Court Calls IJ ‘Arbitrary and Unreasonable’ in Forced Abortion Case
A federal appeals court has chastised Immigration Judge Thomas Y.K. Fong for cutting short the hearing of a Chinese woman who claimed she was forced to undergo an abortion in her home country.
Fong refused a request for a continuance because the woman’s lawyer had forgotten to submit her fingerprints for an updated background check, the Daily Journal reports (sub. req.). Fong did not listen to testimony or consider any evidence, and his action meant the the woman, Qi Cui, would be sent home.
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Fong was “arbitrary and unreasonable” and wrongly attributed previous delays in the case to Cui. Fong, the assistant chief immigration judge for the Central District of California, had sought many of the delays himself, the appeals court said in its opinion (PDF).
Fong was also criticized by the 9th Circuit in 2001 for showing apparent bias toward single mothers and in 2007 for denying a continuance in a different case, the story says.
