More on the Government Illegals Running the Immigration Courts

Attorneys are filing complaints against the sadistic clowns showing up for work in black robes at the Atlanta and Dallas immigration courts.  Will the Executive Office of Immigration Review do something, or will MaryBeth Keller and her cronies in the Office of General Counsel continue with their typically fake investigations and cover-ups?  

Analysis of misconduct complaint management from FOIA releases and lawsuit shows agency malfeasance.  To be serious about housecleaning, the agency needs to fire MaryBeth Keller, EOIR's leadership in the Office of General Counsel, and bring in the GAO for audit

A solo practitioner on Wednesday lodged with the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR) a misconduct complaint against Atlanta immigration court case manager Dan Pelletier because he denied at the last moment her unopposed motion for a continuance to accommodate her maternity leave, and then yelled at her in a crowded court for showing up with her infant daughter, ultimately rescheduling the hearing per her initial request.

Attorney Stacy Ehrisman-Mickle's motion for a continuance is copiously cited and also accompanied by a detailed report from her physician.

 Ehrisman-Mickle's wrote to EOIR, in part:

 My complaint is simple: the IJ denied my motion for continuance for a master calendar hearing because he believed that being on maternity leave is not “good cause”. My initial consultation with the relevant clients (juvenile brothers) was on July 8, 2014. Due to financial constraints, the boys did not hire me right away. They went to their first master calendar hearing unrepresented on September 2, 2014. The boys and their mother came to my office on September 6 - the Saturday after their first master calendar hearing. The clients hired me that day and did not care that I had to file a motion for continuance due to my maternity leave. On Monday, September 8, I mailed a motion to continue their second master calendar hearing scheduled for October 7, 2014. The court received the motion on Tuesday, September 9. Counsel for DHS did not oppose my motion. The IJ did not rule on the motion until Thursday, October 2. I received the decision denying the continuance on Friday, October 3. I appeared with my clients this morning at their scheduled master calendar hearing. I was forced to bring my weeks old daughter with me as day care centers do not accept infants less than 6 weeks of age and I have no family in Georgia that could help me look after my baby. My husband is a truck driver and was out of state today. My family is in Iowa and my husband’s family is in New York and New Jersey. We have only lived in Georgia since November of last year. When the IJ saw me with my daughter, he was outraged. He scolded me for being inappropriate for bringing her. He questioned the fact that day care centers do not accept infants less than 6 weeks of age. He then questioned my mothering skills as he commented how my pediatrician must be appalled that I am exposing my daughter to so many germs in court. He humiliated me in open court.

Ehrisman-Mickle told me that that the EOIR supervisor of the Atlanta courts, Elisa Sukkar, called and expressed her frustration that Pelletier failed to record the exchange and indicated this meant Ehrisman-Mickle had the presumption of accuracy in any dispute about the facts, though Sukkar also indicated she might need further evidence from the attorneys then present.

Dallas Case Manager Dietrich Sims Targeted for Removal
On Thursday I received an email through a listserve from Attorney Niloufar Khonsari.  She indicated her own recent grievance filed against Dallas immigration court case manager Dietrich Sims, and called for other attorneys to share with EOIR their complaints at this time as well.

Khonsari is asking that EOIR terminate Sims and is asking attorneys to forward their complaints against Sims to ACIJ Dee Nadkarni at:  eoir.ijconduct@usdoj.gov

To make sure they don't ignore your Sims complaint, you can also send a copy to Khonsari.  Her email address is -- nilou AT pangealegal.org.

Khonsari Complaint
Khonsari was concerned because Sims first denied her motion for a change of venue because he found her client prima facie ineligible for relief even before his first master calendar hearing (he is eligible for cancellation and asylum). And then, when her client had flown from San Jose to Dallas (he'd been picked up for "driving too closely" and then brought by Dallas police into ICE custody before being released on bond) case manager Sims failed to call the pro bono attorney, per the telephonic hearing to which he had previously agreed.

Such burdens are unwelcome for most firms and a serious obstacle to due process when imposed on already overburdened nonprofits representing indigent clients. Khonsari's complaint to EOIR, including complaints from local attorneys preferring anonymity to incurring further wrath from Sims, states in part:

 -“[H]e is erratic and unpredictable.” 
 -“[He] never grants COV – especially not to CA.” 
 -“He made one of my clients travel from New York City for more than two years worth of hearings…” 
 -“[He] denies most cases.” 
 -“Sims acts as a prosecutor, rather than judge, and invented requirements, such as proving a prima facie case for asylum as a prerequisite to changing venue, that exist in no statute, regulation, or case law.” 
 -“Please file a complaint with the chief immigration judge [against Judge Sims]!” 
- One attorney recently reported that IJ Sims denied a child-client a continuance and ordered a deportation after the child had been granted special immigrant juvenile status. In that case, IJ Sims claimed he had no jurisdiction over the child's adjustment application and sua sponte, ordered the child deported.

Misconduct Investigation Data

The feeling among attorneys is that EOIR's system of  misconduct investigations is a farce. And a preliminary analysis of data released so far backs them up.

Since late 2013, EOIR has been releasing immigration judge misconduct complaints and investigations in summary form, and, since April, 2014 many of the associated underlying complaints and findings.

There are several huge problems with the release to AILA, represented in their FOIA litigation by Public Citizen.  But even the release as doctored by EOIR reveals some interesting results.

Here are some observations based on a quick analysis of the first "200" of their release (really 197-- three inexplicably are missing) from a spreadsheet, produced by Northwestern undergraduates Sam Niiro and Adelina Pak and a crosstab spreadsheet produced by Sam Niiro by complaint source and ACIJ, for the outcomes.

Summarized below are some glaring problems that stuck out as my colleague Professor Heather Schoenfeld and I began assembling data for a more systematic analyses of the release, and press for more accurate reports.

-The number of days lapsed between the conduct and the case being closed are incompatible with any process of remediation. 
Highlights include a complaint submitted by an attorney requesting the ACIJ's assistance with a request for an IJ's recusal that ACIJ Sarah Burr dismissed for "failure to state a claim" after a mere 2,793 days.   This is an outlier but the median range of several hundred days is not much more comforting. Nor are the problems with Gary Smith's "investigations," leaving aside for now his coverup of my own misconduct complaint. For instance, the Board of Immigration Appeals sent Smith a complaint noting an "IJs written order denying R[espondent]'s motion to reopen accuses counsel of attempting fraud," and the next day Smith "dismissed" the complaint "because it cannot be substantiated."  (Emphasis added.)

Nor is it encouraging to note rare punitive decisions taken after the offending IJ has been deporting thousands more, as when, responsive to allegations an IJ "maligned and exhibited hostility towards complainant's law firm, its attorneys, and clients" and intervened in "civil state court adoption proceeding involving an alien child and parent." ACIJ Larry Dean suspended an IJ on October 15, 2012, 1,026 days after the complaint was received.

Dean likewise ignored a complaint that an "IJ prematurely ended the proceedings following a terse exchange and did not adequately evaluate the removal charge," a complaint brought by the BIA on June 9, 2009 for behavior on July 18, 2007 and closed on September 8, 2010 with the IJs retirement.

-Lame or no responses predominate
"Oral counseling" leads all categories of responses (73), and an additional 64 are dismissed because they are "unsubstantiated" (28, including the one above), "merits-related" (22), failure to state a claim (8), disproven (4), or frivolous (2).

15 cases close because the IJ retires.  These are not 15 separate IJs but include multiple complaints against the same IJ--the exact number is not clear because of EOIR coding mistakes, about which EOIR refuses to comment).

-Single IJ terminated over AILA Objections  (#126)

I was contacted by an active AILA attorney in 2010 who felt EOIR was using the complaint as a pretext to go after the IJ for her rulings.  Keller, who managed the investigations, assigned Smith to do the dirty work, even though this was not among the courts he supervised.  The IJ EOIR fired had the reputation of being more progressive.  (She was dismissed after "IJ alleged to have misused position and equipment to influence court action against her husband" and related charges based on assisting her husband with his own traffic case.)

This is all of course the tip of the black ice floe that is EOIR.  Ehrisman-Mickle and Khonsari are to be commended for standing up to these bullies and on behalf of  integrity of a system that is sorely lacking in it.

(The disturbing scope and character of the misconduct complaint misrepresentations in the data released under the supervision of MaryBeth Keller will be discussed at another date, and also the actions of her colleagues in the agency's Office of General Counsel.)

Thanks to Tom Fritzon for the art!