Monday round-up

On March 11, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

Briefly:

• In the latest episode of SCOTUStalk (podcast), Tom Goldstein joins Amy Howe to discuss June Medical Services v. Gee, in which a divided court temporarily blocked a Louisiana law that would require abortion providers to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.
• At Law.com, Marcia Coyle reports on a new study of oral arguments showing that “Supreme Court justices direct their humorous quips and barbs most often at advocates with whom they disagree, lawyers who are losing their arguments and attorneys who do not have experience at the high court.”
• At Jost on Justice, Kenneth Jost looks at the record in Department of Commerce v. New York, a challenge to the Trump administration’s decision to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 census, arguing that “[w]ith all these legal defects, Ross’s decision ought not stand after serious judicial review at the Supreme Court.”
• At Jurist, William Clark and Bobby Segal urge the court to review Acklin v. Alabama, a capital case in which a defendant’s “attorney put his own interest in being paid — and the wishes of his client’s abusive father — ahead of his client’s life.”

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How ICE outmaneuvered a town that tried to close a detention facility

On March 11, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

A Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center holding nearly 400 people in Bakersfield, California, that was slated to close will stay open after the U.S. reached a temporary agreement with GEO Group, a private contractor that owns and operates the facility.

The Mesa Verde facility, which is ICE’s only jail in central California, was slated to shut down March 18, which would have forced ICE to move detainees hundreds of miles to detention facilities around the state or even further.

“Without continued use of the facility, ICE would be required to relocate almost 400 detainees to facilities farther away from their families and attorneys,” ICE said in a statement.

But ICE found a controversial workaround. Citing an “unusual and compelling urgency,” the agency entered into a temporary contract directly with GEO Group, effectively cutting out city government without ICE having to leave.

The exception is intended for use in circumstances like natural disasters or acts of terrorism. In its proposal, ICE argued that it had an “immediate requirement” to continue operating Mesa Verde.

“The fact that this private company circumvented federal regulations, claiming that they’re facing ‘unusual and compelling urgency,’ is outrageous,” said Ambar Tovar, directing attorney for United Farm Workers Removal Defense Project, which works inside Mesa Verde..

ICE has been struggling to keep its facilities open across California after lawmakers passed a pair of “sanctuary” laws in 2017 that prevent cities and counties from entering into new contracts or from expanding existing agreements with ICE. The laws also gave the California Attorney General’s office, now run by Attorney General Xavier Becerra, increased oversight over the centers.

A report released just last week, the first under the Attorney General’s new mandate, found poor conditions, notably inadequate access to medical care and legal representation, including at Mesa Verde.

In part because of the new regulations, the city of McFarland outside Bakersfield ended its contract to operate Mesa Verde in December. The city had been receiving about $35,000 a year for operating as a go-between in ICE’s agreement with GEO Group.

McFarland was the third locality to pull out since the legislation took effect; Sacramento and Contra Costa counties ended their contracts to house detainees in the county jails last year. In those cases, the jails stopped detaining immigrants.

The backlash to ICE in communities comes as immigrant detention hits an all time high—50,049 people were detained as of March 6.

Officials have not commented publicly on the city’s decision to end the contract. But a letter from the city notifying the GEO Group of the contract’s termination suggests that it was not over moral concerns, but rather because the state’s more aggressive stance against ICE made continuing to work with the agency less appealing.

“This has been a satisfactory arrangement for the City,” city manager John Wooner wrote, “until recent adoption by the State of California of legislation impacting facilities such as Mesa Verde.”

As more cities elect to close their immigration facilities, ICE’s tactic shows a new way for the agency to effectively nullify the decisions of local governments. Mesa Verde will stay open for another year, without ICE having to go through the standard time-consuming public bidding process normally required for government contracts.

Even if immigration advocates oppose ICE’s methods, they’re more ambivalent about the outcome. “We definitely don’t think that it is humane to continue to detain people simply because they are fleeing persecution,” Tovar, the immigration attorney, said. “On the other hand, it is also a relief that clients we do represent are not going to be transferred to another location.”

Liz Martinez, director of advocacy for Freedom for Immigrants, which helped draft the 2018 laws, sees the steps ICE took to keep Mesa Verde open as a way for the agency “to circumvent the intention of the law.” Martinez says the group will take it into account when proposing legislation in other states.

“Anything that involves ICE has to be enforceable,” she said. “They’re not going to police themselves and they’re not going to be beholden to anything unless it is written in law.”

Cover image: An immigration detainee stands near an US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) grievance box in the high security unit at the Theo Lacy Facility, a county jail which also houses immigration detainees arrested by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), March 14, 2017 in Orange, California. / AFP PHOTO / Robyn Beck (Photo credit should read ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)

Senators Urge IRS to Focus on Big-Time Tax Cheats, Citing ProPublica Stories

On March 11, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

by Paul Kiel and Jesse Eisinger

In a letter on Friday , a group of prominent senators — including Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., 2020 presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., as well as Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. — urged IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig to increase the agency’s focus on large tax and financial crimes.

As ProPublica has documented with a series of articles, the IRS is a shadow of its former self, the result of a near-decadelong campaign by Republicans in Congress to starve the agency of funds. The agency’s enforcement staff has dropped by more than a third. That has been a boon to the rich and to tax cheats in particular, who have benefited from a collapse in audits, collections and criminal tax prosecutions.

As we reported, and as the senators noted in their letter, the story has been different for the poor, as the IRS has devoted a disproportionate number of its audits to taxpayers who receive the earned income tax credit, one of the government’s largest antipoverty programs.

The senators acknowledged that the budget cuts have badly weakened the agency, but they argued that ProPublica’s stories, together with government watchdog reports, show the IRS could use its limited resources more effectively.

The widening circle of investigations surrounding President Donald Trump has highlighted the weakness of tax enforcement, as we explained last October. Paul Manafort hid income overseas for years, and Michael Cohen dodged taxes through the simplest means imaginable (by lying to his accountant and the IRS) without consequence. It was only after the Robert Mueller’s team and other federal prosecutors began scrutinizing Trump’s circle that their crimes were discovered. The senators say that such examples of “exposure of criminal activity only resulting from investigations pursued for other matters” prove that the IRS can do more. “We urge you to strengthen enforcement efforts at the IRS, including focusing on tax code violations and financial crimes that may be linked to money laundering,” they wrote.

The IRS will not get a budget increase anytime soon. After a 34-day government shutdown, Congress and Trump struck a deal to fund the government for the next seven months. For the IRS, the deal included a cut from last year’s budget. In real terms, the enforcement portion of the agency’s budget is down by 23 percent since 2010.

Will things change next year? That’s in part up to Rettig. Last year, Republican congressional staffers told us that lawmakers might respond favorably if Rettig asked for more funds. So far, Rettig has not made any clear statements about whether he believes the IRS needs more money to do its job.