Events

Advocate Outlines Woes As Immigration Court Backlog Moves Past 500,000

August 5, 2016 By CCM Staff

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

Filed Under: Border Kids, Cases, Community, Events, Refugee Children Tagged With: Border Kids, court backlog, immigrant rights, immigration advocacy

CM Publisher: Dem Email Leaks Reminds Her Of Famous Memo

August 3, 2016 By CCM Staff

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

Filed Under: Events, National Tagged With: Baron and Budd Asbestos Memo, Democratic National Committee, DNC, Email scandal, rigged memories, Sen Jon Kyl

Tucson Newspaper Outlines Asylum-Immigration Trend

July 29, 2016 By CCM Staff

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

Filed Under: Border Kids, Events Tagged With: asylum seekers, Border Kids, immigration, migration policy, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, US immigration system

Latino Community Rallies Around Clinton

July 27, 2016 By CCM Staff

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.

Filed Under: Events, National Tagged With: Donald trump, hillary clinton, huffington post, Latino community, presidential election, sara warner, U.S. Supreme Court

Yale Law Students Organize To Aid Refugee Families

July 20, 2016 By CCM Staff

Photo Credit: Yale Law School Report, 6/29/16

The story begins like this: “Cruz Montano and her daughter were two of the thousands of women and children who were taken to an immigration detention center in Dilley, Texas after crossing the border into the U.S. seeking refuge. They were also among the earliest clients of a newly formed organization called the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (ASAP), founded at Yale Law School.”

The Yale Law website backgrounds that “… Conchita Cruz ’16, Swapna Reddy ’16, Dorothy Tegeler ’16, and Liz Willis ’17 co-founded ASAP in the Spring of 2015 to respond to the unmet legal needs of Central American refugee families, both while detained in border detention facilities and after release. The project started as a volunteer effort funded by the Gruber Project for Global Justice and Women’s Rights at Yale when the co-founders traveled with fellow law students to the Texas detention center. There, they filled a gap in legal services by representing a Honduran mother at her trial, helping to secure her and her 8-year-old son’s legal status and release from the facility.”

Studies have indicated that refugees with legal help are many times more likely to gain residency status in the U.S.

Read about their effort here:

Yale Law Students Launch Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project – Yale Law School

Filed Under: Community, Events Tagged With: asylum seekers, Border Kids, Central American Refugees, immigration legal services, immigration rights, Yale Law School

GOP Convention Underscores Cleveland Police Problems

July 18, 2016 By CCM Staff

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

Filed Under: Community, Events Tagged With: civil rights, Cleveland, consent decree, GOP Convention, Republican National Convention, US Department of Justice

RNC Disrupts Local Civil Courts

July 16, 2016 By CCM Staff

Photo Credit: WKYC

We will hear much about how the Republican National Convention impacts Cleveland over the next week. Let’s start by noting that it shut down much of the local court activity. In a statement this week, the court administration said that the “…RNC poses significant logistical challenges to jurors, members of the public, those who do business with the court, and those who work in the court. As such, court dockets will be limited to critical matters. Trials and hearings are not scheduled for that week. Court staffing will be maintained at minimal levels.”

He says the court will handle: felony arraignments, review of bonds, walk-in Petitions for Ex Parte Civil Protection Orders, Writs, Motions for Temporary Restraining Orders and other matters of immediate concern. Most people on Probation will be asked to report the week of July 25. If you are under supervision by the Court’s Adult Probation Department and have any questions about your reporting requirements, please contact your probation officer.

Find details at WKYC, the NBC affiliate, here: Cuyahoga County Court parking, access, hours for RNC

Filed Under: Community, Events Tagged With: Cleveland, Republican National Convention

Trump Promises Deportation, But Obama Already Delivering It

May 31, 2016 By CCM Staff

Advocates say immigration raids are making it more difficult to contact potential Latino voters. | AP

While Donald J. Trump has outraged immigration advocates by saying he intended to deport massive numbers of undocumented residents, the Obama administration is outraging many of the same people by actually deporting families here to seek asylum from dangerous countries. Politico is reporting that “… the administration has so far declined to confirm specifics about the latest round of raids, which were disclosed in a Reuters report this month. According to a document obtained by the news agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have told agents across the country to prepare for a 30-day ‘surge’ of arrests targeting mothers and children who have recently arrived in the country illegally but have been told to return to their home countries.

One part of the political fallout is simply that immigrant families that might worry about their status just don’t come to the door when political organizers visit. Politico is all over the story here:

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Events Tagged With: Border Kids, Donald trump, immigration, Obama Administration

Obama Administration Defending Jail-Like Family Detention Camps

May 18, 2016 By CCM Staff

Children walk to class at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. Charles Reed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, McClatchyDC Report

Lawyers for the detained families filed a motion with the U.S. District Court of Central District of California Tuesday night charging the administration with violating a federal judge’s ruling last summer that prohibits children from being detained – even with their mothers – in jail-like facilities for more time than it takes to process and release them to family members, reports Franco Ordonez at McClatchy news service.

The report notes that “… U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles found that the Obama administration’s family detention policy violates an 18-year-old court settlement regarding the detention of migrant children. She gave the government until Oct. 23 to comply with her order that required officials release children within five days. She provided an exception that allows officials to hold families for about three weeks under exceptional circumstances like the 2014 border surge of nearly 70,000 families from Central America.”

As background, it is also noted that the “… court filing is only the latest in the family detention saga to cast a shadow on the Obama administration since resurrecting the controversial detention policy because of the surge… the United States is worried enough about violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras that its expanding the refugee program for vulnerable migrants. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security continues to detain and deport families – many of whom have requested asylum because of the violence – to those same countries.”
Read the story here:
Obama administration pulled back to court over family detention

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Events Tagged With: Border Kids, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee, US Department of Homeland Security, US District Court

California Still Dealing With Epic Failure On Case Management System

May 17, 2016 By CCM Staff

California Gov. Jerry Brown is seeking another $12.5 million to help several courts update case management software, a situation that dates back to an epic failure to upgrade the entire state. That project was terminated in 2012 amid what The Courthouse News in L.A. called “damning criticism from legislators, trial judges, court employees and union leaders as a costly and technologically unwieldy boondoggle.” But several counties actually started using the failing system, and they want to now upgrade with new vendors.

The tech debacle was front-and-center as massive budget cuts brought some of the more severe justice rationing to the Golden State. Read the latest at CN here:

CNS – Budget Revise Gives Calif. Courts $12.4 Million More

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget, Events Tagged With: California Court budget, Case Management System, Gov. Jerry Brown