A Legal Thought on Operation Streamline and the Type of Attorney I Don't Want to Be

Operation Streamline

My Trial Experience: Barnyard Justice

Attorneys' Roles in Illegitimate Systems

Would it not have been worth looking a little further into the matter, so as to discover that in December 2009, shortly after your visit, the Ninth Circuit held the Tuscon practice of mass hearings on guilty pleas an illegal violation of Fed R Crim P 11? See United States v. Roblero-Solis, 588 F.3d 692 (2009). Does that make you feel any better about being a Federal Public Defender? Rewriting in view of the situation as it is, whatever that is, would probably be useful.

Less than ten years ago, the Department of Justice decided to treat undocumented immigrants who were captured trying to cross into the United States as felons. So desperate to keep them OUT, we decided to lock them IN our country. So eager to prove to voters that we wouldn’t allow them to enter the United States illegally and become a drain on tax payers’ money through “inevitably” ending up in the welfare system, we shoved them into federal prisons for months and sometimes years. Once JUSTICE is being served, we don’t actually care about the tax money it takes to implement that so-called justice. Punishment is certainly more important to our society than acting in a fiscally rational way.

Operation Streamline

Operation Streamline is a federal program in the southwestern United States that fast tracks undocumented immigrants through the federal criminal justice system. Prior to the 2005 implementation of this policy, undocumented immigrants were almost exclusively sent through the civil immigration system. Now, prosecutors and judges are left with no discretion, and even first-time offenders are “charged” with a federal felony under the zero tolerance policy of the program.

My Trial Experience: Barnyard Justice

I sat through one of Operation Streamline’s “trials” in Tucson, AZ in 2009. Though judges can opt to try each offender separately, I witnessed groups of ten men sentenced at a time, taking a few hours to get through over 60 men. Sentencing varied depending on whether this was a first-time offender, though I did not see any one individual sentenced separately. Rather, the judge chose to group together first, second, and third-time offenders. As described by another viewer: “The only words the defendants uttered were "presente," "si," "no," and "culpable" or “guilty." After being sentenced, one defendant, while being escorted out, shot a volley of questions to his court-appointed lawyer. His lawyer patted him on the back and told him everything would be all right. These 10 seconds are what seem to pass for legal counsel.” Herding is the only word that comes to mind when trying to describe this program.

Attorneys’ Roles in Illegitimate Systems

Attorneys representing these men and women generally meet with their clients an hour or so before the trial. No background legal work is performed (there’s simply not enough time), and the attorney’s one job is to explain the charges to their client. There is no negotiation; no opportunity to even do “Popeye’s dance”. These attorneys are stand-ins so that when the media attends these trials and publish photos and stories, the offenders always have “representation”, or someone to tell them when to say yes or no. It’s a farce. These are sham trials in which felony charges are summarily dismissed so that we can lock non-violent men and women up on the lesser charges. Though I had already decided to attend law school, I decided that day that that was the type of attorney I didn’t want to be.

The female attorney I met with after the trial broke into tears when discussing the her role in Operation Streamline. She felt like a peon of a dehumanizing, cruel system that arrested undocumented immigrants in droves to then release them with the comfortable knowledge that they would once again try to enter the United States illegally. This knowledge was particularly comfortable for CCA, a private prison company paid millions of dollars every month by the government to facilitate needless imprisonment. Yet, she felt that her “clients” took comfort in her presence during trials. And maybe there is something to be said for offering pure human companionship when your client is being treated as a stockyard animal, sentenced to hundreds of days in a language they don’t understand. I wonder, however, if those she represents know that, or if they harbor hopes that her presence is more than a mere performance.

I happened to attend a trial while fears about swine flu were at their highest. Not only were the men shackled at their hands and feet, they were forced to wear face masks. We were afraid of these men’s poverty, afraid even of their health, but somehow had decided that the solution was locking them into the United States.

Legitimized Dehumanization

The dehumanizing aspects of Operation Streamline have significance for the American justice system in general. Legitimacy in our legal system begets legitimacy, just as illegitimacy, and acceptance of a system that functions in illegitimate ways, leads to increased, similar policies. Though I believe many of the attorneys representing clients who were being “Streamlined” were working within the system in the only way they knew how, as opposed to leaving their clients wholly without representation, the ability to treat these men and women as sub-human contributed to an environment in Arizona that led to the passage of xenophobic laws that cemented the idea of sub-human classes of persons in a legal structure.

Where to Go Now?

• #Set ALLOWTOPICVIEW = TWikiAdminGroup, CamilleRanadive
• #Set DENYTOPICVIEW = TWikiGuest