Information About A Secretive Program That Fast-Tracks Deportations

by Emma Winger 

Since the mid-1980s, immigration courts have operated the Institutional Hearing Program (IHP). The program is designed to quickly deport people serving criminal sentences. Despite how long it’s been in operation, little is known about the IHP. With a lawsuit filed earlier this week, advocates hope to shed light on this inherently secretive, newly-expanded program that raises serious due process concerns. 

Under the program, immigration judges can conduct removal proceedings for certain immigrants serving criminal sentences in federal, state, and local correctional facilities. The purported goal of the program is to deport the immigrants as soon as they complete their sentences. But by focusing on expediency, this secretive program undermines the rights of the people it targets for deportation. 

Historical data shows that only a tiny fraction of people facing fast-tracked deportation through the IHP have an attorney. This lack of legal assistance exacerbates other problems with the IHP. Immigrants with criminal convictions—like all immigrants—are entitled to due process in their deportation proceedings. But determining the immigration consequences of criminal convictions is notoriously complicated. Individuals in the IHP are often required to present complex legal arguments without the help of a lawyer to defend against deportation. 

The IHP operates almost exclusively through a video teleconference (VTC) system. This makes the process even more difficult as the system is often plagued by technical failings. These immigrants never have the chance to see an immigration judge in person. Instead, they are often left to defend themselves without the help of an attorney, via a faulty video system. 

It is unclear how or if the IHP protects the rights of those suffering from mental illness. They are entitled to certain safeguards if an immigration judge determines that they are incompetent. Without lawyers or an in-person appearance before a judge, this population is particularly vulnerable to due process violations. 

Despite these concerns, the Trump administration vowed to expand the IHP “[t]o the maximum extent possible.” The need to understand how this program functions has never been more urgent. 

The American Immigration Council, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and the Immigrant Defense Project sued to force the immigration courts to release records and data revealing how the IHP operates, where it operates, and who it targets. Advocates believe this information will bring greater transparency to an expanding, problematic program. 

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4332-Secretive-Program-That-Fast-Tracks-Deportations.html

DHS To Restart Deportation Cases For Hundreds Of Thousands Of Immigrants

Written by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick

Recently released internal communications at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reveal a plan to restart the deportation cases of hundreds of thousands of people whose cases are currently administratively closed. This initiative has the potential to swell the immigration court backlog (currently at 730,000 cases) to over one million cases.

Administrative closure is a docket-management tool which allows immigration judges to temporarily take a case off of their docket. Immigration judges typically grant administrative closure to allow an immigrant to seek relief outside of immigration court or because ICE exercised prosecutorial discretion and decided not to move forward with a case. Once ICE or an immigrant in removal proceedings chooses to move forward with the case, they can ask the judge to “recalendar” the case by placing it back on the docket. .

When Attorney General Jeff Sessions overturned decades of precedent in May 2018 by stripping immigration judges and the Board of Immigration Appeals of their general authority to administratively close cases, he left ICE with the decision to recalendar over 355,000 cases currently administratively closed. The newly-released instructions to ICE prosecutors reveal that ICE intends to recalendar virtually all of those cases. .

ICE prosecutors are instructed to prioritize recalendaring cases where the immigrant is detained, followed by all cases where the immigrant has a criminal record. Next, the agency will prioritize cases where ICE’s most recent motion to recalendar was denied, followed by those that administratively closed over ICE’s objections. Finally, it directs local offices to recalendar the remaining cases through a “case-by-case determination … considering available resources and the existing backlog in the local docket.” .

This last instruction has the potential to seriously limit the effect of ICE’s new policy. Because the agency’s resources are already strained by prosecuting new cases brought under the Trump administration, local ICE offices may not have the resources to recalendar many of the cases included in that last group. However, by indicating that the agency views virtually all 355,000 cases as legitimate targets for future enforcement, any immigrant whose case is currently administratively closed now faces an uncertain future. .

If fully implemented, ICE’s new guidance would have a significant effect on the tens of thousands of people who had their cases administratively closed from 2012 to 2016. Most cases administratively closed had benefited from a favorable exercise of prosecutorial discretion after the Obama administration determined that they were not an enforcement priority. Now, with the elimination of immigration enforcement priorities under the current administration, ICE may haul them back to immigration court again. .

ICE’s plan shows that the agency is eager to seek deportation of all who cross their path, regardless of whether they should be a priority for immigration enforcement or whether the agency will overwhelm the immigration court system in the process. In fact, an independent report commissioned by the immigration courts in 2017 recommended that more cases be administratively closed as an effective tool to reduce the backlog. .

The administration must make smarter use of its limited resources to ensure that enforcement does not needlessly harm countless people who pose no risk to public safety.

 

Source: www. immigrationimpact.com  

http://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a3871-DHS-To-Restart-Deportation-Cases-For-Of-Immigrants.html