Credit: Susan Walsh/Associated Press

Much of what happens in the U.S. immigration courts system remains a secret. Unlike the local and federal judicial systems, immigration filings aren’t available to the public.

But our Aura Bogado recently obtained documents that shed light ([link removed]) on a new court directive affecting immigrant families.

Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Daniel Daugherty issued a requirement via email ([link removed]) to judges in New York City stating that deportation cases involving families “MUST BE COMPLETED WITHIN 365 DAYS.” The order may violate due process and protections for families facing deportation.

Daugherty sent out his email in November, two weeks after the director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the Justice Department agency that runs its immigration courts, issued a separate memo ([link removed]) stating family cases in 10 cities would be tracked “with the expectation that they will be completed within one year or less.”

Michael Wishnie, a Yale Law School professor, told Aura that closing a case prematurely violates the due process clause, as well as several Supreme Court decisions that guarantee fairness as required by the Constitution.

“I can absolutely predict that anyone who loses their case and believes that (Daugherty’s) mandate may have affected their case now has grounds for appeal,” Wishnie said.

Some New York-area immigration lawyers are already noticing harsh time limits. Bryan Johnson, a Long Island attorney, represents a Central American woman who is claiming asylum. Johnson recently filed to continue the case so that the woman’s husband could testify after his release from immigration custody. Without his testimony, her case is weakened.

But the judge initially denied the motion because the case had to be wrapped up within one year.

“The burden is on my client,” Johnson said. “Not having her husband’s statement or testimony would prejudice her case.”

Read the story here. ([link removed])

NEW RULES COULD LEAD TO INDEFINITE DETENTION OF MIGRANT CHILDREN

The Trump administration announced new regulations this week that would dismantle long-standing court protections for migrant children and lead to their indefinite detention.

The regulations would undo three key requirements under the Flores agreement, a 1997 settlement that forced the government to comply with a set of national standards on the detention, treatment and release of immigrant children.

During a call with reporters, including our Patrick Michels, child advocates spelled out those provisions:

* Children should be released from custody as quickly as possible.
* Until they're released, children must be held in “the least restrictive setting.”
* Facilities holding children must maintain standards consistent with state licensing requirements.

Under the new rules, children who arrive with parents could be detained in unlicensed family detention centers. Children are now released to parents, legal guardians, relatives or adults designated by parents. But the government wants to restrict their release to only parents or legal guardians – even if those adults are detained. That means children could be held indefinitely, along with their detained parents or guardians.

Joann Bautista, a policy associate with the National Immigrant Justice Center, said the new rules are “essentially a regression” that will allow the government to “jail children indefinitely." Already, she said, children in family detention centers struggle with sleepless nights, lack of appetite and suicidal behavior.

Holly Cooper, co-director of the UC Davis Immigration Law Clinic, said the new rules could mean the end of education programs. Cooper is part of the legal team that defends the Flores settlement on behalf of detained children, and will try to block the rules from taking effect.

"We’re going to have a world that looks a lot like internment of families and children," she said, "where we have regularized prison as a default for families seeking political asylum in this country."

The new rules are slated to take effect in 60 days, though they will likely be challenged in court.

Read the regulations here. ([link removed])

ANOTHER FLORES UPDATE

We’ve also learned more about conditions at border facilities and other shelters thanks to new court records ([link removed]) filed in the Flores case.

In October, a federal judge appointed an independent monitor, Andrea Sheridan Ordin, to evaluate conditions at government facilities holding migrant children for any potential Flores violations.

Ordin, a former chief assistant attorney general in California, submitted her latest report this week, which confirm earlier news reports of overcrowded facilities. The capacity at the Ursula facility, for instance, is 1,500. “For juveniles alone, there were nineteen days in which the juvenile population exceeded that total capacity, peaking at 1,787.”

The report also includes a breakdown of how many days children spent in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. At least 98 children released from U.S. custody between January 2018 and May 2019 spent nearly two years in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, Ordin found.

Check out Aura’s Twitter thread about the records here. ([link removed])

Read the filing here. ([link removed])

WHAT WE’RE READING

Dozens of migrant children were sexually abused while in foster care, according to claims filed by their families. (The Associated Press ([link removed]) )

A review of 38 legal claims obtained by The Associated Press — some of which have never been made public — shows taxpayers could be on the hook for more than $200 million in damages from parents who said their children were harmed while in government custody.

The father and son are among dozens of families — separated at the border as part of the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy — who are now preparing to sue the federal government, including several who say their young children were sexually, physically or emotionally abused in federally funded foster care.

With more than 3,000 migrant children taken from their parents at the border in recent years, many lawsuits are expected, potentially totaling in the billions. Families who spoke to the AP and FRONTLINE did so on the condition of anonymity over fears about their families’ safety.

“How is it possible that my son was suffering these things?” the father said. “My son is little and couldn’t defend himself.”

The president of Southwest Key was considered a champion of social justice – until his shelters started taking in children separated from their parents. (The Atlantic ([link removed]) )

Lean and still boyish at 71, a former Golden Gloves champ raised in a border barrio who came of age in the Chicano-rights movement, Sanchez was in the middle of his fiercest fight yet. His Walmart facility had become a symbol of Trump’s industrial-scale separation policy, and he’d weathered months of criticism: that he was complicit in the destruction of migrant families, that his $1.5 million salary was unseemly for the operator of a charity, and that he’d failed to prevent sexual abuse in his shelters as Southwest Key grew into a massive operation. Within months of our interview last fall, he would leave the company he built from scratch.

All along, however, Sanchez maintained that he didn’t change—the political climate did. For decades, civil-rights leaders had lauded him as a champion of social justice who was providing migrant children excellent care. By the time we sat down in November, former allies—including his own employees—had abandoned him, arguing that the moral meaning of his shelter empire had changed as the Trump administration weaponized the country’s immigration bureaucracy. As if to rehabilitate his image, Sanchez had invited me to tour one of the shelters and to introduce me to his childhood confidants in South Texas. But the week after my first visit, Sanchez abruptly canceled my next trip when The New York Times exposed a pattern of financial mismanagement at Southwest Key. He did not respond to further requests for comment.

Families in a Mississippi town grapple with the aftermath of the immigration raids that targeted hundreds of undocumented workers. (Slate ([link removed]) )

Welcome to this city of babysitters, where the sudden disappearance of hundreds of working adults has pulled hundreds more into new and unfamiliar roles. A teacher spent the hours after school watching two girls, ages 4 and 7, who hadn’t seen their mother in a week. A woman arrived at the grocery store with 11 kids in tow, their mothers detained hundreds of miles away. A frantic father left his engine running in the school parking lot, afraid that in picking up his children he was driving into a trap. Latino parents kept more than 150 students home from school in central Mississippi’s Scott County, where Forest is the county seat, in the days after the raids.

Fresh crises are unfolding now. Husbands are trying to find (and pay) lawyers for their incarcerated wives, and vice versa. The economic consequences of mass job loss will soon come face to face with September rent payments. The fallout from the country’s largest workplace raids in years has blanketed the Hispanic community here in sadness, fear, and desperation. Their roots in these small towns north and east of the state capital—many arrived more than a decade ago—have permitted them to call upon extensive social support systems, from family to school to church. At the same time, as they navigate a legal process designed to encourage them to leave the country, they will face wrenching decisions about the houses they purchased with the savings from years of chicken work and what the future will hold for their U.S.-born children.

Your tips have been vital to our immigration coverage. Keep them coming: [email protected]. – Laura C. Morel
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