#operation streamline

[louisshalako]

The Courts Where Some Immigrants Plead Guilty Without Knowing What’s Happening

Lawyers, and even a judge, say Operation Streamline's rapid-fire pace is too fast for some defendants to understand.

[investmart007]

SAN DIEGO | California, long a holdout, adopts mass immigration hearings

New Post has been published on https://is.gd/2DcJPA

SAN DIEGO | California, long a holdout, adopts mass immigration hearings

SAN DIEGO — A federal judge was irritated when an attorney for dozens of people charged with crossing the border illegally asked for more time to meet with clients before setting bond.

It was pushing 5 p.m. on a Friday in May, and the judge in San Diego was wrestling with a surge in her caseload that resulted from the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy to prosecute everyone who enters the country illegally.

“It’s been a long week,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Nita Stormes said, suggesting that the court needed more judges and public defenders.

On Monday, the court will try to curb the caseload by assigning a judge to oversee misdemeanor immigration cases and holding large, group hearings that critics call assembly-line justice. The move puts California in line with other border states, and it captures the strain that zero tolerance has put on federal courts, particularly in the nation’s most populous state, which has long resisted mass hearings for illegal border crossing.

Immigration cases were light for the first few months of the year in the Southern District of California. There were no illegal-entry cases in February, only four in March and 16 in April, according to the clerk’s office. But when zero tolerance took full effect, the caseload skyrocketed to 513 in May and 821 in June.

Those numbers pale when compared to other border districts that have been doing mass hearings for years. The Southern District of Texas’ four border-area courts handled nearly 9,500 illegal-entry cases in the eight weeks after zero tolerance took full effect, though those courts saw their numbers balloon too. The District of Arizona carried more than three times California’s number of cases in May.

The mass hearings can be traced back to December 2005, when the Border Patrol introduced “Operation Streamline” in Del Rio, Texas, to prosecute every illegal entry. Over the next three years, the practice spread to every federal court district along the border except California, whose federal prosecutors argued that scarce resources could be better spent going after smuggling networks and repeat crossers with serious criminal histories.

In Tucson, Arizona, a judge sees up to 75 defendants a day, about five to seven at a time, in hearings that last about two hours. The immigrants show up in the clothes they wore when they were arrested, wearing headphones for translation.

In the McAllen, Texas, federal courthouse 73 people who were cuffed at the ankles lined up in six rows of wood benches. They pleaded guilty at the same time in a morning session last month. About two-thirds were sentenced to the few days of time served.

The rest got between 10 and 60 days because they had been previously deported or had criminal convictions.

Carol Lam, the U.S. attorney in San Diego when Streamline began until 2007, said zero-tolerance programs are “ultimately ineffective,” saying they boost conviction numbers but don’t have a proportionate impact on reducing crime.

“The sentences become much shorter to the point where everyone is getting time served or a few weeks in custody, and they’re turned around and come back in again,” she said. “At the end of the day, the system grinds down to a halt and things start deteriorating.”

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has held up Streamline as a model, was the first attorney general to seriously challenge California’s position. In May, he announced that the Homeland Security Department would refer every arrest for prosecution, which led to widespread separation of children from their parents.

Adam Braverman, the newly appointed U.S. attorney in San Diego, had no room to push back.

When prosecutors in California began trying more cases in May, Chief District Judge Barry Moskowitz formed a committee of attorneys and government agencies to minimize the impact, writing that the increased load would cause “strains, issues and problems.”

The court has struggled to get people X-rayed for safety reasons, attorneys say. Jail space has been lacking, requiring some defendants to be housed at jails in Santa Ana and San Bernardino — at least an hour’s drive away — and some in San Luis, Arizona, a nearly four-hour drive from San Diego. Court often runs beyond business hours, once lasting until 10 p.m.

The U.S. attorney’s office in San Diego said in a statement that it was “committed to securing the border and enforcing criminal immigration laws in a way that respects due process and the dignity of all involved.”

The office noted that other districts along the border — in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas — have operated this way for about a decade. Prosecutors from San Diego visited Tucson last month for a firsthand look.

Defense attorneys object to the new court. Reuben Camper Cahn, executive director of Federal Defenders of San Diego Inc., called it separate but unequal and compared it to slavery tribunals.

“They will appear in chains … their cases will be heard en masse,” he wrote the chief judge.

“In this moment, all of us — citizens, lawyers, jurists — must seek the better angels of our nature to navigate the challenges presented,” Cahn wrote last month. “If the Court does this, it will surely reject the (Justice Department’s) abhorrent proposal.”

By Associated Press

[venusinorbit]

New Book Documents 10 Years of Operation Streamline

There are deeply-rooted problems in this federal government program that has expanded the criminal prosecution of immigrants.

For more than 10 years, the federal government has operated a program in federal courts along the Southwest border targeting unauthorized border crossers for criminal prosecution. The program, known as Operation Streamline, has long been criticized for its group hearings—up to 75 people at once—that provide little or no due process to those processed through it.

Through Operation Streamline, which began in Del Rio, Texas in December 2005, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) worked with the Department of Justice (DOJ) to prosecute migrants for unauthorized entry, a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in federal prison, and expanded prosecutions for re-entry, a felony punishable by up to 20 years in federal prison depending on the person’s prior criminal history.

Prior to 2005, removal for unauthorized entry was handled through a civil process. Now, after Operation Streamline, an unauthorized border crosser goes through the criminal process in one group court session—combining arraignment, detention hearing, guilty plea or trial, and sentencing hearing—and serves their jail sentence in the U.S., often at a privately-run facility. Once the person serves their sentence they enter removal proceedings and are deported. They are also subsequently barred from re-entering the U.S. for a minimum of 10 years or possibly permanently barred from returning.

The criminal prosecution of migrants has had a major impact on the federal court and prison systems, and at a significant cost. According to a recent book from Grassroots Leadership and Justice Strategies detailing the history of Operation Streamline, nearly 70,000 migrants—including those who may have had asylum claims—were criminally prosecuted at the border in fiscal year 2015. 49 percent of all federal prosecutions in fiscal year 2015 were for improper entry or re-entry. Moreover, the authors estimate that it has cost the U.S. more than $7 billion to incarcerate those convicted of unauthorized entry or re-entry since 2005, when Operation Streamline began.

[venusinorbit]

A New Report Shows the Continuing Overcriminalization of Immigrants

After more than a century of research and analysis, it has become quite clear that immigrants are far less prone to criminal conduct than the native-born population.

After more than a century of research and analysis, it has become quite clear that immigrants are far less prone to criminal conduct than the native-born population. And yet researcher John R. Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center has recently claimed to have found evidence that exactly the opposite is true.

Lott’s working paper focuses on one specific claim: that undocumented immigrants in Arizona comprise a disproportionately large share of the state’s prison population, including prisoners convicted of serious crimes like murder and rape.

Aside from the fact that this study contradicts nearly every other piece of serious research on the relationship between immigration and crime (or lack thereof), the author of the study likely added up the wrong numbers in reaching his conclusion.

Another important factor that should be considered in analyzing Lott’s study is that the share of immigrants, documented or otherwise, who make up the prison population is not the same as the share who make up the general population.

If immigrants are disproportionately more likely to be picked up by police for some reason (profiling, for instance), then immigrants might be overrepresented among prisoners even if they commit fewer crimes than the native-born population overall. In other words, prison is not a microcosm of the larger world.

[waaradio]

Illegal immigrants apprehended in Yuma avoiding prosecution, feds silent

Illegal immigrants apprehended in Yuma avoiding prosecution, feds silent

First time offenders are no longer being prosecuted.

The federal government is silent when asked whether prosecutors in Yuma, Arizona, are enforcing a long-standing program that assures jail time for the majority of those crossing the border illegally, according to the Associated Press in a report Friday.

Reports that federal prosecutors have stopped some prosecutions under Operation Streamline…

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[janetgoldner]

4- Do you understand your right to a trial? All said “si” down the line.

5- Are you a US citizen? All said “no” down the line.

6- How do you plead? “culpable” (guilty) down the line.

7- Is there any reason the court should not accept this plea? No down the line except a few cases when the lawyer interjected that the person speaks another (Indian) language but understands. Is this true the judge asks? Si, they say.

Then they are sentenced to between 30 and 180 days with credit for time served. Then they shuffle out thru a door in the courtroom and the next panel of 10 takes their place before the judge.

[janetgoldner]

Their names were read and were asked a series of questions. One after the other they answered down the line.

Sometime in the last 10 days you entered the US without being examined by border control.

1- Do you understand the charges and penalties? All 10 said “si” translated to “yes” by the translator-one after the other down the line.

2- Do you understand the terms of the plea agreement and waive your right to appeal? All said “si” translated to “yes” by the translator- down the line.

3- Other than what is in the plea agreement, have any promises been made to you or are you being forced to plea? All said “no” down the line.