"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.
“We don’t need immigration expertise to be hired, and now we don’t need it to deny cases either. Just have to slap any old attachment on it! EOIR is the ‘paint by numbers’ of judging!” https://www.flickr.com/photos/rasputin243/ Creative Commons License
BREAKING: Attorneys advocate for better due process in response to immigration judges making conveyor-belt deportation decisions
June 12, 2023
Immigration attorneys nationwide have witnessed a concerning increase in immigration judges issuing deportation decisions without individualized analysis. Instead, these barebones decisions often rely on boilerplate “form addenda,” which are standardized summaries of immigration law not specific to any noncitizen’s case.
This week, in response to these concerning practices, Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights (CAIR) Coalition and pro bono counsel O’Melveny & Myers, along with over 50 partner organizations, have submitted a letter advocating that the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) reform its policies governing the use of form addenda.
Because they are not specific to a person’s individual case and are instead just stapled to a deportation order as legal justification, the addenda usually include irrelevant issues and sometimes incorrect statements of the law. Plus, the noncitizen and their attorney often never see a copy of the addenda.
The sign-on letter urges EOIR to take multiple, concrete steps to change its policies governing the use of form addenda. These measures include increased training on addenda usage for immigration judges, making form addenda publicly accessible, and appointing an ombudsman to investigate addenda misuse.
“Due to the drastic consequences for immigrants in deportation cases—including family separation and possible persecution and death in people’s home countries—the law requires U.S. immigration judges to conduct an individualized analysis of each noncitizen’s case when deciding on their removal proceedings,” said Peter Alfredson, Senior Attorney at CAIR Coalition. “When the stakes are that high, noncitizens deserve to know that judges are taking their claims seriously—or even looking at their claims at all—and issuing decisions that reflect that responsibility.”
“Immigration judges merely staple these form addenda to a removal order instead of doing their job to analyze each person’s case.” said Adina Appelbaum, Program Director of the Immigration Impact Lab at CAIR Coalition. “We need clearer policies from EOIR so that if judges use these addenda, they will do so in a way that is fair and respectful to the noncitizens whose lives are in their hands.”
Adina Appelbaum Director, Immigration Impact Lab CAIR Coalition Charter Member, NDPA PHOTO: “30 Under 30” from Forbes
Through free legal, social, and litigation services, Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights (CAIR) works to ensure equal justice for immigrants in the Capital region who are at risk of detention and deportation.
It is not easy to convey the magnitude of the ongoing disaster at EOIR, the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the office that oversees our nation’s Immigration Courts. Simply stated, the agency is rescheduling and advancing hundreds–maybe thousands–of cases without notifying attorneys, checking whether we are available to attend the hearings or checking whether we have the capacity to complete the cases.
On its face, this appears to be a mere scheduling problem. But in effect, it is a vicious and unprecedented assault on immigrants, their attorneys, and due process of law.
“Advancing hearings with no notice and no time to prepare? Why didn’t I think of that?!”
For me at least, the problem started small. A few cases were rescheduled and advanced without anyone at the Immigration Court bothering to inquire about my availability: Your case that was scheduled for two years in the future has been advanced and is now set for two months in the future. I was angry and upset, but I did not want to let my clients down. So I set other work obligations aside. I set family time aside. I put off doctors appointments. And I completed the cases, which were approved. I hoped that these cases were anomalies and that EOIR would stop this unfair and abusive practice. But that was not to be.
Instead, EOIR has dramatically expanded its effort to reschedule cases, often without providing sufficient notice–or any notice–to get the work done for our clients. As best as we can tell, the problem is occurring in California, Colorado, Maryland, and Virginia. I myself have had about a dozen cases rescheduled and advanced (so far). These cases had been scheduled for 2023 or 2024, and suddenly, they are now set for the fall of 2022. Other attorneys have had 20, 30 or more cases advanced, including some that were double booked. One lawyer reported having seven cases scheduled for the same week and 47 cases set for one month. Another lawyer purportedly told a judge that if she had one more case scheduled within the next six months, she would commit suicide.
Here, I want to break down what is happening, so noncitizens in Immigration Court can at least have some idea about EOIR’s disruptive practices.
First, when I say that EOIR is not providing notice of the hearings, that is not entirely accurate. They are not sending us a notice or contacting us in advance. Instead, they are posting the new hearing dates on our portal. What does this mean? Each attorney has access to a portal page with a calendar. We can scroll through the calendar one month at a time. Days with hearings are highlighted, and we can click on those days to see what is scheduled. When I review my calendar, I often find new hearings that were not previously on the schedule. The only way to know whether a new hearing has been scheduled is to scroll through our portals month-by-month and compare what’s there with our existing calendar–a burdensome process that leaves plenty of room to overlook a date. Needless to say, every time I sign on to the portal, I feel a nauseous sense of dread about what I might find.
Once we discover the new date, we need to review the file, contact the client, and determine whether we can complete the case. This all takes time. If we cannot complete the case, or we do not have an attorney available on the scheduled date, we need to ask for a continuance. Of course, clients who have been waiting years for a decision usually want to keep the earlier hearing date. They do not understand why we cannot complete the work or why we are not available that day. Their perspective is perfectly reasonable, but they only have one case, where lawyers have many and we are daily being ambushed by EOIR with additional work. All this can result in conflicts between clients (who want their cases heard) and lawyers (who need time to get the work done). It also makes it difficult to serve our other clients, who must be pushed aside to accommodate the new work randomly being dumped on us.
Even if the client agrees to request a continuance, that does not solve the problem. Motions to continue can be denied. Even when they are granted, the judges tend to reset the date for only a few weeks in the future, which is often not enough time to properly complete the work. Other times, judges simply do not rule on the motion, so we are left to prepare the case, not knowing whether it will go forward or not.
Also, while we sometimes discover a new date that is a few months in the future (and so in theory, we might have time to do the work), other times, the new date is only a few weeks in the future. Since the evidence, witness list, and legal brief are due at least 15 days before the hearing, and since even a “simple” asylum case takes 20 or 30 hours to prepare, this is not nearly enough time. Worse, some cases are randomly advanced and placed on the docket after the evidence is due, and so by the time we have “notice” of the case, our evidence is already late.
Adding insult to injury, another common problem is that cases are still being cancelled at the last minute. And so we drop everything to prepare a case, only to have it postponed once all the work is done. Since this is all utterly unpredictable, it is impossible to prioritize our work or advise our clients.
Again, if this were only a few cases, attorneys could set aside other work and get the job done. But lawyers who do immigration law tend to have many cases, and we are seeing dozens and dozens of cases advanced with no notice. This is such a blatant and obvious abuse of due process that it is impossible to believe it is accidental. I might have expected this policy from the Trump Administration, which was hell-bent on restricting immigration by any means necessary. But as it turns out, President Biden’s EOIR is far worse than President Trump’s. Indeed, the current level of callousness would make even Stephen Miller blush.
The solution to these problems is so basic that it should not need to be said, but here it is anyway: EOIR should stop advancing and rescheduling cases without notice and without consideration for whether we have time to complete the work. Unless something changes, we can expect many noncitizens to be unfairly denied protection, immigration attorneys will leave the profession (or worse), and EOIR will become illegitimate. Let us hope that sanity and decency will soon return to the Immigration Courts.
*****************
Ever wonder why Dems struggle to govern and often lose elections they should win?This is a pretty good example of how the Biden Administration, through cowardice, ignorance, arrogance, and failure to prioritize racial justice and immigrant justice are “shooting themselves in the foot, over and over!”
They are going into midterms where every vote counts. They need “all hands on board” in the human rights community to help bail them out of the gross failures of the White House, Garland, and Mayorkas to reestablish a fair, efficient, and properly robust system for legally admitting refugees and processing asylum claims at the borders and the interior. This, in turn, has empowered disingenuous nativists like DeSantis and Abbott to “play games with human lives.”
But, the Biden Administration “strategy” is to do everything possible to offend and drive a wedge between them and some of their most loyal and important groups of supporters — the immigration, human rights, and racial justice communities. (Make no mistake: The ongoing disaster at Garland’s EOIR disproportionally targets individuals of color.)
Garland seems to be impervious to his self-inflicted disaster at EOIR.I think that advocates are going to have to sue to bring his “Stephen Miller Lite” travesty of justice at EOIR to a grinding halt. Those are resources that could and should be used to help asylum seekers “orbited” around the country by DeSantis and Abbott.
I, for one, have been saying for a long time that Garland’s unfathomably horrible performance at EOIR is a threat to our entire justice system and to the future of our nation. Sadly, every day, Garland proves me right!
The real shame: It was all so preventable with just a modicum of competence and backbone from our failing AG!
🇺🇸 Due Process Forever! Merrick Garland’s deadly Clown Courts 🤡, Never!
It’s easy guys, we just do what DHS Enforcement and our political bosses want and we can keep hopping around forever! Backlogs! Ha, the bigger the bigger they get, the more “secure” our jobs! https://www.flickr.com/photos/rasputin243/ Creative Commons License
Dan Kowalski reports for LexisNexis Immigration Community:
CA10 Stop-Time Victory: Estrada-Cardona v. Garland
“The Attorney General may allow otherwise-removable aliens to remain in the country if, among other things, they have accrued 10 years of continuous physical presence in the United States. We call this form of discretionary relief “cancellation of removal.” Under the statutory “stop-time rule,” the period of continuous physical presence ends (A) when the alien is served with a notice to appear, or (B) when the alien has committed certain criminal offenses. 8 U.S.C. § 1229b(d)(1). Nothing more, nothing less. In the latest installment of “What Triggers the Stop-Time Rule?” the Government asks us to hold that the issuance of a final order of removal is a third, extra-statutory event sufficient to stop the clock. The plain language of the statute supports no such conclusion. Declining to read ambiguity into a statute where none exists, we hold a final order of removal does not stop the accrual of continuous physical presence. … This petition for review represents the latest chapter in the Government’s ongoing efforts to dig itself out of a hole it placed itself in. … After years of statutory short-circuiting, the Government finds itself in the uncomfortable position of being wrong. … Because Congress unambiguously replaced the final-order rule with the stop-time rule, the BIA’s application of the final-order rule was legal error. Petitioner continued to accrue continuous physical presence after the immigration judge issued the order to voluntarily depart. … [W]e hold that because the BIA seems to have considered change-in-the-law equitable tolling arguments before, the BIA abused its discretion in this case by failing to “announce its decision in terms sufficient to enable a reviewing court to perceive that it has heard and thought and not merely reacted.” … We cannot discern why the BIA found no extraordinary circumstance which would warrant equitable tolling, so the BIA abused its discretion. … On remand, the Government is free to argue that Petitioner should not be granted sua sponte reopening or equitable tolling. This opinion is expressly limited to two conclusions. First, the BIA’s application of the final-order rule was legal error. Second, the BIA’s explanations for denying sua sponte reopening and equitable tolling constituted, as a procedural matter, an abuse of discretion. For the reasons stated herein, we GRANT the petition for review and REMAND to the BIA for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.”
“For years, if not decades, the Government sent aliens “notices to appear” which failed to include all the information required by § 1229(a)—like the “time and place at which the proceedings will be held.” 8 U.S.C. § 1229(a)(1)(G)(i). For countless aliens, the only obstacle to being eligible for cancellation of removal was the Government’s position that a time-and-place-to-be-set notice to appear still triggers the stop-time rule. In Pereira, the Supreme Court rejected the Government’s atextual interpretation and held a “putative notice to appear that fails to designate the specific time or place of the [alien]’s removal proceedings is not a ‘notice to appear under section 1229(a),’ and so does not trigger the stop-time rule.” 138 S. Ct. at 2113–14. In one fell swoop, the Supreme Court cleared the way for many aliens, like Petitioner, to seek cancellation of removal.
But the Government quickly erected a new hurdle.”
The BIA could and should have prevented this debacle by insisting from the git go that the statute (“the law”) be followed by DHS and EOIR. Instead, at the behest of DHS, and perhaps to prevent tens of thousands of long-term residents who had received statutorily defective notices from seeking relief, the BIA misinterpreted the statute time after time.
The real stupidity here is that the requirement the BIA was pretzeling itself to avoid was hardly “rocket science” or burdensome: Serve a notice containing the actual date, time, and place of the hearing! One might ask what purpose is served by a so-called “Notice to Appear” that doesn’t notify the individual of where and when to appear?
Moreover, when the BIA started issuing their incorrect precedents, DHS and EOIR had a then-existing system — called “interactive scheduling” — that would have complied with the statute. The problem was that the “powers that be” at DOJ, EOIR, and DHS consciously decided NOT to use that system.
The apparent reason was the belief that complying with the law might have interfered with DHS arbitrarily filling the Immigration Courts with large “numbers” of cases to meet various enforcement “priorities” set from “on high.” Rather than doing its job, the BIA chose time and again to “go along to get along” with this nonsense!
Over and over, EOIR lets bogus DHS or Administration “enforcement priorities” or “improperly using the legal system as a deterrent” subvert due process, fundamental fairness, best interpretations, and practical solutions!
And, although Biden and Harris campaigned on a platform of bringing the rule of law and rationality back to immigration, the absurdity and illegality continues under Garland. He even sent OIL in to waste the time of the Article IIIs by mounting essentially frivolous defenses to the BIA’s malfeasance.
Perhaps worst of all, in addition to being denied timely justice, individuals and their lawyers dealing with Garland’s dysfunctional EOIR often are falsely blamed for causing the backlogs that are the primary result of DHS/EOIR incompetence and political meddling by unqualified bureaucrats. The latter don’t understand what really happens in Immigration Court and how to properly, fairly, and efficiently administer such a large and important court system.
The backlogs will continue to grow and the US justice system will crater because of bad immigration decisions generating skyrocketing litigation. Garland must replace the BIA with real expert appellate judges committed to fair, humane, and reasonable interpretations of immigration and human rights laws — without regard to whether those correct interpretations will be “career enhancing” or “career preserving.” In other words, judges who put justice before personal or institutional “survival.” Competent, expert, independent-minded judicial administrators with the guts to keep DOJ and DHS bureaucratic meddlers “at arm’s length” are also required.
Folks who could do the job are out here. But, that’s the problem! They belong in the key judicial judicial and administrative positions at EOIR where they can put any end to the due-process denying, backlog building dysfunction.
“EOIR Clown Show Must Go” T-Shirt Custom Design Concept
Everyone committed to the future of American justice should be asking themselves why Garland hasn’t recruited and hired the right “Team Due Process” for EOIR! American justice can’t afford more of Garland’s inept, “go along to get along,” “afraid to say no to DHS enforcement” BIA and the rest of the EOIR “Deadly Clown Show” largely left over from past, failed Administrations!
As my friend and Round Table colleague “Sir Jeffrey” Chase quipped: “Sadly, funny because it’s so true!”
**********************
Compare and contrast what happens to a respondent who fails to appear for a hearing after receiving defective “notice” with what happens when EOIR and DHS “FTA” for a properly scheduled hearing, often with NO (or only brief) notice.
Ivory Towerists like Garland and his crew wouldn’t last 60 days “in the trenches” of our disgraceful Immigration (Non) “Courts!” How many times do you think the “Garlands of the world” would put up with being yelled at and demeaned by bad judges and burned out clerks? Having their cases that they have meticulously prepared and sweated over rescheduled without notice for no good reason! Dealing with traumatized clients and scared witnesses for whom a day off for court isn’t covered by “personal leave” but could actually cost them their job?
Allowing “elite ivory towerists,” who have never been subjected to Immigration Court, and who know and care little or nothing about what happens there and how it affects humanity, to run it is killing our justice system! ☠️💀⚰️ Literally!
“Sorry, Liz, all of your cases have been reshuffled to October Term 2025. Notice, what notice?”PHOTO: Twitter
What if the Solicitor General, Elizabeth Prelogar arrived at the Supremes, family, spear carriers, fan club, and press flackies in tow, only to find out that her “high profile” case had been “reset” to October Term 2025 without notice because the Chief Clerk (NOT the Chief Justice) had “re-prioritized” the docket?
Folks, I’m retired. I have no intention of ever appearing in Immigration Court again. I don’t have to rely on practicing law any more to feed my family and pay my bills.
But, whether you practice immigration law or not, the younger generation of our legal profession has a vested interest in stopping the ludicrous public degrading of justice in our totally dysfunctional and fundamentally unfair Immigration “Courts.” Injustice to one affects justice for all, to quote or paraphrase MLK, Jr.
YOU, the lawyers of the future, must demand and pressure Garland until he stops treating the most important “retail level” of our justice system — one he completely controls and where lives are on the line every hour of every working day — as a “comedy routine” rather than a serious court of law!
Otherwise, by the time you are my age, there will be no legal system left in America and quite possibly no democracy either!
Yes, folks, it can happen here! Each of YOU could be treated as a “non-person” without humanity or enforceable rights, just like migrants and minorities are being treated today by the arrogant elitists who have been allowed to control our legal system.
Garland might think it’s smart, or even funny, to run the Immigration Courts like a joke. But, those tens of thousands, perhaps millions, whose lives are destroyed by his incompetent leadership and tolerance for the intolerable are not laughing! Nor are the lawyers who are fighting in the trenches to save lives and or preserve our democracy!
For “respondents” (non-citizens in removal proceedings) and their lawyers, Individual Hearings in Immigration Court are a big deal. Evidence must be gathered. Affidavits have to be prepared, checked, and re-checked. Witnesses must be identified, convinced to attend the hearing, and prepared for trial. Respondents practice their testimony. In most cases, the noncitizen has been waiting for many months or years for the trial date. The result of the trial determines whether the applicant can remain in the United States or must leave. When a respondent receives asylum, he is permitted to stay in the U.S. If he loses, he may be deported to a country where he faces danger. In many cases, respondents have family members here or overseas who are counting on them, and the outcome of the case affects the family members as well as the respondent. All of this provokes anxiety and anticipation. In short, Individual Hearings are life-changing events that profoundly effect respondents and their families.
So what happens when the Individual Hearing is canceled?
“Sorry boys and girls, the ‘nice’ list is too long. We’ll reschedule Christmas for next year… or maybe the year after that.”
The first thing to know is that cancellations are common. Cases are canceled weeks, days or even minutes before the scheduled time. Indeed, we often cannot be sure that a case will actually go forward until the hearing begins.
Why does this happen?
There are many reasons, some more legitimate than others. The most common reason these days is the pandemic. Sometimes, courts close due to potential exposures. That is understandable, but as far as I can tell, these represent a small minority of Covid cancellations. I have had 50% or more of my Individual Hearings canceled over the last year and a half, and none of those was caused by a Covid exposure. I suspect that the large majority of these cancellations are due to reduced capacity to hear cases–since judges and staff are often working from home. Indeed, most pandemic cancellations seem to occur a week or two before the Individual Hearing. By that time, we’ve already completed and submitted the evidence, witness list, and legal brief, and have usually started prepping the client for trial. The client is also psychologically gearing up for the big event.
And then we check the online system and find that the case is off the docket.
What’s so frustrating about these cancellations is that we’ve been living with the pandemic since early 2020. The Immigration Courts should have adjusted by now. If cases need to be canceled, why not do that several months in advance? At least that way, applicants would not build up hope, only to have that dashed when the case is cancelled at the last minute. Also, it wastes attorney time–since we will have to submit updated country condition evidence (and perhaps other evidence) later, re-prep witnesses, and potentially prepare new legal briefs, if the law changes (which is more common than you’d like to think). For attorneys who charge hourly, this additional work will involve additional costs to the applicants. So all around, last minute cancellations are harmful, and it’s hard to understand why they are still so frequent.
“I’m double booked today, so let’s put off your heart surgery until 2023.”
Besides the pandemic, court cases are cancelled for a host of other reasons: Immigration Judges (“IJs”) are out sick, hearings get bumped to accommodate “priority” cases or sometimes cases are “double booked,” meaning that they are scheduled for the same time slot with the same IJ, and so only one can go forward. To me, all these are weak excuses for canceling individual hearings. Most courts have several judges, and so if one judge is out sick, or if a priority case must be scheduled at the last minute, another judge should be able to help out (in all but the most complicated cases, judges need little time to prepare for a hearing, and so should be able to adjudicate a case on short notice). Also, there is no excuse for double-booking cases. IJs should have a sense of their schedules and simply not overbook. In addition, all courts are overseen by Assistant Chief Immigration Judges (“ACIJs”), who should be available to hear cases if need be. Finally, given the ubiquity of video conferencing equipment and electronic records, judges can adjudicate cases remotely, and so there should almost always be a judge available to fill in where needed.
Of course, there are times when case cancellations are unavoidable, due to inclement weather, for example. But in an ideal world, these should be rare.
“Oy vey! I have to give priority to a better-looking couple. Let’s reschedule this wedding for later. Are you free in 2024?”
If the delay caused by case cancellations was measured in weeks or even months, the problem would not be so severe. But in many cases, hearings are postponed for one or two years–or even longer! This is obviously distressing for the applicant, as the long-anticipated end date is pushed back to who-knows-when. It is particularly devastating for applicants who are separated from family members. The long postponements are also a problem for the case itself, as evidence becomes stale and must be replaced with more up-to-date information, and laws change, which can require a new legal brief. In short, these delays often force the applicant (and the applicant’s lawyer) to do significant extra work on the case, and this can add additional costs in terms of legal fees.
It seems obvious to me that courts do not fully appreciate the damage caused by last minute cancellations. If judges and staff (and management) knew more about the harm these cancellations cause, perhaps they would make a greater effort to ensure that hearings go forward, and that any delayed hearings are rescheduled as quickly as possible.
*************
Readers of “Courtside” are familiar with the “toxic culture” of EOIR — actively encouraged by some Attorneys General, enabled and abetted by others.
The real problem here is that Immigration Courts are “led” by “managers” beholden to political agendas rather than the public they should serve. Also, since far too many EOIR “managers” and Immigration Judges have never represented individuals in Immigration Court, they are basically clueless as to the human and practical effects of their actions on individuals as well as on the dedicated, often pro bono or “low bono” lawyers who must guide their desperate and often re-traumatized clients through this morass.
At a time when the need for pro bono assistance has never been greater, the disgraceful dysfunction, mismanagement, and “studied user unfriendliness” of EOIR under Garland is actually discouraging attorneys from donating their time and endangering their emotional well-being! Could there be any worse public policy?
With so many extraordinarily talented, creative, courageous, independent legal minds out there in the private/NGO/academic sector of human rights/immigration/racial justice/due process this “intentional mediocrity (or worse)” is inexcusable. Yet, this massive failure of the U.S. justice system at the most basic level gets scant attention outside of Courtside, LexisNexis, ImmigrationProf Blog, Jeffrey S. Chase Blog, The Asylumist, and a few other specialized websites.
This “leading disintegrator of American justice and cosmic threat to our entire democracy” is largely “shoved under the carpet” by “mainstream media,” leaders of the legal profession (outside of immigration/human rights), politicians, policy makers, and the general public. Will they only “wake up” when it is too late and their own rights and futures have been diminished, dehumanized, and de-personified as if they were “mere migrants, not humans?”
In other words, who in America will always be immune from the “Dred Scottification of the other” now practiced, tolerated, and often even encouraged at the highest levels of our government? Don’t think it couldn’t happen to you! If immigrants, asylum seekers, and migrants in the U.S. are not “persons” under the Fifth Amendment, what makes YOU think that YOUR “personhood” will be honored by the powers that be!
In defense of today’s IJs, they actually have remarkably little control over their own dockets which are incompetently “micromanaged” from on high or by non-judicial “administrators.” Sound like a formula for an incredible, largely self-created, 1.5 million case backlog?
Cutting to the chase, the Immigration Courts are controlled by the Attorney General, a political official and a chief prosecutor to boot. Beyond that, no Attorney General has actually had to experience practice before the totally dysfunctional and intentionally user unfriendly “courts” he or she runs.
Foreign Service Officers must initially serve as consuls — the basic operating level of an embassy. Hotel managers usually start by working the front desk, where the “rubber meets the road” in the industry.
But, we enthrone those who are supposed to be the best, wisest, and fairest in the legal profession as Attorneys General and Article III Judges without requiring that they have had experience representing individuals at the “retail level” of our legal system — the U.S. Immigration Courts.
It doesn’t make sense! But, what does figure is that a system run by those without expertise and relevant experience, haphazardly “supervised” by Article III Judges who almost invariably exhibit the same blind spots, indifference to injustice, and lack of practical knowledge and expertise as those they are “judicially reviewing” has devolved into the worst court system in America. It’s an oppressive catastrophe where “liberty and justice are not for all” and survival is often more about the mood, mindset, or personal philosophy of the judge, or the “whim of the day” of DOJ politicos, than it is about the facts of the case or the most fair and reasonable applications of the law by experts! Is this really the way we should be determining who lives and who dies, who thrives and who will struggle just to survive?
These “courts” are not fair and impartial courts at all. They are places where service to the public comes last, poor leadership and mismanagement are tolerated and even rewarded, backlogs are out of control, due process, fundamental fairness, scholarship, and best practices scorned, and precious lives and human dignity routinely are ground to dust and scattered to the wind.
We deserve better from our legal system!
Once, there was a court system with a dream of a better future for all in America — a noble, if ambitious, vision, if you will: “through teamwork and innovation, become the world’s best administrative tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.”😎
Now, sadly, that enlightened vision has disintegrated into a nightmare of dedicated dockets, biased precedents, endless backlogs, sloppy work, due process denying gimmicks, bogus statistics, mediocre judicial selections, secrecy, customer unfriendliness, dishonest blame shifting, and ridiculous Aimless Docket Reshuffling.☠️
Attorney General Merrick Garland’s “limited vision” for EOIR is a continuing nightmare for those sentenced to appear and practice before his stunningly dysfunctional and “highly user unfriendly” Immigration “Courts.” Isn’t it high time to insist that those given responsibility for stewardship over America’s largest — and probably most consequential — Federal “Court” system actually have represented humans before those “courts?” PHOTO: Thomas Hawk Creative Commons Amateur Night
Where there once was the promise of “light at the end of the tunnel,” now there is only “Darkness on The Edge of Town:”
Well lives on the line where dreams are found and lost
I’ll be there on time and I’ll pay the cost
For wanting things that can only be found
In the darkness on the edge of town
In the darkness on the edge of town
