ICE immigration attorney accused of forging documents in effort to deport man, lawsuit says

 

SEATTLE — A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney forged a document in an attempt to deport an immigrant seeking to stay in the country with his wife and children, according to a new lawsuit.
 
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in a Seattle U.S. District Court, seeks $500,000 in damages for Ignacio Lanuza-Torres because the alleged forgery cost him years of courtroom battles. Lanuza-Torres is now a legal U.S. resident.
 
According to the lawsuit, Lanuza-Torres entered the country illegally from Mexico in 1996, settling in Seattle thereafter. In 2008, he pleaded guilty to unlawfully displaying a weapon after handling a friend's pistol at a party, and he was put in removal proceedings by ICE.
 
The following year, Lanuza-Torres married his girlfriend, an American citizen, and sought to have his removal canceled because of the marriage and because he had also met the stipulation of being in the country continuously for 10 years.
 
But in court, ICE assistant chief counsel Jonathan M. Love said Lanuza-Torres had voluntarily given up his right to appear before an immigration judge after he was apprehended by Border Patrol agents in 2000.
 
The government argued that because Lanuza-Torres had left the U.S. to visit Mexico about five times and because he gave up his right to appear before a judge, his appeal to cancel his removal should be rejected.
 
In Border Patrol custody, Love said, Lanuza-Torres had signed a document declining to appear before an immigration judge to argue his case. The document provided evidence that Lanuza-Torres had not been in the country continuously for 10 years. Love entered the document as evidence a week after making his statement in court.
 
Immigration Judge Kenneth Josephson accepted the form as evidence and ordered Lanuza-Torres deported.
 
As Lanuza-Torres appealed, his attorney at the time, Hilary Han, noticed something off about the evidence.
 
The form Love submitted had a Department of Homeland Security header, even though it was dated Jan. 13, 2000 — nearly 20 months before the department was created in response to the Sept. 11 attacks. The form also had the signature of ICE officer Anthony Dodd, who processed Lanuza in Seattle in 2008. The form was supposed to date to 2000 and originate from the U.S.-Mexico border.
 
"You're left in shock. You don't know why he did it. You don't know what he had against me or what happened," Lanuza-Torres said in Spanish, adding "besides getting angry, you get sad. It feels like I was stabbed in the back."
 
Here is "someone who blatantly forged a document in order to deprive someone of their only chance to stay here in the United States with their family, deprive them of their only chance to exercise their rights under the law," said Matt Adams, an attorney with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and Lanuza-Torres' current attorney.
 
ICE spokesman Andrew Munoz said an internal review has been launched.
 
"Any unlawful conduct by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) employees is inconsistent with our agency values and the high standards to which we hold our employees. We take all allegations of misconduct seriously," Munoz said, declining to comment further because of the pending lawsuit.
 
Reached by phone Thursday, Love said he was not aware of the lawsuit. Asked if he remembered the Lanuza-Torres case, he said he did not.
 
Besides seeking damages, Adams has filed complaints with the Homeland Security inspector general, urging a review of all cases Love handled.
 
-- The Associated Press

Obama: I’ll take executive action on immigration between the midterms and end of the year


 

October 2 at 10:49 PM

President Obama said Thursday night that he would take executive action on immigration sometime between the midterm elections and the end of the year.

Speaking before the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute Gala, Obama said he shares the frustration of many in the room upset that immigration reform remains stalled. Obama was accompanied to the gala by two congressional interns who are DREAMers -- young unauthorized immigrants who entered the United States before the age of 16.

"But if anybody wants to know where my heart is or whether I want to have this fight, let me put those questions to rest right now.  I am not going to give up this fight until it gets done," Obama said. "I know the pain of families torn apart because we live with a system that’s broken."

Obama laid blame squarely at the feet of congressional Republicans, who he said exploited a crisis of undocumented children at the southern border for political gain this summer and refuse to act with the president on immigration reform. However, he said, he ultimately needs Congress to pass an immigration law, because anything he does by executive action can be reversed by the next president.

"So the point I want to make is the progress we’ve made has been hard, sometimes it's been slower than we want, but that progress has been steady and it has been real," he said. "I want to make something clear:  Fixing our broken immigration system is one more, big thing that we have to do and that we will do."

Now, Obama said, he will also use immigration as a political tool -- by explaining immigration reform is a boon for the economy.

"And when opponents are out there saying who knows what, I'm going to need you to have my back," he said.

Part of that, Obama said, is getting out in November and voting. Only 48 percent of voters turned out to vote in 2012, he said.

"So the clearest path to change is to change that number.  Si, se puede … si votamos.  Yes we can … if we vote.," he said.

 And Obama said he needs them to continue to believe in him.

"And six years ago, I asked you to believe.  And tonight, I ask you to keep believing -- not just in my ability to bring about change, but in your ability to bring about change," he said. 

 

 

 

 

Money Allocated for Immigration Lawyers [for Unaccompanied Children]





The Department of Health and Human Services announced Tuesday that it would provide $9 million over two years for lawyers to represent unaccompanied minors in their deportation cases in immigration courts. The program, which will assist about 2,600 youths, is the first time the department has directly funded lawyers for those minors. In the 2014 fiscal year ending Tuesday, the department took custody of about 58,100 unaccompanied children caught at the border, officials said, more than double the number in 2013 but far fewer than estimates of 90,000 during a surge in South Texas in June.

See the entire article here.