Immigration courts reportedly have 445,000 pending cases

The already backlogged federal immigration courts have reportedly reached an all-time high with more than 445,000 pending cases.
The Los Angeles Times, citing the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, reports that as of April, the backlog hit 445,706, which is a nearly 30 percent increase since Oct. 1, 2013.
Immigration courts have been overwhelmed since the influx of more than 68,500 unaccompanied children and about as many family units crossing the southern border, most of them from Central America.
During the surge, unaccompanied children’s cases were expedited in courts in Los Angeles and other large cities.
Despite the surge, the unaccompanied children’s cases only make up 16 percent of the total as of April. The juvenile case backlog is still 68 percent larger than it was last June, when the backlog reached 41,641 juvenile cases, the Times reports.
The backlogged cases for Central Americans have skyrocketed. Guatemalans’ cases are up 63 percent, 92 percent for Salvadorians and 143 percent for Hondurans.
The report found that California, Texas and New York led the nation with the largest immigration backlogs, followed by Florida and New Jersey.
Louis Ruffino told the Los Angeles Times that more than 233 judges across the nation are heading immigration cases and 68 more are going to be hired. Ruffino also said that Miami judges have also been hearing Texas immigration cases via videoconferencing.
Denise Gilman, who directs an immigration clinic at the University of Texas law school in Austin, told the paper that “there is no ability of the court to keep up. We really are in a vicious cycle.”
Gilman has a Honduran client who suffered a heart attack recently after waiting two years for his asylum case to be heard.
Jonathan Ryan, executive director of the San Antonio-based legal advocacy group Raices, says the federal government was not addressing the cases that make up a majority of the backlog after it expedited unaccompanied minors’ cases.
 “We see people coming into our office every day whose lives are being negatively impacted by this,” Ryan told the paper.
Some judges believe the backlog is expected to get worse.
San Francisco-based Judge Dana Leigh Marks told the Los Angeles Times that they’re “waiting for the tsunami to come.”
Marks said 100 immigrants judges were expected to retire this year alone. Many immigration judges handle more than 3,000 cases a year, which would push hearings back to 2019.

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California Senate contender Loretta Sanchez makes 'shocking' gesture at Dem convention

U.S. Senate candidate Loretta Sanchez started her campaign off on a rough note after a video surfaced showing her making a whooping cry in a reference to Native Americans dancing during an apparent joke during a California Democratic Party convention Saturday.
Sanchez’s rival, Attorney General Kamala Harris, called the gesture “shocking.”
The video was shared on social media Saturday. It shows Sanchez tapping her hand over her open mouth and making a whooping sound while speaking to a group of Indian-American delegates at the convention.
Sanchez made the gesture while talking about her confusion over whether a potential campaign support, who had referred himself as from the “Indian American community,” was Native American or South Asian descent.
Sanchez told reporters afterward that American Indians have a “great presence in our country and many of them are supporting our election.”
Harris, whose mother was an immigrant from India,” said, “There is no place for that in our public disclosure.”
The incident came during a convention in which the 2016 Senate race played out among speeches and partying. The two Democrats are leading contenders for the vacated seat left by retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer.
Earlier, Harris defended her qualifications on foreign affairs and national defense after Sanchez had suggested she doesn't have the skills for the job in Washington.  
Harris told reporters that voters next year will determine who is qualified for the Senate seat, and her experience as a two-term attorney general and a former local prosecutor gave her the background she would need on Capitol Hill.  
"I feel certainly equipped to have a sense of what California needs and wants as it relates to many issues," Harris said. As a career prosecutor, "I know the stuff they do in Washington actually impacts California."
Sanchez entered the race Thursday and spent the day dashing to and from convention meetings, shaking dozens of hands and posing for snapshots. When she entered the race last week, Sanchez said that her long experience in defense and foreign affairs on Capitol Hill was essential in “perilous times,” drawing contrast with Harris.
Harris has targeted what she says is the dysfunction of Capitol Hill in her speeches. She never mentioned Sanchez, but the statements appeared to suggest that the congresswoman was part of the problem. Harris said that everywhere she travels as a candidate she is asked how she can “possibly get anything done” in paralyzed Beltway politics.
Speaking later with reporters, Harris pointed to her work along the U.S.-Mexico border on drug trafficking as state attorney general.  
The contest between the two high-profile Democrats has geographic, racial and political dimensions. Sanchez, 55, is Hispanic with a background in national defense issues and roots in Southern California. Over the years, she has belonged to a faction of moderate Democrats known as the Blue Dog Coalition. Harris, 50, a favorite of the party's left wing, is a career prosecutor from the San Francisco Bay Area whose father is black and mother is Indian.  
Sanchez, speaking to members of the party's Chicano Latino Caucus, said she wanted to appeal across the state's diverse population. "We will win, and we will win with a fabric of everybody," she said.

Son of fallen Colorado deputy gets father's patrol car

The son of a Colorado deputy killed in the line of duty owns his father’s patrol car thanks to rancher with a heart of gold.
Tanner Brownlee was quickly outbid when his father’s beat-up Dodge Charger was put up for auction Wednesday in Greeley, Colo.
“I was sitting there. I had a set amount that I was gonna do,” Brownlee told Fox & Friends Saturday. “As soon as it went past that, I was…I just kind of gave up hope.”
Brownlee watched local rancher Steve Wells purchase the vehicle with a whopping $60,000 bid, five times the car’s book value.
Then Wells did something incredible, Denver ABC reported.
Wells said, “Tanner, here’s your car,” and gave him the keys.
“I couldn’t even find words,” Brownlee said on Fox & Friends. “As soon as he handed me the keys I shut down and I couldn’t believe it.
“I got up. I shook his hand. I hugged him. I was just crying. I couldn’t find words to express it.”
Brownlee was 15 when his father was killed in 2010 after he and other officers pursued a suspected car thief into a subdivision after a high-speed chase. During the struggle the suspect grabbed Brownlee’s gun and shot the deputy three times, the Denver Post reported in 2011. Another deputy shot Brownlee’s killer.
Sam Brownlee was the first member of the Weld County Sheriff’s Office to die on the job in 70 years.
Brownlee and his colleagues put a lot of hard miles on the Charger. It had 147,000 on the odometer when it went up for auction. It was being sold to raise money for C.O.P.S., a fund for widows and orphans of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty.
Tanner Brownlee started an online fundraising page to bid on the vehicle. He raised $3,000, hoping that would be enough. It wasn’t even close.
Wells turned out to be a man of few words after his good deed.
As he watched Brownlee get behind the wheel of the car, he declined an interview request saying he didn’t want to take away from the moment.
Brownlee said he and his brother Chase are going to use their father’s vehicle as a “cruising car.”
“I’m so excited,” he said. “I’m going to try to keep up on that car, keep it as long as I can.”

Asian groups file federal complaint against Harvard over admission practices

alliance of Asian American groups

An alliance of Asian American groups filed a federal complaint Friday against Harvard University, claiming that the school and other Ivy League institutions are using racial quotas to admit students other than high-scoring Asians.
More than 60 Chinese, Indian, Korean and Pakistani groups came together for the complaint, which was filed with the civil rights offices at the Justice and Education departments. The groups are calling for an investigation and say these schools need to stop using racial quotas or racial balancing in admission.
"We are seeking equal treatment regardless of race," said Chunyan Li, a professor and civil rights activist, who said they'd rather universities use income rather than race in affirmative action policies.
Harvard says its admissions approach has been found to be “fully compliant federal law.” Officials also say the number of Asian students admitted increased from 17.6 percent to 21 percent in the last decade.
"We will vigorously defend the right of Harvard, and other universities, to continue to seek the educational benefits that come from a class that is diverse on multiple dimensions," said Robert Iuliano, Harvard's general counsel.
Iuliano pointed to the Super Court’s landmark 1978 decision in Regents of University of California vs. Bakke, which upheld affirmative action and specifically cited Harvard’s admissions plan as a “legally sound approach” to admissions.
The federal suits say that Harvard and UNC rely on race-based affirmative action policies that impact admissions of high-achieving white and Asian American students. The Harvard lawsuit also alleges that the institution specifically curbs the number of Asian Americans it admits each year.
Yukong Zhao, who organized the groups for Friday's complaint, challenged Harvard to open its admission books to prove that Asians were not purposefully being put at a disadvantage. "We want to help this country move forward," Zhao said.
Other Asian American groups and officials also released statements supporting affirmative action, including two members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. "Neither of us believes that any racial or ethnic group should be subjected to quotas," Commissioners Michael Yaki and Karen Narasaki said. "Nor do we believe that test scores alone entitle anyone to admission at Harvard. Students are more than their test scores and grades."

GOP has waited two years for info on IRS correspondence with Dem senators

Washington Republicans said this week that their requests to the IRS for correspondences between the agency and congressional Democrats remain unfulfilled after two years, raising questions about whether the Obama administration is trying to withhold information for a third-straight election cycle.
“Instead of holding the IRS accountable, Democrats are trying to cover-up their involvement in the IRS targeting scandal,” National Republican Senatorial Committee spokeswoman Andrea Bozek said Friday.
The group, which focuses on getting Republicans elected and reelected to the Senate, provided documents earlier this week showing 10 letters in which the IRS has asked for more time to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests since May 21, 2013.
"On January 14, 2015, I asked for more time to obtain the records you requested,” IRS tax law specialist Denise Higley wrote NRSC lawyer Megan Sowards on April 29. “I am still working on your request and need additional time.”
Higley also said she would contact the NRSC by July 6 if she needs more time.
IRS official Lois Lerner made public in early May 2013 that the agency during President Obama’s 2012 re-election bid had targeted Tea Party groups and other organizations with politically conservative sounding names when they applied for tax-exempt status.
Lerner, who ran the agency’s tax-exempt division, asserted her Fifth Amendment rights when called before Congress to testify about the matter.
She has since retired, and additional efforts by congressional Republicans and others to learn whether the upper reaches of the Obama administration ordered the targeting have been slowed because the hard drive on Lerner’s government computer crash, destroying hundreds or perhaps thousands of emails.  
Republicans and others have also speculated about whether the administration is stalling on providing information until Obama retires from office after the November 2016 elections.
Thursday will mark the second anniversary of the requests.
The agency could not be reached Saturday for additional comment.
The NRSC, which last year help Republicans win control of the Senate, historically focuses its manpower and money on defeating incumbent Democrats who appear vulnerable.
The group has specifically asked for records of correspondence between the IRS and Sen. Mike Bennett, a Democrat seeking a second full term next year in the swing state of Colorado.   
The NRSC is also looking for correspondence between the IRS and New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer.
Others including North Carolina’s Kay Hagan and Alaska’s Mark Begich have already lost re-election bids. Former Senate Majority Leader Harry is also on the original list, but the Nevada Democrat is not seeking re-election next year.