‘Border Kids’ Moves Into New ‘Crisis Of Process’

March 12, 2015 By
Photo from the LA Times Report, "7,000 immigrant children ordered deported without going to court," 3/6/15

Photo from the LA Times Report, “7,000 immigrant children ordered deported without going to court,” 3/6/15


Just when you think the “Border Kids” crisis where thousands of minor asylum seekers flood the borders, the situation takes a turn for the worse. Now, the Los Angeles Times reports, “… more than 7,000 immigrant children have been ordered deported without appearing in court since large numbers of minors from Central America began illegally crossing the U.S. border in 2013, federal statistics show.”
 
Not that anyone knows much beyond those orders. The Times notes that immigrant advocates say many of those children were never notified of their hearing date because of problems with the immigration court system. Times sources say that some notices arrived late, some went to the wrong address or perhaps there was no notice delivered at all. Those sources also say some children were ordered to appear in a court where they were initially detained, not where they are living now.
 
Also, nobody really knows how many of those children choose to just not show up for the hearing, or how many were actually notices. “What was a border crisis has now become a due process crisis,” said Wendy Young, president of Kids in Need of Defense, an advocacy group, in the Times report. Oh, and it is also not known how many of those children facing deportation orders have been sent home – you have to wonder if they even know the hearings happened.
 
Read more on the mess at the Times.

 

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: , , , , ,

Compton Mayor, Justice Issues Profiled In HuffPo piece

March 4, 2015 By
Courts Monitor Publisher Sara Warner has published a Huffington Post profile on Compton Mayor Aja Brown, drawing from a Time Magazine profile last year and an exclusive interview with the mayor. You can read it here: In California’s ‘Hip Hop City,’ Mayor Looks ‘Beyond Brooklyn’
Filed Under: Community, Profiles Tagged With: , , ,

Church-Based ‘Guardian Angels” Step Into Help ‘Border Kids’ Facing Deportation

March 3, 2015 By
A Los Angeles Times report highlights efforts of a Lutheran church group becoming de facto court watchers to make sure the “border kids” – those under-18 would-be immigrants from countries other than Mexico who recently flooded into the U.S. – understand their rights under American law. Advocates say the Justice Department courts that review cases are wildly uneven and outcomes depend largely on legal representation. Those charged in the courts do not have a right to an attorney because the cases are considered civil actions.
 
Reports the LAT: “Because the government does not provide lawyers to immigrants facing removal, many of the children have ended up navigating complex deportation proceedings alone. Last fiscal year, 72% of children in deportation hearings were not represented by an attorney, according to federal data analyzed by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.”
 
Leaders of the guardian angels program, notes the Times, include the Lutheran pastor “… who hatched the idea last summer after hearing that children’s deportation hearings were being fast-tracked through the court system. More than three-fourths of children’s court cases closed in the second half of last year resulted in removal orders, according to the federal Executive Office of Immigrant Review. In the vast majority of those cases, the deportation orders were issued in absentia because the children did not show up for their hearings.”
 
Filed Under: Border Kids, Cases, National Tagged With: , , ,

New Courts Director Targets Pension Reform

February 25, 2015 By

That state auditor’s report illustrating free-spending ways for
California’s top courts officials has helped spark some reform. The
Courthouse News reports that “… in his first round of big changes to
California’s court bureaucracy, new director Martin Hoshino answered a
scathing report from the state auditor with a series of reforms that
included eliminating a lavish pension benefit for the top brass.

The CN adds that “the controversial perk was cut back in 2012 by Chief
Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, but top executives were still receiving
another 22% in pension contributions from public funds on top of their
salaries, including Chief Operating Officer Curt Childs, Chief
Administrative Officer Curt Soderlund and Chief of Staff Jody Patel.
The pension benefit for the top officials caught the attention of the
California State Auditor, who honed in on the perk in a scathing
report released in January after a nearly year-long investigation of
the bureaucracy, formerly known as the Administrative Office of the
Courts. The new director said the benefit would end July 1st.”

Read the CN story
here:http://www.courthousenews.com/2015/02/19/new-director-of-california-court-agency-cuts-perk-for-top-brass.htm of reforms that
included eliminating a lavish pension benefit for the top brass.

The CN adds that “the controversial perk was cut back in 2012 by Chief
Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, but top executives were still receiving
another 22% in pension contributions from public funds on top of their
salaries, including Chief Operating Officer Curt Childs, Chief
Administrative Officer Curt Soderlund and Chief of Staff Jody Patel.
The pension benefit for the top officials caught the attention of the
California State Auditor, who honed in on the perk in a scathing
report released in January after a nearly year-long investigation of
the bureaucracy, formerly known as the Administrative Office of the
Courts. The new director said the benefit would end July 1st.”

Read the CN story
here:http://www.courthousenews.com/2015/02/19/new-director-of-california-court-agency-cuts-perk-for-top-brass.htm

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

State Courts’ Image On The Upswing

February 24, 2015 By

A new poll shows that public perception of state courts is improving on all fronts, but people would really, really prefer to skip a trip to the courthouse and use the Internet when at all possible.

The National Center for State Courts (NCSC) commissioned the  2014 State of State Courts Poll, asking 1,000 registered voters last November to weigh in questions ranging from procedural fairness and customer service to judges’ work hours and salaries. Not surprisingly, the group notes that “… the GBA report concludes that public doubts about political influence and bias represent the greatest threat to public confidence in the courts.”

Read more.

Filed Under: Community Tagged With: , ,

Justice Reform Create Odd Political Bedfellows

February 19, 2015 By
It seems that fixing the American justice system continues to be one place where America’s most high-profile political enemies can find common ground. The New York Times is reporting http://blogs.reuters.com/alison-frankel/2014/10/23/criminal-defense-lawyers-group-no-reason-to-shun-koch-industries-money/ that the “usually bitter adversaries” of Koch Industries and the Center for American Progress have agreed to work together on a new group, the Coalition for Public Safety. Other participating groups, left and right, include the ACLU, Americans for Tax Reform and Tea-Party leaning FreedomWorks. They’ll start with $5 million.
 
According to the NYT, “organizers of the advocacy campaign… consider it to be the largest national effort focused on the strained prison and justice system. They also view the coalition as a way to show lawmakers in gridlocked Washington that factions with widely divergent views can find ways to work together and arrive at consensus policy solutions.” 
 
This follows a Koch effort with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, which Reuters recently noted “… announced a major new grant to fund training for lawyers who represent indigent defendants. That’s no surprise. Providing good lawyers for defendants who can’t afford counsel is a core mission for NACDL. But the source of the funding caused a bit of a stir: Koch Industries, the Kansas-based, privately held manufacturing conglomerate that is the source of the boundless wealth of Charles and David Koch.”
 
Reuters noted that the “senate’s Democratic majority leader, Harry Reid, has tagged them [the Kochs] (via Talking Points Memo) “‘un-American’ plutocrats who ‘have no conscience and are willing to lie’ in order to ‘rig the system’ against the middle class.” That report said NACDL’s president told the reporter that  the group only cares that Koch Industries shares its view of the sanctity of the Sixth Amendment and defendants’ right to council.
 
So far, the odd-bedfellow efforts have been all about criminal, not civil, courts. But any improvements are bound to help both sides of that ledger.

Filed Under: Community 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: , , , ,

Bicyclist Hit By Truck Wins $34.5 Million In Jury Trial

February 10, 2015 By
A Los Angeles bicyclist, who suffered injuries including a lower leg amputation when he was hit by a big-rig truck making a right-hand turn, was awarded $34,555,220 after a personal injury trial.
 
His attorneys said that Alan Casillas, was 19 years old on the morning of Dec. 7, 2012 and was riding his bicycle to a friends’  house. They say that’s when a big rig drove over part of the sidewalk while making a right turn from Tweedy Boulevard to Alameda Street. They said the truck struck Casillas, knocking him from the bike and crushing his left leg, among other injuries.  [Read more…]
Filed Under: Cases, National Tagged With: , , , ,

One-Day Divorce Heralded As Court Innovation

February 5, 2015 By
The Associated Press is profiling a California judge as an innovator for his one-day divorce process, a program inspired in some measure by $1 billion in court budget cuts during the recession. The AP notes that “… layoffs sapped employee morale, 52 courthouses closed across the state and the trying experience of going to court has become more tedious with longer lines, frustrating hearing delays and time-consuming waits on the phone.”
 
“Against that backdrop,” says the AP,”recent innovations seem like baby steps, but they have made it simpler to serve jury duty, pay traffic fines or get a restraining order in some counties. Lawyers in some courts can now schedule hearings online, file motions over the web and get judge’s orders electronically before they leave court.”
 
See a reminder that the California budget cuts are the new normal here.
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , ,
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