"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.
Risch’s last-minute appointment at EOIR was particularly egregious, since he had no known Immigration Court experience. EOIR currently is in an existential crisis that threatens to topple the entire U.S. Justice System, with a highly politicized “judiciary” and an astounding, largely self-inflicted 1.3 million case backlog.
That backlog multiplied much faster than the additional Immigration Judges that Sessions and Barr used to “pack” the Immigration Courts with restrictionists and judges sympathetic to ICE enforcdement and often hostile to asylum seekers and their lawyers. As many experts have observed, the Trump era hires often had highly questionable judicial qualifications, many lacking any immigration law expertise or experience. Perhaps, that’s a reason why the backlog continued to grow exponentially even as Sessions and Barr tried gimmick after gimmick, a number of them blatantly illegal and enjoined by Federal Courts, to cut corners and “rev up” the “Trump Deportation Railroad @ EOIR.”
Obviously, throwing an unqualified political hack like Risch into this mess in a senior “management” position was just another example of the Trump Administration’s abuse of government resources and manipulation of personnel practices @ DOJ. It took some time for Judge Garland to get this one right. But, better late than never.
However encouraging the news of Risch’s departure might be, there is still much more “housecleaning” to be done by Garland at the EOIR Tower. That should start with BIA Chair David Wetmore, a Stephen Miller/Gene Hamilton crony with no positive reputation for scholarship or expertise in the immigration/human rights community and no known experience representing asylum seekers or other migrants in Immigration Court.
It’s little wonder that with “appellate judges” who have earned little respect in the legal community at large comprising the BIA, the system is a mess, turning out poor work product and elementary errors, “outed” by the Article IIIs on a regular basis.
Meanwhile, government watchdog groups expressed concerns over two people whose initial conversion requests had since been approved.
One such conversion was that of Carl Risch, whose October conversion request to be the deputy director, the No. 2 job, at the Executive Office for Immigration Review within the Department of Justice (a civil service job), was approved in December. Risch had been an assistant secretary for consular affairs at the State Department, a political job. His new job came with a $10,000 raise.
“It’s a red flag when there are multiple people being converted to jobs at a single entity. It really raises an even larger concern,” Stier, of the Partnership for Public Service, said. “The process is supposed to be that a political appointee in no way has a leg up on the competition for a career job, but when you see multiple go to the same agency, you really have to wonder how it can be possible that the best qualified individuals are not once, but multiple times, people who are political appointees.”
Risch did not respond to multiple requests for comment. EOIR spokeswoman Kathryn Mattingly said Risch went through the standard pre-hiring review process with the OPM and that the agency had approved his new position.
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Read the full article at the link.
So, the folks who saved due process and stood up for the Constitution and racial justice while Judge Garland was enjoying his cushy ivory tower job at the D.C. Circuit over the past four years remain on the outside, twisting in the wind ⚰️ while their clients and colleagues suffer daily abuse in “Garland’s Star Chambers!” Nice touch!
Meanwhile, Garland hands out the big bucks and a hideout for a notoriously unqualified Trump/Miller political hack imported from the DOS. What does Risch know about immigrant justice or court management? Nothing? Oh, but why is that a problem at EOIR?
He occupies what is supposed to be a key senior management position in America’s most dysfunctional “court system” — running a simply astounding 1.3 million (known) case, largely self-created backlog, grinding out sloppy, unprofessional, biased opinions regularly rejected by even conservative Courts of Appeals, setting horrible anti-immigrant precedents and endangering the lives, health, and safety of those who are caught up in EOIR’s continuing White Nationalist cesspool of cruelty, mismanagement, and gross incompetence?
Judge Garland: “Go faster Carl and David (Garland BIA Chair Wetmore), see how much it takes to make this worthless respondent scream! Remember what your mentor Stephen Miller taught you about the lives and rights of ‘the other.’ Why do you think I’m paying you the ‘big bucks’ and letting you ‘burrow in’ if not to punish and deter those who dare seek due process and humane treatment in MY wholly-owned Star Chambers! I couldn’t have done this at the DC Circuit, but here there are NO RULES, except those we make up for our own benefit, and I aim to keep it that way!”
Is it any wonder that immigrant justice and racial justice remain in free-fall under Biden and Garland?
Let’s lay it on the line! By now, Garland should have cancelled all the Trump-era precedents (“day 1 stuff”), cleaned house at EOIR HQ, and transferred the entire BIA to somewhere where they can inflict no more damage on the American legal system!
That would also have sent a powerful“signal” to the many Immigration Judges who have established “asylum free zones” in Immigration Courts throughout the U.S. over the past two Administrations that there will be a return of due process and fundamental fairness for asylum seekers and other immigrants at EOIR.
Judges can get with the program, start granting asylum and other protection as the law requires, thereby reducing backlogs the “old fashioned way” — consistent with due process and fundamental fairness. Or, they can ship out and sign up with Stephen Miller’s “Aryian Nation Legal Team” — where it appears that many of them would be more at home.
Garland should have brought in folks already on the payroll like Judges Dana Marks, Noel Brennan, & Amiena Khan, all experts in due process, judicial management, immigration, and human rights laws, all of whom have demonstrated true leadership, consistent courage, and independence throughout their distinguished careers, on at least a temporary basis to start restoring justice, rationality, and order in the Immigration Courts.
They would already have identified qualified sitting judges who know how to grant asylum to serve as Acting Appellate Judges at the BIA to start turning things around by enforcing due process and issuing precedents that advance, rather than retard, due process, fundamental, fairness, and judicial efficiency.
Meanwhile, they would be developing legitimate merit selection criteria to recruit and hire as judges practical experts who will fairly and efficiently apply due process and fundamental fairness to all asylum seekers and other respondents, regardless of race, color, or creed. These criteria could be used to recruit andhire a diverse progressive group of permanent Appellate Judges and Immigration Judges, to determine which “probationary IJs” should be retained, and eventually to re-compete all existing IJ positions to insure a real, diverse, independent, due-process focused, Immigration Judiciary comprised of the “best and brightest” American law has to offer!
Greg Chen (AILA) and Professor Peter Moskowitz (Cardozo Law) should be on the EOIR payroll implementing their very achievable program for drastically slashing the unnecessary backlog without stomping on anyone’s rights.
Garland should already have hired Professor Michele Pistone(Villanova Law, VIISTA) to develop quality, due process oriented training programs for everyone at EOIR.
Instead, Garland is bankrolling the current crew of proven incompetents, holdovers, hangers on, and Trump/Miller White Nationalists. In other words, he’s wasting our taxpayer money, destroying the lives and futures of the most vulnerable (and often most deserving) among us, undermining racial and social justice in America, and abusing and endangering the health and safety of members of the NDPA trying to bring some semblance of the rule of law and human decency into our disgustingly dysfunctional Immigration Courts.
Could it get any worse? How?
Think about this! Neo-Nazi Stephen Miller and his fellow White Nationalists apparently were so impressed with the effective legal work done by courageous immigration/human rights/due process advocates in blocking many parts of his racist authoritarian agenda — basically the New Due Process Army (“NDPA”) and its “Senior Fighting Division” The Round Table of Former Immigration Judges — that they are forming their very own neo-Nazi legal advocacy group to help GOP AGs stymie any attempt by the Biden Administration to promote racial justice, social justice, and immigrant justice.
Given the rather incompetent (not to mention ethically questionable) performance of many DOJ attorneysduring the Trump regime, Garland is going to need all the help he can get to fend off Miller and the GOP. Rather than enlisting members of the NDPA on his team, letting them solve problems, and actively soliciting their support and alliance on litigation, he is turning them into highly motivated opponents!
How dumb and counterproductive is that! Turn your would-be friends into enemies? Sounds like something only a tone-deaf Dem politico could pull off!
I’m not a politico. But, I do understand the necessity in politics, as in almost any field, of being able to distinguish your friends from your enemies. Perhaps, Judge Garland has spent so much time in the ivory tower that he has forgotten how to play the game out here in the real world.
I’ve been hanging around the Washington legal scene for almost 50 years now. In that time, I might have witnessed a more inept start by an Attorney General of either party. But, really, I can’t remember when!
🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever! If the NDPA must take the fight to end ☠️⚰️ deadly “Clown Courts” 🤡 to Judge Garland, so be it!
