Debbie Schlussel: Three Cheers for Judge Hanson: Immigration Judges Get "Graded"
One of the most abused claims made by immigration lawyers to keep their illegal alien clients in the U.S. is a petition for asylum. Now, there is a list of immigration judges who don't fall for it.
And Judge Mahlon Hanson of Miami topped the list, rejecting 96.7% of the 1,118 claims for asylum before him. That's our kind of judge. This comes from a report done by the Transaction Records Access Clearinghouse. Here's the data, by judge, from 2000-2005.
We note that a Detroit immigration judge we like, Elizabeth A. Hacker--one of our Heroes of 2005--was also high up the list, rejecting 81.9 percent of the 767 Asylum requests before her. Glad to hear it. In the heart of Islamic America, we need tough judges to turn away phony requests for asylum. She also ruled against Islamic terrorist Ibrahim Parlak, for which we are thankful.
Foreigners who don't qualify for U.S. citizenship--especially those on the verge of being deported, and who should be long gone--often claim that they have to stay here because they will be tortured, abused, or persecuted, if they're deported. It's a claim often used by Islamic terrorists, like Fawaz Abu Damra (who tried unsuccesfully to claim this), and other undesirable Muslims from Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority (like this petition for asylum filed on their behalf by sleazy lawyer to terrorists, Nabih Ayad).
In 2005, the U.S. granted asylum to 13,520 people seeking it. It's a good bet that many of them did not deserve it.
We're glad to see that judges like Mahlon Hanson exist and wish there were more. Unfortunately, there are also immigration judges like New York Judge Margaret McManus, who rejected only 9.8% of 1,638 cases before her. That means she let almost 1,500 of these aliens in. Sucker.
Fortunately, the median rate of rejection by all judges working for the Federal Executive Office of Immigration Review was 65%. But that's not high enough. That means more than one out of every three persons seeking asylum got it, a pretty good set of odds for someone here illegally and seeking to stay after he/she has been caught.
Posted by Debbie on August 1, 2006 05:10 PM to Debbie Schlussel