National

Feds Find $9 Million For Border Kids Lawyers

October 1, 2014 By CCM Staff

Following the leadership of immigration-friendly cities like New York and San Francisco, and on the heels of California stepping up with $3 million in legal aid for unaccompanied minors, the federal government announced that it will spend $9 million for “border kid” representation starting immediately.

The Wall Street Journal and others are reporting that the Department of Health and Human Services will provide the money to two refugee organizations that help the unaccompanied children from Central America. They are the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. Advocates for increased representation for the border kids argue that most of those with legal aid get to remain in the country while most of those facing Justice Department courts on their own are deported.

Read the WSJ story here.

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: border children, border crisis, Border Kids, California Budget, california courts, civil court, Department of Justice, detention, DHHS, Gov. Jerry Brown, Homeland Security, ICE, immigration, immigration reform, refugee children, Superior Court

Report: Immigration Wait For Non-Detained Average 900 Days

September 17, 2014 By CCM Staff

Hearst News is reporting that “… non-detained immigrants now face an average 900-day wait for their cases to be resolved in the country’s immigration courts, according to an official in the Executive Office for Immigration Review.” That is even higher than the previous average time of 520 days, which was based on data gathered by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse [TRAC] at Syracuse University and included some cases where people were detained in federal custody.

“Detained cases, they try to move more quickly,” TRAC Research Center director Susan Long told Hearst. “Secondly, most of those don’t have attorneys, and therefore they get deported. Removal decisions move much more quickly than any one that has an application for relief.

The story also noted that “… nationally, as of Sept. 30, 2013, EOIR had 350,330 pending cases. That’s up 56 percent from the 223,707 cases pending on Sept. 30, 2009. Between 2009 and the start of the influx of unaccompanied minors from Central America at the U.S.-Mexico border earlier this year, the number of new cases received in immigration courts actually was in decline, EOIR’s statistics show.”

Read the story here.

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: access to justice, Courts, detainee, Hearst, immigration, immigration law, immigration reform, legal advocacy, non-detainee

Immigration ‘Rocket Docket’ Raises Ire In S.F.

September 8, 2014 By CCM Staff

Local officials in San Francisco are raising issues with the Department of Justice “rocket docket” for unaccompanied Central American minors who were caught or surrendered to authorities at the U.S. border. The San Francisco Bay Guardian newspaper is reporting that courts are now “… cramming through as many as 50 cases daily.”

“This new docket is dramatically accelerating the pace for the cases of newly arrived, traumatized children and families from Central America,” Robin Goldfaden of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Bay Area wrote in an email to the Bay Guardian. “For many, a wrong decision can mean being sent back to unspeakable harm – brutal beatings, rapes, even death. … But nonprofit legal services providers, already stretched beyond capacity, simply do not have the number of attorneys and other staff required to meet the ever-rising level of need.”

At the Sept. 2 Board of Supervisor’s meeting, one county official proposed a budgetary supplemental to allocate $1.2 million for legal representation for unaccompanied youth being processed in immigration court in the Bay Area. “Under international law, many of these kids would actually qualify as refugees,” said the official. “And many of them have cases that would allow them to be protected by immigration law in the US…”

Read the story here: Kids pushed through immigration court at lightning speed while supes debate legal aid funding | SF Politics

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National, Refugee Children Tagged With: border crisis, budget cuts, california courts, civil court, court backlog, DOJ, immigration, immigration crisis, immigration reform, refugee children, Rocket Docket, San Francisco, Seatlle, US Justice Department

D.C. And L.A. Getting More ‘Border Children’

August 8, 2014 By CCM Staff

The Los Angeles Times is breaking down where the children caught illegally crossing the border are going, noting that cities like Washington with large populations from the originating countries are getting the most newcomers. The Times says reports that D.C. “… is home to an estimated 165,000 Salvadoran immigrants, the nation’s second-largest population after the Los Angeles area’s 275,000, according to the Migration Policy Institute. The capital region had 42,000 immigrants from Guatemala and 30,000 from Honduras.”

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families reports that 2,234 unaccompanied minors were released to sponsors in Virginia between Jan. 1 and July 7, ranking the state fifth after Texas, New York, Florida and California. It’s not noted in the story, but those numbers are expected to accelerate as tens of thousands of children being held are processed into the Immigration Court system.

Read the report here: Amid border crisis debate, many new immigrants land in D.C. area

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: border crisis, california courts, Civil Courts, court backlog, refugee children, refugee kids, Unaccompanied Children

Border Cases Expedited Over Backlog

August 7, 2014 By CCM Staff

The tens of thousands of “border children” immigration cases are being moved to the front of the line in immigration courts, often moving ahead of people who have waited for years to have their day in court, says a Sacramento Bee newspaper report. The story follows a San Francisco immigration court where two judges were assigned “special dockets.”

“The border surge cases are now getting top billing on our dockets, and this immigration court has already been resource-deprived to the point of being anorexic,” said one of the judge quoted in the report. That judge had 2,482 cases on her docket July 25, before the surge of cases began arriving.

The flood of new cases is straining a court that was already overtaxed before tens of thousands of children started crossing illegally into the United States, says the report.

See the story here.

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: border crisis, california courts, Civil Courts, court backlog, refugee children, refugee kids, Unaccompanied Children

In Iowa, ‘Chicken Case’ Tests Anti-Lawyer Populism

August 5, 2014 By CCM Staff

Sara Warner, Courts Monitor publisher, has posted her take a certain anti-lawyer populist trend that seems to have infected at least one U.S. Senate race. See the story at The Huffington Post here: In Iowa, ‘Chicken Case’ Tests Anti-Lawyer Populism

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: 2016 Presidential Election, Anti Lawyer, Gov. Scott Walker, Iowa, Iowa Senate Race, lawyers, Qualifications for Political Office

Mercury News Blasts Border Crisis Response

August 1, 2014 By CCM Staff

The San Jose Mercury News is blasting the government response to the border crisis of unaccompanied children, saying that “… surely the United States will meet this hemisphere’s crisis in a humane manner befitting its history” and outlining that the “policy” crisis is really a funding crisis.

“Republicans have wanted to fund enforcement but not judges,” asserts the paper. “There are just 243 nationwide. Los Angeles County alone has more than 400 judges on its Superior Court. There’s no way the immigration judges can keep up, let alone catch up… refugees from violence are a worldwide challenge. People fleeing wanton slaughter in places like Somalia, Syria and Uganda often end up in nearby countries that are ill-equipped for the influx. But they try.”

The editorial is being picked up around California, and you can read it here: Another View: July 21, 2014

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: border crisis, Civil Courts, immigration crisis, immigration reform, refugee children, Unaccompanied Children

US House Drops Border-Crisis Bill

July 31, 2014 By CCM Staff

BREAKING NEWS: The U.S. House of representatives has dropped a bill that would have provided some $659 million in funding to address the 60,000 unaccompanied children that have arrived on the southwest border. The Huffington Post noted that “… the bill had significant opposition from Democrats, but GOP leadership decided to add a separate vote, if the first were to pass, on a measure meant to bring on conservative support: ending a key Obama policy that allows undocumented young people in the U.S. for years to remain in the country.

Citing other reports, HuffPo says the GOP needed to get to 218 votes but managed only 214.

The HuffPo backgrounder graf is pretty good: “More than 57,500 unaccompanied children and teenagers have been apprehended after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally since October, overwhelming a system already plagued by backlogs and in need of significant resources. President Barack Obama requested $3.7 billion to deal with the crisis, and Senate Democrats proposed a $2.7 billion package. House Republicans introduced a bill to approve just a fraction of that sum — with the possibility of appropriating more funds later — with conditions many Democrats oppose, such as changing a 2008 law so unaccompanied minors from countries other than Mexico and Canada can be deported more quickly and sending the National Guard to the border.”

Read the report here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/31/house-border-vote_n_5638449.html

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: access to justice, border crisis, Congress fails to act, huffington post, immigration, immigration crisis, immigration reform, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, John Boehner, refugee children, US Congress, US House

AP Story On Immigration Crisis Gets Traction

July 29, 2014 By CCM Staff

A Los Angeles-based story by Amy Taxin of the Associated Press continues to be used by those making the case for legal representation for the unaccompanied children awaiting processing to determine if they can stay in the U.S.

Her story opens in Los Angeles with a dramatic courthouse scene: [The judge} … grabbed four thick books and dropped each one on his desk with a thud, warning the families in his Los Angeles courtroom about the thousands of pages of immigration laws and interpretations that could affect their cases, and urging them to get a lawyer. “This is even smaller print,” he said of the 1,200-page book containing regulations during the hearing last month. “I am not trying to scare you, but I’m trying to ensure your children get a full and fair hearing.”

To read the AP report via the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, click here.

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: access to justice, asylum, border crisis, Border Security, Central America, Civil Courts, immigration crisis, immigration reform, Los Angeles, refugee children, Unaccompanied Children

Finally: Capacity Cited In Immigration Courts Crisis

July 28, 2014 By CCM Staff

For the “about time” file, discussion of the ongoing crisis of unaccompanied Central American children seeking refuge in the U.S. is moving beyond theories and finger-pointing to address the capacity issue. And that issue is that there’s not enough court capacity.

The Reuters news service has a sobering report that walks us through the numbers: “… U.S. immigration courts have a backlog of 375,373 cases, almost 50,000 more than they faced two years ago, according to Justice Department figures… one of the 243 judges presiding over 59 immigration courts in the United States, is setting hearing dates as far off as 2018. It now typically takes three to five years for cases to clear the system, judges and lawyers said… on a recent Wednesday at a crowded immigration court in Arlington, Virginia, a judge was setting February 2017 asylum hearings for juveniles. While Reuters does not mention it, we would add that this is possible because immigration courts are civil, not criminal, and thus exempt from decades of “timely trial” laws.

The report does cite budget cuts and other problems, like passing more complex laws without increasing capacity to implement the changes, but also says that the government’s planned solutions are likely to only make things worse.

See the report here.

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: budget cuts, Civil Courts, court budget, immigration, immigration crisis, immigration reform, refugee children