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A "Fair Legal Audience"? - Decide For Yourself:
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS ELIAN
GONZALEZ ,
a minor, by and through LAZARO
GONZALEZ,
as
next friend, or, alternatively, as temporary legal custodian, V. JANET
RENO, Attorney
General of the United States; DORIS MEISSNER, Commissioner, United
States Immigration and Naturalization Service; ROBERT WALLIS, District
Director, United States Immigration and Naturalization. Service; UNITED
STATES IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE; and UNITED STATES
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, JUAN
GONZALEZ, Intervenor TRANSCRIPT
OF ORAL ARGUMENT APPEARANCES
OF COUNSEL: For the Plaintiffs-Appellants: KENDALL COFFEY,
Attorney at Law DONNA
C. KEEBLE, Official Court Reporter P
R 0 C E E D I N G S
JUDGE EDMONDSON: Gonzalez
versus Reno.
{Again
please note: NOT Gonz. v Gonz.} Mr. Coffey, come
around and speak to us, please. MR. COFFEY:
Good morning, your Honor. This is Kendall Coffey for the appellant.
Few things can
be more compelling in either law or life itself than the cause of a
child and, before you this morning, for the rights of a young boy to be
protected from potentially serious harm of a police state. The United States
Congress has, without qualification or reservation of any kind,
established asylum laws with arms that enfold young children within
their protection. The mandatory
will of the Congress and the mandatory statements of the regulations
should have been enough for any responsible agency but, instead, the INS
has done everything possible to avoid the required hearing. JUDGE
WILSON: Mr.
Coffey, is it your contention that the INS has absolutely no discretion
whatsoever to determine whether an asylum application is properly
submitted? MR. COFFEY: Your
Honor, it does not. It must follow its own regulations and those
regulations provide that if an asylum application is completed, there
shall be a hearing. JUDGE WILSON: No
discretion whatsoever? MR. COFFEY: None,
your Honor. In fact ---
...
JUDGE
WILSON: Well,
let me pose a hypothetical to you. MR. COFFEY: Yes,
your Honor? JUDGE WILSON: Let's
say a teenage baby-sitter for a two-year-old alien child takes that
child downtown to the INS office while his parents are at the movies and
has him scribble his first name on an asylum application and the parents
come running down an hour or two later screaming, "I speak for my
child, this baby-sitter doesn't speak for my child," you're telling
me that the INS doesn't have any discretion whatsoever, they have to go
through the time and the expense of having a formal asylum hearing? MR. COFFEY: Your
Honor, if the
{APPLICATION}
form is facially sufficient, on its face, their own regulations say that
there shall be a hearing. That's very
different from a situation where,
for example, in the course of the asylum
hearing
,
they
{
[the
INS], WOULD even}
have to allow a baby-sitter or a smuggler to speak for the child. If there were an
asylum hearing, which typically, your Honor, many of them are 30 minutes
or less -- JUDGE DUBINA: Can
there be an application, though, if the child does not have the
capacity to fill out the form? MR. COFFEY: Well,
your Honor, of course, that's not the case. We have a six-year-old and I
think the guidelines, the INS's own announced procedures, are very clear
that a six-year-old can seek asylum. But if this
extraordinary case which the INS keeps talking about -- which, frankly,
I don't think has come up and which does not present any kind of a
significant agency issue other than for purposes of argument -- JUDGE DUBINA:
It seems to me that the Government in its brief has conceded that
the district court got the statutory interpretation wrong and that any
alien could
include a child such as Elian in this case. The problem then
is, though,
and as they framed the issue in their brief, did he
apply
in this case. Do you agree that
that is the way the issue ought to be framed? MR. COFFEY: That's
the issue now, in their
brief.
JUDGE DUBINA: Do
you agree that's the way the issue ought to be framed? MR. COFFEY: No,
your Honor, I don't. I
think he did
apply.
{
HOW
ABOUT: NO ONE COULD REASONABLY QUESTION AT THIS JUNCTURE THAT HE DID APPLY?!!!}
I think that an
agency's actions have to be reviewed by the analysis the agency did at
the time; and what they did at the time was travel strictly under 1158
(a), the authority to apply for asylum statute, and said that he's
too young. Since
then, they made a remarkable retreat from that and now said, well, he
really isn't too young, because that's exactly what their own guidelines
show. In fact, as the
Court observed in its earlier order,
six
to twelve-year-olds are one of the categories that they specifically
have dedicated training for to determine asylum applications. But now
what they are saying is that the
asylum
application was never filed
and that's contrary to their own regulations. It is certainly
within the prerogative of the INS to duly promulgate regulations. If
they believe there is a baby-sitter problem, they could address that in
the form of regulations and they could make age-specific determinations
in the form of duly promulgated regulations. But what they
can't do is when they have an existing regulation that makes it
mandatory – ... JUDGE WILSON:
Well,
how do you distinguish the Polovchak case when the Seventh Circuit
determined that a twelve-year-old is near the lower end of-the range
where you have the mental capacity or the ability to express a
well-founded fear of persecution sufficient to file an application for
asylum? MR. COFFEY: Well,
what the Polovchak said is that twelve
years was the young end of where a child's interest is equal to or
greater than the parent. It didn't really say that a child, even a
younger child, has no interest at all. And, obviously,
as we acknowledge, a six-year-old's maturity is a factor to be
considered but it is not
a per se
disqualification. And, your Honor, if
the INS had read Polovchak as December 1998 when they announced their
guidelines for children's asylum, if they had said that twelve is the
minimum age, why doesn't it appear anywhere in their own guidelines? Polovchak, in "This
twelve-year-old is the bottom end theory" isn't in their
guidelines; it isn't in the U.N. guidelines. In fact, they
promulgated a specific regulation dealing with the situation of
parent/child conflict where the parent is presently residing in the U.S.
and what they provided in their own regulation is not that there is a
disqualification of six-year-olds. It's absolutely age neutral,
it
does not disqualify on the basis of any age
at all. It says that the
child gets the asylum hearing
and that the parents participate. And that really is
the wisdom of Polovchak, not that there is any disqualification based on
age. And, again, it
doesn't say that anybody under twelve is disqualified but that the
parents' rights are sufficiently important that they, of course, should
be considered in the context of the child's asylum hearing. And, indeed, the
INS guidelines talk about – ...
JUDGE WILSON:
Well, was it in the context of the asylum hearing or in the context of
the asylum application? MR. COFFEY: Well,
your Honor, the only form for adjudication in the INS guidelines is a
hearing, is a hearing/interview by the asylum officer. JUDGE WILSON: What
if you have multiple, multiple applications on behalf of a child,
someone has got to decide who speaks for the child, right? MR. COFFEY: That's
right, your Honor. JUDGE WILSON: Well,
then who makes that decision? MR. COFFEY: You
look at the guidelines. And what the guidelines say is that the child
can speak for the child if the child is acting voluntarily. And a
six-year-old that's cognitive, as we know, could testify in a court of
this land competently, under oath, and that testimony could send adults
to prison for a very long time. This child,
according to the evidence of record, was more than sufficiently
competent to express his desire to invoke a chance to stay in this
country. JUDGE WILSON: Well,
you have represented prominently in your briefs and your submissions
that this six-year-old has the mind and the intelligence of a
twelve-year-old, which is suspiciously convenient to the age that Mr.
Polovchak was. But, I've reviewed
this asylum application and I'm sure Elian Gonzalez is a very bright and
intelligent six-year-old but he didn't even have the ability to sign his
last name on that asylum petition. MR. COFFEY: Your
Honor, many aliens, many aliens have to rely on adults, lawyers,
Catholic services, a range of folks to help them with the process. Of course, when the
INS guidelines were created to treat the child's own asylum application
-- and that's their announced procedures -- and when this court examined
the issues of an agency's own announced procedures in Jean versus
Nelson, which was the INS, this court made it very clear that an agency
has to adhere to its own analysis, procedures. But in the context
of their own guidelines, they talk about the child coming in; they go
through a range of discussions that make it very clear that the asylum
officer is supposed to reach out to that child, a trusted adult --
and that's the term of art -- and they say should presumptively should
be allowed in there with the child. They say a
smuggler, by the way, if there is somebody in there who is adverse to
the child, should be told to leave the room; and that if in a particular
situation it's necessary to be fair to the child, you have to get a
guardian and then you do that, too. JUDGE WILSON: Well,
I'm going to read one of the questions or one of the questions on a
standard form asylum application. I understand that the three
applications that have been submitted in this case are under seal. One
of the questions is, "Have you or any member of your family ever
belonged to or been associated with any organization or groups in your
home country such as, but not limited to, a political party, student
group, labor union, religious organization, military or paramilitary
group, civil patrol, guerilla organization, ethnic group, human rights,
group or press or the media?" You're telling me
that a six-year-old is competent to answer questions like that? MR. COFFEY: Your
Honor, I don't think a six-year-old can answer in detail all of the
questions but what the law says is that there is an age-appropriate
process for six-year-olds. For example,
subjective fear of prosecution, the INS is saying in so many words that
children, if they have difficulty articulating a subjective fear of
prosecution, that is, their own fear, they are implying that they are
disqualified. The guidelines say
the opposite. What they say is that you reduce the burden on a child
where there is a subjective fear of persecution precisely because they
are young and you look to more objective factors. JUDGE WILSON: Well,
I've read the answers, the answers on this asylum application, and they
all appear to be written in the third person and reflect maybe a fear of
prosecution on behalf of someone else, like maybe the person who is
submitting the asylum application on behalf of Elian Gonzalez. Doesn't it appear
that this is really an expression of a fear of prosecution on behalf of
someone other than the petitioner himself? MR. COFFEY: Well,
your Honor, you can certainly have, in a sense, situations where a child
can be subjected to harm because of identification with family members,
no question about that. And here, you have a child who was identified
with a stepfather, a mother who gave her life to bring him to this
country, as well as now the U.S. relatives, all of whose actions are
crimes in Cuba. Make no mistake
about it, this child's mother, the person in the world we cherish the
most, is a traitor in Cuba. And an as our
evidence suggests, evidence that's in the record, what is done in those
circumstances is the child is basically compelled to repudiate the
memory of the parent whose a traitor. JUDGE WILSON: Well,
the supreme court ruled in INS versus Elias-Zacarias, a case that was
cited in the briefs that an asylum seeker claiming to be the victim of
persecution on account of political opinion must offer evidence of four
things: Number one, that he has been a victim of persecution; secondly,
that he holds a political opinion; thirdly, that his political opinion
is known to his persecutors; and, fourth, that the persecution has been
or will be on account of his political opinion. And you're telling
me that the INS does not have the discretion to take a look at this
asylum application and determine that this six-year-old is unable to
meet those four prongs of the test? MR. COFFEY: Your Honor, they can't do that. There has never been a procedure by the INS to pre-screen applications, never. They give a hearing and, in certain limited instances, they still give the applicant an interview. This is the first time ever special --- ... {CUTTING HIM OFF AGAIN! [#4] } JUDGE
WILSON:
So
the INS's hands are tied? If a kidnapper brings in a six-month-old
child, they got to go through the time and the expense of an asylum
hearing? MR. COFFEY: Your
Honor, I think that if a kidnapper comes in with a six-month-old child
– ...
{CUT
HIM OFF AGAIN!
[#5]
} J
UDGE
WILSON: And a prior criminal record. MR. COFFEY: -- and
a prior criminal record, then the INS officer can make, based on the
circumstances at the front end, a determination that this is not the
will of the child and there is no, quote, "trusted adult,"
because this is a kidnapper, then in those circumstances, they might be
able to reject an asylum application. But
that is so far from the case here. J
UDGE
WILSON: Well, there is some discretion on the part of the INS then? MR. COFFEY: Your
Honor, I guess what I would say is the issue, is did this child seek
asylum. If the child did not seek asylum in the scenario that you're
talking about, then that is a different case than the one we have here
today. But the evidence
we have before you -- and it's on a summary judgment standard, all of
the facts have to be taken favorably, of course, to the appellant --
the evidence that we have before you is that this child did want to stay
here. And, of course,
many aliens, your Honor, have very little education, they have no clue
about U.S. asylum law; so, of course, applications are filled out by
lawyers and an age-appropriate or a culture-appropriate discussion is
made between the lawyer and the alien. It doesn't mean they are
disqualified. And I want to
emphasize what is so unfair about the procedure they
invented
here. And now, it's almost like a three-part requirement that they quote
really for the first time in their answer brief that says that they can
look at an application and pre-screen them out. That does not exist
before your Honor. And the
controlling regulation, what it says is that the asylum officer has to
consider any other evidence presented at the hearing, mandatory duty. There was never
a statement at the time this application was submitted that all of your
evidence of any kind has to be in this document, because, we, the INS,
are going create for the first time ever a substantial threshold showing
requirement. You
can't have procedures that are invented four months after-the-fact.
That's incredibly unfair and it violates their own regulation as well as
the guidelines which are at the heart of this matter, your Honor. What they do,
what they always do, is give a - hearing.
A hearing, a day in court, is the heart and soul of justice. It is something in
H.V.C. versus Smith, which I don't think Jean versus Nelson in this
respect overruled at all, said some form of hearing is always required. Why wasn't it done
here? And to suggest that
they are flooded with baby-sitter applications is obviously not true. If
it were, there would be a regulation for it. And the only regulation
they promulgated on minor-parent disagreement allows the minor's case to
go forward to adjudication and brings the parent in. That's fair, we
have never objected to it, but it does not mean you disqualify a small
child. To the contrary, when you read the INS criteria on December, the
10th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Rights, they couldn't
make it more clear that children, refugee children, get more rights than
anyone else; and that with all of the nation's concern about the flood
of immigration, there is still an open heart and an open mind where
refugee children are concerned. Those principles
were turned on their head in this case and a child that should have
gotten, under the INS's own criteria, more compassion, more
consideration, more of a day in court, got absolutely none. JUDGE WILSON
:
Let me ask you -- I see your time is up but let me ask you this: There
is a statute, Section 1103 (a)(1) of Title VIII of the United States
Code, it's been cited in the briefs. It says the attorney general shall
be charged with the administration and enforcement of this chapter and
all other laws relating to the immigration and naturalization of aliens
except insofar as this chapter or such laws relate to the powers,
functions and duties conferred upon the President, Secretary of State,
Office of the Department of State or diplomatic or consulate offices,
provided, however, that determination and ruling by the attorney
general with respect to all questions of law shall be controlling. What does that
mean? {-- QUIZ TIME from JUDGE W.?} MR. COFFEY: What it
means, your Honor -- and the Geary-Geary case and other cases make it
clear -- that's not a divestiture of your jurisdiction, the law is
still decided by a federal court. What it means is -- and the Jean
versus Nelson case discusses something similar, as does the supreme
court case in Geary-Geary -- that for INS purposes, the legal issues are
defined by the attorney general, she delegates them down to certain
agencies, such as the B.I.A. and such as other agencies in appropriate
cases. It doesn't mean
that the courts don't decide the law.
The courts decide the law where there is grounds for deference.
And there is none here because the INS's own procedures are
quite clear. Then, of course, courts apply those normal principles. But that is not a
displacement of jurisdictional provision at all, it has never been so
interpreted. JUDGE DUBINA: Let
me ask you about a different statute, before you sit down. What does 8 U.S.C.
Section 1158 (d)(7) mean to you? And I noticed that
you conspicuously did not discuss that statute in your brief. What does
it mean? MR. COFFEY: Your
Honor, that statute, of course, is carved out from 1158 (a). The
apply-for-asylum process has clearly and always been something that the
Courts have addressed. There is a legion
of cases, your own cases, other cases, that say. What I think (d)
addresses is provisions that are brought elsewhere in the statute and
nothing else, nothing more, is brought in (d). It basically says
you don't have a cause of action under certain other traditions of the
asylum statute. But the case law
has made a vast gulf of difference between (a), which is authority to
apply for asylum. And that's where the cases say the INS has got
to obey the statutes, the regulation and its own announced procedures
and other provisions, because, as we know, the actual grant of
asylum, which is, of course,
something
you've never reached
{HERE},
and that's what (b) and some of the other provisions talk about, that
part of the law does
implicate a degree of discretion.
But the duty to
accept and adjudicate an asylum
application
is a duty owed to any alien, including a small child. J
UDGE
EDMONDSON: Any other questions for this lawyer? Thank you. Mr. Kneedler,
would you come up and speak on behalf of the Government, please? MR. KNEEDLER: Thank
you, your Honor. And may it please
the Court, I am Ed Kneedler from the United States Department of
Justice, representing the appellees in the case. JUDGE EDMONDSON:
Mr. Kneedler, it's always been my view that when I'm talking to lawyers
and I insist upon them not being coy with me, that I should not be coy
with you. Let me call your
attention to a couple of things that worry me. MR. KNEEDLER: Yes,
sir. JUDGE EDMONDSON:
Let's assume, for sake of argument, that the INS has considerable
discretion about determining what is an application at all. And let's assume,
for the sake of argument, that the INS has some discretion as to whom
may file on behalf of a six-year-old child, that you are not obliged to
accept an application from a six-year-old child, his own, unsupported by
any adult. Let's assume that. Here are the two
problems that I have with this case and I want you to lend your help. MR. KNEEDLER: Okay.
JUDGE
EDMONDSON: The
first is in reviewing your exercise of discretion for arbitrariness and
reasonableness, the first problem I have is this: The people who apply,
the adult who applied for Elian Gonzalez is not some stranger; he is a
blood relative, related, I think, to about the fourth degree, and he was
at the time the application was submitted -- let's not say filed,
submitted -- the person who had physical custody under the auspices of
the INS. But nonetheless,
he was residing in the man's house. The parent, on
the other hand, resided out of the country altogether. I have a
question -- and I want you to make me feel better about this -- about
the idea that the INS can have a discretionary policy that where the
sole natural parent is not within the jurisdiction of the United States
himself, that he does not have the exclusive right to file, or that he
does have. I guess your
policy is, as I understand it, absent certain special circumstances, the
sole surviving parent has the exclusive right to either apply or not
apply. The problem that
we're talking about, someone who is outside of the jurisdiction of the
United States and the fact that we, as I understand the policy, it's so
rigid about this guy can apply and no one else can apply, that's not my
understanding of the way, for example, in American courts -- which I
agree are not controlling -- but in American courts, I think a wider
variety of people can act as next of friend other than the natural
parent, even if the natural parent is present. The other
problem I have is I can understand your policy -- I tell you what,
Matt, cut off this lawyer's time. I don't want to take up half his time.
Give him all of his time back. No need in my
lecturing you, Mr. Kneedler; I want you to lecture me. I know what I
think. Here is what the
other problem I have is: I understand the idea that you could have a
policy that says, okay, the natural guardian will be the next friend
absent a substantial conflict of interest. I worry about whether there
is inherently a conflict of interest that is substantial where the child
is within the jurisdiction of the United States and the sole parent is
not only beyond the jurisdiction of the United States but is a resident
in what I understand our state department calls a communist totalitarian
state, that whether there is inherently a conflict of interest between
the child in the United States and his father on the question of whether
or not the child should seek asylum in the United States. So those two
issues, first of all, the exclusiveness aspect. And then if we even
assume the exclusivity of the natural parent is okay but we still have a
conflict of interest exception to that, the idea that under these kinds
of circumstances there is an inherent conflict of interest in reality,
those two ideas worry me. And with those
thoughts, we are going to turn the clock back on and let you speak for
awhile. {SO UNLIKE J. WILSON} MR. KNEEDLER: Okay.
Let me try to address those two concerns. With respect to the
first, on whether the parent who is outside the country, the
commissioner's decision in this case goes through a very careful
analysis of this point in an interpretation of the Immigration Act; and
what she says is that under the Immigration Act, you look to the
relationship of parent and child and you look to the relationship under
the law of the domicile, or the law where the relationship arose. And in the
commissioner's decision, that includes an analysis of the law of Cuba,
which presumably would be the law in virtually every country in the
world, which is that a sole surviving parent would speak for the child. The fact that the
parent is – {FAIR "STOP" HERE, SINCE HE IS WAY OFF THE
QUESTION} JUDGE EDMONDSON:
Well, now, Mr. Kneedler, you need to understand that while I agree
that that's the usual practice in the United States -- MR. KNEEDLER: Yes. JUDGE EDMONDSON:
-- I do not agree that that is the law in the United States in terms of
an
absolute
,
that the parent will speak for the child. MR. KNEEDLER:
Right. No, right.
And I hope to get to that in the second part of the question. JUDGE EDMONDSON:
Okay. I didn't mean to break your thought; I just wanted to be sure what
we were communicating. MR. KNEEDLER:
Right. Right. So what the
attorney general concluded is that the parents' right to speak for their
child stems from the law that the place where the relationship arose, in
this case, in Cuba. And Appellant does
not challenge the fact that Juan Miguel Gonzalez is not only the
biological parent but has legal responsibility, has a close and loving
relationship with his son and also is intimately familiar with his life
circumstances. These are
conditions that the courts in the U.S. look to beyond simply biological
parenthood, a legal responsibility, in determining whether a parent
speaks for the child. They sometimes inquire more broadly; I mean, is
the parent well-situated to examine all of the well-being and all of the
considerations of the child, does the parent know the child's
circumstances. So we do have that here. But, more
fundamentally, I think both in U.S. law and in the international
community but the sacred bond between parent and child does not depend
on where the parent or the child happens to be at any particular moment
in time. It is a relationship that actually predates law, that the
responsibility for the parents to be rearing their children to make
major life decisions for them. And particularly
under the immigration laws which deal with Elian's coming and going from
the United States, it is sensible for the attorney general to be giving
effect to parental decisions when the parent may be outside the country
and the child may be in, or vice-versa. Now, with
respect to the -- and, again, as you pointed out, it's not a question of
exclusive right. What the
commissioner decided is that it's presumptively so this father knew his
child and was presumptively able to speak for him. But then the
attorney general separately inquired into the question of whether Juan
Miguel Gonzalez was being coerced to express wishes that were not
actually his true wishes and concluded that he was not and that he was
expressing his true wishes. JUDGE EDMONDSON:
I'm willing
to accept, for the sake of argument, that Juan Gonzalez's desires
to be with his child are honestly held desires, even if those desires
are consistent with the governmental policies of Cuba. MR. KNEEDLER: Okay.
Thank you. And then the
commissioner perhaps could have said that's dispositive and the parent's
rights went out, but that is not what the commissioner said. The commissioner
said that there is a right for a child to apply independently of the
parent, not just derivatively as the child of an asylum seeker but
independently in his or her own right over the objections of the parent,
even if there is an objective basis for the asylum claim such that it
would suggest that the parent is not adequately representing the child
or that there is a divergence of interest. And this
corresponds not only to the experience in the United States that I think
courts apply and I think common sense applies in other settings but also
balances the competing interests under the international regime where
the rights of the child, as we point out in our brief under numerous
international documents, the convention on the Rights of the Child and
even in the asylum setting as the U.N.H.C.R. materials point out, the
rights of the child take place within the family and within the
framework of family re-unification. So it's important that the family's
rights and family re-unification be given a strong weight. But there is a
subjective check on that and it's a more generous and protective policy
than simply parental rights. And now with respect to the analogy within the United States, it is true that people other than parents can be next friends when circumstances require but the sequence under the law and under practice is that the parent presumptively speaks for a young child in making life decisions. And in the next friend or guardian ad litem situation in a court, the wishes of the person who is sought to be protected are given effect or if that person is not competent, then a parent's wishes are given effect, unless there is a conclusion that that parent is not an adequate representative in the particular circumstances and that parent then gets displaced . {VIA
REGULATIONS, TO BE DETERMINED SUBSEQUENT TO THE APPLICATION
SUBMITTAL.} JUDGE EDMONDSON:
That's where I part company with you a little bit on the law. I don't
know that this is outcome-determinative but let me tell you what I think
that
the law is in this country, in general. I think that there
are a wide variety of relations that may come into a court and claim to
be next friend and can lawfully serve without even accounting for what
the natural parent's wishes are. I mean, I don't think that the Courts
always have to say, well, does he have a parent alive and what do they
think. Second, I think
there is law in this country that in the matters of child custody, child
welfare and so forth that relatives related to a degree of the fourth
degree have in Kansas at least by statute, an absolute right, an
absolute right to appear and to argue the welfare of the child. Now, I don't say
that any of that is binding on the INS, I just want you to understand
that it's not so clear to me that there is only one intelligent legal
response, the parent has the right. MR. KNEEDLER: No.
And first of all, this is an area 0in which there is considerable
discretion on the attorney general to fashion appropriate rules and
precisely because these are difficult circumstances and to borrow by
analogy from other circumstances, and so the practice in courts is not
necessarily controlling. But I think that
different kinds of cases could arise from courts, for example, that
might lead to different circumstances. One would be if the
child just has a monetary claim, then for a guardian ad litem to come in
and advance that suit when the parent doesn't want to, may not be much
of an interference with the parent's rights. On the other hand, there
may be circumstances where it would be. You might have a
parent with a seven-year-old child who may have a suit against a school
district and a very valid claim but the parent, knowing the child very
well, said, "I'm going to forego the right to sue on behalf of the
child because it could cause the child difficulties in the classroom, it
could alienate the school district; and I, as the parent in balancing
what's overall the best for the child, as I understand it, and I
understand him, I'm going to forego the lawsuit because of the pain it
might cause the child." Well, to have
another person come in to file such a lawsuit would constitute a
substantial interference with the parent's judgment about whether or not
to file a claim. And something
similar but far more profound is going on here, where a third-party is
coming in and saying, "I want to invoke a legal process on behalf
of this child on something that is life-altering, life-determining in
terms of where that child's lot will be cast in life," to interfere
with the parent's fundamental decision to say, "My child's lot is
with me."
{VIA REGULATIONS, TO BE DETERMINED ONLY SUBSEQUENT TO THE
APPLICATION SUBMITTAL.} And so what the INS
has said in this situation is as long as the parent can be relied upon
to be acting on behalf of his child, as he understands it in his best
judgment, that that should be given effect, unless, again, with this
check, there is a reason to believe -- JUDGE EDMONDSON:
Let's talk a little bit about the question of inherent conflict of
interest where the child is in -the United States, the sole surviving
parent is in a country which our country says is a communist
totalitarian state which regularly violates the freedoms and rights of
its citizens. I don't think I
exaggerate what the State Department says about Cuba, do I? MR. KNEEDLER: No. JUDGE EDMONDSON:
okay. So let's talk about the conflict of interest. MR. KNEEDLER: I do
not think that that or at least the attorney general could reasonably
conclude that that is not the sort of conflict of interest that would
disqualify the parent from presumptively having a say. After all, if the
mere desire of a parent to have his child with him and to rear him and
to guide him and nurture him, one place where the child or someone
purporting to speak on the child's behalf might prefer to have that
child elsewhere, if that were a conflict of interest then that would be
a fundamental, I think, attack on the understanding in a free country
such as ours, that the autonomy of parent and child to develop that
nurturing relationship would be seriously interfered with. And
what the attorney general has done is to interpret this nation's
immigration laws consistent with those background principles of this
nation's constitutional heritage, that the desire of the father to have
the child with him and to nurture the child as the father sees best is
not a conflict of interest. To put it on
nothing nearly as significant as you're posing but it is a common
occurrence in life if a family is moving to another city, the child may
say because of unfamiliarity with the other place or familiarity with
where he is, "I want to stay here and I'll stay with Aunt
Sally," well, that is not a conflict of interest between the parent
and child, it is a -- JUDGE EDMONDSON:
No, moving from Cleveland to Atlanta is not the same thing, as you
noted, as from Cuba to 0the United States. MR. KNEEDLER: No.
No. But the point I wanted to make is that while the choice may be more
difficult for the parent or while the choice may be more difficult for
the attorney general and for others in this country to accept, it
doesn't detract from the point that it is still ultimately the father's
choice to make. And under our
constitutional system, difficult choices as well as easy choices are
vested in the parent. JUDGE EDMONDSON:
Let me ask you, let me give you a hypothetical, which I concede is far
grosser than I think the case I have in front of me but it helps. Just
like you had some hypotheticals that were not exactly on point, I've got
one that's not on point, either, but it will help me a little bit. Let's suppose
that we have a parent who resides in a hypothetical country in which
children are mutilated in some way that is extremely offensive, at least
to Western minds, on a regular basis; that in that country, given its
culture, that is acceptable conduct. The child, in some way, makes his
way to the United States. The sole surviving parent in the country,
hypothetical country, sincerely, from the heart, says, "Look. I
want and need my child to be with me, I believe that that is in my
child's best interests." Is that a
conflict of interest case or is that kind of like this?
MR. KNEEDLER:
No. That is the sort of situation that the commissioner's
decision was addressed to, if there is an objective basis for believing
that the child would be exposed to -- in the example you're citing, the
harm, assuming it was otherwise covered by the refugee definition but of
the sort of harm that you're describing would go beyond the level of
asylum to the situation that would prohibit the Government from
returning someone, where the Government is the actor. So if you have that
sort of very serious harm that is going back, that is the sort of
objective circumstance that the commissioner's decision contemplates
that there would be an adjudication. So that the commissioner's decision
here was tailored, was carefully crafted both to protect the parent's
rights but not absolutely, because of the concerns that there could be
objective circumstances. But it is important
to sustain that balance that the attorney general struck because there
is an important principle at stake here and that is the principle that
ordinarily and presumptively it is up to the parent to decide whether to
invoke the legal process of another country on behalf of his child. And I just
wanted to illustrate that by the reciprocal situation that if we had a
U.S. child who had traveled abroad with a parent in somewhat similar
circumstances and the parent died -- and let's take a country, let's say
Iraq or China -- where a relative to the fourth degree invoked processes
under that country's laws and said, "I think it would be better if
this child remained here rather than to return to the decadent United
States," they might say, it would be of grave concern to the United
States if courts or administrative processes in other countries were too
likely invoked on the basis of essentially an automatic invocation of a
legal process, which is what the appellant calls for in this case,
without giving the presumptive deference to the parent in the first
instance to decide whether the parent wants that process to be invoked
on behalf of his child. JUDGE DUBINA: Let
me go back with you just a minute or two to the past two questions. MR. KNEEDLER: Yes,
sir? JUDGE DUBINA:
You
seem to concede in your brief that district court erred in its
interpretation of any alien. So then we get to the question of the
capacity, did Elian have the capacity. MR.
KNEEDLER: Yes,
sir? {HE
DID? IS THIS HIS ANSWER?*}
JUDGE DUBINA:
How can you determine that, you being the INS, if you've never
interviewed the child? MR. KNEEDLER: The
reason for that is that capacity is something that has a judgment of
common experience
to it. And let me point
out that the commissioner's decision took the Seventh Circuit's decision
in Polovchak as a touchstone, for example, in which the court there said
that twelve is at the lower end of the range in which a child would be
mature enough to make a life-altering decision in opposition to his
parents. A rough line like
that pervades the Immigration Act. As the commissioner
pointed out elsewhere in her decision in deciding whether Elian was
mature enough to hire the lawyers in this case and concluded that he was
not, pointed out that INS regulations provide that a parent or child may
sign an application or a petition for a child under age . Now, that doesn't
mean that is an automatic cutoff point but what it does suggest is that
-- and that covers all manner of applications and petitions for JUDGE DUBINA: Let
me ask the question a different way: What did the INS base its
decision on that Elian did not have the capacity to file a petition for
asylum? MR. KNEEDLER: What
it based its decision on is that Elian at age six was far below what was
the range of age suggested in the Polovchak decision. Secondly -- and
for that reason, the commissioner had serious doubts that a child of
this age could ever have the capacity to file an application. And then secondly,
she said that there has been no indication in the evidence that was
submitted to her that Elian Gonzalez possessed or articulated or was
able to even subjective fear of persecution on the grounds identified
within the statute; and the third, that Elian Gonzalez was unable to
swear or affirm to the truth of the contents of the application on which
the asylum was sought. And essentially what she said -- for a child this young, I think a flat rule that a six-year-old can never be sufficiently mature to make a life-altering decision like this would have been entirely within the commission’s determination. {*SO HE DID NOT THEN? SELF CONTRADICTORY?} But what she said is at least in the absence of someone coming forward with any evidence that Elian Gonzalez had personally made a judgment of this sort, she was going to regard him as not having the capacity, the capacity to understand that he was applying for asylum, which has the notion that not only of the protected -- of the grounds for asylum that Judge Wilson referred to but also the understanding that applying for asylum is a permanent life -- he speaks a desire to have a permanent life choice. {WITH OUT ACCEPTANCE OF THE PRIOR-FILED APPLICATION OR CONDUCTING ANY HEARING INQUIRY} JUDGE DUBINA: My
last question, and I’ll leave you alone, if Elian's mother had
survived this tragic journey, is there any doubt in your mind that her
petition as well as her son's petition for asylum would have been
granted by the INS? MR. KNEEDLER: Well,
if his mother had survived, it probably would not have been necessary to
invoke the asylum process, because there is a special statute in the
Cuban Adjustment Act and parol policies that build on that that would
have allowed them to stay, because there, you would have had a parent
who said, "I want to stay here." And the great
majority of Cuban-Americans who have come to this country have come and
gotten protection under that general statute, not under the asylum
statute. And, in fact, those that are interdicted, the great majority of
them are found not to be refugees within the meaning of the Act and are
returned.
JUDGE
WILSON: The
appellant relies very heavily upon the fact that there are certain INS
guidelines that are in effect that were not followed in this particular
case. How do you place
those guidelines in context in connection with this case? MR. KNEEDLER: Thank
you. I did want
to address that, because those guidelines, as the second sentence in the
guidelines state, presuppose that there has been an application filed
and they discuss what an asylum officer should do. And the asylum
officer is the person who does the interview.
They do not
speak to the antecedent question of whether there has been a valid asylum
application filed. The third
situation they address is where the child is old enough to apply for
asylum in his own right or where the child has a parent or a duly
appointed legal guardian applying for asylum on his behalf. They do
cover that situation but they do not speak to -- and certainly the
commissioner's interpretation of her own guidelines is entitled to
deference -- do not speak to the situation of whether a minor child can
apply for asylum over the objections of the parent. I had also wanted
to point out that those guidelines specifically say on pages and 0 that
they refer to the handbook of the United Nations Commissioner for
Refugees and the U.N.H.C.R. takes the position that a child under the
age of may be assumed not to be mature enough to apply for political
asylum on his own behalf. And what the United
States has done is apply a floor, a presumptive floor that is
considerably more generous than that. The U.N.H.C.R. is the official,
the United Nations, official responsible for overseeing immigration
matters generally. I also wanted to
point out that those guidelines cite U.N.H.C.R., the INS guidelines cite
U.N.H.C.R. guidelines on the interview of unaccompanied minors. Those
are cited several places in the guidelines. And going back to
the question of interviewing Elian, those guidelines, the U.N.H.C.R.
guidelines, suggest that an interview of a child would only be necessary
if the child was sufficiently mature to warrant an interview. And as we point
out in our brief, there are a number of state court cases that we have
cited that have concluded it's not necessary even to interview a child. But, again, the
question there is whether the attorney generals decision is facially
legitimate or arbitrarily capricious for not having sat down and
interviewed the child in this case. And the absence of any evidence in
the administrative record on the question of the need to interview Elian, that he had
anything personal to add, it was certainly not, we think, an abuse of
discretion not to do that. JUDGE EDMONDSON:
Mr. Kneedler, I think we have no more questions and MR. KNEEDLER: Could
I make just one more point? JUDGE EDMONDSON:
How about one minute for one point? MR. KNEEDLER: Okay.
I just wanted to point out that the point has been made that there are
no preexisting regulations on this subject and nothing in the INA
requires that the attorney general proceed only by regulation. In fact, the
supreme court's leading decision in Chanery (phonetic) on
administrative action allows agencies to proceed by either
administrative adjudication -- and this was an informal adjudication --
or by regulation. And certainly
nothing in the INA detracts from that and Chevron deference
applies equally to determinations and constructions of statutes that are
made in adjudications as opposed to regulations. The attorney
general had to decide whether this was a 0child who had capacity and
whether the person purporting to speak on his behalf could legitimately
displace the child's wishes and the absence of regulations could not get
the attorney general off the hook of having to make that decision, and
so she made that decision on the basis of guidance by analogous
things but without
a
regulation. JUDGE EDMONDSON:
Thank you, Mr. Kneedler. MR. KNEEDLER: Thank
you, your Honor. JUDGE EDMONDSON:
Mr. Craig, would you come up and speak to us, please? MR. CRAIG: Thank
you, your Honor. May it please the Court, I would like to thank
this court for the opportunity to participate in these proceedings. I'm
grateful for this chance to speak for Juan Miguel, who is the father of
Elian. JUDGE DUBINA: I
have but one question and then I'll leave you alone: From everything
I've read in this case, I have no reason to believe that your client is
anything but a loving father to his son. I do not know what
it takes if you're a Cuban national to get out of the country of Cuba.
But I think this goes a little bit to the conflict of interest question
that Judge Edmondson asked a few moments ago. Will you explain to
us why it took your client five months to leave Cuba, to come to the
United States to see his son, after he learned that his son had
survived? MR. CRAIG: His
position throughout this, your Honor, was that if I was confident that I
would be given my son the day I arrived in the United States, I would
have been there immediately. Now, I've gone back
and thought in retrospect would he have had a chance had he come at that
window of time when he first learned that his boy had been recovered and
was okay. And Ifve looked at what happened within the 24, 48, 72 hours
after the time Elian was fished out of the Atlantic Ocean and brought to
the hospital. The very next day
as he was being taken out of the hospital and turned over by the INS to
the relatives in Miami, one of the relatives was quoted in The Miami
Herald as saying, "Heaven has brought him to freedom, we will not
let him go back." That was the first thing that happened. The very next day,
the relatives in Miami retained a lawyer for the purpose of blocking
access to the boy by the father and blocking his ability to return the
son to his father in Cuba. That happened the very next day. The following day,
which is a Sunday, leaders of the Cuban-American community in Miami
visited the boy and made announcements to the public press that there
was no way that this boy would be sent back to Cuba to his father. So already, the
ground rules of the battle had been 0set within two or three days after
this poor boy's arrival and the politics had intruded into what should
have been essentially a family affair and it's unfortunate and it may
well have deterred Juan Miguells willingness to go. I begin with that
little history that the signals that were coming down to Cuba from Miami
were, "We're not going to let this boy go, no matter what." The second thing to
point out, your Honor, is that these are two very hostile bureaucracies
and this is a simple man who lives in Cardenas. It is not an easy thing
for any Cuban national to get a visa approved either by his government
or the government of the United States. So there were bureaucratic
impediments that were quite clear. And if you go back
and look at the reporting -- and I'm not sure that the Miami Herald or
any of the newspapers at the time were totally reliable but that's what
I've got to answer your question -- the reporting is that the INS said
that it would consider the application for a visa by Juan Miguel as it
would any other national from Cuba, which means that it would be put
into a lottery and it would be a matter of time, a good deal of time; it
would be given priority but it would be considered in the same method as
from any other Cuban national. I fault the INS for
not going to Juan Miguel right then and saying, "Mr. Gonzalez, if
you are the father and you 0want this boy, the best thing for you to do
is to come to the United States and retain a lawyer, because the other
side has got a lawyer, and we will be with you to fight for him." The third thing
that happened was that the INS itself did not complete its inquiry until
January rd and did not notify Mr. Gonzalez until January th that the INS
had decided that he was the father, that he could speak for the boy and
that he was entitled to take custody of the boy. Now, what Juan
Miguel did do, your Honor, was the day after he learned -- he learned
about the boy's recovery on a Thursday. That very next day, he gathered
the birth certificate, his marriage certificate and his educational
records, the hospital and medical records and he wrote a letter to his
government saying, "They have my son, I want him back; '- here is
proof." This was on the advice of the officials in his local town. So he took every
action that he knew to take and then he learned that the relatives in
Miami were asserting a claim of custody, that they would not return the
boy, and the situation got worse and worse. JUDGE DUBINA: I
certainly didn't mean to take all of your time by asking you that
question but I did think it was a fair question to ask you. And maybe if
our presiding judge would indulge you a few more minutes to say whatever
you to say to us -- JUDGE EDMONDSON:
Sure. We are here, let's make use of it. Mr. Craig, you want
to take a couple of minutes and tell us some thoughts that you had apart
from our questions?
MR. CRAIG: Thank
you, your Honor. To us, the issue
here is whether a remote relative over a father's wishes can force the
INS to accept and process an asylum application, which if granted could
conceivably destroy the parental rights of Juan Miguel and dismember his
family; and if denied, could conceivably cause such delay, up to six
years, such as to transform the father and his family into prisoners of
the administrative and appellate procedures associated with the asylum
law. I'm really not here
to argue intricacies of INS practices and policies, I'm here simply to
say that we think the INS got it right and that its final resolution of
these issues is supported by our common sense and our common law, our
community values and our nation's constitution. I believe I begin
with the Court's understanding, I hope, that this is a loving father,
who spent an enormous amount of time raising this child for six years,
both before and after the separation with the birth mother. I also assert, your
Honor, that Juan Miguel has spent more time and knows this boy better
than anyone in this courtroom or anyone on the face of this planet and
that Juan Miguells concern about his well-being, about his happiness and
about his future take second place to no one. He, like any
father, wants his son to be happy, to live a full and satisfying life,
to grow up, raise a family and share in the same joys and satisfactions
that he had when he grew up. And that is why,
your Honor, I think that the inherent conflict of interest does enormous
damage to parents who have the misfortune to be living or to be born or
to be raised in communist countries. I think mostly we would respond to
a parental appeal from a Polish family who is living under communism
that their son, if he were in this situation, should be returned, a
six-year-old son. It imposes a
punitive -- the kind of presumption against a family in one of these
countries -
JUDGE EDMONDSON:
Let's talk about that for awhile. MR. CRAIG: I’m
happy to, your Honor. JUDGE EDMONDSON: I
don't think that under the statute that the chief concern that the INS
can have is your client's feelings. I think that their chief concern
and maybe -- let me underline the word "maybe" -- their only
concern can be the child's rights under American laws once he is here.
There is a little
different idea -- I mean, you can have a parent -- of course, we have
cases in the United States you're an experienced lawyer, you know about
such things we have cases in the United States where there are
parents who sincerely, honestly, lovingly will not allow their children
to have certain kinds of medical care. And there is no question about
their sincerity, yet I think it's not uncommon for courts of law,
administrative entities also, family and children services and so on, to
override the parents' interests not because it is insincere but because
that it seems to be so conspicuously in conflict with the needs of the
child at the moment. In the case -- let
me give you a hypothetical. My guess is that you’ve heard every
hypothetical that there is but let me give you this hypothetical so you
can talk to me about this. Let's assume that
we are still residing in the world where international communism was a
viable entity; that the Berlin Wall, for example, was still fully in
place; that we have a mother and child who attempt to escape. In the
course of that escape, the mother dies but, in some way, the child gets
beyond the Wall and comes into West Berlin, that bastion of liberty in
that part of the world at that time. Is it clear to you
that the father in Communist Germany, without regard to his sincerity --
which I accept for the sake of argument -- as I say, the father says,
"Look, I want my child back, he is my flesh and blood, I love him
more than anything in the world, I want my child back," is it clear
to you that his wishes under those circumstances would trump everything
and because he is the father of the child would have been likely to have
been returned? MR. CRAIG: If
American immigration law were applicable in the German situation, it
seems to me quite clearly that the sole surviving parent, if there is
that parent, if there is not objective evidence that shows that that
parent is abusive or will subject that child to or is incompetent or
cannot take care of that child, if there is not objective evidence
that by returning this boy, say, six years, to his father, he will be
subjected to torture or physical mutilation or objective evidence of
some kind of suffering that would warrant the interference with the
parental rights, it ",,, seems to me quite clear under almost
universal applications of international conventions and custom that that
child would be returned to his father. I think that would be the case if
the INS dealt with it here. I would like to
say, your Honor, one thing having to do with this question of coercion
and whether Juan Miguel Gonzalez is, in fact, a free decision-maker at
this point, because I think that's of some importance in your
deliberations. When the INS
first interviewed him, knowing that it was Cuba, they took precautions,
they made every effort to determine whether or not there was coercion.
They found none. Juan Miguel came to
the United States; he brought his immediate family, his wife and his
child. He spoke to the top government officials in this country alone.
He is represented by a lawyer who is pledged to speak for him and to
respond to him. My duties run to him only. He can instruct me to do
whatever he wants to do. He has met with journalists, he has met with
members of Congress; he has been free to express openly and freely his
opinions throughout. Now, he has also
just requested that visas be granted to the extended family, to the
grandparents that are still in Cuba so that they will come up and visit
him.
{BUT,
NEVER ALL OF THEM IN THE U.S. AT ONCE.} He has made it
quite clear that whatever his decision may be as to where he chooses to
raise his son, he wants it to be his own decision, free of any kind of
either manipulation from Miami or coercion from Havana. And it's my duty
to him to try to make it possible for him to make that decision. Your Honor, I want
to say just in closing that there is a real family here and the
decisions that you make here will have an immediate and enormous impact
on the vitality of the family. It is a close family, it is a unit, it is
intact, it is functional. But it's also in
jeopardy. It is in jeopardy from this court's action for fear that
asylum proceedings follow. It is in jeopardy from the actions of Lazaro
Gonzalez, who 0still purports to speak for Juan Miguel over Juan
Miguells consent and over his objection. My plea to the
Court on behalf of this family is to lift the cloud of doubt and
uncertainty from their lives, to do it quickly and to set them free to
return to paths of their own choosing and destinies of their own design.
Thank you very
much, your Honor. JUDGE EDMONDSON:
Thank you very much, Mr. Craig. Mr. Coffey, come up
and give us your rebuttal, if you will. MR. COFFEY: Thank
you, your Honor. JUDGE
EDMONDSON: You
need to understand -- Matt, would you turn off the clock and let me
speak to this lawyer for a minute?
{ INTENDING TOWARDS SOME FAIRNESS.} In an abstract
kind of way, at least, I see this case legally as being chiefly about separation
of powers. I tell you that
because maybe that will cause you to shape your rebuttal
one way or
another. But that is the
real problem, is the separation of powers issue for me.
I am certain
about one proposition: However I might personally feel about what would
be best for Elian Gonzalez is not supposed to determine the outcome in
this case. I trust that you agree with that absolutely? MR. COFFEY: I
understand that, your Honor.
{IF
SO, WHY DID MR. COFFEY FAIL TO FURTHER DEVELOP ON THAT POINT CLEARLY OR
DIRECTLY DURING HIS ENTIRE ORAL ARGUMENT OR CLOSE?} I would like to
initially turn to a question raised by Judge Dubina, who asked why four,
five months. And to clarify perhaps what Mr. Craig said, INS asked him
right up front -- and I'm reading right out of the record -- "You
may apply for a visa to the United States to see Elian now." This
was in early December. Visas are generally granted in situations like
that. "Do you
wish to apply?" "No, I'm not interested." He says he
didn't want to apply when pressed. He fills out a
questionnaire: "Do you want to go to the United States to see Elian
now, yes or no?" He checks, "No. if I make that point, your
Honor, not to emphasize that this is not a loving father. We are not
here to take issue with that but to emphasize that even the most loving
parents in ',, the world cannot always control the harm that their
children may face. And there is no
parent in Cuba that controls what will happen to his or her child. And
there is no power in this country that can protect Elian Gonzalez if he
is removed to Cuba. And let's make no
mistake about it, there is no way that a regime that has been obsessed
with this child, who is probably the most famous six-year-old in the
world, is going to allow him to walk around and say that America is a
good place, that he wishes he was back with his Miami relatives, that
his mother died in that dark night for something of value. The stepfather that
put him on the inner tube, it is a clearly aggressively -- was a clearly
aggressively persecuted traitor. They have got to -- and we say there is
a reasonable possibility that’s the only standard under the asylum
laws -- they have got to make sure this kid is clammed up and shows up
at the parades and says all of the right things that Castro wants him
to. And, of course,
psychological harm and political exploitation are the kinds of things
that are recognized in the INS's own guidelines. And to speech
capacity, these guidelines make it clear that children have capacity,
they talk about how to speak to individual independent asylum applicants
in words that could ',, be understood on Sesame Street. They talk about
bringing in, if you can, a trusted adult. It doesn't have to be a
parent. It doesn't have to be even somebody with the role that Lazaro
Gonzalez had, which, by the way, was good enough for a federal court
standing and why that wasn't good enough for the INS has never been
explained. Of course, he
had capacity. And if they are going to reject any six-year-old--- …
-- (CUT OFF AGAIN! [#6]!
SHOULD HAVE FINISHED WITH: “THEN A SPECIFIC AGE LIMITATION WOULD OR
SHOULD HAVE BEEN SPECIFIED IN THEIR PRIOR/EXISTING
REGULATIONS” ) JUDGE
WILSON: And
this six-year-old can take all these factors into consideration and make
these decisions himself? MR. COFFEY: Your
Honor, a six-year-old cannot understand U.S. asylum application details
and the intricacies of U.S. asylum law. of course, they can't. I would guess
that the vast majority of alien asylum applicants have great difficulty
and do not understand the details. That's why they have lawyers. But that's also
why the INS, fully aware of all of the principles and the norms and
everything that the INS has talked about and invoked about family
values, which we obviously concur with, they absorbed all of that wisdom
into guidelines in and they specifically make it clear that a
six-year-old has these rights; that if a six-year-old lacks ---
...
{(CUT
OFF AGAIN! [#7]!!
} JUDGE
WILSON: But
in the face of competing people ,asserting their interests on behalf of
this child, the INS does not have the discretion to evaluate the
interests of these individuals and determine
who
appropriately speaks for the child? MR. COFFEY: Your
Honor, they have to follow their own announced procedures and they
didn't. {WHY
NOT STATE HOW, SPECIFICALLY, DID THEY FAIL TO DO SO?} And when we talk
about separation of powers, that's one of the most critical issues there
is, because if an agency is going to be given the ball to run with, they
have got to stay within the bounds of the field and they have got to
follow the rules. {HOW
DID THEY FAIL? WHERE DOES
HE BEGIN TO ADDRESS THIS ISSUE AS CLEARLY GUIDED BY JUDGE E. WHO
PRACTICALLY BEGGED HIM FOR A FOLLOWUP!!!, TOTAL LACK OF ANY AND ALL
“THOROUGHNESS” AS
REQUIERED IN CASES LIKE S. C.: “SKIDMORE vs. SWIFT & CO.”} JUDGE
WILSON:
Doesn't the INS have the discretion to interpret its own guidelines? MR.
COFFEY: Your Honor, they have the discretion to promulgate rules
consistent with the rules of Congress and if they get --
...
–
{CUT OFF AGAIN!!! [#8]!!!
SAY
SOMETHING TO THE JUDGE!!!} JUDGE
WILSON(!):
And we are required to give deference to their interpretation of those
guidelines. It's clear in the law that that's true. MR. COFFEY: Your
Honor, their interpretations that are fashioned for the first time in
the scope of a controversy get no deference. And this court as recently
as March made that very clear in the
IAL
Aircraft case.
{?} The last thing the
agencies are supposed to do is in the midst of a difficult controversy,
especially a case of this magnitude of controversy and emotion, is to
make up the rules as they go along. To be very
specific, they have now said in the new rule that there is a
pre-screening requirement that you have to put all of the evidence in
for objective fear of persecution. To be clear, very young children are
basically excused if they lack subjective fear of persecution, so the
issue turns to objective fear of persecution. And what they are
saying is they can create a pre-screening procedure that never existed
before and not even tell you and not even have it in place at the time
the application is considered. And, in fact, the evidence shows, Mr. Bernsteints affidavit says that when he went into the meetings with the INS, they said, "We don't want to deal with the merits of the asylum claim." There was no procedure saying you've got to put it on all on the asylum application. The regulation says at the hearing, you provide additional evidence, which we got, which is in the record, and yet what they did basically, your Honor, is reverse the rules of the game and say that even though your asylum application in so many words was consistent with every known procedure at the time, now, months after the fact, we can write new rules requiring a substantial threshold showing in the application itself, never existed before, and bounce out the application retroactively. That is the heart of unfair process.And whether due
process is treated as a constitutional doctrine, as a statutory based
doctrine, as it was in Jean versus Nelson and Marencus versus Lewis, this
agency approach offends due process under any scenario. A couple of other
points and then I'll thank the court for your extensive patience. JUDGE WILSON: I
thought that we held in Botkin (phonetic) and in Jean versus Nelson that
an un-admitted alien is not entitled to the constitutional protections
and processes? MR. COFFEY:
Exactly. But I'm saying, your Honor, that the notions of due process and
fairness and require an agency to follow its own -- this is mentioned
three or four times in Jean versus Nelson -- the statutes, the
regulations and its own announced procedures. The courts have the right
and the duty to enforce those things as matter of statutory principles.
That's the holding of Jean versus Nelson. Lewis versus
Marencus, Third Circuit, same thing: They did not either recognize
constitutional due process and the asylum process. They said,
"Look, you got to be fair. You can't reinvent the rules after the
fact, you have to be fundamentally fair." And, your Honor,
in H.V.C. versus Smith, and a result that I think is still applicable
today, because, again, there was a statutory basis for results, a
constitutional basis, this, court said the Constitution doesn't apply
but the statutory analysis does. They said a
hearing in some form is a necessity for an asylum adjudication and the
guidelines just points and that I think are quite important, says that
it provides memorandum guidance on adjudicating asylum claims. And, in fact, it
makes it clear on page six of the guidelines, they are automatically
scheduled for interviews and sent interview notices after the filing of
asylum applications. All of the language is mandatory. These hearings
typically take an hour and a half, but at least the applicant, the
person who may be in harm's way, gets to come before a neutral
decision-maker. The U.N. guidelines -- and they are flat wrong. If you look at
section and , the statement that children under are somehow prescribed
by the U.N. guidelines couldn't be more wrong, "Specifically
contemplates adjudication by a neutral fact-finder even if the will of
the child is in conflict with the parent." And that same
premise that even if -- JUDGE EDMONDSON:
Mr. Coffey -- Mr. Coffey, I think you've answered Judge Wilson's
question. Why don't you take two minutes and sum up? I can't promise
that we won't interrupt you but we can say we will try. We say we will
try, we will not –
{WHY NOT LET THE JUDGE FINISH
HIS SENTENCE HERE K. C.?} MR. COFFEY: Okay. Judge, I truly appreciate that. {BETTER IF HAD SAID MUCH EARLIER}There is a role for
the best interests of the child, of course. It does not determine
substantive asylum law. The INS guidelines make that clear, that it
is nonetheless a court process in terms of how it is considered. And
that is exactly why what should have been done was a hearing granted and
an asylum hearing is all this case is about with the participation of
the father, if he wanted to participate in that hearing, because U.S.
law says that, of course, parental rights have great, great importance
and they should. But they say in the final analysis that the best
interests of the child has to be considered. And the rights here to be
protected from harm are the rights of a child. It is not a harm
that would ever be inflicted upon the father. If the affidavits of
record ate right, this child is going to be purged of illegal thoughts
in a communist country. He is a traumatized child. That kind of purging
is potentially of grave and serious harm. It would offend
any standard of law, including, incidentally, the Hague convention,
which they keep referring to. That hearing was never granted.
A brand new procedure to somehow not really consider but maybe consider
an asylum application was conceived after-the-fact, just for the purpose
of avoiding a hearing. But even if it
has discretion, as this court has held so many times on whether to grant
asylum, the duty to consider the application with the hearing is
integral to the system. Whenever a child
is harmed and whenever a child faces future harm, it's a very basic
effort to try to talk to the child, find out what happened, see if there
is circumstances that put that child at risk. And yet, inexplicably,
inexcusably, improperly, the INS refused to do that and to this day,
there is no explanation. That is the most minimum process that is ever
recognized not only in our courts but in INS procedure. There is no
counterpart for a procedure that rejects the asylum applicant without
even talking to them and it is especially wrong to do so in the case of
a small child. JUDGE EDMONDSON:
Mr. Coffey, I think that we understand your position and we thank you
for coming. Do you have one
more word you want to say? MR. COFFEY: That
word is thank you, your Honor. JUDGE EDMONDSON:
That's a very good choice. Well, when I came
out this morning, I said I looked forward to hearing these oral
arguments. I thank you for them. The court thanks you, I think they were
helpful. I also came out
this morning and asked the audience to help us, and you have. I thank
you, too. We will be in
recess. (Proceedings
concluded.) CERTIFICATE
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