Tag: Judge King

4TH CIR. — BIA WRONG AGAIN 👎🏻🤮 ON ASYLUM DENAL — IN RUSH TO WRONGFULLY DENY LIFE-SAVING PROTECTION, ☠️⚰️ BIA FAILS TO FOLLOW CIRCUIT PRECEDENTS ON THREATS AS PAST PERSECUTION! —  BEDOYA V. BARR

https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/191930.P.pdf

Bedoya v. Barr, 4th Cir., 11-25-20, published

PANEL:  KING, KEENAN, and HARRIS, Circuit Judges

OPINION BY:  JUDGE KING

KEY QUOTE:

The BIA fatally erred in deciding that Officer Bedoya had not established past persecution because the various threats were merely “written” and because Bedoya was never physically approached by FARC members. See Zavaleta-Policiano, 873 F.3d at 247; Crespin-Valladares, 632 F.3d at 126-27. We have recognized that “the threat of death alone constitutes persecution,” see Tairou v. Whitaker, 909 F.3d 702, 708 (4th Cir. 2018), and we have never required that a petitioner be physically harmed or personally approached

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in order for the threats to qualify as persecution.4 Moreover, our precedents in Zavaleta- Policiano and Crespin-Valladares demonstrate that death threats may be written. Indeed, written home-delivered death threats and text messages can easily be more menacing than verbal threats, in that they show that the writer and sender knows where his target lives and the relevant personal cellphone number.

The BIA also emphasized the period of time between the threats that Officer Bedoya received in 1996 and those he received in 2013. That period, however, is not dispositive of Bedoya’s asylum claim, in that he has clearly shown past persecution on the basis of the threats he received in 2013. The earlier incident in 1996 — where Bedoya’s friend Correa was killed for trying to protect Bedoya from FARC — simply bolsters Bedoya’s asylum claim and highlights FARC’s “penchant for extracting vengeance.” See Crespin-Valladares, 632 F.3d at 126-27. Moreover, if FARC is targeting former Colombian police officers for their past actions, there is inevitably going to be a time gap between the actions of such officers and when an officer retires.

In sum, Officer Bedoya received multiple threats of death and harm to himself and his family, and the BIA’s determination that Bedoya had not suffered past persecution was manifestly contrary to the law and constituted an abuse of discretion. See Tairou, 909 F.3d

4 Notably, in a recent unpublished opinion, we emphasized that “[w] Lopez-Orellana v. Whitaker, 757 F. App’x 238, 242 (4th Cir. 2018).

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e have never

adopted a requirement that an [asylum] applicant suffer physical harm [in order] to show

past persecution.” See

at 708; Crespin Valladares, 632 F.3d at 126. We therefore reverse the BIA’s ruling that Bedoya failed to establish that he was subject to past persecution.

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

Notably, the key 4th Circuit precedent that the BIA ignored here, Crespin-Valadares v. Holder, was my case at the Arlington Immigration Court. I had granted asylum, the BIA reversed me, and the 4th Circuit reversed the BIA. In other words, I was right and the BIA was wrong! But hey, who’s keeping score?

The continuing abuses by the BIA of asylum law and controlling Circuit precedents favoring asylum grants is in the “when will they ever learn” category. Instead of carefully and forcefully building a body of case law amplifying Crespin-Valladares and applying it broadly to insure more expeditious asylum grants at the “retail level” of our system — the Asylum Office and the Immigration Courts — the BIA insists on the illegal (not to mention immoral) “any reason to deny” approach improperly promoted by White Nationalist racist restrictionist AGs Sessions & Barr.     

EOIR could function, as it was intended, as a model of scholarship, due process, fundamental fairness, and equal justice insuring the granting of the generous protection described by the Supreme Court in Cardoza in many more cases. EOIR could become a model of humane, practical, efficient, best practices jurisprudence that would reduce dockets by promoting correct results at the Asylum Office and trial levels and taking pressure off of the Circuit Courts by minimizing improper denials of relief that engender unnecessary litigation. 

But, that’s not going to happen until the current group of deficient, biased EOIR Executives and BIA Judges is replaced by qualified “practical scholars” from the NDPA who are experts in asylum law and will ensure that necessary, life-saving protection is granted wherever possible.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-01-20

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SPLIT FOURTH CIRCUIT HAMMERS SCOFFLAW SESSIONS’S BOGUS RATIONALE FOR DACA TERMINATION — White Nationalist Former AG’s “Malicious Incompetence” Continues to Be “Outed” — Casa De Maryland v. DHS

Casa De Maryland v. DHS, 4th Cir., 05-17-19, published

DACA decision-May 17 2019-4thCir

PANEL: KING, DIAZ, and RICHARDSON, Circuit Judges.

OPINION BY: JUDGE DIAZ

CONCURRING AND DISSENTING OPINION: Judge Richardson

KEY QUOTE FROM MAJORITY:

Plaintiffs argue that DACA’s rescission was arbitrary and capricious because the
Department of Homeland Security failed to give a reasoned explanation for the change in policy, particularly given the significant reliance interests involved. We agree.17
17 Plaintiffs also assert that (1) the district court failed to consider evidence of “bad faith” and “animus” underlying the decision to rescind DACA presented in their complaint and (2) the Department’s conclusions about DACA’s legality are substantively incorrect. Given our disposition, we decline to address these arguments.

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As we have explained, DACA was rescinded based on the Department’s view that the policy was unlawful. But neither the Attorney General’s September 4 letter nor the Department’s Rescission Memo identify any statutory provision with which the DACA policy conflicts. Cf. Encino Motorcars, 136 S. Ct. at 2127 (rejecting as insufficient agency statement regarding statutory exemption proffered in support of policy change where agency did not “analyze or explain” why statute should be interpreted as agency suggested).
The Attorney General’s letter does mention that the Fifth Circuit affirmed the injunction against the DAPA policy on “multiple legal grounds” in the Texas litigation, J.A. 379, and the Rescission Memo cites to this ruling. The Fifth Circuit’s ruling was based in part on its determination that the DAPA policy likely ran counter to the INA’s “intricate process for illegal aliens to derive a lawful immigration classification from their children’s immigration status.” Texas, 809 F.3d at 179. There is no dispute here, however, that “DACA has no analogue in the INA.” NAACP, 298 F. Supp. 3d at 239 (internal quotation marks omitted). Further, as the Fifth Circuit explained in reaching its conclusion, “DACA and DAPA are not identical.” Texas, 809 F.3d at 174.
The Attorney General’s letter also asserts that DACA suffered from the same “constitutional defects that the courts recognized as to DAPA.” J.A. 379. The courts in the Texas litigation, however, did not address constitutional claims. And while the Attorney General urged in his letter that his office had a duty to “defend the Constitution” and “faithfully execute the laws passed by Congress,” J.A. 379, he does not explain how
allowing the DACA policy to remain in effect would violate that duty.

The Attorney General’s letter and the Rescission Memo also proffer the concern— based on the Attorney General’s determination that the DAPA and DACA policies share the same legal defects—that “potentially imminent” litigation would result in a ruling in the Texas litigation enjoining DACA. Entirely absent, however, is an explanation why it was likely that the district court in the Texas litigation would have enjoined DACA.
Further, the 2014 OLC Opinion outlining the Department’s authority to implement the DAPA policy identified “from the nature of the Take Care duty” at least “four general…principles governing the permissible scope of enforcement discretion,” J.A. 137-38; 2014 WL 10788677, at *5-6, and noted that concerns “animating DACA were . . . consistent with the types of concerns that have customarily guided the exercise of immigration enforcement discretion,” J.A. 149 n.8; 2014 WL 10788677, at *13 n.8.
The point is that the Department had before it at the time it rescinded DACA a reasoned analysis from the office tasked with providing legal advice to all executive branch agencies that supported the policy’s legality. Yet the Department changed course without any explanation for why that analysis was faulty. Cf. Fox Television Stations, 556U.S. at 516 (“[A] reasoned explanation is needed for disregarding facts and circumstances that underlay . . . the prior policy.”).
Nor did the Department adequately account for the reliance interests that would be affected by its decision. Hundreds of thousands of people had structured their lives on the availability of deferred action during the over five years between the implementation of DACA and the decision to rescind. Although the government insists that Acting

Secretary Duke18 considered these interests in connection with her decision to rescind DACA, her Memo makes no mention of them.
Accordingly, we hold that the Department’s decision to rescind DACA was arbitrary and capricious and must be set aside.

KEY QUOTE FROM CONCURRENCE/DISSENT:

Just as in BLE, there is a nonsensical implication in the plaintiffs’ position: that the Executive’s discretion is more constrained when it gives a “reviewable” reason for its actions than when it gives no reason at all. If the Acting Secretary was wrong about the likely illegality of DACA,5 then this might mean that she had provided no lawful reason for the rescission. But in the context of the Executive’s enforcement discretion, this is perfectly appropriate. The Executive need not explain why it makes particular enforcement and non-enforcement decisions. The Judicial Branch cannot bootstrap review of decisions committed to the discretion of the other branches simply because the reasons provided are of a type that judges consider themselves competent to evaluate.
5 Evaluating the actual legality of DACA requires considering whether and how a court may adjudicate an alleged violation of the Take Care Clause. See Kendall v. United States ex rel. Stokes, 37 U.S. (12 Pet.) 524, 613 (1838). But it also requires addressing the distinct question of whether and how one presidential administration may determine that a previous administration’s policy was inconsistent with the constitutional obligation to take care that the nation’s immigration laws be faithfully executed. Cf. Letter from President George Washington to Sec’y Alexander Hamilton, U.S. Dep’t of the Treasury (Sept. 7, 1792) in 32 WRITINGS OF GEORGE WASHINGTON 144 (John C. Fitzpatrick ed., 1939) (writing in 1792 about enforcing unpopular tax laws, President Washington explained that it was his “duty to see the Laws executed: to permit them to be trampled upon with impunity would be repugnant to it”).

In any event, the Acting Secretary’s rescission memorandum was not a mere statement on the legality of DACA. Instead, the memorandum considered various court rulings as well as the Attorney General’s letter before concluding that the “DACA program should be terminated.” Duke Memorandum at 4 (emphasis added). She did not say that DACA must be terminated or that she lacked the legal authority to enforce DACA or a DACA-like program. And in declaring the rescission of DACA after a six- month wind-down period, the Acting Secretary invoked her statutory authority to “establish[] national immigration policies and priorities.” Id. The Acting Secretary’s legal analysis was only one aspect of her reasoning for rescinding DACA, and, of course, a prosecutor may consider beliefs about the law when setting enforcement policy, see BLE, 482 U.S. at 283.
For these reasons, I conclude that the plaintiffs’ APA claims are not reviewable and would dismiss them.

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

The “good guys” win again! The forces of White Nationalist irrationality and lawless behavior are thwarted, at least for the present.

Interestingly, Judge Titus was the only Federal Judge that I’m aware of to have upheld the Government’s termination of DACA. Even the Supremes, the majority of whom Trump widely and contemptuously advertises the GOP has “brought and paid for,” weren’t eager to intervene in the Administration’s idiotic “war on DACA, human decency, and common sense” at this point.

But, let’s not forget that we’re only at this point because the Obama Administration and the Dems failed to solve the DACA issue in 2009 and 2010. Never again!

PWS

05-17-19

 

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