"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
Dan Rather American Journalist PHOTO: Creative CommonsElliott Kirshner Science Filmmaker & Journalist PHOTO: iBiology CoursesJudge (now Justice) Ketanji Brown Jackson, honoree at the Third Annual Judge James B. Parsons Legacy Dinner, February 24, 2020, University of Chicago Law School. Photographer Lloyd DeGrane. Creative Commons License
Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner write on Steady on Substack:
September 15, 1963 — 60 years ago today. An act of murderous cowardice in Birmingham, Alabama, shocked a nation. A bomb at the 16th Street Baptist Church placed by Klansmen killed four girls as they attended Sunday school. Many others were wounded.
As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would say in eulogy, “These children — unoffending, innocent, and beautiful — were the victims of one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity.”
Let us pause in remembrance. Please say their names aloud. They deserve our recognition:
Denise McNair, age 11.
Carole Robertson, 14.
Addie Mae Collins, 14.
Cynthia Wesley, 14.
This horrific act is not ancient history. Some of you were of memory age at the time it happened. And it was not an isolated act of violence. Rather, it was part of a bloody, tragic, and unjust campaign of terror that stretches from before our country’s birth into our present age. It is a story of murder, torture, rape, lynching, and the tearing apart of families. It is a story of Jim Crow, redlining, and voter suppression. And now it is a story that powerful forces in our country would like us to forget, or at least sanitize from the unadulterated truth.
And yet, throughout our history, bigotry has not gone unanswered. Women and men of courage and fortitude have reminded us that we should walk a path toward equality and justice. Many have sacrificed greatly in service to our nation’s highest ideals.
This bombing was an act of domestic terrorism meant to stifle a growing Civil Rights Movement. It had the opposite effect. Less than a year later, President Lyndon Johnson signed the groundbreaking Civil Rights Act.
Progress has been made. However, we are reminded in our current age that the forces of white supremacy will never give up their privilege without a fight. We see more acts of racist violence, more denying of reality, more attempts to rewrite history. It is a cynically destructive ploy for power at the expense of our national unity and the truth.
All this was on the mind of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson this morning, when the first Black woman to serve on the court went to the 16th Street Baptist Church to commemorate the bombing’s anniversary. It was the justice’s first trip to Alabama, but she told those in the pews, “I felt in my spirit that I had to come.”
What she subsequently shared was an acknowledgement of the past and an admonition for our present and our future. We were moved by her words and want to include some of them here, as well as a video of the entire speech, should you wish to watch.
Justice Jackson began by contrasting the story of the Birmingham bombing and her own personal journey.
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Read the complete article, including Justice Jackson’s remarks and pictures of the murdered girls, at the link. Don’t let GOP extremists get away with rewriting our history to match their White Nationalist myths! It’s a key part of their scheme to “dumb down” American education and intellectual debate on all levels!
Rae Ann Varona Legal Reporter Law360 PHOTO: Linkedin
Dan Kowalski over at LexisNexis Immigration Community helpfully forwarded the pdf’s of Rae Ann’s article and the three briefs. You can access them here:
Our Round Table, with the help of some of the greatest litigators and law firms out there, continues to provide key support for the NDPA and timely expertise to the Federal Courts and father Executive on all levels!
Clarence Thomas Hikes Price of Supreme Court Decisions to Keep Pace with Inflation
By Andy Borowitz @ The New YorkerThomas
Andy Borowitz Political Satirist The New Yorker
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Citing “unfortunate economic realities,” Clarence Thomas is hiking the price of Supreme Court decisions to keep up with inflation.
The jurist disclosed his new rate card in a mass e-mail sent to more than a hundred super-donors.
“I have tried to keep my prices reasonable, but, as inflation proves more stubborn than predicted, I have no choice but to adjust my rates accordingly,” he wrote.
“Sadly, the days of shredding civil rights in exchange for ten private-jet flights are over,” he added.
It remains to be seen whether the billionaires who received Thomas’s e-mail will tolerate his steeper prices or whether they will explore a budget option such as Neil Gorsuch.
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Predictably, no public hearings were held on the Justice’s sudden rate hike, which blindsided many right wing billionaires with business before the Court! “We believed in good faith that Clarence & Ginni were bought and paid for at least until the end of the upcoming term,” complained one super donor. “I mean, if the guy demands any more private flights to fancy vacation retreats, we’ll probably have to consider buying him his own private jetliner. Perhaps, he should spend at least a little more time in his chambers in D.C. spouting originalism and obstructing justice! After all, that’s what we’re paying him for!”😨**
Unhappily, in the days of GOP mega-corruption, satire has become almost a lost art.
🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!
PWS
08-11-23
** The above paragraph is fictionalized. Any resemblance to any real person, persons, organizations, and/or situations is purely coincidental and entirely unintended.
Viridiana Chabolla ’13, who was brought to the U.S. from Mexico at 2 years old, on the day she became a U.S. citizen in 2021. PHOTO: Pamona College Magazine
Carla Maria Guerrero writes in Pomona College Magazine:
There are not a lot of big wins for Viridiana Chabolla ’13 in her line of work. It’s not for a lack of trying, or a lack of sweat and tears. Her commitment has been tested over the years but she remains determined. Chabolla is an attorney working in immigration law. The landscape is grim, she says. It can be heartbreaking. Demoralizing. She’s not just an attorney. She is an immigrant, too, and for most of her life she was undocumented.
In February, the Los Angeles Times wrote a story about one of her recent clients. Leonel Contreras, a U.S. Army veteran, was a legal permanent resident before being deported to Mexico after serving time for a nonviolent crime. Contreras had grown up in the U.S., but after his deportation he worked and lived in Tijuana for at least a decade before the Immigrant Defenders Law Center in Los Angeles took his case and Chabolla helped him return to his family members in California. He became a U.S. citizen earlier this year.
“It’s really nice to wave an American flag at a naturalization ceremony,” says Chabolla, who began working at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef) in October 2021. “Immigration law is so harsh and when it’s not harsh, it’s just not helpful. It’s hard to have a win. When you have those moments, you have to grab on and make them last.”
Chabolla was born in Guanajuato, Mexico. Her mother came to the U.S. to escape a bad relationship and start a new life. A 2-year-old Chabolla and the rest of her mother’s family joined her soon after. Chabolla grew up with her grandparents, aunts and cousins all living close to each other in East Los Angeles. “I’d remember seeing my mom and aunts getting ready for work at ridiculous hours of the day,” she says of the early-morning hubbub. “I remember always being surrounded by people and conversations. There were a lot of disagreements but a lot of love.”
When she was 11, Chabolla met a group of lawyers who worked in East L.A. Although she didn’t know what exactly they did, she recalls thinking that they seemed to hold a lot of power. They seemed to have some kind of authority to help her and others like her—people who were not born in the U.S.
It was during Chabolla’s junior year at Pomona that the Obama administration established an immigration policy that changed her life. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) allowed certain immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and also become eligible for a work permit.
For the first time, Chabolla was able to have a job on campus. She saved her first pay stub. It wasn’t much in terms of money, but it was significant for Chabolla.
With DACA, Chabolla’s future seemed a bit brighter. She could now apply for jobs after graduation. Her first work after Pomona was as an organizer with the pro bono legal services nonprofit Public Counsel, a choice that set her on a course for a win of historic proportions.
For four years, Chabolla took down the stories of plaintiffs for cases being handled by Public Counsel. As time passed, she began to feel more empowered to share her immigration status with her director, Mark Rosenbaum, even as the national political landscape was transitioning from an Obama presidency to a Trump one.
“When Trump was elected, I broke down,” she says. She remembers Rosenbaum calling her to tell her she didn’t have to go to work the next day: “Go be with your family, go through your emotions,” he told her.
“We didn’t know what Trump would do first. We just hit the ground running,” says Chabolla, who worked on the defense case for Daniel Ramirez Medina, the first person to have his DACA permit taken away. “With everything going on, we focused on putting out fires. Trump wasn’t taking out DACA in one go just yet. He was creating all of this panic everywhere first.”
Her time at Public Counsel rekindled Chabolla’s original interest in law.
“I kept thinking of the best way I could help others. I loved the idea of gaining new knowledge, and a degree in law would allow me to have a sense of power,” she says. The attorneys at Public Counsel, like her boss Rosenbaum, not only practiced law and led big cases but they also wrote articles and taught university-level courses.
In September of 2017, the Trump administration announced it was officially rescinding DACA. Chabolla had just started at the UC Irvine School of Law. Her initial response was to focus on school and wait.
Then Chabolla got a call from Rosenbaum. “He called me to be a plaintiff in a case against the United States. I felt terrified.”
Chabolla phoned her mother and her family. “If I shared my story, I would have to share their story,” she says. She also was married by then and discussed the possible ramifications with her husband.
Her family was supportive. Chabolla felt compelled to help.
The Public Counsel lawsuit led by Rosenbaum was filed as Garcia v. United States. As it made its way through the higher courts, it was merged with four other cases and ultimately became known as Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California by the time it reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
As a plaintiff in the case, Chabolla shared her story with a lawyer for a written declaration. While she never testified before any judges, she did have to share her immigration story multiple times as the case garnered national media attention.
On June 18, 2020, the Supreme Court delivered its 5-4 decision blocking the Trump administration’s elimination of DACA. Chabolla was in Washington for the hearing. “A few of us got to go inside,” she recalls. “Some DACA students were there, too. And it was really powerful. These justices were hearing arguments on this huge case…but I know maybe for them all cases they hear are huge. But we occupied half the room and that was really powerful and really unusual.”
Chabolla took notes during the hearing. “I remember writing down something that Justice [Sonia] Sotomayor said: ‘This is not about the law; this is about our choice to destroy lives.’
“So much of what Trump did was done without following administrative law,” explains Chabolla about how they “won” this case. “Trump didn’t follow procedure,” she says. “If they had taken their time and done it right, it would have passed. But I remember taking the win.”
Chabolla, who had just recently become a U.S. resident through marriage, remembers feeling relief for the DACA community.
“The DACA victory in the Supreme Court is a testament to the vision, commitment and tireless efforts of many, and Viri’s name would surely be at the top of that list,” says Rosenbaum. “I had the privilege of working with Viri at Public Counsel, first as an organizer…and then to come forward as a plaintiff in Garcia to inspire others to do the same and make the case that our nation needs DACA recipients to build a kinder and more inclusive community for all of us.”
Upon returning home, Chabolla once again focused on school—it was her second-to-last semester at UC Irvine. She spent a year as a graduate legal assistant with the Office of the Attorney General for the California Department of Justice. It was a tough gig for a newly graduated lawyer. After one year, she left for her current job as a staff attorney at ImmDef, a legal services nonprofit with a post-conviction unit that drew her interest. “They take on clients who have criminal convictions like possession of marijuana from 40 years ago with deportation orders—deportation is not a fair punishment for everyone.
“Many of our clients have been living here as legal permanent residents for more than 20 years. Most find out they’re getting deported just when they’re going to be released,” she says. “The statistics show that immigrants commit fewer crimes than the general population and our clients have already served their time—in jail, or prison, they’ve paid their dues and they’ve even paid their fines. Adding deportation is a way of saying ‘I don’t like that you’re an immigrant.’ It’s extra punishment.”
The work is tough. “My supervisor has shared that sometimes we have to redefine what a win is,” says Chabolla. “It makes up partially for the times when we have a clinic and all these people show up thinking they can apply for residency when they actually can’t.”
She says that the immigrants she talks to are so full of hope. They believe that an attorney—like herself—can do it all. “Every situation is different. No lawyer has a miracle cure.
“It’s heartbreaking to know how many people are becoming elders who don’t have a nest egg, who paid taxes into the system but they can’t access Social Security, can’t access Medicare,” Chabolla adds. “It’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about in the past two years: How can I help aside from placing my hopes in a Congress that is more concerned about building borders than dealing with these issues?”
In 2021, Chabolla became a U.S. citizen. The day was bittersweet and laden with guilt. “It was one of those moments where I felt I was further abandoning my undocumented community, but I know that’s not true,” she says. Although her mother recently became a U.S. resident, some of her family remains undocumented.
Chabolla says she’s been able to find some balance as an ally who was once directly impacted by immigration policies. “I’m trying to find a place where I can remain hopeful in my job and be a zealous lawyer and advocate.”
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Congrats and way to go Viri! You have already established yourself as a “New Generation Leader” of the NDPA! Awesome!
For years, the GOP has been mindlessly blocking various versions of DACA, at a great human cost as well as a huge cost to our nation. Dreamers who are able to achieve citizenship, without special help from Congress, and other “New Generation” members of the NDPA must follow the lead of Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-MI) by getting into the “power structure” and forcing long overdue progressive changes.
Thanks to Chief Justice Roberts, the Supremes got this one right, barely 5-4. One vote has made a huge difference in literally hundreds of thousands of lives, and helped to shape American’s future for the better. By contrast, the Trump Administration’s failed attempts to undo this important program was a disgraceful abuse of Government resources! The inability of GOP-controlled states to let this issue go — essentially too keep bullying and threatening some of the most productive and deserving members of our society — is beyond disgusting.
The 2022 Term ended last week but there already are new immigration cases on the Supreme Court’s docket for the 2023 Term.
Law 360 reports that the Supreme Court on the last day of the 2022 Term agreed to review 1) if Board of Immigration Appeals decisions denying cancellation of removal for exceptional hardship are subject to judicial review and 2) consolidated cases on the sufficiency of notice in removal proceedings.
Issue: Whether an agency determination that the statutory standard of “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” is a mixed question of law and fact reviewable under 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(D), or whether this determination is a discretionary judgment call unreviewable under Section 1252(a)(2)(B)(i) (and not subject to judicial review).
The Court continues to deal with the ripple effects of Pereira v. Sessions (2018), which addressed the sufficiency of notice in removal proceedings.
Issue: Whether the government provides notice “required under” and “in accordance with paragraph (1) or (2) of” 8 U.S.C. § 1229(a) when it serves an initial notice document that does not include the “time and place” of proceedings followed by an additional document containing that information, such that an immigration court must enter a removal order in absentia and deny a noncitizen’s request to rescind that order.
KJ
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Aleksandra Gontaryuk ESQ Managing Partner AG Law Newark, NJ PHOTO: AG Law
From: Aleksandra Gontaryuk
Sent: Monday, July 3, 2023 4:29 PM
To: AILA New Jersey Chapter Distribution List <newjersey@lists.aila.org>
Subject: Precedential Decision — 3rd Circuit
Hot off the presses. No supplemental notice allowed to cure defective NTA unless there is a change or postponement of time and place in NTA. In this case, my client had a defective NTA, so 3rd Circuit ruled there can be no change or postponement from a defective NTA in the first place when DHS didn’t issue new NTA!! In absentia remanded.
[The case is Madrid-Mancia v. AG, available in full text at the above link.]
Aleksandra N. Gontaryuk, Esq.
AG Law Firm
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Actually, Dems need an AG who WILL WORRY about systematic denials of due process, fundamental fairness, and failure to install best-qualified progressives in the disastrously dysfunctional Immigration Courts! PHOTO: Wikipedia Commons
The notice issue presented by Campos-Chaves and Singh has been to the Supremes, albeit in different forms, twice before recently. The BIA/DOJ position has been emphatically “stuffed” by the Supremes both times! Yet, here we are again with the same backlog-enhancing, due-process-denying nonsense, this time from a Dem AG who was supposed to act like a “real” Federal Judge, not a “stooge” for DHS Enforcement.
The long and short of it is that this third trip to the Supremes on the notice issue was avoidable. That is, if Garland had appointed immigration experts, individuals not afraid to enforce the statute even where it benefits the individual, as it often will if properly and fairly interpreted, to the BIA, long a hotbed of anti-immigrant interpretations of law. Garland continues to enable a system “packed” with anti-immigrant and anti-asylum judges promoted under Trump and largelyretained by Garland. This should outrage all progressives!
Dems continue to fecklessly “wring their hands” about the sharp right turn of the Supremes and the lower Article IIIs and the predictable decimation of individual rights. It all occurred in plain sight and with plenty of advance warning from the GOP as Dems diddled away their chances to stop it.
Dems aren’t going to be able to expand the Supremes, nor are term limits likely to happen. Both would require GOP support, which will not be forthcoming now that they have achieved their long-promised “takeover!” Discussing it is a waste of breath and brain cells. It also diverts attention from the Dems ongoing failure at EOIR.
The Dems best practical chance of reforming the Federal Courts would be to start “at the critical retail level” with what they control and could change tomorrow:The U.S.Immigration Courts housed (however improperly) in the DOJ. Right now they are an embarrassing mess of bad judging, anti-immigrant bias, worst practices, grotesque mismanagement, insurmountable backlogs, and hare-brained gimmicks.
Every day, in this and other forums, we see inspiring examples of the type of extraordinary progressive, creative, courageous legal talent available “in the marketplace.” They are the ones Garland should be recruiting and putting on the EOIR bench at both appellate and trial levels.
We would get an immediate, long overdue, improvement in the quality and efficiency of justice at EOIR. Correct, scholarly precedents would have carry-over into other areas of law and even gain international traction.
And, Dems would be building a “long bench” of “tried and true” candidates for Article III positions in the process! Who knows if and when a chance like this will come again? Yet, Garland and the Dems are squandering it, damaging democracy and humanity in the process! Talk about turning a “win-win” into a “lose-lose!” It’s something that Dem politicos excel at!
Dems failure to institute progressive reforms and bring in expert progressive judges at the court they do control makes the rest of their pronouncements on Federal Court reform meaningless babbling!
Dems “babble on” about Federal Court reform as GOP scores “real life” victories over individual rights and equity. It’s a waste of time, and “task avoidance” by Dems that diverts attention from the major Federal System they own 100% and operate (very badly): The U.S. Immigration Courts @ EOIR! — “Towel of Babel” By Pieter Bruegel The Elder Public Domain
Pay no attention to Dems disingenuous complaints about the Supremes and “Trumpy” lower court judges until they demonstrate the ability and willingness to reform EOIR!
In recent years, the [GOP’s] blind loyalty to Trump’s radicalism – especially his election lies – has caused it to even challenge the structure of democracy. A sense of national crisis and imminent political extinction, for example, ran through Trump’s rhetoric in the aftermath of the 2020 election, prompting some of his followers to use violence as a way of settling their political grievances on January 6, 2021.
Conservative Supreme Court decisions over the last two years have been especially hard for liberals to accept because they believe that the current majority is ill gotten.
The right’s dominance of the court happened in large part because then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to even grant a confirmation hearing to Obama’s final pick for the top bench, Merrick Garland, who now serves as attorney general in the Biden administration. This allowed Trump to name Justice Neil Gorsuch as his first Supreme Court nominee in 2017. But McConnell later turned his back on his own questionable principle that Supreme Court nominees should not be elevated in an election year by rushing through the confirmation of Trump’s final pick, Amy Coney Barrett, in 2020 – which enshrined the current 6-3 conservative majority.
The move not only confirmed Trump’s status as a consequential president whose influence will be felt decades after he left office. It cemented McConnell among the ranks of the most significant Republican Party figures in decades and ensured conservative policies will endure even under Democratic presidencies and congressional majorities.
Recent revelations about questionable ethics practices by some of the conservative justices have further fueled fury about the legitimacy of the court among liberals.
But not all of the court’s recent decisions have infuriated the White House and Democrats. Earlier this week, for instance, liberals were hugely relieved when the court rejected a long-dormant legal theory that held that state courts and other state entities have a limited role in reviewing election rules established by state legislatures when it comes to federal elections. The so-called Independent State Legislature Theory, a favorite of the Trump campaign, had led to fears that Republican state legislatures in some states could simply decide how to allocate electoral votes regardless of results.
Still, the broad trajectory of the court – on issues including gun control, race, business, regulation, climate and many other issues – is firmly to the right.
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It’s no coincidence that the Trumpist far-right assault on democracy began during the 2016 campaign with unprovoked attacks on Mexican migrants and bogus claims about the border and immigration. It was skillfully, if corruptly, followed up with weaponization of the immigration bureaucracy and packing of the Immigration Courts by the likes of Miller, Sessions, Barr, and Cooch.
We have seen the GOP’s assault and dehumanization of migrants carry over into attacks on a wide range of disadvantaged groups in American society including African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans, Muslim-Americans, women, the LGBTQ+ community, and many others.
Although the Supremes have held that every “person” in the United States is entitled to due process under law, that concept is ludicrous as applied to the U.S. Immigration Courts, where anti-asylum, anti-immigrant, pro-DHS bias still drives much of the decision making, prosecutors appoint the judges and write the rules, the Government can change results that don’t match its political agenda, and individuals are on trial for their lives without a right to appointed counsel or many times even the ability to fully understand the proceedings against them. Predictably, the overwhelming number of individuals stuck in this abusive system are persons of color, many women and children!
This is “colorblind” American justice? Gimmie a break!
Although Dems acknowledged many of these outrageous defects in the Immigration Courts while campaigning for votes in 2020, once in power, they have shown little inclination to correct this unacceptable situation that undermines our democracy.
In particular, given a chance to reform the Immigration Courts, re-compete on a merit basis judicial positions filled under questionable procedures (at best) during the Trump Administration, bring in competent judicial administrators laser-focused on due process and best practices, and remake the Immigration Courts into a bastion of great progressive judging —driven by due process and equal protection, Garland and the Dems have whiffed. In that way they have largely followed the Obama Administration’s failure to take seriously due process for persons who happen to be in Immigration Court.
The failure of Dems to take immigrant justice seriously, and their inexcusable blown opportunity to reshape the Immigration Courts into a training and proving ground for the best and most qualified candidates for Article III judgeships ties directly into the anti-democracy shift in the Article IIIs and the GOP’s ability to carry out its right-wing agenda through a Supremes majority highly unrepresentative of Americans and our values.
An informed observer might well wonder “If the Dems are unwilling and unable to reform and improve the Federal Courts they do control — and apparently are ashamed of the progressive values they espouse — how will they ever counter the right’s anti-democracy agenda?”
“We must decide whether Ramírez’s conduct—lying to local authorities about U.S. citizenship—was for a “purpose or benefit under” a particular law. The BIA, relying on its Richmond decision, concluded that Ramírez lied about his citizenship “for the purpose of avoiding removal proceedings.” See In re Richmond, 26 I. & N. Dec. 779, 788 (B.I.A. 2016) (holding that a “purpose” under a law “includes the avoidance of negative legal consequences— including removal proceedings”). The BIA’s interpretation of § 1182(a)(6)(C)(ii)(I) is untenable. We agree with our sister circuit that “the BIA’s construction of the ‘purpose or benefit’ language [is] . . . ‘unmoored from the purposes and concerns’ of the statute.” Castro v. Att’y Gen., 671 F.3d 356, 370 (3d Cir. 2012) (quoting Judulang v. Holder, 565 U.S. 42, 64 (2011)). … We conclude that Richmond’s construction of “under” is unreasonable and do not afford it any deference. Consequently, we reject Richmond’s derivative holding that “[t]he term ‘purpose’ . . . includes the avoidance of negative legal consequences—including removal proceedings.” … We therefore grant the petition for review and remand to the agency to either grant Ramírez’s application for adjustment of status or explain, consistent with this opinion, why not.”
Trust the BIA under Garland to come up with “teaching examples” of what’s wrong with EOIR!
Just last week we were discussing “Chevron deference” (a/k/a “Article III judicial task avoidance”) in my Immigration Law & Policy class at Georgetown Law. “Unreasonable interpretation” was one of the three ways we discussed for the Article IIIs to avoid giving Chevron deference to the BIA (the other two being “plain meaning” and “not your field of expertise”).
This is a classic (if rather brutal) example of the “unreasonable” exception to Chevron.
One reason why the “21st Century BIA” has become “unmoored” is that it is basically “tethered” to whatever DHS Enforcement wants and what appears to line up with an Administration’s “immigration enforcement agenda.” In other words, the BIA tends to interpret ambiguous statutes with “career preservation” rather than “best interpretations” in mind. That’s generally bad news for individuals seeking due process and fundamental fairness in life or death matters before EOIR!
That’s a chance for NDPA “practical scholar/experts” to start counteracting what has been a two-decade downward spiral of due process, fundamental fairness, and best practices at this oft-ignored “life or death tribunal” with nationwide jurisdiction.
Trump & McConnell stuck a mob of these unqualified righty extremists on the lower Federal Courts. Even a super conservative Supremes might be tiring of the overt bias and lack of basic judicial competence exhibited by these judicial hacks. https://www.flickr.com/photos/rasputin243/ Creative Commons License
The Court’s decision in United States v. Texas was 8–1, with all eight justices in the majority concluding that Tipton didn’t even have jurisdiction to hear this case in the first place — though they split 5-3 on why Tipton lacked jurisdiction. Only Justice Samuel Alito, the Court’s most reliable Republican partisan, dissented.
The case concerned 2021 guidelines, issued by Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, that instructed ICE agents to prioritize enforcement efforts against undocumented or otherwise removable immigrants who “pose a threat to national security, public safety, and border security and thus threaten America’s well-being.”
Two red states, Texas and Louisiana, sued, essentially arguing that ICE must arrest more immigrants who do not fit these criteria. Moreover, because Texas federal courts often allow plaintiffs to choose which judge will hear their case by deciding to file their lawsuits in specific parts of the state, these two red states chose Tipton — a staunchly anti-immigrant judge who has been a thorn in the Biden administration’s side since the first week of his presidency — to hear this lawsuit.
In one of the most predictable events in the US judiciary’s history, Tipton promptly obliged the two states by striking down Mayorkas’s guidelines.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s opinion in Texas holds that no federal judge should have ever even considered this case. As Kavanaugh explains, the plaintiff states “have not cited any precedent, history, or tradition of courts ordering the Executive Branch to change its arrest or prosecution policies so that the Executive Branch makes more arrests or initiates more prosecutions.” To the contrary, the Court held in Linda R. S. v. Richard D. (1973) that “a private citizen lacks a judicially cognizable interest in the prosecution or nonprosecution of another.”
. . . .
That said, the decision does contain some language that anti-immigrant judges may latch onto to impose their preference on the country — including a paragraph that reads like it was written to preserve lawsuits challenging the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
And there is one other very frustrating thing about this case. Although the Supreme Court eventually ruled that Tipton is not the head of ICE and cannot decide who its agents arrest, it rejected a request to temporarily block Tipton’s decision last July.
Don’t just complain about the awful mess @ the BIA! Get on the appellate bench and do something about it! Public Domain
Summary
The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) at the Department of Justice (DOJ) is seeking a highly-qualified individual to join our team of expert professionals who serve as Appellate Immigration Judges.
This is an Excepted Service position, subject to a probationary period. The initial appointment is for a period not to exceed 24 months. Conversion to a permanent position is contingent upon appointment by the Attorney General.
Although there was no formal announcement from EOIR, it appears that Appellate Immigration Judge William Cassidy has finally retired from the BIA. As many of you know, Judge Cassidy, appointed by AG Billy Barr, was notoriously hostile to asylum seekers and to a fair application of the generous well-founded-fear standard for asylum enunciated by the Supremes in INS v. Cardoza-Fonsecaand by the BIA in Matter of Mogharrabi. His “final” TRAC Immigration asylum denial rate as an Immigration Judge in Atlanta was an appalling and bone-chilling 99.1%! https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/judge2022/00004ATD/index.html.
This is a chance for a “real judge” with impeccable academic knowledge, practical solutions, and actual experience representing asylum applicants in the EOIR quagmire to bring some long-overdue and absolutely essential positive, progressive, change to the BIA – a group overall known for its too-often stilted, sloppy, improperly pro-Government, “go along to get along,” “don’t rock the boat by standing up for due process and human rights” decision-making.
The BIA’s lousy performance on the “stop time rule,” where they were twice rebuked by the Supremes for ignoring the language of the statute and the Court’s own holdings, is a classic example of why we need fundamental change at the top of EOIR. This substandard performance generated more unnecessary backlog and “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” in a system that can ill afford it (2 million case backlog). It also created unnecessary confusion and uncertainty in a situation where clarity was both required and achievable. I daresay, it’s hard to imagine any NDPA “practical scholar” getting sidetracked the way the BIA did in its misguided rush to please DHS Enforcement and its political “handlers” at DOJ!
Also, because of “jurisdiction stripping” legislation over the years, limiting the review of the Article IIIs in many areas, the BIA often represents the last realistic chance for individuals to obtain justice and fair treatment!That the BIA too often acts like an “assembly line,” doesn’t diminish its potential to become part of the solution rather than a source of further problems and unfairness.
Don’t let this important Federal Judgeship, with real life or death power over the lives of individuals and the future of our democracy, go by default to another “insider” or asylum denier.
I hear complaints from practitioners nationwide about the BIA’s poor scholarship and failure to issue realistic, positive guidance. But, it’s not going to change unless the “best and the brightest” from the NDPA apply for these critical jobs at EOIR and become agents of change.
Don’t let this chance go by to make a difference in the lives of others and to use your hard-earned expertise and practical skills to fundamentally change our failing U.S. judicial system — starting at the critical “retail level.”
The deadline is July 5, 2023, conveniently during the July 4 holiday. But, don’t let mindless bureaucratic tactics and feeble efforts at recruitment deter you. Force the USG to recognize and employ “judicial excellence” – once the “vision” of EOIR (before “good enough for government work” became the motto). I urge well-qualified minority candidates to apply for this key position!
Justice Alito gets acquainted with billionaires he hardly knew while holding salmon he never previously met and NOT drinking $1,000 per bottle wine. His “fish story” in the WSJ is a real whopper! Photo: Pro PublicaJay Kuo American Author, Producer, CEO of The Social Edge PHOTO: Facebook
Jay Kuo writes in Substack:
In some ways it was bound to happen. For months the public focus has been on Justice Clarence Thomas. Per excellent reporting by ProPublica, Thomas had secretly accepted myriad unreported gifts from billionaire-with-an-archvillain’s-name Harlan Crow: lavish private flights, luxury trips, years of private tuition for a family member, and money for the sale and renovation of his mother’s home (where she still lives rent free). With all that rotting out in the open, it was naturally time to look at the records and practices of other justices who seem to operate outside ethical rules.
This time in the barrel belongs to Justice Samuel Alito, the author and possible leaker of the Dobbs decision that struck down 50 years of federal abortion rights protections under Roe v. Wade. Like Justice Thomas, Alito has been cozy with his own billionaire, hedge fund owner Paul Singer. According to a new blockbuster report from ProPublica by the same team of reporters who brought us the corrupt tales of Justice Thomas, billionaire Singer flew Alito to Alaska on a private plane for a salmon fishing retreat back in 2008.
These billionaires sure like making friends with Supreme Court justices.
As with Thomas and Crow, Alito never disclosed the trip or his relationship with Singer, even though Singer had many cases that regularly came before the Court for review. This included a doozy in which Alito joined the majority in handing Singer’s company an outcome worth $2.4 billion. More on that below.
This controversy is further unique because Alito, seeking to get out ahead of the story, went to his buddies at the Wall Street Journal Opinions department and got them to publish an OpEd written by him entitled “ProPublica Misleads Its Readers.” It purported to “respond” to the ProPublica report hours before it was published. It is awkward and frankly embarrassing to see a justice opine on something he hasn’t even read, all in the hopes of saving his own petard.
Alito’s stated rationales for why he didn’t report the trip, along with his downplaying of his relationship with Singer, are unconvincing and in many ways ludicrous. More on that below, too. But his words do nothing to change the fact that we now have two sitting justices who are trying to explain away apparent efforts to buy influence with the Court.
As Ronald Reagan once put it, if you’re explaining, you’re losing.
Let’s look at the basic facts uncovered in the ProPublica reporting, and then at Alito’s lame responses in his OpEd. If Chief Justice John Roberts thought the scrutiny and collapsing public faith in the High Court had subsided, he thought wrong.
. . . .
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Read Jay’s full op-Ed at the link.
Alito’s “defense” explained in plain English:
Here’s the deal. I’m only a humble Supreme’s Justice, so I didn’t really understand Federal ethics law. Rather than wasting time getting an opinion from an impartial expert, I looked at what others (defined as “my GOP judicial cronies Clarence Thomas and the late Antonin Scalia”) were doing. I reasonably concluded that since the wine I was served at dinner cost less than $1,000 a bottle, there was no problem.
Moreover, please understand that I hardly knew the guy who offered me the $100,000 trip on his private jet. That’s why I found it necessary to take a vacant seat on his private jet, to keep it from going to waste.
Since that put me in Alaska anyway, I figured why not get in a couple of days of salmon fishing with some GOP fat cat donors while roughing it in $1,000/night rustic accommodations like most Alaskans live in. It put me more in touch with the average billionaire and allowed me to empathize with their dire predicament in a socialist society.
Moreover, I’m a busy guy. How could I possibly know or predict that some of these random billionaires would have business before our Court or would have their financial interests materially affected by our rulings?
Would the “woke crowd” at Pro Publica be raising a stink if I had taken the same trip with homeless folks or asylum applicants being flown to Alaska by Gov. DeSantis or Gov. Abbott. I doubt it! Clearly, the liberal media’s double standard is being applied here.
These outrageous charges against me and GOP billionaires I hardly know are just more proof that under Democrats, America has become hostile territory for billionaires. No “reasonable person” (defined as a “GOP Judge who hobnobs with billionaires they hardly know”) would see an “appearance of impropriety” here!
How many “average American reasonable persons” other than me find themselves harassed by the press just for weekending with random billionaires in Alaska? None! Has there ever been a clearer case of media bullying?
As I always say, ignorance of the law is no excuse when applied to poor criminal defendants or unrepresented immigrants who can’t understand the complexities and illogic of our immigration laws. But, I’m not a criminal defendant nor am I a migrant, who, in my view, isn’t a “person” at all under our Constitution. Let them eat cake or drink $1,000 bottles of wine. Moreover, bad judgement is not a crime nor is it a legal disqualification from being a Justice and continuing to pass final, un-reviewable judgement on others.
Finally, I want to say that I am being persecuted by far left journalists who are threatening to publish facts in an article I’ve not yet read. They gave me a chance to respond in advance, but I stonewalled it in favor of an op-ed that was immediately run by my buddies over at the WSJ editorial board. That’s what any “reasonable person” would do when falsely accused of accepting favors from billionaires they hardly know.
Let’s look at this another way.Immigration Judge X accepts a $100,000 private plane ride and a couple of days of salmon fishing and uber-expensive dinners at an exclusive, $1,000 per night fishing camp in Alaska. Judge X claims that he barely knew the guy who offered him the trip, but merely went to keep an otherwise vacant seat on the private plane from going unused. Judge X was later shocked to learn that his benefactor’s spouse had a removal case pending before Judge X, which Judge X later heard and decided in the spouse’s favor.
Raise your hand 🙋🏼♀️if you think Judge X would still have a job after these facts surfaced! Would Judge X get a chance to “rebut the allegations in advance” in the WSJ?
Think that there is “equal justice for all” in America?
Emily Garcia Litigation Reporter Bloomberg Law PHOTO: talkingbiznews.comThis phase of the Inquisition is over. But, torture is still widely practiced worldwide. US Officialdom has shown little enthusiasm for carrying out its mandatory protection responsibilities under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). PHOTO: Public Realm
The Supreme Court recently removed one procedural hurdle for noncitizens seeking humanitarian relief but the high court’s ruling clears up no substantial issues about a law they’ll make their claims under, immigration attorneys say—allowing some relief seekers to be sent back to torturous conditions.
Estrella Santos-Zacaria, a Guatemalan transgender woman, asked for federal review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’s decision denying her protection under the Convention Against Torture. In a unanimous decision, the justices said federal judges can weigh in on BIA’s decisions before discretionary administrative remedies are exhausted. In Santos-Zacaria’s case, her petition may be sent back to BIA for further review but that doesn’t guarantee relief.
While lawyers are hopeful that earlier review by a federal court will facilitate a smoother process for their clients, they express concerns that immigration judges and the BIA too readily dismiss the risk of torture, and say it shouldn’t be so difficult to get humanitarian relief.
CAT protections, including deferral and withholding of removal, allow noncitizens who aren’t eligible for asylum to remain in the US. To receive protection, a noncitizen must show an immigration judge that if they are deported, it’s more likely than not that they will be tortured with government acquiescence or participation. Unlike asylum, protections under the Convention are mandatory and serious criminal convictions can’t disqualify a noncitizen. But protections are especially difficult to win, said Eleni Bakst, a lawyer at the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition.
. . . .
Paul Schmidt, a former immigration judge and chairman of the BIA between and 2001, said the process for evaluating claims under the Convention isn’t scientific. There’s no formula to plug in that will tell the odds of someone being tortured. “It’s sort of in the mind of the beholder,” Schmidt said.
. . . .
As an immigration judge, Schmidt said he and other immigration judges relied heavily on country conditions reports published by the US Department of State. Asked if he believed the reports were an adequate representation of a country, Schmidt said “certainly not.”
Bakst said statistics provided by other countries can also be inaccurate. In El Salvador, the government doesn’t allow monitoring bodies into its prisons so data on inmate torture is incomplete.
Pushing back against questionable reports and statistics, immigration advocates are aware that immigration judges and the BIA may dismiss their client’s risk of torture, and their client may be tortured anyway.
Such was the case for Patrick Julney, a client of CAIR Coalition who was denied deferral under the Convention for failure to show that the likelihood of torture was more than 50% and deported to Haiti. Bakst said that “immediately upon his arrival in Haiti, he was imprisoned and tortured.” Julney was denied access to food, water, and medicine.
Estelle McKee, a clinical immigration law professor at Cornell Law School, represented a schizophrenic man from El Salvador who was denied CAT relief. After his deportation, McKee hired a Salvadorean attorney to track down her client.
She said the attorney couldn’t even enter her client’s village because it was gang-controlled.
“I don’t have much hope that he survived,” McKee said.
McKee and other immigration attorneys agree that the Supreme Court’s decision will speed up the humanitarian claims process, though results may vary. Julney’s case was reviewed by the Third Circuit, but his outcome was unchanged.
. . . .
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Reads Emily’s full, well-written article at the above link.
A Government colleague once remarked to me that “the U.S. should never have signed the CAT.” Obviously, that private view has permeated and driven USG policy on implementing the CAT, particularly at the DOJ where it was immediately treated as “PNG” because of its lack of exclusionary clauses. Even “bad guys” aren’t supposed to be returned to torture (in terms of legal theory, if not reality).
There is no objective evidence that torture is on the decline worldwide. See, e.g., https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/torture/. Yet the mandatory protection required by the CAT remains elusive and quite arbitrary within the U.S. legal system.
One of the best examples of how Government officials who should be insuring that the legal protections under CAT are fairly and reasonably applied to achieve the Convention’s purposes are instead promoting an “any reason to deny” culture is former AG John Ashcroft’s precedent decision in Matter of J-F-F-, 23 I&N Dec. 912 (A.G. 2006). There, Ashcroft reversed a CAT grant by the IJ and the BIA to an unrepresented respondent. In the process, Ashcroft established the “enhanced test” that to gain CAT protection, the respondent must “establish that each step in the hypothetical chain of events is more likely than not to happen.”
In other words, this is an official invitation, some might say directive, to IJs to “lengthen the chain of causation until it breaks” (which it inevitably will, in most cases) and protection can be denied.
Moreover, many CAT claims, like this one, involve unrepresented respondents. The chances of an unrepresented respondent understanding the “chain of causation” or what it means to prove “each step is more likely than not to occur” are very slim.
Additionally, even if they did understand, since many of the unrepresented respondents are in detention, they would have little or no realistic chance of obtaining the type of detailed, timely expert testimony and comprehensive documentation, far beyond the DOS Country Reports (which, by the way are only available in English), necessary to overcome Ashcroft’s “de facto presumption of denial” and prove that every step of the “hypothetical chain” is “more likely than not” to happen.
Effectively, every problem mentioned by Emily and expert practitioners in this article is essentially (intentionally) magnified by J-F-F- and other anti-CAT administrative precedents.
CAT relief is mandatory, thus suggesting a high obligation on the part of IJs and other Government officials to insure non-return to torture. Yet, Ashcroft chastises the IJ involved in J-F-F- for essentially insuring that the respondent exercised his legal right to apply for CAT and helping him develop the record. Ashcroft even took the extraordinary step of disqualifying this IJ from any “hypothetical” future proceedings involving this respondent.
At the beginning of the BIA’s quest to interpret CAT (ironically at the same time Bush Administration lawyers at DOJ were secretly searching for legal pretexts to justify torture), I dissented from an unduly restrictive BIA precedent Matter of J-E-, 23 I&N Dec. 291, 304 (BIA 2002), Paul Wickham Schmidt, Board Member, dissenting, joined by Board Members John W. Guendelsberger, Noel Ann Brennan, Cecelia M. Espenoza, and Juan P. Osuna.
There, I stated:
The majority concludes that the extreme mistreatment likely to befall this respondent in Haiti is not “torture,” but merely “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” The majority further concludes that conduct defined as “torture” occurs in the Haitian detention system, but is not “likely” for this respondent. In short, the majority goes to great lengths to avoid applying the Convention Against Torture to this respondent.
We are in the early stages of the very difficult and thankless task of construing the Convention. Only time will tell whether the majority’s narrow reading of the torture definition and its highly technical approach to the standard of proof will be the long-term benchmarks for our country’s implementation of this international treaty.
Although I am certainly bound to follow and apply the majority’s constructions in all future cases, I do not believe that the majority adequately carries out the language or the purposes of the Convention and the implementing regulations. Therefore, I fear that we are failing to comply with our international obligations.
I conclude that the respondent is more likely than not to face officially sanctioned torture if returned to Haiti. Therefore, I would grant his application for deferral of removal under the Convention Against Torture and the implementing regulations. Consequently, I respectfully dissent.
More than two decades after J-E-, my fears and predictions of officially-sanctioned non-compliance with CAT unfortunately continue to be proved correct.
I also note with pride that our Round Table of Former Immigration Judges ⚔️🛡 filed an amicus brief before the Supremes in Santos-Zacaria supporting the interpretation that eventually prevailed.
“Dagoberto Luna petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ dismissal of his appeal of an immigration judge’s denial of his motion to rescind an in absentia removal order. Luna contends he received a defective Notice to Appear that renders the in absentia removal order invalid. We agree. We GRANT Luna’s petition, VACATE, and REMAND for further proceedings.”
[Hats off yet again to superlitigator Raed Gonzalez!]
When will they learn, when will they ever learn? The ultra-conservative 5th Circuit pays attention when Raed litigates in behalf of individuals seeking due process and fundamental fairness at EOIR. Why doesn’t Garland?
The BIA’s approach to statutory interpretation under Chevron tends to be one-sided in favor of DHS Enforcement. IMAGE: Wikimedia Commons
BIA HEADNOTE:
(1) A conviction for burglary of a building under section 140.25(1)(d) of the New York Penal Law is not categorically an aggravated felony burglary offense under section 101(a)(43)(G) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(G) (2018), because the statute is overbroad and indivisible with respect to the definition of “building” under New York law.
(2) A conviction for displaying what appears to be a pistol, revolver, rifle, shotgun, machine gun, or other firearm while committing burglary under section 140.25(1)(d) of the New York Penal Law necessarily involves the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another and therefore constitutes an aggravated felony crime of violence under section 101(a)(43)(F) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(F).
FOR THE RESPONDENT: Yuriy Pereyaslavskiy, Esquire, Albany, New York
FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY: Donald W. Cassidy, Associate Legal Advisor
BEFORE: Board Panel: GOODWIN and WILSON, Appellate Immigration Judges. Concurring and Dissenting Opinion: BROWN, Temporary Appellate Immigration Judge.
CONCURRING AND DISSENTING OPINION: Denise G. Brown, Temporary Appellate Immigration Judge
I respectfully dissent from that portion of the majority opinion that holds that second degree burglary under section 140.25(1)(d) of the New York Penal Law is categorically an aggravated felony crime of violence under section 101(a)(43)(F) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”), 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(F) (2018). As an initial matter, I have reservations that this case is an appropriate means through which to establish binding precedent on this issue as the Immigration Judge did not reach it. While the parties have had an opportunity to address the issue through supplemental briefing, we lack the benefit of the Immigration Judge’s reasoning. It is our role to “review” questions of law de novo, 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(d)(3)(ii) (2023), but there is no underlying decision regarding whether the respondent was convicted of an aggravated felony crime of violence for us to review here.
Further, I disagree with the majority’s analysis by which it concludes that a violation of section 140.25(1)(d) of the New York Penal Law is categorically a crime of violence. Section 140.25(1)(d) provides that a person is guilty of burglary in the second degree:
when he knowingly enters or remains unlawfully in a building with intent to commit a crime therein, and when
. . . [i]n effecting entry or while in the building or in immediate flight therefrom, he or another participant in the crime
…
. . . [d]isplays what appears to be a pistol, revolver, rifle, shotgun, machine gun or other firearm . . . .
N.Y. Penal Law § 140.25(1)(d) (McKinney 2017). A crime of violence under section 101(a)(43)(F) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(F), is “an offense that has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another.” 18 U.S.C. § 16(a) (2018).
I disagree with the majority that second degree burglary under section 140.25(1)(d) includes as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against another person. In my view, second degree burglary under section 140.25(1)(d) does not include any element that requires the presence of a person other than the defendant. In the absence of an element that requires the presence of a person, the majority’s conclusion that this offense is a crime of violence is unavailing. See Borden v. United States, 141 S. Ct. 1817, 1825 (2021) (“The phrase ‘against another,’ when modifying the ‘use of force,’ demands that the perpetrator direct his action at, or target, another individual.”).
The majority’s analysis heavily relies on case law involving robbery to support its conclusion that second degree burglary under this subsection is a crime of violence. But under New York law, robbery always involves forcible stealing from a person and burglary does not. In United States v. Ojeda, 951 F.3d 66, 71 (2d Cir. 2020), the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected the defendant’s argument that it was possible to commit New York first degree robbery with the aggravating factor of the display of an
apparent weapon without the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force. The court held that the defendant’s argument ignored the foundational element being aggravated, i.e., forcible stealing, which is defined in New York to include the use or threatened immediate use of physical force upon another person. Id. at 72. Forcible stealing is an element for every degree of robbery in New York and “that element categorically requires the use of physical force.” Id. Thus, New York robbery always includes as an element the use or threatened use of physical force against another person, regardless of whether an apparent weapon is displayed. Accordingly, the New York robbery statutes are distinguishable from the burglary statute at issue here, and thus the case law relied upon by the majority relating to robbery is not persuasive in this context. For the same reason, the case law cited by the majority relating to assault is likewise unpersuasive.
The majority also relies on the definition of “display” in the New York model jury instructions to conclude that a display of an apparent weapon must be in front of a person. The majority concludes that “display” in the context of section 140.25(1)(d) necessarily means a conscious display of an apparent weapon to a victim. “Display” as described by the model jury instructions does not constitute the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against another person because, as the Supreme Court explained in Borden, “against the person of another” means “in opposition to” and expresses “a kind of directedness or targeting” rather than being akin to “waves crashing against the shore.” Borden, 141 S. Ct. at 1825–26. However, the language of the model jury instructions—i.e., describing display to be “manifest[ing] the presence of an object that can reasonably be perceived” as a weapon—does not require the type of directedness or targeting described in Borden. N.Y. Crim. Jury Instr. & Model Colloquies, Penal Law § 140.25(1)(d) (May 2018). The language instead appears to contemplate that a person be “the mere recipient” of the display. Borden, 141 S. Ct. at 1826.
Even if the majority’s conclusion were correct that display of an apparent weapon necessarily contemplates the presence of a person to perceive it and that it necessarily involved conduct directed at another person as contemplated by Borden—a conclusion not supported by the actual language of section 140.25(1)(d)—there is nothing in the statute that requires the person perceiving the display to be the victim of the crime, rather than a bystander or another defendant.
The majority’s conclusion that an offense under section 140.25(1)(d) is categorically a crime of violence also assumes that the crime a defendant intends to commit is necessarily a “confrontational crime.” But there is nothing in the statute that connects the display of an apparent weapon with
the crime the defendant has “intent to commit [in the building],” and thus nothing in the statute that requires the crime a defendant has “intent to commit [in the building]” to be a confrontational crime, as the majority concludes. N.Y. Penal Law § 140.25.
For these reasons, I am not persuaded by the majority’s conclusion that an offense under section 140.25(1)(d) of the New York Penal Law is categorically a crime of violence. I would instead conclude that it is not and that therefore the respondent is not removable as charged.
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Thanks for speaking out, Judge Brown, against the BIA’s one-sided approach to statutory interpretation that almost always favors DHS over better and more reasonable interpretations offered by individuals. Then, the Article III Courts compound the problem by giving “Chevron deference” to the BIA’s one-sided jurisprudence!
Dissent matters!
Here’s Judge Brown’s official EOIR bio:
Denise G. Brown
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed Denise G. Brown as a temporary Appellate Immigration Judge in July 2021. Judge Brown earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1992 from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a Juris Doctor in 1995 from the Catholic University of America. From July 2007 to July 2021, she has served as an attorney advisor, Board of Immigration Appeals, Executive Office for Immigration Review. During this time, from March to September 2019, she served on detail as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of Virginia, and from January to July 2017, she served on detail as a temporary Immigration Judge at the Headquarters Immigration Court, EOIR. From December 1999 to July 2007, she served as an Associate General Counsel at the Office of General Counsel, Department of the Air Force. Judge Brown is a member of the District of Columbia Bar.
This class will cover the constitutional and political framework for the U.S. Immigration System, enforcement and adjudication agencies, immigrants, nonimmigrants, removals and deportations, detention and bond, immigration hearings, judicial review, grounds for removal and inadmissibility, “crimmigration,” immigration reform, “Chevron” deference, refugee and asylum status and other international protections. It will also include analyzing major immigration cases like INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U.S. 421 (1987) (well-founded fear) and Matter of Kasinga, 21 I&N Dec. 357 (BIA 1996) (female genital mutilation).
Eliza C. Klein, a retired immigration judge, said the asylum case backlog “creates a second class of citizens.”Credit…Taylor Glascock for The New York Times
Eliza C. Klein, who left her position as an immigration judge in Chicago in April, said the latest increase in illegal border crossings will strain the understaffed work force as they prioritize migrants who crossed recently.
That will leave some older cases to languish even longer, she said.
“This is a great tragedy because it creates a second class of citizens,” Ms. Klein, who started working as an immigration judge in the Clinton administration, said of those immigrants who have been waiting years for an answer to their case. The oldest case Ms. Klein ever adjudicated had been pending in the court for 35 years, she said.
“It’s a disgrace,” Ms. Klein said. “My perspective, my thought, is that we’re not committed in this country to having a just system.”
While crowds of migrants continued to seek refuge in the United States after the lifting of Title 42, U.S. officials said the border remained relatively orderly. About 10,000 people crossed the border on Thursday, a historically large number, but that dropped significantly to about 6,200 on Friday.
Tens of thousands of migrants continued to wait in makeshift camps on both sides of the border for a chance to request sanctuary in the United States. The administration remained concerned about overcrowding; Border Patrol held more than 24,000 migrants in custody on Friday, well over the agency’s maximum capacity of roughly 20,000 in its detention facilities.
. . . .
Mimi Tsankov, the president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, said that to truly address the backlog, the Biden administration would need to do more than simply hire more judges. She said that the government should increase funding for better technology and bigger legal teams, and that Congress should reform the nation’s immigration laws.
“The immigration courts are failing,” said Samuel B. Cole, the judge association’s executive vice president. “There needs to be broad systemic change.”
. . . . .
Judge Charles Honeyman, who spent 24 years as an immigration judge and retired in 2020, said he came away from his job believing the United States would need to do a better job of deterring fraud while protecting those who would be harmed in their home country.
When handling an asylum case, Mr. Honeyman said he would assess the person’s application and examine the state of their home country by reading reports from the State Department and nonprofits. Many of the applicants lacked attorneys; he believes some cases that he denied might have turned out differently if the migrants had had legal representation.
In trying to root out fraud, he would compare a person’s testimony with the answers they had given to an asylum officer or Border Patrol agent.
. . . .
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Read the full article at the link.
EOIR ABUSES ASYLUM SEEKERS — The Problem Goes Deeper Than The Number Of Judges: Quality & Culture Matter!
By Paul Wickham Schmidt
U.S. Immigration Judge (Retired)
Courtside Exclusive
May 16, 2023
While the NYT article notes that the majority of asylum cases are eventually denied on the merits, this data is often presented in a misleading way by the Government, and unfortunately, sometimes the media. According to TRAC Immigration, during the period Oct 2000 to April 2023, approximately 43% of asylum seekers who received a merits decision were granted asylum or some other type of relief. Approximately 57% were denied. https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/asylum/
Even in an overall hostile system, where individuals are often required to proceed without lawyers, and grant/denial rates among Immigration Judges vary by astounding levels (so great as to present prima facie due process issues), asylum seekers succeed on the merits of their claims at a very respectable rate. In a properly staffed and administered system where the focus was on due process and fundamental fairness for individuals, that number would almost certainly be substantially higher.
Moreover, the data suggests that toward the end of the Obama Administration and during the entire Trump Administration, the asylum system was improperly manipulated to increase denials.
I think there are three reasons for the precipitous decline in asylum grant rates, largely unrelated to the merits of the claims. First, Attorneys General Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr overruled some of the leading administrative precedents supporting grants of asylum. In the process, they made it crystal clear that they considered Immigration Judges to be their subordinate employees within the political branch of Government and that denial, deportation, and assistance to their “partners” at DHS Enforcement (actually DHS is a party before EOIR, not a “partner”) were the preferred results at EOIR.
Second, in greatly expanding the number of Immigration Judges, Sessions and Barr appointed almost exclusively from the ranks of prosecutors and government attorneys, even elevating an inordinate number of individuals with no immigration and human rights experience whatsoever. Not only were well-qualified individuals with experience representing individuals in Immigration Court largely passed over and discouraged from applying, but some of the best Immigration Judges quit or retired prematurely as a matter of conscience because of the nakedly anti-immigrant pro enforcement “culture” promoted at EOIR.
Additionally, the nationwide appellate court and precedent setter, the BIA, was expanded and “packed” with some Immigration Judges who denied virtually all of the asylum cases coming before them and had reputations of hostility to the private bar and asylum seekers. Remarkably, Attorney General Garland has done little to address this debilitating situation at the BIA.
Third, since the latter years of the Obama Administration, when a vastly overhyped “border surge” took place, political officials of both parties have improperly “weaponized” EOIR as a “deterrent” to asylum seekers, focusing on expeditious denials of asylum rather than the due process and expert tribunal functions the agency was supposed to serve. The result has been a “culture of denial and deportation” with particular emphasis on finding ways to “say no” to women and individuals of color seeking asylum.
The NYT Article also mentions that asylum merits decisions require a higher standard of proof than “credible fear determinations.” That’s true. But the suggestion that the standards are much higher is misleading. In fact, the standards governing merits grants of asylum before the Asylum Office and EOIR are supposed to be extremely generous.
In the seminal case, INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, the Court said that “well-founded fear” is a generous standard, one that could be satisfied by a 10% chance of persecution. In implementing this holding, the BIA found in Matter of Mogharrabi that asylum could be granted even where the chances of persecution were substantially less than probable.
There is as also a regulation, 8 C.F.R. 208.13, issued under the Bush I Administration, that creates a rebuttable presumption of future persecution based on past persecution.
The problem is that none of these generous and remedial provisions relating to asylum has ever been properly, consistently, and uniformly applied within EOIR. As someone who during my time on the bench took these standards to heart, I found that a substantial majority of merits asylum cases coming before me could and should be granted under a proper application of asylum law.
Consequently, I am skeptical of judges who deny virtually all asylum claims. Likewise, I question the claims by political officials of both parties who pretend, without actual knowledge, that almost all asylum applicants at the border are “mere economic migrants” who deserve to be quickly and summarily removed.
Actually, under some circumstances, severe economic hardships can amount to persecution. Moreover, under the legally required “mixed motive” analysis for asylum, an economic aspect does not automatically obviate other qualifying grounds.
So, at its root, “credible fear” is actually an even more generous application of what is already supposed to be (but often isn’t in reality) a very generous standard for asylum. The alleged “disconnect” between the number of individuals found to have credible fear and the number actually granted asylum on the merits appears to be more a function of defective and overly restrictive decision-making at EOIR than it is of unjustified generosity of Asylum Officers screening for credible fear. It’s also important to remember that at the credible fear stage, individuals haven’t had time to marshal the substantial corroborating evidence eventually required (some would say unrealistically and unreasonably) in formal merits asylum hearings before EOIR.
Finally, just aimlessly increasing the number of Immigration Judges, without solving the systemic legal, logistical, management, quality control, training, and “cultural” problems infecting EOIR creates its own set of new problems.
Recently, a veteran practitioner before EOIR wrote the following:
In about eleven years, our local DMV went from twelve (12) judges in Baltimore and Arlington in 2012 to a hundred (100) judges in 2023 (8 BAL, 18 HYA, 30 WAS, 9 FCIAC, 14 RIAC, 21 STE). That’s an increase of 733.33%. This seismic expansion has resulted in many attorneys being overscheduled for individual hearings, which has an adverse effect on our clients, our ethical obligations, due process, and mental health.
Well-prepared attorneys, many serving pro bono or “low bono,” are absolutely essential to due process and fundamental fairness in Immigration Court, particularly in cases involving asylum and other forms of protection. For EOIR to schedule cases in a manner that does not take into consideration the legitimate needs and capacities of those practicing before their courts is nothing short of malpractice on the part of DOJ leadership.
There is a silver lining here. The EOIR judicial hiring program gives NDPA stars a chance to get on the bench at the retail level level, bring much needed balance and perspective, and to develop the credentials for future Article III judicial appointments. Since change isn’t coming “from the top,” we need to make it happen at the “grass roots level!” Keep those applications coming!
