Opinion ID: 2610
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: The Change of Venue and the 2004 Proceedings before IJ Vomacka

Text: About two months later, on May 27, 2004, the District Court for the Eastern District of New York held a bond hearing as to Ali. And for reasons that are not clear from the record, the parties discussed releasing Ali from the Marshals' custody and returning him to DHS custody. [8] That same day, DHS filed a motion in the Immigration Court in Arlington, Virginia, seeking to reopen the administratively closed CAT termination hearing and change venue to the Varick Street Detention Facility in New York. Meanwhile, on June 3, 2004, IJ Iskra granted DHS's request for a change of venue. And sometime later that month, the case was assigned to IJ Alan Vomacka. Ali promptly filed a request for a change of venue back to Virginia, which DHS opposed. [9] At a hearing on July 22, 2004, IJ Vomacka expressed confusion about why the case was before him, and disapproval of the unusual way in which the case had proceeded. [10] In his view, the normal course of events would be to return Ali to Virginia. He failed to see how a prosecution for illegal reentry in New York made New York City the logical place for his removal proceeding. IJ Vomacka also questioned whether, as a practical matter, Ali could be both in DHS custody and attending ongoing criminal proceedings in the Eastern District of New York. [11] IJ Vomacka memorialized his concerns in a July 30, 2004 Memorandum as to the Status of the Removal Proceedings. [12] Nonetheless, on August 10, 2004, IJ Vomacka held another hearing on the matter and changed his position on the appropriateness of allowing the case to proceed in New York. At this point he believed, based on representation[s] from the Government, that DHS and the District Court had reached an agreement by which, whether or not I transfer venue back to the Immigration Court in Arlington, Virginia, the respondent is going to stay here. Or, as he subsequently explained it, The District Court in New York is going to want him to stay here until the [criminal] case is wrapped up because who knows what delays will occur if he goes to Virginia and has to come back and enter a plea or whatever may be necessary. Plus, if I change venue to Virginia, there's going to be a period of delay, [and] the Immigration case won't go forward. Therefore, essentially to make use of the time Ali would have to spend in New York while he entered his plea and awaited sentencing, IJ Vomacka decided to deny Ali's request to transfer the case back to Virginia and to proceed with it in New York. [13] He scheduled a merits hearing for October 2004. On September 15, 2004, Ali submitted a motion to supplement the record with evidence that he feared persecution in Guyana based on his sexual orientation (as counsel for Ali explained to the court, Ali had recently informed counsel that he is a homosexual). IJ Vomacka interpreted this motion as an implied request for permission to amend respondent's relief claim by raising a new basis for relief and found it unjustified. On October 19, 2004, IJ Vomacka conducted a hearing on the merits of DHS's motion to terminate Ali's deferral of removal. He heard testimony from expert witnesses, including DHS officers who had interviewed Ali in 1998 and 2000, respectively, and a human rights lawyer with Amnesty International. He also heard testimony from Ali, who described again the 1997 rape and his 1997 and 1999 escapes from the Guyanese authorities. Ali also explained why, in 2000, he did not tell U.S. immigration officials about the rape (I was ... too embarrassed to tell anyone that.... [I]t's not something that you would tell anyone), and he admitted writing some threatening letters to the Guyanese Embassy out of fear that he would be deported, tortured, and killed. Counsel for DHS then cross-examined Ali about the details of his account and confronted him with reports from Interpol, which stated that Interpol had no record of Ali's arrest in Guyana. IJ Vomacka did not review the proceedings before IJ Iskra because he found it difficult to hear the tape recordings and because, owing to the lack of an appeal from the earlier decision, the hearing had not been transcribed. On November 10, 2004, IJ Vomacka issued his oral decision. See In re Peter Conrad Ali, No. A 39 105 177 (Immig.Ct.N.Y.City, Nov. 10, 2004). He determined that Ali was no longer entitled to deferral of removal because he failed to present enough credible evidence that he would more likely than not be tortured in Guyana. The decision emphasized four factors. First, the record included reasonably reliable evidence that when [Ali] was questioned in May of 2000, he told [an] Immigration officer that he had no fear of persecution if returned to Guyana. Second, a report submitted by DHS indicated that Interpol had no arrest warrants or other records concerning Ali, even though Ali claimed that he twice escaped from Guyanese authorities. Third, Ali's account of his return to the U.S. following his second deportation was very close to being `inherently implausible' because it involved [too] many lucky breaks and coincidences. Fourth, a psychological evaluation by the Division of Immigration Health Services indicated that Ali possessed traits of paranoid, avoidant, dependent and obsessive compulsive personality disorder. This report, combined with the threatening letters Ali sent to the Guyanese Embassy, suggested to IJ Vomacka that Ali was capable of imaging [sic] or exaggerating harm and that he might invent[ ] problems ... to avoid being sent back to Guyana. As for Ali's sexual orientation, IJ Vomacka reiterated his belief that this information could have been raised and fully explored during the earlier hearings. He noted that [i]t [wa]s not easy for the Court to understand why a respondent would be willing to disclose forcible rape by jail guards, but not willing to discuss his own sexual orientations [sic] as a homosexual. But in any event, IJ Vomacka explained, other evidence in the record ( e.g., the letters to the Guyanese Embassy) suggested that Ali's announcement of his homosexuality may have been just another attempt to delay the proceedings ([T]he raising of a new issue, practically on the brink of what should be his final hearing, tends to look as though it may be another attempt at obstruction ....).