Category: Representation

DUE PROCESS AT WORK: GENDER-BASED CLAIMS ARE WINNING: FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA, SOME U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGES STAND UP FOR THE RULE OF LAW AND THE RIGHTS (& LIVES) OF REFUGEE WOMEN EVEN IN THE FACE OF A SCOFFLAW, XENOPHOBIC DOJ!

Here are two redacted “post-Matter of A-B-” decisions from U.S.Immigration Judges correctly interpreting the law to grant relief to refugee women from Central America who have been victims of gender-based persecution in the form of domestic violence.

Assistant Chief U.S. Immigration Judge Deepali Nadkarni of the Arlington Immigration Court granted this case based on a PSG of “women in Honduras.”

Nadkarni Grant – Women in Honduras PSG

And U.S. Immigration Judge Miriam Hayward of the San Francisco Immigration Court granted this case based on a PSG of “women in Mexico:”

SF IJ Hayward DV PSG grant

 

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Compare the outstanding organization, methodical scholarly analysis, proper use of country conditions, and logical conclusions of these decisions written by fair and impartial judges with the pages of legal gobbledygook and anti-asylum screed set forth by xenophobic politico Jeff Sessions in Matter of A-B-, 17 I&N Dec. 316 (BIA 2018).

In a properly functioning system, decisions like these would be the published precedents, not the misleading, inaccurate, and confusing decision of the Attorney General which has already been firmly rejected by U.S District Judge Sullivan in Grace v. Whitaker. Decisions like these two, if used as models, could actually help speed along the grant process in both the Asylum Office and the Immigration Courts, thus expediting justice without sacrificing Due Process.

As it is, these decisions should be helpful to counsel presenting cases of abused women in Immigration Court.

Assistant Chief Judge Nadkarni and Judge Hayward show what the U.S. Immigration Court system could be if the improper political meddling and enforcement bias were removed and the Immigration Court were allowed to operate independently. Unfortunately, there are some Immigration Judges out there who are intent not on judicial excellence, but on using Matter of A-B- to railroad refugees through the system into the “deportation mill” without Due Process. That’s why we need a diverse and independent appellate body that can reinforce “best practices” while keeping those judges who aren’t fairly and correctly applying asylum law in line and, perhaps, encouraging them to find other careers.

Congratulations to both Assistant Chief Judge Nadkarni and Judge Hayward for having the courage to stand tall for the rule of law, Due Process, and fundamental fairness for the most vulnerable in our society — the actual (if now largely discarded) mission of the U.S. Immigration Courts. I should know, since I helped draft that now-forgotten “vision statement.”

Also, many congrats to counsel Mark Stevens (who appeared before me many times in Arlington) and Kelly Engel Wells for their outstanding work and to the unnamed but still critically important ICE Assistant Chief Counsel who appear to have done an outstanding job of presenting these cases.

NOTE: Judge Miriam Hayward recently retired and has joined “Our Gang” now numbering at least 32 retired U.S. Immigration Judges and Appellate Immigration Judges.

PWS

01-17-19

 

Related posts:

  1. WINNING ASYLUM & SAVING LIVES IN THE “ERA OF A-B-“ – Seven Steps To Success
  2. THE HUMAN AGONY OF ASYLUM: SPEND 4 MIN. WITH MS. A-B- & HUMAN/WOMEN’S RIGHTS EXPERT PROFESSOR KAREN MUSALO — Beaten, Raped, & Threatened With Death By Her Husband, Hounded Throughout Her Country, Abandoned By El Salvadoran Authorities, She Sought Refuge In The U.S., Winning Her Case At The BIA — Then She Was Targeted For A Vicious Unprovoked Attack By Notorious Scofflaw Immigration Judge Stuart Couch & White Nationalist Xenophobe Jeff Sessions — She’s Still Fighting For Her Life!
  3. MORE ARTICLES FEATURE “GANG OF RETIRED JUDGES’ STATEMENT” RE: SESSIONS’S OUTRAGEOUS ATTACK ON SETTLED PRINCIPLES OF PROTECTION LAW! — Media Exposing Corrupt, Inherently Unfair, Biased “Court” System Where The Prejudiced Prosecutor “Cooks” The Results to His Liking! — Jeff Sessions Degrades The American Legal System & Our National Values Each Day He Remains In Office!
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 

IN MEMORIAM – JUDGE NATE GORDON – One Of The “Good Guys” – Tribute By Carl Shusterman, Esquire!

https://www.shusterman.com/immigration-judge-nathan-gordon/

Immigration Judge Gordon Was A Supermensch

Last week, retired Immigration Judge Nathan “Nate” Gordon passed away.  At his funeral, dozens of immigration attorneys, judges and others shared their stories of this wonderful man.

Judge Gordon changed many people’s lives in a very positive way.

I have a lot of stories about Judge Gordon.

Let me share one of them with you.

Judge Gordon – Background

Judge Gordon was born on Christmas Day in 1926 in New Jersey to Jewish immigrant parents from Eastern Europe.  He served in the US Army during World War II and graduated from New York Law School some years later.

He was employed by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) as an Attorney from 1962 to 1977. After that, he became an Immigration Judge, first in Newark, New Jersey, then in Los Angeles.

I first met Judge Gordon in the mid-1980s, after I had left the INS and entered private practice. The tremendous amount of compassion that he had for immigrants was truly impressive.  It trumped all legal standards. If he believed that a person deserved to stay in the US, Judge Gordon would find a way to make it happen.

Honor Student Miguel Perez

I remember getting a phone call one day from Congressman Mervin Dymally’s office. It concerned a young man born in El Salvador. He had been brought over the U.S.-Mexican border by his mother when he was 14 years old in order to save him from the violence of the civil war which was raging in their native country. They were immediately arrested and taken into custody by the Border Patrol.  Though they were later released on bail, the experience was so stressful for his mother that she died of a heart attack a few weeks later.

The young man, Miguel Perez, not knowing a single word of English, was placed under deportation proceedings. The process took years.  Ultimately, his application for asylum was denied by an Immigration Judge.  The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) affirmed the Judge’s decision.

By this time, Miguel had not only mastered the English language, he had become an honor student at a local university.  In his spare time, he tutored underprivileged children in South Central Los Angeles.  After learning of the BIA’s decision, he packed his bags and got ready to book a flight to El Salvador.  However, his professors and friends, horrified by the thought of what might happen to him if he returned to El Salvador, urged him to speak with his local Congressman.

The Congressman’s office arranged to have Miguel meet with me.  The next day, his story appeared on the front page of the Los Angeles Times.  We immediately appealed his case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit which overturned his denial.  Miguel was scheduled for a new hearing before an Immigration Judge.

Miguel had, by this time, lived in the U.S. for more than 7 years.  Under a law which existed at that time, he could apply for a green card through “suspension of deportation”.   He would need to show that he was a “person of good moral character” which he clearly was.  He would also need to demonstrate that he would suffer “extreme hardship” if he were forced to return to El Salvador.  This was a discretionary determination.

What he needed was a compassionate Immigration Judge.

 

Enter Immigration Judge Nathan Gordon, Supermensch

Fortunately, the Judge who had ordered Miguel deported had retired.  By a great stroke of luck, Miguel’s case was transferred to Judge Gordon.

From my previous experiences with Judge Gordon, I was certain that he would find that Miguel would suffer extreme hardship if he were forced to return to El Salvador.

I scheduled a meeting with the INS District Director.  I explained the facts of the case to him. Did the government want to look like bad guys eager to deport an honor student?  Or would he consider having the government’s attorney tell Judge Gordon that they agree that Miguel’s application should be granted?  The District Director agreed that Miguel should be granted suspension of deportation.

I told the District Director that there would be dozens of reporters and TV cameramen waiting outside the courtroom. At the hearing, we requested that Judge Gordon grant Miguel’s application for a green card.  Judge Gordon then asked the government attorney what their position was.  She told him that the government agreed that Miguel’s application should be granted.  Judge Gordon smiled and proceeded to grant Miguel’s application.

Immigration Judge Nathan Gordon

Had Judge Gordon not been assigned to the case, I doubt that the government would have agreed prior to the hearing that Miguel’s application should be approved.

Fast Forward

Miguel went on to get a Ph.D and became a distinguished professor at a public university.  He is married and is a great husband and father.

As I watched Judge Gordon’s casket being lowered into his grave last week, I thought about the thousands of immigrants like Miguel whose lives were altered in such a positive way by Judge Gordon.

Judge Nate Gordon was truly a Supermensch.

Carl Shusterman

Carl Shusterman served as an INS Trial Attorney (1976-82) before opening an 8 attorney firm specializing in immigration law. He is a Certified Specialist in Immigration Law who has testified as an expert witness before the Senate Immigration Subcommittee. Carl was featured in the February 2018 edition of SuperLawyers Magazine.

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Thanks, Carl, for a lovely and fitting tribute to a great jurist and a fine person! Judge Gordon actually took the bench shortly before I became the Deputy General Counsel at the “Legacy INS.” I became familiar with him and his work both during my time at the “Legacy INS” and during my time at the BIA. Indeed, Nate’s son, Attorney Louis Gordon, had an oral argument before a panel of the BIA sitting in Los Angeles. (Yes, there was a time, before Ashcroft, when the BIA was actually allowed to function largely along the lines of a real Federal Court and to decide to have arguments “on the road.” Now, the BIA is “confined to quarters” at Falls Church.)
Carl worked for me for a short time as a Trial Attorney at the Los Angeles Immigration Court when I was the DGC. But, he quickly found fame and fortune elsewhere.
Note how Immigration Court was once a more “user friendly” place, where there was mutual respect among the two parties and the Immigration Judge, and the objective was doing justice, not just cranking out more removal orders to keep the politicos at DOJ happy. Sadly, under Trump and his cronies at DOJ, the U.S. Immigration Court system is actually regressing in terms of expertise, professionalism, independence, and management — “stuck in reverse.”
PWS
01-17-19

Related posts:

  1. DUE PROCESS IN ACTION: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN AN INDEPENDENT ARTICLE III COURT ACTS TO ENFORCE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS BEING IGNORED BY DHS & DOJ: Here’s One Family’s “Human Story” About How the 9th Circuit’s Decision In Jennings v. Rodriguez Saved Them (And Also Us)! — Bond Hearings Can Mean EVERYTHING To A Detained Immigrant & Family!
  2. EFFECTS OF TRUMP SHUTDOWN, “MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE” CONTINUE TO ROIL U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT SYSTEM, SCREW MIGRANTS WHO FAITHFULLY SHOW UP FOR “FAKE” HEARINGS! – Trump Shut Down USG Over A Bogus “National Immigration Emergency” While Deeming Immigration Courts “Nonessential!” – Would ICE Agents Dare File “Charging Documents” Containing False Information With “Real” U.S. Courts?
  3. TWO LA TIMES EDITORIALS “SPOT ON” IN CALLING OUT TRUMP’S FAILED BORDER POLICIES, BOGUS EMERGENCY, & ABUSE OF IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITY!
  4. 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!

NO, WE’RE NOT “OVERWHELMED” WITH ASYLUM SEEKERS – BUT TRUMP’S SHUTDOWN IS ADDING TO THE IMMIGRATION COURT BACKLOG, CREATING MORE “AIMLESS DOCKET RESHUFFLING” THAT HELPED CREATE THE BACKLOG IN THE FIRST PLACE, AND SCREWING ASYLUM SEEKERS WITH PENDING CASES! — We Won’t Be Able To Solve Immigration Until The Immigration Court is Removed From The Executive Branch & Becomes An Independent Court!

The latest TRAC IMMIGRATION report confirms what most of us familiar with the dysfunctional U.S. Immigration Courts already knew: Trump has already needlessly added 42,000 cases to the backlog and will have added at least 100,000 of the shutdown lasts through the end of January.

 

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Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
==========================================
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Since the beginning of the federal government shutdown, most Immigration Court hearings have been cancelled. As of January 11, the estimated number of cancellations reached 42,726. Each week the shutdown continues, cancelled hearings will likely grow by another 20,000. As many as 100,000 individuals awaiting their day in court may be impacted if the shutdown continues through the end of January.

Each week the shutdown continues the practical effect is to add thousands of cases back onto the active case backlog which had already topped eight-hundred thousand (809,041) as of the end of last November. Individuals impacted by these cancellations may have already being waiting two, three, or even four years for their day in court, and now may have to wait years more before their hearing can be rescheduled once the shutdown ends.

Immigration Courts in California have experienced the most hearing cancellations – an estimated 9,424 as of January 11. These and many more details are based on analyses of court records by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.

For state-by-state impacts, see the full report at:

http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/543

In addition, many of TRAC’s free query tools – which track the court’s overall backlog, new DHS filings, court dispositions and much more – have now been updated through November 2018. For an index to the full list of TRAC’s immigration tools go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/imm/tools/

If you want to be sure to receive notifications whenever updated data become available, sign up at:

http://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1&list=imm

or follow us on Twitter @tracreports or like us on Facebook:

http://facebook.com/tracreports

TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the U.S. federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl

David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Syracuse University
Suite 360, Newhouse II
Syracuse, NY 13244-2100
315-443-3563

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But, that’s not all folks!

Amy Taxin reports for NBC LA:

https://apple.news/AB_FhnUCjSkylre8-ue8cZQ 

The partial government shutdown over President Donald Trump’s demand for a border wall is playing havoc with the nation’s already backlogged immigration courts, forcing the postponement of hearings for thousands of immigrants.

For some of those asking for asylum in the U.S., the impasse could mean years more of waiting — and prolonged separation from loved ones overseas — until they get a new court date.

But for those immigrants with little chance of winning their bids to stay in this country legally, the shutdown could help them stave off deportation that much longer — adding to the very delays the Trump administration has railed against.

“It is just dripping with irony,” said Sarah Pierce, policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. “This administration has put a lot of emphasis on speeding up court cases, and the shutdown obviously is just going to cause massive delays.”

The shutdown has furloughed hundreds of thousands of government employees and halted services that aren’t deemed essential, including, in many instances, the immigration courts overseen by the Justice Department.

Hearings involved detained immigrants are still going forward. But untold thousands of other proceedings have been postponed. No one knows for how long; it depends on when employees return to work and hearings can be reset.

Immigration experts said cases could be delayed months or years since the courts have more than 800,000 pending cases, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, and many courtrooms are tightly booked.

Immigration Judge Dana Marks, former president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, said she has at least 60 hearings a day in her San Francisco courtroom and no space on her docket for at least the next three years.

“The cases that are not being heard now — there is no readily available place to reschedule them until at least 2022 or beyond,” Marks said of her courtroom.

Immigration judges hear a wide range of complex cases from immigrants from across the world, some who have recently arrived in the United States, others who have lived in the country for years and the government is seeking to deport.

Immigration judges have long sought more staffing to handle the ballooning caseload, which has roughly doubled in five years following a surge in Central American children and families arriving at the southern border. The Trump administration has tried to speed up the courts by assigning immigration judges quotas and stopping them from shelving cases.

Some of the toughest cases immigration judges hear are claims for asylum, or protection from persecution. And long wait times can be especially difficult for asylum seekers, since they can’t bring spouses or children to join them in the United States unless their asylum requests are approved.

Reynold Finnegan, an immigration attorney in Los Angeles, said one of his Afghan clients hasn’t seen his wife or children in nearly nine years. After being kidnapped and tortured by the Taliban, the man left his homeland, traveled across the world and made his way to the U.S.-Mexico border to seek asylum, Finnegan said.

He waited more than six years for his final hearing before an immigration judge, but it was canceled last week because of the shutdown, and he doesn’t know how much longer it will take.

“He is devastated,” Finnegan said. “He was really planning on seeing his wife later in the year when he got approved, and his children.”

Since the shutdown began in December, immigrants have had to prepare for their scheduled court hearings and in many cases travel to court, knowing the proceedings might be postponed. In Northern states, that can mean hourslong car trips through ice and snow and taking days off from work.

The delays are painful for many immigrants, especially those who have strong asylum claims or green card applications and want to get their lives on solid footing in the United States.

Those with the weakest asylum claims actually benefit from the delays, because they are able to remain in the U.S. in the meantime and hold out hope of qualifying for legal status by some other means down the road.

In the 2017 fiscal year, immigration courts decided more than 52,000 asylum cases. About 1 in 5 were approved, according to statistics from the courts.

Courts have been crippled by a government shutdown. More than 37,000 immigration hearings were delayed by one in 2013.

And it isn’t just immigration courts that are affected. Since Justice Department attorneys are allowed to work in limited circumstances only, some high-profile civil cases have been put on hold, including a lawsuit in Oregon by the widow of Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, a man shot by police in 2016 after the takeover of a wildlife refuge.

Government attorneys have also sought to put on hold environmental cases, including challenges to logging projects and wild horse roundups in Montana and a lawsuit over the disposal in Oklahoma of toxic coal ash from power plants.

Most major criminal cases are expected to stay on track because of federal requirements for a speedy trial.

One aspect of immigration unaffected by the shutdown is the review of applications for green cards and citizenship. That’s because those tasks, which are handled by an agency in the Homeland Security Department, are paid for by application filing fees.

One asylum seeker, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of persecution in her home country, said the wait has been unbearable since her 2014 court date was twice delayed. It is now set for February.

“The past four years have been horrible enough, but this uncertainty, and my life being handled with such, I don’t know, no one cares, basically,” she said. “The process takes forever — just to get the date in front of the judge.”

Associated Press writers Dave Kolpack, Amy Forliti and Matthew Brown contributed to this report.

 

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But, wait!  That’s not all folks. There’s more!

Brittany Shoot @ Fortune writes that Immigration Court waiting times could double as a result of Trump’s shutdown!

https://apple.news/AEy1h1oc7RSux5Cdw1fo4PQ

The United States immigration courts are overburdened. Roughly 800,000 cases are portioned out between around 400 immigration judges, according to PBS NewsHour.And with the federal government shutdowncontinuing into its third week, applicants who have already waited years for their court date may now be shuttled to the back of the line, their hearings rescheduled as late as the 2022. This directly effects people’s everyday lives, as immigration status impacts basics such as the ability to get a work permit.

Focus on immigration enforcement under the Department of Homeland Security may be up, but the immigration courts, which fall under the Department of Justice, have not been given much attention despite the record-high demand for hearings that has been growing over the past decade. Judge Dana Leigh Marks, president emeritus of the National Association of Immigration Judges, told NewsHour the effects of the shutdown are having a “devastating impact.” San Francisco-based Judge Marks says that her own caseload of nearly 4,000 dockets includes cases that are already several years old. With no scheduling slots available, she says those cases may be reset to another date several years in the future.

Non-detained immigrants make up about 90% of judges’ caseloads, and those cases can end up involving anything from asylum decisions to deportations. The other 10% of cases, those for immigrants who are detained by immigration officials, are the only ones that can be processed during the shutdown. And that’s why the vast majority of those waiting for a hearing will simply be moved to the back of the line again.

The effects of the record-long government shutdownare also touching the lives of everyone from private-sector contractorsto Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents and travelers. And if the shutdown continues for another two weeks, its cost to the economy will surpass $5.7 billion, the amount it would cost to build President Trump’s border wall.

Visit FORTUNE.com

 

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Yeah, it’s going to continue to get worse until the shutdown ends and the Immigration Courts are removed from the DOJ.

Also, don’t let Trump, the DOJ, or any of their apologists in Congress or elsewhere “con” you into blaming the largely contrived “flood of asylum applicants” for this. We must stop “blaming the victims” for the lousy policies and gross incompetence of this Administration!

The Immigration Court has been in trouble and should have been fixed years ago. But, Trump, Sessions, Nielsen, and Miller intentionally have made things much, much worse—with no hope of improvement in sight.

Returning Due Process and fairness as the primary focus of these courts as well as placing them under professional court administration working for the Immigration Judges, not bureaucrats in Washington or Falls Church, wouldn’t solve the current immigration issues overnight. But, it certainly would be a head start and a beginning of a solution. That’s one heck of an improvement over the “downward spiral” promoted by this Administration. And, it wouldn’t cost $5.7 billion to fix, either!

PWS

01-15-19

 

 

Related posts:

  1. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”
  2. TRUMP’S MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE IS THE REAL “SOUTHERN BORDER CRISIS” — AND, A GENUINE HUMAN TRAGEDY — The Legal Tools To Address The Crisis In The Northern Triangle Causing A Refugee Flow Exist; This Administration Stubbornly Refuses To Use Them!
  3. 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”
  4. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”

CLOWN COURTS: EOIR CONTINUES ASSAULT ON DUE PROCESS, DUMBING DOWN JUDICIARY WITH CREATION OF HAZY “IMMIGRATION ADJUDICATION CENTERS” TO MASS PRODUCE REMOVALS BY TV WITHOUT DUE PROCESS!

http://immigrationimpact.com/2019/01/07/the-judicial-black-sites-the-government-created-to-speed-up-deportations/

Katie Shepard writes in Immigration Impact:

As the Tru. mp administration continues to strip away due process in immigration courts, the recent creation of two “Immigration Adjudication Centers” is cause for concern. The two new facilities are called “Centers,” not “courts,” despite being places where judges decide whether to issue orders of deportation.

The Centers came out of a “Caseload Reduction Plan” devised by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) as one of several mechanisms designed to reduce the number of cases pending before the immigration courts. This initiative first surfaced in December 2017 ostensibly as one of a series of ways to address the record-high backlog within the immigration court system. In fact, EOIR’s caseload has almost tripled since 2011, from fewer than 300,000 pending cases to 810,000 as of November 2018. This is likely to worsen given the current government shutdown.

A total of fifteen Immigration Judges currently sit in the two Centers—four in Falls Church, Virginia, and 11 in Fort Worth, Texas.

It is unclear whether the Centers are open to the public, despite laws stating such hearings must be. All the cases heard by immigration judges in the Centers will be conducted exclusively by video-teleconference (VTC), with immigrants, their lawyers, and prosecutors in different locations.

According to one source, it’s likely that “thousands of immigration cases will be heard with respondents never seeing a judge face-to-face.”

The utter lack of transparency around these Centers is alarming, given the documented concerns with the use of video teleconferencing and the current administration’s commitment to speed up immigration court hearings, even at the risk of diminished due process.

Speeding up cases could benefit detained individuals who often languish for months or even years behind bars before their release or deportation. However, the impact of these Centers overall could be much more ominous.

The Centers raise serious questions about whether detained immigrants will be disadvantaged by the arrangement. These questions include:

  • How will an individual who is unrepresented and detained in a facility three time zones away from the judge submit critical evidence to the court during a hearing?
  • How can an immigration judge adequately observe an asylum seeker’s demeanor for credibility without being in the same room?
  • Will the immigration judges be required to postpone hearings if there are issues with the telephonic interpreters, and could this lead to prolonged detention?

Further, only 14 percent of detained immigrants have attorneys and many may not have the ability to adequately prepare for their cases on an expedited timeframe. A very real outcome of speeding up cases in this manner is that many immigrants are deported even though they may have valid claims to stay in the United States.

Until the government is more transparent with these Centers, there is simply no way of knowing how many detained individuals—including children—have been deported without the opportunity to obtain counsel, and without appropriate safeguards preventing their removal to imminent harm.

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The degrading “de-judicilization” of the Immigration Courts under the Trump DOJ politicos and their EOIR subordinates continues. I suppose next Immigration Judges will be retitled as “Special Inquiry Officers” or “Removal Adjudicators.”

Hopefully, EOIR will get some much needed oversight and accountability from the House.

PWS

01-11-19

Related posts:

  1. PURE BS 💩 — TRUMP’S “BIG LIE” ABOUT MIGRANT APPEARANCES FOR HEARINGS BOGUS AS $3 BILL 🤮👎🏻— Replacing DHS/EOIR With Rational, Qualified, Fact-Based Governance & Real Judiciary Could Bring Appearance Rate Close To 100%!  — Two Items From ImmigrationProf Blog!
  2. 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.”
  3. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

TAL @ SF CHRON: Dreamer Deal To End Shutdown Seems Unlikely — PLUS BONUS COVERAGE: My Essay “Let’s Govern!”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Why-a-DACA-deal-to-end-the-shutdown-is-unlikely-13517915.php?t=e29fabd761

Tal reports:

WASHINGTON — A perennial trial balloon is once more floating on the horizon: Could protecting young undocumented immigrants from deportation in exchange for border security money get Washington out of a lengthy government shutdown?

The idea is already rapidly falling back to Earth.

President Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, have both brushed aside suggestions that passing protections like the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program could be a way out of the shutdown, which is nearing the end of its third week with no hint of a resolution.

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DACA temporarily protects many undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. under the age of 16 from being deported. Trump, whose attempt to end DACA is tied up in the courts, said Sunday that he would “rather have the Supreme Court rule and then work with the Democrats” on extending protections for program recipients.

“They’re two different subjects,” Pelosi said last month when asked about trading DACA for Trump’s southern border wall — $5.7 billion for which he is demanding before he will sign any government funding bills for the agencies that have been shut down.

Democrats are not universally against the idea. San Mateo Rep. Jackie Speier told MSNBC last week that she “personally would support it” and “there is a willingness to look” at a DACA-for-wall money deal in the caucus. DACA protections for nearly 700,000 immigrants nationwide, 200,000 of whom are in California, are in limbo, and hundreds of thousands more would be eligible for the program.

But numerous other Democrats — including several on the influential Hispanic, Asian Pacific and black caucuses that have leadership’s ear on immigration — said a DACA deal involving wall money is a nonstarter in shutdown negotiations without serious and uncharacteristic overtures from Trump.

Here’s why it’s unlikely:

Trump thinks time, and the Supreme Court, are on his side. The White House believes the court will ultimately invalidate the Obama-era DACA program or side with Trump’s attempt to end it, which has been blocked by lower courts. When that happens, the administration believes, Trump will have more leverage to cut a better deal with Democrats desperate to keep sympathetic young DACA recipients from being deported, and Congress will be forced to deal with a dilemma it has long avoided.

Democrats don’t trust Trump, who has walked away from a number of DACA proposals in the past year. “Donald Trump is not a deal-maker, he’s a deal-breaker,” said Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz. “We’ve seen this happen numerous times, and we’re not going to come approach him with a deal that he’s only going to take and then reject and then come back and move the goalposts on.”

Pelosi is in touch with her base, and her base isn’t eager to broach that deal. “People don’t want to trade a wall for something that isn’t even real,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “People don’t want a wall, period, and I think there’s no trust that there’s any credible negotiation around something positive on immigration, given (Trump’s) history.”

Trump wants much more on immigration than just physical border security, where there are some areas of potential compromise. A presentation that Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen prepared for congressional leaders last week included calls not just for the wall, but the rollback of a bipartisan bill designed to protect human trafficking victims and a court-ordered settlement intended to safeguard immigrant children. Both of those are nonstarters with Democrats, who say the protections are needed and getting rid of them does not promote border security.

Republicans question whether Democrats are as motivated as they say they are to resolve the DACA issue. They’re skeptical Democrats want to take the political leverage off the table. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, a moderate Republican who has long worked on immigration reform, called the potential to get a deal out of the shutdown fight the “opportunity of a lifetime.”

“It requires the Democratic leadership to actually do something that they have not done in the past,” Diaz-Balart said, “which is match their rhetoric on DACA with actual action.”

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

 

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

HERE’S YOUR “BONUS COVERAGE” ESSAY FROM “COURTSIDE:”

LET’S GOVERN!

By

Paul Wickham Schmidt

United States Immigration Judge (Retired)

I still think the best deal for America would be some form of “Wall for Dreamers” compromise. To me, the huge downside of “The Wall” would be more than offset by getting 800,000 great American young people — literally the future of our country – out of the shadows and contributing their maximum skills, talents, and creativity to making America really great (not the hollow mockery of “greatness’ peddled by Trump and his base).

But, Tal’s usually got her head “closer to the ground” than I do these days from my retirement perch in Alexandria. So, I’ll assume for the purposes of this piece that Tal is correct and that the “great compromise” isn’t in the cards – at least at this time.

So, where does we go from here? This is crystal clear: Trump can neither govern in America’s best interest nor can he cut any reasonable deal. So, it seems like the only alternative for America is for the Democrats in Congress to get together with the GOP and develop a plan for governing in the absence of a competent Executive. That means passage of “veto-proof” legislation that also places some specific limits and directions on Executive actions.

What could a “veto proof” compromise to reopen Government look like.  Well, of course, to start it must fund the affected Government agencies through the end of the fiscal year.

But, it also could include a robust $5.9 Million “Border Security” package.  Here’s what could be included:

  • Additional Asylum Officers;
  • Additional port of entry inspectors;
  • Additional Immigration Judges and court staff;
  • Additional funding for Office of Refugee Resettlement for health and safety of children;
  • Required e-filing and other management improvements at EOIR (including elimination of counterproductive “quotas” on judges, and providing at least one judicial law clerk for each judge);
  • Additional Assistant Chief Counsel for ICE;
  • Funding for counsel for asylum applicants and resettlement agencies;
  • Additional Anti-Smuggling, Intelligence, and Undercover Agents for DHS;
  • Smart Technology for and between ports of entry at the border and the interior;
  • Required improvements in management planning, hiring, and supervision within DHS;
  • Limitations on wasteful immigration detention (including a prohibition on long-term detention of children except in limited circumstances) and reprogramming of detention funds to alternatives to detention;
  • Funding for additional border fencing or fencing repairs in specific areas with an express prohibition on additional physical barriers without a specific appropriation from Congress.
  • Assistance to Mexico, the UNHCR, and other countries in the hemisphere to improve refugee processing and address problems in the Northern Triangle;

Sure, Trump could, and maybe would, veto it – although he’d be wise not to. And, I suppose, that veto, which would be overridden, could be the “red meat” for his base that he apparently favors over the “art of governing.”

But, in the meantime, Congress would fulfill its important role of governing in a bipartisan manner that will keep America moving forward even in the times of a weak and incompetent Executive. And, unlike the bogus “Wall,” the foregoing measures would actually contribute to our country’s security and welfare without wasting taxpayers’ money or trampling on individual rights and legal obligations. In other words, “smart governance.” That seems like a fair and worthy objective for both parties in Congress.

PWS

01-09-19

 

 

 

Related posts:

  1. MLK DAY 2018 — DR. KING’S DREAM OF AN AMERICA CELEBRATING EQUALITY & RACIAL HARMONY IS UNDER VICIOUS ATTACK BY TRUMP, PENCE, SESSIONS, AND A HOST OF OTHERS IN TODAY’S WHITE NATIONALIST ENABLING GOP — Who Is Going To Fight To Reclaim The Dream, & Who Is Going To “Go Along To Get Along” With The 21st Century Version Of Jim Crow?
  2. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  3. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”
  4. COURTSIDE HAS BEEN AT THE FOREFRONT OF EXPOSING THE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” COMMITTED BY THE REGIME AND THE MORAL CULPABILITY OF THOSE WHO WILLFULLY CARRY OUT & ENABLE THESE ATROCITIES — The “Mainstream Media” Is Now Channeling Courtside! — “In the meantime, no government has the right to treat people with such abject inhumanity. History will remember Trump for this, but it will also remember the people who enable such atrocious acts.”

PROFESSOR KAREN MUSALO: Persecution Of Women In El Salvador On The Basis Of Gender Is Real & Endemic – The Administration’s Attempts To Skew The Law Against Women Refugees Is Totally Dishonest, Immoral, & Illegal!

https://cgrs.uchastings.edu/sites/default/files/Musalo_El%20Salvador_A%20Peace%20Worse%20Than%20War_30%20Yale%20J.L.%20&%20Fem.%203_20018.pdf

Here’s part of the conclusion of Karen’s article “EL SALVADOR–A PEACE WORSE THAN WAR: VIOLENCE, GENDER AND A FAILED LEGAL RESPONSE” published at 30 Yale Journal of Law & Feminism 3 (2018):

Historical and contemporary factors have given rise to the extremely high levels of violence that persist in El Salvador today. Many of the Salvadorans interviewed for this article referred to a “culture of violence” going back to the brutal Spanish Conquest and continuing into more recent history, including the 1932 Matanza and the atrocities of the country’s 12-year civil war. Gender violence exists within this broader context. However, as almost every Salvadoran source noted, violence against women is even more deeply rooted than other expressions of societal violence as the result of patriarchal norms that tolerate and affirm the most extreme forms of domination and abuse of women.
. . . .

Levels of violence, including the killings of women, have continued to rise, while impunity has remained a constant. Criticism of the persistent impunity for gender violence resulted in El Salvador’s most recent legal development: the enactment of Decree 286, which created specialized courts. However, the exclusion of the most commonly committed gender crimes–intrafamilial violence and sexual violence–from the specialized courts’ jurisdiction, and the courts’ hybrid structure, which requires that cases still be initiated in the peace courts, do not inspire optimism for positive outcomes.

Notwithstanding these considerable obstacles, the Salvadorans interviewed for this article, who have long struggled for access to justice and gender equality, maintain the hope and the belief that change is possible. In the course of multiple interviews over a six-year period (2010 to 2016), Salvadoran sources have expressed deep frustration and disappointment but have not articulated resignation or defeat.

. . . .

The Salvadorans who I interviewed for this article have provided information, insights, and perspectives that are simply not available in written reports or studies. Although they come from a range of backgrounds–governmental and non-governmental; legal professionals as well as grassroots activists–they all acknowledge the complex causes of societal violence. As discussed throughout this article, they also have specific critiques and prescriptions for what must be done in order to see any real progress. Discussions of the country’s crisis, as well as of the international community’s response, must start by listening to the voices of the Salvadorans who, despite the seemingly intractable situation of violence and impunity in which they live, have refused to abandon the struggle for justice and equality. They are inspiring in their courage and resilience. By quoting extensively from these sources, this article has sought to amplify their voices.

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

Read Karen’s complete article at the above link.

Compare real scholarship and honest reflection of the experiences of women in El Salvador affected by this seemingly unending wave of persecution with the intentionally bogus picture painted by Jeff Sessions in Matter of A-B-. Hopefully, advocates will be able to use the research and expertise of Karen and others like her to enlighten fair-minded Asylum Officers and Immigration Judges, support their efforts to grant women the protection they merit as contemplated by the Refugee Act and the Convention Against Torture, and force the Article III Courts and eventually Congress to consign Sessions’s intentionally perverted reasoning to the dustbin of “Jim Crow Misogynist History” where it belongs.

Many thanks to my good friend and colleague in  “Our Gang,” Judge Jeffrey Chase, for passing this link to Karen’s important scholarship along.

Due Process For All Forever!

PWS

12-31-18

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. NY TIMES: Trump Mocks & Dehumanizes Vulnerable Refugees & His Administration Claims It’s OK To Return Them to Honduras; BUT The Facts Say The Opposite: Honduras Is An Armed Conflict Zone Where Gangs Exercise Quasi-Governmental Control & Those Who Resist Are Severely Punished, Often Maimed, Tortured Or Killed!
  3. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

NOTORIOUS CHILD ABUSER JEFF SESSIONS ALSO TARGETED REFUGEE WOMEN & GIRLS FOR DEATH, RAPE, TORTURE, & OTHER MAYHEM — HIS EVIL PLANS HIT A ROADBLOCK: THE LAW! — Read The Latest Commentary From Hon. Jeffrey S.Chase On Challenges To Sessions’s Effort To Pervert The Law — Matter of A-B- In Light Of Grace v. Whitaker!

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2018/12/24/how-far-reaching-is-the-impact-of-grace-v-whitaker

How Far Reaching is the Impact of Grace v. Whitaker?

Six months after a significant number of U.S. immigration judges cheered a decision intended to revoke the hard-earned right of domestic violence victims to asylum protection, immigration advocates had their chance to cheer last week’s decision of U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in Grace v. Whitaker.  The 107-page decision blocks USCIS from applying the standards set forth in a policy memo to its asylum officers implementing the decision of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in Matter of A-B-.  Judge Sullivan concluded that “it is the will of Congress – and not the whims of the Executive – that determines the standard for expedited removal,” and therefore concluded that the policy changes contained in the USCIS memo were unlawful.

In his decision in Matter of A-B-, Sessions stated that “generally, claims…pertaining to domestic violence or gang violence will not qualify for asylum.”  In a footnote, Sessions added “accordingly, few such claims would satisfy the legal standard to determine whether an [asylum applicant] has a credible fear of persecution.”  Read properly, neither of those statements are binding; they are dicta, reflecting Sessions’ aspirations as to how he would like his decision to be applied in his version of an ideal world.  However, both the BIA and the author of the USCIS policy memo forming the basis of the Grace decision drank the Kool Aid.  The BIA almost immediately began dismissing domestic violence cases without the required individualized legal analysis.  And USCIS, in its memo to asylum officers, stated that in light of A-B-, “few gang-based or domestic violence claims involving particular social groups defined by the members’ vulnerability to harm may…pass the ‘significant probability’ test in credible fear screenings.”1

If one reads Matter of A-B- carefully, meaning if one dismisses the more troubling language as non-binding dicta, its only real change to existing law is to vacate the precedent decision in Matter of A-R-C-G- which had recognized victims of domestic violence as refugees based on their particular social group membership.2   A proper reading of A-B- still allows such cases to be granted, but now means that the whole argument must be reformulated from scratch at each hearing, requiring lengthy, detailed testimony of not only the asylum applicant, but of country experts, sociologists, and others.  Legal theories already stipulated to and memorialized in A-R-C-G- must be repeated in each case.  Such Sisyphean approach seems ill suited to the current million-case backlog.

However, the BIA and the USCIS memo chose to apply Sessions’ dicta as binding case law, an approach that did in fact constitute a change in the existing legal standard.  When the Department of Justice argued to the contrary in Grace, Judge Sullivan called shenanigans, as USCIS’s actual application of the decision’s dicta to credible fear determinations  harmed asylum applicants in a very “life or death” way. The judge also reminded the DOJ of a few really basic, obvious points that it once knew but seems to have forgotten in recent years, namely (1) that the intent of Congress in enacting our asylum laws was to bring our country into compliance with the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees; (2) that the UNHCR’s guidelines for interpreting the 1951 Convention are useful interpretive tools that should be consulted in interpreting our asylum laws, and (3) that UNHCR has always called for an expansive application of “particular social group.”  Judge Sullivan further found that as applied by USCIS, the should-be dicta from A-B- constitutes an “arbitrary and capricious” shift in our asylum laws, as it calls for a categorical denial of domestic violence and gang-based claims in place of the fact-based, individualized analysis our asylum law has always required.

How far reaching is the Grace decision?  We know that the decision is binding on USCIS asylum officers, who actually conduct the credible fear interviews.  But is the decision further binding on either immigration judges or judges sitting on the Board of Immigration Appeals?

USCIS of course is part of the Department of Homeland Security.  Immigration judges and BIA members are employees of EOIR, which is part of the Department of Justice.  Its judges are bound by precedent decisions of the Attorney General, whose decisions may only be appealed to the Circuit Courts of Appeal.  However, the credible fear process may only be reviewed by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and only as to whether a written policy directive or procedure issued under the authority of the Attorney General is unconstitutional or otherwise in violation of law.3 This is how Grace ended up before Judge Sullivan.  The BIA and Immigration Judges generally maintain that they are not bound by decisions of district courts.

Despite these differences, the credible fear interviews conducted by USCIS are necessarily linked to the immigration court hearings of EOIR.  An asylum officer with USCIS recently described the credible fear interview process to me as “pre-screening asylum cases for the immigration judge.”  The credible fear process accounts for the fact that that the applicant has not had time yet to consult with a lawyer or gather documents, might be frightened, and likely doesn’t know the legal standard.  But the purpose of the credible fear interview is to allow the asylum officer to gather enough information from the applicant to determine if, given the time to fully prepare the claim and the assistance of counsel, there is a significant possibility that the applicant could file a successful claim before the immigration judge.  The credible fear standard has always been intended to be a low threshold for those seeking asylum. Before A-B-, a victim of domestic violence was extremely likely to meet such standard.  The USCIS memo reversed this, directing asylum officers to categorically deny such claims.  But now, pursuant to Grace, USCIS must go back to approving these cases under the pre-A-B- legal standard.

When an asylum officer finds that the credible fear standard has not been met, the only review is before an immigration judge in a credible fear review hearing.  Although, as stated above, EOIR generally argues that it is not bound by district court decisions, its immigration judges would seem to be bound by the Grace decision in credible fear review hearings.  Congress provided the district court the authority to determine that a written policy directive of the AG (which was implemented by the USCIS written policy memo) relating to the credible fear process was in violation of law, and Judge Sullivan did just that.  Even were EOIR to determine that the decision applies only to USCIS, the IJ’s role in the credible fear review hearing is to determine if USCIS erred in finding no credible fear. If USCIS is bound by Grace, it would seem that IJs must reverse an asylum officer’s decision that runs contrary to the requirements of Grace.

But since the credible fear standard is based entirely on the likelihood of the asylum application being granted in a full hearing before an immigration judge, can EOIR successfully argue that its judges must apply Grace to conclude that yes, a domestic violence claim has a significant chance of being granted at a hearing in which the IJ will ignore the dicta of A-B-, find that the only real impact of the decision was that it vacated A-R-C-G-, and will thus apply an individualized analysis to an expansive interpretation of particular social group (with reference to UNHCR’s guidelines as an interpretive tool)?  And then, once the case is actually before the court, ignore Grace, and apply what appears to the be BIA’s present approach of categorically denying such claims?

Many immigration judges are presently struggling to understand Matter of A-B-.  The decision was issued on the afternoon of the first day of the IJ’s annual training conference.  This year’s conference was very short on legal analysis, as the present administration doesn’t view immigration judges as independent and neutral adjudicators.  But the judges tapped for the asylum law panel had to throw away the presentation they had spent months planning and instead wing a program on the A-B- decision that they had only first seen the prior afternoon.  Needless to say, the training was not very useful in examining the nuances of the decision.  As a result, fair-minded judges are honestly unsure at present if they are still able to grant domestic violence claims.

Of course, a decision of a circuit court on a direct challenge to A-B- would provide clarification.  However, A-B- itself is presently back before the BIA and unlikely to be decided anytime soon.4  I am aware of only one case involving the issue that has reached the circuit court level, and it is still early in the appeal process.  My guess is that EOIR will issue no guidance nor conduct specialized training for its judges on applying A-B- in light of the Grace decision.  Nor will the BIA issue a new precedent providing detailed analysis to determine that a domestic violence claimant satisfied all of the requirements set out in A-B- and is thus entitled to asylum.

A heartfelt thanks to the team of outstanding attorneys at the ACLU and the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies for their heroic efforts in bringing this successful challenge.

Copyright 2018 Jeffrey S. Chase.  All rights reserved.

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

Four of the “scummiest” things about Sessions’s decision in Matter of A-B-.

  • Sessions is a biased prosecutor with well-know racist proclivities who had no business acting as a quasi-judicial decision maker in A-B-;
  • A-B- was purposely decided in a procedural context that made it impossible for the respondent to immediately challenge it in the Circuit Court;
  • Nevertheless, the untested dicta in A-B- cynically was used by USCIS to cut off access to the hearing system for refugee women who were unfairly returned to dangerous situations with no appeal rights;
  • Some U.S. Immigration Judges improperly used A-B- to “rubber stamp” these illegal denials of access to the hearing system, often mocking Due Process by barring the participation of attorneys attempting to represent refugee women and children.

There are few things more despicable than those charged with fairness and protecting the rights of others abusing their authority by  screwing the most vulnerable among us!

PWS

12-26-18

 

Related posts:

  1. THE HUMAN AGONY OF ASYLUM: SPEND 4 MIN. WITH MS. A-B- & HUMAN/WOMEN’S RIGHTS EXPERT PROFESSOR KAREN MUSALO — Beaten, Raped, & Threatened With Death By Her Husband, Hounded Throughout Her Country, Abandoned By El Salvadoran Authorities, She Sought Refuge In The U.S., Winning Her Case At The BIA — Then She Was Targeted For A Vicious Unprovoked Attack By Notorious Scofflaw Immigration Judge Stuart Couch & White Nationalist Xenophobe Jeff Sessions — She’s Still Fighting For Her Life!
  2. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”
  3. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 

HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”

WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES COULD BACKFIRE

 

  • “The Devil is in the Details.” Typical for this group of incompetents, nobody at DHS or in the Mexican Government actually appears to be ready to implement this “historic change.”
  • Expect chaos. After all, the ink wasn’t even dry on Judge Sullivan’s order in Grace v. Whitaker for USCIS to rewrite its credible fear “Policy Memorandum” to comply with law. Want to bet on whether the “credible fear” interviews in Mexico or at the border will be lawful? How about the reaction of Judge Sullivan if they ignore his order? (Nielsen and her fellow scofflaws might want to consult with Gen. Flynn on that one. This is one judge with limited patience for high level Government officials who run roughshod over the law, are in contempt of court, or perjure themselves.)
  • By screwing around with procedures, the Administration opens itself up for systemic challenges in more U.S. District Courts instead of being able to limit litigation to Courts of Appeals on petitions to review individual removal orders.
  • Every “panic attack” by this Administration on the rule of law and the most vulnerable energizes more legal opposition. And, it’s not just within the immigration bar and NGOs any more. “Big Law” and many of the brightest recent graduates of top law schools across the country are getting involved in the “New Due Process Army.”
  • By concentrating asylum applicants at a limited number of ports of entry, pro bono legal groups could actually find it easier to represent almost all applicants.
  • Representation of asylum seekers generally improves results, sometimes by as much as 5X.
  • It could be easier for individuals who are free and authorized to work in Mexico to obtain counsel and prepare their cases than it is for individuals detained in substandard conditions in obscure locations in the U.S.
  • Freed of the intentionally coercive and demoralizing effects of DHS detention, more applicants will be willing to fully litigate their claims, including taking available administrative and judicial appeals.
  • As more cases reach the Courts of Appeals (primarily in the 5th & 9th Circuits) more “real” Article III Judges will “have their eyes opened” to the absolute travesty that passes for “justice” and “due process” in the Immigration Courts under Trump.
  • Shoddily reasoned “precedents” from the BIA and the AG are already failing in the Article III Courts on a regular basis. Three “bit the dust” just within the last week. Expect this trend to accelerate.
  • The 5th and 9th Circuits will find their dockets overwhelmed with Not Quite Ready For Prime Time (“NQRFPT”) cases “dumped” on them by DOJ and EOIR and are likely to react accordingly.
  • The last massive assault on Due Process in Immigration Court by the DOJ under Ashcroft basically caused a “mini-rebellion” in the Article III Courts. There were numerous “remands for redos” and Circuit Court rulings harshly reversing and publicly criticizing overly restrictive treatment of asylum cases by Immigration Judges and the BIA, particularly in the area of credibility determinations. Expect the Circuit Courts to “reverse and revise” many of the current anti-asylum precedents from the BIA and the AG.
  • With almost universal representation, a level playing field supervised by Article III Courts, and all Immigration Judges actually forced to fairly apply the generous standards for asylum enunciated by the Supremes in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, and by the BIA in the (oft cited but seldom actually applied) Matter of Mogharrabi, I wouldn’t be surprised to see grant rates for Northern Triangle applicants exceed 50% (where most experts believe they belong).
  • Overall, there’s a respectable chance that the end result of this ill-conceived policy will be an exposure of the rampant fraud, intellectual dishonesty, and disregard for the true rule of law in this Administration’s treatment of bona fide asylum seekers.
  • Inevitably, however, asylum seekers will continue to die in Mexico while awaiting hearings. DHS politicos probably will find themselves on a regular basis before enraged House Committees attempting to justify their deadly, cruel, and incompetent policies. This will be a “culture shock” for those used to the “hear no evil, see no evil” attitude of the GOP House.
  • The Administration appears to have “designed” another of their “built to fail” systems. If they shift the necessary Immigration Judges to the border, the 1.1 million backlog elsewhere will continue to mushroom. If they work on the backlog, the “border waiting line” will grow, causing extreme pressure from the Mexican Government, Congress, and perhaps the Article III Courts. Every death of an asylum seeker (there were three just within the last week or so) will be laid at DHS’s feet.

NOTE TO THE NDPA:

 The outstanding historical analysis by Judge Emmet Sullivan in Grace v. Whitaker illustrates what we already know: For years, the Executive Branch through EOIR has been intentionally applying “unduly restrictive standards” to asylum seekers to artificially reduce the number of grants in violation of both the Refugee Act of 1980 and our international obligations. This disingenuous treatment has particularly targeted bona fide asylum seekers from the Northern Triangle, those asserting claims based on a “particular social group,” unrepresented individuals, women, and children.

Worse yet, this totally cynical and disingenuous Administration is using the intentionally and unlawfully “skewed system” and “illegal denials” as well as just downright fabricated statistics and knowingly false narratives to paint a bogus picture of asylum seekers and their lawyers as the “abusers” and the Government as the “defenders of the rule of law.” What poppycock, when we all know the exact opposite is the real truth! Only courageous (mostly pro bono) lawyers and some conscientious judges at both the Immigration Court and Article III levels are standing up for the real rule of law against a scofflaw Administration and its outrageous plan to send genuine refugees back into harm’s way.

Nowhere in the racially charged xenophobic actions and rhetoric of Trump, Sessions, and Whitaker, nor in the intentionally derogatory and demonstrably dishonest rhetoric of Nielsen, nor in the crabbed, intentionally overly restrictive interpretations of asylum law by today’s BIA is there even a hint of the generous humanitarian letter and spirit of the Refugee Act of 1980 and the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees or the “non-narrow” interpretation of “particular social group” so well described and documented by Judge Sullivan. On the contrary, we can well imagine folks like this gleefully and self-righteously pushing the refugee vessel St. Louis out to sea or happily slamming the door in the face of desperate Jewish refugees from Europe who would later die in the Holocaust.

Now is the time to force the Article III Courts and Congress to confront this Administration’s daily violations of law and human rights. We can develop favorable case precedents in the Article III Courts, block unethical and intentionally illegal interference by the Attorney General with Due Process in Immigration Court, and advocate changes in the law and procedures that will finally require the Executive Branch and the Immigration Courts to live up to the abandoned but still valid promise of “becoming the world’s best tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and Due Process for all.” And, the “all” certainly includes the most vulnerable among us: refugees claiming asylum!

In the end, through a combination of the ballot box, Congress, the Article III Courts, and informed public opinion we will be able to thwart the rancid White Nationalist immigration agenda of this Administration and return honest, reasonable Government that works within the Constitution and governs in the overall best interests of our country to the United States.

Thanks for all you do! Keep fighting the “good fight!”

Go for it!

Due Process Forever! Scofflaw Administration Never!

PWS

12-21-18

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

THE FURTHER EXPLOITS OF “OUR GANG” – 5th Circuit Grants Oral Argument In Matter of W-Y-C- & H-O-B- (requiring asylum applicants to clearly delineate the PSG before the IJ)!

“Hot off the wire” from “Our Gang” of Retired Immigration Judges’ Leader Judge Jeffrey Chase:

Good morning, all:  The Fifth Circuit has granted oral argument for the week of February 4 in Canterero-Lagos v. Whitaker the appeal of the BIA’s decision Matter of W-Y-C- & H-O-B- (requiring asylum applicants to clearly delineate the PSG before the IJ).  Our group filed an amicus brief in that case (there was a second amicus brief on behalf of legal service providers).  Lead counsel emphasized the importance of the amicus briefs in convincing the Circuit court to grant oral argument, which OIL opposed, arguing that the case was not of particular interest and that W-Y-C- did not constitute a change in existing law.

Best, Jeff

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

Thanks Jeff for passing this along! And special thanks to all of our retired colleagues who make this effort so special and effective and to the amazingly talented and dedicated pro bono advocates who help us be “heard in court.”

Even from our angle, we can see that “great representation makes a difference.” If it makes that much of a difference to retired Immigration Judges trying to be “heard,” just imagine what a difference it makes to those actually appearing in U.S. Immigration Court to literally “plead for their lives!”

That’s why this Administration’s “strategy” of using waiting lists, illegal orders, inhumane detention, family separation, expedited removal, skewed credible fear interviews, and so-called “review before an Immigration Judge” where counsel, even if present, isn’t even allow to speak, to prevent competent representation and fair presentation of claims is such an outrageous abuse of Due Process!

We are still in the early stages of fully exposing the jaw-dropping extent of these abuses to Article III Judges, Congress, and the public! And, we (and our successors and allies in the NDPA) won’t rest until the U.S. Government is finally forced to live up to its cynically abandoned promise of making U.S. Immigration Courts “the world’s best tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all!”

No wonder that Trump and his White Nationalist cronies are so scared of “gangs like ours!”

PWS

12-14-18

Related posts:

  1. HON. JEFFREY CHASE: Speaking Out Against The “Notable Minority” Of U.S. Immigration Judges Who Demonstrated Bias Against Women & Asylum Seekers – “Think about that: some federally appointed immigration judges cheered the fact that women who had been violently raped and beaten in their country can no longer find refuge here, and will be sent back to face more violence, and possibly death. Will there be any consequences for their actions? Were the many outstanding immigration judges who have been proud to grant such cases in the past, who were saddened and sickened by this decision, able to openly jeer or weep or curse this decision? Or would that have been viewed as dangerous?”
  2. WHEN ARTICLE III COURTS FAIL: U.S. “Orbits” Refugee Families To Dangerous Chaos In Guatemala Under Clearly Fraudulent “Safe Third Country” Arrangements As Feckless U.S. Courts Fail To Enforce Constitutional Due Process & U.S. Asylum Laws In Face Of Trump Regime’s Contemptuous Scofflaw Conduct!
  3. JUSTICE PREVAILS AGAIN IN IMMIGRATION COURTS EVEN IN THE “POST-A-B-“ ERA — Outstanding Analysis By Judge Eileen Trujillo Of The U.S. Immigration Court In Denver, CO, Recognizes “Women In Mexico” As PSG, Finds Nexus, Grants Asylum, Distinguishes A-B-
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 

UPI ANALYSIS OF LATEST EOIR ASYLUM STATS ACTUALLY SHOWS THAT MANY FROM NORTHERN TRIANGLE (PARTICULARLY EL SALVADOR) HAVE VALID CLAIMS FOR PROTECTION, BUT SESSIONS’S POLITICAL ACTIONS AND CONTROL OVER U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGES ARTIFICIALLY FORCED THE GRANT RATE DOWN! – It’s Time For An Independent “Article I” U.S. Immigration Court & A Level, Apolitical Playing Field For Asylum Applicants!

https://apple.news/AHg-L3Cy-SEG6Gi9SR1rk_w

Patrick Timmons reports for UPI:

Asylum denials jump; immigration judges’ discretion attacked

MEXICO CITY, Dec. 10 (UPI) — New data about the number of asylum applications granted by the United States this year show how the Trump administration has dramatically narrowed asylum granted to people fleeing persecution in their home countries — though significantly more Central Americans have been admitted over the past decade.

“Asylum acceptance rates are at a 20-year low, and the recent TRAC data confirms that,” said Sarah Pierce, policy analyst for the non-partisan and independent Migration Policy Institute, referring to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

For fiscal 2018, TRAC’s statistics show immigration judges denied 65 percent of asylum claims — up from 42 percent in 2017. There were 42,224 asylum cases decided in 2018, an 89 percent increase over the total number of cases decided in 2016.

Due to a backlog in the immigration system, some asylum seekers have been able to live in the United States for three years to five years while their claims are adjudicated, a situation the administration has tried to address by changing some rules and practices.

“This administration is trying to address people who are trying to take advantage of the system. But unfortunately this administration’s approach tends to punish asylum seekers rather than just specifically looking at those individuals who are taking advantage of the system,” Pierce said.

The administration’s broad approach to all asylum seekers has had the effect of narrowing asylum by increasing immigration judges’ workloads by setting quotas, ending discretionary decision making and rewriting immigration rules to deny relief to asylum seekers fleeing domestic and gang violence.

Immigration experts told UPI the administration’s changes to how immigration judges work has spiked a general increase in asylum denials.

Northern Triangle

There has been an increased flow of asylum seekers from Central American countries, particularly those from the Northern Triangle countries of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

And the fact that more of them are getting approved shows they are “sincere humanitarian migrants,” Pierce said.

A new TRAC tool shows Central Americans now fare better than in previous years. Salvadorans receive asylum in rates higher than Guatemalans or Hondurans. In 2004, Salvadorans’ asylum approval rate was 6 percent. In 2018, it rose to 23 percent. Guatemala’s grant rate in 2018 was 18 percent, the lowest of three countries, with Honduras at 20 percent.

Pierce said that changes in immigration law under the Obama administration help account for significant changes in asylum approval rates for people fleeing the Northern Triangle. Immigration judges over the past decade were more accepting of domestic and gang violence as grounds for asylum, with successes helping to develop case law.

The rise in asylum for Salvadorans has to do with direct violent threats, rather than domestic violence, which is a common claim among Guatemalan asylum seekers, or gang violence, common among Hondurans.

“The circumstantial evidence suggests El Salvador tends to have the most direct violent threats,” said Everard Meade said, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego.

Data comparing the Northern Triangle countries’ asylum seekers’ claims is hard to come by. However, Meade said in 2014 the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees issued its report, “Children on the Run,” about unaccompanied Central American minors highlighting direct violence in El Salvador as a reason for flight. UNHCR interviewed almost 400 children with 66 percent of El Salvadorans reporting flight for threat of direct violence Guatemalans reported 20 percent, Hondurans at 44 percent.

But Central Americans’ asylum approvals might be a blip. Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions this year removed domestic violence and gang violence as grounds for asylum in immigration court proceedings.

“These private acts of violence claims are typically the ones we are seeing from the Northern Triangle,” Pierce said, “including El Salvador.”

Discretionary decision-making

The general picture, however, is that more people are failing to win asylum than ever before because the Trump administration has changed how judges work.

“The asylum decisions and denial data for fiscal year 2018 is really about discretionary relief that used to be available under [President Barack] Obama but is not available under [President Donald] Trump anymore,” Meade said.

Prior to Trump-Sessions, immigration judges used to employ a form of discretionary relief called administrative closure. This was a form of temporary protection against deportation that did not grant any permanent immigration status, unlike asylum, which is a pathway to citizenship.

“Immigration judges had people coming before them who had really compelling stories but those stories did not necessarily cleave close enough to the asylum standard to grant them asylum. But the judges really felt they did not want to return them to dangerous situations, either. They also felt they were people who were credible, who had told the truth, and so they were administratively closing their cases,” Meade said.

The practice of administrative closure ended this year with a Sessions memorandum.

“Administrative closure was a widespread practice and that is exactly what explains how the denial rate can go up so dramatically without the grant rate going down. Actually, the grant rate has gone up. In defense of the institutions, the modest increase in the grant rates suggest people have some really good asylum claims,” Meade said.

The situation in El Paso

Carlos Spector, a veteran El Paso immigration lawyer, said that although the asylum rate has increased nationwide, there is little evidence of successful asylum claims in El Paso’s immigration court.

“This year, I have lost some asylum cases that had really compelling claims,” Spector said, adding that 98 percent of his clients are Mexican.

Mexicans generally do not fare well in immigration court. In 2018, 14.5 percent of Mexican asylum seekers received asylum. Part of the reason is that immigration judges were administratively closing cases, protecting from deportation but stopping short of permanent relief.

For 2018, the latest TRAC data reveal El Paso’s immigration judges reviewed 297 cases, granting asylum 47 times. In 2017, they reviewed 148 cases and granted asylum 12 times. These low asylum rates, some of the lowest in the nation, mean El Paso’s immigration judges have a reputation for enforcing law and order, Spector said.

“I’ve been tracking asylum cases of Mexican nationals for the past few years and it is more or less the same rate along the border from San Diego to Brownsville,” Spector said.

“Because we are on the border and these judges are political appointees and these judges do understand the government’s mandate of holding or guarding the border and they take that law enforcement approach,” Spector said, “the denials are much, much higher on the U.S.-Mexico border, and they always have been.”

TRAC compiled asylum approval and denial statistics for fiscal year 2018, the first full year of Trump’s presidency, based on Freedom Of Information Act requests to the Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review, the agency charged with adjudicating defensive asylum claims in immigration court.

Photoby Ariana Drehsler/UPI : Jose Hernández, 17, styles his hair at El Barretal shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, on Dec. 9, 2018.

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

Just as I have been saying all along!  The Trump Administration’s claim that low asylum approval rates indicate the system is being “gamed” by applicants is a bogus cover up. Even taken at “face value,” a 20-25% chance of being granted asylum hardly shows a system being “gamed.” At most, it shows that Immigration Judges are applying a much more restrictive standard than Asylum Officers considering “credible fear” claims at the border. Far from being “gaming,” that would be consistent with (although not necessarily required by) an intentionally much more generous standard for getting a fair adjudication in a removal hearing (“passing credible fear”) than for actually achieving relief (“a favorable order from an Immigration Judge after a full merits hearing”).

But, what really appears to be going on here are artificially restrictive, politically inspired “tweaks” to asylum law and procedures specifically intended to disadvantage those in danger from the Northern Triangle. Additionally, inappropriate detention policies are intended to force many more applicants to proceed without lawyers or to abandon appeals — making it like “shooting fish in a barrel” for those Immigration Judges with a predilection to deny relief who are under great pressure to “produce” more final orders of removal. It also appears that a disturbing number of Immigration Judges along the Southern Border view themselves as agents of DHS and Administration enforcement policies, rather than as fair and impartial decision makers committed to giving asylum seekers the “benefit of the doubt” under the law.

This all adds up to what appears to me to be a significant “cover up” of politicized wrong-doing and a mass denial of Due Process orchestrated by the Administration through the Department of Justice.

Why are the Administration, DHS, and DOJ so afraid of giving asylum applicants fair access to lawyers, time to prepare and document their cases, and timely fair hearings before impartial quasi-judicial adjudicators whose  sole focus is getting the right substantive result, rather than achieving some type of assembly line enforcement-related “production quotas?”

Why waste time on “gimmicks” — most of which eventually prove to be illegal, ineffective, or both — rather than  concentrating on getting to the merits of these cases in a timely manner and “letting the chips fall where they may.”

Surely, among a largely artificially created 1.1 million case “backlog” there are hundreds of thousands of cases that could be “administratively closed” as an exercise of prosecutorial discretion to allow more recently arrived cases to be timely heard without increasing backlogs or creating further wasteful “Aimless Docket Reshuffling.”

Eventually, the “mask will be ripped off” what’s really happening in  our U.S. Immigration Court system. When that happens, the results could be ugly and damaging to the reputations of those orchestrating and enabling what certainly appears to be a disgraceful and intentional miscarriage of justice!

PWS

12011-18

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

“Bottomless Pinocchios” — A Catalog Of The Liar-in-Chief’s Most Repeated Lies — Not Surprisingly, A Number Of Them Involve Immigration!

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/classic-apps/the-false-claims-that-trump-keeps-repeating/2018/12/09/c2859d36-fc0c-11e8-862a-b6a6f3ce8199_story.html

Glenn Kessler and Joe Fox report for the Washington Post:

The Fact Checker has evaluated false statements President Trump has made repeatedly and analyzed how often he reiterates them. The claims included here – which we’re calling “Bottomless Pinocchios” – are limited to ones that he has repeated 20 times and were rated as Three or Four Pinocchios by the Fact Checker.

The Trump tax cut was the biggest in history

Trump repeated some version of this claim 123 times

Even before President Trump’s tax cut was crafted, he promised it would be the biggest in U.S. history – bigger than Ronald Reagan’s 1981 tax cut. Reagan’s tax cut amounted to 2.9 percent of the gross domestic product and none of the proposals under consideration came close to that level. Yet Trump persisted in this fiction even when the tax cut was eventually crafted to be the equivalent of 0.9 percent of GDP, making it the eighth largest tax cut in 100 years. This continues to be an all-purpose applause line in the president’s rallies. Read more

No, President Trump’s tax cut isn’t the ‘largest ever’

Overstating the size of U.S. trade deficits

Trump repeated some version of this claim 117 times

President Trump frequently overstates the size of trade deficits. But he tips into Four-Pinocchio territory with his repeated use of the word “lost” to describe a trade deficit. (Alternatively, he sometimes says China “made” or “took out” $500 billion.) Countries do not “lose” money on trade deficits. A trade deficit simply means that people in one country are buying more goods from another country than people in the second country are buying from the first country. Trade deficits are also affected by macroeconomic factors, such as currencies, economic growth, and savings and investment rates. Read more

Fact-checking Trump’s tough trade talk

The U.S. economy has never been stronger

Trump repeated some version of this claim 99 times

In June 2018, the president hit upon a new label for the U.S. economy: It was the greatest, the best or the strongest in U.S. history. The president can certainly brag about the state of the economy, but he runs into trouble when he repeatedly makes a play for the history books. By just about any important measure, the economy today is not doing as well as it did under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson or Bill Clinton — or Ulysses S. Grant. Read more

Is this the ‘best economy ever’?

Inflating our NATO spending

Trump repeated some version of this claim 87 times

During the presidential election, Trump consistently inflated the U.S. contribution to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Once he became president, his inaccuracy has persisted, but with a twist. He often claims that “billions and billions” of dollars have come into NATO because of his complaints. All that is happening is that members have increased defense spending as a share of their economies — a process that was started before Trump even announced his candidacy. Read more

President Trump’s ongoing misunderstanding of NATO funding

The U.S. has started building the wall

Trump repeated some version of this claim 86 times

President Trump has sought $25 billion to fund his long-promised wall along the southern border. But Congress has not given it to him. There was nearly $1.6 billion included in the appropriations bill he signed early in 2018 for border protection, but the legislative language was specific: None of the funds could be used for Trump’s border wall prototypes. Instead the money was restricted to fencing, and it was generally used for replacement fencing. He also frequently overstates the amount of money he has obtained for the nonexistent wall. Read more

Has construction of Trump’s border wall started?

The U.S. has the loosest immigration laws in the world — thanks to Democrats

Trump repeated some version of this claim 52 times

Trump repeatedly claims that the United States has the loosest immigration laws, but that’s simply not true. In fact, the United States has among the world’s most restrictive laws, placing it 25th among developing nations in welcoming immigrants, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The president frequently blames Democrats for the current legal system but that’s wrong, too — much of current immigration policy was decided either under a Republican president or through court cases. Read more

Is there a law that requires families to be separated at the border?

Democrats colluded with Russia during the campaign

Trump repeated some version of this claim 42 times

Throughout the special counsel’s investigation of possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, Trump has sought to deflect attention by asserting that the Democrats colluded with Russia. But he has little evidence to make his case, which largely rests on the fact that the firm hired by Democrats to examine Trump’s Russia ties at the same time was working to defend a Russian company in U.S. court. In fact, U.S. intelligence agencies found that Russian entities hacked Democratic leaders’ email during the campaign. Read more

Did Hillary Clinton collude with the Russians to get ‘dirt’ on Trump to feed it to the FBI?

The border wall will stop drug trafficking

Trump repeated some version of this claim 40 times

In demanding a wall on the southern border, Trump has asserted that it would stop the flow of drugs. But the Drug Enforcement Administration says that most illicit drugs enter the United States through legal ports of entry. Traffickers conceal the drugs in hidden compartments within passenger cars or hide them alongside other legal cargo in tractor-trailers and drive the illicit substances right into the United States. Meanwhile, fentanyl, a deadly synthetic opioid, can be easily ordered online, even directly from China. Read more

Will a border wall stop drugs from ‘pouring in?’

U.S. Steel is building many new plants

Trump repeated some version of this claim 37 times

This is one of Trump’s strangest claims. Since he imposed tariffs on steel, the president has repeatedly claimed that U.S. Steel was building new steel plants. Depending on his mood, the number has ranged from six to nine plants. But U.S. Steel made no such announcement. It merely stated that it would restart two blast furnaces at the company’s Granite City Works integrated plant in Illinois — one in March and the other in October, for a total of 800 jobs. The company in August also said it would upgrade a plant in Gary, Ind., but without creating any new jobs. Read more

The U.S. has spent $6 trillion (or more) on Middle East wars

Trump repeated some version of this claim 36 times

Trump started making a version of this claim shortly after taking office, first claiming $6 trillion but then quickly elevating it to $7 trillion. Trump acts as if the money has been spent, but he is referring to a study that included estimates of future obligations through 2056 for veterans’ care. The study combines data for both George W. Bush’s war in Iraq (2003) and the war in Afghanistan (2001), which is in Central/South Asia, not the Middle East. The cost of the combined wars will probably surpass $7 trillion by 2056, when interest on the debt is considered, almost four decades from now. Read more

Has the U.S. spent $7 trillion in the Middle East?

Thousands of MS-13 members have been removed from the country

Trump repeated some version of this claim 33 times

Within six months of becoming president, the president began claiming that his administration had deported thousands of members of the violent MS-13 gang. There had been a crackdown, but the count is in the hundreds. Then, he expanded the claim to say thousands had been deported or imprisoned. But there is nothing that supports these claims. For most of the country, MS-13 is not a threat; the estimated 10,000 members are concentrated in a few Hispanic communities, primarily around Long Island, Los Angeles and the Washington area. Read more

McCain’s vote was the only thing that blocked repeal of the Affordable Care Act

Trump repeated some version of this claim 30 times

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) dramatically refused to advance in the Senate a limited repeal of the Affordable Care Act, but Trump has repeatedly used that vote as his all-purpose excuse for the failure to eliminate the health-care law. This oversimplifies the precarious state of Obamacare repeal at the time. The Senate version of full repeal had failed, with nine “no” votes from Republicans. Even if McCain had supported the “skinny” repeal, lawmakers still would have had to negotiate a compromise agreement and passage was not assured. Read more

Robert S. Mueller III is biased because of conflicts of interest

Trump repeated some version of this claim 30 times

Trump has often misleadingly claimed the “witch hunt” is tainted because of conflicts of interest, such as an unverified (and denied) dispute over golf fees when Mueller was a member of a Trump golf club. Eleven out of 16 attorneys on Mueller’s team have contributed to Democrats, including Clinton and Obama; 13 are registered Democrats. Under federal law, Mueller is not allowed to consider the political leanings of his staff when hiring them, but he took action against a former team member when texts expressing anti-Trump sentiments were discovered. Read more

Fact Check: Do the political preferences of Mueller’s team risk its independence?

Inflating gains from a 2017 trip to Saudi Arabia

Trump repeated some version of this claim 23 times

Trump has repeatedly inflated the gains from his 2017 trip to Saudi Arabia, upping the amount from $350 billion to $450 billion when he came under fire for defending crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. According to the CIA, Mohammed ordered the killing of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi. The administration, with double-counting, could only document $270 billion in tentative agreements. Separately, Trump inflated the jobs said to be created from the purported investments. Many are in Saudi Arabia, indicating few jobs would be created for Americans. Read more

Fact Check: The Trump administration’s tally of $350 billion-plus in deals with Saudi Arabia

About this story

Source: Washington Post reporting. Reporting by Glenn Kessler, Meg Kelly, Salvador Rizzo, Michelle Ye Hee Leeand Nicole Lewis. Meg Kelly also contributed to this story.

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More bogus border narratives are unfolding as I’m writing this. Disingenuous CBP officials are manipulating data to tell the Senate that the border is out of control.

What is really happening is that kids and other asylum seekers are basically turning themselves in to be processed and get the hearings to which they are entitled.  Why? Because the Trump Administration has purposely slowed down the process at legal Ports of Entry.

Clearly, instead of wasting money on troops and unneeded detention, the Administration should be sending Asylum Officers to the border to complete the screening. Once screened, those with “credible fear” can be matched with lawyers. Represented asylum applicants show up for hearings nearly 100% of the time, thus making prolonged detention unnecessary.

Also, since it now appears that the bulk of the “artificial backlog” in Immigration Court actually was “illegally commenced” though defective notices, those cases could simply be removed from the docket. That would free up U.S. Immmigration Judges to hear asylum cases within a reasonable (6-18 month) time frame.

Where there is a will, there’s a way. Additionally, as I often point out, doing things the right, legal way would likely cost far less than the “publicity stunts” now being conducted by the Administration at the border. But, doing the right thing and making the laws work just isn’t something that Trump and his minions are interested in, as the “Bottomless Pinocchios” related above show!

PWS

12-11-18

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Related posts:

  1. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”
  2. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  3. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”
  4. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”

WINNING ASYLUM & SAVING LIVES IN THE “ERA OF A-B-“ – Seven Steps To Success

WINNING ASYLUM

WINNING ASYLUM & SAVING LIVES IN THE “ERA OF A-B-“ – Seven Steps To Success*

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

United States Immigration Judge (Retired)

NEW YORK CITY BAR

DECEMBER 4, 2018

 

Good evening, and thanks so much for inviting me.  In the “old days,” I would have started with my comprehensive disclaimer. But, now that I’m retired, I’m just going to hold the Bar Association, my fellow panelists, and anyone else of any importance whatsoever “harmless” for my remarks tonight.  They are solely my views, for which I take full responsibility. No sugar-coating, no bureaucratic doublespeak, no “party line,” no BS – just the unvarnished truth, as I see it!

“We’ve had situations in which a person comes to the United States and says they are a victim of domestic violence; therefore, they are entitled to enter the United States. Well, that’s obviously false but some judges have gone along with that.” “Good lawyers, using all of their talents and skill, work every day—like water seeping through an earthen dam—to get around the plain words of the INA to advance their clients’ interests. Theirs is not the duty to uphold the integrity of the act. That is our most serious duty.”

 

Those, my friends, are obviously not my words. They are the words of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Incredibly, this totally biased, xenophobic, misinformed, and glaringly unqualified individual was in charge of our U.S. Immigration Court system which helps explains why it is such a total mess today. And Acting Attorney General Whitaker’s certification of two cases yesterday promises a continuation of improper political interference with the Immigration Courts in derogation of Due Process.

 

One of Sessions’s most cowardly and reprehensible actions was his atrocious distortion of asylum law, the reality of life in the Northern Triangle, and Due Process for migrants in Matter of A-B-. There, he overruled the BIA’s important precedent in Matter of A-R-C-G-, a decision actually endorsed by the DHSat the time, and which gave much need protection to women fleeing persecution in the form of domestic violence. Take it from me, Matter of A-R-C-G-was one of the few parts of our dysfunctional Immigration Court system that actually worked and provided a way of consistently granting much needed protection to some of the most vulnerable and most deserving refugees in the world.

 

Sessions is gone. But, his ugly legacy of bias and unfairness remains. Fortunately, because he was a lousy lawyer on top of everything else, he failed to actually accomplish what he thought he was doing: wiping out protection for refugee women, largely from Central America. That’s why it’s critically important for you, as members of the “New Due Process Army” to fight every inch of the way, for as long as it takes, to restore justice and to force our U.S Immigration Courts to live up to their unfulfilled, and now mocked, promise of “guaranteeing fairness and Due Process for all!”

 

I’m going to give you seven very basic tips for overcoming Matter of A-B-.  I’m sure that my colleagues, who are much more involved in the day to day litigation going on in the courts than I am, can give you lots of additional information about addressing specific issues.

 

First, recognize that Matter of A-B- really doesn’t change the fundamental meaning of asylum.It just rejected the way in which the BIA reached its precedent in A-R-C-G-— by stipulation without specific fact-findings based on the administrative record. Most of it is mere dicta. On a case by case basis, domestic violence can still be a proper basis for granting asylum in many cases. Indeed, such cases still are being granted by those Immigration Judges committed to following the rule of law and upholding their oaths of office, rather than accepting Sessions’s invitation to “take a dive.”

 

Just make sure you properly and succinctly state your basis, establish nexus, and paper the record with the overwhelming amount of reliable country condition information and expert opinion that directly contradicts the bogus picture painted by Sessions.

 

Second, resist with all your might those lawless judges in some Immigration Courts who are using, or threatening to use, Sessions’s dictum in Matter of A-B- to deny fair hearings or truncate the hearing process for those claiming asylum through domestic violence.If anything, following the overruling of A-R-C-G-,leaving no definitive precedent on the subject, full, fair case-by-case hearings are more important than ever. Under Due Process, asylum applicants are entitled to a full and fair opportunity to present their claims in Immigration Court. Don’t let wayward, biased, or misinformed Immigration Judges deny your clients’ constitutional and statutory rights.  

 

Third, keep it simple. Even before A-B-, I always said that any proposed “particular social group” (“PSG”) longer than 25 words or containing “circular” elements is D.O.A. I think that it’s time to get down to the basics; the real PSG here is gender! “Women in X country” is clearly a cognizable PSG.  It’s undoubtedly immutable or fundamental to identity; particularized, and socially distinct. So, it meets the BIA’s three-part test.

 

And, “gender” clearly is one of the biggest drivers of persecution in the world. There is no doubt that it is “at least one central reason” for the persecution of women and LGBT individuals throughout the world.

 

Fourth, think political. There is plenty of recent information available on the internet showing the close relationship between gangs and the governments of the Northern Triangle. In some cases, gangs are the “de facto government” in significant areas of the country. In others, gangs and local authorities cooperate in extorting money and inflicting torture and other serious harm on honest individuals who resist them and threaten to expose their activities. In many cases, claiming political or religious persecution will be a stronger alternative ground than PSG.

 

Fifth, develop your record.  The idea that domestic violence and gang-based violence is just “common crime” advanced by Sessions in A-B-is simply preposterous with regard to the Northern Triangle. Establish records that no reasonable factfinder can refute or overlook! Use expert testimony or expert affidavits to show the real country conditions and to discredit the watered down and sometimes downright false scenarios set forth in Department of State Country Reports, particularly under this Administration where integrity, expertise, and independence have been thrown out the window.

 

Sixth, raise the bias issue. As set forth in a number of the Amicus Briefs filed in Matter of A-B-, Sessions clearly was a biased decision maker. Not only had he publicly dismissed the claims of female refugees suffering from domestic violence, but his outlandish comments spreading false narratives about immigrants, dissing asylum seekers and their “dirty lawyers,” and supporting DHS enforcement clearly aligned with him with one party to litigation before the Immigration Courts. By the rules governing judicial conduct there was more than an “appearance of bias” here – there was actual bias. We should keep making the record on the gross violation of Due Process caused by giving a biased enforcement official like Sessions a quasi-judicial role.

 

Seventh, and finally, appeal to the “real” Article III Courts. What’s happening in Immigration Court today is a parody of justice and a mockery of legitimate court proceedings. It’s important to “open the eyes” of the Article III Judges to this travesty which is threatening the lives of legitimate refugees and other migrants.

 

Either the Article III’s do their jobs, step in, and put an end to this travesty, or they become complicitin it. There’s only one “right side of the law and history” in this fight. Those who are complicit must know that their actions are being placed in the historical record – for all time and for their descendants to know – just like the historical reckoning that finally is happening for so- called “Confederate heroes” and those public officials who supported racism and “Jim Crow.”

 

Now is the time to take a stand for fundamental fairness and decency! Join the New Due Process Army and fight to vindicate the rights of asylum seekers under our laws against the forces of darkness and xenophobic bias! Due process forever!

 

 

*This is not a “verbatim transcript” of what I said. Rather it is a compendium and extension of the “talking notes” that I used as a member of the panel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. HON. JEFFREY CHASE: Speaking Out Against The “Notable Minority” Of U.S. Immigration Judges Who Demonstrated Bias Against Women & Asylum Seekers – “Think about that: some federally appointed immigration judges cheered the fact that women who had been violently raped and beaten in their country can no longer find refuge here, and will be sent back to face more violence, and possibly death. Will there be any consequences for their actions? Were the many outstanding immigration judges who have been proud to grant such cases in the past, who were saddened and sickened by this decision, able to openly jeer or weep or curse this decision? Or would that have been viewed as dangerous?”
  4. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”

WILLA FREJ @ HUFFPOST: Trump’s Blatant Lies About Family Separation Just Keep Flowing!

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-child-separation-obama_us_5bfbb980e4b0eb6d93105dd6

President Donald Trump falsely claimed that his policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the southern U.S. border was the “exact same” as the one implemented during the Obama administration.

In complaining about a “60 Minutes” segment that aired Sunday, Trump tried to deflect criticism of his “zero tolerance” immigration policy by arguing that former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush also separated immigrant families.

“I tried to keep them together but the problem is, when you do that, vast numbers of additional people storm the Border,” Trump tweeted Sunday. “So with Obama seperation [sic] is fine, but with Trump it’s not.”

. . . .

Obama deported a record number of immigrants during his time in office which earned him the nickname of “deporter-in-chief.” Prioritizing the removal of people with criminal histories, Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported more than 2.7 million people between fiscal years 2009 and 2016.

The administration worked to quickly detain and deport migrants for several months in 2014, in response to a surge in migrant arrivals. Yet children who had come into the country with their parents didn’t get separated from them, and if families got deported, they were deported together.

The Ninth Circuit ruled that the Flores agreement ― a 1997 federal court decision requiring children to remain in custody for as little time as possible ― also applied to both accompanied and unaccompanied children. They could only be held in detention for a maximum of 20 days.

But Trump administration has gone far beyond his predecessor, separating almost 2,000 immigrant children from their parents in the spring. Many were held in caged detention centers and exposed to severe health consequences. Trump has also tried to withdraw from the Flores settlement and put forth new rules to replace it, which could lead to children being detained indefinitely.

As for deportations, the Trump administration opted to prosecute every single migrant who crossed the border illegally, expanding the Obama-era strategy of focusing on criminals.

The notion that Trump is merely carrying out Obama’s legacy is “preposterous,” Denise Gilman, director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas Law School, told NBC News. “There were occasionally instances where you would find a separated family — maybe like one every six months to a year — and that was usually because there had been some actual individualized concern that there was a trafficking situation or that the parent wasn’t actually the parent.”

“The agencies were surfacing every possible idea,” a top Obama domestic policy advisor, Cecilia Muñoz, told The New York Times. “I do remember looking at each other like, ‘We’re not going to do this, are we?’ We spent five minutes thinking it through and concluded that it was a bad idea. The morality of it was clear — that’s not who we are.”

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Read Willa’s full article, including Trump’s revolting tweets, at the link.

Separate ‘em, jail ‘em, abuse ‘em, gas ‘em! What’s not to like about an unhinged authoritarian with a neo-Fascist program, a propaganda machine masquerading as “news,” and a bunch of mindless supporters who cheer as he and his band of cowards pick on kids and the downtrodden?

Every day is a new “Reichstag Fire” – a fake, manufactured “crisis” and a call to blame and eradicate the “usual suspects.” Some day there will be hell to pay for America’s abandoning human values and allowing Trump to represent our Government! We should all be ashamed of what our country is doing in the name of fake “border security.”

We are diminishing ourselves as a nation, but it won’t stop human migration!

PWS

11-26-18

 

 

 

 

Related posts:

  1. FOUR TODDLERS RESCUED BY PRO BONO LAWYERS FROM DEADLY SITUATION IN CBP CUSTODY — Putrid, Unsanitary, Repressive Conditions Causing Lifetime Harm To Other Traumatized Kids — But, Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost Wants You To Know That She’s Not Taking Responsibility For The Humanitarian Disaster Intentionally Engineered On Her Watch!
  2. “MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE” MORPHS INTO CONTEMPT FOR COURT AS ADMINISTRATION TELLS COURT & SEPARATED FAMILIES “GO POUND SAND” — They Just Don’t Care About Humanity!
  3. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  4. 🤮NO PEACE ON EARTH GOODWILL TOWARD MEN (WOMEN, OR ESPECIALLY CHILDREN) FROM REGIME OF “BAD SANTAS” 🦹🏿‍♂️🎅🏻— Illegally Separated Families Continue To Suffer Irreparable Trauma, 😰 Volunteer Groups 😇🗽⚖️ Left To Pick Up Pieces — A Reminder That Defeated Regime Has Mocked, Disparaged, & Trashed Christ’s Values & Assaulted Humanity Over Four Christmases!🏴‍☠️🤮☠️⚰️👎🏻

INSIDE EOIR: LA TIMES: Former EOIR Attorney Reveals Truth Of Sessions’s Ugly, Corrupt, Mean-Spirited, Attack On Judicial Independence & The Totally Demoralizing Effect On Judges & Other Dedicated Civil Servants – No Wonder This “Captive Court System” Is A Dysfunctional Mess Being Crushed Under An Artificially Created “Sessions Legacy Backlog” of 1.1 Million+ Cases With Neither Sane Management Nor Any End In Sight!

https://apple.news/AnkcqK5ITQ76IwHCZq2FnBw

I resigned from the Department of Justice because of Trump’s campaign against immigration judges

Gianfranco De Girolamo November 26, 2018, 3:05 AM

One of the proudest days of my life was Dec. 16, 2015, when I became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

I shed tears of joy as I swore allegiance to the United States at the Los Angeles Convention Center, along with more than 3,000 other new Americans. I was celebrating a country that had welcomed me with open arms, treated me as one of its own and opened doors I hadn’t known existed. Just a few years before, in the remote village in southern Italy where I grew up, this would have been unimaginable.

Another of my proudest moments came just a year later, when I was awarded a coveted position in the U.S. Department of Justice. This happened in late November 2016, a few weeks after President Trump was elected.

Like many, I harbored reservations about Trump. But I did not waver in my enthusiasm for the job. In law school, l had learned about the role of civil servants as nonpolitical government employees who work across administrations — faithfully, loyally and diligently serving the United States under both Republicans and Democrats.

I was designated an attorney-advisor and assigned to the Los Angeles immigration court. There, I assisted immigration judges with legal research, weighed in on the strengths and weaknesses of parties’ arguments and often wrote the first drafts of judges’ opinions.

Soon enough, however, the work changed. In March 2018, James McHenry, the Justice Department official who oversees the immigration courts as head of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, announced a mandate imposing individual quotas on all the judges. Each judge would be required to decide 700 cases per year, he said.

With these new quotas, which went into effect on Oct. 1, immigration judges must now decide between three and four cases a day — while also reviewing dozens of motions daily and keeping up with all their administrative duties — or their jobs will be at risk.

The announcement of the quotas in March was the first in a series of demoralizing attacks on immigration judges this year. In May, Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, since fired by Trump, personally issued a decision that placed limits on the ability of immigration judges to use a practice known as administrative closure, which allows judges to put cases on indefinite hold, and which, in immigration cases, can be a tool for delaying deportation orders.

The Justice Department enforced the decision in July by stripping an immigration judge in Philadelphia of his authority in scores of cases for continuing to use administrative closure.

All this was in addition to a barrage of disparaging comments made directly by the president. In June, Trump tweeted that there is no reason to provide judges to immigrants. He also rejected calls to hire more immigration judges, saying that “we have to have a real border, not judges” and asking rhetorically, “Who are these people?”

The demoralizing effect on immigration judges was palpable. Morale was at an all-time low. I was new to civil service, but these judges, some of whom have served continuously since the Reagan administration, made clear that this was an unprecedented attack on the justice system.

Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute from L.A. Times Opinion »

I’ve long admired the independence and legitimacy that the judiciary enjoys in the United States, so I found the attacks on judges deeply disturbing and troubling. They reminded me of Trump’s Italian alter-ego, Silvio Berlusconi, who spent most of his tenure as Italy’s prime minister fighting off lawsuits by delegitimizing and attacking the judiciary, calling it “a cancer of democracy” and accusing judges of being communist.

I voiced my concerns to my supervisors and directly to Director McHenry in a letter. Seeing no opportunity to make a positive difference and unwilling to continue to lend credence to this compromised system, I submitted my resignation in July, explaining my reasons in a letter.

This was not how I wanted to end my career in government. I had hoped to serve this country for the long haul. But I couldn’t stand by, or be complicit in, a mean-spirited and unscrupulous campaign to undermine the everyday work of the Justice Department and the judges who serve in our immigration courts — a campaign that hurts many of my fellow immigrants in the process.

Gianfranco De Girolamo was an attorney at the Department of Justice from 2017 to 2018.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook

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

Thanks for speaking out Gianfranco! I published an earlier, at that time “anonymous,” letter from Gianfranco at the time of his resignation. I’m sure there are many others at EOIR who feel the same way.  But, they are “gagged” by the DOJ — threatened with job loss if they “tell the truth” about the ongoing legal farce and parody of justice within our Immigration Courts.

It’s a “closed system” at war with the public it serves, the dedicated attorneys who represent migrants, the essential NGOs who are propping up what’s left of justice in this system, and the very civil servants who are supposed to be carrying out the courts’ mission. What a horrible way to “(not) run the railroad.”

Someday, historians will dig out the whole truth about the “Sessions Era” at the DOJ and his perversion of justice in the U.S. Immigration Courts. I’m sure it will be even worse than we can imagine. But, for now, thanks to Gianfranco for shedding at least some light on one of the darkest and most dysfunctional corners of our Government!

PWS

11-16-18

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  3. COURTSIDE HAS BEEN AT THE FOREFRONT OF EXPOSING THE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” COMMITTED BY THE REGIME AND THE MORAL CULPABILITY OF THOSE WHO WILLFULLY CARRY OUT & ENABLE THESE ATROCITIES — The “Mainstream Media” Is Now Channeling Courtside! — “In the meantime, no government has the right to treat people with such abject inhumanity. History will remember Trump for this, but it will also remember the people who enable such atrocious acts.”
  4. 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.”

LEGAL ETHICS HAVE “TANKED” IN THE TRUMP/SESSIONS/WHITAKER DOJ, AS YET ANOTHER (“REAL”) FEDERAL JUDGE REBUKES GOV’S DISINGENUOUS & DILATORY TACTICS! –“Defendants’ motion makes so little sense, even on its own terms, that it is hard to understand as anything but an attempt to avoid a timely decision on the merits altogether!”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/census-citizenship-question-trial-delay_us_5bf48e1fe4b0eb6d93095d61

Sam Levine reports for HuffPost:

A federal judge in New York City strongly rebuked the Trump administration on Tuesday over its repeated attempts to slow down a lawsuit challenging the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

The ruling from U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman came in response to a request that he halt further proceedings in the trial until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on what evidence he could consider. The Supreme Court had rejected a very similar request to temporarily stop the litigation just weeks ago, the judge noted.

The judge, who sits in the Southern District of New York, did not hold back his frustration in his 7-page opinion, noting that the Department of Justice had submitted 12 separate requests to delay the proceedings since the Labor Day weekend.

“Unless burdening Plaintiffs and the federal courts with make-work is a feature of Defendants’ litigation strategy, as opposed to a bug, it is hard to see the point,” Furman wrote.

All along, the judge has expressed a desire to move the case along quickly, recognizing that any decision he makes is likely to be appealed to higher courts and that the issue needs to be resolved quickly so that the Census Bureau has time to print the census forms.

“Enough is enough,” Furman wrote in his Tuesday ruling.

The lawsuit ― brought by 18 states, the District of Columbia, several cities and a handful of immigrant groups ― argues that the decision to add the citizenship question was motivated by discriminatory intent. They also say the decision should be set aside on the grounds that it was “arbitrary and capricious.”

In this latest effort to stall the proceedings, the Justice Department said that doing so would help conserve judicial resources, an argument the judge dismissed as “galling.”

“If Defendants were truly interested in conserving judicial resources, they could have avoided burdening this Court, the Second Circuit, and the Supreme Court with twelve stay applications over the last eleven weeks that, with one narrow exception, have been repeatedly rejected as meritless,” Furman wrote. “Instead, Defendants would have focused their attention on the ultimate issues in this case, where the attention of the parties and the Court now belongs.”

Kelly Laco, a Justice Department spokeswoman, declined to comment on Furman’s ruling.

The Justice Department appealed this latest motion to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit even before Furman had ruled on it ― a highly unusual move that clearly annoyed the judge, who suggested the department’s conduct in the case was sanctionable.

“Defendants’ motion makes so little sense, even on its own terms, that it is hard to understand as anything but an attempt to avoid a timely decision on the merits altogether,” the judge wrote. “That conclusion is reinforced by the fact that Defendants, once again, appealed to the Second Circuit even before this Court had heard from Plaintiffs, let alone issued this ruling on the motion.”

Furman also noted that the 2nd Circuit had already denied that appeal as “premature.”

Amy Spitalnick, a spokeswoman for New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood, who is leading the case for the plaintiffs, praised Furman’s decision.

“We agree with Judge Furman: enough is enough,” Spitalnick said in a statement.

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

Seems like it’s past time for the courts and bar associations to impose sanctions on the DOJ attorneys for their widespread unethical behavior and bad faith in conducting  litigation in behalf of this scofflaw Administration!

PWS

11-23-18

 

Related posts:

  1. SCOFFLAWS OUTED AGAIN: U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE BLOCKS TRUMP’S ILLEGAL ATTACK ON ASYLUM LAW: ORDERS PROCESSING OF ALL WHO APPLY TO RESUME! — “Whatever the scope of the president’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden!”
  2. “MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE” MORPHS INTO CONTEMPT FOR COURT AS ADMINISTRATION TELLS COURT & SEPARATED FAMILIES “GO POUND SAND” — They Just Don’t Care About Humanity!
  3. 16 STATES SUE TRUMP ON BOGUS NATIONAL EMERGENCY — Nolan Says Trump Ultimately Likely To Prevail — “Slate 3” Appear To Agree!
  4. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”