Ninth Circuit Rejects One-Sided Hearing on Transexuals Asylum Claim

Sandra Hernandez in the SF Daily Journal (Download Delegating_Leads_to_Judge) writes about the interesting Ninth Circuit decision in the case of Edgar Lacsina Pangilinan, a detained transexual noncitizen who walked into an immigration courtroom and “listened carefully as a government attorney questioned her for hours about her asylum application. Pangilinan waited to tell her side of the story, of life in the Philippines, of abuse by police, and of a gang rape. But Immigration Judge Sean H. Keenan never asked. Instead, Keenan delegated the duty of developing the record to the prosecution, and then ordered Pangilinan deported.” 

Based on due process concerns, the Ninth Circuit granted the petition for review and remanded the case.  Download 07-73603o[1]  Pangilinan v Holder, 08-71274 (9th Cir. June 1, 2009).

Hernandez notes in teh story that Immigrtaion Judge “Keenan denied 99 percent of the asylum cases that came before him over the past five years, according to a recent study by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a Syracuse-based non-profit that studies government data.”

KJ