A judge promoted by Trump threatened a 2-year-old boy to release a dog if he was not silent in court | Univision Immigration News

The boy, of Guatemalan origin, made the normal noises that a child of his age makes while attending his deportation process, the site reported Mother jones on your digital page.

“A judge threatened a 2-year-old migrant with a dog. Trump has just promoted it, ”the post wrote on his Twitter social network account.

The report points out that Judge V. Stuart Couch, a former marine sailor known for having a bad temper, was increasingly frustrated by the child's noises. Suddenly he pointed the child with his finger and demanded that he be silent.

"When the child did not obey his order, the threats began," the publication says. "I have a very big dog in my office, and if you don't shut up, he'll come out and bite you!" Couch shouted.

After the wake-up call and the threat, the trial continued. The child received the order and the threat of the judge through an interpreter in Spanish. “Do you want me to go find the dog? If you don't stop talking, I'll take the dog out. Do you want me to bite you? ”The employee translated.

Mother jones He adds that Couch continued to shout at the two-year-old Guatemalan boy during the entire audience every time he moved or made a noise.

Kathryn Coiner-Collier, the only independent observer in the courtroom that day, said she was totally surprised by the threat Couch made to the little boy.

The publication details that sometimes dogs from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) were seen in the court building, and it was completely plausible to Coiner-Collier that the dogs could have been in place that day.

Coiner-Collier, who held the position of coordinator of the North Carolina Legal Aid Center in Charlotte, a group that assists immigrants without resources to defend their rights to stay in the United States, said that he "quickly pointed out" everything what the judge said to the little one.

Soon after, the activist wrote an affidavit detailing the dialogue that occurred in court and the threat. The media said that Kenneth Schorr, executive director of the Center, filed a complaint with the Department of Justice in April 2016.

"I was outraged," says Schorr about knowledge of the threats. "I have practiced law for more than 40 years and have never experienced such bad judicial behavior."

Coiner-Collier says that Judge Deepali Nadkarni, head of Couch, interviewed her several times about the affidavit and told her it was correct.

Schorr, meanwhile, said Nadkarni told him that everything in the affidavit was corroborated by the internal investigation. And that the head of the judge who threatened the little boy wrote to him in June 2016 to say: "Judge Couch acknowledged that he did not handle the situation properly and assured me that it will not happen again."

According to Schorr, Judge Couch should not have remained in the post after his threat to call a dog to attack a two-year-old boy for making noise in court.

However, and against all odds, Couch received a reward. In August, the Trump administration promoted him along with five other judges to the Board of Immigration Appeals of the Department of Justice (BIA), which often has the final say on whether immigrants are deported or not.

These six judges are those who reject asylum applications at a rate much higher than the national average.

Mother jones He says that Judge Couch granted only 7.9% of asylum applications between 2013 and 2018, compared to the national average of approximately 45%. And he adds that before becoming an immigration judge, Couch served as a military prosecutor and attracted widespread attention for refusing to prosecute a detainee in Guantanamo because he had been tortured.

The publication indicates that the boy's mother refused to comment on the story. The child's lawyer said the woman is still afraid of the judge.

The Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR), under the Department of Justice and oversees immigration courts nationwide, declined to answer questions from Mother jones About the incident.

The interpreter who translated the child for Couch at the 2016 hearing declined to talk about the incident.

Coiner-Collier also said that during the hearing, Judge Couch turned off the recording device in the room while threatening the child.

When he turned it on again, she made a statement in which she believes she intentionally altered the child's age to hide the fact that she had threatened someone who was barely 2 years old, according to the child's passport.

Another antecedent revealed in the complaint is that the child did not speak the Spanish language correctly, and that his first language was Kiché, one of the many spoken in Guatemala.

Coiner-Collier says that after the threat, the judge asked him to take the boy out of the courtroom. And that when she asked the child to accompany her, he began to cry and grabbed his mother.

Shortly after the boy returned to the room to continue the process, Couch said: "I owe you an apology." And he added that his job was not to take care of the children. He then made a comment that suggested that he had threatened other minor migrants.

The activist said that among her notes on what happened that day, she recalled that the judge said: “In general, when I threaten children with scary animals, it works. Not with this child. "

In June of last year, while the Trump administration received court orders from deliver as soon as possible to their parents more than 2,500 children separated at the border and free minors deprived of liberty, the authorities have begun issuing subpoenas for infants, some even three years old, to appear in immigration courts for a judge to decide their futures in the United States.

“The problem is that many of them arrive without legal representation,” says Jaime Barrón, an immigration lawyer who practices in Dallas, Texas. "It is an inhuman and illegal process that the government imposed without thinking about the consequences and the damage that this causes and is causing the most vulnerable group of the immigrant community," he added.

The newspaper USA Today On that occasion, he cited the case of a child under three who appeared in court to face the beginning of his deportation case. The juvenile's father was presented with criminal charges for illegally crossing the country and the child was taken away, who was placed in the hands of the Department of Health and Human Resources (HHS).

The child was one of the more than 2,500 minors separated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) between May 9 and the third week of June in compliance with the 'zero tolerance' policy, ordered in April by the Donald government Trump A subsequent report prepared by the DHS General Inspects revealed that forced deportations affected thousands of other children, and that the government hid the data.

The border crisis that dramatically increased the number of asylum cases erupted in June 2014 during the Barack Obama administration. The waves of migrants have not stopped, and so far in fiscal year 2019 the government records record of apprehensions at the border, a situation that has created an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. Migrants, for the most part, flee their home countries because of violence and poverty and seek asylum in the United States.