BARTON v. BARR: “J.R. Five” Jettisons Principles, Fudges Facts In Pathetic Attempt To Avoid Moral Responsibility For Advancing Trump Administration’s White Nationalist, Anti-Immigrant Agenda — Their Treachery & Cowardice Will NOT be Forgotten!

Jay Willis
Jay Willis
Senior Contributor
The Appeal

https://apple.news/A0a8Ej93WTp66f3Ujt4-_Ug

Jay Willis writes for The Appeal:

. . . .

Two things stand out about this outcome: first, the remarkable philosophical flexibility of the Court’s conservatives when their political allies appear before them. The case is only the latest instance in which they have tacitly endorsed some of the president’s more aggressive legal arguments, legitimizing his use of anti-immigrant fearmongering as public policy.

As Professor Nancy Morawetz detailed at the ImmigrationProf Blog, the majority reached its conclusion by selectively applying rules for analyzing vague laws—rules that, if applied to Barton’s case, might have led to a different result. Conservative judges often argue for resolving ambiguities by focusing on the plain meaning of statutory text. As a result, they are supposedly reluctant to assume that any statutory language is redundant or superfluous. (When the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s conservatives decided Democratic Governor Tony Evers couldn’t postpone in-person voting during the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, they leaned heavily on this principle.) But here, the majority’s reasoning required treating part of the text as redundant. Kavanaugh barely bothered to address this divergence from prevailing conservative judicial philosophy: He simply stated that “redundancies are common in statutory drafting,” and that in this case, “the better overall reading of the statute contains some redundancy.”

“That is not the argument you would expect from the conservative wing of the Court,” Professor Morawetz wrote. “It is hard to walk away without the sense that there are different statutory interpretation rules at work for those who are powerful and those who are not.”

The majority and dissenting opinions also contrast sharply in the extent to which the justices considered the impact of their decision on Barton, his family, and other people like Barton whose fates this case determined. The majority begins with a recitation of his involvement with the criminal legal system, noting his convictions “on three separate occasions spanning 12 years.” Later, Kavanaugh takes care to name the substances—methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana—involved in the drug arrests, and describes the gun and assault convictions using lurid, cinematic language, explaining that Barton and a friend “shot up” an ex-girlfriend’s house. (This phrase is decidedly not a legal term of art.) Read together, these rhetorical flourishes evoke a familiar stereotype: a scary, drug-involved career criminal who is liable to start shooting at any moment.

The Barton described in Sotomayor’s dissent, which all four liberal justices signed, sounds like a different person altogether. She carefully lays out the facts of Barton’s early life, personal challenges, and subsequent accomplishments—valuable context that Kavanaugh and company conspicuously omitted. (The details about his background included in the beginning of this article come primarily from her opinion.) For example, it was Barton’s friend, Sotomayor notes, who actually fired at the ex-girlfriend’s house. In court, Barton testified that he didn’t know the friend even had a gun, let alone planned to shoot it.

The rest of the dissent fills in more of the blanks left by the majority. She writes about Barton’s stints in boot camp and rehab, and praises him for getting his GED diploma, graduating from college, and leading “a law-abiding life.” She notes that his drug convictions were for possession, not distribution, and linked them to his since-resolved dependency. She frames Barton’s three convictions against the backdrop of his 30 years in the United States, not the 12-year period in which they occurred. And she quotes the immigration judge who evaluated Barton’s initial application for mercy and badly wanted to approve it; he “is clearly rehabilitated,” the judge said, and his family “relies on him and would suffer hardship” if he were deported.

At every juncture, Sotomayor emphasizes the real-world implications of what the conservatives presented as a rather dry question of statutory interpretation: By the time immigration authorities put Andre Barton in removal proceedings, every member of his immediate family was living in America. Deporting him deprives his family of its primary provider, and sends him off to a country he hasn’t seen in decades.

Not until the very end of Kavanaugh’s opinion does he begin to grapple with the stakes of the case before him. “Removal of a lawful permanent resident … is a wrenching process, especially in light of the consequences for family members,” he wrote. “Removal is particularly difficult when it involves someone such as Barton who has spent most of his life in the United States.”

Just as quickly as he began to acknowledge Barton’s humanity, though, Kavanaugh returned to emphasizing the length of Barton’s rap sheet and the gravity of his transgressions. Congress chose to provide for the deportation of immigrants who commit “serious crimes,” he reasons, and to cut off those with “substantial criminal records” from the possibility of relief; the law, he writes, does not extend leniency to someone who “has amassed a criminal record of this kind.” Put differently, the Court’s conservatives are not responsible for what happened to Andre Barton; Barton, in their telling, did this to himself.

The exact words the justices use while resolving arcane questions about obscure immigration statutes may not seem significant. But when the choice the Court ultimately makes is so callously indifferent to the plight of vulnerable people, framing becomes a critical tool for defending their deliberative process. The decision in Barton v. Barr enables an unapologetically anti-immigrant president to deport longtime legal residents over events that took place years ago, breaking up families and depriving children of their parents and parents of their children. Kavanaugh knows this perfectly well; he acknowledges as much in his opinion. By sketching a two-dimensional portrait of Andre Barton as a dangerous ex-con and ignoring decades of growth and development since, Kavanaugh and the conservatives quietly absolve themselves of any moral obligation to think about it.

Jay Willis is a senior contributor at The Appeal.

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Read Jay’s complete article at the link.

Yup. No surprise to readers of Courtside. 

While, as usual, I was willing to give J.R. and his merry band the “benefit of the doubt,” presuming at least some modicum of intellectual honesty and human decency regardless of philosophical disposition, I’ve been “onto” the judicial, intellectual, and moral fraud going on at our highest Court for some time now. 

Yeah, on a few occasions (see, e.g., Pereira, Guerrero-Lasprilla) some members of “The Five” have had no choice but to recognize that there was no possible way to justify some aspects of the Administration’s vendetta against immigrants and asylum seekers. But, on the big questions, from the bogus “Travel Ban,” to the cruel, inhuman, and clearly illegal and unconstitutional “Let ’Em Die in Mexico” Program, to the illegal White Nationalist scheme to misapply “public charge” grounds to attack the health and welfare of ethnic communities, “The Five” have been out front on the White Nationalist movement to “Dred Scottify” and dehumanize “the other.”

To be fair, the BIA decision here Matter of Jurado-Delgado, 24 I&N Dec. 24 I&N Dec. 29 (BIA 2006), originated years ago, in the “Post-Ashcroft-Purge-Era” of the BIA, during the Bush II Administration. But, all that shows is that the BIA’s drift away from the most fair and humane interpretations of the immigration laws and toward “enforcement friendly jurisprudence,” has been going on for the last two decades, across three different Administrations. However, under Trump, Sessions, Whitaker, & now Barr that “drift” has now become a “mad dash to the bottom.”

Thanks to folks like Jay Willis, Professor Nancy Morawetz, and other lawyers, commentators, and journalists, history will not let the “J.R. Five” escape unscathed for their corrupt backing of “The New Jim Crow.”

Due Process Forever! Jim Crow & Complicit Supremes, Never!

PWS

04-30-20

AS U.S. DISTRICT JUDGES DITHER, DYSFUNCTIONAL IMMIGRATION COURTS THREATEN NATION’S HEALTH & SAFETY — “I think it’s about time the American people woke up to the fact that EOIR’s willingness to perpetuate and extend this pandemic will inevitably bring the virus to their hometown!” ☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻😰😰😰😰😰⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️🦠🦠🦠🦠🦠🧫🧫🧫🧫🧫🆘🆘🆘🆘🆘🆘

Liz Robbins
H Liz Robbins
Legal Reporter
NY Times

https://apple.news/AiFcpYTPESciTT51hvpMdOQ

Liz Robbins reports for The Appeal:

One government lawyer who appeared in a crowded Newark, New Jersey, immigration court last month is in a medically induced coma. A New York immigration lawyer and her client are both sick. Immigration judges are being denied sick leave when they use anxiety or safety as reasons. Migrant children are asking their lawyers if they will fall ill if they go to court, and whether they’ll be deported if they don’t show up.

Sickness, panic, and confusion in the midst of a pandemic: These are the acute side effects of immigration courts continuing to operate as the novel coronavirus races across the country. Despite three weeks of intense pleading to close all 69 courts—across a united front of immigration lawyers, the union representing lawyers for ICE, and the immigration judges’ union—more than two-thirds of them remain open. 

The courts that have been closed by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the federal agency that runs them, have often only been shuttered in reaction to a confirmed case of COVID-19 or suspected exposure. The closures are often last-minute, and not clearly communicated, except on Twitter. This week, several immigration legal associations filed two separate federal lawsuits to close the courts because they fear that the government has put their lives in danger. 

“I think it’s about time the American people woke up to the fact that EOIR’s willingness to perpetuate and extend this pandemic will inevitably bring the virus to their hometown,” Rebecca Press, the legal director at UnLocal in New York, said Thursday via email. She contracted coronavirus two weeks ago and at least one of her clients is sick. “The longer courts remain open even for filing, and the longer the courts require attorneys and immigrants to engage in the work of preparing evidence, the more likely it becomes that the virus will be brought right back to another community.”

Government lawyers are affected, too. Fanny Behar-Ostrow, the president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 511, the union representing ICE lawyers, is getting calls at all hours of the day from members who worry they have been exposed to the virus. “They are panicked, frightened, desperate, upset,” she said. 

In addition to the 36,000 adults in ICE detention facilities, there are some 3,500 migrant children in government custody who are affected by the disarray in the courts. In most courts, children must still attend in-person hearings, putting them at exposure risk. In New York City, the current epicenter of the pandemic, lawyers from Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) have not been told whether EOIR will reschedule cases for next week. They are also unclear about whether the minors even need to come to court at a time when state and city officials have issued stay-at-home orders. 

“We are receiving phone calls from children who had their safety net shaken,” said Maria Odom, vice president for legal services for KIND, which is a nonprofit organization contracted to represent unaccompanied minors. “For us serving vulnerable children, there are so many moving pieces and at a time when we should be able to look to the government, they are just contributing to the chaos.”

Lawyers, judges, and advocates wonder: What will it take for EOIR to close courts nationally?

“I hope that it won’t take a death, but I worry that it will,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an immigration lawyer and policy counsel for the American Immigration Council. His organization is one of the groups behind a lawsuit filed Monday by the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild.

. . . .

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Read the rest of Liz’s article at the link.

Looks like the dead bodies will have to pile up before the Article IIIs and EOIR will take action. As the rest of us know, but to which U.S District Judges & EOIR appear willfully blind, by the time individuals show symptoms and begin dying, it’s too late to stop the spread. The larger community has already been infected.  

I wonder what it is that gives both EOIR officials and Article III Judges such great confidence that they and their families will escape the consequences of their irresponsible behavior? Maybe, it’s that both EOIR Senior Execs and Article III Judges manage to studiously avoid “direct exposure” to Immigration Courts. “Below their pay grade,” so to speak. 

But, according to folks like Dr. Fauci, who possibly knows even more about infectious diseases than EOIR Director McHenry and the Federal Judges who continue to defer to the irresponsible EOIR “guidance,” nobody will be immune. 

So far, the U.S. has done the worst job of any developed country in the world of “flattening the curve.” Inevitably, we eventually will become the “world leader” in coronavirus deaths. After observing the inept response of EOIR and the failure of the U.S. District Courts to promptly intervene on the side of medical knowledge, common sense, and preserving human lives, I can now see why we are failing as a nation to take the extreme measures necessary for self-preservation.

I would think that as lawyers, judges, and other members of the legal community start dying as a result of EOIR’s policies, that the officials responsible eventually will face legal actions brought by surviving family members and colleagues. Life tenure and the judicial doctrine of “absolute immunity” will protect the feckless Federal Judges from legal accountability. But, it won’t protect them and their reputations from moral accountability and the “judgements of history” which are likely to be harsh and as unforgiving as the Trump Immigration Kakistocracy’s treatment of the most vulnerable among us and their brave lawyers.

Due Process Forever! Trump’s Immigration Kakistocracy & Feckless Federal Courts, Never!

PWS

04-04-20

THE TRUTH IS OUT: Human Life & Public Safety Aren’t “Priorities” In Weaponized Immigration “Courts” – Judges & Court Staff Turning Out To Be Just As “Dispensable” As Migrants, Attorneys, & The Public Welfare!

Liz Robbins
Liz Robbins
Immigration Reporter

https://apple.news/A5yFRyomETnyiKYwwb6QR8g

 

Liz Robbins reports for The Appeal:

 

Federal immigration courts that handle cases of detained immigrants are still open, despite a growing number of states and cities issuing “stay at home” mandates to combat COVID-19. On Sunday night, the organizations representing immigration judges, prosecutors, and defense lawyers jointly demanded—for the second time in a week—that the courts be closed.

Meanwhile, detained immigrants are staging hunger strikes at three New Jersey jails to protest the lack of sanitary conditions they fear could lead to outbreaks. Their protests come after confirmation of positive tests from two staff members connected with two other jails in the state that house immigrants.

The pipeline to feed those jails remains open. Although immigration enforcement officers have scaled back operations, they say they will continue to focus their enforcement on “public safety risks” and people subject to “mandatory detention on criminal grounds.”

“Their recklessness towards immigrant community well-being and immigrant lives is particularly disturbing—and even more dangerous in this moment because a virus doesn’t ask you for your legal status before it decides what to do,” said Camille Mackler, a New York immigration lawyer who is a fellow with the Truman National Security Project, a left-leaning think tank for national security issues. “This could get everyone sick.”

The Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies are intersecting with a highly contagious disease at a time when New York State leads the nation with at least 20,875 confirmed coronavirus cases. In New York on Friday, Attorney General Letitia James joined Bitta Mostofi, New York City’s commissioner of Immigrant Affairs, in calling for a shutdown of all immigration courts. They agreed with the judge’s union and lawyer organizations in urging for bond to be filed electronically.

The Legal Aid Society and the Bronx Defenders—two New York legal providers—sued in federal court on Friday to have clients who are susceptible to coronavirus released from ICE detention, including those with diabetes, heart disease, neurocognitive disorder, kidney disease, and lung and liver problems.

Officials with ICE said on Monday that there had been no detainees with confirmed cases of coronavirus of individuals in the agency’s custody. They said that they were testing detainees according to guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but would not say how many. In a statement, a spokesperson said: “The health, welfare and safety” of ICE detainees “is one of the agency’s highest priorities.”

 

. . . .

 

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Read the rest of Liz’s report at the link.

 

And, here’s the full text of the letter from NY AG Letitia James:

 

VIA EMAIL

The Honorable William Barr Attorney General
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20530

Administrative Chief Immigration Judge Kevin Mart, Acting Court Administrator Paul Friedman
Varick Immigration Court
201 Varick Street, 11th Floor

New York, NY 10014

Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Philip J. Montante, Jr. Batavia Immigration Court
4250 Federal Drive, Room F108
Batavia, NY 14020

(212) 416-8050

STATE OF NEW YORK

OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL 28 LIBERTY ST.
NEW YORK, NY 10005

March 20, 2020

Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Carrie C. Johnson-Papillo Ulster Immigration Court
750 Berme Road, PO Box 800
Napanoch, NY 12458

Re: New York Immigration Court Operations During COVID-19 Outbreak

Dear Attorney General Barr, Honorable Judges, and Mr. Friedman:

I write to support efforts to protect practitioners, staff, and the public at New York State immigration courts amid the expanding COVID-19 outbreak. Organizations that provide free legal representation to indigent non-citizens at these courts, including those that make up the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP), Prisoners’ Legal Services of New York, and the ECBA Volunteer Lawyers Project, have reported that some of its members have COVID-19 symptoms or have been exposed to an individual with COVID-19. These organizations requested measures to reduce the risk of exposure to the virus, and while EOIR has

taken some steps to reduce hearings and court traffic for non-detained cases, current policies still require extensive in-person interaction in cases involving detained individuals.

During this national public health emergency, it is incumbent upon us all to mitigate the spread of this novel virus. Court administrations at the state and federal level have instituted protocols that allow court business to continue but also safeguard the public health, including closing non-essential parts of the court and adjourning new trials. A similar approach is appropriate and warranted in immigration courts.

I therefore ask that you at a minimum adopt the proposals put forth by NYIFUP providers at all immigration courts in New York State. These proposals include adjourning master calendar hearings, presumptively permitting telephonic appearances for bond and individual hearings, and presumptively permitting extensions and continuance requests. Especially in courts where respondents appear in person and where witnesses must travel from out of town, these measures are necessary to minimize human contact. I also request that you institute a means for practitioners to submit these motions electronically. Currently, practitioners are required to submit these motions in person at the court or through the mail via post offices. Requiring these in-person or by mail submissions not only causes delays in submitting these important requests, it also unnecessarily jeopardizes the health of those involved.

These are unprecedented times. It is imperative that all agencies adjust policies and practices to protect the health and welfare of our community. I implore you to take these critical steps here.

Sincerely,

Letitia James
New York State Attorney General

 

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Don’t expect much to happen until folks start dropping and dying. By then, it will be too late! But, perhaps that’s just “business as usual” in a system that has made rationality and concern for humanity non-factors. And, to date, there has been no accountability, by Congress or the Article IIIs for any of the outrageous, life-threatening, scofflaw, unconstitutional actions of the Trump regime in the immigration area. Indeed, the Supremes and other U.S. appellate courts have actually “rubber stamped” their “seal of judicial approval” one some of the most outrageous conduct employed by Miller and the White Nationalist cabal

While the lives and human dignity of migrants has been of little visible concern to the Congress, the Supremes, and many Circuit Courts of Appeals (that’s actually what the regime’s program of “Dred Scottifying” and “maximum dehumanization” aims to achieve) perhaps the illness and even death of judges, lawyers, and court personnel will finally get the attention of the “exalted ones” in their rarified, risk-free air. On the other hand, the Senate GOP doesn’t seem to have “gotten the message” even as their own colleagues start to drop.

PWS

 

03-23-20