"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.
A graduate of the University of Baltimore Law, Laura has been Senior Policy Counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association (“AILA”) National Office in Washington, D.C. for the past four years. In that role, she engaged with Federal agencies, Congress, and designated AILA committees on immigration issues with a focus on interior enforcement, due process, and removal defense. Immigration Court Reform was one of Laura’s key areas of expertise.
Importantly, from my personal standpoint, Laura has been (and will continue to be, I hope), part of the “Informal Strategic Planning Group” for the New Due Process Army (”NDPA”) that includes Dan Kowalski, Michelle Mendez, Debi Sanders, Tess Hellgren, and my Round Table colleagues Judge Jeffrey S. Chase and Judge Ilyce Shugall! Her many contributions to our camaraderie and work in behalf of due process and fundamental fairness have been nothing short of spectacular!
The good news is that, although NILC is headquartered in Los Angeles, Laura will be remaining in Washington, D.C. While she tells me that her “precise portfolio” at NILC is “TBD,” I know we will be hearing much more from our “Due Process Superstar” in the future.
Thanks for all your past contributions and all the best for the future, Laura, from all of your many “admirers and fellow soldiers in the NDPA!”
Federal Court Denies Government’s Motion to Dismiss in Immigration Court Case Advocates’ challenge to immigration courts as “deportation machines”
moves forward; constitutionality of immigration court system at issue
PORTLAND, OR – Immigrant rights advocates challenging the weaponization of the U.S. immigration courts applaud Friday’s late-afternoon ruling by the U.S. District Court of Oregon that their lawsuit, Las Americas v Trump, will move forward. The legal services providers, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (ASAP), Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC), the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Innovation Law Lab, and Santa Fe Dreamers Project (SFDP), working with Perkins Coie LLP for pro bono support, allege that the Administration has failed to establish an impartial immigration court as required under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and the Take Care Clause of the U.S. Constitution – weaponizing them into deportation machines against asylum seekers and other noncitizens – and asks the court to end the unlawful use of the courts to effectuate mass deportations instead of fair decisions.
In Friday’s order, the Honorable Karin Immergut denied the government’s motion to dismiss the case. The district court rejected the government’s arguments, holding that all of the organizations’ claims could proceed, including their claim that the Attorney General has grossly mismanaged the immigration court system and weaponized the system against asylum seekers.
“This is a clear victory for everyone who has sought a fair hearing in immigration court, only to face a system plagued by rampant dysfunction and policies designed to subvert justice,” said Melissa Crow, senior supervising attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Immigrant Justice Project. “For asylum seekers and those who represent them, the current process is like playing Russian roulette. Despite the life-or-death stakes in these cases, there is little rhyme or reason to the court’s workings apart from prioritizing deportation at all costs.”
“Friday’s decision is an important milestone in our fight for a truly fair, transparent, and independent immigration court,” said Tess Hellgren, staff attorney with Innovation Law Lab. “Whether an asylum seeker wins or loses should not depend on the political whims of the President or Attorney General. ”
Not only does the Court’s decision confirm that the gross mismanagement of the immigration court system is subject to judicial review, it also recognizes that there may be important constitutional checks and balances on the power of presidential administrations to manipulate the immigration courts to achieve mass deportation.
“This win is incredibly validating. We often operate under the guise that the work we are doing is impossible,” said Linda Corchado, Managing Attorney of the Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center. “We feel uplifted as we can take the giant step forward to tackle the system now, with everything we’ve got.”
“ASAP works with families across the United States and at the border who fled persecution and now face countless obstacles to seeking asylum in the U.S. immigration court system,” said Conchita Cruz, Co-Executive Director of ASAP. “This decision gets us one step closer to showing that the injustices of the U.S. immigration court system are not only wrong, but illegal. We stand with asylum seekers and immigrants’ rights advocates in bringing these abuses to light and demanding better from our government.”
The lawsuit, which was filed in December 2019, alleges President Trump, Attorney General Barr, and other members of the executive branch have failed to establish a fair immigration court system in which the plaintiff organizations can provide meaningful legal assistance to their asylum-seeking clients. The complaint outlines pervasive dysfunction and bias within the immigration court system, including:
The Enforcement Metrics Policy, , which requires immigration judges to decide cases quickly, at the expense of a fair process, in exchange for favorable performance reviews.
The “family unit” court docket, which stigmatizes the cases of recently arrived families and rushes their court dates, often giving families inadequate time to find an attorney and prepare for their hearings.
Areas that have become known as “asylum-free zones,” where virtually no asylum claims have been granted for the past several years.
The nationwide backlog of pending immigration cases, which has now surpassed 1 million — meaning that thousands of asylum seekers must wait three or four years for a court date.
In June 2019, Innovation Law Lab and SPLC also released a report, based on over two years of research and focus group interviews with attorneys and former immigration judges from around the country, documenting the failure of the immigration court system to fulfill the constitutional and statutory promise of fair and impartial case-by-case adjudication. The report can be accessed here: The Attorney General’s Judges: How the U.S. Immigration Courts Became a Deportation Tool.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Alabama with offices in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Washington, D.C., is a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society. For more information, see www.splcenter.org and follow us on social media: Southern Poverty Law Center on Facebook and @splcenter on Twitter.
Innovation Law Lab, based in Portland, Oregon with projects around the country and in Mexico, is a nonprofit organization that harnesses technology, lawyers, and activists to advance immigrant justice. For more information, visit www.innovationlawlab.org.
The Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (ASAP) provides community support and emergency legal aid to asylum seekers, regardless of where they are located. ASAP’s model has three components: online community support, emergency legal aid, and nationwide systemic reform. For more information, see www.asylumadvocacy.org and follow us on social media at @asylumadvocacy on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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So, finally, the clear unconstitutionality of“Star Chambers” run by a biased prosecutor who basically views himself as the personal lawyer for a racist xenophobic President is going to get some scrutiny, along with the beyond grotesque mismanagement of EOIR that has created a “backlog” that in all likelihood now exceeds 2 million cases. But, of course we don’t know, and may never know, the exact extent of the backlog because of 1) the notoriously defective record keeping at EOIR; and 2) the manipulation of and sometimes outright misrepresentation of data by the Trump Administration.
Thanks to SPLC and Innovation Law Lab for undertaking this long-overdue effort. And, special appreciation to my friends and New Due Process Army superstars Melissa and Tess.
Even before he was hired as Donald Trump’s attorney general, William Barr made it clear that he would be acting as the president’s lackey first and the chief lawyer for the United States second, having auditioned for the role by sending an unsolicited letter to the Justice Department calling the Russia inquiry “fatally misconceived” and describing Robert Mueller’s actions as “grossly irresponsible.” Since then, Barr has told Congress it’s perfectly okay for the president to instruct aides to lie to investigators, suggested that Mueller’s report fully exonerated Trump, which of course it did not, and attempted to bury the “urgent“ whistle-blower report that became the basis of the House’s impeachment proceedings.
Now, if it were up to Barr, he’d happily carry on doing the president’s dirty work, but for one problem: Trump, with his flapping yap and quick trigger finger, has been making it a little too obvious that the DOJ, in its current form, exists to punish his enemies and spare his friends. The most recent example of this, of course, came this week, when the president tweeted, at 1:48 a.m., that the sentencing recommendation of seven to nine years for his longtime pal Roger Stone was “horrible,” “very unfair,” and a “miscarriage of justice.” Then, after Barr’s DOJ intervened with a new filing calling for a much lighter sentence—which prompted the four prosecutors on the case to withdraw from it—the president tweeted his thanks, congratulating the attorney general on getting involved in matters relevant to his personal interests.
For many people long aware of Barr’s status as a boot-licking hack, this was a bridge too far. The calls for him to resign or be impeached were swift. And they got so bad that on Thursday, the attorney general felt compelled to sit down with ABC News and send the message to the president that if he’d like the DOJ to continue to do his dirty work, he needs to stop tweeting about it. Do criminals tell their social-media followers “Check out this sweet scam I just pulled”? No! Of course, rather than stating directly that the president’s penchant for telling the world about the many ways he’s corrupted the government have made it difficult for that corruption to continue, Barr had to pretend his comments were all about ensuring the DOJ’s independence, which would be a funny, not-at-all-believable thing for him to start caring about now.
“I’m not going to be bullied or influenced by anybody….whether it’s Congress, newspaper editorial boards, or the president,” Bill Barr tells @ABC News.
“I cannot do my job here at the department with a constant background commentary that undercuts me.”
“I’m not going to be bullied or influenced by anybody,” Barr insisted to ABC News chief justice correspondent Pierre Thomas. “Whether it’s Congress, a newspaper editorial board, or the president. I’m gonna do what I think is right. And you know…I cannot do my job here at the department with a constant background commentary that undercuts me.” Just in case that extremely obvious hint was lost on its intended audience, Barr added: “I think it’s time to stop the tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases.”
Maybe it’s not the tweets damaging his integrity but the nakedly partisan and quasi-legal decisions he’s made on the tweeter’s behalf?Just a thought.
Asked about the decision to reverse the sentencing recommendation for Stone, Barr insisted that it definitely had nothing to do with the guy being a longtime friend of Trump’s, claiming that he came to the unbiased conclusion on his own that the seven-to-nine-years call was excessive and that he was planning to file an update even before Trump tweeted about it being “horrible and unfair.” (He was not asked about the NBC News report that he additionally removed a U.S. attorney from her post for failing to punish Trump’s enemy Andrew McCabe, or that the Justice Department also intervened to change the sentencing recommendation for convicted criminal and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.)
Barr said Trump’s middle-of-the-night tweet put him in a bad position. He insists he had already discussed with staff that the sentencing recommendation was too long. “Do you go forward with what you think is the right decision or do you pull back because of the tweet? And that just sort of illustrates how disruptive these tweets can be,” he said.
Barr also told ABC he was “a little surprised” that the entire Stone prosecution team had resigned from the case—and one from the DOJ entirely—which presumably has something to do with the fact that after using your department to do the president’s bidding for so long, you sometimes forget that other people will take issue with such behavior.
Asked if he expected Trump to react to his criticism of the tweets, Barr responded: “I hope he will react.”
“And respect it?” Thomas asked.
“Yes,” Barr said. You hear that, Mr. President? Let the man turn the judicial branch into your own personal score-settling operation in peace!
Even smart folks like The NY Times’David Leonhardt are babbling about, perhaps, giving Billy “the benefit of the doubt.” Come on, man!
As BessLevin points out, Barr’s faithfully been doing Trump’s “dirty work” for him since even before he set foot inside the DOJ again. It’s not like he’s suddenly had a “moral awakening” or discovered human decency.
No, Trump is the “unitary Executive” that Billy and some of his GOP righty neo-fascists have always salivated over. But, understandably he’d prefer more privacy as he deconstructs the DOJ and undermines fair and impartial justice, including, of course, further trashing the Immigration Courts that, incredible as it might seem in a country that actually has a written Constitution supposedly guaranteeing Due Process to “all persons,” belong exclusively to him.
Remarkably, and quite stunningly to anyone who has actually studied the law, the Article III Courts, all the way up to the feckless Supremes, have gone along with this absurd charade. You get the message: Immigrants, migrants, and asylum seekers aren’t really “persons” at all. They have been dehumanized by the regime and “Dred Scottified” by the Article IIIs.
There is no particular legal rationale or justification for this ongoing miscarriage of justice. It’s just a matter of enough folks in black robes being too cowardly or self-absorbed, or maybe in a few cases too ignorant, to stand up for the Constitutional and human rights of the most vulnerable among us.
To paraphrase an expression from the world of religion: “What would Jesus think about this blindness to human suffering?” Nothing good, I’m sure!
If he’s actually out there among us today, he’s undoubtedly among those suffering in the regime’s “New American Gulag” or waiting in squalor along the Mexican border for a “fixed hearing” that’s probably never going to happen anyway. I know where he isn’t: among the sign waving crazies shouting hateful slogans glorifying human rights abuses at the “hate fests” z/k/a “Trump rallies!”
In Immigration Court, the conflicts of interest and threats to human decency aren’t just “implied” or “apparent.” They are very real, and they are destroying real human lives, even killing innocent folks, every day.
And, unlike U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, whose life tenure allows her to “ignore the noise and do what she thinks is right” (as Trump’s GOP toadies love to point out), Immigration Judges are “wholly owned commodities” of Billy and the regime: disposable, subservient, and told to “follow orders.” They can’t even schedule their own cases without political interference, let alone apply the law in a way that conflicts with Billy’s unethical precedents or those entered by his “wholly owned appellate body,” the Board of Immigration Appeals!
The latter has recently gone out of its way to show total subservience to the regime’s White Nationalist anti-asylum, anti-due-process, anti-immigrant agenda. Indeed, they have even drawn the ire of at least one conservative GOP-appointed Article III Judge by contemptuously disobeying a direct court order in favor of a footnote in a letter from the Attorney General.
“Shocking” as this professional malpractice and contempt for the justice system might be to those journalists and former DOJ employees who haven’t been paying attention, it’s nothing new to those of us involved in immigration. For the last three years, the regime has been actively and unethically “gaming” the unconstitutional Immigration “Court” system against the very migrants and asylum seekers whose legal rights and human dignity they are actually supposed to be protecting!How is this “just OK?”
Feckless Article III Courts have largely “gone along to get along,” although they might be showing less patience now that the scofflaw actions and disrespectful attitudes promoted by Billy and his predecessor “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions are directed at them personally rather than just screwing vulnerable migrants and asylum seekers.
While it’s nice that at least some Article III Judges are finally reacting to being “given the finger” by Barr, Trump, and their gang of White Nationalist thugs, outrage at their own disrespectful treatment pales in comparison with the death, torture, rape, extortion, and the other parade of horribles being inflicted daily on vulnerable migrants by the Immigration “Courts” and the human rights criminals in the Trump regime while the Article IIIs fail to step in and save lives.
In the end of the day, as history will eventually show, human lives, which are the key to the “rule of law,” will prove to be more important than “hurt feelings” among the Article III “lifers” or the kind of legal gobbledygook (much of it on “jurisdiction” which often translates into “task avoidance”) that Article IIIs, particularly those from the right wing, like to throw around to obscure their legal tone-deafness and moral failings from their fellow humans.
Due Process Forever; Complicity in the Face of Tyranny Never!
In the present climate, immigration lawyers must continue to present judges with creative, intelligent arguments; to present the public with proof of what is wrong with the current system; and to present those in power to change what is wrong with solutions.
I’ve added posts that address each these points. First, I discuss some recent articles in which scholars raise creative legal arguments as to the limits of Chevron deference in appeals to the federal courts. I have also posted a statement of our Round Table of Former Immigration Judges to the House Judiciary Committee, Immigration and Citizenship subcommittee that was made part of the record of its hearing last Wednesday on solutions to the present crisis in the immigration courts.
I have also posted the group statement of our Round Table on the one-year anniversary of the MPP, or “Remain in Mexico” policy that was drafted by former Immigration Judge Ilyce Shugall, who has volunteered her time to travel to Texas to observe MPP hearings that is meant to raise awareness of the need to end this awful program.
The powers of the Attorney General and the Board of Immigration Appeals to influence law by issuing binding precedent decisions is greatly enhanced by what is known as Chevron deference. The principl
On Wednesday, January 29 at 9:30 am, the House Judiciary Committee, Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee is holding a hearing entitled “Courts in Crisis: The State of Judicial Independence and
The Round Table of Former Immigration Judges is comprised of former immigration judges who are dedicated to due process in the immigration system. As former immigration judges, we
As we see the results of the regime’s Article III-enabled and encouraged nativist, racist policies like an expanded “Travel Ban” that now includes a large portion of Africa, new non-legislative restrictions on legal immigration, unmitigated expansion of the deadly “New American Gulag,” intentional mistreatment of children, and the continuing abrogation of both Due Process and our binding obligations to protect refugees at our Southern Border and elsewhere, Tess’s last sentence is particularly prophetic:
As the Attorney General and other executive officials attempt to expand their authority to define the terms of immigration adjudication, federal courts should heed the Seventh Circuit’s decision – and remember the foundational legal principle that “[i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”
So far, the Supremes and the Circuits have largely “vacated the province and shirked their duties” to the nation and our laws by shrinking and cowering in the face of the regime’s continuing lawlessness, bullying, bias, and tyranny. Indeed, the Supremes have shown a disturbing favoritism to unjustified requests by Trump’s Solicitor General to short-circuit the litigation system and the rules that bind all others.
Not since the Eisenhower Administration’s “Operation Wetback” (obviously one of the regime’s “models” of lawless disregard for human and legal rights, not to mention basic morality) has our national Government shown such overt racism and contempt for migrants of color. Yet, rather than standing tall and delivering a united, powerful, intellectually courageous defense of our Constitution, the “GOP Gang of Five Supremes” backed the dehumanization and demonization of migrants on racial and religious grounds for transparent and invidious political reasons in the “Travel Ban case.” They basically invited and then approved a demonstrably false and “bad faith” national defense “pretext” which the Administration has “jumped on” to justify other attacks on the rule of law.
Now the “ban” has remarkably, but predictably, been extended to a large part of Africa, including its largest economy, Nigeria. Hardly a whimper as Trump disembowels both Constitutional norms and human decency. What’s next on the agenda, Supremes, a bogus Executive ban on all non-White, non-Christian immigration? Who’d be surprised at this point?
Of course, with “constitutional de-personification” well under way with Article III approval, the next targets will be US citizens of color and others who “dare to differ” like the LGBTQ community, women, political opponents, journalists, lawyers, and, finally, judges themselves once their usefulness to Trump and his authoritarian regime is exhausted. The all-powerful, unrestrained, “unitary Executive” has no need of legislature, judiciary, or the people except to “ratify” their authoritarian abuses.
The failure to defend and reinforce the courageous legal community challenging the regime’s authoritarian overreach and the pathetically weak defense of the integrity of judicial colleagues who have tried to hold the regime accountable by Roberts has done nothingbut confirm and reinforce Trump’s pre-existingbelief that courts are “his” tools and judges “his toadies.”
America deserves better from its life-tenured judiciary! What’s the purpose of a supposedly independent life-tenured judiciary that sides with powerful, dishonest, lawless, bullies over the rights of individuals and is unwilling to stand up for the rights and human dignity of the most vulnerable among us?
THE ROLE OF JUDGES TO “SAY WHAT THE LAW IS”: JUDICIAL OVERSIGHT OF IMMIGRATION ADJUDICATION
By Tess Hellgren, Staff Attorney and Justice Catalyst Legal Fellow
January 31, 2020
Since the beginning of the Trump Administration, the immigration court system has been used as a tool to further the executive branch’s anti-immigrant agenda. The Attorney General and other executive officials have enabled widespread due process violations and skyrocketing case backlogs while imposing case quotas and docketing rules that prevent judges from serving as impartial adjudicators.[1]
Last week, the Seventh Circuit highlighted a new abuse of power: the refusal of executive officials in the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) to follow a direct order from a federal court.
The BIA is the administrative body responsible for reviewing decisions that are appealed from sixty-eight immigration courts across the country. Like these immigration courts, the BIA is part of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) – the immigration court system, located in the executive branch, that is ultimately overseen by the Attorney General of the United States. Despite the serious flaws inherent in the design of this system, BIA decisions may at least be appealed up to the appropriate federal circuit court, providing a crucial layer of independent judicial review in individual cases.[2]
In the case of Baez-Sanchez v. Barr, the Seventh Circuit had previously held that the immigration laws unambiguously grant immigration judges the power to waive a noncitizen’s inadmissibility to the United States, overruling the BIA’s prior decision to the contrary.[3] On remand, the BIA “flatly refused to implement” the court’s direct order.[4] Writing that the BIA’s decision “beggars belief,” the Seventh Circuit stated that
We have never before encountered defiance of a remand order, and we hope never to see it again. Members of the Board must count themselves lucky that [the Respondent] has not asked us to hold them in contempt, with all the consequences that possibility entails.[5]
This language is an extraordinary rebuke: it is very rare for a circuit court to issue an implicit threat to hold members of an administrative agency in contempt for directly disregarding a court order. The Seventh Circuit was clear that the BIA was mistaken if it thought that “faced with a conflict between our views and those of the Attorney General it should follow the latter.”[6] Affirming foundational separation of powers principles, the Seventh Circuit admonished that
[I]t should not be necessary to remind the Board, all of whose members are lawyers, that the “judicial Power” under Article III of the Constitution is one to make conclusive decisions, not subject to disapproval or revision by another branch of government . . . Once we reached a conclusion, both the Constitution and the statute required the Board to implement it.[7]
The Seventh Circuit’s decision also noted that the Attorney General had submitted a brief asking the court to give the BIA another opportunity to issue “an authoritative decision” on this issue, arguing that such a decision could be entitled to judicial deference.[8] The court aptly responded that this “request is bizarre,” as the court had already held that the applicable regulation was unambiguous – and an agency “cannot rewrite an unambiguous [law] through the guise of interpretation.”[9] As the Supreme Court made clear in Kisor v. Wilkie, “if the law gives an answer—if there is only one reasonable construction of a regulation—then a court has no business deferring to any other reading, no matter how much the agency insists it would make more sense.”[10]
Notably, even if the Seventh Circuit had found the laws in question to be ambiguous, the Attorney General and members of the BIA do not have free reign to impose any interpretation they choose. It is true that federal courts must defer to the reasoned decisions of administrative agencies when Congress has left the agency’s discretion to interpret an ambiguous provision of law, under the doctrine of Chevron deference.[11] But this deference is not boundless. As the Supreme Court made clear in Chevron, courts should defer to agencies’ interpretation of ambiguous statutes when the agency interpretation is “a reasonable accommodation of conflicting policies that were committed to the agency’s care by the statute.”[12] The agency’s interpretation must thus still fall “within the bounds of reasonable interpretation.”[13]
This standard, and the Seventh Circuit’s reprimand, is especially important as the Attorney General attempts to aggressively expand his control of immigration court adjudication. Under the Trump Administration, the Attorneys General have issued a number of “certified” decisions that attempt to restrict eligibility for asylum based on factors such as domestic violence, gang violence, or past persecution due to family membership.[14] In these decisions, which upend years of established immigration precedent, the Attorney General has pointedly asserted his authority to construe the terms of the Immigration and Nationality Act and implied that federal courts must fall in line with his interpretations.[15]
Yet the Attorney General’s reasoning holds only if his interpretations are actually entitled to judicial deference: if the laws in question are ambiguous and the federal courts find his interpretations reasonable.[16] And as the Supreme Court has admonished, “let there be no mistake: That is a requirement an agency can fail.”[17] Indeed, in addressing the application of the Attorney General’s certified decision in Matter of A-B-, at least one federal court has already held that a “general rule against domestic violence and gang-related claims during a credible fear determination is arbitrary and capricious and violates the immigration laws.”[18]
Faced with the Trump Administration’s weaponization of the immigration courts against asylum-seeking individuals, the role of the federal courts is more important than ever. As the Attorney General and other executive officials attempt to expand their authority to define the terms of immigration adjudication, federal courts should heed the Seventh Circuit’s decision – and remember the foundational legal principle that “[i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”[19]
[11]Chevron v. Nat. Res. Def. Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 842–43 (1984).
[12]Id.at 844–45; see also 5 U.S.C. § 706(2) (a reviewing court shall set aside agency action, findings, and conclusions found to be “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law”).
[13]See Kisor, 139 S.Ct. at 2416, quotingArlington v. FCC, 569 U.S. 290, 296 (2013).
[14]See Matter of A-B-, 27 I&N Dec. 316 (2018);Matter of L-E-A-, 27 I&N Dec. 581 (2019). Note inconsistencies
[15]See Matter of A-B-, 27 I&N at 326–27; Matter of L-E-A-, 27 I&N at 591–92.
[16]SeeNat’l Cable & Telecommunications Ass’n v. Brand X Internet Servs., 545 U.S. 967, 982 (2005) (allowing for agency interpretation to override judicial interpretation in certain circumstances, when the agency interpretation is “otherwise entitled to Chevron deference”).
Tress Hellgren Staff Attorney/Fellow Innovation Law Lab
My friend Tess Hellgren, Staff Attorney/Justice Catalyst Legal Fellow @ Innovation Law Lab reports:
Hi all,
As some of you are already aware, I am very pleased to share that Innovation Law Lab and the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit this morning challenging the weaponization of the nation’s immigration court system to serve the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda. More information is available below and at http://innovationlawlab.org/faircourts/.
I would like to thank all of you again for participating in our IJ roundtable and sharing your experiences for our report on the immigration court system (you will see a reference to it in our press release below). The insights we gained over the course of that report were vital in helping us identify and understand the problems in the immigration courts under the current administration.
Ramon Valdez, ramon@innovationlawlab.org / 971-238-1804 Immigration Advocates File Major Lawsuit Challenging
Weaponization of the Nation’s Immigration Court System
Advocates Launch Immigration Court Watch App to Ensure
Greater Accountability, Transparency in Courts
WASHINGTON, DC – The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Innovation Law Lab (Law Lab), Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (ASAP), Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC) and Santa Fe Dreamers Project (SFDP) have filed a federal lawsuit challenging the weaponization of the nation’s immigration court system to serve the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda.
“Under the leadership of President Trump and the attorney general, the immigration court system has become fixated on the goal of producing deportations, not adjudications,” said Stephen Manning, executive director of Innovation Law Lab. “The system is riddled with policies that undermine the work of legal service providers and set asylum seekers up to lose without a fair hearing of their case.”
The complaint outlines pervasive dysfunction and bias within the immigration court system, including:
Areas that have become known as “asylum-free zones,” where virtually no asylum claims have been granted for the past several years.
The nationwide backlog of pending immigration cases, which has now surpassed 1 million — meaning that thousands of asylum seekers must wait three or four years for a court date.
The Enforcement Metrics Policy, implemented last year, which gives judges a personal financial stake in every case they decide and pushes them to deny more cases more quickly.
The “family unit” court docket, which stigmatizes the cases of recently arrived families and rushes their court dates, often giving families inadequate time to find an attorney and prepare for their hearings.
“The immigration courts make life-and-death decisions every day for vulnerable people seeking asylum – people who depend on a functioning court system to protect them from persecution, torture, and death,” said Melissa Crow, senior supervising attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Immigrant Justice Project. “While prior administrations have turned a blind eye to the dysfunction, the Trump administration has actively weaponized the courts, with devastating results for asylum seekers and the organizations that represent them.”
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of six legal service providers whose work for asylum seekers has been badly impaired as a result of the unjust immigration court system.
“As the political rhetoric surrounding immigrants has become sharper, we’ve noticed a decline in the treatment our clients receive in immigration court,” said Linda Corchado, Director of Legal Services, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center. “While asylum seekers are entitled to a full and fair hearing, their proceedings are too often rushed, and judges deny our requests for time to properly prepare their cases and collect and translate crucial evidence from across the world.”
In addition to filing on behalf of their own organizations, plaintiffs include Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (ASAP), Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC) and Santa Fe Dreamers Project (SFDP).
In an effort to ensure greater transparency and accountability in the nation’s immigration courts, Innovation Law Lab also announced the full launch of an Immigration CourtWatch app, which enables court observers to record and upload information on the conduct of immigration judges.
The new tool allows data on immigration judge conduct to be gathered and stored in both individual and aggregate forms. This will provide advocates with valuable information to fight systemic bias and other unlawful court practices. This data can be used to bolster policy recommendations, along with advocacy and legal strategies.
In June, Law Lab and SPLC released a report, based on over two years of research and focus group interviews with attorneys and former immigration judges from around the country, on the failure of the immigration court system to fulfill the constitutional and statutory promise of fair and impartial case-by-case review. The report can be accessed here: The Attorney General’s Judges: How the U.S. Immigration Courts Became a Deportation Tool.
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The Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Alabama with offices in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Washington, D.C., is a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society. For more information, see www.splcenter.org and follow us on social media: Southern Poverty Law Center on Facebook and @splcenter on Twitter.
Innovation Law Lab, based in Portland, Oregon with projects around the country and in Mexico, is a nonprofit organization that harnesses technology, lawyers, and activists to advance immigrant justice. For more information, visit www.innovationlawlab.org.
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Hon. Ilyce Shugall U.S. Immigraton Judge (Retired) Director, Immigrant Legal Defense Program, Justice & Diversity Center of the Bar Assn. of San Francisco.
And, here’s a statement in support of this much-needed litigation action from my distinguished Round Table colleague Judge (Ret.) Ilyce Shugall:
These were my remarks during the press conference:
I am Ilyce Shugall, a former immigration judge. I became an IJ in 9/2017 and resigned in 3/2019. I was sworn in by then-Chief IJ Mary Beth Keller. She has also resigned. I swore to uphold the constitution at my investiture. When the administration made it impossible to continue to do so, I resigned.
I defended immigrants in immigration court for 18 years before I became an immigration judge, so I understood the inherent problems and limitations on judicial independence in a court system housed inside the Department of Justice, a prosecuting arm of the executive branch. However, as Melissa said, this administration’s policies have entirely eroded what independence and legitimacy remained in the immigration court system.
As an immigration judge, I watched independence being stripped from the judge corps on a regular basis. The attorney general ended administrative closure, taking away a vital docketing tool from the judges, while simultaneously contributing to the court’s ever-growing backlog. The attorney general also significantly limited the judges’ ability to grant continuances. Then, the attorney general and EOIR director implemented performance metrics which required judges complete 700 cases per year and created time limits on the adjudication of cases. And this was only the beginning. These policies have had a drastic impact on those appearing in immigration court, particularly those fleeing horrific violence who have been preventing from effectively presenting their cases.
New policies, memoranda, and regulations are being published regularly by this administration. Each one, an attack on the system, and each one with the goal to eliminate due process and expedite deportations. I hope this lawsuit will eventually lead to a truly independent immigration court system, where judges can uphold their oaths and therefore immigrants receive the due process they are entitled and deserve.
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Every one of us in America is entitled to Due Process; every day, vulnerable asylum applicants and other migrants are being dehumanized and denied their Due Process rights by an ridiculously unconstitutional Immigration “Court” system operating with the complicity of life tenured Federal Judges, all the way up to the Supremes, who are failing to live up to their oaths of office.
The grotesque, constant, open abuse of the legal and constitutional rights of the most vulnerable among us threatens the rights of each of us, including those individuals responsible for putting the Trump regime in power, maintaining it, and the Article III judges who are failing to stand up to the regime’s unconstitutional cruelty and mocking of our the rule of law. Enough! It’s long past time for the Article IIIs to live up to their responsibilities and stand up for the victims of tyranny!
The case is
LAS AMERICAS IMMIGRANT ADVOCACY CENTER, et. al v. TRUMP (D OR)
