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Lawsuits Galore From Buckwheat's Antics

Mike

Well-known member
Illegal immigrants pouring across the border could trigger a wave of lawsuits flooding the U.S. court system for years and costing taxpayers millions, according to legal experts.

The American Civil Liberties Union has already sued the federal government to ensure that each of the 60,000-plus unaccompanied children who have come across the border since November gets taxpayer-funded representation at deportation hearings. But legal advocacy groups who represent illegal immigrants could file additional suits alleging improper treatment at the hands of the government. And with the system overwhelmed, there’s little doubt corners are being cut.

“You can bet there is a phalanx of left-wing lawyers trying to line up illegal alien plaintiffs,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch.

"The sky’s the limit, it could be a nightmare.”
- Jessica Vaughn, The Center for Immigration Studies

Slow asylum hearing dockets — like those that have already prompted a class action suit on behalf of 40,000 illegal immigrants — are certain to get much worse, experts say. But every interaction between the government and the illegal immigrants pouring in could potentially trigger a cause of action if lawyers can prove the letter of the law was not followed.

Jessica Vaughn, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, said there's little the White House can do now that the children — most of whom are from Central America —are already here. Under U.S. law, kids from non-contiguous countries cannot be turned back at the border and must be granted deportation hearings.

“If we start sending these kids back to their home countries, there will be lawsuits galore,” said Vaughn. “We’re already seeing suits for conditions and denial of privileges. The sky’s the limit, it could be a nightmare.”

President Obama has asked Congress for $3.7 billion to deal with the border crisis, money that would include tending to the care and legal needs of the illegal aliens. But the courts are already clogged with suits like one from a woman who claims the Border Patrol kept her in a car for eight hours without feeding her and another filed in March by Americans for Immigrant Justice claiming illegal immigrants in the Texas Rio Grande Valley facility were held in brightly lit, cold, cot-less cells.

And earlier this month the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that a Mexican teenager killed on Mexican soil by a Border Patrol agent who claims he was being pelted with rocks had rights under the U.S. constitution. His family is suing for $325 million.

Vaughn said the administration makes it easy to sue the federal government, both with policies that critics say have invited the influx, and half-hearted efforts in court.

“This administration is empowering these groups by not lifting a finger to defend itself,” Vaughn said. “ICE often times doesn’t bother to send a prosecutor to appear in court. This creates a climate which makes people think they can get away with anything.”

Illegal immigrant advocacy groups hailed the ACLU suit filed Wednesday in San Antonio on behalf of eight illegal immigrants ranging in age from 10-17. Immigration courts do not have to provide legal representation for adult illegal immigrants who are fighting deportation, but the ACLU suit said that the children it is representing must get legal help. And they have not been able to find lawyers, partly because the nation’s immigration courts are backlogged by 367,000 pending cases of children and adults, according to the suit.

A ruling that the government must provide representation could prove expensive to taxpayers, but no one expects illegal immigrant children to represent themselves. And the Obama administration has already signaled it is open to the idea of providing legal help where needed.

“We welcome this suit with open arms,” says Cheryl Little executive director of Americans for Immigrant Justice. “The money the president has requested is not enough. We’ve been overwhelmed and at crisis level for two years. Free legal assistance for children regardless of their status can mean life or death.”

Under the president’s proposed money request the Department of Justice would be given $15 million to hire attorneys to defend unaccompanied minors against deportation in removal proceedings before an immigration judge. An additional $1.1 million would be allocated for "immigration litigation attorneys" who, presumably, would assist adult illegal immigrants in their proceedings.

“The president is asking U.S. taxpayer to spend millions to help illegal immigrants who knowingly broke our laws to avoid deportation,” says Vaughn. “The federal government is undercutting its entire mission. No one is defending our law.”

Vaughn says the law requires legal counsel and hearings for unaccompanied minors but questioned why children released into parental custody are being treated as unaccompanied under the law. According to Vaughn almost half of the children in the current border crossing surge have been released to relatives living in the U.S.

However, Little said she’s concerned there is a move underway to send children back to their home countries too soon by using video conferencing to expediting hearings which according to Little would “violate these children’s right to their full and fair process.”

The ACLU is looking for other causes of action amid the border crisis, too.

“There was only one open bathroom and no activities for children who were stuffed into small cells,” said ACLU of Texas senior staff attorney Adriana Pinon. “We’re monitoring the situation. There’s always the possibility of a lawsuit. ”

Meanwhile, conditions for agents working in border facilities remains challenging.

“Agents in the El Paso and Laredo sectors are getting sick,” said Shawn Moran vice president of the National Border Patrol Council. “We’re working in close proximity doing medical screening on people and seeing cases of H1N1 swine flu, chicken pox, measles, lice and tuberculosis. People who are supposed to be cleared are being released into the community. Given the dormant period of some of these diseases there is a concern. ”

Moran doubts there’s much legal recourse for agents who get injured or sick as a result of the border crisis. And taxpayers won’t have much recourse, either, Vaughn predicted.

“The average taxpayer does not have the means,” Vaughn siad. “There’s more financial aid available to illegal immigrants than there is for the average
 

Whitewing

Well-known member
Mike, I read artilces like the one above and I keep thinking, why are these issues even being discussed? Aren't these people here ILLEGALLY?

Aren't there already tons of laws on the books to deal with them? Here illegally? You're going to get deported. Simple as that.

But then, reality smacks me in the face and I remember that they're not illegal aliens, they're merely undocumented democrats.

Suddenly it all makes sense.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Whitewing said:
Mike, I read artilces like the one above and I keep thinking, why are these issues even being discussed? Aren't these people here ILLEGALLY?

Aren't there already tons of laws on the books to deal with them? Here illegally? You're going to get deported. Simple as that.

But then, reality smacks me in the face and I remember that they're not illegal aliens, they're merely undocumented democrats.

Suddenly it all makes sense.


"If you're a Mexican, you get sent back. ... But if you're from a noncontiguous country like the Central American countries" then you can stay in the United States.

Henry Cuellar on Sunday, July 6th, 2014 in an interview on CNN's "State of the Union"



Texas congressman says immigrant minors from countries that don't border the U.S. can stay

True


Why are so many children pouring across the southwest U.S. border? The answer is partly U.S. law, said a Texas congressman on CNN’s State of the Union on July 6, 2014.

Candy Crowley, CNN’s host, asked Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, "Why are they coming in such numbers? What do you think prompts these numbers right now?"

Cuellar answered, "If you're a Mexican, you get sent back. Mother, kids, adults, you're sent back, but if you're from a noncontiguous country like the Central American countries, then the law says that you are going to be held, (and) Health and Human Services, they're going to place you. That’s the law that we need to change right now."

We looked into the claim and found that Cuellar wasn’t crossing any lines.

With an influx of about 52,000 child immigrants at the border since October, the conversation has shifted to explanations. Which brings us to the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008. Some have cited it as the catalyst for the increase in illegal immigration.

President George W. Bush signed the law on Dec. 23, 2008; it received bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate as a measure to combat human trafficking worldwide.


The law was never intended to encourage mass immigration from noncontiguous countries. But the law’s Section 235 did change the policies and procedures for handling unaccompanied alien children.

Section 235, entitled "Enhancing Efforts to Combat the Trafficking of Children," requires humane treatment of minors crossing the border from foreign nations. It also mandates "safe and secure placements," calling for careful consideration when placing unaccompanied minors in residences within the United States.

The law lays out one procedure for child immigrants from contiguous countries, like Mexico and Canada, and another for children from noncontiguous countries, like El Salvador or Honduras.

Child immigrants from contiguous countries are processed for immediate return to their home country. In all other cases, the children are placed under the responsibility of the Secretary of Health and Human Services. These children are placed with family or in other residences while they await their immigration court date. Long story short, they get to stay in the United States.

The law seems to assume that alien children from noncontiguous countries were likely to be the victims of human trafficking, and it guarantees these minors access to legal counsel and child advocates.

Experts said Cuellar was right, and the law was never intended to allow immigrant children from Central America to remain in the United States.

"Representative Cuellar's characterization is mostly right," said Dan Cadman, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies. The law "has actually fueled an industry in the smuggling of minors. Contrary to intent, it has proven to be an inducement to wholesale smuggling of minors from noncontiguous countries."

The House GOP task force, assembled by speaker John Boehner to address the immigration crisis, issued a statement this week calling for changes to the law. "We agree with the president that (these children) must be returned to their home countries in the most humane way possible and that will require a revision of the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act."

On July 9, 2014, Cuellar said that he is introducing legislation to make the repatriation of minors from noncontiguous countries easier and faster by revising the law.

Our ruling

Cuellar said that unaccompanied alien children from contiguous countries are "sent back" no matter what, but the law calls for the placement of minors from "a noncontiguous country like the Central American countries" in a residential setting.

Cuellar correctly characterizes the law. The law was passed as a measure to combat human trafficking worldwide. As a result, certain parts of the legislation allow unaccompanied minors from noncontiguous countries to stay in the United States. Lawmakers are now contemplating changing the law.

We rate this statement True.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/jul/10/henry-cuellar/rep-texas-says-immigrant-minors-countries-dont-bor/

Nope- not as simple as that.... And you must be wrong... GW thought those folks all loved him and would vote Repub... That is the reason he signed the law that is keeping Immigration authorities from just hauling them back...

And now the totally dysfunctional Congress can't get together to fix that screwed up bipartisan passed law, because they are too afraid anything they do might cost them a vote...
 

Mike

Well-known member
The "Buyers Remorse" keeps piling higher & higher. :wink:

Buckwheat don't know that the "Scandal Fatigue" ain't working. :lol:
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
As children continue to pour across the country’s southern border, it’s the nation’s 228 immigration judges who are tasked with deciding who stays in the U.S. and who gets sent back home.

We get a view from within the system from Dana Leigh Marks, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. She’s been a judge for 27 years and is based in San Francisco.

Well, thank you, Judge Marks, for joining us.

Everyone seems to agree about the huge backlog, but how serious a problem is it for the system and for an individual judge?

DANA LEIGH MARKS, National Association of Immigration Judges: It’s an extremely serious problem.

The immigration courts have 375,000 cases pending before them right now, and only 228 immigration judges across the country to deal with those cases. The National Association of Immigration Judges has been trying to call attention to the extremely overburdened conditions and — that our dockets are experiencing and how long cases remain pending, which can be four or five, sometimes six years in various parts of the country if someone is not detained.

But we have had trouble getting attention focused on us.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, a lot of attention now. What kind of immigration changes have immigration judges seen in terms of who is appearing before you? Are you seeing many younger people now?

DANA LEIGH MARKS: Yes.

Over the past three to four years, there has been a steady increase of unaccompanied juveniles that are appearing before the court, because what happens is when people are encountered at the border, their cases may not necessarily stay there. If they have family members that they are reunited with, then they are allowed to change the venue of their cases, and those cases end up being transferred to the 59 immigration courts around the country.

JEFFREY BROWN: I know immigration law can be complicated, like other aspects of the law, but is there an easy way to describe the criteria that you use or the amount of leeway that an individual judge has in deciding cases like this?

DANA LEIGH MARKS: Actually, the immigration law is so complex that it’s very often compared to tax law, and yet the amount of leeway a judge has is very, very limited.

Immigration law has a series of categories that are very, very rigid. If someone fits within one of those categories, they may be eligible for some kind of release from an order of deportation and removal.

But if they don’t fit in that category, then the judge can be required to send them back home.

JEFFREY BROWN: So, given this enormous caseload, how much time — give us a sense of how much time a judge can spend with any particular person before you, and what happens in a courtroom?

DANA LEIGH MARKS: Well, the courtrooms are very much like criminal courtrooms that you see across the country, except that people are not represented. There’s no guarantee of representation by an attorney. And so approximately 40 percent of the people nationwide do not have attorneys.

And if you look at the detained population, approximately 85 percent of those individuals do not have attorneys to represent them. So, the judge has to spend additional time explaining to the individual the procedures, what is going on, what possible remedies they might have under the immigration law.

And it’s extremely difficult for an immigration judge when there is not an attorney representing the person who’s appearing in court. The government is represented by attorneys in virtually all cases.

JEFFREY BROWN: But, presumably, that means the level of evidence that you actually hear must differ all the time.

DANA LEIGH MARKS: It varies dramatically depending on whether or not the person is represented and how well represented they are as well, since it’s also well-known that immigrants can be victimized by unscrupulous lawyers.

And so we have difficulty with substandard immigration law practice in our courts as well.

JEFFREY BROWN: So, now the president has proposed adding 40 new judges in what he put forward this week. How easy is it to ramp up the numbers in terms of the training that a judge needs, and what kind of difference do you think that would make?

DANA LEIGH MARKS: It will be — any addition to the corps will be extremely helpful. We can’t deny that.

But it is not an easy job to ramp up quickly. Immigration judges need many years of experience in immigration law or in being judges. Many judges agree that it takes probably four to five years to really hit your peak in being a judge in this kind of specialty setting. And we are very concerned that this is just a drop in the bucket.

The Senate bill that was introduced last spring, Senate Bill 744, recommended that there be 75 new immigration judges in each of the next three years, 2014, 2015 and 2016. So, you can imagine that 40 coming now towards the end of 2014 is not nearly enough to solve the problem that has been existing in the immigration courts even before the surge occurred.

JEFFREY BROWN: So your group is pushing for more judges, more what? What would you like to see, in our last minute here?

DANA LEIGH MARKS: We would like to see more immigration judges, more judicial law clerks — those are attorneys — to help us.

And we actually believe that the best long-term reform for the immigration courts is to move us out of the United States Department of Justice and make us an Article 1 court, similar to the tax courts or the bankruptcy courts, so that there’s transparency in how money is allocated and how it’s spent to the courts, and so that we don’t find ourselves in the circumstances a few years later down the line.

JEFFREY BROWN: Very briefly, when you say transparency, you mean that is not there now in terms of the funding?

DANA LEIGH MARKS: We don’t believe it is as transparent as it should be, correct.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, Judge Dana Leigh Marks, thank you very much.

DANA LEIGH MARKS: Thank you, Jeffrey.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/amid-border-crisis-immigration-judges-push-resources/


One of the articles I read the other day stated that because of the backlog of cases- the average waiting period for their day in court for one of these noncontiguous country illegals was over 18 months... And that was before this summers surge in crossings began...
 

TexasBred

Well-known member
What has encouraged the mass immigration has been the talk of AMNESTY once you cross into the United States. That was the answer given to Border Control Agents by 95% of the immigrants interviewed. Now who was it that was wanting to give amnesty to all these illegals.
 

Steve

Well-known member
The immigration courts have 375,000 cases pending before them right now, and only 228 immigration judges across the country to deal with those cases. The National Association of Immigration Judges has been trying to call attention to the extremely overburdened conditions and — that our dockets are experiencing and how long cases remain pending, which can be four or five, sometimes six years in various parts of the country if someone is not detained.

at first glance.. .the number seems boggling..

but a closer look at the number.. sheds some light on it..

375,000 (and for the sake of the argument, add another 75,000 to it)

450,000 divided by 228 is 1974 cases a piece..

assuming the Judges get a month's vacation and at least two weeks of sick leave, and that they do not schedule much over Christmas..

we could assume the work 45 weeks out of the year.

and if we assume they work a four day week.. one could assume they would each work about 180 days a year..

and given the liberal constraint of a federal work day.. lets assume the actually sit in court 6 hours a day.. that gives them 1080 hours a year..

some of these case takes a few minutes.. some maybe days... but most take very little time at all to decide.. mainly because most do not show up..

I have seen one of these court rooms... several hundred empty chairs.. a receptionist.. a security officer.. and a law clerk who reads off a name and finds the person not there.. and orders removal.. or a future trial date if this is the first no show..

there was one student,.. one lady who was arrested several times for vagrancy, and clearly wasn't all there.. the student was told to self deport, and the lady was sent for "evaluation" and that was it.. just endless reading of names..


To assume the courts are crushed under the weight of the shear number of cases is a bit underwhelming..

if they worked full days and full weeks .. they would have around 2000 hours a year to wade through the cases.. those that show up...



even knowing many of these courts are almost a sham.. I think we should appoint at least a 1000 temporary judges and attorneys and translators to deal with the detained cases..






The average time an immigration judge has to make a decision for each case they hear is seven minutes. In that short time a judge must decide whether the person standing in front of them will be separated from family, be sent back to a country where his or her life may be in danger, or remain in prison for an indefinite sentence. At the end of 2013 alone, over 350,000 immigration cases were still pending, waiting to be heard by just 249 judges. -

According to an article that recently appeared in the Washington Post, the immigration court system in the United States is so over crowded and stressed that many immigrants have their fates decided without ever physically entering a courtroom or speaking to a judge. To ease the burden of the strained judicial workload, officials have devised ways to resolve cases quickly. Some immigrants appear in court via a video conference from jail, while others give up their right to a hearing so that they can be released from prison. -
 

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