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Teams from Love Investigations and the Blake firm continued developing the evidence, working with the clients, and preparing the documents and presentation for Marshall’s oral argument. As Reed, Amy, and the briefing team developed formal statements of fact in both cases, these statements were edited by the clients. Despite their limited education and zero legal experience, the clients rose to the occasion, understood the serious stakes, and provided valuable assistance.
They studied and re-studied their asylum applications and statement of facts. They read them, ad nauseam, until they knew them by heart. Their ‘coaches’ understood that even someone telling the truth in court might succumb to nervousness, have a memory lapse, and, perhaps, fail to keep dates or other particulars straight. They also reminded the clients that demeanor in court is vitally important and observed. The judges, in particular, would be observing client demeanor and taking it into account.
“Look the government’s attorney in the eye when you answer his questions. If the judge asks a question, or it is otherwise appropriate to directly address him, look him in the eyes. Direct eye contact is considered a sign of honesty to many law enforcement and legal officials. Staring at the floor, up in the air, down at one’s hands is considered a sign of dishonesty.”
Reed and his team collected an impressive array of human rights reports, government documents, news clippings, Facebook and blog posts, Google Earth snapshots of on-the-ground unrest, and multiple additional social media documentation. In addition, investigators contacted family members in Syria and Venezuela. They readily supplied sworn affidavits about conditions, now and when the clients fled their respective countries. Investigators also used backchannel connections to communicate with opposition leaders and families of political prisoners. All eagerly provided detailed statements of human rights violations, injuries, deaths, torture, intimidation, and other forms of cruelty and suppression of speech in opposition to oppressive regimes.
The evidence was neatly assembled, indexed, and annotated in a folder of exhibits. The documents were paginated consecutively and alphabetically tabbed. Due to the sheer volume of the presentation, country condition documents were annotated with the most critical parts of those documents in the index.
Amy reasoned that a judge would not likely read all the evidence. However, she was reasonably confident that the judge would at least go through the index and, perhaps, seek out the most important aspects of the cases. For example, Amy felt that extreme country conditions would be very important to an immigration judge. In fact, Marshall told her that some judges literally read these types of documents into the record—to support a ruling granting asylum—pieces directly from the firm’s annotated index. Judges often cited corroborating pieces of evidence and country condition documents, reading verbatim from the index itself. Marshall implored Reed and Amy to be detailed because detailed records of support for these cases would rule the day.
In most branches of the federal court system, the Federal Rules of Evidence applied to the inadmissibility of testimony and documents. This is not true in immigration court, where the sole test for admission of evidence was whether it is probative and fundamentally fair. Amy knew evidence that complied with the rules was more probative or persuasive—judges might give the evidence more weight—she also knew non-compliance did not make the evidence inadmissible.
Because of his command of these lax rules, she instructed Reed and the others obtain sworn affidavits and corroborate them using social media tools. Every single communication with a witness was carefully indexed and annotated with some form of social media corroboration. All audio or video evidence was converted to stills and transcribed in print, as technology is not admissible. Foreign documents were translated in English, and a certificate of translation was included, indexed, and annotated each time. Amy and Reed left no stone unturned in fine-tuning Marshall’s presentations to Judges Farhat and Tucker.
All exhibits and annotations were assembled with detailed statements of facts. Amy knew the presentations required strong written records and experienced oral advocacy. What emerged in both cases was a compelling and persuasive argument to grant asylum. It was time for Marshall, Amy, and the briefing team to write legal briefs on the law and apply the law to the facts of each case.
The 14th Amendment confers all the rights, privileges, and protection of citizenship to anyone born in the United States. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 declared that all individuals born in the US, regardless of race, were US citizens. This act overturned the infamous Dred Scott decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled that anyone who was a descendant of a slave, free or not, was not a citizen nor eligible to become one. To prevent amendment or repeal of the Act, Congress ratified the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Citizens are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The children of parent citizens are automatically citizens, but not the other way around. Thus, in Gonzalez, Marshall would argue that these kids were being denied their constitutional rights by being subjected to a divided family and the possible loss—deportation—of their parents through no fault of their own.
Next, Amy focused the firm’s briefs on the so-called ‘two fears’ of persecution and torture. With Venezuela, Reed’s report detailed a country in turmoil, with starvation wages, malnutrition, illness, and death. Was this enough? Amy wasn’t certain. Marshall didn’t think so, even though most citizens fled the country because of this humanitarian crisis.
Doctors claim incidents of this condition were skyrocketing because impoverished families could not afford infant formula and were feeding babies rice cream, cornmeal, wheat flour, and even spaghetti. Marshall and Amy decided to focus on Miguel Gonzalez’s support of the opposition leader instead of the sitting president, who was supported by the country’s armed forces and Supreme Court. As Miguel and his family fled the country, the United Nations Human Rights Council was charging that the Venezuelan government committed crimes against humanity after a detailed fact-finding investigation of killings, torture, violence, and disappearances. The two lawyers included portions of the UN report, which contained evidence of violence and acts of terror aimed at opposition leaders and followers. People were tortured or shot, point-blank, in what the United Nations called ‘patterns of violations and crimes.’
The UN report was compelling evidence in the Gonzalez case, and Miguel’s active support for the opposition created the necessary nexus Marshall needed to connect the law to the facts. If Miguel and Mary Carmen were sent back, they would be imprisoned and permanently separated from their children. Marshall would argue that this would be cruel and unusual punishment for the simple crime of overstaying a visa. The threat of torture and persecution should be enough to grant asylum to these visitors, people who had never been in trouble with the law in the U.S., worked hard, were parents of U.S. citizens, and pillars of their community.
The facts and law in Rima Al-Baklavi’s case were equally compelling. Ronald John and his successor, Steven Golding, were outspoken proponents of border walls and Muslim Bans. The Iran Hostage Crisis, 9-11, and other terrorist incidents resulted in the designation of certain Middle Eastern countries as terrorist sponsors. America and Americans were hated in these banned Muslim countries. Two American citizens, a mother and her infant daughter, were detained and held hostage by ISIS. Rima Al-Baklavi rendered aid and comfort to the enemy, helped them escape, and a bounty was now offered to anyone who successfully located and executed the infidel.
All of this was bound up in a neat little binder of evidence, indexed, annotated, and tabbed with corroborating evidence of potential torture, persecution, and certain death. The firm’s exhibit package, fact statement, and legal brief laid out the stark and detailed case that told the judge: “If you send Rima back, you are sentencing her to death.”
The two briefs were completed and delivered by courier to James Theurer, Judge Farhat, and Judge Tucker, one month prior to the court date set for the Gonzalez case. The government’s response briefs would be due two weeks before each scheduled court date. It was literally all over but the shouting. It would soon be time for Marshall to argue both cases in a court of law.
