Yesterday was my first day back at the office.  I’d been home Thursday because one of the Y’s was sick. My best friend from law school flew into town on Friday and I didn’t come into the office at all over the weekend, which is unusual since I like to come in on Sundays and figure out what stuff I’m going to procrastinate, er, complete, for the week. But, being a holiday week and seeing as how the boss was in a decent mood I just decided to relax, read a book (not even the sentencing guidelines) on my brand new Kindle and relax.

PART ONE – THE MONDAY PART WHERE IT STARTS OUT SHITTY AND GETS BETTER

Monday, I had the day planned out.  Work on a few Padilla based post-convictions motions and then go out to the jail to see some folks.  I’ve got my first federal sentencing on Thursday but the memo is done.  I wrote another memo based on a dirty trash search (pun intended) last week while I was at home so that was done. I have a hearing in State court on Friday, but it’s relatively small so I wasn’t too concerned about that either.  The big news for this week was a hearing in federal court on an immigration case for a temporary restraining order filed a few days before Christmas.  Let me give you some background, bear with me for a paragraph or two that’s got some legal shit in it, ok?

The Department of Homeland Security used to be called Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS).DHS has three branches  but the one we focus on today is called Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  They are the investigative and the police officers for DHS.  With me so far?  So, ICE has offices called Detention and Removal Offices (DRO).  They are in charge of removing (not deporting, right?) people from the United States of America.  They even have their own planes so they can be super efficient.  Pretty cool, huh?  Anyway, there are generally two ways people get removed from the U.S. (please be advised this is really a cursory review of this for funsies.)  One way is through an immigration judge in immigration court.  If this happens your client gets a Notice to Appear and they get to file papers and see a judge and then appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals and you know, it’s more or less normal and you have some time to work things out. Or, at least you have a judge that you can ask for things.  The other way is administratively via ICE and their DRO – this is called expedited removal because it is, um, expedited.  This is what happens to clients who are convicted of aggravated felonies.  THEY ARE REMOVED EXPEDITIOUSLY.  They don’t see a judge, the Immigration courts don’t even have jurisdiction.  A client can make it harder on ICE by not signing a removal order and getting some due process, but a lot of people don’t know better and they sign them.  And when they do, it’s almost impossible to do anything about it.  Except go to Federal Court and file a TRO (or a habeas, but really only in limited circumstances).

We now know that part of our obligation as criminal defense lawyers is to inform our clients of immigration consequences. We also know that lots of lawyers have neglected this part of their job. Many clients plead to aggravated felonies which put them in expedited removal.  The current regime has stepped up enforcement because they want to increase the number of removals and expedited removal is obviously an incredibly efficient way of doing this. So, they round up folks who have ag fels, send them to a detention facility, have them sign admin removal orders, and give them a one way ticket to a warm and sunny climate (usually) courtesy of the taxpayers of America.

Come on, Mirriam. What the fuck does this have to do with yesterday?  Aren’t you going to write about how you won the ABA Blawg 100?  Isn’t that what this post should be about.  That’s big news.  Come on, gush, you know you want to.

You’d think, right?  But no.

I got to the office at 6:15 a.m. yesterday.  At 7:30 I got a call that my client was on his way out of town.  Like, a long, long, long way out of town.  This was the client for whom we’d filed the TRO. We had a hearing.  Everyone had been served. How could they move him?  But, the truth is, they could. If they wanted to.  Which, clearly they did.  I’m sure there are lots of you who are thinking “well, the guy was an aggravated felon since he was in expedited removal, who cares if he gets deported?” You are the same folks who don’t think that people accused of crimes should get representation so really, there’s no hope for you.  The fact is that the Supreme Court said we have some rights and well, if they are violated really what you’ve done has nothing to do with anything.  That’s how it works, if it works properly.  Let’s move on.

I was ready to do a ton of other work that was desperately needing attention.  But this call knocked me off my feet because it was completely unexpected.  I was angry, I was sad, I was thinking “why am I doing this?  Maybe I should do worker’s comp or cruise law.”  Instead of changing my website to indicate that I was  now an expert in some other area of law, I  ran around some, made phone calls, and talked to some reasonable people that work for the government (shocking, I know, but they do exist).  Oh, and I won that Blawg award.  I emailed Terry Kindlon asking him to tell me to suck it up, that sometimes our clients get crushed despite our best efforts.  He told me exactly that, but then said it was ok to feel like complete shit when it does happen.  Blah blah blah, ABA award.  At 4:30 pm we got a message from ICE that said “your client won’t be removed today because of the TRO, but he came damned close”.  At 7:30 pm the client’s family called and said he was literally on the plane and they pulled him off of it because of that TRO.  He is back in Virginia.  I can visit him tomorrow.  He will be in cold, gray VA and not on a tropical island.  His family can go say hello. I did a dance, I high fived Rob Robertson because in the world of criminal defense and immigration, this is a win. Then I sat down to write those post-convictions.  Today I am going to the jail to see those folks who were neglected yesterday.  We live to fight another day.

PART TWO – THE PART ABOUT THAT AWARD

I had lots of folks congratulate me on the ABA Blawg 100 thing.  I don’t want to appear ungrateful.  But to be honest, there are lots of other blogs that are much better than mine.  My blog is simple, and thus far it’s doing exactly what I intend it to do.  I don’t want to preach to the choir, I don’t want to tell you how to make your law office better, faster.  I’m not necessarily going to tell you when to make hearsay objections (but when in doubt, do – always preserve your record) and I don’t scour the headlines to come up with the hottest topic of the day.  The purpose behind Not Guilty No Way is and always has been well, just to have a place to go to write about stuff that I think is important.  It’s not important to everyone.  Some days friends will complain about how legally intense the posts are, other time folks tell me that while the blog is amusing, it’s heavy on the fluff and light on the law.  I think all of those criticisms are fair and I think about them each time I start a post.  At the end of the day though, this blog is me and will hopefully just continue to be.

I do have a New Year’s goal though, and that’s to have two blog posts a week.  I can’t promise much more than that since my main objective is to grow my practice and well, to help grow my kids as well.  And, I can’t promise that the posts will always be just fun to read, or will give you the latest practice pointers. But I can promise that whatever I write I’ll mean.  I hope that’s good enough.