A senior Justice Department official is arguing that 3- and 4-year-olds can learn immigration law well enough to represent themselves in court, staking out an unconventional position in a growing debate over whether immigrant children facing deportation are entitled to taxpayer-funded attorneys.<\/span>
<\/span>Jack H. Weil, a longtime immigration judge who is responsible for training other judges, made the assertion in sworn testimony in a deposition in federal court in Seattle. His comments highlighted the plight of thousands of juveniles who are forced to defend themselves each year in immigration court amid a surge of children from Central America who cross the southwestern U.S. border .<\/span>
<\/span>\u201cI\u2019ve taught immigration law literally to 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds,\u201d Weil said. \u201cIt takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of patience. They get it. It\u2019s not the most efficient, but it can be done.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span>He repeated his claim twice in the deposition, also saying, \u201cI\u2019ve told you I have trained 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds in immigration law,\u201d according to a transcript. \u201cYou can do a fair hearing. It\u2019s going to take you a lot of time.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span>Legal and child psychology experts ridiculed Weil\u2019s assertions, noting that key milestones for 3- and 4-year-olds include cooperating with other children, saying simple sentences and building towers of blocks.<\/span>
<\/span>\u201cI nearly fell off my chair when I read that deposition,\u201d said Laurence Steinberg, a psychology professor at Temple University, who is a witness for the plaintiffs in the Seattle case. \u201cThree- and 4-year-olds do not yet have logical reasoning abilities. It\u2019s preposterous, frankly, to think they could be taught enough about immigration law to be able to represent themselves in court.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>
<\/span>Lauren Alder Reid, a spokeswoman for the department\u2019s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), said in a statement: \u201cAt no time has the Department indicated that 3 and 4 year olds are capable of representing themselves. Jack Weil was speaking in a personal capacity and his statements, therefore, do not necessarily represent the views of EOIR or the Department of Justice.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>
<\/span>Weil is not just any immigration official. As an assistant chief immigration judge in EOIR\u2019s Office of the Chief Immigration Judge \u2014 which sets and oversees policies for the nation\u2019s 58 immigration courts \u2014 he is responsible for coordinating the Justice Department\u2019s training of immigration judges.<\/span>
<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>
<\/span>Ahilan Arulanantham, deputy legal director at the ACLU of Southern California and the attorney who questioned Weil in the deposition, said he initially thought the judge had misspoken \u201cbecause what he said was so outrageous. As I asked further questions, he obviously meant what he said.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span>\u201cThis is the person in charge of training immigration judges about how to treat children? And this is the witness the government puts forward to present their views as to how this is supposed to happen? That is horrifying,\u201d said Arulanantham. He added that Weil\u2019s assertions \u201care going to be a significant issue in the case.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span>Unlike in felony criminal cases in federal court, children charged with violating immigration laws have no right to appointed counsel, even though the government is represented by Department of Homeland Security attorneys.<\/span>
<\/span>Although a network of pro bono organizations and a Justice Department program try to help children find attorneys \u2014 some paid for by the government \u2014 many children are forced to fend for themselves. According to Justice Department figures, 42 percent of the more than 20,000 unaccompanied children involved in deportation proceedings completed between July 2014 and late December had no attorney. It is unclear how often children 5 or under are forced to defend themselves, but attorneys and advocates for immigrants said it does happen.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nThis is a level of outright malice inherent in his statements that leaves me dumbstruck.<\/p>\n
Weil should not be an Immigration Judge. I’m not sure that he should be trusted as a pastry chef.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The most evil thing in America this doesn’t come from the Republican Presidential campaign. It came from immigration judge Jack Weil, who has asserted that 3 and 4 year old children are qualified to represent themselves before an immigration judge: A senior Justice Department official is arguing that 3- and 4-year-olds can learn immigration law …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,969,1053,972,1041],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-evil","category-immigration","category-justice","category-law-enforcement-misconduct"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181835"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181835\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}