border crisis

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

S.F. Stepping Up In Border-Child Crisis

September 5, 2014 By CCM Staff

Citing its tradition of being a “Sanctuary City” for immigration, documented or not, San Francisco has become the first California city to provide funding for attorneys representing immigrants facing deportation. The money will go through the nonprofit Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights. It’s an important move, in part, because government funding including most federal programs cannot pay for representing immigrants in deportation situations.

Terry Collins of the Associated Press reported that “.. since January, nearly 200 children in San Francisco who entered the country unaccompanied by an adult now have adult sponsors and cases pending in immigration court, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department reported… advocates believe there are hundreds more children who have sought refuge in the city without a sponsor, officials added.”

The AP report also noted that “… the U.S. Justice Department has ordered immigration courts to make cases involving unaccompanied minors entering the country a priority. California has the largest backlog of immigration court cases, followed by Texas and New York, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. While San Francisco is the first Golden State city to offer attorney-focused assistance, the city of New York has a similar program and the state of California is spending several million dollars on the issue.

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

SoCal Civil Court Backlogs With Child Immigration Cases

September 3, 2014 By CCM Staff

Southern California Public Radio has an important new piece on how Los Angeles courts are handling the immigration crisis of unaccompanied Central American children. Reporter Dorian Merina quotes one judge noting that “… other federal judges hear about 500-600 cases a year” while typical immigration judges in L.A. hear three times as many, or up to 1,600 on average.

The judge explains that the situation “.. has led to an historic backlog of cases in the immigration court system nationwide” and that there are about 375,000 pending cases as of June this year, the highest it’s ever been, according to government enforcement.

The report also addresses the issue of legal representation, saying that “… of the 7,729 juvenile cases currently in the L.A. courts, just under half, or 3,516, face proceedings without a lawyer, according to TRAC data. (Unlike criminal cases, immigration courts are considered administrative hearings and attorneys are encouraged, but not guaranteed.)”

It’s a troubling report from the nation’s largest immigration court: LA’s immigration courts overwhelmed by child migrant cases

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget, Refugee Children Tagged With: border crisis, budget cuts, california courts, civil court, court backlog, immigration, immigration crisis, immigration reform, refugee children

Journalist Notes Change In U.S. ‘Trick’ Deportations

September 2, 2014 By CCM Staff

Los Angeles-based journalist Charles Davis, writing online at VICE, has noted changes in one of the more troubling immigration polices coming to light amid the ongoing child-refugee border crisis. He reports on an Aug. 27 court settlement that “… the [U.S] government will no longer use ‘threats,’ ‘misrepresentations,’ or ‘subterfuge’ in order to trick undocumented immigrants into agreeing to voluntarily deport themselves.”

Davis quotes from written arguments by Gabriel Rivera and Mitra Ebadolahi from the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties: “For years, countless families throughout Southern California have been torn apart by immigration enforcement agencies’ coercive and deceptive ‘voluntary return’ practices… as a matter of standard practice, ICE and Border Patrol have misinformed immigrants about the consequences of ‘voluntary return,’ including withholding the fact that ‘voluntary return’ can trigger a ten year bar against returning to the United States.”

The VICE post paints a truly alarming picture of what’s been going on in our immigration process, including intimidation and suggesting that failure to “go along” might mean trouble for family members.

You can read it here.

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: ACLU, border crisis, deportation, ICE, immigration, immigration crisis, refugee children, voluntary deportation

‘Rocket Dockets’ Set For Border-Children Immigration

August 13, 2014 By CCM Staff

The federal government is creating “rocket dockets” to process unaccompanied border children, hoping to slow the flow of children by showing a policy of quick returns. Critics are responding that the new practice moves too quickly in a system inadequate to provide legally required court oversight and without a system for legal representation.

The U.K.-based Guardian newspaper has a good overview, reporting that “.. under normal rules, the recent arrivals would have queued at the tail-end of a backlogged system where migrants wait months or years for hearings at overstretched immigration courts… instead, with Republicans accusing the president of neglecting border security, the administration vaulted the newly arrived children to the front of the line, and said they would have initial court hearings within 21 days.”

They also cite a California-based critic: “We appreciate the government’s attempt to deal with these [new] cases expeditiously, but not to this extreme. We think 21 days is too fast. Maybe 60 days would be preferable,” said Caitlin Sanderson, director of the Los Angeles-based Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project, which has staff attorneys representing about 270 children pro bono.

See the story here.

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: border crisis, california courts, civil court backlog, Civil Courts, deportation, Immigrant Children, immigration, immigration reform, refugee children, The Guardian

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

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