"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.
Inside the Gulag In the fine tradition of an earlier “Uncle Joe,” like US Presidents before him, Joe Biden finds it useful to have a deadly “due process free zone” to stash “non-persons” and “break their will to resist!” — PHOTO: Public Realm
President Biden vowed in his 2020 campaign to shutter for-profit migrant detention facilities; he repeated the promise after taking office. It hasn’t happened. To the contrary: The administration, overwhelmed by the surge in unauthorized border crossings, now holds roughly 30,000 migrants in detention, about double the count it inherited from the Trump administration. Roughly 4 in 5 detainees are in private facilities overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
That’s a troubling development given ongoing reports of poor conditions and health care for migrant detainees, and evidence that the government has been less than aggressive in seeking remedies in the past. Officials say they are tightening oversight, yet problems persist. Even though the government has stopped housing migrants in some prisons with poor records, more needs to happen. And Mr. Biden’s original promise to close down for-profit migrant detention should still be the goal.
In fact, the president issued an executive order soon after entering office to close down private prisons used to house other federal inmates — who are by and large U.S. citizens. The rationale for closing them was the same as that for shifting away from private migrant prisons: the principle that incarcerating offenders is properly a government obligation, not an opportunity for profit.
If anything, the logic for ending private prisons for migrants is more compelling. Roughly 70 percent of migrant detainees have no criminal record; they face civil immigration proceedings, awaiting adjudication of their asylum and deportation cases. Many of the rest have been charged with relatively minor offenses, including traffic violations, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, which gathers immigration enforcement data. Only a modest number have committed serious crimes. In other words, few migrant detainees are dangerous.
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Read the complete editorial at the link.
Unfortunately, it’s no surprise to migrants and their advocates that Biden and Harris said one thing about human rights to get elected and did the opposite once in office. The list of broken promises and betrayals of fundamental legal and human values is long and enraging.
With yet more USCIS fee increases apparently in the offing — more money for less service and diminished quality — perhaps DHS should be required to reprogram money and resources from the “New American Gulag” to USCIS adjudications. Might also cut down on litigation and IG investigations, not to mention detainee deaths.
Like most of the Biden Administration’s self-inflicted immigration/human rights/racial justice failures, this isn’t “rocket science.” A Committee appointed by DHS Secretary Johnson during the Obama-Biden Administration recommended that private immigration detention be ended. That was more than six years ago. See, e.g., https://wp.me/p8eeJm-7j.
Additionally, you don’t have to be a lawyer or a deep thinker to grasp that conditions unsuitable for convicted felons shouldn’t be inflicted on so-called “civil detainees” most of whom are just awaiting justice from a system that consistently and illegally treats them as “less than human!”
Elizabeth Gibson Managing Attorney National Immigrant Justice Center Publisher of “The Gibson Report”
Weekly Briefing
This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.
Politico: Experts in the immigration field say they’re expecting a stressful and chaotic transition when a court-ordered deadline to end the Trump directive is hit, one that could drive a new rush to the border and intensify GOP criticism. See also States move to keep court from lifting Trump asylum policy.
Reuters: The United States is in talks with Mexico and other countries to facilitate the return of Venezuelan migrants to their homeland, a senior U.S. official said in a call with reporters on Tuesday.
TRAC: The South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, which currently houses single adults (mostly females) has more than doubled the number of individuals it is holding since September. ICE reports this facility run by CoreCivic now has the largest average daily population of detainees (1,562) in the country
CBS: McCarthy also threatened to use “the power of the purse and the power of subpoena” to investigate and derail the Biden administration’s immigration and border policies, saying Republican-led committees would hold oversight hearings near the U.S.-Mexico border.
LexisNexis: “Remand is required in this case because the BIA did not give consideration to all relevant evidence and principles of law, as those have been detailed by this Court’s recent decision in Scarlett v. Barr, 957 F.3d 316, 332–36 (2d Cir. 2020). … Because Mejia did not fear torture at the hands of the Guatemalan authorities, the relevant inquiry is whether government officials have acquiesced in likely third-party torture. To make this determination, the Court considers whether there is evidence that authorities knew of the torture or turned a blind eye to it, and “thereafter” breached their “responsibility to prevent” the possible torture.”
LexisNexis: “Having reviewed both the IJ’s and the BIA’s opinions, we hold that the agency did not err in finding that Garcia-Aranda failed to satisfy her burden of proof for asylum and withholding of removal, but that the agency applied incorrect standards when adjudicating Garcia-Aranda’s CAT claim.”
Law360: The Third Circuit has backed a decision denying a Dominican man’s bid for deportation relief based on his fear of being tortured, saying the procedural flaws he claimed tainted his proceedings — including the use of legal jargon and a videoconferencing glitch — did not prejudice him.
Law360: An English-speaking Cameroonian lost her chance to stay in the U.S. after the Eighth Circuit ruled that she failed to provide enough evidence showing that military officers had attacked her for her presumed support of Anglophone separatists.
LexisNexis: “Without record evidence that Phong orally waived his right to appeal before the IJ, we decline to address his alternative arguments that any waiver was unconsidered, unintelligent, or otherwise unenforceable. Rather, we remand to the BIA to develop the record on the waiver issue and, if it deems it appropriate, to consider Phong’s remaining arguments in the first instance.”
Law360: A divided Ninth Circuit on Monday ruled that the federal government was not constitutionally required to provide a Salvadoran immigrant a second bond hearing amid his prolonged detention during removal proceedings, while also bearing the burden to show he was a flight risk or danger to the community.
AP: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has agreed to pay a Vermont-based immigrant advocacy organization $74,000 in legal fees to settle a lawsuit seeking information about whether advocates were being targeted by immigration agents because of their political activism.
USCIS: Today, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it is extending and expanding previously announced filing fee exemptions and expedited application processing for certain Afghan nationals.
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Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)
Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship
National Immigrant Justice Center
A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program
224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org
Folks, it’s about re-instituting the law and screening system for legal asylum seekerswhich was in effect, in one form or another, for four decades before being illegally abrogated by the Trump Administration’s abusive use of Title 42. Outrageously, after promising to do better during the 2020 election campaign, the Biden Administration has “gone along to get along” with inflicting massive human rights violations under the Title 42 facade until finally ordered to comply with the law by U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan last month.
One of Judge Sullivan’s well-supported findings was that the scofflaw actions by both Trump and Biden officials had resulted in knowingly and intentionally inflicting “dire harm” on legal asylum applicants:
Sullivan wrote that the federal officials knew the order “would likely expel migrants to locations with a ‘high probability’ of ‘persecution, torture, violent assaults, or rape’ ” — and did so anyway.
“It is unreasonable for the CDC to assume that it can ignore the consequences of any actions it chooses to take in the pursuit of fulfilling its goals,” Sullivan wrote. “It is undisputed that the impact on migrants was indeed dire.”
Contrary to the “CYA BS” coming from Biden Administration officials, making the law work at the Southern Border requires neither currently unachievable “reform” legislation nor massive additions of personnel! It does, however, require better personnel, expert training, accountability, smarter use of resources, and enlightened, dynamic, courageous, principled, expert leadership currently glaringly lacking within the Biden Administration.
The Administration’s much ballyhooed, yet poorly conceived, ineptly and inconsistently implemented,“revised asylum regulations” have also failed to “leverage” thepotential for success, thus far producing only an anemic number of “first instance” asylum grants. This is far below the rate necessary for the process significantly to take pressure off the backlogged and dysfunctional Immigration Courts, one of the stated purposes of the regulations!Meanwhile, early indications are that Garland’s ill-advised regulatory time limits on certain arbitrarily-selected asylum applications have further diluted quality and just results for EOIR asylum decisions. That, folks, is in a system where disdain for both of these essential judicial traits is already rampant!
It’s not rocket science! It was well within the capability of the Biden Administration to establish a robust, functional asylum system had it acted with urgency and competency upon taking office in 2021:
Better Asylum Officers at USCIS and Immigration Judges at EOIR — well-qualified asylum experts with practical experience in the asylum system who will timely recognize and grant the many valid asylum claims in the first instance;
Cooperative agreements with NGOs and pro bono organizations to prescreen applications in an orderly manner and represent those who can establish a “credible fear;”
A new and improved BIA of qualified “practical scholars” in asylum law who will establish workable precedents and best practices that honestly reflect the generous approach to asylum required (but never carried out in practice or spirit) by the Supremes in Cardoza-Fonseca and the BIA itself in its long-ignored and consistently misapplied precedent in Mogharrabi;
An orderly refugee resettlement program administered under the auspices of the Feds for those granted asylum and for those whose claims can’t be expeditiously granted at the border and who therefore must present them in Immigration Court at some location away from the border.
The Biden Administration has nobody to blame but themselves for their massive legal, moral, and practical failures on the Southern Border! With House GOP nativist/restrictionists “sharpening their knives,” Mayorkas, Garland, Rice, and other Biden officials who have failed to restore the legal asylum system shouldn’t expect long-ignored and “affirmatively dissed” human rights experts and advocates to bail them out!
The massive abrogations of human rights, due process, the rule of law, common sense, and human decency that the GOP espouses — so-called enforcement and ineffective “deterrence” only approach — will NOT resolve the humanitarian issues with ongoing, often inevitable, refugee flows!
But, the Biden Administration’s inept approach to human rights has played right into the hands of these GOP White Nationalist politicos. That’s an inconceivable human tragedy for our nation and for the many legal refugees we turn away without due process or fair consideration of their life-threatening plight! These are refugees — legal immigrants — who should be allowed to enter legally and help our economy and our nation with their presence.
If we want refugees to apply “away from the border,” we must establish robust, timely, realistic refugee programs at or near places like Haiti, Venezuela, and the Northern Triangle that are sending us refugees. In the Refugee Act of 1980, Congress actually gave the President extraordinary discretionary authority to establish refugee processing directly in the countries the refugees are fleeing. This was a significant expansion of the UN refugee definition which requires a refugee to be “outside” his or her country of nationality. Yet, no less than the Trump and Obama Administrations before, President Biden has failed to “leverage” this powerful potential tool for establishing orderly refugee processing beyond our borders!
Meanwhile, down on the actual border, a place that Biden, Harris, Mayorkas, Garland, Rice, and other “high level architects of failed asylum policies” seldom, if ever, deign to visit, life, such as it is, goes on with the usual abuses heaped on asylum seekers patiently waiting to be fairly processed.
A rational observer might have thought that the Biden Administration would use the precious time before Dec. 22, 2022, reluctantly “gifted” to them by Judge Sullivan, to pre-screen potential asylum seekers already at ports of entry on the Mexican side. Those with credible fear and strong claims could be identified for orderly entries when legal ports of entry (finally) re-open on Dec. 22. Or, better yet, they could be “paroled” into the U.S. now and expeditiously granted asylum by Asylum Officers.
This would reduce the immediate pressure on the ports, eliminate unnecessary trips to backlogged Immigration Courts, and expedite these refugees’ legal status, work authorization, and transition to life in the U.S.
I have no idea what the Biden Administration has done with the time since Judge Sullivan “gifted” them a stay. The only noticeable actions have been more BS excuses, blame-shifting, and lowering expectations.
But, in reality, by their indolent approach to humanitarian issues and the law, in the interim the Administration has consciously left the fate of long-suffering and already “direly-harmed” legal asylum seekers to the Mexican Government. According to a recent NBC News report, the Mexican Government forcibly “rousted” many awaiting processing at a squalid camp near the border and “orbited them’ to “who knows where.” https://www.nbcnews.com/now/video/mexican-authorities-evict-venezuelan-migrants-from-border-camps-155516485544
Judge Sullivan might want to take note of this in assessing how the Biden DOJ has used the “preparedness time” that he reluctantly granted them following his order.
The heroes of the 2022 midterm elections were Democratic voters and activists, not the party’s leadership. Those leaders should remember that and not try to distance themselves from the party’s base as they have at times in the past two years.
Though they changed course in the final months before the election, the Biden administration and congressional Democrats spent much of 2021 and 2022 on a flawed strategy. Democratic leaders were determined to boost the party with people who didn’t vote for Joe Biden in 2020, particularly the White voters without college degrees who have shifted sharply to the GOP over the last decade. So Democrats focused largely on economic policy, such as the American Rescue Plan, the infrastructure bill and a law making it easier to manufacture microchips in the United States. They intentionally highlighted how these provisions would help people without college degrees and people in rural areas.
They at times sidelined other issues, such as voting rights, that might not be the priorities of White voters without college degrees. In July, a top White House official, communications director Kate Bedingfield, bashed party activists who complained that the administration wasn’t responding aggressively enough to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling eliminating the right to an abortion. And Democrats moved to the right on some issues, most notably policing. There were constant efforts to court moderate GOP voters and lawmakers and sideline prominent left-wing figures.
. . . .
The Democrats didn’t do well in this year’s elections by flipping lots of voters in places that voted Republican in 2020, such as Florida and Ohio. What they did was maintain strength in the congressional districts and states that they won two years ago and four years ago. The party’s base prevented the bottom from falling out.
Party officials are rushing to give credit — to one another. And some of the party’s leaders do deserve praise. Candidates such as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who easily won reelection, and Pennsylvania Gov.-elect Josh Shapiro early in their campaigns highlighted abortion and democracy, in addition to the economy. Biden rightly ignored some in the party who argued he should not talk about democracy issues in the final days of the campaign.
But in elections, the voters are the actors, the deciders. And this year, millions of Democratic-leaning voters turned out and stuck with the party, looking past sky-high inflation and a leadership team that spent much of its time courting people who would never vote for Democrats while ignoring key priorities of people who always vote for the Democrats.
These voters should be commended and celebrated.
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Read the complete op-ed at the link.
Perry my friend, let’s go back just a bit in time and think about the “original targets” of Trump’s MAGA GOP “platform” of hate, lies, false narratives, and virulent anti- democracy insurrection masquerading as “patriotism!”
Who’s been out there fighting for truth, justice, and equality before the law since “Day 1” of the MAGA hate movement? Who led the resistance at airports when the first manifestations of the Trump regime’s neo-Nazism in action began just shortly after his inauguration? Who took the legal fight to preserve American democracy all the way to the Supremes before a right-leaning majority still wedded to Dred Scott and the Chinese Exclusion cases tilted in favor of tyranny? A tilt, I might add that has progressively gotten worse over time and has spawned millions of human rights abuses, enabled torture, and actually helped kill some of the vulnerable humans we were sworn to protect?
Historically, migrants of all types, voluntary or involuntary, have constituted the “other” in America — targeted, disadvantaged at law,and exploited by their fellow Americans even while being the essential ingredient that has built our nation.
It’s rather odd, considering that 98% of us were “the other” at some point in history. I suppose a reckoning with that “inconvenient truth” is one of a number of reasons why theMAGA GOP works so hard to “whitewash” American history.
So, it’s worth thinking about why a talented group, their expertise, and their “learned wisdom” — and the better America for all that they represent and fight for — becomes so expendable and ignored by Dems between election cycles. Also worth reflecting on where American democracy, tenuous as it might be today, would be without them.
If the Biden Administration had honored and “leveraged” the immigration experts who helped elect it in 2016 and preserve it in 2022, we might well have order at the border, many more legal workers, lower inflation, decreasing backlogs, focused immigration enforcement that preserves national security, courts that model equal justice and due process and help develop the Article III Judiciary of the future, creative ideas for helping the economy of rural America, smarter use of taxpayer dollars, the list goes on. Success in these areas might even have enabled Dems to hold onto the House or given them a bigger margin in the Senate.
Elizabeth Gibson Managing Attorney National Immigrant Justice Center Publisher of “The Gibson Report”
Weekly Briefing
This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.
Texas Observer: But as the case of Felipe shows, immigration officials have continued to separate parents and children in violation of the policy. From the start of the new administration to August 2022—the latest month for which data has been published—U.S. authorities have reported at least 372 cases of family separation.
AP: Within hours, the Justice Department asked the judge to let the order take effect Dec. 21, giving it five weeks to prepare. Plaintiffs including the American Civil Liberties Union didn’t oppose the delay.
Politico: Party leaders are pushing hard for legislation aiding the undocumented population known as “Dreamers” before Republicans take the House. But GOP senators have little interest. See also House Judiciary GOP Highlights First Oversight Targets.
TRAC: The outcome for asylum seekers has long been influenced by the identity of the immigration judge assigned to hear their case. This continues to be true as documented by TRAC’s just released judge-by-judge report series, now updated through FY 2022. In Arlington, Virginia, judge denial rates ranged from 15 percent to 95 percent. In Boston, judge denial rates varied from 17 percent to 93.5 percent. In Chicago, they ranged from 16 percent to 90 percent, while in San Francisco one judge denied just 1 percent of the cases while another denied 95 percent.
NPR: Individuals held in immigration detention were barred from visits with relatives and friends for more than two years during the pandemic — far longer than federal prisons. In May, ICE lifted the ban, but immigrant advocates and people in detention centers argue that social visits have not been fully nor consistently reinstated.
Philly Inquirer: A second bus carrying immigrants from Texas arrived in Philadelphia Monday morning, a twice-in-six-days sequel that propelled the city to offer fresh welcome to more weary, uncertain travelers from the border.
AP: U.S. immigration authorities didn’t do enough to adequately vet or monitor a gynecologist in rural Georgia who performed unnecessary medical procedures on detained migrant women without their consent, according to results of a Senate investigation released Tuesday.
Intercept: According to ICE’s Performance-Based National Detention Standards, whenever there is a “calculated use of force,” staff are required to use a handheld camera to record the incident. The Intercept, with Kumar’s consent, requested the video through the Freedom of Information Act. After ICE refused to turn over the footage, The Intercept filed a lawsuit and ICE subsequently agreed to turn over the footage, but the agency redacted the faces and names of everyone who appears in it, aside from Kumar.
Guardian: A multi-country investigation by the Guardian finds at least 6,500 migrant workers from south Asia have died in Qatar in the 10 years since it was awarded the right to host the World Cup.
AG: (1) Matter of S-O-G- & F-D-B-, 27 I&N Dec. 462 (A.G. 2018), is overruled. (2) Pending the outcome of the rulemaking process, immigration judges and the Board of Immigration of Appeals may consider and, where appropriate, grant termination or dismissal of removal proceedings in certain types of limited circumstances, such as where a noncitizen has obtained lawful permanent residence after being placed in removal proceedings, where the pendency of removal proceedings causes adverse immigration consequences for a respondent who must travel abroad to obtain a visa, or where termination is necessary for the respondent to be eligible to seek immigration relief before United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Law360: The Biden administration on Thursday swept aside a Trump-era decision that mostly stripped immigration judges of their power to end removal proceedings, restoring immigration courts’ ability to terminate some deportation cases while it devises new policy.
Law360: A federal judge on Wednesday granted “with great reluctance” the Biden administration’s request for a five-week stay of his previous day’s order to end expulsions of migrants under Title 42, a public health provision the Trump administration began using at the start of the pandemic.
Law360: A split Fourth Circuit panel ordered the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals to reconsider a Jamaican man’s removal order, criticizing the agency’s reasons for rejecting his claims that he diligently sought reversal of his order following a Supreme Court ruling.
LexisNexis: Michael Shannon writes: “I wanted to share a very good written decision from IJ Barbara Nelson, who granted asylum to my client based on her actual and imputed feminist political opinion under Hernandez-Chacon v. Barr.”
Law360: The federal government got the green light from an Arizona federal judge to conduct psychological examinations of asylum-seeking parents suing for damages for the alleged emotional trauma from being separated from their children at the southwestern U.S. border.
AILA: AILA and partners sent a letter to USCIS, EOIR, and OPLA addressing the unnecessary hurdles non-detained people in removal proceedings face in securing a biometrics appointment prior to their merits hearing.
AILA: USCIS notice of the automatic extension of the validity of TPS-related documentation for beneficiaries under the TPS designations for El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, Sudan, Honduras, and Nepal set to expire on 12/31/22, through 6/30/24. (87 FR 68717, 11/16/22)
You now can change your email settings or search the archives using the Google Group. If you are receiving this briefing from a third party, you can visit the Google Group and request to be added. If you receive an error, make sure you click request access.
Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)
Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship
National Immigrant Justice Center
A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program
224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org
After two years of “drinking the koolaid,” the party might be over for Mayorkas & Garland, as McCarthy & his insurrectionist/White Nationalist zanies “move in for the kill.”
Two years of ineptness, failure to clean house at DOJ and DHS, unkept promises to advocates, lack of guts to quickly reverse Trump’s massive scofflaw program of racist-inspired human rights abuses, arrogant “tuning out” of experts, lack of engagement and presence at the border have been largely ignored by Dems in both Houses. Indeed, other than a hearing on the Article 1 bill before Chair Lofgren (at which Garland was not required to appear and explain his due-process-denying mess and abject failure to reform EOIR), Dems failure to conduct meaningful oversight of the Administration’s mishandling of refugee programs, asylum, detention, asylum seeker resettlement, and Immigration Courts will be “coming home to roost” as insurrectionist, racists from the House GOP take aim at “snuffing” humanity and abolishing the rule of law!
Two years of inept, immoral, “Miller Litism” from the Administration leaves Dems with no defense and no supporters of their actions. Nativist restrictionists wanted “100% kill” @ border! Experts wanted a return to the rule of law, orderly processing, and due process. The Biden Administration delivered neither!
We tried to tell them, but they wouldn’t listen! No,McCarthy and his insurrectionist White Nationalist zany-haters have the floor. Just have to hope that historians are fully documenting the lies and Neo-Nazi views that these GOP hacks will be promoting — to help future generations understand how America “went off the rails” in the 21st century! Understandably, the GOP would rather focus on Biden’s failed immigration policies than on the rampant gun violence, hate crimes, child abuse, forced births, and dumbing down of America at the heart of their vile agenda!
🇺🇸Due Process Forever! The GOP’s “New McCarthyism,” Never!
“Judge” Roy Bean (1825-1903) American Saloon Keeper & “Jurist” Public Realm His reputation for “rough justice” in the West would be right at home in the “Asylum Free Zones” of Garland’s EOIR. Bean “was once trying a Mexican on a charge of horse stealing and his charge was the shortest on record: Gentlemen of the Jury, there’s a greaser in the box and a hoss missing. You know your duty, and they did.”
Here’s the latest analysis of Garland’s ongoing abuse of his office from Austin Kocher, PhD, at TRAC:
Has Alfred E. Neumann been “reborn” as Judge Merrick Garland? “Not my friends or relatives whose lives as being destroyed by my ‘Kangaroo Courts.’ Just ‘the others’ and their immigration lawyers, so who cares, why worry about professionalism, ethics, and due process in Immigration Court?” PHOTO: Wikipedia Commons
If someone NOT Merrick “What Me Worry” Garland (the “Alfred E. Neumann of Biden’s immigration bureaucracy”) took a look at the data, one major thing would jump out! There are likely more than 400,000 refugees entitled to asylum sitting in Garland’s 770,000 case asylum backlog (52% x 770,000). (The asylum backlog at EOIR is a “subset” of Garland’s largely self-inflicted, ever mushrooming, nearly 2 million case EOIR backlog — more judges have produced more backlog, so that’s likely NOT the answer here).
And, this is in a system currently governed by skewed anti-asylum BIA “precedents” and a chronic “anti-asylum culture” actively encouraged and fed by the Trump Administration. In a properly staffed and functioning court system with qualified, due-process oriented, judges and an expert BIA that enforced some decisional consistency and properly and generously interpreted asylum law, a “grant rate” of 75% or more would be a plausible expectation.
Given the obvious (and I would argue intentional) lack of reliable data on how a legitimate asylum system, one consisting at all levels of judges with well-recognized expertise in asylum law and human rights, and overseen by competent, due-process-oriented judicial administrators, might function, the 75% figure is just an “educated guesstimate.” But, it matches my own personal experience over 13 years on the bench in the (now defunct) Arlington Immigration Court.
It’s also in line with my recent conversations with the head of one of the largest NGOs in the DMV area involved in meeting busses and counseling those “orbited” from the Southern border by the racist/nativist GOP Govs that Biden, curiously, has chosen to run our domestic refugee resettlement program. This is a person who, unlike Garland, his lieutenants, and most of the other politicos and nativist blowhards participating in the “border travesty,” actually spent years of a career representing individuals in Immigration Court. They estimated that “at least 70%” of the “arriving bus riders” had very viable asylum claims.
This is a far cry from the nativist, restrictionist myths promoted by both the Trump and Biden Administrations — obviously to cover up their gross human rights violations in knowingly and illegally returning hundreds of thousands of legal refugees to danger zones! Many human rights experts would consider such gross misconduct to be “crimes against humanity.” Consequently, it doesn’t take much imagination to see why self-interested scofflaw officials like Garland, Mayorkas, and White House advisors seek to manipulate the system to keep the asylum grant rates artificially low while eschewing proper, realistically robust use of the overseas refugee program to take the pressure off the border — by acting legally rather than illegally!
Almost all the EOIR asylum backlog consists of “regular docket” (I use this term lightly with EOIR where “normalcy” is unknown) cases. Those are refugees who have had time to get lawyers, adequately prepare, document their cases, but are stuck in Garland’s chronically dysfunctional system. Consequently, they are “denied by delay” legal immigration status, a chance to get green cards, and to eventually qualify for citizenship. The American economy is denied an important source of legal workers who should be part of our permanent workforce and well on their way to full participation in our political system and society!
An expert looking at this system would see a “golden opportunity” to move most of the backlogged “easily grantable” asylum cases out of the system with stipulated grants or short hearings (the kind you actually might be able to do 3-4 a day without stepping on anyone’s due-processrights or driving the private bar nuts). These cases would also avoid the BIA’s appellate backlog, as well as eliminating unnecessary workload in the U.S. Circuit Courts (which already have their own inconsistency, rubber stamp, and bias issues in the human rights/racial justice area that seem to be getting worse, not better).
Knocking 400,000+ cases off the backlog wouldn’t completely solve Garland’s 2 million case backlog problem — only a complete “house cleaning” at EOIR, replacing many of the current bureaucrats with competent leaders and expert Immigration Judges well-versed in asylum law, will do that. But, cutting EOIR’s backlog by 20% (and the asylum backlog by over 50%) without stomping on anyone’s rights, while bolstering much-needed legal immigration, and harnessing the strengths of the private/pro bono bar, is nothing to “sneeze at!” That’s particularly true in comparison with Garland’s two years of mindless “designed to fail” gimmicks and astounding mismanagement, which have produced exactly the opposite results!
How bad has Garland’s leadership been at on human rights, due process, and racial justice at DOJ. A number of seasoned asylum practitioners have told me that today’s EOIR, also suffering from a tidal wave of Garland’s“Aimless Docket Reshuffling” — is actually significantly worse than it was under Trump! That’s right, Garland’s tone-deaf incompetence has exceeded the disorder and systemic unfairness caused by overt xenophobia, anti-asylum bias, misogyny, “dumbing down,” and enforcement-biased “weaponization” of the Sessions/Barr years.
As for Dr. Kocher’s cogent observation that input from the Immigration Judges who actually decide these cases is a “missing ingredient,” good luck with that, my friend! Perhaps understandably in light of his unseemly failures at EOIR, Garland has taken EOIR’s traditional opaqueness and “muzzling” of Immigration Judges to new heights — even barring their participation in CLE events aimed at improving the level of practice before his courts.
Apparently, “studied incompetence” in a Democratic Administration can be even worse than the “malicious incompetence” of the Trump Kakistocracy — at least where immigrants rights/human rights/racial justice/ women’s rights are concerned at EOIR. That’s an astounding observation! One that I actually never thought I’d hear from practitioners!
The only way for human rights and racial justice experts and advocates to “communicate” with Garland in his “ivory tower” is to ‘“sue his tail” in court! Judge Sullivan’s recent opinion finding Title 42 illegal incorporates the very facts and law used by human rights experts and advocates in years of fruitless pleading and begging Garland to “cease and desist” his support for unlawful conduct and “just follow the law.” The latter seems like a modest “no-brainer” request to a guy once nominated by an Dem President for the Supremes.
Waiting for Merrick Garland to fix the mess at EOIR to provide even a bare minimum of due process and rational administration is like waiting for the guy pictured below. Frustrated and “Garland-weary” as they might be, human rights advocates should take it to heart and act accordingly!
Waiting for Merrick Garland and his “clueless crew” at DOJ to fix the dysfunctional Immigration Courts will be an exercise in futility. He only pays attention when ordered by a Federal Judge, which, somewhat ironically, he used to be. But, he’s proven “beyond a reasonable doubt” that he is unqualified to run one of the most important and life-determining Federal Judiciaries — one where due process has been buried beneath an avalanche of expediency, incompetency, intellectual dishonesty, and dumb gimmicks. When will “enough be enough?” https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0
A federal judge on Tuesday struck down a Donald Trump-era policy used by U.S. border officials to quickly expel migrants because of the covid pandemic, saying the ban had little proven benefit to public health even as it shunted migrants to dangerous places.
U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in the District of Columbia vacated the order known as Title 42, effectively restoring asylum seekers’ access to the borders for the first time since the Trump administration issued it during the earliest days of the pandemic.
The decision — which takes effect immediately — knocks down one of the last remaining barriers to asylum from the Trump administration, advocates for immigrants said. It also poses an immediate logistical challenge for the Biden administration after two consecutive years of record apprehensions on the U.S.-Mexico border, with the possibility that the numbers could grow.
Biden officials have long worried about a mass rush to the border creating an emergency similar to the one that occurred in Del Rio, Texas, in Sept. 2021, when thousands of migrants crossed illegally and overwhelmed U.S. agents, creating a squalid camp on the banks of the Rio Grande that embarrassed the Biden administration.
Sullivan’s ruling also comes days after top border official Chris Magnus resigned under pressure after clashing with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
The Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security had no immediate response to the ruling.
The American Civil Liberties Union, one of the organizations that brought the lawsuit on behalf of migrants, said Sullivan’s decision to vacate the Title 42 policy means the policy ends for all migrants, including families and adults traveling without children.
“Title 42 unfortunately had a long shelf life but has finally been ended, and that will mean enormous relief to desperate asylum seekers,” said ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt.
Sullivan also made clear that that he would not stay his order pending appeal, leaving it to a higher court to do so if the Biden administration sought more time to address the ruling.
. . . .
Key Quote:
Sullivan wrote that the federal officials knew the order “would likely expel migrants to locations with a ‘high probability’ of ‘persecution, torture, violent assaults, or rape’ ” — and did so anyway.
“It is unreasonable for the CDC to assume that it can ignore the consequences of any actions it chooses to take in the pursuit of fulfilling its goals,” Sullivan wrote. “It is undisputed that the impact on migrants was indeed dire.”
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The horrific consequences for lawful asylum seekers subjected to this unlawful policy have indeed been “dire:” rape, assault, kidnapping, beating, torture, extortion, starvation, illness, sickness, death, family separation, despair, to name a few.
By contrast, there have been NO consequences for Stephen Miller and the other Trump Administration officials who fabricated and directed this ruse on the justice system and attack on humanity and the rule of law! Nor have there been any consequences for lower level officials who “went along to get along” with what they knew or should have knownto be deadly abuses of our laws.
Additionally, Biden officials who continued to violate the law and even concocted ways of expanding its illegal and immoral use have escaped accountability and continue in their jobs. DOJ lawyers who failed to do “due diligence” and defended a policy based on pretext, misrepresentations of fact, racism, and xenophobia have also continued to operate in the “ethical twilight zone” that normally would have serious professional consequences!
Of course the whole history of the Title 42 charade ☠️🤮has been one of one step forward and three steps back. The corrupt decision-making extends to unqualified right-wing zealots with lifetime sinecures on the Federal Article III bench and to equally corrupt GOP state AG’s for their dishonest scheme to force continued illegal Title 42expulsions.
So, despite these “crimes against humanity,” don’t expect that “heads will roll!” Given the current sorry state of our Federal Courts and the DOJ, it’s not certain that Judge Sullivan’s order will actually have effect or that asylum seekers will ever get the fundamentally fair and humane treatment to which they are entitled.
But, I am certain that this will eventually go down in history as one of the most disgraceful intentional abrogations of law, with the most drastic consequences for humanity and our nation’s reputation, in 21st Century legal history!
It’s also worthy of note that rather than getting the asylum system properly staffed and trained, bringing in Immigration Judges with the required expertise, installing a BIA of expert judges capable of issuing correct, realistic, generous, practical asylum precedents, working cooperatively with the private bar to facilitate representation, and developing an orderly process for resettlement (away from the border) of asylum applicants who pass credible fear, Garland, Mayorkas, and a White House officials have dithered away two years of time without getting the necessary robust, fair, expert, efficient, timely asylum adjudication system up and running!
The advice and pleas of experts and advocates have been “tuned out” or ignored by those in charge! Now, as all of us predicted, the “chickens have come home to roost” for the Administration’s indifferent, incompetent, and lackadaisical approach to the biggest racial justice and human rights crisis facing our nation.
Thanks Judge Sullivan! Thanks ACLU! Apologies to the hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers wronged by the cowardly failure of America to uphold our laws, Constitution, and international obligations — that “subset” of victims who are still alive despite our Government’s grotesque misconduct!
Along the 2,000-mile (3,219km) boundary between the US and Mexico, the 2022 fiscal year proved the deadliest on record for people trying to make unauthorized crossings of this heavily patrolled international line.
In Eagle Pass’s regional enforcement sector alone, border patrol agents discovered more than 200 dead migrants between October 2021 and the end of July, compared to an already heartbreaking 34 bodies during the entire 2020 fiscal year.
Ahead of this week’s crucial midterm elections, Republicans have manipulated these harrowing statistics as yet another opportunity to make much ado about what various rightwing players call Joe Biden’s “open border policies”, accusing his administration of incompetence that is causing “body bags [to] keep piling up”.
It’s close to sealed by a hostile combination of pandemic-era public health measures cynically retooled as federal immigration control and mass policing by state troops who arrest, jail and criminalize migrants.
Cruelly, these hardline deterrence mechanisms advanced by both Democrats and Republicans have probably only made the US’s south-west border bloodier.
Deterrence as a strategy has informed some of the US’s most controversial immigration policies, from separating families, to detaining children, to stranding asylum seekers in dangerous Mexican border towns.
But desperate people still find ways to make it on to US soil: last fiscal year, Customs and Border Protection documented nearly 2.38m enforcement encounters at the southern border, a record high causing headaches for Biden as conservatives accuse the president of being “lax” on border crime.
The truth is more complex, and not at all lax. More than a million of last fiscal year’s border enforcement encounters were processed under Title 42, now invoked as a federal immigration enforcement tool but originally disguised as a public health measure amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
The policy allowed the Trump and now the Biden administrations to expel huge numbers of people from the US without even letting them ask for asylum, seemingly in violation of domestic and international law.
Far from ending unauthorized migration, the invocation of Title 42 has in fact dramatically inflated the number of encounters at the US-Mexico border, as people who are expelled feel compelled to cross again – and again, and again. Sometimes, relentless migrants have been so determined to complete their journeys that they have risked life and limb dozens of times, fueling a political and humanitarian disaster.
And both parties continue to police people seeking security and opportunity over violence, persecution and poverty as if they’re national security threats.
In the shadow of it all, the corpses amass.
Back in Eagle Pass, locals like Rosalinda Medrano who have lived for decades along a porous border understand that migrants have and will always come or, increasingly, die trying.
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“Even though there’s one fence, and another fence, and so many troopers, and the national guard, and you name it – Border Patrol, here and there and everywhere – it’s not gonna stop these families,” she said, adding simply: “They want a better life.”
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Read the complete article at the link, in which Alexandra points to the numerous achievable solutions that both parties eschew — for political reasons — some cynical, dishonest, and racist (GOP) — others cowardly (Dems). None of what Alexandra reports will come as news to faithful readers of Courtside, or, indeed, to anyone who has taken the time to actually study and reflect on America’s decades of expensive, inhumane, “deterrence policies.”
Fact is, existing law, if correctly applied and administered, offers some obvious ways to start solving the problem:
Robust realistic “overseas” refugee programs in the Western Hemisphere — 150,000 would be a modest start — rather than the piddling, restricted numbers now slowly doled out by the Biden Administration.
Reopen legal ports of entry to legal asylum seekers, as required by law, to incentivize and reward them for not seeking to cross between ports of entry.
Staff the Asylum Office and the Immigration Courts with real experts in asylum law (there are plenty of well-qualified lawyers now in the private sector) who are committed to due process and can rapidly recognize and grant the many meritorious cases. Then, individuals are admitted in legal status, on their way to green cards, rather than aimlessly wandering the US with government-issued packets of misinformation (or no information at all) waiting for hearings that will come either too soon or too late, but never in a reasonable manner and often with incorrect preordained results designed to abuse the legal system as an “enforcement deterrent.” (NOTE: To act as an incentive/reward for appearing at ports of entry, the asylum system must be credible, transparent, and timely — something that no Administration has achieved to date, but which is possible with more vision, leadership, and better personnel making decisions.)
Work with, bolster, support, and learn from the many NGOs in the U.S. to insure that asylum seekers are informed of their obligations, represented on their applications, and resettled, mostly away from the borders to areas that need them, in an orderly fashion.
“Even though there’s one fence, and another fence, and so many troopers, and the national guard, and you name it – Border Patrol, here and there and everywhere – it’s not gonna stop these families,” she said, adding simply: “They want a better life.”
We can, and must, do better than “more body bags” as a matter of national policy! Migrants aren’t going to stop coming. That, we can’t change in the long run — no matter how many lies, myths, and distortions nativists throw out there, and no matter how fast spineless Dem politicos run from or attempt to hide the truth. But, we can deal with reality in a more humane, practical, realistic manner that will serve our nation’s, and humanity’s, interests into the future.
Elizabeth Gibson Managing Attorney National Immigrant Justice Center Publisher of “The Gibson Report”
Weekly Briefing
This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.
Forbes: Evidently, USCBP is eliminating the passport entry stamp to streamline the entry process. So now, foreign nationals will only have access to the Form I-94 website as proof of their lawful immigration status.
CBS: The department confirmed the review when asked to respond to accounts from migrants who told “60 Minutes” that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials along the U.S.-Mexico border kept their documents, despite agency policy instructing agents to return migrants’ personal property unless they are fraudulent.
NIJC: More than 130 immigration, criminal justice, and civil rights organizations released a letter today urging the Biden administration to include immigrants in the pardon process.
Law360: More than 100 immigrant rights organizations are urging the Biden administration to fully reinstate visitation at immigration detention facilities, saying in a Thursday letter that visitation is crucial for detainees’ mental health and monitoring human rights violations.
SA Current: The ACLU is condemning the actions of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents allegedly caught on video firing pepper balls at a group of Venezuelan migrants protesting along the banks of the Rio Grande River near El Paso.
Law360: The Second Circuit on Wednesday declined to review a decision denying an asylum application from a Honduran man and his son who claim they will be killed by gang members if they return home, finding the Board of Immigration Appeals properly reviewed the immigration judge’s decision.
Law360: The Second Circuit on Tuesday backed the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeal’s decision to apply a persecution motive standard used in asylum requests to an Ecuadorian’s withholding of removal request, saying it was reasonable for the agency to do so.
Law360: The Third Circuit on Tuesday knocked down a Guatemalan man’s asylum bid after concluding he failed to back up his fears of violence in the Central American nation based on gang recruitment efforts and his rejection of gangs due to his evangelical Christian faith.
Law360: The Eighth Circuit has upheld a Board of Immigration Appeals ruling that denied a family asylum based on alleged gang threats for lack of evidence that the government of El Salvador could not or would not protect them.
Law360: A Mexican citizen who said police and criminal gangs would torture him for being bisexual and suffering from mental illness if he is deported a third time
Law360: The Ninth Circuit on Thursday backed an order requiring U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to adjudicate Special Immigrant Juvenile petitions within 180 days, rejecting the government’s argument that a lower court relied on “stale evidence” and disregarded hardship considerations.
Law360: Republican state attorneys general accused the Biden administration of violating an injunction requiring it to repel migrants from the border under pandemic-era restrictions, saying a sharp drop in Haitian expulsions indicated the administration was selectively lifting the so-called Title 42 border block.
AILA: On 10/31/22, DHS began limited implementation of the DACA final rule. USCIS will continue to accept and process applications for deferred action, work authorization, and advance parole for current DACA recipients. Due to litigation, USCIS will accept but cannot process initial DACA requests.
AILA: EOIR 30-day notice and request for comments on proposed revisions to Form EOIR-42A and Form EOIR-42B. Comments are due 12/5/22. (87 FR 66326, 11/3/22)
AILA: EOIR 30-day notice-and-comment period for proposed revisions to Form EOIR-31A, which allows an organization to seek accreditation or renewal of accreditation of a non-attorney representative to appear before EOIR and/or DHS. Comments are due by 12/5/22.
You now can change your email settings or search the archives using the Google Group. If you are receiving this briefing from a third party, you can visit the Google Group and request to be added. If you receive an error, make sure you click request access.
Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)
Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship
National Immigrant Justice Center
A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program
224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org
Supposedly, the main political issues right now are the economy and inflation. But, the economy and inflation are largely determined by the Fed, markets, global conditions, weather, and a certain amount of pure luck — all things beyond the direct control of the political branches of the USG.
As mentioned by Chuck Todd on last Sunday’s NBC “Meet the Press,” many experts say that the most effective tool that the Administration and Congress have to improve the economy without triggering a recession is to increase legal immigration — sooner rather than later. But, neither party is interested. The GOP sees an anti-immigrant stance as a key to political success. And, the Dems are “actively disinterested” in the issue. So, the opportunity passes.
But, the reality is that, in the long run, no amount of shipping containers, walls, prisons, family separations, deportations, exclusions to death or despair, hate rhetoric, or restrictive legal roadblocks will halt the future flow of human migration, and not incidentally, the internal relocation in America as certain areas become “unlivable.”
According to a government report published in today’s Washington Post:
The U.S. can expect more forced migration and displacement
Already, the authors of Monday’s report said, major storms such as Hurricane Maria, as well as extended droughts that strained lives and livelihoods, have led people to leave their homes in search of more-stable places.
In the hotter world that lies ahead, they write, additional climate impacts — along with other factors such as the housing market, job trends and pandemics — are expected to increasingly influence migration patterns.
“More severe wildfires in California, sea level rise in Florida, and more frequent flooding in Texas are expected to displace millions of people, while climate-driven economic changes abroad continue to increase the rate of emigration to the United States,” the report finds.
Such shifts are inherently complicated and fraught.
Several Indigenous tribes in coastal regions, facing fast-rising seas, have already sought government help to relocate, but have struggled to do so without significant hurdles.
“Forced migrations and displacements disrupt social networks, decrease housing security, and exacerbate grief, anxiety and mental health outcomes,” the authors write.
Neither political party appears serious about addressing these migration realities — already underway. The ideas that we can wall ourselves off, invest in “sending countries,” detain, and deport our way out of migration are not “solutions.”
Failure to act boldly and expansively on legal immigration will create a huge class of exploitable, disenfranchised, extralegal residents and plenty of work for border agents, internal police, righty judges, and jailers. It will also be a huge boon to smugglers and cartels who basically will “own” the American migration franchise. But, in the long run, building a large “underground humanity” won’t be enough to offset the “downside” of lacking a robust, realistic, orderly, legal immigration process.
Eventually, those nation-states that figure out how to harness, welcome, and distribute the power of human migration will rule the future. Right now, America’s leaders, of both parties, seem wedded to a “sure to fail” approach of either opposing or ignoring the realities and unlimited potential of human migration. Too bad — for all of us!
Org. Sign-On Letter to the Admin re: Haitians in Guantánamo Bay or third country agreements
Hi everyone –
This morning, Haitian Bridge Alliance (HBA) along with 288 immigration, civil rights, human rights, and faith-based organizations, sent a letter to President Biden urging him to protect Haitian asylum seekers. In the letter, organizations urged the administration to not send Haitians seeking safety back to Haiti, third countries, or detain them in Guantánamo Bay.
Pretty much says it all! A Dem Administration abandons the values of racial justice and immigrant justice for some “strategy” that sure escapes me.
It’s not like continuing to “beat up” on Haitians and other migrants of color and threatening to inflict even more extreme violations of legal andhuman rights than the Trump Administration has garnered ANY support or acceptance from the far right. They continue to characterize all Administration policies as “open borders,” although nothing could be further from the truth.
Additionally, failure to reinstitute and improve the rule of law at the border for legal asylum seekers has failed to create an orderly process for screening asylum seekers at ports of entry or for refugee status outside the U.S. and timely and generously processing valid claims for protection. The result has been a loss of an important group oflegal immigrants who could have helped reduce inflation and improved the economic outlook. At the same time, shifting asylum screening away from legal ports of entry has overburdened the Border Patrol by forcing everyone seeking protection to cross the border between ports of entry.
As a related point, I defy anyone to explain on what basis some asylum seekers apprehended at the border are allowed to enter and pursue claims and others similarly situated are orbited back into danger with no process whatsoever. It’s certainly NOT the result of the prompt screening by USCIS Asylum Officers that Congress mandated, but the Trump and Biden Administrations have ignored — to everyone’s detriment.
This resulting “disorder at the border” has NOT attracted independent voters to the Administration’s immigration stance.
At the same time it has driven an unwise and entirely unnecessary wedge between the Administration and 1) Democrats who want “order at the border” and a reduction in extralegal entries; 2) Democrats who believe in strictly honoring our legal, Constitutional, treaty, and human rights obligations to asylum seekers regardless of race; and 3) Democrats who believe that both 1) and 2) are achievable!
I have no idea what the Biden Administration’s “vision” of border law and policy is. But, I can tell you for sure that it’s NOT working and that more, harsher, racially discriminatory enforcement without reinstating our refugee and asylum systems and reforming the totally dysfunctional Immigration Courts is NOT the answer!
Every year at the end of October, legal service providers come together to celebrate Pro Bono Week. It is a dedicated opportunity to acknowledge the amazing work that our volunteers do—work that is the foundation of the American Immigration Council’s Immigration Justice Campaign. In an immigration system that is set up to make it almost impossible for certain groups of people to win, pro bono volunteers are one of the bastions helping overwhelmed legal service providers hold the line for due process and justice.
From the solo practitioner doing pro bono work to learn a new skill, to the corporate law firm partner who has incorporated pro bono as part of their practice for two decades, our volunteers run the gamut. Everyone makes a difference—from the law students interpreting between classes and homework to the community members who volunteer simply because they care. Every single volunteer is integral to the Justice Campaign’s work—and we thank them for their time and dedication.
Since its creation in 2017, the Justice Campaign and our volunteers have walked alongside hundreds of immigrants in their fight for justice and due process in the United States.
This year alone, over 200 Justice Campaign volunteers have:
Worked on 221 cases for detained individuals in 14 detention centers across the country.
Worked on 335 cases for non-detained individuals across 32 states of residence.
Served clients from 30 countries of origin who speak 19 different languages.
And with these volunteers’ help:
71% of clients have won their immigration case.
85% of clients asking for release from detention have won that release from an immigration judge.
Nationally, only 40% of people win their immigration cases, and only 32% win their release from an immigration judge. Those numbers are even lower for people without an attorney. Detained immigrants without an attorney only have about an 11% chance of winning release.
This small example of Justice Campaign clients and volunteers shows the immediate impact that pro bono work has on clients’ lives. Without the dedication of our pro bono volunteers, many of these individuals would have had to move forward alone. Statistically speaking, that means most probably would have lost.
The past several years have been difficult for most of the world in so many ways. And yet, pro bono volunteers continue showing up every day, allowing the Justice Campaign to continue serving clients, help people get out of detention, fight their cases—and for many, win. To the hundreds of volunteers who have worked with the Justice Campaign, this year and every year, thank you. We could not do this work without you.
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This reality bears little resemblance to the myths and false narratives about the impact of representation put out by nativists and parroted by EOIR during the Trump years. Nor does it match the gimmicks and poor planning of the Biden Administration, which continues to operate on the false assumption that the vast majority of asylum cases in Immigration Court will be denials.
While this sample is probably too small to be statistically valid, it certainly supports the view that the current mess at EOIR unjustly leaves behind many asylum seekers and other individuals entitled to relief just because they are unrepresented or poorly represented. It also make them much more likely to remain in detention, costly for both them and the Government.
It would make sense for EOIR and the Biden Administration to work cooperatively with the pro bono and low bono bar to prioritize and increase representation and to then prioritize represented cases that are most likely to result in grants of relief. Those cases are likely to proceed faster (without any due-process-denying “gimmicks”), less likely to be appealed, and would seldom reach the Courts of Appeals. An overall efficient way to use resources.
Additionally, EOIR should be working more closely with VIISTA Villanova and others who have developed “scalable” programs for training accredited representatives to increase quality representation in Immigration Court.
Instead, with yet another round of mindless “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” on steroids, EOIR has instigated an unnecessary and counterproductive “pitched battle” with advocates across America. Go figure!
Too many Biden Administration Immigration officials appear to share Stephen Miller’s “upside down” view of the Statue of Liberty, in whole or in part! Why can’t they just follow the Refugee Act of 1980 and establish the robust, timely, generous legal approach to refugees and asylum seekers that best serves America?Bill Frelick Director Refugee and Migrant Rights Division Human Rights Watch
Refugees are people who flee for their lives. Escape from danger and abuse is usually chaotic, sudden, desperate. The Biden administration’s rollout of its new policy for Venezuelan refugees seems oblivious to this refugee reality and risks doing more harm than good.
. . . .
Announcing the program on Oct. 12, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas said Venezuelans who enter irregularly “will be returned to Mexico.”
He didn’t mention — and appeared to disregard — U.S. law, which recognizes that anyone who arrives in the United States has the right to seek asylum “whether or not at a designated port of arrival” and “irrespective of such alien’s status.”
The impact of this announcement, “effective immediately,” was the summary return to Mexico without examination of their asylum claims of any Venezuelans entering the United States without authorization. Mexico has given no assurances that it will examine their refugee claims or provide asylum to those who fear return to Venezuela. In fact, the 4,050 Venezuelans expelled to Mexico since the implementation of the policy have been given visas valid for only one week and instructed to leave the country.
. . . .
With the Biden administration’s plan in effect, we might as well apply a blowtorch to Emma Lazarus’s welcoming poem at the foot of the Statue of Liberty and chisel in a new message: “Give me your well-rested, your well-to-do, your properly ticketed jet-setters yearning to breathe free.”
Read Bill’s complete op-ed act the link. Bill is one of many “practical experts” who would do a much better job than current Administration politicos in establishing and running a refugee and asylum program that would comply with the law, due process, human dignity, and America’s best interests.Why is Biden following the lead of his “clueless (and spineless) crew?”
The Refugee Act of 1980was enacted and amended to deal with these situations! Robust, realistic refugee programs outside the U.S. should encourage many refugees to apply, be screened abroad, and admitted legally.
Other refugees arriving at our border can be promptly screened for credible fear. Those who fail that test can be summarily removed in accordance with existing law.
Those who pass that test should have access to counsel and receive timely, expert adjudications, with full appeal rights, under the generous “well founded fear” (1 in 10 chance) international standard established by the Refugee Act. See, e.g., INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca (Supremes); Matter of Mogharrabi (BIA).
It’s not “rocket science!” With dynamic, experienced refugee experts running the system and “practical scholars” with expertise in refugee processing and human rights laws serving as USCIS Asylum Officers and EOIR judges at the trial and appellate levels the legal system should be flexible enough to deal with all refugee situations in an orderly manner.
Many, probably a majority, of today’s asylum seekers should be granted asylum and admitted to the U.S. in full legal status, authorized to work, and on their way to green cards and eventual citizenship. Like those admitted from abroad, they could also be made eligible for certain resettlement assistance to facilitate integration into American communities who undoubtedly will benefit from their presence.
The more robust, realistic, and timely our overseas refugee programs become, the fewer refugees who will be forced to apply for asylum at our borders. Also, real, bold, dynamic humanitarian leadership, including accepting our fair share of refugees and asylees, could persuade other countries signatory to the Geneva Refugee Convention to do likewise.
No insurmountable backlogs; no bewildered individuals wandering around the U.S. in limbo waiting for hearings that will never happen; few “no shows;” no long-term detention; no botched, biased “any reason to deny” decisions from unqualified officers and judges leading to years of litigation cluttering our legal system, no diverting Border Patrol resources from real law enforcement, no refugees huddled under bridges or sitting on street corners in Mexico!
It’s not “pie in the sky!” It’s the way our legal system could and should work with competent leadership and the very best available adjudicators and judges! It would support the proper, important role of refugees as an essential component of LEGAL IMMIGRATION, not an “exception” or “loophole” as racists and nativists like to falsely argue.
Instead of demonstrating the competence and integrity to use existing law to deal with refugee and asylum situations, the Biden Administration resorts to ad hoc political gimmicks. Essentially, the “RA80” has been repealed “administratively.” Effectively, we’re back to the “ad hoc” arbitrary approaches we used prior to ‘80 (which I worked on during the Ford Administration, and where I recollect I first heard of Bill Frelick).
I doubt that the late Senator Ted Kennedy, former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, and the rest of the group who helped shepherd the Refugee Act of 1980 through Congress would have thought that using Border Patrol Agents as Asylum Officers or packing the Immigration Courts and the BIA with judges prone to deny almost every asylum claim, regardless of facts or proper legal standards, was the “key to success!”
Congress specifically intended to eliminate the use of parole to deal with refugees except in extremely unusual circumstances, not present here. Biden’s latest ill-advised gimmick violates that premise. It’s totally inexcusable, as the refugee flow from Venezuela is neither new nor unpredictable. I was granting Venezuelan asylum cases before I retired in June 2016. Even then, there were legions of documentation, much of it generated by the USG, condemning the repressive regime in Venezuela and documenting the persecution of those who resisted!
A better AG would say “No” to these improper evasions of existing law. But, we have Merrick “What Me Worry” Garland! His botching of the Immigration Courts has been combined with a gross failure to stand up for equal justice for migrants (particularly those of color) across the board! America and refugees deserve better from our chief lawyer.
The Refugee Act of 1980 actually provides all the tools and flexibility the Biden Administration needs to establish order on the border and properly and fairly process refugees and asylees. Why won’t they use them?
AG Merrick Garland has “looked the other way” while the Biden Administration flaunts applicable protection laws in and outside the U.S. He also runs a dysfunctional “court system” where anti-asylum bias, worst practices, poorly qualified decision makers, and grotesque inconsistencies undermine the legal rights of asylum seekers and other refugees. Doesn’t America deserve more competence from its top lawyer? PHOTO: Wikipedia Commons
Garland’s approach to immigrant justice in his courts harkens back to “the bad old days.” Yet he remains impervious — and unaccountable! The Wasp 1882-01-06 cover Slow but sure.jpg Slow, but Sure. Cartoon depicts Lady Justice riding a tortoise, about to hang a man. George Frederick Keller Public domain
Dean Kevin Johnson @ ImmigrationProf Blog previews upcoming book by Professor Maya Pagni Barack:
The publisher’s description of the book reads as follows:
“Each year, hundreds of thousands of migrants are moved through immigration court. With a national backlog surpassing one million cases, court hearings take years and most migrants will eventually be ordered deported. The Slow Violence of Immigration Court sheds light on the experiences of migrants from the “Northern Triangle” (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) as they navigate legal processes, deportation proceedings, immigration court, and the immigration system writ large.
Grounded in the illuminating stories of people facing deportation, the family members who support them, and the attorneys who defend them, The Slow Violence of Immigration Court invites readers to question matters of fairness and justice and the fear of living with the threat of deportation. Although the spectacle of violence created by family separation and deportation is perceived as extreme and unprecedented, these long legal proceedings are masked in the mundane and are often overlooked, ignored, and excused. In an urgent call to action, Maya Pagni Barak deftly demonstrates that deportation and family separation are not abhorrent anomalies, but are a routine, slow form of violence at the heart of the U.S. immigration system.”
KJ
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The ongoing national disgrace called “EOIR” continues to mete out injustice and inane bureaucratic nonsense under a DEMOCRATIC Administration that pledged to return the rule of law and humanity to our broken Immigration Court system!
That system is “headed and controlled” by a DEMOCRATIC AG, Merrick Garland. He is a former Federal Appellate Judge who certainly knows that what passes for “justice” in his broken “court” system is nothing of the sort! Also this ongoing debacle doesn’t say much good about Garland’s “lieutenants:” Deputy AG Lisa Monaco, Associate AG Vanita Gupta, Assistant AG for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke, and Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar.
They have all “looked the other way,” defended, or failed to condemn this travesty undermining our entire justice system, unfolding under their collective noses at EOIR every day! At some point in the future, all these guys will be “making the rounds” of major law firms, NGOs, universities, mainstream media, and corporations — seeking to “cash in” on their DOJ “experience.” Then, folks should remember how they ACTUALLY PERFORMED (or didn’t) when they had a chance to fix “America’s worst courts” — hotbeds of racial and ethnic injustice, purveyors of bad law, and a haven for ridiculously dysfunctional procedures!
Perhaps a suitable future for these willfully blind “public servants” would be to require them to spend the balance of their careers practicing on a pro bono basis before the “star chambers” they inflicted on others! See how they like being “scheduled,” with no or inadequate notice, to do 15 or 20 asylum cases per month; appearing before too many ill-qualified “judges” who have already decided to deny regardless of the law and facts; appealing to a captive “appellate court” dominated by individuals, working for the Executive, whose main “judicial qualification” was that they denied close to 100% of the asylum claims that came before them in Immigration Court and were known for their rude and dismissive treatment of asylum applicants and their lawyers! See, e.g., “Confronting The American Star Chamber . . .,” https://wp.me/p8eeJm-4Vm.,
Here’s Professor Barak’s bio from the U of Michigan-Dearborn website:
Maya Barak, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Criminal Justice Studies
Maya P. Barak, PhD Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice Studies U. of Michigan -Dearborn PHOTO: UM-D Websitew
Teaching Areas: Arab American Studies, Criminology & Criminal Justice Studies, Master of Science in Criminology and Criminal Justice, Women’s & Gender Studies
Research Areas: Capital Punishment, Criminal Justice, Criminology, Gangs, Immigrants / Crimmigration, Legal Sociology, Procedural Justice, State-Corporate Crime
Biography and Education
I am an Assistant Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. I hold a PhD in Justice, Law and Criminology from American University (2016), an MA in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Eastern Michigan University (2011), and a BA in Social Anthropology and Peace and Social Justice from the University of Michigan (2009). My research brings together the areas of law, deviance, immigration, and power, utilizing interdisciplinary approaches that span the fields of criminology, law and society, and anthropology.
Gould, Jon B. and Maya Barak. 2019. Capital Defense: Inside the Lives of America’s Death Penalty Lawyers. New York: NYU Press.
Selected Articles
Barak, Maya. 2021. “Can You Hear Me Now? Attorney Perceptions of Interpretation, Technology, and Power in Immigration Court.” Journal on Migration and Human Security (https://doi.org/10.1177/23315024211034740).
Barak, Maya. 2021. “A Hollow Hope? The Empty Promise of Rights in the U.S. Immigration System”/ “¿Una promesa vacía? La ilusión de “los derechos” en el sistema migratorio de los Estados Unidos.” Las Cadenas Que Amamos: Una panorámica sobre el retroceso de Occidente a todos los niveles.
Barak, Maya. 2021. “Family Separation as State-Corporate Crime.” Journal of White Collar and Corporate Crime Vol. 2(2), 2021, pp. 109-121 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2631309X20982299). (2021 Outstanding Article or Book Chapter Award, Division of White-Collar and Corporate Crime, American Society of Criminology)
Barak, Maya. 2017. “Motherhood and Immigration Policy: How Immigration Law Shapes Central Americans’ Experience of Family.” In Forced Out and Fenced In: Immigration Tales from the Field, edited by Tanya Golash-Boza. New York: Oxford University Press.
Advocates and all Americans committed to racial justice and equal justice under law need to keep raising hell — and supporting progressive candidates — until this horrible system is replaced by a real court system, with subject matter expert judges, totally focused on delivering due process, fundamental fairness, and best judicial practices to all!
What’s happening to individuals (fellow humans, “persons” under our Constitution) and their lawyers at EOIR is NOT OK, nor is it acceptable from a DEMOCRATIC ADMINISTRATION!
Yeah, “there’s trouble, right here in River City!” And, it begins with “E,” ends with “R,” and rhymes with “EYORE!”
“Eyore In Distress” Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”
Elizabeth Gibson Managing Attorney National Immigrant Justice Center Publisher of “The Gibson Report”
Weekly Briefing
This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.
NYT: The decision from the three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit — one of the country’s most conservative federal appellate courts — affirmed a 2021 lower court decision. The Biden administration will need to continue its legal fight to enroll new applicants in the program, called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.
SD Union-Trib: Simple marijuana possession is usually charged at the state rather than federal level, so if governors follow Biden’s lead, there could be a wider impact on immigration court cases…Biden’s Thursday proclamation also explicitly says that undocumented noncitizens are not eligible for the pardon.
ProPublica: The public has largely stopped paying attention to what’s happening inside shelters and other facilities that house immigrant children since President Donald Trump left office, and particularly since the end of his administration’s zero tolerance policy, which separated families at the southern border.
VOA: Shortly before attending OAS ministerial talks on the perplexing question of migration in the western hemisphere, Blinken told reporters of “new humanitarian and bilateral and regional assistance” to the tune of $240 million. See also United States fell far short of refugee goal last fiscal year
Roll Call: With Cuellar in line to be the top Democrat in the next Congress on the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, which oversees the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection budgets, some Democrats and advocacy groups are growing concerned.
WaPo: A Mexican man who was shot fatally inside a Border Patrol station in Texas this week had grabbed an “edged weapon” off a desk inside the facility and continued to approach U.S. agents after they attempted to stop him with a Taser, the FBI said in a statement late Wednesday.
VOA: Two Russians who said they fled the country to avoid military service have requested asylum in the U.S. after landing in a small boat on a remote Alaska island in the Bering Sea, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s office said Thursday.
Law360: The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday turned away a deported Salvadoran man’s bid to look into an allegedly “unfairly” crafted deadline for filing deportation order reconsideration requests, ending his decades-long hope of returning to the U.S.
Law360: The Fifth Circuit on Wednesday affirmed a Texas judge’s ruling that vacated the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has protected some young immigrants from deportation, and barred new applicants, but asked the lower court to review the Biden administration’s recent final rule on the DACA program.
LexisNexis: Because we conclude that the government failed to provide the constitutionally required notice within a reasonable time period following the denial of Asencio-Cordero’s visa application, the government was not entitled to summary judgment based on the doctrine of consular nonreviewability.
LexisNexis: A fraud waiver under section 237(a)(1)(H) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”), 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(1)(H) (2018), does not waive a respondent’s removability under section 237(a)(1)(D)(i) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(1)(D)(i), where conditional permanent residence was terminated for failure to file a joint petition
Law360: A Minnesota federal judge ended an American Civil Liberties Union-backed suit alleging that U.S. Customs and Border Protection assaulted and degraded two teenagers in its custody, after the agency agreed to pay the girls $80,000 to resolve the claims.
Law360: Florida pushed for a trial to resolve its contention that the Biden administration has a policy of releasing immigrants subject to detention, but asked a federal judge to first declare that the state has standing to challenge the alleged policy.
Law360: The head of a U.S. Department of Justice office on Friday asked a Virginia federal judge to nix a suit filed by an immigration judges association claiming they are “muzzled” by a policy that they say bars them from discussing their personal views on immigration, contending that a new policy encourages speech and simply requires supervisory approval.
AILA: USCIS 30-day notice and request for comment on USCIS’s Online Account Access system, formerly called Identity and Credential Access Management (ICAM). Comments are due 11/7/22.
AILA: Following an outbreak of Ebola in the Republic of Uganda, the CDC announced enhanced public health screening for flights departing after 11:59 pm (ET) on 10/10/22, for flights carrying travelers with nexus to Uganda. Said flights will be funneled through JFK, EWR, IAD, ATL, and ORD.
You now can change your email settings or search the archives using the Google Group. If you are receiving this briefing from a third party, you can visit the Google Group and request to be added. If you receive an error, make sure you click request access.
Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)
Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship
National Immigrant Justice Center
A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program
224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org
Given the disgraceful mess @ EOIR, it’s understandable that Garland & Co. fear IJ’s speaking out in public. It’s just not a justifiable position, particularly for a Democratic Administration.
Professor Philip G. Schrag Georgetown Law Co-Director, CALS Asylum ClinicProfessor from Practice; Director, Human Rights Institute; Director, Center for Applied Legal Studies PHOTO: GeorgetownLawProfessor Jaya Ramji-Nogales, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs I. Herman Stern Research Professor Temple Law PHOTO: Temple Law
Here’s the abstract of the latest “practical scholarship” from the RR3:Professors Phil Schrag, Andy Schoenholtz, and Jaya Ramji-Nogles, “The New Border Asylum Adjudication System: Speed, Fairness, and the Representation Problem,” which will appear in the Howard Law Journal:
The New Border Asylum Adjudication System: Speed, Fairness, and the Representation Problem
In 2022, the Biden administration implemented what the New York Times has described as potentially “the most sweeping change to the asylum process in a quarter-century.” This new adjudication system creates unrealistically short deadlines for asylum seekers who arrive over the southern border, the vast majority of whom are people of color. Rather than providing a fair opportunity for those seeking safety to explain and corroborate their persecution claims, the new system imposes unreasonably speedy time frames to enable swift adjudications. Asylum seekers must obtain representation very quickly even though the government does not fund counsel and not enough lawyers offer free or low-cost representation. Moreover, the immigration statute requires that asylum seekers must corroborate their claims with extrinsic evidence if the adjudicator thinks that such evidence is available – a nearly impossible task in the time frames provided by the new rule. As a result, the new rule clashes with every state’s Rules of Professional Conduct 1.1 and 1.3, imposing duties of competence and diligence in every case that a lawyer undertakes. It will be extremely difficult for lawyers to provide competent and diligent representation under the new, excessively short deadlines. For immigration lawyers, the new rule exacerbates a challenge that they share with public defenders and other lawyers working within dysfunctional systems: how to provide even the most basic level of procedural due process for their clients, most of whom are people of color.
This article begins by describing the regular asylum process. It then summarizes the history of expedited removal, a screening system that limits access to that process for asylum seekers who arrive at the southern U.S. border without visas. It then explains and assesses the Biden administration’s first and second versions of the new asylum rule, highlighting the major flaw that will make the current version an unfairly formidable hurdle for asylum seekers subject to it. The article concludes by setting out a way for the Biden administration to create a more fair, accurate and efficient border asylum adjudication system and ensure that the U.S. can comply with domestic and international refugee law.
Keywords: Asylum, Asylum adjudication, Asylum process, Expedited removal, Immigration, Legal ethics, Due process, Administrative law
JEL Classification: K39
Suggested Citation:
Schrag, Philip G. and Ramji-Nogales, Jaya and Schoenholtz, Andrew I., The New Border Asylum Adjudication System: Speed, Fairness, and the Representation Problem (September 29, 2022). Howard Law Journal, Vol. 66, No. 3, 2023, Available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4233655
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New regulations pasted on old anti-asylum, anti-lawyer, anti-due-process attitudes and relying on an ever more dysfunctional EOIR, now at war with the asylum bar, won’t cut it! Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
You can download the complete article from SSRN at the above link.
Expect the Biden Administration to “blow off” the suggestions for improvement at the end of the article. They seem to glory in “tuning out” the views of practical experts who know how to fix the broken asylum adjudication system.
As I predicted when these regulations first came out, they were “programmed for failure.”
Due-process-denying, representation-killing, arbitrary time limits imposed from above have been tried by Administration after Administration. They have always failed and will continue to do so. So, why are they a key part of the Administration’s so-called “reforms?”
Compare the article’s discussion of the importance of representation and the practical and ethical problems caused by the new regulations with the reality of the “nutsos” ways EOIR is mis-treating attorneys currently trying to practice before the Immigration Courts!
Additionally, the unwarranted, yet largely self-fulfilling assumption by the Biden Administration that only 15% of asylum applications would be granted at the “Asylum Office stage” show why this program was designed to fail by the wrong officials. For the system to meaningfully address the Immigration Court asylum backlog, the grant rate would have to be multiples of that — probably at least 50%.
That’s a realistic projection, given the well-documented, atrocious human rights conditions in most “sending countries” and the current artificial limitations on grants imposed by bad precedents and flawed, biased, or incompetent adjudications. When I was at the Arlington Immigration Court from 2003-16, a significant majority of the “referrals” from the Asylum Office were granted asylum, withholding of removal, or CAT protection, often with concurrence or only token opposition by ICE. That suggests that there is a huge unrealized potential for many more timely asylum grants at the Asylum Office. But, success will never be achieved with the current “anti-asylum, afraid to correctly and fairly implement refugee law gang” in charge — committed to retaining the bad attitudes and repeating the mistakes of the past!
Hanging over the whole disaster is the “uncomfortable truth” that I’ve been shouting:
The Biden Administration is still operating EOIR and large portions of the immigration bureaucracy at DHS with Trump-era “holdovers” who were improperly “programmed to deny” asylum.
There is a dearth of positive precedents from the BIA on gender-based asylum and other types of common asylum applications at the border that are routinely and wrongfully mishandled and denied.
There are cosmic problems resulting from failure to provide qualified representation of asylum seekers at the border.
Detention continues to be misused as a “deterrent” to legal claims and “punishment” for assertingthem.
Despite “touting” a much larger refugee admissions program beyond the border, the Administration has failed to deliver a robust, realistic, refugee admissions program for Latin America and the Caribbean which would take pressure off the border.
Racism and White Nationalism continue to drive the Administration’s dramatically inconsistent approach to White refugees from Ukraine compared with refugees of color at the Southern Border.
Indeed, this entire “reform effort” is essentially “upside down.” It’s a “designed to fail” attempt to avoid the broken and malfunctioning Immigration Court system without dealing with the REAL problem: EOIR!
Without the necessary progressive personnel and structural reforms at Garland’s EOIR (“clean house” of unqualified, under-qualified, or misplaced administrators and judges from past Administrations), the cultural changes (“out with the anti-asylum, anti-immigrant, racially challenged, too often misogynistic, EOIR culture”) it would bring, and most of all, the substantive changes to align asylum law with due process, best practices, and the generous interpretations that were foreshadowed by the Refugee Act of 1`980 but have been intentionally suppressed by politicos of both parties, there will be neither justice nor stability in our asylum and immigration systems, nor will there be equal justice for all, including racial justice, in America!
Even my esteemed “RR3” friends understate the debilitating effects of the ever-worsening dysfunction at EOIR and Garland’s failure of leadership on due process and human rights!
Perhaps the most telling statement in their article is this: “Asylum officers are more highly trained in asylum adjudication than immigration judges . . . .”Why, on earth, would that be?
Why isn’t the BIA led and comprised of internationally-respected asylum experts like Schrag, Schoenholtz, Ramji-Nogales, and others like them? Why aren’t all Immigration Judges drawn from the ranks of universally-respected “practical scholars” in asylum and human rights?Plenty of them are out here! Why aren’t they on the bench? Why is the Biden Administration running a “D-Team Judiciary” at EOIR rather than “the world’s best administrative tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all” as EOIR was once envisioned? What’s the excuse for lousy training at EOIR when top-flight “modulated” asylum training is available from expert sources like Professor Michele Pistone’s innovative VIISTA Villanova program? What’s the excuse for the colossal EOIR failure that threatens lives and our democracy on a daily basis? Why aren’t alarm bells going off at the White House about Garland’s failed stewardship at EOIR?
Reforming the asylum system, starting with EOIR, could also potentially have big societal and economic benefits for America. Asylees gain legal status, can work, get in line for green cards, eventually become citizens, and realize their full potential as productive members of our society. Not incidentally, they also become regular taxpayers and can help bolster essential enterprises and infrastructure improvements.
For example, just yesterday the Portland (ME) Press Herald featured an article about the critical, chronic shortage of workers in Maine. https://www.pressherald.com/2022/10/02/how-can-maine-solve-its-workforce-crisis/ Why isn’t the Biden Administration working with Maine authorities, NGOs, and economic development groups to “fast track” asylum approvals for those who might be persuaded to resettle in Maine to take advantage of these economic opportunities, for everyone’s benefit? Mainers also are suffering from a shortage of affordable housing. I’ll bet that with a little “seed money,” there are enterprising, skilled groups of potential asylees who could help build and maintain affordable housing for communities in need, in Maine and elsewhere in the U.S. Why are they instead “rotting at the border” or being aimlessly “orbited” around America by nativist GOP governors trying to score political points with their White Nationalist base?
By adopting the nativists’ dehumanizing mis-characterization of asylum seekers as a “problem” to be measured in “numbers,” deterred, and held at bay, the Administration is missing a golden opportunity to achieve some much-needed “win-wins.” Why run bone-headed “built to fail, haste makes waste” asylum pilot programs in a few cities rather than trying things that might work to everyone’s advantage, as I have described above?
At a time when many in America are finally learning the truth about our disgraceful failure to offer refuge to Jews during the period leading up to the Holocaust from the Ken Burns documentary, we (our at least some Americans) appear to be committed to making the same mistakes again. We should not undervalue the lives and contributions of refugees because of systemic or structural boas against certain groups!
Claiming to “reform” the U.S. refugee and asylum system without dealing with the ongoing, worsening, disasterous dysfunction at EOIR is a fool’s errand. The way to make the system work more efficiently is to grant the large number of deserving asylum cases in a timely, practical, manner driven by due process, best practices, and best interpretations of asylum law. Unless and until those in charge act on this truth, the awful mess at EOIR will continue to be an existential threat to democracy!
Elizabeth Gibson Managing Attorney National Immigrant Justice Center Publisher of “The Gibson Report”
Weekly Briefing
This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.
Reuters: The 9th Circuit, in an 8-3 decision, said the government has come to rely almost exclusively on detention centers operated by GEO Group and other companies. California, the largest U.S. state, does not have the authority to second-guess that decision, the court said.
NPR: In August alone, the Border Patrol recorded more than 50,000 apprehensions in the Del Rio sector, which includes Eagle Pass — tens of thousands more than in traditional migration corridors like the Rio Grande Valley and El Paso. The number of migrants arriving from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua was nearly equal to the number from Mexico and northern Central America.
NYT: In an unusual step, Biden administration officials gave some reporters a background briefing on Monday before Customs and Border Protection’s routine monthly release of data. Officials noted that the number of removals over the past year — more than 1.3 million — was more than any previous year. See also How to understand the latest immigration numbers.
Buzzfeed: For months, Border Patrol and ICE have been releasing immigrants with documents incorrectly listing their future residences as addresses to nonprofits or churches. These immigrants and asylum-seekers, most of them from Venezuela, then show up to random buildings confused and unsure of what to do next.
NPR: A majority of Americans support a pathway to citizenship for certain groups of immigrants, including farmworkers, those deemed as essential workers and for immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. That’s according to an NPR/Ipsos poll conducted in 2021. And yet action in Washington has stalled.
Law360: The Border Patrol along the southwest U.S. border skipped assigning some noncitizens entering the country “alien registration numbers” used to create a profile of their immigration history, according to a report by a U.S. Department of Homeland Security watchdog.
LexisNexis: The BIA held that, in order to qualify for relief under Lujan-Armendariz, a state conviction must have resulted in a sentence of no more than one year of probation. … In sum, the BIA legally erred by holding that, because he received a sentence of three years of probation, Petitioner’s expungement did not qualify under Lujan-Armendariz.
AP: Prosecutors moved to drop the case against Newton District Judge Shelley Joseph after she agreed to refer herself to a state agency that investigates allegations of misconduct by members of the bench.
Law360: The University of Washington’s human rights center sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Seattle federal court for failing to provide documents that could shed light on reports that detained immigrants are enduring medical neglect, sexual assault, beatings and long periods without food.
Law360: Colorado’s Court of Appeals, which initially sided with a sheriff accused of detaining a man for four months after his daughter posted bond, has ruled that the sheriff’s refusal to release the man put him beyond the shield of immunity.
Law360: A D.C. federal judge tossed a proposed class action Friday by 95 visa holders who allege the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ lengthy processing times for work permit applications violate the Administrative Procedure Act, finding the agency has since issued decisions on each application and the claims are moot.
USCIS: he final rule removes certain regulatory text governing asylum applications, interviews, and eligibility for employment authorization based on a pending asylum application. Relevant regulatory text is restored to appear as it did before the effective dates of the vacated rules. The final rule is effective on Feb. 7, 2022.
USCIS: On Sept. 22, 2022, USCIS was notified of a settlement agreement between the U.S. Army and class members of the civil action captioned Calixto v. Department of the Army, Civ. A. No. 18-1551 (PLF) (D.D.C.). The Calixto settlement agreement affects USCIS’ military naturalization policies, and USCIS is reviewing policy changes based on the terms of this settlement agreement.
AP: The Biden administration said Wednesday that the U.S. Embassy in Cuba will begin processing full immigrant visas in early 2023, making it easier for Cubans to reunite with family members in the United States.
AILA: Advance copy: DHS notice extending the designation of Burma for TPS for 18 months, from 11/26/22 through 5/25/24, and redesignating Burma for TPS. The notice will be published in the Federal Register on 9/27/22.
You now can change your email settings or search the archives using the Google Group. If you are receiving this briefing from a third party, you can visit the Google Group and request to be added. If you receive an error, make sure you click request access.
Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)
Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship
National Immigrant Justice Center
A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program
224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org
