"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.
Hello Judge, it has been a while since I reported from Houston. Although I have not reported, I have kept reading (and learning from) your writings. So it was a pleasant surprise when I recently came across some BIA decisions and saw your name written on them.
They are Matter of Arreguin, 21 I&N Dec. 38 (BIA 1995) and Matter of Fuentes-Campos, 21 I&N Dec. 905 (BIA 1997).
You see, I was preparing for a individual hearing on the merits, where the client, a 65-year old Mexican national, who has lived in the U.S. since about 1979, and was admitted as a Legal Permanent Resident in 1991, was found to be deportable under INA section 237(a)(2)(b)(i) due to a controlled substance conviction from 1994. His relief: Section 212(c).
The saga started in early January 2012, when he was encountered by ICE, was detained, and placed into removal proceedings. The firm I work for began to represent him at that point. While waiting for his detained merits date, the client suffered a medical condition and was not expected to survive, so ICE released him to family members, essentially so he wouldn’t die in their custody. However, he did not die, he survived, and made a full recovery.
Fast forward to today. Ever since his release, his case got stuck in the “aimless docket reshuffling” that you so often write about. It was not until today, June 28, 2023, that he finally got his day in court for an immigration judge (IJ) to consider his case.
Not knowing whether the assigned IJ or DHS trial attorney (TA) would have any experience with Section 212(c) because this is an old type of relief that is not very common anymore and also due to the hostility often encountered at Houston EOIR, I prepared for the worst case scenario, and feared that the client might not get a fair shake.
Fortunately on the day of trial, I saw an experienced TA was representing the government. Before the IJ went on the record the TA and I discussed the case, and the TA told me that he did not have any issues with the case. I asked if he would stipulate to a grant of relief and he said yes, but warned the IJ might still want to take testimony. The IJ came on the record shortly thereafter, and asked if we had any agreements, at which point I told the IJ that we had an agreement for stipulation to a grant of relief because the evidence submitted was sufficient to carry our burden. The TA confirmed our agreement, and the IJ responded that she had reviewed the record, and also agreed that the client was eligible and deserving of relief because of his long-time physical presence, the conviction was very old, and the client had not had any recent criminal history.
In less than 5 minutes, this case that had been pending over 11 years and 5 months (or about 4,184 days), was resolved by agreement of all parties! The client was stunned and did not even know what happened. He did not expect it to be this fast after waiting so long. The client confided in me that his mother passed away a few days ago in Mexico, and he had been very worried because all of his witnesses (family members) went to Mexico to attend the funeral and were not available to testify on his behalf. I remembered something my grandmother would tell me as a child, that when a close loved one dies, they go to heaven and become your guardian angel, so I thought… just maybe… his mother had been his guardian angel today and whispered in the TA and IJ’s ear before the hearing.
In all seriousness, I ask myself (as this is not the only case I have had that has been pending for over 10 years, only to be resolved by stipulation at the final hearing in less than 5 minutes) how much $$$ is the government spending to fight a case like this for more than a decade–only for it to be resolved in 5 minutes of discussion. (Of course if it had not been resolved favorably, we would have continued litigating the case and appealed to the BIA, something that under current wait times would last another 3 or more years and who knows how much more resources). I imagine that between the IJ and TA’s salary, the court staff, support staff, and even utilities of operating a court, the price tag might be well above $100,000 for a case like this. This is not sustainable.
I asked the client for permission to share the photo we took after the hearing, and if I get the permission I will share it with you.
I am glad the case was resolved favorably by agreement, however, I was ready to use your cases to help defend my client.
DPF!
RB
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Love this, Roberto! Makes my day! Good precedents, great scholarship, collegiality, good judging, teamwork combining to make the system work in a just and humane manner! Thanks for forwarding and DPF!
Matter of Arreguin, written by the late Judge Fred W. Vacca, was one of the first precedents issued, in Volume 21 of the I&N Dec., during my time as BIA Chair. That Volume also reflected the “new style” of BIA precedent format with the “bound volume” citation and pagination available in the “slip opinion” and the individual author of the majority and separate opinions clearly identified.
Always gratifying to see that the now “old” precedents turned out by the long-gone “Schmidt Board” still have something to say and teach. It was a time when intellectual dialogue and meaningful debate of important issues was encouraged, rather than being discouraged and avoided as has happened in today’s “assembly line culture” at EOIR!
Additionally, Roberto’s report raises a continuing question. What if rather than misusing EOIR as a “deterrent,” and thereby engaging in “Aimless Docket Reshuffling,” Garland and the other “powers that be within the Administration” returned EOIR to its original purpose of insuring due process, fundamental fairness, and best, most efficient judicial practices?
I’m sure there is lots of “low hanging fruit,” 🍒exemplified by this case, that could be prioritized for quick disposition or reassigned to a better-functioning version of USCIS for more efficient completion. Indeed, with guidance and some institutional discipline by a “Better BIA” of true asylum expert Appellate Judges, I’d guess that the majority of the hundreds of thousands of asylum cases pending for more than two years could be granted without full hearings, either at EOIR or a better functioning Asylum Office. Additionally, many of the long-pending “Non-LPR Cancellation Cases” now clogging the EOIR docket could be more efficiently handled by a better functioning and better staffed USCIS.
It appears that nobody with any realistic vision of what the future could and should look like, and an appreciation of both the cosmic importance and great positive potential of a functional EOIR, has paid any attention to 1) the composition of the EOIR backlog, 2) the abundant opportunities for positive resolutions that would benefit everyone, 3) the lack of quality control at today’s EOIR, and 4) the glaring absence of practical problem solving skills among senior EOIR management and the BIA (not to mention DOJ management and leadership in this area, such as it is).
“Nexus? What nexus? These “just happen to be” women facing a little “random violence!” Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
With credible testimony and harm that rises to the level of persecution for a woman in El Salvador, who was the victim multiple rapes, on its face, this should have been an easy grant for a competent IJ.
Essentially, this judge argues that harm rising to the level of persecution — multiple rapes — inflicted on a woman in El Salvador, where femicide and misogyny run rampant, has nothing to do with her being a woman. Such a conclusion is unlikely — some experts would say facially absurd!
Indeed, the IJ’s apparent view that multiple rapes had nothing to do with a gender-based protected ground of being a woman would be totally “off the wall” for any experienced asylum adjudicator who truly understood the well-documented nature of violence against women as a widespread form of persecution worldwide!
According to the UN Handbook for Determining Refugee Status, adjudicators should give credible applicants “the benefit of the doubt.” “It is therefore frequently necessary to give the applicant the benefit of the doubt.” (Par. 203). That’s not what this IJ did!
Also, in the remand order, the BIA specifically rejected the IJ’s finding that this gross harm to the respondent was “individualized” and “personalized” and therefore not a basis for an asylum claim — something not mentioned by the IJ in his “certification.”
Counsel for the applicant is well aware of this “better analysis” and could have argued it.But, in his snarky haste to prejudge and deny needed protection, this Houston IJ didn’t even give the parties a chance to participate in his “return to sender” (“certification”) nonsense.
A better functioning expert BIA would have long ago provided precedential guidance granting cases like this — adopting and amplifying the rationale of the IJ in the Honduran case.
Additionally, the BIA remand instructed the IJ to inquire of the DHS as to whether this victim of multiple rapes with no apparent criminal record or other adverse factors was and “enforcement priority” under applicable DHS guidelines — something that the IJ contemptuously and improperly did not do! Indeed,he didn’t seek any input from the parties despite being instructed to do so.
Unquestionably, being an El Salvadoran woman is a) immutable or fundamental to identity; b) highly particularized, and c) socially visible, as recognized by the Salvadoran government and everyone in El Salvador, thereby clearly qualifying as a “particular social group.”
There is also plenty of reliable evidence that El Salvador, like the rest of the Northern and Triangle Governments, is basically a failed state — something publicly admitted by some Administration officials, including Special Envoy to the Northern Triangle Ricardo Zuniga. https://apple.news/A9FpzsjRAQ2OoAyQZzHZm1A (“democracy, the rule of law and the security situation continue to deteriorate”). The Salvadoran government is neither willing nor able to provide a reasonable level of protection to women like this applicant. Indeed, there is likely sufficient evidence for a better BIA to establish a “rebuttable presumption of failure of state protection” in El Salvador and the rest of the Northern Triangle.
Temporary Appellate Immigration Judge Gabe Gonzalez, author of the remand, is one of the better BIA judges. But, his remand could have been even stronger. He could have reversed this IJ and granted asylum on this record. Why “beat around the bush” on grantable cases that are being mishandled by “chronically over-denying IJs” below? At this point, removal of this particular judge from the case would be more than justified. Cases like this certainly raise the legitimate question of why IJs who sit around inventing reasons to deny relief to those in need of protection are on the Immigration Bench in the first place. There are certainly better-qualified judicial choices — many of them located in Texas — who could bring legitimacy, quality, and efficiency to Garland’s dysfunctional courts!
“Bogus lack of nexus” is one of the most overused grounds for improper denials of protection by EOIR judges at all levels. It’s part of the “any reason to deny” approach enabled by EOIR’s current “anti-asylum culture” — one that was overtly encouraged and promoted by the Trump DOJ.
Inexplicably selecting Houston as one of the “test locations” for the new asylum regulations is “built to fail.” Without expert, positive guidance from qualified IJs in Houston (and the BIA) on granting asylum — something that this “denial centered court” simply doesn’t possess — there is every reason to believe that asylum seekers will not receive professional treatment or correct decisions from either the Asylum Office or the Immigration Court in Houston. And, relying on the BIA or, worse yet the “over the top” 5th Circuit,” to guarantee fairness and justice for asylum seekers? That’s a sick joke under current conditions!
8) Poorly reasoned, legally incorrect asylum denials and frivolous actions like the IJ’s “certification” in this case are a major factor in generating a 1.8 million case EOIR backlog and enabling a lawless, non-expert, anti-immigrant “culture of denial” at EOIR. Many grantable asylum cases languish in the backlog, are subjected to “Aimless Docket Reshuffling,” and then are wrongfully denied by poorly performing judges at both levels of EOIR.
9) EOIR suffers from poor leadership, a poorly performing BIA that overall lacks the expertise and courage to grant the large number of deserving asylum cases currently languishing in the EOIR backlog, and to set proper legal standards that will guide Immigration Judges and Asylum Officers in efficiently granting deserving cases at the first level of the system.
10) Garland should remove or reassign the “under-performers” and “non-performers” at EOIR and replace them with qualified experts committed to best practices and “guaranteeing fairness and due process for all” (EOIR’s now long-forgotten and dishonored mission).
11) Lives and the future of democracy are at stake here! America simply can’t afford the “institutionalizednonsense” still rampant at EOIR as illustrated by this case!
12) Also, EOIR’s performance in this cases is inconsistent with almost every sentence of the recent “LA Declaration.” Issuing statements of principle that are directly contradicted by your actual practices is a bad idea!
This has been a bad week for individual rights and particularly the rights and humanity of women in America. Garland can’t fix the out of control, “fringe-right,” Supremes’ majority. But, he can fix EOIR! And, that would be a long overdue and desperately needed first step toward fixing the entire broken and foundering Federal Court system. Start “at the retail level” with what you have the power to fix and work from there!
Here’s another remand you might like to read. This time it was Nexus and PSG with IJ Monique Harris (previously in Houston). According to TRAC she has a 96.5 asylum denial rate. The prior remand I shared was IJ Khan who is at 97% denial rate. Clearly these IJs are getting a lot of “matter of life and death” decisions wrong. As you say, haste makes waste. This case (like the previous one) should have been easy grants with all of the supporting documents that were included. I appeared at the individual hearing and my colleague Bryan Russell Terhune (from the same office) worked on the BIA Brief.
P.S. you can see this news article: https://sv.usembassy.gov/court-inaugurated-memory-pnc-agent/ , from our own U.S. Embassy in El Salvador where they inaugurated an athletic court in the Usulutan Police Delegation, named after the PNC officer Nelson Panameño, who was killed. Panameño was one of the instructors from the Gang Resistance Education and Training Program (GREAT) which my client closely worked with for many years helping him and the PNC gain trust with the community and local youth. This was part of the record, plus a lot more evidence showing this specific connection and the specific and imminent warnings that Panameno gave to my client before his own murder. This was just one of the many great things this client did in El Salvador to try and make his country a better place. We are lucky to have him and his family in this country now.
This was just one of the many great things this client did in El Salvador to try and make his country a better place. We are lucky to have him and his family in this country now.
That this respondent is here to contribute to our country is due to Roberto and his colleagues in the Law Office of Juan Reyes, Houston, and to this particular panel of BIA Appellate Judges. But it is “no thanks” to the IJ who got this case egregiously wrong below!
Nor, is it thanks to an Attorney General who has allowed injustice, bad judgment, and poor quality decision-making to flourish at the “retail level” of his wholly-owned “court” system. What about the many folks who don’t have Roberto or someone like him for a lawyer or who get members of the “BIA asylum deniers club” appointed under Trump to “pack the BIA for an anti-asylum agenda” instead of this panel of conscientious appellate judges?
I note that Judge Elise Manuel and Judge Denise Brown are currently denominated “Temporary” Appellate Judges. At least in this case, along with Judge Ellen Liebowitz, they “got it” at a level at odds with the work of too many of their so-called “permanent” colleagues. Why has Garland allowed this obviously problematic situation to continue to fester with human lives at stake?
Judge Ellen Liebowitz’s compact, cogent, powerful opinion is a terrific “mini-primer” on how PSG and “one central reason” nexus cases properly should be decided! As Judge Liebowitz demonstrates, you don’t have to write a lot to say a lot. You just have to know what you’re doing!
The gross, fundamental errors in the application of basic statutory terms by the IJ below in this case are, unfortunately, repeated on a regular basis by many of her colleagues across America who are improperly “programmed to deny” clearly grantable asylum cases.
It belies the bogus claim that EOIR is an “expert subject matter tribunal!” That expertise is, at least in part, what the questionable doctrines of “Chevron deference” and “Brand X abdication” by the Supremes rest upon. Shouldn’t it make a difference that in EOIR’s case, it’s a lie?
Why is Garland allowing this to happen when it could be remedied? Make this case a precedent and start removing, retraining, or reassigning so-called “judges” who don’t follow it and who continue to disregard the law and the rights of asylum seekers!
Why isn’t this case a precedent? Why is an IJ who is so clearly unqualified to decide asylum cases still on the Immigration Bench under Garland? Why aren’t cases like this being used to end the “asylum free zone” improperly established by some Houston IJs?
These are the “tough questions” that Garland should have addressed. Why hasn’t he? Why is “refugee roulette” still plaguing EOIR and American justice — 15 years after the problem was first “outed” by my Georgetown Law colleagues Professors Schrag, Schoenholtz, and Ramji-Nogales? How is this “good government,” or even “minimally competent government?”
When compelling, well-documented cases like this are turned down at the trial level, something clearly is rotten in the system! Make no mistake about it, lack of expertise, bad judicial attitudes, widespread anti-asylum bias, counterproductive “haste makes waste gimmicks,” and way, way too many denials are significant “drivers” of the backlog that continues to mushroom under Garland.
The arbitrary and often grotesquely unfair, unprofessional, and results-driven state of “justice” in Garland’s dysfunctional Immigration Courts was recently highlighted by Brooklyn Law Associate Dean Stacey Caplow in her lament about the Supremes’ abdication of responsibility in Patel v Garland.
Stacy Caplow Associate Dean of Experiential Education & Professor of Law Brooklyn Law PHOTO: Brooklyn Law website
As Dean Caplow cogently points out:
Patel shuts the door firmly and unequivocally, preventing independent review of fact-finding by Immigration Judges, however irrational and indefensible once the Board of Immigration Appeals has affirmed. This makes the need to populate the Immigration Court bench with independent, highly qualified, experienced, non-political unbiased individuals with appropriate temperament even more urgent. Perhaps this case will provide new impetus for reform such as Real Courts, Rule of Law Act of 2022 voted by the House Judiciary Committee in May just days before the Supreme Court’s decision.
While an independent, subject matter expert Article I Immigration Court is the obvious answer, unfortunately, it’s not immediately on the horizon. Meanwhile, the innocent and vulnerable continue to suffer daily injustices, sometimes gratuitous humiliation or dehumanization, in Garland’s broken system. It DOESN’T have to be this way!
As Dean Caplow says, we “need to populate the Immigration Court bench with independent, highly qualified, experienced, non-political unbiased individuals with appropriate temperament.” It’s not “rocket science” 🚀— just intellectual excellence, courage, and a fair-minded approach to justice!
There are literally hundreds of extraordinarily well-qualified individuals out there in the private sector who could outperform the IJ in this case in every critical aspect of the job! Why hasn’t Garland actively recruited them for his courts? Why isn’t his system functioning correctly “on the retail level?”
Garland has the authority to take the bold action necessary to redirect, refocus, and re-populate his current parody of a court system to laser-focus on due process, fundamental fairness, judicial expertise in immigration and human rights, and efficiency (without sacrificing due process or decisional excellence).All of us who care about the future of American justice should be asking why he isn’t doing his job!
Report on Boston Asylum Office finds disproportionately low acceptance rates, bias against applicants
The office serving asylum seekers in and around Maine has the second lowest approval rate in the nation, according to a report by Maine immigrant advocacy groups.
The Boston Asylum Office has the second lowest acceptance rate of any office in the nation, and granted asylum to only 11 percent of its applicants in 2021, according to a report by Maine legal aid organizations handling immigration cases and advocates for reform.
The report says the office that serves asylum seekers in and around Maine is plagued by bias and burnout, and that its low grant rate is “driven by a culture of suspicion” toward asylum seekers.
The process of seeking asylum in the United States begins with an application to U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services. Applicants must prove they are fleeing a country in which they previously suffered persecution or were at risk of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.
Applications go through asylum offices first, which can either grant asylum from the outset or refer an application to an immigration court for a judge to consider.
Jennifer Bailey, an attorney for the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project and one of the report’s authors, said almost all asylum seekers she works with eventually obtain asylum status through immigration court, after failing to be granted asylum at the Boston Asylum Office. But the court process can take years, and, while they’re waiting, applicants aren’t able to access federal student aid, social services or educational opportunities. Even worse, they spend that time away from their families, who can still be at risk.
“It’s not uncommon for people’s (families) left at home to die while they’re waiting, or to be lost within the violence,” Bailey said.
Collaborating with the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project on the report were the Refugee and Human Rights Clinic at the University of Maine School of Law, the ACLU of Maine and a visiting lecturer at Amherst College in Massachusetts who spent eight years waiting on a decision from the Boston Asylum Office and was ultimately denied in May 2021. Today, he and his family live in Canada.
During its first five years, the Boston office – which opened in 2015 and processes about 5,600 applications a year – granted roughly 15 percent of its asylum applications on average, the report states. Meanwhile, offices in San Francisco and New Orleans were accepting asylum requests at rates that were more than three times higher. Nationally, the acceptance rate from 2015 to 2020 was 28 percent, the report says.
The report acknowledged that asylum officers who approve or refer cases to court face a “complex and essential” list of responsibilities. Being overworked and having less time to consider cases often results in asylum officers sending more referrals to immigration court, said some former officers cited in the report.
Meanwhile, supervising officers play an “outsized” role in the asylum-granting process, according to the report. If an asylum officer recommends granting asylum and the supervisor disagrees, the officer could face retaliation in the form of more work or a negative performance evaluation, the report states.
PRESUMPTION OF FRAUD
The report’s authors contend that their research “strongly suggests” that Boston’s asylum office doesn’t consider applications from a neutral stance, “but rather presumes they must be fraudulent or pose a security threat.” Of 21 trainings for asylum officers mentioned in the report, 14 were focused on fraud detection. Former officers told the report’s authors that constantly hearing concerns about fraud and credibility made them think such problems were more prevalent than they were.
“They’re telling their story, which, no matter what, can involve this unimaginable trauma of torture and violence or sexual violence or death,” Bailey said of asylum seekers. “Put yourself in that position and imagine how hard it is to talk about the worst thing that’s ever happened to you in your life, and having this officer – who has the power to help you and your family – say ‘No, I don’t believe you.’”
According to the report, bias and skepticism in the office extend to certain countries. The Boston Asylum Office granted only 4 percent of asylum applications from the Democratic Republic of Congo from 2015 to 2020, even though the U.S. has acknowledged significant human rights violations in that country, including unlawful killings and torture, the report says. The office granted only 2 percent of its applications from Angola, another country where there is known abuse.
The Newark Asylum Office in New Jersey, which also serves some of New England, granted asylum to 17 percent of its applicants from Angola and 33 percent of its applicants from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
English-speaking applicants are nearly twice as likely to be granted asylum as non-English speakers, who are referred to immigration court 80 percent of the time, the report says. Asylum-seekers who can speak English are referred to immigration court just under 60 percent of the time.
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Read the rest of Emily’s fine article at the link.
I did lots of DRC cases over 13 years on the trial bench! Most had lawyers and were extremely well-documented. Often ICE didn’t oppose grants (prior to Trump).
In Arlington, with agreement from the parties, they were candidates for the “short docket.” Nearly all the DRC cases “referred” from the Arlington Asylum Office were granted upon “de novo” review in Immigration Court.
This is a prime example of how our asylum system seriously regressed under Trump and has not been fixed by Garland and Mayorkas! No wonder our Immigration Courts are hopelessly and unnecessarily backlogged with an astounding 1.6 million pending cases. Bad judging, systemic anti-asylum bias, lack of competence, and gross mismanagement by DOJ and DHS are taking a toll on democracy and humanity!
Pathetically and disingenuously, USCIS tries to blame their malfeasance and lack of competence on “the pandemic.” That drew one of the more perceptive public comments I’ve seen recently:
Pandemic restrictions didn’t create bias in other asylum offices – that’s a totally inadequate excuse.
For sure! Just like it’s a pretext for the elimination of our legal asylum system at the border that Garland disgracefully defends! Think that the “anti-asylum culture” problem ends with USCIS? Guess again?
Former Attorney General Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions was never bashful about sharing his White Nationalist, nativist, xenophobic falsehoods and myths about asylum seekers with his “captive” Immigration Judges. That’s right, for those not “in the know,” amazingly the “courts” that are supposed to provide expert legal precedents on asylum law and give a “fresh look” to those cases not granted by the Asylum Office aren’t “courts” at all as most Americans know them. They are run by the chief law enforcement official of the United States, the Attorney General, even though they are called “Immigration Courts.”
Sessions actually made the following statement, unsupported by any hard evidence, to a group of his wholly owned “judges” on October 12, 2017:
“We also have dirty immigration lawyers who are encouraging their otherwise unlawfully present clients to make false claims of asylum providing them with the magic words needed to trigger the credible fear process.”
At the same time, he announced that he was, on his own motion and over the objection of the DHS and the applicant, “undoing” the leading BIA precedent recognizing gender-based harm as a ground for asylum. For a good measure, he also warned his supposedly, but not really, “fair and impartial judges” that he expected them to strictly apply precedent — HIS precedents, that is. In other words, start cranking out those asylum denials or your career might be in peril!
Some judges chose to resign or retire. Some kept on doing their jobs conscientiously, legitimately “working around” Sessions’s poorly reasoned and factually inaccurate anti-asylum precedents. Many, however, chose to “go along to get along” with the anti-asylum program — some happily (there were reportedly some cheers and applause when Sessions announced his cowardly assault on vulnerable refugee women of color), some not.
So clearly wrong and totally off-base was Sessions’s assault on asylum-seeking women, primarily those of color, that even the otherwise timid and reticent AG Merrick Garland had to reverse it during his first year in office and restore the prior BIA precedent. However, there has been no further guidance from the BIA on properly and generously applying this potentially favorable, life-saving precedent.
President Biden charged Garland and Mayorkas with developing regulations on gender-based claims by October 2021. Obviously, that date has come and gone with the regulations still MIA!
Think that promoting a culture of xenophobia, racism, and overt bias has no effect? During the Trump Administration, although conditions for refugees, and particularly for refugee women, worsened over that time, the Immigration Court asylum grant rate fell precipitously — from more than 50% during the mid-years of the Obama Administration to only 23% during FY 2020, the last full year of the Trump regime.
The Immigration Courts and especially the BIA were “packed” by Sessions and his successor “Billy the Bigot” Barr with questionably qualified “judges” perceived to be willing to do their nativist bidding. Inexplicably, Garland has been unwilling to “unpack” them, despite these being DOJ attorney positions in the “excepted service,” NOT life-tenured Federal Judges.
Consequently, life or death asylum decisions today depend less on the legal merits of an applicant’s case than they do on the particular Immigration Judge assigned, the composition of the BIA “panel” on appeal, the Federal Circuit in which the case arises, and even the composition of the panel of U.S. Circuit Judges who might review the case.
They also depend on whether the applicant is fortunate enough to have a lawyer (not provided by the USG). Any unrepresented, often non-English-speaking asylum seeker has little or no chance of negotiating the intentionally arcane, opaque, unnecessarily hyper technical, and “user unfriendly” asylum system in Immigration “Court” without expert help.
Almost every week, the Circuit Courts of Appeals publish major decisions pointing out elementary legal and factual errors by the BIA’s “deportation railroad.” But, that’s just the tip of the iceberg! The vast majority of life-threatening errors by the Immigration Courts go uncorrected as the applicants are unable to pursue their cases to the Courts of Appeals or are “duressed” by DHS detention in substandard conditions into giving up viable claims.
Check out some of these denial rates by ten of Barr’s BIA appointees who previously served as Immigration Judges. Those judges are listed with their asylum denial rates, according to Syracuse University’s 2021 TRAC Reports:
Michael P. Baird (91.4%),
William A. Cassidy (99%),
V. Stuart Couch (93.3%),
Deborah K. Goodwin (91%),
Stephanie E. Gorman (92%),
Keith Hunsucker (85%),
Sunita Mahtabfar (98.7%),
Philip J. Montante, Jr. (96.3%),
Kevin W. Riley (90.4%),
Earle B. Wilson (98.2%)
Gee, these guys make even the artificially high nationwide asylum denial rates (76%) resulting from Trump’s all-out assault on due process and the rule of law look low by comparison! Gosh, only one of these Dudes was even within 10% (just barely) of that already outrageously high, artificially “reverse engineered” national denial rate.
Yet, inexplicably, these virulently anti-asylum judges continue to serve and negatively shape asylum law under Garland! Even “pre-Trump,” most of them avoided granting any asylum, in the face of precedents supposedly requiring generous application of the law in accordance with U.N. guidance and recognizing gender-based persecution as real.
So, it’s little surprise that no meaningful positive guidance or helpful interpretation has come from Garland’s BIA that might lead to expedited and consistent asylum grants to the many meritorious asylum cases now buried in his burgeoning 1.6 million case Immigration Court backlog! No wonder civil rights, human rights, equal justice, and Constitutional law experts consider Garland to be a failure as AG!
To date, Garland has appointed only one BIA Appellate Judge out of 21! That was to fill an existing vacancy. Judge Andrea Saenz is a superbly qualified asylum expert with scholarly credentials, “real life” experience representing asylum seekers in Immigration Court, clerking experience in those courts, and proven intellectual and practical leadership capabilities.
But, we need a “BIA of Judge Saenzes” — like yesterday! The talent is out there! But, Garland and his lieutenants have been too dilatory, tone deaf, and shockingly indifferent to these glaring due process, expertise, and racial justice issues to bring in the qualified judges and judicial administrators to fix his unjust, unfair, and grotesquely inefficient “courts.” Thus, the dysfunction grows, festers, and eventually destroys, maims, and kills! Is this really an appropriate “legacy” for a Dem Administration?
Today, in a WashPost OpEd, Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, President & CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, points out:
Why are members of this outrageous “protection deniers’ club” still on Garland’s broken and biased Immigration Court bench? You don’t have to be a human rights scholar or Constitutional law expert to see that there is something seriously wrong here that Garland is sweeping under the rug!
Yes, the best answer is an independent Article I Immigration Court, free from the mismanagement and political shenanigans of the DOJ, with a merit-based selection system for judges. But, that doesn’t absolve Garland from the responsibility to fix the existing system NOW before more lives are lost, futures ruined, and American justice irretrievably degraded!
The current racially discriminatory, scofflaw, patently unjust parody of a “court” system being run by Garland is as unacceptable as it is immoral!
Garland and Mayorkas have allowed this approach to asylum seekers to flourish on their watch. That raises serious questions about their suitability for their current positions! Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
“Interim Regulations” Aren’t The Answer!
Today, the Biden Administration released new “Interim Asylum Regulations” that appear designed to fail. https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2022-06148.pdf. That’s because they don’t address the real competency, leadership, and legal problems plaguing the current system!
I won’t claim to have waded through every word of this entire 512-page mishmash of largely impenetrable bureaucratic gobbledygook. But, I can see it’s more tone-deaf micromanagement of the Immigration Court, along with the usual, arbitrary and capricious, unrealistic “off the wall” “time limits” that are guaranteed to make things worse, not better. It’s basically more of Garland’s “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and his “Treadmill for Immigration Attorneys” that have already helped fuel unprecedented backlogs amidst wildly inconsistent results and a steady stream of life-threatening errors from his dysfunctional “courts.”
As if the answer to a poorly functioning, hopelessly self-backlogged, incompetent, biased, and unfair system is to “speed it up!” Come on, man! That suggests, quite incorrectly, that the primary problems in our asylum system are something other than lack of competence, integrity, expertise, and leadership at DHS and DOJ!
In reality, Garland’s defective “assembly line justice” at EOIR is already cutting so many corners and being so careless and “denial focused” that a steady stream of elementary legal errors show up in the Courts of Appeals every week. How is speeding up an already unfair and error plagued system going to make it better?
The real answer is to move the many grantable asylum cases that pass credible fear through the system correctly, fairly, on a reasonable, timely, predictable basis, with representation. That requires more and better trained Asylum Officers; different, better Immigration Judges who know how to recognize and grant asylum and keep the parties moving through the system; a new BIA of practical scholars who are due-process-oriented human rights experts to set favorable, practical asylum and procedural precedents and to keep IJs, AOs, and counsel for both sides in line; and close cooperation and advance coordination with the private bar and NGOs to insure representation of all asylum seekers.
This “interim regulation” avoids and obfuscates the necessary personnel replacement, attitude adjustment, and changes to the “culture of denial and deterrence” required in the Executive Branch for our asylum system to work! I predict colossal failure!
Get ready to litigate, NDPA! This is an “in your face,” largely unilateral, insulting approach. Rather than respecting your expertise, dedication, abilities, and counsel in fundamentally changing this system, Mayorkas and Garland intend arrogantly to “shove it down your throats and the throats of asylum seekers” with their inferior personnel, a toxic culture of denial, bad attitudes, and poor lawyering! Accept the challenge to resist!`
Roberto Blum, Esquire, reports from Houston:
