A report issued by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics indicates that immigration crime continued to take up more time on the federal criminal docket during the 2010 fiscal year. Mark Motivans, Federal Justice Statistics, 2010 (Dec. 2013). Law enforcement actions targeting immigration crimes have driven up arrests and investigations of federal crimes, while also affecting the daily work of federal criminal courts. Immigration crime was the most common category of federal crime for which suspects were arrested and booked by the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), the federal [...]
Border Patrol’s “Consequence Delivery System” Casts Doubt on President’s Immigration Priorities
By Geoffrey Boyce On February 11, articles in the New York Times and the Washington Post focused attention on Operation Streamline, the federal program under which as many as 80 unauthorized border crossers may be charged, convicted and sentenced in a hearing lasting as little as half an hour. Those convicted under Streamline face sentences of up to 180 days for “illegal entry,” INA § 275, or 2 to 20 years for “illegal reentry,” INA § 276, depending on whether they have a previous “aggravated felony” conviction in the United States. Readers of crImmigration.com are likely familiar with [...]
US Dist Ct: Mandatory detention presumptively unreasonable after 6 months
The federal government may invoke the INA’s mandatory detention provision, INA § 236(c), to keep individuals in removal proceedings locked up without bringing them before an immigration judge for a bond hearing. After that, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts concluded, immigration officials must provide detainees with bond hearings. Reid v. Donelan, No. 13-cv-30125-MAP, slip op. (D. Mass. Jan. 9, 2014) (Ponsor, J.). This case involved an LPR detained for 14 months by the time the court issued its order in January. During this time, he lost a claim for protection under [...]
Immigration prosecutions top federal criminal docket in FY ‘12
Immigration prosecutions made up the biggest segment of criminal prosecutions lodged by U.S. Attorneys in fiscal 2012, the agency reported. U.S. Attorneys’ Office, United States Attorneys’ Annual Statistical Report: Fiscal Year 2012. This is consistent with a trend that stretches to the end of the Bush Administration. According to the agency’s report, immigration prosecutions accounted for 40.6% of all federal criminal cases filed in fiscal year 2012. 2012 Statistical Report at 10 chart 2.2. This is a slight drop from the 41.8% of the federal criminal docket that immigration crimes filled in [...]
The Mentally Ill Immigrant & Due Process
Patty Corrales On April 23, 2013, a federal district judge ordered in the case of Franco-Gonzalez v. Holder, a class action lawsuit, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Attorney General, and the Executive Office of Immigration Review to provide legal representation to immigrant detainees with mental disabilities who are facing deportation and who are unable to adequately represent themselves in immigration hearings. Franco-Gonzalez v. Holder, No. CV 10-02211 DMG, slip op. (C.D. Cal. April 23, 2013) (Gee, J.). The ruling is the first of its kind for immigrant detainees who are [...]
US Dist Ct: ICE agents’ lawsuit against prosecutorial discretion survives
In a decision about a politically contentious lawsuit, a federal district court struck a blow at the Department of Homeland Security’s use of prosecutorial discretion to manage its removal work. Crane v. Napolitano, No. 3:12-cv-03247-O, slip op. (N.D. Tex. April 23, 2013) (O’Connor, J.). The court strongly suggested that it will uphold the bulk of the claims brought against DHS by the ICE union challenging ICE’s prosecutorial discretion memoranda and the specific prosecutorial discretion initiative known as Deferred Action Against Childhood Arrivals (DACA). As I detailed before, the agents [...]
US Dist Ct: ICE agents have standing to pursue challenge to prosecutorial discretion policy
A U.S. District Court announced that several ICE agents challenging the Obama Administration’s prosecutorial discretion and deferred action policy initiatives may take their claims to trial. Crane v. Napolitano, No. 3:12-cv-03247-O, slip op. (N. Dist. Tex. Jan. 24, 2012) (O’Connor, J.). The court concluded that the agents have standing to pursue their claim that they may suffer adverse employment consequences as a result of doing what the INA, the federal statute that governs immigration law, requires of them. The ICE agents’ single surviving claim is that Secretary Napolitano’s deferred [...]
Scholars Sidebar: Can immigration attorney be appointed in fed criminal case?
A new article by a Justice Department trial attorney suggests that it may be possible for immigration counsel to be appointed in the federal prosecution of a noncitizen defendant. Scott R. Grubman, I Want My (Immigration) Lawyer! The Necessity of Court-Appointed Immigration Counsel in Criminal Prosecutions After Padilla v. Kentucky, 12 Nev. L. J. 364 (2012). Grubman clearly explains that the views expressed in the article are his alone and not those of the Justice Department. According to Grubman, the federal Criminal Justice Act may provide a route for a criminal defense attorney to [...]