Your government puts people in jail on the merest suspicion,
refusing them lawyers, and either holding them indefinitely or
deporting them in the dead of night.
As immigrant round-ups continue, immigration judges systematically
deny asylum in a pattern of bias, incoherent justification, and
complete insensitivity. At least 23,000 Muslim, Arab, and South Asian
immigrants have faced these round-ups, and have to deal with a legal
system stacked against them. Recently, federal appeals judges gave
sharp criticism to immigration judges for their complete mistreatment
of asylum-seekers. Life-threatening political repression is often
ignored when sending immigrants back to their home countries.
Immigration judges often write nothing to justify their decisions, and
make completely insensitive remarks during procedings.
Richard A. Posner, a prominent conservative federal
appeals court judge in Chicago, recently said “the adjudication of
these cases at the administrative level has fallen below the minimum
standards of legal justice.” Judge Julio M. Fuentes of the United States Court of Appeals for the
Third Circuit said about one immigration judge: “The tone, the tenor, the disparagement, and
the sarcasm of the I.J. seem more appropriate to a court television
show than a federal court proceeding.”
The
amount of immigration cases has dramatically increased since the
post-9/11 round-ups began. Then attorney general John Ashcroft
restructured the Board of Immigration Appeals, purging it of any
liberals, and encouraged single-judge appeals and one-word decisions.
Judge Posner (quoted above) wrote that the board often affirmed “either
with no
opinion or with a very short, unhelpful, boilerplate opinion even when”
the immigration judge had committed “manifest errors of fact and logic.”
In
essence, the Bush regime is rounding up immigrants, denying them any
fair legal process, and often deporting them to countries where they
could be persecuted or killed for their political beliefs. Will you
allow this to go on?
The World Can’t Wait! Drive Out the Bush Regime!
Mobilize to protest Bush’s state of the union address Jan. 31, and come
to DC Feb. 4 to demand “Bush: step down, and take your program with
you!”