ACLU director has beef with immigration proposals

Wednesday, April 12, 2006 | 7:35 a.m.

Proposed changes to U.S. immigration laws would strip away many due process rights currently given to illegal immigrants.

Gary Peck, executive director of the ACLU of Nevada, said the proposals being debated in Congress could expand what he views as already flawed policies that "are closing the door of the courts and justice for illegal immigrants."

The bill, currently stalled in the Senate, has sparked marches throughout the country. Opponents say many fine points of the law have been lost in the increasingly acrimonious debate.

Among the proposed changes:

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wants to streamline the appeals process and send all cases through the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington.

Doing so, Specter argues, would break the backlog of deportation cases in many federal appellate courts, especially in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which handles appeals from nine Western states, including Nevada, and two U.S. territories.

Of 12,349 appeals in the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, more than half were handled by the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit.

Judge Carlos Bea of the 9th Circuit testified before the Senate committee in favor of the changes. Bea said he once faced a deportation order and won on appeal.

Circuit courts disagree on several aspects of the law, and because the U.S. Supreme Court rarely agrees to hear an immigration case, many of the circuits remain split, Bea said.

Having one court hear the cases would clarify the case law, he said.

University of Virginia School of Law professor David A. Martin, however, said splits among the circuits are part of a healthy judiciary because "deliberation by several courts helps to think through the best way ultimately to resolve the issue."

Jonathan Cohn, deputy assistant attorney general, testified that he did not believe the changes would deprive "an alien of his day in federal court," adding that "nothing will limit or affect" a full review of the cases.

The changes, Cohn said, would weed out cases without merit.

"Without these reforms, aliens deserving of relief are unjustly delayed," Cohn said.

The problem, opponents contend, is not the current appellate system, but the number of poorly decided cases by lower courts.

There is a "severe lack of resources and manpower" of immigration judges who handle the nation's 300,000 deportation cases a year, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge John M. Walker told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.

"With only 215 (immigration) judges, a single judge has to dispose of 1,400 cases a year, or nearly 27 cases a week, or more than five each business day, simply to stay abreast of his docket," he said.

The proposed solution to that problem would have a single judge screening cases that get to the federal appellate court. Under that provision, if the judge did not act on a case within 60 days, it would be dismissed.

If that measure becomes law, the heavy caseloads could prevent many immigrants' appeals from receiving serious review, Peck said.

"We stand firmly that immigrants, illegal or documented alike, should be entitled to a full and fair hearing of their appeals, and this provision would directly strip and erode that right," he said.

Although not addressed in the April 3 hearing, another proposal - even more troubling to Peck - would broaden the number of those people who can be indefinitely detained by authorities.

He said the policy of detaining suspected terrorists and those with previous convictions for terrorist acts or violent crimes may be expanded to allow "indefinite detention of those illegal immigrants who have been convicted of nonviolent offenses as well."

"This would essentially criminalize someone based on their status of an illegal immigrant," he said. "This isn't fighting terrorism, but instead treating illegal immigrants like terrorists."