Aaron Reichlin-Melnick Profile picture
Sep 24, 2020 9 tweets 4 min read Read on X
🚨 New! A.G. Barr takes ANOTHER whack at the asylum process, issuing a new precedential decision in Matter of A-C-A-A-, 28 I&N Dec. 84 (A.G. 2020) and giving both immigration judges and the BIA more leeway to deny asylum claims.

justice.gov/eoir/page/file… Image
Before I go through this latest attack on the asylum process, please enjoy a picture of Petra, who is a Very Good Cat. I hope this softens the blow a tiny bit. Image
A.G. Barr begins his decision (issued under authority to set precedent in immigration court) by basically saying that the Board of Immigration Appeals hasn't been digging deeply enough in every single case to find ways to deny people asylum. It's hard to read it otherwise. Image
In the underlying decision, the respondent was found to be credible and to have suffered past persecution on the basis of membership in a particular social group. Because of changed circumstances, the judge found no well-founded fear, but granted humanitarian asylum. Image
Notably, DHS did NOT appeal the grant of humanitarian asylum. Instead, they only appealed the IJ's finding that the respondent was credible and that the IJ shouldn't have found past persecution.

The BIA affirmed the IJ's decision in a very brief order. Image
Despite the fact that DHS did NOT appeal the grant of humanitarian asylum, A.G. Barr believes that the BIA should have evaluated whether or not the IJ should have granted humanitarian asylum anyway. Image
A.G. Barr lays out here the role he sees the BIA as playing in asylum cases under what he articulate as "de novo review."

Basically, question everything, dig through the record, and find ways to deny applicants. ImageImageImageImage
In the decision, Barr basically tells the BIA to utterly ignore all normal rules of appellate procedure. Who cares if the government didn't raise an issue—or even stipulated to an issue! The BIA should ignore all of that and go digging through the record.
This decision makes even more clear that the immigration courts are fully broken. They have been politicized to death and are now fundamentally incompatible with due process.

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More from @ReichlinMelnick

Sep 8
🚨The Supreme Court today gives Trump a license to engage in racial profiling, with Justice Kavanaugh writing in concurrence to expressly endorse ICE and Border Patrol targeting any Latinos they observe in Los Angeles speaking Spanish and then demanding their papers. Image
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Justice Sotomayor is utterly scathing: "We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent." Image
Sotomayor: "The [Gov't], and now the concurrence, has all but declared that all Latinos, US citizens or not, who work low wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction." Image
Read 7 tweets
Sep 5
🚨NEW: Reversing *generations* of practice, the Board of Immigration Appeals gives ICE exactly what it demanded, ruling that any undocumented immigrant who entered illegally is categorically ineligible to ask a judge for bond — expanding mandatory detention by millions of people. Image
The new decision comes after the Trump admin announced in July that it would take the legal position that a 1996 law barred release on bond anyone who crossed illegally — despite no admin having EVER made that claim before. Now the BIA greenlights that completely novel argument.
The Board of Immigration Appeals has upheld grants of bond to people in this situation THOUSANDS of times in the past. NO ONE previously put forward the argument that they greenlit today — one that they claim is just a straightforward application of the law, not even ambiguous.
Read 10 tweets
Sep 3
🚨 The Trump admin is moving to de-legalize more than a quarter of a million Venezuelans who have been here for at LEAST four years.

The vast majority entered before Biden took office (often on tourist visas) and were previously granted deportation protections by Trump himself.
Trump is now moving to strip protections and deport the same people that he himself granted deportation protections to in his last week in office in 2021.

Trump’s order said protecting noncriminal Venezuelans from being sent back to Maduro was a matter of U.S. national interest. Image
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Trump's DED order for Venezuela applied to anyone here before January 20, 2021. Only weeks later, Secretary Mayorkas granted Temporary Protected Status to Venezuelans here before March 9, 2021. So effectively speaking, this is the same group of people that Trump protected.
Read 10 tweets
Sep 3
🚨NEW: Declarations filed in the lawsuit against the rushed attempt to deport 600 Guatemalan children reveals the chaotic way the Trump admin carried out the operation.

Children were taken out of bed after midnight to be rushed onto planes. One girl "was so scared she vomited." Image
Other declarations directly refute the Trump admin's claims that the children's parents requested their return to Guatemala.

One dad in Guatemala says he got "a strange call" two weeks ago saying that his daughter was about to be deported — despite never having asked for that. Image
One 17-year-old describes what happened to him on Sunday night. He says he was woken up at 2:00 in the morning and told to get his things. He was scared, so he prayed to God and hoped he'd be protected.

Throughout the fateful morning, no one told him what was happening. Image
Read 8 tweets
Sep 2
NEW: The Trump admin plans to double the number of immigration judges, ordering hundreds of military lawyers to serve as immigration judges, despite flimsy legal authority to do so.

Notably, immigration law is infamously complex, and judges normally require months of training.
Many former JAGs serve as immigration judges today, having gone through a competitive hiring process. JAGs are often good lawyers, so I am not of the belief that they will all become rubber stampers. But the command pressure to deny will undoubtedly be *enormous.*
Indeed; the Trump admin has actually fired dozens of judges already and moved to purge many of the Biden appointees.

While I don’t believe military judges will be ordered to deny, they will undoubtedly be pressured to do so. And their inexperience will cause serious issues.
Read 8 tweets
Aug 19
NEW: McCarthyism returns to immigration law, as @USCIS announces that it will begin screening applicants for immigration benefits for "Anti-America ideologies or activities." The term has no prior precedent in immigration law and its definition is entirely up to the Trump admin. Image
The full policy memo is here. The Trump administration says that it will use its discretion to deny immigration benefits to anyone it deems to have supported a group with "anti-American ideologies" or engaged in "ant-American activities." uscis.gov/sites/default/…
The new policy on "anti-Americanism" and discretionary benefits comes just days after the Trump admin tightened standards for naturalization, ordering a more searching analysis of whether applicants for citizenship have met the required "good moral character" standard. Image
Read 4 tweets

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