National Courts Monitor

Unaccompanied Child Lawsuit Gets Federal Hearing, And It’s A Mess

Updated: October 23, 2014

Politico’s David Rogers has one of the better reports on that federal court hearing in Seattle over the issue of providing legal counsel to the unaccompanied children migrating to the U.S. from nations other than Mexico, and it was not pretty. Rodgers begin the story by noting that the case is “… dramatizing the split personality in the Obama administration over the question of providing counsel to child migrants faced with deportation hearings.”

He supports that statement by recalling that “… no less than Attorney General Eric Holder told the Senate last year that it is ‘inexcusable’ that young children “have immigration decisions made on their behalf, against them, whatever and they’re not represented by counsel. That’s simply not who we are as a nation.”

Somehow avoiding references to Kafka and/or Joseph Heller (we assume through sheer force of will), Politico offers this summary from one of the immigration experts: “That’s the genesis of the whole jurisdictional problem that we have here. It’s the reason why the counsel claim is always ruled out and can never be heard in the court of appeals. For children who have counsel, it’s moot because they have counsel. Children who don’t have counsel don’t have the ability to file a board of immigration appeal.”

Read more of the telling report here: Migrants’ right to counsel argued

Courts Funding Gets Buzzy

by NCM Staff

Updated: September 4, 2014

Leave a Comment

Call it official: the once obscure civil courts funding issue surrounding immigration enforcement has gone mainstream. We know this because the click-fest known as BuzzFeed has actually developed one of their video-centric reports: “Top 10 Reasons Why Immigration Courts Need More Funding.”

The reasons are solid, like “… with a backlog of more than 360,000 cases, the average wait for a case to be resolved in immigration court is 578 days.” They also note the lack of legal representation for minors, budget cuts and common sense.

It’s posted in the “community” section with a disclaimer that it was produced by a BuzzFeed non-staffer, but it certainly has the BF DNA. Take a look here.

SoCal Civil Court Backlogs With Child Immigration Cases

by NCM Staff

Updated: October 23, 2014

Leave a Comment

Southern California Public Radio has an important new piece on how Los Angeles courts are handling the immigration crisis of unaccompanied Central American children. Reporter Dorian Merina quotes one judge noting that “… other federal judges hear about 500-600 cases a year” while typical immigration judges in L.A. hear three times as many, or up to 1,600 on average.

The judge explains that the situation “.. has led to an historic backlog of cases in the immigration court system nationwide” and that there are about 375,000 pending cases as of June this year, the highest it’s ever been, according to government enforcement.

The report also addresses the issue of legal representation, saying that “… of the 7,729 juvenile cases currently in the L.A. courts, just under half, or 3,516, face proceedings without a lawyer, according to TRAC data. (Unlike criminal cases, immigration courts are considered administrative hearings and attorneys are encouraged, but not guaranteed.)”

It’s a troubling report from the nation’s largest immigration court: LA’s immigration courts overwhelmed by child migrant cases

Journalist Notes Change In U.S. ‘Trick’ Deportations

by NCM Staff

Updated: October 23, 2014

Leave a Comment

Los Angeles-based journalist Charles Davis, writing online at VICE, has noted changes in one of the more troubling immigration polices coming to light amid the ongoing child-refugee border crisis. He reports on an Aug. 27 court settlement that “… the [U.S] government will no longer use ‘threats,’ ‘misrepresentations,’ or ‘subterfuge’ in order to trick undocumented immigrants into agreeing to voluntarily deport themselves.”

Davis quotes from written arguments by Gabriel Rivera and Mitra Ebadolahi from the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties: “For years, countless families throughout Southern California have been torn apart by immigration enforcement agencies’ coercive and deceptive ‘voluntary return’ practices… as a matter of standard practice, ICE and Border Patrol have misinformed immigrants about the consequences of ‘voluntary return,’ including withholding the fact that ‘voluntary return’ can trigger a ten year bar against returning to the United States.”

The VICE post paints a truly alarming picture of what’s been going on in our immigration process, including intimidation and suggesting that failure to “go along” might mean trouble for family members.

You can read it here.

Writer Calls Out U.S. Policy On Border-Children Crisis

by NCM Staff

Updated: October 23, 2014

Leave a Comment

The writer Ruben Navarrette is citing MLK and Democratic governors in a new CNN piece that also says the Obama Administration is misleading the public about what is actually happening to unaccompanied Central American children seeking refuge in the United States.

Navarette, who is also a Daily Beast online columnist and syndicated nationally via the Washington Post Writers Group, begins by citing the civil rights icon: “In his epic ‘Letter from the Birmingham Jail,’ the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. observed that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied.’ But now that the Obama administration is fast-tracking the deportation of thousands of undocumented minors, perhaps hoping to get rid of them before the November elections, it’s clear that expedited justice is just as bad.”

The writer adds that, “… despite the President’s claim that there is no rush in returning the children and due process would be preserved, the reality is much different. Kids are given court dates they can’t possibly be expected to make — often in another state. Many don’t have lawyers. Deportation cases are being rushed through the pipeline.”

He also suggests that the crisis might become a 2016 presidential election issue, noting that “… Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, a possible contender for the Democratic nomination in 2016, warned that the administration was giving the migrant children death sentences. O’Malley told a gathering of the National Governors Association in Nashville, Tennessee: ‘We are not a country that should turn children away and send them back to certain death.’”

It is one of the strongest indictments yet of how the U.S. is handling the crisis, and you can read it at CNN here: Fast-tracking children to possible death