CPD IN THE NEWS

Latin Times - Nov 07, 2013

Like the other 13 detainees set to appear before an immigration judge on Wednesday afternoon, Maximiliano Ortiz had been roused in the wee hours of the morning from his cell in a county jail.  Facing the judge at the Varick Street Immigration Court in Lower Manhattan, clothed in an orange jumpsuit, he looked groggy. 

"Are you arriving at this decision voluntarily?" the judge asked.  The interpreter translated the question into Spanish. 

"Yes," said Ortiz, and shortly afterward, having agreed to concede the charge of "entry without inspection" and accept an order of removal from the country, the first of about 190 poor, detained immigrant to receive pro bono legal representation via the city of New York was escorted out of the courtroom, chains jangling at his wrist and waist. 

On Wednesday, a coalition of seven public defender, legal advocacy and community activist groups unveiled the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP), the first program in the nation to win public funding for legal defense of detained immigrants who cannot afford to hire lawyers.  In June, the New York City Council appropriated $500,000 for the pilot, which organizers say will be enough to meet about 20 percent of each year's need.  Under the program, detainees whose income falls at no more than 200 percent of the federal poverty line can receive pro bono legal counsel from New York Immigrant Defenders, which consists of public defender offices The Bronx Defenders and Brooklyn Defense Services. 

Organizers of the project trace its descent to the efforts of Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Robert Katzmann, who in 2010 commissioned two separate studies of detained immigrant representation in the city.  The odds those reports gave detainees were dim: of the 4,818 detainees who had to argue their case from 2005 to 2010, one found, only 3 percent of them did it successfully, compared to 74 percent of those who were represented and weren't held in detention in the time leading up to their appearance.  A separate study carried out previously by the City Bar Justice Center concluded that 39.2 percent of the 400 detainees it interviewed had "possibly meritorious claims for various forms of relief from removal". 

Immigration law is one of the most notoriously complex types, comparable to tax law.  But Lisa Schreibersdorf, founder and executive director of Brooklyn Defense Services, says detainees could win the right to remain in the country through a wide range of ways.  Some have status and don't know it.  "We had a kid who came to the country when he was two with his mom and dad.  The parents got separated, and he went to live with his mom.  His dad became a citizen before the kid turned 18.  Now, that's automatic citizenship for the child, but the kid didn't know.  When he was being interviewed by immigration officials, they'd ask if he was documented and he'd say, 'no'.  So off he goes."

Others who have green cards or visas might be able to stay because of a US citizen spouse; those without papers might be able to receive legal status of some sort - for example, victims of domestic violence or trafficking could apply for U or T visas, or young people who grew up in the US could apply for DACA. 

"People sometimes don't know, or they don't follow through and do it," she said.  "Even now that they're facing deportation, it's not too late.  You can still apply for those things, and that should actually negate the deportation proceeding.  That's really where I think most of the benefit is going to come from."

"Then there's the low-level criminal cases where deportation is not required and the judge has the ability to cancel the removal.  In that situation, a lawyer's very helpful because they explains to the judge what's going on with that family.  It's very hard for an individual who's unrepresented to know what to tell the judge, what kind of things are going to help them.  Plus it's very hard for people to speak in public.  That's what we're good at." 

On Wednesday, 10 of the 14 detainees who showed up for their initial court hearings were represented by lawyers provided by one of the two groups.  All of them were from Latin American countries.  Marianne Yang, the director of the immigration unit at Brooklyn Defense Services, says they expect demographics of clients to vary.  But according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse(TRAC), a database of information obtained from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agencies, out of the top ten most common nationalities, eight of them are in Latin America.  The most typical profile for a detainee in NYC's immigration system is a Mexican (26 percent of all nationalities; Dominicans make up another 15 percent) who has been charged with "entry without inspection" -- a charge which accounts for about 47 percent of all detainees and some 89 percent of those who are from Mexico. 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials say the agency only goes after immigrants who fit in its priority categories: someone who has committed serious crimes while in the US lawfully, people who crossed the border illegally in recent times and has few community ties, and "egregious immigration violators", or those have committed fraud or violated immigration law on multiple occasions.  But organizers point to the case of Carlos Rodríguez Vásquez, a 27-year-old cook from the Dominican Republic and husband to a US citizen wife who was arrested by the NYPD for "trespassing" in the apartment building of a friend in Washington Heights.  "In court, they dropped the charges right away, because I'd never had any kind of trouble with the law," he said.  But he'd never filed the paperwork to declare his marriage to his wife in the United States, and the NYPD passed him off to ICE, which transferred him to a detention facility in Hudson County, New Jersey. 

His family shelled out for a lawyer.  But when his case went before a judge, Vásquez says, "The lawyer I hired made me sign a voluntary deportation agreement without talking to me about it, without me knowing."  He ended up calling the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights, which helped him win a retrial, but not before remaining in detention for an additional eight months.

In a report released on Thursday, the project's organizers argue that it makes good financial sense for the public, saying it will save New York state nearly $1.9 million per year in public health insurance spending, foster care services, and lost tax revenues.  It also says it'll help employers save $4 million annually which they lose through turnover when immigrants are forced to leave their jobs.  "Taken together," the report says, "these savings offset the majority of the investment needed to establish he program."

"It's presented as something which is just for immigrant families," said Brittny Saunders, senior staff attorney at the Center for Popular Democracy. "But in reality it's for everybody."

Source:

Landlord-in-chief Donald Trump wants to evict 800,000 people from the U.S. On September 5th, the Trump administration announced it intends to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

Many DACA recipients, employed in the construction industry, built the very buildings that made real-estate moguls like Trump rich.

Everyday, the people of New York City are fighting landlords and their racist policies. This past couple of weeks have been no exception. On Wednesday, Aug. 30, thousands turned out for a march to protect DACA. It was organized by 15 different community organizations, including 32BJ SEIU, Working Families Party, Make the Road New York, New York Immigration Coalition, United We Dream, Tenants and Neighbors, Churches United For Fair Housing (CUFFH), New York Communities for Change, Alliance for Quality Education (AQE), VOCAL NY, the Women’s March, and the Center for Popular Democracy. Thousands in cities and municipalities around the country also rallied and marched to defend DACA.

Read the full article here.

WASHINGTON — One of the longest economic expansions in American history remains so fragile that the Federal Reserve said on Thursday it would postpone any retreat from its stimulus campaign.

Janet L. Yellen, the Fed’s chairwoman, described the decision as a close call and said the central bank still expected to raise interest rates later this year. The Fed has kept its benchmark interest rate close to zero since late 2008, when the nation’s economy was at the depths of crisis.

“The recovery from the Great Recession has advanced sufficiently far and domestic spending has been sufficiently robust that an argument can be made for a rise in interest rates at this time,” Ms. Yellen said at a news conference.

But, she said, “heightened uncertainties abroad,” including the Chinese economy’s weakness, had persuaded the bank to wait at least a few more weeks for fresh data that might “bolster its confidence” in continued growth.

The Fed’s decision, announced after a two-day meeting of its policy-making committee, had been widely expected by investors in recent weeks.

Fed officials spent most of the summer suggesting that they wanted to raise rates in September, only to lose confidence as signs of slowing global growth weighed on markets.

The 10-year Treasury note yield fell 0.11 percentage points to 2.189 percent. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index dropped 0.26 percent to 1,990.20.

There were signs, however, that the Fed might hesitate only briefly. It separately released economic projections showing 13 of the 17 officials on the Federal Open Market Committee still expected to raise the benchmark rate this year.

The Fed has said it is moving toward raising rates because it expects economic growth to continue, reducing unemployment and eventually raising inflation; on Thursday, Ms. Yellen said that outlook had not changed.

“There’s a tendency among some to think that they’re always going to get cold feet, and I thought Yellen really as much as possible discouraged that kind of thinking,” said John L. Bellows, a portfolio manager at Western Asset Management.

The policy-making committee still has scheduled meetings in October and December, and Ms. Yellen said a rate increase was possible at either meeting.

One official, Jeffrey M. Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, in Virginia, voted to raise rates at the September meeting, the first dissent this year. The economic projections suggest that Ms. Yellen faces more disagreements at the Fed’s October meeting, given that six officials predicted the Fed would raise rates at least two times this year, while four said that they expected no increases.

The latest postponement was welcomed by liberal activists and economists who argue that the recovery remains incomplete. Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, introduced legislation on Thursday directing the Fed to push the unemployment rate below 4 percent. While the bill has no chance of winning approval in the Republican-controlled Congress, Mr. Conyers addressed a rally organized by the Center for Popular Democracy outside an office building where Ms. Yellen spoke, joining in a chant of “Don’t raise interest rates.”

Critics expressed concern that the Fed has adopted increasingly ambitious goals for its stimulus campaign. “There is always a reason to chicken out,” said Dean Croushore, a professor of economics at the University of Richmond. “The Fed will lose credibility over time, as it fails to follow its own prior announcements about when it will increase rates.”

Ms. Yellen, asked about the efforts to put public pressure on the Fed, which have mounted in recent months, dryly observed, “We have been receiving advice from a large number of economists and interested groups.”

She denied that outside pressure had influenced the Fed’s decision. She also said it had not been influenced by concerns about a potential government shutdown, which could disrupt growth, though she said that it “would be more than unfortunate.”

The Fed’s decision is probably a “mixed blessing” for the global economy,” Eswar S. Prasad, an economics professor at Cornell, said in an email. Instead of new pressures, investors must deal with continued uncertainty.

A Fed increase, for example, might have prompted investors to pull money out of countries like Turkey or Brazil, damaging their economies, and reduced demand for imports from Europe and other developed countries. But the decision to stand pat also could weigh on Europe in the short term if it causes the euro to rise against the dollar, making things harder for exporters.

The American economy is outpacing the rest of the world, and Ms. Yellen said on Thursday that the Fed did not yet see evidence that growth was slowing.

Fed officials say they believe that labor market conditions have nearly returned to normal. In the new round of economic projections, officials estimated unemployment would stabilize next year at 4.8 percent, just below the August level of 5.1 percent.

Officials also remain confident that inflation will rebound, although perhaps a little slowly because of the recent downturn in the prices of oil and other commodities. Since the financial crisis, inflation has remained consistently below the central bank’s 2 percent annual target, lately rising just 0.3 percent over the previous year.

Fed officials argue that a tighter labor market will lead to higher inflation as employers are finally prodded to pay higher wages. But, Ms. Yellen said on Thursday, that will happen more slowly than the unemployment rate might suggest, because people not counted among the unemployed — like those who have stopped looking for work or have taken part-time jobs — may start looking again as conditions improve.

James A. Wilcox, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, said that it was difficult to find evidence for a strong connection between inflation and employment, particularly over the last decade. Inflation fell less than expected during the recession, and it has increased less than expected in the aftermath.

“The events of the last 10 years have caused a lot of rethinking and stomach acid within the Federal Reserve and the research community,” Dr. Wilcox said.

Recent history has reinforced the more basic point that it takes a lot to change the underlying pace of inflation. That stability has allowed the Fed to press its stimulus campaign, but Dr. Wilcox said it also provided a good reason for the Fed to be wary of allowing inflation to climb, because reversing the trend could be very painful.

“If the heat builds slowly, and it can only be turned down slowly, then you have to move ahead of time,” he said. “That’s why there’s sympathy for the idea of starting to raise rates relatively soon.”

Given the weakness of economic growth, however, Ms. Yellen reiterated on Thursday that the Fed planned to raise rates more slowly than its past practice. Fed officials expect the benchmark rate to reach 2.6 percent by the end of 2017.

In June, they predicted the rate would reach 2.9 percent. Officials also expect the rate to reach a new plateau of about 3.5 percent, less than the June prediction of 3.8 percent and significantly below the level once regarded as normal. Such a low plateau would limit the Fed’s ability to respond to economic downturns.

The Fed has already held its benchmark rate near zero much longer than it once expected. It announced in 2012 that it would keep rates near zero at least until the unemployment rate fell below 6.5 percent. That threshold was crossed in April 2014.

Last winter, when the Fed ended its bond-buying campaign, officials pointed to June as the most likely moment for “liftoff” from the so-called zero bound.

Some officials have made clear they are not inclined to wait much longer.

Stanley Fischer, vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, warned in late August that officials would not be able to postpone a decision until all doubts were resolved. “When the case is overwhelming,” he said, “if you wait that long, then you’ve waited too long.”

Ms. Yellen echoed that warning on Thursday. “We don’t want to wait until we’ve fully met both of our objectives to tighten monetary policy,” she said.

The Fed’s hesitation on Thursday echoed events of two years ago, when investors expected the central bank to announce at its September 2013 meeting that it was tapering its bond purchases. The Fed demurred, citing uncertainty about economic conditions.

Instead of September, it acted in December.

Source: New York Times

FORMER CALIFORNIA ATTORNEY General Kamala Harris on Wednesday vaguely acknowledged The Intercept’s report about her declining to prosecute Steven Mnuchin’s OneWest Bank for foreclosure violations in 2013, but offered no explanation.

“It’s a decision my office made,” she said, in response to questions from The Hill shortly after being sworn in as California’s newest U.S. senator.

“We went and we followed the facts and the evidence, and it’s a decision my office made,” Harris said. “We pursued it just like any other case. We go and we take a case wherever the facts lead us.”

Mnuchin is Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Treasury Department, and served as CEO of OneWest from 2009 to 2015. In an internal memo published on Tuesday by The Intercept, prosecutors at the California attorney general’s office said they had found over a thousand violations of foreclosure laws by his bank during that time, and predicted that further investigation would uncover many thousands more.

But the investigation into what the memo called “widespread misconduct” was closed after Harris’s office declined to file a civil enforcement action against the bank.

Harris’s statement on Tuesday doesn’t explain how involved she was with the decision to not prosecute, or why the decision was made. She also would not say whether the revelations would disqualify Mnuchin for the position of treasury secretary. “The hearings will reveal if it’s disqualifying or not, but certainly he has a history that should be critically examined, as do all of the nominees,” Harris told The Hill. She added that she would review the background and history of all Trump cabinet nominees.

Senate Democrats have vowed to put up a fight over Mnuchin — even creating a website inviting homeowners to list their complaints against OneWest. And yet not one senator has commented publicly on the leaked memo, which received media coverage in Politico, Bloomberg, the New York Post, CBS News, Vanity Fair, CNN, CNBC, and other outlets.

The Intercept has reached out to half a dozen Senate Democratic offices, including those of Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and leading Mnuchin critics Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, receiving no response.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc., retweeted the story, as did the Twitter account of the Democratic National Committee. But another DNC tweet just hours later hinted at the bind Democrats are in when it comes to using the information against Mnuchin. That tweet praised Harris’s swearing-in. Her decision not to prosecute may make her new colleagues wary of pursuing it.

Progressive groups have not been so reluctant. Three groups — the Rootstrikers project at Demand Progress, the Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up Campaign, and the California Reinvestment Coalition – have called for a delay of Mnuchin’s confirmation hearing until he publicly discloses all settlements and lawsuits OneWest has faced from its foreclosure-related activities, responds fully to all questions submitted by members of the Senate Finance Committee, and publicly discloses his role in obstructing the California attorney general investigation, or any others.

The California Reinvestment Coalition followed that up on Thursday by asking OneWest to release the obstructed evidence, which involved loan files held by a third party then known as Lender Processing Services (it’s now called Black Knight Financial Services). “That’s something the Senate Finance Committee should ask him for, prior to scheduling their hearing with him,” said Paulina Gonzalez, executive director of the California Reinvestment Coalition.

Mnuchin has already declined to answer a detailed list of questions from Finance Committee member Sherrod Brown, which Brown sent before the release of the leaked memo.

After The Intercept story was published, Mnuchin spokesperson Barney Keller called it “meritless,” and highlighted OneWest’s completion of a foreclosure review with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (which involved completely separate issues from the California inquiry) and what he claimed was OneWest’s issuance of over 100,000 loan modifications to borrowers.

“Memos like this belong in the garbage, not the news,” Keller said.

Meanwhile, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, an organizing group that made headlines in 2010 by protesting on Mnuchin’s front lawn over OneWest’s foreclosure practices, expressed disbelief that he could now become treasury secretary. “My family lived first hand the fraud and unethical behavior under his leadership when I was told to default before they could help me, and (was) instead pushed into foreclosure,” said Peggy Mears, a OneWest victim.

ACCE plans to ask incoming California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to take up the prosecution of OneWest based on the newly released evidence. And the group vowed to fight the Mnuchin nomination. “No one who oversaw the defrauding of thousands of homeowners should be allowed to serve watch over our country’s money,” Mears said.

By David Dayen

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