Federal Judge Ready To Close 3 Immigration Detention Centers

July 30, 2015 By
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.

A federal judge is poised to order immigration authorities to close three family detention centers housing some 1,700 people awaiting decisions on their stay-or-go arguments. Dolly Gee, a U.S. District judge in Southern California, ruled that federal authorities have violated key provisions of an 18-year-old court settlement that placed restrictions on detention of migrant children.
 
The Los Angeles Times notes that “…  The ruling, released late Friday, is another blow to President Obama’s immigration policies and leaves questions about what the U.S. will do with the large number of children and parents who crossed the border from Latin America last year.”
 
Judge Gee blasted the government and the conditions at both the detention centers (two in Texas and one in Pennsylvania) as she gave the government until Aug. 3 to explain why an order she plans to issue should not be implemented within 90 days. Read the LAT report here:
 
Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, National Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Public Interest Attorney Notes Amicus Role For Immigration

July 24, 2015 By

Writing for the “Above The Law” website, attorney Sam Wright makes a case for increasing the role that amicus briefs might play for immigration court policies. Sam Wright, described as “a dyed-in-the-wool, bleeding-heart public interest lawyer,” focuses on the specific case of Cristoval Silva-Trevino, the subject of a Texas-based case with national implications.

A federal circuit court recently issued the latest guidelines in a years-long struggle over the case, but Wright makes the point that amicus briefs played an important role. For example, the Southern Poverty Law Center offered its opinion, along with another organization that the Center considers a hate-associated group.

See how it plays out, read here.

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community Tagged With: , , , ,

Report Offers Details About Immigration Court Backlog

July 8, 2015 By
As reported in Al Jazeera America: "The nation’s immigration courts got a bit of relief at the beginning of June, when the Department of Justice hired 18 new immigration judges. But the courts are still facing a major backlog.Illustration by Sam Ward for Al Jazeera America"

As reported in Al Jazeera America: “The nation’s immigration courts got a bit of relief at the beginning of June, when the Department of Justice hired 18 new immigration judges. But the courts are still facing a major backlog.Illustration by Sam Ward for Al Jazeera America”

A new report by Bruce Wallace, writing for Al Jazeera America, details just how stalled the nation’s busiest immigration courts are, and how backlogged they remain. Writing from New York, he reports that “… depending on how you count it, this courthouse — actually a collection of 31 small courtrooms scattered across two floors of a tall federal office building in downtown Manhattan — is either the busiest or second busiest of the 58 immigration courts in the country. The one in Los Angeles got more new cases last year — a little over 18,000, compared with around 17,700 for Manhattan. But Manhattan has more cases pending: 60,538 compared with 51,878 in L.A. Or, on average, about 2,240 cases per New York judge. Judges in comparable courts have about 700 cases a year, according to the American Bar Association.
 
The story goes on: “Death-penalty cases in a traffic-court setting” is how Dana Leigh Marks likes to put it. She’s an immigration judge in San Francisco and president of the National Association of Immigration Judges (and, as such, one of two immigration judges in the country who are permitted to speak to the media). “The volume alone is like traffic court, and yet the stakes for someone who asserts a claim of asylum, if I am wrong — or even if I’m right but, because the law doesn’t allow me to grant relief, I have to deny them — they could be going back and facing death.”
 
Immigration courts, despite their name, are not actually part of the federal courts system. They are part of the Justice Department and the judges do not have much power over their colleagues who represent the government. They are civil courts, so there is no right to have counsel provided. Nationally, some 450,000 cases are pending with wait times reaching half a decade.
 
Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: , , , , ,

It Had To Happen: Immigrant Avoids ICE Hold, Now A Murder Suspect

July 6, 2015 By
It made headlines last year as jurisdictions, acting on a federal court decision out of Oregon, decided they would not honor “hold” requests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. Now a San Francisco murder suspect was freed despite such a hold request just before committing the alleged killing. But an attorney for the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department says “…nothing in his background showed anything like that.”
As reported in the LA Times: Liz Sullivan and Jim Steinle, parents of Kathryn Steinle, who was fatally shot Wednesday in San Francisco. A suspect with seven felony convictions who had been deported five times has been arrested in connection with the shooting. (Lea Suzuki / San Francisco Chronicle)

As reported in the LA Times: Liz Sullivan and Jim Steinle, parents of Kathryn Steinle, who was fatally shot Wednesday in San Francisco. A suspect with seven felony convictions who had been deported five times has been arrested in connection with the shooting. (Lea Suzuki / San Francisco Chronicle)

 
Says an ICE spokesperson: “An individual with a lengthy criminal history, who is now the suspect in a tragic murder case, was released onto the street rather than being turned over to ICE for deportation… we’re not asking local cops to do our job. All we’re asking is that they notify us when a serious foreign national criminal offender is being released to the street so we can arrange to take custody.”
 
San Francisco County Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi said ICE misses the point. “ICE was informed about San Francisco’s position on detainers,” he said, “but did not seek a court order for Sanchez’s transfer as required under the law.”
 
The Courts Monitor follows immigration issues because the cases are civil, not criminal. Read more from the L.A. Times here:
 
Filed Under: Border Kids, National Tagged With: , , , , , ,

NYT Gives Family Detention Camps Front-Page Status

June 16, 2015 By
 
The Sunday New York Times gave migrant detention centers front-page treatment, profiling a big camp in Texas. Activists will no doubt note that the report does not mention the context of the detentions – nearly a half-million migrants await their day in immigration court – or that the “courts” are actually administration employees and part of the justice department.
 
But there is some notice taken on the lack of lawyers and that some people languish because they can’t post the “bond” to get out. The one amount noted in the report was $1,500.
 
Says the NYT: “While the number of people crossing the border illegally has dropped sharply this year, families continue to come. Since Oct. 1, more than 17,000 parents and children have been caught along the Southwest border, according to official figures. At the Dilley camp, more than half the detainees are children. Their average age is 9… The centers were designed to hold the women while they fight their cases in the immigration courts, part of the administration’s expansion of family detention to more than 3,000 beds nationwide, from only 95 a year ago.”
 
We will see if the NYT treatment is enough to make the issue a priority. Read the story here.
Filed Under: Border Kids, Community Tagged With: , , ,

TV News Report Includes Director’s Rare Comments Demanding Change

May 27, 2015 By
 
A California NBC TV affiliate has scored a rare interview with the director of the nation’s immigration system, and he’s not holding back in blaming lawmakers for what amounts to a broken system. Bay Area NBC says that “… in his first ever TV interview on camera, the Director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) tells NBC Bay Area that only a complete overhaul by Congress will truly fix the issues plaguing the current system.”
 
“There’s no question that the system, the immigration court system, is under incredible stress right now,” Director Juan Osuna told the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit, which conducted the interview in Washington, D.C. The multi-part report says that “… according to EOIR’s latest figures, US Immigration Courts received 306,045 cases in 2014 alone. Many of those cases were never heard, adding to a backlog which now totals 445,607 according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC.”
 
The comments are rare, both because of what NBC called “tradition” and also because the immigration system, including the judicial branch, are not “courts” at all but really are a function of the Department of Justice. 
 
See the milestone story here.
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How Clinton’s Immigration Policy Would Differ From Obama’s

May 8, 2015 By
 
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton made headlines by calling for a path to full and equal citizenship for undocumented immigrants, but offered few details on how her programs as president would go beyond what President Obama has done by executive order. Immigration cases are civil actions and some 400,000 cases are backed up in the special “immigration courts” which are actually operated by the U.S. Justice Department, not the usual courts system.
 
The left-leaning website ThinkProgress has a solid analysis of how Clinton’s ideas differ from Obama’s, noting that the candidate “… called for granting ‘full and equal citizenship’ to undocumented immigrants; extending an existing executive action that provides deportation protections to so-called DREAMers, or undocumented immigrants, giving legal representation to immigrants in immigration court; and reforming immigration enforcement and detention practices ‘so they’re more humane, more targeted, and more effective.'”
 
See more of the analysis here.
Filed Under: Border Kids, Community Tagged With: , , , ,

NPR Follow-Up Humanizes Those Border Kids Cases

March 10, 2015 By
As the United States punts on its obligation to deal with asylum seeking children on its southern border, a new NPR report follows up on the story of  Jose, no last name or country used for fear of gang retaliation, who is “… one of almost 60,000 unaccompanied minors from Central America now living with family and friends in the United States. Most of the youths are awaiting court hearings to determine whether or not they can stay in the country. Many are also going to school and trying to get settled in new homes and new communities.”
 
NPR says that “a recent study by Syracuse University found that two-thirds of unaccompanied minors do not have legal representation — and that having it makes a big difference; those with attorneys are far more likely to be allowed to stay in the United States.”
 
As we have noted before, immigration courts have the look and feel of regular courts, but are actually civil proceedings and the judges are actually Justice Department employees In effect, the “courts” are hearings and NPR quotes one legal-services activist saying “… these kids are facing exile and in some cases death. It’s also very hard to represent yourself pro se when you’re a 10-year-old in a new country and you don’t speak the language.”
 
Filed Under: Border Kids, Community Tagged With: , , , , ,

Judges Renew Calls For Immigration Court Reform

February 26, 2015 By
After a period of relative quiet, the immigration judges facing hundreds of thousands of cases are speaking out, calling for help amid a crisis. A new NPR report explains that “… as Congress debates the fate of President Obama’s immigration policies, the nation’s immigration court system is bogged down in delays exacerbated by the flood of unaccompanied minors who crossed the southern border last summer. The administration made it a priority for those cases to be heard immediately. As a result, hundreds of thousands of other cases have been delayed until as late as 2019.”
 
NPR adds that “even before this past summer’s surge of unaccompanied minors seeking asylum, the immigration courts were already clogged, says Judge Dana Leigh Marks, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. There were too many cases for too few judges, and adding in the cases of the unaccompanied minors only made matters worse. There are currently more than 429,000 cases pending in the courts with just 223 judges.
 
The “judges” are not part of the usual judicial system, but are actually employees of the Justice Department – that means, for example, that they could not hold government agents – really, their co-workers – in contempt of court during one of the hearings. Read more: Immigration Courts ‘Operating In Crisis Mode,’ Judges Say
Filed Under: Border Kids, Cases, Refugee Children Tagged With: , , , , ,

Judge Halts Obama’s Immigration Order

February 17, 2015 By
When President Obama took executive action on immigration policy, one concern was that legal action would delay or even halt his plans. That’s come to pass, with a federal judge in Texas blocking the action to give a 26-state coalition more time to pursue its lawsuit against the measures. The White House says it will appeal, but such is the danger of congressional inaction – we head to the executive branch and, eventually, the courts.
 
In response to the judge’s order, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it would halt preparations for a program to protect parents of U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents until further notice.
 
Read the Associated Press report here. 
Filed Under: Border Kids, Community Tagged With: , , , ,
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