Fed court lays ground rules in immigrant court case

Posted: Sunday, August 31, 2014 5:52 pm
EMMA PEREZ-TREVIÑO | STAFF WRITER

Conservative activist Orly Taitz and a U.S. government attorney have their work cut out for them in appearing before a federal judge in Brownsville.

Taitz, the California attorney and dentist who in court documents filed in Brownsville’s federal court accuses President Barack Obama and others of treason, racketeering and trafficking undocumented immigrants to provide cheap labor for their donors, will have to rein in the rhetoric, and specify her alleged causes of action.

“This is not a forum to resolve political issues,” U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen said in a hearing last week as he laid out the ground rules for the parties to the lawsuit.

The hearing was held on Taitz’s request for a temporary restraining order against Obama, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell and the U.S. Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley Sector.

“We’re not here to resolve any kind of immigration crisis, political questions, or border security issues. That’s not why we’re here,” Hanen said.

The judge also said that no one is to call his chambers for anything, and also referred to a motion that Taitz had filed, but suggested that a courtesy copy that was provided had been longer, and that this would constitute ex-parte communications, which are not permitted.

Hanen said that the question before the court is if the government has a policy that is directly injuring an individual, does that individual have standing to bring a lawsuit.

U.S. government attorney Colin A. Kisor argued that the government could not be sued for injunctive relief without a waiver of sovereign immunity, but also that the federal court — Hanen — didn’t have jurisdiction.

Hanen said he was stunned that Kisor would suggest that if a government program, theoretically, would lead to injuring people, that no one would have a remedy in a court.

Taitz filed the request for an emergency stay in federal court July 14, seeking to stop Obama, Johnson, Burwell and the U.S. Border Patrol from “dumping” immigrants in other states. She is asking that they be either immediately deported or held in quarantine for two months because, she says, they spread epidemics of scabies, tuberculosis, measles, whooping cough, swine flu, dengue fever, Ebola virus and lice.

She also alleges that some immigrants who have entered the country illegally pose a threat to national security and safety.

In her court filings, Taitz referred to an order Hanen entered in December 2013 in an unrelated case, United States of America vs.

Mirtha Veronica Nava-Martinez, who was convicted of attempting to smuggle a 10-year-old girl from El Salvador.

Court records show that the girl’s mother Salmeron Santos, an immigrant illegally in the country, admitted that she had hired smugglers to transfer her child from El Salvador to Virginia and paid a $6,000 advance for the service. DHS delivered the child to her mother.

“This court is quite concerned with the apparent policy of the Department of Homeland Security ... of completing the criminal mission of individuals who are violating the border security of the United States ... The DHS, instead of enforcing our border security laws, actually assisted the criminal conspiracy in achieving its illegal goals,” Hanen wrote in his order.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Hanen directly and in posing questions to government witnesses voiced similar concerns. The witnesses called were U.S. Border Patrol Chief Kevin Oaks of the Rio Grande Valley Sector in Edinburg, Deputy Field Office Director Alfredo Fierro with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, and Teresa M. Brooks, supervisory field program specialist-South Texas, Division of Children’s Services, Office of Refugee Resettlement within the HSS department.

Hanen said that releasing a child to a sponsor who the government knows also is in the country illegally, and with a criminal record in some cases, and with the expectation that they would appear at an immigration court hearing defied common sense.

At the end of the approximately four-hour hearing, Hanen denied Taitz’s request for a temporary restraining order, but gave her until Sept. 12 to file an amended complaint. The government’s response would be due Oct. 3. Hanen set an injunction hearing for Oct. 29.

For the upcoming hearing, Taitz wants to call several Border Patrol agents based in California to testify, and Hanen said that since Taitz also is from California, he had thought that perhaps the case should be transferred to California, but he noted that the allegations had occurred here.

http://www.themonitor.com/news/local...7a43b2370.html