"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.
“Law360, New York (January 5, 2018, 9:27 PM EST) — The Board of Immigration Appeals has vacated an immigration judge’s denials of a Salvadoran native’s bids to secure asylum and to duck deportation, after finding that the judge used “hostile and bullying behavior” toward the individual’s attorney.
The BIA wants a different judge to review the case, essentially from scratch, after finding that the Immigration Judge Quynh V. Bain “screamed” at the lawyer for more than five minutes, mimicked her voice, called her “several disrespectful names,” said she was “unprofessional” and refused to allow a recess…”
***********************************
Those with complete Law360 access can read Penton’s full story at the link. Kudos to the BIA for “stepping up” to stop such abuses and protect due process!
Surprisingly, and sadly, Judge Quynh V. Bain is one of my former colleagues at the U.S. Immigration Court in Arlington, Virginia. The Arlington Immigration Court generally has had a well-deserved reputation for fairness, professionalism, respect, teamwork, and unfailing courtesy. In other words, it’s always been a court where lawyers on both sides enjoy practicing. Indeed, it often serves as a “training court” for student attorneys, interns, new Assistant Chief Counsel, and newly appointed U.S. Immigration Judges. So, I’d have to assume that this was an aberration in the context of Arlington.
Nevertheless, given the high stress levels that U.S. Immigration Judges are already working under, the plans of Attorney General Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions to “torque up” the pressure on Immigration Judges to turn our final orders of removal without much, if any regard, for due process, the counter-pressure from the U.S. Courts of Appeals for Immigration Courts to function like “real” courts, the many newly appointed inexperienced Immigration Judges, and the lack of meaningful training for Immigration Judges, I would expect such incidents to increase in the future. Just another reason why it’s past time for an independent Article I U.S. immigration Court!
Changing to the topic of Law360, one of my favorite “immigration beat” reporters, Allissa Wickham (a/k/a the fabulous “AWick”) tells me that she has left Law360 for a “new gig” with HBO, working on a show featuring Wyatt Cenac (formerly of the “Daily Show”). The show is scheduled to air this spring. Allissa says that she will continue to do original reporting, so hopefully at least some immigration topics will find their way into her “portfolio.” Good luck Allissa, and thanks for all of your great immigration reporting, clear writing, and many contributions while at Law360!
About one in five inmates in federal prison are foreign-born, and more than 90 percent of those are in the United States illegally, according to a report released on Thursday by the Trump administration, which has sought to highlight the dangers it says unauthorized immigrants pose to public safety.
Officials at the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security quickly framed the statistics as evidence that the country needed stricter anti-immigration measures, particularly the wall President Trump has pushed to erect across the southern border.
The report arrives as the White House and Republicans in Congress insist that any legislative deal to restore legal protections for young immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children must include more restrictions on legal and illegal immigration.
. . . .
Administration officials have repeatedly emphasized what it says are links between unauthorized immigrants and crime, even opening an office to advocate for the victims of crimes committed by immigrants. But a large body of research has suggested that immigrants are no more likely, and often less likely, to commit serious crimes than native-born Americans.
The proportion of unauthorized immigrants in federal prison may be explained partly by the fact that immigration offenses now account for about half of all federal prosecutions, including those for smuggling people into the United States, illegally entering the country and illegally re-entering the country after being deported.”
Predictably, Attorney General Jeff Sessions seized upon the report to re-iterate his oft-made claim that we’re in the middle of an “alien crime wave:”
“At the border and in communities across America, our citizens are being victimized by illegal aliens who commit crimes,” the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, said in a statement on Thursday, calling on Congress to pass Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda. “The simple fact is that any offense committed by a criminal alien is ultimately preventable.”
Also predictably, Sessions’s claim was vigorously rejected by pro-immigrant advocacy groups:
“The report proves one thing only: The administration will take any opportunity possible to twist facts to demonize immigrants,” said Tom Jawetz, the vice president for immigration policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. “The vast majority of immigrants in federal prison are there for crimes that only immigrants can be charged with — illegal entry and illegal entry after removal. When you cook the books you shouldn’t pretend to be surprised by the results.”
*****************************************
The Administration’s conclusions were also rejected in a report filed by Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute, a Libertarian think tank:
“The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) today released a report that found that about 94 percent of foreign-born inmates in Federal prisons are illegal immigrants. That is not surprising, as illegal immigrants convicted of an immigration offense are incarcerated in federal prison and account 7.3 percent of all inmates. Likewise, drug traffickers who cross international borders are also in federal prison and account 46.3 percent of all prisoners. Thus, illegal immigrants are overrepresented in federal prison because the federal government enforces immigration laws and many drug trafficking laws but only a small fraction of all those incarcerated for all crimes committed in the U.S. are in federal prisons.
The authors of this DHS/DOJ report do deserve credit for highlighting its shortcomings. On the first page, it states:
This report does not include data on the foreign-born or alien populations in state prisons and local jails because state and local facilities do not routinely provide DHS or DOJ with comprehensive information about their inmates and detainees. This limitation is noteworthy because state and local facilities account for approximately 90 percent of the total U.S. incarcerated population.
The federal prison population is not representative of incarcerated populations on the state and local level, so excluding them from the report means that it sheds little light on nationwide incarcerations by nativity, legal status, or type of crime. On the last point, it is shocking how unrepresentative federal prison is regarding the types of crimes its inmates are convicted of. In 2016, 67,742 people were sentenced to federal prison. Almost 30 percent of them were for immigration offenses. Those immigration convictions comprised 100 percent of the convictions for immigration crimes in the United States in 2016. By contrast, there were only 85 federal convictions for murder out of a nationwide total of 17,785 murder convictions that year, comprising less than 0.5 percent of all murders.
If Garcia Zarate had actually been convicted of murdering Kate Steinle, then he would have been incarcerated in California state prison and he would not show up as an illegal immigrant murderer in this DHS/DOJ report. What good is a federal report on illegal immigrant incarceration rates if it would have excluded Kate Steinle’s killer had he been convicted?
The DHS/DOJ report also explained why they did not include an estimate of illegal immigrants incarcerated on the state and local level:
DHS and DOJ are working to develop a reliable methodology for estimating the status of state and local incarcerated populations in future reports.
A March 2017 Cato Institute Immigration Research and Policy Brief employed a commonly used residual statistical methodology to analyze the incarcerated population in the U.S. Census for 2014. We found that illegal immigrants were about 44 percent less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans. I look forward to reviewing any methodology that the federal government comes up with but illegal immigrant criminals would have to be severely undercounted in prisons to give them an incarceration rate that even approaches native-born Americans.
The broad finding among criminologists and economists who study this topic is that immigrants are less crime-prone than natives whether measured by the areas where they live or their incarceration rates. Although there is less research on illegal immigrant criminals, the general finding is that they are less crime-prone or about as criminally inclined as native-born Americans. The DHS/DOJ report reveals no new information about incarcerations on the federal level, does not provide evidence for a higher nation-wide illegal immigrant incarceration rate, nor does it support the administration’s plea for more border security.”
*******************************************
Meanwhile, over at the American Immigration Council (“AIC”), another pro-immigrant group, Walter Ewing, although not mentioning the DOJ report specifically, asserts that here is no basis for the “nativists” claim that crimes by migrants are a crisis:
First, in the nativist mindset, since undocumented immigrants have broken a law by coming to or staying in the United States without authorization, they are all “criminals”—and criminals are dangerous. Therefore, according to this line of reasoning, undocumented immigrants must be dangerous criminals.
Second, since some undocumented immigrants are in fact serious criminals, nativists argue that we would have fewer criminals in the United States if we had fewer undocumented immigrants. Yet the same reasoning applies to any social group. If we had fewer white people, or short people, or blonds in this country, then there would be fewer serious criminals as well since some criminals are white, and some are short, and some are blond. Missing from this argument is the fact that immigrants commit crimes at a much lower rate than the native-born.
An example of the nativist line of reasoning comes from a story on Frontpage Magazine by retired Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) agent Michael Cutler. The story throws together a collection of disembodied incarceration statistics with inflammatory political rhetoric. Cutler also argues, without citing a primary source, that undocumented immigrants are responsible for nearly a third of all murders in the country.
While Cutler can’t credibly back up his claims, there is no shortage of credible researchers who have demonstrated the absence of any relationship between high rates of immigration and high crime rates. In just the past three years, three compelling studies have been added to the pile of evidence which has been growing for decades concerning the lack of any connection between immigration and crime.
A study released in 2017 concluded that “undocumented immigration was significantly associated with reductions in drug arrests, drug overdose deaths, and DUI arrests” between 1990 and 2014. The study “provides evidence that undocumented immigration has not increased the prevalence of drug or alcohol problems, but may be associated with reductions in these public health concerns.”
Another recent study found no relationship between undocumented immigration and rates of violent crime. The authors note that their findings undermine what they call the “Trump Hypothesis,” a notion which holds that undocumented immigration is fueling “violent and drug-related crime in the United States” as declared by President Trump’s 2015 presidential campaign announcement.
Finally, a 2014 study found that “immigrants to the United States are less likely to engage in violent or nonviolent antisocial behaviors than native-born Americans.” Notably, native-born Americans were approximately four times more likely to report violent behavior than Asian and African immigrants and three times more likely than immigrants from Latin America.”
Cutler’s piece ignores this evidence and resorts to simplistic rhetoric; labeling any immigrant in prison for any offense a “criminal alien” and accusing them of terrorizing the American people. But it is immigrants—particularly the undocumented—who risk being terrorized by nativists in their zeal to stereotype and scapegoat immigrants as the source of every ill that afflicts the United States.
The former INS agent characterizes the statistics in his story as “the stunning numbers the Left cannot refute.” However, it is Cutler who seemingly can’t refute the body of research which thoroughly discredits his arguments.”
***************************************
Suffice it to say that the grandiose claims about the DOJ report’s findings made by Sessions and others in the Administration appear problematic, at best.
Calderon-Rodriguez v. Sessions, 9th Cir., 01-03-18, published
COURT’S HEADNOTE:
The panel granted Henri Calderon-Rodriguez’s petition for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision, concluding that the Board in two related ways abused its discretion in affirming the IJ’s competence evaluation and determination.
First, the Board affirmed the IJ’s inaccurate factual findings, failing to recognize that the medical record upon which the IJ and Board heavily relied was nearly a year old, and that it may have no longer reflected Calderon’s mental state.
Second, the Board affirmed the IJ’s departure from the standards set out by the Board for competency determinations in Matter of M-A-M-, 25 I. & N. Dec. 474 (BIA 2011). Specifically, the panel concluded that the IJ did not adequately ensure that the Department of Homeland Security complied with its obligation to provide the court with relevant materials in its possession that would inform the court about Calderon’s mental competency. In this respect, the panel noted that, importantly, neither the IJ nor the Board recognized that, as DHS was providing ongoing medical care to Calderon as a detainee, it necessarily possessed additional relevant, but not introduced, medical records.
The panel remanded to the Board with instructions to remand Calderon’s case to the IJ for a competence evaluation based on current mental health reviews and medical records, as well as any other relevant evidence.
** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.
PANEL: A. Wallace Tashima and Marsha S. Berzon,Circuit Judges, and Matthew F. Kennelly,* District Judge.* The Honorable Matthew F. Kennelly, United States District Judge for the Northern District of Illinois, sitting by designation.
OPINION BY: Judge Berzon
KEY QUOTE:
“First, the BIA affirmed the IJ’s inaccurate factual finding about the mental health evidence in the record. Neither the IJ nor the BIA recognized that the medical record upon which they heavily relied was nearly a year old, and that it may have no longer reflected Calderon’s mental state. Instead, the IJ referred to the medical record as an “updated” reflection of Calderon’s present mental health condition, and stated that the record showed that Calderon “[p]resently . . . is not exhibiting any active PTSD symptoms, suicide ideation, hallucinations, or psychosis” (emphasis added). Those findings as to Calderon’s condition at the time of the hearing were not supported by the year-old date on the mental health record. As these critical factual findings were made “without ‘support in inferences that may be drawn from the facts in the record,’” Rodriguez v. Holder, 683 F.3d 1164, 1170 (9th Cir. 2012) (quoting Anderson v. Bessemer City, 470 U.S. 564, 577 (1985) and citing United States v. Hinkson, 585 F.3d 1247,M1262 (9th Cir. 2009) (en banc)), they constituted an abuse of discretion.
Second, the BIA abused its discretion by affirming the IJ’s departure from the standards set forth in Matter of M-A-M-, 25 I&N Dec. at 480–81. See Mejia, 868 F.3d at 1121. While the IJ did “take” at least some “measures” to determine whether Calderon was competent, Matter of M-A- M-, 25 I&N Dec. at 480, she did not adequately ensure that DHS complied with its “obligation to provide the court with relevant materials in its possession that would inform the court about the respondent’s mental competency,” as required by Matter of M-A-M-. Id.
Importantly, neither the IJ nor the BIA recognized that, as DHS was providing ongoing medical care to Calderon as a detainee, it necessarily possessed additional relevant, but not introduced, medical records. There were, indeed, specific indications that there were later medical records not provided to the IJ or the BIA that could have reflected a deterioration in Calderon’s condition.”
**************************************
This unrepresented Respondent has been in DHS custody for going on six years! This case previously reached the Court of Appeals and was remanded at the DOJ’s request for the holding of a competency hearing. Yet, the BIA still did not take the time and care necessary to properly apply their own precedent on how to conduct mental competency hearings consistent with due process!
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
==========================================
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Greetings. During the first two months of FY 2018, the Immigration Court number of pending cases climbed by an additional 30,000. According to the latest case-by-case court records, the backlog at the end of November 2017 had reached 658,728, up from 629,051 at the end of September 2017. Despite the hiring of many additional immigration judges, there has been no apparent slackening in the growth of this backlog. The rate of growth during the first two months of FY 2018 was in fact greater than the pace of growth during FY 2017.
California leads the country with the largest Immigration Court backlog of 123,217 cases. Texas is second with 103,384 pending cases as of the end of November 2017, followed by New York with 89,489 cases.
These and other findings are based upon very current case-by-case court records that were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. For further highlights see:
In addition, many of TRAC’s free query tools – which track the court’s overall backlog, new DHS filings, court dispositions and much more – have now been updated through November 2017. For an index to the full list of TRAC’s immigration tools go to:
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:
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
———————————————————————————
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse is a nonpartisan joint research center of the Whitman School of Management (http://whitman.syr.edu) and the Newhouse School of Public Communications (http://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 http://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.
**************************************
Of personal interest to me, the U.S. Immigration Court in Arlington, Virginia now has a pending caseload approaching 40,000 cases! Yet, amazingly, the “powers that be” apparently are still detailing Arlington immigration Judges to other dockets!Talk about ADR in action! No wonder cases are being set for Individual Hearing dates 4-5 years in the future!
ImmProf: Following the lead of California Governor Jerry Brown, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo pardoned more than a dozen immigrants who faced deportation over prior convictions who now have a chance of staying in the United States.
Press-Enterprise: Undocumented immigrants can be deported for marijuana consumption in certain circumstances and may risk not being admitted back into the United States if they leave.
AILA: USCIS provided guidance and FAQs on DACA requests delivered by the filing deadline but not officially “ received” by USCIS. USCIS contacted individuals and they have 33 days from the date of the letter to resubmit the request. USCIS included information on other types of mail issues as well.
Politico: Democrats seeking a deal to protect so-called Dreamers from deportation must be prepared to agree to a package that includes several White House priorities, including a border wall and reforms to the U.S. immigration system, President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter Friday morning…House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her Senate counterpart, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), are set to meet [] Wednesday with House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) at the White House, where the congressional leaders are expected to work on a DACA deal as part of negotiations to avert a government shutdown.
The Commercial Appeal (note: this article is focused on Tennessee but generally relevant): Workplace immigration investigations will likely focus on “critical infrastructure,” such as airports, defense contractors, food distribution and other businesses that have an impact on the general safety and welfare of the community
Beginning on January 15, 2018, OCC-NYC will only accept joint motion to reopen (JMTR) requests electronically through eService portal.
OCC: Effective January 15, 2018, the OCC-NYC will move to the next phase of electronic service. Please note that on January 15, 2018, we will be disabling our JMTR email boxes in favor of service to our eService online portal. JMTR requests sent to the following email boxes on or after that date will be deemed improperly served: NONDETAINED.NYC_JMTR@ice.dhs.gov,DETAINED.NYC_JMTR@ice.dhs.gov.
“Our planet is beset with war, terror, hunger, disease, poverty and environmental degradation which must end soon if future generations are to survive and progress.
Perpetuating hatred, ignorance, bias, prejudice, selfishness, greed, fear, extremism, jealousy and misunderstanding from generation to generation perpetuates the world’s differences, disasters, degradations and difficulties.
Without an immediate, dramatic change of direction individually and collectively, our human race will come to where we are presently — and suicidally
— headed.
I and many others doubt whether individual actions or reactions to the planet’s universal problems can or will make any difference.
I personally pledge that I will forever peacefully condemn, resist and denounce killing, terror, war, crime, prejudice, vengeance and the loss or limitation of basic human rights – including, but not limited to:
The right to adequate food, shelter, clean water, clean air and clothing.
The right to health care.
The right to education.
The right to work for a living.
The right to worship one’s highest spirit and/or creator.
The right to a homeland free of challenge or aggression.
I will work to promote remedial action by those who have too much in favor of those who have too little; and, by those who can offer aid to those who need help.
I will not tolerate — without my active peaceful protest and, where necessary my peaceful civil disobedience — any government action that violates these covenants.
I support one planetary, plenary police power, consisting of fair representation from all nations, which will enforce the principles of universal law and peace through a multinational force governed by the United Nations.
I support one World Court, representative of all nations, to interpret and administer its universal rights and laws and principles.
I support a renewed and more responsible United Nations, free of veto power vested in any single nation or select group of nations.
Any declaration of war implied by any nation, government, individual or organized entity, other than the United Nations, shall be a declaration against all earth’s people; and, I will oppose any such aggressor.
I advocate the prompt mutual elimination of all weapons of mass destruction.
I will look anew at earth’s environmental status as well as my own in light of the damage humankind has wrought; and, I will endeavor to waste no resource, to conserve energy and prevent pollution of air, water and soil. I will try to use no more energy than is necessary to support my family.
I will teach my children and grandchildren principles of universal tolerance, love, equality, understanding, compassion, sympathy, empathy and freedom. I will teach the lessons of history and world events that have led us to this perilous time. This promotion of universal principles has become so necessary to the survival of humankind and the preservation of our earth.
I pledge to end the exposure of children to violence, including that portrayed in the media and I will also reject such portrayals myself.
I will pray for all those who are asked to understand this simultaneous planet-wide denouncement of violence and killing and vengeance even though they and their loved ones have been brutalized and victimized; and, I will promote the message that we must altogether say “enough” to violence, terror and killing. I believe earth’s present generations must agree to forgive terrible past and present wrongs and forego future wrongs and revenge.
I will respect and work to protect human differences in religion, culture, color, nationality, language, gender, age, ethnicity and political beliefs.
This dramatic and immediate change, so essential to preserving the planet and its people, will not come about through slow generational purging of the problems and prejudices that plague our earth.
We must act together to adopt sweeping, global change that will provide all people with the ultimate promise and hope, that we can together act to change tomorrow. I pledge to act responsively and responsibly to achieve this end.
I support a general amnesty for those who have engaged in conflict, so long as they terminate armed conflict and lay down their arms forever.
We must redirect worldwide economic resources from weapons and armies, fear and terror, to provide world sustenance, health, universal education and other basic human rights and needs for all. I will work for the preservation of the earth’s natural resources and development of clean renewable alternative energy to sustain future life on the planet.
I will urge others to take this pledge including my governmental representatives at all levels, my religious leaders, my nation’s military leaders, educational leaders and corporate leaders.
If we support these changes, there can and will be peace on earth and preservation of our planet and protection and perpetuation with dignity for humankind.
Thomas Lister is a trial lawyer, former Jackson County district attorney and circuit court judge. He is retiring from Fitzpatrick Skemp & Associates, La Crosse.
************************************************
Judge Thomas “Tom” Lister and I were members of the Class of 1973 at the University of Wisconsin School of Law. (No Orange Bowl — or indeed any Bowl — victories in those days — we were happy if the Badger Football team won a game. But, we faithfully attended the games in the “law student section” and the “fifth quarter” afterward!) Indeed, Tom, his wonderful wife Sally, my wife Cathy, and I were very close friends throughout those three years and have remained in touch ever since. Tom and I were members of the same “study group.”
Like me, Tom has seen the U.S. legal system from a number of different vantage points — as a prosecutor, a judge, and a private practitioner. Several years ago at our 40th UW Law Reunion we had an interesting discussion of the failures of the traditional law enforcement approach to drug and opioid use, a particular problem not only in Northern Virginia but in the largely rural Jackson Country Wisconsin where Tom was a Circuit Judge and, some years prior to that, the District Attorney.
I find Tom’s words and thoughts inspiring, particularly at a time when the level of political and intellectual discourse in our country is often quite the opposite, to say the least. I particularly appreciate his message about tolerance and the recognition of basic universal human rights — a subject which has concerned me throughout my legal career.
“It would have seemed unbelievable in 1990, when there were 2,245 killings in New York City, but as of Wednesday there have been just 286 in the city this year — the lowest since reliable records have been kept.
In fact, crime has fallen in New York City in each of the major felony categories — murder and manslaughter, rape, assault, robbery, burglary, grand larceny, and car thefts — to a total of 94,806 as of Sunday, well below the previous record low of 101,716 set last year.
If the trend holds just a few more days, this year’s homicide total will be under the city’s previous low of 333 in 2014, and crime will have declined for 27 straight years, to levels that police officials have said are the lowest since the 1950s. The numbers, when taken together, portray a city of 8.5 million people growing safer even as the police, under Mayor Bill de Blasio, use less deadly force, make fewer arrests and scale back controversial practices like stopping and frisking thousands of people on the streets.
“There is no denying that the arc is truly exceptional in the unbroken streak of declining crime,” said William J. Bratton, who retired from his second stint as police commissioner last year.
But officials see one area of concern: an uptick in reports of rapes toward the end of the year. The increase, which officials said included a higher-than-normal number of attacks that occurred more than one year ago, coincided with the publication of accusations against powerful menlike Harvey Weinstein, which gave rise to the #MeToo movementencouraging victims to come forward. City police officials have said they believed news coverage played a role in the spike in reports, though they also credited their own efforts combating domestic violence with encouraging victims to speak up.
And while rapes were down from last year by one, to 1,417, misdemeanor sex crimes — a catchall for various types of misconduct that includes groping — ticked up 9.3 percent to 3,585 so far.
The lower homicide numbers are still preliminary — and include one announced on Wednesday night — but they jibe with large drops in killings in major cities like Chicago and Detroit, while contrasting with sizable increases in killings in smaller cities like Charlotte and Baltimore.
The city today is a far cry from what it was when Mr. Bratton arrived in 1990 to become the head of the then-separate Transit Police. Not only were there 2,245 killings that year, but there were more than 527,000 major felony crimes and more than 5,000 people shot. Shootings have plunged to 774 so far this year, well below last year’s record low of 998. And for the first time, fewer than 1,000 people have been hurt by gunfire: 917 as of Sunday.
The continued declines are a boon to Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat elected on promises of police reform — promises that prompted warnings of mayhem to come by his opponents in 2013. But the opposite has happened, putting him on stronger footing as he pivots to a second term with a Police Department transformed to exercise greater restraint as it focuses on building trust in the city’s neighborhoods.
Franklin E. Zimring, a professor at University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, said the downturn was an “astounding achievement,” but it raised another question: How long and low will crime fall?
Mr. de Blasio and the police commissioner, James P. O’Neill, credit recent drops in crime to the Police Department’s emphasis on going after the relatively small groups of people — mostly gangs and repeat offenders — believed to be responsible for most crime, while also building relationships in communities where trust has been strained.
Mr. Bratton applauded political support for the police from the mayor, who provided funding for investments in officer hiring, training, equipment and overdose-reversal drugs.
One of the results is that police officers are using deadly force less often. As of Dec. 20, police officers intentionally fired their service guns in 23 encounters, a record low, down from 37 in 2016. The Police Department said officers were relying more on stun guns, which were used 491 times through November, compared with 474 times during the same period in 2016. More than 15,000 officers have been trained how to use them.
But criminologists differ about the cause of the continued declines. Mr. Zimring said that while better policing accounted for much of the decline in crime since 1990, it was no longer a primary driver. New York is “tiptoeing” toward a 90 percent crime decline for reasons that remain “utterly mysterious,” he said.
More broadly, research suggests that crime trends are closely tied to economic conditions. Interest rates, inflation and unemployment are among the macro-level factors influencing crime, according to James Austin, the president of the JFA Institute, a criminal justice policy nonprofit.
“What the Fed does will have more of an impact than any sentencing or police reforms,” Mr. Austin said.
The reductions in New York are a part of what the Brennan Center for Justice expects will be a 2.7-percent decline in crime rates and 5.6-percent drop in murder rates across the country’s largest cities. After record-high bloodshed last year, killings in Chicago have declined 15 percent.
Through August, rape was down in New York City 7 percent compared with last year, but a small increase in September was followed by spikes in October and November. The New York Times first published accusations against Mr. Weinstein on Oct. 5.
Reports of rapes that had occurred in a previous year, meanwhile, were up almost 12 percent through November. In response, the Police Department is adding investigators to its Special Victims Unit and hasmodernized the techniques detectives use to investigate claims.
“We can’t answer definitively” what is driving the rise, Commissioner O’Neill told reporters at a crime briefing this month. “At least I can’t. But we’re seeing people coming forward and having faith in the N.Y.P.D. And that’s what we want to happen.”
Whatever the reason for New York’s crime reductions, the statistics do not capture the complete picture of public safety. Some crimes are not represented fully or at all: acts of domestic violence, sexual assaults, identity thefts, hate crimes, and shootings that don’t result in injuries or damage.
Increasingly, officers are receiving calls to help people in emotional crises. The police responded to 157,000 such calls in 2016. But only 7,000 officers have received crisis intervention training for handling those situations.
While most police encounters are resolved without officers resorting to deadly force, fatal police shootings of people in emotional distress — including Dwayne Jeune on July 31 in Brooklyn and Miguel Richards on Sept. 6 in the Bronx — have drawn scrutiny. A police sergeant, Hugh Barry, was indicted on murder charges in May for the fatal on-duty shooting of a mentally ill woman, Deborah Danner, in October 2016. His trial is scheduled to begin in January.”
*****************************************
AG Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions’s White Nationalist inspired anti-immigrant, anti-Sanctuary Cities, “turn a blind eye to police brutality” campaign actually impedes the type of community-trust based policing that appears to work in reducing crime. As I have noted before, Gonzo’s policies show little respect for the Constitution, the rule of law, or state and local rights, but lots of anti-immigrant bias.
“Iowa should consider waiting on SF 481 until the fate of the Texas anti-sanctuary bill is decided, which is likely to require a decision from the Supreme Court.
If Iowa actually needs a bill to eliminate sanctuary policies, it is not an urgent need.
State Senator Julian Garrett, the bill’s floor manager, has acknowledged that the vast majority of Iowa cities and counties cooperate with ICE enforcement efforts already.
And Iowa has a relatively small population of undocumented aliens. According to the PEW Research Center’s 2014 per-state estimate, Iowa only had 40,000 undocumented aliens in 2014, which was 1.3 percent of Iowa’s population. California had 2,350,000 undocumented aliens (6.0 percent of its population), and Texas had 1,650,000 (6.1 percent of its population).
[Graphic Omitted]
SF 481 also has substantial political opposition.
Numerous organizations have registered opposition to SF 481, including the Iowa League of Cities, Iowa State Bar Association, Iowa Police Chiefs Association, Iowa County Attorneys Association, Interfaith Alliance of Iowa, American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, Iowa Catholic Conference, and Iowa Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church.
Only one organization has registered support for SF 481, the Iowa Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.
Perhaps Iowa should just leave the decision on whether to cooperate with ICE up to the discretion of its police departments.
Nolan Rappaport was detailed to the House Judiciary Committee as an executive branch immigration law expert for three years; he subsequently served as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims for four years. Prior to working on the Judiciary Committee, he wrote decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals for 20 years.“
********************
Read Nolan’s complete article with more on the origins of Iowa SF 481 and the Texas litigation over at The Hill at the link.
I think Nolan is “right on” here. It appears that at present there is no need for this legislation.
“For most of the past six decades, the Republican Party could count on Charlie Heimach. The retired Air Force colonel donated money to President Richard Nixon, backed Ronald Reagan and both Bushes, and cast his ballot last year for Donald Trump.
But in the recent Virginia governor’s race, Heimach voted for the Democrat, because of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, and its attempts to deport a ballroom dancing instructor from the studio where Heimach, 79, likes to Lindy Hop.
Since May, Heimach and a disparate crew of lawyers, military veterans, a dog walker, an entomologist and others united in their love for dancing have been on a crusade to protect the instructor they call “G,” an undocumented immigrant from Mongolia who was arrested twice in 2016 for drunken driving.
To some, their efforts are misguided — even dangerous.
But the ballroom dancers say Galtsog Gantulga is a gifted instructor who senses when his students need to talk or want to dance but are too shy to take the initiative. He hurt no one in the two drunken driving incidents, they point out, and has served time behind bars. He also sold his car and joined Alcoholics Anonymous.
In the America these dancers know, such a person deserves another chance, a view not always held in the U.S. immigration system.
For the moment, thanks to their persistence, Gantulga has a reprieve.
“He built his life over here,” said Mealy Chhim, a retired software engineer who was part of the effort. “He just messed up.”
***************************
Read Maria’s complete article at the link.
This is why guys like Trump, Gonzo, and Homan invariably strive to “dehumanize” immigrants in pushing their harsh deportation agenda.
“Anti-immigrant voices’ smokescreen that they were only opposed to illegal immigration has been shredded. They now revel in their calls for immigration exclusionism. If allowed to persist, it will distort and damage our economy and impede entrepreneurship. It has already encouraged a wholly-misguided approach to crime fighting.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Trump have concocted a theory that we are awash in crime because of illegal immigrants, especially those living in “sanctuary cities.” That is patently false, and Sessions’ efforts to punish cities that refuse to do the feds bidding in detaining and helping to deport illegal immigrant have been swatted down in court. However, the barrage of litigation over sanctuary cities and obsession with the issue has led us to ignore both the successes and failures in crime fighting — and the causes of each.
. . . .
So when Los Angeles mayors and police chiefs tell the Justice Department that making police into immigration agents will impair their community policing success and divert valuable resources, maybe we should listen to them. Conservatives used to understand that in federalism we have the “laboratories of democracy,” namely the opportunities to find through experimentation what works and what doesn’t. Rather than riding roughshod of localities, Sessions should highlight the successes of local police departments, urge others to follow suit and increase funding — rather than threaten to yank it for spurious reasons — for those localities that need it the most. Alas, his ideological fixation with demonizing illegal immigrants seems to preclude such a fact-based approach.“
***************************
Read JRube’s compleat article at the link.
As she indicates, Gonzo is undoubtedly the most “fact and law free” Attorney General in our lifetime. Almost every one of his amazingly horrible and destructive decisions is driven by deeply ingrained ideological bias. Senator Liz Warren and the others who spoke up at the confirmation hearings were right. But, the GOP Senate tuned them out. Remember that the next time you go to the polls!
“Pope Francis strongly defended immigrants at his Christmas Eve Mass on Sunday, comparing them to Mary and Joseph finding no place to stay in Bethlehem and saying faith demands that foreigners be welcomed.
Francis, celebrating his fifth Christmas as leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, led a solemn Mass for about 10,000 people in St. Peter’s Basilica while many others followed the service from the square outside.
Security was stepped up, with participants checked as they approached St. Peter’s Square even before going through metal detectors to enter the basilica. The square had been cleared out hours earlier so security procedures could be put in place.
The Gospel reading at the Mass in Christendom’s largest church recounted the Biblical story of how Mary and Jesus had to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem to be registered for a census ordered by Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus.
“So many other footsteps are hidden in the footsteps of Joseph and Mary. We see the tracks of entire families forced to set out in our own day. We see the tracks of millions of persons who do not choose to go away, but driven from their land, leave behind their dear ones,” Francis said.
Even the shepherds who the Bible says were the first to see the child Jesus were “forced to live on the edges of society” and considered dirty, smelly foreigners, he said. “Everything about them generated mistrust. They were men and women to be kept at a distance, to be feared.”
“NEW SOCIAL IMAGINATION”
Wearing white vestments in the flower-bedecked church, Francis called for a “new social imagination … in which none have to feel that there is no room for them on this earth.”
The 81-year-old pope, who was born of Italian immigrant stock in Argentina, has made defense of migrants a major plank of his papacy, often putting him at odds with politicians.
Austria’s new chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, has aligned himself with central European neighbors like Hungary and the Czech Republic in opposing German-backed proposals to distribute asylum seekers around EU member states.
In elections in Germany in September, the far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party made significant gains, with electors punishing Chancellor Angela Merkel for her open-door policy and pushing migration policy to the top of the agenda in talks to form a coalition government.
Italy’s anti-immigrant Northern League, whose leader Matteo Salvini often gives fiery speeches against migrants, is expected to make gains in national elections next year. A law that would give citizenship to children born in Italy to migrant parents is stalled in parliament.
In his homily, Francis said, “Our document of citizenship” comes from God, making respect of migrants an integral part of Christianity.
“This is the joy that we tonight are called to share, to celebrate and to proclaim. The joy with which God, in his infinite mercy, has embraced us pagans, sinners and foreigners, and demands that we do the same,” Francis said.
Francis also condemned human traffickers who make money off desperate migrants as the “Herods of today” with blood on their hands, a reference to the Biblical story of the king who ordered the killing of all newborn male children near Bethlehem because he feared Jesus would one day displace him.
More than 14,000 people have died trying to make the perilous crossing of the Mediterranean to Europe in the past four years.
On Christmas Day, Francis will deliver his twice-yearly “Urbi et Orbi” (To the City and to the World) blessing and message from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica.
******************************
Compare the Pope’s very clear statement of true Christian values with the fear-mongering, false narratives, and xenophobic rantings and actions of the so-called “Christians” in the Trump Administration.
“FAMILIES AND unaccompanied children detained at the Mexican border are often fleeing horrific conditions in Central American countries, especially El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, where violent gangs, drug trafficking and rampant criminality contribute to some of the world’s highest murder rates. Now the Trump administration, alarmed at the recent surge in border crossers, is considering a new strategy to deter them. The message: “You think your native country is cruel? America is even crueller.”
That’s the logic behind a proposal under consideration by Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen that would try to discourage migrant families from crossing the border by threatening to separate parents from their children when they are taken into custody in the United States.
Until now, that approach has been beyond the pale for U.S. officials, who rejected it as inhumane and coldhearted in the extreme, given the trauma it would inflict on children, who by definition are innocent.
If Ms. Nielsen gives the green light to break up migrant families, many of whom have plausible asylum claims, she would be responsible for a policy whose heartlessness would rival that of Executive Order 9066, which authorized the forcible internment of some 110,000 U.S. citizens and noncitizens of Japanese descent during World War II. Four decades after that act of mass inhumanity, President Ronald Reagan signed legislation formally apologizing for it.
Arrests by the Border Patrol plummeted after Mr. Trump took office nearly a year ago, reflecting a decline in illegal border crossing driven at least partly by the president’s aggressive anti-immigrant rhetoric. Despite that, detentions began climbing again in the spring — mainly of families and solo children. And in November, more than 7,000 “family units” were taken into custody at the border, a 45 percent surge compared with October; in the same month, the number of unaccompanied minors crossing the border shot up by a quarter.
U.S. officials are correct that those families take tremendous risks, often at the hands of coldblooded smugglers who guide them north to the border. They are also justified in wanting to discourage migrants from undertaking the journey, in which ransom, rape and other forms of abuse are rampant.
The right way to do that is not to double down on the cruelty with which those families already contend by tearing children from their parents’ arms. What’s more, it is unlikely to work in the case of families and children who flee their native countries in fear for their lives.
Heedless of horrendous conditions in Central America, the Trump administration cynically believes border-crossing families are trying to game America’s system, with its years-long backlog in immigration courts and legal protections that allow many people to live and work freely while they await adjudication of their cases. In fact, many have legitimate asylum claims based on the threats they face in their home countries, and all are entitled to due process.
The idea of wrenching children from their families was first entertained in March by then-Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly, now the White House chief of staff, who said the minors would be “well cared for as we deal with their parents.” Has a U.S. official ever issued a more chilling “assurance”?”
******************************
On the eve of the day when the world’s Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, I find it ironic that we have a President who uses “Merry Christmas” as an “in your face” insult to followers of other religions and atheists, yet with every day in office moves us further and further as a nation away from the humane, compassionate values and teachings of Jesus.
Indeed, were Christ to return to earth today, he would most certainly be found among the vulnerable and downtrodden known as “undocumented migrants” or among those assisting them. He would never walk among the Pharisees such as Trump, Sessions, and Pence. The undocumented are truly the “children of God;” Trump and his followers, not so much.
COMPLAINT AGAINST CHIEF IMMIGRATION JUDGE FOR ORDERING JUDGES TO IGNORE FEDERAL LAWS PROTECTING CHILDREN
by Bryan Johnson on December 22, 2017
The following complaint was filed today against Chief Immigration Judge, MaryBeth Keller for ordering immigration judges to disregard special legal protections for unaccompanied children as mandated by 8 USC 1232(e):
Gotta believe that this one will get a quick coat of whitewash from EOIR, particularly since Chief Judge Keller’s “rise through the ranks” of the HQ bureaucracy was fueled, in part, by her role as the Assistant Chief Judge in charge of Judicial Conduct.
I always liked Chief Judge Keller, who once worked for me at the BIA. She’s a fundamentally decent person working for a bad guy (Jeff Sessions) and just trying to hang onto her job and limit the damage as best she can until she’s eligible to retire. I doubt that the “offending (and offensive) memo” was her idea. She was undoubtedly ordered to write it by Acting Director McHenry and his “handlers” at the DOJ. And, it certainly echoes Sessions’s clear bias against all immigrants, particularly young people of color. Remember the completely uncalled for “smear job” he did on “Dreamers” while gleefully announcing their planned demise as if it were some great achievement, rather than something of which we all should be ashamed?
Dreamers make our country better; Gonzo Apocalyto, not so much.
But so many foreigners had flooded into the country since January, he vented to his national security team, that it was making a mockery of his pledge. Friends were calling to say he looked like a fool, Mr. Trump said.
According to six officials who attended or were briefed about the meeting, Mr. Trump then began reading aloud from the document, which his domestic policy adviser, Stephen Miller, had given him just before the meeting. The document listed how many immigrants had received visas to enter the United States in 2017.
More than 2,500 were from Afghanistan, a terrorist haven, the president complained.
Haiti had sent 15,000 people. They “all have AIDS,” he grumbled, according to one person who attended the meeting and another person who was briefed about it by a different person who was there.
Forty thousand had come from Nigeria, Mr. Trump added. Once they had seen the United States, they would never “go back to their huts” in Africa, recalled the two officials, who asked for anonymity to discuss a sensitive conversation in the Oval Office.
As the meeting continued, John F. Kelly, then the secretary of homeland security, and Rex W. Tillerson, the secretary of state, tried to interject, explaining that many were short-term travelers making one-time visits. But as the president continued, Mr. Kelly and Mr. Miller turned their ire on Mr. Tillerson, blaming him for the influx of foreigners and prompting the secretary of state to throw up his arms in frustration. If he was so bad at his job, maybe he should stop issuing visas altogether, Mr. Tillerson fired back.
Tempers flared and Mr. Kelly asked that the room be cleared of staff members. But even after the door to the Oval Office was closed, aides could still hear the president berating his most senior advisers.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, denied on Saturday morning that Mr. Trump had made derogatory statements about immigrants during the meeting.
“General Kelly, General McMaster, Secretary Tillerson, Secretary Nielsen and all other senior staff actually in the meeting deny these outrageous claims,” she said, referring to the current White House chief of staff, the national security adviser and the secretaries of state and homeland security. “It’s both sad and telling The New York Times would print the lies of their anonymous ‘sources’ anyway.”
While the White House did not deny the overall description of the meeting, officials strenuously insisted that Mr. Trump never used the words “AIDS” or “huts” to describe people from any country. Several participants in the meeting told Times reporters that they did not recall the president using those words and did not think he had, but the two officials who described the comments found them so noteworthy that they related them to others at the time.
The meeting in June reflects Mr. Trump’s visceral approach to an issue that defined his campaign and has indelibly shaped the first year of his presidency.
How We Reported This Story
The Times conducted over three dozen interviews with current and former administration officials, lawmakers and others close to the process.
Seizing on immigration as the cause of countless social and economic problems, Mr. Trump entered office with an agenda of symbolic but incompletely thought-out goals, the product not of rigorous policy debate but of emotionally charged personal interactions and an instinct for tapping into the nativist views of white working-class Americans.
Like many of his initiatives, his effort to change American immigration policy has been executed through a disorderly and dysfunctional process that sought from the start to defy the bureaucracy charged with enforcing it, according to interviews with three dozen current and former administration officials, lawmakers and others close to the process, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail private interactions.
But while Mr. Trump has been repeatedly frustrated by the limits of his power, his efforts to remake decades of immigration policy have gained increasing momentum as the White House became more disciplined and adept at either ignoring or undercutting the entrenched opposition of many parts of the government. The resulting changes have had far-reaching consequences, not only for the immigrants who have sought to make a new home in this country, but also for the United States’ image in the world.
“We have taken a giant steamliner barreling full speed,” Mr. Miller said in a recent interview. “Slowed it, stopped it, begun to turn it around and started sailing in the other direction.”
It is an assessment shared ruefully by Mr. Trump’s harshest critics, who see a darker view of the past year. Frank Sharry, the executive director of America’s Voice, a pro-immigration group, argues that the president’s immigration agenda is motivated by racism.
“He’s basically saying, ‘You people of color coming to America seeking the American dream are a threat to the white people,’” said Mr. Sharry, an outspoken critic of the president. “He’s come into office with an aggressive strategy of trying to reverse the demographic changes underway in America.”
. . . .
Even as the administration was engaged in a court battle over the travel ban, it began to turn its attention to another way of tightening the border — by limiting the number of refugees admitted each year to the United States. And if there was one “deep state” stronghold of Obama holdovers that Mr. Trump and his allies suspected of undermining them on immigration, it was the State Department, which administers the refugee program.
At the department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, there was a sense of foreboding about a president who had once warned that any refugee might be a “Trojan horse” or part of a “terrorist army.”
Mr. Trump had already used the travel ban to cut the number of allowable refugees admitted to the United States in 2017 to 50,000, a fraction of the 110,000 set by Mr. Obama. Now, Mr. Trump would have to decide the level for 2018.
At an April meeting with top officials from the bureau in the West Wing’s Roosevelt Room, Mr. Miller cited statistics from the restrictionist Center for Immigration Studies that indicated that resettling refugees in the United States was far costlier than helping them in their own region.
Mr. Miller was visibly displeased, according to people present, when State Department officials pushed back, citing another study that found refugees to be a net benefit to the economy. He called the contention absurd and said it was exactly the wrong kind of thinking.
But the travel ban had been a lesson for Mr. Trump and his aides on the dangers of dictating a major policy change without involving the people who enforce it. This time, instead of shutting out those officials, they worked to tightly control the process.
In previous years, State Department officials had recommended a refugee level to the president. Now, Mr. Miller told officials the number would be determined by the Department of Homeland Security under a new policy that treated the issue as a security matter, not a diplomatic one.
When he got word that the Office of Refugee Resettlement had drafted a 55-page report showing that refugees were a net positive to the economy, Mr. Miller swiftly intervened, requesting a meeting to discuss it. The study never made it to the White House; it was shelved in favor of a three-page list of all the federal assistance programs that refugees used.
At the United Nations General Assembly in September, Mr. Trump cited the Center for Immigration Studies report, arguing that it was more cost-effective to keep refugees out than to bring them into the United States.
“Uncontrolled migration,” Mr. Trump declared, “is deeply unfair to both the sending and receiving countries.”
. . . .
As the new year approached, officials began considering a plan to separate parents from their children when families are caught entering the country illegally, a move that immigrant groups called draconian.
At times, though, Mr. Trump has shown an openness to a different approach. In private discussions, he returns periodically to the idea of a “comprehensive immigration” compromise, though aides have warned him against using the phrase because it is seen by his core supporters as code for amnesty. During a fall dinner with Democratic leaders, Mr. Trump explored the possibility of a bargain to legalize Dreamers in exchange for border security.
Mr. Trump even told Republicans recently that he wanted to think bigger, envisioning a deal early next year that would include a wall, protection for Dreamers, work permits for their parents, a shift to merit-based immigration with tougher work site enforcement, and ultimately, legal status for some undocumented immigrants.
The idea would prevent Dreamers from sponsoring the parents who brought them illegally for citizenship, limiting what Mr. Trump refers to as “chain migration.”
“He wants to make a deal,” said Mr. Graham, who spoke with Mr. Trump about the issue last week. “He wants to fix the entire system.”
Yet publicly, Mr. Trump has only employed the absolutist language that defined his campaign and has dominated his presidency.
After an Uzbek immigrant was arrested on suspicion of plowing a truck into a bicycle path in Lower Manhattan in October, killing eight people, the president seized on the episode.
Privately, in the Oval Office, the president expressed disbelief about the visa program that had admitted the suspect, confiding to a group of visiting senators that it was yet another piece of evidence that the United States’ immigration policies were “a joke.”
Even after a year of progress toward a country sealed off from foreign threats, the president still viewed the immigration system as plagued by complacency.
“We’re so politically correct,” he complained to reporters in the cabinet room, “that we’re afraid to do anything.”
****************************************
Read the full, much more comprehensive and detailed, article at the link.
Disturbing for sure, but unfortunately not particularly surprising for those of us who have watched the Administration roll out its toxic, ill-informed immigration policies. Perhaps ironically, while the immigration issue has certainly allowed Trump to capture and control the GOP, polls show that his extreme restrictionist, xenophobic views on immigration are generally out of line with the majority of Americans (although not necessarily the majority of GOP voters).
“Earlier this month, the DHS Office of Inspector General (IG) released a report on “Concerns about ICE Detainee Treatment and Care at Detention Facilities.” According to the ACLU, the way to address the violationsdescribed in this “damning new report” is to “release people from immigration detention and prohibit ICE from using dangerous and inhumane jails.”
The IG found problems at four of the five detention centers it inspected, but it is a stretch to call the report “damning” or to claim that ICE is “using dangerous and inhumane jails.” Many of the problems were relatively minor, and, apparently, all of them are going to be corrected.
The immigration court backlog is so long that, as of October 2017, the average wait for a hearing was 691 days, and Trump’s backlog reduction plan isn’t going to bring it under control.
ICE cannot release detainees because wait-times are too long. Many of them will not return for their hearings. During FY2015, 23.4 percent of the aliens who were released from custody did not return for their hearings, and releases were limited to cases in which there was reason to expect the aliens to return.
Which alternative do you expect the Republicans to choose?”
*******************************************
Go on over to The Hill to read Nolan’s complete article.
Why Expedited Removal Isn’t the Answer (Leaving Aside The Substantial Legal and Moral Issues Involved):
Under Trump, DHS has already “maxed out” the use of expedited removal at the border.
While Trump’s Executive Order called for an expansion of expedited removal to individuals who have been in the country for less than two years, that requires a regulatory change which, curiously, the DH’s has failed to accomplish in the nearly one year since the Executive Order.
Even with expedited removal expanded to two years, the vast majority of individuals comprising the “court backlog” have been there at least that long and therefore wouldn’t be candidates for expedited removal.
Of those limited number who have been in the U.S. for less than two years, many have already passed “credible fear” or “reasonable fear” and are, therefore, entitled to Individual hearings.
Some of those removed from the docket for expedited removal could still pass the “credible fear” or “reasonable fear” process before the Asylum Office and have their cases restored to the Immigraton Court docket (with an entirely new proceedings that would have to “start from scratch”).
Under BIA rulings, once proceedings have commenced before the Immigration Court, the DHS can’t unilaterally remove them from the court’s docket for expedited removal. It requires a DHS motion to terminate, a chance for the respondent to be heard in opposition, and a decision by the Immigration Judge. Given the administrative mess at both EOIR and DHS Chief Counsel, filing and responding to those motions can be an administrative problem. Moreover, although almost all motions to terminate for expedited removal ultimately are granted by the Immigraton Judges, the termination is a “final order” subject to appeal to the BIA.
Individuals placed in expedited removal whose “credible fear’ or “reasonable fear” claims are rejected, have a right to expedited review before an Immigraton Judge. Such reviews generally take precedence over other types of cases, but do not produce “final orders” from the Immigraton Judge. At some level, ratcheting up the expedited removal process actually inhibits the processing of previously scheduled cases before the Immigration Court.
What Does Work:
Alternatives to Detention (“ADT) such as ankle bracelet monitoring. See, e.g., http://lirs.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/The-Real-Alternatives-to-Detention-FINAL-06.27.17.pdf
This strongly suggests that immigration hearings conducted for unrepresented individuals are inherently unfair and a denial of due process, something that should be (but isn’t) the number one concern of the DOJ and EOIR.
My own experience at the Arlington Immigration court was that individuals 1) represented by counsel , and 2) with applications for relief filed showed up for their hearings nearly 100% of the time. Indeed, beyond criminal record and family ties, those were the two most significant factors for me in setting immigration bonds.
An Administration truly interested in improving the performance of the Immigration Courts, achieving due process, and lessening the need for immigration detention would be working closely with NGOs, bar associations, states and localities, and ADT providers to develop cooperative ways of maximizing representation in Immigraton Court, But, this Administration is far more interested in advancing a xenophobic, White Nationalist agenda than it is in fairness, due process, or solving problems.
