Thread: Immigrant Pleas Crushing Federal Appellate Courts

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me ... ay02.story

THE NATION

Immigrant Pleas Crushing Federal Appellate Courts
# As caseloads skyrocket, judges blame the work done by the Board of Immigration Appeals.

By Solomon Moore and Ann M. Simmons, Times Staff Writers

Immigrants fighting to stay in the United States are flooding the federal appellate courts with cases, creating huge backlogs and fundamentally changing the character of the second-highest courts in the nation.

The deluge reflects growing dissatisfaction with the nation's immigration courts, and attorneys representing asylum-seekers and others say they have little choice but to appeal to the federal judiciary.

The trend is nationwide, federal records show, but bearing the brunt of this sudden surge is the San Francisco-based U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. In the year ending June 30, 2001, the immigration caseload was 965. It skyrocketed to 4,835 cases in the year ending in June 2004.

"Three years ago, immigration cases were 8% of our calendar," said 9th Circuit Judge Michael Daly Hawkins. "Today, as we speak, that percentage is 48%."

The 9th Circuit is the nation's largest federal appellate court and has long had a liberal reputation, but its immigration caseload is largely driven by the region it serves: California, eight other states and two territories. The court's 24 judges consider myriad cases that must now compete with the ever-growing immigration backlog.

"There are only so many judges available to hear and decide cases," said 9th Circuit clerk Cathy Catterson, adding that appellate cases used to take about six months to complete; now they can take about nine months.

"We feel overloaded by this problem," said Dorothy Nelson, another 9th Circuit judge. "It's just extraordinary. I've been on the court for 25 years, but I've never seen a rush … overwhelming us like this. Frankly, the immigration system needs to be reformed."

The cases inundating the circuit courts are coming from the Board of Immigration Appeals, a quasi-judicial body appointed by the U.S. attorney general.

The mounting workload has prompted federal judges to criticize the BIA's work in uncharacteristically blunt terms.

"The BIA's decision was nonsensical," a 9th Circuit panel wrote in March of an asylum case. "Not only was the BIA's opinion an example of sloppy adjudication, it contravened considerable precedent."

Many people caught entering the country illegally never appear in the nation's 53 immigration courts, which primarily deal with those hoping to obtain asylum or avoid deportation.

In those courts asylum-seekers testify about persecution they suffered in their home countries, hoping a judge will allow them to stay here. Other immigrants fight to remain in the United States after a criminal conviction makes them eligible for possible deportation.

Still others petition immigration courts to change their residency status from temporary to permanent. Petitioners who disagree with an immigration judge's ruling may appeal to the Virginia-based BIA.

The sharp rise in BIA decisions being appealed to the circuit courts has been triggered by several factors:

• Overall immigration is up, increasing the pool of potential petitioners. According to an analysis of census figures by the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, the immigrant population, both legal and illegal, reached more than 34 million in March 2004 â€â€

Sorry I just saw it was posted earlier. Sorry for the duplicate thread.