Thread: Deportation review begins in Bay Area immigration court

Deportation review begins in Bay Area immigration court

By Matt O'Brien
Bay Area News Groupcontracostatimes.com
Posted: 06/04/2012 11:49:03 AM PDT
June 4, 2012 6:49 PM GMTUpdated: 06/04/2012 11:49:03 AM PDT

The San Francisco immigration court partially closed Monday morning as a team of federal lawyers scoured through thousands of backlogged Bay Area deportation cases to close those they deem a low priority.

The two-week review in one of the nation's busiest immigration courts will relieve some Bay Area residents who are in the country illegally but have strong community ties and a clean record.

But having their cases administratively closed -- in other words, set aside indefinitely -- also will leave the illegal immigrants in limbo, allowing them to stay but not to seek permanent legal residency.

"It's something that is kind of like a Damocles' sword hanging over their heads," said private immigration lawyer Matthew Muller, whose San Francisco firm is seeking what federal authorities call "prosecutorial discretion" for a few dozen people this week.

"It's just a decision by the agency that you're not a priority right now," Muller said. "In theory, they could certainly become a priority later."

A new U.S. president, for instance, could reverse the leniency. Republican lawmakers have described the case closures as a "backdoor amnesty" encouraging more illegal immigration.

The Obama administration announced last year that its immigration enforcers would begin using more discretion in choosing whom to deport, focusing resources on expelling criminals and sparing some ordinary undocumented residents whose chief wrongdoing was coming here.

After the Obama administration deported a record 396,906 people last year -- and a million since taking office -- the move toward discretion is slowing deportations but affects a minority of cases, according to statistics.

As of mid-April, ICE said it had reviewed 219,554 pending deportations and closed 2,722 of them -- roughly one percent.

It identified several thousand more -- about 7.5 percent of the total -- as amenable to prosecutorial discretion.

The closed cases mostly involved longtime residents of the United States with an American citizen family member and "compelling ties" to the country, according to ICE. The second largest group -- several hundred nationwide -- were children, high school or college students or college graduates brought to the country as youngsters.

Except for a few extraordinary exceptions, federal attorneys screening the Bay Area cases this month are unlikely to grant relief to anyone without a near-perfect record, Muller said.

"The cynical view is they're the people who would probably get relief anyhow," he said. "We're not expecting fireworks."

The Obama administration accelerated the deportation screenings by closing the Denver and Baltimore immigration courts for several weeks at the end of last year. The rolling reviews then moved to Detroit, New Orleans, Orlando, Seattle and New York City.

Then came San Francisco, where ICE attorneys will be weeding out low-priority cases through June 15. The unprecedented screenings will shut down the courtrooms of 12 of the court's 16 immigration judges.

The San Francisco court had more than 18,000 pending cases to review as of last month.

Early research by a public records group at Syracuse University shows that prosecutorial discretion -- first announced last June -- has not much reduced the national backlog of more than 300,000 deportation cases.

"The hope was this was going to speed the cases and bring down the backlog," said Susan Long, co-director of Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. "We haven't seen that, but maybe we're expecting too much in the short term."

Deportation review begins in Bay Area immigration court - San Jose Mercury News

"Early research by a public records group at Syracuse University shows that prosecutorial discretion -- first announced last June -- has not much reduced the national backlog of more than 300,000 deportation cases."

Then deport them all while you have them. They have broken the law just by being here.

scroll down:

Deportation Cases Forums for Justice - View Single Post - Illegal Immigration - Deportation Cases http://bit.ly/Hod1JP

ICE Charges Criminal Activity in Fewer Deportation Proceedings http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/281/