M.S.P.C. v. Johnson
The American Civil Liberties Union, the American Immigration Council, the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, and the National Immigration Law Center have sued the government on behalf of asylum-seeking mothers and children who are quickly being deported before they can adequately prepare for an asylum hearing. These women and children seek shelter in the U.S. from violence and threats in their home country, but the Obama administration has instituted a strong-arm ‘detain-and-deport’ policy that violates constitutional and statutory law by deporting those seeking asylum regardless of their individual circumstances.
Asylum-seeking women and children are held at a remote detention center in Artesia, New Mexico where communication with the outside world – including their immigration attorneys – is difficult to impossible. Important information regarding their interviews is often withheld, hindering their ability to prepare or consult with legal counsel. Mothers are rushed through interviews and forced to recount details of traumatic rape and violence in front of their children. If the government continues to see these cases under this policy, immigrant mothers and children will be forced to return to their home countries where death threats, gang violence, and corrupted law enforcement await them.
https://www.aclu.org/immigrants-rights/mspc-v-johnson
Immigration Judges Want an Independent Immigration Court
Judges Dana Leigh Marks and Denise Noonan Slavin, president and executive vice president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, both expressed need for an immigration court that is independent of the Justice Department and federal law enforcement. Marks commented on the paradoxical nature of operating a neutral court within a law enforcement agency. Judges are meant to be neutral parties when overseeing cases argued by Homeland Security Department lawyers; however, the lines of neutrality can be blurred as immigration judges also act as attorneys for the government and employees of DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR).
Additionally, says Marks, many decisions concerning immigration court regulations are made from outside of the actual court system. She cites the recent fast-tracking of immigrant children deportation cases as an example. In no other court system could the government perform such a total overhaul of the docket and reorder so many cases.
The Department of Justice released a statement reporting that it would be difficult and costly to change the immigration court system, which has been designed to operate within the structure of the Justice Department. Slavin counters that investing more money in the underfunded immigration court system could improve efficiency and help clear the backlog of more than 375,000 pending immigration cases. She asks, “If your gas tank has a leak do you keep filling it up with gas or do you fix it first?”
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/immigration-judges-union-independent-court-25148576
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