California Drought Brings Water-Rights Lawsuit

July 13, 2015 By
As reported on 6/19 in the Sacramento Bee: "Irrigation water runs along a dried-up ditch in the Sacramento Valley. | Jae C. Hong Associated Press file"

As reported on 6/19 in the Sacramento Bee: “Irrigation water runs along a dried-up ditch in the Sacramento Valley. | Jae C. Hong Associated Press file”

In what’s sure to become a milestone civil case, a group of water districts is suing California regulators over the state’s order prohibiting holders of some of the oldest water rights from pumping water out of rivers and streams. The Sacramento Bee newspaper explains that “… the lawsuit, filed in Stanislaus Superior Court, challenges the State Water Resources Control Board’s decision last week to ban diversions by 114 different rights holders in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river watersheds.”
 
The Bee adds that “… the affected groups are senior water rights holders. That means they’ve held the right to divert water since before 1914, when California established its rights system. Last week’s decision by the water board marked the first time since the drought of 1977 that any senior rights have been curtailed.”
 
Western state’s water laws are the stuff of legend, with some using “use it or lose it” policies that fall a bit short on conversation. Read more about the California situation here: Lawsuits challenge California’s drought plan
Filed Under: Cases, Community Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Trial Court Operations Still Facing Budget Shortfalls

July 9, 2015 By
The state’s trial courts are facing diminished revenues from case filing fees and penalties, and that’s bringing some pressure on budget decisions. The Courthouse News explains that “… though Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget gives California trial courts $90.6 million in new funding, the state Judicial Council slashed $22.7 million across the board to address a shortfall in a critical fund for trial court operations…”
 
The CN also notes that “… the courts have seen diminished revenues from case filing fees and penalties for two fiscal years now. Brown’s budget included $66 million to compensate for that deficit, but the Trial Court Trust Fund is still short $22.7 million…  the council voted unanimously to take the money out of the $90.6 million before it is allocated to the courts.
 
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , ,

Report Offers Details About Immigration Court Backlog

July 8, 2015 By
As reported in Al Jazeera America: "The nation’s immigration courts got a bit of relief at the beginning of June, when the Department of Justice hired 18 new immigration judges. But the courts are still facing a major backlog.Illustration by Sam Ward for Al Jazeera America"

As reported in Al Jazeera America: “The nation’s immigration courts got a bit of relief at the beginning of June, when the Department of Justice hired 18 new immigration judges. But the courts are still facing a major backlog.Illustration by Sam Ward for Al Jazeera America”

A new report by Bruce Wallace, writing for Al Jazeera America, details just how stalled the nation’s busiest immigration courts are, and how backlogged they remain. Writing from New York, he reports that “… depending on how you count it, this courthouse — actually a collection of 31 small courtrooms scattered across two floors of a tall federal office building in downtown Manhattan — is either the busiest or second busiest of the 58 immigration courts in the country. The one in Los Angeles got more new cases last year — a little over 18,000, compared with around 17,700 for Manhattan. But Manhattan has more cases pending: 60,538 compared with 51,878 in L.A. Or, on average, about 2,240 cases per New York judge. Judges in comparable courts have about 700 cases a year, according to the American Bar Association.
 
The story goes on: “Death-penalty cases in a traffic-court setting” is how Dana Leigh Marks likes to put it. She’s an immigration judge in San Francisco and president of the National Association of Immigration Judges (and, as such, one of two immigration judges in the country who are permitted to speak to the media). “The volume alone is like traffic court, and yet the stakes for someone who asserts a claim of asylum, if I am wrong — or even if I’m right but, because the law doesn’t allow me to grant relief, I have to deny them — they could be going back and facing death.”
 
Immigration courts, despite their name, are not actually part of the federal courts system. They are part of the Justice Department and the judges do not have much power over their colleagues who represent the government. They are civil courts, so there is no right to have counsel provided. Nationally, some 450,000 cases are pending with wait times reaching half a decade.
 
Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: , , , , ,

SF Immigration-Murder Case May Be ‘Willie Horton’ of 2015

July 7, 2015 By
The broad-daylight killing of a woman by an undocumented immigrant is becoming a political football, and the San Francisco Chronicle gets it right by saying: “… from the presidential stage to California’s local political contests, it may be accused killer Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, a Mexican citizen with a string of deportations and drug-related felonies in the U.S., who becomes this year’s Willie Horton and shapes the debate over illegal immigration.”
 
The report quotes a political science professor saying that the victim’s death “… has catapulted itself onto the national stage, because it allows those who are running in the heartland to talk about all the liberal icons and all the stereotypes associated with San Francisco… in some way, this is becoming a Willie Horton moment for the country.”
 
But the story also reminds us that  more than 320 jurisdictions have sanctuary policies similar to San Francisco. Supporters say such policies help, among other things, foster trust with people living in the community without documentation. Meanwhile, the USA Today coverage tells us that more than 10,000 people have been released that federal authorities wanted held.
 
The USA Today and Chronicle stories are below.
 
 
 
 
Filed Under: Border Kids, Community Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

It Had To Happen: Immigrant Avoids ICE Hold, Now A Murder Suspect

July 6, 2015 By
It made headlines last year as jurisdictions, acting on a federal court decision out of Oregon, decided they would not honor “hold” requests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. Now a San Francisco murder suspect was freed despite such a hold request just before committing the alleged killing. But an attorney for the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department says “…nothing in his background showed anything like that.”
As reported in the LA Times: Liz Sullivan and Jim Steinle, parents of Kathryn Steinle, who was fatally shot Wednesday in San Francisco. A suspect with seven felony convictions who had been deported five times has been arrested in connection with the shooting. (Lea Suzuki / San Francisco Chronicle)

As reported in the LA Times: Liz Sullivan and Jim Steinle, parents of Kathryn Steinle, who was fatally shot Wednesday in San Francisco. A suspect with seven felony convictions who had been deported five times has been arrested in connection with the shooting. (Lea Suzuki / San Francisco Chronicle)

 
Says an ICE spokesperson: “An individual with a lengthy criminal history, who is now the suspect in a tragic murder case, was released onto the street rather than being turned over to ICE for deportation… we’re not asking local cops to do our job. All we’re asking is that they notify us when a serious foreign national criminal offender is being released to the street so we can arrange to take custody.”
 
San Francisco County Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi said ICE misses the point. “ICE was informed about San Francisco’s position on detainers,” he said, “but did not seek a court order for Sanchez’s transfer as required under the law.”
 
The Courts Monitor follows immigration issues because the cases are civil, not criminal. Read more from the L.A. Times here:
 
Filed Under: Border Kids, National Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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