GUERRERO-LASPRILLA v. BARR – immigrationcourtside.com

☠️⚰️ “STORY KILLERS” — TAYLOR LORENZ @ WASHPOST REPORTS ON WORLDWIDE EPIDEMIC OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN & HOW FEMALE JOURNALISTS ARE PARTICULAR TARGETS FOR ABUSE — Biden Administration Largely MIA, Failing To Effectively Address Systemic Problems For Women Seeking Refuge From Gender-Based Persecution!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/02/14/women-journalists-global-violence/

Taylor Lorenz writes:

. . . .

The ordeal of Farooqi, who covers politics and national news for News One in Pakistan, exemplifies a global epidemic of online harassment whose costs go well beyond the grief and humiliation suffered by its victims. The voices of thousands of women journalists worldwide have been muffled and, in some cases, stolen entirely as they struggle to conduct interviews, attend public events and keep their jobs in the face of relentless online smear campaigns.

Stories that might have been told — or perspectives that might have been shared — stay untold and unshared. The pattern of abuse is remarkably consistent, no matter the continent or country where the journalists operate.

Farooqi says she’s been harassed, stalked and threatened with rape and murder. Faked images of her have appeared repeatedly on pornographic websites and across social media. Some depict her holding a penis in the place of her microphone. Others purport to show her naked or having sex. Similar accounts of abuse are heard from women journalists throughout the world.

. . . .

This article is part of “Story Killers,” a reporting project led by the Paris-based journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories, which seeks to complete the work of journalists who have been killed. The inspiration for this project, which involves The Washington Post and more than two dozen other news organizations in more than 20 countries, was the 2017 killing of the Indian journalist Gauri Lankesh, a Bangalore editor who was gunned down at a time when she was reporting on Hindu extremism and the rise of online disinformation in her country.

New reporting by Forbidden Stories found that shortly before her slaying, Lankesh was the subject of relentless online attacks on social media platforms in a campaign that depicted her as an enemy of Hinduism. Her final article, “In the Age of False News,” was published after her death.

. . . .

Until news organizations recognize the purpose of harassment campaigns and learn to navigate them appropriately, experts say, women will continue to be forced from the profession and the stories they would have reported will go untold.

“This is about terrifying female journalists into silence and retreat; a way of discrediting and ultimately disappearing critical female voices,” Posetti said. “But it’s not just the journalists whose careers are destroyed who pay the price. If you allow online violence to push female reporters out of your newsroom, countless other voices and stories will be muted in the process.”

“This gender-based violence against women has started to become normal,” Farooqi said. “I talk to counterparts in the U.S., U.K., Russia, Turkey, even in China. Women everywhere, Iran, our neighbor, everywhere, women journalists are complaining of the same thing. It’s become a new weapon to silence and censor women journalists, and it’s not being taken seriously.”

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

“Not being taken seriously” aptly describes the attitude and actions of the Biden Administration toward some women seeking asylum on the basis of gender-based violence. Certainly, our Government could and should do better at recognizing and prioritizing refugee and asylum status for this vulnerable group.

Recently, I published a “happy ending” story from my friends over at the GW Law Immigration Clinic, involving an Afghan female attorney granted asylum by the Arlington Asylum Office. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2023/02/15/🗽🇺🇸-i-hope-to-rebuild-my-life-here-i-cant-save-my-country-but-i-can-save-myself-and-my-family-gw-law-immigration-clinic-asylum-laws-save-another-l/

Yet, even this “slam dunk” case took nearly six months to adjudicate. Seems like it could and should have been granted at the interview in a well-functioning system. Better yet, most Afghan refugees could have been screened overseas and admitted in legal refugee status, thus avoiding the backlogged asylum system and freeing both USG and private bar resources for more difficult cases.

My friend and Round Table colleague Judge Joan Churchill and the National Association of Women Judges have petitioned the Biden Administration to offer refuge to as many as 250 Afghan female judges whose lives are in grave danger. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/08/19/🗽⚖️human-rights-immigration-judges-speak-out-for-afghan-women-judges-national-association-for-women-judges-call-to-protect-courageous-afghan-women-featured-in-was/

Yet, I am aware of no guidance, precedent, or directives recognizing refugee status or directing grants of asylum for Afghan women. In the meantime, several European nations have determined that all women who have fled Afghanistan can qualify as refugees. See, e.g., https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/02/09/denmark-sweden-offer-protection-all-women-girls-afghanistan.

Once, America was in the forefront of setting precedents that protected female refugees. See, e.g., Matter of Kasinga, 21 I&N Dec. 357 (1996) (FGM, opinion by Schmidt, Chair). Now, not so much, despite our nation’s heavy involvement with Afghanistan. Apparently, the “powers that be” are afraid that consistently and aggressively supporting refugee protection for women fleeing Afghanistan and other dangerous countries would “encourage” them to actually seek legal protection here thereby upsetting right-wing nativists and misogynists.

Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for both journalists and women. See, e.g., https://monitor.civicus.org/updates/2022/05/10/mexico-vicious-attacks-against-women-journalists-and-hrds-continue/.

Yet, incredibly, the Biden Administration proposes to send up to 30,000 rejected NON-MEXICAN border arrivals per month to Mexico without fair examination of their potential asylum claims. To date, BIA precedents, regulations, and policy statements have NOT recognized the well-documented, clear and present dangers for journalists, women, and particularly female journalists, in Mexico. Consequently, I’d say that there is about a 100% chance that some female journalists seeking asylum will be illegally returned to death or danger, whether in Mexico or their native countries.

Just can’t make this stuff up. Yet, it’s happening in a Dem Administration!

AG Merrick Garland did vacate former AG Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions’s lawless and misogynistic decision in Matter of A-B-. That action “restored” the BIA’s 2014 precedent decision in Matter of A-R-C-G-, recognizing that gender-based domestic violence could be a basis for granting asylum.

However, the BIA didn’t elaborate on the many forms that gender-based persecution can take, nor did they provide binding guidance to Immigration Judges on how these cases should be handled in accordance with due process, fundamental fairness, and best practices.

Garland and his BIA have failed to follow up with any meaningful guidance or amplification of A-R-C-G- for Immigraton Judges. That’s even though many women fleeing Latin America come from countries where gender-based violence is rampant and the governments make little or no effective efforts to control it — sometimes police and other corrupt officials even join in the abuses.

Consequently, life or death protection for female asylum seekers remains a disgraceful and wholly unacceptable “crap shoot.” Outcomes of well prepared and copiously documented asylum cases often depend more on the attitude of the Immigration Judge or BIA Appellate Judge hearing the case than on the law and facts.

Also, without a knowledgeable lawyer, which the Government does not provide, an applicant has virtually no chance of winning a gender-based protection case in today’s EOIR. Additionally, those in immigration detention or placed on Garland’s “accelerated/dedicated” dockets are known to have particular difficulty obtaining pro bono counsel.

Anti-asylum IJs, some of whom were known for their negative attitudes toward female asylum seekers — many of those who actually “cheered” Sessions’s biased and wrong reversal of hard-won asylum protection for women in EOIR courts — remain on the bench under Garland at both levels.

To their credit, some have changed their posture and now grant at least some gender-based cases. But, others continue to show anti-asylum, anti-female bias and deny applications for specious reasons, misconstrue the law, or just plain use “any reason to deny” these claims, without any fear of consequences or meaningful accountability.

Trial By Ordeal — Many advocates and experts would say that female asylum applicants still face “trial by ordeal” in Garland’s “overly Trumpy” EOIR. Despite campaign promises, the Biden Administration has done little to champion the cause of gender-based refugees and asylum seekers — at the Southern Border or elsewhere. Woman Being “Tried By Ordeal”
17th Century Woodcut
Public Realm
Source: Ancient Origins Website
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/trial-ordeal-life-or-death-method-judgement-004160

Whether or not such egregious errors and non-uniform applications of asylum law get reversed at the BIA again depends on the composition of the BIA “panel” assigned to the case. (Not all “panels” have three Appellate Judges; some are “single member” panels). Significantly, and inexplicably, a group of Trump-holdover BIA Appellate Judges known for their overt hostility to asylum applicants (with denial rates approaching 100%) and their particular hostility to gender-based claims, remains on the BIA under Garland. There, they can “rubber stamp” wrong denials while sometimes even reversing correct grants of protection by Immigration Judges below! Talk about a broken and unfair system!

With an incredible backlog of 2.1 million cases, approximately 800,000 of them asylum cases, wrongly decided EOIR cases can “kick around the system” among the Immigration Courts, the BIA, and the Circuits for years. Sometimes, a decade or more passes without final resolution! Imagine being a pro bono or “low bono” attorney handling one of these cases! You “win” several times, but the case still has no end. And, you’re still “on the hook” for providing free legal services.

It’s no wonder that, like his predecessors over the past two decades, Garland builds EOIR backlog exponentially — without systematically providing justice or instituting long overdue personnel and management changes! It’s also painfully clear that, also like their predecessors, Garland and his political lieutenants have never experienced the waste and frustrations of handling pro bono litigation before the dystopian “courts” they are now running into the ground!

Meanwhile, Biden’s promise and directive that his Administration promulgate regulations containing standards for gender-based asylum cases that would promote fairness and uniformity within his OWN courts and agencies remains unfulfilled — nearing the halfway point of this Administration! Apparently, some politicos within the Administration are more fearful of predictable adverse reactions from right-wing nativists and restrictionists than they are anxious to “do the right thing” by listening to the views of the experts and progressives who helped put them in office in the first place!

Thus, abused women and other refugees and asylum seekers, and their dedicated supporters, many of whom have spent “professional lifetimes” trying to establish the rule of law in these cases, face a difficult conundrum. In America today, neither major political party is willing to stand up for the legal and human rights of refugees, particularly women fleeing gender-based persecution.

As an “interested observer,” it seems to me that something’s “got to give” between so-called “mainstream Dems” and progressive immigration/human rights advocates. The latter have devoted too much time, energy, courage, and expertise to “the cause” to be treated so dismissively and disrespectfully by those they are “propping up.” And, that includes a whole bunch of Biden Administration politicos who were nowhere to be found while immigration advocates were fighting, often successfully and against the odds, on the front lines to save democracy during the “reign of Trump.”

That was a time when immigrants, asylum seekers, people of color, and women were the targets for “Dred Scottification” before the law. I have yet to see the Biden Administration, or the Dem Party as a whole, take a strong “active” stand (rhetoric is pretty useless here, as the Administration keeps demonstrating) against those who would use misapplications of the law, ignoring due process, demonization, and refusal to recognize the humanity of migrants as their primary tool to undermine and ultimately destroy American democracy!

Immigrants, including refugees, are overall a “good story” — indeed the real story of America since its founding. That Dems can’t figure out how to tell, sell, advance, and protect the immigrant experience that touches almost all of us is indeed a national tragedy.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-18-23

BARTON v. BARR: “J.R. Five” Jettisons Principles, Fudges Facts In Pathetic Attempt To Avoid Moral Responsibility For Advancing Trump Administration’s White Nationalist, Anti-Immigrant Agenda — Their Treachery & Cowardice Will NOT be Forgotten!

https://apple.news/A0a8Ej93WTp66f3Ujt4-_Ug

Jay Willis writes for The Appeal:

. . . .

Two things stand out about this outcome: first, the remarkable philosophical flexibility of the Court’s conservatives when their political allies appear before them. The case is only the latest instance in which they have tacitly endorsed some of the president’s more aggressive legal arguments, legitimizing his use of anti-immigrant fearmongering as public policy.

As Professor Nancy Morawetz detailed at the ImmigrationProf Blog, the majority reached its conclusion by selectively applying rules for analyzing vague laws—rules that, if applied to Barton’s case, might have led to a different result. Conservative judges often argue for resolving ambiguities by focusing on the plain meaning of statutory text. As a result, they are supposedly reluctant to assume that any statutory language is redundant or superfluous. (When the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s conservatives decided Democratic Governor Tony Evers couldn’t postpone in-person voting during the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, they leaned heavily on this principle.) But here, the majority’s reasoning required treating part of the text as redundant. Kavanaugh barely bothered to address this divergence from prevailing conservative judicial philosophy: He simply stated that “redundancies are common in statutory drafting,” and that in this case, “the better overall reading of the statute contains some redundancy.”

“That is not the argument you would expect from the conservative wing of the Court,” Professor Morawetz wrote. “It is hard to walk away without the sense that there are different statutory interpretation rules at work for those who are powerful and those who are not.”

The majority and dissenting opinions also contrast sharply in the extent to which the justices considered the impact of their decision on Barton, his family, and other people like Barton whose fates this case determined. The majority begins with a recitation of his involvement with the criminal legal system, noting his convictions “on three separate occasions spanning 12 years.” Later, Kavanaugh takes care to name the substances—methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana—involved in the drug arrests, and describes the gun and assault convictions using lurid, cinematic language, explaining that Barton and a friend “shot up” an ex-girlfriend’s house. (This phrase is decidedly not a legal term of art.) Read together, these rhetorical flourishes evoke a familiar stereotype: a scary, drug-involved career criminal who is liable to start shooting at any moment.

The Barton described in Sotomayor’s dissent, which all four liberal justices signed, sounds like a different person altogether. She carefully lays out the facts of Barton’s early life, personal challenges, and subsequent accomplishments—valuable context that Kavanaugh and company conspicuously omitted. (The details about his background included in the beginning of this article come primarily from her opinion.) For example, it was Barton’s friend, Sotomayor notes, who actually fired at the ex-girlfriend’s house. In court, Barton testified that he didn’t know the friend even had a gun, let alone planned to shoot it.

The rest of the dissent fills in more of the blanks left by the majority. She writes about Barton’s stints in boot camp and rehab, and praises him for getting his GED diploma, graduating from college, and leading “a law-abiding life.” She notes that his drug convictions were for possession, not distribution, and linked them to his since-resolved dependency. She frames Barton’s three convictions against the backdrop of his 30 years in the United States, not the 12-year period in which they occurred. And she quotes the immigration judge who evaluated Barton’s initial application for mercy and badly wanted to approve it; he “is clearly rehabilitated,” the judge said, and his family “relies on him and would suffer hardship” if he were deported.

At every juncture, Sotomayor emphasizes the real-world implications of what the conservatives presented as a rather dry question of statutory interpretation: By the time immigration authorities put Andre Barton in removal proceedings, every member of his immediate family was living in America. Deporting him deprives his family of its primary provider, and sends him off to a country he hasn’t seen in decades.

Not until the very end of Kavanaugh’s opinion does he begin to grapple with the stakes of the case before him. “Removal of a lawful permanent resident … is a wrenching process, especially in light of the consequences for family members,” he wrote. “Removal is particularly difficult when it involves someone such as Barton who has spent most of his life in the United States.”

Just as quickly as he began to acknowledge Barton’s humanity, though, Kavanaugh returned to emphasizing the length of Barton’s rap sheet and the gravity of his transgressions. Congress chose to provide for the deportation of immigrants who commit “serious crimes,” he reasons, and to cut off those with “substantial criminal records” from the possibility of relief; the law, he writes, does not extend leniency to someone who “has amassed a criminal record of this kind.” Put differently, the Court’s conservatives are not responsible for what happened to Andre Barton; Barton, in their telling, did this to himself.

The exact words the justices use while resolving arcane questions about obscure immigration statutes may not seem significant. But when the choice the Court ultimately makes is so callously indifferent to the plight of vulnerable people, framing becomes a critical tool for defending their deliberative process. The decision in Barton v. Barr enables an unapologetically anti-immigrant president to deport longtime legal residents over events that took place years ago, breaking up families and depriving children of their parents and parents of their children. Kavanaugh knows this perfectly well; he acknowledges as much in his opinion. By sketching a two-dimensional portrait of Andre Barton as a dangerous ex-con and ignoring decades of growth and development since, Kavanaugh and the conservatives quietly absolve themselves of any moral obligation to think about it.

Jay Willis is a senior contributor at The Appeal.

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

Read Jay’s complete article at the link.

Yup. No surprise to readers of Courtside.

While, as usual, I was willing to give J.R. and his merry band the “benefit of the doubt,” presuming at least some modicum of intellectual honesty and human decency regardless of philosophical disposition, I’ve been “onto” the judicial, intellectual, and moral fraud going on at our highest Court for some time now.

Yeah, on a few occasions (see, e.g., Pereira, Guerrero-Lasprilla) some members of “The Five” have had no choice but to recognize that there was no possible way to justify some aspects of the Administration’s vendetta against immigrants and asylum seekers. But, on the big questions, from the bogus “Travel Ban,” to the cruel, inhuman, and clearly illegal and unconstitutional “Let ’Em Die in Mexico” Program, to the illegal White Nationalist scheme to misapply “public charge” grounds to attack the health and welfare of ethnic communities, “The Five” have been out front on the White Nationalist movement to “Dred Scottify” and dehumanize “the other.”

To be fair, the BIA decision here Matter of Jurado-Delgado, 24 I&N Dec. 24 I&N Dec. 29 (BIA 2006), originated years ago, in the “Post-Ashcroft-Purge-Era” of the BIA, during the Bush II Administration. But, all that shows is that the BIA’s drift away from the most fair and humane interpretations of the immigration laws and toward “enforcement friendly jurisprudence,” has been going on for the last two decades, across three different Administrations. However, under Trump, Sessions, Whitaker, & now Barr that “drift” has now become a “mad dash to the bottom.”

Thanks to folks like Jay Willis, Professor Nancy Morawetz, and other lawyers, commentators, and journalists, history will not let the “J.R. Five” escape unscathed for their corrupt backing of “The New Jim Crow.”

Due Process Forever! Jim Crow & Complicit Supremes, Never!

PWS

04-30-20

THE “GOOD GUYS” FINALLY WIN ONE @ THE SUPREMES: Judicial Review Exists For Application Of Law To Settled Facts In Immigration Cases (Here “Equitable Tolling”) — GUERRERO-LASPRILLA v. BARR (7-2, Justice Breyer, Majority Opinion)

GUERRERO-LASPRILLA v. BARR, No. 18-776, 03-23-20

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-776_8759.pdf

MAJORITY: BREYER, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and GINSBURG, SOTOMAYOR, KAGAN, GORSUCH, and KAVANAUGH, JJ., joined.

DISSENT: THOMAS, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which ALITO, J., joined as to all but Part II–A–

SYLLABUS BY REPORTER OF DECISIONS:

The Immigration and Nationality Act provides for judicial review of a final Government order directing the removal of an alien from this country. 8 U. S. C. §1252(a). Section 1252(a)(2)(C) limits the scope of that review where the removal rests upon the fact that the alien has committed certain crimes. And §1252(a)(2)(D), the Limited Review Provision, says that in such instances courts may consider only “con- stitutional claims or questions of law.”

Petitioners Guerrero-Lasprilla and Ovalles, aliens who lived in the United States, committed drug crimes and were subsequently ordered removed (Guerrero-Lasprilla in 1998 and Ovalles in 2004). Neither filed a motion to reopen his removal proceedings “within 90 days of the date of entry of [the] final administrative order of removal.” §1229a(c)(7)(C)(i). Nonetheless, Guerrero-Lasprilla (in 2016) and Ovalles (in 2017) asked the Board of Immigration Appeals to reopen their removal proceedings, arguing that the 90-day time limit should be equitably tolled. Both petitioners, who had become eligible for dis- cretionary relief due to various judicial and Board decisions years after their removal, rested their claim for equitable tolling on Lugo- Resendez v. Lynch, 831 F. 3d 337, in which the Fifth Circuit had held that the 90-day time limit could be equitably tolled. The Board denied both petitioners’ requests, concluding, inter alia, that they had not demonstrated the requisite due diligence. The Fifth Circuit denied their requests for review, holding that, given the Limited Review Pro-

——————

*Together with No. 18–1015, Ovalles v. Barr, Attorney General, also on certiorari to the same court.

vision, it “lack[ed] jurisdiction” to review petitioners’ “factual” due dil- igence claims. Petitioners contend that whether the Board incorrectly applied the equitable tolling due diligence standard to the undisputed facts of their cases is a “question of law” that the Provision authorizes courts of appeals to consider.

Held: Because the Provision’s phrase “questions of law” includes the ap- plication of a legal standard to undisputed or established facts, the Fifth Circuit erred in holding that it had no jurisdiction to consider petitioners’ claims of due diligence for equitable tolling purposes. Pp. 3–13.

(a) Nothing in the statute’s language precludes the conclusion that Congress used the term “questions of law” to refer to the application of a legal standard to settled facts. Indeed, this Court has at times re- ferred to the question whether a given set of facts meets a particular legal standard as presenting a legal inquiry. See Neitzke v. Williams, 490 U. S. 319, 326 (“Rule 12(b)(6) authorizes a court to dismiss a claim on the basis of a dispositive issue of law”); Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U. S. 511, 528, n. 9 (“[T]he appealable issue is a purely legal one: whether the facts alleged . . . support a claim of violation of clearly established law”); cf. Nelson v. Montgomery Ward & Co., 312 U. S. 373, 376 (“The effect of admitted facts is a question of law”). That judicial usage indi- cates that the statutory term “questions of law” can reasonably encom- pass questions about whether settled facts satisfy a legal standard. The Court has sometimes referred to such a question as a “mixed ques- tion of law and fact.” See, e.g., U. S. Bank N. A. v. Village at Lakeridge, LLC, 583 U. S. ___, ___. And the Court has often used the phrase “mixed questions” in determining the proper standard for appellate re- view of a district, bankruptcy, or agency decision that applies a legal standard to underlying facts. But these cases present no such question involving the standard of review. And, in any event, nothing in those cases, nor in the language of the statute, suggests that the statutory phrase “questions of law” excludes the application of law to settled facts. Pp. 4–5.

(b) A longstanding presumption, the statutory context, and the stat- ute’s history all support the conclusion that the application of law to undisputed or established facts is a “questio[n] of law” within the meaning of §1252(a)(2)(D). Pp. 5–11.

A “well-settled” and “strong presumption,” McNary v. Haitian Refugee Center, Inc., 498 U. S. 479, 496, 498, “favor[s] judicial review of administrative action,” Kucana v. Holder, 558 U. S. 233, 251. That presumption, which can only be overcome by “‘“clear and convincing evidence” ’ ” of congressional intent to preclude judicial review, Reno v. Catholic Social Services, Inc., 509 U. S. 43, 64, has consistently been applied to immigration statutes, Kucana, 558 U. S., at 251. And thereis no reason to make an exception here. Because the Court can rea- sonably interpret the statutory term “questions of law” to encompass the application of law to undisputed facts, and given that a contrary interpretation would result in a barrier to meaningful judicial review, the presumption indicates that “questions of law” does indeed include mixed questions. Pp. 6–7.
(2) The Limited Review Provision’s immediate statutory context belies the Government and the dissent’s claim that “questions of law” excludes the application of law to settled facts. The Provision is part of §1252, which also contains §1252(b)(9), the “zipper clause.” The zip- per clause is meant to “consolidate judicial review of immigration pro- ceedings into one action in the court of appeals.” INS v. St. Cyr, 533 U. S. 289, 313. The zipper clause’s language makes clear that Con- gress understood the statutory term “questions of law and fact,” to in- clude the application of law to facts. One interpretation of the zipper clause at the very least disproves the Government’s argument that Congress consistently uses a three-part typology, such that “questions of law” cannot include mixed questions. And another interpretation— that “questions of law” in the zipper clause includes mixed questions— directly supports the holding here and would give the term the same meaning in the zipper clause and the Limited Review Provision. Pp. 7–8.
(3) The Provision’s statutory history and relevant precedent also support this conclusion. The Provision was enacted in response to INS v. St. Cyr, in which the Court interpreted the predecessor of §1252(a)(2)(C) to permit habeas corpus review in order to avoid the serious constitutional questions that would arise from a contrary in- terpretation, 533 U. S., at 299–305, 314. In doing so, the Court sug- gested that the Constitution, at a minimum, protected the writ of ha- beas corpus “ ‘as it existed in 1789.’ ” Id., at 300–301. The Court then noted the kinds of review that were traditionally available in a habeas proceeding, which included “detentions based on errors of law, includ- ing the erroneous application or interpretation of statutes.” Id., at 302 (emphasis added). Congress took up the Court’s invitation to “provide an adequate substitute [for habeas review] through the courts of ap- peals,” id., at 314, n. 38. It made clear that the limits on judicial review in various §1252 provisions included habeas review, and it consoli- dated virtually all review of removal orders in one proceeding in the courts of appeals. Congress also added the Limited Review Provision, permitting review of “constitutional claims or questions of law.” Con- gress did so, the statutory history strongly suggests, because it sought an “adequate substitute” for habeas in view of St. Cyr’s guidance. If “questions of law” in the Provision does not include the misapplication of a legal standard to undisputed facts, then review would not includean element that St. Cyr said was traditionally reviewable in habeas. Lower court precedent citing St. Cyr and legislative history also sup- port this conclusion. Pp. 8–11.
(c) The Government’s additional arguments in favor of its contrary reading are unpersuasive. More than that, the Government’s inter- pretation is itself difficult to reconcile with the Provision’s basic pur- pose of providing an adequate substitute for habeas review. Pp. 11– 13.
No. 18–776, 737 Fed. Appx. 230; No. 18–1015, 741 Fed. Appx. 259, va- cated and remanded.,

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

Congrats to Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, admittedly frequent “pincushions” here at “Courtside” for often voting to uphold injustice and authoritarianism in immigration cases, for “seeing the light” and voting with the “forces of justice” on this one. Justices Thomas and Alito, perhaps predictably, continue to side with the “forces of darkness and oppression.”

As to the impact, just offhand I would hazard a guess that most Convention Against Torture (“CAT”) cases involving those whose crimes make them mandatorily ineligible for asylum and withholding involve the application of law (Is it “torture?” Will the government “acquiesce?” Is it “probable?”) to established facts (“Individuals are frequently beaten, starved, and raped in detention while the government looks the other way”). Immigration Judges, driven by inappropriate “production quotas,” officially sanctioned anti-migrant attitudes, and intentionally misleading “politicized precedents” where the migrant always loses no matter how strong their case, too often get these questions wrong. Sometimes, “dead wrong!”

Also, given the delays in Immigration Courts, most resulting from politically-motivated “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” within EOIR or just plain administrative incompetence under an overwhelming, largely self-created backlog, the issue of “equitable tolling” regularly comes up. Since the DOJ politicos and the OIL litigators “hate equitable tolling,” the BIA almost always strains to deny such claims no matter how well-documented and meritorious. Indeed, I suspect that the unavailability of effective judicial review by “real courts” has contributed to the disturbingly low quality of the BIA’s work in cases like this.

However welcome, and it certainly is, this is just a “limited fix” in what remains a blatantly unconstitutional and dysfunctional “court” system (where the courts are not actually fair and impartial tribunals) that threatens lives and American institutions every day it is allowed to continue to operate by the Supremes and the other Article IIIs, not to mention a feckless Congress.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-23-20

Taylor Lorenz writes:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

Due Process Forever! Jim Crow & Complicit Supremes, Never!

Related posts:

Due Process Forever!

Related posts: