Barack Obama Part Seven

Obama Calls for Support from “African Americans, Latinos, and Women”

In late April 2010, President Obama narrated an ad calling on American voters to support Democrats in the upcoming November midterm elections. Said Obama in the ad: “It will be up to each of you to make sure that the young people, African Americans, Latinos and women who powered our victory in 2008 stand together once again.”

“You’re Going to Be Harassed”: Obama Criticizes Arizona's New Immigration Law

On April 23, 2010, Arizona's Republican governor, Jan Brewer, signed into law a bill deputizing state police to check with federal authorities on the immigration status of any individuals whom they had stopped for some legitimate reason, if the behavior or circumstances of those individuals led the officers to suspect that they might be in the United States illegally. This Arizona measure was not a departure from existing law, but simply sought to enforce a federal statute that was being enforced inadequately. President Obama depicted the law as a “misguided” example of legislative “irresponsibility” that would “undermine basic notions of fairness,” and he ordered the Justice Department to find some way to challenge its standing.

At an April 27, 2010 Iowa town hall meeting, completely misrepresented the new law: “You can imagine, if you are a Hispanic American in Arizona—your great-grandparents may have been there before Arizona was even a state. But now, suddenly, if you don’t have your papers and you took your kid out to get ice cream, you’re going to be harassed. That’s something that could potentially happen.”

On June 17, 2010, the Obama administration announced that it intended to sue the state of Arizona over the law.

Obama Criticizes Arizona Immigration Law in Meeting with Mexican President

On May 19, 2010, Obama met with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who blasted the controversial immigration law that had been recently passed in Arizona. Obama, during his own welcoming remarks to Calderon, called the Arizona law a “misdirected expression of frustration over our broken immigration system.”

Obama Reacts to Supreme Court Ruling on the Arizona Immigration Law

When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down parts of the Arizona law in June 2012, Obama said: “I am pleased that the Supreme Court has struck down key provisions of Arizona's immigration law.... At the same time, I remain concerned about the practical impact of the remaining provision of the Arizona law that requires local law enforcement officials to check the immigration status of anyone they even suspect to be here illegally.... No American should ever live under a cloud of suspicion just because of what they look like.

The DREAM Act by Executive Order: Obama Announces Plan to Stop Deporting Illegal Immigrants Who Came to U.S. As Children

In July 2012, Obama issued an executive order to stop the deportation of illegal immigrants who: had come to the United States before the age of 16; had lived in the U.S. for at least five years; were either students, high-school graduates, or military veterans in good standing; had clean criminal records; and were still under the age of 30. The new policy was expected to affect 2 million to 3 million illegal immigrants.

This was a fulfillment of Obama's previous assertion that he intended to use executive order to enact as much of the so-called DREAM Act as possible, since Congress had not passed the bill on its own. Notably, Congress had voted three times to reject the terms that Obama now said he would deal out all by himself.

Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King said he planned to sue the Obama administration to halt its effort to “legislate by executive order” rather than legislative approval. Wisconsin Republican Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner called Obama's decision “offensive to the millions of Americans still out of work.” “It rewards law-breaking,” Sensenbrenner said. “And it’s deeply unfair to those who came to this country legally.”

Conservative political commentator Byron York offered this incisive analysis: “With his announcement that he will, in effect, unilaterally enact a key feature of long-debated immigration reform, President Obama is doing something he has always wished to do: Get around a Congress that doesn't see the issue his way. In a speech to La Raza last July, Obama said that on the question of immigration reform, 'some people want me to bypass Congress and change the laws on my own.' Obama said he found the idea 'very tempting' but had to reject it because 'that's not how our system works.'” But now Obama had found a way to beat that same system.

Obama Makes It Virtually Impossible to Deport Anyone Living in the U.S. Illegally Unless They Have also Committed an Additional Crime

On December 21, 2012, Obama's Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a directive “reinforcing that almost all immigration offenses were unenforceable absent a separate criminal conviction.”

Obama Expands DREAM Act Protections to Illegal Immigrant Relatives of "DREAMers"

On August 23, 2013, the Obama DHS issued a directive “expanding that [summer 2012 executive order regarding the DREAM Act] amnesty to illegal immigrant relatives of DREAM Act beneficiaries.”

“Maybe They'll Need a Moat” with “Alligators”: Obama Mocks Republican Position on Illegal Immigration

In May 2011, President Obama went to El Paso, Texas to give what was billed as an important speech on immigration. When he mentioned the border fence which was under construction at that time, the crowd shouted, “Tear it down!” When he criticized Republicans, the audience booed and shouted, “They're racist.” At other times, the crowd joined Obama in chanting, “Yes, we can.”

At one point during his speech, Obama claimed that “the [border] fence is now basically complete.” He then promptly mocked opponents of illegal immigration, saying, “Maybe they'll need a moat [i.e., to keep Mexicans out of the United States]. Maybe they'll need alligators in the moat.”

In reality, fewer than 700 miles of the more than 1,900-mile U.S.-Mexico border had any sort of barrier, and less than 5% of the border had the type of robust, double-fenced barrier that Congress had initially requested. Moreover, a recent Government Accountability Office study had found that 40% of the border was essentially open and unguarded.

Obama Justice Department Ignores Civil Rights Cases with White Victims

On Election Day, November 4, 2008, two members of the New Black Panther Party—a profoundly racist organization that has called for violence and murder against white people—intimidated white voters with racial slurs and threats of violence at a Philadelphia polling station. Those two members—Jerry Jackson and Minister King Samir Shabazz—derided passersby as “White Devils” and shouted: “You are about to be ruled by the black man, Cracker!” On January 7, 2009, the Justice Department under President Bush filed criminal charges against Jackson, Minister Shabazz, and New Black Panther Party chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz for violating the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The failure of all three men to appear in court led to an order by U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell to seek judgments or sanctions against the three Panthers.

But in May 2009, the Obama Justice Department suddenly dismissed the case. The following month, J. Christian Adams, who had served in the Voting Section of the Justice Department for 5 years, resigned over the “corrupt nature of the dismissal of the case.” Wrote Adams in 2010: “The New Black Panther case was the simplest and most obvious violation of federal law I saw in my Justice Department career.... The assistant attorney general for civil rights, Tom Perez, has testified repeatedly that the 'facts and law' did not support this case. That claim is false. If the actions in Philadelphia do not constitute voter intimidation, it is hard to imagine what would, short of an actual outbreak of violence at the polls.... Citizens would be shocked to learn about the open and pervasive hostility within the Justice Department to bringing civil rights cases against nonwhite defendants on behalf of white victims. Equal enforcement of justice is not a priority of this administration. Open contempt is voiced for these types of cases.”

In July 2010, Adams gave damning public testimony about how Obama officials believed that “civil rights law should not be enforced in a race-neutral manner, and should never be enforced against blacks or other national minorities.”

More Allegations that the Obama Justice Department Ignores Civil Rights Cases Involving White Victims

In September 2010, Christopher Coates, Voting Section Chief for the Justice Department, corroborated the previous testimony of J. Christian Adams, stating that the Department had routinely ignored civil rights cases involving white victims. Coates had delayed testifying (to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights) on this matter for more than a year—at the request of the Justice Department. Now, however, he chose to go public with his story and asked for protection under whistleblower laws.

Obama Justice Department Sues Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio

In September 2010, the Obama Justice Department announced that it would sue Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, known for his strong stance against illegal immigration. The Justice Department charged that Arpaio's trademark immigration patrols had racially profiled Latinos. Said Arpaio: “If they sue, we'll go to court. And then we'll find out the real story. They're telling me how to run my organization. I'd like to get this resolved, but I'm not going to give up my authority to the federal government. It's as simple as that.”

Obama Signs Bill Paying $1.15 Billion in Discrimination Compensation to Black Farmers

As the result of a 1999 decision on a class action suit known as Pigford v. Glickman, the federal government paid approximately $1 billion to 15,640 black farmers who claimed that the that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) had discriminated against them by refusing to provide them with federally subsidized farm loans and benefits during the years 1981-96. In 2008, then-Senator Barack Obama pushed to get another $100 million appropriated through that year's farm bill, to compensate black farmers who alleged USDA discrimination but had missed the 1999 filing deadline under the original Pigford case. “I am also pleased that the bill includes my proposal to help thousands of African-American farmers get their discrimination claims reviewed under the Pigford settlement,” said Obama.

Then, in early December 2010, President Obama signed the Claims Settlement Act of 2010, which awarded another $1.15 billion to 94,000 black farmers alleging USDA discrimination between 1981-96. When signing the bill, Obama lamented the “long and unfortunate chapter in our history” that it represented.

According to the Census Bureau, the number of black farmers in America between 1981 and 1996 peaked at 33,000 in 1982. More than 15,000 of those had already received settlements under Pigford I. The USDA predicted that about 3,000 of the remaining 18,000 black farmers would now come forward to file additional discrimination claims. Instead, the actual total was 94,000 people claiming to have been “victimized” by the USDA.

Obama USDA Awards $760 Million to Native American Farmers As Compensation for “Discrimination”

In October 2010, the Obama USDA settled the so-called Keepseagle case, agreeing to make $760 million available to Native American farmers and ranchers contending that they had not received the same farm loan opportunities as whites between 1981-99.

Obama USDA Offers Female and Hispanic farmers over $1.3 billion in “Discrimination” Payouts

On September 24, 2012, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced that Hispanic and women farmers and ranchers who believed the USDA had discriminated against them between 1981 and 2000, could now file claims to get a portion of at least $1.33 billion in cash awards and tax relief payments, and up to $160 million in farm debt relief. Said Vilsack: “The opening of this claims process is part of USDA’s ongoing efforts to correct the wrongs of the past and ensure fair treatment to all current and future customers.” The USDA said it would use mail, media, and community advocacy groups to ensure that those eligible would be made aware of the claims process.

The Fraudulence of the Black, Native American, Hispanic, and Female Farmer "Discrimination Payouts Is Confirmed

On April 25, 2013, The New York Times reported the folowing:

In the winter of 2010, after a decade of defending the government against bias claims by Hispanic and female farmers, Justice Department lawyers seemed to have victory within their grasp.

In the winter of 2010, after a decade of defending the government against bias claims by Hispanic and female farmers, Justice Department lawyers seemed to have victory within their grasp.

Ever since the Clinton administration agreed in 1999 to make $50,000 payments to thousands of black farmers, the Hispanics and women had been clamoring in courtrooms and in Congress for the same deal. They argued, as the African-Americans had, that biased federal loan officers had systematically thwarted their attempts to borrow money to farm.

But a succession of courts — and finally the Supreme Court — had rebuffed their pleas. Instead of an army of potential claimants, the government faced just 91 plaintiffs. Those cases, the government lawyers figured, could be dispatched at limited cost. They were wrong.

On the heels of the Supreme Court’s ruling, interviews and records show, the Obama administration’s political appointees at the Justice and Agriculture Departments engineered a stunning turnabout: they committed $1.33 billion to compensate not just the 91 plaintiffs but thousands of Hispanic and female farmers who had never claimed bias in court.

The deal, several current and former government officials said, was fashioned in White House meetings despite the vehement objections — until now undisclosed — of career lawyers and agency officials who had argued that there was no credible evidence of widespread discrimination. What is more, some protested, the template for the deal — the $50,000 payouts to black farmers — had proved a magnet for fraud....

The compensation effort sprang from a desire to redress what the government and a federal judge agreed was a painful legacy of bias against African-Americans by the Agriculture Department. But an examination by The New York Times shows that it became a runaway train, driven by racial politics, pressure from influential members of Congress and law firms that stand to gain more than $130 million in fees. In the past five years, it has grown to encompass a second group of African-Americans as well as Hispanic, female and Native American farmers. In all, more than 90,000 people have filed claims. The total cost could top $4.4 billion.

From the start, the claims process prompted allegations of widespread fraud and criticism that its very design encouraged people to lie: because relatively few records remained to verify accusations, claimants were not required to present documentary evidence that they had been unfairly treated or had even tried to farm. Agriculture Department reviewers found reams of suspicious claims, from nursery-school-age children and pockets of urban dwellers, sometimes in the same handwriting with nearly identical accounts of discrimination.

Yet those concerns were played down as the compensation effort grew. Though the government has started requiring more evidence to support some claims, even now people who say they were unfairly denied loans can collect up to $50,000 with little documentation.

As a senator, Barack Obama supported expanding compensation for black farmers, and then as president he pressed for $1.15 billion to pay those new claims. Other groups quickly escalated their demands for similar treatment. In a letter to the White House in September 2009, Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, a leading Hispanic Democrat, threatened to mount a campaign “outside the Beltway” if Hispanic farmers were not compensated.

The groups found a champion in the new agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack. New settlements would provide “a way to neutralize the argument that the government favors black farmers over Hispanic, Native American or women farmers,” an internal department memorandum stated in March 2010.

The payouts pitted Mr. Vilsack and other political appointees against career lawyers and agency officials, who argued that the legal risks did not justify the costs.

Beyond that, they said it was legally questionable to sidestep Congress and compensate the Hispanic and female farmers out of a special Treasury Department account, known as the Judgment Fund. The fund is restricted to payments of court-approved judgments and settlements, as well as to out-of-court settlements in cases where the government faces imminent litigation that it could lose. Some officials argued that tapping the fund for the farmers set a bad precedent, since most had arguably never contemplated suing and might not have won if they had....

A 2010 settlement with Native Americans was contentious for its own reasons. Justice Department lawyers argued that the $760 million agreement far outstripped the potential cost of a defeat in court. Agriculture officials said not that many farmers would file claims.

That prediction proved prophetic. Only $300 million in claims were filed, leaving nearly $400 million in the control of plaintiffs’ lawyers to be distributed among a handful of nonprofit organizations serving Native American farmers. Two and a half years later, the groups have yet to be chosen. It is unclear how many even exist....

[Senior Justice Department officials] said the attorney general had broad discretion to settle litigation. “It was a priority for the administration to resolve the long-standing discrimination cases,” a senior official said, and give “farmers who believed they had been discriminated against a chance to seek redress.” ...

Farmers routinely borrow money to carry themselves from high-cost planting season to harvest time; lack of credit can lead to barren fields. The original lawsuit, Pigford v. Glickman, filed in federal court in Washington in August 1997, argued that the Agriculture Department’s credit bureau, now called the Farm Service Agency, routinely denied or limited loans to black farmers while freely distributing them to whites.

Two government reports that year found no evidence of ongoing, systemic discrimination. The Government Accountability Office reported that 16 percent of minority farmers were denied loans, compared with 10 percent of white farmers, but traced the difference to objective factors like bad credit. An Agriculture Department study also found “no consistent picture of disparity” over the previous two years.

But the study concluded that decades of discrimination before then had cost African-American farmers significant amounts of land and income. Black farmers gave heart-rending accounts of loan officers who withheld promised money while crops withered, who repossessed their land and sold it to white cronies, who advised them to milk cows for white farmers rather than sow their own crops.

Written discrimination complaints had fallen on deaf ears at the Agriculture Department, where the civil rights office had been disbanded during the Reagan administration.

John W. Boyd Jr., a Virginia farmer who leads the National Black Farmers Association, was among those who pressed President Bill Clinton to settle the case....

Just five months after the lawsuit was filed, and without the investigative step of discovery, the Justice Department opened settlement negotiations....

“[I]t was more a political decision than a litigation decision,” said one lawyer familiar with the administration’s stance. “The administration was genuinely sympathetic to the plight of these farmers.” ...

[Presiding Federal Judge Paul L. Friedman] initially limited the class of potential claimants to African-Americans who had farmed between 1981 and 1996 and had previously filed written discrimination complaints. But his final order significantly expanded the class, admitting those who had only “attempted to farm.” And it threw out the requirement for a written bias complaint, stating that an oral complaint was sufficient if someone other than a family member attested to it in an affidavit.

The Agriculture Department was partly to blame for the lack of records. It routinely discarded failed loan applications after three years, and it had badly mismanaged written discrimination complaints. Ninety percent of the farmers had no records either, plaintiffs’ lawyers said.

The billion-dollar settlement, the judge’s opinion said, was designed to provide “those class members with little or no documentary evidence with a virtually automatic cash payment of $50,000.” Those with documentary proof could seek higher awards, a tack ultimately chosen by fewer than 1 percent of applicants.

Justice Department lawyers worried about false claims. But the lawyer familiar with the Clinton administration’s stance said they had decided that “it was better to err on the side of giving money to people who might not qualify if they went through litigation than to deny money to people who actually deserve it.” ...

Accusations of unfair treatment could be checked against department files if claimants had previously received loans. But four-fifths of successful claimants had never done so. For them, “there was no way to refute what they said,” said Sandy Grammer, a former program analyst from Indiana who reviewed claims for three years. “Basically, it was a rip-off of the American taxpayers.”

The true dimensions of the problem are impossible to gauge. The Agriculture Department insists that the names and addresses of claimants are protected under privacy provisions. But department data released in response to a Freedom of Information request by The Times are telling. The data cover 15,601 African-Americans who filed successful claims and were paid before 2009.

In 16 ZIP codes in Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi and North Carolina, the number of successful claimants exceeded the total number of farms operated by people of any race in 1997, the year the lawsuit was filed. Those applicants received nearly $100 million.

In Maple Hill, a struggling town in southeastern North Carolina, the number of people paid was nearly four times the total number of farms. More than one in nine African-American adults there received checks. In Little Rock, Ark., a confidential list of payments shows, 10 members of one extended family collected a total of $500,000, and dozens of other successful claimants shared addresses, phone numbers or close family connections.

Thirty percent of all payments, totaling $290 million, went to predominantly urban counties — a phenomenon that supporters of the settlement say reflects black farmers’ migration during the 15 years covered by the lawsuit. Only 11 percent, or $107 million, went to what the Agriculture Department classifies as “completely rural” counties....

The claim period ended in late 1999, although the adjudication process dragged on for a dozen years. But the gusher of claims had only begun.

“Once those checks started hitting the mailboxes, people couldn’t believe it,” said Mr. Wright, the Pine Bluff justice of the peace. “Then it dawned on them. ‘If Joe Blow got a check, I can get one.’” ...

Some 66,000 claims poured in after the 1999 deadline. Noting that the government had given “extensive” notice, Judge Friedman ruled the door closed to late filers. “That is simply how class actions work,” he wrote.

But it was not how politics worked. The next nine years brought a concerted effort to allow the late filers to seek awards. Career Agriculture Department officials warned that they might be even more problematic than initial claimants: in one ZIP code in Columbus, Ohio, nearly everyone in two adjoining apartment buildings had filed, according to the former high-ranking agency official.

President George W. Bush was unreceptive to farmers’ repeated protests. But Congress was not: legislators from both parties, including Mr. Obama as a senator in 2007, sponsored bills to grant the late filers relief.

Mr. Boyd said Mr. Obama’s support led him to throw the backing of his 109,000-member black farmers’ association behind the Obama presidential primary campaign. Hilary Shelton, the N.A.A.C.P.’s chief lobbyist, said Mr. Obama’s stance helped establish him as a defender of the concerns of rural African-American communities.

Public criticism came primarily from conservative news outlets like Breitbart.com and from Congressional conservatives like Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, who described the program as rife with fraud. Few Republicans or Democrats supported him. Asked why, Mr. King said, “Never underestimate the fear of being called a racist.”

Congress finally inserted a provision in the 2008 farm bill allowing late filers to bring new lawsuits, with their claims to be decided by the same standard of evidence as before. The bill also declared a sense of Congress that minority farmers’ bias claims and lawsuits should be quickly and justly resolved.

Congress overrode a veto by Mr. Bush, who objected to other provisions in the bill. But as Mr. Bush left Washington, Congress had appropriated only $100 million for compensation, hardly enough to pay for processing claims.

Within months of taking office, President Obama promised to seek an additional $1.15 billion. In November 2010, Congress approved the funds. To protect against fraud, legislators ordered the Government Accountability Office and the Agriculture Department’s inspector general to audit the payment process.

But simultaneously, the Agriculture Department abandoned the costly and burdensome review process it had applied to earlier claims. As a result, according to internal government memos, the percentage of successful claims is expected to exceed that in the original 1999 settlement. More than 40,000 claims have been filed and are under review.

In November, the G.A.O. concluded that antifraud provisions provided “reasonable assurance” of weeding out false claims, saying more than 3,100 suspicious applications had been identified. But as before, it noted, late filers need not document claims, leaving adjudicators to rely on assertions that they have “no way of independently verifying.” ...

The Bush Justice Department had rebuffed all efforts to settle the parallel discrimination suits brought by Native American, Hispanic and female farmers. But now, the Obama administration’s efforts to compensate African-American farmers intensified pressure from members of Congress and lobbyists to settle those cases as well.

Within the administration, Secretary Vilsack, a former Iowa governor who had briefly run for president, found an ally in Mr. West, who had been named an assistant attorney general after serving as a major Obama fund-raiser....

The Native-American case was clearly problematic for the government. The federal judge overseeing the case, Emmet G. Sullivan, had already certified the plaintiffs as a class, although only to seek changes in government practices and policies. He postponed a decision on whether they could seek monetary damages as a class.

But Justice Department litigators were far from unarmed. If they lost on damages, case law suggested that the decision might be reversed. Depositions had revealed many of the individual farmers’ complaints to be shaky. And federal judges had already scornfully rejected the methodology of the plaintiffs’ expert, a former Agriculture Department official named Patrick O’Brien, in the women’s case.

Mr. O’Brien contended that white farmers were two to three times as likely as Native Americans to receive federal farm loans in the 1980s and 1990s than were other farmers. But the government’s expert, Gordon C. Rausser, a professor of economics and statistics at the University of California, Berkeley, had produced a 340-page report stating that Mr. O’Brien’s conclusions were based “in a counter-factual world” and that Native Americans had generally fared as well as white male farmers.

Professor Rausser was astounded when, with both sides gearing up for trial in late 2009, the government began settlement negotiations. “If they had gone to trial, the government would have prevailed,” he said.

“It was just a joke,” he added. “I was so disgusted. It was simply buying the support of the Native-Americans.”

Agriculture officials predicted that only 5,300 Native Americans were likely to file claims. The plaintiffs’ lawyers, whose fees were to be based on a percentage of the settlement, estimated up to 19,000 claims.

Only 4,400 people filed claims, with 3,600 winning compensation at a cost of roughly $300 million. That left $460 million unspent — of which roughly $400 million under the terms of the settlement must be given to nonprofit groups that aid Native American farmers....

The remaining $60.8 million will go to the plaintiffs’ lawyers, led by the Washington firm Cohen, Milstein, Sellers & Toll....

On Feb. 19, 2010, Alan Wiseman, a lawyer for the Hispanic farmers, strode into Federal District Court in Washington unusually upbeat. “Sometimes,” he told Judge James Robertson, “it takes divine intervention” to move the government.

Over the past decade, his case had not gone well. Nor had the parallel lawsuit brought by female farmers.

Judge Robertson had refused to certify either group as a class. The United States Court of Appeals had upheld him, stating in 2006 that the Hispanic plaintiffs had been denied loans “for a variety of reasons, including inadequate farm plans and lack of funds.” Nor had female farmers proved a pattern of bias, the court found.

The Justice Department’s lawyers had definitively ruled out any group-style settlement. “Some of these folks have never made a loan payment in their entire history with U.S.D.A.,” Lisa A. Olson, the lead government litigator against the 81 Hispanic plaintiffs, told Judge Robertson in August 2009. “There may even be folks who are under criminal investigation.”

Michael Sitcov, assistant director of the Justice Department’s federal program branch, told the judge that senior department officials agreed with career litigators that the cases should be fought one by one.

But members of the Congressional Hispanic caucus and a group of eight Democratic senators, led by Mr. [Bob] Menendez, were lobbying the White House to move in the opposite direction. They grew increasingly agitated as the plaintiffs’ cases appeared to falter.

In a letter to Mr. Obama in June 2009, the senators noted that black farmers stood to receive $2.25 billion in compensation, but that Hispanic farmers, who alleged the same kind of discrimination, had gotten nothing. Should that continue, Mr. Menendez wrote that September, “Hispanic farmers and ranchers, and their supporters, will be reaching out to community and industry leaders outside of the Beltway in order to bring wider attention to this problem.”

The issue came to a head after the Supreme Court refused to reopen the issue of class certification. The next month, on Feb. 11, 2010, Daniel J. Meltzer, principal deputy White House counsel, held the first of three meetings at which resolution of the case was discussed, records and interviews show. Among the attendees were senior Justice and Agriculture Department officials, including Mr. West, Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perrelli, and Krysta Harden, then the assistant agriculture secretary for Congressional relations. Settlement negotiations began the next week.... Attorneys for the 81 Hispanic farmers also raised the vague specter of tens of thousands of plaintiffs....

In agreeing to the payout, the government did, for the first time, impose a greater evidentiary burden. While one major category of claimants — those who said their loan applications had been unfairly denied — remained eligible for payments of up to $50,000 without any documentation, others were required to produce written evidence that they had complained of bias at the time. The Hispanic plaintiffs were indignant.

Adam P. Feinberg, who represents some of them, said: “Once the government puts a program in place for one racial group, even if it decides it is too generous, it cannot adopt a different set of restrictions for another racial group. It’s outrageous.”

The claims process opened in late September, six weeks before the election. In the weeks before the March 25 deadline, facing far fewer claimants than expected, the Agriculture Department instructed processors to call about 16,000 people to remind them that time was running out, despite internal disquiet that the government was almost recruiting claims against itself. The deadline was then extended to May 1.

So far, about 1,900 Hispanics and 24,000 women have sought compensation, many in states where middlemen have built a cottage industry, promising to help win payouts for a fee.

Obama Justice Department Alleges Racism in Police Departments

On May 31, 2011, Salon.com reported that “President Obama's Justice Department is aggressively investigating several big urban police departments for systematic civil rights abuses such as harassment of racial minorities, false arrests, and excessive use of force....”