Law360 is providing free access to its coronavirus coverage to make sure all members of the legal community have accurate information in this time of uncertainty and change. Use the form below to sign up for any of our weekly newsletters. Signing up for any of our section newsletters will opt you in to the weekly Coronavirus briefing.
Sign up for our Immigration newsletter
You must correct or enter the following before you can sign up:
Thank You!
Law360 (August 3, 2020, 10:26 PM EDT ) An Oregon federal judge has dismissed one of several claims against the Trump administration brought by legal organizations alleging the government has "weaponized" immigration courts against migrants, saying that she could not interfere with immigration judges' handling of cases in so-called "asylum-free zones."
U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut rejected most of the government's arguments for tossing the suit in her order Friday, allowing the organizations to move forward with the bulk of their claims. But she said she could not force immigration judges in areas where few petitions for asylum are granted to raise their acceptance rates.
"The crux of plaintiffs' objection to the asylum-free zones is that the immigration courts … deny asylum applications at rates that are too high to be legally tenable," Judge Immergut said. "In order to grant relief on these claims, this court would be required to issue a ruling that said that these courts need to produce different outcomes in some proportion of the asylum cases before them."
A petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in December 2016 identified regional immigration courts in Atlanta; Dallas; Houston; Las Vegas; and Charlotte, North Carolina, as venues where "nearly no claimant will be granted asylum." The advocacy groups said that 23 immigration courts — 40% of them — were in that category in 2019, according to their complaint last December.
Asylum-free zones were just one item on a laundry list of complaints alleged by the immigrant advocacy organizations, which include the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Innovation Law Lab and the Catholic Legal Immigration Network. The organizations accused the government of contorting the country's immigration system into "systemic dysfunction and anti-immigrant animus" in their complaint.
Stephen Manning, executive director of the Innovation Law Lab, disagreed with Judge Immergut's assessment of the organizations' argument in a statement to Law360 on Monday.
"The question of whether, and why, an asylum-free zone exists is plainly within the scope of the judge's jurisdiction," Manning said. "What the judge correctly concluded is that she cannot alter an individual order in an individual case."
Those decisions, as Judge Immergut noted in her order, can only be reexamined under the Executive Office for Immigration Review's petition for review process.
In April, Judge Immergut rejected the legal organizations' request for a temporary restraining order to curtail in-person immigration hearings, alleging that immigration courts were not abiding by COVID-19 safety protocols and endangering the health of individuals attending immigration hearings. The government called the request "extraordinary and irresponsible."
With Friday's decision, the legal organizations may now move forward with their allegations that the backlog of cases facing immigration courts as well as the administration of those courts violate the Immigration and Nationality Act, as well as arguments that the Metrics Policy and family unit docketing, or FAMU, directive violate the Administrative Procedures Act.
"This is a clear victory for everyone who has sought a fair hearing in immigration court, only to face a system plagued by rampant dysfunction and policies designed to subvert justice," Melissa Crow, senior supervising attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center's Immigrant Justice Project, said in a statement Friday.
The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
The plaintiffs are represented by Stephen Manning, Nadia Dahab, Jordan Cunnings and Tess Hellgren of Innovation Law Lab, Bryan D. Beel, Heidee Stoller, Nathan R. Morales, Thomas R. Johnson and Christopher G. Parker of Perkins Coie LLP and Melissa Crow, Rebecca Cassler and Gracie Willis of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The government is represented by Lauren C. Bingham, Francesca M. Genova, Brian C. Ward and Erez Reuveni of the U.S. Department of Justice.
The case is Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center et al. v. Trump et al., case number 3:19-cv-02051, in U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon.
--Editing by Abbie Sarfo.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
