Ninth Circuit Criticizes BIA and IJ

Dan Kowalski’s incisive read of the read of the following story on IJ performance: “The Daily Journal submitted a freedom of information request seeking a summary of disciplinary actions for the nation’s immigration judges. But the department declined to release any data on discipline. By contrast, disciplinary actions taken against immigration lawyers are prominently displayed on the Web site maintained by the Executive Office of Immigration Review.”

http://www.dailyjournal.com  January 31, 2006

JURIST’S ASYLUM-SEEKER RULINGS EARN REBUKES 9th Circuit Rebukes Hard-Liner Judge on Unfairness to Asylum Seekers  By John Roemer, Daily Journal Staff Writer

SAN FRANCISCO – Desperately trying to prove his U.S. citizenship, Salvador Rivera brought his mother and his Oregon birth certificate into court to show Immigration Judge Anna S. Ho.

It didn’t do any good. Ho deported him to Mexico, where Rivera remains stuck four years later even as he and his lawyer insist he is a native of the United States.

A federal appeals court, saying that Ho acted more like a prosecutor than a judge, overruled her and gave Rivera another chance to show he is a citizen.

It was hardly an isolated incident. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed Ho in favor of immigrants at least 11 times in her decade on the bench, and not just for technical legal mistakes.

In one of the circuit’s bluntly worded critiques, a three-judge panel last year scolded Ho for “improper hostility” toward some of the foreign citizens who appear in her courtroom. She also has been chided for wrongly excluding witnesses, prejudging cases and disregarding important evidence.

Statistics on the nation’s immigration courts show that Ho, who currently works in Los Angeles after stints in Seattle and San Francisco, grants political asylum to foreigners at less than half the rate of her colleagues.

Ho could not be contacted for comment for this story because Justice Department policy forbids immigration judges from talking to the media.

There is no publicly available data on how often higher courts find fault with the rulings by administrative judges who sit on the nation’s immigration courts. Nor is there any way of knowing what remedial steps are taken when those judges go astray because oversight by the Justice Department is shrouded in secrecy.

KJ