, EOIR’s inadequate response, notably released late on Friday when attention was focused elsewhere, combined with the regime’s total lack of credibility on all things immigration, is likely to make things worse.
There are all sorts of reasons why we need an independent Article I Immigration Court with competent, professional management focused on the public good. This is just the latest example of of how politicized, dysfunctional “courts” (that aren’t courts at all, as they are controlled by the prosecutor) hurt America and endanger all of us.
Kevin Euceda, a 17-year-old Honduran boy, arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border three years ago and was turned over to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services until his request for asylum could be decided by immigration courts. During that period, he was required, as are all unaccompanied minors in custody, to meet with therapists to help him process what he had gone through.
In those sessions, Kevin was encouraged to speak freely and openly and was told that what he said would be kept confidential. So he poured out his story of a brutalized childhood, of how MS-13 gang members moved into the family shack after his grandmother died when he was 12, of how he was forced to run errands, sell drugs and, as he got older, take part in beating people up. When he was ordered to kill a stranger to cement his position in the gang, Kevin decided to run.
His therapists submitted pages of notes over several sessions to the file on him, as they were expected to do. But then, HHS officials — without the knowledge of the teen or the therapists — shared the notes with lawyers for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who used them in immigration court to paint the young migrant as a dangerous gang member who should be denied asylum and sent back to Honduras. In sharing those therapy notes, the government did not break any laws. But it most assuredly broke its promise of confidentiality to Kevin, violated standard professional practices — the first therapist involved quit once she learned her notes had been shared — and offended a fundamental expectation that people cannot be compelled to testify against themselves in this country.
Kevin, whose story was detailed by the Washington Post, wasn’t the only unaccompanied minor to fall victim to such atrocious behavior, though how many have been affected is unknown. The government says it has changed that policy and no longer shares confidential therapy notes, but that’s not particularly reassuring coming from this administration. It adopted the policy once; it could easily do so again.
Last week, Rep. Grace F. Napolitano (D-Norwalk) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) introduced the Immigrants’ Mental Health Act of 2020 to ban the practice, which is a necessary preventive measure. The bill would also create a new training regimen to help border agents address mental health issues among migrants and require at least one mental health expert at each Customs and Border Patrol facility. Both of those steps are worth considering too.
That the government would so callously use statements elicited from unaccompanied minors in therapy sessions to undercut their asylum applications is part of the Trump administration’s broad and inhumane efforts to effectively shut off the U.S. as a destination for people seeking to exercise their right to ask for sanctuary. Jeff Sessions and his successor as attorney general, William Barr, have injected themselves into cases at an unprecedented rate to unilaterally change long-established practices and immigration court precedent.
They have been able to do so because immigration courts are administrative and part of the Justice Department, not the federal court system, and as a result they have politicized what should be independent judicial evaluations of asylum applications and other immigration cases. Advocates argue persuasively that the efforts have undermined due process rights and made the immigration courts more a tool of President Trump’s anti-immigration policies than a system for measuring migrant’s claims against the standards Congress wrote into federal law.
Of course, trampling legal rights and concepts of basic human decency have been a hallmark of the administration’s approach to immigration enforcement — witness, for example, its separation of more than 2,500 migrant children from their parents. Beyond the heartlessness of the separations, the Health and Human Services’ inspector general last week blasted the department for botching the process. Meanwhile, the administration has expanded detention — about 50,000 migrants are in federal custody on any given day, up from about 30,000 a decade ago — and forced about 60,000 asylum seekers to await processing in dangerous squalor on Mexico’s side of the border.
There are legitimate policy discussions to be had over how this government should handle immigration, asylum requests and broad comprehensive immigration reform. In the meantime, no government has the right to treat people with such abject inhumanity. History will remember Trump for this, but it will also remember the people who enable such atrocious acts.
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The LA Times is ”on top” of the grotesque perversion of the Immigration “Courts” under nativist zealot Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions and Trump toady Billy Barr to carry out a White Nationalist political agenda:
They have been able to do so because immigration courts are administrative and part of the Justice Department, not the federal court system, and as a result they have politicized what should be independent judicial evaluations of asylum applications and other immigration cases.
Who’a NOT “on top” of what’s happening: The GOP-controlled U.S. Senate, Chief Justice Roberts, a number of his Supremely Complicit colleagues, and a host of Court of Appeals Judges who allow this unconstitutional travesty to continue to mock the Fifth Amendment and the rule of Law, while abusing and threatening the lives of legal asylum seekers every day!
With 2.5 Branches of our Government led by anti-democracy zealots and cowards, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is our only remaining bulwark against tyranny! Capable as she is, she can’t do it all by herself!
In reality, judges were among those inside Germany who might have effectively challenged Hitler’s authority, the legitimacy of the Nazi regime, and the hundreds of laws that restricted political freedoms, civil rights, and guarantees of property and security. And yet, the overwhelming majority did not. Instead, over the 12 years of Nazi rule, during which time judges heard countless cases, most not only upheld the law but interpreted it in broad and far-reaching ways that facilitated, rather than hindered, the Nazis ability to carry out their agenda.
— United States Holocaust Museum, Law, Justice, and the Holocaust, at 8 (July 2018)
How soon we forget!
Due Process Forever; Complicit Courts & Other Immoral Enablers, Never!
(CNN)The union representing immigration judges urged the Trump administration in a letter Monday to “immediately” implement steps to protect judges and their staff and provide guidance on how to proceed amid the coronavirus outbreak, which also has the potential to exacerbate the overwhelming backlog of pending cases.
The letter calls for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, an agency within the Justice Department that oversees the nation’s immigration courts, to inform employees about the plan “as it relates to a potential pandemic,” noting that some immigration court functions “may not lend themselves to telework.”
“As you know, our work requires us to be in close contact with the public on a daily basis, often in very large numbers and groups,” wrote Judge Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges.
She continued: “Beyond our own employees, the respondents who come before us may also be at high risk for developing serious illness. Because we order their appearance and they face the prospect of removal if they don’t appear, sick respondents and respondents vulnerable to serious illness will keep coming to court unless we take action.”
As concerns over the coronavirus ramp up, some government agencies, businesses and organizations have taken steps to try and prevent the spread of the disease by preparing for employees to telework, limiting travel and canceling gatherings.
In Monday’s letter, the union asked the Trump administration to consider measures such as waiving the appearance of some respondents, allowing for telephonic appearances and limiting in-court paper filings. The union is also recommending in an email to the workforce that judges keep bottles of hand sanitizer in the courtroom, use disinfecting wipes to clean surfaces and limit court attendance.
Any change in daily operations is critical in immigration court, which faces a pile-up of pending cases. Immigrants fighting deportation generally have a chance to make their case in court, where they can ask a judge to allow them to stay in the US by arguing they qualify for asylum or another legal option.
Last year’s US government shutdown, which resulted in some cases being postponed, exacerbated the long-standing issue and added to the backlog. There are more than 1 million pending cases before the immigration courts, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse or TRAC, which tracks immigration court data — resulting in cases being scheduled out years in advance.
TRAC estimated last year that between 80,000 and 94,000 immigration court hearings may have been canceled as a result of last year’s government shutdown. The only cases that moved forward during that time were those of immigrants in detention.
The concerns held among immigration lawyers Monday are reminiscent of the government shutdown.
Immigration attorneys are worried about the effect on the backlog of cases if judges, attorneys, and other stakeholders are out because of the illness.
“If this thing gets out of control, it’s always a problem when cases are canceled, given the backlog,” Lawrence K. Le Roy, an immigration lawyer based in Newark, said in reference to coronavirus.
John Leschak, an immigration attorney, had a hearing scheduled Monday at the Newark immigration court for a client seeking asylum in the United States. The judge was not in court and the hearing was postponed. It’s unclear whether the reason behind the judge’s absence was related to coronavirus.
“It’s unfortunate because it’s a case that’s been pending for a long time,” Leschak said. “We’re between a rock and a hard place.”
The coronavirus is also already impacting the operations of some federal courts across the US.
For example, a district court in Washington state and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from nine western states including Washington, altered some of the procedures as the virus continues to spread. Washington has seen at least 80 cases.
Unlike other courts, however, immigration courts fall under the executive branch, not the judicial branch.
Ariane de Vogue and Kevin Bohn contributed to this story.
Laura A. Lynch, Esq.
Senior Policy Counsel
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Thanks Laura, my friend, for keeping us up to date. And, as always, thanks to Priscilla for her great reporting on the never-ending mess and continuing outages at EOIR.
When it comes to public service and professional court administration from “Headquarters,” “today’s EOIR is the pits.” And, that’s not a knock on Chief Judge Chris Santoro who is generally known as a “straight shooter” and a “problem solver.” I think that I’ve acknowledged before that he was always kind and supportive to me and helped me through some very difficult times in my career at Arlington. I’ll always be appreciative for that.
“Reading between the lines,” he was ordered by one of his “superior bozos” in EOIR’s ludicrous “chain of command” to issue the inane order and then to rescind it when everything “hit the fan.” Typical EOIR “march ‘em up the hill, then march ‘em down again nonsense,” that actually has an adverse effect on both internal morale and the public.
On the other hand, perhaps it’s time for those who know how screwed up and “maliciously mismanaged” this system is to “come out and join the resistance,” as others in our Round Table have done, some at considerable personal sacrifice (not me, of course — I was fortunate enough to be able and ready to retire from EOIR even before the current regime took over.) I have no doubt that someone with Chief Judge Santoro’s ample and diverse skill set could find employment in the private sector.
But, this “circus-like” incident raises deeper issues.
In what kind of “court system” are “judges” not allowed to post public notices issued by the CDC without saying “Captain May I?” The DOJ falsely claims that its “judges” are “policy officials.” Whoever heard of a “policy official” who couldn’t hang up a Government public health poster? This whole thing is an unbelievable farce! Why does it take a directive from “Headquarters” to rectify what should be a no brainer in any functioning court system?
And, what kind of “court system” (outside the military) reports to “headquarters.” You think that the U.S. District Courts in Washington called up John Roberts to see if it was OK to cancel trials because of a public health threat? I doubt it.
Why wasn’t NAIJ President Judge Ashley Tabaddor involved in the Coronavirus planning. She speaks for those “on the line” in contact with the public. Certainly, few issues could have a greater effect on “working conditions” than steps to prevent the spread of infectious disease. Why is the NAIJ forced to waste time complaining and going to such lengths when competent management would have involved them in advance planning months ago?
Imagine how much better this system would operate if it were run by real judges who hired professional court administrators to work for the public good, instead of maliciously incompetent clowns carrying out Stephen Miller’s fascist agenda?
As you know, I blame the Article IIIs and Congress for letting this deadly mockery of our Constitution and American Justice continue to operate — essentially to dehumanize, abuse, and sometimes kill. I trust the younger members of the NDPA, folks like Laura and her colleagues, and the next generations to see that the life-tenured judges and legislators who looked the other way and knowingly acted as enablers as human dignity, our Constitution, and the rule of law were trampled upon by a White Nationalist regime are held fully accountable in the “court of history.”
The “J.R. Five’s” toxically improper action in Wolf v. Cook County, skirting the rules to enable the regime’s illegal, racially motivated rewriting of the “public charge” rules to go into effect has been exposed for the outrageous politically biased action it is. It allows the regime to intentionally spread panic in ethnic communities, particularly targeting Hispanics, citizens, immigrants, and the undocumented, and to intimidate those who should be seeking health care advice from doing so. Nice public health policy. As if Coronavirus and other diseases know the difference between “documented” and “undocumented” humans. It’s likely that Roberts and his tone deaf cronies will have even more “blood on their hands” before this is over.
As I said on Courtside recently, in the future, we also need more courageous, scholarly, humane, and ethical Article III Judges — folks who will read the Constitution and stand up for individual rights and for human dignity — folks who understand as MLK once said that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” The current group of Article IIIs is a national disgrace (as a whole, although there are many notable exceptions, mostly among the U.S. District Court Judges who all too often get reversed by the CAs and the Supremes as their “reward” for “standing tall” for the rest of us and standing up for the fair application of the rule of law).
In the meantime, NAIJ President Judge Ashley Tabaddor is a national hero for standing up for the due process rights of all and having the courage to “speak truth to power” in these perilous times. Obviously, the unethical “decertification action” started by DOJ and EOIR is part of the effort to punish and silence her.Hang in there Ashley! We in the NDPA and the Round Table support and appreciate you and your tireless efforts!
Due Process Forever! Clown Courts 🤡& Complicit Article III Courts Never!
Dead Refugee Child Washes Ashore in Turkey — Stephen Miller Hopes To Kill More Refugees in The AmericasMr. & Mrs. Stephen Miller Look Forward to Planning Together for More “Crimes Against Humanity” Targeting World’s Most Vulnerable Refugees
“KILLER ON THE ROAD” – EMBOLDENED BY THE COMPLICITY OF THE “ROBERTS’ COURT,” GOP ABDICATION OF LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT, & BREAKDOWN OF DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS AND VALUES, REGIME APPARENTLY PLANNING EXTRALEGAL MOVE TO KILL MORE OF THE MOST VULNERABLE REFUGEES – Refugee Women, Children, LGBTQ Community, Victims Of Government-Enabled Gangs Said To Among Targets of Miller/Trump White Nationalist “American Death Squads!”
“There’s a killer on the road His brain is squirmin’ like a toad Take a long holiday Let your children play If ya give this man a ride Sweet memory will die Killer on the road, yeah”
— From “Riders on the Storm” by The Doors (1971)
By Paul Wickham Schmidt
Courtside Exclusive
Feb. 24, 2019
I have been getting “unverified hearsay” reports from Courtside readers and others across the country that an emboldened and now totally unrestrained Trump regime actively is planning an all-out extralegal, extrajudicial onslaught against established asylum laws. It’s likely to claim the lives of many of the most vulnerable and deserving asylum seekers in the United States.
Predictably, this atrocious attack on humanity and human dignity is the “brainchild” of newly married neo-fascist White Nationalist hate monger Stephen Miller. Although unconfirmed, these reports have come from diverse enough sources and sound so consistent with the regime’s nativist, xenophobic approach to asylum that I, for one, give them credence. It’s time to start sounding the alarm for the regime’s latest vile assault on the rule of law and our common humanity!
I have gleaned that there is a 200-page anti-asylum screed floating around the bowels of the regime’s immigration bureaucracy representing more or less the nativist version of the “final solution” for asylum seekers. The gist of this monumental effort boils down along these lines:
[W]ould ban the grant of asylum claims involving PSGs defined solely by criminal activity, terrorist activity, persecutory actions, presence in country with generally high crime rates, attempted recruitment by criminal, terrorist, persecutors, perception of wealth, interpersonal disputes which government were not aware of or involved in and do not extend countrywide; private criminal acts which government was not aware of and do not extend countrywide; status as returned from U.S. and gender. Note the inclusion of “gender” at the end.
Thus, in one “foul swoop” the regime would illegally: 1) strip women and the LGBTQ community of their decades-long, hard-won rights to protection under asylum laws; 2) eliminate the current rebuttable regulatory “presumption of countrywide future persecution” for those who have suffered past persecution; 3) reverse decades of well-established U.S. and international rulings that third party actions that the government was unwilling or unable to protect against constitute persecution; and 4) encourage adjudicators to ignore the legal requirement to consider “mixed motivation” in deciding asylum cases.
There is neither legal nor moral justification for this intentional distortion and rewriting of established human rights principles. Indeed, in my experience of more than two decades as a judge at both the appellate and trial levels, a substantial number, perhaps a majority, of the successful asylum and/or withholding of removal claims in Immigration Court involved non-governmental parties and/or gender-based “particular social groups.” They were some of the clearest, most deserving, and easiest to grant asylum cases coming before the Immigration Courts.
At the “pre-Trump” Arlington Immigration Court, many of these cases were so well-documented and clearly “grantable” that they were “pre-tried” by the parties and moved up on my docket by “joint motion” for “short hearing” grants. This, in turn, encouraged and rewarded multiparty cooperation and judicial efficiency. It was “due process with efficiency, in action.”
Consequently, in addition to its inherent lawlessness, cruelty, and intentional inhumanity, the regime’s proposed actions will stymie professional cooperation between parties and inhibit judicial efficiency. This is just one of many ways in which the regime has used a combination of wanton cruelty and “malicious incompetence” to artificially “jack up” the Immigration Court backlog to over 1.3 million pending and “waiting” cases, even with the hiring of hundreds of additional Immigration Judges.
In a functioning democracy, with an independent judiciary, staffed by judges with knowledge, integrity, and courage, you might expect a timely judicial intervention to block this impending legal travesty and humanitarian disaster as soon as it becomes effective. But, as Justice Sotomayor recently pointed out in a blistering dissent, Chief Justice Roberts and his four GOP colleagues appear to have “tilted” in favor of the regime.
They can’t roll over and bend the laws fast enough to “greenlight” each new immigrant-bashing gimmick instituted by the regime. Moreover, as I’m sure is intended, once these new anti-asylum regulations are railroaded into force, the USCIS Asylum Offices will deny “credible fear” in nearly all cases, thus preventing most asylum applicants from even getting a day in court to properly challenge the regulations. All this will happen while the life-tenured Article III Courts look the other way.
For Stephen Miller, the coming Armageddon for defenseless asylum seekers must represent the ultimate triumph of fascism over democracy, hate over reason, and racism over tolerance. Miller was recently quoted in a New Yorker article about how screwing asylum applicants, and presumably knowing that they and their families would suffer and die, be tortured, or be otherwise harmed by his unlawful acts, was, in effect, his “life’s dream.” “It’s just that this is all I care about. I don’t have a family. I don’t have anything else. This is my life,” said Miller after a meeting in which he had promoted a fraudulent “Safe Third Country Agreement” with El Salvador, a country he acknowledged was without a functioning asylum system.” https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/02/stephen-miller-immigration-this-is-my-life.html.
It appears that even Miller’s forlorn “love life” has taken an upturn. Although the Trump Administration has been a “coming out party” for racists, White Nationalists, and White Supremacists of all stripes, the “hater dater circuit” has remained somewhat “restricted.” Evidently, not everyone “gets off” on the chance to get “up close and personal” with “wannabe war criminals.”
Nevertheless, in the middle of all the suffering he has caused, Miller finally found somebody who apparently hates and despises humanity just as much as he does, in Vice Presidential Press Secretary Katie Waldman. They were recently married at the Trump Hotel in D.C. with the “Hater-in-Chief” himself attending the festivities. How can America “get any greater,” particularly if you have the good fortune not to be a refugee condemned to rape, torture, abuse, family separation, beatings, disfiguration, burning, cutting, extortion or other horribles by this cruel, scofflaw, and “maliciously incompetent” regime?
Judge finds US in contempt after immigrants in suit deported
A federal judge has found the U.S. government in contempt after authorities deported five young immigrants who were seeking to remain in the country under a program for abused and neglected immigrant children.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Nathanael Cousins issued the civil order Friday after finding the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services violated a 2018 preliminary injunction that required them to notify lawyers of any enforcement action against the young immigrants in a class-action lawsuit in California.
Despite the preliminary injunction, five immigrants who were seeking to stay in the United States under a federal government program for abused immigrant children were deported, and one of them was reportedly assaulted.
Mary Tanagho Ross, appellate staff attorney at Public Counsel’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said she learned of the deportations months after one of the immigrants was back in Guatemala, where he was attacked by gang members.
“It is shocking the defendants didn’t do their part to make sure ICE complied with a federal court order and they literally sent kids back to the lion’s den,” she said Wednesday.
A Department of Justice spokesman declined to comment on the case.
The lawsuit was settled last year between the U.S. government and lawyers for immigrants who sought to be covered by the program after they turned 18. Applications are allowed until age 21.
Tanagho Ross said she would never have learned of the deportations but for another lawyer who mentioned one of his clients had applied for the program, which leads to a green card, but got deported after losing a case for asylum.
The court ordered the agencies to return the five immigrants to the United States by Feb. 29 so long as they want to come back, and pay $500 for each day after that each one remains out of the country.
One of them has already been returned and is in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which plans to send him back to Guatemala in another two weeks now that the lawyers have been notified, the U.S. government said in a court filing.
His application to the program for abused children has been approved but he will likely have to wait more than two years for a green card due to a cap on the number allowed to be issued each year, the government said.
Tanagho Ross said attorneys will seek to block his deportation.
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From the Judge’s order:
Defendants’ violation of the preliminary injunction is especially concerning. Beyond Defendants’ basic failure to comply with a Court’s order, Defendants removed class members that had been abused, neglected, or abandoned in their countries of origin. And instead of notifying Plaintiffs’ counsel of those removals as ordered by the Court, Defendants remained silent until Plaintiffs’ counsel discovered those violations themselves six months after the first removal.
Accordingly, the Court now holds all Defendants—Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, Chad F. Wolf, Robert M. Cowan, United States Department of Homeland Security, and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services—in civil contempt.
So, just why would we be spending taxpayer money to remove abused children who had already been found eligible for relief to the countries where they would again be abused, just because “no number was available” at the moment? Are “numbers” really more important than human lives? Why would the Government spend taxpayer money “defending the indefensible” rather than just confessing error and apologizing to the plaintiffs and to the judge? Why aren’t DOJ lawyers working for Barr and defending regime scofflaws held to the same ethical standards as lawyers in private practice?
Prior to this regime, DHS counsel routinely stipulated to stays or “administrative closing” of cases like this. If they hadn’t, most Immigration Judges would have ordered the cases closed, terminated “without prejudice,” or continued. Why have sensible legal practices that promoted docket efficiency, reasonableness, and humanity been intentionally abandoned? Obviously it’s “malicious incompetence” as practiced by DHS & DOJ management in this regime that has ballooned the Immigration Court backlog to over 1.3 million cases and still growing. Whatever happened to responsible Government in the public interest?
One of those most responsible for this breakdown in legal ethics and fundamental fairness is former Attorney General Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions who illegally and unethically did away with “administrative closing.” Yet “Gonzo” walks the streets, even having the audacity to run for the Senate again, while his victims and our legal system suffer. (Sessions was the “mastermind” of the unconstitutional “family separation” fiasco that even years later is still traumatizing innocent families for the “crime” of seeking legal protection under our laws.) What’s wrong with a system that lets corrupt, immoral individuals like Sessions escape accountability and publicly tout, even seek to benefit from, their “crimes against humanity?”
This is the second time recently that Article III Federal Judges have found Trump regime employees to be basically in contempt of their orders. When are Federal Judges going to start sending some of these folks to jail and referring Barr, “Cooch Cooch,” and the DOJ lawyers who continue to obfuscate and frivolously defend the indefensible to the appropriate bar (not Barr) authorities for license revocation?
Sent to Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), and Representative Don Beyer (D-VA) and a few others today:
Dear
RE: Independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court
As an American, human being, taxpayer, and retired career civil servant, I am outraged at the totally unconstitutional and maliciously incompetent destruction of due process and the rule of law, not to mention simple human decency, in our U.S. Immigration Courts by the Department of Justice and the Trump Administration. They have created unprecedented dysfunction and grotesque unfairness.
The current mess, with already record low and plummeting morale and an out of control, largely self-created backlog of more than 1.3 million cases, serves neither the human beings condemned to its daily injustices and intentional degradations of humanity nor the legitimate needs of DHS enforcement. The latter should not be confused with the many outright lies and intentionally false narratives about the need for massive, counterproductive, fiscally wasteful, and intentionally cruel immigration enforcement spread by this Administration. I call on you to join your colleagues in supporting bipartisan legislation to create an independent, Article I U.S. Immigration Court as one of our highest and most pressing national priorities.
I have been involved in the field of immigration, law enforcement, refugees, and human rights for 47 years. More than 35 of those years were spent at the U.S. Department of Justice, where I worked under both Republican and Democratic Administrations. Indeed, as a career Senior Executive under the Reagan Administration, I helped create the Executive Office for Immigration Review (“EOIR”) to house the Immigration Courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”).
Our aim then was to increase judicial independence, due process, fundamental fairness, and professionalism. The Department that I loyally served bears no resemblance whatsoever to the unbelievable ethical and legal morass that now exists under Bill Barr, one of the three most totally unmqualified individuals to hold that post during my lifetime (the others being convicted felon John Mitchell and notorious White Nationalist enforcement zealot Jeff Sessions, who was primarily responsible for the Administration’s cruel and unconstitutional “child separation” program).
Prior to my retirement on June 30, 2019, I spent 13 years as an Immigration Judge at the U.S. Immigration Court in Arlington, Virginia. Before that, I was a Board Member and Appellate Immigration Judge at the BIA, for eight years, the first six as BIA Chair. I also spent more than a decade at the “Legacy Immigration & Naturalization Service,” (“INS”) where as Deputy General Counsel, and Acting General Counsel during portions of the Carter and Reagan Administrations, I was responsible for the overall operation of the nationwide legal program, including all representation before the Immigration Courts and the BIA. I have also practiced immigration law as a partner at the D.C. Office of Jones Day and as managing partner of the D.C. Office of Fragomen.
I currently teach Immigration Law & Policy as an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown Law, as well as making numerous speeches and other public appearances, and publishing my own blog, immigrationcourtside.com. I am a proud member of the Round Table of Former Immigration Judges, a voluntary organization, with more than 40 former judges as members, committed to filing amicus briefs, public statements, and taking part in educational efforts intended to increase public and judicial understanding of the Immigration Courts and to promote an essential restoration of due process and fundamental fairness as its focus.
I know of few, if any, other participants in the current “immigration dialogue,” who have personally been involved in more cases either helping deserving individuals achieve legal status under our laws or, conversely, ordering the removal of individuals found not to qualify to remain here under our laws. In other words, I know what I’m talking about, much of it from face to face encounters with individuals on all sides of the issue in Immigration Court, as well as years of experience in shaping national immigration policy and legislation in both the public and private sectors.
I have had to personally deliver to individuals and their families the “bad news” that I was required by the law to return them to countries where I had little doubt that they would suffer torture, rape, dehumanization, or even death. It’s a sobering experience not shared by most of those clueless demagogues now bragging about how “success” should be measured by our ability to inflict more unnecessary cruelty and inhumanity on some of the most vulnerable individuals in the world and how “court efficiency” means nothing other than assembly line removals with neither due process nor fundamental fairness.
What’s happening now in our Immigration Courts is a travesty and a national catastrophe. It is wrong, from a Constitutional, legal, and moral standpoint. It eventually will join Jim Crow as one of the most heinous abuses of legal authority and human rights in modern American legal history. Surely, we all want to be on “the right side of history” on this fundamental issue.
Today, many NGOs involved in justice, immigration, and human rights launched a “twitter storm” to raise awareness of the tragic abuses of the legal system going on at the Administration’s instigation daily in our failed and unconscionably “weaponized” Immigration Courts. Innocent lives are literally being lost and families and futures ruined while we stand by and watch. America’s future as a great nation and “beacon of hope” for the rest of the world is literally being dissolved and washed down the drain.
Please take time to read the detailed letter that our Round Table of Former Immigration Judges signed, along with the American Immigration Lawyers Association and 53 other distinguished non-governmental organizations, demanding an end to the abusive Immigration Courts under DOJ control and the establishment of a constitutionally required independent Immigration Court that will insure due process and fundamental fairness as required by our Constitution.
Also, if you have not already done so, I urge you to read the letter signed by me and more than 2,500 other former DOJ officials deploring the corruption and unethical behavior that Bill Barr has “normalized” at the DOJ and demanding his resignation.
American justice is facing an existential crisis resulting from this Administration’s weaponization and maliciously incompetent management of what is perhaps our biggest, and certainly most important in terms of human lives and American’s future in the world, court systems: The Immigration Courts. When these courts finally implode under the Trump Administration’s continued abuses, they will take with them a large portion of our American justice system and that which makes America different from the rest of the world.
I should know – I dealt with the human wreckage caused by the failure of courts and justice systems in other countries nearly every working day for more than four decades. This Administration has turned our once-proud Immigration Courts into a “parody of justice” usually found in third-world dictatorships or authoritarian states where due process is but a mirage.
Therefore, I respectfully ask for your support in creating an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court. Due Process Forever!
The head of the Federal Judges Association is taking the extraordinary step of calling an emergency meeting to address the intervention in politically sensitive cases by President Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr.
U.S. District Judge Cynthia M. Rufe, the Philadelphia-based judge who heads the voluntary association of around 1,100 life-term federal judges, told USA Today that the issue “could not wait.” The association, founded in 1982, ordinarily concerns itself with matters of judicial compensation and legislation affecting the federal judiciary.
Republicans defend Barr as Klobuchar looks forward to testimony
Lawmakers and White House counselor Kellyanne Conway commented Feb. 16 on President Trump’s tweets and the conduct of Attorney General William P. Barr. (The Washington Post)
On Sunday, more than 1,100 former Justice Department employees released a public letter calling on Barr to resign over the Stone case.
A search of news articles since the group’s creation revealed nothing like a meeting to deal with the conduct of a president or attorney general.
Rufe, appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, could not be reached for comment late Monday.
The action follows a week of turmoil that included the president tweeting his outrage over the length of sentence recommended by career federal prosecutors for his friend Roger Stone and the decision by Barr to withdraw that recommendation.
In between, Trump singled out the judge in the Stone case, Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court in Washington, for personal attacks, accusing her of bias and spreading a falsehood about her record.
“There are plenty of issues that we are concerned about,” Rufe said to USA Today. “We’ll talk all this through.”
Trump began disparaging federal judges who have ruled against his interests before he took office, starting with U.S. District Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel. After Curiel ruled against Trump in 2016 in a pair of lawsuits detailing predatory marketing practices at Trump University in San Diego, Trump described him as “a hater of Donald Trump,” adding that he believed the Indiana-born judge was “Mexican.”
Trump keeps lashing out at judges
President Trump has a history of denouncing judges over rulings that have negatively affected him personally as well as his administration’s policies. (Drea Cornejo/The Washington Post)
Faced with more than 100 adverse rulings in the federal courts, Trump has continued verbal attacks on judges.
Rufe’s comments gave no hint of what the association could or would do in response.
Some individual judges have already spoken out critically about Trump’s attacks generally, among them U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman, a colleague of Jackson’s in Washington, and most recently, the chief judge of the court in Washington, Beryl A. Howell.
*******************
In reality, judges were among those inside Germany who might have effectively challenged Hitler’s authority, the legitimacy of the Nazi regime, and the hundreds of laws that restricted political freedoms, civil rights, and guarantees of property and security. And yet, the overwhelming majority did not. Instead, over the 12 years of Nazi rule, during which time judges heard countless cases, most not only upheld the law but interpreted it in broad and far-reaching ways that facilitated, rather than hindered, the Nazis ability to carry out their agenda.
— United States Holocaust Museum, Law, Justice, and the Holocaust, at 8 (July 2018)
How soon we forget!
Will Trump & Barr eventually separate Article III Judges’ families or send them to danger zones in Mexico or the Northern Triangle to “deter” rulings against the regime? Will Mark Morgan and Chad Wolf then declare “victory?” Will their families be scattered to various parts of the “New American Gulag” with no plans to reunite them? Will they be put on trial for their lives without access to lawyers? Are there costs for failing to take a “united stand” for the rule of law, Constitutional Due Process, human rights, and the human dignity of the most vulnerable among us?
Why does it take the case of a lifetime sleaze-ball like Roger Stone to get the “life-tenured ones” to “wake up” to the attacks on humanity and the rule of law going on under noses for the past three years?
The Freudian concept of psychological projection refers to the behavior of people who, unable to acknowledge their own weaknesses, ascribe those same failings to others. President Trump provides a striking example in his multiple post-impeachment rants calling those who sought his removal “vicious” and “mean.” His choice of the word “mean” caught my attention, because I’ve been thinking for some time now that the United States has become a mean country.
There has been meanness, and worse, in the world, of course, long before there was a President Trump. But it doesn’t require suffering from the agitation of Trump derangement syndrome to observe that something toxic has been let loose during these past three years.
Much of it has to do with immigration: the separation of families at the border and the effort to terminate DACA, the program that protects from deportation undocumented young people brought to the United States as children. Removing this protection for hundreds of thousands of productive “Dreamers,” now pursuing higher education or holding jobs (or both), is an obvious lose-lose proposition for the country. It is also simply mean.
And the meanness radiates out from Washington. The mayor of Springfield, Mass., one of the biggest cities in one of the bluest states, has taken the president up on his offer to let local officials veto the resettlement of refugees in their communities. Tennessee enacted a law to cut off state money to cities that declare themselves “sanctuaries” from federal immigration enforcement. (At the same time more than a dozen counties in Tennessee have endorsed a growing “Second Amendment sanctuary” movement for gun rights.)
The meanness spreads to the lowest ranks of the country’s judiciary. USA Today reported two weeks ago that a common pleas judge in Hamilton County, Ohio, has adopted the practice of summoning ICE whenever he has a “hunch” that the defendant standing before him is an undocumented immigrant. “I’m batting a thousand. I haven’t got one wrong yet,” Judge Robert Ruehlman boasted.
In the Arizona desert, where thousands of border-crossing migrants have died from exposure and dehydration in the past decade, Border Patrol agents have been filmed kicking over and emptying bottles of water left for the migrants by volunteers. (This practice evidently preceded the Trump administration; the Border Patrol, in its union’s first-ever presidential endorsement, endorsed Mr. Trump’s candidacy in 2016, deeming him “the only candidate who actually threatens the established powers that have betrayed our country.” )
The United States attorney’s office in Tucson has been prosecuting people who enter the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge without a permit to leave lifesaving bottles of water and cans of food along common migratory routes. In 2018, a federal magistrate judge, in a nonjury trial, convicted four people for illegal entry and abandoning property in the desert wilderness. The four are volunteers for No More Deaths/No Más Muertes, a ministry of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson.
In their appeal before a federal district judge, Rosemary Márquez, the four invoked the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, arguing that their actions were driven by their faith and their belief in the “sanctity of human life.” The government responded that the four had simply “recited” religious beliefs “for the purpose of draping religious garb over their political activity.” (I’m not holding my breath for the Trump administration to similarly ridicule the religious claims of employers who say they can’t possibly include the birth-control coverage in their employee health plans, as the Affordable Care Act requires, lest they become complicit in the sin of contraception.)
The administration met its match in Judge Márquez. On Jan. 31, finding that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act barred the prosecution, she overturned the convictions. Her 21-page opinion noted that human remains were regularly found in the area, and she had this to say about that fact:
“The government seems to rely on a deterrence theory, reasoning that preventing clean water and food from being placed on the refuge would increase the risk of death or extreme illness for those seeking to cross unlawfully, which in turn would discourage or deter people from attempting to enter without authorization. In other words, the government claims a compelling interest in preventing defendants from interfering with a border enforcement strategy of deterrence by death. This gruesome logic is profoundly disturbing.”
The headline on this column promises some thoughts about the Supreme Court, so I’ll now turn to the court. The country’s attention was focused elsewhere two weeks ago when five justices gave the Trump administration precisely what it needed to put into effect one of the most meanspirited and unjustified of all its recent immigration policies. This was the radical expansion of the “public charge” rule, which bars from admission or permanent residency an immigrant who is “likely at any time to become a public charge.”
The concept of “public charge” in itself is nothing new. It was part of the country’s early efforts to control immigration in the late 19th century, where it was used to exclude those likely to end up in the poor house or its equivalent. That historic definition — “primarily dependent on the government for cash assistance or on long-term institutionalization” — was codified in 1999 “field guidance” issued to federal immigration officers.
Last August, the administration put a new definition in place. Any immigrant who receives the equivalent of 12 months of federal benefits within a three-year period will be deemed a public charge, ineligible for permanent residency or a path to citizenship. The designated benefits include nutrition assistance for a child under the SNAP program; receipt of a Section 8 housing voucher or residence in public housing; and medical treatment under Medicaid. The new rule, titled Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds, aggregates the benefits — that is, three of the benefits received in a single month count as three months of the 12.
States, cities, and nonprofit organizations around the country promptly filed lawsuits, with varying preliminary outcomes. The plaintiffs argued that the drastic change in definition was “arbitrary and capricious,” violating the Administrative Procedure Act’s core requirement of “reasoned decision making.”
In October, a federal district judge in New York, George Daniels, ruled in favor of two sets of plaintiffs, one group headed by New York State and the other, a coalition of nonprofit organizations. Judge Daniels noted that the government was “afforded numerous opportunities to articulate a rational basis for equating public charge with receipt of benefits for 12 months within a 36-month period, particularly when this has never been the rule,” but that its lawyers “failed each and every time.” He explained that “where an agency action changes prior policy, the agency need not demonstrate that the reasons for the new policy are better than the reasons for the old one. It must, however, show that there are good reasons for the new policy.”
And Judge Daniels added: “The rule is simply a new agency policy of exclusion in search of a justification. It is repugnant to the American dream of the opportunity for prosperity and success through hard work and upward mobility.” Noting that the policy would immediately cause “significant hardship” to “hundreds of thousands of individuals who were previously eligible for admission and permanent residence in the United States,” he issued a nationwide injunction to block its implementation.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit put the government’s appeal on a fast track but refused, in the interim, to grant a stay of the injunction. So, predictably, the administration turned to its friends at the Supreme Court and, equally predictably, got what it wanted. By a vote of 5 to 4, the court granted a stay of the injunction to last through a future Supreme Court appeal.
Granting a stay at this point was a breathtaking display of judicial activism. The Second Circuit will hear the case promptly; briefs are due on Friday. More to the point, the court’s summary action, without full appellate review, changes the lives of untold numbers of people for the worse, people who immigrated legally to the United States and who have followed every rule. Being kicked off the path to citizenship puts them directly on the path to deportation, without any explanation from the highest court in the land of why this should be the case.
Of the five justices in the majority — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — only Justices Gorsuch and Thomas deigned to write anything. In a four-page concurring opinion, they made clear their determination to hold up this case, Department of Homeland Security v. New York, as an example of “the gamesmanship and chaos” that they said was attendant on “the rise of nationwide injunctions.”
I don’t remember such hand-wringing a few years back when anti-immigrant states found a friendly judge in South Texas to issue a nationwide injunction against President Barack Obama’s expansion of the DACA program to include parents of the “Dreamers.” The Supreme Court let that injunction stand.
Do the justices realize how they are being played? I started this column by mentioning psychological projection, a distorted view of others engendered by a distorted view of oneself. That’s Donald Trump, seeing himself the innocent victim of attacks from vicious and mean people. There’s another kind of projection, the image reflected when light strikes a mirror. Who do these five justices see when they look in their mental mirrors? Could it be Donald Trump?
*************************************
Eventually, the New Due Process Army will win the war to restore justice, Due Process, and the rule of law to our Republic. And one of the lessons should be: Better Federal Judges driven by fairness, scholarship, practicality, compassion, kindness, respect for all persons, and the courage to speak out for the rights of the people against tyranny and corruption.
In reality, judges were among those inside Germany who might have effectively challenged Hitler’s authority, the legitimacy of the Nazi regime, and the hundreds of laws that restricted political freedoms, civil rights, and guarantees of property and security. And yet, the overwhelming majority did not. Instead, over the 12 years of Nazi rule, during which time judges heard countless cases, most not only upheld the law but interpreted it in broad and far-reaching ways that facilitated, rather than hindered, the Nazis ability to carry out their agenda.
— United States Holocaust Museum, Law, Justice, and the Holocaust, at 8 (July 2018)
How soon we forget!
Yes, Linda, I think the Supremes’ Justices and other Article IIIs who aid the “dehumanization” and “Dred Scottification” of migrants, asylum seekers, and “the other” by the regime know full well that they are “being played.” They are willing, sometimes as in the case of the recent totally gratuitous nonsense about targeting nationwide injunctions flowing off the pens of Gorsuch and Thomas actually eager, to “go along to get along” — even when it often means hanging braver lower court colleagues who had the courage to speak truth to power and stand up to tyranny “out to dry.”
Like judges during the Jim Crow era and other disastrous episodes of legal history, they think they can hide out in their ivory towers behind legal gobbledygook that most first-years law students can recognize as the nonsense “cop out” that it is. They also knowingly and intentionally betray the legions of courageous, ethical lawyers, many working pro bono in dangerous and unhealthy conditions, to uphold the rule of law in America and to defend human rights and human decency.
Hopefully, our Republic will survive this dark time, and these folks “working at the retail level,” many “charter members” of the New Due Process Army, will form the core of a future, better judiciary that will put Due Process and humanity first, above party loyalty and bizarre, often nonsensical, right wing theories used to justify lawlessness, injustice, unfairness, and invidious discrimination.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.(left), and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote a letter accusing the Trump administration of politicizing the immigration courts.
CREDIT J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE / AP
Top Senate Democrats warn that the Trump administration is deliberately undermining the independence of immigration courts.
In a bluntly-worded letter to the Justice Department, which oversees the immigration courts, the senators accuse the administration of waging an “ongoing campaign to erode the independence of immigration courts,” including changing court rules to allow more political influence over decisions, and promoting partisan judges to the Board of Immigration Appeals.
“The administration’s gross mismanagement of these courts,” they write, threatens to do “lasting damage to public confidence in the immigration court system.”
The letter was sent Thursday to Attorney General William Barr. It was signed by nine Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, including Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Richard Durbin of Illinois, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. They are requesting extensive information about the department’s hiring practices for trial-level and appellate judges, among other documents.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter.
The senators’ concerns echo those voiced by former and current immigration judges, including the head of the union representing those judges. Ashley Tabaddor, the president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, testified at a House Judiciary Committee hearing last month that immigration courts should no longer be overseen by the Justice Department.
“The only real and lasting solution is the establishment of an independent Immigration Court,” Tabaddor wrote in her testimony. “It must be free from the constantly changing (often diametrically opposed) politicized policy directives of the Department of Justice.”
Immigration courts face a massive backlog of more than a million cases. And there’s wide agreement that the court system needs reform. But not everyone believes that removing immigration courts from the Justice Department is the right approach.
“The attorney general and his subordinates are actively working to remedy this problem, by providing the needed resources to the immigration courts,” wrote Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge who is now a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee last month. “Restructuring the immigration courts … will almost certainly not address the core problems that are facing those courts,” Arthur added.
At a time when caseloads are surging, some immigration judges are quitting, citing frustration and exhaustion. Judge Charles Honeyman retired from the Philadelphia Immigration Court in January after 24 years on the job.
“I would want future administrations and the Congress to think of immigration judges as judges, literally, and give them the autonomy and the independence and the confidence to make decisions without political interference or overreach,” he said in an interview with NPR’s Noel King.
“The only way to do that is to create an independent court where the judge makes a decision and the judge isn’t afraid of how many cases he has to complete for the year or whether some political actor is going to be looking over his shoulder and say, I don’t agree with that decision; we’re going to find a way to put pressure on you,” Honeyman said.
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
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Thanks, Charlie, my friend, for speaking out so forcefully for Due Process and justice in our Immigration Courts!
After seeing how Trump attacked an Article III life-tenured U.S. District Judge this week, does anyone seriously think that an Immigration Judge, a mere civil servant, who ruled against the Trump/Miller White Nationalist agenda in a case that came to Trump’s attention would retain their job under Billy Barr? After seeing how Trump treated some career civil servants and military officers after they “spoke truth to power” does anyone seriously think that Billy Barr of any other regime sycophant would defend fair and impartial decision making that Trump didn’t like?
No way! So how can ANY foreign national get a fair hearing before a “fake court system” where the prosecution authorities retain the right to change any result that goes against them and to remove subordinates who are supposed to be exercising independent judgement from their jobs if they don’t like the result.
The entire Immigraton Court system is and has been for some time now a cruel, unconstitutional hoax. Why haven’t the Article III Courts, whose judges are protected by life tenure, done their duty by stepping in and putting an end to this unconstitutional dysfunctional mess that is destroying innocent lives and ruining futures?
(CNN)The Trump administration is reinforcing a tight deadline for immigration cases of unaccompanied migrant children in government custody in an effort to make quicker decisions about deportation, according to an email obtained by CNN.
The message seems designed to apply pressure on immigration judges to wrap up such cases within a 60-day window that’s rarely met and falls in line with a broader effort by the administration to complete immigration cases at a faster speed.
Judge Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, said deadlines are “putting the judge between a rock and a hard place.”
“The only thing that can get done within 60 days is if someone wants to give up their case or go home or be deported,” Tabaddor told CNN.
The Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees the nation’s immigration court system, sent the email last month to assistant chief immigration judges, reminding them that unaccompanied children in government custody are to be considered the same as detained adults for purposes of scheduling cases.
While the 60-day deadline cited in the email is not new, it’s difficult to meet for cases of unaccompanied kids, in part, because of the time it takes to collect the relevant information for a child who comes to the United States alone. As a result, cases can often take months, if not years, to resolve.
Last year, an uptick in unaccompanied children at the US-Mexico border strained the administration’s resources. Over the course of the 2019 fiscal year, Border Patrol arrested around 76,000 unaccompanied children on the southern border, compared to 50,000 the previous fiscal year.
Unaccompanied children apprehended at the southern border are taken into custody by the Department of Homeland Security and referred to Health and Human Services. While in care at shelters across the country, case managers work to place a child with a sponsor in the United States, like a parent or relative.
Like adults and families who cross the US-Mexico border, unaccompanied children are put into immigration proceedings to determine whether they can stay in the United States.
The email from EOIR, dated January 30, says unaccompanied migrant children who are in the care of the government should be on a “60-day completion goal,” meaning their case is expected to be resolved within 60 days. It goes on to reference complaints received by the office of the director, but doesn’t say who issued the complaints or include a punishment for not meeting the completion goal.
EOIR spokeswoman Kathryn Mattingly told CNN that she could not comment on internal communications.
Golden McCarthy, deputy director at the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, which works with unaccompanied migrant children, said “it does take time to reach out to” a child’s caretaker or adults in the child’s life.
“We all know that many times the child doesn’t necessarily have the full picture of what happened; it does take time to reach out to caretakers and adults in their lives to understand,” McCarthy said.
Initiatives designed to quickly process cases have cropped up before.
The Obama administration tried to get cases scheduled more expeditiously but deferred to the judges on the timeline thereafter, whereas the Trump administration’s move seems to be an intent to complete cases within a certain timeframe, according to Rená Cutlip-Mason, chief of Programs at the Tahirih Justice Center and a former EOIR official.
The Trump administration also appears to be getting cases scheduled faster. In Arizona, for example, the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Project has begun seeing kids called into immigration court earlier than they had been before.
In a statement submitted to the House Judiciary Committee in January, the group detailed the cases of children, one as young as 10 years old, who appeared before an immigration judge within days of arriving to the US.
“I think our clients and the kids we would work with are resilient,” McCarthy, the deputy director at the project, said. “But to navigate the complex immigration system is difficult for adults to do, and so to explain to a kid that they will be going to court and a judge will be asking them questions, the kids don’t typically always understand what that means.”
It can also complicate a child’s case since he or she may eventually move to another state to reunify with a parent or guardian, requiring the child’s case to move to an immigration court in that state.
Under the Trump administration, the Justice Department has rolled out a slew of other policies — such as imposing case quotas — to chip away at the nearly one million pending cases facing the immigration court system. Some of those controversial policies have resulted in immigration judges leaving the department.
In its latest budget request to Congress, the White House called for $883 million to “support 100 immigration judge teams” to ease the backlog.
*************************************
How to build a 1.3 million case backlog with no end in sight: Anatomy of “Aimless Docket Reshuffling:”
2017: Trump Administration “deprioritizes” unaccompanied minors, creating more docket chaos;
2020: Trump Administration “reprioritizes” unaccompanied minors, creating more docket chaos;
Result:
Unfairness to unaccompanied minors rushed through the system without due process;
Unfairness to long-pending cases continuously “shuffled off to Buffalo:”
Gross inconvenience to the public;
Demoralized judges whose dockets are being manipulated by unqualified bureaucrats for political reasons;
Growing backlogs with no rational plan for resolving them in the foreseeable future.
This reminds me of my very first posting on immigratoncourtside.com – from Dec. 27, 2016 —
SAVING CHILD MIGRANTS WHILE SAVING OURSELVES
By Paul Wickham Schmidt
They cross deserts, rivers, and territories controlled by corrupt governments, violent gangs, and drug cartels. They pass through borders, foreign countries, different languages and dialects, and changing cultures.
I meet them on the final leg of their trip where we ride the elevator together. Wide-eyed toddlers in their best clothes, elementary school students with backpacks and shy smiles, worried parents or sponsors trying to look brave and confident. Sometimes I find them wandering the parking garage or looking confused in the sterile concourse. I tell them to follow me to the second floor, the home of the United States Immigration Court at Arlington, Virginia. “Don’t worry,” I say, “our court clerks and judges love children.”
Many will find justice in Arlington, particularly if they have a lawyer. Notwithstanding the expedited scheduling ordered by the Department of Justice, which controls the Immigration Courts, in Arlington the judges and staff reset cases as many times as necessary until lawyers are obtained. In my experience, retaining a pro bono lawyer in Immigration Court can be a lengthy process, taking at least six months under the best of circumstances. With legal aid organizations now overwhelmed, merely setting up intake screening interviews with needy individuals can take many months. Under such conditions, forcing already overworked court staff to drop everything to schedule initial court hearings for women and children within 90 days from the receipt of charging papers makes little, if any, sense.
Instead of scheduling the cases at a realistic rate that would promote representation at the initial hearing, the expedited scheduling forces otherwise avoidable resetting of cases until lawyers can be located, meet with their clients (often having to work through language and cultural barriers), and prepare their cases. While the judges in Arlington value representation over “haste makes waste” attempts to force unrepresented individuals through the system, not all Immigration Courts are like Arlington.
For example, according to the Transactional Records Clearinghouse at Syracuse University (“TRAC”), only 1% of represented juveniles and 11% of all juveniles in Arlington whose cases began in 2014, the height of the so-called “Southern Border Surge,” have received final orders of removal. By contrast, for the same group of juveniles in the Georgia Immigration Courts, 43% were ordered removed, and 52% of those were unrepresented.
Having a lawyer isn’t just important – it’s everything in Immigration Court. Generally, individuals who are represented by lawyers in their asylum cases succeed in remaining in the United States at an astounding rate of five times more than those who are unrepresented. For recently arrived women with children, the representation differential is simply off the charts: at least fourteen times higher for those who are represented, according to TRAC. Contrary to the well-publicized recent opinion of a supervisory Immigration Judge who does not preside over an active docket, most Immigration Judges who deal face-to-face with minor children agree that such children categorically are incompetent to represent themselves. Yet, indigent individuals, even children of tender years, have no right to an appointed lawyer in Immigration Court.
To date, most removal orders on the expedited docket are “in absentia,” meaning that the women and children were not actually present in court. In Immigration Court, hearing notices usually are served by regular U.S. Mail, rather than by certified mail or personal delivery. Given heavily overcrowded dockets and chronic understaffing, errors by the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) in providing addresses and mistakes by the Immigration Court in mailing these notices are common.
Consequently, claims by the Department of Justice and the DHS that women and children with removal orders being rounded up for deportation have received full due process ring hollow. Indeed a recent analysis by the American Immigration Council using the Immigration Court’s own data shows that children who are represented appear in court more than 95% of the time while those who are not represented appear approximately 33% of the time. Thus, concentrating on insuring representation for vulnerable individuals, instead of expediting their cases, would largely eliminate in absentia orders while promoting real, as opposed to cosmetic, due process. Moreover, as recently pointed out by an article in the New York Times, neither the DHS nor the Department of Justice can provide a rational explanation of why otherwise identically situated individuals have their cases “prioritized” or “deprioritized.”
Rather than working with overloaded charitable organizations and exhausted pro bono attorneys to schedule initial hearings at a reasonable pace, the Department of Justice orders that initial hearings in these cases be expedited. Then it spends countless hours and squanders taxpayer dollars in Federal Court defending its “right” to aggressively pursue removal of vulnerable unrepresented children to perhaps the most dangerous, corrupt, and lawless countries outside the Middle East: El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. The Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”), the institution responsible for enforcing fairness and due process for all who come before our Immigration Courts, could issue precedent decisions to stop this legal travesty of accelerated priority scheduling for unrepresented children who need pro bono lawyers to proceed and succeed. But, it has failed to act.
The misguided prioritization of cases of recently arrived women, children, and families further compromises due process for others seeking justice in our Immigration Courts. Cases that have been awaiting final hearings for years are “orbited” to slots in the next decade. Families often are spread over several dockets, causing confusion and generating unnecessary paperwork. Unaccompanied
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children whose cases should initially be processed in a non-adversarial system are instead immediately thrust into court.
Euphemistically named “residential centers” — actually jails — wear down and discourage those, particularly women and children, seeking to exercise their rights under U.S. and international law to seek refuge from death and torture. Regardless of the arcane nuances of our asylum laws, most of the recent arrivals need and deserve protection from potential death, torture, rape, or other abuse at the hands of gangs, drug cartels, and corrupt government officials resulting from the breakdown of civil society in their home countries.
Not surprisingly, these “deterrent policies” have failed. Individuals fleeing so-called “Northern Triangle” countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras have continued to arrive at a steady pace, while dockets in Immigration Court, including “priority cases,” have mushroomed, reaching an astonishing 500,000 plus according to recent TRAC reports (notwithstanding efforts to hire additional Immigration Judges). As reported recently by the Washington Post, private detention companies, operating under highly questionable government contracts, appear to be the only real beneficiaries of the current policies.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We could save lives and short-circuit both the inconsistencies and expenses of the current case-by-case protection system, while allowing a “return to normalcy” for most already overcrowded Immigration Court dockets by using statutory Temporary Protected Status (known as “TPS”) for natives of the Northern Triangle countries. Indeed, more than 270 organizations with broad based expertise in immigration matters, as well as many members of Congress, have requested that the Administration institute such a program.
The casualty toll from the uncontrolled armed violence plaguing the Northern Triangle trails only those from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. TPS is a well- established humanitarian response to a country in crisis. Its recipients, after registration, are permitted to live and work here, but without any specific avenue for obtaining permanent residency or achieving citizenship. TPS has been extended among others to citizens of Syria and remains in effect for citizens of both Honduras who needed refuge from Hurricane Mitch in 1998 and El Salvador who needed refuge following earthquakes in 2001. Certainly, the disruption caused by a hurricane and earthquakes more than a decade ago pales in comparison with the very real and gruesome reality of rampant violence today in the Northern Triangle.
Regardless, we desperately need due-process reforms to allow the Immigration Court system to operate more fairly, efficiently, and effectively. Here are a few suggestions: place control of dockets in the local Immigration Judges, rather than bureaucrats in Washington, as is the case with most other court systems; work cooperatively with the private sector and the Government counsel to docket cases at a rate designed to maximize representation at the initial hearings; process unaccompanied children through the non-adversarial system before rather
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than after the institution of Immigration Court proceedings; end harmful and unnecessary detention of vulnerable families; settle ongoing litigation and redirect the talent and resources to developing an effective representation program for all vulnerable individuals; and make the BIA an effective appellate court that insures due process, fairness, uniformity and protection for all who come before our Immigration Courts.
Children are the future of our world. History deals harshly with societies that mistreat and fail to protect children and other vulnerable individuals. Sadly, our great country is betraying its values in its rush to “stem the tide.” It is time to demand an immigrant justice system that lives up to its vision of “guaranteeing due process and fairness for all.” Anything less is a continuing disgrace that will haunt us forever.
The children and families riding the elevator with me are willing to put their hopes and trust in the belief that they will be treated with justice, fairness, and decency by our country. The sole mission and promise of our Immigration Courts is due process for these vulnerable individuals. We are not delivering on that promise.
The author is a recently retired U.S. Immigration Judge who served at the U.S. Immigration Court in Arlington Virginia, and previously was Chairman and Member of the Board of Immigration Appeals. He also has served as Deputy General Counsel and Acting General Counsel of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, a partner at two major law firms, and an adjunct professor at two law schools. His career in the field of immigration and refugee law spans 43 years. He has been a member of the Senior Executive Service in Administrations of both parties.
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Tragically, as a nation, we have learned nothing over the past more than three years. Things have actually gotten much, much worse as we have unwisely and unconscionably entrusted the administration of our laws to a cruel, corrupt, scofflaw regime that sees inflicting pain, suffering, and even death on children and other vulnerable seekers of justice as an “end in an of itself.” They actually brag about their dishonesty, racism, selfishness, contempt for human decency, and “crimes against humanity.”
So far, they have gotten away nearly “Scot-free” with not only bullying and picking on vulnerable children and refugee families but with diminishing the humanity of each of us who put up with the horrors of an authoritarian neo-fascist state.
History will, however, remember who stood up for humanity in this dark hour and who instead sided with and enabled the forces of evil, willful ignorance, and darkness overtaking our wounded democracy.
Due Process Forever; Child Abuse & Gratuitous Cruelty, Never.
There has never been a better time to be a Hooker for Jesus.
Under Attorney General Bill Barr’s management, it appears no corner of the Justice Department can escape perversion — even the annual grants the Justice Department gives to nonprofits and local governments to help victims of human trafficking.
In a new grant award, senior Justice officials rejected the recommendations of career officials and decided to deny grants to highly rated Catholic Charities in Palm Beach, Fla., and Chicanos Por La Causa in Phoenix. Instead, Reuters reported, they gave more than $1 million combined to lower-rated groups called the Lincoln Tubman Foundation and Hookers for Jesus.
Why? Well, it turns out the head of the Catholic Charities affiliate had been active with Democrats and the Phoenix group had opposed President Trump’s immigration policies. By contrast, Hookers for Jesus is run by a Christian conservative and the Lincoln Tubman group was launched by a relative of a Trump delegate to the 2016 convention.
That Catholic Charities has been replaced by Hookers for Jesus says much about Barr’s Justice Department. Friends of Trump are rewarded. Opponents of Trump are punished. And the nation’s law enforcement apparatus becomes Trump’s personal plaything.
Federal prosecutors Monday recommended that Trump associate Roger Stone serve seven to nine years in prison for obstruction of justice, lying to Congress, witness tampering and other crimes.
Then Trump tweeted that the proposed sentence was “horrible and very unfair” and “the real crimes were on the other side.” And by midday Tuesday, Barr’s Justice Department announced that it would reduce Stone’s sentence recommendation. All four prosecutors, protesting the politicization, asked to withdraw from the case.
But politicization is now the norm. Last week, Barr assigned himself the sole authority to decide which presidential candidates — Democrats and Republicans — should be investigated by the FBI.
Also last week, the Department of Homeland Security, working with the Justice Department, announced that New York state residents can no longer enroll in certain Trusted Traveler programs such as Global Entry — apparent punishment for the strongly Democratic state’s policies on illegal immigrants.
On Monday, Barr declared that the Justice Department had created an “intake process” to receive Rudy Giuliani’s dirt from Ukraine on Joe Biden and Hunter Biden — dirt dug in a boondoggle that left two Giuliani associates under indictment and Trump impeached.
The same day, Barr’s agency announced lawsuits against California, New Jersey and King County (Seattle), Washington — politically “blue” jurisdictions all — as part of what he called a “significant escalation” against sanctuary cities.
On Tuesday, to get a better sense of the man who has turned the Justice Department into Trump’s toy, I watched Barr speak to the Major County Sheriffs of America, a friendly audience, at the Willard Hotel in Washington.
Even by Trumpian standards, the jowly Barr, in his large round glasses, pinstripe suit and Trump-red tie, was strikingly sycophantic. “In his State of the Union, President Trump delivered a message of genuine optimism filled with an unapologetic faith in God and in American greatness and in the common virtues of the American people: altruism, industriousness, self-reliance and generosity,” he read, deadpan.
Trump, he went on, “loves this country,” and “he especially loves you.” The boot-licking performance continued, about Trump’s wise leadership, his unbroken promises and even the just-impeached president’s passionate belief in the “rule of law.”
Then Barr turned to the enemy. He attacked “rogue DA’s” and “so-called social-justice reformers,” who are responsible for “historic levels of homicide and other violent crime” in Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, Chicago and Baltimore. Politicians in sanctuary jurisdictions, he said, prefer “to help criminal aliens evade the law.” Barr vowed to fight these foes with “all lawful means” — federal subpoenas to force them to turn over “information about criminal aliens,” dozens of lawsuits to invalidate statutes and attempts to deny them both competitive and automatic grants.
In response to a question, Barr railed against tech companies’ use of encryption: “They’re designing these devices so you can be impervious to any government scrutiny,” he protested.
Maybe people wouldn’t be so sensitive about government scrutiny if the top law enforcement official weren’t using his position to punish political opponents and reward political allies.
Instead, with Barr’s acquiescence, we live in a moment in which: Trump’s Treasury Department immediately releases sensitive financial information about Hunter Biden, while refusing to release similar information about Trump; Trump ousts officials who testified in the impeachment inquiry and even ousts the blameless twin brother of one of the witnesses; and Trump’s FBI decides to monitor violent “people on either side” of the abortion debate — although the FBI couldn’t point to a single instance of violence by abortion-rights supporters.
This week, the Pentagon released a new color scheme for Air Force One, replacing the 60-year-old design with one that looks suspiciously like the old Trump Shuttle.Surprised? Don’t be. Soon the entire administration will be able to apply for a Justice Department grant as a newly formed nonprofit: Hookers for Trump.
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Barr’s inspirational lesson for new lawyers: Once you achieve fame, fortune, and protection from corrupt politicos and complicit judges, it’s virtually impossible to get your law license revoked for unethical performance. As long as you thumb your nose at the law and ethical rules right in public, right in front of judges, you’re essentially immune. The “rules” only apply to those poor suckers at the bottom of the “legal totem pole.”
This is actually a fairly new development under the Trump regime. In the past, even high-profile lawyers who violated their ethical obligations got zapped: John Mitchell, Dick Kleindienst, Bill Clinton(technically, he might have “surrendered his law license” in lieu of disbarment), Webb Hubbell, etc.
But, during the Trump regime, Federal Judges seem content to just “roll their eyes” at lies, false narratives, thinly veiled racist or religiously bigoted rationales for policy, and simply astounding conflicts of interest (how about running a biased and unconstitutional Immigration “Court” right in plain view?) streaming out of an ethics-free zone at the “Department of Hookers for Trump.”
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson was actually a “target” of Roger Stone’s contemptuous and openly threatening behavior. It will be interesting to see how she deals with the sudden reversal and baseless plea for mercy from Barr for this unrepentant and totally unapologetic criminal.
As if to resolve any doubts as to his contempt for America and democratic institutions, the cowardly “Bully-in-Chief” unleashed an unprovoked twitter tirade against Judge Jackson and the career prosecutors in the case. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/02/12/trump-stone-judge/
Perhaps predictability, this was followed by an impotent call by Senate Democrats for the uber corrupt Billy Barr to resign and for the equally corrupt and spineless Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to stop slithering around the Capitol and schedule an “investigative hearing” into improper political influence at the “Department of Hookers for Trump.”https://apple.news/Az2hAo6yqT8uKJSuAX26F1Q Don’t hold your breath, folks!
This is not “normal.” This is not “right.” It’s time for those of us who still believe in American democracy to take a stand in November to remove Trump and the sociopathic element that he represents in our society from power. Otherwise, the “race to the bottom” will continue, unabated. And more innocent people will be hurt by or die because of this unprincipled, totally immoral lunatic.
3 Roger Stone prosecutors quit over Justice Department sentencing reversal
February 11, 2020
The Justice Department’s decision to reportedly back off its sentencing recommendation for President Trump’s longtime adviser Roger Stone apparently wasn’t well-received by two of his prosecutors.
Upon learning the Department reversed course and said seven to nine years was “grossly disproportionate” given Stone’s offenses — which include lying to Congress, witness tampering, and obstructing a House investigation related to 2016 Russian election interference — prosecutor Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Aaron Zelinsky withdrew from Stone’s case. However, it looks like he’ll be sticking with the Justice Department and returning to his old job in Maryland.
Another prosecutor, Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Jed, is doing the same. Meanwhile, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Kravis, is resigning from the department altogether.
The decisions by the prosecutors appear to be in protest of what they consider interference from Justice Department higher-ups. The sentencing recommendation was reversed after Trump tweeted angrily about it, although there’s no confirmation if the White House was directly driving the change.
This story has been updated to reflect Jed’s decision.
—Tim O’Donnell
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I will be interested in seeing 1) how Judge Amy Berman Jackson handles this; and 2) if Trump just goes ahead and pardons the uber sleazy and unrepentant Stone.The GOP has made it crystal clear that the rule of law in America is “for suckers only.”
UPDATE:
After this story was posted, the fourth prosecutor on the Stone case also withdrew.
BALTIMORE (AP) ― A federal judge in Maryland has banned immigration officials from arresting, detaining and deporting immigrants who are seeking legal status based on their marriages to U.S. citizens.
U.S. District Judge George J. Hazel issued the ruling Friday in a case filed by six couples accusing immigration officials of luring families to marriage interviews in Baltimore, only to detain the immigrant spouse for deportation. Hazel also ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release from custody immigrants married to U.S. citizens detained before they could complete the first step of the process to obtain legal residency.
Federal regulations allow U.S. citizens to try to legalize the status of spouses who have been living in the country illegally, including those with deportation orders. But the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the Maryland couples, has argued that a growing number of officers have “cruelly twisted” the rules by detaining immigrant spouses following the required marriage interviews.
The months-long process typically requires couples to demonstrate the legitimacy of their marriage as part of the first step. If the couples pass an interview and earn other approvals, immigrant spouses eventually must travel abroad for a visa interview at a U.S. consulate. Only if they receive a visa can they return to the U.S. legally.
It’s unclear how many people have become permanent U.S. residents through the Obama-era regulations. They were created to significantly reduce the time that U.S. citizens are separated from immediate family members while trying to build a lawful immigration case from their home countries.
“(T)his order is in the public interest because it requires Respondents to comport with their own rules and regulations, bars arbitrary agency action toward vulnerable immigrant communities, and diminishes the emotional and financial impact on families participating in the provisional waiver process,” Hazel wrote. He has not ruled on the class certification sought by the plaintiffs.
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The government in its response filed last year asked Hazel to dismiss the case arguing the court lacked jurisdiction and the plaintiffs’ “claims are not likely to be successful.”
The ruling only applies to anyone living in Maryland, but the ACLU is also pursuing a similar complaint in Massachusetts. It is unclear how many people must be released from custody under Hazel’s ruling.
Among the plaintiffs is Elmer Sanchez, a native of Honduras who was ordered in absentia to be deported in 2005 and married a U.S. citizen in 2013. He was taken into custody in May moments after he and his wife successfully finished their interview with an immigration officer in Baltimore. He was released six weeks later after the ACLU sought an emergency order to prevent imminent deportation.
“These families endured trauma under the actions of ICE,” ACLU of Maryland attorney Nick Steiner said in a statement Monday. “Their blatant disregard for their own rules and regulations that are meant to prevent family separation is unconstitutional. We are hopeful about the ruling and we believe it’s a step in the right direction in recognizing that immigrants have constitutional protections too.”
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Not many things this regime hates more than being required to follow the law!
