compiled by the El Reportero staff
In a decision that set the tone to end the rights of undocumented immigrants to have their day in court, Attorney General Michael Mukasey unraveled decades of legal precedent guaranteeing due process to people facing deportation.
According to an American Immigration Law Foundation (AILF) communiqué,on Jan. 7 the Attorney General declared that henceforth,immigrants, asylum seekers,and all others in removal(deportation) proceedings do not have any right under statute or the Constitution to representation by a lawyer before they can be ordered deported. The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) and most federal courts have for decades operated under the premise that immigrants DO have such rights. The Attorney General has reversed many years of precedent and operation by simply declaring it so.
The Attorney General said that because there is no legal or constitutional right to a lawyer, immigrants do not have the right to legal counsel and thus no right to complain or request a new hearing when their lawyer is incompetent or fraudulent. It adds, it attempts to ameliorate the harsh impact of his revolutionary action by allowing reopening of cases in certain highly extreme circumstances, but his declaration will wipe out the rights of all but a handful of people with one stroke of his pen.
“We are outraged by this action” said Nadine Wettstein, the Director of AILF’s Legal Action Center. “With this ruling, the Administration is attempting to undermine an immigrant’s right to a fair hearing on whether he should be thrown out of the country. It is yet another in a long line of midnight changes and an example of this Administration’s disregard for fundamental principles of due process of law. It is also part of an ongoing attempt to eviscerate the federal courts’ role in protecting against Constitutional abuses by the immigration agency. We strongly disagree with the Attorney General’s pronouncements and are confi dent that federal courts eventually will reject this action.”
The Attorney General’s decision is Matter of Compean, 24 I & N Dec. 710 (A.G. 2009) is available at
http://www.usdoj.gov/eoir/vll/intdec/vol24/3632.pdf
The AILF brief is available at http://www.ailf.org/lac/chdocs/IACBrief.pdf.
CaliforniaAttorney General sues to overturn Bush’s rules on Endangered Species Act.
SAN FRANCISCO–California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr.announced that he has fi led suit in federal court to block an “audacious attempt” by the Bush Administration to gut provisions in the Endangered Species Act mandating scientifi c review of federal agency decisions that may threaten endangered species and their habitat.
“The Bush Administration is seeking to gut the Endangered Species Act on its way out the door,” Attorney General Brown said. “This is an audacious attempt to circumvent a time-tested statute that for 35 years has required scientifi c review of proposed federal agency decisions that affect wildlife.”
The new regulations,initially proposed by the Departments of the Interior and Commerce in August 2008 and made final on Dec. 16, largely eliminate a requirement in the Endangered Species Act that mandates scientifi c review of federal agency decisions that might affect endangered and threatened species and their habitats.
The changes allow federal agencies to undertake or permit mining, logging, and other commercial activities on federal land and other
areas without obtaining review or comment from federal wildlife biologists on the environmental effects of such activities.
