immigration courts

Study: Miami Immigration Court Is Most Lenient In Nation

September 12, 2016 By CCM Staff

The clearinghouse that tracks immigration court backlog says that some places are better than others for immigrations hoping remain in the United States. The Miami Herald reports that’s “… because judges at the Miami immigration court are deemed among the most lenient toward immigrants in the country… the report from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University says that the Miami immigration court is in the top five immigration courts in the country whose judges are more likely to allow immigrants to stay in the country despite deportation orders sought by government trial attorneys representing the Department of Homeland Security.

According to the TRAC study, the Phoenix immigration court ranks No. 1 with “the highest proportion of individuals who were allowed to stay.” In second place was the New York immigration court, followed by Denver in third, San Antonio in fourth and then Miami in fifth, according to the study.

See the TRAC research here.

Read the newspaper’s story here: How lenient are Miami immigration judges? A study ranks the court

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: border crisis, Border Kids, court, immigration, immigration courts, immigration reform

One Nation? It’s All Regional When It Comes To Staying In U.S.A.

June 2, 2016 By CCM Staff

The Associated Press, using the Freedom of Information Act, is reporting that “… youngsters whose applications are handled by the U.S. government’s regional offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles are far more likely to win approval from asylum officers than those applying in Chicago or Houston…” and the report also explains that “… the figures offer a snapshot of how the government is handling the huge surge over the past two years in the number of Central American children arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border unaccompanied by adults. Tens of thousands of youngsters — many of them fleeing gang violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — have overflowed U.S. shelters and further clogged the nation’s overwhelmed immigration courts.”

The AP backgrounds that “… under federal law, these children can apply to remain in the country in a process that involves an interview with an asylum officer from one of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ eight regional offices. To win their cases, they must show that they have been persecuted or are in danger of persecution.” The report notes that “.. overall, 37 percent were granted asylum, but the rate varied dramatically from 86 percent at the San Francisco office, which handles applications for a swath of the Pacific Northwest, to 15 percent in Chicago, which covers 15 states from Ohio to Idaho.”

Read how much geography is destiny here: AP Exclusive: Children’s Asylum Approvals Vary by US Region

Filed Under: Border Kids, Cases, National Tagged With: Border Kids, immigration courts, immigration services

Atlanta Is Worst For Avoiding Deportation

May 26, 2016 By CCM Staff

STEVE EBERHARDT FOR THE HUFFINGTON POST
Kimberly Pineda Chavez and her mother, Lourdes, came to the U.S. from Honduras.

Elise Foley, the Huffington Post’s immigration reporter, has a devastating story about Atlanta being the “worst” for immigrants hoping to avoid deportation. She notes that “… more than a third of the people detained under what the government calls Operation Border Guardian were from the Atlanta area, more than any other ICE jurisdiction.

There’s a reason for this. Immigration law doesn’t vary from state to state or court to court. But immigrants’ odds do, and by the numbers, Atlanta is one of the worst places in the country to be an undocumented immigrant hoping to avoid deportation. Justice Department-appointed judges in that court denied asylum 98 percent of the time in the 2015 fiscal year, the highest rate of any immigration court that heard more than five cases. Eighty-eight percent of cases that went before Atlanta immigration courts ended with a removal order. That’s way over the national average: In the country as a whole, immigration judges denied about 52 percent of asylum claims, and 69 percent of cases resulted in a deportation order.”

She also backgrounds that “…Atlanta immigration judges have been accused of bullying children, badgering domestic violence victims and setting standards for relief and asylum that lawyers say are next to impossible to meet. Given Atlanta immigration judges’ reluctance to grant asylum, some immigrants who fear returning to their native countries don’t even pursue it.”
Read the story here: Here’s Why Atlanta Is One Of The Worst Places To Be An Undocumented Immigrant

Filed Under: Border Kids, Cases, Community Tagged With: Border Kids, immigration courts, undocumented workers

Sen. Patrick Leahy: Many children facing deportation are forced to proceed before a judge without a lawyer

May 10, 2016 By CCM Staff

Immigrant children and their mothers arrive in Guatemala after being deported from the United States in 2014. The migrants had come to the U.S. to flee a humanitarian crisis in their homeland. Photo Credit CNN Report, 5/9/2016

A powerful U.S.senator, who serves as the ranking Democrat on the Senate’s justice committee and on the body’s subcommittee on immigration, has authored a national CNN piece opinion piece blasting the nation’s current approach to the “border kids,” our term for often unaccompanied children seeking asylum in the U.S. Asserting that a fair day in court is “… a bedrock principle of our justice system,” Sen, Patrick Leahy of Vermont said that having legal representation is “… especially important for children who cannot advocate for themselves.”

The Democrat didn’t call out the Obama Administration, but does ask “… so how could we possibly expect children to navigate court proceedings on their own?” He answers by noting “… and yet, each year, the United States government does just that. In immigration court, in case after case, a trained federal prosecutor represents the interests of the government while too many children facing deportation are forced to proceed before a judge without a lawyer.” He also says that “.. it is the longstanding policy of the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice to pursue immigration cases against children, even very young children, without lawyers. And it is a longstanding executive policy they are actively defending in federal court, right now.”

You can read his comments, which do not include plans from his various committees, here:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/09/opinions/children-need-lawyers-leahy/

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, National Tagged With: Border Kids, child immigration, Department of Justice, immigration courts, Senator Patrick Leahy

Paper Reports On Little-Known Option For ‘Border Kids’ In U.S.

April 8, 2016 By CCM Staff

A U.S. Border Patrol agent detains juvenile undocumented immigrants near the U.S.-Mexico border in December 2015 at La Grulla, Texas. The number of unaccompanied minors crossing the border from Central America has surged in recent months. Photo Credit, San Diego Union-Tribune report, 3/11/16

Remember that influx of “border kids” from two summers ago? The owes who showed up at the border, often unaccompanied, asking for asylum? Well, the San Diego Union-Tribune has a great story about a little-used program that is allowing many to stay in the country on a path to a green card – in effect, bypassing the overworked parts of the immigration system.

The paper offers some background: More than 100,000 [border-crossing] children since 2014 have been released to sponsors — usually family members or relatives — with more than 11,000 settling in California, federal data shows. Los Angeles has received 5,776, the largest number of any county in the state. San Diego has received a fraction of that, some 359

The report outlines what is known as “Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) status” and said such documents “… filed with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigrations Service has increased 187 percent from 2013 through last year, records show. The number of those petitions that have been approved has also risen sharply, from 3,431 in 2013 to 8,739 in 2015, according to government data.

The point, says the Times-Union, is that “… getting status as a Special Immigrant Juvenile can be important, since it paves the way for recipients to become lawful permanent residents — getting a “green card” that allows them to live legally in the U.S. Advocates see it as a humanitarian step available only to those children who are fleeing abuse, neglect or who have been abandoned in their home countries. But some critics say the program highlights a weakness in the immigration system that opens a backdoor for some to get legal status.”

It’s an interesting report even for those following the immigration situation fairly closely:
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2016/mar/11/unaccompanied-minors-legal-program/

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community Tagged With: child immigration, immigration courts, U.S. Citizenship

Rights Group Notes Immigration Courts Backed Up 3 Years

March 21, 2016 By CCM Staff

The Human Rights First advocacy group is noting its new study indicating that the U.S. Immigration Courts are backed up for about three years now, and it’s only getting worst. The Courthouse News in Los Angeles reports that the group “… says the problem is most pronounced in Texas and California where 89,000 and 81,000 immigration cases are pending, respectively.”

Also noted in the CN story: The group says: “The number of cases pending before the court will soon exceed 500,000, far too many for a court staffed with only 254 immigration judges – a fraction of the number needed to timely address removal cases.” Congress took a small step towards fixing the problem in December when it approved funding for 55 new immigration judges as part of a spending bill for fiscal year 2016, Human Rights First said.

But experts say lawmakers have been overly focused on the front door of illegal immigration, the U.S.-Mexico border, and the threat of terrorists entering the country so that, from 2001 to 2010, the number of Border Patrol agents at the border more than doubled to exceed 20,000.

Read the CN story here:
CNS – Report Outlines Backlog in Immigration Courts

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community Tagged With: California, court backlog, Courthouse News, Human Rights First, immigration courts, Refugees, Texas

Dallas Newspaper Reports From ‘Chaos’ Of Backlogged Immigration Court

February 22, 2016 By CCM Staff

The Dallas Morning News has an important new report on the U.S. Immigration Court backlog, highlighting the case of a Korean man who “… has been in America long enough to raise two sons and run a family-owned doughnut shop in Irving. After years of worrying, he thinks he’s about to find out his fate. Things look promising. But [the judge] sets a merit hearing for Dec. 6, 2017.”

Reporter Dianne Solis makes the point that the man is “… caught in an immigration court system that is bursting with huge caseloads and stressed by a seemingly endless shortage of judges. The U.S. immigration court backlog is at a record 474,000 cases — nearly triple the number from a decade ago. The average case now takes two years to wind through the courts. Some can take five.”
One interesting think is that the report notes that the Immigration Court backlog “annoys both the political left and right. U.S. Rep. Jack Ratcliffe, R-Heath, called it a ‘de facto amnesty’ at a recent congressional hearing. Immigrants live in the U.S. for years waiting to find out whether they can, well, live in the U.S.”

But, the report continues, “… Democrats complain that the courts need more money to operate smoothly. The nation’s immigration courts have long functioned like an orphaned child of the immigration system. The courts’ budget equals about 2 percent of total federal funding for immigration law enforcement this fiscal year. Underfunding the courts ‘undermines justice,’ U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, said at the same hearing.”

The DMN also backgrounds that Immigration Court is civil, so there’s no guarantee of an attorney as their would be in criminal court. That’s important because, Solis notes, “… an unrepresented immigrant has a greater chance of losing, of being ordered removed from the U.S. That came into harsh light recently with the surge of Central American mothers with children. In a study by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a Syracuse University nonprofit, of such cases, about a quarter of those who were represented by attorneys were allowed to stay in the U.S. Only 1.5 percent of those who didn’t have attorneys were allowed to stay.”
The story is basically an indictment of the whole Immigration Court process with the only good point being a promise of more judges soon if certain things work out.

Read it here: Chaos, backlogs straining immigration courts

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: california courts backlog, california legal news, immigration courts, U.S. Immigration

Houston Press Outlines How Broken Immigration Courts Really Are

February 18, 2016 By CCM Staff

Illustration by Brian Stauffer used in a report by The Houston Press, “Immigration Backlog Bounces Thousands of Cases to Late 2019,” 2/10/16

The Houston Press newspaper starts with immigration attorney John Nechman explaining how busy he used to be before “all of his removal cases scheduled to be heard in Houston’s downtown immigration court were reset to the same ten-day span in November, 2019.” And he says “it’s like that for every immigration attorney in town.” Obviously, the report points out, there’s no way all the cases actually scheduled for November, 2019 can be heard – it seems like a good holding date that’s still in this decade.

There are thousands of cases in Houston and also San Antonio and speculation is that they will actually get bumped back into the next decade. Nechman explains the irony: “good” cases, likely to be allowed to remain in the U.S. get the shaft because they remain in legal limbo for years and years; meanwhile, “bad” cases likely to get sent out of the country get years and years to become part of the culture and remain in the U.S. Houston has the most pending cases in Texas, and is nationally third behind Los Angeles and New York City.

If you’re among those who feel like the immigration court, which is actually an administrative function of the Justice Department and not a federal court at all, has become dysfunctional with its 450,000-case backlog, then this story confirms your worst fears.

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community Tagged With: Houston TX, immigration courts, John Nechman, Justice Department

NYT Offers Insight Into Obama’s Immigration Woes

February 1, 2016 By CCM Staff

Photo from NYT report, 1/8/16: A 2-year-old boy from Honduras at a shelter in San Antonio, where he stayed with his mother before joining relatives elsewhere in the United States.

A New York Times story is detailing how an influx of Central American refugees is complicating the Obama Administration’s immigration policies, including how building family detention camps to send an anti-immigration signal in 2014 has come back to challenge legal and political situations in an election year. In particular, the report notes that Jude Dolly M Gee of the Federal District Court of the Central District of California ordered back in August that migrant children could not be held in a locked detention center and had to be released, with their parents, “without unnecessary delay.”

Instead of moving away from the camps, the government doubled-down win increased capacity. The NYT report is also interesting in noting that the camps were meant to send a “stay away” message to potential asylum seekers. It says that the “… Obama administration devised a strategy to manage the influx, putting them in detention centers to convince others that illegal crossers would be caught and sent back.”

Read the report here: A Rush of Central Americans Complicates Obama’s Immigration Task

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community Tagged With: Barack Obama, Border Kids, Central American Refugees, detention camps, immigration, immigration courts

U.S. Family Detention Centers: Still There, Still Debated

November 18, 2015 By CCM Staff

As events in Paris rivet the U.S. media on the massive immigration crisis in Europe, it’s worth noting that we still have

Photo from LA Times Report, 10/23/15, “Immigrant family detention centers are prison-like, critics say, despite order to improve”

450,000 pending cases in the United States immigration court system and our “family detention” centers have been ruled illegal by a federal judge, who has ordered them closed. The federal government has responded by trying to license them through state agencies.

The Los Angeles Times reminds us that “… this summer, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles castigated federal officials, finding they had failed to meet conditions for detaining immigrant children established by a 1997 court settlement, Flores vs. Meese. The judge prohibited the administration from holding children at centers not licensed to care for them and from holding families unless they posed a flight risk or a threat to national security…”

Find the rest of that story and related reporting about the situation here:

Immigrant family detention centers are prison-like, critics say, despite order to improve

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community Tagged With: immigration, immigration courts, immigration reform, Legal news, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee