Your daily ration of California civil justice rationing
Sara Cocoran Warner, Founding Publisher of the California Courts Monitor
In a Huffington Post blog post, Courts Monitor Publisher Sara Warner recalls another leaked memo, well before email was to blame.
Rigged Memories? DNC Email Leak Recalls Asbestos-Victim Memo Scandal
A man climbs over the international border into Nogales, Ariz., from Nogales, Mexico. Matt York / AP
The BuzzFeed News is among those noting the milestone in Immigration Court backlog, reporting that “… the backlog of immigration court cases has ballooned to an all-time high of more than 500,000, a number fueled by unaccompanied minors and families from Central America, officials said Wednesday” and adding that “… the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) said there are 500,051 pending immigration cases in the U.S. system. To deal with the backlog, EOIR plans to boost the number of immigration judges from 277 to 399.”
Reporter Adolfo Flores backgrounds that “… the backlog has been fueled by a growing number of unaccompanied minors and families, mostly from Central America, who have been crossing the border in recent years. Many of them are fleeing violence back home and are seeking better economic prospects in the US.”
Read the story here:
US Immigration Court Backlog Exceeds 500,000 Cases For First Time
Gasoline pumps situated at a Chevron station in Milpitas, Calif., in February. A federal judge ruled that a record $9.5 billion environmental-damage award against Chevron was tainted. ASSOCIATED PRESS
California-based Chevron has won the latest court decision in a case that the Wall Street Journal calls “… one the longest running in corporate history.” The WSJ backgrounds that “… Monday’s decision affirms a lower-court ruling by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who found in 2014 that the $9.5 billion environmental-damage judgment won by New York lawyer Steven Donziger and his Ecuadorean plaintiffs against Chevron was obtained through fraud and corruption. Judge Kaplan ruled Mr. Donziger couldn’t enforce the judgment in the U.S. or profit from the award anywhere in the world.
One reason the case will continue: “The appeals judges wrote that although the $9.5 billion judgment can’t be enforced in the U.S., their ruling does not stop the plaintiffs from taking action to enforce the judgment elsewhere.”
Read about the latest chapter of the saga here:http://www.wsj.com/articles/chevron-wins-ruling-blocking-enforcement-of-9-5-billion-ecuador-judgment-1470686218
Photo Credit: Francis Riviera
In an opinion piece in The Hill newspaper in Washington D.C., a San Antonio immigration advocate outlines a recent milestone in the immigration court backlog: “In numbers just released, the backlog in immigration courts has now risen above half a million cases (500,051). Immigrants wait an average of 672 days for resolution of their cases, and for some cases the wait can reach up to six years. The highest number of pending cases are in California (93,466 cases), Texas (87,088 cases), and New York (86,834 cases).”
Sara Ramey says that “… in Texas, where my NGO RAICES serves the immigrant community, the average wait for resolution of a case is 712 days. The San Antonio court is setting hundreds, if not thousands, of cases for Nov. 29, 2019 as a place holder until the court can find a date, likely on an even later day. And this is just to start proceedings, not to determine the merits of the case.
Ramey does a good job outlining the problems when cases go that long and makes an appeal for both political parties to step up on the issue. See her argument here: http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/judicial/289875-immigration-court-delays-make-a-mockery-of-us-justice
Sara Cocoran Warner, Founding Publisher of the California Courts Monitor
Courts Monitor Publisher Sara Warner, in a Huffington Post blog, reminds us that internal communication leaks are not always emails. She looks at the famous “B&B script memo” at HuffPo. The idea of “rigged memories” is newly relevant and the 19-year-old memo is even in a new documentary.
Rigged Memories? DNC Email Leak Recalls Asbestos-Victim Memo Scandal
Esteban/Felix: Associated Press
The typical narrative of undocumented immigration, sneaking across the border, is giving way to people who turn themselves in at the border, say officials in a Tucson.com report. Why? The report by Perla Trevino of the Arizona Daily Star newspaper explains that “… as soon as people who turn themselves in at an official crossing point say they are afraid of returning to their home country, it sets in motion the asylum process, which can drag on for years.”
The report backgrounds that “… more and more on the Southwest border, the new challenge is mixed flows,” said Doris Meissner, former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. “The basic illegal immigration of young men or younger Mexicans who are purely coming for job function is basically behind us.”
One surprise: “Cubans are responsible for a large share of this growth. Since fiscal 2010, the number of Cubans presenting themselves at Southwest ports of entry has grown from 5,500 to nearly 34,000 as of June of this fiscal year.”
Immigration cases are a leading example of civil justice rationing. The immigration “courts” are actually Justice Department administrative hearings and the judges are employees of the department, not independent judges. The system is backed up by a half-million cases, including asylum seekers, many of them children who have arrived at the border independently of adults.
See the report here: Asylum-seekers pose new challenge to US immigration system
Sara Cocoran Warner, Founding Publisher of the California Courts Monitor
Read the latest Huffington Post article, “Latino Community Rallies Around Clinton,” by Courts Monitor Publisher, Sara Warner. Sara provides her thoughts about the importance of the Latino community to the presidential election, as well as the implications it has on the U.S. Supreme Court and issues like immigration and civil rights.
Outgoing Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. PHOTO: ZUMA PRESS
Those leaked emails indicated that that Democratic Party leaders may have conspired against the primary campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders have not only led to a party shake-up but have sparked class-action litigation, the Wall Street Journal is reporting. The story is that “… a trove of hacked party emails posted by WikiLeaks show that Democratic National Committee officials had worked to undermine the underdog campaign of Mr. Sanders.
Some of the more damaging info: Weeks before the firestorm erupted, culminating in the resignation of party chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a group of plaintiffs brought a lawsuit in federal court alleging that DNC “actively concealed its bias” from its donors and Democrats backing Mr. Sanders.
Photo Credit: Yale Law School Report, 6/29/16
Cleveland mounted police officer Abraham Cortes leans on his horse Paco with fellow officer Michael Herrin (R) on Bas during a demonstration of police capabilities near the site of the Republican National Convention July 14, 2016. Police in Cleveland say they aim to avoid mass arrests at the protests planned for next week’s Republican National Convention, but the fact that the city’s courts are preparing to process up to a 1,000 people a day has some civil rights activists worried. Photo By Rick Wilking/Reuters
As tens of thousands of GOP faithful and some of their critics gather in Cleveland this week, it’s worth noting that they are in a city under a federal consent decree demanding changes in how police do their work. The PBS Newshour notes that “… the consent decree was formed in May 2015 between the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and Ohio’s second-largest city after decades of complaints lodged by residents over excessive use of force and civil rights violations by members of the Cleveland Police Department.”
The Newshour backgrounds that “… a DOJ investigation found a pattern of ‘unnecessary and excessive use of deadly force,’ retaliatory force with ‘Tasers and chemical spray and fists’ and the ’employment of poor and dangerous tactics,’ among a slew of other conclusions.
But many of the stipulations forged in the agreement will not be installed in time for the Republican National Convention (RNC), according to interviews with the DOJ, legal and civil rights organizations and a court-designated independent monitor of the Cleveland Police Department.”
“The milestones and the benchmarks are not being met,” said Jacqueline Greene, a source for the PBS report identified as co-coordinator of the Ohio Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, and a civil rights attorney. “Therefore it won’t apply during the RNC”
See the report here: As GOP convention nears, Cleveland police reform rules still not in place
