Posted on 06/04/2009 9:40:26 AM PDT by La Lydia
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. yesterday overturned a Bush administration ruling in January that immigrants do not have a constitutional right to effective legal counsel in deportation proceedings. In vacating the decision his predecessor, Michael B. Mukasey, issued two weeks before President George W. Bush left office, Holder restored one of the most common grounds cited by immigrants for appealing removal orders: that their attorneys were incompetent.
....immigration courts are separate from the judicial branch and operate under the Justice Department, which makes the U.S. attorney general the final arbiter for immigration proceedings. Immigrants are not entitled to public defenders but can hire their own lawyers. Immigrants can appeal deportation rulings to the federal court system, and thousands have...
...during Bush's second term, the Justice Department argued in the federal courts that neither the Constitution nor any federal law or regulation "entitles an alien to a do-over if his initial removal proceeding is prejudiced by the mistakes of a privately retained lawyer," Mukasey wrote.
The Bush Justice Department argued successfully in recent years against that right, winning decisions covering the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 4th and 8th circuits. If there is no constitutional right to counsel in immigration cases, there is no such right to effective counsel, Mukasey ruled.
Holder's decision restored immigration court procedures and legal precedents in place before January...
Nadine Wettstein, director of the American Immigration Law Foundation's Legal Action Center, said in a statement that the advocacy arm of the nation's immigration law bar was "very encouraged that Attorney General Holder appreciates the importance of immigrants' rights in deportation proceedings."...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Of course, for those who can’t afford it, LaRaza will get federal funds to defend them.
More likely, the Muslim Brotherhood.
This means that obozo’s Kenyan illegal auntie gets to extend her stay in the US and eventually Holder will make it permanently.
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