Cameroon – Page 2 – immigrationcourtside.com

UNHOLY BEDFELLOWS: Trump’s Cruelty Combines With 9th Cir.’s Complicity To Abuse & Kill U.S. Asylum Seekers In Mexico

https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-refugee-camp-rio-grande-migrants-border-20190708-htmlstory.html

Molly O’Toole & Carolyn Cole Report for the LA Times:

A group of roughly 100 Haitians, Africans and South Americans cross the Rio Grande, just shallow enough for adults to wade despite an overnight storm.

As they wait on the muddy bank near Del Rio, Texas, to surrender themselves to the Border Patrol, the voices of children in the group carry across the river to the Mexican side.

There, in the city of Ciudad Acuña, hundreds of migrants have formed an impromptu refugee camp in an ecological park bound on one side by the river. Just outside the park, the official port of entry to the United States sits at the end of a short bridge.

They’ve crossed thousands of miles by foot, boat and bus to seek asylum in the U.S., only to find themselves stalled in a purgatory of soggy tents and overflowing bathrooms. Now, they face an uncertain wait prolonged by Trump administration policy.

The temptation to make the risky and illegal river crossing mounts daily.

“If you see people jumping over the river, it is because they are tired of staying here,” said one resident of the camp, Luis, who declined to give his last name out of fear for the safety of his family back home.

Home for him would be the West African nation of Cameroon, where Luis was vice principal of a school until he fled last fall. He escaped a widening conflict between the country’s English-speaking minority and its Francophone-majority government, which receives security assistance from the U.S.

He was jailed and tortured before escaping to neighboring Nigeria, Luis said. After a trek across three continents, he landed here, where he has waited for six weeks to present himself to U.S. officials at the Del Rio port of entry.

He hopes to join a sister in Ohio.

“At times, it is really disheartening,” he said, “so it is difficult to wait.”

. . . .

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Read the complete article along with Carolyn’s wonderful photography at the link.

Cruel, “designed to fail” policies and complicit judges who fail to protect the statutory, constitutional, and human rights of others are unlikely to stop the flow of forced migrants in the long run. They will, however, succeed in killing some, torturing others, ruining many lives, and causing permanent damage to large numbers of their fellow human beings, particularly children.

NBC/Reuters just reported on continuing concerns, confusion, and accusations regarding treatment of migrants in Mexico by the National Guard. https://apple.news/APdRhfQFnTneror8AprpRZQ I’m willing to bet that this is just the “tip of the iceberg.” Eventually, the true “body count” and extent of the human rights violations chargeable to Trump, the 9th Circuit, and the Mexican Government will surface. It will be unbelievably ugly.

Future generations will also find it difficult to understand and explain our national complicity, since the facts about the abuses the Trump Administration is heaping on humanity in our name are out in the open for life-tenured judges to ignore at the peril of their lasting reputations. And, too many of them are doing just that.

PWS

07-10-19

SYSTEMIC FAILURE: 9TH Circuit’s Most Recent Reversal Of BIA Demonstrates Disturbing Lack Of Basic Judicial Competence At All Levels Of EOIR – But, Even The 9th’s Rebuke Misses The Real Point – There Can Be No Due Process In Complex Cases Of This Type Without Legal Representation! – Arrey v. Barr

Arrey v Barr — 9th — Firm Resettlement

Arrey v. Barr, 9th Cir., 02-16-19, Published

SUMMARY BY COURT STAFF:

The panel granted in part a petition for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision affirming an immigration judge’s denial of asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture to a citizen of Cameroon, and remanded.

The panel rejected petitioner’s contention that she was deprived of her due process right to a full and fair hearing based on the denial of her right to retained counsel and an unbiased fact finder. The panel held that the IJ in this case provided petitioner reasonable time to locate an attorney, where the IJ provided several continuances so she could do so, warned her repeatedly that he would not grant further continuances, and attempted to call her attorney when he failed to appear on the day of her merits hearing. The panel also held that although the IJ was rude and harsh with petitioner, petitioner failed to establish that the IJ’s conduct prejudiced her, where the IJ held a complete hearing and made a thorough decision that fully examined the underlying factual matters, and any potential prejudice caused by the IJ’s questionable adverse credibility determination was cured by the Board’s subsequent decision assuming the credibility of petitioner’s testimony in full.

The panel held that the Board committed three legal errors in its application of the firm resettlement bar, which precludes asylum relief if an applicant was firmly resettled in another country prior to arriving in the United States. First, the panel held that the Board erred by failing to consider whether the conditions of petitioner’s offer of resettlement in South Africa were too restricted for her to be firmly resettled. Second, the panel held that the Board erred by applying the firm resettlement rule not as a mandatory bar to petitioner’s asylum claim, but instead as a limitation on the evidence the Board considered in support of her claim for relief from removal to Cameroon, thus causing the Board to improperly ignore evidence of the abuse petitioner suffered in Cameroon before fleeing to South Africa, as well as evidence of the nature of her relationship with her abuser. Third, the panel held that the Board erred by applying the firm resettlement bar to petitioner’s withholding of removal claim, which is not subject to the firm resettlement bar.

Turning to petitioner’s CAT claim, the panel held that substantial evidence did not support the Board’s determination that petitioner could avoid future harm through internal relocation in Cameroon.

The panel remanded petitioner’s asylum, withholding, and CAT claims for further proceedings consistent with its opinion.

** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

PANEL: Ronald M. Gould and Marsha S. Berzon, Circuit Judges, and Frederic Block,* District Judge.

* The Honorable Frederic Block, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York, sitting by designation.

OPINION BY: Judge Gould

KEY QUOTE:

Petitioner Delphine Arrey petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (“BIA” or “Board”) decision dismissing her appeal of an immigration judge’s (“IJ”) denial of her application for asylum, withholding of removal, and relief under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). We conclude that the IJ did not deny Arrey her due process rights to counsel and an unbiased factfinder. As to Arrey’s asylum and withholding of removal claims, we conclude that the Board erred as a matter of law in its analysis and application of the “firm resettlement” rule. As to Arrey’s claim for relief under CAT, we conclude that substantial evidence does not support the Board’s determination that Arrey could safely relocate in another area of Cameroon. We grant the petition in part and remand for reconsideration of Arrey’s claims consistent with our opinion.

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Even the 9th Circuit “blew” the fundamental issue here: No matter how annoying the respondent’s conduct might have been, there was no way to conduct a fair hearing in a case of this complexity without counsel present.

From this recitation of facts, it’s pretty obvious that the respondent had no idea what “firm resettlement” was or how the process for proving or disproving it worked. Going ahead with the hearing created a miscarriage of justice that simply wasted time by going all the way the 9th Circuit and then being returned for competent judicial adjudication applying the correct standards. Haste makes waste.

And the overwhelming backlog that obviously was on the judge’s mind here was not created by this respondent and her attorney; no, it primarily results from “aimless docket reshuffling,” poor administration, Congressional neglect, and “designed to fail policies” by politicos in the DOJ (under the improper and unethical political influence of the DHS) which went into “overdrive” under Sessions.

Getting to the merits, beyond apparently correctly setting forth the respondent’s name and “A number,” the Immigration Judge and the BIA got largely everything else in this case wrong! The basic errors range from a “clearly erroneous” adverse credibility ruling, to a legally incorrect standard for “firm resettlement,” to an idiotically nonsensical ruling that “threats and one attempted assault of rape” did not “rise to the level of persecution” (cases involving these facts were routinely granted by the BIA during my tenure and, to my knowledge, were uniformly granted by IJs in Arlington; indeed, I can’t even imagine an ICE Assistant Chief Counsel during my tenure in Arlington arguing the contrary), to wrong evidentiary determinations, to another completely nonsensical finding on internal relocation.

In other words, this was a “rubber stamp” by BIA “judges” of a staff attorney’s writeup with canned “any reason to deny” language. It was not a fair and impartial adjudication by an “expert” group of appellate judges.

Far from it. If a student had turned this in as an exam answer to a hypothetical case on my Georgetown Law final exam, it would have received “zero credit.” So, how is it “OK” to have a system where individuals in what are supposed to be senior judicial positions, requiring great expertise in immigration, asylum, and human rights law, perform in a manner that would have been deemed unacceptable for L2s and L3s?

It isn’t; and it’s up to the Article III Courts and Congress to get some backbone and some integrity and put an end to this travesty. Yeah, this is “only one case.” But, it involves a human life. Cameroon is a horrible country; credible Cameroonian asylum cases were routinely granted in the Arlington Immigration Court, normally without appeal by ICE.

And for every case where a respondent is lucky enough to get a “Court of Appeals intervention,” dozens of individuals, many without lawyers or the faintest knowledge of what’s happening, are “railroaded” through this fundamentally unfair and constitutionally defective system. This, rather than the bogus wall, or an influx of desperate refugee families seeking asylum, is our true “national emergency” involving immigration: The disdain by our current Administration for the rule of law, human rights, judicial quality, simple human decency, and Due Process of Law under our Constitution!

Congrats to Attorney Ron Richey, an “Arlington Immigration Court regular,” who appeared before me many times, for fighting for due process and justice in another jurisdiction. You are an inspiration to all of us in the “New Due Process Army!”

PWS

03-01-19

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