🗽⚖️ ATTENTION NDPA: FIGHT THE “NEW AMERICAN GULAG” IN RICHMOND, VA. — Legal Aid Justice Center Looking For Bilingual Attorney!

https://www.justice4all.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Bilingual-Immigration-Attorney-Richmond-2.pdf

About the Legal Aid Justice Center

BILINGUAL IMMIGRATION ATTORNEY Legal Aid Justice Center Richmond, VA

The Legal Aid Justice Center is a nationally recognized nonprofit organization that partners with communities and clients to achieve justice by dismantling the systems that create and perpetuate poverty. Justice means racial justice, economic justice, and social justice. From its offices in Charlottesville, Richmond, Petersburg, and Falls Church, LAJC is a fierce advocate for low-income clients and communities in Virginia.

Founded in 1967, LAJC provides services under four key program areas: Civil Rights & Racial Justice, Economic Justice, Youth Justice, and Immigrant Advocacy. LAJC boldly tackles issues of systemic injustice and aims to raise public and policymaker awareness of some of the most pressing challenges facing low-income Virginia residents. For more information, visit www.justice4all.org.

Legal Aid Justice Center seeks a Bilingual (Spanish-English) Immigration Attorney for our Richmond office, serving Richmond and the surrounding communities. The attorney will represent individual clients, with a focus on creative forms of removal defense. The attorney will partner with a community organizer to meet the needs of the immigrant community, and advocate for pro-immigrant policies at the local and state level, with a special focus on disentangling local and state government and law enforcement from federal immigration enforcement. The attorney will create and supervise a robust pro bono project, and advocate for stakeholders (including local governments) to support immigration legal services. The attorney will provide regular know-your-rights and immigration update clinics, in Spanish and English, to community members and to service providers.

• Strong commitment to social, economic, and racial justice

• Strong commitment to immigrants’ rights

• Experience working directly with immigrant community members

• Prior experience handling immigration cases, whether professionally or through a law

school clinic

• A sufficient level of Spanish fluency to interview and counsel clients in Spanish without

the assistance of an interpreter

• An ability to multi-task and balance a variety of responsibilities

Just in the past year, we permanently

repealed Virginia’s driver’s license suspension for court debt scheme, secured an injunction slashing the number of immigrants detained by ICE at the largest detention center in the Mid- Atlantic and passed a law giving Virginia oversight authority, won the nation’s first COVID- specific, statewide, and enforceable workplace safety standards, passed legislation enabling communities to set up civilian oversight for law enforcement, and decriminalized school-based disorderly conduct, which was a leading contributor to the school-to-prison pipeline,

especially for Black girls.

About the Position

Required Qualifications

123 E. Broad Street, Richmond, VA 23219 • (804) 643-1086 237 North Sycamore Street, Petersburg, VA 23803 • (804) 862-2205

6066 Leesburg Pike, Suite 520, Falls Church, VA 22041 • (703) 778-3450 1000 Preston Avenue, Suite A, Charlottesville, VA 22903 • (434) 977-0553

Preferred Qualifications

Location Salary Benefits

• Membership in the Virginia bar, confirmed eligibility to waive in, or willingness to sit for the February 2022 Virginia bar (LAJC provides bar study leave and application fees)

This role will be based in our Richmond office. Occasional travel between offices will be required.

Salary range is $55,000 to $70,000 based on years of relevant experience and LAJC’s formal salary scale.

Our mission is compelling, and our team members are passionate about their work, and so we recognize the need to provide generous benefits and encourage rest and a healthy work environment. For example, we provide:

• Generous paid time off every year, including 3 to 6 weeks of vacation, 12 days of health leave, 6 weeks parental leave, and 14 holidays (not including bonus holidays/rest days allocated as needed)

• 100% employer paid health, dental, and vision insurance, plus excellent family insurance with annual max of $2,400 premium contribution to LAJC-sponsored health plan

• 403(b) retirement plan with 4% employer contribution (no required match)

• Strong commitment to professional development

• Full mileage reimbursement at IRS rates

• Law school loan repayment assistance and full reimbursement for VA bar and CLE

expenses

• Relocation package

Email a cover letter, resume, a legal writing sample, and three references to Simon Sandoval- Moshenberg at hiring@justice4all.org. If you’re able, please submit your application as a single PDF titled “[date submitted in yyyy.mm.dd format][last name][first name][position sought].” Please include “Richmond Bilingual Immigration Attorney” in the email subject.

an environment that enables staff and clients to feel empowered, valued, respected, and safe. In reviewing applications, we look for evidence

that applicants have experience and/or thoughtfulness in working with traditionally marginalized populations.

Application Instructions

The Legal Aid Justice Center is an equal opportunity employer, committed to inclusive hiring and

dedicated to diversity in our work and staff. We strongly encourage candidates of all identities,

experiences, and communities to apply. The Legal Aid Justice Center is committed to strengthening the

voices of our low-income clients, working in collaboration with community partners, and rooting out

the inequities that keep people in poverty. We strive to take on the issues that have broad impact on

our client communities and to be responsive to client input. Recognizing the particular impact of

racism on our clients and staff, we devote special attention to dismantling racial injustice. All

applicants must be dedicated to working in and sustaining clients to feel empowered, valued, respected, and safe. In reviewing applications, we look for evidence

that applicants have experience and/or thoughtfulness in working with traditionally marginalized populations.

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The Richmond Adjudication Center for DHS detainees was established by the Trump regime and has been continued by AG Garland over the unanimous and vigorous objections of advocacy groups. The Government uses “civil” immigration detention and “captive courts” embedded in these “civil prisons” to coerce individuals into abandoning claims, restrict access to counsel, and inhibit the proper preparation and documentation of cases. The latter is particularly egregious, given the intentionally hypertechnical and unnecessarily complicated administrative requirements developed by the BIA in an overt effort to restrict asylum access.

One on the “unwritten assumptions” is that detention will make it easier for DHS and DOJ to railroad unrepresented migrants, thereby increasing “productivity” and “weaponizing” the Immigration Courts as a deterrent to individuals’ asserting their legal rights. It also helps create bogus and distorted statistics about the merits of Immigration Court cases.

A great way of combatting this outrageous and abusive Government “strategy” is by vigorously representing individuals in detention. This not only saves lives, but it also thwarts the Government’s coercive and abusive strategy.

Additionally, representation exposes the grossly substandard conditions that prevail in most DHS detention facilities and the fiction that mass detention, without fair and impartial individualized determinations, serves a legitimate governmental purpose.

Positions like this will be in the forefront of re-establishing the rule of law and achieving racial justice for all in the U.S.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever! More “New American Gulag,” never!

PWS

09-22-21

GROUND-BREAKING PROFESSSOR GABRIELA LEON-PEREZ BRINGS THE FULL IMMIGRATION STORY TO UNDERGRADUATES @ VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY (“VCU”) IN RICHMOND, VIRGINIA – Educating America For a Better Future For Everyone By Understanding The Critical Importance Of Immigrants & Social Justice!

I Speak To Professor Gabriela Leon-Perez’s Class @ VCU, Professor Perez on my left, Richmond Attorney Pablo Fantl on my right
Feb. 20, 2020

From VCU News:

Immigration course provides VCU students with a better understanding of a national issue

The sociology course, taught by Gabriela León-Pérez, examines the history of immigration and how the current debate ties to the past.

Gabriela León-Pérez’s class, Immigration and American Society, provides students with a more nuanced understanding of the current immigration debate. (Getty Images)

By James Shea

University Public Affairs

https://news.vcu.edu/article/Immigration_course_provides_VCU_students_with_a_better_understanding

Wednesday, March 11, 2020

Immigration has always been a controversial topic in the United States. In the late 19th century, over 2 million Irish immigrated to the U.S. Most were Catholic and that created conflict with the largely Protestant U.S. population. The first comprehensive immigration law, the U.S. Immigration Act of 1882, contained provisions specifically designed to discourage European immigrants.

“This is not the first time the country has had anti-immigration policies, but the scapegoat group has changed over time,” said Gabriela León-Pérez, Ph.D., an assistant professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University who studies immigration policy.

León-Pérez wanted to give her students an understanding of the current immigration debate so she developed a course called Immigration and American Society, which covers the history of immigration and immigration policy and examines where the current debate fits into the past.

“It presents students with a context on the state of immigration today,” León-Pérez said. “A lot of people have opinions about immigration but most of them are not based on facts.”

A class to cut through the noise

When designing the course, León-Pérez wanted to be able to address current events in the news. The course uses some textbooks, but it also incorporates podcasts and blogs. The goal is to have the discussion revolve around the current state of the immigration debate.

“It definitely evolves based on current events,” León-Pérez said. “The first time I taught it was 2018, and there have been a lot of changes since then.”

John Lees, a psychology major, believes the class has given him a better understanding of immigration history. The class specifically looks at the immigration policies of presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Lees believes he now has a well-rounded perspective on the subject.

Yessica Flores, who is majoring in psychology and sociology, signed up for the class because she hears a lot of information about the subject and knew a class would help her cut through the noise.

“We are living in a world where the media is everywhere; where false news is frequent news,” Flores said. “I enrolled in the course with hopes of becoming educated in this area to help educate, inform and encourage others to better understand the reality of immigration within American society.”

As part of the class, León-Pérez teaches students how to find accurate information about immigration. The students learn to access official government data and other reliable sources. (Kevin Morley, University Marketing)

At the start of the class, León-Pérez teaches students how to find accurate information about immigration. The students learn to access official government data and other reliable sources.

“I try to present both sides of the debate,” León-Pérez said. “I want the students to have a well-rounded understanding of immigration and the debate. I don’t want them to shut down a side of the debate.”

Many students, she has observed, only understand the immigration debate from a particular vantage point. The class is a “light bulb” moment for them, and they realize that immigration is a complicated and nuanced topic. In general, immigration often comes down to economics, León-Pérez said. People against immigration are worried that new residents will take jobs, but people who support immigration say immigrants will do the type of work that many residents will not. Immigrants are looking for opportunity.

“Immigrants tend to complement American workers,” León-Pérez said. “Immigrants tend to work at lower-skilled jobs.”

Protecting due process

León-Pérez brings in guest speakers to enhance the curriculum. In February, she invited retired immigration judge Paul Schmidt. In previous semesters, León-Pérez has invited an immigration attorney as a guest speaker. This time, she wanted students to get the perspective of the person on the other side of the bench.

Schmidt served as an immigration judge from 2003 until he retired in 2016. Before that, he served on the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals. Since retiring, he has been talking about the state of the immigration courts and the lack of due process given to asylum seekers.

“The immigration courts are going through an existential crisis,” Schmidt told the class.

He understands that people have different opinions about immigration, but the courts must follow a process that protects the due process rights of asylum seekers, he said. The court functions as a division of the Department of Justice and Schmidt believes it is not given the resources to function properly. Everyone within the justice system should share a common interest in seeing the courts functioning in a fair and equitable way, Schmidt said.

Retired immigration judge Paul Schmidt speaks to León-Pérez’s class. (Kevin Morley, University Marketing)

“The immigration court now is structured in such a way that it is nothing more than a whistle stop on the road to deportation,” he said.

Schmidt offered several suggestions to the students on ways to help people who are going through the immigration courts. Immigrants, unlike citizens, are not required to have an attorney. Many do not understand the immigration process. Schmidt said students could volunteer and help them navigate the complex immigration system in the United States.

“You can join the new due process army,” Schmidt said.

Flores said she has found the class to be informative, and has enjoyed the guest lecturers. The class has not necessarily changed her views about the subject but has motivated her to become more involved.

“I have always disliked the way the immigration cases have been handled, especially the ones involving immigrant children,” Flores said. “I must say that my feelings toward being more involved in promoting change and awareness have changed in the sense that I have developed a much greater interest in getting more involved in the form of a future career.”

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And, here’s some information about one of America’s most talented and innovative professors, Dr. Gabriela Leon-Perez, who brings her rich background and scholarly research combined with innovative “student-centered, real life” teaching methods to perhaps the most important and “undertaught” subject in undergraduate, secondary, elementary, and even adult education today! Her teaching incorporates fairness, scholarship, timeliness, teamwork, respect, and lots of self-direction by the students themselves.

Professor Gabriela Leon-Perez — Gabriela Leon-Perez
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Virginia Commonwealth University

https://sociology.vcu.edu/people/faculty/leon-perez.html

Gabriela León-Pérez, Ph.D.

Education

2018 Ph.D. in Sociology, Vanderbilt University

2015 M.A. in Sociology, Vanderbilt University

2012 M.A. in Sociology, Texas A&M International University

Teaching Areas

Research Methods, Immigration, Health Disparities

Research Interests

International Migration, Internal Migration, Mexico-US Migration, Immigrant Health, Health Disparities

Biography

Gabriela León-Pérez is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her research focuses on Mexican internal and international migration, the experiences of immigrants in the United States, and health disparities.

The underlying goal of her research agenda is to clarify the role of social, structural, and contextual factors in creating health and social inequalities, as well as to identify resources that improve the outcomes of immigrants and other marginalized populations. In her most recent project, she investigated the health trajectories of return US migrants, internal migrants, and indigenous migrants from Mexico. Other on-going projects focus on Mexican skilled migration to the US and the effects of stress, legal status, and state immigrant policies on the health and well-being of immigrants. You can read more about her current work on her personal website.

Select Publications

León-Pérez, Gabriela. 2019. “Internal Migration and the Health of Indigenous Mexicans: A Longitudinal Study.” SSM-Population Health 8(August).

Donato, Katharine M., Gabriela León-Pérez, Kenneth A. Wallston, and Sunil Kripalani. 2018. “Something Old, Something New: When Gender Matters in the Relationship Between Social Support and Health.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 59(3):352-370.

Young, Maria-Elena, Gabriela León-Pérez, Christine R. Wells, and Steven P. Wallace. 2018. “More Inclusive States, Less Poverty Among Immigrants? An Examination of Poverty, Citizenship Stratification, and State Immigrant Policies.” Population Research and Policy Review 37(2):205-228.

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I’ll lay it on the line. If more Americans, and particularly more potential younger voters, had understood the true role of immigration and refugees in building America’s past and propelling us into an even greater future, and the dangers to them, their classmates, communities, friends, families, and colleagues posed by Trump’s race baiting “Build That Wall” and “Lock Her Up” chants – certainly pages out of the Third Reich and Jim Crow “playbooks,” – then the modest number of additional votes might well have been there to save lives (perhaps those of loved ones) and to preserve our democratic instiutions and justice system from the vicious and corrupt attacks being waged by the Trump regime, its allies, and its enablers.

We could be working together to build a better future for everyone in America, rather than engaged in a desperate struggle to save our nation and our world from authoritarianism, ignorance, wanton cruelty, and environmental and societal degradation. And, unfortunately, the “enablers” include those who don’t agree with Trump but failed to cast a vote for Clinton in the last election. Simple as that. Every vote counts. Elections have consequence. And, defeating Trump and his GOP in November could be our last clear chance to preserve America as a democratic republic!

Following the class, I did a Spanish language radio show with my good friend Pablo Fantl, Esquire, of Richmond, who was kind enough to translate for me.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-12-20

DAHLIA LITHWICK @ SLATE: How Corrupt GOP Minority Rule Is Destroying America! — “ The Republican howls about an unruly minority of socialists and protesters who seek the removal of this president misconstrue the fact that a majority of Americans do not agree to be governed by diktat.”

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/01/richmond-to-impeachment-senate-minority-rule-rules.html

Lithwick writes:

On Monday, Kellyanne Conway responded to a reporter’s question about why the president’s public schedule of events included no function to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr., on a holiday designated to honor him. Conway decided to answer this question by claiming that Dr. King would have hated impeachment: “The president … agrees with many of the things that Dr. Martin Luther King stood for and agreed with for many years, including unity and equality,” she said. “He’s not the one trying to tear the country apart through an impeachment process and a lack of substance that really is very shameful at this point.”

If this claim—that really it’s the impeachment process that’s tearing this nation apart—sounds familiar, it’s because it was also the lament of GOP House members as impeachment unfolded there. Yes, the day before the president’s impeachment trial opens in the Senate, and on the selfsame day Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced rules that will, he hopes, preclude the calling of witnesses, hearing of evidence, and any other indicia of a “trial” in the Senate trial, the GOP has fallen perfectly in line behind the “stop tearing the country apart” argument as its impeachment defense. It’s the new authoritarian’s lament.

“This is a sad day for America,” intoned Ohio Rep. Bill Johnson, as the House debated the articles of impeachment in December, before calling for a moment of silence to memorialize the 63 million Americans who voted for Trump. As Michelle Goldberg noted at the time, “On the surface it seems strange, this constant trumpeting of a vote total that is more than two million less than the total received by Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton. Trump didn’t just lose the popular vote—he lost it by a greater margin than any successful presidential candidate in American history. … But as I watched impeachment unfold, it seemed like something more than that—an assertion of whom Republicans think this country belongs to.” The Republican howls about an unruly minority of socialists and protesters who seek the removal of this president misconstrue the fact that a majority of Americans do not agree to be governed by diktat. A new CNN poll shows that 51 percent of Americans want Trump removed from office, 74 percent of them are closely watching impeachment coverage, and 69 percent want to hear witness testimony. In other words, the majority of America does not consent to authoritarian Senate procedures and rules, and it is not some small faction of illiberal Democrats who are tearing the country apart, as Conway suggests. The majority of Americans are not willing to submit to autocracy, though we will turn to the Senate Tuesday to see if the majority of Americans’ wishes are to be trammeled by Senate Republicans. Spoiler alert: It seems all but inevitable that they will be, which tells you a good deal about how the Senate represents American voters.

The Republican howls about an unruly minority of socialists and protesters who seek the removal of this president misconstrue the fact that a majority of Americans do not agree to be governed by diktat.

If you would like to see another example of what minority rule feels like, kindly turn your attention to the 22,000 people who showed up in Richmond, Virginia, for what is now being described in the media as a “peaceful” march and a triumph of peaceable assembly. Armed with assault-style weapons and body armor, militia members were seen wearing masks and carrying semi-automatic rifles outside the seat of government. The biggest star of the rally—identified by the Washington Post as Brandon Lewis—brandished his .50-caliber Barrett M82A1 rifle, as passersby expressed admiration. “This sends a strong visual message,” Lewis, cradling the firearm and decked out in a helmet and bulletproof vest, told the Post. “The government is not above us. They are us.” The Washington Post clocked another protester wearing full-body camo, with a bulletproof vest, a handgun and an AR-15–style assault rifle. The protesters were overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male and overwhelmingly dedicated to a vision of “peace” that looks like this. They were there to refuse to abide by any democratically passed gun control measures, and they stood outside the state capitol chanting First Amendment–protected threats to oust Virginia’s democratically elected governor. More than 100 counties, cities, and towns in Virginia have declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries and vowed to oppose any new “unconstitutional restrictions” on guns, presumably following the lead of one of Monday’s speakers, a county sheriff who last month promised to “deputize” gun owners if lawmakers continue to push gun control measures. This nullification will be attempted despite the fact that the great majority of Virginia voters actually favor Democratic proposals to limit gun access, a Washington Post–Schar School poll found in October.

Todd Gilbert, the Republican Leader of the Virginia House of Delegates, issued a statement on Jan. 10 after the decision was taken to declare a temporary state of emergency, banning all weapons from the Capitol grounds from Friday at 5 p.m. until Tuesday at 5 p.m. Gilbert’s statement deplored that action as “disgusting and wrong.” The same Todd Gilbert reversed himself on Sunday, issuing a statement opposing protesters who would spread “white supremacist garbage,” hate, civil unrest, or violence, after multiple white supremacists and Nazis were arrested and it became clear that there was at least a possibility of violence at the march. The threat of violence is only as serious as your most recent FBI briefing, it seems. That doesn’t make for a peaceful demonstration—it puts you at the mercy of the armed marchers.

But because there was no violence in the end, we are told, the rally was “peaceful.” As Jim Geraghty at National Review noted smugly, the threatened violence never occurred, which means that the media panic (and apparently that of Todd Gilbert) was overblown. The march was apparently peaceful, he writes, because “perhaps the hateful types decided to stay away.”

Perhaps there were violent people who decided to stay away from Richmond on Monday. But there were also nonviolent people who decided they needed to stay away from Richmond on Monday. As Garrett Epps notes, those who stayed away included many other groups who had equally compelling First Amendment statements to offer:

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence had also planned to assemble and petition for gun-control legislation—as it had done in peaceful competition with gun-rights groups in previous years. This year, because of the threats of armed violence surrounding the gun-rights march, that gun-control demonstration had to be canceled. The delegate from Manassas, Lee Carter, the South’s only socialist legislator, went into hiding because of death threats. Carter had not, in fact, sponsored an anti-gun measure, but gun-rights groups spread disinformation on the internet that he had done so; his life—and his ability to function as a legislator—was endangered.

Pages from the Legislature’s page program were told to stay home. Many legislators asked their staffs to stay away or work from home. The rally forced officials to reschedule the city’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day vigil for the first time in 28 years. New Virginia Majority—one of the largest progressive groups in the commonwealth—postponed its annual MLK Day of Action due to threats from armed racist groups and because “we cannot protect our people from individuals committed to acts of violence.” Mothers Demand Action stayed off the streets and held phone-banking events, and it almost goes without saying that virtually all people of color stayed home. And so a “peaceful” march, as fêted in the media and fêted by those who seek to blur the line between First Amendment speech and Second Amendment threats, will now include in its definition mass marches in which participants are armed with assault weapons, many of whom were also wearing masks. (Only one person in a mask was arrested Monday despite the fact that hundreds were masked. She was unarmed.)

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I have always found ridiculous the GOP’s disingenuous claim that removal of Trump would “disenfranchise 63 million voters,” when more than 71 million voters didn’t vote for him and have basically been dismissed by Trump and the GOP who have pandered almost exclusively to the parochial interests of the minority. Included in the majority who didn’t vote for Trump are the nearly 66 million people who voted for Hillary Clinton.

It’s clear that the GOP won’t remove Trump from office no matter how overwhelming the evidence against him. But, even if he were removed, it would in no way be a “reversal” of the 2016 election.

Trump would be replaced not by Hillary Clinton or any other Democrat, but by his hand-picked GOP toady Mike Pence, who was actually elected with him. So, the most corrupt and lawless GOP President in history would be succeeded by a perhaps somewhat less overtly corrupt GOP politico.

To the extent that Trump voters wanted a regime motivated by White Nationalism, religious intolerance, hate, disenfranchisement of voters of color, intellectual dishonesty, and lots of tax breaks for the wealthy few, Pence wouldn’t disappoint them. It’s possible that Pence wouldn’t be as chummy with authoritarian dictators and wouldn’t publicly treat our allies with contempt and disrespect. He might also cut a deal with the Dems on infrastructure improvements or some other relatively non-controversial topic. And, he seems capable of speaking and writing in complete, largely grammatical sentences. But, Trump voters should be able to live with that, particularly since removal from office wouldn’t remove Trump from Twitter.

PWS

01-23-20

RAY OF HOPE? — 3RD CIR FINDS DUE PROCESS REQUIRES JUDICIAL REVIEW OF DHS ATTEMPTED EXPEDITED REMOVAL OF CHILD GRANTED SIJS STATUS — Issues Preliminary Injunction Against DHS Scofflaws! — Osorio-Martinez v. Attorney General

Osorio-Martinez v. Attorney General, No. 17-2159, June 18, 2008, published

3rd-SIJS3rd-172159p

PANEL: AMBRO, KRAUSE, and SCIRICA, Circuit Judges

OPINION BY:

KEY QUOTE:

Petitioners, four children of Salvadoran and Honduran origin and their mothers, appear before us for a second time to challenge their expedited orders of removal. In Castro v. United States Department of Homeland Security, 835 F.3d 422

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(3d Cir. 2016), cert. denied, 137 S. Ct. 1581 (2017), we held that we lacked jurisdiction to review their claims under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and that, while the Suspension Clause of the Constitution would allow an aggrieved party with sufficient ties to the United States to challenge that lack of jurisdiction, the petitioners’ ties were inadequate because their relationship to the United States amounted only to presence in the country for a few hours before their apprehension by immigration officers. Thus, weaffirmed the District Court’s dismissal of their petition.

Now, two years after their initial detention, Petitioners raise what, at first glance, appear to be the same claims. But upon inspection they differ in a critical respect: The children now have been accorded Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) status—a protective classification designed by Congress to safeguard abused, abandoned, or neglected alien children who are able to meet its rigorous eligibility requirements. The protections afforded to children with SIJ status include an array of statutory and regulatory rights and safeguards, such as eligibility for application of adjustment of status to that of lawful permanent residents (LPR), exemption from various grounds of inadmissibility, and robust procedural protections to ensure their status is not revoked without good cause.

Because we conclude that the INA prohibits our review just as it did in Castro, we are now confronted with a matter of first impression among the Courts of Appeals: Does the jurisdiction-stripping provision of the INA operate as an unconstitutional suspension of the writ of habeas corpus as applied to SIJ designees seeking judicial review of orders of expedited removal? We conclude that it does. As we explained in Castro, only aliens who have developed sufficient

4

connections to this country may invoke our Constitution’sprotections. By virtue of satisfying the eligibility criteria for SIJ status and being accorded by Congress the statutory and due process rights that derive from it, Petitioners here, unlike the petitioners in Castro, meet that standard and therefore may enforce their rights under the Suspension Clause. Accordingly, we will reverse the District Court’s denial of Petitioners’request for injunctive relief.1

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My quick and pointed analysis:

In Castro v. United States Department of Homeland Security, 835 F.3d 422 (3d Cir. 2016), cert. denied, 137 S. Ct. 1581 (2017), this court basically extinguished the Due Process rights of vulnerable asylum seekers in the United States caught up in the clearly, pathetically, and intentionally unfair Expedited Removal System. The court did so by disingenuously running over the statute, international law, and the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, not to mention ordinary human morality.
Think of Castro as a “Modern Day Dred Scott case” and the clueless ivory tower wonks who decided it as mini-versions of the infamous Chief Justice Roger B. Taney.
To reward the Third Circuit for toadying up to Congress and the DHS, the DHS doubled down on their outrageous behavior by stomping on the rights of defenseless children. Even though they themselves had determined these kids should be allowed to remain in the U.S. by approving them for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, they tried to remove them to a country where “it would not be in the child’s best interest to return.” Cruel and stupid. But, hey, we’re dealing with DHS in the age of Trump and Sessions.
Realizing that they were about to look like fools and also to have the blood of children as well as defenseless women on their hands, this panel of judges wrote 55 pages of fairly impenetrable legal gobbledygook hoping to cover up their mistake in Castro.
What they were really trying to say was pretty simple: The U.S. Government is engaging in outrageously arbitrary and capricious treatment of these children in clear violation of the 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and they should knock it off.
But, that doesn’t mean that the court has the courage or backbone to go back and correct Castro. They are just vainly hoping that by firing a limited “warning shot” across the Government’s bow on abuse of SIJS children, they can rein in DHS misconduct. Otherwise, the court might have to accept some responsibility for its own feeble legal reasoning and moral cowardice in Castro.
At least it’s something! And it shows that unlike Trump, Sessions, Nielsen, and the rest of the Administration scofflaws, Article III Judges do at some point have a sense of shame. Just not enough of one to do the right thing all the time.

Many thanks to Roxanne Lea Fantl of Richmond, VA for sending this my way.

PWS

06-23-18

DARA LIND @ VOX NEWS: Is More DACA Litigation On the Way As DHS “Slow Walks” Adjudication of New Applications Filed Before Cutoff?

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/1/17066606/daca-apply-statistics-backlog

Lind writes:

In September, when the Trump administration announced that it was winding down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that protected young unauthorized immigrants who came to the US as children from deportation, tens of thousands of immigrants were waiting to hear back about DACA applications they’d already submitted.

Many of them are still waiting.

According to new statistics from US Citizenship and Immigration Services, at least 20,000 immigrants who applied for the program before the September announcement are still awaiting approval for their applications.

That means that 20,000 or so immigrants have had to live in fear of deportation, and haven’t been able to get a job in the US legally, since September 5, 2017 — when the administration announced no new DACA applications would be accepted — even though they applied for DACA before the cutoff.

The precise number isn’t entirely clear. One USCIS report says there were “approximately” 21,950 initial DACA requests pending as of the end of January; another says there were 25,513. (USCIS was asked for comment Wednesday but was unable to provide it before publication.)

But what’s clear is that the overwhelming majority of those immigrants submitted their applications back when DACA was still in full effect — and have been waiting anxiously to hear back from the government as the program’s future has been called into doubt.

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Read Dara’s complete article at the link. USCIS has plenty of time to send out mindless requests for additional information on what used to be routine business visa petitions, but not enough time and resources to adjudicate these requests? Gimme a break! The “Administration of Scofflaws” does virtually nothing without a court order.

Thanks to Roxanne Lea Fantl of Richmond, VA for alerting me to this item!

PWS

03-12-18

LAUREN MARKHAM IN THE NEW REPUBLIC: Why “Trumpism” Ultimately Will Fail – Those Ignorant of Human History & Unwilling To Learn From It Will Just Keep Repeating The Same Expensive Mistakes – “One tragic lesson of the extra-continentales is that no set of governments, however callous, can solve the migration crisis by closing its doors to refugees seeking shelter. . . . The doors will not hold, and neither will the fences. You can build a wall, but it will not work. Desperate people find a way.”

https://newrepublic.com/article/146919/this-route-doesnt-exist-map

“How efforts to block refugees and asylum-seekers from Europe have only made the global migration crisis more complex and harrowing

By LAUREN MARKHAM

February 26, 2018

By 7 p.m., the sun had set and groups of young men had begun to gather inside a small, nameless restaurant on a narrow street in Tapachula, Mexico. Anywhere else in the city, a hub of transit and commerce about ten miles north of the Guatemalan border, there would be no mistaking that you were in Latin America: The open colonial plaza, with its splaying palms and marimba players, men with megaphones announcing Jesus, and women hawking woven trinkets and small bags of cut fruit suggested as much. But inside the restaurant, the atmosphere was markedly different. The patrons hailed not from Mexico or points due south but from other far-flung and unexpected corners of the globe—India, Pakistan, Eritrea, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Congo. Men, and all of the diners were men, gathered around tables, eating not Mexican or Central American fare but steaming plates of beef curry, yellow lentils, and blistered rounds of chapati. The restaurant’s proprietor, a stern, stocky Bangladeshi man in his thirties named Sadek, circulated among the diners. He stopped at one table of South Asian men and spoke to them in Hindi about how much they owed him for the items he’d collected on their tab. The waitress, patiently taking orders and maneuvering among the crowds of men, was the only Spanish speaker in the room.

Outside, dozens of other such men, travelers from around the world, mingled on the avenue. They reclined against the walls of restaurants and smoked cigarettes on the street-side balconies of cheap hotels. They’d all recently crossed into the country from Guatemala, and most had, until recently, been held in Tapachula’s migrant detention center, Siglo XXI. Just released, they had congregated in this packed migrants’ quarter as they prepared to continue their journeys out of Mexico and into the United States. They had traveled a great distance already: a transatlantic journey by airplane or ship to Brazil; by car, bus, or on foot to Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia; through Panama, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua; on to Honduras, Guatemala, and into Mexico. Again and again, I heard their itinerary repeated in an almost metronomic cadence, each country a link in a daunting, dangerous chain. They’d crossed oceans and continents; slogged through jungles and city slums; braved detention centers and robberies; and they were now, after many months, or even longer, tantalizingly close to their final goal of the United States and refugee status.

Police in Tapachula, a Mexican city used as a waypoint for migrants known as *extra-continentales*, patrol past a Cameroonian traveler (in a striped shirt).

They are the extreme outliers of a global migration crisis of enormous scale. Today, more than 65 million people around the world have been forced from their homes—a higher number than ever recorded, as people flee war, political upheaval, extreme poverty, natural disasters, and the impacts of climate change. Since 2014, nearly 2 million migrants have crossed into Europe by sea, typically landing in Italy or Greece. They hail from dozens of countries, but most are from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Nigeria—countries struggling with war, political repression, climate change, and endemic poverty.

Their passage to supposed safety, which takes them across Libya and the Sinai, as well as the Mediterranean, has become increasingly perilous. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, nearly 150,000 people crossed the Mediterranean in 2017. More than 3,000 are believed to have drowned. Stories of detention in Libya, as well as physical and sexual abuse, are commonplace among those who manage to make it to Europe. A recent CNN report depicted a Libyan slave auction, where people were being sold for as little as $400. Even the lucky ones who wash up on Europe’s shores may end up stuck for years in transit camps and detention centers in the south of the continent, in some cases only in the end to be deported. In 2013, in an effort to curb migration and ease the burden of migrants within its borders, the European Union began ramping up deportations. In 2016, nearly 500,000 people were deported from Europe.

Globally, more than 65 million people have currently been forced from their homes—a higher number than ever recorded.

While the global drivers of migration have not subsided—devastation in Syria and Afghanistan, political repression in parts of sub-Saharan Africa—200,000 fewer migrants attempted to cross into Europe in 2017 than the year before. In response to the migrant crisis, European countries have sent strong messages that newcomers are no longer welcome; they’ve built fences to stop refugees from crossing their borders and elected far-right politicians with staunchly anti-immigrant messages. Meanwhile, most asylum cases are stalled in overburdened court systems, with slim prospects for any near-term resolution, which leaves many migrants stuck in the wicked limbo of a squalid, under-resourced refugee camp or austere detention facility. Today, European authorities have stiffened their resistance not only to new arrivals, but to the hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers who arrived years before and remain in an eerie liminal zone: forbidden to live or work freely in Europe and unwilling, or often unable, to go home.

Because of the high risks of crossing and the low odds of being permitted to stay, more and more would-be asylum-seekers are now forgoing Europe, choosing instead to chance the journey through the Americas that brings them to Sadek’s restaurant in Tapachula. Each year, thousands of migrants from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia make their way to South America and then move northward, bound for the United States—and their numbers have been increasing steadily. It’s impossible to know how many migrants from outside the Americas begin the journey and do not make it to the United States, or how many make it to the country and slip through undetected. But the number of “irregular migrants”—they’re called extra-continentales in Tapachula—apprehended on the U.S. side of the border with Mexico has tripled since 2010.

They remain a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands of Mexicans and Central Americans crossing into the United States. But it is a hastening trickle that may well become a flood. “These ‘extra-continental’ migrants will probably increase,” said Roeland De Wilde, chief of mission for the International Organization for Migrationin Costa Rica, “given the increased difficulties in entering Europe, relative ease of entry in some South American countries, and smugglers’ increased organization across continents.”

A migrant from Bangladesh, Sadek (in a red shirt) is part restaurateur, part migratory middleman. He can help a traveler with a good meal—or a good travel agent or immigration attorney.

One tragic lesson of the extra-continentales is that no set of governments, however callous, can solve the migration crisis by closing its doors to refugees seeking shelter. All Europe has done is redirect the flow of vulnerable humanity, fostering the development of a global superhighway to move people over this great distance. The doors will not hold, and neither will the fences. You can build a wall, but it will not work. Desperate people find a way.

“Cette route,” a French-speaking man from Cameroon told me, one sweltering afternoon in Tapachula on the breezeless balcony of a hotel frequented by irregular migrants, “n’existe pas sur le map.” This route doesn’t exist on the map.”

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

Read Lauren’s much longer complete article at the above link. It’s one of the most incisive treatments of the worldwide migration phenomenon that I have seen recently. I highly recommend it.

Thanks to dedicated “Courtsider” Roxanne Lea Fantl of Richmond, VA for sending this item my way!

Shortly after I arrived at the Arlington Immigration Court, one of my wonderful colleagues told me “Paul, desperate people do desperate things. Don’t take it personally, and don’t blame them. We just do our jobs, as best we can under the circumstances.” Good advice, to be sure!

We can diminish ourselves as a nation, but that won’t stop human migration!

PWS

03-02-18

PROFESSOR ERIC S. YELLEN IN WASHPOST: TRUMP & GOP’S MOST OUTRAGEOUS WHITE NATIONALIST RACIST PROPOSAL TO DESTROY AMERICA MIGHT NOT EVEN HAVE BEEN HIS RESTRICTIONIST IMMIGRATION PLAN — DESTROYING THE CAREER CIVIL SERVICE PROMISES RETURN TO CORRUPT POLITICAL SPOILS SYSTEM WE ABANDONED NEARLY 150 YEARS AGO! — “Calls for government accountability have long merged racism and anti-government rhetoric but have traditionally stopped short of resurrecting the spoils system.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/02/05/the-corrupt-racist-proposal-from-the-state-of-the-union-address-that-everyone-missed/

Yellen writes:

“President Trump continued his efforts to drive the United States back to the 19th century during his State of the Union address last week.

Standing in front of a divided Congress, with possible obstruction charges looming over him and facing governance struggles produced by his ineffective leadership, the president sought to undermine a 135-year-old law protecting federal civil servants from the whims of tyrants and hacks. “I call on the Congress to empower every Cabinet secretary with the authority to reward good workers — and to remove federal employees who undermine the public trust or fail the American people,” he said.

While this plea sounds sensible, it actually represents a historic threat to the U.S. government and to some of its most vulnerable citizens. Recognizing that threat requires understanding two crucial and related pieces of context — first, how the law Trump seeks to dissolve came into being, and second, how the effort to undermine it fits into a larger pattern of racist ideas driving the Trump administration’s actions.

Why can’t a Cabinet secretary simply fire federal employees? Before 1883, they did just that on a regular basis. Federal employees came and went on the orders of political appointees with each electoral cycle. Every four years, federal workers sat waiting with bags packed to find out if their party would hold on to power and they onto their livelihoods.

Claiming these spoils of victory enabled a president and his Cabinet secretaries to hand out high-paying, desirable jobs to political supporters. Abraham Lincoln famously — or infamously — cleaned house in 1861 to reward his new political party whose members had not tasted federal salaries since the collapse of the Whig party a decade earlier.

But in the 1870s, consistency and competence in the federal bureaucracy became more important as the nation’s political and commercial life grew more complex. Americans became increasingly aware of political corruption (see: the Grant administration) and its drag on government and commercial efficiency. When, in July 1881, President James A. Garfield was assassinated by disgruntled office seeker Charles Guiteau, the push for reform gained enough momentum to force Congress to rein in the patronage system.

The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883 cost its namesake, Sen. George H. Pendleton (Ohio), his job in a political backlash against the new anti-spoils system. Nevertheless, the Pendleton Act was a major step forward for good government, and over the next quarter-century the majority of ordinary and largely essential civil service positions became disconnected from political machinations, filled instead through a standard set of hiring practices and exams, and protected from arbitrary firing.

The system was never perfect, and political affiliation has continued to matter for employment prospects in Washington right up through the present. Still, today the U.S. government does have something resembling what political scientists call an “autonomous” civil service — that is, a federal bureaucracy sheltered from political winds.

The result is a more stable and experienced government workforce, a Congress that gets accurate reports from its research bureaus and federal departments that provide a certain level of regulatory consistency for citizens and businesses at home and around the world.

Trump’s upending of decades of civil service protections is not about accountability. Such changes would clearly risk a return to more corrupt and less competent government. Even worse, Trump’s proposal and the rhetoric surrounding it also threaten to undermine a second set of crucial reforms that occurred thanks to the civil rights movement.

During the 1960s, the civil rights movement pushed the government to guarantee racial equality in federal employment. This effort was more successful than attempts to transform the private workforce, largely because of federal training programs, standardized hiring procedures and fixed pay scales that weeded out bias, aggressive anti-discrimination measures and historic mentorship and seniority lines dating to the Johnson administration. Today, African Americans are 30 percent more likely to work in civil service than white Americans. Black men and women, just 13 percent of the U.S. population and with an unemployment rate double that of white Americans, make up about 18 percent of the federal workforce.

Over the past 30 years, conservative valorization of “market solutions” has been accompanied by deeply racialized notions of government inefficiency that aims to undermine these civil rights achievements by invoking the image of a wasteful, corrupt public workforce — one viewed by many Americans as dominated by African Americans. Commentator Pat Buchanan, for example, claimed that federal offices under the Obama administration operated according to a “racial spoils system.” For Buchanan and many others, the drive for a leaner government merges with a racist suspicion of black workers — what they see as the most rotten part of the bureaucracy.

Moreover, the president’s attack on the stability of government jobs comes at a rough time for public servants, who have been battered by austerity measures that have made jobs scarcer.

These measures have also deepened the racial disparity in the public workforce, which, along with the growing racial wealth gap that deprives nonwhite Americans of stability and mobility, transforms Trump’s assault on the Pendleton Act from merely historically ignorant and potentially corrupt into something more. It becomes a nod to the same racist worldview that produces the profound suspicion of people of color that has defined much of Trump’s political life.

Continuous conflation of blackness and wastefulness in American governance, a conflation pushed by writers and politicians like Buchanan and Trump, marks African Americans as incapable of earning “the public’s trust” through good governance, a stain that persists into today’s politics, from assumptions of black voting malfeasance to questions about President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

And that returns us to Trump’s rise to the presidency. Calls for government accountability have long merged racism and anti-government rhetoric but have traditionally stopped short of resurrecting the spoils system. Then again, politicians have traditionally veiled their positions in generous and moderately realistic visions of humanity to maintain moral ground and the capacity to govern. In his latest call for the gutting of civil service reforms, Trump seems hellbent on surrendering both.

Eric S. Yellin is an associate professor at the University of Richmond and author of “Racism in the Nation’s Service: Government Workers and the Color Line in Woodrow Wilson’s America”

Follow @EricSYellin

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

As I have mentioned several times before, my more than four decades of working in the field of immigration, and my 21 years of judging individual asylum cases have given me an outstanding chance to study virtually all of the current political and government systems in the world.

The difference between the U.S. and the corrupt states that send us refugees is not necessarily the words of our Constitution. Almost all countries have snazzy sounding constitutions that aren’t worth the paper on which they are written.

The main difference is that the U.S. has a basically honest, dedicated, professional, largely apolitical Career Civil Service that works hard to make sure that the words of our Constitution are translated into actions. Most refugee sending countries have a Trump-like “spoils system” where notwithstanding the words of the constitution and laws, the government is corrupt and run primarily for the benefit of the dictator and his relatives and friends or for the ruling class and their cronies.

When the government changes (usually, although not always, violently) the “new” group, even if it once had a “reform platform,” merely views it as “their turn” to loot and pillage the country and the common people for their own benefit and that of their supporters, be it tribe, ethnic group, or party.

The Trump Administration and the “modern GOP” already have all of the earmarks of a kleptocracy. Letting them destroy our Career Civil Service, the “Jewel in the Crown” of American democracy, would lead to the end of our nation as we have known it.

PWS

02-05-18

CHECK OUT MY 17-POINT “IMMIGRATION CONSUMERS’ PROTECTION PROGRAM” (“ICPP”)!

IMMIGRATION CONSUMERS’ PROTECTION PROGRAM (“ICPP”)

BY Paul Wickham Schmidt, United States Immigration Judge (Retired)

Get a lawyer.
Make sure lawyer is real & reputable.
- Confirm bar admission and check complaints online.
- Firm website should confirm that immigration is a primary area of practice.
- Google published immigration cases and check results.
Get it in writing.
- In a language you understand.
If it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t.
Play to tell the truth.
- With lawyer, court, DHS.
Keep your appointments with your lawyer.
- Time is money – YOUR money!
- Lawyer needs complete and accurate information to help.
Show up for all Immigration Court hearings at least 30 minutes early.
- Failing to appear (“FTA”) is the worst possible thing you can do in Immigration Court.
- FTA = Final Order of Removal = Arrest, Detention & Immediate Removal = YOU become “low hanging fruit” for DHS’s “jacked up” removal goals!
Dress the part.
- No cutoffs, t-shirts, flip-flops, halter-tops, crop tops, underwear showing, muscle shirts, flashy distracting jewelry, “rainbow hair,” shirts with (particularly political) slogans, baseball caps in Immigration Court.
- Dress as you would to go to the funeral of someone you respected.
Avoid the “Big Five:”
- Alcohol
- Drugs
- Domestic violence
- Gangs
- Driving violations of all types.
  - OWLs can be a problem and eventually turn into felonies in Virginia!
  - That’s what busses, trains, friends, co-workers, bikes, and strong legs are for.
- Keep all documents – originals and at least one copy.
  - Never give away originals (unless the judge requires it) or your only copy of a document.
- Pay taxes.
- Stay in school or keep employed.
- Ask questions.
  - Insist on an explanation that you understand in a language you understand.
- Don’t sign anything you don’t understand.
  - Make sure everything has been translated for you.
- Comply with all court orders.
- Use available resources:
  - Internet
  - 1-800 number
  - Immigration Court Practice Manual (“ICPM”) (online).
- Don’t forget family and friends.
  - They can be some of your best resources.

(12-10-17)

This outline contains some of the points that I emphasized during my two Spanish-language radio appearances in Richmond, Virginia on Friday, December 8, 2017!

PWS

12-10-17

ATTN “COURTSIDERS” – HEAR ME “LIVE” ON RADIO IN RICHMOND, VA, THE INTERNET, AND FACEBOOK TOMORROW, FRIDAY, DEC. 8, 2017!

I’ll be on two local radio shows hosted by Richmond Attorney Pablo Fantl tomorrow.

Both are am radio stations, and are available online. They also will broadcast on Facebook Live, and will be available in the archives afterwards. I will post links on immigrationcourtside.com once the recordings are available.

From 11:30-12:30 Radio Poder 1380 am http://www.wbtk.com/

From 1:00-2:00 Maxima 1320 am https://maxima1320.com/

These are programs directed at informing the Hispanic community in Richmond. Although I’m not bilingual, Pablo has promised excellent interpretation services. And, gosh knows, I’m pretty used to being translated into many languages from my days on the immigration bench.

Hope you’ll “tune in!”

PWS

12-07-17

TENNESSEE DOES THE RIGHT THING ON “SIJ” JURISDICTION – Will Other States Follow Suit? – Young Lives & Our Own Human Dignity Are At Stake!

https://herstontennesseefamilylaw.com/

The Herston Family Law Group reports:

“Tennessee Has Jurisdiction to Determine Whether Returning to Home Country Is in Child’s Best Interest: In re Domingo C.L.

Facts: Child was born in Guatemala 16 years ago. Child’s father abandoned the family over four years ago. Child’s mother struggled to provide for the family, which forced Child to drop out of school after the sixth grade because his mother was too poor to pay for him to continue. After dropping out of school, Child worked in the cornfields. Child’s family ate once or twice a day and typically ate only the corn they grew.

In 2015, Child left Guatemala and traveled to the United States, where he was apprehended by immigration authorities. He was placed in the temporary custody of his paternal uncle in Tennessee. Child has lived in Tennessee since that time, and has been enrolled in school in Tennessee.

In 2016, Child’s uncle petitioned for the appointment of a guardian for Child requesting, among other things, a specific finding regarding whether it is in Child’s best interest to be returned to Guatemala.

After hearing, the trial court found that both of Child’s parents had willfully abandoned Child. The trial court refused, however, to make a finding as to whether it was in Child’s best interest to be returned to Guatemala because the trial court ruled that it lacked jurisdiction to make such a determination.

Child’s uncle appealed.

On Appeal: The Court of Appeals reversed the trial court.

Some children present in the United States without legal immigration status are in need of humanitarian protection because they have been abused, abandoned, or neglected by a parent. Special Immigrant Juvenile (“SIJ”) status is an immigration classification that may allow for these vulnerable children to immediately apply for lawful permanent resident status, i.e., a “green card.”

A child cannot apply for SIJ status without an order from the juvenile court that contains factual findings based on state law about the abuse, neglect, or abandonment, family reunification, and the best interest of the child. It should be noted, however, that the state court order does not grant SIJ status or a “green card”; only federal immigration authorities can grant or deny these benefits.

The state-court proceeding is just the first step of a three-step process to obtain a green card. Once the state court has made the specific findings, the child can apply to federal authorities for SIJ status. If SIJ status is granted, then the third step is applying for a green card.

The Court determined that the Tennessee trial court had jurisdiction to make the finding as to whether it is in Child’s best interest to be returned to Guatemala:

[T]he trial court had jurisdiction to hear the Petition for Appointment of Guardian pursuant to Tennessee Code Annotated § 34-to-101.

* * * * * *

In the case now before us, [federal law] establishes that in order to apply for special immigrant juvenile status, the Minor must have, among other things, an order from a Tennessee court placing him in the custody of an individual appointed by the court, a determination that reunification with his parents is not viable due to abandonment [or other possible grounds] as found under Tennessee law, and a determination that it would not be in the Minor’s best interest to be returned to Guatemala. The trial court’s Order Appointing Guardian appointed the Minor’s uncle [as the] guardian of the Minor, placed the Minor in the custody of the Minor’s uncle, and found that reunification of the Minor with his parents was not viable due to willful abandonment. The trial court, however, failed to make a finding with regard as to whether it is in the best interest of the Minor to be returned to Guatemala. We note . . . that making such finding does not guarantee that the Minor will be granted special immigrant juvenile status. This finding, however, is a required predicate for the Minor to apply for such status.

The Petition for Appointment of Guardian properly contained a request seeking a finding regarding whether it is in the Minor’s best interest to be returned to Guatemala. We find and hold the trial court had jurisdiction to make this requested finding.

Thus, the case was remanded to the trial court to determine whether it is in Child’s best interest to be returned to Guatemala.

In re Domingo C.L. (Tennessee Court of Appeals, Middle Section, August 30, 2017).

Information provided by K.O. Herston: Knoxville, Tennessee Divorce and Family-Law Attorney.”

“******************************************

In one of my long past lives, private practice, I had some role in the legislation that created the Special Immigrant Juvenile “SIJ” status. This seems one of the most appropriate uses of the law ever! Saving young lives, getting them green cards, and building a better future for America, one case at a time! Can’t get much better than that!

Thanks so much to the always wonderful Roxanne Lea of Richmond, VA for sending this to me!

PWS

10-02-17

🇺🇸Due Process Forever! More “New American Gulag,” never!

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From 11:30-12:30 Radio Poder 1380 am http://www.wbtk.com/

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