TAL @ SF CHRON TAKES US INSIDE EOIR’S LATEST ASSAULT ON DUE PROCESS: Lack Of Live Interpretation Causing Confusion, Delays, Misinformation, & Denials Of Fundamental Fairness In U.S. Immigration Courts — Bogus “Court” System Continues To Make Major Changes Diminishing Due Process Without Consulting Judges, Attorneys, Or The Affected Individuals!

Tal Kopan reports for the SF Chron:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Confusion-delays-as-videos-replace-interpreters-14414627.php

Confusion, delays as videos replace interpreters at immigrants’ hearings

By Tal Kopan

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has been slow to implement its new policy replacing in-person interpreters with informational videos at immigrants’ initial hearings, but the switch is causing delays and confusion where it has been introduced, including in San Francisco, observers say.

The Justice Department informed immigration judges in late June that it would replace in-person interpreters at the first court appearance for immigrants facing deportation with videos advising them of their rights. The switchover began in July.

So far, the policy has been rolled out to courts in just four cities: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami and New York.

It’s not clear when the policy will expand. A spokesman for the Justice Department division that oversees the courts said the agency “is taking into consideration all feedback before additional translation videos are created and the program is rolled out to further immigration courts.”

Judges and attorneys observing the courts say the change has mostly served to delay proceedings, by adding lengthy steps and information that is not necessary for all migrants to hear.

After the videos are shown, each immigrant is called up for his or her individual hearing and may have questions for the judge. Although judges are now barred from scheduling in-person interpreters for the hearings, at times interpreters can be found on short notice in the courthouses. When none is available, judges must try a telephone service to reach an interpreter.

At issue are what are called master calendar hearings — immigrants’ first appearance in courts that determine whether they can remain in the U.S. The typically rapid-fire sessions serve to inform migrants of their rights and the process they will go through. Judges also schedule their next hearings.

Many immigrants in the system are Spanish speakers, but it’s also common for Chinese, Creole, and several indigenous languages from Central America and around the world to be spoken in courtrooms.

Judges in courts that have made the change are required to play either a Spanish-dubbed or English-language video for immigrants who do not have attorneys representing them. The 20-minute video runs through a lengthy list of technical legal advisories. Videos in other languages are not yet available, but the Justice Department has plans to introduce them.

Most of the dozens of immigrants going through their initial hearings Tuesday in San Francisco were shown the video. Many of them had attorneys present who translated, and others were able to use a Spanish-speaking interpreter who was on hand. Languages spoken in court included Spanish, Punjabi, Hindi, Mandarin and Fijian.

One hearing in the courtroom of Judge Arwen Swink involved a Mongolian woman who needed translation. After about five minutes, Swink was able to secure an interpreter in her language through the telephone service Lionbridge.

Swink asked the interpreter to introduce himself to the woman, who did not have an attorney, to ensure that she understood him. The interpreter said he had trouble hearing, but court staffers brought the microphone closer to the woman and the session was able to proceed.

With an interpreter in the room, such a hearing can take five minutes or less. The woman’s case took 15 minutes.

The Chronicle has obtained transcripts of the separate videos that are played for immigrants who are in detention and not in detention, as well as an FAQ handout they receive.

Roughly a fifth of the videos are devoted to a discussion of “voluntary departure,” under which immigrants can go back to their home country without being penalized if they try to come back someday. The videos also warn immigrants of the criminal consequences of trying to re-enter the country illegally after being deported.

Legal experts and veteran immigration judges say neither topic was commonly brought up in initial hearings before the videos were introduced because they are most relevant at the end of cases, if migrants do not prevail in their bid to remain in the U.S. Several said they feared the emphasis on voluntary departures and criminal penalties could prompt immigrants with valid claims to stay in the U.S. to waive their right without fully understanding what they’re doing.

The Justice Department did not consult with the union that represents immigration judges before making the change, and has proceeded despite ongoing bargaining with the group. The result is “lots of confusion, constantly changing parameters of the program by the agency and frustration among many judges,” said Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges and an immigration judge in Los Angeles.

Tabaddor added that courts in New York and Miami have had trouble securing help by phone, and that cases have been delayed in the Los Angeles court because of shortages of interpreters.

Amiena Khan, the union’s executive vice president and a judge in New York, said the videos make for a “really long day” for unrepresented immigrants who have to wait through proceedings for all migrants who have attorneys before watching a 20-minute video. She finds herself repeating or adding key advisories when immigrants are called before her.

“There was no problem that needed to be solved by the introduction of the video,” Khan said. “What I think really bothers me is that it’s mandatory. I think if it was discretionary as a tool for the judge to use, it could be helpful. (But) it takes away our judicial independence as to what method to employ to best get through the day’s docket.”

Khan and former immigration Judge Jeffrey Chase, who reviewed the transcripts, also noted that the videos do not include information that would be important for immigrants, including that they have only one year to formally apply for asylum in the U.S.

“The information provided is misleading in a way that can lead to a noncitizen’s removal,” said Chase, who now volunteers for organizations that provide legal assistance to immigrants.

Laura Lynch, senior policy counsel for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the transcripts show that the videos use “scare tactics” instead of informing immigrants of their rights. The videos warn immigrants against filing frivolous asylum claims, but don’t explain what asylum is, she noted.

“The videos provide an overwhelming amount of information that no one can easily digest in one setting,” Lynch said. “What’s more disturbing is that the content itself only tells one side of the story.”

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Click on the link for Tal’s full story with links to actual transcripts of this “parody of justice.”

This is DOJ/EOIR’s “malicious incompetence” in action. Accurate interpretation is essential to Due Process and fundamental fairness as well as the hallmark of a competently and professionally run court system. Somewhere along the line, the money for interpreters was frittered away by what passes for “management” at DOJ/EOIR. And, let’s not even think about the waste of money on absurd “Immigration Judge Dashboards” while the two decades old overwhelming need for a functional nationwide e-filing system goes unmet.

Right now, Congress is paralyzed. When are the Article III Courts going to wake up, get some backbone, and enforce the U.S. Constitution by putting an end to this so-called “court system” run by prosecutors that provides not even a semblance of fair and impartial (and at least minimally competent) adjudication? No more “Clown Court!”🤡

PWS

09-05-19

INSIDE TRUMP’S “NEW AMERICAN GULAG” (“NAG”): Where So-Called “Civil Immigration Detainees” Asserting Their Legal Rights Are Punished In Ways That Would Be “Cruel & Unusual” If Applied To Convicted Criminals!

https://edition.pagesuite.com/popovers/dynamic_article_popover.aspx?guid=6efdc532-da2a-4e07-8ea4-f1876c153c07&v=sdk

Tom K. Wong writes in the LA Times:

The Trump administration has attempted to close the door on asylum seekers who are looking for refuge in the United States. But even as it blocks entry — and sends tens of thousands of asylum seekers to Mexico to wait out their immigration proceedings — thousands of families with children are also being held in federal immigration detention facilities.

Because the administration has prohibited advocacy groups, journalists, immigration attorneys and even congressional staff from entering detention facilities to document conditions and interview detainees, the public has had only anecdotal glimpses into how detainees were treated. Now we have systematic evidence to support accounts of the harsh conditions that asylum seekers experience in immigration detention. In many ways, it is worse than we thought.

From October 2018 through June 2019, the San Diego Rapid Response Network (SDRRN) assisted approximately 7,300 asylum-seeking families at their shelters. These families, who were processed and then admitted into the U.S., totaled more than 17,000 people, including 7,900 children 5 years old or younger. My team and I at the U.S. Immigration Policy Center (USIPC) at UC San Diego independently analyzed intake data collected by the SDRRN for all of these families.

In a report released last week, we found that approximately 35% of the asylum-seeking heads of households we studied reported problems related to conditions in immigration detention, treatment in immigration detention, or medical issues. This finding is alarming since it’s very likely an underestimate, because the SDRRN was focused on providing needed services to the asylum-seeking families, not administering questionnaires. Moreover, abuses or problems in detention may be underreported by asylum seekers who are afraid that raising complaints may negatively affect their asylum case.

Of those who reported issues related to conditions in detention, approximately 6 out of 10 reported food and water problems, including not having enough to eat, being fed frozen food, being fed spoiled food, not being given formula for infants, not being given water, and having to drink dirty or foul-tasting water. Approximately half reported having to sleep on the floor, having to sleep with the lights on, overcrowded conditions, confinement, and the temperature being too cold in “la hielera,” the detention facilities known as the “iceboxes.” Approximately 1 out of every 3 reported not having access to clean or sanitary toilets, being able to shower or being able to brush their teeth.

About 1 out of 10 of the asylum-seeking heads of households — or more than 700 of them — reported verbal abuse, physical abuse or some form of mistreatment in immigration detention. Examples of verbal abuse include being told “we don’t want your kind here” and “you’re an ape,” among others. Examples of physical abuse include being thrown against the wall when attempting to get a drink of water.

The data also showed the great diversity of those who arrive at the southern border to seek refuge. The majority of the asylum-seeking families came from the “Northern Triangle” of Central America — Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. However, many also came from other continents, 28 in all, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Russia, Kazakhstan, India, China and Vietnam, to name a few. Any changes to U.S. asylum policies meant to deter Central Americans from entering at the southern border will affect asylum seekers from all over the world who are also looking to the U.S. for safety.

We also found that just over 1 out of 5 of these families do not speak Spanish as their primary language. The languages spoken range from indigenous Central American languages — including K’iche’, Q’eqchi’ and Mam — to Creole, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Hindi, Vietnamese and Romanian, among others. This linguistic diversity presents another set of challenges.

When asylum seekers are released from detention, they are given detailed instructions on a form called the “Notice to Appear,” including instructions about their immigration court dates, times and locations. On the notice, immigration officials indicate the language that the asylum seeker was given these instructions in. For those whose primary language is not Spanish, nearly 9 out of every 10 were nevertheless given instructions in Spanish. If these families are not provided instructions about their immigration proceedings in a language they can understand, they will not be able to navigate an extremely complex legal process, which may infringe on their basic rights to due process.

From substandard conditions in immigration detention to verbal and physical abuse to serious due process concerns, the data show that the Trump administration is not abiding by its obligations under U.S. and international asylum and refugee law to treat humanely those who are seeking protection from persecution.

With the administration now determined to hold asylum-seeking families for potentially as long as it takes for their immigration proceedings to play out (which could be years), conditions may get worse. Cruelty, after all, may very well be the point.

Tom K. Wong is associate professor of political science and director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Center at UC San Diego.

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What kind of country allows its leaders to impose these types of abuses on vulnerable individuals whose “crime” is seeking protection under our laws and the international conventions that they implement?

Why are “Big Mac” and other Trump sycophants at DHS allowed to lie with impunity about what is really happening in DHS detention, the real inhuman consequences of “Remain in Mexico” (a/k/a “Let ‘Em Die in Mexico”), and abuse “Safe Third Country” agreements by dishonestly pretending that Guatemala, one of the world’s most notoriously dangerous and corrupt “failed states,” meets the statutory requirements?

A key point in Professor Wong’s article is that many, probably the majority, of those released from detention receive inadequate explanations of their obligations to report current addresses and appear for both Immigration Court Hearings and separate ICE detention “check-ins.” Combined with this Administration’s obstinate refusal to work closely and cooperatively with legal services groups to maximize representation, it leads to many unnecessary, yet largely intentional on the part of DHS & EOIR, so-called “no shows.” These, in turn, get bogus “in absentia orders” from Immigration Judges operating under excruciating and inappropriate pressure to “produce numbers, not justice.” This, in turn, feeds the demonstrably false DHS narrative, oft repeated by “Big Mac With Lies” & others, that a large number of asylum seekers will “abscond” if released in the U.S.

It’s all part of a White Nationalist restrictionist immigration agenda that when finally exposed in detail after Trump and his cronies leave office will paint America as foolish, corrupt, and cowardly. Is this the “legacy” we truly want to leave to future generations?

Join the “New Due Process Army” and fight to restore the rule of law and Constitutional order and to end the corruption and daily human rights abuses of the Trump Administration!

PWS

09-0-19

9TH CIR/TRUMP “KILL ‘EM IN MEXICO PROGRAM” ENDANGERS ASYLUM SEEKERS & THOSE WHO ASSIST THEM —Judicial Disgrace Continues To Destroy Lives, Mock Humanity, Undermine The Rule of Law! — “Extortion-minded mobs view vulnerable migrants as walking ATMs.“

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-09-01/kidnapping-of-pastor-in-mexican-border-town-dramatizes-threats-to-migrants

Patrick J. McDonnell

Mexico City Bureau Chief

LA Times

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico — The kidnappers came to the shelter near the U.S.-Mexico border looking for Cuban migrants, favored targets because relatives in the United States are known to pay exorbitant ransoms to free abducted loved ones.

In cartel-dominated Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, a gateway to the United States, it’s a lucrative racket: Snatch a migrant from Cuba, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Venezuela or elsewhere; commandeer their cellphones; then call U.S. relatives demanding thousands of dollars.

No need to spell out the consequences of nonpayment in the lawless Mexican border state of Tamaulipas, known for mass graves and massacres of migrants — including hundreds slain by gunmen of the Zetas cartel outside the town of San Fernando in 2010-11.

(Los Angeles Times)

On Aug. 3, when the Rev. Aaron Mendez, an evangelical pastor and head of the Amar shelter, refused the kidnappers’ demands, the thugs took him away.

The pastor entered the twilight world of Mexico’s “disappeared” — officially 37,000 and growing, with Tamaulipas state leading Mexico in the grisly statistic. Federal and state police are investigating what happened to Mendez, said Ivan Moyle, a spokesman for the Tamaulipas prosecutor’s office, who declined to comment further.

The case has dramatized the systematic fashion of abductions and shakedowns faced by migrants and others at an especially sensitive time — when U.S. authorities have been expelling tens of thousands of Central Americans, Cubans and others back to Mexico’s crime-ridden border cities under the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols, known informally as “Remain in Mexico.”

Under the program, rolled out in January in the border cities of Tijuana and San Diego — and later expanded to other U.S.-Mexico crossings — more than 37,500 U.S.-bound migrants have been returned to Mexico to wait for U.S. court hearings. Many intend to seek political asylum in the United States.

More than 3,000 have been dispatched across the Rio Grande to Tamaulipas — both to Nuevo Laredo, opposite Laredo, Texas; and to Matamoros, sister city to Brownsville, Texas — since the program was extended in July. Mexican authorities provide little housing or other aid to the returnees, who are often left on the streets to fend for themselves.

Extortion-minded mobs view vulnerable migrants as walking ATMs. They are easy prey, lacking family ties in Mexico and known to have U.S. relatives with access to dollars. Mob halcones — hawks, or lookouts — watch bus stations and other strategic spots, eyeing potential quarry.

Though drug trafficking provides the bulk of cartel income, Mexico’s organized crime groups are multibillion-dollar conglomerates that also control migrant smuggling, kidnapping and other illicit ventures, working in cahoots with corrupt police and politicians.

“There is no protection,” said Father Julio Lopez, a Catholic priest who runs the Casa de Migrante Nazareth shelter in Nuevo Laredo.

Three Honduran migrant families who returned to Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols recently recounted in interviews with the Los Angeles Times how gangsters kidnapped them, obliging relatives in the United States to pay ransoms. All three said they had alerted U.S. immigration officials that they had been abducted in Mexico — but were nonetheless sent back to Mexico.

U.S. authorities say multiple factors are considered when determining whether apprehended migrants should be sent back to Mexico, including whether they face persecution or torture. Claims by migrants are documented, authorities said, but fear of being kidnapped does not necessarily disqualify detainees from being sent back to Mexico.

“One of our main priorities in the U.S. Border Patrol is the safety and the well-being of the people that we apprehend,” said Jose A. Martinez, acting assistant chief Border Patrol agent in Laredo, Texas.

The State Department has slapped its highest security alert on Tamaulipas, noting that “armed criminal groups target public and private passenger buses as well as private automobiles traveling through Tamaulipas, often taking passengers hostage and demanding ransom payments.”

Beti Suyapa Ortega, 36, said she was unaware of the extent of the danger when she boarded a Mexican public bus last month headed for the U.S. border with her son, Robinson Javier Melara, 17. The single mother of five from the northern Honduran state of Yoro said she was fleeing maras, or gangs, that demanded weekly extortion payments at her family’s grocery store.

“The maras in Honduras are bad, but here I think they are even worse,” Ortega said.

Ortega spoke in a sweltering ground-floor waiting room in the concrete compound of Mexico’s immigration agency in Nuevo Laredo, where she and others fearful of going outside lingered for hours on plastic chairs and mats strewn on the floor.

On Aug. 4, Ortega said, she and her son were on a bus when a group of about 10 men flagged the vehicle down on the outskirts of Nuevo Laredo. The gangsters demanded that passengers produce identification and forced all foreigners off the vehicle, she said.

“We control this area!” one of the toughs declared, saying that he and the others were from the Northeast Cartel — the dominant gang in Nuevo Laredo and splinter faction of the hyper-violent Zetas mob.

Ortega and her son were taken to a house where about a dozen other migrants were being held, she said, and the kidnappers grabbed her phone. They found the number of her younger brother, Kevin Joel Ortega, 25, who had arrived in Atlanta a few months earlier. The captors snapped photos of Ortega and her son and dispatched the images to her brother, demanding $8,000 for their release, she said.

“If he didn’t pay, they said they would turn us over to ‘other people,’” Ortega said, trembling as she recalled the ominous phrasing. “My brother said it would take him time to raise the money, that he had just arrived, but please not to do anything to us.”

Ortega and her son were held for two weeks in a room with others, sleeping on the floor, receiving two daily meals — mostly beans and rice — and spending much of the time bored and watching a large flat-screen TV, she said. Her jailers did not physically harm anyone, she said, but angrily called the captives’ relatives in the United States daily, insisting on the payments.

“A time finally comes when one is not afraid anymore,” said Ortega, who was barefoot as she kept a close eye on her teenage son, the eldest of her five children, resting on the mat in the grimy Mexican immigration outpost. Her other four kids remained in Honduras.

Her brother in Atlanta was instructed to deposit the funds electronically in five different U.S. bank accounts, Ortega said.

On Aug. 18, when the money had been paid, Ortega said, she and her son were driven to a spot along the Rio Grande, where the cartel strictly controls illicit crossings, and taken across the river in an inflated tire tube.

Ortega and her son were detained in U.S. custody in Texas for two nights, she said, before being released with a court date of Dec. 10 in San Antonio.

“We told them [U.S. immigration authorities] we had been kidnapped, but they didn’t believe us,” Ortega said.

On Aug. 20, U.S. Border Patrol officers returned Ortega, her son and 18 other distraught migrants on foot to Nuevo Laredo across the Juarez-Lincoln International Bridge that spans the Rio Grande, in a sullen procession repeated here daily beneath the blazing sun. Many clutched transparent plastic bags emblazoned with the seal of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and containing notices to appear in immigration court.

But Ortega, like the others huddled in the Mexican immigration depot, said she had no intention of sticking around Nuevo Laredo. She was too frightened. She and fellow migrants were waiting for bus transport to Tapachula, a Mexican city near the Guatemalan border. The one-way rides are a Mexican government initiative that serves a double purpose — removing discouraged migrants from the perilous border zone, while also diminishing the chances that they will make the long and hazardous trip back for U.S. court dates.

“We’ve had enough,” Ortega said.

Also waiting for the bus was Maria Suyapa Rodriguez, 35, and her 12-year-old son. She and her son, she said, had also been kidnapped — on Aug. 15 at the Nuevo Laredo bus terminal, one of the most treacherous spots in town. The two were released two days later when her sister in New York agreed to pay a ransom, said Rodriguez, who did not know the amount. The pair subsequently crossed the Rio Grande, she said, and surrendered to the Border Patrol, which returned them to Mexico.

Like Ortega, Rodriguez said she had given up and would forgo her Jan. 10 U.S. court date and return home to Honduras, following the tracks of so many migrants, broke and petrified of Mexican organized crime.

In one case, said Father Lopez, a Guatemalan man swallowed his phone’s SIM card to prevent kidnappers from tracking down relatives. A Honduran kidnap victim recalled flushing papers with the scrawled numbers of U.S. kin down the toilet.

Among the recent clients at Casa de Migrante Nazareth was Rosa Emilia Torrez, 45, her husband and her two children, a 12-year-old son and an infant daughter. Kidnappers grabbed the family at the Nuevo Laredo bus station July 21, Torrez said, two days after U.S. immigration authorities expelled them back to Nuevo Laredo. The family had planned to take a bus to Durango, Mexico, and wait at a relative’s home until their Sept. 25 U.S. court date, Torrez said.

Their captors released the family July 28, according to Torrez, after her brother-in-law in New Orleans paid $16,000, negotiated down from an initial demand of $32,000.

The kidnappers, Torrez said, then insisted on taking the family back across the Rio Grande to Texas, where, Torrez said, the Border Patrol arrested the family again.

Torrez said she tried to explain to the agents that the kidnappers forced them to return to the U.S. side — and that they feared being sent back to Mexico yet again — but no one paid any attention.

“We just take your fingerprints and send you back to Mexico,” the Border Patrol agent told her, Torrez said.

U.S. immigration authorities returned the family to Nuevo Laredo on Aug. 1, said Torrez, who added that her family plans to find safe housing somewhere in Mexico and show up for their immigration hearing in Texas later this month.

“We came this far,” Torrez said. “We aren’t turning back now.”

Times staff writer Molly Hennessy-Fiske in Houston and Cecilia Sanchez of The Times’ Mexico City bureau contributed to this report.

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Patrick J. McDonnell

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Patrick J. McDonnell is the Los Angeles Times Mexico City bureau chief. McDonnell is a native of the Bronx, where he majored in Irish-American studies and N.Y. Yankee fandom. He is a graduate of New York University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, was a Nieman fellow at Harvard and a 2014 Pulitzer finalist in international reporting for coverage from inside Syria.

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Cowardly tyrants like Trump his lying DHS lackeys like McAleenan & co. count on the complicity of at least some Federal Judges to get away with their program of undermining the rule of law and violating human rights. So far, the Ninth Circuit has obliged them when it comes to declaring “open season” on the world’s most vulnerable individuals seeking, but not finding, justice and fairness under our law.

The “Big Lie” By U.S. Border Patrol:

“One of our main priorities in the U.S. Border Patrol is the safety and the well-being of the people that we apprehend,” said Jose A. Martinez, acting assistant chief Border Patrol agent in Laredo, Texas.

Obviously, Chief Martinez is a liar. The safety and well-being of those apprehended in the U.S. not only is not a “main priority,” it’s not even “on the radar screen.” Indeed, sending folks who have passed credible fear back to Mexico to be abused and possibly Continue reading 9TH CIR/TRUMP “KILL ‘EM IN MEXICO PROGRAM” ENDANGERS ASYLUM SEEKERS & THOSE WHO ASSIST THEM —Judicial Disgrace Continues To Destroy Lives, Mock Humanity, Undermine The Rule of Law! — “Extortion-minded mobs view vulnerable migrants as walking ATMs.“

IMMIGRATION COURTS: “MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE ON STEROIDS” — With Court System Reeling & Asylum Applicants Suffering, Administration Plans Another Round Of Massive “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”), Reports Hamed Aleaziz @ BuzzFeed News!

https://apple.news/A3UINub7KSjuOLcKAHDJMLw

Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News:

A Surge Of Immigration Judges Are Expected To Handle The Cases Of Thousands Forced To Wait In Mexico

“This will wreak havoc on court dockets across the country,” said one immigration court official.

Hamed Aleaziz

BuzzFeed News Reporter

A 10-month-old boy, whose family fled violence in El Salvador, waits in a tent in Tijuana, Mexico, for an immigration court hearing in the US.

Department of Homeland Security officials expect about 150 immigration judges from across the US will be selected to handle cases involving asylum-seekers forced to remain in Mexico while their cases proceed, according to a source with knowledge of the matter, a massive potential increase in assignments that threatens to overwhelm an already struggling court system.

Around a dozen judges currently presiding over courts in San Diego and El Paso, Texas, handle the cases of people referred under Migration Protection Protocols, the controversial Trump administration policy forcing asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico as their cases move through the immigration system. While the cases can take months or years to be scheduled, the number of individuals included in the program has expanded to more than 35,000, according to figures obtained by BuzzFeed News.

The Trump administration hopes to change that by soon opening facilities along the border to handle the cases. Officials plan to open two border courts in Texas — in Laredo and Brownsville — by the middle of September, in which they will hear up to 20 cases per day, according to a government briefing document obtained by BuzzFeed News. A DHS spokesperson said the date the facilities would open was still to be determined.

On Tuesday, Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, who chairs the House DHS Appropriations Subcommittee, revealed in a letter that the agency had plans to transfer $155 million in federal disaster funds to Immigration and Customs Enforcement to help fund the new facilities.

The cases heard at the border are expected to be conducted primarily via video teleconferencing, allowing for more judges across the country to be brought into the process. Assistants, working on contract, will help organize the hearings by taking roll call, send case documents to judges in other locations, and operate the video systems, according to a separate DHS planning document obtained by BuzzFeed News.

Judges assigned these cases could be forced to delay other asylum and deportation hearings that had already been scheduled, causing a ripple effect and further growing an already bloated court backlog of hundreds of thousands of cases.

People wait inside an immigration court in Miami.

“Once again immigration judges from courts across the country will have to push their home court dockets aside to preside televideo at border courts,” said one immigration court official who could not speak publicly on the matter. “This will wreak havoc on court dockets across the country.”

At a San Diego court that has presided over many “Remain in Mexico” cases for months, judges have been told to prioritize the hearings over others, according to a source with knowledge of the change. As a result, some immigrants who have waited for months or years for their previously scheduled cases will likely have their hearings delayed.

“The prioritization of MPP cases will place a huge burden on the immigration courts,” said a DOJ official involved with immigration matters. “Additionally, the postponement of previously scheduled cases will cause the backlog to grow even more, as the completion of these cases will be further delayed for months or even years.”

Rebecca Jamil, a former immigration judge under the Trump administration, said that the cases on judge’s dockets don’t go away when they are assigned new cases.

“Those families have been waiting for years to have their cases heard, and now will wait another two or three years, and due process is denied by the delay — evidence becomes stale, witnesses die, country conditions change,” she said.

The Department of Justice, which oversees the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which manages the nation’s immigration courts, is prepared to meet the demands from the DHS on any hearings, an agency spokesperson said.

The potential changes come as data revealed by Syracuse University indicates that asylum-seekers forced to wait in Mexico rarely have legal representation; just 1% of individuals are accompanied by attorneys at their hearings.

The Remain in Mexico program is one of the few hardline Trump immigration policies that has thus far survived a court injunction. While a federal court judge in San Francisco blocked the policy earlier this year, a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel allowed it to continue as a legal challenge works its way through the court process.

Asylum-seekers who were returned to Mexico under the Trump administration have faced consequences of remaining there, according to advocacy group Human Rights First. The group found more than 100 cases of people returned under the program alleging rapes, kidnappings, sexual exploitation, or assault, according to a report released this month.

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This is the result of the complete abdication of duty by the Ninth Circuit in Innovation Law Lab v. McAleenan, that lifted a proper, life-saving U.S. District Court injunction and allowed the Administration’s patently illegal and immoral “Kill ‘Em in Mexico Program” to proceed.

The solution: There is no such thing as a “fair” asylum denial under this program. Yes, not everyone meets the criteria. But, everyone is entitled to a fair chance to present a claim, free from duress, coercion, and biased judging, which is not happening.

Advocates must flood the Ninth Circuit and the other border circuits with petitions for review and other types of court actions forcing these complicit Article III “Ivory Tower Judges,” who believe they have removed themselves from the fray, with the human carnage resulting from their gross dereliction of duty to enforce the statutory and Constitutional rights of asylum seekers.

The disgusting and spineless performance of the Article IIIs in light of the Administration’s bogus, illegal actions to “deter” legitimate asylum seekers is nothing short of a national disgrace. If not corrected, it will rightfully tarnish the reputation of the Federal Courts and the individual judges involved for generations to come.

PWS

08-30-19

DRAGGING OUR COUNTRY THROUGH THE MUD: Trump Regime Seeks To Expand Kiddie Gulag, Detain Families Indefinitely, To Persecute Brown-Skinned Refugees — “Big Mac With Lies” Fabricates Rationale! — Family Detention Is Inappropriate & Unnecessary — A Hoax Being Perpetrated On The American People!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-administration-unveils-plan-to-hold-migrant-children-in-long-term-detention-with-parents-11566394202?emailToken=4c4cef15494942e910d1a88399f30468h/KobQ7iZDpXs3+1U0UyU/6Llg8yPWOeC8NON3gVk0aHveiieP2ipZ/k5yIsdu5tOIl+M5NwqQd3m5dATQluPq4eXG90TKl9KSsbeoCCMsuuLKJlleMAX1vFUKKBEkR0pBAWATMgJ03qd2aW8xT7qIOnyXUMQs0yOmge7FJu78Q%3D&reflink=article_email_share

Michelle Hackman reports for the WSJ:

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration moved to allow the government to indefinitely detain families crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and supersede a decades-old court settlement that both limits how long migrant children can be held in custody and sets standards for their care.

The new rules are the Republican administration’s latest effort to tighten immigration laws on its own, with Congress long unable to agree on any legal overhaul. Wednesday’s policy change could permit authorities to detain families through the duration of their immigration proceedings, rather than release them or separate children from their detained parents.

Immigration-rights advocates are expected to challenge the rules in federal court, where they have blocked the administration before. A legal challenge would likely keep the policy from taking immediate effect.

Administration officials say the new rules are intended to discourage family members from attempting to cross the border together in the belief that they will gain an advantage in lodging their asylum claims because of the current detention limits for children. “No child should be used as a pawn to scheme our immigration system,” said acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan on Wednesday.

. . . .

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Those with WSJ access can read Michelle’s complete article at the above link.

As Michelle points out, McAleenan and his corrupt DHS flunkies are simply “making it up” as they go along to justify unconstitutional, racist policies intended to target legitimate asylum seekers based on the color of their skin. By continuously doing “in your face” moves, often with little expectation of success in the in the courts, but a great expectation of rallying racial animosity for political gain, Big Mac & Co. are misusing their access to Federal Courts, constantly violating their oaths of office, and making a mincemeat out of Federal and State professional ethics rules.

Contrary to Big Mac’s false blather, the “solution” to the exodus of refugees is straightforward and not prohibitively expensive:

Release them to community placements;
Help them find pro bono lawyers;
Ask judges to schedule court cases at the earliest possible date consistent with the legitimate needs of those pro bono lawyers;
See what happens on the merits of their asylum cases in a fairer, non coercive system where applicants are encouraged to fully develop claims assisted by lawyers who understand the complexities of asylum law. (This is actually the way the U.N. Convention-based system is supposed to work, but too often doesn’t).

As I have pointed out before, even with unabashed bias and the open encouragement by the Trump Administration of blatant anti-asylum adjudications, a significant number of represented Central American applicants continue to win their claims both before the Asylum Office and in Immigration Court.

Without the effects of intentionally coercive detention, and gimmicks intended to limit access to counsel and inhibit preparation, many of those who lose in Immigration Court will have a fair opportunity to exercise their legal rights to pursue their claims before Article III Appellate Courts. While far, far too deferential to flawed agency decision makers, the Article IIIs are much closer to operating as fair, impartial, and unbiased decision-makers than are Immigration Judges working for Barr and his White Nationalist regime.

Over time, I think many more asylum seekers will win their claims. But, whether that happens or not, the process will have more legitimacy. U.S. asylum law will come to represent more than the Administration’s anti-asylum ideology. Those who lose their cases after exhausting their legal avenues for appeal can be removed in a dignified and humane manner after receiving full Due Process.

This incident also graphically illustrates the “reward” received by those Democrats who recently worked in good faith with the Administration to pass “emergency border funding.” Rather than returning that good faith by using funds to improve conditions in detention and to explore the many available options to reduce the instances of detention, the Administration is squandering money in an almost certain to be DOA attempt to expand their White Nationalist Gulag to unnecessarily punish more (Hispanic) families for asserting their legal rights to apply for protection under U.S. laws.

I have seen little or no evidence that this “emergency funding” — falsely advertised as “necessary” to put food in kids mouths and provide them medical care — has been used for those purposes. By all reliable accounts, conditions in DHS detention remain intentionally deplorable. Instead of working in good faith with public interest groups and Democrats to solve the problems with border detention, Big Mac & Co. are off wasting time and abusing their publicly funded salaries by spreading lies and insulting the intelligence of Federal Judges.

Indeed, Big Mac regularly ignores the overwhelming body of medical evidence that any amount of detention has potential lifetime adverse effects upon young people. The idea that the “Flores settlement,” which has been in effect for years prior to the Trump regime, is primarily responsible for fueling a surge of children fleeing the Northern Triangle is beyond absurd. Moreover, as Big Mac is undoubtedly aware, the increase in child refugees is part of a worldwide trend that transcends any particular U.S. court settlement. Actually, it’s the dumb policies of the Trump Administration and their insistence on using gimmicks rather than the legal mechanisms available that has fueled the profits of smugglers.

Enough! This Administration simply cannot be trusted on anything involving immigration and humanitarianism. Democrats need to demand fundamental, demonstrable changes at DHS, including a phase out of most civil detention, and a commitment to fair access to the legal system, as a condition for providing any further funding.

Due process forever; Big Mac and his lies, never!

PWS

08-22-19

AN “OPEN LETTER PROPOSAL” FROM TWO UW LAW ‘73 RETIRED JUDGES — We’ve Spent 90+ Collective Years Working To Improve The Quality & Delivery Of Justice In America On Both The State & Federal Levels, In The Private & Public Sectors — What We’re Seeing Now Is Shocking, Heartbreaking, Inexcusable, & Unnecessary — It’s Time For Legislators & Policy Makers To Start Listening To Those Of Us With New Ideas Based On “Real Life” Experiences & Observation!

Hon. Thomas Lister
Retired Jackson County (WI) Circuit Judge

A CONCEPTUAL PROPOSAL FOR AN AUXILIARY IMMIGRATION JUDICIARY

By

Paul Wickham Schmidt, Retired U.S. Immigraton Judge and Former Chair, U.S. Board Of Immigration Appeals

&

Thomas Lister, Retired Wisconsin Circuit Judge

Drawing on our judicial expertise gained over decades of working in both Federal and State judicial system, we respectfully set forth a concept for those working in the legislative, political, legal, and judicial systems to use and further develop to promote better, fairer, and more efficient judicial decision-making and to make better use of existing and future judicial resources both in and outside the U.S. Immigration Court system.

To save time, and since neither of us purports to be a legislative draftsperson, instead of submitting a “draft bill,” or the “outline” of such a bill, we advance an idea and the conceptual and practical justifications for it for your consideration and future use in drafting actual legislation.

No knowledgeable individual thinks the current dysfunctional U.S. Immigration Court system can continue without imploding. Just feeding more new, permanent Immigration Judges into an unfair and broken system actually is making things worse as well as outrageously wasting our taxpayer money at a time when deficits are skyrocketing.

All too many newly hired Immigration Judges appear to be neither the best qualified to be judges nor, even if qualified on paper, properly trained in how to deliver “full due process with efficiency” under the immigration laws and in strict compliance with the Due Process Clause of our Constitution.

On the other hand, many retired judges from other Federal and State systems have proven expertise and track records that would allow a competent judicial administrator (there are, to our knowledge, NONE of these currently in DOJ or EOIR) to determine if they are suitable for emergency service and how they could best be trained to effectively and efficiently use their skills as “Auxiliary Immigration Judges” to augment the current and future Immigration Judiciary.

Moreover, since most retired Federal and State judges already have adequate pensions or other means of support, asking them to volunteer to serve on the basis of limited compensation, or even just reimbursement for out of pocket expenses, would not be unreasonable.

We are offering this idea as a way in which those of us with lifetime legal and judicial expertise can use it to improve the delivery of justice in America; it is not intended as a means of enriching or offering alternative full-time employment to current retired judges, from any system.

To name just a few areas of “low hanging fruit,” we believe that:

• Most bonds;

• Initial “Master Calendars” (arraignments);

• Master Calendar scheduling for Individual Hearings;

• Motions Calendars;

• “Status” Calendars;

• Stipulated Final Order and Withdrawal Calendars;

• Individual Hearings on Cancellation of Removal for long-time lawful and unlawful residents;

• Uncontested Adjustments of Status and other types of equitable waivers; and

• Voluntary Departure as the sole application cases

have elements in common with most other types of judicial work.

Using Auxiliary Judges for such cases would allow those judges, from any Federal or State system, with sound work records, that is, those with impeccable reputations for fairness, professionalism, judicial efficiency, and impartiality, to handle these types of immigration adjudications with a modest amount of additional training and in close consultation and cooperation with the sitting Immigration Judges in a particular location.

In this respect, our emphasis would always be on aiding existing, sitting U.S. Immigration Judges, in cooperation with them and at their request, in the ways those sitting judges deem most helpful, fair, and effective.

It would never be on fulfilling inappropriate and unethical “production quotas,” numerical goals, or pandering to interests who want to use the judicial system to fulfill political or law enforcement objectives inconsistent with Due Process, fundamental fairness, or sound judicial administration.

We do not propose that “Auxiliary Judges” ever work directly for or under the supervision of non-judicial political officials as is now, disturbingly, the case in our Immigration Court System. Indeed, the current unwarranted attack on the independence and professionalism of Immigration Judges by unqualified political officials seeking to “decertify” the Immigration Judges’ professional association, the National Association of Immigration Judges, is a prime example of the type of counterproductive activity in which “Auxiliary Judges” should never be allowed to participate, in any way.

By contrast with the types of more straightforward judicial work described above as potential “low hanging fruit,” Asylum Cases, Withholding of Removal Cases, and applications for protection under the Convention Against Torture involve complex legal and factual issues. These are matters that should NOT be delegated to retired judges from other fields.

Indeed, one huge advantage of our proposal is that it would allow existing and future Immigration Judges to spend adequate time (a contested fair hearing on any of these aforementioned protection matters would take a well-trained judge 3-4 hours, minimum) on these types of cases and to receive more and better training on how to fairly and timely adjudicate, consistent with Constitutional Due Process, claims for protection under these laws and International Conventions.

Of course, there would be some administrative costs involved with training and maintaining a list of those willing to serve as “Auxiliary Immigration Judges.” But, they pale in relation to the costs of continuing to throw new permanent positions into a badly broken and dysfunctional system.

Indeed, some, such as the ABA Commission on Immigration, have observed that additional Immigration Judge hiring under current conditions has demonstrably been a waste of taxpayer money that has actually made the system worse and further impaired the delivery of Due Process to those vulnerable individuals whose lives depend on fair, professional, and efficient administration of Due Process and fundamental fairness in our Immigration Courts.

Sadly, we surmise that significant amounts of the “assembly line (in)justice” currently being encouraged and delivered to represented individuals in today’s Immigration Courts will eventually have to be re-adjudicated by orders of the Article III reviewing courts because of legal and/or factual errors. The only reason we don’t include unrepresented individuals in our equation is that these, unfortunately, are often “railroaded” out of our country without realistic access to the Article III Courts.

As lawyers with a combined 90 years of experience working in State and Federal justice systems, as prosecutors, judges, private litigators, educators, and government officials, at both the national and local level, we cannot in good conscience watch the continued deterioration of justice in the Immigration Courts while constructive ideas for improvements and efficiency and fairness are ignored or left unaddressed.

The concept of using retired State and Federal Judges outside the Immigration System to do certain types of cases to augment justice and relieve the incredible stress on full time Immigration Judges, in times of emergency or workload surges, without all the problems inherent in the current hiring of permanent judges by the DOJ, easily could be incorporated into one of the “Independent Article I Immigration Court” bills being advocated and advanced by groups such as the ABA, FBA, AILA, and the National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”).

The current system is dying before our eyes. We need to “pull out all the stops,” consider “every potential concept,” and utilize “positive professional creativity” (the antithesis of the negative energy devoted to cruel and counterproductive “gimmicks” and outright illegal actions) designed to enhance, rather than denigrate, Due Process, fundamental fairness, and judicial efficiency without sacrificing quality.

It is in that spirit that we respectfully request those involved in legislative reform of our Immigration Court system to consider incorporating our concept of an “Auxiliary Immigration Judiciary” into overall legislative proposals for positive reform of the Immigration Courts now being advanced by all of the leading voices in the field.

Respectfully submitted,

Thomas Lister, Middleton, WI

Paul Wickham Schmidt, Alexandria, VA

August 19, 2019

JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”

New from JMHS | An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era

View this email in your browser

A publication of the Center for Migration Studies

Donald Kerwin, Executive Editor
John Hoeffner and Michele Pistone, Associate Editors

An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era

By Paul Wickham Schmidt (Georgetown Law)

This paper critiques US immigration and asylum policies from perspective of the author’s 46 years as a public servant. It also offers a taxonomy of the US immigration system by positing different categories of membership: full members of the “club” (US citizens); “associate members” (lawful permanent residents, refugees and asylees); “friends” (non-immigrants and holders of temporary status); and, persons outside the club (the undocumented). It describes the legal framework that applies to these distinct populations, as well as recent developments in federal law and policy that relate to them. It also identifies a series of cross-cutting issues that affect these populations, including immigrant detention, immigration court backlogs, state and local immigration policies, and Constitutional rights that extend to non-citizens. It makes the following asylum reform proposals, relying (mostly) on existing laws designed to address situations of larger-scale migration:

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and, in particular, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) should send far more Asylum Officers to conduct credible fear interviews at the border.
Law firms, pro bono attorneys, and charitable legal agencies should attempt to represent all arriving migrants before both the Asylum Office and the Immigration Courts.
USCIS Asylum Officers should be permitted to grant temporary withholding of removal under the Convention Against Torture (CAT) to applicants likely to face torture if returned to their countries of origin.
Immigration Judges should put the asylum claims of those granted CAT withholding on the “back burner” — thus keeping these cases from clogging the Immigration Courts — while working with the UNHCR and other counties in the Hemisphere on more durable solutions for those fleeing the Northern Triangle states of Central America.
Individuals found to have a “credible fear” should be released on minimal bonds and be allowed to move to locations where they will be represented by pro bono lawyers.
Asylum Officers should be vested with the authority to grant asylum in the first instance, thus keeping more asylum cases out of Immigration Court.
If the Administration wants to prioritize the cases of recent arrivals, it should do so without creating more docket reshuffling, inefficiencies, and longer backlogs

Download the PDF of the article

Read more JMHS articles at http://cmsny.org/jmhs/

Want to learn more about access to asylum on the US-Mexico border? Join the Center for Migration Studies for our annual Academic and Policy Symposium on October 17.

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

My long-time friend Don Kerwin, Executive Director of CMS, has been a “Lt. General of the New Due Process Army” since long before there even was a “New Due Process Army” (“NDPA”). Talk about someone who has spent his entire career increasing human understanding and making the world a better place! Don is a great role model and example for newer members of the NDPA, proving that one can make a difference, as well as a living, in our world by doing great things and good works! Not surprisingly, Don’s career achievements and contributions bear great resemblance to those of our mutual friend, the late Juan Osuna.

So, when Don asked me to consider turning some of my past speeches about our immigration system and how it should work into an article to honor Juan, I couldn’t say no. But, I never would have gotten it “across the finish line” without Don’s inspiration, encouragement, editing, and significant substantive suggestions for improvement, as well as that of the talented peer reviewers and editorial staff of JMHS. Like most achievements in life, it truly was a “team effort” for which I thank all involved.

Those of you who might have attended my Boynton Society Lecture last Saturday, August 10, at the beautiful and inspiring Bjorklunden Campus of Lawrence University on the shores of Lake Michigan at Bailey’s Harbor, WI, will see that portions of this article were “reconverted” and incorporated into that speech.

Also, those who might have taken the class “American Immigration, a Cultural, Legal, and Anthropological Approach” at the Bjorklunden Seminar Series the previous week, co-taught by my friend Professor Jenn Esperanza of The Beloit College Anthropology Department, and me had the then-unpublished manuscript in their course materials, and will no doubt recognize many of the themes that Jenn and I stressed during that week.

Perhaps the only “comment that really mattered” was passed on to me by Don shortly after this article was released. It was from Juan’s wife, the also amazing and inspiring Wendy Young, President of Kids In Need of Defense (“KIND”):“Juan would be truly honored.”

Donald M. Kerwin
Executive Director
Center for Migration Studies

Juan P. Osuna (1963-2017)
Judge, Executive, Scholar, Teacher, Defender of Due Process

Wendy Young
President, Kids In Need of Defense (“KIND”)

PWS

08-19-19

THE ROUNDTABLE IN ACTION: HON. ILYCE SHUGALL DELIVERS POWERFUL STATEMENT IN THE LA TIMES ON WHY SHE COULD NO LONGER SERVE AS A JUDGE IN OUR OBSCENELY DISTORTED AND UNFAIR U.S. IMMIGRATON COURT SYSTEM – “But nothing prepared me for the unprecedented, unfair and unworkable policies the Trump administration imposed on the courts and the immigration process.”

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-08-03/immigration-court-judge-asylum-trump-policies

By ILYCE SHUGALL

LA Times

AUG. 4, 2019

I have been an immigration lawyer dedicated to fairness and due process for immigrants my entire career. In 2015, convinced that my 18 years of experience as an advocate would make me a good immigration judge, I applied for the job.

Most immigration judges are former attorneys from the chief counsel’s office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, former assistant U.S. attorneys or former attorneys from other federal government agencies. Former advocates are appointed less frequently, but I believed in the importance of having judges from varied backgrounds on the bench and therefore applied.

I made it through the application and vetting process and was appointed to the bench in September 2017. I resigned this March because I could no longer in good conscience work as an immigration judge in the Trump administration.

I knew when I joined the bench that there would be frustrations, as immigration courts are governed by the Justice Department and lack the independence of other courts in the federal judicial system. But nothing prepared me for the unprecedented, unfair and unworkable policies the Trump administration imposed on the courts and the immigration process.

I believed it was my job to ensure that all people who appeared before me understood their rights and had the opportunity to fully present their cases. I found the job fulfilling when I was hearing cases. I enjoyed learning about the lives of people from all over the world and analyzing complex legal issues. It was also heartbreaking. I heard stories of horrific violence, terror and pain. I was moved by the struggles and resolve of those who leave everything behind to seek safety and refuge, those who dedicate their lives to caring for family members, and those who overcome incredible obstacles to make a better future for themselves and their families.

In 2018, Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions and the director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees the immigration courts, began imposing quotas and performance metrics that affected the day-to-day function and independence of the judges. We were notified that all judges were expected to complete 700 cases a year to receive a satisfactory performance review. EOIR also published performance metrics for the judges that established specific timelines for adjudication of cases and motions.

During a conference of immigration judges in June 2018, agency leadership informed us that the quota policy would go into effect in October. Sessions, during his keynote speech at the conference, announced that he would be issuing his decision in the case of Matter of A-B-, which dealt with asylum claims based on domestic violence. His decision to prohibit grants of asylum for victims of domestic violence and persecution perpetrated by other nongovernment actors was announced later that day. I left the conference extremely demoralized.

My colleagues and I felt the impact of the case quotas on our ability to render correct and well-reasoned decisions. My calendar was fully booked with cases through 2021. The judges in San Francisco, where I served, were told we could not schedule any cases in 2022 until our calendars showed that three cases were scheduled every day through the end of 2021.

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This meant that the judges were forced to schedule at least two cases in one time slot (there being two slots a day) — regardless of whether it was possible to hear two cases in such a short time frame or whether this would allow a judge to consider fully the merits of each case, which often involved determining life or death issues.

This was the way to push us to complete 700 cases a year. Failure to hit the quota would also result in failing to meet other performance metrics. In August 2018, Sessions also issued a decision limiting continuances of cases in immigration court.

Shortly after we were told to hear three cases a day, we were also told we could not schedule interpreters for two different languages in each of the morning or afternoon sessions. We were told we needed to match languages or pair English-language cases with other languages, though we had no tools to assist us in coordinating languages.

The impact of these administrative policies, while bad on judges’ morale and workloads, was worse for the immigrants appearing at court. The pressure to complete cases made me less patient and less able to uphold the constitutional protections required to properly adjudicate cases.

In addition to these policies, the Trump administration announced several new policy changes to limit the rights of noncitizens to apply for asylum. One was the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which required asylum applicants to stay in Mexico while awaiting their court hearings. Another was the administration’s attempt to eliminate eligibility for asylum for individuals who did not present themselves at a port of entry while simultaneously preventing asylum seekers from being processed at the ports of entry.

In November 2018, the EOIR director issued a memorandum to push through cases of “family units” on a fast track. These cases continue to be docketed and heard on an expedited basis. This policy prevents indigent noncitizens from having adequate time to secure counsel or evidence to support their cases. And it often leads to individuals being ordered removed without a hearing because clerical errors caused hearing notices to be sent to incorrect addresses.

As more policies were issued, it became clear that this administration’s attack on immigrants and the independence and functioning of the immigration courts would only get worse.

As I expected, the attacks continued. Since I resigned, the Department of Homeland Security has expanded expedited removal. Recently, EOIR began using a video to comply with federal regulations requiring that all noncitizens be advised of their rights and responsibilities in court. The video, which replaces in-person interpreters, will inevitably cause confusion and make it far harder for individuals to defend themselves.

Just last week, Atty. Gen. William Barr issued a decision that largely eliminates asylum eligibility for those facing persecution because of family ties. This ruling could affect thousands of legitimate asylum seekers fleeing violence in Mexico and Central American countries, as well as other parts of the world.

I expect the Trump administration’s relentless attacks against immigrants and the immigration system to continue. The way to limit the damage is to establish an independent immigration court that is outside the Justice Department. Until that happens, the immigration courts will be subject to the politics driving the administration rather than the principles of justice immigration judges are sworn to uphold.

Ilyce Shugall is the director of the Immigrant Legal Defense Program at the Justice & Diversity Center of the Bar Assn. of San Francisco.

OPINIONOP-ED

Hon.

MORE FROM THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

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

Well said, Judge Shugall, my friend, colleague, and fellow member of the Roundtable of Former Immigration Judges!

Ilyce explains and gives “real life examples” of two concepts that I discuss often at “Courtside:”

AIMLESS DOCKET RESHUFFLING (“ADR”): Arbitrarily or maliciously moving cases around without actually deciding them to the disadvantage of the respondents, their lawyers, the judges, court staff, and often even ICE counsel (who, as far as I can tell, are never consulted in advance or given meaningful input on major policy changes at DHS, despite probably being the best qualified individuals in the agency to understand the real legal framework and practical implications of various policy decisions imposed “from above”);
MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE (“MI”): Using White Nationalist restrictionist policies, not based on either the law or empirical data, usually irrational and impractical, to limit the ability of migrants to exercise their legal rights, create chaos in the court system, and ultimately to destroy the system and replace it with something even more draconian and more completely unfair.

PWS

08-04-19

SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND (D-NY) INTRODUCES BILL TO PROVIDE ATTORNEYS FOR ASYUM SEEKERS – Other Dems Sign On

https://apple.news/AgrY1IyNUTySuACBpvrL_aQ

Veronica Stracqualursi
Politics Reporter
CNN

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand introduces new legislation that would provide asylum seekers with attorney

Veronica Stracqualursi

CNN

Updated 2:18 PM EDT August 2, 2019 Washington

2020 Democratic presidential candidate and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrandintroduced a bill Wednesday that would provide immigrants with an attorney as they seek asylum or other legal protections in the US as the Trump administration has been dramatically limiting the ability of Central American migrants to claim asylum.

Immigrants, for example, have the right to counsel and may hire a lawyer themselves, but unlike in the criminal justice system, representation is not guaranteed.

Under Gillibrand’s proposed bill, legal counsel would be required for eligible groups facing removal proceedings — including children, individuals with disabilities, victims of abuse, torture, and violence, and individuals at or below 200% of the federal poverty level.

The Funding Attorneys for Indigent Removal (FAIR) Proceedings Act “would ensure that some of the most vulnerable individuals in this process can be represented by an attorney,” Gillibrand said in a statement Friday.

“This would not only guarantee a more humane way to process asylum claims and other legal protections, but it would improve the efficiency of our immigration courts and help our country do a much better job of managing our immigration system,” Gillibrand said.

She accused the Trump administration of being “far too willing to fast-track deportation cases even when people have credible claims to asylum.”

Democratic Reps. Donald McEachin from Virginia and Zoe Lofgren from California have introduced a House companion to Gillibrand’s bill. Sens. Cory Booker and Bernie Sanders, two other 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls, and Richard Blumenthal have also signed onto the Senate bill as co-sponsors.

The Trump administration has worked to limit immigration and toughen the US asylum process amid overcrowded conditions at border facilities and a spike in apprehensions at the US-Mexico border over the recent months.

Last month, the departments of Justice and Homeland Security also rolled out an interim rule that would prohibit migrants who have resided or “transited en route” in a third country from seeking asylum in the US, therefore barring migrants from Central America traveling through Mexico from being able to claim asylum and as a result, drastically limiting who’s eligible for asylum.

A federal judge blocked the asylum rulefrom going into effect, deeming it “likely invalid because it is inconsistent with the existing asylum laws.”

The Trump administration also moved to expanda procedure to speed up deportations to include undocumented immigrants anywhere in the US who cannot prove they’ve lived in the country continuously for two years or more.

The notice, filed in the Federal Register on July 22, casts a wider net of undocumented immigrants subject to the fast-track deportation procedure known as “expedited removal” which allows immigration authorities to remove an individual without a hearing before an immigration judge. The American Civil Liberties Union has said it will sue to block the policy.

© 2019 Cable News Network, Inc. A WarnerMedia Company. All Rights Reserved.

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Competent lawyers have been beating the Trump Administration like a drum on immigration issues. That’s why corrupt officials like Trump, Barr, Miller, “Big Mac With Lies,” and “Cooch Cooch” are so desperate to railroad asylum applicants out of the country while unlawfully denying them access to even the limited number of pro bono lawyers available under current law.

The Federal Courts have also “tanked” on their constitutional duty to insure Due Process by requiring appointed counsel in immigration cases, something that should make the entire Article III judiciary hang their collective heads in shame. The Federal Courts have also been “asleep at the switch” by allowing the Trump Administration to use inhumane coercive detention in obscure places and other gimmicks intentionally designed to defeat asylum applicants’ right to counsel of their own choosing.

PWS

08-03-19

THE VOICE OF REASON: ANGELINA JOLIE @ TIME ON WHY THE U.S. SHOULD NOT BE ABANDONING OUR TRADITIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LEADERSHIP ROLE! — “It is troubling to see our country backing away from these, while expecting other countries, who are hosting millions of refugees and asylum seekers, to adhere to a stricter code. If we go down this path, we risk a race to the bottom and far greater chaos. An international rules-based system brings order. Breaking international standards only encourages more rule-breaking.” — Advocates Independent Article I Immigration Court For Fair & Impartial Adjudication Of Asylum Claims!

https://apple.news/ARnAxuYYATOy78Bq8BYOy7g

Angelina Jolie writes in Time:

Angelina Jolie: The Crisis We Face at the Border Does Not Require Us to Choose Between Security and Humanity

Angelina Jolie

Jolie, a TIME contributing editor, is an Academy Award–winning actor and Special Envoy of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees

We Americans have been confronted by devastating images from our southern border and increasingly polarized views on how to address this untenable situation.

At times I wonder if we are retreating from the ideal of America as a country founded by and for brave, bold, freedom-seeking rebels, and becoming instead inward-looking and fearful.

I suspect many of us will refuse to retreat. We grew up in this beautiful, free country, in all its diversity. We know nothing good ever came of fear, and that our own history — including the shameful mistreatment of Native Americans — should incline us to humility and respect when considering the question of migration.

I’m not a lawyer, an asylum seeker, or one of the people working every day to protect our borders and run our immigration system. But I work with the UN Refugee Agency, which operates in 134 countries to protect and support many of the over 70 million people displaced by conflict and persecution.

We in America are starting to experience on our borders some of the pressures other nations have faced for years: countries like Turkey, Uganda and Sudan, which host 6 million refugees between them. Or Lebanon, where every sixth person is a refugee. Or Colombia, which is hosting over 1 million Venezuelans in a country slightly less than twice the size of Texas. There are lessons — and warnings — we can derive from the global refugee situation.

The first is that this is about more than just one border. Unless we address the factors forcing people to move, from war to economic desperation to climate change, we will face ever-growing human displacement. If you don’t address these problems at their source, you will always have people at your borders. People fleeing out of desperation will brave any obstacle in front of them.

Second, countries producing the migration or refugee flow have the greatest responsibility to take measures to protect their citizens and address the insecurity, corruption and violence causing people to flee. But assisting them with that task is in our interest. Former senior military figures urge the restoration of U.S. aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, arguing that helping to build the rule of law, respect for human rights and stability is the only way to create alternatives to migration. The UN Refugee Agency is calling for an urgent summit of governments in the Americas to address the displacement crisis. These seem logical, overdue steps. Our development assistance to other countries is not a bargaining chip, it is an investment in our long-term security. Showing leadership and working with other countries is a measure of strength, not a sign of weakness.

Third, we have a vital interest in upholding international laws and standards on asylum and protection. It is troubling to see our country backing away from these, while expecting other countries, who are hosting millions of refugees and asylum seekers, to adhere to a stricter code. If we go down this path, we risk a race to the bottom and far greater chaos. An international rules-based system brings order. Breaking international standards only encourages more rule-breaking.

Fourth, the legal experts I meet suggest there are ways of making the immigration system function much more effectively, fairly and humanely. For instance, by resourcing the immigration courts to address the enormous backlog of cases built up over years. They argue this would help enable prompt determination of who legally qualifies for protection and who does not, and at the same time disincentivize anyone inclined to misuse the asylum system for economic or other reasons. The American Bar Association and other legal scholars and associations are calling for immigration court to be made independent and free from external influence, so that cases can be fairly, efficiently and impartially decided under the law.

There are also proven models of working with legal firms to provide pro-bono legal assistance to unaccompanied children in the immigration system without increasing the burden on the U.S. taxpayer. Expanding these kinds of initiative would help to ensure that vulnerable children don’t have to represent themselves in court, and improve the effectiveness, fairness and speed of immigration proceedings. Approximately 65% of children in the U.S. immigration system still face court without an attorney.

We all want our borders to be secure and our laws to be upheld, but it is not true that we face a choice between security and our humanity: between sealing our country off and turning our back to the world on the one hand, or having open borders on the other. The best way of protecting our security is by upholding our values and addressing the roots of this crisis. We can be fearless, generous and open-minded in seeking solutions.

TIME Ideas hosts the world’s leading voices, providing commentary on events in news, society, and culture. We welcome outside contributions. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.

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

Wow! Great thoughts on how caring people might actually help to constructively address human migration issues rather than cruelly making them worse through “malicious incompetence.”

It’s painfully clear that we have the wrong “celebrity” leading our nation. But, Jolie wasn’t on the ballot (not will she be). Nevertheless, in a saner and more law-abiding Government, there should be a place for ideas and leadership from Jolie and others like her.

HISTORICAL NOTE: If my memory serves me correctly, Angelina Jolie once appeared before my esteemed retired colleague U.S. Immigration Judge M. Christopher Grant, as an expert witness in an asylum case before the Arlington Immigration Court.

PWS

08-02-19

AILA CONDEMNS BARR’S LATEST COWARDLY EXTRALEGAL ATTACK ON VULNERABLE ASYLUM SEEKERS — “Matter of L-E-A- is a poorly-reasoned decision from an Administration that seems intent on ending legal asylum. AG Barr’s decision ignores decades of circuit court case law which has concluded that families are the ‘prototypical’ or ‘quintessential’ particular social group to qualify for asylum.”

Jeremy McKinney, Esquire
Greensboro, NC
AILA 2nd Vice President

AG’s Decision Ignores Precedent and Is the Latest Attempt to Restrict Asylum

AILA: AG’s Decision Ignores Precedent and Is the Latest Attempt to Restrict Asylum

AILA Doc. No. 19072905 | Dated July 29, 2019

CONTACTS:

George Tzamaras
202-507-7649
gtzamaras@aila.org Belle Woods
202-507-7675
bwoods@aila.org

WASHINGTON, DC — On July 29, 2019, Attorney General (AG) William Barr issued a precedent decision in Matter of L-E-A- and announced that in his view, families cannot be considered a particular social group (and thus grounds for asylum) unless they are recognized by society as such.

AILA Second Vice President Jeremy McKinney stated, “Matter of L-E-A- is a poorly-reasoned decision from an Administration that seems intent on ending legal asylum. AG Barr’s decision ignores decades of circuit court case law which has concluded that families are the ‘prototypical’ or ‘quintessential’ particular social group to qualify for asylum. Courts, like the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, have voluminous case law directly contradicting the Attorney General’s decision today.

“The impact of AG Barr’s decision, along with the other decisions issued by his immediate predecessors on asylum and the nation’s immigration courts, cannot be overstated. Last summer, the AG issued Matter of A-B- attempting to end the category of persecution – essentially restricting domestic violence victims and other victims of crimes perpetrated by private, non-government actors from their ability to qualify for asylum. Today, the AG’s office further attempts to restrict asylum by targeting a new category of asylum seekers: families. This will cause irreparable harm. We know that these are some of the most vulnerable of asylum seekers as parents flee with their children in order to protect them from persecution. This decision unnecessarily makes asylum harder. Clearly, our nation needs an independent immigration court system separate from the Department of Justice.”

Cite as AILA Doc. No. 19072905.

Laura A. Lynch, Esq.

Senior Policy Counsel

Direct: 202.507.7627 I Email: llynch@aila.org

American Immigration Lawyers Association

Main: 202.507.7600 I Fax: 202.783.7853 I www.aila.org

1331 G Street NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20005

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

Cowardice is the very definition of when those in power whose job and solemn duty is to protect and vindicate the rights of others, particularly the most vulnerable among us like refugees, instead grossly abuse their power by picking on them, bullying them, and abusing them. Whether or not Barr and the other White Nationalist restrictionists in the Trump Administration are committing actual crimes under U.S. law, they are certainly guilty of “crimes against humanity” in any normal sense of the word.

It is for legal scholars, historians, and moral philosophers to insure that Trump, Pence, Barr, Sessions, “Cooch Cooch,” “Big Mac With Lies,” Miller, Nielsen, Kelly, Homan, Morgan, and others who have enthusiastically supported and enabled this debacle do not escape the negative judgements of history!

PWS

07-30-19

SENTENCED TO DEATH WITHOUT DUE PROCESS: Trump’s Legal Shenanigans Kill Innocent People!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/opinion/politics/expedited-deportation-trump-immigration.html

Beth Werlin writes in The NY Times:

The Trump administration’s expansion of the use of fast-track deportations through “expedited removal” will create a “show me your papers” regime nationwide in which people — including citizens — may be forced to quickly prove they should not be deported. This policy allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement to quickly deport someone without going before an immigration judge, undermining American principles of fundamental fairness and putting United States citizens, permanent residents and asylum-seekers at risk of wrongful deportation.

For 15 years, the government has been applying expedited removal in a limited way to those within 100 miles of the Canadian or Mexican border who have been in the United States for less than two weeks. The entire process consists of an interview with an immigration officer during which the burden is on the individual to prove a legal right to remain in the United States. One could be questioned, detained and deported very swiftly with little time to consult a lawyer or to gather evidence to prevent deportation. The extremely short timeline of the expedited-removal process increases the chances that a person who is legally entitled to stay in the United States can end up being removed anyway. The government now says it will apply it across the country for many people who cannot prove they have been present in the United States for two years or more. The expansion could affect thousands of people nationwide.

During just one year of the Trump administration, 27,540 citizens were questioned by ICE — five times more than the last year of the Obama administration. The expansion of the expedited removal process will further increase the number of people questioned, creating a heightened risk that citizens will be arrested, detained and wrongfully deported.

The process has many shortcomings. First, in expedited removal proceedings, immigration officers serve as both prosecutor and judge — charging someone as deportable and making a final decision to deport him, often all within a day. These rapid deportation decisions fail to take into account many critical factors that an immigration judge would consider, including whether the individual is eligible to apply for lawful status in the United States or whether he has citizen family members.

Second, there is generally no opportunity to consult with a lawyer. Having one can make all the difference. With a lawyer, a person is 10 times more likely to prevail in an immigration case. Moreover, there is typically no judicial oversight, with relatively low-level government officers authorized to issue the deportation orders.

Despite the backlogs in the immigration court system and even though the courts often fail to live up to expectations, they can help ensure a basic level of fair process. They safeguard against unlawful removals, afford people the opportunity to obtain counsel, and provide a streamlined appeal process.

This is particularly critical today, given that many people who will be subject to expedited removal are asylum seekers. These particularly vulnerable people could face serious harm or death in their countries of origin if they’re deported.

The lack of safeguards and information in expedited removal is compounded by well-documented abuse of the process. Immigration officers applying expedited removal are obligated to inform individuals of their opportunity to seek asylum and refer a person who expresses a fear of returning to their home country for a “credible fear interview.” Unfortunately, multiple investigations have revealed that officers at the border sometimes fail to fulfill these obligations.

One hallmark of the American justice system is a fair day in court before an impartial decision maker. This is the ultimate distortion of that system. Rather than strengthening the immigration court system, the administration is planning to bypass it entirely, and the human costs will be great.

Beth Werlin is the executive director of the American Immigration Council

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

Trump’s cruel abuse of vulnerable refugees and his wanton destruction of the U.S. Immigration Court system are national disgraces!

PWS

07-27-19

AS COURTS & CONGRESS DITHER, FAILING TO STOP CLEARLY ILLEGAL & INHUMAN CONDUCT, TRUMP ADMINISTRATION CONTINUES TO PUNISH INNOCENT KIDS AT THE BORDER WITH ARROGANT IMPUNITY — Whatever Happened To The Institutions That Were Supposed To Protect Us From Abuses By An Authoritarian, Scofflaw Executive? — Kate Linthicum Reports For The LA Times!

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=f4f6873a-7ae7-4cc2-bbe2-9fc685d2ea1b

Kate Lithicum reports for the LA Times:

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — For the two dozen migrant children living inside a small church on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez, most days go like this: breakfast at 8 a.m., dinner at 6 p.m. and hours of nothing in between.

There is no school, and except for a handful of worn Bibles, there are no books. Dangers abound in the surrounding hills, so most haven’t left the razor-wire-ringed compound in weeks or even months.

“I feel imprisoned,” said 16-year-old Alison Mendoza.

She left Nicaragua with her parents and two younger sisters in March after her father received death threats for demonstrating against President Daniel Ortega, whose government has jailed and killed thousands of dissenters.

The family has been waiting here in Juarez for nearly two months for their chance to request political asylum in the United States. A Trump administration policy allows only a handful of asylum seekers to pass through ports of entry at the U.S. border each day.

Mendoza and her sisters, Sol, 6, and Michele, 11, are among the thousands of migrant children languishing along the border as a result of changing migration trends and White House policies that seek to deter asylum seekers.

They left friends and relatives behind and endured the trials of the migrant trail only to end up stuck in camps, cheap hotels and shelters such as Buen Pastor, which is now home to children and their families from as far away as Ghana and Congo. Pawns in an adult’s dispute, their future is entirely uncertain.

Two recent Trump administration mandates are almost certain to result in even larger numbers of migrant children being stranded here.

One calls for asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases are adjudicated. About 3,000 migrant children and their families have been returned to Juarez under that program since April, according to Chihuahua state officials.

A mandate announced this week calls for asylum to be denied to migrants who did not apply for protection in at least one country they passed through while trying to reach the United States.

The rules mean that there is a very strong likelihood that if the Mendozas finally do cross the border to plead their case, they will be sent right back to Juarez.

“What will we do?” said Donald Mendoza, 37, who left behind a good job at a Managua university that would have allowed him to pay for all three girls’ college educations.

The Mexican government has committed to providing schooling to migrants who are returned from the U.S., but Mendoza doesn’t want to raise his girls in notoriously dangerous Juarez, where 10 people were slain on Sunday alone.

“This is not the life I planned for my children,” he said.

Buen Pastor opened its doors about 20 years ago to migrants — back then almost always single men — who passed through Juarez before seeking to sneak across the border.

“They would come, rest for a night or two, and then cross,” said Pastor Juan Fierro Garcia.

But over the last two years, entire families began trudging up the dirt road that leads to the church.

Many had heard that U.S. authorities were releasing migrants as long as they requested asylum and were traveling with children.

“We didn’t know much about the situation, just that families were passing,” said Joseph Venegas, 26, who left Honduras last month with his wife and their two sons.

After crossing into the U.S. illegally last week, and turning themselves in to border authorities, Venegas and his family were held for two days and then released back into Juarez with an order to appear at an asylum hearing in October. A Mexican official told them how to get to Buen Pastor.

Ten-year-old Jose sobbed on the way there. “I want to go back to Honduras,” he wailed.

“We had bad luck,” his father explained. “The law is the law and we have to respect it.”

“We are doing all of this for you,” Venegas added.

Venegas said the family decided to leave because a teachers’ strike meant Jose hadn’t been able to go to school for months.

But now, as he watched Jose sit morosely in one corner of the shelter and his wife nurse their coughing 4-month-old baby on a nearby bench, he wondered whether leaving had been in the best interest of his kids.

“What kind of childhood is this?” he asked.

The experience is a little easier on the younger children, many of whom don’t understand exactly what is happening, and who run around the shelter in a tight pack. The youngsters from Africa speak only a small amount of Spanish, but they still manage to make friends.

The lack of toys means the children entertain themselves around a big table, beating it like a drum until their parents complain or turning it into a fort under which they hide and whisper.

There are several small buildings clustered around the compound — a men’s dormitory, a women’s dormitory and the church sanctuary where families camp out each night on mattresses squeezed between the pews.

The crowded conditions and a constant stream of visitors — nongovernmental organization workers, pro bono lawyers and journalists all asking the same tired questions — mean there is zero privacy. Young women groom themselves and change clothes under the cover of blankets.

A psychologist from the state comes once a week. On a recent morning, she gathered the children around a big round table and led them in breathing exercises.

She asked them to go one by one, saying their names and where they were from.

“I’m Natalia from Honduras,” one girl said.

“I’m Akasia from Congo,” said another.

A thin child from Guatemala declined to speak, burying her head in her arms.

“She is sad,” the 7-year-old boy next to her explained.

“It’s OK,” the psychologist said. “It’s okay to be sad.”

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

This kind of preventable harm inflicted by an Administration that has declared war on humanity and the rule of law is directly at the feet of three irresponsible Federal Judges of the Ninth Circuit who tanked by vacating the injunction against such gross abuses properly put in place by the U.S. District Judge in Innovation Law Labs v. McAleenan, ostensibly so that their colleagues could “deliberate” (actually “dither”) over a decision that would take responsible judges about 60 minutes to reach! How do guys like this sleep at night?

The issue in Innovation Law Labs involves the bogus “Migrant Protection Protocols,” more accurately described as “Remain in Mexico” or “Die in Mexico” that intentionally violates both Fifth Amendment Due Process and numerous provisions of the INA, including the rights to access to counsel of one’s own choosing, fair notice of hearings, adequate time to prepare and present a case, and the right to assert withholding of removal to a country where one fears persecution or torture.

Failure of privileged Article III Judges to protect the most vulnerable among us from Executive overreach and abuse, in this case clearly racially motivated, has real life adverse consequences, beyond the “judicial ivory tower,” that in many cases are irreversible.

All of us who believe in justice should be outraged by the Ninth Circuit’s dilatory performance in this case! It’s nothing short of child abuse sanctioned by the Federal Judiciary. It must stop!

PWS

07-19-19

LIKE A BAD MOVIE: VIDEO SUB FOR REAL INTERPRETERS PANNED AS EOIR CONTINUES TO PLUMB THE DEPTHS IN COMING UP WITH WAYS TO DENY DUE PROCESS — Tal @ SF Chron Reports!

https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Videos-start-replacing-interpreters-at-14103649.php

Videos start replacing interpreters at immigration court hearings

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration began the process of eliminating in-person interpreters at immigrants’ initial court hearings Wednesday, replacing them with a video advising people of their rights.

Advocates who observed court proceedings said the video was confusing and difficult to understand, and said they feared the new system would not give immigrants a fair shot in cases that decide whether they will be deported.

The new system went into place at immigration courts in New York and Miami, according to multiple sources. Details were sketchy, as the policy was applied only to immigrants who were not represented by lawyers, meaning that in some instances there were no observers in the courtroom.

The immigration court in San Francisco is not among those where the videos are being used in a pilot program, but eventually interpreters are expected to be replaced there as well.

The Chronicle was first to report the new policy, shortly after immigration judges were told about it in June. Some judges have since raised concerns, and their union hopes to negotiate changes with the Justice Department, which runs the courts.

The department says replacing interpreters with videos at initial court appearances will save money. The main purpose of such initial hearings is to inform immigrants of their rights and schedule further proceedings.

After the video is shown, immigrants who want to ask questions of the judge will have no way of doing so unless they have a bilingual attorney on hand. If they don’t, judges will have to try to track down an interpreter who happens to be free or use a telephone interpreting service.

Advocates say the new system is likely to lead to confusion among some immigrants, who might miss their next hearing as a result. Missing a hearing can be grounds for deportation.

Witnesses who were in court in New York on Wednesday said the video was roughly 20 minutes long and featured Christopher Santoro, the principal deputy chief immigration judge of the immigration courts. As he spoke in English, the video was dubbed in Spanish with Spanish subtitles. After the video, immigrants received an 11-page FAQ handout in Spanish.

Joan Racho-Jansen, an organizer with New Sanctuary Coalition, which provides non-attorney volunteers to immigrants, said the video was slickly produced but difficult to understand even for Spanish speakers with whom she watched. She also said it spent considerable time on the immigrants’ right to accept “voluntary departure” from the U.S.

Immigrants in the courtroom “were either asleep or very, very frightened because they were saying things (in the video) that were scary,” Racho-Jansen said. “We had (experienced) volunteers who spoke Spanish and they just kept shaking their heads and felt disturbed by language that was far too confusing for them to understand.”

She said the video was full of “legalese” that would go over the heads of even fluent Spanish speakers — and many Central American immigrants speak indigenous languages and little or no Spanish.

The handout, viewed by The Chronicle, was clear but technical, with a volume of information that could challenge people from rural foreign countries who have no familiarity with courts.

“I asked the interpreters what they thought (of the video), and they said it was very confusing, that the person who was dubbing occasionally couldn’t pronounce or didn’t understand the word they were saying so they said it incorrectly,” Racho-Jansen said.

She said interpreters were present in the New York courtrooms and that judges used them after the video. It’s not clear if the Justice Department scheduled them to be there or if they were in court for other reasons.

The department declined to comment and refused The Chronicle’s request to view the video.

San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Alexei Koseff contributed to this report.

Tal Kopan is The San Francisco Chronicle’s Washington correspondent. Email: tal.kopan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @talkopan

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

The continuing denigration of Due Process by EOIR is appalling. This time, in addition to the real victims, the migrants who are forced to use this rancid system, EOIR is taking a “cheap shot” at the professional interpreters who have helped the foundering agency keep its head above water for years.

Sorry to see Principal Deputy Chief Judge Chris Santoro participating in this scam. Chris is someone I always admired and who was always very helpful and supportive to me during my career.

Where is Congress on this ugly and unnecesasry mess? Certainly, requiring EOIR to conform to Due Process by providing live interpretation ought to be a “bipartisan no-brainer.”

PWS

07-18-19

NDPA COUNTERATTACKS: ACLU, Immigrants’ Rights Groups Challenge Trump’s Scofflaw Attempt To Repeal Asylum Statute By Regulation That Failed To Comply With Legal Requirements For Advance Notice & Comment!

hhttps://www.wsj.com/articles/civil-rights-and-immigration-groups-file-lawsuit-challenging-new-trump-limits-on-asylum-claims-11563310786

Brent Kendall reports for the WSJ:

Civil-rights and immigration groups filed a lawsuit challenging new Trump administration rules that could dramatically limit asylum claims by Central American migrants seeking entry to the U.S.

The suit, filed in a northern California federal court on Tuesday, alleges the new asylum policy is “an unlawful effort to significantly undermine, if not virtually repeal, the U.S. asylum system at the southern border.

It “cruelly closes our doors to refugees fleeing persecution,” the suit added.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of several groups that assist migrants and refugees.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Brent’s article at the above link.

Go New Due Process Army, Beat Scofflaws!

PWS

07-16-19

CONTACTS:
George Tzamaras 202-507-7649 gtzamaras@aila.org	Belle Woods 202-507-7675 bwoods@aila.org

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A CONCEPTUAL PROPOSAL FOR AN AUXILIARY IMMIGRATION JUDICIARY

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