🤯 FORMER EMPLOYEE’S EXPLOSIVE FEDERAL COURT ALLEGATIONS: NOT EVERYONE IN EOIR MANAGEMENT FOCUSED ON “GUARANTEEING FAIRNESS & DUE PROCESS!”

“Lust and Avarice”
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Thomas Rowlandson
Creative Commons Zero, Public Domain Dedication

This item was originally reported by Bloomberg Law. From the complaint in Escoto v. Garland, USDC CD CA:

INTRODUCTION

1. Plaintiff CLAUDIA ESCOTO, while working as a Staff Assistant to Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Scott Laurent was subjected to egregious and continual sexual harassment, including Judge Laurent describing in graphic detail other judges and employees he wanted to have sex with, or had sex with, in what positions he wished to have sex and in what manner. Judge Scott Laurent discussed in lurid detail the physical attributes of attorneys who came before him to represent litigants and the government and further discussed attraction to and/or sexual relations with other judges. Judge Laurent regularly subjected Plaintiff to rambling diatribes regarding the breasts, attractiveness and whether he deemed the female attorneys and judges “fuckable.” Judge Laurent also regularly discussed female colleagues and employees in a degrading and sexual manner, discussing in graphic detail who he wanted to have sex with, the physical attributes of female employees and judges. Judge Laurent engaged in this conduct even when in judge’s robes when on the bench. Judge Laurent subjected Plaintiff to graphic description of sexual relations he was having with his wife and other women, including during what was supposed to be work hours.

2. Judge Laurent touched Plaintiff without her consent in a sexual manner, repeatedly placing his hand on Plaintiff’s upper leg when she traveled in a car with him, and ensuring his right arm touched her breasts. This was unwelcome and deeply disturbing to Plaintiff.

3. Judge Laurent further demeaned Plaintiff’s sexual orientation, claiming he could turn her straight (referring to his supposed sexual prowess if Plaintiff had sexual relations with him), referred to Plaintiff’s wife’s breasts and attractiveness and demanded that Plaintiff come “sit on Daddy’s lap,” referring to himself as “Daddy.” He would also proclaim “I can turn you straight, Baby!”

4. Judge Laurent’s conduct caused Plaintiff severe emotional impacts, including causing fainting spells, among other severe reactions. Plaintiff requested a medical leave, during which time

Judge Laurent continued to contact Plaintiff to pressure her to work. He denied Plaintiff’s extension of leave, improperly placing her on AWOL status, even though Plaintiff had leave time. Plaintiff requested a reasonable accommodation of reassignment to a different supervisor where she would not be subjected to this egregious sexual harassment. This request was denied by Defendant. Defendant then acted on Judge Laurent’s recommendation to fire Plaintiff shortly after receiving Plaintiff’s complaints of sexual harassment, discrimination, and retaliation, having taken no actions to address Plaintiff’s complaints, other than to fire her.

5. Judge Laurent’s actions show no respect for the sacred office he holds, demean the entire justice system, and turn what should be a model employment environment into a cesspool, where Plaintiff was made to endure an onslaught of sexual comments and sexual advances, ultimately being fired when she had the bravery to come forward. Plaintiff CLAUDIA ESCOTO, as well as the justice system itself, deserved so much better. Defendant must be held to account.

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These are only unproven allegations in a court complaint at this point! But, if any of this is true, it would confirm that there are some deep “cultural” issues at EOIR that leadership has not dealt with.

“Expedited/dedicated dockets” and other “haste make waste” nonsense that misses the mark at EOIR aren’t going to solve systemic issues affecting due process and fundamental fairness for the millions whose lives and futures are pending in our broken and dysfunctional Immigration Courts!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-04-23

🏴‍☠️🤮 HALLS OF INJUSTICE: Allegations Of Racism, Misogyny, Islamophobia, & Other Bias Have Been Swirling Around Garland’s Dysfunctional EOIR — Now, The Ohio Immigrant Alliance Is Seeking & Assembling Examples To Force Long Overdue Action!

Garland’s “vision of justice” for asylum seekers and other migrants at EOIR leaves something to be desired:

Four Horsemen — Folks with wrong-headed “take no prisoners” views on asylum law were “rewarded” with “ judgeships” at both the trial and appellate levels of EOIR under the Trump Administration. Many continue to serve and discriminate against legitimate asylum seekers under Garland. Just check out the number of “sitting IJ’s” with outrageously high “asylum denial rates” near or in excess of 90%, according to TRAC Immigration. Why haven’t these important, non-life-tenured positions been “merit re-competed” to place the “best, brightest, and most qualified” on the Immigration Bench?
Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Woman Tortured — Jaundiced attitudes about women (particularly those of color) and gender-based asylum claims among EOIR judges have neither been “rooted out” nor effectively addressed by Garland. As we can see, de-humanization of women and stripping them of dignity under asylum laws carries over into other legal arenas! Targeted, endemic. societal persecution of women is often intentionally minimized and mis-characterized as “random violence,” “personal disputes,” “mere jealousy,” or “not that serious” in Immigration Court! “Fictionalized accounts” of the ability of abused women to seek protection from authorities in countries where femicide and rape are rampant are sometimes employed to deny legitimate asylum claims in Garland’s broken courts.
Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Star Chamber Justice — Wrong , “unduly restrictive,” asylum precedents and discredited methods (“Aimless Docket Reshuffling” — on steroids under Garland — is a key example) continue to harm asylum seekers in Garland’s dysfunctional “courts.” — Public Realm

https://ohioimmigrant.org/2022/09/08/wanted-examples-of-racism-and-other-bias-in-us-immigration-court/

WANTED: Examples Of Racism And Other Bias In US Immigration Court

September 8, 2022 tramontelaComments Off

on WANTED: Examples of racism and other bias in US immigration court

. . . .

The nation’s Immigration Courts have—thus far—flown under the public’s radar screen. Yet these are the places where life-or-death decisions are made, often for subjective and even racist reasons. That is why the Ohio Immigrant Alliance is collecting examples of racist, misogynistic, Islamophobic, and other biased statements and decisions made by Immigration Judges from across the country. We are working with a research team to analyze the cases and produce a report in early 2023. Here are a few examples.

Contact Lauren Hamlett (hamlett.15 AT buckeyemail.osu.edu) for more information or to share examples. This can be in the form of court documents and judges’ decisions or an interview with an immigrant or attorney. We will adhere to all privacy requirements requested by the immigrant and not publish anything without their consent.

The report, to be published in 2023, will shine a light on how racism shows up in Immigration Court using real-life examples. These findings will enrage anyone who believes the U.S. should work toward becoming a nation that guarantees “justice for all.”

See this testimony for more information, and contact Lauren to share your experiences.

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I was struck by the undeniable truth — scandalously ignored by Garland, his lieutenants, and Biden Administration policy officials — contained in the January 20, 2022 statement by Lynn Tramonte, Ohio Immigrant Alliance, to the House Judiciary Committee considering the need for an independent, professionally-administered, merit-based Immigration Court.

The U.S. Is Deporting People Who Qualify for Asylum

The current U.S. immigration system is not designed to function fairly, but to fail. There are many examples of this, but today I will focus on examples from the U.S. Immigration Court.

Lynn’s full statement is available at the “this testimony” link above. I’ve made this point over and over!

Because the current system is purposely biased against asylum seekers, particularly those of color arriving at our Southern border, the “statistics” purportedly showing that few will qualify for asylum are totally bogus! Then, they are inexcusably cited by so-called “mainstream media” who haven’t done their homework! This perpetuates the “nativist myth” of the “illegitimate asylum seeker” which is then used to dehumanize refugees and deny them their legal and human rights!

Fact is, because we don’t have a legitimate, expert asylum adjudication system, we don’t really know how many qualified refugees are being illegally turned away or denied. But, it’s a safe bet that a fair, expert, professionally administered asylum system would grant legal protection to many more — probably a majority — of those who pass credible fear!

The problem is NOT, as Sessions and other nativists claimed, that too many individuals pass “credible fear.” It’s that a biased, anti-asylum, mal-administered, and constitutionally flawed system wrongfully denies far, far, far too many legitimate claims! And, Garland’s incredibly dysfunctional EOIR is at the heart of this problem!

Fixing EOIR is an essential first step in “re-legitimizing” our entire floundering justice system. But, Garland isn’t up to the job!

Asylum is an important form of legal immigration and an opportunity for America to put its best foot forward by properly, fairly, and timely screening and admitting those who can qualify for refuge and will be key contributors to our nation’s future. The babble of GOP nativists like DeSantis, Cruz, Abbott, and others about “illegals” is total BS!

Asylum seekers have every right to be here and pursue fair, timely, and professional adjudication of their claims — something that’s elusive — highly unlikely to happen — under today’s “designed to fail” system! That includes the “new, designed to fail, improperly staffed and mindlessly operated asylum regulations.” See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2022/10/03/%f0%9f%98%b0asylum-programmed-for-failure-refugee-roulette-three-rr3-confirm-what-many-of-us-said-right-off-the-bat-about-biden-admin/

It’s an ongoing national disgrace that Garland has failed to reform his Immigration Courts, eliminate bias and invidious discrimination from his judiciary, install quality, expertise, and professionalism, and insist that the Biden Administration abandon “Miller Lite,” nativist policies and mis-interpretations of the law that are diminishing our nation and endangering our future; that he also has ridiculously chosen to “go to war” with experts, NGOs, attorneys, and others seeking to change and improve his disgraceful mess at EOIR!

What’s the purpose and function of an Attorney General who operates broken and biased “courts,” defends the indefensible, and refuses to stand up for the fair application of the law to some of the most vulnerable among us?

In the meantime, submit your “real life” examples of what really happens to vulnerable humans in “America’s worst courts” to Ohio Immigrant Alliance at the above link.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-07-22

🏴‍☠️🤮👎🏽 WHAT’S GARLAND DOING? — LATEST 4TH CIR. REJECTION OF ABSURDIST EOIR ASYLUM DENIAL SHOWS WHY GARLAND MUST “PULL THE PLUG” 🔌 ON THE BIA! — While He’s At It, He Needs To Look At OIL’s Mindless “Defense Of The Clearly Indefensible!” — Why Are American Women Giving Garland A “Free Pass” On Overt, Institutionalized, Racially-Charged, Misogyny @ His DOJ?

Doctor Death — Would you want this guy as your Immigration Judge or BIA “panel?” If not, tell Garland to “pull the plug” on his deadly and incompetent BIA!
Public Domain

https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/201762.P.pdf

Sorto-Guzmán v. Garland, 4th Cir., 08-93-22, published

PANEL: KING and WYNN, Circuit Judges, and FLOYD, Senior Circuit Judge.

OPINION: Judge FLOYD

KEY QUOTE:

In sum, we hold that the IJ’s decision, which the BIA adopted, blatantly ignored our long line of cases establishing that the threat of death alone establishes past persecution. This was legal error, and therefore, an abuse of discretion. See Cordova v. Holder, 759 F.3d 332, 337 (4th Cir. 2014). We hold that Sorto-Guzman has established she was subjected to past persecution in El Salvador.2 She is thereby entitled to the presumption of a well-founded fear of future persecution. Li, 405 F.3d at 176; 8 C.F.R. § 208.13(b)(1). The IJ and the BIA erred in not affording Sorto-Guzman this presumption, which would

2 Sorto-Guzman argues, in the alternative, that the IJ and the BIA erred in finding that she failed to establish a well-founded fear of future persecution. We will not answer that question today. Because we hold that she properly established past persecution, the proper remedy is to remand the case to the BIA to consider the question of whether DHS can rebut the presumption that Sorto-Guzman has a well-founded fear of future persecution.

11

have then shifted the burden to DHS to rebut the presumption. Ngarurih v. Ashcroft, 371 F.3d 182, 187 (4th Cir. 2004); 8 C.F.R. § 1208.13(b)(1)(i).

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

Sorto-Guzman is a life-long Catholic who regularly attended Catholic services in El Salvador. In December 2015, about five members of the Mara 18 gang accosted Sorto- Guzman in the street as she was leaving church. At the time, she was wearing a crucifix medallion around her neck. The gang members tore the chain from her neck, hit and kicked her, and threatened to kill her if she ever wore it or attended church again. Sorto-Guzman stopped attending church after the attack, fearing the gang and their threats.
A few weeks later in January 2016, a group of Mara 18 gang members—including some of the gang members from the December 2015 assault—stopped Sorto-Guzman, along with her sister and Rivas-Sorto, as she was coming home from a shopping trip. One of the men attempted to sexually assault Sorto-Guzman and had started to forcefully kiss her. He only stopped when her screams caught the attention of a neighbor. The gang members threatened to kill Sorto-Guzman and Rivas-Sorto if Sorto-Guzman did not join the gang and start living with them.
3

On February 13, 2016, some of the gang members from the prior incidents tracked where Sorto-Guzman lived and broke into her house carrying guns. The gang members viciously beat Sorto-Guzman, threatened her life, and robbed her. Sorto-Guzman’s neighbors called the police, but they did not come until several hours after the assault. Sorto-Guzman reported the assault and robbery to the officers who arrived at the scene. She also went to the local police station the next day to report the attack. The police made one attempt to investigate, but Petitioners were not home when the police arrived, and the officers never followed up. The day after, a gang member called Sorto-Guzman, warning her she would regret making the report to the police and that they would soon kill her, her son, and her sister.

Absurdly, an Immigration Judge found that this gross abuse and death threats by a gang with the ability and willingness to carry them out did not amount to “persecution.” Worse yet, on appeal, rather than reversing and directing the judge below to follow the law, the BIA agreed — invoking the outlandish “theory” that the death threats, on top of the savage beating, weren’t so bad because they had never come to “fruition.” In other words, the applicant hadn’t hung around to be killed. Then, to top it off, attorneys from the DOJ’s Office of Immigration Litigation (“OIL”) unethically defended this deadly nonsense before the Fourth Circuit! This is “justice” in Garland’s disgraceful, deadly, and dysfunctional “court” system!

Trial By Ordeal — Garland’s BIA Judges applying the “fruition” test. If she lives, it’s not persecution!
Public Realm
Source: Ancient Origins Website
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/trial-ordeal-life-or-death-method-judgement-004160

NOT, a “mere mistake.”

EOIR’s performance is this case, particularly the BIA’s absurdist conclusion that, essentially, death threats must result in death to constitute past persecution, is a contemptuous disregard for binding circuit precedent, a demonstration of gross anti-asylum bias, misogyny, and a clear example of judicial incompetence.

Would a heart transplant surgeon who “forgot” to install a new heart or neglected to sew up the patient’s chest be allowed to continue operating? Of course not! So, why is the BIA still allowed to botch life or death cases — the equivalent of open heart surgery?

If Garland allows his “delegees” to perform in this dangerous and unprofessional manner, in his name, what is he doing as Attorney General? This is a farce, not a “court system?” Those responsible need to be held accountable! And, OIL’s unethical defense of this deadly nonsense is indefensible!

Alfred E. Neumann — “What are legal ethics? Not my friends or relatives whose lives as being destroyed by these ‘Kangaroo Courts.’ Just ‘the others’ and their dirty immigration lawyers! So, who cares? Why worry about professionalism, ethics, and due process in Immigration Court?”
PHOTO: Wikipedia Commons

We’ve heard lots lately from Garland about “accountability.” Why doesn’t it apply to his own, wholly owned, totally dysfunctional, legally deficient, contemptuous, unprofessional “court system” that builds astounding, self-created backlogs while causing pain, suffering, and sometimes sending innocents to death?☠️

EOIR Clown Show Must Go T-Shirt — “EOIR Clown Show Must Go” T-Shirt Custom Design Concept

Additionally, in Kansas this week, women have shown the power of their just demand to be treated as humans, with rights, rather than dehumanized pawns just there to re-populate the world for the men in charge. So, why not unleash the same passion and rightful fury on Garland and his ongoing, illegal, misogynistic treatment of women (primarily women of color) at EOIR!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-04-22

🏴‍☠️ DYSFUNCTIONAL COURTS: HIGH DENYING IJ IN HOUSTON REJECTS BIA REMAND, LECTURES HIGHER COURT JUDGES ON HOW TO DENY ASYLUM TO REFUGEE WOMAN — Parties Given No Input In Garland’s Zany, Topsy-Turvy, Out Of Control, Asylum Denial Machine! — Who’s On First In This Deadly ☠️ “Ongoing Clown Show” 🤡 That Degrades Human Rights & Mocks Judicial Competence & Best Practices?

Here are the redacted decisions:

BIA Remand Maria Delmy Andasol-Parada_20220531_0001_Redacted IJ Ceritification Maria Delmy Andasol-Parada_20220531_0001_Redacted

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Not rocket science 🚀 here:

With credible testimony and harm that rises to the level of persecution for a woman in El Salvador, who was the victim multiple rapes, on its face, this should have been an easy grant for a competent IJ.

- - Essentially, this judge argues that harm rising to the level of persecution — multiple rapes — inflicted on a woman in El Salvador, where femicide and misogyny run rampant, has nothing to do with her being a woman. Such a conclusion is unlikely — some experts would say facially absurd!
  - Indeed, the IJ’s apparent view that multiple rapes had nothing to do with a gender-based protected ground of being a woman would be totally “off the wall” for any experienced asylum adjudicator who truly understood the well-documented nature of violence against women as a widespread form of persecution worldwide!
  - According to the UN Handbook for Determining Refugee Status, adjudicators should give credible applicants “the benefit of the doubt.” “It is therefore frequently necessary to give the applicant the benefit of the doubt.” (Par. 203). That’s not what this IJ did!
  - Also, in the remand order, the BIA specifically rejected the IJ’s finding that this gross harm to the respondent was “individualized” and “personalized” and therefore not a basis for an asylum claim — something not mentioned by the IJ in his “certification.”

Another, better qualified Immigration Judge in the 5th Circuit recently granted a similar case for a Honduran woman. https://immigrationcourtside.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Immigration-Judge-Asylum-Decision-5-6-2022-Redacted.pdf.

- - Counsel for the applicant is well aware of this “better analysis” and could have argued it. But, in his snarky haste to prejudge and deny needed protection, this Houston IJ didn’t even give the parties a chance to participate in his “return to sender” (“certification”) nonsense.
  - A better functioning expert BIA would have long ago provided precedential guidance granting cases like this — adopting and amplifying the rationale of the IJ in the Honduran case.
  - Additionally, the BIA remand instructed the IJ to inquire of the DHS as to whether this victim of multiple rapes with no apparent criminal record or other adverse factors was and “enforcement priority” under applicable DHS guidelines — something that the IJ contemptuously and improperly did not do! Indeed, he didn’t seek any input from the parties despite being instructed to do so.

Unquestionably, being an El Salvadoran woman is a) immutable or fundamental to identity; b) highly particularized, and c) socially visible, as recognized by the Salvadoran government and everyone in El Salvador, thereby clearly qualifying as a “particular social group.”
Like the rest of the Northern Triangle, femicide, and abuse of women because they are women is endemic in El Salvador. Five minutes of internet research by a competent judge, assisted by good lawyers, would have turn up mountains of compelling, actually irrefutable, evidence of such uncontrolled abuse. Try the research yourself. See, e.g., https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.867945; https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/06/05/🇺🇸🗽⚖%EF%B8%8Fgeorge-w-bush-institute-report-gender-violence-☠%EF%B8%8F⚰%EF%B8%8Fdrives-continuing-refugee-flow-to-u-s-dishonesty-o/ (this is from the George W. Bush Institute, no less).
There is also plenty of reliable evidence that El Salvador, like the rest of the Northern and Triangle Governments, is basically a failed state — something publicly admitted by some Administration officials, including Special Envoy to the Northern Triangle Ricardo Zuniga. https://apple.news/A9FpzsjRAQ2OoAyQZzHZm1A (“democracy, the rule of law and the security situation continue to deteriorate”). The Salvadoran government is neither willing nor able to provide a reasonable level of protection to women like this applicant. Indeed, there is likely sufficient evidence for a better BIA to establish a “rebuttable presumption of failure of state protection” in El Salvador and the rest of the Northern Triangle.
Temporary Appellate Immigration Judge Gabe Gonzalez, author of the remand, is one of the better BIA judges. But, his remand could have been even stronger. He could have reversed this IJ and granted asylum on this record. Why “beat around the bush” on grantable cases that are being mishandled by “chronically over-denying IJs” below? At this point, removal of this particular judge from the case would be more than justified. Cases like this certainly raise the legitimate question of why IJs who sit around inventing reasons to deny relief to those in need of protection are on the Immigration Bench in the first place. There are certainly better-qualified judicial choices — many of them located in Texas — who could bring legitimacy, quality, and efficiency to Garland’s dysfunctional courts!
“Bogus lack of nexus” is one of the most overused grounds for improper denials of protection by EOIR judges at all levels. It’s part of the “any reason to deny” approach enabled by EOIR’s current “anti-asylum culture” — one that was overtly encouraged and promoted by the Trump DOJ.

- - Recently, a BIA panel led by Judge Ellen Liebowitz rebuked another high-denying IJ’s bogus nexus denial in a Houston, 5th Circuit case. See https://immigrationcourtside.com/category/department-of-justice/executive-office-for-immigration-review-eoir/board-of-immigration-appeals-bia/judge-ellen-liebowitz/. So, what isn’t THAT case a precedent — which would end the anti-asylum nonsense and intentionally wrong analysis employed by this judge? “Houston, we’ve got a problem!” What is Garland doing to solve it?
  - Inexplicably selecting Houston as one of the “test locations” for the new asylum regulations is “built to fail.” Without expert, positive guidance from qualified IJs in Houston (and the BIA) on granting asylum — something that this “denial centered court” simply doesn’t possess — there is every reason to believe that asylum seekers will not receive professional treatment or correct decisions from either the Asylum Office or the Immigration Court in Houston. And, relying on the BIA or, worse yet the “over the top” 5th Circuit,” to guarantee fairness and justice for asylum seekers? That’s a sick joke under current conditions!

8) Poorly reasoned, legally incorrect asylum denials and frivolous actions like the IJ’s “certification” in this case are a major factor in generating a 1.8 million case EOIR backlog and enabling a lawless, non-expert, anti-immigrant “culture of denial” at EOIR. Many grantable asylum cases languish in the backlog, are subjected to “Aimless Docket Reshuffling,” and then are wrongfully denied by poorly performing judges at both levels of EOIR.

9) EOIR suffers from poor leadership, a poorly performing BIA that overall lacks the expertise and courage to grant the large number of deserving asylum cases currently languishing in the EOIR backlog, and to set proper legal standards that will guide Immigration Judges and Asylum Officers in efficiently granting deserving cases at the first level of the system.

10) Garland should remove or reassign the “under-performers” and “non-performers” at EOIR and replace them with qualified experts committed to best practices and “guaranteeing fairness and due process for all” (EOIR’s now long-forgotten and dishonored mission).

11) Lives and the future of democracy are at stake here! America simply can’t afford the “institutionalized nonsense” still rampant at EOIR as illustrated by this case!

12) Also, EOIR’s performance in this cases is inconsistent with almost every sentence of the recent “LA Declaration.” Issuing statements of principle that are directly contradicted by your actual practices is a bad idea!

This has been a bad week for individual rights and particularly the rights and humanity of women in America. Garland can’t fix the out of control, “fringe-right,” Supremes’ majority. But, he can fix EOIR! And, that would be a long overdue and desperately needed first step toward fixing the entire broken and foundering Federal Court system. Start “at the retail level” with what you have the power to fix and work from there!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-24-22

‘SIR JEFFREY” CHASE: Garland’s “First Steps” To Eradicate Misogyny & Anti-Asylum Bias @ EOIR Are Totally Insufficient Without Progressive Personnel Changes — Regulations Will Only Be Effective If Drafted By Progressive Human Rights Experts Of Which There Currently Are NONE @ DOJ Save For Some Immigration Judges In The Field Whose Expertise, Intellectual Integrity, & Moral Courage Has Been Ignored By Team Garland! — There Will Be No Gender, Racial, Or Immigrant Justice @ Justice As Long As Garland Mindlessly Lets “Miller’s Club Denial” Operate @ BIA! — Progressives Must Turn Up The Heat On Garland To Reform & Remake EOIR With Qualified Expert Judges & Dynamic, Independent, Progressive Leaders!

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2021/6/21/first-steps

The latest from the Hon. “Sir Jeffrey:”

JEFFREY S. CHASE | OPINIONS/ANALYSIS ON IMMIGRATION LAW

Blog Archive Press and Interviews Calendar Contact

First Steps

On June 16, Attorney General Merrick Garland finally, mercifully vacated three decisions that formed a key part of the Trump administration’s unrelenting attack on the law of asylum.1 Matter of A-B-, issued by Jeff Sessions in June 2018, took aim in particular at victims of domestic violence.2 Matter of L-E-A-, issued the following year by William Barr, sought to undermine protection for those targeted by gangs due to their familial ties.3 And on January 14, 2021, six days from the end of the Trump Administration, acting A.G. Jeffrey Rosen issued a second decision in A-B-, gratuitously criticizing the method for determining nexus in asylum claims employed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, while conveniently evading that court’s review of the original decision in the case through remand.4

Garland’s action restores the law to where it stood prior to June 11, 2018, but only for the time being. Proposed rules on the subject (which Garland referenced) are due by October 30, when they will first be subjected to a period of public comment. If final rules are eventually published, it will occur well into next year.

As we sigh in collective relief and celebrate the first steps towards correcting our asylum laws, let’s also take note of the imperfect place in which the case law stands at present.

As to domestic violence claims, the BIA’s 2014 decision in Matter of A-R-C-G- (which Matter of A-B- had vacated) has been restored as binding precedent.5 That decision was issued at a time when (as now) regulations addressing particular social groups were being contemplated by DHS and EOIR.6 While A-R-C-G- was an extremely welcome development, the Board used it to recognize a rather narrowly-defined group: “married women in Guatemala who are unable to leave their relationship.” In a footnote to the decision, the Board declined to address the argument of several amici (including UNHCR) that a particular social group may be defined by gender alone. Although A-R-C-G- led to many grants of asylum, some immigration judges relied on the limited scope of the group’s definition to deny claims involving slightly broader variations, in particular, where the victim was not legally married, but nevertheless in a domestic relationship that she was unable to leave. While the BIA reversed some of those denials in unpublished decisions, it declined to speak to the issue through binding precedent.

As to Matter of L-E-A-, Garland’s recent action returns us to the BIA’s original opinion in that case.7 While the decision acknowledged that families constitute particular social groups (a point that was not in dispute, having been universally recognized for some 35 years and stipulated to by DHS), the BIA still denied asylum by invoking a legally incorrect standard for establishing nexus that it has continued to apply in all family-based asylum claims.

For these reasons, the content of the forthcoming regulations will be extremely important in determining the future of asylum in this country. While a return to the test for social group cognizability expressed in the BIA’s 1985 precedent in Matter of Acosta tops most regulation wish lists, I will focus the discussion here on a couple of more specific items necessary to correct the shortcomings of Matter of A-R-C-G- and Matter of L-E-A-.

First, the regulations need to explicitly recognize that a particular social group may be defined by gender alone. In its 2002 Gender Guidelines, UNHCR identified women “as a clear example of a social subset defined by innate and immutable characteristics, and who are frequently treated differently than men,” and whose “characteristics also identify them as a group in society, subjecting them to different treatment and standards in some countries.”8 However, over the nineteen years since those guidelines were issued, the BIA has consistently avoided considering the issue.

The peril of defining gender-based groups in the more narrow manner employed by the BIA has been addressed by two distinguished commentators, who explain that such practice results in “constant re-litigating of such claims,” sometimes creating “an obstacle course in which the postulated group undergoes constant redefinition.”9 And of course, that is exactly what has happened here, as A-R-C-G- gave way to A-B-, which led to differing interpretations among different courts until Garland’s recent reset. The above-mentioned commentators further decried the “nitpicking around the margins of the definition” resulting from the narrow approach when the true reason for the risk of persecution to the applicant “is simply her membership in the social group of ‘women.’”10 Regulations recognizing gender alone as a particular social group would thus provide clarity to judges and asylum officers, eliminate the wastefulness of drawn out litigation involving “nitpicking around the margins,” and bring our laws into line with international standards.

But as L-E-A- demonstrates, recognition of a group alone does not guarantee asylum protection. In order for a group’s recognition to be meaningful, the regs must also address an ongoing problem with the BIA’s method for determining nexus, or whether persecution is “on account of” the group membership.

The BIA is accorded deference by Article III courts when it reasonably interprets immigration laws, provided that the meaning of the language in question is ambiguous. However, the “on account of” standard included by Congress in defining the term “refugee” is quite clear; its meaning is long established, and in fact, is not particular to immigration law.

The Supreme Court referenced this standard last year in a non-immigration case, Bostock v. Clayton County. The Court explained that the test

incorporates the “‘simple’” and “traditional” standard of but-for causation…. That form of causation is established whenever a particular outcome would not have happened “but for” the purported cause….In other words, a but-for test directs us to change one thing at a time and see if the outcome changes. If it does, we have found a but-for cause.11

In a 2015 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit applied this exact test in the asylum context to conclude that persecution was on account of family, determining that the petitioner’s “relationship to her son is why she, and not another person, was threatened with death if she did not allow him to join Mara 18.”12 But for some reason, the BIA has felt entitled to reject this established standard outside of the Fourth Circuit in favor of its own excessively restrictive one.

Had the proper test for nexus been employed in L-E-A-, asylum would have been granted. Under the facts of that case, once the familial relationship is removed from the equation, the asylum-seeker’s risk ceases to exist. However, the BIA instead imposed an incorrect test for nexus requiring evidence of an “animus against the family or the respondent based on their biological ties, historical status, or other features unique to that family unit.”13

As a former circuit court judge, Garland is particularly qualified to recognize the error in the Board’s approach, as well as the need to correct its course. The problem is compounded by the particular composition of the BIA at present. For example, of the ten immigration judges who were promoted to the BIA during the Trump administration, nine denied asylum more than 90 percent of the time (with the tenth denying 85 percent of such claims). Three had an asylum denial rate in excess of 98 percent.14

This matters, as those high denial rates were achieved in part by using faulty nexus determinations to deny asylum in domestic violence claims, even before the issuance of Matter of A-B-. This was often accomplished by mischaracterizing the abuse as merely personal in nature, referencing only the persecutor’s generally violent nature or inebriated state. The analysis in those decisions did not further examine whether gender might also have been one central reason that the asylum seeker, and not someone else, was targeted.

One BIA Member appointed under Trump recently found no nexus in a domestic violence claim by concluding that the persecutor had not targeted the asylum seeker because of her membership in the group consisting of “women,” but rather because she was his woman. There is no indication in the decision that the Board Member considered why the persecutor might view another human being as belonging to him and lacking the same rights he seems to enjoy. Might it have been because of her gender?

Without a correction through published regulations, there is little reason to expect different treatment of these claims moving forward. Let’s hope that the Attorney General views his recent action as only the first steps on a longer path to a correct application of the law.

Copyright 2021, Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.

Notes:

Matter of A-B-, 28 I&N Dec. 307 (A.G. 2021) (“A-B- III”); Matter of L-E-A-, 28 I&N Dec. 304 (A.G. 2021) (“L-E-A- III”).

27 I&N Dec. 316 (A.G. 2018) (“A-B- I”).

27 I&N Dec. 581 (A.G. 2019) (“L-E-A- II”).

28 I&N Dec. 199 (A.G. 2021) (“A-B- II”).

26 I&N Dec. 388 (BIA 2014).

The regulations under consideration at that time were never issued.

27 I&N Dec. 40 (BIA 2017) (“L-E-A- I”).

UNHCR, Guidelines on International Protection: Gender-Related Persecution within the context of Article 1A(2) of the 1951 Convention and/or its 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (May 2002) at para. 30.

James C. Hathaway and Michelle Foster, The Law of Refugee Status, Second Edition (Cambridge University Press, 2014) at 442.

Hathaway and Foster, supra.

Bostock v. Clayton County, 140 S.Ct. 1731, 1739 (2020).

Hernandez-Avalos v. Lynch, 784 F.3d 944, 950 (4th Cir. 2015).

L-E-A- I, supra at 47.

See TRAC (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse) Immigration Judge Reports https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/judgereports/.Republished with permission.

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

Without progressive intervention, this is still headed for failure @ EOIR! A few things to keep in mind.

- Former Attorney General, the late Janet Reno, ordered the same regulations on gender-based asylum to be promulgated more than two decades ago — never happened!
- The proposed regulations that did finally emerge along the way (long after Reno’s departure) were horrible — basically an ignorant mishmash of various OIL litigation positions that would have actually made it easier for IJs to arbitrarily deny asylum (as if they needed any invitation) and easier for OIL to defend such bogus denials.
- There is nobody currently at “Main Justice” or EOIR HQ qualified to draft these regulations! Without long overdue progressive personnel changes the project is almost “guaranteed to fail” – again!
- Any regulations entrusted to the current “Miller Lite Denial Club” @ the BIA ☠️ will almost certainly be twisted out of proportion to deny asylum and punish women refugees, as well as deny due process and mock fundamental fairness. It’s going to take more than regulations to change the “culture of denial” and the “institutionalized anti-due-process corner cutting” @ the BIA and in many Immigration Courts.
- Garland currently is mindlessly operating the “worst of all courts” — a so-called “specialized (not) court” where the expertise, independence, and decisional courage is almost all “on the outside” and sum total of the subject matter expertise and relevant experience of those advocating before his bogus “courts” far exceeds that of the “courts” themselves and of Garland’s own senior team! That’s why the deadly, embarrassing, sophomoric mistakes keep flowing into the Courts of Appeals on a regular basis.
- No regulation can bring decisional integrity and expertise to a body that lacks both!
- Any progressive who thinks Garland is going to solve the problem @ EOIR without “outside intervention” should keep this nifty “five month snapshot of EOIR under Biden” in mind:
  - Progressive judges appointed to BIA: 0
  - Progressive judges appointed to Immigration Court: 0
  - Progressives installed in leadership positions @ EOIR permanently or temporarily: 0
  - Billy Barr Selected Immigration Judges Appointed: 17
  - “Miller Lite” holdover individuals still holding key positions @ EOIR: many (only two removed to date)
  - Number of BIA precedents decided in favor of respondent: 2
  - Number of BIA precedents decided in favor of DHS: 9

That’s right, folks: Billy Barr and Stephen Miller have had more influence and gotten more deference from Garland at EOIR than have the progressive experts and advocates who fought tirelessly to preserve due process and to get the Biden Administration into office. How does that a make sense?

“Miller Lite” – Garland’s Vision of “Justice @ Justice” for Communities of Color — Finally vacating two grotesquely wrong anti-female, anti-asylum precedents hasn’t ended the “Miller Lite Unhappy Hour” for migrants and their advocates at Garland’s foundering DOJ!

Progressives, advocates, and NGOs must keep raising hell until we finally get the “no-brainer,” long overdue, obvious, personnel, legal, structural, institutional, and cultural changes at EOIR that America needs! Waiting for Judge Garland to get around to it is like “Waiting for Godot!” Perhaps worse — I don’t recollect that anyone died waiting for Godot!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever! The BIA Denial Club, Never!🏴‍☠️

PWS

06-22-21

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🤮👎IT JUST KEEPS GETTING WORSE @ GARLAND’S BIA — Plethora of Errors, Mischaracterizations, Misogyny, and Abuses Emanate From Garland’s Deadly, Out Of Control Star Chambers In Falls Church — How Many Deaths & Embarrassments Is It Going To Take For Judge G. To Finally Pull The Plug 🔌 On This Dangerous, Incompetent Band Of Scofflaws? — Issue = Asylum For Rape Victim/Abused Widow In India!

https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2021/06/21/18-72786.pdf

Kaur v. Garland, 9th Cir., 06-21-21, published

PANEL:Mary M. Schroeder and Marsha S. Berzon, Circuit Judges, and Salvador Mendoza, Jr.,* District Judge.

OPINION BY: Judge Mendoza

STAFF SUMMARY:

Granting Ravinder Kaur’s petition for review of a decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals, and remanding, the panel held that the Board erred in concluding that Kaur failed to establish material changed circumstances to warrant an exception to the time limitation on her motion to reopen, and in concluding that she failed to establish prima facie eligibility for asylum, withholding of removal, or protection under the Convention Against Torture.

Kaur sought to reopen her removal proceedings based on a combination of changed personal circumstances – the death of her abusive husband and his family’s threats that they would kill her if she returned to India because she was responsible for his death, and changed country conditions – including worsening conditions in India for women and widows.

The panel held that the Board mischaracterized the record and erred in concluding that Kaur presented evidence of only changed personal circumstances in support of reopening. The panel explained that while a self-induced change in personal circumstances does not qualify for the changed circumstances exception, that principle cannot apply rigidly when changed circumstances in the country of origin, while personal to the petitioner, are entirely outside her control, as was the case here. The panel further

** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

KAUR V. GARLAND 3

explained that even where any change in personal circumstances is voluntary and did not originate in the country of nationality, the changed circumstances exception applies where changes in personal circumstances are made relevant due to changes in country conditions. The panel wrote that Kaur’s husband’s death, and his family’s death threats, were made relevant by increased violence in India against women, and in particular against widows. The panel further wrote that, contrary to the Board’s determination that Kaur provided evidence of only generalized conditions, Kaur presented evidence demonstrating that the prevalence and severity of human rights violations against women and widows had materially worsened in many respects.

The panel held that the Board also erred in concluding that Kaur failed to establish prima facie eligibility for asylum and withholding of removal relief. First, the panel concluded that the Board erred in determining that Kaur failed to establish that a protected ground, including her membership in a family social group, would be one central reason, or a reason, for the harm she fears. The panel wrote that a person may share an identity with a persecutor, and if a member of a particular social group is persecuted by other members of that same group because those members perceive the applicant as being “insufficiently loyal or authentic” to that group, she has been persecuted on account of a protected ground. Second, the panel concluded that the Board erred by requiring Kaur to show that her similarly situated family members had been mistreated. The panel explained that the safety of similarly situated members of the family who remained in the country of origin may be pertinent to a claim of future persecution, but does not itself disprove it, and in this case, the Board relied on the safety of Kaur’s daughter, who was not similarly situated. Third, the

4 KAUR V. GARLAND

panel concluded that the cultural context and Kaur’s evidence established more than a mere personal vendetta.

The panel held that the Board erred in concluding that Kaur failed to establish prima facie eligibility for CAT protection. First, the panel held that the Board erred in applying a “more likely than not” standard, rather than requiring Kaur to show a “reasonable likelihood” of meeting the statutory requirements for CAT protection. Moreover, the panel concluded that the Board abused its discretion in determining that Kaur did not meet the government consent or acquiescence requirement. The panel pointed out that Kaur presented evidence that her husband’s family is wealthy and has the means of carrying out their threats, that India suffers from widespread corruption, and that officials respond ineffectively to crimes, especially those against women. Based on that evidence, the panel concluded that the Board did not have substantial evidence to dismiss Kaur’s fears as speculation.

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

This is outrageous! In addition to raising issues about Garland’s failure to replace the “Killer BIA” with real progressive judges who are experts in human rights, due process, and immigration law, as almost every expert recommended, it raises serious concerns about Associate AG Vanita Gupta’s inexplicable failure to bring in litigation competence at OIL. Presenting and defending this mess as acceptable performance by DOJ quasi-judicial officials raises very serious ethical questions about both the “judges” and the attorneys defending their obviously defective, bias-based, anti-asylum, anti-female work product.

As many of us have been saying ever since the election, the “thorough housecleaning” at DOJ can’t wait! There is plenty of evidence to get the government lawyers participating in this mockery of justice out of leadership and decision-making positions, at a minimum! The fact that this case was argued under the Trump regime does not change the unethical performance at OIL or the incompetence of the BIA. Folks who “go along to get along” with violations of law and ethics, particularly in support of a White Nationalist agenda, should not be holding responsible Government legal positions. PERIOD!

Every individual and group who believes in due process, equal justice, gender fairness, good government, humanity, racial justice, and legal ethical norms should be demanding that Garland, Monaco, Gupta, and Clarke change leadership at EOIR, immediately relieve and replace (even if on a temporary basis) the BIA, and bring ethics, expertise, and competence to OIL.

Kristen Clarke, some the most outrageous “civil rights abuses” in America here taking place right at the DOJ — at EOIR and OIL! Others are “hidden in plain sight” at DHS, particularly in their “New American Gulag.” You’re NOT going to solve voting rights, police misconduct, or any other civil rights problem in America without first getting the DOJ’s house in order. And, that means standing up to your dawdling and, to date, remarkably ineffective “political bosses” and demanding immediate change!

It’s YOUR REPUTATION, along with the lives of refugee women like Ms. Kaur, that are on the line here!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-21-21

🇺🇸🗽⚖️GEORGE W. BUSH INSTITUTE REPORT: GENDER VIOLENCE ☠️⚰️DRIVES CONTINUING REFUGEE FLOW TO U.S. — Dishonesty Of Sessions’s Misogynistic Attack In Matter Of A-B- 🤮 Exposed Again! — Yet, Garland Fails To Take Action To End Misogyny, Anti-Asylum Culture @ EOIR, Even As He Also Fails To Insist On The Restoration Of The Rule Of Law @ Our Borders! — WHY?🤯

Gender Violence in Central America — Gender Violence continues to to be endemic in Latin America! Yet, shockingly, its victims, refugee women of color, can expect little protection in Garland’s Immigration Courts still applying Jeff Sessions’s inaccurate, misogynistic precedent in Matter of A-B- and continuing to be staffed by too many “judges” selected or promoted by the Trump Administration because of their perceived willingness to support anti-asylum policies targeting many women of color! Recently Garland outraged progressives by appointing 17 “Miller/Barr Holdovers” to powerful, life or death, Immigration Judge positions while eschewing better-qualified progressive experts from the private sector who could bring diversity and gender and racial justice to his dysfunctional Immigration “Courts!”
PHOTO: UNHCR website

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2021/06/03/abuse-of-women-and-children-at-root-of-immigration-crisis/

Abused women at border — Migrant women carry children in the rain at an intake area after turning themselves in upon crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, late Tuesday, May 11, 2021, in La Joya, Texas. The U.S. government continues to report large numbers of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border with an increase in adult crossers. But families and unaccompanied children are still arriving in dramatic numbers despite the weather changing in the Rio Grande Valley registering hotter days and nights. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)(Gregory Bull)

By Natalie Gonnella-Platts and Jenny Villatoro In the Dallas Morning News:

When U.S. Border Patrol found him in the Texas desert, 10-year-old Wilton was crying, “they abandoned me.” Exhausted and alone, his image went viral — a poignant visual of the struggle faced by thousands seeking safety.

But Wilton’s story actually began in Nicaragua when his mother, Meylin, wasn’t able to get legal protection from an abusive partner. Mother and son fled to the United States, seeking asylum, but were expelled under a public health rule and sent to Mexico, where they were kidnapped, according to an account in El Pais. Meylin’s brother in Miami could pay only half the ransom — enough for Wilton alone to be released.

Although Meylin was ultimately released and reunited with her son, the tale that led to Wilton’s arrival at the border as an unaccompanied minor isn’t unique. It illustrates the fact that gender-based violence, revictimization and lack of justice affect children, families and communities thousands of miles away. It also highlights the importance of a safe and legal pathway into the United States for survivors of gender-based violence and other asylum-seekers. For many, arriving at the U.S. border seeking asylum is the only legal pathway available.

Immigration reform in the United States is essential to assuring that we have a secure and efficient border, a system flexible enough to handle changes in migrant flows, and the capacity to treat each migrant with dignity. But more needs to be done in the migrants’ home countries, too, so that they are not forced to flee for their safety in the first place.

Any comprehensive plan on Central America and immigration reform should address gender inequity and gender-based violence.

They are not siloed issues to acknowledge only when horrific stories of femicide and human trafficking force us to pay attention. Rather, they are deeply entangled with broader challenges of corruption and poverty. Proposed solutions shouldn’t overlook the impact of gender-based violence on migrant flows, economic development, education and health.

Fourteen of the 25 most dangerous places for women are in the Western Hemisphere, including countries within Central America. Patriarchy and gang violence subject women and girls to abhorrent actions of abuse and control.

Honduras and El Salvador saw some of the highest incidences of femicide within Latin America in 2019, at rates of 6.2 and 3.3 per 100,000, respectively. In Guatemala, adolescent girls are at a high risk of being “disappeared,” with 8 out of every 10,000 girls between the ages of 15 and 17 reported missing each year.

COVID 19-related lockdowns are being exploited by gangs looking to strengthen control: El Salvador alone has seen a 70% increase in gender-based violence since the beginning of the pandemic. And lockdowns have forced vulnerable individuals to stay in close proximity to their perpetrators. Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador reported an increase in intrafamily violence, with El Salvador reporting an increase in intrafamily femicides as well.

Justice systems and access to services need to be strengthened to ensure adequate protection for all under the law. Legal protections often are inhibited by weak institutions, corruption and a culture of impunity toward perpetrators.

According to a 2017 national survey, two-thirds of Salvadoran women over the age of 15 have experienced violence, but only 6% have ever reported it. While laws against child marriage exist across the region, in some countries about 1 in 3 young women are in a union before age 18. Post-trauma support and efforts that inform Central American women of their rights and agency are critical interventions that could help women like Meylin.

Females have been disproportionately affected by the devastating impact of hurricanes Eta and Iota, but the status of women and girls is chronically overlooked in response efforts, exacerbating the risk of violence.

Women and girls must be seen and heard. Greater focus on gender and age-disaggregated data collection and in tracking the effectiveness and efficiency of legal systems is crucial. And women and their lived experiences need to be more fully represented at all leadership levels.

Finally, direct outreach to local communities should be a priority for U.S. government and private sector-led programs. This includes resource and capacity support for advocates and organizations that serve as lifelines for those affected by violence, often at great personal risk. Engagement with men and boys is equally imperative.

How can anyone be expected to thrive when her day-to-day priority is simply to survive? The United States needs to recognize that gender-based violence and gender inequity drive migration.

Immigration reform must include strategies to address the root causes of migration from Central America in effective and lasting ways to prevent situations like Wilton’s and Meylin’s. Women and girls must be front and center in these solutions.

Natalie Gonnella-Platts serves as the director of the Women’s Initiative at the George W. Bush Institute.

Jenny Villatoro is an associate for the George W. Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative.

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

“Deterrents” and illegally abusing asylum seekers DON’T WORK! It’s not that difficult a concept. Indeed, these misguided attempts at deterrence have been failing consistently under Administrations of both parties for the past four decades. One would think that an “enlightened nation” would try a different approach rather than simply repeating the costly failures of the past in various forms.

What we need are functioning refugee and asylum systems, led and staffed by progressive experts, operating from INSIDE Government, that will grant status to qualified refugee women in a fair and timely manner and set favorable precedents even while separately addressing the endemic problems in the “refugee-sending countries.” Of course, it will result in more legal immigration of refugees and asylum seekers to the U.S. That’s a good thing for both us and those individuals, not something to be feared or unlawfully and dishonestly “deterred!”

With stagnating population growth, we should welcome and facilitate legal immigration of courageous, talented, dedicated refugee women from all countries and their children through the refugee, asylum, and a much more robust legal immigration system!

Thanks to NDPA warrior-queen Debi Sanders for sending in this item. This report should be great evidence for those litigating to halt the Garland misogyny mess at EOIR and, sadly, to some extent in U.S. Courts of Appeals that have chosen to sweep both reality of what’s happening in the Northern Triangle and the patent unconstitutionality of a system governed by bogus precedents entered or promoted by AG’s affiliated with DHS Enforcement who also packed and reshaped the immigration “judiciary” in the image of nativist restrictionists! However, compelling as it is, the report only adds to the existing body of documentation of the dishonest approach by Administrations of both parties to Latin American asylum claims, particularly those of women and children.

For Pete’s sake, first and second year law students know that the EOIR travesty is unconstitutional! Why are life-tenured Article III Judges covering it up? Hopefully, history will take note of their mal-performance on the bench! These guys are life-tenured! So, what’s their excuse for not upholding the Constitution against clear Congressional and Executive abuses?

Hard for me to say this. But, former President George W. Bush is doing more for human rights, gender rights, civil rights, and immigrants rights’ than Garland or anyone else at the Biden DOJ! At least he speaks out publicly for the humanity and contributions of migrants and for their fair and generous treatment, which is more than any member of the Biden Administration has done as they continue to mistake softening the rhetoric with taking firm action to reverse White Nationalist policies and replace them with readily achievable progressive ones.

Meanwhile, despite pleas from nearly every expert, progressive, human rights, immigrants’ rights, and gender rights group in the U.S., Garland continues to allow Sessions’s wrong, toxic, and misogynistic decision in Matter of A-B – to remain in place and threaten the lives of female refugees while ignoring the misogynistic, anti-asylum, culture inculcated by Sessions and Barr at EOIR that continues to flourish and daily dish out abuse to migrants and their representatives without meaningful consequences.

Judge Merrick Garland — “ . . . while this guy continues to apply misogynistic precedents, eschew progressive experts, recycle failed ‘Aimless Docket Reshuffling’ gimmicks, and allow the Trump-era anti-asylum culture to continue to flourish at EOIR and DOJ?” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland
Official White House Photo
Public Realm

What, indeed, is someone like AAG Vanita Gupta doing with herself at Garland’s anti-progressive, and anti-due-process mess at DOJ? Why are folks like her and Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke there in the first place if they aren’t going to stand up to Garland’s tone-deaf, inept approach to gender rights, human rights, and racial justice @ EOIR? How, on earth, do you lead a “Civil Rights Division” while turning a blind eye to grotesque violations of civil and human rights going on daily in your “Boss’s” wholly owned “court” system that functions like no “real court” in America? What’s DAG Lisa Monaco doing presiding over a gender disaster at EOIR? It’s straight out of “Jim Crow!”

James “Jim” Crow
Symbol of American Racism, still right at home at Garland’s EOIR!

And, I wouldn’t say that Vice President Harris is looking very good either, as she “swallows the whistle” on notorious scofflaw human rights violations that she was well aware of from her time in the Senate! Doesn’t anyone in the Biden Administration have the backbone to speak up for human rights, human decency, and restoring the rule of law? Is it REALLY our position that following the Constitution, our statutory laws, and the international treaties to which we are party is beyond the capabilities of the U.S. Government? If so, what, may I ask, is the difference between us an any third world dictatorship where laws have no meaning?

Vice President Kamala Harris — Vice President Kamala D. Harris. “Our first African-American, AAPI, child of immigrants VEEP seems curiously deaf and indifferent to the gross abuses being heaped on migrants and women of color at EOIR and at our Souther Border! What’s her excuse for turning her back on the progressive, human rights, gender equality groups that helped put her in office. Why is she remaining silent as Garland continues to appoint Billy Barr’s hand-selected non-progressive, non-diverse Immigration Judges to a life-determining “judiciary” that the Biden Administration wholly controls? How can you create a progressive, diverse, Article III Judiciary that will promote racial equity when you’re unwilling to apply those values and selection criteria to a huge judiciary that you actually control? What message are you sending to ‘next generation progressive attorneys of color’ when you allow Garland to ignore them in favor of lesser qualified candidates? Why aren’t you out there actively recruiting more attorneys of color and other underrepresented groups for the Immigration Judiciary rather than allowing Garland to use same-old, same old bogus “USA Jobs Phantom recruitments?” Lots of unanswered questions here!
Vice President of the United States
(Official Senate Photo)

I can’t figure it out! But, I do know that Garland’s lousy stewardship at EOIR, failure to speak out for fundamental fairness, usher in progressive changes, and restore due process @ EOIR has reached “crisis proportions” affecting our entire justice system and threatening democracy!

Hopefully, progressive advocacy, human rights, and civil rights groups will keep up the pressure and demands for long, long, long overdue and readily achievable changes at EOIR: in leadership, precedents, culture, and administration of justice! (Get this: Garland just created yet another bogus “Dedicated Docket” without a functional e-filing system to make it work! That’s “Aimless Docket Reshuffling 101,” as anyone who has actually had to deal with the mess in his Immigration Courts could tell him. But, he’s apparently not interested!) Right now, it’s an unmitigated “disaster zone” continuing to spiral downward!

There is a direct link between the “Dred Scottification of the other” that Garland countenances at EOIR and the overall failure of our justice system to deal effectively with institutionalized racism! The U.S. has a long, disreputable history of treating women and persons of color as “non persons” under the Constitution. Much of it traces to our immigration laws where “the others” are routinely dehumanized, stereotyped, demonized, and abused by those who falsely claim to be furthering the “rule of law!” We will NOT achieve racial justice for all in America until we deal with the festering wounds intentionally inflicted on women, children, and people of color in our immigration system, at EOIR, and illegally continuing at our borders!

By choice, Garland now “owns” the misogynistic, anti-due-process, anti-asylum disaster @ EOIR. Make him deal with it in a constructive way!

🇺🇸🗽⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever! Garland’s continued tolerance of misogyny and the anti-due-process, anti-asylum culture at EOIR, NEVER! Stop Garland’s continuing misogynistic nonsense before more refugee women and people of color needlessly die! What’s it going to take finally to get some “real justice @ Justice?”

PWS

06-05-21

😎WIN ONE, LOSE ONE☹️: 9TH CIR. ANNIHILATES MATTER OF ARMENDAREZ-MENDEZ (SUA SPONTE REOPENING), WHILE 11TH CIR. WOODENLY ENDORSES 👎🏻 MATTER OF L-E-A- (NEXUS)!☠️⚰️

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca9-on-departure-bar-sua-sponte-reopening-balerio-rubalcaba-v-garland#

CA9 on Departure Bar, Sua Sponte Reopening: Balerio Rubalcaba v. Garland

Balerio Rubalcaba v. Garland

“This case presents the question whether the departure bar limits an IJ’s ability to reopen immigration proceedings sua sponte. We have jurisdiction to review questions of law under 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(D), and we conclude that the departure bar does not apply in the context of sua sponte reopening. That is, an IJ’s discretion to reopen a case on his or her own motion is not limited by the fact that a noncitizen has previously been removed or has departed from the United States. Therefore, we grant the petition for review.”

[Hats off to Elsa Martinez!]

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

https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/201915091.pdf

KELLY SANCHEZ-CASTRO,

versus

U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL,

________________________

Petition for Review of a Decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals _______________________

(June 1, 2021)

Petitioner,

Respondent.

Before WILLIAM PRYOR, Chief Judge, LUCK and ED CARNES, Circuit Judges.

WILLIAM PRYOR, Chief Judge:

Kelly Sanchez-Castro, a native of El Salvador, petitions for our review after

she unsuccessfully sought relief from removal because a gang targeted her family based on the assumption that her father’s work in the United States made it

USCA11 Case: 19-15091 Date Filed: 06/01/2021 Page: 2 of 15

wealthy. The Board of Immigration Appeals denied her applications for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture, and substantial evidence supports its decision. Sanchez-Castro is ineligible for asylum and withholding of removal because the gang that targeted her family did so only as a means to the end of obtaining funds, not because of any animus against her family. And she is ineligible for protection under the Convention Against Torture because she has not established that any harm she will suffer if returned to her home country will come with at least the acquiescence of a government official. We deny Sanchez-Castro’s petition for review.

. . . .

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

To reach its incorrect and life-threatening endorsement of the BIA’s misconstruction of the nexus requirements (throwing out the normal rules of causation to achieve an anti-asylum-seeker result) the 11th Circuit panel eschewed a much better and more intellectually honest approach by the 4th Circuit in Hernandez-Avalos v. Lynch, 784 F.3d 944, 950 (4th Cir. 2015).

Notwithstanding Chief Judge Pryor’s cavalier attitude about sending Ms. Castro-Sanchez back to possible death or dismemberment at the hands of gangs who operate with relative impunity in El Salvador, these are not “academic exercises.” They are serious life or death matters involving bad law produced by a (non) “court” (the BIA) controlled by a law enforcement official (the Attorney General) that is not comprised of judges who are recognized experts in asylum and immigration laws and has over recent history construed the law against immigrants at almost every opportunity!

These two cases show the difference between this panel of the 9th Circuit that takes judicial review and what’s at stake seriously and the “indifferent to humanity” rubber-stamp approach applied by the 11th Circuit panel. We need better judges, progressives with expertise in due process, human rights, immigration, and racial justice at every level of our Federal Judiciary — from the Immigration Courts to the Supremes! Circuits like the 5th and the 11th with long and disgraceful records of relative indifference to the rights and lives of migrants, mostly those of color, are long, long overdue for infusion of better qualified progressive “practical scholars” and advocates.

That makes the progressive outrage over Garland’s totally inappropriate “giveaway” of Immigration Judge positions he controls to Barr-selected, non progressive, candidates who applied under a flawed recruitment process designed to discourage diversity and exclude the best qualified expert candidates from the private sector, along with his failure to address skewed anti-asylum-seeker precedents like L-E-A- and A-B– all the more understandable! It also makes changes that will put more expert, progressive, due-process oriented judges who have experience representing individuals in court all the more urgent!

Cases like this wouldn’t get into the “Article III Life or Death Lottery” if Garland had dealt promptly and properly with L-E-A-, A-B-, and other Trump-era, anti-asylum, anti-migrant, anti-due-process, misogynist precedents!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever! Tell the Biden Administration that we need progressives, not more “regressives,” on the Federal Bench, starting with the Immigration Courts! End abusive judging by a non-diverse Federal Judiciary!

PWS

06-04-21

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🆘NO JUSTICE @ JUSTICE! — OUTRAGE OF PROGRESSIVE EXPERTS CONTINUES TO GROW AS GARLAND FAILS TO VACATE SESSIONS/BARR RACIST, MISOGYNIST, ANTI-IMMIGRANT, UNETHICAL, BIASED PRECEDENTS — “Garland’s Star Chambers” Careen Further Out Of Control As AG Dithers While Lives Of Vulnerable Refugee Women Hang in Balance & Pro Bono Advocates Are Forced To Exhaust Resources Fighting Trump DOJ’s Misdeeds That Biden Has Failed To Fix, Despite Promises — “Unforced Errors,” Lack Of Competent Progressive Leadership Continue To Plague Flawed Immigration Agenda @ Justice, Offend Dem Supporters! — Expert Professors Karen Musalo & Stephen Legomsky Call For Immediate Vacating Of Repulsive Matter of A-B- Abomination Before More Lives Of Women Of Color Are Lost!

Professor Karen Musalo
Director, Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, Hastings Law

Stephen Legomsky — Professor Stephen H. Legomsky
Emeritus Professor of Law & Former USG Senior Executive
Washington U. Law
PHOTO: Washington U. Law website

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/552539-one-quick-asylum-fix-how-garland-can-help-domestic-violence-survivors

Karen & Steve write in The Hill:

With the stroke of a pen, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland could restore access to life-saving protection for domestic violence survivors and others caught in the crosshairs of his predecessors’ campaign to exclude refugees. Garland can and should immediately vacate Jeff Sessions’ 2018 decision in the case known as Matter of A-B-, which all but eliminated asylum for people fleeing brutal domestic violence.

On the campaign trail Joe Biden pledged to reverse Matter of A-B- and ensure a fair opportunity for survivors to seek asylum. As president, Biden has issued an executive order directing his Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to review their asylum policies and, by August, determine whether our country protects people fleeing domestic violence in a way that’s consistent with international standards. Following this review, the agencies will issue regulations that bring our treatment of asylum seekers into alignment with our treaty obligations, and with basic principles of humanity and fairness.

But this process will span many months, and when lives are on the line, more immediate action is imperative. Every day Matter of A-B- remains in effect, people are being wrongly denied asylum and delivered into the hands of the very persecutors they’ve fled.

How did we get into this mess? In 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions personally intervened in the case of Ms. A.B., a Salvadoran woman. He used her case as a vehicle to overrule a landmark Justice Department opinion recognizing domestic violence as a potential basis for asylum. That ruling was the culmination of 15 years of advocacy and extensive consideration by government agencies and refugee law experts.

The impact of Sessions’ decision was immediate and catastrophic. Immigration judges around the country began denying asylum in cases that — pre-Matter of A-B- — should have been relatively straightforward. Though some survivors could still prevail in immigration court, Trump administration attorneys would often appeal these cases to the Justice Department’s appellate tribunal, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and get them overturned.

. . . .

One of the authors — Professor Musalo — represents a victim of Sessions’ attack on survivors: We’ll call her “Cristina” to protect anonymity. Cristina fled Honduras after enduring nearly two decades of domestic violence so severe it once put her in a month-long coma. Cristina was also terrorized by a politically powerful family that murdered multiple siblings and close relatives. When Cristina received a note threatening her with the same fate, she knew she had no choice but to seek asylum.

Cases like Cristina’s have life-or-death stakes, but with Sessions’ ruling intact they are being denied automatically. Though Cristina presented a strong asylum application, in 2020 the Board of Immigration Appeals denied her case, ruling that Matter of A-B- precluded protection. Cristina now faces imminent deportation to Honduras, where she is terrified she’ll be killed.

Merrick Garland can protect survivors like Cristina by simply vacating Sessions’ decision and related asylum rulings from Trump’s Department of Justice. This would at least bring us back to where we were before — not a perfect world, but one where asylum seekers had a fairer shot — while the Justice Department prepares a more humane and legally defensible set of principles to guide future decision-making in asylum cases.

. . . .

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

Read the complete op-ed at the link.

If the current BIA were replaced with competent, expert, progressive, due-process oriented judges tomorrow, as should have happened months ago, this problem could be solved immediately.

I have no doubt that with real asylum experts like Karen as appellate judges at the BIA, Matter of A-B- would rapidly be turned into a blueprint for efficiently granting needed protection to persecuted women. It would also serve as a much needed tool for ending the “asylum free zones” unethically and unprofessionally established by some Immigration Judges throughout the country and starting the long overdue process for removing those unqualified Immigration Judges who are unable or unwilling to fairly grant asylum to qualified applicants and who have created an unacceptable anti-asylum, racist, misogynist culture in some parts of EOIR, in other words the “95% denial club” needs to go! Now!

Disgracefully, that culture was actually encouraged and rewarded by White Nationalist political hacks like Sessions and Barr — folks who never, ever should have had any role in asylum adjudication in America, let alone been permitted to unethically act as “judges” in cases they had “pre-decided” on a mass basis! “Fair and impartial adjudicator,” the core of American constitutional due process, became a sick joke under Sessions and Barr as the Supremes and many Article IIIs disgracefully and spinelessly looked the other way. And, Garland has done nothing to effectively address or reverse this toxic, anti-due-process, racist, misogynist “culture” despite having been told by experts that it was an emergency that could not wait!

Karen and Steve also point out how the BIA disintegrated from a tribunal that was supposed to guarantee fairness and due process for migrants, implement best judicial practices, and protect the most vulnerable from Government overreach into a tool and weapon of DHS enforcement! Yet, 100 days into the Biden Administration, BIA appellate judges who “toadied up” to the Trump regime’s White Nationalist agenda and aided “Dred Scottification” of “the other” by Stephen MIller remain, and experts who should have replaced them remain “on the outside looking in.”

If the Biden Administration and Garland are incapable of putting diverse, qualified progressive experts into a judiciary that they actually control, what are the prospects for progressive transformation of the Article IIIs? That makes this week’s disclosure that Garland mindlessly appointed 17 “Miller Lite” Immigration Judges left over from Barr’s flawed recruitment and scummy tenure instead of properly using these valuable positions to start building a long overdue progressive, expert judiciary at EOIR all the more infuriating and outrageous!

The unmitigated, entirely unnecessary, and potentially solvable due process disaster at EOIR will prevent any meaningful progressive immigraton reforms, whether by legislation or Executive action! It’s also undermines racial justice, threatens the future of American justice, and undermines our democracy every day that it festers away, unaddressed.

Garland must fix this problem starting now! Reassigning the 17 judges who should not have been hired and are still in probation, re-competing their positions under merit criteria that encourage applications from all sources and promote diversity, and cancelling the ridiculous plans for the unneeded, due process denying Richmond Adjudication Center (“Star Chamber”) should be just the start.

“Unit Chief Immigration Judges” are needed like a hole in the head, probably less. They were a bogus idea cooked up by now deposed former Director McHenry to aid in his misguided union busting initiative. What is needed is less bogus judicial supervision (whoever heard of qualified judges needing “supervisors”) and the accompanying time and resource wasting gimmicks, better professional judicial management, and more competent, progressive, independent, expert immigration judges with experience representing asylum applicants and other immigrants in Immigration Courts and judges with NGO and clinical experience who actually know how to manage dockets and solve problems — skills that are in perilously short supply at EOIR.

Garland needs to replace the “gang that can’t shoot straight” @ DOJ and EOIR with some progressive experts and let them start fixing problems and knocking heads of those still stuck in the Sessions/Barr era! Some of us believe that elections should have consequences. Among those is the immediate end of “Miller Lite Justice @ Justice” and the type of promised due process reforms that got Biden and Harris elected in the first place!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-09-21

🇺🇸⚖️🗽GARCIA HERNANDEZ, MOSKOWITZ, CHEN, & I RIP GARLAND’S CONTINUATION OF BARR’S HORRIBLE IMMIGRATION JUDGE HIRING PRACTICES 🤮👎🏻 — DOJ’s Lame, Disingenuous Defense Of Garland’s Anti-Diversity, Anti-Immigrant, Anti-Due Process, Expertise-Denying Bogus Judicial Hiring Practices @ EOIR Enrages Progressives, Scholars, Experts, Betrays Biden’s Promises, Threatens To Shatter Dem Coalition! — Report By Rebecca Beitsch @ The Hill!

Rebecca Beitsch
Staff Writer
The Hill
PHOTO: pewtrust.org

https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/552373-biden-fills-immigration-court-with-trump-hires

From Rebecca’s article:

. . . .

The first 17 hires to the court system responsible for determining whether migrants get to remain in the country is filled with former prosecutors and counselors for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as well as a few picks with little immigration experience.

Almost none have made their career representing migrants in court.

The Thursday announcement from the Department of Justice (DOJ) initially perplexed immigration attorneys, advocates and even some former immigration judges who wondered why the group so closely mirrored the jurists favored by the Trump administration.

. . . .

It’s also a surprising move for a president that has otherwise sought to quickly reverse a number of Trump immigration policies while calling for a more humane response to migration.

“This is a list I would have expected out of Bill Barr or Jeff Sessions, but they’re not the attorney general anymore. Elections are supposed to have consequences,” said Paul Schmidt, now an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law School after 21 years as an immigration judge. That included time serving as the chair of the Board of Immigration Appeals, the highest administrative body dealing with immigration cases.

“No one on that list is among the top 100 asylum authorities in the country, and that’s the kind of people they should be hiring — not prosecutorial re-treads,” he added.

. . . .

DOJ pushed back against criticism that the new judges would contribute to a pattern of rulings that favor government attorneys over immigrants, saying it “takes seriously any claims of unjustified and significant anomalies in adjudicator decision-making and takes steps to evaluate disparities.”

“Note also that the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) continually evaluates its processes and procedures to ensure that immigration cases are adjudicated fairly, impartially and expeditiously and that its immigration judges uniformly interpret and administer U.S. immigration laws,” the spokesperson said.

But Schmidt said diversifying the attorneys on the bench is what will be needed to have a greater impact.

“You need to get some progressive immigration experts into the system who recognize what good asylum claims are who can establish precedent for granting cases and then move those cases through the system,” he said.

“I haven’t seen much evidence to back up their initial claim they want to be fair and just to asylum seekers. It’s just Stephen Miller Lite.”

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

The DOJ’s response is preposterous, further evidence Garland is the wrong person to bring “justice” back to “Justice!” No, and I mean NO, progressive immigration expert in America would call the DOJ’s judicial hiring practices under the Trump Administration fair and merit-based! These lists and the selection process were tainted by the Trump kakistocracy at DOJ. What kind of Attorney General perpetuates this utter nonsense!

Numerous detailed reports have criticized the Trump hiring plan that Garland mindlessly and insultingly furthered! Garland has access to all of these criticisms, most of which were delivered to the Biden Transition Team in one form or another. No excuses for Garland’s atrocious handling of EOIR to date!

The claim that EOIR takes claims of glaring discrepancies “seriously” is equally ridiculous and intellectually dishonest! Current TRAC Immigration data shows asylum grant rates for currently sitting Immigration Judges varying from more than 90% to 1% with a number of Immigration Judges, including several “rewarded” with appointments to the BIA under Barr, denying 98% or 99% of claims. Duh, you don’t need to be a statistician or have an Ivy League law degree to know that there is a skunk 🦨 in these woods!

These are major, unacceptable discrepancies first highlighted by my colleagues Professor Andy Schoenholtz, Professor Phil Schrag, and Professor and now Associate Dean (Temple Law) Jaya Ramji Nogales in their seminal work “Refugee Roulette” written more than a decade ago at Georgetown Law. The system is actually immeasurably worse now than it was then, as Sessions and Barr filled the Immigration Bench and packed the BIA with unqualified judges notorious for their lack of knowledge of asylum law and their anti-asylum bias. In some cases, they combined those shortcomings with allegations of rudeness and unprofessional behavior lodged by the private bar.

The NY Times figured out exactly what is wrong with the Immigration Courts — that they are not really “courts” at all by any normal measure and are operated by individuals who place immigration enforcement above due process and equal justice. Garland is certainly smart enough to have figured out what the NYT Editorial Writers had no difficulty in documenting and describing!

Neither Biden nor Garland would be in their current jobs without the efforts of progressive immigration litigators and scholars over the past four years and the energy and resources they injected into the Biden-Harris campaign when the chips were down! Progressives can’t allow the Biden Administration and Garland to continue to treat them as “chopped liver” while coddling Stephen Miller, Billy Barr, and, outrageously, even “AG for 5 minutes” “Monty Python” Wilkinson’s clearly unjustified and highly inappropriate judicial picks!

These are NOT bureaucratic jobs. “Conditional offers” aren’t “jobs,” particularly when made in the “excepted service” on the eve of or even after a hotly contested election where immigration and human rights were major issues! Immigration Judge positions are important life or death judicial positions in what is now America’s worst and most broken judiciary. In that context, Garland’s inappropriate judicial selections are totally outrageous and set a tone of continuing disrespect and disregard for some of the Democratic Party’s most loyal supporters, their expertise, and the important communities they represent!

It’s time for the Biden Administration to pay attention to the progressive immigration/human rights/due process bar! Otherwise, perhaps it’s time for progressives to turn their energies and talents to opposing an Administration that neither represents their views nor values their expertise and tireless efforts in support of American democracy and equal justice for all!

I, for one, did not go to the polls last fall to help more “Billy the Bigot” picks off tainted, exclusionary lists, developed in a culture that actively discouraged progressives and minority attorneys from applying, get jobs as Immigration Judges for which there is no way that they are the best candidates available! And, I’ll bet that neither did other members of the NDPA! Enough is enough! End the EOIR Clown Show!☠️🤡 And, if Garland can’t or won’t do that, then Biden needs a new AG before Garland irrevocably splinters the Democratic base with his gross mishandling of EOIR!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-09-21

☠️🤮👎🏻⚰️OUTRAGEOUS “MILLER LITE” JUSTICE! — NO WONDER GARLAND WANTED TO KEEP HIS “JUDICIAL PICKS” SECRET! — It’s A “Two Sharp Sticks In The Eyes” Putdown Of The Human Rights/Immigration Advocacy Community That Helped Boost Biden & Harris To Their Jobs! — Tired Of Being Ignored, Disrespected, & Take For Granted? — Had Enough Of The Consistent Stupidity, Mind-Numbing Ineptitude, & Total Contempt For Constitutional Due Process @ EOIR Under Both The Dems & The GOP?

It’s “Miller Lite Time” @ Garland’s DOJ as this Dude gets the last laugh over immigration/human rights/due process advocates and experts who worked for Biden’s election! — Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com

Every member of the NDPA should be outraged by Garland’s treachery:

https://www.justice.gov/eoir/file/1392116/download

Here’s the latest farcical roster of prosecutors, government attorneys, and non-immigration experts to be inflicted on migrants and their attorneys:

NOTICE

U.S. Department of Justice

Executive Office for Immigration Review

Office of Policy

5107 Leesburg Pike

Falls Church, Virginia 22041

Contact: Communications and Legislative Affairs Division

Phone: 703-305-0289 Fax: 703-605-0365 PAO.EOIR@usdoj.gov @DOJ_EOIR

www.justice.gov/eoir

May 6, 2021

EOIR Announces 17 New Immigration Judges

FALLS CHURCH, VA – The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) today announced 17 new Immigration Judges (IJs), including one Assistant Chief Immigration Judge (ACIJ) and six Unit Chief Immigration Judges (UCIJs). ACIJs are responsible for overseeing the operations of their assigned immigration courts. In addition to their management responsibilities, they will hear cases. UCIJs serve as IJs in formal judicial hearings conducted via video teleconference and supervise the staff assigned to their virtual courtroom. IJs preside in formal judicial hearings and make decisions that are final unless formally appealed.

After a thorough application process, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed Megan B. Herndon, Wade T. Napier, Tamaira Rivera, David H. Robertson, Elizabeth Crites, Bryan E. DePowell, Nicholle M. Hempel, Kathy J. Lemke, Martinque M. Parker, David M. Paxton, Bryan D. Watson, Kenya L. Wells, and Mark R. Whitworth to their new positions; then-Acting Attorney General Monty Wilkinson appointed Adam Perl to his new position; then-Acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen appointed William H. McDermott to his new position; and then-Attorney General William P. Barr appointed Elliot M. Kaplan and Jeb T. Terrien to their new positions.

Biographical information follows:

Megan B. Herndon, Assistant Chief Immigration Judge, Richmond Immigration Adjudication Center

Megan B. Herndon was appointed as an Assistant Chief Immigration Judge to begin supervisory immigration court duties and hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Herndon earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1999 from Occidental College and a Juris Doctor in 2002 from the University of San Diego School of Law. From 2020 to 2021, she served as Senior Regulatory Coordinator, Office of Visa Services, Bureau of Consular Affairs, Department of State (DOS), in the District of Columbia. From 2018 to 2020, she served as Deputy Director of Legal Affairs, Office of Visa Services, Bureau of Consular Affairs, DOS. From 2015 to 2018, she served as Chief of the Legislation and Regulations Division, Office of Visa Services, Bureau of Consular Affairs, DOS. From 2013 to 2015, she served as a Section Chief, Immigration Law and Practice Division, Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in the District of Columbia and Falls Church, Virginia. From 2009 to 2013, she served as an Appellate Counsel, OPLA, ICE, DHS, in Falls

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Church. From 2007 to 2009, she served as an Assistant Chief Counsel, OPLA, ICE, DHS, in San Diego. From 2002 to 2007, she served as an Assistant Chief Counsel, OPLA, ICE, DHS, in Los Angeles, entering on duty through the Attorney General’s Honors Program. Judge Herndon is a member of the District of Columbia Bar and State Bar of California.

Wade T. Napier, Unit Chief Immigration Judge, Richmond Immigration Adjudication Center

Wade T. Napier was appointed as a Unit Chief Immigration Judge to begin supervisory immigration adjudication center duties and hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Napier earned a Bachelor of Science in 2001 from Transylvania University and a Juris Doctor in 2005 from Northern Kentucky University–Salmon P. Chase College of Law. From 2008 to 2021, he served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky, in Lexington. In 2008, he served as a Staff Attorney for a Trial Court Judge, in Boone County, Kentucky. From 2005 to 2007, he worked in the Claims Litigation Department of Great American Insurance Company, in Cincinnati. Judge Napier is a member of the Kentucky Bar.

Tamaira Rivera, Unit Chief Immigration Judge, Richmond Immigration Adjudication Center

Tamaira Rivera was appointed as a Unit Chief Immigration Judge to begin supervisory immigration adjudication center duties and hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Rivera earned a Bachelor of Science in 1991 from Florida State University, a Juris Doctor in 1995 from California Western School of Law, and a Master of Laws in 2004 from The George Washington University Law School. From 2019 to 2021, she was an Immigration Practitioner with Advantage Immigration PA, in Orlando, Florida. From 2017 to 2019, she served as an Assistant Chief Counsel, Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in Orlando. From 2012 to 2017, she served as an Assistant Chief Counsel, OPLA, ICE, DHS, in San Antonio. From 2010 to 2012, she served as an Attorney Advisor and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S. Air Force, in San Antonio. From 2009 to 2010, she served as a Senior Democracy Fellow, U.S. Agency for International Development, in the District of Columbia. From 2007 to 2009, she was a Senior Associate Attorney and Program Manager with BlueLaw International LLP, in the District of Columbia. From 1996 to 2006, she served as a U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate, in the following locations: Madrid, Spain; Tucson, Arizona; San Antonio; and Okinawa, Japan. Judge Rivera is a member of the District of Columbia Bar and the Florida Bar.

David H. Robertson, Unit Chief Immigration Judge, Richmond Immigration Adjudication Center

David H. Robertson was appointed as a Unit Chief Immigration Judge to begin supervisory immigration adjudication center duties and hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Robertson earned a Bachelor of Science in 1986 from James Madison University, a Juris Doctor in 1989 from the University of Richmond School of Law, and a Master of Laws in 1999 from the Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School. From 1990 to 2020, he served as a U.S. Army Judge Advocate in various locations throughout the U.S. and Germany. During that time, from 2010 to 2020, he served as a Military Judge in the following locations: Fort Bliss, Texas; Fort Bragg, North Carolina; Kaiserslautern, Germany; and Fort Stewart, Georgia. While serving as a Military Judge, he also presided over trials in Kuwait and Afghanistan. From 2004 to 2006, he served as a Regional Defense Counsel; from 1999 to 2001, as a Senior Defense Counsel; from 1995 to

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1997, as a Prosecutor; and from 1993 to 1995, as a Defense Counsel. From 1995 to 1996, he deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina, and from 2007 to 2008, he deployed to Kosovo. In 2020, he retired in the rank of Colonel. Judge Robertson is a member of the Virginia State Bar.

Elizabeth Crites, Immigration Judge, Chicago Immigration Court

Elizabeth Crites was appointed as an Immigration Judge to begin hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Crites earned a Bachelor of Arts in 2005 from Ball State University and a Juris Doctor in 2009 from the University of Illinois Chicago John Marshall Law School. From 2016 to 2021, she served as an Assistant Chief Counsel, Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security, in Chicago. From 2009 to 2016, she was an Associate Attorney with Broyles, Kight & Ricafort PC, in Chicago. Judge Crites is a member of the Illinois State Bar.

Bryan E. DePowell, Immigration Judge, Adelanto Immigration Court

Bryan E. DePowell was appointed as an Immigration Judge to begin hearing cases in April 2021. Judge DePowell earned a Bachelor of Arts in 2007 from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa and a Juris Doctor in 2009 from Widener University Commonwealth Law School. From 2019 to 2021, he served as a Deputy Prosecuting Attorney, Felony Trials Division – Office of Prosecuting Attorney, City and County of Honolulu. From 2018 to 2019, he served as Chief Counsel for the House Minority Research Office, State of Hawai’i, in Honolulu. From 2012 to 2018, he was an Associate Attorney with Crisp and Associates LLC, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Judge DePowell is a member of the Hawaii State Bar and the Pennsylvania Bar.

Nicholle M. Hempel, Immigration Judge, Houston – Greenspoint Park Immigration Court

Nicholle M. Hempel was appointed as an Immigration Judge to begin hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Hempel earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1996 from California State University, Fresno and a Juris Doctor in 2000 from Chicago-Kent College of Law. From 2010 to 2021, she served as an Assistant Chief Counsel, Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security, in Los Angeles. From 2003 to 2010, she served as an Assistant State Attorney with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, in Chicago. From 1998 to 2003, she served as a Law Clerk for the First Municipal District, Circuit Court of Cook County, in Chicago. Judge Hempel is a member of the Illinois State Bar.

Kathy J. Lemke, Immigration Judge, Portland Immigration Court

Kathy J. Lemke was appointed as an Immigration Judge to begin hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Lemke earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1994 from the University of Chicago and a Juris Doctor in 1997 from Arizona State University School of Law. From 2019 to 2020, she served as the City Prosecutor for Phoenix. From 2009 to 2019, she served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona, in Phoenix. From 2004 to 2009, she served as an Assistant City Prosecutor for Phoenix. In 2003, she served as a Deputy County Attorney for Pinal County in Florence, Arizona. From 1998 to 2003, she served as a Deputy County Attorney for Maricopa County, in Phoenix. Judge Lemke is a member of the State Bar of Arizona and the District of Columbia Bar.

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Martinque M. Parker, Immigration Judge, Houston – Greenspoint Park Immigration Court

Martinque M. Parker was appointed as an Immigration Judge to begin hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Parker earned a Bachelor of Arts in 2005, a Bachelor of Science in 2006 from the University of Georgia, and a Juris Doctor in 2011 from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law. From 2017 to 2021, she served as an Assistant Chief Counsel, Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security, in Lumpkin, Georgia. From 2011 to 2017, she served as a Deputy Prosecuting Attorney, in Little Rock, Arkansas. Judge Parker is a member of the Arkansas Bar and the State Bar of Georgia.

David M. Paxton, Immigration Judge, Houston – Greenspoint Park Immigration Court

David M. Paxton was appointed as an Immigration Judge to begin hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Paxton earned a Bachelor of Science in 1998 from Texas State University, a Master of Business Administration in 2004 from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Juris Doctor in 2009 from Santa Clara University School of Law. From 2015 to 2021, he served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, in McAllen and Corpus Christi. From 2011 to 2015, he served as a Deputy District Attorney for the San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office, in San Luis Obispo, California. From 2010 to 2011, he served as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Criminal Division of the Northern District of California, in San Jose. From 1997 to 2004, he served as a Systems Engineer for Advanced Micro Devices and Legerity Inc., in Austin, Texas. Judge Paxton is a member of the State Bar of California.

Bryan D. Watson, Immigration Judge, Atlanta – W. Peachtree Street Immigration Court Bryan D. Watson was appointed as an Immigration Judge to begin hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Watson earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1993 from the University of Missouri, a Juris Doctor in 1996 from the University of Missouri, a Master of Arts in 2006 from Air University, and a Master of Science in 2014 from the National Defense University. From 2019 to 2021, he served as the Chief Trial Judge of the U.S. Air Force Trial Judiciary, at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. From 2017 to 2019, he served as the Commandant of the U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate General’s School, at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. From 2014 to 2017, he served as the General Counsel of the White House Military Office, in the District of Columbia. From 1996 to 2021, he served as a U.S. Air Force Active Duty Judge Advocate, in the following locations: Moody Air Force Base, Georgia; Francis E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming; Langley Air Force Base, Virginia; Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama; Randolph Air Force Base, Texas; Joint Base Andrews, Maryland; Aviano Air Base, Italy; and the Pentagon, White House, Bolling Air Force Base, and Fort McNair, District of Columbia. He retired from the U.S. Air Force in 2021 as a Colonel. Judge Watson is a member of the State Bar of Georgia and the Missouri Bar.

Kenya L. Wells, Immigration Judge, Houston – Greenspoint Park Immigration Court

Kenya L. Wells was appointed as an Immigration Judge to begin hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Wells earned a Bachelor of Science in 2007 from Texas A&M University and Juris Doctor in 2010 from the University of Texas School of Law. From 2017 to 2021, he served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. From 2010 to 2016, he served as an Assistant District Attorney with the New York County District Attorney’s Office, in New York. Judge Wells is a member of the New York State Bar.

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Mark R. Whitworth, Immigration Judge, Houston – Greenspoint Park Immigration Court

Mark R. Whitworth was appointed as an Immigration Judge to begin hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Whitworth earned a Bachelor of Journalism in 1985 and a Juris Doctor in 1993, both from the University of Texas at Austin. From 2003 to 2021, he served as an Assistant Chief Counsel, Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security, in Harlingen, Texas. From 2001 to 2003, he served as an Assistant District Counsel with the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, Office of the District Counsel, Department of Justice, in Harlingen. From 1994 to 2001, he served as an Assistant Attorney General and an Assistant Managing Assistant Attorney General for the Texas Office of the Attorney General, in Harlingen. From 1993 to 1994, he was an Associate Attorney with Roerig, Oliveira and Fisher LLP, in Brownsville, Texas. Judge Whitworth is a member of the State Bar of Texas.

Adam Perl, Immigration Court, New York – Broadway Immigration Court

Adam Perl was appointed as an Immigration Judge to begin hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Perl earned a Bachelor of Arts in 2006 from Florida International University and a Juris Doctor in 2011 from St. Thomas University School of Law. From 2018 to 2021, he served as a Deputy Chief Counsel, Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in New York. From 2016 to 2018, he served as an Assistant Chief Counsel, OPLA, ICE, DHS, in Newburgh, New York; from 2014 to 2016, he served as an Assistant Chief Counsel, in New York; and from 2011 to 2014, he served as an Assistant Chief Counsel, in Los Angeles. Judge Perl is a member of the Florida Bar.

William H. McDermott, Immigration Judge, New York – Federal Plaza Immigration Court

William H. McDermott was appointed as an Immigration Judge to begin hearing cases in April 2021. Judge McDermott earned a Bachelor of Arts in 2007 from Long Island University and a Juris Doctor in 2011 from The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law. From 2019 to 2021, he served as the Deputy State’s Attorney for Wicomico County, Maryland. From 2011 to 2019, he served as an Assistant State’s Attorney, Deputy State’s Attorney, and Ad Interim State’s Attorney, in Worcester County, Maryland. Judge McDermott is a member of the Maryland State Bar.

Elliot M. Kaplan, Unit Chief Immigration Judge, Richmond Immigration Adjudication Center

Elliot M. Kaplan was appointed as a Unit Chief Immigration Judge to begin supervisory immigration adjudication center duties and hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Kaplan earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1998 from Antioch University, a Master of Business Administration in 1982 from Whittier College, and a Juris Doctor in 1982 from Whittier Law School. From 2019 to 2020, he was Of Counsel to Kutak Rock LLP, in Kansas City, Missouri. From 2004 to 2019, he was in private practice, in Kansas City. From 1995 to 2003, he was a Partner and Founder of Daniels & Kaplan PC, in Detroit and Kansas City. From 1991 to 1994, he was Of Counsel to Berman, DeLeve, Kuchan & Chapman LLC, in Kansas City. From 1990 to 1991, he was Of Counsel to DeWitt, Zeldin & Bigus PC, in Kansas City. From 1985 to 1990, he was Of Counsel to Husch, Eppenberger, Donohue, Cornfeld & Jenkins, in Kansas City. From 1983 to 1985, he was Assistant General Counsel and Assistant Secretary of Air One Inc., in St. Louis. Judge Kaplan is a member of the Missouri Bar.

Communications and Legislative Affairs Division

EOIR Announces 17 New Immigration Judges

Page 6

Jeb T. Terrien, Unit Chief Immigration Judge, Richmond Immigration Adjudication Center

Jeb. T. Terrien was appointed as a Unit Chief Immigration Judge to begin supervisory immigration adjudication center duties and hearing cases in April 2021. Judge Terrien earned a Bachelor of Science in 1994 from The University of Virginia and a Juris Doctor in 1997 from Tulane Law School. From 2009 to 2021, he served as a Managing Assistant U.S. Attorney and Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia, in Harrisonburg. During that time, from 2014 to 2015, he served as an Assistant Director, National Advocacy Center, Office of Legal Education, Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, Department of Justice, in Columbia, South Carolina. From 2004 to 2008, he served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, in Cincinnati, and the Northern District of West Virginia, in Martinsburg. From 2000 to 2004, he served as a Regional Drug Prosecutor for the Commonwealth of Virginia in Halifax, Charlotte, and Campbell Counties. From 1999 to 2000, he served as an Assistant Attorney General with the Virginia Attorney General’s Office, in Richmond. From 1998 to 1999, he served as an Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney for the Accomack County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office in Accomac, Virginia. Judge Terrien is a member of the Virginia State Bar.

— EOIR —

Communications and Legislative Affairs Division

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

There’s a powerful message here NDPA! Elections DON”T matter, nor does your expertise, dedication, and hard work! Maybe it will be time to act on that message during the next election cycle. Stephen Miller? Judge “MillerLite?” What’s the real difference?

Here are some “early reactions” from the NDPA:

I just looked quickly, but was there only one new IJ coming from private practice? When I looked up the firm, it doesn’t practice immigration law.

I didn’t recognize any names. Shouldn’t the goal be to hire those with a scholarly understanding of immigration law, including at least some who have demonstrated a creative approach to asylum?

My take is why not put new IJ hiring on pause until the agency has figured out how it intends to move forward? EOIR should have their new Chief IJ in place, have revamped the IJ training, have figured out what AG precedents it intends to vacate, etc. Also, the quotas are still in place.

When new IJs with no immigration law background come on board, should they feel they can’t continue a case to study the law or consult with a colleague because they have to complete 4 cases that day to avoid being fired?

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

Ah, Justice from “Miller Lite” Justice @ Justice. What a “poke in they eyes with a sharp stick” to the immigration/human rights bar!

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

Thanks for sharing Judge Schmidt. In addition to the new hires, it’s deeply concerning that AG Garland’s DOJ is expanding its use of secretive and inaccessible immigration adjudication centers- opening a new location in Richmond, Virginia.

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

Of 14 IJs appointed under Biden (Acting AG Wilkinson or AG Garland), 7 have worked for ICE, 5 have been prosecutors of other types, 2 have worked for ICE and been prosecutors, and 2 have worked as immigration defense attorneys (though these two have also worked for ICE).

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

It is completely baffling. Two working theories: 1) EOIR is just so far down Garland’s radar that he just doesn’t care or have time to care; or 2) he has made a political decision to “hang tough” on immigration for the optics and to stave off Rethuglican encroachment in the mid-terms.

Neither theory speaks well of him.

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

I don’t see how dissing the immigration/human rights bar is the key to success for the Dems in the midterms. I personally know lots of NDPA members who “busted tail” and donated lots of time and money to getting Biden & Harris elected. Don’t think that the “elections don’t matter for human rights/immigration/due process/racial justice” is going to “energize the base” for the midterms.

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

I have essentially lost hope that anything will change….

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

I guess this answers the question of whether establishing an independent, progressive, due process focused Immigration Judiciary within the Executive Branch is possible. Obviously, it isn’t! Litigation and Article I appear to be the only solutions.

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

What is that old adage, “the more things change the more they stay the same”???

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

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever! We need to translate Garland’s blatant disrespect, ignorance, and failure to stand up for racial justice, an end to misogyny, and progressive expertise in the Immigration Judiciary into action and resistance to his “Miller Lite” vision for the DOJ!

PWS

05-06-21

🏴‍☠️👎🏻🤮“HOUSTON, WE’VE STILL GOT A PROBLEM!” — A HUGE AND GROWING ONE — Garland’s Failure To Restore “Justice @ Justice” Reverberates Throughout Our Nation!🆘

Judge Garland’s vision of “justice” for immigrants @ Justice:

Courtside Exclusive

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

May 5, 2021

This just in from a NDPA stalwart in Houston, TX:

Houston we still have a (huge) problem! Luckily we also have some great immigration advocates and members of the due process army.

. . . .

Houston EOIR is still closed for non-detained. They have just built a third immigration court here, “Greenspoint”, with over 30 brand new judges, just collecting dust (although that’s probably a good thing as it would only serve as a deportation mill). If you can believe the absurdity, you have to file a motion for change of venue + a motion to consolidate, to join family members whose cases have been placed in different courts all here in Houston. 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

I believe Houston now has the 2nd largest backlog after New York City now, in large part due to the mismanagement by EOIR HQ.

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

From coast to coast, from the Rio Grande to the Great Lakes, Courtside followers and NDPA warriors are making it clear: Garland’s failure to take due process and racial justice in Immigration Court seriously and his disregard and disrespect for immigration/human rights experts is furthering havoc in the American justice system!

Is it “malicious incompetence” or just plain old incompetence and disregard for the due process rights of “the other” by Garland? Does it make any difference?

What will make a difference is flooding the Article IIIs with litigation challenging this ongoing constitutional nonsense and squandering of taxpayer funds! Overwhelm EOIR with applications for judicial positions and “bore out” the rotten foundations of this system from the inside with the tools of due process, fundamental fairness, and best practices! Also, inundate your Congressional representatives with demands that this blot on American justice be removed from the DOJ forthwith! Write those op-eds and keep informing your local media about the unmitigated, unnecessary, unconscionable, unconstitutional continuing disaster at Garland’s EOIR and how it destroys human lives on a daily basis! Shine the beacon of due process and justice on the dark, secretive, unconstitutional “Star Chambers” Garland operates in the guise of Immigration “Courts.”

NDPA legions, don’t be content to “wander in the wilderness” while clueless politicos and bureaucrats @ Garland’s DOJ destroy your sanity and the lives of the humans you represent! Stand up to institutionalized racism, continuing incompetence, disgraceful misogyny, intransigence, and ongoing “Dred Scottification” of communities of color by the Garland DOJ! End the DOJ’s anti-immigrant culture and disrespect for the defenders of due process and American democracy that goes on Administration after Administration as if your clients’ lives and your professional expertise were “chopped liver!” Enough is enough! Fight back against “Miller Lite Justice!”

My fellow warriors for justice, YOU are again being ignored, shut out, marginalized, abused, looked down upon, dehumanized, insulted, and scorned by yet another Dem Administration that YOU helped put in office! Time to stand up and be heard for YOUR rights, the rights of the people YOU represent, and the future of our Federal Judiciary and our American Democracy!

NO MORE “MILLER LITE @ JUSTICE!” ASK YOURSELVES: WHO WON THE LAST ELECTION? WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “WIN” IF GARLAND CONTINUES TO RUN THE IMMIGRATION COURTS LIKE STEPHEN MILLER IS STILL IN CHARGE?

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-06-21

🤮👎🏻SHOCKING BETRAYAL@ “JUSTICE” — GARLAND DISSES PROGRESSIVE EXPERTS WITH SECRET APPOINTMENTS OF 17 UNQUALIFIED IMMIGRATION JUDGES! — New AG’s Open Contempt For Racial Justice, Due Process, Human Rights Enrages Advocacy Community Who Believed & Supported Biden-Harris Campaign Pitch! — THE REINCARNATION OF “DEEP THROAT” @ EOIR “BLOWS WHISTLE” ON NEW AG’S ATROCIOUS FAILURE TO TAKE SERIOUSLY MOCKING OF DUE PROCESS, INSTITUTIONALIZED RACISM, MISOGYNY, LACK OF SCHOLARSHIP, AVERSION TO PRACTICAL PROBLEM SOLVING IN AMERICA’S DEADLY, DYSFUNCTIONAL STAR CHAMBERS!⚰️☠️🏴‍☠️

Deep Throat — Reincarnated @ EOIR? — Creative Commons License

Courtside Exclusive

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

May 4, 2021

Recently, some of America’s top legal minds were “wordsmithing” their “practical scholarly” advice on what actions Judge Garland should take to begin straightening out his EOIR mess. Common sense steps to slash the largely self-created Immigration Court backlog of an astounding 1.3 million cases actually could and should have been taken within hours of Garland’s swearing in as Attorney General. But, unknown to these experts, the battle they steadfastly had been fighting for the past four years in behalf of due process, common sense, and humanity in a broken system already was lost.

Basically, Garland and his team had secretly delivered the “big middle finger” to progressives earnestly seeking to assist and guide them in the right direction on long overdue reforms at Garland’s incredibly backlogged, totally dysfunctional, anti-due-process, Immigration “Courts” that don’t fit any known American definition of “court.” For while the wheels of scholarly, problem-solving brainpower were grinding away, Garland had cavalierly and clandestinely handed out 17 of the most important (and certainly most readily available to progressive judicial candidates) Federal Judicial positions to unqualified insiders and prosecutors basically “in the Stephen Miller White Nationalist pipeline.” Adding insult to injury, Garland and his lieutenants covered up their disgraceful actions. But, thanks to a reincarnated “Deep Throat” @ EOIR (see, Watergate for newer generations), we now know the truth.

According to “Deep Throat 2021,” (“DT-21”) it’s worse than I previously thought about Immigration Judge appointments. (And, I thought it was bad.) Garland actually secretly appointed 17 new IJs in April, but EOIR hasn’t released the names publicly because they (rightly) fear “the blowback” from Dems and progressives.

So, who is Team Garland” trying to please? “Gauleiter” Stephen Miller? “Billy the Bigot” Barr? Gene Hamilton? Donald Trump? Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions? Chad “Wolfman” Wolf? Ken “Cooch Cooch” Cuccinelli? “Teddy the Traitor” Cruz? Tom “Blacks & Hispanics Should be Pickin’” Cotton?

The 17 include some for the VTC black box “court” in Richmond. The only one that went public was a story a judge himself placed. That’s apparently the one that Dan Kowalski and I picked up. According to sources, none of Garland’s new judges are good for due process or for progressive, expert, independent judging.

Also, there’s a rumor that the open BIA position is going to go to an “EOIR insider,” not someone from the outside who could help restore due process and fundamental fairness.

Let’s see, so far the Biden Administration has had exactly zero progressive Federal Judges confirmed by the Senate. Meanwhile, over at DOJ, Garland has handed out these 17 powerful judgeships with life or death authority serving on the front lines of racial justice in America to non-progressives apparently recommended and tapped by his restrictionist predecessor.

Make sense? Only if you’ve watched past Dem Administrations’ inept handling of the Immigration Courts.

In positive news, there’s “internal chatter” that EOIR Deputy Director Carl C. Risch, a political hack “burrower” from the Trump Administration, is leaving EOIR.

But, “DT-21” is still gravely concerned that “Millerite” BIA Chair David Wetmore (Maury Roberts must be turning over in his grave) has yet to be removed with his “probationary period” set to expire at the end of this month. What, exactly, have been Wetmore’s contributions to human rights scholarship, “applied due process,” fundamental fairness, racial justice, and fair treatment of female asylum seekers that justify his continued tenure as essentially the “Chief Justice of Immigration?”

Garland’s malfeasance at EOIR is not just disappointing, but totally outrageous! On Tuesday, he disingenuously asked the House for more money to promote civil rights while running Star Chambers of institutionalized racism that are undermining the American justice system at the critical “retail level.”

Those advocates who almost single handedly kept the American justice system afloat by successfully challenging many of the unconstitutional racist actions of the Trump immigration kakistocracy once again find themselves “on the outside looking in.” Meanwhile, Judge Garland, who was hiding out above the fray @ the DC Circuit, treats them as “chopped liver” while continuing White Nationalist, anti-due-process policies and precedents initiated by Trump and his cronies.

How out of touch is Garland’s proposal to the House yesterday to address the Immigration Court backlog by casting 100 new Immigration Judges into this mess? (Presumably, these positions will be handed out “like candy” to more non-expert, non-diverse, non-due-process oriented insiders and former government prosecutors.) Well, even with many more Immigration Judges on the bench (more than twice as many as at the end of the Obama Administration), it’s been about two decades since EOIR has decided more cases than it has docketed! That’s how “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” by DOJ politicos and EOIR bureaucrats builds uncontrollable backlogs!

Assume the highly unlikely, that under Garland, without any more quotas, corner cutting, or other anti-due-process gimmicks, the existing nearly 600 judges could keep “even” with new filings. Then, once selected, trained, and on duty (a process that took the Obama Administration an astounding average of two years), “Garland’s 100 new judges” could devote themselves to “backlog reduction.” At the DOJ’s quota of 700 cases per judge, the new judges could decide 70,000 cases per year. At that rate, it would take them approximately two decades (or five 4-year Administrations) to “wipe out” the backlog.

Sound like a plan? Only if you don’t understand the fundamental, endemic problems plaguing EOIR and have no “real life experience” representing individuals whose hopes, lives, and futures are being ground to dust by EOIR malfeasance on a daily basis!

Folks, this has to stop! Keep pressing those constitutional arguments that eventually will bring Garland’s corrupt, dysfunctional system to a screeching halt. And keep pushing for legislation to take this ungodly mess out of the DOJ. Also, keep reminding President Biden who helped get out the vote and get him his job. And, where is our African/Asian American/daughter of immigrants Vice President while this outrage at “Justice” is playing out?

How do supposedly progressive women legal luminaries like Lisa Monaco and Vanita Gupta justify their role in Garland’s misogynist, due process farce @ EOIR?

As for “DT-21,” he/she/them remains as enigmatic, unverifiable, unabashed, and unafraid as ever! This is a 21st Century “patriot” tired of the abuse of due process, racism, incompetence, and misogyny that EOIR has fostered over Administrations of both parties. EOIR under Garland is a progressive’s continuing nightmare!

Does “DT-21” lurk in the shadows of a parking garage, beyond the view of security cameras, as did the famous 1970’s namesake? Or, at the outskirts of an interstate rest area? Perhaps in a dark unwatched corner of an overcrowded Zoom chat room?

And, while you’re at it, say a prayer for Linda Lovelace (1949-2002), the original “Deep Throat” (1972), who later said she was an abused spouse coerced into a career as an adult actress that she eventually rejected. Somehow, there is a tie-in between Lovelace’s exploitation in the 1970s and the systemic mistreatment of asylum seeking domestic violence victims that went into high gear during the Trump regime and continues unabated under Garland! Interestingly, before her untimely death in 2002, Lovelace became an anti-porn activist who testified before the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography (a/k/a “The Meese Commission”) in 1986.

Stay tuned for more “truth from the Tower.” You certainly won’t get it from “Team Garland.”

Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-04-21

⚠️🆘JUDGE GARLAND’S FAILURE TO ADDRESS HIS DYSFUNCTIONAL IMMIGRATION COURTS CONCERNS UNION, ADVOCATES, EXPERTS, & UNDERMINES HIS LEADERSHIP ON RACIAL INJUSTICE 🏴‍☠️ — Continuation Of Trump-Miller-Sessions-Barr White Nationalist, Anti-Asylum, Racist, Misogynist Agenda, Lack Of Plan To Replace GOP Hacks & Unqualified Judges Is A “Bad Look” For New AG & Team! — Round Table Star Judge Sue Roy Speaks Out!

Suzanne Monyak
Senior Reporter, Immigration

Hon. Susan G. Roy
Law Office of Susan G. Roy, LLC
Princeton Junction, NJ
Member, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

https://rollcall.com/2021/04/22/despite-bidens-union-support-immigration-judges-left-waiting/

Suzanne Monyak reports for Roll Call:

. . . .

Garland has yet to indicate whether he will rescind several decisions penned by attorneys general under the previous administration. In the last four years, Trump officials limited asylum eligibility for those fleeing violence by private actors, like gang members and domestic partners, and immigration judges’ ability to maintain their own dockets.

“There’s no reason that Attorney General Garland hasn’t done a thorough review of the attorney general certifications from the last administration,” said Susan Roy, a former immigration judge. “He should rescind any of them which he can. He has the authority to do that.”

. . . .

The Biden administration has also inherited a lengthy immigration court backlog — containing roughly 1.3 million cases — that have kept immigrants facing deportation and asylum-seekers waiting years for decisions in their cases.

The Biden administration has recognized that immigration judges may be key to processing these claims quickly and efficiently. In a preview of its budget request released earlier this month, the White House proposed increasing funding for the Justice Department’s immigration court agency from $734 million to $891 million to hire 100 new immigration judges.

Immigrant advocates and former judges say freeing the immigration court system from political influences is also critical to this effort.

“Without a union, there’s no way to protect judges against political ideologies of a given administration,” Roy said.

While judicial independence has “always been a concern” with a court system housed within a federal agency, “rarely has that been as problematic as it was under the Trump administration,” she said.

. . . .

Some advocates also want to see immigration courts be removed entirely from the DOJ and made an independent court system. The issue is on the agenda for the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s virtual “day of action” on April 22.

Roy, the incoming chair of AILA’s New Jersey chapter, acknowledged that Garland faces a number of competing priorities outside of the immigration courts. But she urged the administration against letting the system fall to the wayside.

“The immigration court is a subject that needs immediate attention,” she said. “Otherwise, it’s going to collapse under its own weight.”

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

Thanks, Sue!

Today’s Immigration Courts, hotbeds of inefficiency, worst practices, racial bias, misogyny, and unnecessary backlogs, undermine everything that Biden and Harris campaigned on. They also make Judge Garland’s pledge to return justice and independence to the Department of Justice look like a farce.

You simply can’t be responsible for something as totally broken, biased, and due process denying as the current Immigration Courts and have ANY shred of credibility on racial justice, independence, and “good government!”

EYORE — “Eyore In Distress”
“Why won’t Judge Garland help me get back on my feet? I”m so tired of being ‘belly up!’”

Judge Garland’s concept of “justice” for refugee women and people of color seems a little out of touch — anti-asylum, misogynistic, anti-due process, xenophobic, racially charged precedents remain in place; regressive, unqualified judges on the bench; “worst practices” continue to flourish; 1.3 million case backlog builds; & He hasn’t spoken to the naij:

Woman Being “Tried By Ordeal”
17th Century Woodcut
Public Realm
Source: Ancient Origins Website
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/trial-ordeal-life-or-death-method-judgement-004160

Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-23-21

🇺🇸🗽⚖️FIGHT MISOGYNY INFLICTED ON FEMALE REFUGEES OF COLOR @ EOIR WITH TIMELY NEW SEMINAR — Get The Facts To Combat The Institutionalized Lies, Intentional Misrepresentations, Bias, Cruelty Inflicted On Vulnerable Women Asylum Applicants In Immigration Court! — Featuring NDPA Superstars 🌟 Alberto Benitez & Paulina Vera From The GW Law Immigration Clinic!

Here’s the Zoom link:

https://zoom.us/j/97070084525

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

Congrats to Professors Benitez and Vera and GW Law!

If YOU were a refugee woman pleading for YOUR LIFE in Immigration Court, who would YOU want as the Judge?

This Stephen Miller clone holdover from the Trump Administration:

Grim Reaper — “Appellate Immigration Judge” approved by Stephen Miller to find the “final solution” for female refugees of color
Image: Hernan Fednan, Creative Commons License

Or these internationally-renowned practical scholar-experts in gender based asylum:

Professor Deborah Anker
Director, Harvard Law Immigration & Refugee Clinic
PHOTO: Harvard Law

This might also be a good time to watch (or re-watch) the following video short featuring the “real” Ms. A-B- (and her lawyers) who was arbitrarily targeted by White Nationalist “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions to receive an unwarranted “death sentence” in violation of due process!

https://immigrationcourtside.com/wp-admin/about.php

So why is Judge Garland retaining the “Trump-Miller-Sessions-Barr BIA” rather than replacing them with much better qualified immigration/human rights experts dedicated to due process like, for example, Alberto Benitez and Paulina Vera?

👍🏼🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process For Refugee Women! Tell Judge Garland To End Institutionalized Misogyny @ EOIR!☠️🤮⚰️👎🏻Remove Anti-Asylum Zealots & Those Unwilling To Stand Up For Due Process For All Asylum Seekers From The BIA! Appoint Real Judges To Restore Due Process!

PWS

04-13-21

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

Garland’s “vision of justice” for asylum seekers and other migrants at EOIR leaves something to be desired:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

Sorto-Guzmán v. Garland, 4th Cir., 08-93-22, published

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

Here are the redacted decisions:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

The latest from the Hon. “Sir Jeffrey:”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever! The BIA Denial Club, Never!🏴‍☠️

Related posts:

Kaur v. Garland, 9th Cir., 06-21-21, published

It’s YOUR REPUTATION, along with the lives of refugee women like Ms. Kaur, that are on the line here!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

By Natalie Gonnella-Platts and Jenny Villatoro In the Dallas Morning News:

Related posts:

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever! Tell the Biden Administration that we need progressives, not more “regressives,” on the Federal Bench, starting with the Immigration Courts! End abusive judging by a non-diverse Federal Judiciary!

Related posts:

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

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Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

Every member of the NDPA should be outraged by Garland’s treachery:

Here’s the latest farcical roster of prosecutors, government attorneys, and non-immigration experts to be inflicted on migrants and their attorneys:

Here are some “early reactions” from the NDPA:

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever! We need to translate Garland’s blatant disrespect, ignorance, and failure to stand up for racial justice, an end to misogyny, and progressive expertise in the Immigration Judiciary into action and resistance to his “Miller Lite” vision for the DOJ!

Related posts:

Judge Garland’s vision of “justice” for immigrants @ Justice:

Courtside Exclusive

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

May 5, 2021

This just in from a NDPA stalwart in Houston, TX:

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

Courtside Exclusive

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

May 4, 2021

Related posts:

Due Process Forever!

Related posts:

Congrats to Professors Benitez and Vera and GW Law!

If YOU were a refugee woman pleading for YOUR LIFE in Immigration Court, who would YOU want as the Judge?

This Stephen Miller clone holdover from the Trump Administration:

Or these internationally-renowned practical scholar-experts in gender based asylum:

👍🏼🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process For Refugee Women! Tell Judge Garland To End Institutionalized Misogyny @ EOIR!☠️🤮⚰️👎🏻Remove Anti-Asylum Zealots & Those Unwilling To Stand Up For Due Process For All Asylum Seekers From The BIA! Appoint Real Judges To Restore Due Process!

Related posts: