Tag: Maryland

🇺🇸⚖️🗽 MARYLAND IMMIGRANT LEGAL ASSISTANCE PROGRAM (“MILAP”) HELPS KIDS FACING THE TRAUMA OF OVERWHELMED IMMIGRATION COURTS!

Cate ScennaDirector of PBRC's Maryland Immigrant Legal Assistance Project (MILAP)
Cate Scenna
Director of PBRC’s Maryland Immigrant Legal Assistance Project (MILAP)
PHOTO: Linkedin

From the Pro Bono Resource Center of Maryland:

Cate Scenna, Director of PBRC’s Maryland Immigrant Legal Assistance Project (MILAP), and Bill Meyer, a longtime volunteer with MILAP, spoke to the Baltimore Banner about the state of the Baltimore Immigration Court, and how the overwhelmed system is affecting asylum seekers’ lives.  

“One group — attorneys with the Pro Bono Resource Center of Maryland — has established a presence on the fourth floor of the George Fallon Federal Building, where the immigration court in Baltimore is located. This is where the five Salvadoran sisters waited.” 

Read more the growing and persistent need for pro bono representation at the Baltimore Immigration Court: https://lnkd.in/et63PTxe

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A system that lets kids face Immigration Court alone has lost touch with justice and common sense.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-28-24

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❤️MICHELLE N. MENDEZ: A HEARTFELT TRIBUTE TO THE KEY BRIDGE WORKERS!

Michelle N. Mendez
Michelle N. Mendez, ESQ
Director of Legal Resources and Training
National Immigration Project, National Lawyers Guild
PHOTO: NIPNLG

Michelle posted on LinkedIn:

The human beings who remain missing from the Francis Scott Key Bridge tragedy in Baltimore are all immigrants in their 30s and 40s from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico, who had settled in local neighborhoods. They were fixing potholes at 1:30AM when a cargo ship struck and destroyed the bridge. Next time someone–including a presidential candidate who has caught over 100 criminal charges by this point–dehumanizes immigrants, remember these men and the children and spouses they leave behind. Remember the sacrifices that immigrant workers make day in and day out to ensure that our country runs.

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Beautifully said, my friend!

Also, much gratitude 🙏 for the first responders whose quick thinking and actions to stop all bridge traffic before the fatal crash undoubtedly saved many lives and much more heartbreak. 

For those who want to contribute to the families of the lost workers, here’s a link to the Baltimore’s Civic Fund recently posted by Kelly White:

https://www.baltimorecivicfund.org/key-bridge-response-fund

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-31-24

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U.S. JUDGE 👨‍⚖️ 🇺🇸⚖️ THWARTS ICE 🏴‍☠️ EFFORT TO REMOVE INDONESIAN ASYLUM APPLICANT – “Siahaan’s attorneys, Elsy Ramos Velasquez and Patrick Taurel, had argued the arrest was made under false pretenses, without a warrant and in violation of ICE’s policy that typically prohibits agents from making arrests on church property.”

Meagan Flynn
Meagan Flynn
Morning Mix Reporter
WashPost
Photo From Twitter

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/siahaan-immigration-deportation/2020/10/03/ec7f2380-04c2-11eb-897d-3a6201d6643f_story.html

 

By

Meagan Flynn

Oct. 3, 2020 at 3:50 p.m. EDT

A federal judge in Maryland has granted an undocumented Indonesian immigrant temporary reprieve from deportation, ruling Friday evening that immigration authorities cannot remove him from the country until he has a chance to pursue religious asylum.

Binsar Siahaan, a 52-year-old father to two U.S. citizens, attracted considerable support from faith-based activists nationwide after he was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement last month at his home on the grounds of Glenmont United Methodist Church in Silver Spring, Md. He and his wife, also an undocumented Indonesian immigrant, work there as church caretakers.

ICE arrested an undocumented immigrant on church grounds. They lied to coax him out, family and attorney say.

Siahaan’s attorneys, Elsy Ramos Velasquez and Patrick Taurel, had argued the arrest was made under false pretenses, without a warrant and in violation of ICE’s policy that typically prohibits agents from making arrests on church property. They also argued that Siahaan, who is Christian, should not be deported to majority-Muslim Indonesia until he has a chance to fully pursue religious asylum.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Paul Grimm agreed, granting Siahaan a preliminary injunction that blocks ICE from removing him from the country until the Board of Immigration Appeals, or a higher federal court, makes a ruling on his pending appeal. Siahaan is being held at a detention center in Georgia, where he was transferred from Baltimore to await deportation. Grimm also ordered ICE to bring him back to Baltimore, where he will remain in custody closer to his family.

“When the ruling came down, we were really relieved,” said the Rev. Kara Scroggins, pastor at Glenmont United Methodist. “We’re glad that he’s closer to home at the detention facility in Baltimore, but we’re going to keep fighting until he’s home with his family.”

ICE could not immediately be reached for comment Saturday but previously said Siahaan was arrested “after he received full due process in the nation’s immigration courts.”

 

. . . .

 

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Read the full article at the link.

 

Hats off to the litigation team and to U.S. District Judge Paul Grimm! By ordering ICE to return Siahaan to Maryland, rather than detaining him in Georgia, generally known as one of the worst places in the “New American Gulag,” Judge Grimm took the kind of effective action necessary to stop the abusive actions of ICE and to guarantee real due process!

 

In a functioning system with an independent U.S. Immigration Court comprised of Judges with expertise in asylum and human rights laws and a commitment to due process and the rule of law, Immigration Judges could take the actions necessary to protect fundamental rights and hold ICE accountable without constant resort to the U.S. District Courts. A “captive” Immigration Court, where Immigration Judges are subservient to Billy the Bigot Barr and pressured to act as “ICE enforcement in robes” ill-serves the national interest! It’s also highly inefficient and wasteful of public resources!

 

Thanks to my good friend Deb Sanders for bringing this incident to my attention!

 

Due Process Forever!

 

 

PWS

10-05-20

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THE REST OF THE STORY: ALLEGED “RAPE” THAT WAS A “CAUSE CELEB” FOR ANTI-IMMIGRANT RESTRICTIONISTS ENDS QUIETLY WITH DISMISSAL OF ALL CRIMINAL CHARGES!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/the-rockville-rape-case-erupted-as-national-news-it-quietly-ended-friday/2017/10/20/f75dacc0-b5c1-11e7-a908-a3470754bbb9_story.html

Dan Morse reports for the Washington Post:

“Maryland prosecutors have dropped child pornography charges against Rockville teenager Henry Sanchez Milian, quietly ending a case that erupted onto the national stage when Sanchez Milian and a friend — who each entered the country illegally last year — were accused of raping a classmate in a school bathroom.

“I am grateful to God,” Sanchez Milian’s stepmother, Lorena Hernandez, said outside of court Friday. “Now there is light at the end of the tunnel.”

With the dismissed charges, Sanchez Milian no longer faces any counts from incidents that unfolded on March 16, when a 14-year-old student at Rockville High School told school officials and detectives she had been forced into a bathroom stall, held down and attacked.

Sanchez Milian, 18 at the time, and Jose Montano, 17 at the time, were charged by Montgomery County police with rape and sex offense counts, punishable by life in prison. Montano was charged as an adult.

In the two months that followed, however, prosecutors studied high school surveillance video, reviewed phone records, spoke to the girl and others, and concluded the original claims could not be corroborated. Defense attorneys had been telling prosecutors for weeks that the sex acts had been consensual.

Henry Sanchez Milian (Montgomery County Police)
In May, prosecutors dropped the rape case but filed charges against the suspects related to possession of child pornography. According to their new case, ­before March 16, Montano had engaged in lewd text exchanges with the 14-year-old, and she sent him images of herself unclothed. Montano then forwarded the ­images to Sanchez Milian, prosecutors said.

Defense attorneys did not deny that sequence of events, but they blasted prosecutors for what they said was a stretch of child pornography laws designed to go after adults. Montano’s attorneys resolved his pornography case in juvenile court when he admitted to possessing one of the images.

But Sanchez Milian — who had stayed in the adult court system — was facing trial on child pornography charges at the end of October. His defense attorneys had dug in for a fight, establishing in hearings that they had the legal right to call the girl to the witness stand for questioning about whether the images in the texts were of her.

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Read the full story at the link.

 

PWS

10-22-17

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SANCTUARY: MD AG Issues Guidance On Cooperation With ICE!

Here is the guidance memorandum published by MD Attorney General Brian Frosh on state and local cooperation with ICE:

http://www.marylandattorneygeneral.gov/Reports/Immigration_Law_Guidance.pdf

 

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Many thanks to Dan Kowalski at LexisNexis and Professor Elizabeth Keyes at the University of Baltimore School of Law for bringing this to my attention.

PWS

05-16-17

 

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BIA Says MD Sexual Solicitation Of Minor Is Categorical CIMT — Matter of JIMENEZ-CEDILLO, 27 I&N Dec. 1 (BIA 2017) — BIA Reaches A Publication Milestone!

https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/955631/download

Here’s the headnote:

“(1) A sexual offense in violation of a statute enacted to protect children is a crime involving moral turpitude where the victim is particularly young—that is, under 14 years of age—or is under 16 and the age differential between the perpetrator and victim is significant, or both, even though the statute requires no culpable mental state as to the age of the child. Matter of Silva-Trevino, 26 I&N Dec. 826 (BIA 2016), clarified.

(2) Sexual solicitation of a minor under section 3-324(b) of the Maryland Criminal Law with the intent to engage in an unlawful sexual offense in violation of section 3-307 is categorically a crime involving moral turpitude.”

PANEL: Appellate Immigration Judges Pauley, Mullane, and Greer; Opinion by Judge Pauley.

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Yeah, I know that they teach you in law school never to rely on headnotes. So, if you are going to use this case for any legal filing you should of course read the entire opinion.

But, for the rest of us, the BIA headnotes are some of the “best in the business” if I do say so myself, having had some role in setting up the “modernized version” of BIA precedent distribution and formatting in one of my former lives.

And with this case, the BIA crosses another threshold in its 77 year history: completion of Volume 26 and the very first decision in Volume 27.

PWS

04-08-17

 

 

 

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