2014 July

Counter-protests Highlight Ongoing Child-Immigration Crisis

July 14, 2014 By CCM Staff

The ongoing failure of the civil immigration system is bringing counter-protests to the Murrieta community Southern California, where angry residents turned away three Homeland Security buses transporting unaccompanied minors from nations other than Mexico to facilities there. The transfer came after an estimated 37,600 unaccompanied minors were detained at the border since October, overcrowding facilities there.

Last week, more than 200 pro-immigrant activists held a vigil at Murrieta City Hall on Wednesday evening for the migrant families that have found themselves in Southern California, the USA Today and other outlets report. That newspaper writes that “… Border Patrol spokesman Paul Carr said the agency has reduced its backlog in south Texas and is now able to process more migrants there… Carr said the decision to discontinue transfers to San Diego and El Centro was not a result of the ongoing protests that have taken place in Murrieta, Calif.”

While the reports use the term “arrested,” the immigration issues are actual civil, not criminal, charges. The difference is stark, including that civil defendants do not have the same rights to be represented by an attorney, a situation that has brought its own protests and lawsuits.

Read the USA Today protest story here: Debating the nation’s immigration laws – USATODAY.com

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: California, california courts, Civil gideon, immigration, immigration courts, immigration reform, protests, refugee children, refugee kids

ACLU Leader Outlines Immigration Lawsuit Argument

July 11, 2014 By CCM Staff

As reported by NPR: Detainees sleep and watch television in a holding cell where hundreds of mostly Central American immigrant children are being processed at a U.S. Customs facility in Nogales, Texas.

With armed “citizen groups” starting to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border and angry crowds protesting the arrival of children into their communities, the ongoing “unaccompanied children immigration” crisis is growing worse. Clearly, this is a tragic worst-case example of what happens with “rationing justice” in our civil courts, and California has the biggest caseload backup with tens of thousands of kids awaiting a day in court.

In a major Los Angeles Times opinion piece, the director of the ACLU of Southern California outlines theories behind this week’s lawsuit against the U.S. Government, filed by his group and other civil rights groups. Among other issues, the groups argue for legal representation, saying that

“… the appointment of counsel is the only way to ensure that children with potentially valid claims can present the necessary arguments and proof. Given the complexities of immigration law and the language and cultural barriers immigrants face, it should surprise no one that attorneys matter in immigration proceedings. A 2012 study of New York immigration courts showed that immigrants who proceed without representation are five times more likely to lose their cases than those who have counsel.”

The ACLU director also argues that, while we may use the term “immigration,” these children are more accurately classified as refugees fleeing for their lives. These are the emerging talking points on the escalating crisis, and you can find them here: Kids caught at the border deserve due process, including lawyers

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: ACLU, armed citizen groups, border patrol, california courts, child immigration, civil court, court backlog, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, immigration, Mexico, refugee, Southern California ACLU

Non-Representation Of Immigration Children Sheds Light On System

July 10, 2014 By CCM Staff

As reported by the LA Times: Karla Salazar, right, and Ellen Leonard on Tuesday joined nearly 100 demonstrators at the naval base in Port Hueneme, where hundreds of immigrant children are being housed. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

In a country where citizens are only vaguely aware that immigration is mostly controlled by civil, not criminal, courts, the ongoing “unaccompanied children” crisis is serving to shed some light on how the civil courts work – or, more exactly, how they sometimes don’t work. Now a coalition of immigration groups has filed a federal lawsuit against the United States over non-representation of these children, The Los Angeles Times is reporting.

The Times reports that “… the immigrant advocacy groups that filed suit are targeting ongoing actions in which immigration officials have initiated proceedings to deport thousands of minors, both recent arrivals as well as those who have lived for years in the United States but without permission. Many of the children never hire attorneys, appearing in court by themselves. Because immigration cases are civil, not criminal proceedings, defendants are not guaranteed the right to legal counsel.”

The immigration groups make the same basic argument that other juvenile advocates make, “… attorneys argue that children are not equipped to represent themselves in serious cases that can determine their future, lacking the intellectual and emotional capacity of adults as well as knowledge of legal remedies that may be available to them.”

Meanwhile, federal authorities say that some of the 243 immigration judges in 59 courts nationwide will be reassigned to hear the cases, either at the border or by video with some new judges appointed temporarily. Clearly, the issue is not going away – read some of the Times’ excellent coverage here.

U.S. sued for not providing attorneys to children in immigration court

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: immigration reform, LA Times, NPR

AOC Name-Change Called ‘Superfluous’

July 9, 2014 By CCM Staff

As reported by MetNews.com, Steven Jahr is the California Administrator Director of the Courts.

Anyone thinking that the re-branding of the controversial “Administrative office of the Courts, or AOC” to the “Judicial Council staff” is window dressing might note comments by outgoing AOC Director Steven Jahr, who called the measure “superfluous,” according to the MetNews.

The MetNews notes that “… the name change announced Friday was seen by some judges as a harbinger of Jahr’s departure. At the Judicial Council meeting announcing the name change, Jahr was unusually freewheeling in his expression, saying, ‘Retiring the name AOC will produce a perceptual change, or perhaps a cultural change. Yet under the substantive law, it makes no change at all. The name is superfluous.'”

Jahr replaced William Vickrey, who, the MetNews story reminds us, “… left the AOC in September 2011 amid mounting controversy over the agency’s spending practices and a $500 million court technology project that judges and state legislators deemed a failure.”

Read the report here: Courts Director Jahr to Step Down After Two Years

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: Administrator of the Courts, california court cuts, california courts, California State Budget, California Superior Court, California Supreme Court

Child-Immigration Crisis Also A Civil Court Crisis

July 8, 2014 By CCM Staff

With President Obama asking Congress for a quick $2 billion to address the growing crisis on the U.S.-Mexican border, it is worth noting that the system failure is not just about immigration policy or border enforcement – it’s really a failure of civil courts capacity. Many Americans learning about the crisis are surprised to discover that immigration issues are “civil” and not “criminal,” and that the core of the problem is that tens of thousands of children are due a day in court – and that day will not come for years and years.

Background: National Public Radio and others are drawing attention to the fact that, over the past nine months, “… more than 50,000 children and teenagers have crossed that border illegally on their own, most from Central America. By law, the administration can’t deport those young people until they have an immigration hearing — a process that can take years.” The immigration law is different for people from Mexico, who can be returned much faster.

Says NPR: “… law requires the U.S. to hold an immigration hearing before deporting a child from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador or any other country that doesn’t border the U.S., says Marc Rosenblum of the Migration Policy Institute. The law aims to protect vulnerable young people from being inadvertently sent home into forced labor or the sex trade.”

“While they wait for that immigration hearing, the law also requires that they be held in the least restrictive custody setting,” Rosenblum tells NPR. “What that means in practice is that most of these kids are getting placed with family members in the U.S. while they wait for an immigration hearing.”

Because the immigration courts are overloaded, the average wait is nearly two years, Rosenblum adds in the NPR coverage.

That means what we’re seeing is really a high-profile example of what happens when civil courts can’t meet demands. There is very likely a similar situation in many of our family courts and other systems, and those will eventually bring their own “crisis” headlines.

Here’s the NPR report: Obama To Ask Congress For $2B To Ease Immigration Crisis

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: Civil Courts, court funding, criminal courts, habeus corpus, ICE, immigrant detention, immigration, immigration reform

Writer Recaps Court Budget Situation

July 7, 2014 By CCM Staff

Much-watched Sacramento Bee Columnist Dan Walters, whose ideas go well beyond the state capitol, has published a good recap of the state’s court situation, outlining the recent history of shifting state funding from local to state authorities and concluding that: “Bottom line: The shift to state support was supposed to bring financial stability to the courts but instead has brought much higher instability.”

He offers this quick history: “When the Legislature and then-Gov. Pete Wilson agreed in 1997 that the state would assume the entire cost of financing California’s largest-in-the-nation court system, judges rejoiced… it was a big win for Ron George, whom Wilson had appointed as the state’s chief justice a year earlier, and he hailed ‘a stable and adequate source of funding’ as ‘one of the most important reforms in the California justice systems in the 20th century.'”

Walters also observes that “… the impact is being felt mostly on the civil side of courts because criminal cases command priority for restricted judicial resources. It can take literally years for a civil case to get a trial date.”

It’s a good read, but also a good story to file away for newcomers to how things got this way. Read it via the Mercury News here Dan Walters: California courts sought stability, found instability

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: access to justice, california court cuts, california courts, California Legislature, California State Budget, civil court, court cuts, Dan Walters

More Bay Area Court Facilities Close

July 2, 2014 By CCM Staff

More court facilities are closing and more employees are losing their jobs in the Bay Area. The ongoing budget crisis is hitting Solano County Superior Court, where officials have announced cuts that include closing clerks offices, staff layoffs and shuttering the Family Law Clerk’s Office at the Solano Justice Building in Vallejo. The family law office closing means custody matters and other issues will be heard some 20 miles away in Fairfield, according to published reports.

The Reporter newspaper notes that, “… in announcing the cuts, local officials quoted California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye in her comments on the state budget’s impact on courts. ‘This is the second year of partial reinvestment in the judicial branch after five years of severe budget cuts resulting in a reduction to access to justice. And while I appreciate the work of the Governor and the Legislature in increasing branch funding, especially given the context of this budget, the state revenues, the demands and the needs – unfortunately it is not enough to provide timely, meaningful justice to the public,’ she said.

The Reporter also quoted local officials explaining that the current-year funding shortfall leaves the Solano courts with an $830,000 deficit going into the fiscal year. Read the story here: Solano County Courts announce closures, furloughs, layoffs for coming fiscal year

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: access to justice, California Budget, california court cuts, california courts, California State Budget, court closings, family court, family law, San Francisco courts

Brown Appoints Presiding Judges

July 1, 2014 By CCM Staff

The MetNews is reporting that Gov. Jerry Brown has named Court of Appeal Justice Frances Rothschild as presiding justice of this Los Angeles Div. One, and proposed three judges of other courts for appointment to other divisions. The website says that Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brian M. Hoffstadt will be nominated as associate justice in Div. Two, former Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Presiding Judge Lee S. Edmon as presiding justice in Div. Three, and U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins as associate justice in Div. Four.

Read the report, with background on the newly appointed and their confirmation process, here: Brown Names Rothschild and Edmon Presiding Justices of C.A.

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: California, california court cuts, california courts, civil court, Civil Courts, Court of Appeals, Gov. Jerry Brown, Judges