DA – Court Clog 2.

0 – CPWW
 Notes
Shoutout to the students (especially Ben Amiel and Peter Chase #RoHoHeg) who
worked on this file – it wasn’t easy to find coherent impact scenarios that weren’t
overtly racist
 1NC
Measures to reduce the backlog are being implemented now—more lawyers,
resources, and deterrents to future illegal immigration
Benner 6/21 (Katie Benner is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who covers the Justice Department for
The New York Times. "Defense Dept. to Help Justice Dept. Prosecute Immigration Cases," No
Publication, 6-21-2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/us/politics/immigration-justice-defense-
department.html)//Bennerz

WASHINGTON — As federal prosecutors face skyrocketing immigration caseloads along the southwestern border, the
Defense
Department agreed Wednesday to help the Justice Department prosecute the cases. Twenty-one lawyers
for the Defense Department “will work full time, assisting in prosecuting reactive border immigration
cases, with a focus on misdemeanor improper entry and felony illegal re-entry cases ,” the department said in a
statement. The assignment is to last for about six months. The Justice Department had asked for the help in anticipation of a surge in cases
after Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a “zero tolerance” policy in April. “A crisis has erupted at our southwest border that
necessitates an escalated effort to prosecute those who choose to illegally cross our border,” Mr. Sessions said at the time. “To those who wish
to challenge the Trump administration’s commitment to public safety, national security and the rule of law, I warn you: Illegally entering this
country will not be rewarded, but will instead be met with the full prosecutorial powers of the Department of Justice,” he said. In
a memo
to federal prosecutors along the border with Mexico, Mr. Sessions said they should request additional
resources as needed to enforce the new policy. “Our goal is not simply more cases. It is to end the illegality in
our immigration system,” he said. The Justice Department’s hard line on immigration has elicited strong opposition in recent weeks.
Immigration judges fear that the attorney general wants to prioritize speed over due process for
immigration and amnesty cases. Protests against a decision to enforce separation of children from parents who seek to enter the
United States reached such a fevered pitch that President Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday meant to end the practice. Yet
criminal prosecutions for illegally crossing the southwestern border jumped to 8,298 in April, the month Mr. Sessions announced the zero-
tolerance policy, an increase of 30 percent from March, according to data from TRAC, a research institute at Syracuse University. Curbing
immigration has been a signature issue for Mr. Sessions throughout his career, which has included stints as a
federal prosecutor and state attorney general in Alabama, and nearly 20 years in the Senate. In speeches this year, Mr. Sessions has said that
the zero-tolerance policy would hopefully deter immigrants from entering the United States. “The
world will know what our rules
are, and great numbers will no longer undertake this dangerous journey,” he said in a speech this month to
immigration judges. “The number of illegal aliens and the number of baseless claims will fall,” he said. “A virtuous cycle will be created, rather
than a vicious cycle of expanding illegality.”

The plan’s surge in immigration backlogs the courts

Arthur 17, (Andrew R. Arthur On July 24, 2017, The Massive Increase in the Immigration Court
Backlog, 7-24-2017, CIS.org, https://cis.org/Report/Massive-Increase-Immigration-Court-Backlog)

Why was there such a stark increase in the backlog of cases, and decrease in the percentage of cases
completed? A variety of factors, some of them susceptible to analysis, others less so, contributed to what has become a vicious circle of backlog, delay, and
continuance. Resources The first is resources. There are, simply put, too few judges (and complementary staff) to adequately do
the job. With the swearing-in of 11 new IJs in June 2017, there are 326 so-called "adjudicator" IJs, including assistant chief IJs in the field who hear some cases.37
According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, through May 2017, there were 598,943 pending cases in the nation's
immigration courts.38 This means that there are approximately 1,837 pending cases per IJ. GAO determined that the average IJ completed 807 cases in FY 2015.39
Therefore, even if no new cases were filed, it would take the immigration courts more than two years to complete their pending cases. IJs are not the only resource
in short demand. In June 2009, TRAC reported that there were just under four IJs for each judicial law clerk (JLC).40 As TRAC noted, JLCs "perform many functions
that can help Immigration Judges handle their caseload ... [and] are hired each year for temporary one-to-two year positions from recent law school graduates
through the Attorney General's Honors Program."41 The fewer hours of a JLC's time that an IJ can draw upon, the more time an IJ must spend doing research on
unique issues and drafting opinions. GAO also found that a lack of "other support staff" (including clerical workers and legal technicians) was a "contributing factor"
in the backlog.42 Increasing Seniority of Immigration Judges Second,
the number of hours that those IJs actually spend hearing
cases is, on average, shrinking as the judges gain seniority. According to GAO, 39 percent of all IJs are eligible for retirement, which
means that many are senior government employees, at the high end of the pay and leave scale.43 Senior government employees, those who have 15 or more years
of federal government service, are entitled to eight hours of leave each pay period, about 208 hours or 23 (nine-hour) days per year.44 There are also 10 federal
holidays per year when court is not in session.45 Finally, many IJs are on a "flex schedule", or "alternative work schedule" (AWS), meaning that they work eight nine-
hour days and one eight-hour day per pay period, and get one extra day off, for an additional 26 "working" days off per year. Assuming that there are 260 working
days in a year (five days in a work week times 52 weeks in the year), any potential IJ entitled to the full rate of leave receiving each federal holiday with AWS may
only be working 201 of them (260-23-10-26), or just more than 40 work weeks per year. In addition, IJs receive one-half day every two weeks for case preparation
(too little time for this purpose), another 13 "working" days per year not spent in court. As a result, as IJs work their way up the federal employment ladder, they
spend fewer and fewer actual hours in court hearing cases. This likely explains in part why, as GAO found, continuances for "unplanned immigration judge leave —
sick or annual leave" were up by 95 percent between FY 2006 and FY 2015.46 The Surge Third,
the "surge" in families across the
southern border has also contributed to the backlogs and delays in completion of cases in the
immigration courts. The number of unaccompanied alien children apprehended along the border
increased by 76 percent (to 68,541) between FY 2013 and FY 2014, while the number of "family units"
increased by 360 percent (to 68,445) during the same period, according to U.S. Customs and Border
Protection (CBP).47 EOIR responded on July 9, 2014, by "prioritizing" certain "cases involving migrants who have recently crossed the Southwest border
and whom DHS has placed into removal proceedings" in order to ensure "that these cases are processed both quickly and fairly to enable prompt removal in
appropriate cases, while ensuring the protection of asylum seekers and others."48 Those "new priority" cases consisted of "unaccompanied children who [had]
recently crossed the Southwest border; families who [had] recently crossed the border and [were] held in detention; families who [had] recently crossed the border
but [were] on 'alternatives to detention;' and other detained cases."49 Specifically, "[t]o allocate resources with these priorities, EOIR [] reassign[ed] immigration
judges in immigration courts around the country from their current dockets to hear the cases of individuals falling in these four groups," and "rescheduled [c]ases
not falling into one of these groups ... to accommodate higher priority cases."50 This
is likely a major contributing factor for the 112
percent increase between FY 2006 (3,296 cases) and FY 2015 (6,983 cases) in continuances for
"[u]nplanned immigration judge leave — detail or other assignment" identified by GAO.51 In addition, as
"experts and shareholders" told GAO: [T]he nature of cases resulting from the surge exacerbated the effects of the backlog. Specifically, many of the surge cases
were cases of unaccompanied children, which may take longer to adjudicate than other types of cases because, for example, such a child in removal proceedings
could apply for various forms of relief under the jurisdiction of USCIS, including asylum and Special Immigrant Juvenile Status. In such cases the immigration judge
may administratively close or continue the case pending resolution of those matters. Therefore, these experts and stakeholders told us that the surge not only
added volume to the immigration court's backlog, but resulted in EOIR prioritizing the cases of unaccompanied children over cases that may be quicker for EOIR to
resolve.52

<< insert impact mod>>

2NC Toolbox
 2NC Link Wall
Sessions’ decision unburdening the court now, plan reverses this by overturning his
decision – asylum claims too hard to verify, only a few thousand cases
Re, 6/11 (Gregg Re, editor at Fox News, 6-11-2018, "Sessions limits asylum claims, citing federal law, widespread fraud, 'unacceptable'
backlog of cases ," Fox News, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/06/11/sessions-limits-asylum-claims-citing-federal-law-widespread-
fraud-unacceptable-backlog-cases.html)///PSC

Crimes such as domestic

violence and gang-related attacks, as "vile and reprehensible" as they are, don't automatically
ensure their victims can obtain asylum in the United States, Attorney General Jeff Sessions told immigration judges
Monday. Sessions' announcement, which came after he exercised his authority to intervene and issue a binding ruling in a 2016 Board of
Immigration Appeals (BIA) case, provoked immediate backlash from politicians and activists who say that the U.S. must do more to protect
vulnerable members of other nations. But Sessions
made clear in his ruling that he did not believe the responsibility
fell on the U.S. immigration system, echoing the White House's long-standing complaints that the
asylum process is overburdened and prone to abuse. "The mere fact that a country may have problems
effectively policing certain crimes — such as domestic violence or gang violence — or that certain populations are more likely to be
victims of crime, cannot itself establish an asylum claim," Sessions wrote. "In reaching these conclusions, I do not minimize the
vile abuse that the respondent reported she suffered at the hands of her ex-husband or the harrowing experiences of many other victims of
domestic violence around the world," Sessions added. He said his ruling would be binding on immigration judges. SESSIONS SENDS MORE
IMMIGRATION JUDGES, PROSECUTORS TO THE BORDER The legal standard for obtaining asylum in the U.S. is strict, and
ordinarily requires that people from foreign countries demonstrate they face serious, legitimate risks of
persecution by their government if they remain in their homeland. But, not all forms of persecution are relevant
for asylum consideration. Under federal law, applicants must demonstrate that their risk for persecution is
based on their national origin, race, religion, political views or membership in a particularly vulnerable social class --
a category that was expanded in 2014, when the BIA ruled that domestic abuse could form the basis for an asylum claim. Declaring that his
decision "restores sound principles of asylum and long-standing principles of immigration law," Sessions indicated that the move
would help reduce the backlog of asylum claims that has risen sharply in recent years -- with many of the
claims illegitimate. "The vast majority of the current asylum claims are not valid," Sessions said in remarks Monday. " For the last five
years, only 20 percent of claims have been found to be meritorious after a hearing before an
immigration judge." Sessions added that the system is simply overwhelmed with claims, and that bogus
applications are crowding out legitimate ones. U.S. border inspectors begin to process asylum-seekers from migrant caravan; William La
Jeunesse reports from Tijuana, Mexico. "In 2009, DHS conducted more than 5,000 credible fear reviews," he said. "By 2016, only seven years
later, that number had increased to 94,000. The
number of these aliens placed in immigration court proceedings
went from fewer than 4,000 to more than 73,000 by 2016." 1,000 ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS SENT TO CALIFORNIA FEDERAL
PRISON FOR DETENTION But Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. sharply rebuked Sessions in a statement Monday, saying his decision
to "block tens of thousands of asylees from seeking refuge in our nation represents another triumph of ideology over morality – one that sets
back the global fight against domestic violence and sex trafficking, and America’s standing in the world.” Sessions'
move was widely
expected after he announced his decision to intervene in the case three months ago. He and other top
White House officials have said repeatedly in recent months that the asylum process has been
dysfunctional. Senior White House adviser Stephen Miller charged in May that the immigration system, including the asylum
process, has been "completely shattered" in recent years, and that finding legitimate asylum cases is like
spotting "a needle in a haystack." Later Monday evening, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director L. Francis
Cissna told The Associated Press that his office was preparing to look into immigrants who were ordered deported, but later may have cheated
the system by obtaining green cards and becoming citizens using fake identities. USCIS is hiring dozens of lawyers and officials to assist in the
effort, Cissna said, adding that cases would be referred to the Justice Department and could result in immigrants losing their citizenship or even
facing criminal charges. "We
finally have a process in place to get to the bottom of all these bad cases and start
denaturalizing people who should not have been naturalized in the first place ," Cissna said. "What we're
looking at, when you boil it all down, is potentially a few thousand cases."
Aff asylum claims get evaluated first increasing the time older asylum seekers spend in
detainment
Torbati 1/31 (Yeganeh Torbati, Yeganeh Torbati is a Washington, D.C.-based reporter for Reuters, covering the State Department and
sanctions issues, received numerous awards including the Gerald Loeb Award, the Overseas Press Club Award, the European Press Prize in
Investigative Reporting, the SABEW Best in Business International Investigative Award, and the Deadline Club's Daniel Pearl Award for
Investigative Reporting, orted for the Baltimore Sun and interned at the New York Times, and received her bachelor's degree from Yale
University, 1-31-2018, "U.S. immigration agency to review newest asylum cases first in bid...," U.S., https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-
immigration-asylum/u-s-immigration-agency-to-review-newest-asylum-cases-first-in-bid-to-deter-fraud-idUSKBN1FK2Y5)///PSC

Asylum seekers regularly wait five years or more for their cases to be heard, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services had a backlog of 311,000 pending asylum cases as of Jan. 21. This was in part a result of a surge of people in recent years claiming
asylum at the U.S. southern border, starting in 2012. The asylum backlog has grown by 1750 percent over the last five
years, according to USCIS. The agency will now schedule asylum interviews for more recent applicants ahead
of older applications, returning to the system in place until December 2014, when the Obama administration decided to prioritize the
oldest cases first. Trump administration officials contend that the years-long waits encourage fraudulent claims. By judging new claims
first, officials want to discourage applications by people who have no legitimate claim but hope to take
advantage of the backlog to work legally in the United States for a few years while their applications work their way through
the system. “Delays in the timely processing of asylum applications are detrimental to legitimate asylum
seekers,” said Francis Cissna, the USCIS director, in a statement. “Lingering backlogs can be exploited and used to
undermine national security and the integrity of the asylum system.” Immigrant advocates agree that the asylum
backlogs harm those seeking protection from persecution or violence abroad but said the Trump administration’s decision
would push those people into an even longer wait. “Asylum seekers already waiting in the backlog will
be severely disadvantaged - and even be sent wrongfully back to violent life-threatening conditions -
because their cases will be further delayed and they will have even more difficulty getting witnesses
and evidence to support their claims,” said Greg Chen, director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers
Association. The Trump administration has sought to change the U.S. immigration system to limit both legal and illegal immigration, arguing
that unfettered immigration to the United States presents both a national security and economic risk to the country.

SCOTUS ruling puts asylum seekers in private prisons now, plan forces more asylum
claims, increases the time immigrants are detained
Rivas, 2/27 (Jorge Rivas, Senior Staff Writer, 2-27-2018, "The Supreme Court's Ruling on Immigrant
Detention Is a Huge Win for Private Prisons," Splinter, https://splinternews.com/the-supreme-courts-
ruling-on-immigrant-detention-is-a-h-1823367899)

The Supreme Court’s ruling on Tuesday that people in immigrant detention do not have a right to a periodic
bond hearing is a major win for the for-profit prison industry, which can continue to be supplied by the federal
government with immigrants to fill its empty beds. In its 5–3 opinion Tuesday, the court ruled that undocumented
immigrants, asylum seekers, and permanent residents in immigrant detention have no inherent right
to a bond hearing—meaning that they could be held indefinitely. The ruling reversed a decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals,
which had ruled that immigrants had a right to a bond hearing every six months. The average daily population of people in
immigration custody in 2017 was just over 38,000—with more than 70 percent of immigrants detained
in private, for-profit jails. This means that any ruling or policy that prolongs the detention of immigrants is good for
the corporations that run the jails. “The Supreme Court has effectively handed private prison companies a victory with this ruling,”
said Christina Fialho, co-founder of the immigrant rights group CIVIC, which tracks conditions inside detention centers. (The non-profit group
CIVIC has no relation to the private prison corporation CoreCivic.) “It
signals to them that they can continue to profit off
the misery of immigrants—indefinitely,” Fialho told Splinter via email. Two for-profit prison companies—the GEO Group
and CoreCivic (formerly the Corrections Corporation of America) hold 72 percent of privately contracted immigration
detention beds, according to a 2015 report from Grassroots Leadership, a non-profit whose mission is to shut down for-profit prison
facilities. Both have seen their profits spike under Donald Trump’s presidency. And they could continue to benefit
even more: Trump’s 2018 budget plan requested an increase in the number of available immigrant
detention beds to over 48,000. ACLU attorney Ahilan Arulanantham, who argued the Supreme Court case, said in a statement that
he looks forward to continuing to fight this case in lower courts. In the meantime, immigrants will stay in jails. Taxpayers will
continue to foot the bill. And private prison companies will continue to thrive.

New asylum claims get processed first, delaying court cases for previously detained
immigrants
Kuang, 16 (Jeanne Kuang, journalist, 6-6-2016, "Backlogs in immigration courts keep asylum seekers in
limbo for years," chicagotribune, http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-immigration-
cases-backlog-met-20160605-story.html)///PSC
Jaime said he had no future in El Salvador because of the rampant gang violence. So he fled to the U.S., like many others, hoping for a better
life. But he said he doesn't know whether he has a future here either — and he won't know for years. His
asylum case is among
more than 20,000 deportation cases pending in Illinois immigration courts, a number almost five times
higher than the number of cases a decade ago. This means the average wait time for a hearing date at the
Chicago courthouse is now nearly three years. "I have to wait that long to know what's going to happen," Jaime said. "For me
(it's) living like, what is going to be my future?" Jaime, 31, who left El Salvador in 2006 to escape the violence and discrimination against gay
people, now lives in Evanston and is seeking asylum in the U.S. so he can stay with his American husband, Benjamin, 37. The pair, who asked to
be identified only by their first names due to the pending case, said they
expected the process to take a year, maybe a little
more. Instead, the judge set Jaime's hearing date for April 2018 — over three years away at the time of their initial
hearing. Jaime and Benjamin said they try to focus on day-to-day life, but they are constantly reminded of the uncertainty of Jaime's status.
Having children, buying a house or even getting a pet doesn't make sense until they know whether Jaime will be able to stay in the U.S. Some
citizens face immigration arrests because of weak legal protections, experts say "There's so many up-in-
the-airs," Benjamin said. "I wonder, am I going to have a husband to live with me here? … Having that over your head every morning,
you don't know." Jaime's attorney, Michael Jarecki, second vice chairman of the American Immigration Lawyers Association's
Chicago chapter, said many of his clients, including Jaime, have strong cases and could get legal status in the
U.S. but are instead "languishing as asylum applicants" due to the backlog in immigration courts . The
number of pending removal cases in the nation's immigration courts has steadily grown over the past 10 years, from about 170,000 in fiscal
year 2006 to over 485,000 this fiscal year, according to records analysis by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
About 20 percent of those cases, which are overseen by the Justice Department's E xecutive Office for
Immigration Review, are applications for asylum, in which an immigrant has to prove he is subject to
persecution or danger in his home country, according to a recent report published by the nonprofit Human Rights First. Other
deportation cases involve defenses such as people who have children who are U.S. citizens or people who are victims of domestic violence.
Legal experts say a combination of staffing shortages, a 2014 influx of Central American immigrants —
their cases have been prioritized by the immigration review office to move ahead of others — and a global
refugee crisis have created a perfect storm. The backlog has stretched out the wait times for immigrants hoping to stay in the country,
leaving them in legal limbo for years as they await their day in court. At Chicago's courthouse, the average case
has a wait time of 1,046 days, according to the Syracuse clearinghouse. "We've been dealing with backlogs here in Chicago for a
number of years now, and we've just seen them get increasingly worse," attorney Ashley Huebner said. Huebner manages the National
Immigrant Justice Center's Asylum Project, a legal clinic that handles many of Chicago's asylum cases. In Illinois, hearings are held at the main
Chicago courthouse and several detention centers statewide. "Our court is basically grinding to a halt at this point," she said. At the end of fiscal
year 2011, there were nine immigration judges in Chicago, according to Kathryn Mattingly, an immigration review office spokeswoman. That
number had dropped to five by early 2016. A sixth judge was added in April. Immigrants rush to apply for citizenship in last
window before election At any time, these judges can also be re-assigned from their regular court
dockets to hear the cases of people who are being held in detention centers, lengthening the wait for
people like Jaime. There are currently 259 immigration judges across the country's 57 courts. In its report, Human Rights First
recommended there be a total of 524 judges to ease the backlog. According to the immigration review office, this fiscal year's budget
includes funding to hire 55 new immigration judge teams. Immigrants can also apply for asylum through
the Department of Homeland Security within a year of entering the country. But according to the Human Rights First report, the backlog
in Homeland Security's eight asylum offices has increased fourfold since 2013. In March, interviews at the Chicago
office were being scheduled for those who applied for asylum nearly three years ago. In Los Angeles, that office was scheduling interviews for
applicants from 2011. The Human Rights report also recommended increasing the number of officers nationally who handle these asylum
applications from 533 to over 700. If
an applicant is denied asylum by the Homeland Security office, he can then
pursue asylum in immigration court. Backlogs in both procedures mean the total wait time could add
up to six years or more. "It's a ballooning problem in both systems," said Shaw Drake, principal researcher on the Human Rights First
report. In addition to staffing shortages, the prioritization of Central American cases is contributing to
delays in other deportation cases. These other cases are being assigned hearing dates several years in
the future and are subject to change as the courts process the priority cases. "The vast majority will be
rescheduled for another date, earlier or later, depending on docket availability," Mattingly said in a statement. "(The Executive Office for
Immigration Review's) response to the evolving situation on the southern border will continue to adapt appropriately." An
increase in
immigrants applying for citizenship Many permanent residents, motivated by anti-immigrant campaign
rhetoric, are hoping to be eligible to vote for the first time. In 2014, the U.S. saw a spike in illegal border crossings by
immigrants from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, including many families and over 50,000 unaccompanied minors. Additionally,
asylum applications have increased as more people than ever worldwide are leaving their homes to seek
safer conditions, fleeing conflict and instability in countries such as Syria, the Central African Republic ,
Afghanistan and Somalia, according to a United Nations report. Huebner said Chicago's asylum seekers are mainly from Mexico, Central
America, and Central and East African countries. "The U.N. has counted the highest number of displaced persons
around the world in recent history," Drake said. "It has caused, of course, an increase in the number of people seeking asylum
around the world." All these factors have made a difficult process almost overwhelming, immigration attorneys said. " We see this very
devastating impact on asylum seekers due to these delays," Huebner said. "It's been a real devastating impact on the
family, on the clients' ability to have a stable existence in the United States and a severe impact on their psyche." Although immigrants
can get work authorization six months after applying for asylum, many of them have left children or
other family members in dangerous situations and can't bring them to the U.S ., Huebner said. Applicants
won't be deported while their cases are pending, but they also don't have legal status . They can't apply for
student loans if they want to pursue higher education or certain certifications for specialized work. "It's a frustrating process, and the emotions
are quite high," Jarecki said. "They're
not getting closure in their case and they have to think about the torture
and harm (they experienced in their home countries), waiting for the day they can explain it in court. It takes its toll." Jaime
said he left El Salvador to escape being recruited into a gang. "They want to make you become part of the gangs, and when you don't want to
do it is when you pay the price," Jaime said. "All these things about gangs in El Salvador, you feel not safe. You can't go out at night." But the
country is doubly dangerous for him because of his sexual orientation, which he hid before coming to the U.S. In El Salvador, Jaime said he saw
gay people being beaten and targeted by the gangs. Now
that people back home know he has come out of the closet
and gotten married to a man, he said he especially fears being sent back. "I think probably if I was still living in El
Salvador, I would be hiding," he said. "(In the U.S.) I wasn't afraid to go out and meet people. I never did in my country because of the
discrimination." While Jaime awaits his chance to make his case to a judge, Benjamin has applied to sponsor him in the country through their
marriage. They hope this will help Jaime get legal status faster. But this
process is also lengthy and expensive, they said,
and they are still waiting to be scheduled for an interview. "We're blessed we are here in this country where Jaime can
come and has the opportunity to seek safety and to seek a better life," Benjamin said. "But the fact that it's going to take so long is just hanging
over your head, always on your mind."
Impacts
 2NC – Turns Case
Large backlogs lead to mass deportations without due process- turns the aff
Delgado 5/30 (Edwin Delgado, journalist and expert focusing on immigration. "Attorneys for
immigrants: Rush to clear backlog may rush deportations," UPI, 5-30-2018,
https://www.upi.com/Attorneys-for-immigrants-Rush-to-clear-backlog-may-rush-deportations/
8391527693520/)//Bennerz

El CENTRO, Calif., May 30 (UPI) -- Attorneys representing immigrants along the U.S. border with Mexico say an
effort to expedite court
proceedings and clear a backlog of cases could lead to thousands of deportations without proper
consideration. Immigration attorneys are bracing for an influx of court proceedings after Attorney General Jeff Sessions on May 2 ordered more prosecutors
and judges to courts along the border in an effort to alleviate a backlog of cases. Melissa Lopez, an immigration attorney and executive director of the Diocesan
Migrant and Refugee Services in El Paso, Texas, said she's worried about the courts rushing cases. DMRS provides free legal services to immigrants and refugees.
Lopez said thegovernment is implementing an aggressive approach that could limit each migrant's ability to
have a fair opportunity to seek benefits and resources they may be eligible for -- including an ability to
hire a lawyer. "It's concerning when people are not getting the opportunity to fully prepare for a case,"
she said. "When the consequences of losing a case is deportation , it's obviously very important for everyone to have an opportunity
to go through the adequate process." In total, 35 prosecutors and 18 immigration judges are expected to arrive in courts along the border in the next several weeks.
Seven of those prosecutors will be assigned to the Western District of Texas, which includes El Paso, San Antonio, Austin and Midland. Some of those judges have
begun to hear cases through video teleconferencing, while the Department of Justice evaluates when the judges will travel to their courts. In late April, around
1,200 migrants from Central America arrived at the U.S. border. Their arrival sparked an effort by the U.S. government to discourage migrants from continuing to
enter the country illegally. Sessions called the so-called caravan of migrants an attempt to undermine U.S. law and overwhelm the immigration system. In response,
he implemented a "zero-tolerance" policy in which he asked federal prosecutors to prioritize all criminal immigration offenses. He supplemented that policy with
the latest directive to add staffing for the courts. Immigration activists say the federal government is overreacting to the uptick of border crossings made in the two
previous months. The number of apprehensions and illegal border crossings has been dropping steadily for more than a decade, down from about 1.8 million in
2005 to less than 490,000 in 2017, the lowest number in 37 years, according to U.S. Border Patrol data. Justice Department spokesman Devin O'Malley said the
directive is part of the administration's efforts to increase efficiency and reduce a backlog of cases. About 700,000 immigration cases are pending in courts
throughout the country, with more than 100,000 of those in Texas, the DOJ said. "The prosecutors that will be sent to the border will handle the expected increase
of cases dealing with criminal violations, including illegal entry," O'Malley said. "The expected increase in immigration court cases leads to the need to bring judges
to increase the adjudicatory capacity." Those who represent immigrants in court see the influx as an effort to speed up the removal of undocumented immigrants.
"In
El Paso, we had already seen an increase in prosecution taking place on the ground and these
announcements are confirmation of something we suspected was already happening ," said Lourdes Ortiz, a
member of the Detained Migrant Solidarity Committee. Ortiz is a caseworker who specializes in representing unaccompanied minors who either came to the United
States alone or were separated from their families after being detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Ortiz said there is a fear among immigration
attorneys that courts
will quickly move to deport migrants without a fair trial and reasonable opportunity to
seek appropriate legal representation, which she says, is "the single biggest factor on whether you win
your case or not." The DOJ insists the actions are aimed at making the courts more efficient. O'Malley said the government is also increasing the use of
video teleconferencing in immigration courts and streamlining the hiring process for new judges. The average time frame for the hiring of a judge has been reduced
from 762 to 318 days, according to the DOJ, and the goal is to further reduce the hiring process to eight to 10 months.

Deportation is a death sentence for many migrants and should be rejected

Glasser and Klemack 17 (Matthew Glasser and John Cádiz Klemack "Immigration Courts Are on the
Verge of Collapse," NBC Southern California, 9-27-2017,
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Immigration-Courts-Investigation-California-
448283253.html)//Bennerz

But Chacón says those who are worried about law and order issues and want to see a crackdown on
immigration should be equally concerned with the failures of the Immigration Court system. "The
difficulty with the backlog is lots of people who have potential relief are not being heard and that is a
justice problem," Chacón said. "If you have rule of law concerns you should be deeply concerned about
our immigration courts because they are failing by rule of law metrics." Chacón says existing US law
gives undocumented immigrants a variety of reasons for being allowed to stay in this country. It's not
simply a case of being legal or illegal. In fact, data shows in 2016 that nearly 70% of local undocumented
immigrants were granted some form of legal status when their case was finally heard. "It's very
important to get that right because if you get that wrong you're sending somebody back to die or to be
tortured or to be imprisoned," she says. Immigration judges know they're making life-changing decisions
from the bench and worry that the amount of cases they are handling, often in the thousands per judge,
are threatening due process for those involved. Judge Dana Marks is an immigration judge in San
Francisco but spoke to NBC in her capacity as President of the National Association of Immigration
Judges. "We've been resourced-starved for over a decade and this is what happens," said Marks, adding
that the stakes are just too high to get these decisions wrong. "People's lives are at risk and the quality
of their lives is deeply affected by whether or not they're allowed to stay," Marks said. "The cases that
we hear - they are death penalty cases." Judge Marks says returning someone to their home country
could result in their death or the death of their families. In other cases, deported immigrants faced
torture and long prison sentences when they returned to their country of origin. "Many people don't
realize how intensely complicated immigration law is," she said.
 1NC - Human Rights
Immigration court backlogs undermine U.S human rights obligations
Drake 16, (B. Shaw Drake, law degree, his work includes connecting Human Rights First’s extensive
pro-bono representation program to advocacy efforts affecting Human Rights First clients, Human Rights
First, April 2016, https://www.gcir.org/sites/default/files/resources/HRF-In-The-Balance_Backlogs
%20Delay%20Protection%20in%20the%20US%20Asylum%20and%20Immigration%20Court
%20Systems.pdf)

Article 14 (1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, “Everyone has the right to seek and to
enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.”141 The cornerstone of the refugee protection regime is the principle of
“nonrefoulement,” which prohibits the return of refugees to persecution. This obligation is contained in the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and
its 1967 Protocol. The
United States is a party to the Protocol and has committed to comply with the
Convention’s protections for refugees.142 UNHCR has stated that asylum applications should be
processed in a timely manner, condemning nations that do not have a just and efficient asylum
processing system.143 The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which the United States has signed and ratified, preserves the
right of access to the court in Article 14. The United Nations Human Rights Committee (HRC), established to monitor implementation of the ICCPR, says, “an asylum
seeker must be allowed sufficient time to lodge their claim and conversely access to asylum procedures must be granted within a reasonable time.”144
Relatedly, the committee also states, “An important aspect of the fairness of a hearing is its
expeditiousness.”145 Applying the importance of expeditiousness to civil proceedings, which encompass civil immigration matters, the committee says,
“delays in civil proceedings that cannot be justified by the complexity of the case or the behavior of the
parties detract from the principle of a fair hearing.”146 It further clarified that where “delays [in civil cases] are caused by a lack of
resources and chronic under-funding, to the extent possible supplementary budgetary resources should be allocated for the administration of justice.”147 The
application of these principles is illustrated by the committee’s 2003 review of Russia, when it concluded that the two-year delays in asylum adjudications were of
particular concern.148 Other countries that receive high numbers of asylum seekers have time limits to adjudicate claims. In 2013, the European Parliament and the
Council of the European Union issued a directive of common procedures for granting and withdrawing international protection.149 Member states were instructed
to “ensure that examination procedures are concluded within six months of the lodging of the application.”150 Under limited circumstances, the state is allowed to
extend the processing time to “a period not exceeding a further nine months.”151 Furthermore, the
directive sets an absolute maximum
limit for adjudication of 21 months from the lodging of the application.152 U.S. asylum law developed from international
law instruments, primarily the 1967 Protocol which the United States embraced in 1968. To fulfill its international obligations under the 1967 Protocol, Congress
enacted the Refugee Act of 1980, which incorporated key provisions of the Refugee Convention into the Immigration and Nationality Act. Importantly, the Refugee
Act incorporated the refugee definition from the Convention and established uniform procedures for the treatment of asylum claims in the United States.153 U.S.
law provides two indications of time limitations on the initial adjudications of asylum claims. First, initial interviews or hearings on asylum applications “shall
commence no later than 45 days after the date an application is filed,” in the absence of exceptional circumstances. 154
Statute also dictates that
in the absence of exceptional circumstances, final administrative adjudication of the asylum application,
not including administrative appeal, shall be completed within 180 days after the date an application is
filed.”155 According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), as of September 2015, 61
percent of the over 100,000 pending applications at the asylum office have exceeded the 180-day
requirement.156 From 2010 to 2014 the number of affirmative asylum applications adjudicated past the 180-day requirement nearly doubled.157 For
asylum cases adjudicated before the immigration courts, there is no statutorily imposed timeline. However, constitutional due process rights may demand the need
for additional resources for the immigration courts, such that cases can be afforded adequate consideration by judges with caseloads that allow for fair and
meaningful adjudication. The Immigration and Nationality Act includes a guarantee that “the alien shall have a reasonable opportunity to examine the evidence
against the alien, to present evidence on the alien’s own behalf, and to crossexamine witnesses presented by the Government.”158 The Seventh Circuit indicates
that immigration court procedures “must satisfy currently prevailing notions of fairness.”159 That court has also characterized the due process rights of immigrants
to include the right to “meaningfully present” evidence in a “meaningful way.”160 Scholars argue that in order for judicial fact-finding to be conducted in a
meaningful way, immigration judges must have sufficient time to review documentation and access witnesses. In an interview conducted by Dr. Alicia Triche and
published in 2015, Judge Dana Marks, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, indicated the following: A typical workweek includes 36 hours on
the bench and a meager four hours of time spent in chambers. That is four hours to review documentation for every individual case occurring that week—a total
that, especially if a law school or large firm is involved, can span hundreds or even thousands of pages.161 Limited time to review complex cases with often life
threatening implications leads Judge Marks to characterize immigration court as “death penalty cases in a traffic court setting.”162 Ballooning backlogs cause
immigration judges to face a growing number of pending cases, and increased pressure to examine them as expeditiously as possible. The large caseloads threaten
the fundamental fairness required by due process. Conclusion Protecting refugees is a core American ideal, central to the country’s identity and history. As the
asylum and immigration court systems struggle with large backlogs, those who need America’s protection suffer in a state of perpetual limbo. For
thousands
of asylum seekers, permanent protection in the United States is key to security and freedom from future
persecution—protection now on hold for hundreds of thousands. Uprooted by persecution, asylum seekers in the United
States fully expect to struggle as they rebuild their lives. Yet extended delays in their cases make this struggle at times

insurmountable. Unable to reunite with their family or work or pursue an education or overcome the trauma of their persecution, asylum seekers must
simply subsist for years—their lives hanging in limbo. Continued and strengthened bipartisan support will be essential to

secure the vital resources needed to reduce and ultimately eliminate the growing backlogs at the
Asylum Division and immigration courts. The human rights of asylum seekers and the very integrity of
the United States immigration system are at stake.

US human rights violations are modelled globally

HRF 6/27 (Human Rights First, "Top 10 Reasons Family Incarceration is Not a Solution," 6-27-2018,
https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/resource/top-10-reasons-family-incarceration-not-solution)//Bennerz

Sets a Bad Example for Countries Hosting Most Refugees: The UN Refugee Agency has documented that
families and children fleeing violence in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador have urgent protection
needs, reporting a significant increase in numbers fleeing to neighboring countries. If the United States
continues using harsh policies, other nations that host many more refugees may follow suit, triggering
additional displacement.

I-law and HR k2 natural disaster resilience

Ferris, 14 (Elizabeth Ferris, research professor with the Institute for the Study of International
Migration at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, nonresident senior fellow in Foreign
Policy at the Brookings Institution, senior advisor to the U.N. General Assembly’s Summit for Refugees
and Migrants in New York, 4-10-2014, "How Can International Human Rights Law Protect Us from
Disasters?," Brookings, https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-can-international-human-rights-law-
protect-us-from-disasters/)///PSC

People do not lose their rights when disasters strike. As climate change increases the likelihood that disasters will
become both more intense and more unpredictable, it is time for the international human rights
community to devote more attention to disasters and on the humanitarian community to incorporate a rights-based
approach to disaster management. In the past decade, there has been growing awareness of the relevance of
international human rights law to prevention, response and recovery from disasters. In many respects, the 2004 Indian Ocean
tsunami marking a turning point in the international community’s perception of disasters. Before the 2004 tsunami, disasters
were primarily seen in terms of the need to mobilize rapid humanitarian aid – an area in which logistical expertise
was prioritized. After the tsunami, awareness grew that human rights had to be built into all phases of disaster
management – prevention or risk reduction, response and recovery. While the Convention on the Protection of Persons with Disabilities is
the only human rights treaty to explicitly reference disasters, the applicability of human rights law to disasters is receiving
greater attention from both the scholarly community and intergovernmental bodies at the regional and
international levels. The International Law Commission is working on Draft Articles on the Protection of persons
in the event of disasters and affirms that “[p]ersons affected by disasters are entitled to respect for their
human rights.” As Walter Kälin points out, UN treaty bodies are increasingly taking up issues related to disasters in carrying out their
monitoring duties. The UN Human Rights Council, for the first time, devoted a special session to human rights issues arising from a natural
disaster: the Haitian earthquake of 2010. Presently, the
Human Rights Council is engaged in further work on the relationship
between the promotion and protection of human rights in post-disaster and post-conflict situations . While
there are many entry points to the issue of the relationship between human rights law and disasters, in this short paper, I would like to
highlight four different ways that international
human rights law is being used to strengthen efforts at
prevention, response and recovery from disasters. • The use of legal remedies as a way of holding
governments accountable when they fail to prevent or reduce the risk of disasters • The use of international human
rights law relating to gender as a way of understanding how gender should be incorporated into all
phases of disaster risk management. • The use of primarily ‘soft’ international law as reflected in the Guiding
Principles on Internal Displacement, as a way of upholding the rights of those displaced by disasters International
human rights law has much to offer those involved in disaster risk management – from governmental policy-makers to local first responders,
from international agencies promoting disaster risk reduction to development organizations taking the lead in long-term preventive efforts.

Natural disaster leads to extinction – resistance strategies key

Sandberg, 18 (Anders Sandberg, researcher, science debater, futurist, transhumanist and author,
Ph.D. in computational neuroscience from Stockholm University, James Martin Research Fellow at the
Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, Feb 2018, "Human Extinction from Natural Hazard
Events," Oxford Research Publications,
http://naturalhazardscience.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199389407.001.0001/acrefore-
9780199389407-e-293)///PSC

Like any other species, Homo sapiens can potentially go extinct. This risk is an existential risk: a threat to the entire future of the
species (and possible descendants). While anthropogenic risks may contribute the most to total extinction risk
natural hazard events can plausibly cause extinction. Historically, end-of-the-world scenarios have been popular topics in
most cultures. In the early modern period scientific discoveries of changes in the sky, meteors, past catastrophes, evolution and
thermodynamics led to the understanding that Homo sapiens was a species among others and vulnerable to extinction. In the 20th century,
anthropogenic risks from nuclear
war and environmental degradation made extinction risks more salient and
an issue of possible policy. Near the end of the century an interdisciplinary field of existential risk studies emerged. Human
extinction requires a global hazard that either destroys the ecological niche of the species or harms
enough individuals to reduce the population below a minimum viable size. Long-run fertility trends are highly
uncertain and could potentially lead to overpopulation or demographic collapse, both contributors to extinction risk. Astronomical extinction
risks include damage to the biosphere due to radiation from supernovas or gamma ray bursts, major
asteroid or comet impacts, or hypothesized physical phenomena such as stable strange matter or
vacuum decay. The most likely extinction pathway would be a disturbance reducing agricultural
productivity due to ozone loss, low temperatures, or lack of sunlight over a long period. The return time of
extinction-level impacts is reasonably well characterized and on the order of millions of years. Geophysical risks include
supervolcanism and climate change that affects global food security. Multiyear periods of low or high temperature can
impair agriculture enough to stress or threaten the species. Sufficiently radical environmental changes that lead to direct extinction are unlikely.
Pandemics can cause species extinction, although historical human pandemics have merely killed a fraction of the species.
Extinction risks are amplified by systemic effects, where multiple risk factors and events conspire to
increase vulnerability and eventual damage. Human activity plays an important role in aggravating and mitigating these effects.
Estimates from natural extinction rates in other species suggest an overall risk to the species from natural events smaller than 0.15% per
century, likely orders of magnitude smaller. However, due to the current situation with an unusually numerous and widely dispersed population
the actual probability is hard to estimate. The natural extinction risk is also likely dwarfed by the extinction risk from human activities. Many
extinction hazards are at present impossible to prevent or even predict, requiring resilience strategies .
Many risks have common pathways that are promising targets for mitigation. Endurance mechanisms against extinction may
require creating refuges that can survive the disaster and rebuild. Because of the global public goods and
transgenerational nature of extinction risks plus cognitive biases there is a large undersupply of mitigation effort despite strong arguments that
it is morally imperative.
 2NC – Human Rights – Ext Spillover
US HR abuses violate HR obligations and international HR law
IJRC 6/27 (International Justice Resource Center informs, trains, and advises advocates and individual
victims on using international and regional human rights protections to advance justice and
accountability in their communities. "Ten Human Rights Standards Implicated by U.S. Immigration Policy
Changes," 6-27-2018, https://ijrcenter.org/2018/06/27/ten-human-rights-standards-implicated-by-u-s-
immigration-policy/)//Bennerz

Detention as a Last Resort International human rights law provides that adult migrants may be
administratively detained only in limited circumstances, and that migrant children generally should not
be detained. For example, in its 2014 report on a visit to the U.S., the UN Working Group on Arbitrary
Detention noted that “such detention is to be a measure of last resort, necessary and proportionate and
be not punitive in nature, and that alternatives to detention are to be sought whenever possible.” See
Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Report of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on its visit
to the United States of America (2017), UN Doc. A/HRC/36/37/Add.2, para. 21. An individual may not be
indefinitely detained, even if the State is unable to deport him or her. See Human Rights Committee,
General Comment No. 35: Article 9 (Liberty and security of person), UN Doc. CCPR/C/GC/35, 16
December 2014, para. 18. Detention must be subject to judicial review to ensure these conditions have
been satisfied on an individual basis. See Report of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on its visit
to the United States of America, UN Doc. A/HRC/36/37/Add.2, paras. 26, 29. The same requirements
apply to asylum seekers who enter unlawfully. See Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 35,
para. 18. Human rights bodies have interpreted the “best interests of the child” standard to mean that
detention of child migrants is generally not permissible. See Working Group, para. 42. The UN High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) guidelines indicates that minor asylum seekers “should not be
detained.” See UNHCR, UNHCR Revised Guidelines on Applicable Criteria and Standards relating to the
Detention of Asylum Seekers (1999), Guideline 6 (emphasis in original). The UN Human Rights
Committee has stated, “Children should not be deprived of liberty, except as a measure of last resort
and for the shortest appropriate period of time, taking into account their best interests as a primary
consideration…” See General Comment No. 35: Article 9 (Liberty and security of person), UN Doc.
CCPR/C/GC/35, para. 18. Moreover, in the words of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, “when
the child’s best interests require keeping the family together, the requirement not to deprive the child
of liberty extends to the child’s parents and family members,” meaning that family detention is not
permissible in this instance. See Report of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on its visit to the
United States of America, UN Doc. A/HRC/36/37/Add.2, para. 46. See also IACHR, Report on Immigration
in the United States: Detention and Due Process (2010), paras. 49-51. Deterring immigration is not a
permissible justification for detention under international human rights law, nor is private profit. See
Report of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on its visit to the United States of America, UN Doc.
A/HRC/36/37/Add.2, para. 43. The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has expressed concern at the
apparent economic incentive for increasing detention of migrants, given that many detention facilities
are privately-owned or -operated and are required by U.S. law to maintain certain occupancy rates. See
id. at para. 31. Last week, the joint statement by 11 UN human rights experts called on the U.S. to
release migrant children from detention, stating that “children should never be detained for reasons
related to their own or their parents’ migration status.” [OHCHR Press Release: UN Experts] The IACHR
similarly noted that “detention is never in the best interest of the child.” [IACHR Press Release]
 2NC – Human Rights – Ext Internal Link
The US asylum process is a human rights violation with international ramifications
HRF 16 (Human Rights First "In the Balance Backlogs Delay Protection in the U.S. Asylum and
Immigration Court Systems," Human Rights First, April 2016,
https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/sites/default/files/HRF-In-The-Balance.pdf)//Bennerz

Article 14 (1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, “Everyone has the right to seek and to
enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.”141 The cornerstone of the refugee protection
regime is the principle of “nonrefoulement,” which prohibits the return of refugees to persecution. This
obligation is contained in the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol.
The United States is a party to the Protocol and has committed to comply with the Convention’s
protections for refugees.142 UNHCR has stated that asylum applications should be processed in a timely
manner, condemning nations that do not have a just and efficient asylum processing system.143 The
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which the United States has signed and
ratified, preserves the right of access to the court in Article 14. The United Nations Human Rights
Committee (HRC), established to monitor implementation of the ICCPR, says, “an asylum seeker must be
allowed sufficient time to lodge their claim and conversely access to asylum procedures must be granted
within a reasonable time.”144 Relatedly, the committee also states, “An important aspect of the
fairness of a hearing is its expeditiousness.”145 Applying the importance of expeditiousness to civil
proceedings, which encompass civil immigration matters, the committee says, “delays in civil
proceedings that cannot be justified by the complexity of the case or the behavior of the parties detract
from the principle of a fair hearing.”146 It further clarified that where “delays [in civil cases] are caused
by a lack of resources and chronic under-funding, to the extent possible supplementary budgetary
resources should be IN THE BALANCE 24 HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST allocated for the administration of
justice.”147 The application of these principles is illustrated by the committee’s 2003 review of Russia,
when it concluded that the two-year delays in asylum adjudications were of particular concern.148
Other countries that receive high numbers of asylum seekers have time limits to adjudicate claims. In
2013, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union issued a directive of common
procedures for granting and withdrawing international protection.149 Member states were instructed
to “ensure that examination procedures are concluded within six months of the lodging of the
application.”150 Under limited circumstances, the state is allowed to extend the processing time to “a
period not exceeding a further nine months.”151 Furthermore, the directive sets an absolute maximum
limit for adjudication of 21 months from the lodging of the application.152 U.S. asylum law developed
from international law instruments, primarily the 1967 Protocol which the United States embraced in
1968. To fulfill its international obligations under the 1967 Protocol, Congress enacted the Refugee Act
of 1980, which incorporated key provisions of the Refugee Convention into the Immigration and
Nationality Act. Importantly, the Refugee Act incorporated the refugee definition from the Convention
and established uniform procedures for the treatment of asylum claims in the United States.153 U.S. law
provides two indications of time limitations on the initial adjudications of asylum claims. First, initial
interviews or hearings on asylum applications “shall commence no later than 45 days after the date an
application is filed,” in the absence of exceptional circumstances.154 Statute also dictates that in the
absence of exceptional circumstances, final administrative adjudication of the asylum application, not
including administrative appeal, shall be completed within 180 days after the date an application is
filed.”155 According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), as of September 2015, 61
percent of the over 100,000 pending applications at the asylum office have exceeded the 180-day
requirement.156 From 2010 to 2014 the number of affirmative asylum applications adjudicated past the
180-day requirement nearly doubled.157 For asylum cases adjudicated before the immigration courts,
there is no statutorily imposed timeline. However, constitutional due process rights may demand the
need for additional resources for the immigration courts, such that cases can be afforded adequate
consideration by judges with caseloads that allow for fair and meaningful adjudication. The Immigration
and Nationality Act includes a guarantee that “the alien shall have a reasonable opportunity to examine
the evidence against the alien, to present evidence on the alien’s own behalf, and to crossexamine
witnesses presented by the Government.”158 The Seventh Circuit indicates that immigration court
procedures “must satisfy currently prevailing notions of fairness.”159 That court has also characterized
the due process rights of immigrants to include the right to “meaningfully present” evidence in a
“meaningful way.”160 Scholars argue that in order for judicial fact-finding to be conducted in a
meaningful way, immigration judges must have sufficient time to review documentation and access
witnesses. In an interview conducted by Dr. Alicia Triche and published in 2015, Judge Dana Marks,
president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, indicated the following: A typical workweek
includes 36 hours on the bench and a meager four hours of time spent in chambers. That is four hours to
review documentation for every individual case occurring that week—a total that, especially if a law
school or large firm is involved, can span hundreds or even thousands of pages.161 IN THE BALANCE 25
HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST Limited time to review complex cases with often life threatening implications
leads Judge Marks to characterize immigration court as “death penalty cases in a traffic court
setting.”162 Ballooning backlogs cause immigration judges to face a growing number of pending cases,
and increased pressure to examine them as expeditiously as possible. The large caseloads threaten the
fundamental fairness required by due process.

The US asylum process perpetuates human rights abuses

HRW 17 (Human Rights Watch "Q &amp; A: White House Immigration Principles and Policies," 10-13-
2017, https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/10/13/q-white-house-immigration-principles-and-policies)//
Bennerz

A: The US asylum system is, in many ways, broken, but not in the way the Trump administration claims.
In the US today, border agents, in violation of US and international law, regularly turn away people who
have genuine and legitimate claims that they will be persecuted or killed if they are returned to their
home countries. Existing procedures for fast-track deportations, called “expedited removal,” have
returned such asylum seekers to harm. Even after they have entered the US, asylum seekers face an
incredible array of challenges to gain protection in the US, including severe backlogs in the courts, lack
of legal representation for people who cannot afford to hire an attorney, prolonged detention in many
cases, and widely inconsistent rates of granting asylum across the country. Whether a person is granted
asylum can depend on where they apply. In some areas, immigration judges grant asylum to fewer than
five percent of applicants. The White House proposal largely echoes the provisions of the proposed
Asylum Reform and Border Protection Act, HR 391, which Human Rights Watch has joined other
organizations in opposing. It would raise the threshold standard of proof in credible fear interviews,
which is the preliminary screening before full adjudication of an asylum claim. Raising the standard for a
screening process faced by newly arrived people, many of whom are traumatized and interviewed in
challenging settings, often while detained, by telephone, and with remote interpreters, would most
likely result in the deportation of many asylum seekers with legitimate claims. The White House also
proposes to “close loopholes” that supposedly allow terrorists to gain asylum. The existing “terrorism-
related” bars to asylum protection are so broad, however, that they have been applied to the victims of
terrorist groups like a refugee from Burundi, who an immigration judge found provided “material
support” to a terrorist group because rebels had robbed him of four dollars and his lunch. Trump’s
proposal to ensure “appropriate use of parole authority,” reiterating aspects of executive orders and
Homeland Security memoranda that emphasize broader detention of asylum seekers, could effectively
mean that all asylum seekers would be jailed pending their immigration court proceedings, with no
individualized consideration of whether such detention is necessary to ensure court appearances or
protect public safety, a colossal waste of resources and a violation of the international human rights
norm that in general, asylum seekers should not be detained. This would also most likely result in
prolonged, indefinite detention given the backlog in immigration courts. Expanding the return of asylum
seekers to “safe third countries,” such as Mexico, would inappropriately shift the burden to a country
with less capacity to process claims.

The asylum process violates human rights

Harris 17 (Lindsay M. Harris, Assistant Professor of Law, University of the District of Columbia. "Is the
US immigration court system broken?," Conversation, 4-17-2017, https://theconversation.com/is-the-
us-immigration-court-system-broken-75338)//Bennerz

In 2015, the TRAC Immigration Project out of Syracuse University estimated that full resolution of cases
in the backlog would take from 2 to 6 ½ years. Asylum applicants who are seeking U.S. protection from
persecution in their home countries may wait five or more years simply for an interview to assess their
claim. The backlog has arisen largely because of an increase in the number of Central American women
and children seeking asylum. Many families without authorization are sent to detention centers to be
held while they undergo expedited removal. The expedited removal process was created to bypass the
immigration court system and allow for the swift removal of undocumented immigrants. However, if
those immigrants say they’re afraid to return home, the Department of Homeland Security must give
them a “credible fear interview” to determine if they are eligible for asylum. These individuals can then
take their cases to immigration court. Asylum officers are sent to detention centers to conduct credible
fear interviews. Approximately 85 to 90 percent of families interviewed are granted the right to present
their case in immigration court. Asking asylum seekers to present their cases before both asylum officers
and judges is repetitive and time consuming. It would be more efficient to either allow asylum officers to
grant asylum after a credible fear interview when they see a strong case, or simply bypass this step and
allow all asylum seekers to present their cases in court. As of February 2017, there were only 527 asylum
officers working in the nation’s eight asylum offices, even though the United States Citizenship and
Immigration Services has authorized hiring as many as 625. The nonprofit Human Rights First estimates
that 272 of those officers are needed just to conduct credible fear interviews. Effects of the backlog As I
have detailed in my work, delays in processing immigrants cause hardships for asylum seekers. While an
asylum seeker is awaiting a decision in their case, they often face financial instability, difficulty finding
employment and prolonged separation from immediate family members. Years of delay also make it
more difficult for immigrants to find pro bono legal representation. Meanwhile, the Department of
Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly has cited the “historic backlogs” in immigration courts to justify
increasing expedited removals. There’s evidence that such expedited removals circumvent due process
for asylum seekers. In some cases, U.S. border officials have even failed to properly implement
safeguards to protect asylum seekers from being returned to harm or death. Recently, the U.S.
government did not attend a hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights regarding
Customs and Border Patrol illegally turning asylum seekers away from our southern border. The
nonprofit Human Rights First estimates that the U.S. needs at least 524 judges working to address the
immigration court backlog, in addition to more law clerks and administrative support. More asylum
officers are also needed. Human Rights First estimates that with 800 asylum officers on the job, we could
get rid of the backlog by 2022. Solving the problem of our nation’s backlogged immigration courts
should be a priority for any administration to ensure that the system functions in a timely and efficient
manner.

Detention is a human rights violation

Cherry and Paska 6/24 (NCSS President Terry L. Cherry and NCSS Executive Director Lawrence M.
Paska, "Affirming Our Commitment to Children, Families, and Human Rights," National Council for the
Social Studies, 6-24-2018, https://www.socialstudies.org/about/affirming-our-commitment-children-
families-and-human-rights)//Bennerz

National Council for the Social Studies (“NCSS”), through its resolutions and position statements, has
continuously affirmed that the detention of asylum seeking families and the act of separating families
is a human rights violation. As we noted in our 2014 position statement, Human Rights Education: A
Necessity for Effective Social and Civic Learning, we believe in the “democratic ideals of freedom,
equality, non-discrimination and respect for the rights of all. In an increasingly globalized world and
within the United States itself, this growth and development must emphasize not only the rights and
obligations arising from American citizenship but also the rights and responsibilities that arise
domestically and globally from our common humanity.”

Detention centers massively violate human rights

IJRC 6/27 (International Justice Resource Center informs, trains, and advises advocates and individual
victims on using international and regional human rights protections to advance justice and
accountability in their communities. "Ten Human Rights Standards Implicated by U.S. Immigration Policy
Changes," 6-27-2018, https://ijrcenter.org/2018/06/27/ten-human-rights-standards-implicated-by-u-s-
immigration-policy/)//Bennerz

The prohibition on torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment is firmly established in
international law. In the detention context, this prohibition extends beyond acts of physical violence to
also require that conditions of detention are appropriate and humane, and access to medical care,
adequate food and water, opportunities for recreation, and other basic needs. See, e.g., IJRC, Torture;
IACHR, Principles and Best Practices on the Protection of Persons Deprived of Liberty in the Americas.
Recent reports have indicated that child migrants in U.S. detention facilities have been forcibly
medicated, abused, and denied adequate food and water. [HRW; HuffPost; NPR] Amnesty International
has condemned the family separations as torture. [Amnesty] Similarly, in its 2014 report on the U.S., the
Committee Against Torture expressed concern about immigration detention centers for children, noting
“reports of substandard conditions…the use of solitary confinement… [and] reports of sexual violence by
staff and other detainees.” See CAT, Concluding observations on the combined third to fifth periodic
reports of the United States of America, UN Doc. CAT/C/USA/CO/3-5, 19 December 2014, para. 19.
 2NC – Human Rights – Ext Disaster Impact
Small failures lead to systemic risks and extinction
Sandberg, 18 (Anders Sandberg, researcher, science debater, futurist, transhumanist and author,
Ph.D. in computational neuroscience from Stockholm University, James Martin Research Fellow at the
Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, Feb 2018, "Human Extinction from Natural Hazard
Events," Oxford Research Publications,
http://naturalhazardscience.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199389407.001.0001/acrefore-
9780199389407-e-293)///PSC

Localized disasters or slow-moving risks are unlikely on their own to spell doom for H. sapiens. It may appear that an
unlikely intense global event or confluence of disasters need to occur in order to cause extinction. However, many risks are potentially
systemic: a sequence or combination of disasters may reduce resiliency and the ability to recover,
especially when interacting with the human systems. A model of how compound risks can act is the synchronous failure
model of Homer-Dixon et al. (2015). Multiple stresses (such as climate change, resource shortages, or conflicts) can interact and
accumulate in a social-ecological system, pushing it toward a state where its coping capacity is
diminished. Different subsystems become coupled because they require support from each other to
function in the stressed state. When a crisis occurs (either externally triggered or because an internal component finally fails) it
rapidly cascades through the system, spreading between subsystems and causing the whole to fail .
Simultaneous damage is often multiplicative in severity. Many human systems such as food, energy, finance and
communications are global, densely interconnected systems where failures can cascade rapidly (Helbing,
2013). They have developed in a locally rational way: the gains in efficiency and reliability have been significant. However, the probability
of global failures also has increased compared to more local, modular and redundant systems (Goldin &
Vogel, 2010). While societal collapse does not imply extinction, humans are dependent on complex societies and their
high productivity, and any long-term collapse would reduce the human carrying capacity significantly. A stressor such as climate
change may increase the probability and severity of global failure, and once this occurs vulnerability to
further risks increases. Various example scenarios can be constructed where plausible events produce gradual deterioration of the
human system before it can recover; see, for example, Tonn and MacGregor (2009) and other papers in the same issue. Another example is
sudden geoengineeringcessation. If, as a response to climate change, solar radiation management
geoengineering is used to maintain temperature, this will require ongoing technological maintenance . If a
global disaster disrupts civilization, besides the damage from the primary disaster there would also be a rapid temperature change to close to
what the un-modified climate would have been. This will likely produce massive disruptions of agriculture and other human systems at the time
when vulnerability is maximal (Baum, Maher, & Haqq-Misra, 2013). In this case a risk mitigation effort adds to systemic risk. Systemic
effects are hard to predict (trade can both strengthen human societies by providing an adaptive system of distribution, prosperity,
and incentives for innovation as well as destabilize them due to market bubbles, dependencies, and spread of pathogens). Taking
uncertainty into account is possible but tends to lead to conservative policies (Weitzman, 2009). Another approach
is to engineer human systems so they are naturally redundant, modular, and otherwise resilient to systemic stresses (Helbing, 2013).

Natural disasters make humans vulnerable which leads to extinction

Sandberg, 18 (Anders Sandberg, researcher, science debater, futurist, transhumanist and author,
Ph.D. in computational neuroscience from Stockholm University, James Martin Research Fellow at the
Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, Feb 2018, "Human Extinction from Natural Hazard
Events," Oxford Research Publications,
http://naturalhazardscience.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199389407.001.0001/acrefore-
9780199389407-e-293)///PSC
There is clear evidence that natural events could cause the extinction of H. sapiens. While astronomical risks may be the
most dramatic, geophysical risks to food security and pathogenic risks appear to be more significant . It is
unlikely that a single disaster will be severe enough to directly cause extinction, but it is plausible that it could place the species
in a vulnerable situation for a long time, during which other risks could lead to further vulnerability and
extinction. The overall probability of H. sapiens going extinct due to known natural disasters in the foreseeable future is relatively low.
However, this is not a reason for complacency. First, new kinds of risks have been discovered in recent decades: there is a fair
probability that some important risk categories have not yet been discovered . Second, many of the natural
disaster risks interact strongly with human systems in such a way that they may act as triggers or
components in larger disasters where human activity contributes to lethality . Third, the total non-anthropogenic
risk to the species is likely far smaller than anthropogenic risk (Cotton-Barratt et al., 2016). These risks, from n uclear war over
bioweapons to runaway technologies, can develop quickly and are integrated in the techno-social systems of the species. While
this means they can also be mitigated through human actions the complexity of doing so in the face of
economic, national, and other interests can be daunting. The irony is that many of these risks are emerging as a result of
increasing technological and economic sophistication that helps mitigate many non-anthropogenic risks. Extinction risks can be caused by a
broad spectrum of hazards, ranging from well understood to speculative. There are profound uncertainties attached to these hazards and
handling them requires expertise from a range of different disciplines. As a result, there is a strong need for interdisciplinary investigation of
extinction-level risk in order to find better mitigation policies.
 1NC - Private Jails
Detained immigrants get funneled into private prisons where they are used as free
labor
Burnett, 17 (John Burnett, NPR’s Southwest correspondent and reporter, 11-21-2017, "Big Money As Private Immigrant Jails Boom,"
NPR.org, https://www.npr.org/2017/11/21/565318778/big-money-as-private-immigrant-jails-boom)///PSC

The Trump administration wants to expand its network of immigrant jails. In recent months, Immigration and
Customs Enforcement has called for five new detention facilities to be built and operated by private prison corporations across
the country. Critics are alarmed at the rising fortunes of an industry that had fallen out of favor with the previous administration. The Joe Corley
Detention Facility is a sprawling complex surrounded by shiny concertina wire located in Conroe, Texas — about an hour north of Houston. ICE
spends more than $2 billion a year on immigrant detention through private jails like this one . The Corley
facility is owned by GEO Group, the nation's largest private prison company. ICE and the U.S. Marshals Service pay GEO
$32 million a year to house, feed and provide medical care for a thousand detainees. Between 2013 and 2014,
Douglas Menjivar was one of those ICE detainees. Menjivar says he was raped by gang members in his
cell, and when he reported it to the medical staff they mocked him. ICE found the rape allegation to be
unsubstantiated. His lawyer has filed a federal civil rights complaint. Menjivar also says he was forced to work for a dollar a day. "Lots of
things happened to me in Conroe," he says. He is a 42-year-old Salvadoran who entered the country illegally and is charged with violating a
prior deportation. He's out now, fighting to get legal status in immigration court. Menjivar has become a bitter critic of immigrant detention
centers, which are supposed to be holding facilities for civil matters, not prisons for meting out
punishment. The forced labor allegations are part of two class-action lawsuits in federal court. GEO "strongly refutes" these claims and
plans to fight them. In an emailed statement, the company says detainee labor is voluntary and immigrant workers
are paid a dollar a day because that's the rate set by ICE. GEO also says it provides "culturally responsive services in safe
and humane environments," and that all of its facilities comply with national detention standards. Here's GEO's full statement defending its
facilities: "GEO has a long history of providing culturally responsive services in safe and humane environments that meet the needs of
individuals in the care and custody of federal immigration authorities as confirmed in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Advisory
Council report in 2016 on privately operated ICE facilities. As a matter of long-standing policy, GEO does not take a position on or advocate for
or against any immigration policies, such as the basis for an individual's detention or the length of detention." GEO also rebuts the class-action
lawsuit filed in Colorado: "GEO has consistently, strongly refuted the allegations made in this lawsuit, and we intend to continue to vigorously
defend our company against these baseless claims. The
volunteer work program at all immigration facilities as well as
the minimum wage rates and standards associated with the program are set by the Federal government
under mandated performance-based national detention standards. Our facilities, including the Aurora, Colo. Facility,
are highly rated and provide high-quality services in safe, secure, and humane residential environments pursuant to the Federal Government's
national standards." But these are just the latest grievances against the business of immigrant incarceration. Human rights groups, including
Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, Detention Watch Network and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have
compiled
reports of medical neglect and deaths in custody. They claim corporations skimp on detainee care in
order to maximize profits. "I don't get the impression that the Trump administration has any interest in
implementing new detention reforms. If anything it looks like they may be eliminating some safeguards,"
says Kevin Landy, who was director of the Office of Policy and Planning at ICE for six years. That office tried to reform federal oversight of
immigrant jails during the Obama administration. He also advocated for raising the pay rate of a dollar a day, which was set in 1974. " I
believe contractors save a lot of money by using detainee labor because they're performing work that
would otherwise have to be performed by paid employees," Landy says. That work includes cooking and cleaning the
facility. But now, ICE is shutting down Landy's old office and moving the functions elsewhere in the agency. "It is incredibly scary to contemplate
the notion that ICE would be removing even the dysfunctional oversight that currently exists," says Carl Takei,
senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project. At the same time, immigration authorities want to
increase detention space. In its latest budget request, ICE
has asked for more than 51,000 detainee beds — a 25
percent increase over the last year. It's good business sense to have bed capacity in close proximity to where our operations are.
Phillip Miller Immigrant advocates wish the agency would use more alternatives to detention, such as electronic ankle monitors. ICE,
however,
believes lockups are the surest way to get detainees to show up in immigration court. So ICE is
turning once again to the private prison industry. "I think what's driving this is the administration wants to make a point that
they're serious about immigration enforcement," says Lauren-Brooke Eisen of the New York University School of Law. She's author of a new
book, Inside Private Prisons. "They're going to put their money where their mouths are and I think they're going to invest in more immigrant
detention centers," she continues. The two largest private corrections corporations, GEO Group and CoreCivic,
each gave $250,000 to Trump's inaugural festivities. The Obama administration took the extraordinary step of phasing out
contracts with private prisons that house immigrants convicted of crimes committed in the U.S. The Justice Department found
these prisons fall short on safety and security, and are no cheaper than those run by the federal
government. Since Trump took office, the Bureau of Prisons has restored those contracts. And ICE is proposing five new private
detention centers — in Detroit, Chicago, St. Paul, Salt Lake City and south Texas. Traditionally, ICE has put its jails in border states close
to where most people were caught. But immigration agents under Trump have been much more aggressive in the interior. They're
psychologically mistreating immigrants. Douglas Menjivar "As we continue to have increased operational control of the border,
and the numbers of arrests on the border go down, at the same time our arrests in the interior are going up," says Phillip Miller, deputy
executive associate director for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations. "It's good business sense to have bed capacity in close proximity to
where our operations are." The changing arrest pattern is good news for private prison companies. In a third-quarter
earnings call last month, a GEO executive indicated that the government's need for additional detention space
should benefit company revenues. Back in Conroe, Texas, a second GEO jail is now under construction. That facility will house
1,000 inmates at a cost to taxpayers of at least $44 million per year. "But what they're building is another prison," says Menjivar, the man who
was detained there. "For me it's a bad idea. They're psychologically mistreating immigrants."

The impact is increased structural violence

Marguiles, 16 (Joseph Margulies, civil rights attorney, professor at Cornell University, August 24,
2016, 11-15-2013, "This Is the Real Reason Private Prisons Should Be Outlawed," Time,
http://time.com/4461791/private-prisons-department-of-justice/)

The Department of Justice recently announced it would begin to phase out the use of private prisons for federal
inmates. We should cheer, but less for the reasons given than those the DOJ left unsaid. In her memo announcing the change, Deputy Attorney
General Sally Yates pointed out that privateprisons “compare poorly” to facilities run by the federal Bureau of
Prisons. The DOJ found that, in general, private prisons provide fewer correctional services at greater security
and safety risk to inmates and staff, without producing substantial savings. These results are related. To
achieve their modest savings, private prisons tend to cut back on staff costs and training . More than a decade
ago, researchers found that private facilities pay their officers less, provide fewer hours of training and have higher
inmate-to-staff ratios, a combination which may account for their much higher turnover rate among correctional officers, as well as the uptick
in inmate assaults. This is the conventional critique of private prisons: They do not deliver on their promise of significant
savings, and the greater risk far outweighs the small fiscal benefit they provide to those within the walls .
But the evidence for this critique is mixed. As the legal scholar Sasha Volokh has pointed out, some studies have shown that public
prisons are more cost-effective than their private counterparts, while others suggest the opposite. More importantly,
Volokh argues that the private sector can be incentivized to improve—especially compared to the government—and that we should reform the
model rather than end the experiment. If we accept the premise that private corporations should run prisons, Volokh’s argument has some
force. The
real reason we should end the use of private prisons is not the conventional one. The real
reason is that justice should not be administered through the prism of profit . As a rule, we disfavor private
prosecutors hired by the victim’s family, or judges who get paid when a defendant in her court is convicted but not when he is acquitted. In
both cases, the concern is obvious: We mistrust arrangements that might lead actors in the system to stray from
their duty to administer justice impartially. The problem with the private prison is analogous, though not identical. The
companies that build and run private prisons have a financial interest in the continued growth of mass
incarceration. That is why the two major players in this game—the Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group—
invest heavily in lobbying for punitive criminal justice policies and make hefty contributions to political campaigns that
will increase reliance on prisons. From 1999-2010, for instance, the Sentencing Project found that CCA spent on average $1.4
million per year on lobbying at the federal level and employed a yearly average of 70 lobbyists at the state level. In California,
where state law requires lobbyists to disclose their contributions in detail, we know that CCA used its resources to support,
among other things, additional adult and juvenile prisons and detention centers and to oppose a bill
that would have outlawed private prisons entirely. These corporations have every legal right to shower money on friendly
legislators. But the fact that they consider it in their interest to do so is exactly what exposes their troubling conflict. Especially today, when
the systemic, deeply entrenched, racialized problems with the criminal justice system are increasingly
apparent, we should not endorse strategies that encourage the expansion of the carceral state. Regrettably,
this was not the explicit message in the DOJ’s announcement. But Yates at least hinted at it. Before pointing out that private prisons “compare
poorly” to their public counterparts—that is, before making the conventional critique—Yates noted that the number of federal prisoners has
begun to fall, in part because of a shift in law and policy away from incarceration, especially in drug cases. As a philosophical matter, the Obama
Administration is trending—albeit haltingly—toward a default preference for non-carceral solutions to crime. The best evidence strongly
supports their preference. The endless churning of the incarceration cycle—the thousands of young men and women
repeatedly removed from their neighborhoods, returned and removed again— systematically destabilizes the very
communities we are trying to save by disrupting the intricate but fragile webs of connection that hold
them together. In fact, research has shown that high incarceration rates of the sort we have seen since the
1980s not only destabilize disadvantaged communities; they actually increase the incidence of crime.
That is why former Attorney General Eric Holder recently argued that as a nation, we should aspire to send fewer people to prison for shorter
periods. This is precisely the opposite of what the private prison industry wants. While you can perhaps incentivize it to improve, you cannot
incentivize a private corporation to go out of business. As long as we have private prisons, their corporate leadership will support policies that
fill every bed. There are roughly 115,000 people incarcerated in private prisons: 25,000 in the federal system and 90,000 in the states. A
corporation’s bottom line should not determine their fate. The DOJ has done what it could. It is time for the states to follow the lead.
 2NC – Private Jails – Yes Detention
ICE redetains immigrants even after being released
Raphael, 17 (T.J. Raphael, content editor, senior editor of FOLIOMag.com, journalist, 5-18-2017, "How immigration detention creates a
shadow prison system," Public Radio International, https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-05-18/how-immigration-detention-creates-shadow-
prison-system)///PSC

For much of the 20th century, immigration detention was a concept that was scoffed at. But today, the practice of apprehending
immigrants and holding them in custody has created a shadow prison system, served by hundreds of
federal and private facilities throughout the country. Ralph Alhassani is a member of the LGBT community from
Ghana — he felt persecuted there and sought asylum in the US in September 2015. He entered from Mexico and quickly
apprehended by ICE. He was initially held in California for eight months and has been held in New Jersey for
the last nine months. “Unfortunately for me, I didn't have an attorney to represent me before the judge,” he says. “Most of us who are
not able to hire an attorney have to represent ourselves before the judge. When I was released, I was released on bond. I was released
on a bond of $35,000 from the judge. Properties had to be sold to pay this bond for me. My mom did all this — she sold her house
because she feared if I came back home, I'd be persecuted." After he was released in California, he was instructed to report to ICE regularly.
Alhassani moved east, and in the summer of 2016, an officer decided that he should have never been released .
“I was given a form to always report to ICE, and I did report all the time,” he says. “But then I met an ICE official, whom I
explained my situation to — he was wondering how I was released, but [still] had to report all the time. So, I told him I was given a bond of
$35,000 by a judge. So, he was like, ‘No it's not supposed to be that way.’ He asked me to come back in January 2017. But on the August 12,
2016, ICE said they wanted to see me on August 15. So, on the 15 when I went, they said they were going to cancel the bond
because my case was not appealed." Since then, Alhassani has been in detention in New Jersey. “I don't really
know what is happening,” he says from a scratchy phone line inside the detention center. Like other inmates, Alhassani is not
allowed to receive calls. He can dial out at certain designated times that come with strict time limits, often at a very
high price per minute. “All I know is ICE is trying to deport me right now because, on February 10, they made me speak to my consulate about
my travel documents. I'm not having the money back, and now ICE is trying to deport me back to my country to face
persecution," he says. Nowadays, his hope and patience are running out. “It is hell. It is hell, my brother,” he says as an automated
recording from the prison cuts between his words. “We've been treated like prisoners. There is no life here. There is
no life.” He later continues: “You have to be locked up during count, you have to be locked up when you're
about to eat, and you have to be locked up when you're going to sleep . I want people to know that immigration
detention is not a good thing at all. ICE is not treating us with justice. Because if I was allowed to pay bond and then come out of detention,
why should I be detained again? Why should I be detained? I know United States believes in justice, the whole world — everybody
knows that. And then after coming all the way from my country to this country to have my freedom, I’ve been treated like this. I don't think this
is fair. So, if there's anything people could do to help people like me. … I would be most grateful. And that is my message." Alhassani has
committed no crime. Yanet Candelario Salazar is a 39-year-old with dual Canadian Cuban citizenship. She was stopped by ICE
and was initially held at the Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey, which is now part of the Orange County Correctional Facility
in New York, where she is with a mixed inmate population, even though she has a green card pending and has
committed no crime. “I am in a dorm with about 50 beds, about half of the inmates here are people with
criminal convictions or waiting to be convicted,” she says from inside the detention center. “I have adjusted to the lack of any
freedom. The human rights abuses that I've seen there are unbelievable. The things that I've seen in here, I mean, I was in detention with a
woman who was 83 years old and very frail, detained for like three weeks.” Candelario Salazar came to the United States three years ago. She
was fleeing an abusive relationship in Canada and wanted to be close to her son and her sister , both of
whom live in the US. “I mean, I am a regular citizen,” she says. “I used to do volunteer work. I don't break laws. I couldn't begin to imagine this,
and even when I got here, I thought this was a mistake and they were going to release me shortly. It
is unbelievable. I still cannot
believe that I said I'd be here for a few weeks or a month, and I have lost any money that I have … I mean,
the weight of my child, his grades have suffered and he's been on his own this whole time. “It was devastating to listen to that call knowing that
she is in distress not having her son by her side,” says Sally Pillay, the director of First Friends, an immigration advocacy group that has set up a
free hotline for people in immigration detention to call and seek support. She is keenly aware of the challenges faced by people like Alhassani
and Candelario Salazar. “We get different stories from different days, sometimes it’s heart-tugging and I have tears in my eyes with some of the
stories that individuals will share with us,” Pillay says. “In particular, recently, we’ve been getting a lot of calls about how peo ple
are being
picked up in communities, apprehended, especially when they go to ICE reportings, to ICE check-ins, and
then are being re-detained. Or they are just being picked up on random traffic violations, where ICE is
present at courts.” She later adds: “We need policies and reforms that are just and humane. Right now, that is not the case.”

Detainment wastes billions and forces immigrants into an ever-expanding network of

private prisons – more cost effective and moral options
Raphael, 17 (T.J. Raphael, content editor, senior editor of FOLIOMag.com, journalist, 8-2-2017, "Immigration detention quotas cost
taxpayers billions — a 'mindless policy' says one congressman," Public Radio International,
https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-08-01/immigration-detention-quotas-cost-taxpayers-billions-mindless-policy-says-one)///PSC

As the complicated and messy fight over immigration policy drags on, immigration detention centers are costing American
taxpayers billions. Last year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement spent more than $3 billion dealing with
immigrants facing deportation. But that figure doesn’t tell the whole story. Back in 2009, Congress passed a law that
required no fewer than 33,400 immigrant detention beds to be “active” every night. Four years later, that number
increased to 34,000 and came to be interpreted as a mandatory minimum. No other law enforcement agency has a similar quota. In
2013, two congressmen introduced a bill to end the "detention bed mandate." Reps. Bill Foster (D-Ill.) and Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) claimed the
quota costs too much, and may adversely influence enforcement protocols. Years later, Foster is still trying to
eliminate this mandate. “There are a number of much less expensive alternatives to detaining immigrants than
locking them up somewhere,” says Foster. “It costs roughly $150 per person, per day, to put them in a detention
facility. For roughly a tenth of that — somewhere between $17 and 15 cents or 20 cents a day, you can put them
into either electronic monitoring programs or community-based programs where people are frequently monitored.” Right now,
the US immigration bed quota system represents a “mindless policy,” Foster argues. More about electronic monitoring and immigrant
supervision programs. “There are two different adjustments we can make — one is to simply adjust the number of beds you have ready
unconditionally,” he says. "'Beds' are [also] sort of a loose term that includes space in local county jails; there are federal facilities used
specifically for detention centers, and there are also for-profit private detention centers.” The
Obama administration tried to
phase out for-profit detention centers, Foster says, because the “standard of care” is often subpar in these
facilities. “The for-profit prisons pay less, so they hire out of a different application pool, and they have
very high turnover," says Foster. "More than half of the guards at for-profit centers turn over in any given
year, and that doesn’t generate a very well-trained force, and a lot of bad things happen to detainees in those
circumstances. Unfortunately, when the Trump administration came in, they reversed many of these decisions.” Given the White
House’s promise to crack down on undocumented immigration, Foster says there isn’t much hope for reform, at least for now. President
Donald Trump has prioritized expanding the detention system . One of his first executive orders called on Homeland
Security to allocate resources or establish contracts to “construct, operate, or control facilities to detain aliens at or near the land border with
Mexico.” Also, Trump’s Department of Justice has said it will resume contracting with private prison
companies. "Discussions with my Republican colleagues, when they acknowledge that there is a correct and rational position on things like
climate change or immigrant detention, they say, 'You know, you’re right on this, but I just can’t vote that way in my district,' or, "I would get a
primary challenge from the right if I acknowledge what I believe to be the correct and rational position on this,"" Foster says. Foster says the
fight to end the bed quota has morphed largely into a political one. “On
the one hand, they’re voting for something that,
objectively looking at it, wastes government money, which is not something that they’re big fans of,” he says. “On the
other hand, if they vote to get rid of the detention bed mandate, it opens you up to the attack of being soft on immigration, which,
unfortunately, has a lot more teeth in a Republican primary than it does in the rest of the general electorate.”
 2NC – Private Jails – Ext Impact
Private prisons cut costs to maximize profits when jailing detained immigrants and
waste taxpayer money
Urbi, 6/20 (Jaden Urbi, associate producer of CNBC 6-20-2018, "This is how much it costs to detain an immigrant in the US," CNBC,
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/20/cost-us-immigrant-detention-trump-zero-tolerance-tents-cages.html)///PSC

The Trump administration's zero tolerance policy for illegal immigration is shining a spotlight on U.S.
detention efforts. Recent government handout images show children lying on the ground with Mylar blankets in kennel-like wire cages.
Audio obtained by ProPublica captures children crying after being separated from their migrant parents. Though Trump signed an
order he says will keep migrant families together, the detention facilities drawing the most attention right now aren't the
only ones in the U.S. As of this month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement runs 113 detention facilities across the
country and works with state and local jails along with private prisons to operate hundreds more. ICE facilities
cost $133.99 a day per adult According to ICE's FY 2018 budget, on average it costs $133.99 a day to maintain one adult
detention bed. But immigration groups have pegged the number closer to $200 a day . The cost to maintain a
family bed, which keeps mothers and children together in a family residential center, costs around $319 a day, according to
DHS. But as of April, children have been separated from their parents with much higher frequency, which has led to the creation
of "tent cities" to hold thousands of separated children. Those beds cost $775 per person per night, HHS told NBC News.
Migrant children, many of whom have been separated from their parents under the "zero tolerance" policy by the Trump administration, are
being housed in tents next to the Mexican border in Tornillo, Texas, U.S. June 18, 2018. Migrantchildren, many of whom have been
separated from their parents under the "zero tolerance" policy by the Trump administration, are being housed in tents next to the
Mexican border in Tornillo, Texas, U.S. June 18, 2018. An ICE spokesman said it does not detain
unaccompanied children. However, it does oversee "juvenile facilities," managed by local jurisdictions, that allow for
"temporary housing of children separate from adults." The average bed rate for this type of facility is $139.40 per day ,
according to ICE. However, ICE estimates often lack in transparency and don't reflect the true cost. There's been so
much discrepancy that the U.S. Government Accountability Office looked into ICE's budget requests and found that its methodology was
inaccurate and recommended a change in the way it comes up with its cost estimates. And then there's the question of how long immigrants
are detained.
ICE estimates an average stay of 44 days, but thousands of immigrants have been held far
longer. In one case heard by the Supreme Court, an immigrant spend three years in detention. The DHS
projects there will be an average of 51,379 people held in immigration detention centers each day in fiscal
2018, a sizable jump from the last few years, which have hovered near the low 30,000s. The increase stems follow's President Donald Trump's
hardline policy against illegal immigration. The executive order On Jan. 26, 2017, Trump announced an executive order called "Enhancing Public
Safety in the Interior of the United States." It broadened the scope of who is at risk for deportation, called for thousands of new ICE agents and
directed DHS to use state and local police more to help enforce immigration law. ICE officers in search of a man question his mother about his
whereabouts in a morning raid on his residence in Riverside, California. ICE officers in search of a man question his mother about his
whereabouts in a morning raid on his residence in Riverside, California. A number of ICE's official reports reference Trump's executive order as a
reason for ramping up operations. And that means more taxpayer money will be funneled toward immigration enforcement and deportation.
But that doesn't mean people aren't profiting. In fact,
private prison companies are making lots of money off
detaining immigrants. Private profits Private prisons get stipends from the government to take over
responsibilities of running a prison. To get that stipend, their costs must be lower than that of a public
prison. The more beds a private prison can fill, the more funding they'll get from the government. And
just like any business, the more costs they can cut, the bigger that profit margin will be . But many times,
that results in poor quality of care for prisoners. A guard escorts migrant detainee from his segregation cell back into the
general population at the Adelanto Detention Facility in Adelanto, California. The facility is managed by the private GEO Group. A guard escorts
migrant detainee from his segregation cell back into the general population at the Adelanto Detention Facility in Adelanto, California. The
facility is managed by the private GEO Group. Just look at GEO Group, one of the country's largest private prison corporations. It donated
hundreds of thousands of dollars to a Trump-aligned super PAC, hosted its annual leadership conference at one of Trump's golf resorts, and just
after Trump's election — its stock soared. Its shares have gained more than 8 percent this year. In ICE's FY 2018 budget, it says a "Longer
Average Length of Stay (ALOS) will also drive the need for additional detention beds." Now , GEO Group officials say they expect
earnings to rise with increased immigration detention time. ICE budget requests have skyrocketed under
Trump. Even as the president vowed to stop separating families at the border, his zero tolerance policy
is still in effect.

Private prisons fail – don’t meet the purpose of a prison

Mohammed 17 (Farah Mohammed, 5-15-2017, Farahnaz Mohammed is a nomadic journalist, based wherever there’s an internet
connection. Her writing has appeared in The Huffington Post, The Guardian, The Women’s Media Center and others, and her work has been
referenced by Quartz, The Washington Post and El Colombiano. Farah holds a Masters of Science in Journalism from Northwestern University
and a Masters in Spanish and English Literature from The University of Edinburgh. "The Problem With Privatizing Prisons," JSTOR Daily,
https://daily.jstor.org/the-problem-with-privatizing-prisons/)

Private prisons are, in theory, a practical solution to a thorny problem. The state has too many prisoners and
not enough prisons. The public sector is unable or unwilling to build more. Private companies step in and earn revenue per prisoner to
maintain and run the facilities. The system minimizes government waste while increasing the capacity of
incarceration. The theory behind private prisons has translated poorly into practice, however, and has been
strongly criticized. Studies showed there were minimal savings compared to using public prisons . A scandal involving the
murder of an Oklahoma couple by escaped inmates was linked to lax security at their private facility. Another private Ohio prison
saw thirteen stabbings, two murders, and six escapes in its initial 14 months . In 2011, a Court Judge was
convicted in a “cash for kids jail scheme,” in which private prisons had paid him to dole out harsh
sentences in order to maintain their prison population. Private prisons have no real incentive to
rehabilitate prisoners. The Obama administration had begun to scale back its use of private prisons. The future for the industry looked
grim and investments plummeted. Consequently, when the Trump campaign began outlining future plans, private
prison groups lobbied. Quartz reports, “GEO Group, one of the two largest prison operators, was one of the few publicly
traded companies to openly donate large sums to the Trump effort. Both GEO Group and CoreCivic, the other
industry giant, donated to the presidential inauguration. One donation, the senators point out, came a day after the
Obama Justice Department’s decision to eliminate their use of private facilities .” Under Trump, inmate
numbers are expected to increase substantially, following a crackdown on illegal immigration and a new
insistence on mandatory minimums (where repeat offenders of even non-violent crimes must serve sentences of years). Molly Gill, director of
federal legislative affairs at FAMM, explained to the Huffington Post, “If you’re determined to lock everybody up as long as possible, whether
they’re dangerous or not, you need a place to put them and lots of money to pay for it.” If inmate numbers increase
dramatically, the government may give itself no other option. Even with a decrease in inmate population under the
Obama administration, current facilities are still operating over capacity. Yet human rights advocates criticize the
inadequacy of private prisons to address this. “Traditionally, the purpose of imprisoning a person falls into
three distinct areas: protection for the public, rehabilitation for the offender, and punishment for the
criminal. In all three of these areas, private prisons perform no better than public prisons—and may
actually perform worse.” Private prisons have no real incentive to rehabilitate prisoners. If they make their profit from criminal society,
its goes against business sense to reduce criminality. Staff overturn rate at private prisons can be significantly higher than at public ones,
suggesting a constant flow of inexperience in a high-pressure environment. And security at the expense of cost-cutting can have disastrous
effects for civilians.

Private prisons abuse juveniles and starve mentally ill patients

Eber and Winter, 12 (Gabriel Eber, Staff Counsel at the ACLU National Prison Project where he litigates and advocates for
improved conditions of confinement for prisoners and detainees, received his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center, his M.P.H. from
the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and his A.B. from Harvard College, Margaret Winter, Associate Director of the ACLU National Prison
Project, litigated prison and jail reform cases in federal trial and appellate courts around the nation and has argued and won a prisoner’s rights
case in the U.S. Supreme Court, won ground-breaking remedial decrees in class action cases challenging conditions of confinement on death
row, prolonged solitary confinement, treatment of youth sentenced as adult and of prisoners with serious mental illness, HIV-based
discrimination, and failure to protect prisoners from rape and violence, 4-30-2012, "Private Prisons Are the Problem, Not the Solution,"
American Civil Liberties Union, https://www.aclu.org/blog/mass-incarceration/private-prisons-are-problem-not-solution)///PSC

For the past two years, the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center have been investigating and exposing a
horrifying pattern of abuse against juveniles and the mentally ill in two Mississippi prisons operated by
the GEO Group, one of the biggest for-profit prison operators in the world. Recently, we got some good news and some bad news. The
good: the Mississippi Department of Corrections has ended its contract with GEO. The bad: the Department has announced that
it is looking for another for-profit prison contractor to run the three state prisons formerly run by GEO . It
is all too predictable that merely replacing one greedy for-profit prison contractor with another will only prolong the crisis in some
of Mississippi's most brutal prisons. There's no question that GEO has been a bad actor in Mississippi, and richly deserves to be
ousted: only last month, a federal judge found that GEO's operation of the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional
Facility, which incarcerates teenagers as young as 13, has created "a picture of such horror as should
be unrealized anywhere in the civilized world," including a pattern of sexual abuse and severe beatings. The judge also
excoriated the Mississippi Department of Corrections for failing to monitor and halt GEO's abuses. And teenagers aren't the only incarcerated
population facing abuse in GEO's Mississippi facilities. At
East Mississippi Correctional Facility, the state's only prison
for those who need treatment for mental illness, the ACLU and SPLC have collected massive evidence that GEO has
been starving the mentally ill prisoners, denying them basic mental health care, punishing them with
solitary confinement, and exposing them to such systemic abuse and neglect that suicides and suicide
attempts are rampant. But there is no reason whatsoever to believe that the situation will be improved by replacing GEO with a
different prison profiteer. In fact, two other big private prison contractors — Corrections Corporation of America and Wexford — are already
operating the medical and mental health systems in some Mississippi prisons, and the
Department of Corrections is well aware that
those private contractors are providing abysmal care to prisoners with serious medical and mental health needs. The
ACLU has painstakingly documented Wexford and CCA's gross lack of regard for prisoner health; MDOC has long been on notice of these
deficiencies, some of which have resulted in deaths. The
root of the problem: all for-profit prison corporations are in
the very business of generating the greatest possible profits, by any means necessary . Providing safe
and humane conditions of confinement to the human beings in their custody is — at best — a distant
secondary goal. The private prison industry has been a key player over the past two decades in driving the explosion of mass incarceration
in the U.S. Families, communities and state and local government have suffered terribly from the mass
incarceration binge; the only clear winner is the private prison industry and its stockholders , making billions
in revenues. GEO's chairman and CEO claimed that it was backing out of the Mississippi contract because EMCF was "financially
underperforming;" GEO said it had expected the contract to generate about $21.7 million in annual revenue. Evidently, even starving mentally
ill prisoners — an ACLU medical expert documented case after case of inmates losing upwards of 10 and as many as 30 pounds after a few
months in GEO custody — did not make the contract adequately profitable. The next for-profit corporation that gets the contract will have no
more incentive than GEO to provide adequate security staffing, medical and mental health care, nutrition, or decently safe sanitary housing — if
it can figure out a way to squeeze more profit out of the prisoners by cutting per-capita expenditures. Private
prisons are the
problem, not the solution. Mississippi should throw out the prison profiteers for good, and take responsibility for providing decent
treatment to the men, women and children it chooses to incarcerate.
Aff- Court Clog DA
2AC – Non U
 2AC Generic
The backlog is increasing and only going to get worse—Sessions’ efforts to reduce the
backlog are making it even worse
Benner 6/12 (Katie Benner is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who covers the Justice Department for
The New York Times. "Immigration Judges Express Fear That Sessions’s Policies Will Impede Their Work,"
No Publication, 6-12-2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/us/politics/immigration-judges-jeff-
sessions.html)//Bennerz

TYSONS, Va. — As the nation’s immigration judges gathered here for training this week, Attorney
General Jeff Sessions had a message: They needed to help “end the lawlessness that now exists in our
immigration system.” But to many of the judges, Mr. Sessions’s hard-line immigration agenda is
increasingly standing in the way of their ability to mete out justice. In interviews, some objected to
quotas he imposed on them this spring of 700 cases per year, as well as his ban on a bureaucratic tool
they used to reduce their caseloads. Others expressed concern about the impact his zero-tolerance
policy on illegal immigration could have on their dockets, and his push for faster rulings. They viewed
those together as leaving them at risk of creating a system that sacrifices due process for efficiency.
“Sessions is treating them like immigration officers, not judges,” said Paul Schmidt, a former judge in the
immigration courts, which count more than 300 judges in their ranks and another two dozen or so on an
immigration appeals board. Mr. Sessions’s carrying out of his immigration agenda has reignited a long-
running debate about the independence of immigration judges, who are part of the Justice Department,
not the judicial branch. Some of the judges fear that they could be used to help fulfill the
administration’s priorities, endangering their independence. “The Justice Department is the premier law
enforcement agency, but the role of law enforcement is different from that of a neutral court,” said
Dana Leigh Marks, the president emeritus of the immigration judges’ union. She said the organization
believes the time has come to separate immigration courts from the department. A Justice Department
official said Tuesday that part of the mission of the immigration courts was to complete cases in a timely
manner. The courts have a goal to “increase productivity and timeliness of case processing by setting
appropriate standards, streamlining procedures, and implementing staff-generated recommendation,”
according to the department’s website. Opposition to Mr. Sessions among their ranks, judges said, is
more about the pressures he has put upon the office than about his stance on immigration. Immigration
courts stand apart from the judicial system. Cases are often complicated by an absence of
documentation and supporting evidence, defendants’ failure to understand American laws and lack of a
lawyer. Proceedings can be time-consuming. Many families and individuals have their cases denied,
making courts emotionally charged places where crying and screaming are familiar sounds. Judges often
burn out, Mr. Schmidt said. The immigration judges report to a Sessions appointee, James McHenry, the
chairman of the office that oversees them. His office controls which cases they will hear and can force
judges to prioritize certain cases and send them around the country to work. Mr. Sessions has assigned
18 immigration judges to work at detention centers near the border, about a 50 percent increase in the
ranks of judges handling immigration cases in those areas. In a speech on Monday at the judges’
conference outside Washington, hosted by the Justice Department, Mr. Sessions asked them to look for
inefficiencies to finish cases more quickly. “We have to be very productive,” he said. “Volume is critical.”
Three judges said they were struck by his emphasis on speed, prosecutions and policy matters without
acknowledgment of the need to balance those demands with ensuring due process for immigrants. They
said they feared the focus on metrics and closing cases would make it harder to sort through
complicated cases and easier to simply deny applications for entry into the United States. Scores of
attendees wore American flag pins in support of “judicial independence and integrity in our courts,”
according to a note accompanying the pins. Dozens of judges who gathered early Monday evening
expressed anxiety over their treatment, according to one person present who was not authorized to
share the details of the private meeting. They said they lacked specifics on which cases would count
toward their quotas. They pointed to Mr. Sessions’s ban on their use of administrative closure, the tool
that effectively allowed them to close cases. And they worried that his zero-tolerance policy on illegal
immigration would flood the system with new cases and make it hard for them to decrease the system
backlog of about 700,000 cases. The potential impact of Mr. Sessions’s zero-tolerance policy toward
immigration has been of particular concern to judges who are already grappling with a large caseload.
“It’s as if local police and prosecutors decided to prosecute every traffic ticket of anyone going 2 miles
per hour over the speed limit and filled the court system with those cases,” Mr. Schmidt said. Judges are
also resigning in large numbers, Ms. Marks said, a pattern she expected to continue. As of last year, 39
percent of immigration judges were eligible for retirement, according to a study conducted by the
Government Accountability Office. Many immigration judges were sworn in during a wave of hiring in
the 1990s. The Justice Department has said it is on pace to hire 100 more judges this year, and its data
shows that the department has never filled every slot. Currently there are 336 judges out of the 484
authorized slots. In a conference session on Tuesday afternoon with Mr. McHenry, one judge asked if
they could delay disciplining judges on the attorney general’s directives about metrics and streamlining
the system. The room erupted in applause, but the question went unanswered.

Non-unique – courts already clogged, hundreds of thousands of cases

Tampa Bay Times, 17 (Tampa Bay times, 12-time Pulitzer prize winner, updated October 27, 2017, The broken immigration
courts, http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/Editorial-The-broken-immigration-courts_161954293)///PSC

The nation has demonstrated its ability to round up suspected illegal immigrants . What it can't do as
effectively is determine who should stay and who should go - thanks to an underfunded and understaffed court
system that is hopelessly backlogged with hundreds of thousands of cases. The system is unjust and a waste of
public resources, and it doesn't serve either side of the immigration debate. Congress needs to spend more money before the impact on
families and the states gets even worse. Theclogs in the system are frustrating judges, attorneys and advocates.
According to recent federal data cited by the Tampa Bay Times, 637,000 cases are pending in the
nation's immigration courts. Florida has about 42,000 of those cases, making it the fourth-busiest state behind California, Texas and
New York. There are more than 2,100 cases pending in the Tampa Bay area, and as the logjam grows, the wait times for court
hearings have climbed, with some cities setting court dates as far out as 2022. In Miami, one of Florida's main
immigration jurisdictions, some immigrants won't get their day in court until November 2018. In Orlando, it's late 2019. That's ridiculous. These
delays benefit neither immigrants and their families nor hardliners appealing for the government to act.
They deny due process for those who have valid claims to stay while forestalling deportation for those
who really should be forced out of the country. And while President Donald Trump made a crackdown on immigration a top
campaign issue and priority for his administration, the backlog in the immigration court system preceded Trump. As
the Times reported, the number of pending cases grew from about 186,000 in 2008 to roughly 516,000
in 2016. Immigrants in Florida are waiting an average of more than 500 days for their cases to be placed on a docket of one of 35 judges in
Orlando and Miami. The Trump administration's tougher approach to immigration has brought about 82,000
new cases to the system nationwide since January. That will only clog the system further by putting more
immigrants with valid claims for residency before the courts. Officials trace the problem back to the Sept. 11, 2001,
terror attacks, when the nation began to spend more to enforce the immigration laws while keeping a lid on
spending to hire judges. Funding
for enforcement has far outpaced the budgets for the 58 immigration courts .
Trump's order applying enforcement in a broader range of cases will only channel more people into an
already dysfunctional system. The smart and more efficient approach would be for federal authorities to
prioritize their efforts on those suspected of being involved in gang activity or serious crimes. That still would
not wholly compensate for the shortfall in court funding. A bill introduced in the House last year would have brought some parity to funding for
enforcement and the courts; it went nowhere. The administration's 2018 budget calls for additional judicial staff; the
Justice Department said 50 more judges will be appointed this year and another 75 in 2018. But that's
not nearly enough. The backlog in the courts is only one symptom of a broken immigration system, which still needs broader reform. But
the delays and uncertainty will continue to hurt states such as Florida where immigrants play an outsized role in civic and economic life.

Court backlog getting worse – judge changes, court dates pushed back, more ICE
agents
Meckler and Caldwell, 5/23 (Laura Meckler, journalist, ALicia Caldwell, immigration specialist and journalist, Wall Street
Journal writers, 5/23/18, The Wall Street Journal, The Glitch in Trump’s Immigration Campaign: Overloaded Courts,
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-immigration-courts-long-crowded-are-now-overwhelmed-1527089932)

The nation’s chronically overburdened immigration courts are becoming even more crowded as a wave
of illegal immigrants enters the system and fewer are able to exit it. The 334 immigration judges working nationwide
each juggle dockets of some 2,000 cases. The backlog has reached nearly 700,000, more than double what it was six
years ago, and the average case is in court for more than two years. This frustrates people on both sides of the immigration debate. Court
hearings are scheduled for months or years into the future, delaying deportations for those who have no
right to stay and putting off permission to remain for those who do. The Trump administration has campaigned to
increase arrests and deportations of illegal immigrants. The number of pending cases has increased nearly 150,000—a 26% jump—since Donald
Trump took office. The monthly increases during the Trump administration exceed all but the last two months of the Obama administration.
“The winner is an alien who has a really lousy case, because they get to be here for years waiting for a
case to come up,” says Judge Lawrence Burman, of Arlington, Va. His calendar is full through 2020, and he has scheduled hearings on the
docket of a future judge who has not yet been hired. Immigration judges aren’t permitted to speak to the media; Mr. Burman spoke in his
capacity as an official with the union representing immigration judges. “Undoing years of neglect takes time,” he said in a written statement,
expressing confidence that the Justice Department “will ultimately create an immigration court system that
serves the national interest and introduces speed and efficiency without compromising due process .”
Visits to several immigration courts turned up similar scenarios: Cases are called, and when an immigrant needs time to
find a lawyer, or produce the right paperwork, or hear back from the immigration agency on a pending
application, the case is rescheduled. The way advocates of tougher immigration enforcement see it, the backlog allows people
who should be deported to linger in the U.S., and encourages others to come or stay illegally, knowing it could take years for them to be
removed. Mr. Trump and others have cited the case of Apolinar Altamirano, who was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement
agents in 2013 but released on bond while his case moved through the immigration courts in Arizona. Court Overload As
the case
backlog grows in U.S. immigration courts, government lawyers are closing fewer cases by exercising
prosecutorial discretion. Pending caseload at end of year 700 thousand cases 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 ’12 ’10 FY2008 ’14 ’16 ’18*
Cases closed because of prosecutorial discretion 30 thousand cases 20 10 0 ’15 ’16 FY2013 ’14 ’17 *First 6 months of FY18 Source: Executive
Office for Immigration Review, Justice Department While waiting, Mr. Altamirano, then 29 years old, allegedly shot in the head a Mesa, Ariz.,
convenience-store clerk named Grant Ronnebeck, as the clerk counted money Mr. Altamirano had put down for a pack of cigarettes. The clerk
died, and Mr. Altamirano was charged with murder. That was in 2015. The criminal case is pending, and he remains in an Arizona jail. “Grant
Ronnebeck’s murder is a direct result of your agency’s failed policies,” Rep. Paul Gosar (R., Ariz.) told a then-Obama administration official
during a 2016 congressional hearing. Lawyers representing immigrants also decry the long waits. Delays make it difficult to try cases, as
evidence grows stale and clients change addresses. It is hard to recruit pro bono lawyers, because they know they may be tied to the case for
years. Immigrants likely to win in court are instead stuck in limbo. A court hearing for a 32-year-old
Honduran woman who crossed the Rio Grande in south Texas in 2014 is now scheduled for December
2019. According to the woman and her lawyer, her parents and brother were murdered in Honduras by attackers trying to force them from
their land, and her husband was attacked. She is now seeking asylum in the U.S. Her pro bono lawyer, Samad
Pardesi, says he plans to argue that as a member of this family, she faces persecution if sent back to
Honduras. ICE agents, shown frisking illegal immigrants at a Manhattan processing center in April, are authorized to arrest almost anyone
they find in the U.S. illegally. “The police couldn’t protect my brother. They couldn’t protect my parents,” the woman said in an interview. Her
hearing, originally scheduled for the fall of 2016, has been postponed three times. When
a new judge was hired for the court,
the case was reassigned, pushing back the date. The new judge bumped her date, twice, so she could
hear the case of someone in detention, a higher priority, according to her lawyer. During the final years of Barack
Obama’s presidency, ICE targeted for arrest a narrower category—recent border crossers and those convicted of serious crimes. Nearly
everyone else was let go on the theory that the government had limited resources and had to set enforcement priorities. The Trump
administration says it targets for arrest all illegal immigrants charged, convicted or suspected by ICE of
any crime, along with anyone previously ordered deported. ICE agents also arrest almost anyone else they find in the U.S.
illegally. During the first half of fiscal year 2018, 33% of those arrested by ICE had no criminal convictions, compared with 13% in 2016 . The
president has requested funding from Congress for 10,000 more ICE agents in a push to nearly triple the
size of the force. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers conducted a search for a wanted illegal immigrant in Brooklyn, N.Y., in
April. When new cases land in court, government lawyers are less likely to agree to exercise prosecutorial discretion to close them based on the
circumstances of the immigrants involved, or to give them time to apply for a status that would let them stay legally. In 2016, under the Obama
administration, judges exercised such discretion to close more than 25,000 cases. In 2017, 8,600 people received such treatment. Such closed
cases can later be reopened at the request of the government or the immigrant. “We see almost no prosecutorial discretion anymore,” says
Barry Frager, an immigration lawyer in Memphis. “We consider those days to be over.” The Trump administration has also stepped up
reopening previously closed cases. An
agency official says ICE directed its lawyers to systematically review those
cases. During fiscal year 2017, 21,000 previously closed cases were put back on the calendar, a 42%
increase from 2016. That was the case with Hugolino Garcia Matul, a 44-year-old Guatemala native, who
came to the U.S. illegally in 1997 and works in a turkey-processing plant in rural Missouri. In 2010, he
was arrested for driving without a license and, in 2011, put into deportation proceedings . In 2012, the
government agreed to administratively close the case because Mr. Garcia had been in the U.S. for many
years and hadn’t committed a serious crime, his lawyer says. Last year, he got a notice from the government that his case
would be put back onto the court’s calendar. His case is scheduled for a status hearing in September, and his lawyer expects the merits hearing
will be sometime in 2021. Filling the Bench There is wide support and funding for more immigration judges, but
hiring has been slow. There are 334 on the job now. Number of immigration judges authorized 600 judges 500 400 300 200 100 0 ’17
’18 FY2015 ’16 ’19* Budget for immigration-court system $600 million 500 400 300 200 100 0 ’17 ’18 FY2016 ’19* *2019 budget request
Source: Executive Office for Immigration Review, Justice Department Periodic shifts in court priorities, during both the Obama and Trump
administrations, have contributed to the backlog. Under
Mr. Obama, judges were told to move the cases of immigrant
families and children to the top of their dockets, which pushed older cases involving single adults to the
back of the line. Mr. Trump scrapped that directive. He transferred about 100 judges to courts near the
Mexican border and to some cities with large caseloads. That meant cases at their home courts had to be rescheduled.
The redeployment occurred when border crossings were at their lowest levels in at least 45 years, leaving many judges with little to do in their
temporary assignments, according to several judges. A report prepared for the Executive Office of Immigration Review, the agency that runs the
immigration courts, by outside consultants concluded that temporarily reassigned court personnel had trouble catching up with their own work
after returning to their home courts. This
month, the Justice Department announced it was again temporarily
deploying 18 immigration judges to the border. A U.S. immigration court is housed in this federal
building in lower Manhattan. There is wide support for hiring more immigration judges. In this year’s budget, Congress
has authorized 484 judge positions, up from 319 in 2015. Just 334 are currently on the job, partly
because of a lengthy hiring process. Unlike most federal judges, immigration judges work for the Justice
Department, which runs the immigration-court system. The Justice Department says it has shortened the hiring time. It
also is working to convert the courts’ paper files into an electronic system. Beyond that, there is little agreement about how to reduce the
backlog. Manycritics of the administration’s immigration stance want ICE agents and prosecutors to
exercise discretion and not arrest or prosecute illegal immigrants who are settled in the U.S. and pose no
threat to the public. “We should be focusing enforcement on those who present a danger to our community,” says Jeremy McKinney, an
immigration lawyer in North Carolina and secretary of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. The department has focused on speeding
up the handling of cases. It has directed immigration judges to grant fewer continuances, saying efficient courts are in the “national interest.” It
also informed judges that their job evaluations will be tied to how many cases they complete. “Meritless
cases or motions
pending before the immigration courts…should be promptly resolved consistent with applicable law,”
Attorney General Jeff Sessions wrote in a December memo to court staff. Last week, Mr. Sessions issued a
new directive instructing immigration judges not to set aside cases by administratively closing them,
although he didn’t order the reopening of all previously closed cases. He also is expected to overturn a 2014 Board of
Immigration Appeals decision that guarantees most asylum applicants the right to a full hearing, even if they lose their cases at an earlier stage.
The administration has lobbied for changes that would reduce the number of people who have the right to go to court in the first place .
It
wants Congress to make it harder to pursue an asylum claim. It also wants to change the law so more
children who arrive at the border alone can be quickly deported without seeing an immigration judge
first. Art Arthur, a former immigration judge who now works at the conservative think tank Center for Immigration Studies,
recommends “bright line” standards for immigration judges in deciding routine matters such as when to
delay a hearing, when to grant asylum and when judges should grant “cancellation of removal,” which
allows someone to legally stay in the U.S. If unauthorized migrants were quickly deported, he says, fewer would try to cross in the first place.
“Ifyou create the perception that you can’t stay forever, fewer people will enter,” he says, “and in the
long run, the numbers [in court] will fall.” Corrections & Amplifications The number of pending cases in U.S. immigration courts
has increased by nearly 150,000—a 26% jump—since President Donald Trump took office. An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the
increase was more than 150,000 and a 25% jump. (June 1, 2018)

Backlog now- snapshot and trends prove- Trump stops increasing judges
Barr 6/20 (Luke Barr, journalist for ABC News, 6/20/18, “Immigration backlog exceeds 700,000 cases
and rising”, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/immigration-backlog-exceeds-700000-cases-rising/story?
id=56028787)/CWB

One thing Attorney General Jeff Sessions and immigration activists can agree on is that there is a huge
backlog of immigration court cases at the southern border. And they’ve been increasing since 2016, according
to Syracuse University's TRAC Immigration database, which monitors U.S. federal immigration
enforcement. As of now, there are 714,067 pending immigration cases, according to the database. By
comparison, there were just over 400,000 in 2014, just over 450,000 in 2015 and more than 515,000 in
2016, the most recent year for which data is available. The courts in New York, Los Angles, San Francisco and Houston
are experiencing the biggest backlogs, data show. In response, the U.S. Justice Department sent 35 more prosecutors to the
Southwestern border last month. The department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which adjudicates immigration cases, also
added 18 immigration judges to hear cases in person and via video conference. The assistant U.S. attorneys are allocated along the southern
border states of Texas, California, Arizona and New Mexico. In a speech earlier this month at the EOIR, Sessions talked about a 50 percent
increase in the number of U.S. immigration judges hearing cases in the coming year. Because the Department of Justice now refers all
immigration cases for prosecution, there could be a bigger increase of backlogged cases. At an event last month, EOIR Director James McHenry
said his office is always looking for ways to expiate the process but ensure due process. There are more than 320 immigration judges around
the country but Sessions has signaled that he wants to hire more to address the problem. To that end, Congress has given the DOJ room to hire
up 150 new judges, McHenry said. But President
Trump expressed a different view in his reaction to a proposal by Senate Republicans,
saying that adding judges on the southwest border would be "crazy."

Trump purposefully increasing backlog to deter immigration and appeal to his base-
increasing judges fails
Hayoun 18 (Massoud Hayoun, contributing writer to Pacific Standard, citing Richard A. Boswell, law
professor at UC Hastings, 1/11/18, “IS TRUMP SOLVING THE IMMIGRATION COURT BACKLOG OR IS HE
FUNDING IT?”, https://psmag.com/social-justice/is-trump-solving-the-immigration-court-backlog-or-is-
he-funding-it)/CWB
The White House appears to be at odds with experts over who is to blame for a sluggish immigration
court system. The Trump administration may soon add hundreds of thousands of new immigration court
cases to an already massive—and rapidly growing—backlog, as a key corner of the legal system in the
United States slows to a standstill and asylum seekers suffer unprecedented wait times. The
administration has promised to take sweeping measures to slash the backlog, but some legal analysts
are skeptical of the administration's actual goal, questioning whether the administration might be
clogging the system to fulfill pledges to its anti-immigrant base. Immigration authorities began the year
with a heightened spike in the backlog. The number of pending immigration court cases soared by
30,000 to more than 650,000 in the first two months of the 2018 fiscal year, according to a count of
public records conducted by Syracuse University and published late last week. In those two months
alone, the growth in pending cases outpaced that of the entire 2017 fiscal year, the report showed. But the
administration has signaled it may soon dwarf that substantial uptick in immigration cases. Last week,
Attorney General Jeff Sessions called to review the practice of so-called administrative closures, in which a
judge does not rule in favor of an immigration claim but bars an immigrant from deportation while they
petition for citizenship, the Associated Press reported. Among the questions Sessions posed on the closed cases, he indicated that he
may consider re-opening them, the report said, effectively adding some 350,000 administratively closed cases to an
already overloaded docket. When pressed for comment, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services directed Pacific Standard to
the Department of Justice's Executive Office of Immigration Review. The latter did not respond by the time of publication. If Sessions does move
to re-open the 350,000 administratively closed cases, the decision would fly in the face of the administration's recent pledges to slash its
tremendous immigration court backlog in half by 2020, which unnamed administration officials told the Washington Post it aimed to do by
adding more judges and updating technology in courts. Immigration law experts observe that, while the administration claims to tackle the
backlog, it is simultaneously creating more cases that fund it. "The
backlog is directly attributable to the Trump
administration's broad enforcement priorities, which do not distinguish between immigrants with
longstanding ties in the U.S. and strong legal defenses to being deported," says Richard A. Boswell, a law
professor at the University of California–Hastings College of the Law. President Donald Trump's fiery
words and actions on immigrants fund the backlog, Boswell explains. "Under a system of laws, a person
facing deportation cannot be picked up and immediately removed from the U.S. They are entitled to a
hearing and that hearing is presided over by an immigration judge." And more judges won't be enough
to meet the need, Boswell warns. "Even if they did bring in more immigration judges, they are
overloading the system. When and if this administration faces the realities of our immigration problem,
they will see that we need comprehensive immigration reform that provides for legalization of many of
those who are already here, and which also streamlines the process for those with good reason to be
allowed into our country." Immigration officials underlined for the Post that, in an effort to slash the backlog, the administration
had reversed the practice of prosecutorial discretion, whereby judges can set aside low-urgency cases in
order to prioritize others. The administration of former President Barack Obama—which deported an unprecedented number of
undocumented migrants—introduced the practice to address the growing backlog. Boswell cited prosecutorial discretion as one means of
curbing—as opposed to exacerbating, per the administration officials cited in the Post—the backlog. "They should go back to the prosecutorial
discretion policies instituted by the previous administration, and look for a legislative compromise that will grant a form of amnesty to many of
these people whose cases are clogging up the system," Boswell says, adding that he's almost certain the Trump administration will do none
of that. "I am not convinced that the Trump administration really cares about remedying the situation.
These policies satisfy the desire by their political base, which believes that we have way to many
immigrants as it is and would be happy to have those caught up in the system deported as soon as
possible." In addition to Sessions potentially re-opening 350,000 closed cases, there's more still that the administration is doing to burden
the courts; the upheaval wrought by months of controversial anti-immigrant policies is expected to funnel hundreds of thousands more into the
court system. Likely factoring into the backlog are, barring an act of Congress guaranteeing their status, the 690,000 recipients of the Deferred
Action for Childhood Arrivals program and the people rounded up in a much-touted recent surge in Immigration and Customs Enforcement
arrests following directives in executive orders that Trump signed shortly after his inauguration last year. On Monday, the administration
announced its decision to discontinue temporary protected status for some 200,000 Salvadoran escapees of natural and political disaster. Many
of those Salvadoran Americans may also end up in immigration court, particularly as a large proportion are married to U.S. citizens. Others have
little hope of a successful court bid to remain in the U.S., despite having children who are U.S. nationals. The
backlog has left many
families burdened and analysts with little faith in the functions of government. And now, everyone
seems to be struggling to interpret whether the Trump administration is doing what it claims to be
doing, or if it's engaged in some complex act of brinkmanship.
 2AC – Sessions’ Reforms Fail
Sessions’ measures won’t do anything—the issues go deeper and judges aren’t the
problem
Rappaport 4/4 (Nolan Rappaport, executive branch immigration law expert for three years; he
subsequently served as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security
and Claims for four years. Prior to working on the Judiciary Committee, he wrote decisions for the Board
of Immigration Appeals for 20 years, "Immigration judge quotas will not eliminate the backlog crisis,"
TheHill, 4-4-2018, http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/394036-How-Comey-intervened-to-kill-
Wikileaks-immunity-deal)//Bennerz

The National Association of Immigration Judges opposes the performance goals. Among other things,
they point out that the current backlog cannot be attributed to a lack of productivity on the part of
judges, and the imposition of quotas and deadlines on judges will impede justice and due process. But
here’s a better reason to oppose the quotas: Session’s performance goals are not an effective way to
deal with the backlog crisis. As of March 5, 2018, there were approximately 350 judges, and the
immigration court had 684,583 pending deportation cases. If the judges do 700 cases-a-year, it will only
dispose of approximately 245,000 cases-a-year. At that rate, it would take almost three years to
eliminate the backlog … if there are no new cases. But there will always be new cases. Sessions also will
hire more judges, but the problems the immigration court is having with the current judges should be
addressed first to determine whether the selection process needs to be changed. From FY2013 through
FY2017, 379 complaints were filed against the judges, approximately 30 percent of the judges every
year! Also, there are gross disparities in the way the judges are applying the law. TRAC Immigration
reports that the outcome at asylum hearings over a six-year period depended largely on which judge
was assigned to the case. For the 6,922 asylum seekers whose applications were adjudicated at the San
Francisco Immigration Court, the likelihood of a denial varied from only 9.4 percent up to 97.1 percent,
depending on which judge handled the case. For the 1,233 individuals whose cases were heard at the
Newark Immigration Court, the likelihood of a denial ranged from 10.9 percent up to 98.7 percent,
depending on which judge handled the case. In other words, the likelihood of being granted asylum in
these courts could be as high as 90 percent or as low as 3 percent, depending upon which judge handles
the case. According to a Reuters report on disparities in how frequently immigrants are deported in
removal proceedings, “the findings underscore what academics and government watchdogs have long
complained about U.S. immigration courts: Differences among judges and courts can render the system
unfair and even inhumane.” GAO makes similar findings in its November 2016 report on variations in
the outcomes of applications across immigration courts and judges. GAO also found that judges with 7
years of experience were 28 percent less likely to grant asylum than less experienced judges, which
could be a factor in explaining the disparities. Are unqualified judges being hired? Is the training
program for new judges inadequate? To some extent, the problem may be due to misconduct on the
part of officials involved in the selection process. For instance, in 2004, the Justice Department paid
$11.5 million to settle a class action suit claiming that the immigration judge hiring practices of the
Executive Officer for Immigration Review were discriminatory. Four years later, Monica Goodling from
the Office of the Attorney General admitted that she had taken political considerations into account in
soliciting candidates and reviewing applications. In any case, it is apparent that Sessions isn’t going to
eliminate the backlog crisis by setting performance goals or hiring more judges. He has to reduce the
number of cases the immigration court has to handle. The need for hearings before an immigration
judge can be reduced by making more use of expedited removal proceedings, which are conducted by
immigration officers. Trump prepared the way for this option with his Executive Order, “Border Security
and Immigration Enforcement Improvements,” in which he orders the DHS Secretary to use the
expedited removal proceedings authorized by section 235(b)(1)(A)(iii)(II) of the INA for aliens who are in
the United States but were not lawfully admitted and cannot establish that they have been here
continuously for two years. If an alien in expedited removal proceedings wants a hearing before an
immigration judge, he has to establish to the satisfaction of an asylum officer that he has a credible fear
of persecution. If the asylum officer is not persuaded, the alien can request an abbreviated review by an
immigration judge, which usually is held within 24 hours. But expedited removal proceedings will be of
limited use because many of the aliens in the pending cases have been here continuously for two years.
Perhaps the numbers should be reduced further with a legalization program. If Trump does not find a
way to eliminate the backlog crisis, his immigration enforcement efforts will fail.

Courts clogged now – Sessions’ plan fails, low tech courts, inefficient process
Tanfani, 4/16 (Joseph Tanfani, Reporter, 4/16/2018, http://www.lexisnexis.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/lnacui2api/results/docview/
docview.do?
docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T27661801435&format=GNBFI&sort=DATE,D,H&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T27661801425&cisb=22_T276618
01424&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=164263&docNo=20, Sessions tries to fix immigration courts, The Bismarck Tribune)///PSC
WASHINGTON - The nation's 58 immigration courts long have been the ragged stepchild of the judicial
system - understaffed, technologically backward and clogged with an ever-growing backlog of cases,
more than 680,000 at last count. But a plan by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a longtime immigration hawk, aimed
at breaking the logjam and increasing deportations of immigrants in the country illegally has drawn
surprising resistance from immigration judges across the country. Many say Sessions' attempts to limit the
discretion of the nation's 334 immigration judges, and set annual case quotas to speed up their rulings,
will backfire and made delays even worse - as happened when previous administrations tried to reform the system. "It's going
to be a disaster and it's going to slow down the adjudications," warned Lawrence O. Burman, secretary of the National Association of
Immigration Judges, a voluntary group that represents judges in collective bargaining. Cases already move at a glacial pace. Nationwide, the
average wait for a hearing date in immigration court is about two years, according to data analyzed by
the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research organization at Syracuse University. But some jurisdictions are
much slower. The immigration court in Arlington, Va., where Burman is a judge, has a four-year backlog, meaning hearings for new cases are
being scheduled in 2022. Burman says the reality is far worse _ the docket says he has 1,000 cases scheduled to begin on the same day in 2020.
Trump complained bitterly about immigration courts during an event in West Virginia on Thursday, saying inaccurately that immigrants "are
supposed to come back in two or three years for a court case, but no one comes back." A large majority of people show up for court hearings,
however, statistics show. Immigration judges conduct administrative proceedings to determine if immigrants charged with violating
immigration law should be deported or allowed to remain in the country. The Homeland Security Department is responsible for guarding the
border and enforcing immigration law, but the courts are under a separate office in the Justice Department. Unlike
criminal courts,
defendants in immigration court who don't hire lawyers are not provided with public defenders. That
includes the nearly 90,000 minors who crossed the border without their parents, mostly in recent surges from violence-torn parts
of Central America, and are facing deportation proceedings. For the Trump administration, the courts' slow pace is a serious
obstacle to attempts to increase deportations. But fixing the courts won't be easy. Everyone agrees
more judges are needed. But putting them on the bench is itself a lengthy process. A 2015 report by the
Government Accountability Office said it took more than two years, on average, to hire an immigration judge due to the need for security
clearances and multiple reviews. After a concerted effort to streamline the process, hiring now takes about 10 months,
according to Devin O'Malley, a Justice Department spokesman. He said the system now has 334 judges, up from 247 in
2015, but more than 100 positions are still vacant. Sessions has called for ending use of so-called administrative closures, which allows
immigration judges to close removals cases without making a final ruling, thus letting some of the immigrants avoid deportation. In a speech in
December, he criticized the Obama administration for allowing judges to close 200,000 cases in five years. "We are completing, not closing,
immigration cases," Sessions said. But judges
argue that removing their ability to clear the books of stalled cases
will only increase the backlog, not fix the problem. Another problem: Poorly funded immigration courts still
use paper files, slowing access to information, while other federal courts use digital filing systems . The
Executive Office of Immigration Review, the Justice Department office that oversees the courts, started studying the problem in 2001. It has
issued numerous reports and studies over the last 17 years, but accomplished little in the way of computerized record keeping.
Immigration courts also help adjudicate asylum claims. Under the law, immigrants may apply for asylum
if they have suffered persecution, or have a credible fear of persecution, for such criteria as race, religion and political
opinion. About 80 percent of applicants are allowed to stay while their asylum claims are reviewed. Sessions has said that many
asylum seekers are abusing the system by filing unsubstantiated claims so they can stay pending a
hearing. The Trump administration wants Congress to change the law that requires children and families to be released from detention while
they wait for their hearing date. "Our hands are tied," said a senior administration official, who briefed reporters on the condition he not be
identified. "Until changes are made, people are still going to exploit it."

Non-unique – Sessions increasing the case load

Campoy, 3/7 (Ana Campoy, reporter and Latin American specialist, 3-7-2018, "Jeff Sessions is quietly remaking the US immigration
system," Quartz, https://qz.com/1223294/jeff-sessions-is-quietly-remaking-the-us-immigration-system)///PSC

It’s been a busy week for Jeff Sessions. The US attorney general is deploying his broad powers to remake the US’s
immigration system instead of waiting for Congress to pass legislation. Late Tuesday, he filed a lawsuit against the
state of California, for its policies limiting cooperation between state officers and federal immigration agents. “ Federal law is the
supreme law of the land,” he said in a speech in Sacramento on Wednesday. Far more quietly, on Monday,
Sessions took the unusual step of digging up an old legal decision that affirmed asylum-seekers’ right to
a make their case in court—and cancelled it. That little-noticed move has the potential of doing more to further Trump’s efforts
to deport undocumented immigrants than his attack on so-called sanctuary jurisdictions like California. Sessions’s choice to revisit the four-
year-old case on Monday was not explained in his three-paragraph announcement. A Justice Department spokesperson tells Quartz that the
decision which Session overruled had “added unnecessary cases to the dockets of immigration judges,
who are working hard to reduce an already large immigration court backlog.” The mountain of pending
immigration cases, which now stands at nearly 670,000, has emerged as a major bottleneck for Trump’s administration. Regardless of their legal
status, many immigrants are entitled to a day in court under the law. With US immigration courts chronically understaffed,
that can take years. Many applications will likely be processed more quickly—and denied—if asylum-seekers aren’t given the chance to
argue their case. The Matter of E-F-H-L As head of the Department of Justice, Sessions oversees the country’s immigration
courts, and the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA,) where parties can contest immigration judge decisions. Unlike federal or
state courts, the immigration court system is not part of an independent judicial branch, but embedded
within a president’s administration. Critics—including many immigration judges—say that setup makes the court
system vulnerable to political interference, and there’s evidence that both Democratic and Republican
administrations have done that to further their goals. Among the attorney general’s powers is the ability to single-handedly
overwrite any decisions by the BIA, as Sessions did on Monday. The decision he is zeroing in on is related to a case dubbed
“Matter of E-F-H-L,” after the initials of the person who brought it to the appellate body. E-F-H-L, a Honduran immigrant, requested
asylum. He appeared before an immigration court, but didn’t get a chance to testify because the judge
determined E-F-H-L had no chance of getting asylum based on his application. E-F-H-L appealed the decision to the
BIA, which found that the judge had dismissed the case prematurely. An asylum applicant, it said in its decision, “is entitled to a hearing on the
merits of the applications, including an opportunity to provide oral testimony and other evidence.” By striking it, Sessions
is signaling
that giving asylum seekers that chance is no longer required. Paul Schmidt, a former immigration judge,
says it’s important to hear out asylum applicants even if their case doesn’t look very solid on paper . Many
of them—around 20% whose cases were decided in fiscal 2017—don’t have a lawyer, and are not familiar with the kind of information that
should be included in the application. Others don’t even speak English. “You can’t always tell how the case is coming out just by looking at the
application,” he said. But another retired immigration judge, Andrew Arthur, welcomed the apparent change .
“Given the fact that an asylum merits case can take anywhere between two hours and several days, this authority will allow those
judges to streamline their dockets and complete more cases in a timely manner,” he wrote in a post for the
Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates for reducing undocumented immigration. Sessions’s decision also
appears to target the asylum system in particular, which he’s said is being gamed by people with false claims. The precedent
it sets is bound to make it more difficult for asylum seekers to make their case. Administrative closure Sessions’s sudden interest in
E-F-H-L also appears to be related to a tool immigration judges often use referred to as “administrative
closure.” That’s when a judge decides to put a case on the back burner instead of immediately deciding
whether a person can stay in the US or should be deported. There are several reasons why judges might delay a case’s
decision. Sometimes rescheduling helps them organize their crowded docket; other times an immigrant may be in the middle of a visa
application with US Citizen and Immigration Services, in which case it makes sense to wait until that process is completed, says Lenni Benson, a
professor at New York Law School. That appears to have been E-F-H-L’s case. In its decision, the BIA ordered the judge to give E-F-H-L a proper
hearing, but by that time, he had applied for a family-based visa and didn’t want to follow through on his asylum claim. So the judge put the
case in administrative closure. In his Monday decision, Sessions
argued that since the immigrant is no longer applying
for asylum, his case should be put back on the docket and resolved. It seems odd that the head of the Justice
Department would make time in his busy schedule to single out an obscure four-year-old case. But Benson says it fits within a broader effort to
remove judges’ ability to put a case on hold. Earlier this year, Sessions
used his authority to pluck another case, this one
involving a Guatemalan minor, to question the use of administrative closure. He is currently asking for input before
taking any action, however. (Several groups, including the Safe Passage Project, a non-profit where Benson runs a program to train pro bono
lawyers to represent immigrant youth, have filed a brief advocating for Sessions to keep the practice.) If he doesn’t, the group of affected
immigrants would be much broader than just asylum seekers. The
use of administrative closure expanded during the
Obama presidency. Because that administration’s focus was on criminals, the cases of many
undocumented immigrants with a clean record became lower priorities . Administrative closure essentially took those
immigrants off the list of deportation targets, even if their legal status remained unchanged. The Trump administration, however, has made it
clear it’s going after everyone who is in the country illegally. With efforts to change immigration law stalled in Congress, Sessions appears to be
doing everything he can administratively to carry out Donald Trump’s vision

Sessions’ efforts make the backlog worse- increases appeals and decreases due
process- more enforcement makes it inevitable
Solis 4/10 (Dianne Solis, journalism degrees from Northwestern University, Cal State University
Fresno, Nieman fellowship from Harvard, senior writer for The Dallas News, 4/10/18,“AG Sessions' plan
to clear immigration case backlog will make things worse, judges and attorneys fear”,
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/immigration/2018/04/10/immigration-judges-attorneys-worry-
sessions-quotas-will-cut-justice-clogged-court-system)/CWB

A case takes nearly 900 days to make its way through the backlogged immigration courts of Texas. The
national average is about 700 days in a system sagging with nearly 700,000 cases. A new edict from President Donald Trump's
administration orders judges of the immigration courts to speed it up. Now the pushback begins. Quotas planned for the nation’s
334 immigration judges will just make the backlog worse by increasing appeals and questions about due
process, says Ashley Tabaddor, Los Angeles-based president of the National Association of Immigration
Judges. Quotas of 700 cases a year, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, were laid out in a performance plan memo by U.S. Attorney
General Jeff Sessions. They go into effect October 1. Some have even called the slowdown from the backlog “de facto amnesty.” “We
believe it is absolutely inconsistent to apply quotas and deadlines on judges who are supposed to
exercise independent decision-making authority,” Tabaddor said. “The parties that appear before the
courts will be wondering if the judge is issuing the decision because she is trying to meet a deadline or
quota or is she really applying her impartial adjudicative powers,” she added. That will build an appeal into
the case and swell the backlog, rather than deflate it, Tabaddor predicts. Some defend the quotas. Art Arthur, a
retired immigration judge, said if an immigrant is deportable, “it is de facto amnesty” to let them stay for months or years while awaiting the
outcome of their cases “because they get to live here indefinitely.” Arthur worked as an immigration judge for nearly a decade in Pennsylvania
and said that he cleared about 1,000 cases annually. But Cornell
Law School professor Stephen Yale-Loehr called the
move an attack on judicial independence that may violate due process rights of non-citizens, too. “You
can imagine if we had a backlog in our criminal courts and the Texas Attorney General said every judge
had to settle a certain number of cases per week. There would be a huge uproar,” Yale-Loehr said. Pushback
Immigration judges are part of a court system that isn’t within the independent judiciary branch of government. Much of the immigration code
deals with civil offenses in the immigration courts. A closer parallel would be administrative law judges who work within the executive branch of
government, said Margaret Taylor, a professor of administrative and immigration at Wake Forest University
School of Law in North Carolina. The Social Security Administration and its judges who rule on disability cases have had quotas
before, Taylor noted. The pushback against the quotas has renewed calls to fortify the independence of
immigration judges. The National Association of Immigration Judges has long argued that the immigration courts should be taken out of
the Department of Justice, a law enforcement agency, and given real independence and more resources. Proponents of the quotas point to the
need to reduce the exploding backlog of cases. Colorado leads the nation with the longest wait time to get a case resolved, about 1,000 days,
according to the Syracuse University-based Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC. Texas comes in third, after Illinois. In Dallas
immigration courts, cases move at a faster clip than Texas as a whole at about 560 days compared to about 900 days for the whole state,
according to TRAC. But even the Dallas number has been climbing for several years. Faster decision-making could cut the backlog, but
it also has many worried about fairness. The pressure for speed means immigrants would have to move quickly to find an attorney.
Without an attorney, the likelihood of deportation increases. Nationally, about 58 percent of immigrants are represented by attorneys,
according to Syracuse's research center. But in Texas, only about a third of the immigrants have legal representation. Paul
Schmidt, a
retired immigration judge who served as chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals for immigration
courts for six years, says he saw decisions rendered quickly and without proper legal analysis, leaving it
necessary for many cases to be sent back to the immigration court for what he called “a redo.” “Due
process isn’t making widgets,” Schmidt said. “Compare this to what happens in regular courts. No other
court system operates this way. Yet the issues in immigration court are life and death,” he said, referring to
asylum cases. Schmidt said there are good judges who take time with cases, which is often needed in asylum pleas from immigrants from
countries at war or known for persecution of certain groups. But he also said there were “some not-very-good judges” with high productivity.
Ramping up the production line, Schmidt said, will waste time. “You will end up with more do-overs. Some people are going to be railroaded
out of the country without fairness and due process,” Schmidt said. Solutions? More judges and legal clerks need to be hired to deal with the
backlog, say many law professors. Particularly troubling is the fact that 40 percent of the nation’s 334 judges in 61 cities are now eligible for
retirement, says Tabaddor, leader of the judges’ association. “It
doesn’t make any sense to squeeze them,” said Huyen
Pham, a professor at Texas A&M University School of Law in Fort Worth. “When you see a lot more
enforcement, it means the immigration court will see a lot more people coming through.” Lawyers and law
school professors say the faster pace of deportation proceedings by the U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement spells more trouble ahead. Immigration courts don’t have electronic filing processes for most of the system. Many
judges must share the same clerk. For decades, the nation’s immigration courts have served as a lynchpin in a complex system now under
intense scrutiny. Immigration has become a signature issue for the Trump administration. Five years ago, the backlog was about 344,000 cases
— about half today’s amount. It grew, in part, with a rise in Central Americans coming across the border in the past few years. Most were given
the opportunity to argue before an immigration judge about why they should stay in the U.S. This isn’t the first time the judges have faced an
administration that wants them to change priorities. President Barack Obama ordered that the cases of Central American unaccompanied
children to be moved to the top of docket. “Our dockets have been used as a political tool regardless of which administration is in power and
this constant docket reshuffling, constant reprioritization of cases has only increased the backlog ,”
Tabaddor said. The quota edict was followed by a memo to federal prosecutors in the criminal courts with jurisdiction over border areas to
issue more misdemeanor charges against immigrants entering the country unlawfully. Sessions’ memo instructs prosecutors “to the extent
practicable” to issue the misdemeanor charges for improper entry. On Wednesday, Sessions is scheduled to be in Las Cruces, New Mexico, to
speak on immigration enforcement at a border sheriffs’ meeting.
2AC - AT: Link
 2AC - Link Turn – Quotas
Link turn- per country quotas create backlogs and delays in the status quo- lifting
solves
Joshi 15 (HRISHIKESH S. JOSHI, PhD from Princeton, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of
Philosophy at the University of Michigan, 12/4/15, “Why the immigration quota system needs to go”,
The Hill, http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/262021-why-the-immigration-quota-
system-needs-to-go)/CWB
Suppose that James and Arvind are both studying in the U.S. Like many international students, they want to eventually settle down in America.
They are similarly qualified and both working on master’s degrees in electrical engineering. There is one crucial difference between them,
however. While James was born in St. Lucia, a tiny country in the Caribbean, Arvind was born in India. Now, this difference seems irrelevant and
hardly worth bringing up in the context of immigration policy. Whether or not such individuals get to remain in the U.S.
should plausibly depend on things like: what their qualifications are, how long they have resided in the
country, what the demand is for workers with their skills, and whether or not either of them has a
criminal record. The country of birth seems irrelevant. Yet, when it comes to the American immigration
system, the difference in their places of birth becomes of paramount importance. Suppose that both James and
Arvind get offered jobs at the same company – say, Intel. So long as Intel is willing to sponsor him, James can expect to get his
permanent residency status approved in a few months, whereas Arvind will have to wait for around 8
years! This delay will have enormous consequences for Arvind – while he is waiting for his “green card,” he will have to
remain in the U.S. through a work visa program, known as the H1-B. Since the H1-B only lasts for 3 years, however, it will have to be periodically
renewed, and each application for the visa will cost thousands of dollars. Moreover, The H1-B works via a lottery system – with roughly a 1 in 2
chance of success – so Arvind may well not get his visa. And if that happens, he will have to leave the country. Additionally, since the H1-B is
specifically a work visa, Arvind also cannot remain in the U.S. if he is laid off from Intel, unless he can immediately start at a different job. What
lies behind this differential and deeply unjust treatment is the country-based quota system employed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services (USCIS). According to USCIS
rules, no more than 7 percent of the total number of visas in a particular
category may be granted to persons from any given country of origin. This creates an enormous backlog
because many prospective immigrants to the U.S. seeking employment-based green cards originate,
unsurprisingly, from certain large countries – particularly China and India . This aspect of immigration law is
problematic for several reasons. First, it seems unreasonable that St. Lucia, a country with a population of just under 200,000, should get the
same maximum quota as China or India, which both have populations of over a billion people. China and India are “countries” only
because of contingent geopolitical and historical factors – in reality, they are more akin to continents. Several states in India, for example, have
bigger populations than the whole of France. Moreover, China and India both exhibit remarkable linguistic and ethnic diversity – so if the idea
behind the quota system is to promote diversity among the immigrant population, then assigning quotas to countries seems ham-handed.
Second, the fact that the quotas specifically apply to country of birth renders the system further unfair and outdated. In today’s increasingly
globalized world, many people spend most of their lives in countries other than the one in which they were born. Thus, in our example, Arvind
may well have grown up in St. Lucia from a young age. He may even be a citizen of St. Lucia, and identify culturally with residents of the
country. Yet, in the eyes of USCIS, he is to be considered Indian for the purposes of determining “country of origin.” Third, the law
is
counterproductive even from the perspective of the interests of American citizens. Given the long
delays and sheer luck involved in the green card process for people like Arvind, many otherwise talented foreigners are deterred from
coming to America, and take their skills to Canada, England, or Australia instead. Further, since the H1-B lottery is determined entirely by luck,
the U.S. in effect turns away many extremely talented individuals who would remain in the country if given a chance, and contribute
significantly to its economic and scientific progress. What I have said so far is fairly uncontroversial and seems like it would be met with
widespread agreement. So why is the law still on the books? Why hasn’t Congress been able to replace the law with
something less unfair to would-be immigrants, and more beneficial to the interests of the American people? The obstacle facing
progress here is that many politicians in the Senate, as well as President Obama, seem to be unwilling to reform parts of
the immigration system bit by bit – preferring rather to achieve “comprehensive” immigration reform. Since such reform
may not be imminent, the status quo with regards to the quotas is likely to remain for some time to
come. I’m sure that this delay in favor of comprehensive reform serves many political goals. Nonetheless, it seems that the right thing to do is
to make progress on issues that involve patent injustice and that both sides of the aisle can agree on. It is unfair that people like Arvind must
wait for almost a decade to become residents while the politicians take their time to strike a deal.
2AC - AT: Impact Mods
 2AC - AT: Human Rights
US historically does not follow I-Law
Mccoy, 15 (Alfred W. Mccoy, R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
author, 2-24-2015, "You Must Follow International Law (Unless You’re America)," Nation,
https://www.thenation.com/article/you-must-follow-international-law-unless-youre-america/)///PSC

“The sovereign is he who decides on the exception,” said conservative thinker Carl Schmitt in 1922, meaning that a
nation’s leader can defy the law to serve the greater good. Though Schmitt’s service as Nazi Germany’s chief jurist and his
unwavering support for Hitler from the night of the long knives to Kristallnacht and beyond damaged his reputation for decades, today his ideas
have achieved unimagined influence. They
have, in fact, shaped the neo-conservative view of presidential power that
has become broadly bipartisan since 9/11. Indeed, Schmitt has influenced American politics directly
through his intellectual protégé Leo Strauss who, as an émigré professor at the University of Chicago, trained Bush
administration architects of the Iraq war Paul Wolfowitz and Abram Shulsky. All that should be impressive enough for a
discredited, long dead authoritarian thinker. But Schmitt’s dictum also became a philosophical foundation for the exercise of American global
power in the quarter century that followed the end of the Cold War. Washington, more than any other power, created the modern
international community of laws and treaties, yet it now reserves the right to defy those same laws with
impunity. A sovereign ruler should, said Schmitt, discard laws in times of national emergency. So the United States, as the
planet’s last superpower or, in Schmitt’s terms, its global sovereign, has in these years repeatedly ignored
international law, following instead its own unwritten rules of the road for the exercise of world
power. Just as Schmitt’s sovereign preferred to rule in a state of endless exception without a constitution for his Reich, so Washington is now
well into the second decade of an endless War on Terror that seems the sum of its exceptions to international
law: endless incarceration, extrajudicial killing, pervasive surveillance, drone strikes in defiance of
national boundaries, torture on demand, and immunity for all of the above on the grounds of state
secrecy. Yet these many American exceptions are just surface manifestations of the ever-expanding clandestine dimension of the American
state. Created at the cost of more than a trillion dollars since 9/11, the purpose of this vast apparatus is to control a covert
domain that is fast becoming the main arena for geopolitical contestation in the twenty-first century . This
should be (but seldom is considered) a jarring, disconcerting path for a country that, more than any other, nurtured the idea of, and wrote the
rules for, an international community of nations governed by the rule of law. At the First Hague Peace Conference in 1899, the U.S. delegate,
Andrew Dickson White, the founder of Cornell University, pushed for the creation of a Permanent Court of Arbitration and persuaded
Andrew Carnegie to build the monumental Peace Palace at The Hague as its home. At the Second Hague Conference in 1907, Secretary of State
Elihu Root urged that future international conflicts be resolved by a court of professional jurists, an idea realized when the Permanent Court of
International Justice was established in 1920. After
World War II, the U.S. used its triumph to help create the United
Nations, push for the adoption of its Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and ratify the Geneva Conventions for
humanitarian treatment in war. If you throw in other American-backed initiatives like the World Health
Organization, the World Trade Organization, and the World Bank, you pretty much have the entire
infrastructure of what we now casually call “the international community.” Breaking the Rules Not only did
the U.S. play a crucial role in writing the new rules for that community, but it almost immediately
began breaking them. After all, despite the rise of the other superpower, the Soviet Union, Washington was by then the
world sovereign and so could decide which should be the exceptions to its own rules , particularly to the
foundational principle for all this global governance: sovereignty. As it struggled to dominate the hundred new nations that started appearing
right after the war, each one invested with an inviolable sovereignty, Washington
needed a new means of projecting power
beyond conventional diplomacy or military force. As a result, CIA covert operations became its way of
intervening within a new world order where you couldn’t or at least shouldn’t intervene openly . All of
the exceptions that really matter spring from America’s decision to join what former spy John Le Carré called that “squalid procession of vain
fools, traitors… sadists, and drunkards,” and embrace espionage in a big way after World War II. Until the creation of the CIA in 1947, the
United States had been an innocent abroad in the world of intelligence. When General John J. Pershing led two million
American troops to Europe during World War I, the U.S. had the only army on either side of the battle
lines without an intelligence service. Even though Washington built a substantial security apparatus during that war, it was
quickly scaled back by Republican conservatives during the 1920s . For decades, the impulse to cut or
constrain such secret agencies remained robustly bipartisan, as when President Harry Truman abolished
the CIA’s predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), right after World War II or when President Jimmy Carter fired
800 CIA covert operatives after the Vietnam War. Yet by fits and starts, the covert domain inside the U.S. government has grown stealthily from
the early twentieth century to this moment. It began with the formation of the FBI in 1908 and Military Intelligence in 1917. The Central
Intelligence Agency followed after World War II along with most of the alphabet agencies that make up the present U.S. Intelligence
Community, including the National Security Agency (NSA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and last but hardly least, in 2004, the Office of
the Director of National Intelligence. Make no mistake: there
is a clear correlation between state secrecy and the rule
of law—as one grows, the other surely shrinks. World Sovereign America’s irrevocable entry into this covert netherworld
came when President Truman deployed his new CIA to contain Soviet subversion in Europe. This was a continent then thick with
spies of every stripe: failed fascists, aspirant communists, and everything in between. Introduced to
spycraft by its British “cousins,” the CIA soon mastered it in part by establishing sub rosa ties to networks of ex-Nazi spies, Italian
fascist operatives, and dozens of continental secret services. As the world’s new sovereign, Washington used the CIA to enforce its chosen
exceptions to the international rule of law, particularly to the core principle of sovereignty. During his two terms, President
Dwight
Eisenhowerauthorized 104 covert operations on four continents, focused largely on controlling the
many new nations then emerging from centuries of colonialism. Eisenhower’s exceptions included
blatant transgressions of national sovereignty such as turning northern Burma into an unwilling
springboard for abortive invasions of China, arming regional revolts to partition Indonesia, and overthrowing elected
governments in Guatemala and Iran. By the time Eisenhower left office in 1961, covert ops had acquired such a powerful mystique in
Washington that President John F. Kennedy would authorize 163 of them in the three years that preceded his
assassination. As a senior CIA official posted to the Near East in the early 1950s put it, the Agency then
saw every Muslim leader who was not pro-American as “a target legally authorized by statute for CIA
political action.” Applied on a global scale and not just to Muslims, this policy helped produce a distinct “reverse wave” in the global trend
towards democracy from 1958 to 1975, as coups—most of them U.S.-sanctioned—allowed military men to seize power in more than three-
dozen nations, representing a quarter of the world’s sovereign states. The
White House’s “exceptions” also produced a
deeply contradictory U.S. attitude toward torture from the early years of the Cold War onward . Publicly,
Washington’s opposition to torture was manifest in its advocacy of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and the Geneva
Conventions in 1949. Simultaneously and secretly, however, the
CIA began developing ingenious new torture
techniques in contravention of those same international conventions . After a decade of mind-control research, the
CIAactually codified its new method of psychological torture in a secret instructional handbook, the
“KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation” manual, which it then disseminated within the U.S.
Intelligence Community and to allied security services worldwide. Much of the torture that became synonymous with the era of
authoritarian rule in Asia and Latin America during the 1960s and 1970s seems to have originated in U.S. training programs that provided
sophisticated techniques, up-to-date equipment, and moral legitimacy for the practice. From
1962 to 1974, the CIA worked
through the Office of Public Safety (OPS), a division of the U.S. Agency for International Development
that sent American police advisers to developing nations. Established by President Kennedy in 1962, in just six years OPS
grew into a global anti-communist operation with over 400 U.S. police advisers. By 1971, it had trained more than a million policemen in 47
nations, including 85,000 in South Vietnam and 100,000 in Brazil. Concealed within this larger OPS effort, CIA
interrogation training
became synonymous with serious human rights abuses, particularly in Iran, the Philippines, South
Vietnam, Brazil, and Uruguay. Amnesty Internationaldocumented widespread torture, usually by local police, in 24 of the 49 nations
that had hosted OPS police-training teams. In tracking torturers across the globe, Amnesty seemed to be following the trail of CIA training
programs. Significantly, torture began to recede when America again turned resolutely against the practice at
the end of the Cold War. The War on Terror Although the CIA’s authority for assassination, covert intervention, surveillance, and
torture was curtailed at the close of the Cold War, the terror attacks of September 2001 sparked an unprecedented
expansion in the scale of the intelligence community and a corresponding resurgence in executive
exceptions. The War on Terror’s voracious appetite for information produced, in its first decade, what the
Washington Post branded a veritable “fourth branch” of the U.S. federal government with 854,000 vetted security
officials, 263 security organizations, over 3,000 private and public intelligence agencies, and 33 new security complexes—all pumping out a total
of 50,000 classified intelligence reports annually by 2010. By that time, one
of the newest members of the Intelligence
Community, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, already had 16,000 employees, a $5 billion
budget, and a massive nearly $2 billion headquarters at Fort Belvoir, Maryland—all aimed at coordinating the flood of
surveillance data pouring in from drones, U-2 spy planes, Google Earth, and orbiting satellites. According to documents whistleblower Edward
Snowden leaked to theWashington Post, the
U.S. spent $500 billion on its intelligence agencies in the dozen years
after the 9/11 attacks, including annual appropriations in 2012 of $11 billion for the National Security
Agency (NSA) and $15 billion for the CIA. If we add the $790 billion expended on the Department of Homeland Security to that
$500 billion for overseas intelligence, then Washington had spent nearly $1.3 trillion to build a secret state-within-the-state of absolutely
unprecedented size and power. As this secret state swelled, the
world’s sovereign decided that some extraordinary
exceptions to civil liberties at home and sovereignty abroad were in order . The most glaring came with
the CIA’s now-notorious renewed use of torture on suspected terrorists and its setting up of its own
global network of private prisons, or “black sites,” beyond the reach of any court or legal authority .
Along with piracy and slavery, the abolition of torture had long been a signature issue when it came to the international rule of law. So strong
was this principle that the U.N. General Assembly voted unanimously in 1984 to adopt the Convention Against Torture. When it came to
ratifying it, however, Washington dithered on the subject until the end of the Cold War when it finally
resumed its advocacy of international justice, participating in the World Conference on Human Rights at
Vienna in 1993 and, a year later, ratifying the U.N. Convention Against Torture. Even then, the sovereign decided
to reserve some exceptions for his country alone. Only a year after President Bill Clinton signed the U.N. Convention,
CIA agents started snatching terror suspects in the Balkans, some of them Egyptian nationals , and sending
them to Cairo, where a torture-friendly autocracy could do whatever it wanted to them in its prisons. Former CIA director George Tenet later
testified that, in the years before 9/11, the CIA shipped some 70 individuals to foreign countries without formal extradition—a process dubbed
“extraordinary rendition” that had been explicitly banned under Article 3 of the U.N. Convention. Right after his public address to a shaken
nation on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush gave his staff wide-ranging secret orders to use torture,
adding (in a vernacular version of Schmitt’s dictum),“I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we are going
to kick some ass.” In this spirit, the White House authorized the CIA to develop that global matrix of secret
prisons, as well as an armada of planes for spiriting kidnapped terror suspects to them, and a network of allies
who could help seize those suspects from sovereign states and levitate them into a supranational gulag of eight agency black sites from
Thailand to Poland or into the crown jewel of the system, Guantánamo, thus eluding laws and treaties that remained grounded in territorially
based concepts of sovereignty. Once
the CIA closed the black sites in 2008-2009, its collaborators in this global
gulag began to feel the force of law for their crimes against humanity. Under pressure from the Council of Europe,
Poland started an ongoing criminal investigation in 2008 into its security officers who had facilitated the CIA’s secret prison in the country’s
northeast. In September 2012, Italy’s
supreme court confirmed the convictions of 22 CIA agents for the illegal
rendition of Egyptian exile Abu Omar from Milan to Cairo, and ordered a trial for Italy’s military
intelligence chief on charges that sentenced him to 10 years in prison. In 2012, Scotland Yard opened a criminal
investigation into MI6 agents who rendered Libyan dissidents to Colonel Gaddafi’s prisons for torture, and two years later the Court of Appeal
allowed some of those Libyans to file a civil suit against MI6 for kidnapping and torture. But not the CIA. Even after the Senate’s 2014 Torture
Report documented the Agency’s abusive tortures in painstaking detail, there was no move for either criminal or civil sanctions against those
who had ordered torture or those who had carried it out. In a strong editorial on December 21, 2014, the New York Times asked
“whether the nation will stand by and allow the perpetrators of torture to have perpetual immunity.”
The answer, of course, was yes.Immunity for hirelings is one of the sovereign’s most important exceptions. As President Bush
finished his second term in 2008, an inquiry by the International Commission of Jurists found that the CIA’s mobilization of allied
security agencies worldwide had done serious damage to the international rule of law . “The executive…
should under no circumstance invoke a situation of crisis to deprive victims of human rights violations… of their… access to justice,” the
Commission recommended after documenting the degradation of civil liberties in some 40 countries. “ State
secrecy and similar
restrictions must not impede the right to an effective remedy for human rights violations .” The Bush years also
brought Washington’s most blatant repudiation of the rule of law. Once
the newly established International Criminal Court (ICC)
convened at The Hague in 2002, the Bush White House “un-signed” or “de-signed” the U.N. agreement
creating the court and then mounted a sustained diplomatic effort to immunize U.S. military operations from its writ. This was an
extraordinary abdication for the nation that had breathed the concept of an international tribunal into being. The Sovereign’s Unbounded
Domains While Presidents Eisenhower and Bush decided on exceptions that violated national boundaries and
international treaties, President Obama is exercising his exceptional prerogatives in the unbounded
domains of aerospace and cyberspace. Both are new, unregulated realms of military conflict beyond the rubric of international
law and Washington believes it can use them as Archimedean levers for global dominion. Just as Britain once ruled from the
seas and postwar America exercised its global reach via airpower, so Washington now sees aerospace
and cyberspace as special realms for domination in the twenty-first century. Under Obama, drones have grown
from a tactical Band-Aid in Afghanistan into a strategic weapon for the exercise of global power. From 2009 to 2015, the CIA and the
U.S. Air Force deployed a drone armada of over 200 Predators and Reapers, launching 413 strikes in
Pakistan alone, killing as many as 3,800 people. Every Tuesday inside the White House Situation Room, as the New York Times
reported in 2012, President Obama reviews a CIA drone “kill list” and stares at the faces of those who are targeted for possible assassination
from the air. He then decides, without any legal procedure, who will live and who will die, even in the case of American citizens. Unlike other
world leaders, this sovereign applies the ultimate exception across the Greater Middle East, parts of Africa, and elsewhere if he chooses. This
lethal success is the cutting edge of a top-secret Pentagon project that will, by 2020, deploy a triple-canopy space “shield” from stratosphere to
exosphere, patrolled by Global Hawk and X-37B drones armed with agile missiles. As
Washington seeks to police a restless
globe from sky and space, the world might well ask: How high is any nation’s sovereignty ? After the successive
failures of the Paris flight conference of 1910, the Hague Rules of Aerial Warfare of 1923, and Geneva’s Protocol I of 1977 to establish the
extent of sovereign airspace or restrain aerial warfare, some puckish Pentagon lawyer might reply: only as high as you can enforce it.
President Obama has also adopted the NSA’s vast surveillance system as a permanent weapon for the
exercise of global power. At the broadest level, such surveillance complements Obama’s overall defense
strategy, announced in 2012, of cutting conventional forces while preserving U.S. global power through
a capacity for “a combined arms campaign across all domains: land, air, maritime, space, and
cyberspace.” In addition, it should be no surprise that, having pioneered the war-making possibilities of cyberspace, the president did not
hesitate to launch the first cyberwar in history against Iran. By the end of Obama’s first term, the NSA could sweep up
billions of messages worldwide through its agile surveillance architecture . This included hundreds of access points
for penetration of the Worldwide Web’s fiber optic cables; ancillary intercepts through special protocols and “backdoor” software flaws;
supercomputers to crack the encryption of this digital torrent; and a massive data farm in Bluffdale, Utah, built at a cost of $2 billion to store
yottabytes of purloined data. Even after angry Silicon Valley executives protested that the NSA’s “backdoor”
software surveillance threatened their multi-trillion-dollar industry, Obama called the combination of Internet information
and supercomputers “a powerful tool.” He insisted that, as “the world’s only superpower,” the United States
“cannot unilaterally disarm our intelligence agencies.” In other words, the sovereign cannot sanction any
exceptions to his panoply of exceptions. Revelations from Edward Snowden’s cache of leaked documents in late 2013 indicate
that the NSA has conducted surveillance of leaders in some 122 nations worldwide, 35 of them closely,
including Brazil’s president Dilma Rousseff, former Mexican president Felipe Calderón, and German
Chancellor Angela Merkel. After her forceful protest, Obama agreed to exempt Merkel’s phone from future NSA surveillance, but
reserved the right, as he put it, to continue to “gather information about the intentions of governments… around the world.” The sovereign
declined to say which world leaders might be exempted from his omniscient gaze. Can there be any question that, in the decades to come,
Washington will continue to violate national sovereignty through old-style covert as well as open interventions, even as it insists on rejecting
any international conventions that restrain its use of aerospace or cyberspace for unchecked force projection, anywhere, anytime? Extant laws
or conventions that in any way check this power will be violated when the sovereign so decides. These are now the unwritten rules of the road
for our planet. They represent the real American exceptionalism.
 2AC – AT: Terror
Terror isn’t a threat— only one out of hundreds of millions of people who entered
through immigration has ever committed a deadly terror attack
Beauchamp 4/20 (Zack Beauchamp "Why you should be more scared of your oven than of terrorists
sneaking into America," Vox, 4-20-2018, https://www.vox.com/world/2018/4/20/17253328/terrorism-
trump-immigration-study-vetting)//Bennerz
Donald Trump has, throughout his presidency, used the American immigration system’s alleged vulnerability to terrorist infiltration as a justification for his harsh
restrictions on immigration. “America must fix its lax immigration system, which allows far too many dangerous, inadequately vetted people to access our country,”
Trump said in one representative statement. “The terrible harm that this flawed system inflicts on America’s security and economy has long been clear.” But
Trump’s claims that our immigration system is “lax” aren’t true — or, in fact, even close to true. A new study from David Bier, an immigration policy analyst at the
libertarian Cato Institute, digs into the data on just how many terrorists America has let into the country. He found that only
a single terrorist who
committed a deadly attack snuck through the vetting process to enter the US legally after 9/11, out of a total of 379
million people who lawfully entered the country. Between 2002 and 2016, roughly twice as many people were
killed by their own kitchen appliances than by a terrorist who slipped through the immigration
system. Trump’s fearmongering bears absolutely no relation to reality. What the study found Cards on the table: Cato is a pro-immigration think tank. But a
close look at Bier’s methodology suggests that it’s solid; in fact, it’s actually likely to produce an overestimate of the US immigration system’s terrorism problem
than an underestimate. Bier combed through government data on terrorism prosecutions and terrorists killed by law enforcement in the midst of a terrorist act. He
also combed through several nongovernment databases on terrorism to make sure he wasn’t leaving any incidents out. Bier then looked for what he calls “vetting
failures,” which he defines as cases where “a foreigner is granted entry to the United States who had terrorist associations or sympathies and who later committed a
terrorism offense.” That’s designed to get to the crux of the debate Trump is raising: Is the United States, in fact, admitting “dangerous, inadequately vetted”
individuals — or is the system mostly screening them out? Identifying vetting failures is hard to figure out, obviously, as we can’t really be sure what was in
someone’s mind when they entered the US (with a few exceptions, like the 9/11 hijackers, who were part of pre-organized plans). So the Cato study makes a pretty
broad assumption: that anyone who entered the United States when they were a) 16 or older and b) committed a terrorism-related offense within 10 years of
entering the US counts as a “vetting failure.” This figure is probably an overcount; it’s easy to imagine someone coming into the US on, say, a student visa and then
becoming radicalized a year or two into their time in America. But it’s a fine proxy for a study that bends over backward to be generous to Trump’s argument. Bier
found that, between 1986 and 2001, there were 52 vetting failures — a rate of about one vetting failure for every 4.7 million grants of entry. The most notorious of
such failures were the 9/11 hijackers themselves, who took advantage of the fact that State Department visa officers had zero training in identifying terrorists during
interviews as well no access to law enforcement files on suspected terrorists. After 9/11, the US conducted a massive overhaul of its visa screening procedures —
retraining visa officers, strengthening databases on terrorism suspects, and adding biometric information (like fingerprints) to keep people from simply lying about
whether they’d been denied a visa under another name. The result was a massive decline in vetting failure rate; between 2002 and 2016, there were a total 13
people who qualified as vetting failures; a rate of one failure for every 29 million admissions. But it goes further than that. The goal of these reforms was to prevent
another 9/11, an attack orchestrated from outside the country, in which attackers sneak through the immigration system to conduct a massive, planned assault. No
such attack has happened since; in vetting failures since 9/11, all but one of those let through were convicted on terrorism-related charges, like providing money to
a terrorist group, rather than themselves killing anyone in an attack. The only person to fit Bier’s “vetting failure” criteria and commit a deadly attack was San
Bernardino shooter Tashfeen Malik, who had committed no crimes prior to her entry to the United States but had expressed sympathies for jihadist groups in social
media posts. Malik and her husband, American citizen Syed Rizwan Farook, went on to kill 14 people in their 2015 attack on a California nonprofit that serves people
with disabilities. That means that flaws
in the US immigration and visa system have contributed to a total of 14
deaths during the period studied by Bier (and it’s worth noting the US introduced social media screening after the San Bernardino attack). This is
despite admitting about 379 million people during that timeframe, an astonishingly low rate of failure.
Why this matters To put this in perspective, I looked at the Centers for Disease Control database on deaths in America, oddly called WONDER, and pulled a few
examples of things that had killed more Americans between 2002 and 2016 than vetting failures: 37
died from “contact with hot household
appliances,” like stovetops and ovens. 34 died from their own pajamas burning (“exposure to ignition or
melting of nightwear,” as WONDER puts it). 20 people died in hot air balloon accidents. 16 people were
killed due to “contact with steam or other hot vapors.” This isn’t to minimize the horror of any death; every life lost is a tragedy.
Rather, it’s to point out the yawning gulf between the scale of the immigrant terrorist problem and the president’s extreme proposed solutions, like a ban on
Muslims entering the United States. Trump has not called for discriminating against hot air balloon enthusiasts or a war on exploding nightwear, because that would
be self-evidently ridiculous. But he is hyping up fears of the immigration system admitting terrorists — an extremely rare event, significantly less common than a
person being killed by an oven or stovetop — to justify policies that would discriminate against literally millions of people. The president wants you to believe that
it’s easy for terrorists to flood into the United States under current law, that we are at serious risk unless we take the extreme step of barring huge numbers of
people, mostly from Muslim-majority countries, from entering the country. You simply have no reason to believe him.