Category: 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees

The Carter Years

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

President With An “Afterlife”

Jimmy Carter (1924-2024), the 39th President of the United States is an anomaly among modern U.S. Presidents. He is probably better known and more widely respected for his post-Presidency achievements and work than for his accomplishments during his single four-year term (1977-81). 

After losing the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan in a landslide, Carter devoted himself to humanitarian work on a national and international scale. He founded the Carter Institute. He and his wife Rosalynn (1927-2023) were famous for their never-ending work personally of building housing for communities in need for Habitat for Humanity. 

Carter wasn’t just a “mouthpiece,” promoter, or financial supporter. He and Rosalynn could often be found with their sleeves rolled up digging, pounding, sawing, and painting with the rest of the crews. Individuals in the District of Colombia fondly remember him working side-by-side with community members to build housing that they still proudly reside in!

Carter is generally regarded as one of the most intelligent and fundamentally decent Presidents. However, his term was largely viewed as unsuccessful at the time. Economic woes, an energy shortage, the Iranian hostage crisis, tensions with the Soviet Union, and the Cuban boatlift overshadowed his meaningful achievements such as the Camp David Peace Accords and creation of the Department of Education.

As a career civil servant, I worked for the Carter Administration in several senior positions at the “Legacy” Immigration and Naturalization Service (“INS”). Although I never met the President in person, I certainly saw his facsimile signature on many official documents. 

One of the first of these was a Presidential Pardon for Vietnam Era Draft Evaders that he issued shortly after taking office. As the then legislative and regulations expert in the INS Office of General Counsel, I was charged with figuring out the practical effect of the somewhat vague language of the pardon on cases of former U.S. citizens who had renounced their citizenship abroad, primarily in Canada, during the war years.

Human Rights Focus

The Carter Administration was the only one in my lifetime that made human rights around the world a key focus of policy. While it was a great and noble idea in theory, it often clashed with the political and international realities of governing during the waning stages of the Cold War. 

From my “deep in the bureaucracy” perspective, the Carter Administration also too often exhibited a “tone deafness” when it came to dealing with the “old line Democrats” and Committee Chairs who then controlled Congress. For example, I was asked to draft a comprehensive legalization and employer sanctions immigration bill, but instructed not to consult with any Committee staff. Needless to say, the final product went over like a lead balloon. As I remember, the Dem Committee Chairs balked at even introducing the bill and it got a “DOA reception” from both Dems and the GOP. 

INS Commissioner Leonel Castillo: The Fall of a Rising Star

It probably didn’t help that Carter’s Commissioner of Immigration was Leonel Castillo. Immediately prior to appointment, Castillo was the City Controller of Houston, the first Hispanic-American to hold the job, and was considered a “rising young star” in Texas Democratic politics. (Yes, there was such an animal in those days.)

Unfortunately, it wasn’t a very good fit. Perhaps, it was simply “mission impossible” for an Hispanic leader then. Leonel was mostly interested in getting out, pressing some flesh, and the “big picture” of immigration. But, many of INS’s problems and challenges involved “nitty gritty” technical issues, fending off interference from a small army of “whiz kid” special assistants at the DOJ, and dealing with the always prickly Congressional Committees who controlled agency funding. 

This wasn’t Leonel’s strong suit. He surrounded himself with his own group of young special assistants, executive assistants, and analysts, many from Texas, who didn’t “mesh well” with the career bureaucrats in the INS Central Office, the largely “good old boy” field management structure, the egos in the DOJ, and the “Kings of the Hill.” 

Leonel never established rapport with Sen. Ted Kennedy, then the most recognizable Democrat in Congress and, beginning in 1978, Chair of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, which exercised INS oversight. Kennedy later went on to unsuccessfully challenge President Carter for the 1980 Democratic Presidential nomination. Nor did he have a good working relationship with powerful Chair Peter Rodino (D-NJ) of the House Judiciary Committee, who had been deeply involved in INS issues for many years.

Additionally, Leonel had a rocky relationship with the formidable Rep. Elizabeth Holtzmann (D-NY), the Chair of the House Immigration Subcommittee. Holtzmann was “all over INS” for what she deemed to be inadequate efforts to locate, investigate, and denaturalize former Nazi war criminals living in the U.S. who had been erroneously admitted as refugees following World War II. 

At the time, I was responsible for drafting Leonel’s congressional testimony and accompanying him to congressional hearings. As he was struggling through one contentious hearing with Chairperson Holtzmann, Leonel inadvertently knocked over the water pitcher, soaking the witness table. Holtzmann reached under her dais, grabbed a towel, and unceremoniously threw it at the hapless Commissioner with an implicit admonishment to “clean up his mess.” Committee staff later quipped that perhaps it was time for INS to “throw in the towel.” 

Needless to say, that wasn’t one of the “high points” in the Carter Administration’s dealings with Congress. Chairperson Holtzmann eventually succeeded in wresting control of all Nazi immigration investigations and prosecutions away from the INS and vesting it in a newly-created Office of Special Investigations (“OSI”) in the DOJ’s Criminal Division. 

While my “political bosses” tended to view this as a “bureaucratic defeat,” I told them it was anything but. Not having to deal with the Chairperson on Nazi investigations on a daily basis turned out to be a huge “plus” for INS, particularly the OGC, where the “Nazi Unit” was then located. It was well worth the “loss” of the half-dozen positions to the Criminal Division, which then greatly expanded the OSI. 

General Counsel/Acting Commissioner David Crosland

At the end of the Ford Administration, INS General Counsel Sam Bernsen was serving in the position as a “rehired annuitant.” That meant technically he had already retired and was continuing to serve on a special arrangement. The new Administration “finalized” Sam’s retirement and appointed a new General Counsel, David Crosland, a civil rights attorney from Atlanta, Georgia with ties to the “Georgia Mafia” that surrounded Carter and his first Attorney General, former Fifth Circuit Judge Griffin Bell. 

Dave had once worked in the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ under then AG Ramsey Clark. After Carter left office, Dave remained in the immigration field for the rest of his life. Indeed, we were both Immigration Judges at the Arlington Immigration Court, and he was still on the bench at the Baltimore Immigration Court at the time of his death in 2022.

Shortly after Dave’s appointment as General Counsel, the then Deputy General Counsel, Ralph Farb was elevated to the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”). I became Dave Crosland’s Deputy.

Sam Bernsen, however, landed on his feet. Although he had 40+ years of Government service, he was relatively young, perhaps 57, having begun his career as a messenger at Ellis Island in his late teens. After a short period of private practice with Larry Latif (who later was my law partner at Jones Day), he became a name and managing partner of the Washington, D.C. Office of Fragomen, Del Rey, and Bernsen, a leading immigration “boutique.” I later succeeded him in that position in 1992. Immigration is a small world!

There was an old anecdote (perhaps apocryphal) that Judge Bell once said that at INS, “Castillo represented the White House, Deputy Commissioner Mario Noto represented House Judiciary Chair Peter Rodino, Special Assistant to the Commissioner David Dixon represented Senate Judiciary Chair Jim Eastland, and Crosland represents me!”

Ben Civiletti Succeeds Judge Griffin Bell as AG

Judge Bell eventually gave way to Attorney General Ben Civiletti in 1979. Among the many “Special Assistants” working for AG Civiletti was young Harvard Law grad, Merrick Garland. His meteoric career trajectory occasionally crossed paths with my role at INS. I remember him from those days as a smart, serious, ambitious, earnest guy. 

Also in 1979, Leonel Castillo resigned as Commissioner and returned to Houston to run for Mayor. But, his tenure at INS proved no help. He finished third in that race and was unsuccessful in three additional bids for local elective office. INS proved to be a political “career killer” rather than a “career enhancer.” 

Meanwhile, no successor to Castillo as Commissioner was ever nominated and confirmed during the Carter Administration. My “boss,” David Crosland became the Acting Commissioner of INS, and I became the Acting General Counsel, a situation that continued for the balance of the Carter Administration. 

For me, the Carter Administration was one of the formative periods of my legal career. At 31, I became the top legal official at INS which involved running the nationwide legal program, advising the Acting Commissioner and other senior managers at INS, and also being the “point person” for Immigration litigation, legislation, and other issues with the Attorney General, the Solicitor General, and heads of other DOJ divisions and offices. 

I remember once returning to my office after a long day of meetings to be handed a stack of yellow message slips (no voice mail or e-mail in those days) by our receptionist. One thing that I always did at the OGC and that served me well thereafter was to faithfully return all phone calls and answer all my personal correspondence. 

The receptionist told me in an excited voice that  “Mr. Letti’s” office had been trying to get ahold of me all day, and that I had to return that call first! I puzzled over who “Mr. Letti” was, because it didn’t ring a bell, offhand. “You know Mr. Letti,” said the receptionist, “Mr. Benson Letti, (as she had written on the message slip), said it was very important.” Finally, the light bulb went off, “Ah, you mean Ben Civiletti, the Attorney General,” said I. Yes, said the receptionist, “THAT Mr. Letti.” 

During 1979, I was involved in a notable incident involving Lyudmila Vlasova , a star Russian ballerina, in a plane halted on the tarmac at JFK. The issue was whether she was leaving the U.S. of her own volition, as her husband, Aleksandr Godunov, also a dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet, had defected and sought asylum in the U.S. (In a strange time warp, in those days a Dem Administration was actually more concerned about individuals being denied their right to seek asylum here than in “deterring” legal asylum seekers from “darkening our doors!”)

Part of the “Plan B” hatched for determining her situation was to designate AG Civiletti as an “Immigration Officer” authorized to detain and examine foreign nationals. I duly drafted up a legal document so designating the A.G. Fortunately, the situation was resolved (she voluntarily departed the U.S.) without resorting to Plan B. Several weeks later, I received the “appointment document” back by mail with a handwritten note by AG Civiletti that said something like: “With thanks and great relief it wasn’t needed!” The 1985 movie “Flight 222” was loosely based upon this incident.

Four Issues That Changed U.S. Immigration: The Refugee Act of 1980; The Cuban Boatlift; The Iranian Hostage Crisis; The INS Attorney Reorganization

Four issues stand out for me from the Carter years. The first was the enactment of the Refugee of 1980. It was the first codification and legal affirmation of our International obligations to refugees and asylum seekers under the United Nations Convention and 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. 

It gave me a chance to work closely with two of my contemporaries in the Administration who later went on to become “intellectual giants” in the field of human rights. One was David A. Martin, then Special Assistant to Patt Derian, the Assistant Secretary for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs at the State Department. David went on to become a famous Professor at UVA Law, co-author of leading textbooks, the General Counsel of INS in the Clinton Administration, and Principal Deputy General Counsel of DHS during the Obama Administration (then DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano was his student at UVA Law).

The other was Alex Aleinikoff, then an attorney in the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel. Alex also went on to become a professor, co-author (with David Martin) of textbooks, an INS Senior Executive, Dean of Georgetown Law, and Deputy UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

I also worked closely with Committee staff in Congress, particularly the late Jerry Tinker who was Senator Kennedy’s staffer on the Senate Judiciary Committee. I can still remember getting a phone call one evening from Jerry saying “Schmidt, I’m in a jam. Could you draft me some legislative history for the Refugee Bill and send it over. You know what the Senator wants.” It was sort of a “hinky” request, given the state of relations between the Carter White House and Senator Kennedy. But, I figured it would be “career preserving” to give Jerry a  hand, without mentioning it to anyone else. 

A second major event, unfortunately coinciding the the enactment of the Refugee Act of 1980, was the so-called Mariel Boatlift. INS hadn’t had time to fully implement that Act before we were confronted with another in a long line of “refugee crises.” This one involved Castro’s unexpectedly and temporarily “opening” some ports in Cuba and a flotilla of small boats going from Florida to pick up friends and relatives. 

We had to call upon FEMA — who famously introduced themselves as the “Masters of Disaster” — and the Orange Bowl became the initial “processing center” for new arrivals. The vast majority of those who came were quickly screened and released into the community. They eventually were able to get green cards, without applying under the Refugee Act, under the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966.

However, there was a proportionately small, yet highly visible, group of individuals who had been released from Cuban jails, obviously without documentation of the crimes for which they had been imprisoned. They were processed for possible exclusion and deportation, which invoked the asylum and withholding of removal provisions of the new Refugee Act.

Since INS had no suitable housing for “high risk” criminals, we had to enter agreements with the Bureau of Prisons to reopen some “dormant, high-security facilities” — like the Atlanta Penitentiary and McNeil Island Penitentiary in the State of Washington. Additionally, we were allowed to use military bases such as Fort Chaffee, Arkansas; Fort McCoy, Wisconsin; Fort Drum, New York, and Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania to detain those suspected of criminal activity who required Immigration Court hearings. The then “Boy Governor” of Arkansas, Bill Clinton, blamed well-publicized escapes from Fort Chaffee as a factor leading to his re-election defeat.

We also lacked sufficient Immigration Judges in those locations to hear the cases. That required an emergency effort to assemble and train a corps of “Temporary Immigration Judges” from the ranks of active and retired Administrative Law Judges and DOJ Attorneys.

The Cuban Boatlift got the Refugee Act of 1980 off to a rocky start. Many of the initial “precedents” on asylum issued by the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) involved Cuban applicants with criminal records, not the most sympathetic group. That, combined with some sensationalist dramatic portrayals of criminals among the arrivals, such as the movie “Scarface,” starring Al Pacino, hardened attitudes towards refugees generally, while also producing some relatively restrictive initial interpretations of the Act. 

Additionally, the Boatlift ushered in an era of mass long-term immigration detention. While the Boatlift eventually subsided, the phenomenon of large-scale immigration detention has continued to grow over the years. It has become a controversial “staple” of U.S. immigration enforcement and “deterrence.” It has been used, in some form or another, by all Administrations since Carter.

The “Carter experience” also hardened views toward large-scale migration in the Executive Branch, as both politicos and bureaucrats vowed “never again!” During the Reagan Administration, the new and oft-criticized device of “high seas interdiction” was used to stop further vessels from Cuba and Haiti from even reaching the U.S. and invoking the Refugee Act protections. Some individuals were brought to the U.S. after preliminary screening onboard Coast Guard vessels. But, most were returned without hearings (Haitians) or sent to the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (Cubans).  

A third pivotal event, which also played a role in the demise of President Carter, was the so-called “Iranian Hostage Crisis.” Most of the “action and drama” took place in and around the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. But, there was also a “domestic component.”

Then Attorney General Griffin Bell was shocked to learn that the INS at that time had no national database on the number, location, and status of Iranian students studying in the U.S. This led to new efforts and regulations to require all such Iranian students to “register” with the INS and imposed penalties, including deportation, on those who failed to do so or committed crimes in the U.S. — even if those crimes in and of themselves were not specified as grounds of deportation.

While the frustration and outrage of Administration officials was quite understandable, the whole exercise was was somewhat like “kicking the cat after a bad day at the office.” Almost all the Iranians studying in the U.S. at that time were supporters of the deposed Shah’s U.S.-backed government. The “radicals” who were holding hostages in the Embassy weren’t anywhere near the U.S. 

Most of the enforcement efforts against Iranians in the U.S. became embroiled in never-ending litigation. However, the concept of “special registrations” for groups of non-immigrants, particularly from Middle Eastern countries, became part of the “immigration regulation toolbox.” It was repeated after “9-11” and is also one of the antecedents to Trump’s so-called “Muslim ban.”

Finally, my fourth main event  from the Carter Administration was “phase one” of the INS attorney reorganization, which created the Chief Legal Officer for each INS district in the U.S. Started under General Counsel/Acting Commissioner Dave Crosland, the second phase of the reorganization was completed during the Reagan Administration under the leadership of General Counsel Maurice C. “Iron Mike” Inman, Jr. Along the way, Mike changed the name from “Chief Legal Officer” to “District Counsel.” They were the forerunners of today’s “full service” Offices of Chief Counsel at ICE, an integral part of DHS’s operations.

Prior to Crosland and me, the INS Trial Attorneys, although selected by and under the “program management” of the General Counsel, worked for the District Directors, their clients, and were supervised and evaluated by them. Additionally, an even larger group of INS attorneys, Naturalization Examiners, also worked for the District Director, although they were selected and under the program direction of the Assistant Commissioner for Naturalization in the Central Office.

Using a plan developed by then Regional Counsel for the West, Bill Odencrantz, we reorganized the program along the DOJ’s traditional “attorney-client” model to place assignment, supervision, and evaluation of all INS attorneys under the General Counsel. This also gave the General Counsel, in consultation with the Assistant Commissioner, authority to use legal resources in any district “across programs” when needs dictated. 

As you might expect, this move was met with fierce opposition from District Directors, Regional Commissioners, and some naturalization attorneys. As the “point person” for the reorganization, I became the recipient of some of the most vehement and vocal objections.

During “phase two,” completed during Mike Inman’s tenure, the attorneys were moved out of the naturalization program into the Offices of District Counsel and replaced with non-attorney examiners in the naturalization program, which, in turn, merged with the overall adjudications program. 

This is much the way these programs operate today within DHS, with the legal program being part of ICE and the naturalization function part of USCIS. It would have been hard to create the DHS, with all its legal issues, litigation, and complexities, without the “groundwork” being laid during the Carter Administration, and later the Reagan Administration, for a modern, quasi-independent legal program reporting to the ICE Principal Legal Advisor.   

Those Were The Days, My Friend

Looking back, I appreciate the seriousness and integrity with which President Carter and those around him took governing. (I also got frequent calls from Vice President Mondale’s office about immigration issues.) I will always remember the Carter years as a time of both excitement and professional growth. I started as one of a handful of attorneys on the staff of the INS General Counsel and ended up running the INS’s nationwide legal program and being the agency’s top lawyer, albeit in an acting capacity while Dave Crosland was the Acting Commissioner. 

I appreciated and learned from the opportunities that came my way. I particularly enjoyed helping to select, form, organize, and work with the many outstanding attorneys, agents, and staff at INS and DOJ, a number of whom remained my friends and sometimes became colleagues again as my career continued into the Reagan Administration and eventually, beyond INS. The “team approach” to the law and problem-solving that I developed and honed during the Carter years stayed with me and became key to the rest of my career.

(12-29-24)