"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
Estrella Santos-Zacaria has come a long way from San Pedro Soloma, Guatemala, a village nestled in the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes mountains and known as El Valle del Ensueño, or the Valley of Dreams.
For years, Santos-Zacaria dreamed desperately — of escape.
In 2008, she attempted to immigrate to the U.S., fearing that the violence she had experienced because of her sexual orientation and identity as a transgender woman could get her killed. Since then, she has been deported twice.
But in January, her case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. And on May 11, Santos-Zacaria won the right to further challenge her deportation — and the potential to start a new life in the U.S. Other immigrants facing deportation could benefit, as well, because the ruling helps clear a procedural obstacle for noncitizens seeking judicial review of rulings by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), an administrative appellate body within the U.S. Department of Justice.
The Supreme Court’s decision, authored by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, also marks a notable step in its acknowledgment of transgender people. Santos-Zacaria’s chosen name, Estrella, was referenced alongside her former given name, and her proper pronouns were used throughout.
The case was the first initiated by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative (SIFI) to reach the U.S. Supreme Court. SIFI provides pro bono legal representation to asylum seekers who are being held at immigrant detention centers in the Deep South.
“What Estrella’s won is the right to keep fighting,” said Peter Isbister, senior lead attorney for SIFI. “And that would not have been possible without her team of volunteer attorneys. Cases and clients like Estrella are why SIFI believes so deeply in having a pro bono program.”
In her case, both the BIA and the 5th Circuit had gone out of the way NOT to meaningfully review life or death mistakes made in the Immigration Court. In doing so, they tossed aside the realities and roadblocks facing those seeking justice in Immigration Court and their representatives (if any, in a glaringly unfair system).
This case shows the critical importance of pro bono immigration assistance. These lower court Federal Judges focused not on constitutionally required due process and fundamental fairness, or on the vulnerable human life at stake, but rather on inventing ways NOT to provide fair hearings in some of the most important, perhaps the most important, cases coming before the Federal Justice system.
Pro bono representation levels the playing field and exposes the poor performance of those whose sole focus should be individual justice, rather than “institutional task avoidance!”
Beth Barkley thought she was attending a ceremony for International Day of the Girl on Wednesday. The high school English teacher stood in the library at Cardozo Education Campus as the city’s mayor explained the importance of attaining “educational equity across genders.”
But, in a ceremony focused mostly on her, Barkley learned that she had been named D.C’s 2024 Teacher of the Year.
“This year we have a teacher of the year who serves as a role model not only for her students, but for other teachers across the District,” said D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D). “She has gone above and beyond her normal teaching duties to uplift student voices and inspire her students.”
Each year, educators across the city vie for the top honor, which comes with a $7,500 check and the chance to compete for National Teacher of the Year in a contest run by the Council of Chief State School Officers. Barkley, who teaches English and other classes to students who are new to the United States, was met with applause and sparkling pompoms wielded by students.
“This is a huge honor,” she said to the room of teachers, staff members and several of her students. “I have students that are changemakers. My students are leaders. … This is really for and because of them.”
Emily Garcia Litigation Reporter Bloomberg Law PHOTO: talkingbiznews.comThis phase of the Inquisition is over. But, torture is still widely practiced worldwide. US Officialdom has shown little enthusiasm for carrying out its mandatory protection responsibilities under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). PHOTO: Public Realm
The Supreme Court recently removed one procedural hurdle for noncitizens seeking humanitarian relief but the high court’s ruling clears up no substantial issues about a law they’ll make their claims under, immigration attorneys say—allowing some relief seekers to be sent back to torturous conditions.
Estrella Santos-Zacaria, a Guatemalan transgender woman, asked for federal review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’s decision denying her protection under the Convention Against Torture. In a unanimous decision, the justices said federal judges can weigh in on BIA’s decisions before discretionary administrative remedies are exhausted. In Santos-Zacaria’s case, her petition may be sent back to BIA for further review but that doesn’t guarantee relief.
While lawyers are hopeful that earlier review by a federal court will facilitate a smoother process for their clients, they express concerns that immigration judges and the BIA too readily dismiss the risk of torture, and say it shouldn’t be so difficult to get humanitarian relief.
CAT protections, including deferral and withholding of removal, allow noncitizens who aren’t eligible for asylum to remain in the US. To receive protection, a noncitizen must show an immigration judge that if they are deported, it’s more likely than not that they will be tortured with government acquiescence or participation. Unlike asylum, protections under the Convention are mandatory and serious criminal convictions can’t disqualify a noncitizen. But protections are especially difficult to win, said Eleni Bakst, a lawyer at the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition.
. . . .
Paul Schmidt, a former immigration judge and chairman of the BIA between and 2001, said the process for evaluating claims under the Convention isn’t scientific. There’s no formula to plug in that will tell the odds of someone being tortured. “It’s sort of in the mind of the beholder,” Schmidt said.
. . . .
As an immigration judge, Schmidt said he and other immigration judges relied heavily on country conditions reports published by the US Department of State. Asked if he believed the reports were an adequate representation of a country, Schmidt said “certainly not.”
Bakst said statistics provided by other countries can also be inaccurate. In El Salvador, the government doesn’t allow monitoring bodies into its prisons so data on inmate torture is incomplete.
Pushing back against questionable reports and statistics, immigration advocates are aware that immigration judges and the BIA may dismiss their client’s risk of torture, and their client may be tortured anyway.
Such was the case for Patrick Julney, a client of CAIR Coalition who was denied deferral under the Convention for failure to show that the likelihood of torture was more than 50% and deported to Haiti. Bakst said that “immediately upon his arrival in Haiti, he was imprisoned and tortured.” Julney was denied access to food, water, and medicine.
Estelle McKee, a clinical immigration law professor at Cornell Law School, represented a schizophrenic man from El Salvador who was denied CAT relief. After his deportation, McKee hired a Salvadorean attorney to track down her client.
She said the attorney couldn’t even enter her client’s village because it was gang-controlled.
“I don’t have much hope that he survived,” McKee said.
McKee and other immigration attorneys agree that the Supreme Court’s decision will speed up the humanitarian claims process, though results may vary. Julney’s case was reviewed by the Third Circuit, but his outcome was unchanged.
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Reads Emily’s full, well-written article at the above link.
A Government colleague once remarked to me that “the U.S. should never have signed the CAT.” Obviously, that private view has permeated and driven USG policy on implementing the CAT, particularly at the DOJ where it was immediately treated as “PNG” because of its lack of exclusionary clauses. Even “bad guys” aren’t supposed to be returned to torture (in terms of legal theory, if not reality).
There is no objective evidence that torture is on the decline worldwide. See, e.g., https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/torture/. Yet the mandatory protection required by the CAT remains elusive and quite arbitrary within the U.S. legal system.
One of the best examples of how Government officials who should be insuring that the legal protections under CAT are fairly and reasonably applied to achieve the Convention’s purposes are instead promoting an “any reason to deny” culture is former AG John Ashcroft’s precedent decision in Matter of J-F-F-, 23 I&N Dec. 912 (A.G. 2006). There, Ashcroft reversed a CAT grant by the IJ and the BIA to an unrepresented respondent. In the process, Ashcroft established the “enhanced test” that to gain CAT protection, the respondent must “establish that each step in the hypothetical chain of events is more likely than not to happen.”
In other words, this is an official invitation, some might say directive, to IJs to “lengthen the chain of causation until it breaks” (which it inevitably will, in most cases) and protection can be denied.
Moreover, many CAT claims, like this one, involve unrepresented respondents. The chances of an unrepresented respondent understanding the “chain of causation” or what it means to prove “each step is more likely than not to occur” are very slim.
Additionally, even if they did understand, since many of the unrepresented respondents are in detention, they would have little or no realistic chance of obtaining the type of detailed, timely expert testimony and comprehensive documentation, far beyond the DOS Country Reports (which, by the way are only available in English), necessary to overcome Ashcroft’s “de facto presumption of denial” and prove that every step of the “hypothetical chain” is “more likely than not” to happen.
Effectively, every problem mentioned by Emily and expert practitioners in this article is essentially (intentionally) magnified by J-F-F- and other anti-CAT administrative precedents.
CAT relief is mandatory, thus suggesting a high obligation on the part of IJs and other Government officials to insure non-return to torture. Yet, Ashcroft chastises the IJ involved in J-F-F- for essentially insuring that the respondent exercised his legal right to apply for CAT and helping him develop the record. Ashcroft even took the extraordinary step of disqualifying this IJ from any “hypothetical” future proceedings involving this respondent.
At the beginning of the BIA’s quest to interpret CAT (ironically at the same time Bush Administration lawyers at DOJ were secretly searching for legal pretexts to justify torture), I dissented from an unduly restrictive BIA precedent Matter of J-E-, 23 I&N Dec. 291, 304 (BIA 2002), Paul Wickham Schmidt, Board Member, dissenting, joined by Board Members John W. Guendelsberger, Noel Ann Brennan, Cecelia M. Espenoza, and Juan P. Osuna.
There, I stated:
The majority concludes that the extreme mistreatment likely to befall this respondent in Haiti is not “torture,” but merely “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” The majority further concludes that conduct defined as “torture” occurs in the Haitian detention system, but is not “likely” for this respondent. In short, the majority goes to great lengths to avoid applying the Convention Against Torture to this respondent.
We are in the early stages of the very difficult and thankless task of construing the Convention. Only time will tell whether the majority’s narrow reading of the torture definition and its highly technical approach to the standard of proof will be the long-term benchmarks for our country’s implementation of this international treaty.
Although I am certainly bound to follow and apply the majority’s constructions in all future cases, I do not believe that the majority adequately carries out the language or the purposes of the Convention and the implementing regulations. Therefore, I fear that we are failing to comply with our international obligations.
I conclude that the respondent is more likely than not to face officially sanctioned torture if returned to Haiti. Therefore, I would grant his application for deferral of removal under the Convention Against Torture and the implementing regulations. Consequently, I respectfully dissent.
More than two decades after J-E-, my fears and predictions of officially-sanctioned non-compliance with CAT unfortunately continue to be proved correct.
I also note with pride that our Round Table of Former Immigration Judges ⚔️🛡 filed an amicus brief before the Supremes in Santos-Zacaria supporting the interpretation that eventually prevailed.
Knightess of the Round Table — Somebody’s listening to our message! Too bad the Biden Administration doesn’t! It would save lots of time, resources, and lives if they did!
JUSTICE JACKSON delivered the opinion of the Court.
Under 8 U. S. C. §1252(d)(1), a noncitizen who seeks to challenge an order of removal in court must first exhaust certain administrative remedies. This case presents two questions regarding that statutory provision. For the rea- sons explained below, we hold that §1252(d)(1) is not juris- dictional. We hold further that a noncitizen need not re- quest discretionary forms of administrative review, like reconsideration of an unfavorable Board of Immigration Appeals determination, in order to satisfy §1252(d)(1)’s exhaustion requirement.1
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Read the full opinion at the link.
So, why is a Dem Administration under AG Garland taking anti-immigrant positions that can’t even garner a single vote on the most far-right Supremes in recent history?
Incredibly, the DOJ made the absurdist argument that, in violation of the statute, an additional unnecessary layer of procedural BS should be inflicted on individuals already dealing with the trauma of a dysfunctional system running a 2 million plus backlog and a BIA with more than 80,000 un-adjudicated appeals at last count! Where’s the common sense? Where’s the competence? Where’s the “better government” that the Biden Administration promised?
Meanwhile, our Round Table continues to put our centuries of collective experience in due process, fundamental fairness, and practical problem solving to use! The Biden Administration might not be paying attention. But, many others, including Article III Judges, are taking advantage and listening.
Professor Kate Shaw Cardozo Law PHOTO: Cardozo Law WebsiteProfessor Leah Litman University of Michigan Law PHOTO: Michigan Law Website
Kate and Leah were live from the University of Pennsylvania in Strict Scrutiny’s first live show of 2023! Penn Law Professor Jasmine E. Harris joined the hosts to recap arguments in a case that could impact disability rights. Kate and Leah recap two other arguments, in a case about immigration law and another about the ability to criminally prosecute corporations owned by foreign states. Plus, a major update about the Supreme Court’s “investigation” into who leaked the draft opinion of Dobbs last spring. And Temple University Law School Dean Rachel Rebouche joined the hosts to talk about some concerning updates in abortion access– an unfortunately commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
• Here’s the report summarizing the Supreme Court’s investigation into who leaked the Dobbs opinion. (TLDR: they still don’t know who did it, but they tried their best? Former United States Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said so.)
To hear the comments on our amicus brief “tune in” at 14:00 (lots of other “interesting commentary” on other cases if you listen to the entire program):
“With the highest possible human stakes,” amen, Kate!I get that, you get that, those stuck in the “purgatory of EOIR” get that! But, sadly, Biden, Harris, Garland, Mayorkas, their too often bumbling bureaucrats, and a whole bunch of Federal Judges at all levels DON’T “get” the dire human consequences and the practical impact of many of their decisions. That’s particularly true of those that give EOIR a “pass” on bad interpretations, opaque procedures, and a “super-user-unfriendly” forum that all too often defies logic and common sense! If they did “get it,” EOIR wouldn’t be the dystopian, likely unconstitutional, and life-threatening mess that it is today!
All you have to do is imagine yourself to be an unrepresented individual, who doesn’t speak English, on trial for your life in this messed up and unaccountable “court” system that holds millions of lives in its fumbling hands! Seems like a “modest ask” for those who have risen to the Federal Bench. But, for many, it’s a “bridge too far!” Let’s just hope that the Court does the “right thing” here!
Thanks to Round Table Maven Judge “Sir Jeffrey” Chase for spotting this!
