What Does Legal Representation Look Like in Immigration Courts Across the Country?

 

Written by Emily Creighton of the American Immigration Council and Jennifer Whitlock of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

It might seem like a straightforward statistic: 44% of individuals who appear in deportation proceedings have an immigration attorney. But it’s not so simple.

Instead, it is a number that must factor in deportation cases that proceed on expedited timelines and the reality that a person may retain counsel only for a specific stage of a case. The number also changes significantly depending on the location of the immigration court. Legal representation in immigration proceedings is actually quite complex. Depending on how you look at the numbers, the rates of representation can look significantly different.

More information https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a5529-legal-representation-in-immigration-court.html

New Leadership Strikes a New Tone for America

 

By: American Immigration Council - www.immigrationimpact.com

America turned a corner today. We not only installed new leadership, but these leaders set a distinctively new tone for the next four years.

A president is a political and policy leader, but he or she is also our conductor-in-chief, coordinating the timing and performance of government agencies and setting the direction and tempo of our public discourse.

On January 20, Joe Biden, the freshly inaugurated 46th president of the United States, spoke with a dramatically different timbre than his predecessor—one filled with humility, empathy, and commitment to service and country. He acknowledged the many challenges we face and asked for our help to rise to meet them.

“We must end this uncivil war that pitches red versus blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal,” Biden said, because we have “much to repair, much to restore, much to heal, much to build, and much to gain.”

More information https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a5043-Joe-Biden-New-Leadership-for-America.html

Immigration Courts Further Limit Legal Help Available To People Facing Deportation

By Kristin Macleod-Ball

Every year, thousands of people are forced to face the complex deportation system without an attorney representing them. Now, the immigration courts are seeking to limit the assistance that these individuals can receive from “friend of the court” attorneys.

The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the agency which includes the nation’s immigration courts, released a memo about the role of attorneys in immigration court. It specifically addresses the role they can have in cases of individuals they are assisting but not fully representing.

The memo, released in November 2019, appears to target programs by legal service providers that provide basic assistance to individuals facing deportation, including children, through attorney-of-the-day programs.

More information:

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4668-Immigration-Courts-Limit-Legal-Help-Available.html

 

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com

How The Immigration Court Reached A Record One Million Case Backlog

By:Aaron Reichlin-Melnick www.immigrationimpact.com

When Donald Trump took office in January 2017, the immigration courts faced a record backlog of over 542,000 cases. This month, the immigration court backlog hit a new historic high with over 1,000,000 cases. Driven by new Trump administration immigration court policies and the growth in the number of families arriving at the border in 2019, the backlog has increased at record speed.

At the current rate, the immigration court backlog is on pace to more than double less than three years into Trump’s first term in office. By contrast, it took nearly six years for the backlog to double under Obama.

Over the past two years, the Trump administration has taken a series of measures it claimed would slow the growth of the immigration court backlog. The first of these efforts came in 2017 with the creation of a “Strategic Caseload Reduction Plan,” which called for the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) to “realign the agency towards completing cases.” However, these measures have largely been ineffective and the backlog has grown to unprecedented levels.

The focus on completing cases as rapidly as possible has caused many to argue that the agency is putting speed over justice. Last October, EOIR immigration judges across the country were asked to decide 700 cases a year, with the possibility of professional discipline if they failed to meet the quota. The president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, Ashley Tabbador, argued that the quota would lead to “assembly line justice.”

Many of the actions taken by the administration to speed up cases have had the opposite effect. In 2018, Attorney General Sessions eliminated a process known as “administrative closure,” where judges could take low-priority cases off of their dockets to focus on the cases which most needed their attention. He also prevented judges from terminating cases in certain circumstances, requiring them to adjudicate the cases instead, which has further added to the backlog.

The Trump administration’s elimination of enforcement priorities has also increased the immigration court backlog. Under the Trump administration, ICE has arrested more undocumented immigrants with no criminal records who have long ties to their communities. These individuals are more likely to be eligible to seek relief from removal in court, meaning that the government cannot obtain a swift order of deportation.

The immigration courts have been shaken up by other Trump administrations actions as well, including the month-long government shutdown in January which led to more than 50,000 cases being delayed.

The immigration court backlog is also likely to grow even faster as the Trump administration expands the “Remain in Mexico” program. Immigration judges have been pulled from their regular cases and required to hear those on the Remain in Mexico docket instead. The crush of new cases under the Remain in Mexico program has “broken the courts” at the border, in the words of a U.S. government official.

This political interference with the courts has led many to call for the immigration court system to be taken away from the Department of Justice and become truly independent. Now that the courts have hit one million cases, it has become clear that the Trump administration’s interference-heavy approach isn’t working. A new approach must be tried.

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4495-Immigration-Court-Reached-a-One-Million-Case-Backlog.html

Chaos And Dysfunction At The Border: Remain In Mexico Program

By Aaron Reichlin-Melnick www.immigrationimpact.com

The first thing many people forcibly returned to Mexico tell you is that they’re afraid. Afraid of the cartels, afraid of Mexican immigration officials, and afraid of the months of uncertainty. This is what they’ve faced since the Trump administration sent them back to Mexico as part of the “Remain in Mexico” program—formally called the “Migrant Protection Protocols” (MPP).

Last week, I visited El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez in Mexico to witness the effects of MPP firsthand. What I saw was chaos, dysfunction, and a policy that has removed what little remaining due process protections existed in immigration court.

Under MPP, individuals who cross the border or arrive at ports of entry are given a notice to appear in immigration court and then sent back to Mexico through a port of entry. Only Mexicans, unaccompanied children, and “vulnerable” individuals are excluded from the program. But that hasn’t stopped U.S. Customs and Border Protection from forcing back extremely pregnant women and vulnerable LGBT+ individuals.

In Ciudad Juárez, those subject to MPP are largely waiting in a network of private and publicly operated shelters. Although some lucky few have managed to obtain jobs and alternate housing, most people subject to MPP will spend the next several months confined to small, crowded spaces because they are too afraid to leave the shelter.

Kidnappings, assaults, rapes, and murders are routine in Ciudad Juárez, and most everyone I talked to had either been victimized themselves or knew someone who had been.

With over 42,000 people sent back across the border under MPP since the program began in January 2019, MPP has rapidly become the most effective tool in the Trump administration’s efforts to stop asylum seekers from coming to the United States. When individuals are sent back under MPP, they are required to wait in Mexico until the date of their next court hearing. This can often take months. I talked to some people in Ciudad Juárez who were sent back in June 2019 and still hadn’t had their first court hearings.

If people survive the wait, they must return to the port of entry on the day of their hearing. They are then taken by armed guards to the nearest immigration court for a hearing.

Those subject to MPP will likely have to go through this process three or four times at a minimum before their case is resolved. Those who are actually able to file for asylum—likely only a small number, given that barely one percent of people subject to MPP have found lawyers—will wait even longer. It will likely take six months to a year for a resolution of their case. Throughout this whole time, they remain vulnerable in Mexico.

When I visited the El Paso immigration court, I was told that more than 15,000 people had been returned to Mexico from the El Paso region alone.

This massive swell of new cases has overwhelmed the small El Paso Immigration Court, which in 2018 saw just 1,464 new cases filed. The court only has four judges, which means that each judge has been assigned thousands of MPP cases.

Despite the small size of the court, judges have been forced to take on hundreds of cases a day. On one of the days I visited the court, a single judge had been assigned 161 cases total on her morning and afternoon dockets. By the end of the day, she had been unable to complete all the cases and was forced to send some people back to Mexico without any movement on their cases.

The sheer size of the MPP docket has also crowded out observers from the El Paso Court. Despite waiting all day at the court, I was told I was not allowed to observe any of the supposedly public hearings. They needed every available seat in the courtroom for individuals subject to MPP. This has plunged the court in El Paso into a state of secrecy, making it virtually impossible to track what’s happening in hearings.

Despite the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe, there is no sign that the Trump administration is planning to reverse course on MPP. In the next few weeks, tents housing MPP “immigration courts” are set to open in Laredo and Brownsville, Texas, where tens of thousands of new cases will begin. And until a court or Congress steps in, the chaos, dysfunction, and harm caused by this program will continue.

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4468-Chaos-and-Dysfunction-Remain-in-Mexico-Program.html

DOJ Moves To Further Politicize Immigration Court System

By Katie Shepherd www.immigrationimpact.com 

The Trump administration implemented more drastic changes to the U.S. immigration court system. A new rule gives the director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR)—a Trump political appointee—the power to adjudicate cases and appeals. 

Described as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” the rule turns the immigration court system into a law enforcement agency and undermines any semblance of judicial independence within the immigration court system. 

The new interim final rule was published by the Department of Justice (DOJ) just days after it was announced by the administration. It allows the director of EOIR to decide cases that “cannot be completed in a timely fashion”–within 90 days for detained cases and 180 days for non-detained cases. The move raises grave concerns about having a political appointee adjudicate immigration cases—essentially allowing the director to shape case law. The director reports to Attorney General William Barr and may now feel beholden to his political whims. 

Currently, only immigration judges, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the attorney general are permitted to adjudicate cases. The immigration court system is currently housed within the DOJ, the same executive branch agency responsible for prosecuting immigrants in federal court. This is an inherent conflict of interest. 

This summer, the National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ), American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), and others sent a letter to Congress, calling for an independent immigration court system. 

The new rule has met immediate criticism. NAIJ issued a stinging statement in response, calling the announcement: “An unprecedented attempt at agency overreach to dismantle the Immigration Court,” alleging that the “DOJ’s action ends any transparency and assurance of independent decision making over individual cases.” 

The rule also formalizes the creation of the Office of Policy, which is housed within EOIR and has been in operation since 2017. Many of the more problematic policies issued by EOIR over the past year—including initiatives to speed up deportations and weaken due process protections—have originated from this Office of Policy. The office has remained largely unresponsive to stakeholders seeking clarification or basic information about new policies. 

Monday’s new rule is hardly the first time the Trump administration has taken aim at the immigration court system. 

Earlier this month, the Trump administration moved to decertify the immigration judge’s union, the 40-year-old collective bargaining representative of U.S. immigration judges. 

The House Judiciary Committee issued a strong statement in response: “The Trump Administration has taken unprecedented steps to strip immigration judges of judicial independence by limiting their ability to manage their dockets and make informed discretionary decisions.” 

The committee pledged to hold hearings in the coming months to explore the current state of the immigration court system and the possibility of legislation to create an independent immigration court. 

The new rule has concerning implications for the future of the immigration court system and erosion of due process for the thousands of immigrants whose lives are now in the hands of the EOIR director. 

 

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com 

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4438-DOJ-Further-Politicize-Immigration-Court-System.html

Tent Immigration Courthouses Are Being Built At The Texas Border

By Melissa Cruz www.immigrationimpact.com 

Immigration judges from across the country will soon be reassigned from their normal caseload to preside over thousands of immigration cases along the U.S.-Mexico border, reportedly in an effort to speed up hearings under the controversial “Remain in Mexico” program. 

To handle the cases faster, the Trump administration is in the process of building makeshift immigration courthouses out of tents in the border towns of Laredo and Brownsville, Texas. 

Immigration judges will conduct these hearings via video teleconferencing from their court rooms, while the individuals will reportedly appear for court in the tents. Contracted assistants will organize the hearings in person by taking roll call, sending case documents to judges, and operating the video systems. 

Over 1,000 people may appear at one of these two courts each day. This means that people who fled violence in their home countries and were then forced to wait in cartel-controlled Mexican towns will be allowed to enter the United States—and the tents—for their hearings. 

The challenges of using a tent for a courthouse include notoriously spotty video teleconferencing with a judge thousands of miles away, and the likelihood that few people will have access to an attorney to guide them through the process. This makes a person’s chance at receiving asylum protections even slimmer. It’s reported that only 1% of people subject to the Remain in Mexico program have been able to obtain a lawyer. 

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials expect that around 150 immigration judges will be reassigned to handle the cases of asylum seekers and others who were forced to remain in Mexico while awaiting their U.S. immigration court case. More than 35,000 people have been sent back since Remain in Mexico’s implementation in January 2019. 

Removing judges off their regular dockets to process asylum cases at the border could also worsen the backlog of pending immigration cases. 

Judges will likely need to postpone their own hearings in order to prioritize these cases. This means immigration court cases around the country could be delayed for months or years. 

A former immigration judge under President Trump, Rebecca Jamil, told BuzzFeed News this shuffle could have a profound impact on those waiting for their court hearing outside of the border region: 

“Those families have been waiting for years to have their cases heard, and now will wait another two or three years, and due process is denied by the delay—evidence becomes stale, witnesses die, country conditions change.” 

It’s clear the Trump administration has devastated the U.S. asylum system and continues to disregard the basic due process rights of those seeking protection in the United States.

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com 

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4431-Tent-Immigration-Courthouses-Are-Being-Built.html

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

Rushing Immigration Court Cases Through ‘Rocket Dockets’ Deprives Families Of Due Process

In an attempt to rush through immigrant families’ court cases, the government began implementing “rocket dockets” in September 2018 for parents and children who had recently entered the United States together without authorization. The program is intended to discourage Central American families from coming to the United States by quickly deporting those already here. But by drastically shortening the timeline of the court process, the dockets prevent many asylum-seeking families from accessing a meaningful day in court. 

As of June 2019, over 56,000 cases were on these dockets in 10 cities around the country. 

Some immigrant families are only given a matter of weeks to find a lawyer and prepare their cases, and many attorneys report that expedited cases are scheduled too quickly to prepare well. This compressed timeline increases the chances that a family will have to navigate our complex immigration detention and removal system without an attorney. Those who go into court with no representation are much more likely to lose their cases .

Additionally, judges are under increasing pressure to close cases due to strict completion quotas . This adds more incentive to rush through cases at the expense of due process. 

While testifying before Congress in June, acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan claimed that the majority of families did not show up for court. But in fact, 86% of families released from detention attended their hearings from 2001 to 2016. 

Rocket dockets are unnecessary to ensure that people attend their immigration hearings. Immigrant families are generally eager to attend their hearings. These hearings are the only way for them to obtain permanent protections in the United States. The consequences of missing a hearing are also exceptionally high. Immigration judges are generally required to issue in absentiaremoval orders when someone fails to appear. 

Most families who miss court do so by accident. Often, the government has failed to notify them properly. In 2018, judges overturned 44 of 46 in absentia removal orders. The families in those cases had not received notice of their hearing or presented “extraordinary circumstances” for missing court. Thousands of hearing notices arrived after the hearing or to the incorrect address. Others included a date that doesn’t exist , a date on which the court was closed, or no date at all. 

There are meaningful and more effective alternatives available to these rocket dockets. 

To increase court appearances, the Trump administration could restart the Family Case Management Program (FCMP). This program provided individualized comprehensive help to families in five cities at a cost of only $38 per day for a family of two, compared to $592 for family detention . FCMP had a 99% success rate for compliance with court hearings and ICE appointments, but the government nevertheless ended it in June 2017. 

Other simple methods like text or email reminders about hearing dates have proven effective. 

The administration said it aims to discourage parents from traveling with children. To do this, they could reinstate the Central American Minors Program . This program allowed certain children with parents with legal status in the United States to apply as refugees. Hope of a legal path to the United States later may prevent parents from bringing them on the dangerous initial journey.

Instead of fast-tracking the court process, immigration courts should give these families the chance to prepare their cases. The opportunity to seek asylum is an American value—these programs would help restore that value. 

Source: immigrationimpact.com 

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4386-Rushing-Immigration-Court-Cases-Through.html

Attorney General Barr Rolls Back Asylum Protections For Families

By Aaron Reichlin-Melnick 

Attorney General William Barr issued a decision that significantly restricts the ability of many current asylum seekers to win their cases on Monday. In Matter of L-E-A-, Barr issued a new immigration court decision that says people should generally not be granted asylum if they face persecution because of who their family is.

Many individuals currently qualify for asylum because they have been targeted for persecution based on who is in their family. For example, cartels often kill a target’s relatives to send a message or governments may go after a political dissident’s family as a means of leverage. 

Despite the courts granting such “family-based” asylum claims for years, in Matter of L-E-A-, Barr declared that membership in a family would generally not qualify as “membership in a particular social group” for the purposes of asylum law. This essentially means that families are not “social groups” under the law. Under Barr’s decision, “family-based” asylum could largely be eliminated. Barr left in place only a few exceptions. This includes individuals who come from families of “greater societal import” and people from clan-based societies where family groups are significantly larger than in most Western societies. 

Although Barr did not give an exact definition for families that are of “greater societal important,” it suggests that he believes only some families matter enough to qualify for asylum. For example, the child of a rich and powerful family might qualify for asylum while the child of a poor family might not, even if the motive of the persecutor—and potential for harm or death—is the same. 

Barr’s decision comes slightly more than a year after former Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a similarly sweeping decision restricting asylum for victims of domestic violence. That decision was decried by former immigration judges as “an affront to the rule of law.” Not surprisingly, asylum grant rates this year have fallen. 

Monday’s decision may also cause the asylum grant rate to go down. Absurdly, the Trump administration is making it harder to win asylum, yet using the very fact that fewer people are winning asylum to argue that Congress should further restrict asylum. Through these artificially created barriers to asylum, the Trump administration is building its own evidence that the asylum process should be reformed—even though individuals’ reasons for fleeing their home countries is unchanged. 

Before Barr issued his decision, an individual in Honduras who was targeted for death because a family member chose to speak out against the gangs would have been able to argue that he was eligible for asylum. After Barr’s decision, such cases will be far harder to win. 

Barr’s decision also flies in the face of years of legal precedent. In a 2015 case, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals held that “the family provides a prototypical example of a particular social group.” Indeed, every single federal court to consider whether families qualified for asylum that way agreed that they did. The Ninth Circuit has also declared that “the family remains the quintessential particular social group.” 

Despite this long legacy of historical precedent, Barr declared that his interpretation of the law was binding and that each federal circuit court had come to the wrong conclusion. This declaration of authority will likely be tested as cases affected by his new decision go through the appeals process. 

Many individuals won’t be able to wait for appeals, however. Barr’s decision goes into effect immediately in immigration courts across the country and will be applied at border asylum screenings as well. Regardless of whether a court eventually find that the decision is wrong, asylum seekers today face an even higher bar to winning their cases than ever before. 

As more asylum seekers arrive at the border in 2019 than any previous year, we should be working on ensuring that our system provides full protections to anyone fleeing harm—not working to undermine the basic humanitarian protections that we have offered for decades. Barr’s decision takes us in the wrong direction. 

 

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com 

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4358-Rolls-Back-Asylum-Protections-for-Families.html