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Articles by Robert M. Morgenthau
Those labeling Sotomayor a radical don't know her at all
No sooner had President Obama announced his nomination of Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor than conservative partisans began calling for her defeat. These so-called pundits have pronounced her a "radical," an "activist," part of the "far left," an "affirmative action case" and, most astoundingly, a "racist." We were not long left in suspense as to whether this administration's judicial nominees can expect to be vetted with objectivity and due civility.
Robert Morgenthau, longest-serving Manhattan DA, dies at 99
NEW YORK (AP) — Former Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau, who spent more than three decades jailing criminals from mob kingpins and drug-dealing killers to a tax-dodging Harvard dean, died Sunday. He was 99, just 10 days short of his 100th birthday. Morgenthau died at Manhattan's Lenox Hill Hospital after a short illness, his wife Lucinda Franks told The New York Times.
Shield courthouses from ICE: Immigration enforcement in court settings makes us less safe
Justice, not roundups. (Susan Watts/New York Daily News) The current federal administration is flirting with the ill-conceived notion of appointing an “immigration czar,” deportation efforts have been stepped up across the land, and 280 immigrants were arrested at work in Texas earlier this month. Most alarmingly, the heightened enforcement now reaches into our halls of justice, as even courthouses are regularly swept by immigration officials.
Robert Morgenthau: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security Has Become an Out-of-Control Deportation Machine
President Obama has now moved to place a new team at the head of the Department of Homeland Security, nominating Jeh Johnson for secretary of Homeland Security, to join Stevan Bunnell as general counsel. Both men are eminently qualified, but they'll need to hit the ground running. At least with respect to immigration enforcement, Homeland Security is an agency that has lost sight of its own policies.
Wanted: independent immigration judges
Immigration court needs impartial jurists. (Mary Altaffer / AP) In immigration courts all over the country, thousands of individuals make their case for asylum every year. This number includes people who have fled some of our civilization's greatest horrors: sectarian violence, gang violence, political persecution, starvation and natural disaster. Though many migrants carry with them stories of past tragedy, not all of these stories are sufficient grounds for asylum under our laws.
A way forward on immigration: For starters, attack the insane backlog in our courts
Long ago backlogs in these courts, where everything from visa overstays to routine changes in immigration status are adjudicated, became absurd. Then they got much worse. According to a think tank at Syracuse University, since the beginning of fiscal year 2017, the backlog of cases has doubled. The active backlog has reached an historic high of 768,257 cases. But on top of that, the Executive Office for Immigration Review summarily reopened 330,211 previously closed cases.
The dangerous perversion of 'genocide': Israel's critics distort a crucial term
Shortly after the Second World War, genocide was recognized as a crime under international law in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and it is binding even on nonparties to the convention as part of customary international law. The crime of genocide has a narrow legal meaning consistent with its historical development.
Robert M. Morgenthau: Will Trump tell the truth about the Armenian Genocide?
As Hitler launched his invasion of Poland in 1939, he instructed his commanders “to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women and children of Polish derivation and language.” He assured his staff the world would raise little objection: “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” That was a reference to the systematic destruction of the Armenian population by the Ottoman Turks beginning in 1915.
Will Trump Tell the Truth About the Armenian Genocide?
As Hitler launched his invasion of Poland in 1939, he instructed his commanders “to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women and children of Polish derivation and language.” He assured his staff the world would raise little objection: “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” That was a reference to the systematic destruction of the Armenian population by the Ottoman Turks beginning in 1915.
Robert Morgenthau: America’s real immigration crisis
When I was Manhattan district attorney, I saw what happens when enforcement efforts overrun court capacity. During the high-crime 1970s and ’80s, there was such a backlog of arrests that many arrestees were not even brought before a judge for 72 hours. They were held, virtually incommunicado, for days, as the Police Department scoured the city for jail cells where they might be housed.
The VA’s Faltering Battle Against Veteran Suicide
The popular imagination has often pictured the war veteran as a gregarious hero, eager to repeat a trove of cherished war stories. As a veteran of combat in World War II, I can only say that has not been my experience. When my destroyer, the USS Lansdale, was nearly cut in two by a German torpedo, 49 of my shipmates were lost in that attack. But that was only the beginning of the toll. In the decades following, I witnessed the...
Robert Morgenthau: The Supreme Court’s immigration imperative
Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in U.S. vs. Texas, the case challenging President Obama’s policy deferring deportation proceedings against children and some other categories of immigrants. Commentators who witnessed the arguments reported that the case seems headed to a 4-to-4 tie. That would resolve nothing.
Robert M. Morgenthau: America’s deportation nightmare
Ever since the Statue of Liberty first called out to the world’s “homeless” and “tempest-tost” yearning to breathe free, the United States has had a compassionate policy of welcoming immigrants seeking asylum. Not so today for many Honduran women and children, who are being targeted for removal by immigration authorities. Today Honduras is in crisis. In many parts of the country, law enforcement is nearly powerless against ruthless gangs.
The US Keeps 34,000 Immigrants in Detention Each Day Simply to Meet a Quota
On any given day, Immigration and Customs Enforcement keeps at least 34,000 immigrants locked up while they wait for their cases to be heard in immigration court. Many of these detainees are incarcerated not because they are dangerous or likely to skip their court dates, but because ICE must meet an arbitrary quota set by Congress. This quota, which is often referred to as the “detention-bed mandate,” is a disgrace and should be eliminated.
Forgotten flaw in Iran nuclear deal: It lets killers go free
President Barack Obama has in good faith negotiated an agreement with Iran that would end a broad range of economic sanctions on Iran, in return for Iran’s promise to scale back its efforts to build a nuclear bomb. I believe that Congress’s support of the agreement would be a very serious mistake. I find persuasive the arguments of many analysts that the proposal fails because it lifts sanctions before Iran has over time proven that it is committed to abandoning its nuclear weapons program.
Robert Morgenthau: Shunning the huddled masses
On many fronts, the Obama administration has tried to humanize immigration policies, only to be frustrated by an intransigent Congress and, more recently, by adverse court rulings. But in at least one area, the administration’s problems are entirely of its own making: the needless — and some might say heartless — detention of mothers, with children, entering the country with valid claims for asylum.
Robert Morgenthau: The courage to call genocide what it is
As the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during World War I, my grandfather, Henry Morgenthau Sr., was an eyewitness on April 24, 1915, when 300 prominent Armenians were rounded up and killed in Constantinople. Thus began the Armenian genocide, one of the most brutal episodes of the war and one that profoundly changed the course of my grandfather’s life.
Robert Morgenthau: Don’t let kids rot behind bars
Ten years ago, our country took an important step to improve our justice system when the United States Supreme Court abolished the death penalty for juveniles. It is long past time we extended the logic of that ruling and abolished life without parole sentences for juveniles as well. In its landmark 2005 decision, Roper vs.
More executive action, please
President Obama famously — or, in the minds of some, infamously — took executive action last week to halt deportations and grant work permits to an estimated 4 million undocumented immigrants. He explained that he decided to act because the Republican-controlled House has repeatedly refused to bring a comprehensive immigration reform bill up for a vote. I applaud the President’s announcement.
Robert Morgenthau: Those Migrant Children Belong With Their U.S. Families
One of the goals of any sensible immigration policy should be to unite family members and keep them together. Our government should not be taking children away from their parents or close relatives and deporting them back to home countries wracked by drug-related violence and poverty.
Welcome to deportation nation
In enforcing our immigration laws, two goals always come into conflict: the desire to seem tough, by deporting record numbers of immigrants every year; and the desire to be fair, by focusing on those immigrants who are criminals or who otherwise threaten national security. When it comes to meeting these irreconcilable goals, what is the record? As for the first goal, seeming tough by deporting record numbers of immigrants, I long ago lost confidence in the government’s tabulation.
Immigrants jailed just to hit a number
Nobody likes quotas. When there’s even a whiff of a parking-ticket quota, the public is outraged. When France imposed a quota on imported American movies, it provoked international controversy. But there is one quota — and a pernicious one — that no one denies. While the Congress is to be congratulated for passing an appropriations bill with bipartisan support, there are troublesome riders attached to it.
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