budget cuts

Immigration Courts Face Obama Actions

December 11, 2014 By CCM Staff

President Obama’s executive actions on immigration will impact the civil courts system, but it’s hard to know how soon that will happen – or how much the impact will be. Southern California public radio station KPCC is reporting it as “promising news” for immigration judges “… who have long sought more resources for their busy courtrooms, says Bruce Einhorn, a former immigration judge who served in the LA courts for more than 15 years.”:

As reported in SCPR, “A judge hears the cases of immigrant teens in Los Angeles.”

The KPCC reports says that a typical judge in Los Angeles has about 2,500 cases on their docket, which means an average case takes more than two years to reach a decision, but that could change with Obama’s action. Einhorn, said it will take time to see the effects on the ground. One group that will likely not find relief are the thousands of child migrant cases that are working their way through the courts. As Take Two has been covering on the program, more than 7,000 children are being heard in Los Angeles alone. Since they arrived in the country within the past five years, they probably will not qualify under the new rules from Obama.

Read and listen to the report here: Obama’s actions could affect thousands at LA’s immigration courts.

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: access to justice, Border Kids, budget cuts, california courts, court backlog, court rationing, immigration, KPCC, Los Angeles, Obama, White House

Court Budget Group Punts On Alternative Allocation

September 18, 2014 By CCM Staff

Despite a looming $22.7 million revenue shortfall, the state’s Trial Court Budget Advisory Committee, or TCBAC, will decline to offer an “alternative recommendation” on how funds are allocated to California courts, according to The Courthouse News Service. The CN report adds that “… deftly bypassed the option to revisit the original four allocation options. Instead, members narrowed their focus to the two pro-rata 2014-15 base allocation scenarios. Adoption of the second scenario means a 2 percent increase for San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Siskiyou, Stanislaus, Tehama, and Tulare counties over the first scenario.”

The news service also noted that “… the meeting was only the second afforded public access after Gov. Brown axed a provision initiated by the state Legislature earlier this year to open up all of the council’s advisory committee and subcommittee meetings.”

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

Courts Funding Gets Buzzy

September 4, 2014 By CCM Staff

Call it official: the once obscure civil courts funding issue surrounding immigration enforcement has gone mainstream. We know this because the click-fest known as BuzzFeed has actually developed one of their video-centric reports: “Top 10 Reasons Why Immigration Courts Need More Funding.”

The reasons are solid, like “… with a backlog of more than 360,000 cases, the average wait for a case to be resolved in immigration court is 578 days.” They also note the lack of legal representation for minors, budget cuts and common sense.

It’s posted in the “community” section with a disclaimer that it was produced by a BuzzFeed non-staffer, but it certainly has the BF DNA. Take a look here.

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: access to justice, budget cuts, Buzzfeed, court budget cuts, court funding

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

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

‘One-Day’ Divorce Is National Trend

June 25, 2014 By CCM Staff

Of course it’s not really “one day,” but faster, do-it-yourself, lawyer-free divorces are becoming a national trend, according to the New York Times. A driving issue is cost, reports the NYT, which reports that “… costs vary by location, but Randall M. Kessler, a family law specialist in Atlanta, said a typical divorce with no major disagreements over assets and custody issues might cost a few thousand dollars, while cases with significant disputes can easily cost $25,000 or more

In California, says the report, roughly three-fourths of family law litigants lack lawyers, according to Maureen F. Hallahan, supervising judge in the family law division at San Diego Superior Court. Typically, people file initial divorce paperwork on their own, but they don’t know what to do next, so their file languishes for months. Budget cuts in the state courts reduced available personnel and made the problem worse.

Like most “one-day” programs, the term doesn’t mean a divorce is truly started and completed in a single day — residency and notification requirements have to be met first. You must, for example, already have filed a divorce petition and served your spouse with divorce papers to participate. But the program does allow you to wrap things up in a single day, or even a matter of hours, once you meet the initial criteria. “This is designed to help people get through the system,” said Judge Hallahan.

Read the story here: California Pioneers the Court-Aided One-Day Divorce

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: budget cuts, California, california courts, court budget, divorce, family law, legal costs

June Budget Challenges Union Talks

May 8, 2014 By CCM Staff

With next month’s state budget deadlines looming, several union contracts remain in limbo – including the “California Attorneys, Administrative Law Judges and Hearing Officers in State Employment” group. If they miss next month’s deadline for an agreement-and-funding decision, they will have to wait until August to resume discussions. Union officials told the Sacramento Bee newspaper that an unexpected shift in top management has delayed the agreement, but that time is growing short.

Missing the deadline this year would be especially irritating, not only because the state has a surplus budget for the first time in years but because many state-worker unions are getting raises that kick in July 1.

Read the Bee report by Jon Ortiz here.

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: budget cuts, Civil Courts, contract negotiations, court cuts, SEIU, union