Deportation orders, asylum denials climb
Deportation orders in Tennessee, Arkansas and northern Mississippi have increased nearly 50 percent since 2016, the year before President Donald Trump took office.
The sharp increase, based on decisions from the Memphis Immigration Court, was driven by factors inside and outside the courtroom: the appointment of a judge with a track record of denying almost every asylum case, an increased number of Central American immigrants seeking asylum, and an increased caseload caused, in part, by policies established by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Tennessee’s only immigration court is in Memphis. The court handles cases in Tennessee, Arkansas and northern Mississippi, as well as Kentucky.
Judge Vernon Miles, who transferred to Memphis from San Antonio in October 2017, rejected 98 percent of asylum applications he faced before his transfer, according to the most recent report compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. That was one of the highest denial rates in the nation. Across the U.S., judges rejected an average of 53 percent of asylum cases between Fiscal 2012 and 2017.
Miles, originally appointed under the Obama administration, replaced retiring Judge Charles Pazar, who had the lowest rate of asylum denials among the four Memphis judges, at 56 percent.
When Pazar left, Memphis was already turning out more deportations than in years past. The court doubled its number of judges in 2015, and the caseload skyrocketed. Today, Memphis is issuing more deportation orders than at any time during the past two decades.
As the deportation orders shot up over the past two years in particular, Memphis judges also allowed fewer immigrants to stay in the country. Taken as a whole, the nation’s immigration courts followed a similar pattern, although Memphis’s changes have been more dramatic. Judges across the country were on track to issue 37 percent more deportation orders in fiscal 2018 compared 2016.
“I’m preparing my clients for the appeal process because I know we’re going to lose,” said Stacie Hammond, an attorney with the advocacy group Latino Memphis.
Judges in Memphis are on track to order 3,225 deportations in fiscal 2018, which ends September 30, according to data compiled by the Syracuse University researchers. That compares to 2,168 in fiscal 2016, the last full year under the Obama administration. In 1998, the court ordered about 500 people deported.
Judges in Memphis also occasionally preside over video cases from other states.
Denials more common, judge says
Denials have been more likely recently, said Pazar, the retired judge, because the Memphis court today tries many young men from Central America who are afraid of gangs, and they may not qualify for asylum. That’s because asylum claims require a person to show credible fear of persecution based on the basis of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.
Still, the chance that Miles could hear their case gives attorneys pause, Hammond said: “There’s that panic when you get that hearing notice.”
Judges have implicit biases like everyone else that may sway their decisions, said Judge Dana Marks, president emeritus of the National Association of Immigration Judges. The problem is exacerbated by heavy case loads, she said, which mean judges have to make decisions quickly.
“The biggest way to counteract implicit bias and to be sure you’re not allowing that to creep into your decisions as a judge,” Marks said, “is to spend more time hearing the case.”
Cases surge with more immigrants
While the makeup of the Memphis court shifted last year, perhaps the biggest recent change was the national spike in deportation cases beginning in 2014. That year, the nation saw a surge in unaccompanied minors from Central America, especially from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. More broadly, the foreign-born population in the southern U.S. has climbed.
Immigration officials filed four times the number of deportation cases in Memphis in fiscal 2014 compared to 2013.
To accommodate the uptick in cases, the Department of Justice hired two new judges in Memphis in 2015, doubling the number already there. Matthew Kaufman and Richard Averwater took the bench. Both had higher asylum denial rates than the national average between fiscal 2012 and fiscal 2017.
“Because it’s a small court, hiring two had a huge impact,” said Marks, from the National Association of Immigration Judges.
Despite the added capacity, Memphis defendants still have to wait a while for their cases to make their way through the system. In fiscal 2018, through May, Memphis cases were open an average of 471 days. That was better than the national average of 721 days.
Andrew Free, an immigration lawyer in Nashvillie, said judges are scheduling cases a year and a half out: “There is still a backlog.”
Sessions limits judges’ authority and institutes quotas
In 2018, Sessions made some significant changes to the way judges handle cases, likely leading to a further increase in deportation orders, said Karla McKanders, a law professor and director of the Vanderbilt University Immigration Practice Clinic.
Sessions instituted case quotas in April that required judges to hear a certain number of cases and make a certain number of decisions each month. In May, he also prohibited judges from “administratively” closing cases, a practice that has allowed some immigrants to apply for visas or green cards outside of court. Critics argued judges were allowing some immigrants to stay in the country for too long. In June, Sessions also wrote an opinion that reverses asylum protections for victims of domestic violence.
It’s probably too early to see the effects of the domestic violence opinion in the deportation numbers, McKanders said, but the earlier changes are already having the effect of pushing up the orders.
Judges and advocates say Sessions’ changes could jeopardize the courts’ fairness.
“It’s extremely difficult to do these cases at breakneck speed and still maintain due process,” said Marks from the the National Association of Immigration Judges.
Commercial Appeal reporter Daniel Connolly contributed to this report.
Reach Mike Reicher at 615-259-8228.