Border Cases Expedited Over Backlog

August 7, 2014 By
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.
 
 
 
Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Mercury News Blasts Border Crisis Response

August 1, 2014 By
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: , , , , ,

AP Story On Immigration Crisis Gets Traction

July 29, 2014 By
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: , , , , , , , , , ,

Finally: Capacity Cited In Immigration Courts Crisis

July 28, 2014 By
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.
 
Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Immigration Debate Shifts To U.S. Role

July 25, 2014 By
Debate over the immigration crisis of unaccompanied Central American children is shifting from immediate needs like housing and toward the role of the United States in creating the causes for the influx. An editorial blog from The Dallas Morning News explains why understanding the U.S. role is so important: “If Central American minors can make a credible claim that deportation would expose them to persecution or sexual exploitation in their home countries, U.S. immigration judges are likely to be lenient and let them stay. But the bar is set very high — and for a good reason.”
 
As stories surface about U.S.-based gangs operating in the countries of origin for the children, you can expect that debate over “causes” to increase. And how the civil immigration courts manage to verify any claims is going to be interesting.
 
Here’s the Morning News take from editorial writer Tod Robberson: 
Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: , , , ,

WaPo: Obama Admin. Was Warned Of Border-Children Crisis

July 23, 2014 By
Top officials at the White House and the State Department had been warned repeatedly of the potential for a further explosion in the number of migrant children since the crisis began escalating two years ago, according to former federal officials and others familiar with internal discussions, The Washington Post is reporting.
 
The newspaper also says that the White House was directly involved in efforts in early 2012 to care for the children when it helped negotiate a temporary shelter at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, which would seem to contradict administration claims that nobody could see the crisis brewing – at least not on the scale we see today. Meanwhile, estimates of Central American children arriving in the U.S. without accompanying parents or guardians is being revised from around 60,000 to more like 90,000 and up.
 
The border crisis is a civil justice crisis. The immigration process is a civil proceeding, as opposed to a criminal case, so children are not guaranteed representation by an attorney or a speedy process, as would be the case with criminal charges. Civil rights groups are suing the government in hopes of obtaining mandatory legal representation for the children.
 
Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Child-Immigration Crisis Also A Civil Court Crisis

July 8, 2014 By
With President Obama asking Congress for a quick $2 billion to address the growing crisis on the U.S.-Mexican border, it is worth noting that the system failure is not just about immigration policy or border enforcement – it’s really a failure of civil courts capacity. Many Americans learning about the crisis are surprised to discover that immigration issues are “civil” and not “criminal,” and that the core of the problem is that tens of thousands of children are due a day in court – and that day will not come for years and years.
 
As reported by NPR: Detainees sleep and watch television in a holding cell where hundreds of mostly Central American immigrant children are being processed at a U.S. Customs facility in Nogales, Texas.

As reported by NPR: Detainees sleep and watch television in a holding cell where hundreds of mostly Central American immigrant children are being processed at a U.S. Customs facility in Nogales, Texas.



Background: National Public Radio and others are drawing attention to the fact that, over the past nine months, “… more than 50,000 children and teenagers have crossed that border illegally on their own, most from Central America. By law, the administration can’t deport those young people until they have an immigration hearing — a process that can take years.” The immigration law is different for people from Mexico, who can be returned much faster.
 
Says NPR: “… law requires the U.S. to hold an immigration hearing before deporting a child from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador or any other country that doesn’t border the U.S., says Marc Rosenblum of the Migration Policy Institute. The law aims to protect vulnerable young people from being inadvertently sent home into forced labor or the sex trade.”
 
“While they wait for that immigration hearing, the law also requires that they be held in the least restrictive custody setting,” Rosenblum tells NPR. “What that means in practice is that most of these kids are getting placed with family members in the U.S. while they wait for an immigration hearing.”
Because the immigration courts are overloaded, the average wait is nearly two years, Rosenblum adds in the NPR coverage.
 
That means what we’re seeing is really a high-profile example of what happens when civil courts can’t meet demands. There is very likely a similar situation in many of our family courts and other systems, and those will eventually bring their own “crisis” headlines.


Here’s the NPR report: Obama To Ask Congress For $2B To Ease Immigration Crisis

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Brown Appoints Presiding Judges

July 1, 2014 By
The MetNews is reporting that Gov. Jerry Brown has named Court of Appeal Justice Frances Rothschild as presiding justice of this Los Angeles Div. One, and proposed three judges of other courts for appointment to other divisions. The website says that Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brian M. Hoffstadt will be nominated as associate justice in Div. Two, former Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Presiding Judge Lee S. Edmon as presiding justice in Div. Three, and U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins as associate justice in Div. Four. 
 
Read the report, with background on the newly appointed and their confirmation process, here: Brown Names Rothschild and Edmon Presiding Justices of C.A.
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Sen. Feinstein Discovers Need For Child Representation

June 30, 2014 By
The Los Angeles family court may be limping along and we may be closing facilities and programs important to juvenile justice, but Sen. Dianne Feinstein has at least discovered the need for representation for children being detained under civil (as opposed to criminal) immigration issues. In an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times, she says of the detained, “… it is also imperative that child advocates be provided for these children, both while they are in federal custody and upon release to family members or sponsors. The children need representation as their court cases advance, and no child should be forced to navigate the U.S. legal system alone.”
 
She also wrote that she applauds “… the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review for expanding juvenile dockets across the country to handle immigration cases for these children. Otherwise, these cases could easily get lost in current backlogs, forcing these children to live in the shadows indefinitely.” All this, of course, only after a flood of negative publicity over current practices of holding thousands of children without much of a plan on how to process them or return them home. 
 
Read the senator’s position here:
Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Divorce Delay? Not If You Can Pay For Private!

June 10, 2014 By
 
Years of judicial branch budget cuts have delayed civil trials, and divorce cases have been hard-hit as family law judges focus on domestic violence orders and other priorities. While state lawmakers have been slow to react, it seems the free market is making a move: a growing trend is to have “private trials,” and it’s apparently catching on across the country.
 
The Tulsa World newspaper is reporting that “California-based trial consulting firm Decision Analysis has been suggesting clients use a private trial for a long time, but the procedure is just starting to gain popularity, firm president Richard Gabriel said.” He said that “I think people are starting to consider it more and more because state court budgets across the country have been severely slashed,” adding that the cuts mean fewer court staff, increasing the length of time and money it takes for cases to be completed in the public courts system.
 
Other advantages if you can afford to pay for judges, and sometimes juries and other costs: Private trials also provide the privacy that mediation and arbitration do. Petition for divorce and decree of divorce is public record, but unless somebody appeals to the actual court system, the conclusions of law then those specifics are confidential.
 

Despite all that, some studies suggest that you might actually save money because “… complicated civil cases often come out ahead financially because private trials are much quicker.” Read the story here.

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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