News & Links

Study: Immigration Courts Reduced to a “Hollow Facade”

The Washington Sun reports that researchers from California State University, Long Beach, and Princeton University observed over 3,500 hearings before immigration courts in 13 states and concluded that the Trump administration is “dismantling… due process.” Apart from pressuring immigration judges to “resolve” cases without considering individuals’ claims or circumstances, the Department of Justice has hired immigration judges – renamed “deportation judges” – on the extreme right of the political spectrum, disregarding indications that they are xenophobes and temperamentally ill-suited to becoming jurists.

“Like a Nightmare”: Pregnant and Detained by ICE

During her months-long ordeal in the Bluebonnet Detention Facility, my client experienced the “inadequate medical care, overcrowding and unsanitary living conditions, [and] inadequate food” that is common ICE detention facilities. Many accounts more harrowing than hers are detailed in Sen. Jon Ossoff’s recent report, “The Abuse of Pregnant Women & Children in U.S. Immigration Detention.”

Immigration Courts Dispense Injustice

New regulations that give immigration judges the authority to hold in contempt and punish only one of the two parties before them – that is, the nonimmigrants’ lawyers – form part of a larger pattern: our immigration judges have become prosecutors in robes.

While maintaining the pretense of judicial independence, the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) swung open its doors to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) enforcers, who prowled the corridors of the nations courts, intent on depriving noncitizens of their liberty and their day in court, until a judge enjoined the practice as “arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to law in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).”

Immigration judges’ “independence” is now cabined by 320 precedent decisions rushed to release under the Trump administration: all but one of these dictate when judges must deny the so-called “alien” asylum, withholding of removal, cancellation of removal, adjustment of status, continuances, administrative closure, and the termination of removal proceedings. A striking pattern in these decisions is the fiction that DHS – one of the two parties who appear before these judges – is not responsible for the delay in adjudicating “collateral” applications for relief, such as family- and employment-based visa petitions. When the Board intones, for instance, that “[a]dministrative closure… is not intended to be used to delay proceedings indefinitely,” and “the average processing time for [such-and-such] an application is approximately 28 months,” it overlooks the fact that USCIS is a division of DHS. In effect, the Board is commanding judges to punish one party (the noncitizen) for the other party’s foot-dragging.

EOIR’s motto, “Qui Pro Domina Justitia Sequitur” – roughly, “who prosecutes on behalf of justice” – befits courtrooms staffed with two prosecutors and no judge.

ICE and CBP have gone rogue

In a report released in February, the American Immigration Council reveals how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) “routinely go[] far beyond what the law allows them to do.” It is an old problem. CBP in particular has, for decades, encouraged in its agents a contempt for the laws and regulations that bind the agency. While Congress and the office of the presidency coddle and praise Border Patrol, whistleblowers and independent investigations like AIC’s reveal an alarming tolerance for agents’ deceit, racism, and excessive use of force.

Study: immigration arrests don’t benefit native-born workers

The National Bureau of Economic Research has released a comprehensive study that concludes, “We find no evidence of positive spillover effects to U.S.-born workers and U.S.-born workers who work in immigrant-heavy sectors are harmed.” In the areas most affected by ICE’s paramilitary operations, joblessness actually increased for native-born workers.

Immigrants who do things “the right way” get detained too

Nicaraguan asylum applicant Freddy Antonio Tellez Lopez had resided in the U.S., abiding by our laws, for 5 years. This didn’t dissuade ICE from arresting him at his asylum interview in Miami, Florida. Nor did it dissuade ICE from detaining him for over six months, during which time a guard attempted to sexually assault him. In Trump’s America, an immigrant is no less likely to face arrest and detention if they do things “the right way.”