U.S. Constitution – Page 294 – immigrationcourtside.com

My Message To Cornell Law — “Fight For Due Process” — Join The “New Due Process Army” — Due Process In Peril At The U.S. Immigration Court!

I spoke to an audience of approximately 120 members of the Cornell University community in Ithaca on Wednesday, March 8, 2017, as part of the Berger International Programs Lecture Series at Cornell Law. Many thanks to Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr for inviting me.

Read my entire speech

“EXISTENTIALISM AND THE MEANING OF LIFE AT THE U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT – CORNELL LAW VERSION”

here:

EXISTENTIALISM — Cornell — AND THE MEANING OF LIFE AT THE U

Here are a few “Highlights:”

“Sadly, the Immigration Court System is moving further away from that due process vision. Instead, years of neglect, misunderstanding, mismanagement, and misguided priorities imposed by the U.S. Department of Justice have created judicial chaos with an expanding backlog now exceeding an astounding one half million cases and no clear plan for resolving them in the foreseeable future.”

“Nobody has been hit harder by this preventable disaster than asylum seekers, particularly scared women and children fleeing for their lives from the Northern Triangle of Central America. In Immigration Court, notwithstanding the life or death issues at stake, unlike criminal court there is no right to an appointed lawyer.”

“First, and foremost, the Immigration Courts must return to the focus on due process as the one and only mission. The improper use of our due process court system by political officials to advance enforcement priorities and/or send “don’t come” messages to asylum seekers, which are highly ineffective in any event, must end. That’s unlikely to happen under the DOJ – as proved by over three decades of history, particularly recent history.”

“This is hardly “through teamwork and innovation being the world’s best administrative tribunals guaranteeing fairness and due process for all!” These unusually low asylum grant rates are impossible to justify in light of the generous standard for well-founded fear established by the Supreme Court in Cardoza-Fonseca and the BIA in Mogharrabi, and the regulatory presumption of future fear arising out of past persecution that applies in many asylum cases. Yet, the BIA has only recently and fairly timidly addressed the manifest lack of respect for asylum seekers and failure to guarantee fairness and due process for such vulnerable individuals in some cases arising in Atlanta and other courts with unrealistically low grant rates.”

“Over the past 16 years, the BIA’s inability or unwillingness to aggressively stand up for the due process rights of asylum seekers and to enforce the fair and generous standards required by American law have robbed our Immigration Court System of credibility and public support, as well as ruined the lives of many who were denied protection that should have been granted. We need a BIA which functions like a Federal Appellate Court and whose overriding mission is to ensure that the due process vision of the Immigration Courts becomes a reality rather than an unfulfilled promise.”

“So, do we abandon all hope? No, of course not! Because there are hundreds of newer lawyers out there who are former Arlington JLCs, interns, my former student, and those who have practiced before the Arlington Immigration Court.”

“They form what I call the “New Due Process Army!” And, while my time on the battlefield is winding down, they are just beginning the fight! They will keep at it for years, decades, or generations — whatever it takes to force the U.S. immigration judicial system to live up to its promise of “guaranteeing fairness and due process for all!”

“Folks, the U.S Immigration Court system is on the verge of collapse. And, there is every reason to believe that the misguided “enforce and detain to the max” policies being pursued by this Administration will drive the Immigration Courts over the edge. When that happens, a large chunk of the entire American justice system and the due process guarantees that make American great and different from most of the rest of the world will go down with it.”

“Now is the time to take a stand for fundamental fairness! Join the New Due Process Army! Due process forever!”

PWS

03/10/17

THE HILL: Nolan Rappaport Says New Trump Travel Ban A Slam Dunk Winner In Court! Get Link Here!

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/immigration/322720-trumps-travel-ban-legally-sound-defensible-all-the-way-to-the

Nolan writes:

“The Trump administration released Monday a revised version of its immigration Executive Order to address the concerns raised in an appeals court decision, but those criticisms were always fundamentally irrational and not based in the text of the Order.”

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Read Nolan’s complete article in The Hill at link.

As I indicated in my posts yesterday, the new travel ban appears to me just as bogus as the first one. Rather than being designed to solve a real national security problem, it is fear-mongering designed primarily to rev up public opinion, particularly among Trump’s base, against Muslims and refugees, neither of which pose a significant threat to the U.S. at present.

I noted that the Post “Fact-Checker” has already awarded “Three Pinocchios” to the misleading statistics that Secretary Kelly and AG Sessions cited in their “staged dialogue” asking the President to reimpose the travel ban. And, this is from a President and an Administration that already have pretty much zero credibility.

That being said, I don’t necessarily disagree with Nolan’s bottom line that Trump might well win this one if it even gets to the Supremes. This time, following the advice of Government litigators, he has applied the ban prospectively only to those foreign nationals overseas who have not previously been admitted or already documented to enter the U.S. He’s also eliminated the overt mention of religion.

Given that the standard for overseas visa denials is a “facially legitimate and bona fide reason,” the Administration might well be home free. Although the stated rationale might not stand up to a rigorous examination, it is unlikely that the Supremes, or even most lower Federal Courts, view engaging in a testing of the factual basis for this type of order affecting individuals overseas as something that can properly be adjudicated by Article III judges.

See my previous posts here:

http://wp.me/p8eeJm-ry

http://wp.me/p8eeJm-rH

PWS

03/07/17

THE ATLANTIC: Our Unhappy Immigration History — President Herbert Hoover’s Anti-Immigrant Policies Resulted In The “Mexican Repatriation” — U.S. Citizens Were The Majority Of Those Illegally Removed!

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/americas-brutal-forgotten-history-of-illegal-deportations/517971/

Alex Wagner writes:

“Back in Hoover’s era, as America hung on the precipice of economic calamity—the Great Depression—the president was under enormous pressure to offer a solution for increasing unemployment, and to devise an emergency plan for the strained social safety net. Though he understood the pressing need to aid a crashing economy, Hoover resisted federal intervention, instead preferring a patchwork of piecemeal solutions, including the targeting of outsiders.
According to former California State Senator Joseph Dunn, who in 2004 began an investigation into the Hoover-era deportations, “the Republicans decided the way they were going to create jobs was by getting rid of anyone with a Mexican-sounding name.”

“Getting rid of” America’s Mexican population was a random, brutal effort. “For participating cities and counties, they would go through public employee rolls and look for Mexican-sounding names and then go and arrest and deport those people,” said Dunn. “And then there was a job opening!”

“We weren’t rounding up people who were Canadian,” he added. “It was an absolutely racially-motivated program to create jobs by getting rid of people.”

Why, specifically, men and women of Mexican heritage? Professor Francisco Balderrama, whose book, A Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s is the most definitive chronicle of the period (and, not coincidentally, one of the only ones), explained: “Mexican immigration was very recent. It goes back to that saying: Last hired, first fired. The attitude of many industrialists and agriculturalists was reflected in larger cities: A Mexican is a Mexican.” And that included even those citizens of Mexicans descent who were born in the U.S. “That is sort of key in understanding the psychic of the nation,” said Balderrama.

The so-called repatriation effort was, in large part, a misnomer, given the fact that as many as sixty percent of those sent to “home” Mexico were U.S. citizens: American-born children of Mexican-descent who had never before traveled south of the border. (Dunn noted, “I don’t know how you can repatriate someone to a country they’ve not been born or raised in.”)

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Pretty grotesque. Where’s the apology? Where is the circumspection? Where its the humanity in the Administration’s new “immigrant scapegoating” program?

Thanks much to Nolan Rappaport for bringing this interesting, if disturbing, piece of immigration history to my attention.

PWS

03/06/17

DIFFERING VIEWS OF NEW “TRAVEL BAN” ON CNN: Jeffrey Toobin: It Could Stand Up — Advocates: It Stinks!

Jeffrey Toobin writes:

“CNN)For President Trump and his travel ban, the second time may be the charm.

The revised executive order, revealed Monday during a rare joint appearance by three Cabinet members, addresses many of the legal problems that led Trump’s first executive order to be stymied by the courts.
The new order makes plain that holders of green cards and valid visas are now clearly exempt. There is no longer an exception to allow Christian refugees to jump to the head of the line.

The government’s explanation for why it selected the covered countries does not mention religion; rather, the administration says the six countries — down from seven in the previous order — either support terrorism or lack sufficient controls to identify dangerous visitors to the United States. The order also removes Iraq as one of the countries covered by the order.
The courts, which invalidated the original ban, did so, in effect, because they found the order amounted to religious discrimination against Muslims. This new order, unlike the first, makes no mention of the religions of any applicants to come to the United States.
Still, opponents of the order will insist the new rules are merely pretexts — that the new order once again fulfills President Trump’s campaign promise to ban Muslims from entering the United States.”

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/06/opinions/trump-travel-ban-toobin/index.html

On the other hand, Lauren Said-Moorhouse reports:

“(CNN)International humanitarian groups have slammed US President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban, which targets six Muslim-majority nations, for sharing many of the same flaws as its predecessor.

Similar to the January order, travel ban 2.0 again prevents citizens from Syria, Iran, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Sudan from entering the United States for at least 90 days. In this iteration, Iraq is not on the list of barred countries.
The new order, which the Trump administration says is needed to protect the United States from foreign terrorists entering the country, will also suspend the admission of refugees for 120 days and urges US officials to improve vetting procedures for a resettlement program already regarded to be rigorous.
Aid groups, including the International Rescue Committee, or IRC, and Amnesty International USA, quickly condemned the new directive, arguing the ban still does not make the United States any safer.
David Miliband, IRC president and CEO, said in a statement that the revised executive order on immigration “heartlessly targets the most vetted and most vulnerable population to enter the United States.” He added that the new executive order could affect 60,000 people already screened for resettlement in America.

“The ban doesn’t target those who are the greatest security risk, but those least able to advocate for themselves. Instead of making us safer, it serves as a gift for extremists who seek to undermine the United States,” Miliband said.”

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/06/world/trump-travel-ban-world-reaction/index.html

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PWS

03/06/17

The Optimist, Ruy Teixeira Says That While Trump Will Inflict Some Damage, Liberal Democratic Values Are Destined To Prevail!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/03/optimistic-leftist/?utm_term=.27be7a4aa301

Ruy Teixeira writes in the Washington Post:

“Public-opinion data is quite clear that the United States has become more, not less, liberal in all these areas over time and that these trends are continuing. Take the standard question about whether immigration levels should increase, decrease or stay the same. The 38 percent of people who say “decrease” is about as low as it ever has been since Gallup started tracking the question in the 1960s. The current number represents a massive drop, of about 30 points, since the early 1990s, when Pat Buchanan first raised his pitchfork high at the Republican National Convention. There has also been a considerable change in views about whether immigration is a good or bad thing for America — and it’s positive, not negative, change, even if one confines the data to white Americans. According to Gallup, the “good thing” response by whites was as low as 51 percent in the early 2000s but has been around 70 percent in the past two years.

Nor has there been any kind of spike in negative racial attitudes in recent years — in fact, according to the University of Chicago’s General Social Survey , such attitudes were far more prevalent in the early 1990s than they are today, including among white Democrats and Republicans. This is true even as perceptions of the quality of race relations have been dimming, thanks primarily to conflict around police shootings and to a tiny minority of genuine haters whose rhetoric and actions have been widely covered. But the underlying trend toward racial liberalism continues.

So the idea that Trump will somehow successfully relitigate the role of immigrants, minorities, gays and women in American society is scary but absurd. He may continue the Republican campaign to restrict voting rights. He may seek to overturn Roe v. Wade (supported by 70 percent of the American public). He may promote prejudice against Muslim Americans. Such actions may in fact be cheered on by his hard-core supporters. But he will ultimately fail, because what he wishes to do is both massively unpopular and runs against the grain of legal precedent and institutional norms.

And he can’t hold back the one true inevitability in demographic change: the replacement of older generations by newer ones. Underappreciated in November’s election was the continuing leftward lean of young voters, once again supporting the Democratic candidate by around 20 points — and with younger millennials, including both college-educated and noncollege whites, even more pro-Democratic than older ones. That is huge. And don’t expect these voters to shift right as they age. Political science research shows that early voting patterns tend to stick.

Another locus of disquiet, if not hysteria, on the left is the environment. But consider this: In 1969, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught fire; in 1979, when Obama was attending college in Los Angeles and remembers constant smog, there were 234 days when the city exceeded federal ozone standards. Our water and air are now orders of magnitude cleaner than they were back then.
Trump will not be able to suddenly wipe out all these gains. Sure, he says he will severely cut environmental regulations, especially ones put in place by Obama; hollow out the EPA; somehow bring back the coal industry; and much more. But saying and doing are two different things. Getting rid of Obama-era rules such as the Clean Power Plan would take years and be challenged by litigation. Reversing the decline of the coal industry is economically impossible. Abolishing the EPA and gutting the clean air and water acts is politically impossible. When the George W. Bush administration tried to eliminate one Clinton-era rule on levels of arsenic in drinking water, it ran into a political buzzsaw and had to retreat.”

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PWS

03/06/17

REUTERS: Some Good News For The U.S. Immigration Courts: AG Sessions Exempts Immigration Courts From Hiring Freeze!

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-judges-idUSKBN16A2NI

Mica Rosenberg and Kristina Cooke report:

“President Donald Trump’s federal hiring freeze will not apply to immigration court judges under an exception for positions that are needed for national security and public safety, the Executive Office for Immigration Review told Reuters on Friday.

The Trump administration has called for faster removal of immigrants in the United States illegally, but immigration courts, which rule on asylum applications and deportation appeals, are weighed down by a record backlog of more than 542,000 cases.

On Jan. 23, Trump froze hiring for all federal government positions, except for military personnel and in some other limited circumstances.

New Attorney General Jeff Sessions “determined that Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) positions can continue to be filled,” EOIR spokeswoman Kathryn Mattingly told Reuters in an email response to questions about the freeze.

“As such, EOIR is continuing to advertise and fill positions nationwide for immigration judges and supporting staff,” Mattingly said. The immigration courts are run by the Justice Department, unlike federal courts which are independent.”

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As noted in the article, there are approximately 50 individuals already in the judicial hiring process. It isn’t clear if these individuals will be appointed or whether the Administration will choose instead to start the process over again. As noted in the article, the process, as currently designed and administered, is lengthy, often taking a year or more. Interestingly, that’s probably as long or longer than it takes to get an average Article III judicial appointee through the Senate confirmation process.

PWS

03/04/17

IMMIGRATION IMPACT: Katie Shepard Explains How New USCIS Lesson Plans Are Likely To Harm Asylum Seekers!

http://immigrationimpact.com/2017/02/28/changes-may-keep-asylum-seekers-getting-day-court/

“Effective February 27, 2017, new changes to the asylum screening process could lead to an increased number of deportations of asylum-seekers who fear persecution upon return to their home country.

On February 13, 2017, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) revised its Asylum Division Officer Training Course (ADOTC) lesson plans on how to assess an asylum seeker’s credible and reasonable fear of persecution or torture. The lesson plans were revised to be consistent with the January 25, 2017 Executive Order on border security and immigration enforcement and provide guidelines to the asylum officers when conducting credible fear interviews (for those at the border or port of entry who were never previously deported) and reasonable fear interviews (for those who were previously order deported but who later seek asylum).

The changes to the lesson plans are significant and may cause the denial rate to skyrocket, in which case thousands of asylum seekers would be wrongfully denied a meaningful day in court . Not only does the new guidance provide asylum officers with greater discretion to deny an applicant for reasons which may be out of the applicant’s control, but the applicant will essentially be forced to undergo a full asylum hearing with none of the safeguards in place to ensure a meaningful opportunity to present a claim for relief.”

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Read Katie’s complete analysis at the link. You should also look at Dree Collopy’s short video on the changes which I previously posted.

http://wp.me/p8eeJm-qx

If this carries over into Immigration Court where unsuccessful applicants can seek “expedited review,” it would mean that “credible fear reviews” could become more time consuming.

I was usually able to complete them in a few minutes using the Asylum Officer’s notes and asking a few questions. I found that the overwhelming number of those denied had “credible fear,” and probably at least half of those cases eventually resulted in relief. However, over the last year of my career I was primarily on the non-detained docket, so I only did “credible fears” when I was on detail to a detention center or the system was backed up.

As an Immigration Judge, I did not use the USCIS lesson plans. But, I did rely on the Asylum Officer’s notes for a basic understanding of the claim. I then usually asked a few questions to verify that the notes accurately reflected the claim and that nothing relevant had been omitted.

PWS

03/03/17

Emory Law/SPLC Observation Study Rips Due Process Violations At Atlanta Immigration Court — Why Is The BIA “Asleep At The Switch” In Enforcing Due Process? What Happened To The EOIR’s “Due Process Vision?”

https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/2017-atl_complaint_letter_final.pdf

“We write to provide you with findings of observations of the Atlanta Immigration Court conducted by Emory Law students, in conjunction with the Southern Poverty Law Center, during the fall semester of 2016. Six Emory Law students observed the Court in September and October 2016 seeking to identify any apparent factors leading to the Court’s reputation as one where rule of law principles are not widely respected.1 Atlanta Immigration Judges (IJs) “have been accused of bullying children, victims of domestic abuse and asylum seekers;” while “[immigration] attorneys complain that judges impose such stringent requirements on their clients that they are

1 See Elise Foley, Here’s Why Atlanta Is One of The Worst Places To Be An Undocumented Immigrant, HUFFINGTON POST, May 25, 2016, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/deportation-raids-immigration- courts_us_574378d9e4b0613b512b0f37; Chico Harlan, In an Immigration Court That Almost Always Says No, A Lawyer’s Spirit is Broken, WASHINGTON POST, Oct. 11, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in-an-immigration-court-that-nearly-always-says-no-a-lawyers- spirit-is-broken/2016/10/11/05f43a8e-8eee-11e6-a6a3-d50061aa9fae_story.html?utm_term=.430a15e12a55; Ted Hesson, Why It’s Almost Impossible to Get Asylum in Atlanta, VICE MAGAZINE, Jun. 8, 2016, http://www.vice.com/read/why-its-almost-impossible-to-get-asylum-in-atlanta. See also Southern Poverty Law Center, Immigrant Detainees in Georgia More Likely to Be Deported Than Detainees Elsewhere; Georgia Detainees Less Likely to Be Released on Bond (2016), https://www.splcenter.org/news/2016/08/23/immigrant- detainees-georgia-more-likely-be-deported-detainees-elsewhere.

impossible for an immigrant to meet.”2 Atlanta’s Immigration Court records one of the highest denial rate of asylum applications–98 percent–in the United States.3

The observations identified several areas of key concern that indicate that some of the Immigration Judges do not respect rule of law principles and maintain practices that undermine the fair administration of justice.”

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Read the complete letter to EOIR Director Juan Osuna at the link. Gotta ask: How does the performance of the Atlanta Immigration Court fulfill the “EOIR Vision” of: “Through teamwork and innovation, be the world’s best administrative tribunals guaranteeing fairness and due process for all?” Where has the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) in been on these alleged abuses? Why doesn’t the BIA live up to the EOIR Vision? If it’s this bad now, how bad will it get under the Trump Administration?

PWS

03/02/17

AILA TV: In Less Than 5 Minutes, Superstar Attorney Dree Collopy Tells You Everything You Need To Know About The Revised USCIS Guidance On Credible/Reasonable Fear — Must Watch TV!

Here’s the You-Tube link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgVJkysse2Y

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Great job by Dree!

Bottom Line: Under pressure from the Trump Administration, USCIS is tilting the system against (largely unrepresented) asylum applicants from the Northern Triangle. The only questions are 1) whether the Immigration Courts will follow suit, and 2) if so, whether the Article III Courts will blow or swallow (as they have done so far in the credible/reasonable fear context) the whistle on due process for the most vulnerable.

A good introduction to reality for anyone who believes that conscientious career civil servants will be able to persevere in the face of the Trump Administration’s all-out assault on due process and fundamental fairness.

WALTER PINCUS IN THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS: The Coming Immigration Court Disaster!

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/03/01/trump-us-immigration-waiting-for-chaos/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYR Dennett immigration reform Chopin&utm_content=NYR Dennett immigration reform Chopin+CID_c0a3091a06cff6ddbb541b093215f280&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_term=US Immigration Waiting for Chaos

“One thing however is clear. Trump’s recent efforts to use blunt executive power to close our borders and prepare the way for deporting large numbers of undocumented immigrants are confronting far-reaching problems. Not only is there opposition from federal judges, the business sector, civil liberties groups, and others. There is also a major roadblock from another quarter: our already broken system of immigration laws and immigration courts.

The nation’s immigration laws needed repair long before Trump came to office. Even without the measures taken by the new administration, immigration courts face a backlog of hundreds of thousands of cases, while the existing detention system is plagued, not just by arbitrary arrests, but also by deep problems in the way immigrant detainees are handled by our courts, one aspect of which is the subject of a Supreme Court challenge.

But will the potential Trump excesses—driven by the president’s fear mongering about immigrant crimes and the alleged potential for terrorists to pose as refugees—be enough to light a fire under a Republican-led Congress that has for years balked at immigration reform?

. . . .

For better or worse—and it may turn out to be worse if Congress continues to refuse to act—the Trump administration’s determination to enforce current laws has pushed long-standing inequities in immigration justice onto the front pages.

Take the matter of those immigration judges, who now number some three hundred and are scheduled to grow substantially under the Trump administration. In April 2013, the National Association of Immigration Judges issued a scathing report pleading for omnibus immigration reform. Describing the morale of the immigration judge corps as “plummeting,” the report found that “the Immigration Courts’ caseload is spiraling out of control, dramatically outpacing the judicial resources available and making a complete gridlock of the current system a disturbing and foreseeable probability.”

The judges also noted that, “as a component of the DOJ [Department of Justice], the Immigration Courts remain housed in an executive agency with a prosecutorial mission that is frequently at odds with the goal of impartial adjudication.” For example, the judges are appointed by the Attorney General and “subject to non-transparent performance review and disciplinary processes as DOJ employees.” As a result, “they can be subjected to personal discipline for not meeting the administrative priorities of their supervisors and are frequently placed in the untenable position of having to choose between risking their livelihood and exercising their independent decision-making authority when deciding continuances”—the postponement of a hearing or trial.

The immigration judges writing this complaint were working under the Obama administration Justice Department, with Eric Holder as attorney general. What will their situation be like with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a believer in tighter immigration controls, as their boss?

As it is now, an immigration judge’s job is exhausting. They carry an average load of 1,500 cases, but have minimal staff support. In the 2013 report, the immigration judges noted that they have no bailiffs, no court reporters, and only one quarter of the time of a single judicial law clerk. The backlog of immigration cases in the United States now stands at roughly 542,000. Most important, the immigration judges claim some 85 percent of detained immigrants appearing before them are unrepresented by counsel.

Meanwhile, another pending lawsuit highlights a different long-running problem concerning our nation’s immigration judges. In June 2013, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, along with Public Citizen and the American Immigration Council (AIC) filed a case in federal district court in Washington, D.C., seeking documents that would disclose whether the federal government adequately investigated and resolved misconduct complaints against immigration judges.

Such complaints have been widespread enough that the Justice Department reports annually on the number. In fiscal 2014, the latest figures published, there were 115 complaints lodged against 66 immigration judges. Although 77 were listed as resolved, the outcomes are not described.”

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This timely article was brought to my attention by my good friend and former colleague retired U.s. Immigration Judge (NY) Sarah Burr. Walter Pincus is a highly respected national security reporter. He’s not by any means an “immigration guru.”

As I have pointed out in previous blogs and articles, this problem is real! In the absence of sensible, bipartisan immigration reform by Congress, which must include establishing an independent immigration judiciary, our entire Federal Justice System is at risk of massive failure.

Why? Because even now, immigration review cases are one of the largest, if not the largest, components of the civil dockets of the U.S. Courts of Appeals. As due process in the Immigration Courts and the BIA (the “Appellate Division” of the U.S. Immigration Courts) deteriorates under excruciating pressure from the Administration, more and more of those ordered removed will take their cases to the U.S. Courts of Appeals. That’s potentially hundreds of thousands of additional cases. It won’t be long before the Courts of Appeals won’t have time for anything else but immigration review.

In my view, that’s likely to provoke two responses from the Article III Courts. First, the Circuits will start imposing their own minimum due process and legal sufficiency requirements on the Immigration Courts. But, since there are eleven different Circuits now reviewing immigration petitions, that’s likely to result in a hodgepodge of different criteria applicable in different parts of the country. And, the Supremes have neither the time nor ability to quickly resolve all Circuit conflicts.

Second, many, if not all Courts of Appeals, are likely to return the problem to the DOJ by remanding thousands of cases to the Immigration Courts for “re-dos” under fundamentally fair procedures. Obviously, that will be a massive waste of time and resources for both the Article III Courts and the Immigration Courts. It’s much better to do it right in the first place. “Haste makes waste.”

No matter where one stands in the immigration debate, due process and independent decision making in the U.S. Immigration Courts should be a matter of bipartisan concern and cooperation. After all, we are a constitutional republic, and due process is one of the key concepts of our constitutional system.

PWS

03/02/17

Raul Reyes On CNN: Trump’s “Softening” On Immigration A “Cruel Hoax” — “The Most Anti-Immigrant President In Modern History”

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/01/opinions/trump-bait-and-switch-on-immigration-reyes/index.html

“Then came Trump’s address before Congress, and his true intentions were revealed. His talk of immigration reform, we now know, was just that: Talk. At best, his earlier statements about immigration reform were a publicity stunt designed to gin up interest (and ratings, which Trump is obsessed with) in his speech. At worst, this bait-and-switch was a cruel hoax perpetrated on millions of undocumented people who might have briefly hoped for a reprieve from possible deportation.
In fact, Trump’s speech offered little meaningful policy on immigration, beyond conflating immigrants with crime and misrepresenting key facts underlying illegal immigration. Tellingly, there was no mention of offering legalization to anyone.

. . . .

Yes, such reform is possible, but it is unlikely Trump will expend any political capital making it happen. He was elected by a base that is fervently opposed to anything resembling “amnesty.” He has surrounded himself with advisers like white nationalist champion Steve Bannon, the xenophobic Stephen Miller, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who wants curbs on legal immigration.”

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PWS

03/02/17

SLATE: Bannon, Sessions, Miller Plan To Use Justice Department To Implement Far Right Agenda!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/magazine/jeff-sessions-stephen-bannon-justice-department.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Emily Bazelon reports:

“One night in September 2014, when he was chief executive of Breitbart News, Stephen Bannon hosted cocktails and dinner at the Washington townhouse where he lived, a mansion near the Supreme Court that he liked to call the Breitbart Embassy. Beneath elaborate chandeliers and flanked by gold drapes and stately oil paintings, Jeff Sessions, then a senator from Alabama, sat next to the guest of honor: Nigel Farage, the insurgent British politician, who first met Sessions two years earlier when Bannon introduced them. Farage was building support for his right-wing party by complaining in the British press about “uncontrolled mass immigration.” Sessions, like other attendees, was celebrating the recent collapse in Congress of bipartisan immigration reform, which would have provided a path to citizenship for some undocumented people. At the dinner, Sessions told a writer for Vice, Reid Cherlin, that Bannon’s site was instrumental in defeating the measure. Sessions read Breitbart almost every day, he explained, because it was “putting out cutting-edge information.”

Bannon’s role in blocking the reform had gone beyond sympathetic coverage on his site. Over the previous year, he, Sessions and one of Sessions’s top aides, Stephen Miller, spent “an enormous amount of time” meeting in person, “developing plans and messaging and strategy,” as Miller later explained to Rosie Gray in The Atlantic. Breitbart writers also reportedly met with Sessions’s staff for a weekly happy hour at the Union Pub. For most Republicans in Washington, immigration was an issue they wished would go away, a persistent source of conflict between the party’s elites, who saw it as a straightforward economic good, and its middle-class voting base, who mistrusted the effects of immigration on employment. But for Bannon, Sessions and Miller, immigration was a galvanizing issue, lying at the center of their apparent vision for reshaping the United States by tethering it to its European and Christian origins. (None of them would comment for this article.) That September evening, as they celebrated the collapse of the reform effort — and the rise of Farage, whose own anti-immigration party in Britain represented the new brand of nativism — it felt like the beginning of something new. “I was privileged enough to be at it,” Miller said about the gathering last June, while a guest on Breitbart’s SiriusXM radio show. “It’s going to sound like a motivational speech, but it’s true. To all the voters out there: The only limits to what we can achieve is what we believe we can achieve.”

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Talk about “the fox guarding the chicken coop!” And, I don’t share Bazelon’s view that DOJ career attorneys will be a significant moderating influence.

They all work for Jeff Sessions. Resisting Administration policies or positions could be considered insubordination — a ground for firing. Short of that, those who don’t “get with the program” could find themselves demoted, denied pay increases, transferred to obscure offices (perhaps in different locations), or given meaningless “busywork” assignments as punishment. In DOJ lingo the disfavored and exiled are known as “hall walkers.”

Yes, it’s true that in many past Administrations those with opposing views were tolerated and often even had their differing perspectives considered and occasionally adopted. That often had a moderating effect. But, that assumes an Administration acting in good faith. Sounds like Sessions and his colleagues have already decided to dismantle those parts of the U.S. justice system that don’t fit their ultra nationalist, restrictionist, white-power-Christian-oriented agenda. It could be a long four years at the DOJ for career lawyers (those who survive). Sad!

PWS

02/28/17

New Administration “Travel Ban” Likely On Wednesday — Revisions Will Address Some Issues That Troubled Courts

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/new-travel-ban-will-exempt-current-visa-holders/2017/02/28/42ac1f3a-fe03-11e6-99b4-9e613afeb09f_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_trumpban-0608pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.33edc3e29145

Matt Zapotosky reports in the Washington Post:

“Barring any last minute changes, President Trump will sign a revised travel ban that exempts current visa holders, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The revision marks a significant departure from the now-frozen first executive order, which temporarily barred refugees and citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States, and resulted in the State Department unilaterally revoking tens of thousands of visas. Justice Department lawyers hope the new order will be more likely to withstand legal challenges and will not leave any travelers detained at U.S. airports.

The new order also removes an exception to the refugee prohibition for religion minorities, the person said. Critics of the order had said that exception proved it was meant to discriminate on the basis of religion, because it allowed only Christians into the country.
The new order, the details of which were first reported by the Wall Street Journal, is expected to be signed Wednesday. The person who described it to The Post did so on the condition of anonymity because the administration had not authorized the release of details.”

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I would expect advocates to quickly challenge the new order. If the Administration backs up the order with some evidence supporting its actions, the legal challenges might be more difficult this time around.

PWS

02/28/17

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UPDATE: NBC News reports Wednesday morning that the White House now says that the new Travel Ban Order will be further delayed.

PWS

03/01/17

USA TODAY: Former Bush, Obama DHS Execs Say Expanded Expedited Removal Could Be Legally Problematic

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/02/24/president-trumps-expedited-removal-plan-may-be-illegal/98276078/

Alan Gomez reports:

“That expansion threatens the constitutional rights of undocumented immigrants who may get mistakenly deported, warned John Sandweg, who headed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under President Obama.

“The Supreme Court has consistently held that even undocumented immigrants are entitled to due process,” he said.

Sandweg added that expedited removals have been a valuable tool for immigration agents working near the border when they are dealing with clear-cut cases of illegal entry.

Julie Myers Wood, who headed ICE under President George W. Bush, agreed. She said her team considered expanding expedited removals, but decided against it because of legal concerns. She said other aspects of Trump’s tougher immigration enforcement plan also may run afoul of the law.

“Many of these authorities have never been used that way,” Wood said. “The administration is really testing the parameters of what’s acceptable. There is some litigation risk there.”

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Stay tuned.

PWS

02/27/17

Alexandria Churches Walk In Solidarity With Hispanic Neighbors In Arlandria!

Led by Father Robert Malm of Grace Episcopal Church and Pastor Deborah Porras of Beverley Hills Community United Methodist Church, members of both Alexandria, VA congregations joined together for a walk through the Arlandria Area of Alexandria to show solidarity and support with neighbors from the Hispanic migrant community. The walk took place on Sunday Morning, February 26, 2018. As noted by Father Malm, God sent a perfect day for a walk. Pictures below.

PWS

02/27/17

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