Summary of February 6, 2014 BIA Oral Argument: Matter of Vides Casanova

Carolyn Patty Blum, Senior Legal Adviser, Center for Justice and Accountability, writes: "At oral argument before a three judge panel of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“Board” or “BIA”), Diego Handel, lawyer for Eugenio Vides Casanova, former Director of the National Guard and Minister of Defense of El Salvador, argued that U.S. government support for the Salvadoran regime in the 1980s prohibited the Board from upholding the judge’s removal decision.  Vides-Casanova had been ordered removed from the U.S. under a 2004 law which allows for removal of persons who “ordered, incited, assisted or otherwise participated in torture or extra-judicial killing.”  Handel argued that the case should be tossed as a non-justiciable political question or as a matter of equitable estoppel – that is, the U.S. government should now be prohibited from trying to remove someone who was once an ally of the U.S. in its “battle against communism.”  While U.S. policy in Central America hung over the small, crowded hearing room like a black cloud, the Board members appeared unpersuaded that they were prohibited from acting in the case because of prior foreign policy choices of the executive branch in the 1980s. Board Member Hugh Mullane pressed Handel for precedent for his position; at one point, he noted that Handel apparently was advocating that this case was without precedent – and, therefore, should be one to make new law.  That clearly was not a favored prospect."  [More...]