Fraud Waste & Abuse – immigrationcourtside.com

⚠️ REMEMBERING THE LATE, GREAT SEN. BILL PROXMIRE’S (D-WI) “GOLDEN FLEECE AWARDS!” — USCIS CLAIMS THE EAD, “A GLORIFIED 10-MINUTE CLERICAL FUNCTION” COSTS $3,000/HR TO PROCESS! 🤯 — Save Money! — Hire Former AG Eric Holder @ “Merely” $2,295/Hr To Crank Out Forms I-765!

Sen. William Proxmire — Senator William Proxmire (D-WI)
1915-2005
Years served: 1957-89
PHOTO: Milwaukee Journal

The late Senator Bill Proxmire (D-WI) was a ”good government activist,” famous for his monthly “Golden Fleece Awards!” 🏆🐑 The latter were presented to recognize, or more accurately expose, “the biggest, most ridiculous or most ironic example of government spending.”

Proxmire was Wisconsin’s longest-serving U.S. Senator (1957-89), having been elected in a 1957 special election to replace the infamous Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-WI) who died in office. (1957 was the year the then Milwaukee Braves beat the mighty NY Yanks to bring Milwaukee what remains its only World Series Championship. We were allowed to listen on the PA system at Washington Grade School, in Wauwatosa, where I was a student!)

According to his Congressional bio, “Proxmire also set an attendance record not likely to be beaten. Over a period of more than 20 years, he did not miss a single roll-call vote, casting 10,252 consecutive votes before leaving the Senate in 1989.” https://www.senate.gov/senators/FeaturedBios/Featured_Bio_ProxmireWilliam.htm. (Actually, the record was recently broken by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), sort of, as Grassley eclipsed Proxmire’s years of service, but cast thousands fewer votes, thanks to Congress’s lackadaisical approach to governing in recent years.)

He also famously won contested re-election in 1976 spending under an inflation adjusted $1,000! “He relied upon retail politics — selling himself to Wisconsinites by shaking hands and listening to their stories — to fuel his reelection bid.” https://captimes.com/content/tncms/live/. Proxmire was a rare pol who “walked the walk!”

Sen. Proxmire left the Senate well before the creation of DHS. But, he would have had a field day with entrenched bureaucracy, lack of creativity, and spendthrift ways that have become ingrained in DHS’s poor to pathetic delivery of public services. USCIS lost its way under the malicious incompetence of the Trump Administration and such stunningly unqualified “leaders” as Ken “Cooch Cooch” Cuccinelli. But, it has continued to “wander in the wilderness” under Biden.

David J.Bier of the Cato Institute takes the measure of the outrageous proposed fee increases from USCIS in this analysis. https://www.cato.org/blog/uscis-will-charge-3000/hour-process-work-authorization-under-new-rule.

David “hits the nail on the head”: with these two paragraphs:

USCIS is charging more money for less efficient work. It is not surprising that it is taking adjudicators much longer to process forms because the length of the forms keeps growing. The average form length has increased from about 3 pages in 2003—when the agency started—to about 10 pages in 2022.

USCIS should be eliminating the number of required applications and streamlining the process through electronic filing. The “discounts” for online filing that it plans on introducing hardly compensate applicants who must spend much more time using USCIS’s difficult online application portals, and regardless, online filing will remain unavailable for many types of forms. USCIS is moving too slowly to create a modern immigration system.

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I’ll bet that with his brilliant mind and work ethic, Eric Holder could actually substantially improve on the alleged 13.2 minute average “adjudication” time for Form I-765.

Eric Holder, Jr.
Former U.S. Attorney General, now Partner @ Covington & Burling. He could actually save Biden’s USCIS a few bucks on hourly cost of adjudicating EADs!

The EAD is probably the most egregious example of an out of control bureaucracy that charges more for less service and complicates, rather than simplifies, a routine “no-brainer/low risk” function. Even the current $410 fee for an EAD is a ripoff that should be generating tons of excess cash for USCIS. Given the incomprehensible EAD backlog, in fact, the public has paid for lots of “service” that has never been “delivered.”

In private industry, that would be a “red flag” for potential fraud, waste, and abuse. If there were a “Better Business Bureau” for the bureaucracy, USCIS be in hot — no boiling — water!

Actually, the DHS IG and the GAO are supposed to perform this function for the Government, but have been largely “MIA” on the rapid downward spiral of the immigration bureaucracy over the past decade! In any event, nobody appears to pay much attention to their reports. They are issued, covered initially by the media, the subject of a few “political sound bites,” and then buried and forgotten (except, perhaps, by historians and scholars).

DHS needs new creative management, an emphasis on public service, and some close oversight (something Dems conveniently ignored while they had “unified control” of Congress). Most of us “get” that Trump and his flunkies intentionally destroyed what passed for “service” at USCIS. But, that was a well-known fact going into the 2020 election.

After two years in office, whining about what the Trump kakistocracy did or didn’t do, and pointing to Congress’s undoubted dereliction of duty, is getting old. Very old!

The Biden Administration needs to get new leadership into the dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy at DHS, DOJ, DOL, DOS, & other agencies. That must be leadership with a vision, courage, expertise, and a determination to deliver great public services in a competent, timely manner without “breaking the bank” or further blaming, shaming, punishing, or burdening the public “victims” of failed government.

Additionally, the out of touch “Miller Lite Brew Crew” that passes for immigration, human rights, and security advisors at and to the Biden White House needs to be replaced with practical experts who can get the job done without breaking laws and resorting to “built to fail” gimmicks.

Perhaps Senate Dems need much more of “Sen. Bill Proxmire’s Ghost” 👻 and far less tolerance for “Miller Lite thinking” among Congressional Dems and the Biden Administration!

Undoubtedly, once they get rolling, the “GOP Clown Show” 🤡 in the House will provide lots of unwanted “oversight” to Mayorkas and Garland. But, given the GOP’s toxic record on immigration, it’s highly unlikely to focus on solving any of the REAL problems in the immigration bureaucracy, nor will it promote better public service — something simply not in the GOP lexicon these days.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-19-23

😰 EOIR EARNS “F” FROM DOJ I.G. FOR MISMANAGEMENT OF MULTIMILLION $$ TECHNOLOGY CONTRACT!

https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/reports/23-

We found that JMD’s and EOIR’s contracting files did not demonstrate that the acquisition planning team applied well-established techniques to facilitate monitoring and overseeing the contractors’ performance in compliance with the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), DOJ and EOIR policies, or the award terms and conditions.

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In simple terms, with well over a million lives at stake and with tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money on the line, EOIR screwed up! Royally!👑 This report focuses on the period 2017-22, that included the Trump Administration. During that time, the Trump-Era “EOIR Clown Show” 🤡 was busy on such frivolous things as:

Developing a list of lies, distortions, and misrepresentations about asylum seekers and their attorneys and putting it out as a bogus (now eradicated without a trace) “fact sheet;”
Implementing since-abandoned “production quotas” and wasting money on so-called “IJ Dashboards” to micromanage production;
Creating an “Office of Policy” in an agency where such “policy” is largely the responsibility of what is supposed to be a body of independent quasi-judicial adjudicators, the BIA, and which office largely duplicated functions that were being satisfactorily performed by the EOIR Office of General Counsel;
Mismanaging the COVID response in the Immigration Courts;
Building record backlogs.

While Garland did eventually push out the Director, Deputy Director, and Chief Immigration Judge, the later position remains vacant and there is no hard evidence that the replacements for Director and Deputy Director are any more qualified than their inept predecessors to lead “America’s worst courts” back to some level of competence and functionality.

And, as has become the “norm” under Garland, there is no firm indication of any accountability or meaningful institutional improvements to insure due process and appropriate expenditure of public funds.

And, it’s not like things were better before 2017. As the report noted, between 2001 and 2016, EOIR “blew through” $80 million on its so-called “eWorld Adjudication System (eWorld),” without producing a functional product that could be used nationwide! Hence the need to throw even more money at the problem from 2017-22!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-02-22

🤯 AS EOIR SINKS INTO THE SEA OF CHAOS & INJUSTICE, GARLAND’S SOLUTION: MORE UNNEEDED BUREAUCRACY!

Hole in the head — This is how much EOIR and its long-suffering stakeholders need a “Chief of the Immigration Law Division” at EOIR!
PHOTO: EOI Teacher @ Twitter

https://www.justice.gov/legal-careers/job/supervisory-attorney-advisor-chief-immigration-law-division

Duties include but are not limited to the following:

Plan and direct general legal activities of the Agency with the objective of assuring that all actions taken are in accordance with law and regulation with special emphasis on assuring that actions taken conform to the basic principles of law.

Provide interpretation of immigration provisions, laws, and regulations to all segments of the agency.

Propose the development of policies and procedures in response to legal cases or problems that have the effect of substantially broadening or restricting the activities of the agency.

Advise the Director/Deputy and staff on the legal implications of proposed and newly enacted laws, regulations and policies that will have an impact on the operation of the agency and keeps abreast of current decisions of the courts.

Direct professional legal staff in the development, documentation, and operation of both internal processes and administrative/technical controls.

Supervise staff in the formulation and direction of proactive, time-sensitive services and/or guidance to EOIR components, unique needs of senior management and responsiveness to the Department and other government or regulatory agencies.

Qualifications:

In order to qualify for the position, you must meet the following minimum qualifications:

Education: Applicants must possess an LL.B. or a J.D. degree. (Provide the month and year in which you obtained your degree and the name of the College or University from which it was conferred/awarded.)

AND

Licensure: Applicants must be an active member of the bar, duly licensed and authorized to practice law as an attorney under the laws of any state, territory of the U.S., or the District of Columbia. (Provide the month and year in which you obtained your first license and the State from which it was issued.)

AND

Required Experience:

For GS-15: Applicants must have four (4) full years (48 months) of post J.D. or LL.B professional legal experience. Qualifying professional legal experience includes: Direct professional legal staff in the development, documentation, and operation of both internal processes and administrative/technical controls; Advise Senior Management and staff on the legal implications of proposed and newly enacted laws, regulations and policies that will have an impact on the operation of the agency and keeps abreast of current decisions of the courts; and Plan and direct general legal activities of the Agency with the objective of assuring that all actions taken are in accordance with law and regulation with special emphasis on assuring that actions taken conform to the basic principles of law.

(Your resume must CLEARLY demonstrate this experience)

Preferred Experience:

The ideal candidate will have experience with the following:

Providing technical and administrative supervision over attorneys and professional staff within an organization.

Planning and assigning work to subordinate attorneys based on priorities and difficulty of the assignment.

Providing input and advice to Senior Officials on policy decisions.

Coordinating with other government offices and/or agencies on legal matters.

NOTE: Qualifying experience is calculated only after receipt of J.D. or LL.B.

IN DESCRIBING YOUR EXPERIENCE, PLEASE BE CLEAR AND SPECIFIC. WE MAY NOT MAKE ASSUMPTIONS REGARDING YOUR EXPERIENCE.

Salary:

($148,484 – $176,300 per year.

Travel:

Occasional travel

Application Process:

To Apply for this position, please click the below link to access and apply to the vacancy announcement via USA Jobs USAJOBS – Job Announcement . Please read the announcement thoroughly. You Must Submit a complete application package by 11:59PM (EST) on 9/02/2022, the closing date of the announcement.

Applicants should familiarize themselves and comply with the relevant rules of professional conduct regarding any possible conflicts of interest in connection with their applications. In particular, please notify this Office if you currently represent clients or adjudicate matters in which this Office is involved and/or you have a family member who is representing clients or adjudicating matters in which this Office is involved so that we can evaluate any potential conflict of interest or disqualification issue that may need to be addressed under those circumstances.

Application Deadline:

Tuesday, September 6, 2022

Relocation Expenses:

Not authorized

Number of Positions:

1

Updated August 23, 2022

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The ship is rudderless and sinking! Many of the sailors are inept or think they are working for a different Navy! The solution: More Lt. Commanders on deck, each doing someone else’s job and giving random orders, to add to the confusion and disorder!

Let me be clear: EOIR and its long-suffering “customers” and “stakeholders” need this superfluous position like a hole in the head! Perhaps less! This looks like “EOIR imitating the DHS bureaucracy” that it is supposed to be treating as a “party,” not a “role model!”

The “Office of Policy” — totally unnecessary and inconsistent with the mission of a quasi-judicial court system — is a serious boondoggle created by the last Administration. Eliminating it and redeploying its wasted resources into competent, expert quasi-judicial decision making should have been “Day One Stuff” for Garland. But it wasn’t!

EOIR needs better, expert judges, who know immigration and human rights laws, and are unswervingly committed to due process, fundamental fairness, and best practices! It also needs a “lean team” of well qualified judicial administrators to recruit, hire, train, and support judges and court staff!

Incredibly, most of this PD sounds like it’s right out of the PDs for BIA Chair, BIA Member, CIJ, Director, Deputy Director, or General Counsel. Get folks who can do those jobs and eliminate the Office of Policy and the other “non-operational bureaucratic fat” in Falls Church!

Does the Supreme Court have a “U.S. Law Division?” How about the D.C. Circuit where Garland once served? What on earth is Garland doing with this wasteful nonsense!

For Pete’s sake, the BIA IS the “Immigration Law Division!” If, as I maintain, most of the current Appellate Judges are not capable of performing those functions competently and in accordance with due process and fundamental fairness, then get better judges in there! Now!

Sure, it’s not the “popular solution” within the self-perpetuating bureaucracy. But, it’s the right one!

Stop the unnecessary proliferation of inept bureaucrats at EOIR! “Hey, hey, Ho, ho, the EOIR Clown Show has got to go!” Throwing more “ringmasters” into this circus is NOT the answer!

EOIR Clown Show Must Go T-Shirt — “EOIR Clown Show Must Go” T-Shirt Custom Design Concept

DOJ and Director Neal should be hauled before an Oversight Committee to justify their continuing bureaucratic nonsense in the face of abject “mission failure!” Not going to happen. But, it should! Honestly!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-24-22

☠️HE SURVIVED 22 YEARS IN CAL STATE PRISONS — 2 YEARS IN DHS DETENTION “BROKE” HIM, DESPITE WINNING HIS CASE BEFORE AN IJ! — Welcome To America & Biden’s Gulag, Where Asylum Seekers Get Treated Worse Than Convicted Felons!🤮

https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/I-ve-done-time-in-12-California-prisons-Yuba-16804293.php

Carlos Sauceda writes in the SF Chron:

In 2017, after serving 22 years in prison for a gang-related murder I committed as a teenager, the California parole board granted me early release due to my rehabilitation and leadership while incarcerated. I was incredibly fortunate to get what I thought would be a second chance at life, and I committed myself to using my freedom to improve the world around me.

But I had to put those plans on hold. Because I was undocumented, I was immediately transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody at Yuba County Jail. The two years I spent there awaiting a decision on my immigration status were far worse than the over two decades I spent in 12 different prisons serving out my sentence.

Yuba County Jail is the last county jail under contract with the federal government to hold immigrant detainees in California. For the two years I fought my immigration case, I was psychologically, emotionally and physically abused by the Yuba County Sheriff’s Department. Some of the cells I lived in had no drinking water, others did not have working toilets and others had no lights, leaving me and other detainees in the dark all day long. My stress increased and my blood pressure became dangerously high. In 2018, after a year at the jail, I finally won my immigration case. But Department of Homeland Security attorneys appealed the judge’s decision, keeping me separated from my family, fueling my depression and suicidal thoughts. After another year of fighting the appeal, I had to make an impossible choice: Die inside Yuba County Jail or risk imminent death in my native land. After two years of inhumane treatment, I chose the latter. I signed the paperwork for self-deportation and went back to my home country.

My story is just one of thousands playing out in federally contracted county jails and privately operated ICE detention centers across the country. Despite President Biden’s campaign promise to end the use of private prisons for immigration detention, for undocumented people being held at Yuba County Jail, no relief is coming.

Yuba County Jail has a long history of violating national detention standards. From 2010 to 2021, ICE’s own detention office conducted at least eight inspections at the jail and found 171 violations. Among those violations, inspection officials determined that a sergeant, who was involved in two use-of-force incidents at the jail, participated in his own reviews. As a result of the findings, 24 members of Congress wrote a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas demanding that the department terminate ICE’s contract with Yuba County. At the state level, California legislators passed SB29, forbidding local governments to enter into new detention agreements with ICE. But as The Chronicle’s reporting pointed out, in 2018, the same year SB29 took effect, ICE and Yuba County officials “quietly extended their contract” to 2099.

Why would Yuba County officials establish an indefinite contract with ICE as the rest of the state moves to end the use of its jails by federal immigration authorities? Follow the money. The contract with ICE earns the Yuba County Sheriff’s Department a minimum of just under $24,000 a day, whether or not any detainees are being held in the jail, totaling about $8.66 million per year.

When the pandemic hit, conditions inside the jail worsened. Following an April 2020 class-action lawsuit, court orders led the jail to decrease its detainee population. Thanks to the work of human right advocates and formerly detained undocumented people like myself, and others, the jail went from having 127 detainees in May 2020 to zero in late 2021. For those of us who had fought, staged hunger strikes and protested, both inside and outside the jail, it felt like we were finally seeing the end of immigrant detainment.

But our celebrations were brief. In the two months that the jail had no detainees, the county’s contract with ICE was still in place, earning it an estimated $1.4 million. And in December, ICE transported its first detainee back into the jail. As of this week, three people are now detained there under ICE custody.

The repopulation of the jail by ICE only means we will fight even harder for liberation and the termination of the contract. Over the past year, and despite being thousands of miles away, I found ways to raise my voice. I connected with others who were detained alongside me and who were also deported and encouraged them to join the fight. My wife, along with other mothers, sisters, and family members joined us as well. We hosted Instagram live videos as a space for storytelling. For weeks, I met with congressional offices and shared my story and the story of others, which ultimately led to their support.

At a recent Yuba County Board of Supervisors meeting, newly named Chairman Randy Fletcher said that the claims made in a letter sent by the ACLU to the Yuba County sheriff and Board of Supervisors about the multiple violations and unlawful conditions at the jail were not true. “They make a lot of accusations. … It’s not true. It’s just not true,” he said. But I and the other undocumented people who were detained there know what we suffered through is true. And it needs to stop.

. . . .

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Read the rest of the story at the link.

Coercion and punishment have long been part of the plan. That’s because the Supremes have fabricated the concept that “civil” imprisonment isn’t “punishment.” Pure balderdash!

Also, how does a jail get paid $1.4 million by taxpayers for nothing? Sounds like a “fleecing of America.”

But, of course, neither Garland nor Mayorkas bother to look into these questionable practices. Rather curious in light of the recommendation of a “select task force of experts” at the end of the Obama Administration that detention contracts (which frequently make establishing accountability for abuses difficult or impossible) be ended and that DHS phase out unnecessary detention.

Lack of accountability for DHS Detention is a chronic problem. So are defective bond procedures by EOIR that several Federal Courts have found unconstitutional, but which Garland continues to defend! Arbitrary bond procedures, weak internal appellate review, and lack of helpful precedents all feed the system.

Also, EOIR’s brushing aside the intentional coercion, lack of access to counsel, absence of resources, inability to prepare and document cases all contribute to the dangerous dysfunction. New, independent, expert, progressive “real judges” at EOIR would not allow Mayorkas and Garland to keep sweeping these abuses under the carpet!

Perhaps that’s why Garland has been content to allow his “courts” to malfunction using a majority of Trump/Miller holdovers and some notorious “go along to get along” bureaucrats as “judges.” Voices of expertise and reason among the IJs, and there are some, are often “silenced,” “neutered,” or “intentionally frustrated” by a BIA stacked with apologists, sometimes flat-out advocates, for DHS Enforcement and anti-immigrant policies.

Meanwhile, journalists, advocates, and those who have experienced “The Gulag” first hand need to keep it in the headlines, continue to litigate vigorously against it, and make a record of the disgraceful gap between what America claims to stand for and what it actually does! And, they would do well to “keep turning up the heat” on Garland’s “star chambers” and on his own lack of accountability for the daily disasters that unfold under his auspices.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-27-22

💸🤑SCAM CITY USA! — Feds Paid Bad Cal Jail $1.4 Million For Nothing! — Now They Are Placing Immigration Detainees In These Dangerous, ☠️ Substandard ⚠️ Conditions! — Administrations Change, But The American Gulag 🤮 Remains!

https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/Northern-California-jail-reopens-to-immigrant-16765144.php

Deepa Fernandes for the SF Chron:

. . . .

Court orders in the class-action lawsuit caused Yuba’s detainee population to steadily decline, from 127 in May 2020 to zero on Oct. 27, 2021, when the last incarcerated noncitizen was released. Activists briefly celebrated and hoped to use the momentum to prevent the jail from accepting future detainees.

But ICE and Yuba County had quietly extended their contract indefinitely in 2018. The contract stipulates that Yuba County receive a minimum of $24,000 a day whether any detainees are in its jail or not. In the two months the jail was without detainees, the federal government paid Yuba County almost $1.4 million.

As word trickled out that the Northern California jail might begin accepting new detainees, formerly incarcerated men and community supporters protested outside the federal immigration court in San Francisco last month.

A report by the team overseeing the jail’s compliance with the court-ordered consent decree found that a “severe breakdown of the Jail’s mental health system” contributed to the suicide last month of a man who had been in the jail for only a few days. It also found that officials had failed to fix previously cited suicide risks, and that there was inadequate medical and mental health staffing and treatment.

“We’ve known for decades that Yuba County Jail has a horrific record of mental and medical care that has unfortunately resulted in tragic deaths and lots of pain for lots of families,” said Laura Duarte Bateman, communications director for the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, which organized last month’s protest against Yuba accepting new detainees.

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Read the full article at the link.

Fraud, waste, and abuse. No need for the GAO “hotline” on this one. It’s all hanging out in public view as Mayorkas & Garland bury their respective heads in the sand.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-11-21

⚖️🗽🇺🇸SLAVIN, BENÍTEZ, KOWALSKI, SCHMIDT SPEAK OUT ON BROKEN COURTS — Yilun Cheng Reports For “Borderless Magazine”

fl-undocumented-minors 2 – Judge Denise Slavin, former executive vice president of the National Association of Immigration Judges in an immigration courtrrom in Miami. Mike Stocker, Sun Sentinel — Judge Slavin is a member of the Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

GW Law Immigration Clinic Director Professor Alberto Benítez & Co-Director Paulina Vera

Dan Kowalski
Online Editor of the LexisNexis Immigration Law Community (ILC)

https://borderlessmag.org/2021/01/13/for-undocumented-immigrants-a-shot-at-lawful-residency-requires-risking-it-all/

From “For Undocumented Immigrants, a Shot at Lawful Residency Requires Risking It All” by Yilun Cheng in Borderless Magazine:

. . . .

The risk has become even higher in recent years as the Trump administration filled the immigration court system with hardline judges, according to Paul Schmidt, a former judge at the U.S. Immigration Court in Arlington, Virginia. For years, legal groups have urged the government to hire judges from diverse backgrounds to guarantee fairness in the courts, but the situation has only deteriorated in recent years, Schmidt said.

. . . .

“The Obama administration was just negligent,” Schmidt said, suspecting that former president Barack Obama left dozens of vacant immigration judgeships when he left the White House. “The new administration got a chance to fill those positions with a far-right judiciary.”

. . . .

“It’s very much a law enforcement-oriented and not a due process-oriented judiciary,” Schmidt said. “It’s just a bad time to be an individual with a case in the immigration court right now, with a bunch of unsympathetic judges, political hacks pulling the strings, and inconsistent COVID policies.”

. . . .

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Read Yilun’s full article at the link.

In the article, my friend and Round Table 🛡⚔️ colleague Judge Denise Slavin gives an excellent description of how “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” operates in a bogus “court” system run by political hacks with enforcement (and in the defeated “regime” racist) motivations.

“Ready to try” cases, many of which could be granted or should be closed, are shuffled off to the end of the docket, some without any notice on the day of trial when the respondent, his or her lawyer, and often witnesses who have taken the day from work arrive only to find out that their case has been “orbited” into the “outer space” of the EOIR backlog.

Meanwhile, cases of individuals who haven’t had time to get lawyers or been granted the preparation time required by due process are put at the front of the docket to make denial of their cases easier for “judges” who have been told that they are basically functionaries of DHS enforcement. Sometimes, the very same lawyers who have had their years-old prepared cases arbitrarily reset to oblivion are then improperly pressured and required to go forward with cases they haven’t had a chance to properly prepare or document.

Often, individuals whose cases are improperly “accelerated” recieve inadequate notice, resulting in carelessly issued, illegal “in absentia” orders that could result in improper removal or at least require heroic efforts by lawyers to get the case reopened and restored to the docket. Meanwhile, the bogus “no-show” statistics caused by the Government’s improper actions are used to build an intentionally false narrative that asylum seekers don’t show at their hearings.

The truth, of course, is the exact opposite: When given a chance to get competent representation and when the system is explained to them in understandable terms, asylum seekers show up for the overwhelming majority of their hearings, regardless of the ultimate result of their cases.

As cogently studied and stated by highly-respected “practical scholar” Professor Ingrid Eagly of UCLA Law and her colleague UCLA empirical researcher Steven Shafer, in a recent published study:

Contrary to claims that all immigrants abscond, our data-driven analysis reveals that 88% of all immigrants in immigration court with completed or pending removal cases over the past eleven years attended all of their court hearings. If we limit our analysis to only nondetained cases, we still find a high compliance rate: 83% of all respondents in completed or pending removal cases attended all of their hearings since 2008. Moreover, we reveal that 15% of those who were ordered deported in absentia since 2008 successfully reopened their cases and had their in absentia orders rescinded. Digging deeper, we identify three factors associated with in absentia removal: having a lawyer, applying for relief from removal (such as asylum), and court jurisdiction.

https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=9695&context=penn_law_review

Professor Ingrid Eagly
UCLA Law
PHOTO: Twitter

I’d be willing to bet that at least an equal number of individuals with in absentia orders are illegally deported because they aren’t knowledgeable enough to reopen their cases, or their reopening motions are wrongfully denied but they lack to resources to pursue appeals, which often involve prolonged periods of dangerous and abusive detention.

Obviously, an Administration actually interested in solving problems (presumably “Team Garland”) would “can the false narratives and bogus enforcement gimmicks” and concentrate on getting asylum seekers represented and increasing and raising the quality of judicial review of detention decisions. The regime’s immigration kakistocracy, of course, has moved in exactly the opposite direction.

Cooperation and coordination with the private, often pro bono, bar, essential to any well-functioning court system, has become non-existent. In fact, it is actively discouraged by DOJ politicos and their “management toadies” at EOIR, who often have mischaracterized the private bar as “the enemy” or out to “game” the system. Perversely, of course, the exact opposite is true. The regime’s immigration kakistocracy has tried over and over to use illegal methods and bogus narratives to illegally and unconstitutionally “game” the system against legitimate asylum seekers and their hard-working attorneys (actually, the only “players” in this sorry game trying to uphold “good government” and the rule of law.)

As a result, the only way for the private bar to be heard is by suing in the “real” Article III Federal Courts. This has resulted in a string of injunctions and TROs against EOIR and DHS misconduct, illegal regulations, and unlawful policies throughout the country, further adding to the chaos and inconsistencies. It also has clogged the Federal Courts with unnecessary litigation and frivolous, often disingenuous or unethical, “defenses to the indefensible” by DOJ lawyers.

This is how a dysfunctional “court system” that actually is a veneer for out of control enforcement and institutionalized racist xenophobia builds backlog. The corrupt “leaders” of this dysfunctional and unconstitutional mess then blame their victims for the delays caused by gross Government mismanagement. In turn, they use this “bogus scenario” to justify further unconstitutional restrictions of immigrants’ rights, due process, and judicial independence.

It’s a “scam” of the highest order! One that actually harms ☠️ and kills ⚰️ people, harasses lawyers, undermines the rule of law, and wastes taxpayer resources. One that has brought disgrace upon the DOJ and undermines the entire U.S. Justice system🏴‍☠️. One that Judge Garland and his incoming team at the DOJ must immediately end and totally reform, while holding accountable those responsible for this gross miscarriage of justice, fraud, waste, and abuse.

This is not “normal Government” or a question of “differing philosophies.” It’s outright fraud, intentional illegality, abuse of Government resources, and instititutionalized racism. It must be treated as such by the Biden Administration.

⚖️🗽🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-18-21

EXPOSING THE KAKISTOCRACY 🏴‍☠️ — LATEST TRAC “DATA DIVE” SHOWS WHY THERE ARE LIES, DAMN LIES, & EOIR’S “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” ☠️🤮👎 – The Round Table & Other Immigration Experts, As Well As Some Article III Judges, Have Been Saying It Ever Since “Gonzo” Sessions’s Unethical & Dishonest Opinion In Castro-Tum: “TRAC finds that far from contributing to the backlog, administrative closure has helped reduce the backlog. [T]he EOIR significantly misrepresented the data it used to justify this rule.”

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse

The Life and Death of Administrative Closure

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

In August 2020, the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR) proposed a new rule that would effectively eliminate administrative closure as a docket management tool for Immigration Judges. The EOIR justified this proposed rule by claiming that administrative closure has “exacerbated both the extent of the existing backlog of immigration court cases and the difficulty in addressing that backlog in a fair and timely manner.” TRAC analyzed the EOIR’s claims as well as the historical data on administrative closure from 1986, and has just published its findings in a detailed report. The link to the report is below.

TRAC’s detailed analysis of the court records on administrative closure yields four key findings. First, administrative closure has been routinely used by Immigration Judges to manage their growing caseloads as well as manage the unresolved overlapping of jurisdictions between the EOIR and other immigration agencies. From FY 1986 to 2020, 6.1 percent (or 376,439) deportation and removal cases had been administratively closed during their lifespan. Each year, between 1 percent and 30 percent of cases are administratively closed, with high percentages of administrative closures during the Reagan and Bush Administrations in the late 1980s and early 1990s and during the Obama Administration between 2012 and 2016.

Second, TRAC finds that far from contributing to the backlog, administrative closure has helped reduce the backlog. If the 292,042 cases that are currently administratively closed and not yet recalendared were brought back onto the Court’s active docket, this would suddenly increase the Court’s active workload from its current backlog at the end of July 2020 of 1,233,307 cases to 1,525,349 cases. This would produce a 24 percent jump in the court’s already clogged hearing schedules, pushing the resolution of other backlogged cases off for many additional months if not years.

Third, data from the Immigration Courts show that immigrants who obtain administrative closure are likely to have followed legal requirements and obtain lawful status. When cases were administratively closed, recalendared, and decided, most immigrants met the legal standard to remain in the country lawfully. For example, for those cases in which the government was seeking removal orders, six out of ten (60.1%) immigrants met the high legal threshold of remaining in the country. The largest proportion of these had their cases terminated since the Court ultimately found there were no longer valid grounds to deport them. Just three out of ten (30.3%) immigrants were ultimately ordered removed.

Fourth, the EOIR significantly misrepresented the data it used to justify this rule. Specifically, the agency claims to show low numbers of case completions during the Obama Administration and high numbers of case completions during the Trump Administration. In reality, the data behind this argument artificially eliminates cases that were administratively closed. Its argument also fails to recognize that average annual case completions per Immigration Judge have actually declined from 737 closures per judge to 657 per judge during the past four years, not increased, perhaps due to the changes introduced by the current Administration.

Read the full report at:

https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/623/

TRAC’s free web query tools which track Immigration Court proceedings have also been updated through July 2020. For an index to the full list of TRAC’s immigration tools and their latest update go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/imm/tools/

If you want to be sure to receive a notification whenever updated data become available, sign up at:

https://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1

Follow us on Twitter at:

https://twitter.com/tracreports

or like us on Facebook:

https://facebook.com/tracreports

TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the US Federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl

David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Syracuse University
Suite 360, Newhouse II
Syracuse, NY 13244-2100
315-443-3563
trac@syr.edu
https://trac.syr.edu

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse is a nonpartisan joint research center of the Whitman School of Management (https://whitman.syr.edu) and the Newhouse School of Public Communications (https://newhouse.syr.edu) at Syracuse University. If you know someone who would like to sign up to receive occasional email announcements and press releases, they may go to https://trac.syr.edu and click on the E-mail Alerts link at the bottom of the page. If you do not wish to receive future email announcements and wish to be removed from our list, please send an email to trac@syr.edu with REMOVE as the subject.

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

“Significantly misrepresented” — That’s a euphamism for “blatantly lied.” Of course, that’s what the head of the regime does on life or death matters. So, I suppose we wouldn’t expect anything else from the “toadies on parade” filling out the kakistocracy.

Look, you don’t “jack” the backlog to at least twice its “pre-regime” level with twice the number of Immigration Judges without some pretty grotesque mismanagement, cover-ups, falsification of data, dishonesty, and denial of rights to migrants.

Moreover, TRAC specifically shows the “false narrative” peddled by the racists in the Trump regime that administrative closing is some type of “evasion” that is not in the public interest. As Judge Richard Leon would say “poppycock.” It’s exactly the opposite! TRAC finds that “data from the Immigration Courts show that immigrants who obtain administrative closure are likely to have followed legal requirements and obtain lawful status.”

Administrative closure is a sane, reasonable, well-established, entirely legal, and absolutely necessary procedure. Gee whiz, one of the original proponents of administrative closure and its aggressive use as a docket management tool was the late first Chief Immigration Judge William R. Robie. Chief Judge Robie was a Republican appointee during the Reagan Administration. He also was a devotee of fundamental fairness and judicial efficiency. He had led a number of professional organizations and was known and respected in the DC Legal Community as a “guru of timeliness and efficient legal administration.”

What’s abusive are the illegal tactics, lies, and mismanagement at both DOJ and DHS that have been concocted to justify racist, White Nationalist policies that do not serve the public interest!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-10-20

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

Here’s an Addendum from Margaret Stock:

From: Margaret Stock [mailto:MStock@CASCADIALAWALASKA.COM]
Sent: Saturday, September 12, 2020 10:17 AM
To: Benson, Lenni B.
Cc: Immprof (immprof@lists.ucla.edu)
Subject: Re: [immprof] FW: The Life and Death of Administrative Closure

The Administration is most definitely putting out misleading information (as usual). Example: one often overlooked “administrative closure” group has been members of the US military who got tossed into removal proceedings for one reason or another (usually because of a referred asylum case or failure to file an I751 or denial of an I751 by USCIS). They almost always naturalize after being put into proceedings, then reopen and terminate. Lately, they’ve had to hire a lawyer to keep showing up at master calendar hearings, usually for a couple of years. The judges can’t hear the case because they’ve got naturalization applications pending. But the judges have to keep wasting docket time on them because there’s no such thing as admin closure anymore. It’s foolish and costly for the service members.

Sent from my iPhone

KAKISTOCRACY WATCH🤮: JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT THE REGIME COULDN’T GO ANY LOWER: Billy The Bigot Tries To Force Taxpayers To Underwrite Trump’s Verbal Attack On Victim Of His Alleged 1990 Sexual Assault! 👎🏻🤮

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/doj-seeks-defend-trump-suit-e-jean-carroll-who-has-n1239589

Dartunorro Clark is a political reporter for NBC News:

. . . .

Last year, advice columnist E. Jean Carroll accused Trump of sexually assaulting her at Bergdorf Goodman in New York City in the mid-1990s. She said the friendly encounter turned violent when Trump, then a businessman, pushed her up against a dressing room wall, unzipped his pants and forced himself on her. Carroll said she pushed him off and ran from the store.

Trump has denied the claim, saying “she’s not my type” and it “never happened.” Carroll said no attendants were in the dressing room area at the time of the alleged assault, and she did not file a report with the New York Police Department.

Carroll filed a defamation suit against Trump in November after the president denied her allegation. The Justice Department argued that because the president denied the accusation in his official capacity, the agency can defend him against the suit. She is seeking unspecified damages and a retraction of Trump’s statements.

Carroll’s lawyers also served notice to Trump’s legal team this year for Trump to submit a DNA sample for “analysis and comparison against unidentified male DNA” present on the dress she said she wore at the time of the alleged assault. A New York judge last month also denied Trump’s move to temporarily halt the suit.

“Sir, I and my attorney Robbie Kaplan, are ready! So is every woman who has ever been silenced! So is every American citizen who has been trampled by Bill Barr and the DOJ! BRING IT!” Carroll wrote.

Carroll and Kaplan released separate official statements Tuesday night calling the move by the Justice Department offensive.

Kaplan said: “Realizing that there was no valid basis to appeal that decision in the New York courts, on the very day that he would have been required to appeal, Trump instead enlisted the U.S. Department of Justice to replace his private lawyers and argue that when he lied about sexually assaulting our client, explaining that she ‘wasn’t his type,’ he was acting in his official capacity as President of the United States.

“Even in today’s world, that argument is shocking. It offends me as a lawyer, and offends me even more as a citizen. Trump’s effort to wield the power of the U.S. government to evade responsibility for his private misconduct is without precedent, and shows even more starkly how far he is willing to go to prevent the truth from coming out.”

Carroll said in her statement that the Justice Department’s court filing shows that Trump “will do everything possible” to stop the case from going forward. She added, “But Trump underestimates me, and he also has underestimated the American people.”

Dartunorro Clark

Dartunorro Clark is a political reporter for NBC News.

***************
Read the rest of the article at the link.

Let’s see: Billy the Bigot has weaponized the Immigration Courts against those individuals whose rights it was supposed to protect. He denies the reality of “institutionalized racism” in the face of “indisputable video evidence” that it is alive and well in the U.S. today. He has failed to protect the rights of the LGBTG community. He has undermined the voting rights and political power of Americans of color. Now, he blatantly misuses DOJ resources to mount a personal defense of a corrupt and dishonest Prez in litigation arising out of his alleged private actions more than a quarter century before he was sworn into his Government office.

Who knows what else “Billy the Bigot” has up his sleeve in his never-ending quest to destroy the U.S. Justice System at your expense, in more ways than one! When the “people’s lawyers” become the personal lawyers of a corrupt would-be authoritarian head of state, you know that you’re well on your way to “failed state” status, no matter how high your GNP might be at present.

A more overriding observation: Trump and his corrupt cronies have managed to manipulate the U.S. Justice system over nearly four years to avoid accountability or public disclosure of his many acts of corruption, starting with hiding his tax returns. That’s a sure sign of systemic institutional failure!

This November, vote like your life and the future of democracy depend on it! Because they do!

PWS

09-09-20

TWO-FER: Billy Barr Assaults First & Fifth Amendments In Frivolous Attack On NAIJ — Seeks To Harass, Silence Immigration Judges’ Union For Fearlessly Speaking Out Against Demise Of Due Process, Improper Political Influence, Gross Mismanagement In America’s Most Unfair & Dysfunctional “Courts!”

Judge Amiena Khan is the executive vice president of the National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ) — Judge Amiena Khan Executive Vice President National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ)

Judge Dorothy Harbeck, an immigration judge in New York City, is the secretary/treasurer of the NAIJ — Judge Dorothy Harbeck Secretary/Treasurer of the NAIJ

Immigration TFL_Mar-Apr2020

Judge Amiena Khan and Judge Dorothy Harbeck (in their capacities as NAIJ Officers) write in the Federal Lawyer:

DOJ Tries to Silence the Voice of the Immigration Judges—Again!

The Second Attempt to Decertify the National Association of Immigration Judges

by Judge Amiena Khan and Judge Dorothy Harbeck

Immigration Law

Judge Amiena Khan is the executive vice president of the National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ) and serves as the co-chair of the NAIJ Vulnerable Populations Committee. Judge Khan was appointed by Attorney General Eric Holder in December 2010. She is seated at the New York Immigration Court and is a member of the New York State Bar. Judge Khan is the programs chair of the FBA Immigration Law Section and is also a member of the National Association of Women Judges.

Judge Dorothy Harbeck, an immigration judge in New York City, is the secretary/treasurer of the NAIJ. She is also an adjunct professor of law at Columbia and Rutgers. She
is a fellow of the Federal Bar Foundation, is on the Executive Board of the FBA Immigration Law Section, and is a member of the bar in New Jersey and New York.

The 2019 DOJ Petition for Decertification
In August 2019, the Department of Justice (DOJ), in a veiled attempt to silence the voice of the immigration judges (IJs), filed a petition with the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) to decertify the Nation- al Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ).1 The NAIJ—origi

The 2019 DOJ Petition for Decertification

In August 2019, the Department of Justice (DOJ), in a veiled attempt to silence the voice of the immigration judges (IJs), filed a petition with the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) to decertify the Nation- al Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ).1 The NAIJ—originally certified in 1979 as the recognized representative for collective bargaining for all U.S. IJs—is a voluntary association that represents and speaks for the interests of the nation’s 440 IJs. The NAIJ was formed with the objectives of promoting independence and enhancing the professionalism, dignity, and efficiency of the immigration courts. DOJ asserts that IJs should be reclassified as “management officials.” This would mean IJs could no longer union- ize, be part of a collective bargaining unit, or speak independently.

NAIJ serves as the only voice of the IJs who cannot speak out without prior express permission of DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR).2 NAIJ serves to afford transparency and accountability. The immigration courts are not independent courts under Article I or Article III of the Constitution. They are wholly contained within DOJ. Without a union,

IJs have no protection against the politicization of the process and their decisions. Without transparency,

the integrity of the process is in jeopardy. Without a union, the IJs cannot protest policy measures, such as the imposition of quotas and performance measures; the IJs cannot contest the numerous policies enacted by EOIR that encroach upon and undermine the inde- pendent decision-making ability of the IJs; and the IJs will not be able to rally against the effective speedup of the workforce, placing due process and fundamental fairness of the proceedings at risk.

How the Process Works

The burden to show that IJs are management officials is on the moving party (i.e., DOJ). The FLRA regional director (RD) has opened an investigation into the

NAIJ, seeking information about its responsibilities. DOJ can submit factual and legal arguments in support of its petition. The RD can then issue a decision or request a hearing to solicit more information. Either party can appeal the RD’s decision to the full FLRA board.

The Unsuccessful 2000 Attempt to Decertify

the Immigration Judges’ Union

This current effort follows a similar, and unsuccessful, strategy pursued by DOJ to decertify the immigration judges’ union approximately 20 years ago. In Septem- ber 2000, the FLRA’s RD rejected DOJ’s argument, and the full FLRA upheld the RD’s decision on appeal. In that prior decertification attempt,3 the FLRA reject- ed DOJ’s argument that IJs make policy through the issuance of decisions, noting that the trial court level IJs do not set precedent and that their rulings are often appealed and reviewed. The FLRA also said that the immigration court system was established specifically so that IJs do not maintain any management duties to enable them to focus on hearings.

The FLRA also ruled that there is a distinct differ- ence between the trial level IJs and the appellate level Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) members.4 The description of the duties of the IJ were described in the 2000 decertification attempt:

The daily routine of an Immigration Judge involves hearing and deciding cases that arise from the operation of the INS.5 A court’s juris- diction to decide these cases is determined at the time a case is filed. After filing, the cases are randomly assigned by the court administrator to an individual Judge and placed on a Judge’s calendar on his or her master calendar day. At that time, the Judge hears presentations from the parties and their attorneys, identifies the is- sues, and advises individuals as to their right to

March/April 2020 • THE FEDERAL LAWYER • 9

representation. The Judge also sets time frames and briefing schedules, as well as the date for trial.6

The nature of the IJs’ decisions and their position in the hierarchy of binding the EOIR was also set forth:

During a trial, the parties are represented by counsel and the rules of evidence are observed. Thereafter, in arriving at their decisions, Immigration Judges are required to apply immigra- tion statutes, applicable regulations, published decisions of the Board of Immigration Appeals and federal appellate courts, and other foreign and state laws. After the trial, the Judge issues his or her decision, almost always orally, and advises the parties of their appeal rights. Oral decisions are not tran- scribed unless they are appealed; are not published; and are final and binding only with respect to the parties to the case. With limited exception, decisions of the Immigration Judges may be appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals and review of their decisions is de novo. Certain cases may also be appealed to the appropriate U.S. circuit court.7

Citing its precedential case on the managerial status of BIA members (hereinafter “the BIA Management Case”),8 the FLRA specifically stated that the BIA appellate judges were management officials within the meaning of section 7103(a)(11) of the statute and, therefore, could not be included in the existing bargaining unit. In particular, it concluded that “the incumbent Board Member directly influences activity policy through his participation in the interpreta- tion of immigration laws and the issuance of decisions and, thereby, meets the definition of a management official set forth in section 7103(a)(11) of the Statute.”9

In the 2000 decertification attempt, the RD applied the BIA Management Case and concluded that “unlike decisions of the Board of Immigration Appeals, the decisions of Immigration Judges are

not published, do not constitute precedent, are binding only on the parties to the proceedings, and are subject to de novo review.”10 The RD accordingly concluded that the decisions of the judges do not in- fluence and determine the Agency’s immigration policy, in contrast to the decisions of the BIA.

The FLRA concurred that the RD’s definition of a management official is defined as “an individual employed by an agency in a posi- tion the duties and responsibilities of which require or authorize the individual to formulate, determine, or influence the policies of the agency.”11

Critically, the full FLRA also found that management officials are individuals who: “(1) create, establish or prescribe general princi- ples, plans or courses of action for an agency; (2) decide upon or settle upon general principles, plans or courses of action for an agen- cy; or (3) bring about or obtain a result as to the adoption of general principles, plans or courses of action for an agency.”12

The FLRA distinguished the trial court IJs from the BIA appellate judges by specifically holding that IJs do not “make policy through the issuance of their decisions … that in arriving at their decisions, Immigration Judges are required to apply immigration laws and reg- ulations, that their decisions are not published and do not constitute precedent.” Finally, the RD observed that the decisions are binding only on the parties to the case, are “routinely” appealed, and are subject to de novo review.13 There is no difference in this now.

The FLRA specifically agreed with the RD’s rejection of the EOIR’s claims that “the sheer volume of decisions issued by the [immigration] Judges and the finality of their decisions, unless they are appealed,” affect the EOIR’s policy. This is because “no matter the volume of decisions issued, or number of appeals filed, the fact remains that when an Immigration Judge issues a decision [,] he or she is applying and following established Agency law and policy.”14 Again, there is no difference in this now.

While IJs have some authority to control practice in their own courtrooms, they have no authority to set overall policy as to how the courts as a whole will operate. Nor, critically, do they have the authority to direct or commit the EOIR to any policy or course of action. The IJs are highly trained professionals with the extremely important job of adjudicating cases.15 This organizational structure and supervisory delegation was established specifically so that the IJs are unencumbered by any supervisory and management obligations and are free to concentrate on hearings.16 Aspirationally, this is still the position of the IJs.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the article at the link. Many thanks to Judge Khan and Judge Harbeck for courageously speaking out and informing us in such a well-documented and scholarly manner.

It’s disgraceful that political leaders who are supposed to be committed to our Constitution and the rule of law instead misuse government funds and abuse their authority to cover up their wrongdoing and mismanagement. In a functional government, Barr and his toadies would be facing impeachment or referral for criminal investigation from Congress for their abuses of authority and attacks on our Constitution. Most certainly, a competent Congress would long ago have removed EOIR from the clutches of the DOJ politicos and placed it where it belongs: as an independent court system under either Article I or Article III.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-23-20

TRAC: ADMINISTRATION CONTINUES TO “JACK” U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT BACKLOG – 809,000 ACTUALLY PENDING, 330,000 CLOSED CASES “IN LINE” TO BE ARTIFICIALLY ADDED – Adverse Effects Of Sessions’s Xenophobic Views & Gross Mismanagement Continue To Impede Due Process Even After His Departure! — Across The Board Failure, Even On “Priority Detained” Cases!

==========================================
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
==========================================
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEGreetings. The Immigration Court backlog continues to rise. As of November 30, 2018, the number of pending cases on the court’s active docket grew to 809,041 cases. This is almost a fifty percent increase compared to the 542,411 cases pending at the end of January 2017 when President Trump took office. This figure does not include the additional 330,211 previously completed cases that EOIR placed back on the “pending” rolls that have not yet been put onto the active docket.The state of Maryland continues to lead the pack with the highest rate of increase in pending cases since the beginning of FY 2017 — up by 107 percent. In absolute terms, California has the largest Immigration Court backlog – 146,826 cases waiting decision – up by 54 percent. These results are based upon proceeding-by-proceeding internal Immigration Court records obtained and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse UniversityJust in the last two months, the Immigration Court active backlog has grown by over 40 thousand cases. Particularly high growth rates of 10 percent or higher were experienced at nine Immigration Courts. The two courts with the highest rate of growth in their backlog were two courts at ICE detention facilities. The Eloy Immigration Court in Arizona saw its backlog increase by 144 percent, while the Conroe Immigration Court (Houston SPC) in Texas had an increase of 62 percent. These increases occurred even though the court assigns the highest priority to hearing detained cases.

For the full report go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/542/

In addition, many of TRAC’s free query tools – which track the court’s active backlog, new DHS filings, court dispositions and much more – have now been updated through November 2018. For an index to the full list of TRAC’s immigration tools go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/imm/tools/

If you want to be sure to receive notifications whenever updated data become available, sign up at:

http://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1&list=imm

or follow us on Twitter @tracreports or like us on Facebook:

http://facebook.com/tracreports

TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the U.S. federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl

David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Syracuse University
Suite 360, Newhouse II
Syracuse, NY 13244-2100
315-443-3563

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

More judges, more backlog, due to “gonzo” enforcement, politicization, cratering morale, and just plain old mismanagement. When will Congress and/or the Article IIIs step in and put this dying system out of its misery before the DOJ politicos can do any more damage?

Sessions launched a three-point attack on already inadequate Due Process in U.S. Immigration Court by:

Removing Immigration Judges’ last vestiges of authority to independently manage their dockets;
Severely limiting judicial discretion, thereby effectively reducing Immigration Judges to the status of DHS adjudicators; and
Attacking the well-established rights of asylum seekers, particularly those from the Northern Triangle.

The result has been chaos in the courts. Even more wildly inconsistent decisions from Immigration Judges, cases that should have been “slam dunk” asylum grants, stipulated grants by ICE, or not in Immigration Court in the first place now occupying docket space and being “fully litigated,” thereby tying up more judicial time. Meanwhile judges are being subjected to sophomoric “production quotas,” which were almost universally opposed by everyone working in the system, and forced over scheduling. “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” has gone into full gear. Not surprisingly, there are more appeals, more remands from the Article III Courts, and grossly unfair and disparate treatment of those who are detained and or unrepresented. It’s basically the “worst of all worlds.” All of this is continuing under Whitaker.

I hope that at least the House Committees will look into how political mismanagement is wasting the taxpayers’ money and mocking due process, with no rational solution in sight! There needs to be some accountability for this grotesque fraud, waste, and abuse engineered by this Administration!

PWS

12-18-18

TAL @ SF CHRONICLE: Trump’s Scofflaw Attack On Local Jurisdictions Is Not Only Terrible Law Enforcement, But Also Is A Stupid & Risky Litigation Strategy!

https://www.sfchronicle.com/nation/article/Trump-gambled-big-on-sanctuary-cities-Could-he-13425437.php

Trump gambled big on sanctuary cities. Could he lose big?

Tal Kopan

WASHINGTON — On July 1, 2015, a single gunshot rang out on San Francisco’s Pier 14, fatally wounding 32-year-old Kate Steinle. By July 3, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump was tweeting about it.

An undocumented immigrant and five-time deportee who had been released from San Francisco jail was charged with her murder, though he was acquitted two years later. By the time he went on trial, the incident had become a rallying cry for conservatives in general and Trump in particular. He took action just days into his presidency to block federal funds to sanctuary cities, a catch-all term that describes jurisdictions that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

And then Trump’s administration began to lose — repeatedly — in court.

Now, experts say that by continuing to press the issue, the administration’s strategy could backfire — possibly jeopardizing the cooperation that federal authorities now receive from many local governments and preventing Congress from even passing legislation on the topic.

Related Stories

Trump’s first legal setback came in response to the executive order he issued to block any federal funding to sanctuary cities, when a federal judge in San Francisco ruled in April 2017 that he could not broadly withhold money to force cooperation with immigration agents.

Trump, via then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, then tried to impose more targeted punishment, making law-enforcement grant money conditional on cities’ cooperation with immigration enforcement. Courts in Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Francisco again blocked his efforts. The Justice Department also sued California to try to pre-empt its state sanctuary law. A federal judge in Sacramento blocked that as well.

But it’s not just the grants that are at stake — the administration is at risk of losing the one law on which it has hung all its efforts.

The key development came in May in an unrelated case, when the Supreme Court ruled that a federal law prohibiting states from legalizing sports gambling was unconstitutional. The justices said the law illegally “commandeers” states to follow federal policy and intrudes on their lawmaking authority.

The decision had major ramifications for sanctuary cities litigation.

The Trump administration’s anti-sanctuary campaign is based on a piece of immigration law commonly referred to by its code number, 1373. That law prohibits state and local governments from restricting information about an immigrant’s status from federal officials.

Former President Barack Obama’s administration made some law enforcement grant money conditional on compliance with 1373. The Trump administration seized on that and sought to expand the interpretation of what was required of cities and states.

The law, government lawyers argued, covered more than just a person’s immigration status. They said it also required local governments to share the date immigrants would be released from custody, so federal agents could pick them up. The law became the underpinning of the government’s lawsuit over California’s sanctuary legislation.

However, lower courts following the Supreme Court’s ruling in the gambling case have applied it to 1373-related lawsuits — and have found that the immigration law also violates local governments’ rights.

A federal judge in Philadelphia ruled in June that not only were the immigration-related conditions on grants unconstitutional, so was 1373 itself. A federal judge in Chicago followed suit in July. In October, U.S. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco agreed, ruling in favor of San Francisco and striking down 1373.

If the administration leaves those cases where they are, the effects will be relatively minimal. Each of those lower court rulings applies only to the cities that sued the Trump administration — they would not become nationally binding precedent unless federal lawyers appeal the decisions to higher courts and lose.

“If I were them, I would not want this at the Supreme Court, and would just leave it, leave these decisions as they are and just let the rest of the country continue to think that 1373 is constitutional,” said Bill Hing, professor of law and migration studies at the University of San Francisco.

Some issues in the cases have been heard on appeal, but those were decided before the Supreme Court’s gambling ruling. The Justice Department has filed a pending appeal in the Chicago case, looking not to overturn the judge’s decision but to seek a ruling that it and the administration’s other courtroom defeats should apply only to the individual cities and not nationwide.

Josh Blackman, a professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston and contributor to the conservative legal group the Federalist Society, argues that winning on the issue of limiting nationwide rulings would be worth it, even if the administration jeopardizes 1373 in the process. He argues that appellate courts can decide these cases without needing to weigh in on 1373, which he called a “useless statute.”

“If that statute’s declared unconstitutional, then so what?” Blackman said. “The government often enacts policies that they know have a greater than average chance of failing, but if it advances the agenda of the executive branch, it’s worth taking the chance.”

Hing, though, called that strategy risky in light of the high court’s gambling decision. If the Trump administration keeps losing, he said, cities that cooperate now with federal immigration authorities could be sued by sanctuary advocates with legal precedent on their side.

Justice Department spokesman Steven Stafford said it was “absurd” to argue that sanctuary jurisdictions should receive federal law enforcement funding. The agency, he says, wants local authorities to “stop actively obstructing federal law enforcement.”

That position “is not only allowed by the Constitution, it is demanded by the Constitution,” Stafford said. “The Supreme Court’s decision in (the gambling case) has no bearing on the federal government’s ability to place conditions on funding.”

Immigration attorney Leon Fresco, who served in the Justice Department under Obama, said the Trump administration may have never believed it would prevail on sanctuary cities, but pursued the case to win a political talking point and potentially spur congressional action. But he warned that if courts make clear it’s unconstitutional for the federal government to force state and local governments to cooperate with immigration agents, it could give congressional Democrats cover for not acting.

“They’re making it easier for Democrats to say, ‘It’s not I’m not for solving this issue, it’s that we legally can’t,’ ” Fresco said. “The more (Trump officials) tease this out and make it true, the more likely they are to lose not just the legal issue, but the political issue.”

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Bottom line: The Trump Administration essentially is abusing the Federal Courts with largely frivolous litigation to score political points with its base. Seems like fraud, waste, and abuse, as well as unethical behavior on the part of DOJ attorneys.

PWS

11-28-18

THE GRIFTERS: RICH GOP POLITICOS LOOT TAXPAYERS — From Trump’s Failure To Pay Taxes To Price’s Outrageous Gov. Travel Abuses, Fat Cats Have Nothing But Contempt For Ordinary American Taxpayers!

https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?e=amVubmluZ3MxMkBhb2wuY29t&s=59ce2736fe1ff635a7644af0

James Hohmann reports in the Washington Post:

“THE BIG IDEA: Bowing to pressure from Republicans on Capitol Hill and public criticism from President Trump, Tom Price announced Thursday that he will partially reimburse the government for the costs of his flights on charter planes in recent months.

The Health and Human Services secretary is writing a check for $51,887 to the Treasury Department. He said he will no longer take private charters at taxpayer expense and plans to cooperate with the HHS inspector general, who last week launched an investigation into his travel practices.

The optics here are terrible. Price took a $25,000 charter flight from Dulles to Philadelphia when a round-trip train ticket would have cost $72. The government also paid for a private jet to whisk Price to a resort in Georgia where he owns land and to Nashville, where he lunched with his son.

— It came out last night that Price also used military aircraft for trips to Africa and Europe this spring, and to Asia in the summer, at a cost of more than $500,000 to taxpayers. Politico, which broke that story, notes that the reimbursements do not cover any military planes: “The overseas trips bring the total cost to taxpayers of Price’s travels to more than $1 million since May. … Price’s wife, Betty, accompanied him on the military flights, while other members of the secretary’s delegation flew commercially to Europe. … But one of Price’s recent predecessors, Kathleen Sebelius, who served for five years under President Barack Obama, said she never took a military plane on her many trips overseas; she always flew commercially.”

— A million dollars isn’t nothing, but is it more scandalous than the New York Times’s estimate that Donald Trump could cut his tax bills by more than $1.1 billion, including saving tens of millions of dollars in a single year, if Congress enacts the proposal he unveiled this week? We cannot know for sure how much Trump stands to gain personally because he’s the first president since Richard Nixon who refuses to release his tax returns.

The national debt topped $20 trillion for the first time ever this month, yet Senate Republicans tentatively agreed last week to a budget deal that would allow them to pass as much as $1.5 trillion in tax cuts without spending reductions or revenue offsets to pay for them. “Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has repeatedly called the debt ‘unsustainable’ and ‘alarming,’ even going so far as to say in 2013 that it ‘makes us look a lot like Greece.’ Yet McConnell was the one who held the meeting in his office to broker the red-ink deal,” Heather Long notes.

Many of Price’s charter flights, which numbered more than two dozen in total, were so that he could be the lead cheerleader for repealing Obamacare. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill that passed the House in May, which Price aggressively advocated for, would have left 23 million more Americans uninsured by 2026 than under current law.

— Price was also flying high on the taxpayer dime at the same time he was championing cuts in spending on scientific research, medical research, disease prevention programs and health insurance for children of the working poor.

The Trump administration’s May budget called for cutting $1.2 billion from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is part of HHS, including an $82 million cut at the center that works on vaccine-preventable and respiratory diseases, such as influenza and measles. Price’s budget proposed a cut of $186 million from programs at CDC’s center on HIV/AIDS, viral hepatitis, sexually transmitted infections and tuberculosis prevention. There was also $222 million in cuts to the agency’s chronic disease prevention programs, which are designed to help people prevent diabetes, heart disease and stroke, and obesity. The agency’s center on birth defects and developmental disabilities saw a 26 percent cut to its budget. The experts there are still trying to understand the full consequences of Zika infections in pregnant women and their babies.

Price’s first budget also sought $1 billion in cuts for the National Cancer Institute, $575 million in cuts for the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and $838 million in cuts for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The administration asked Congress to slash the overall National Institutes of Health budget from $31.8 billion to $26 billion. These cuts went further than even some of the most conservative GOP lawmakers were willing to go.

— All these numbers are far more consequential to the long-term health, both fiscal and physical, of the United States than Price’s private plane habit. But they are also way more abstract, and thus less sexy, than a million bucks spent on airfare.

People are inclined to focus on relatively small expenditures because they sometimes struggle to wrap their heads around bigger numbers that underscore harder truths. A search of Lexis Nexis and Google News makes clear that Price’s flights have garnered far more attention than the proposed HHS budget cuts in May or even the GOP’s $1.5 trillion debt deal last week. Non-mainstream outlets like TMZ have seized on the plane story.

— By no means is the point here that Price’s travel is unworthy of coverage. His profligacy signifies misplaced priorities, demonstrates hypocrisy (he decried Democrats for flying on military aircraft when he was in Congress) and suggests that a culture of entitlement pervades the upper echelons of the Trump administration.

Drip, drip, drip: More stories continue to emerge about members of Trump’s Cabinet flying private.

“Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke chartered a flight from Las Vegas to near his home in Montana this summer aboard a plane owned by oil-and-gas executives,” Drew Harwell and Lisa Rein scooped last night. “The flight cost taxpayers $12,375, according to an Interior Department spokeswoman. Commercial airlines run daily flights between the two airports and charge as little as $300. …

“Zinke and his official entourage also boarded private flights between the Caribbean islands of St. Thomas and St. Croix during a three-day trip to the Virgin Islands in March … The spring trip included an official snorkeling tour of the nearby Buck Island Reef National Monument … Zinke also attended a Virgin Islands GOP event and spoke on behalf of President Trump.”

Taxpayers have spent more than $58,000 for Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt to take at least four noncommercial and military flights since mid-February.

The Treasury Department’s inspector general is investigating Steven Mnuchin for his use of a government plane to visit Kentucky during the solar eclipse with his wife, as well as for a short trip from New York City to Washington.

— Congressional Republicans are taking this seriously. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a proud penny pincher, called on Trump last night to impose a governmentwide ban on the use of charter flights by administration officials. Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has requested that more than 20 agencies provide details about the use of private, charter aircraft and government-owned aircraft by political appointees since January.“

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You get what you vote for, folks. On the other hand, the majority of Americans are stuck with the stunningly poor choices of the minority. And, it’s not like Trump’s dishonesty and lack of values were secrets!

PWS

09-29-17

SWAMP NEWS: “FREQUENT LIARS CLUB” — Treasury Secretary Steven “Munchkin” Mnuchin Claimed He Needed USG Jet For Honeymoon For “National Security Reasons” — Flunks “Straight Face Test!”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/steve-mnuchin-honeymoon_us_59baf2ebe4b02da0e1407719

Mollie Reilly reports for HuffPost:

“Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has defended asking to use a government plane for his honeymoon travel this summer, claiming his request was “purely a national security issue.”

As ABC News reported Wednesday, the former Goldman Sachs banker requested the use of a U.S. Air Force jet during his honeymoon travel in France, Italy and Scotland. (Mnuchin married the Scottish actress Louise Linton in June.) According to the report, using such an aircraft could have cost taxpayers as much as $25,000 per day.

In an interview with Politico Live on Thursday, Mnuchin said his staff made the request so he could have “access to secure communication” throughout his trip.

“This had nothing to do with convenience,” he said. “This was purely a national security issue.”

Mnuchin said that due to spending “over 50 percent” of his time working on national security, he needed a secure communication facility to continue to conduct business while on his honeymoon.

“I speak to, almost on a daily basis, either the president, the secretary of state, the national security adviser, [Defense Secretary] General [James] Mattis,” he said. “We are dealing with, as you know, some of the most complicated issues right now, whether it be North Korea, Iran, Venezuela or anywhere else.”

“At the time my staff wanted to make sure I constantly had access to secure communication and secure information,” he continued. “This was one of the things we explored, so they put in a request to consider the use of an aircraft ― not so much just for flying, but effectively it was a portable office so that I could be available.”

A Treasury spokesperson gave a similar explanation on Wednesday.

Mnuchin said his staff withdrew the request after finding another way to give him access to secure communication channels.”

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Read the rest of Mollie’s entertaining “Swamp Report” at the link.

Wow! I guess that The Munchkin’s marriage to famously culturally tone deaf actress Louise (“Let ’em eat Gucci”) Linton wasn’t going to keep him occupied for much of their honeymoon. I suppose he worked while she bought out the high-end clothes shops! I can only imagine what The Munchkin’s contributions to the national security strategies for North Korea or Iran might be!

PWS

09-14-17

EXPOSED: DHS INSPECTOR GENERAL SHOWS TOTAL INSANITY OF TRUMP’S PROPOSALS TO ADD 15,000 UNNECESSARY IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AGENTS! — Would Require “Vetting” Of 1.25 Million Applicants! –“Neither [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] nor [ICE] could provide complete data to support the operational need or deployment strategies for the additional 15,000 agents and officers!”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-plan-to-hire-15000-border-and-immigration-personnel-isnt-justified-federal-watchdog-says/2017/08/02/c9345136-77a1-11e7-8839-ec48ec4cae25_story.html?utm_term=.af47cea49a62

Lisa Rein reports for the Washington Post:

“President Trump’s plan for an aggressive hiring surge of 15,000 Border Patrol and immigration personnel to help keep out undocumented immigrants is unrealistic — and the Department of Homeland Security has not made a case for it, the agency’s watchdog says.

A report released this week by the DHS inspector general concludes that based on its rigorous screening requirement for law enforcement jobs and the relatively high rate of attrition among Border Patrol agents, Homeland Security would have to vet 750,000 applicants to find 5,000 qualified personnel.

In addition, to hire the 10,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents the president called for in executive orders he issued in his first days in office, a pool of 500,000 candidates would need to apply, auditors found.

The report calls into question whether DHS officials even need 15,000 new hires to target undocumented immigrants. Agency leaders have done such poor planning for what their workforce should look like, with an understaffed, poorly trained human resources operation, that they cannot justify thousands of new employees, the report says.

“Neither [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] nor [ICE] could provide complete data to support the operational need or deployment strategies for the additional 15,000 agents and officers,” the report by the office of Inspector General John Roth said.

[Read the inspector general’s report here]

DHS officials told auditors that they are still three to four years from getting a system in place that will be able to tell them how many new personnel they need and where to deploy them.

“Without comprehensive staffing models, operational needs analyses, and deployment strategies, CBP and ICE will not be able to identify clearly the correct number and type of employees required, what positions must be filled, or where to deploy those employees,” the report said.

Trump promised on the campaign trail to vastly beef up enforcement against undocumented immigrants with a new border wall, a surge in agents to help seal off the Southwest border with Mexico and a “deportation force” to arrest people in the country illegally. The 15,000 new front-line employees would come with almost 9,600 more technical and support staff, the report said.”

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Read Rein’s complete article and get a link to the IG’s report at the above link.

More fraud, waste, and abuse from the “Fraudster In Chief.” For a fraction of the money Trump & Co propose to squander, we could build a first-class U.S. Immigration Court system that would be a model of due process and fairness and would contribute much more to fair, efficient, and effective enforcement of the immigration laws.

PWS

08-03-17

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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Carlos Sauceda writes in the SF Chron:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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Deepa Fernandes for the SF Chron:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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This November, vote like your life and the future of democracy depend on it! Because they do!

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