Trump Administration Moves To ‘Disband and Destroy’ Immigration Judges Union

Posted by Melissa Cruz

Immigration judges around the country are denouncing the Trump administration’s latest move to “disband and destroy” their union. 

The judges’ union has been openly critical of the administration’s immigration enforcement agenda. 

The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a petition to the Federal Labor Relations Authority on Friday asking to revoke the National Association of Immigration Judges’ (NAIJ) union certification. Department officials claim that NAIJ members are “management officials” and therefore banned from collectively organizing. 

Judge Amiena Khan, vice president of NAIJ, says the step to decertify is a “a misguided effort to minimize our impact. We serve as a check and balance… and that’s why they are doing this to us.” 

Under their official capacity as DOJ employees, immigration judges cannot publicly speak out on issues that could be considered political. But representatives of the union can discuss—and criticize—DOJ policies on behalf of its members. They have done so since the union’s founding in 1971. 

But tensions between the department and immigration judges have only escalated in recent years. The union has even called on Congress to remove the immigration court system from the DOJ and establish it as an independent entity. 

In 2018, the Trump administration implemented case completion quotas as part of immigration judges’ performance reviews, compelling them to decide cases under strict deadlines. The quota was set in place to tackle the growing backlog of pending cases, which now totals more than 930,300. 

The quotas do not take the complexity of a case into consideration, nor the due process rights granted to all immigrants in court. Judges also risk termination if they do not complete the quota deadline. 

NAIJ called the move a “death knell for judicial independence in the immigration courts.” 

At the same time, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions stripped judges of their ability to manage their caseload by taking away a vital case management tool. He also made it more difficult for judges to grant asylum to domestic violence victims, as well as dismiss cases. 

These changes are amounting to a slower system with an increased backlog. Immigration judge and NAIJ President Ashley Tabaddor noted last month: 

“…It’s just a lot of chaos and counterproductive measures that undermine the ability of judges to use their expertise to help a case go through the system.” 

The call to dismantle the union appears to fall under that same goal of undermining and silencing immigration judges. 

NAIJ plans to respond to the administration’s petition once it receives an official notice from the Federal Labor Relations Authority. The agency will then likely investigate NAIJ to determine whether its certification can be revoked. 

The union once faced similar threats under President Bill Clinton and survived. For the sake of due process, the outcome will hopefully be the same this time too. 

 

 

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com 

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4393-Immigration-judges-are-denouncing-disband-and-destroy-their-union.html

It Is Legal to Seek Asylum

Written by Royce Murray

As thousands of asylum-seeking parents were separated from their children in recent months, the Trump administration actively portrayed them as law breakers who must be prosecuted and punished for coming to the United States. Left out of the narrative is one well-established fact: it is legal to seek asylum.

The Immigration and Nationality Act, which governs our nation’s immigration law, makes clear that anyone arriving at the U.S. border or within the United States is permitted to apply for protection. U.S. law embraces both international and domestic legal obligations not to return any person to a place where they face persecution on account of one of several protected grounds.

Most everyone can apply for asylum, and where narrow exceptions apply, those individuals can apply for other forms of protection including withholding of removal or relief for those at risk of torture.

For those able to reach the U.S. border, many have been unlawfully turned away by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials who have told migrants that ports of entry are closed or that the U.S. no longer welcomes asylum seekers, at least from certain countries, among other justifications. Faced with no alternatives, many asylum seekers present themselves to Border Patrol between the ports of entry in order to seek protection. Following the Attorney General’s “zero tolerance” policy of prosecuting everyone apprehended between the ports of entry, many asylum-seeking parents were separated from their children for months so they could be prosecuted for entry-related crimes before being given a chance to ask for protection.

Confusion is triggered, however, by the existence of federal criminal offenses for unlawful entry (a misdemeanor) or unlawful reentry to the United States after having been deported or ordered removed (a felony). While there are many concerns with entry-related prosecutions, it is particularly problematic when asylum seekers are prosecuted while trying to seek protection.

People fleeing life or death situations cannot often wait in their home countries to secure a visa or even use their true identity documents to depart their country and travel onward. Moreover, there is no way to apply for asylum from outside of the United States; overseas refugee processing is only available to select populations in specific locations and in very small numbers. Only 1,500 refugees may be admitted from all of Latin America and the Caribbean in fiscal year 2018; a mere 126 refugees from that region had been admitted as of June 2018.

To be clear, asylum seekers have a right to apply for asylum, not to be granted asylum. Once an individual tells a DHS official after being stopped at the border that they are afraid, asylum seekers must be processed and referred to asylum officers who assess an asylum seeker’s claims. Enforcement officers, such as CBP officers or Border Patrol agents, are not allowed to make these determinations.

The Refugee Convention also makes clear that countries are precluded from penalizing individuals requesting protection from persecution or torture in their country of origin. Indeed, in 2015 the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General noted that the prosecution of those “who express fear of persecution or return to their home countries” was “inconsistent with and may violate U.S. treaty obligations.”

The United States must stop its criminalization of asylum seekers. Rather than treating them as law breakers, our country must adhere to its legal obligations to afford protections to those in harm’s way.

 

Source: www. immigrationimpact.com  

http://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a3852-It-Is-Legal-to-Seek-Asylum.html

Violencia Doméstica Y De Pandillas Ya No Serán Motivo Para Pedir Asilo En Estados Unidos

En importantes noticias relacionadas con la inmigración, el fiscal general estadounidense, Jeff Sessions, anunció el lunes que la violencia doméstica ya no será motivo de asilo en su país. Esta decisión constituye un cambio de gran alcance que podría afectar a miles de mujeres que huyen de situaciones de violencia de género, en particular provenientes de Centroamérica.

Sessions anuló un precedente establecido en un fallo de la corte de apelaciones de inmigración en 2014, que había otorgado asilo a una mujer guatemalteca llamada Aminta Cifuentes, quien había huido a Estados Unidos tras haber sido brutalmente agredida por su esposo durante años: Cifuentes sufrió golpes, patadas, quemaduras con ácido y un puñetazo tan fuerte en el estómago cuando cursaba ocho meses de embarazo que causó el nacimiento de su hijo, en forma prematura y con hematomas. Luego de agredirla, el hombre le dijo que no tenía sentido que acudiera a la policía, porque “incluso la policía y los jueces golpean a sus esposas”. 

De todos modos, ella se presentó ante las autoridades, que le recomendaron que dejara a su marido. Sin embargo, cuando lo hizo él la rastreó, y amenazó con matarla. Después de esto, Cifuentes huyó a Estados Unidos, donde finalmente obtuvo asilo. Pero el lunes, el fiscal general Jeff Sessions anuló el precedente que se había establecido con su caso al dictaminar que “las solicitudes de extranjeros relacionados con violencia doméstica o violencia de pandillas perpetrada por actores no gubernamentales no cumplirán los requisitos para que se otorgue el asilo”. 

Los abogados de inmigración han condenado el fallo de Sessions, que podría tener efectos radicales no sólo para las mujeres que huyen de la violencia doméstica, sino también para todas las personas que huyen de la violencia relacionada con las pandillas. Karen Musalo, del Centro de estudios de género y refugiados de la Universidad de California Hastings College of the Law, declaró: “Lo que hace esta decisión es regresarnos a la era del oscurantismo que distinguía entre los derechos humanos y los derechos humanos de las mujeres”. 

Fuente: www.democracynow.org - Noticias Telemundo 

http://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a3821-nuevas-condiciones-para-pedir-asilo-en-Estados-Unidos.html