"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, Music, Politics, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt and Dr. Alicia Triche, expert brief writer, practical scholar, emeritus Editor-in-Chief of The Green Card (FBA), and 2022 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year. She is a/k/a “Delta Ondine,” a blues-based alt-rock singer-songwriter, who performs regularly in Memphis, where she hosts her own Blues Brunch series, and will soon be recording her first full, professional album. Stay tuned! 🎶 To see our complete professional bios, just click on the link below.
Manning argues immigration judges must ask questions to develop the record for pro se applicants like Arevalo-Quintero about their PSG affiliations. She isn’t alone in her push for a different standard for pro se immigrants applying for asylum.
In an amicus brief, a group of retired immigration judges and former members of the Board of Immigration Appeals point to a Fifth Circuit opinion that says immigration judges have a duty to “seek clarification” and “ensure that the [PSG] being analyzed is included in his or her decision.”
Immigration judges “must remain neutral, but that does not mean that they are passive bystanders during immigration court hearings,” the brief states. “The regulations require IJs, for example, to explain the factual allegations and charges in ‘non-technical’ language.”
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Read Brad’s full article at the link.
Many thanks to my“eagle eyed” friend Deb Sanders for sending this my way.
The Round Table 🛡⚔️ continues to play a positive role. Compare that with the unfailingly negative role of the current “EOIR Clown Show.”🤡🤮
In what hopefully will be a much better world after January 20, 2021, the Round Table could work with a “new EOIR,” led and staffed by real judges from the NDPA, on the practical legal and administrative reforms necessary for EOIR to become a “model court,” usingteamwork and best practices to guarantee fairness and due process for all. That’s actually what the “EOIR vision” was prior to the advent of the Bush II Administration in 2001.
That noble vision could still become a reality, but only if the Biden-Harris Administration evicts the “EOIR Clown Show” 🤡and replaces it with competent experts from the NDPA committed to due process for all. ⚖️🧑🏽⚖️🇺🇸🗽
When I wasn’t visiting border, I was trying to understand how the U.S. government could put in place a policy that seemed the very antithesis of what seeking asylum was supposed to be, as articulated in Refugee Act of 1980. I had spent my time before coming to Refugees International researching the writing and passage of that law and the development of the contemporary asylum system since 1980. The Remain in Mexico policy is unprecedented. The U.S. government claims the authority for it lies in a provision of the 1996 immigration law that allows for the return of certain applicants for admission to contiguous territory to await processing. I began researching this provision and it became clear that it was not intended to apply to asylum seekers.
In support of a challenge to the Remain in Mexico program in California federal court, Refugees International and I, with attorneys from Sidley Austin LLP, submitted this brief describing why the Refugee Act forbids the program, a reality that the 1996 law does not change. The argument of the brief is that, when the 1980 Refugee Act was enacted, it was intended to establish a uniform process for consideration of asylum claims that would preclude this return to Mexico approach. A lynchpin in the argument is that there were two versions of the asylum provision of the Refugee Act—one proposed by Congresswoman Holtzman and one by Senator Edward Kennedy. Only the House version provided that asylum seekers at a land border be accorded the same ability to seek asylum as those already in the country. When, in conference, Holtzman’s version was accepted, Congress made a conscious choice in pursuit of uniformity in consideration of asylum requests: that the United States would treat asylum seekers at the border the same as it would all others. And the language mandating uniform treatment of asylum seekers in the 1980 Refugee Act was reiterated in the 1996 immigration law.
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The case is Immigrant Defenders Law Center v. Wolf, USDC, C.D. CA.
Read Yael’s intro, her outstanding brief prepared by Sidley Austin LLP, and the “Holtzman Papers” at the above link.Notably, Sidley Austin is one of the great firms that have helped our Round Table with amicus briefs! It’s what happens when you connect the dots among history, research, social justice, and the law. It’s why the Liberal Arts are the wave of a better future and a better Federal Judiciary! It’s all about perspective and problem solving!
Thanks Yael for all that you, Refugees International, and great pro bono lawyers like Sidley Austin do for justice and humanity.
The real problem here: A disgraceful Supremes’ majority 🏴☠️ that improperly “greenlighted” this totally illegal, racist-inspired, “crime against humanity,” cooked up by neo-Nazi hate monger Stephen Miller ☠️🤮, after it had properly and timely been enjoined by lower Federal courts. And, a complicit EOIR that consistently fails to provide due process and justice to asylum seekers is a huge part of the problem.
Unlike the Supremes, the EOIR Clown Show 🤡 can be removed and justice at all levels improved just by a putting the right experts from the NDPA in charge right off the bat.
Democratic Administrations, particularly the Obama Administration, have a history of not getting the job done when it comes to achievable immigration reforms within the bureaucracy. If you don’t want four more years of needless death, disorder, demeaning of humanity, and deterioration of the most important “retail level” of our justice system, let the incoming Biden Administration know: Throw out the EOIR Clown Show and bring in the experts from the NDPA to turn the Immigration Courts into real, independent courts of equal justice and humanity that will be a source of pride, not a deadly and dangerous national embarrassment!
Contrary to all the mindless “woe is me” suggestions that it will take decades to undo Stephen Miller’s (is he really that much smarter than any Democrat politico?) racist nonsense, EOIR is totally fixable — BUT ONLY WITH THE RIGHT FOLKS FROM THE NDPA IN CHARGE!
It’s only “mission impossible” if the Biden-Harris Administration approaches EOIR with the same indifference, lack of urgency, and disregard for expertise and leadership at the DOJ that has plagued past Dem Administrations on immigration, human rights, and social justice.
It won’t take decades, nor will it take zillions of taxpayer dollars! With the right folks in leadership positions at EOIR, support for independent problem solving (not mindless micromanagement) from the AG & DOJ, and a completely new BIA selected from the ranks of the NDPA, we will see drastic improvements in the delivery of justice at EOIR by this time next year. And, that will just be the beginning!
No more clueless politicos, go along to get along bureaucrats, toadies, and restrictionist holdovers calling the shots at EOIR, America’s most important, least understood, and “most fixable” court system! No more abuse of migrants and their representatives! No more ridiculous, “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” generating self-created backlogs! No more vile and stupid White Nationalist enforcement gimmicks being passed off as “policies!” No more “Amateur Night at The Bijou” when it comes to administration of the immigrant justice system at the DOJ under Dems!
Get mad!Get angry! Stop the nonsense! Tell every Democrat in Congress and the Biden Administration to bring in the NDPA experts to fix EOIR! Now! Before more lives are lost and futures ruined! It won’t get done if we don’t speak out and demand to be heard!
This is our time! Don’t let it pass with the wrong people being put in charge — yet again! Don’t be “left at the station” as the train of immigrant justice at Justice pulls out with the best engineers left standing on the platform and the wrong folks at the controls! Some “train wrecks” aren’t survivable! 🚂☠️⚰️
As this Court has recognized, “when [an] alien appears pro se, it is the IJ’s duty to ‘fully develop the record.’” Agyeman v. INS, 296 F.3d 871, 877 (9th Cir. 2002) (quoting Jacinto v. INS, 208 F.3d 725, 733-34 (9th Cir. 2000)). Despite this long-recognized obligation, the record in this case demonstrates that this duty is not always fulfilled; and that the consequence may be unfairness and injustice to the pro se petitioner who is unable to develop the record without guidance and assistance. We respectfully submit that this Court should use this case to provide much-needed guidance to IJs on the scope of their duty to work with pro se respondents to elicit the information necessary to develop the factual record. Based upon our own extensive experience, we are of the view that this can be done efficiently and effectively by conscientious IJs, so long as the rule that they are required to do so is clear.
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Thanks so much to out “Team of Pro Bono Heroes” at Sullivan & Cromwell, NY:
Philip L. Graham, Jr.
Amanda Flug Davidoff
Rebecca S. Kadosh
Joseph M. Calder, Jr.
This regime has appointed mostly judges lacking experience representing individuals in Immigration Court and then compounded the problem with:
Mindless “haste makes waste” enforcement gimmicks (often supported by knowingly false or misleading narratives) imposed by political hacks at DOJ and Falls Church;
A BIA lacking expertise and objectivity that instead of focusing on due process for those in Immigration Court, spews forth “blueprints for denial and deportation” without regard for statutory, Constitutional, and human rights;
A system that has elevated “malicious incompetence” and “worst judicial practices” to a “dark art form.”☠️
TIME FOR COURAGEOUS NEW IMMIGRATION LEADERSHIP!
By Paul Wickham Schmidt
It’s time for the “EOIR Clown Show” in Falls Church to go! Bring in competent jurists and administrators from the NDPA: practical scholars and problem solvers with real life skills developed by saving lives from this broken and biased system. Real jurists with expertise in human rights and courage, who will make due process, fundamental fairness, humane values, and “best judicial practices” the only objectives of the Immigration Courts. Jurists who will courageously resist political interference and improper and unethical weaponization of the Immigration Courts by any Administration.
Let the incoming Biden-Administration know that you won’t accept failed “retreads” from the past and “go along to get along” bureaucrats running and comprising what is probably the most important and significant court system in America from an equal justice, social justice, constitutional development, and saving human lives standpoint.
This is the “retail level” of our justice system: Thefoundation upon which the rest of our legal system all the way up to a tone-deaf, flailing, failing, and generally spineless Supremes stands! This is a court system that the Biden Administration can fix without Mitch McConnell!
The members of the NDPA are the ones who have been fighting in the trenches (and at the borders) to save lives, advance social justice, insure equal justice for all, end institutional racism, and preserve our democracy in the face of a tyrannical, unscrupulous, corrupt, racially biased, anti-democracy regime and its enablers! Many have sacrificed careers, health, not to mention financial security in this fight!
Don’t let those who watched from the sidelines, above the day-to-day fray, or were part of the problem swoop in and take control after the battle has been won!
Get mad! Get vocal! Get active! Call everyone you know in the incoming Administration! Demand that the NDPA and its members be given the leadership roles they have earned and deserve in remaking EOIR and reforming a thoroughly corrupt, politicized, and dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy across our Government!
Don’t let the Dems turn their back on achievable reforms and “shut out” the reformers and problem solvers in the advocacy sector (who have “carried the water” for Dems for decades) as has been the case in the past! Don’t let the mistakes and short-sightedness of the past destroy YOUR chances for a better future!
Don’t let timidity, ignorance, indifference, and fear of “rocking the boat” in the name of justice, due process, and human dignity replace “malicious incompetence” in Government!
Due Process Forever! Same old, same old, never! It’s time for real change and reform! It’s YOUR time to shine! Let YOUR voices be heard!
