Thread: Deception and Disorder in Immigration Court

[FYI -- Mark Krikorian]

Contact: Steven Camarota, (202) 466-8185, sac@cis.org

Deception and Disorder in Immigration Court

Report Offers Solutions to Broken Appeals System

WASHINGTON (June 1, 2011) – The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing two weeks ago on the immigration courts, the Justice Department's appeals system for aliens challenging deportation. To contribute to this reassessment of an important component of America's immigration infrastructure, a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies examines the serious problems in our immigration courts and offer solutions to address them.

The report, “Built to Fail: Deception and Disorder in America's Immigration Courts,â€

Disorder in the court: Our immigration failure


Monday, June 6, 2011


The Obama administration's lax immigration enforcement includes failure to reform immigration courts that illegal aliens routinely ignore.

Mark Metcalf, a former Miami immigration court judge, extensively details the problems in a new Center for Immigration Studies (cis.org) report, "Built to Fail: Deception and Disorder in America's Immigration Courts."

He says deportation orders are rarely enforced -- in part because immigration judges lack authority to enforce their own orders -- even when those targeted ignore them or skip court. Among 1.9 million aliens freed to await trial from 1996 through 2009, 40 percent vanished.

Department of Justice statistics mask the grim truth, too. Justice contends 39 percent of aliens missed immigration court dates in 2005 and 2006; Mr. Metcalf says the real figure is 59 percent.

He suggests replacing the existing system with "Article I" courts -- akin to the U.S. Tax Court -- with both civil and criminal jurisdiction and judges empowered to enforce their orders. He also advocates a Government Accountability Office audit and reform of Justice's annual reports to Congress.

Sadly, his ideas likely won't interest a White House that's not interested in keeping illegals out, much less deporting them.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsbu ... 40390.html

DOJ Lies About Immigration Courts To Hide Corruption

Last Updated: Tue, 06/07/2011 - 12:11pm

The Department of Justice distorts figures to hide from Congress pervasive corruption in the nation’s immigration court system, which allows deportable aliens to evade hearings without consequences and more than 1 million removal orders to be ignored.

Adding insult to injury, U.S. taxpayers finance the drove of appeals filed by illegal immigrants deported for criminal convictions and fraudulent marriages. From 2000 to 2007, Americans doled out $30 million for aliens’ court costs, according to a new report authored by a former immigration court judge (Mark H. Metcalf) in south Florida, considered a hotbed in the system.

The veteran jurist says the nation’s immigration courts, which are operated by the DOJ, are ruled by deception and disorder and are at the heart of a system that nurtures scandal. About 250 overwhelmed judges preside over hundreds of thousands of cases annually and rarely are their deportation orders enforced.

Even after the 2001 terrorist attacks, 50% of all aliens who were free pending trial disappeared, according to figures provided in the judge’s report. Between 2005 and 2006 the number of aliens who failed to appear at their court hearing grew to 59%.

The DOJ deceptively reported the figure as “onlyâ€