HON. JEFFREY S. CHASE: The History Of A Flawed Judiciary; The Intentional Tilting Of Asylum Law Against Asylum Seekers; The Farce Of Justice In The Immigration Courts; The Need For An Independent Article I Court!

 

The Immigration Court: Issues and Solutions

The following is the transcript of my lecture on March 28, 2019 at Cornell Law School as part of its Berger International Speaker Series titled The Immigration Courts: Issues and Solutions. Here is a link to the actual recording of the lecture. My heartfelt thanks to Prof. Stephen Yale-Loehr, Prof. Estelle McKee, and everyone at Cornell Law School for the honor of speaking, and for their warmth, intelligence, and dedication.

I’ve had a couple of occasions recently to consider the importance of faith in our judicial institutions.  I discussed the issue first in a blog post in which I commented on the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, and then again in remarks relating to a play I was involved in in NYC based on an actual immigration court case, called The Courtroom.  Attorneys more commonly focus on faith in our courts on an individualized, case-by-case basis.  But in a democracy, a larger societal faith in our judicial institutions is paramount. And this may sound strange, but a large reason for this is that our courts will not always reach the right result.  But society will abide by judicial outcomes that they disagree with if they believe that the result was reached impartially by people who were genuinely trying to get it right. Abiding by judicial decisions is a key to democracy.  It is what prevents angry mobs from taking justice into their own hands. In the words of Balzac, “to distrust the judiciary marks the beginning of the end of society.”

If we accept this point of view, I believe that recent developments provide a cause for concern.  As Jeffrey Toobin recently wrote in The New Yorker, “these days the courts are nearly as tribal in their inclinations as the voters are,”  a point that the partisan nature of recent Supreme Court confirmation battles has underscored.

Our immigration courts are particularly prone to political manipulation because of their unique combination of structure, history, and function.  The present administration has made no secret of its disdain for judges’ ability to act as a check on its powers. But the combination of the fact that immigration judges are under the direct control of the Attorney General, and that their jurisdiction concerns a subject matter of particular importance to this administration has made this court especially ripe for interference.

A brief history of the immigration courts reveals it to be what my friend Prof. Deborah Anker at Harvard Law School calls a “bottom up” institution.  Immigration Judges originated as “special inquiry officers” within the old INS, where they held brief “hearings” under very non-courtlike conditions. In 1998, while I was an IJ, the court held a ceremony to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the immigration courts.  This was not the anniversary of its recognition as a court by Congress, which came much later, but rather, the anniversary of the agency beginning to refer to its personnel as judges.

The keynote speaker at the ceremony was William Fliegelman, who was the first person to hold the title of Chief Immigration Judge.  To the extent that his historical account was accurate, the immigration judge corps essentially invented itself, purchasing their own robes, designing the layout of their hearing rooms to better resemble courtrooms, and coordinating with INS district counsel to send its attorneys to each hearings to act as prosecutors.  Judge Fliegelman and then-INS District Counsel Vincent Schiano together created the Master Calendar hearing which is still used by the courts as its method of preliminary hearing. In other words, according to Judge Fliegelman’s account, the immigration judges presented themselves to the Washington bureaucrats as a fait accomplis, leaping fully formed much like Athena from Zeus’s head.

However, the judges still remained employees of the INS, the agency prosecuting the cases.  Most of the immigration judges were former INS trial attorneys. It was not uncommon for the judge and prosecutor to go out to lunch together, which didn’t exactly create the appearance of impartiality.  In 1983, the immigration judges, along with the Board of Immigration Appeals, were moved into an independent agency called the Executive Office for Immigration Review (“EOIR”). However, EOIR remained within the Department of Justice, as did the INS.  As both the INS commissioner and EOIR director reported to the same boss at Main Justice, and as INS was a much larger, more influential agency than EOIR, the former continued to be able to exert undue influence on the latter agency. That dynamic ended when the functions of the old INS were moved into the newly-created Department of Homeland Security in 2003.  Actually, EOIR was slated to move to DHS as well, but managed to finally achieve some space from ICE once again only through the IJ’s own lobbying efforts.

Although EOIR did begin sporadically appointing private attorneys to the bench in the 1980s, the number of more liberal private bar advocates appointed increased under the Clinton Administration in the mid-1990s, significantly changing the overall makeup of the immigration judge corps.  Many of those more liberal hires became retirement eligible under the present administration.

It wasn’t until 1996 that Congress finally recognized immigration judges by such title in statute.  As I was a new judge at the time, I can report that yet again, this development was accomplished by the immigration judges themselves, who chipped in to pay a lobbyist to bring about this change, with no assistance from EOIR management.

Soon thereafter, the immigration judge’s union began advocating for independent Article I status.  In the 1990s, then-Congressman Bill McCollum of Florida sponsored such a bill, which was opposed by EOIR management (out of its own self-interest), and which did not advance in Congress.  A very similar bill was drafted last year by New York Senator Kristin Gillibrand, which was never proposed to the Republican-controlled Congress.  A main difference between the 1990s proposal and present one is the climate in which they are made. While many of the arguments for Article I status involved hypothetical threats in the 1990s, over the past two years, many of the fears that gave rise to such proposal have become reality.

Some of the recent developments underscoring the urgency of the need for Article I courts include:

Politicized IJ hiring.  Following the more diverse corps of IJs hired under the Clinton Administration, a backlash occurred under the George W. Bush Administration.  A report following an investigation by the DOJ Inspector General’s Office detailed a policy of extending IJ offers only to those who had been found to meet the proper conservative, Republican profile.  For example, the report indicated that one candidate was found to have the proper conservative views on the “three Gs:” God, Guns, and Gays.

Although such practices came to an end in the latter part of the Bush Administration, in May of last year, a letter by 8 members of Congress. Prompted by whistleblowers within EOIR, requested the DOJ Inspector General to investigate new reports of a return of such politicized hiring under the present Administration.  At present, nearly all new IJ hires are former prosecutors or those who otherwise have been deemed to fit this administration’s ideological profile.

Completion quotas:  As of October 1, 2018, IJs are required to satisfy completion quotas set by EOIR management.  According to the President of the Immigration Judges’ Union, Hon. Ashley Tabaddor, no other class of judges are subject to similar quotas.  Judge Tabaddor has stated that IJs cease to be true judges under such system, as an adjudicator who must repeatedly choose between the requirements of due process and their own job security is one who lacks the independence required of judges.

Since October 1, judges are treated to a graphic on their computer screens each day which resembles the gauges on an airplane or sports car, with an animation of a needle which in seven different “gauges” will either be in the green, yellow, or red zone.  Not surprisingly, IJs find this demeaning.

Under the quotas, IJs are each required to complete 700 cases per year.  95 percent must be completed at their first scheduled individual hearing.  The judges may not have more than 15 percent of their decisions remanded or reversed by the BIA.

Judges have reported that when they find it necessary to continue a merits hearing, they soon receive a call from management requiring them to provide a detailed defense of their decision to continue the case.  In some courts, EOIR management has asked the court’s judicial law clerks to act as spies by listening to the recording of the continued hearing and reporting whether the in-court statements of the judge match the explanation the judge later provided to their supervisor for the continuance.  As a result, judges appointed by the Attorney General of the U.S. to hear life-and-death claims for asylum now feel the need to play-act on the record to avoid punishment from their superiors.

Another thing about quotas: right after they were announced, a reporter from NPR called me to ask what impact they were likely to have on judges.  In response, I suggested that we look at the most recent case completion figures on EOIR’s website.  I said we should first look at the court with the highest denial rate in the country, Atlanta. We divided the total number of case completions by the number of judges, and found that these judges averaged over 1,500 completions for the year, or more than double what was needed to meet the quota.  We then did the same for one of the more liberal courts in the country, the New York City court, and found that the judges there averaged just 566 completions a year, well under what would be needed to satisfy the quota. So just to be clear, the quotas are not designed to have a neutral impact; the administration hopes that forcing more completions will also result in more denials.

It should be noted that despite these quotas and numerous other efforts by the Trump Administration to supposedly increase the court’s productivity, the backlog has actually increased by 26% over the past two years.

Continued impact of the 2003 BIA purge:  In 2002, then Attorney General John Ashcroft expressed his dismay for some of the BIA’s more liberal decisions.  His response was to strip some of the BIA’s authority (in particular, taking away its de novo review authority over immigration judges’ findings of fact).  Ashcroft also announced that, in order to improve an overburdened BIA’s efficiency, he would reduce its size from 21 to 12 members. If you believe that the last part makes no sense, believe me, you are not alone.

One year later, Ashcroft followed through on his threat, removing every judge he deemed to be liberal from the BIA.  The Board, which had always been conservative leaning, subsequently took a much greater tilt to the right.  There was no correction under the Obama Administration, meaning that the BIA for the past 16 years and counting has been devoid of any liberal members.  It’s present chair, David Neal, is a Republican who served as a staff member to former U.S. Senator and Kansas Governor Sam Brownback.  The Board’s most prolific judge under the Trump Administration, Garry Malphrus, had been appointed to the bench after playing a role in the “Brooks Brothers riot,” in which Republican faithful hampered the recount of ballots in Florida following the 2000 presidential election.  Board Member Ed Grant was a Republican staff member to Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican with anti-immigrant views who previously chaired the House Immigration Subcommittee.

Of course, the result has been the issuance of more conservative precedent decisions which are binding on immigration judges.  And due to the common practice of Circuit Courts to accord deference to those decisions, under Chevron, Brand X, or Auer deference, humane interpretations of the immigration laws have become harder to come by.  Prior to 2002, the BIA commonly decided precedent decisions en banc, often providing a range of concurring and dissenting opinions, some of which were later adopted by the circuit courts on appeal.  But since that time, the Board only publishes three-member panel decisions as precedent, with a very small number of dissents.

A recent article in the Stanford Law Review by Prof. Jennifer Lee Koh provides an example of one of the effects of the Board’s more conservative makeup.  Being convicted of what is characterized as a “crime involving moral turpitude,” or CIMT, may render noncitizens removable from the U.S. and ineligible for immigration benefits or reliefs.  An attempt by the last Attorney General to serve under the Bush Administration, Michael Mukasey, to increase the BIA’s ability to find crimes to be CIMTs by creating his own alternative to the categorical and modified categorical approaches was vacated by his successor, Eric Holder (after having been rejected by 5 Circuit Courts of Appeal).  As several related Supreme Court decisions sealed the matter, the Board in 2016 was finally forced (at least on paper) to acknowledge the need to make CIMT determinations through a strict application of the categorical approach. However, as Prof. Koh demonstrates with examples from BIA precedent decisions, since 2016, the Board, while purporting to comply with the categorical approach, in fact has expanded through its precedent decisions the very meaning of what constitutes “moral turpitude,” enabling a greater number of offenses to be categorized as CIMTs.

Consistent with this approach was a training given by now-retired arch conservative Board member Roger Pauley at last summer’s IJ training conference.  From the conference materials obtained by a private attorney through a FOIA request, Pauley appears to have trained the judges not to apply the categorical approach as required by the Supreme Court when doing so won’t lead to a “sensible” result.  I believe the IJ corps would understand what this administration is likely to view as a “sensible” result. Remember that the IJs being trained cannot have more than 15 percent of their decisions remanded or reversed by the BIA under the agency’s completion quotas.  So even if an IJ realizes that they are bound by case law to apply the categorical approach, the same IJ also realizes that they ignore the BIA’s advice to the contrary at their own risk.

As to the law of asylum, not long after the purge of its liberal members, the BIA issued six precedent decisions between 2006 and 2014 making it more difficult to qualify for asylum based on membership in a particular social group.  The standard set out by the BIA in its 1985 decision Matter of Acosta – requiring the group to be defined by an “immutable characteristic” that its members either cannot change, or that is so fundamental to their identity that they should not be required to change it – had worked well for 21 years.  However, with no liberal push back, the more right-leaning Board members chose to add the additional requirements of particularity and social distinction to the PSG determination. The Board’s reliance on 2002 UNHCR Guidelines as justification for adding the latter requirement was most disingenuous, as the UNHCR employed the word “or” to allow those unable to otherwise satisfy the PSG requirements an alternative means of doing so, thus expanding those able to meet the definition.  But by changing the “or” to an “and,” the Board required applicants to establish both immutability and social distinction, thus narrowing the ranks of those able to qualify.

The changes had a dramatic impact on the large number of refugees escaping gang violence in Central America who generally relied on particular social group-based asylum claims.  Furthermore, while family has always been acknowledged as a particular social group, the BIA issued a decision in 2017 making it much more difficult to establish that the persecutor’s motive is on account of the victim’s family membership.   In that decision, the BIA offered the Bolshevik assassination of members of the family of Czar Nicholas II in Russia in 1918 as an example of what must be established to be granted asylum based on one’s family membership.   I have yet to find any lawyer who represents clients whose family presently enjoys a similar standing to the Romanov family in 1918 Russia. The ridiculously narrow interpretation was obviously designed to make it close to impossible for such claimants to qualify for relief.

The BIA also recently held that a Central American woman who was kidnaped by a guerrilla group and forced to cook and clean for them while in captivity had provided material support to a terrorist organization, thus barring her from a grant of asylum.  In reaching such holding, the Board determined that the victim should have reasonably known that the Salvadoran guerrilla group that kidnaped her was a terrorist organization in 1990, a time at which the U.S. government did not seem to yet hold such view.

Of course, IJs are bound by these decisions.  There have always been IJs who have forwarded new and sometimes creative legal theories which overcome these Board-imposed obstacles in order to grant relief.  But as stated previously, the quota guidelines will deter such creative decisionmaking by threatening the IJ’s job security. Judges should not have to fear repercussions for their good faith interpretations of the law.

Under prior administrations, ICE prosecutors have agreed in worthy cases to waive appeal when appropriate, and would even stipulate to grants of relief in worthy cases.  Also, under the previous administration, ICE would commonly agree to exercise its prosecutorial discretion to close non-priority cases. However, ICE attorneys at present are directed to oppose everything and agree to nothing.

Increased AG certifications:  In 2016, former Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales co-authored an article in the Iowa Law Review suggesting that instead of issuing a controversial executive order, the Obama Administration should have instead had the Attorney General issue precedent decisions in order to change the immigration laws.  A strange regulatory provision allows an Attorney General to direct the BIA to refer any decision for review. The AG can then simply rewrite any decision as he or she sees fit, creating precedent binding on the BIA, IJs, and DHS.

Clearly, the present administration is using Gonzales’s article as its playbook.  Apparently not satisfied with its power to appoint its own immigration judges, with packing the BIA with conservative former Republican Congressional staffers, and with its power to publish regulations interpreting the immigration laws to its own will and to issue policy directives binding on the judges, the Attorneys General serving the Trump Administration are also issuing precedent decisions through the process of self-certification at an alarming rate.  The decisions are different from those of other administrations, in that they are self-certified through procedural irregularity, are decided based on issues entirely different than those presented before the IJs and the BIA, and upend what had been settled issues of law that were not being questioned by either party to the action.

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions used the certification process to make immigration judges less judge-like by stripping away necessary tools of docket management such as the right to administratively close proceedings, to terminate proceedings where appropriate, or to freely grant continuances in pending cases.  Sessions certified one case, Matter of E-F-H-L-, to himself four years after the BIA’s decision in the case, after it had been not only remanded back to the IJ, but had subsequently been administratively closed to allow the respondent to await the approval of an immigrant visa petition.  Sessions’s purpose in digging such an old case up was to vacate its holding guaranteeing asylum seekers a right to a full hearing on their application before an immigration judge. And his interest in doing so was to suggest to immigration judges that a way to increase their efficiency would be to summarily deny asylum claims without affording a hearing, which some judges have actually started to do.  And in another decision, Sessions suggested exactly what type of asylum cases he deemed most appropriate for such treatment.

Sessions’s most egregious decision attempted to unilaterally strip women of the ability to obtain asylum as victims of domestic violence.  This was not an issue that was in dispute, but had been a matter of settled law since 2014, when the BIA issued its precedent decision in Matter of A-R-C-G-, in which the DHS had stipulated that “married women in Guatemala who are unable to leave their relationship” constituted a cognizable particular social group to which asylum could be granted.

In certifying the case of Matter of A-B- to himself to reconsider such holding, Sessions invited briefs from all interested parties.  A total of 14 briefs were filed, two by the parties, and 12 amicus briefs (including one from my group of former IJs and BIA members).  The briefs from both parties (i.e. including DHS), and of 11 of the amici (the exception being FAIR, an anti-immigration group that regularly files the sole opposing amicus brief in such cases) all concluded that A-R-C-G- should not be vacated, and constituted a valid application of law which satisfied all of the BIA’s post-purge obstacles described above.  Thus, with the exception of FAIR, there was agreement by DHS, the BIA, the private bar, legal scholars, advocacy groups, and under international law as to the validity of the existing practice.

Nevertheless, Sessions issued a poorly-written decision in which he strongly disagreed, and vacated A-R-C-G- while attempting to make it close to impossible for such claims to succeed in the future.  I emphasize the word “attempting,” because fortunately, Sessions is a terrible lawyer with no asylum law expertise.  As a result, his decision is largely dicta, which even Department of Justice attorneys admit only managed to vacate A-R-C-G- without otherwise altering the legal factors that would allow such grants in the future.  But the BIA has simply been dismissing such claims on the grounds that Sessions had rejected them, without undertaking the individualized analysis required in such cases.  As a result, the circuit courts, and not the BIA, will likely decide the propriety and impact of Sessions’s decision.

My final note concerning A-B- is that while the case was still pending before him, Sessions stated in a radio interview in Arizona that “We’ve had situations in which a person comes to the United States and says they are a victim of domestic violence; therefore they are entitled to enter the United States.  Well that’s obviously false, but some judges have gone along with that.” Clearly, any judge making such a statement would have to recuse him or herself from the case. But Sessions, who never hid his bias against immigrants (among other groups), neither felt the need to be impartial, nor did the law require it of him.

Which makes Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s recent remarks to a new class of immigration judges particularly worrisome.  Rosenstein reminded the group that they are “not only judges,” but also employees of the Department of Justice, and members of the executive branch.  As such, Rosenstein stated, IJs must “follow lawful instructions from the Attorney General, and…share a duty to enforce the law.”  But shouldn’t judges who make such important decisions that sometimes involve life and death be “only judges?”

The incongruity is that the DOJ is an enforcement agency.  As such, it is not designed to be either neutral or transparent.  As already noted at length, it is headed by a Presidential political appointee, many of whose decisions and policies are guided by a purely political agenda.  As such, DOJ has never understood IJs, who need to be neutral, transparent, and insulated from political influence.

Although many in EOIR’s management hold titles that make them sound like judges, in fact, they see their role not as protectors of immigration judge independence, but rather as executive branch, DOJ managers whose main job is to appease their higher-ups in the Justice Department.  They view DHS not as one of the parties appearing before the agency, but rather as fellow executive-branch comrades. They take the same view of attorneys with OIL and the U.S. Attorneys Office who litigate immigration decisions in the federal courts. Significantly, they view the private bar and academia as being outside of this executive branch fold.

As my friend and fellow blogger, retired Immigration Judge Paul Schmidt recently wrote in a blog post, “what real court acts as an adjunct to the prosecutor’s office?” adding that such relationship is common in authoritarian, refugee-producing countries.

The last recent development I wish to mention that underscores this conflict was the treatment of a highly respected and fair immigration judge in Philadelphia, Steven Morley, who had issued a decision which was certified and reversed by Sessions, Matter of Castro-Tum.  Castro-Tum entered the U.S. as an unaccompanied minor.  After his release from ICE detention, he did not appear for his immigration court proceedings.  However, Judge Morley was concerned, based on his past experience, that ICE had provided the court with an inaccurate address for the youth, and felt it would be unfair to order him removed in absentia without first determining if he had received proper notice of the hearing as required by law.

On remand, Judge Morley was directed by Sessions to proceed  according to the section of the law that governs in absentia orders.  Now, that section also requires a finding of proper notice on the respondent.  Judge Morley therefore proceeded properly and consistently with the AG’s order when he granted a short continuance for briefing on the issue of proper notice.  In response, the case was immediately removed by EOIR management from Judge Morley’s calendar. While a case would normally then be randomly reassigned to another judge in the same court, EOIR hand chose a management-level supervisory judge known for following the company line, who was sent to Philadelphia to conduct a single five-minute hearing in which she ordered the youth removed in his absence.  Furthermore, Judge Morley was chastised by his supervisor, Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Jack Weil, who, according to a grievance filed by the IJ’s union, incorrectly told Judge Morley that he was required to enter a final decision at the first hearing following the remand, and further falsely accused him of acting unprofessionally in purportedly criticizing the AG’s and BIA’s decisions.  86 similar cases were subsequently removed from Judge Morley’s calendar. Such action sent a very strong warning to the entire IJ corps (many of whom are new hires still in their two year probation period) of what to expect should they choose to act as “only judges” and not loyal employees of the Attorney General and executive branch.

The above inadequacies in the immigration court system have allowed the present administration to exploit it like never before in support of its own political narrative.  Examples of this include:

The Trump Administration’s early trumpeting of causing a “return to the rule of law” by increasing the number of removal orders its judges entered compared to the prior administration.  Early on, this was supposedly “accomplished” through what Paul Schmidt refers to as “ADR” or Aimless Docket Reshuffling. Judges in busy courts were told to continue two weeks worth of cases at a time (usually involving noncitizens represented by attorneys who had already waited years for their day in court) to instead travel to courts near the southern border to hear cases of largely unprepared and unrepresented, newly-arrived asylum seekers.  To repeat, in fact, the backlog has grown significantly in spite of such policies.

The administration also maintains a false narrative that Central American asylum seekers fleeing horrible gang and domestic violence are not really refugees, and in fact are dangerous criminals.  Through the AG’s issuance of Matter of A-B- and the compliant BIA’s reliance on that decision to give short shrift to such claims; through the detention of asylum seekers in remotely located detention centers, and the new policy of forcing some to wait in Mexico while their claims are adjudicated, thus severely limiting such asylum seekers access to counsel and their ability to meaningfully participate in compiling evidence and otherwise presenting their best claims; by indoctrinating new IJs that “these are not real claims,” the administration has artificially lowered the percentage of such claims that are being granted asylum, which thus furthers its narrative that “these are not real refugees.”

Furthermore, by forcing those attempting to apply legally to wait in Mexico under inhospitable and sometimes dangerous conditions for increasingly long periods of time, those who finally out of desperation cross the border without authorization are immediately arrested and tried criminally for the “crime” of crossing the border illegally, thus supporting the narrative that our country is being invaded by “criminals.”

The administration also maintains the narrative that immigrants should just be deported quickly, without due process and hearings before judges.  It is trying to accomplish this through the transformation of the immigration judge corps. By stripping IJs of much of what makes them independent judges, through the removal of necessary case management tools such as administrative closure, termination, and the ability to grant continuances; by imposing on them insulting completion quotas, and by making IJ training less about the proper application of the law and more about efficiency, many more experienced IJs are retiring sooner than they intended.  The administration is most happy to replace them with their hand-picked candidates who they expect to be made more compliant through the lengthy period of probation, the completion quotas, and an indoctrination of the type described above.

The result of all this was summarized in a detailed report of the ABA released last week.  The ABA report concluded that the immigration courts at present are “irredeemably dysfunctional” and on the verge of collapse.  There are those who believe that such collapse has been the goal all along, as it would allow the administration to replace the present system with one that is even more compliant and affords even less due process, perhaps something like the old special inquiry officer model.

What can be done?  A number of respected organizations, including the ABA, the Federal Bar Association, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and of course the National Association of Immigration Judges have endorsed moving the immigration courts out of DOJ and making them an independent Article I court.

Article I status will likely not solve every problem, but for the reasons detailed above, it is an absolutely necessary starting point.  Article I is truly a non-partisan position. It’s first sponsor, Rep. McCollum, was a Republican; Sen. Gillibrand, who has recently shown interest in the issue, is a Democrat.  As the leader of a group of former immigration judges and BIA members, which includes members from across the ideological spectrum, I have found certain issues to be divisive within the group.  However, the issue of immigration judge independence has been unique in garnering universal support.

While it is too early to discuss the details of what such bill might contain, it is hoped that the BIA as presently constituted will be replaced by an immigration appeals court committed to independently and fairly interpreting the law, free of any fear of displeasing the Attorney General.  It’s members must be bipartisan, and appointed based on their knowledge of the law and their courage to apply it correctly. This would be a drastic change from the present group led by former Republican staffers still aiming to please their old bosses, and fleshed out with career DOJ bureaucrats who will loyally follow the party line.  I’ve always felt that choosing a former Article III judge to head an independent immigration court would immediately change the court’s priorities in the proper manner.

What role can we all play in making this happen?  At present, the most vocal advocates are immigration lawyers.  As such change would need to come from Congress, it bears noting that no elected official’s election hopes are likely to hinge on their winning the immigration lawyer vote, which amounts to probably a few thousand votes in total spread across many states and congressional districts.

However, we are all constituents of our senators and representatives. It is therefore incumbent on all of us to be advocates, and where possible, to join forces with other groups of constituents that might both share our interest in the issue and carry more sway with elected officials.

Speak out to anyone willing to listen to tell them that Article I is a non-partisan solution to the unrepairable mess that our present immigration court system has become.  In speaking to elected officials, try to find a reputable representative to endorse the concept.

Tell your own stories to make your points.  Because lawyers at heart are storytellers.

Explain that quotas and deadlines run contrary to judicial independence.

Ask for oversight hearings, to which groups such as the NAIJ, the ABA and AILA should be invited to the table.

Outside of the actual immigration judges and BIA, the following additional changes are needed.  First, ICE attorneys in the employ of DHS, i.e. the prosecutors in immigration court proceedings, must be allowed once again to offer prosecutorial discretion and to stipulate to grants in worthy cases, or to otherwise conference cases with private attorneys in an effort to streamline hearings.  I can’t think of any high volume court in which stipulations, plea agreements, and conferencing between the parties is not the common practice. Imagine what would happen to criminal courts if they were told that from now on, every jay walking ticket will require a full trial and appeal.

Prosecutorial discretion and some of these other streamlining techniques had finally become common practice in the immigration courts under the Obama administration.  It makes good sense and serves an important purpose in such an overburdened system to prioritize cases, and temporarily close out those cases that are not a priority. Most such cases involve noncitizens who are law-abiding, tax-paying individuals, some of whom have US citizen children.

Lastly, there are a large number of specially-trained asylum officers presently employed by DHS.  Some have suggested moving them as well into an independent court system in a supporting role, and providing the asylum officers with expanded jurisdiction to hear not only a broader array of asylum claims (thus removing those cases they grant from the actual judges’ dockets), but perhaps also allowing the asylum officers to adjudicate other classes of cases, such as cancellation of removal claims.

In closing, as summarized earlier, over several decades, immigration judges evolved from non-judicial adjudicators in the employ of an enforcement agency into administrative judges comprised of lawyers from a broad spectrum of ideological backgrounds who were allowed to exercise a good deal of independent judgment in a court setting.  And much of this positive development came from the “bottom up,” through the judges’ own collective efforts.

Because the final step of Article I status was never realized, actions by the Trump administration, which views independent judges as an unwanted obstacle to enforcing its own anti-immigration agenda, is attempting to roll back immigration judges to a state more closely resembling their INS special inquiry officer origins.

Although my focus has been on the present crisis under the Trump Administration, in fairness I want to state that the factors which set the stage for it built up over many years under both Democratic and Republican administrations.  Regardless of what administration follows this one, the immigration courts at best will almost certainly continue to suffer from the not-so-benign neglect that led us here, simply because immigration is such a controversial topic that problems are kicked down the road rather than resolved.

The reforms which Article I will bring will help insulate the system from unnecessary costs and delay caused by clogged dockets and unnecessary appeals prompted by a lack of trust in the system.  It will also help guarantee a clear funding stream with necessary resources not syphoned off by DOJ for other programs, and will safeguard the Circuit Courts from needless (and costly) appeals.

For all of these reasons, only an independent Article I court can sufficiently remove the threat of political manipulation, and again restore the faith in the immigration court’s fairness and impartiality that a democracy requires.

Copyright 2019 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.

 

 

Court Rebukes Youth Policy Shift

 

fullsizeoutput_40da.jpeg

Jeffrey S. Chase is an immigration lawyer in New York City.  Jeffrey is a former Immigration Judge, senior legal advisor at the Board of Immigration Appeals, and volunteer staff attorney at Human Rights First.  He is a past recipient of AILA’s annual Pro Bono Award, and previously chaired AILA’s Asylum Reform Task Force.

***************************************************

Thanks Jeffrey my friend and colleague for telling it like it is and setting the record straight.

PWS

03-29-19

GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH 1924 – 2018, 41ST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: A Throwback To A Time When Our President Was A Decent & Honorable Human Being, Regardless Of Whether One Agreed With His Policies!

https://abcn.ws/2FOfIMV

Cokie Roberts for ABC News:

Decency — that’s the first word that comes to mind when thinking of George H.W. Bush. He was a decent, self-effacing, funny, nice man. And he brought those traits to the presidency.

In a long interview I conducted with him as part of a series on former presidents reflecting on the Constitution, he said something like “I don’t want to namedrop” at several points, when telling a story about visiting his own son in the White House. When recounting an anecdote about the fall of the Soviet Union, which he helped engineer, he would say, “I don’t want to brag.”

He took very much to heart his mother’s dictum to “be a good sport,” and not blame others for your own shortcomings. He said he thanked God for that motherly advice when he suffered defeat in 1992 because “it hurts to lose, it feels wonderful to win.”

.&lid=view[Slideshow]” target=”_blank”>

PHOTO:
SLIDESHOW: Photos:George H. W. Bush through the years

It was tough for Bush to score many wins in his presidency as he faced a Congress run by a large and increasingly partisan Democratic majority. He did squeak out votes of approval to use the U.S. military to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait and felt strongly that it would have been wrong to pursue the invader back to Baghdad.

Taking issue with the “Monday morning quarterbacks” who questioned that decision, he stated firmly, “I don’t believe in mission creep and I don’t believe in going back on your word to Congress and I don’t believe in going back on your word to the United Nations.”

PHOTO: George H.W. Bush in 1985.Greg Mathieson/REX/Shutterstock

Decency.

Bush disagreed often with members of Congress, but he never demonized them. Many were his friends. One of his best buddies was Bob Strauss, a fellow Texan, who served as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, while Bush held the same role at the Republican National Committee.

It was during the Watergate scandal and Bush thought he deserved combat pay, “it was the worst job in the world.”

Strauss called him and told him that his position was like “making love to a gorilla,” the former president told me in the cleaned-up version.

“You can’t stop until the gorilla wants to.” The party chairman soon found himself faced with the dicey task of advising the Republican president to resign. It was the decent thing to do.

PHOTO: Former President George H. W. Bush poses with his sons, former President George W. Bush and Jeb Bush after completing a parachute jump in Kennebunkport, June 12, 2009 for his 85th birthday.Gregory Rec/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images, file
more +

When the Soviet Union disintegrated, Bush appointed Strauss as the first ambassador to the new Russia though, as the Democrat told the president, he had never voted for him for anything.

In those difficult years in the White House Bush knew there was one person who always had his back — his wife Barbara. When I said to him that first ladies are often unsung heroes he laughed, “She’s sung. And you know what the boys call her? The Enforcer, even the president calls her that.”

Reveling in the fact that his wife was “100 percent behind anything I did,” Bush did admit that he was reamed out for loudly declaring that he hated broccoli, though his stance “liberated every 4 year old.”

The affection that the Bushes felt for each other in their 73 year marriage heartened the nation when Mrs. Bush died but it was not just her affection that her husband appreciated, it was also her wisdom. Presidential wives “play a very influential role…they can make an enormous difference,” according to the husband of one First Lady and the father-in-law of another.

PHOTO: Former President George H.W. Bush arrives for the coin toss prior to Super Bowl 51 between the Atlanta Falcons and the New England Patriots at NRG Stadium on Feb. 5, 2017 in Houston, Texas.Patrick Smith/Getty Images, FILE
more +

In his long career serving the country, President Bush came to know many of the people who chose his path. His view: “I believe public service is a noble calling and most members of Congress are honorable people.” He added, “I’ve found that most people serve for the right reasons.”

He certainly did, whether you agree or disagree with his policies, he served because he thought it was the right thing, the decent thing, for a dedicated American citizen to do.

*******************************************

Amen.

PWS

12-01-18

 

SESSIONS’S TOXIC WHITE NATIONALIST LEGACY OF BIAS AND MISMANAGEMENT CONTINUES TO HAUNT U.S. IMMIGRATION COURTS – Inappropriate “Certifications” & Skewed Precedents Denied Asylum To Legitimate Refugees While Improperly Limiting Authority of Immigration Judges To Control & Manage Their Dockets – “Gonzo” Actions Diverted Attention & Resources From Pursuing Long-Overdue Improvements In Delivery of Due Process!

https://www.sfchronicle.com/nation/article/Jeff-Sessions-unfinished-legacy-of-reversing-13420329.php

Bob Egelko reports for the SF Chronicle:

In 21 months as the nation’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions affected no area of public policy more than immigration, from his “zero tolerance” orders to arrest and prosecute all unauthorized border crossers to establishing new rules speeding up deportations and limiting legal challenges.

But with his dismissal by President Trump the day after the Nov. 6 election, one part of Sessions’ immigration agenda remained unfinished: his reconsideration, and often reversal, of pro-immigrant rulings by the immigration courts, particularly on the rights of migrants seeking political asylum in the United States.

Because immigration courts are a branch of the Justice Department, the attorney general has the authority to review and overturn their rulings. Sessions used that authority at an unprecedented pace, reversing decisions that had allowed immigration judges to delay or postpone hearings to give immigrants time to apply for legal status, and eliminating grounds for asylum that were commonly invoked by migrants from Central America.

In October, he announced plans to reconsider a ruling that, if repealed, would keep thousands of asylum-seekers locked up even after they convinced hearing officers that they had a case for fearing persecution in their homeland.

A 2005 ruling by the Board of Immigration Appeals allowed immigrants seeking asylum to be freed on bond after an immigration officer ruled that they have a “credible fear” of persecution if deported. They remain free until the immigration courts decide whether their fear of persecution is “well founded,” entitling them to asylum, a work permit and legal residence. If not, they can be deported.

That determination sometimes takes a year or longer. Immigration rights advocates and legal commentators say tens of thousands of asylum-seekers would be locked up for that period if the attorney general overturned the 2005 decision.

“It’s a dramatic change in policy … part of a pattern of efforts to implement the ‘zero-tolerance’ policy” that Sessions declared in April for unauthorized border-crossing, said Kevin Johnson, UC Davis law school dean and an immigration law expert.

This was “Sessions, on his own initiative, trying to rewrite immigration law,” said Paul Wickham Schmidt, a retired immigration judge, former chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals and publisher of the ImmigrationCourtside blog.

Now the decision will be left to Sessions’ successor. Or maybe not.

, , , ,

*****************************************

Go to the above link to read the rest of the story.

Sessions’s biased jurisprudence and his intentional mismanagement resulted in a largely artificial “backlog” of 1.1 million cases and a group of demoralized judges who are treated as assembly line workers on a deportation conveyor belt. This preventable disaster is a major contributor to the bogus crisis on the Southern Border.

Sessions admittedly built on and intentionally aggravated pre-existing problems left by the Bush II and Obama Administrations. Nearly two decades of abuse and misuse of the U.S. Immigration Court System by the DOJ for political aims often unrelated to due process and fairness won’t be resolved “overnight.”

But competent court administration combined with a return to an exclusive focus on delivering full due process with maximum achievable efficiency would certainly make an immediate difference and put the Immigration Courts back on track to fulfilling their noble (now abandoned) vision of “being the world’s best tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.” No rational observer would say that these courts are moving in that direction under Trump and his toadies at the DOJ and DHS.

PWS

11-26-18

WORLD REFUGEE DAY: LAURA BUSH SPEAKS OUT AGAINST ADMINISTRATION’S CRUEL & INHUMAN TREATMENT OF ASYLUM SEEKERS! “[T]his zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/laura-bush-separating-children-from-their-parents-at-the-border-breaks-my-heart/2018/06/17/f2df517a-7287-11e8-9780-b1dd6a09b549_story.html?utm_term=.146e23ade113

Laura Bush: Separating children from their parents at the border ‘breaks my heart’

Laura Bush is a former first lady of the United States.

On Sunday, a day we as a nation set aside to honor fathers and the bonds of family, I was among the millions of Americans who watched images of children who have been torn from their parents. In the six weeks between April 19 and May 31, the Department of Homeland Security has sent nearly 2,000 children to mass detention centers or foster care. More than 100 of these children are younger than 4 years old. The reason for these separations is a zero-tolerance policy for their parents, who are accused of illegally crossing our borders.

I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart.

Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso. These images are eerily reminiscent of the Japanese American internment camps of World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history. We also know that this treatment inflicts trauma; interned Japanese have been two times as likely to suffer cardiovascular disease or die prematurely than those who were not interned.

Americans pride ourselves on being a moral nation, on being the nation that sends humanitarian relief to places devastated by natural disasters or famine or war. We pride ourselves on believing that people should be seen for the content of their character, not the color of their skin. We pride ourselves on acceptance. If we are truly that country, then it is our obligation to reunite these detained children with their parents — and to stop separating parents and children in the first place.

People on all sides agree that our immigration system isn’t working, but the injustice of zero tolerance is not the answer. I moved away from Washington almost a decade ago, but I know there are good people at all levels of government who can do better to fix this.

******************************

Thanks, Mrs. Bush, for speaking up and speaking out against these unconscionable, unnecessary, and illegal policies at such an important time and on such a significant day.  Thank you for reminding us that we have forgotten our legal and moral obligations to refugees and the most vulnerable of the world. Selfishness and intentional cruelty are never acceptable policies.

Celebrate World Refugee Day by resisting Trump, Sessions, Nielsen, Miller, and the rest of their White Nationalist scofflaw gang who are making us complicit in their demeaning of humanity.

PWS

06-17-18

“DUH” OF THE DAY: Official Policies Of Child Abuse, The “New American Gulag,” & Routinely Denying Constitutional Due Process Fail To Stem Refugee Tide On Southern Border!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/illegal-border-crossings-remained-high-in-may-despite-trumps-crackdown/2018/06/01/aab543ae-65a9-11e8-a768-ed043e33f1dc_story.html?utm_term=.3943d1d60e43

Nick Miroff reports for WashPost:

The number of migrants attempting to cross illegally into the United States remained high last month, according to administration officials and Border Patrol agents, an early indication that “zero tolerance” measures separating parents from their children and President Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops have not had an immediate deterrent effect.

The Department of Homeland Security is expected to publish its closely watched monthly arrest totals in coming days, and Trump administration officials are bracing for a new eruption from the president. He has treated the statistics as a gauge for the success of his hard-line immigration policies, and when border arrests fell to historic lows in the months after his inauguration last year, Trump touted the decrease as a personal triumph.

Since then, migration trends have reversed. In March and again in April, border arrests exceeded 50,000, the highest monthly totals of Trump’s presidency, sending him into fits of rage, aides say. Trump unloaded on DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen during a Cabinet meeting May 9, scorching her for nearly 30 minutes over the spike in illegal crossings, while demanding she “close” the border.

The Trump administration is preparing to renew its push for an $18 billion border wall plan that would also tighten asylum procedures and overhaul other laws Trump officials say are encouraging illegal behavior. Trump has threatened to shut down the government this fall if Democrats don’t provide the funds.

But with midterm elections approaching and the president preparing to campaign on his border crackdown, Nielsen and other Homeland Security officials do not appear to be satisfying his strict enforcement targets. May’s arrest totals are expected to be at least as high as the previous two months, administration officials and Border Patrol agents said.

Large groups of Central American migrants have been taken into custody in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas in recent weeks, according to Border Patrol agents, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss operations. During one 24-hour span last month, 434 migrants were processed at the Border Patrol station in McAllen, agents said.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and President Trump have had a contentious relationship as illegal border crossings increase.

“The numbers have been very high,” said one agent assigned to the Rio Grande Valley, the nation’s busiest corridor for illegal migration. “It’s to the point that we have had to bring in buses to come out and load these folks up, or send four of five vans at a time.”

 

 

Another agent said so many migrants were apprehended in the Rio Grande Valley last month that many were diverted to other sections of the border for processing. The Justice Department has reassigned additional prosecutors to the border region to increase the number of migrants it charges with federal crimes, but one veteran border agent said it was “too early to tell” if the tougher enforcement measures were giving pause to migrants thinking of making the journey from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

“It’s going to take longer for the message to get back to those countries,” the agent said.

On Friday, Homeland Security officials would not say whether the tougher enforcement measures were meeting their goals. They said the May border arrest totals were not ready for publication, and they would not confirm whether the figures have been sent to the White House.

“The bottom line is Congress needs to act and close loopholes that serve as a tremendous pull factor for illegal immigration,” said Tyler Houlton, a DHS spokesman. “The Trump administration is restoring the rule of law by increasing prosecutions of illegal border crossers.”

According to a Trump adviser, the president was warned this spring that illegal border crossings were likely to increase. Trump said at the time he would not be satisfied with any such surge and everything needed to be done to block it. That led to the decision to deploy the National Guard.

The number of illegal border crossings “is going to go higher and higher yet,” said the adviser. “You’re going to see a line that goes up all summer long.”

Trump has not been briefed on the May arrest numbers yet, two advisers said.

In a statement late Friday, Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller blamed Democrats for blocking the president’s immigration overhaul.

“The illegal migrant crisis is the exclusive product of Democrats’ shameless refusal to close catch-and-release loopholes that cartels exploit to smuggle illegal aliens into the United States at great cost in taxpayer dollars, jobs and, too often, lives,” Miller said.

Weak border enforcement remains the biggest incentive to illegal migration, according to Miller. “We must end catch-and-release by reforming our asylum laws, and establishing expedited removal, to stop the smuggling and defend the nation,” he said.

As in recent years, many of those taken into custody last month were teenagers or parents traveling with children, and the administration has triggered broad condemnation for separating more families with its push to prosecute anyone who crosses illegally.

More than 10,800 migrant children were in federal custody as of May 31, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, up 21 percent since the end of April. The agency’s shelters are 95 percent full, and HHS officials say they are preparing to add thousands of additional beds to cope with the increase.

A Border Patrol agent in South Texas said the family separation measures were not being applied as broadly as assumed. Some parents who face federal charges are apart from their children for only several hours, then released and assigned a court date, the agent said.

“To us, that’s still ‘catch-and-
release,’ ” the agent said. “People are going to continue to come.”

Arrests along the Mexican border peaked at more than 1.6 million in 2000, then fell sharply during the Obama administration. During the government’s past fiscal year that ended in September, U.S. agents made 303,916 arrests, the lowest total since 1971.

Trump’s fixation is driven, in part, by a view that border security is paramount to his most fervent supporters and that immigration is a winning issue for Republican candidates in November’s congressional elections.

“I’m very proud to say that we’re way down in the people coming across the border,” Trump said in January. “We have fewer people trying to come across, because they know it’s not going to happen.”

The arrest numbers began shooting upward soon after that, from 36,682 in February to 50,296 in March. The yearly total for 2018 is on pace to approach or exceed 400,000, a level more consistent with migration patterns of the past five years, DHS statistics show.

During a visit Thursday to the Nogales border crossing in southern Arizona, Nielsen called the increase in illegal migration a crisis and said Homeland Security officials were working to “end this lawlessness.”

The country’s borders are being violated “by criminals, by smugglers and by thousands of people who have absolutely no respect for our laws,” she said.

“This is changing, it will change, and we will do all that we can to change this,” Nielsen added, emphasizing that the “zero-tolerance” approach announced in April will be applied as aggressively as possible.

“If you come here illegally, whether you’re single, whether you have a family, whether you’re a smuggler or whether you’re a trafficker, you’ve broken the law, so we’re prosecuting,” she said.

On Friday, Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Nielsen and Attorney General Jeff Sessions demanding information on the administration’s enforcement efforts, including the number of children who have been separated from their parents and whether there are formal procedures to reunite them.

Border arrests typically rise during spring months, when seasonal labor demands increase. Farms across the Midwest are becoming desperate for workers, with the U.S. unemployment rate at the lowest level since 2000. Lawmakers from both parties have told Nielsen that worker shortages are squeezing an array of industries in their states, and the DHS said last week that it will issue 15,000 seasonal guest-worker visas.

But border agents said much of the increase this spring seems to be driven by the same groups — families and teenagers traveling alone — who have been straining Homeland Security capacity since the 2014 crisis that left Border Patrol stations overflowing.

Photos of recent mass arrests provided by one agent show migrants of all ages walking through willow groves along the Rio Grande or lined up in federal custody along the river levees, waiting to board government buses.

Josh Dawsey contributed to this report.

********************************************

No surprises here. “Toldja so” back when Trump unwisely declared “Victory at Sea” after a few months of reduced border apprehensions. Since Trump is proudly ignorant of history, he apparently didn’t study what happened to Bushie II after he declared “Victory in Iraq” or his “Heck of Job, Brownie” moment. Nor does he have any idea of the actual dynamics driving human migration. That’s the problem with policies driven by racism, bias, xenophobia, and White Nationalism.

Also, trying to rewrite the Constitution and international protection law, as Trump, Sessions, Miller, Cotton, and the rest of the White Nationalist Gang would dearly like to do, to deny established legal rights won’t work either. In fact, it would make things 10X worse.

The laws aren’t the problem!  The problem is the people charged with implementing them.

We can diminish ourselves as a nation, (and in fact, we are diminishing under Trump) but it won’t stop human migration!

 

PWS

06-02-18

COURTSIDE HISTORY: LEST WE FORGET: THE “ASHCROFT PURGE” AT THE BIA IN 2003 DESTROYED THE PRETEXT OF JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE AT EOIR FOREVER – HERE’S HOW! — Read Peter Levinson’s 2004 Paper: “The Facade Of Quasi-Judicial Independence In Immigration Appellate Adjudications”

Levinson–The Facade Of Quasi-Judicial Independence

Read Peter’s full article at the above link (sorry about the difficult formatting — this was my “file copy.”)

Abstract:

Recently the quasi-judicial appellate process for reviewing decisions of immigration judges in noncitizen removal proceedings changed dramatically when the Department of Justice proposed and later implemented a major downsizing of the Board of Immigration Appeals combined with greatly enhanced reliance on single Board members to decide cases. Because the rule restructuring the Board did not limit the Attorney General�s discretion in identifying those who would lose their Board Member positions�and potential criteria referenced by the Department of Justice in that regard were not helpful in explaining how reassigned Board Members differed from colleagues who remained-�this study undertook an examination of case related data.
The study of closely divided en banc precedent decisions of the Board during the period of service by all five subsequently reassigned Board Members showed that adjudicators inclined to favor the position of noncitizens were particularly vulnerable. In fact, four out of the five Board Members who most often supported outcomes favorable to the noncitizen faced reassignment�and the fifth reassigned Member�s stance in favor of the noncitizen in a high profile case of importance to the Attorney General could explain his reassignment. Outcomes in the closely divided cases also suggested that the Attorney General succeeded in moving the Board of Immigration Appeals in a conservative direction just by announcing his downsizing plans�and the result of implementing downsizing the following year was to remake the Board into a largely homogeneous body without significant dissent.
The paper discusses the need for independent immigration adjudicators and points to the judicial nature of the Board�s work. The Board�s experience under Attorney General Ashcroft, the paper concludes, should give new impetus to efforts to separate review of immigration judge decisions from an agency with law enforcement responsibilities. The alternatives recommended by Federal commissions�a specialized court or an independent Executive Branch adjudicatory agency�continue to provide potential solutions.

 

************************************
Ashcroft certainly “poisoned the well” for judicial independence and Due Process at EOIR. And, frankly, the Obama Administration was also a huge part of the problem.
Well aware of the Ashcroft travesty at EOIR, the Obama DOJ basically covered up the truth and furthered a captive, complacent, “go along to get along” Immigration Court system, overwhelmingly composed of judges from government and prosecutorial backgrounds, because it furthered their own aims of compromising judicial independence to achieve “political goals,” when necessary. As one of my colleagues said, “while the Obama Administration was not Sessions, they certainly made Sessions possible, perhaps probable.”
If Ashcroft and the Bushies “poisoned the well,” Obama let the contamination fester, and Sessions now basically “dumps cyanide into the well” on an almost daily basis.
History is repeating itself  in the ugliest possible manner at EOIR. The only question is whether armed with knowledge of the evils of the past, we can change the future to create a system of independent judges who will truly aspire to “be the worlds’ best tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and Due Process for all.”
Join the New Due Process Army! Due Process Forever!
 
PWS
05-17-18

MICHAEL GERSON @ WASHPOST: TRUMP USES “BULLY PULPIT” TO BULLY CHILDREN! — Some Damage Likely Irreparable! — “The separation of children from their parents as a deterrent is a human rights abuse.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/americas-president-is-the-bully-of-children/2018/05/14/178c941c-579c-11e8-8836-a4a123c359ab_story.html?utm_term=.68038e376ea8

How does President Trump act when he feels on top of the economic and diplomatic world? As his influence solidifies within the GOP? As his poll numbers tick upward?

If a recent Cabinet meeting tirade is any indication, political security has not translated into magnanimity. According to news reports, Trump spent 30 minutes dressing down his homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, for insufficient zeal in closing the southern border to illegal immigrants. One consistent source of tension between the two has been Trump’s desire to use family separation as a deterrent against illegal crossings.

Trump unbound is increasingly impatient with the excessive humanity of some of his own staff. This is not a problem he has, to be clear, with his chief of staff. Asked if family separation was cruel and heartless, John F. Kelly replied, “I wouldn’t put it quite that way. The children will be taken care of — put into foster care or whatever. But the big point is they elected to come illegally into the United States.” He described the family-separation policy as a “tough deterrent.”

No, pulling crying children from the arms of their parents is not heartless at all. They will be taken care of, “or whatever.” For Kelly and Trump, the defining characteristic of these migrants is their illegality, not their personhood or their dignity. This is the definition of dehumanization.

A few points. First, the debate over a border wall is a policy matter. The separation of children from their parents as a deterrent is a human rights abuse. And the Trump administration, at its highest levels, cannot tell the difference.

As usual, Trump and his team are operating in a complete vacuum of historical knowledge. Family separation is not new to America. It was essential to the practice of chattel slavery. If enslaved people were truly property, they could not also be husbands and wives, or constitute true families. If those emotional and moral bonds were conceded as valid, slavery’s whole structure of dehumanization would crumble. Which is exactly why abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe emphasized the cruel separation of families in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

Inhuman immigration enforcement is not the moral or legal equivalent of slavery. But a nation with this history should take particular care when contemplating family separation as official policy. Few human beings would treat other human beings in this manner. Which is exactly why Trump and Kelly must present “illegals” as lesser beings defined by their criminality.

Second, if the deterrence of crime is the only standard we employ in immigration enforcement, what is the limiting principle? Why stop at the separation of families? Why not put able-bodied illegal immigrant children to work in salt mines? Why not plant land mines at the border? Why not strafe illegal immigrants from attack helicopters?

The answer, of course, is that America, by definition, has a higher standard than legality. Our country’s most basic commitment — and its limiting principle — is universal human rights and dignity. This does not prevent the government from enforcing reasonable immigration laws. It does forbid the government from inhumanity in the enforcement of immigration laws. And there is no definition of inhumanity that does not include the intentional separation of parents from their children.

The fragmentation of families can be a tragic byproduct of the criminal-justice system. Many American children must visit a parent in prison. But if the breakup of families were proposed as a tough deterrent for crime — as a policy and a punishment — it would rightly be seen as a betrayal of American values. As it would be at our borders.

Third, Trump’s policy of family separation illustrates the swift downward spiral of demagoguery. In 2012, citizen Trump criticized Mitt Romney’s “crazy policy of self-deportation, which was maniacal. It sounded as bad as it was, and he lost all of the Latino vote. . . . He lost everybody who is inspired to come into this country.” By his candidacy announcement tour in 2015, Trump had discovered the visceral appeal of presenting Mexican immigrants as rapists and murderers. Now he feels comfortable proposing the punishment of children and the purposeful destruction of immigrant families as a deterrent. And he feels comfortable because the Republican Party has surrendered, step by step, to his agenda of dehumanization.

Other American presidents have used their accumulated political capital for humanitarian goals. Trump is a leader who, as he grows politically stronger, is using his power to attack and exploit the weak and vulnerable. America’s president is the bullier of children.

*******************************

Gerson is “right on” in his analysis of the truly reprehensible program of de-humanization of migrants (and indeed of all people of color) being carried on by the Trumpsters.

Gotta ask the question though:

Michael, My Man, where was your “spot on” sense of morality, humanity, and values during the during the Bush II Administration when, as I remember it, you were part of the “spin team” trying to put a favorable gloss on some of the immoral, and sometimes illegal, acts of the Bush II Administration?

On the other hand, I’d have to admit to serving Administrations and private clients whose values I did not always share. So, it’s probably better to attain some moral clarity later in life than not at all.

And, perhaps, having once defended the questionable, marginally defensible, or the indefensible is part of the overall “learning curve” in public service. Upon my “first retirement” from Government, I remember being told by one senior DOJ lawyer that he would miss my “unparalleled ability to provide rational explanations for some of the essentially irrational policies” of my “client.”

The main problem with the Trumpsters is that they appear to have neither second thoughts nor moral qualms about most of the immoral and sometimes illegal actions and positions they are advancing. In the long run, that’s got to be bad for our country and the world. Lack of judgement, courage, and values appear to be the qualifications for service at the higher levels of the Trump administration.

PWS

05-15-18

 

 

N. RAPPAPORT IN THE HILL: Trump Follows In Bush’s & Obama’s Footsteps By Sending National Guard To The Southern Border

http://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/382136-by-sending-national-guard-to-border-trump-follows-bush-obama

Family Pictures

Nolan writes:

. . . .

Trump isn’t the first president to use the National Guard this way. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama did it when they were presidents. Their National Guard operations were successful, and Trump’s probably will be too, if his operation is similar to theirs.

Apparently, the Border Patrol feels that way too. According to Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, experience has shown that the military can supplement the work of agents on the ground.

We do not know yet how the troops will be used. The memorandum gives the secretary of Defense, working with DHS and the attorney general, 30 days to submit an action plan detailing what resources and actions are needed, including federal law enforcement and U.S. military resources.

. . . .

In any case, it doesn’t make sense to use the number of apprehensions as the criterion for determining how secure the border is. What about the aliens who were not apprehended? There is no way of knowing how many aliens succeeded in making an illegal entry without being detected by the Border Patrol.

Ultimately, Trump’s decision to send Border Patrol agents to the border should not be considered unusual or inhumane. Instead, it is a continuation of his existing immigration policies and even presidential precedent.

*************************************

As Nolan points out, sending the National Guard to the border is neither unusual nor unprecedented. But, that doesn’t mean it’s smart, effective, or cost efficient.

I’m aware of no hard evidence that sending the National Guard makes any long-term difference in border enforcement or security.

A number of commentators have also questioned whether the somewhat marginal short-term enforcement benefits of sending troops outweighs the substantial costs and negative perception issues. See e.g.,

https://www.dailysignal.com/2014/07/16/sending-military-border-good-idea/

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2018/04/08/what-happened-when-bush-obama-sent-troops-to-mexico-border/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/03/trump-mexico-wall-military-guards-obama-bush-not-first-president

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160421171156.htm

I see no evidence of any real security crisis at the Southern Border. Certainly, Trump’s panic about the so-called “Caravan” (actually largely made up of desperate women and children) is totally bogus, apparently based on over-hyped reports by Fox News.

It’s obvious that having blown the chance to get funding for his Wall, Trump is looking for some way to hype a non-existent “Southern Border Crisis” to show his base that he hasn’t given up on his racist approach to immigration. He also keeps raising his bogus claims that we need to further truncate the already too limited existing rights of children and asylum seekers and expand the “New American Gulag.” What total BS

There is an ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Northern Triangle causing individuals to undertake the journey North. That’s been going on for many years, and is almost certain to continue as long as folks like Trump are in charge. It’s not like Obama or Bush helped the situation either. Indeed, the US policy toward Latin America has been screwed up during my entire lifetime and shows no signs of changing.

Nothing Trump does is going to change that. Indeed, by almost any rational measure, Trump’s enforcement bluster is likely to make the situation even worse. As a number of commentators have pointed out, if Trump actually goes through with his stated wish to expel Hondurans and Salvadorans currently here in TPS status, that would almost certainly further destablilize both countries, further strengthen the hands of gangs, and guarantee an even larger northward flow.

PWS

04-09-18

 

 

 

JOSEPH TANFANI @ LA TIMES: More Critical Reaction To Sessions’s Immigration Court Quotas — “If you’ve got a system that is producing defective cars, making the system run faster is just going to result in more defective cars.” (PWS)

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-immigration-courts-20180406-story.html

Joseph Tanfani reports for the LA TIMES:

The nation’s 58 immigration courts long have been the ragged stepchild of the judicial system – understaffed, technologically backward and clogged with an ever-growing backlog of cases, more than 680,000 at last count.

But a plan by Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, a longtime immigration hawk, aimed at breaking the logjam and increasing deportations of immigrants in the country illegally has drawn surprising resistance from immigration judges across the country.

Many say Sessions’ attempts to limit the discretion of the nation’s 334 immigration judges, and set annual case quotas to speed up their rulings, will backfire and made delays even worse — as happened when previous administrations tried to reform the system.

“It’s going to be a disaster and it’s going to slow down the adjudications,” warned Lawrence O. Burman, secretary of the National Assn. of Immigration Judges, a voluntary group that represents judges in collective bargaining.

Cases already move at a glacial pace. Nationwide, the average wait for a hearing date in immigration court is about two years, according to data analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research organization at Syracuse University.

But some jurisdictions are much slower. The immigration court in Arlington, Va., where Burman is a judge, has a four-year backlog, meaning hearings for new cases are being scheduled in 2022. Burman says the reality is far worse — the docket says he has 1,000 cases scheduled to begin on the same day in 2020.

. . . .

Another problem: Poorly funded immigration courts still use paper files, slowing access to information, while other federal courts use digital filing systems.

The Executive Office of Immigration Review, the Justice Department office that oversees the courts, started studying the problem in 2001. It has issued numerous reports and studies over the last 17 years, but accomplished little in the way of computerized record keeping.

. . . .

The judges don’t see it that way. Burman and other leaders of the immigration judges’ association, in an unusual public protest, say Sessions’ plan will force judges to rush cases and further compromise the courts’ already battered reputation for fairness.

“Clearly this is not justice,” said the association president, Judge A. Ashley Tabaddor, who sits in Los Angeles, the nation’s busiest immigration court. The plan will “undermine the very integrity of the court.”

Sessions is not the first U.S. attorney general to try to push deportation cases through the system faster.

John Ashcroft, who served under President George W. Bush, unveiled a streamlined approach in 2002, firing what he called softhearted judges from the 21-member Board of Immigration Appeals, the highest administrative body for interpreting and applying immigration laws.

The result was an increase of cases sent back by federal courts, which reviewed the decisions – and more delays.

Under the Obama administration, immigration judges were ordered to prioritize old cases to try to clear the backlog. But after thousands of unaccompanied minors from Central America surged to the southwest border in 2014, they were told to focus on those cases instead. As the dockets were reshuffled, the backlog kept growing.

Last fall, Sessions ordered 100 immigration judges from around the country to travel to courts on the border to move cases quickly. The Justice Department pronounced it a success, saying they finished 2,700 cases.

Some of the judges were less enthusiastic.

“We had nothing to do half the time,” said Burman, who spent eight weeks in border courts. “I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, but they sent more people than they needed to” while his caseload in Virginia languished for those two months.

Immigration advocates say the answer is more resources: more judges, more clerks, and legal representation for immigrants. They also say the courts should be independent, not under the Justice Department.

“Everybody wants to hear there’s some magical solution to make all this fine. It’s not going to happen,” said Paul Schmidt, a former immigration judge and former chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals.

“If you’ve got a system that is producing defective cars, making the system run faster is just going to result in more defective cars,’ he said.

Staff writer Brian Bennett contributed to this report.

******************************************

Go on over to the LA Times at the above link for Joseph’s complete article.

Those of us in the Immigration Courts at the time of the “Ashcroft debacle” know what a complete disaster it was from a due process, fairness, and efficiency standpoint. Far too many of the cases were returned by the Article III Courts for “redos” because Immigration Judges and BIA Members were encouraged to “cut corners” as long as the result was an order of removal.

Some judges resisted, but many “went along to get along.” Some of the botched cases probably still are pending. Worse, some of the botched, incorrect orders resulted in unjust removals because individuals lacked the resources or were too discouraged to fight their cases up to the Courts of Appeals. And, the Courts of Appeals by no means caught all of the many mistakes that were made during that period. Haste makes waste.  I analogized it to being an actor in a repertory theater company playing the “Theater of the Absurd.” Now, Sessions is promoting a rerun of another variation on that failed theme.

Somebody needs to fix this incredibly dysfunctional system before shifting it into “high gear.” And, it clearly won’t be Jeff Sessions.

PWS

04-07-18

 

HON. JEFFREY CHASE: Sessions’s Abuses Of “Certification Power” Show Why It’s Past Time To End This Unfair, Unethical, & (Probably) Unconstitutional Mockery of Justice!

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2018/3/29/the-ags-certifying-of-bia-decisions

The AG’s Certifying of BIA Decisions

The recent flurry of case certifications by Attorney General Jeff Sessions (he has certified four BIA decisions to himself since January) raises the question of the continued appropriateness of the practice.  Certification allows a political appointee who heads an enforcement agency, and is subject to the policy agenda of the administration he or she serves, absolute authority to overrule or completely rewrite the decisions of an ostensibly neutral and independent tribunal comprised of judges possessing greater subject matter expertise.

The issue has only become a matter of legitimate concern under the two most recent Republican administrations.  In her eight years as Attorney General during the Clinton Administration, Janet Reno decided a total of three cases pursuant to certification.  Under the Obama administration, AGs  Loretta Lynch and Eric Holder decided a comparable number of cases (four). The number is artificially inflated by the fact that two of those consisted of Holder vacating late-term decisions by his predecessor, Michael Mukasey.  In one of the vacated decisions, Mukasey’s reasoning had been rejected by five separate U.S. circuit courts of appeal.

In contrast, during the eight year administration of George W. Bush, his three Attorneys General issued 16 precedent decisions through the certification process.  Sessions so far seems to be on a similar pace.

One of Bush’s AGs, Alberto Gonzales, co-authored an article in 2016 defending the use of certification.1  As part of his argument, Gonzales traced the history of the practice to the BIA’s origins as an advisory-only panel in the Department of Labor in the 1920s and 30s.  When the Board was transferred to the Department of Justice in 1940, it was provided only limited decision-making authority, but was required to refer to the AG certain categories of cases, including those “in which a dissent has been recorded” or where “a question of difficulty is involved.”

I will add that the early appointees to the BIA were career bureaucrats with no prior expertise or experience in the field of immigration law.  To me, such history seems to provide no real justification for the continued practice. The BIA has for decades enjoyed the authority to independently decide a broad class of cases.  It’s members all come to the Board with far more expertise and experience in the field of immigration law than the AG possesses (although since the 2003 purge by then-AG John Ashcroft, its make-up is far more conservative).  Furthermore, whereas in the past, it was the BIA itself, and later, the Commissioner of INS, requesting certification, at present, the AG is handpicking the cases and certifying them to himself, sometimes in order to decide an issue that wasn’t part of the decision below.

Law Professor Margaret H. Taylor has noted that the practice of AG certification “might be seen as objectionable because it conflicts with a core value of our legal system: that disputes are resolved by an impartial adjudicator who has no interest in the outcome.”2  Taylor further points out that many such decisions were issued in the final days of an AG’s term, meaning that the AG “refers a controversial issue to himself and renders a decision upending agency precedent on his way out the door.”3

In an article calling for the implementation of procedural safeguards on the AG’s certification power, the author accurately notes that the practice of “agency head review” is common and non-controversial.4  However, Professor Stephen Legomsky has pointed out that the strongest arguments for agency head review – inter-decisional consistency, and agency control (by politically-accountable officials) over policy – don’t translate well to the process of deciding asylum applications, for example.5  This harks back to a point I made in an earlier article – that immigration judges (including BIA Board member) are the only judges in the otherwise enforcement-minded Department of Justice, and that the Department has never really grasped the concept of independent decision-makers existing under its jurisdiction.

Legomsky pointed out in the same article that the BIA, as an appellate authority, “can yield the same consistency as agency head review” through the issuance of en banc decisions; adding that the AG could require the Board to decide certain cases en banc.6  Interestingly, the BIA has given up the use of en banc decisions in recent years. It has not decided a precedent decision en banc even in cases of major import, or following remands from the AG or circuit courts.

Sessions’ use of certification thus far is unique in his redetermination of what the case he chooses is even about.  In Matter of Castro-Tum, the DHS appealed an immigration judge’s decision to administratively close proceedings in which an unaccompanied minor did not appear on the grounds that it had met its burden of establishing proper notice of the hearing on the minor respondent.  The BIA actually agreed with DHS and remanded the matter. However, Sessions has now turned the case into a referendum on whether any IJ or the BIA has the legal authority to administratively close any case, an argument that was never raised below. In Matter of A-B-, an immigration judge, in defiance of the BIA’s order to grant asylum on remand, refused to calendar the case for a hearing for an excessive length of time, and then disobeyed the Board’s order by denying asylum again for spurious reasons.  Somehow, Sessions decided to certify this case to decide whether anyone seeking asylum based on membership in a particular social group relating to being a victim of private criminal activity merits such relief. His ultimate decision could curtail asylum eligibility for victims of domestic violence, members of the LGBTQ community, targets of gang violence, and victims of human trafficking.

Furthermore, two of the cases certified by Sessions involve tools of docket management, i.e. administrative closure and continuances.  As immigration judges are the only judges within the Department, and as the BIA has set out uniform procedures for the proper use of these tools, how can the AG justify his need to weigh in on these issues, which clearly do not involve the need for intra-department consistency (as no other component of the department employs such tools), or for control by a politically-accountable official to ensure the coherent expression of agency policy?

Once again, the solution is to create an independent, Article I immigration court, allowing IJs to continue to decide cases with fairness and neutrality free from such policy-driven interference.

Copyright 2018 Jeffrey S. Chase.  All rights reserved.

Notes:

  1. Alberto Gonzales and Patrick Glen, Advancing Executive Branch Immigration Policy Through the Attorney General’s Review Authority, 101 Iowa L.Rev. 841 (2016).
  2. Margaret H. Taylor, Midnight Agency Adjudication: Attorney General Review of Board of Immigration Appeals Decisions, 102 Iowa L. Rev. 18 (2016).
  3. Id.
  4. Laura S. Trice, Adjudication by Fiat: The Need for Procedural Safeguards in Attorney General Review of Board of Immigration Appeals Decisions, 85 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1766 (2010).
  5. Stephen H. Legomsky, Learning to Live with Unequal Justice: Asylum and the Limits to Consistency, 60 Stan. L. Rev. 413, 458 (2007).

6.  Id.

 

fullsizeoutput_40da.jpeg

Jeffrey S. Chase is an immigration lawyer in New York City.  Jeffrey is a former Immigration Judge, senior legal advisor at the Board of Immigration Appeals, and volunteer staff attorney at Human Rights First.  He is a past recipient of AILA’s annual Pro Bono Award, and previously chaired AILA’s Asylum Reform Task Force.

BlogArchiveContact

*************************************************

Obviously, we need a truly independent Article I U.S. immigration Court as Jeffrey suggests.

Additionally, it’s well past time for the Supremes to take a close look at the constitutionality of this practice under the Due Process Clause. Those conservative leaning justices who have expressed reservations about “Chevron deference” should have major problems with this arcane procedure that allows a political official of the Executive Branch to overrule supposedly “expert” quasi-judicial officials on questions of law which the Attorney General would be decidedly less qualified to answer than an Article III judge or justice.

The whole “certification” process appears to be a facial violation of fundamental fairness and due process under the Fifth Amendment as well as a clear violation of judicial ethics by having a political official, the Attorney General, purport to act in a quasi-judicial capacity on a question or case on which he has already expressed an opinion or a clear hostility to foreign nationals as a group.

PWS

03-30-18

 

ON SATURDAY, “COURTSIDE” & SLATE’S JEREMY STAHL GAVE YOU THE “REAL LOWDOWN” ON AAG RACHEL BRAND’S “FLIGHT FROM JUSTICE!” — Two Days Later, NBC News Confirms What We Already Said!

Here’s a link to the prior blog on immigrationcourtside.com:

https://wp.me/p8eeJm-26R

Here’s the NBC report by one of my favorite Washington reporters, Julia Edwards Ainsley:

http://nbcnews.to/2CfKuHi

Julia reports:

“WASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s No. 3 attorney had been unhappy with her job for months before the department announced her departure on Friday, according to multiple sources close to Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand.

Brand grew frustrated by vacancies at the department and feared she would be asked to oversee the Russia investigation, the sources said.

She will be leaving the Justice Department in the coming weeks to take a position with Walmart as the company’s executive vice president of global governance and corporate secretary, a job change that had been in the works for some time, the sources said.

Sources: Brand left DOJ over fear of overseeing Russia probe 3:40

As far back as last fall, Brand had expressed to friends that she felt overwhelmed and unsupported in her job, especially as many key positions under her jurisdiction had still not been filled with permanent, Senate-confirmed officials.

Four of the 13 divisions overseen by the associate attorney general remain unfilled, including the civil rights division and the civil division, over one year into the Trump administration.

While Brand has largely stayed out of the spotlight, public criticism of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein by President Donald Trump worried Brand that Rosenstein’s job could be in danger.

Should Rosenstein be fired, Brand would be next in line to oversee Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, thrusting her into a political spotlight that Brand told friends she did not want to enter.

The Justice Department pushed back on NBC’s report.

“It is clear these anonymous sources have never met Rachel Brand let alone know her thinking. All of this is false and frankly ridiculous,” said Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Flores.

Brand has had a long legal career that has spanned several administrations, including under Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican George W. Bush.

In announcing her departure, Attorney General Jeff Sessions described Brand as “a lawyer’s lawyer,” noting that she graduated from Harvard Law School and clerked at the Supreme Court.

In the same statement, Brand said, “I am proud of what we have been able to accomplish over my time here.”

****************************************

Undoubtedly, the DOJ under Trump and Sessions has made some great strides in attacking the rule of law, undermining social justice, mal-administering the Immigration Courts, eroding the credibility of DOJ attorneys in court, and generally diminishing the quality and fairness of the justice system in the United States.

While those might give Rachel “bragging rights” over at Wal-Mart or in right-wing legal circles, I don’t see that they are anything to “write home about.”  Hopefully, at some point in the future, having served as a politico in the Trump/Sessions DOJ will become a “career killer” for any future Government appointments.

But, in today’s topsy-turvy legal-political climate, it’s still a shrewd “self-preservation” move on Brand’s part. And, she’s somewhat less likely to be stomping on anyone’s civil rights over at Wal-Mart (although you never know when an opportunity to dump on the civil rights of the  LGBTQ community, African-Americans, Latinos, immigrants, women, the poor, or to promote religious intelerance might present itself in a corporate setting).

Looking forward to more DOJ reporting from the super-talented Julia! I’ve missed her on the “immigration beat!”

PWS

02-12-18

 

 

 

GOP WONKSTER CARLOS BONILLA WONDERS WHEN “1st GENERATION AMERICANS” BECAME “ANCHOR BABIES,” “FAMILY REUNIFICATION” BECAME “CHAIN MIGRATION,” & “THE AMERICAN DREAM” WAS REPLACED BY THE GOP WHITE NATIONALIST RACIST AGENDA? — “We Used To Be Called First Generation Americans, But ‘Anchor Baby’ Apparently Resonates Better For Fearmongering Purposes.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/01/31/the-immigration-rules-president-trump-wants-would-have-crushed-my-family/

Bonilla writes in the Washington Post:

“After my father died in Honduras in 1990, I sponsored my widowed mother for permanent residency in the United States. She was 67 years old, I was her only child, and my three children were her only grandchildren. Of course I had to bring her here.

I was doing what most children with aging parents, in any country, try to do: take care of them as they once took care of us. Fortunately, the wisdom of U.S. immigration law at the time allowed her to enter with a green card under the family reunification visa preference, now under attack as “chain migration” by opponents of legal immigration, including President Trump. I was able to sponsor her because I was a U.S. citizen, born and raised here. No doubt some would consider me an “anchor baby,” although my nonimmigrant parents were here legally when I was born. We used to be called first-generation Americans, but “anchor baby” apparently resonates better for fearmongering purposes.

The Trump administration’s proposals to change the U.S. immigration system and end most family reunification preferences would have kept me from helping my mother, and if they become law, they’ll keep countless Americans from doing the same for their loved ones. The president wants to end visa preferences for parents, adult children and siblings of immigrants — only minor children or spouses would qualify for family visas. In Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, Trump said that he would protect “the nuclear family” and that the changes he’s proposed are necessary for “our security, and for the future of America.” But his rules wouldn’t have protected my family, or our future, at all. In my case, bringing my mother here had a profound impact on my life and those of my children — and no one would have been better off if immigration law had forced her to stay in Honduras.

CONTENT FROM CHILDREN’S NATIONAL
“There was constant anxiety. He would accuse people of not being careful enough [with food]. He was scared something could happen and that he could have a reaction.”
Read More
[For 50 years, keeping families together has been central to U.S. immigration policy]

In 1996, after going through a divorce, I found myself a single father, trying to raise three tweens and teens on my own, wondering how I would handle work and family obligations. My mother saved my life. In many ways, she saved my children’s lives as well. She was the after-school presence, always there to greet them and keep them out of trouble. We did a good job: All three graduated from good colleges — the University of Pennsylvania, Duke and the University of Pittsburgh. They’ve all gone on to successful careers in education, technology and real estate.

Without my mother here, I would have had to decline the greatest professional opportunity of my life in 2001: the chance to work in the White House as a special assistant for economic policy to President George W. Bush. What had been a few hours a day of after-school care that my mother handled became many hours a day and often late nights, as anyone who has worked in the White House will attest. Had she not been here, I could never have met the demands of that job with kids in high school.

In 2002, we celebrated my mother obtaining her U.S. citizenship with lunch in the White House Mess. We sat there and wished my father had lived to see this — his son working in the White House. My father, born to a single mother in a poor mountain town in Honduras, got a college education only because Rotary International gave him a scholarship at age 27 to study in the United States. He went on to get a master’s degree in economics, the same trade that brought me to the White House’s National Economic Council.

In some ways, mine was an atypical foreign family: My parents spent 20 years working here on G-4 visas , which are granted to employees of international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the Inter-American Development Bank, where they worked before taking overseas posts and ultimately retiring in Honduras. In other ways, though, we were the stereotypical American immigrant story: They came here to improve their lot in life. They were luckier than most and better educated than many. But that education took place only after my parents got here. They came with a high school education and no assets. They left this world with much more, but you couldn’t have predicted that when they first arrived in the United States.

[How ‘chain migration’ brought us the Trump White House]

Now the Trump administration is deriding family reunification as “chain migration,” a term intended to belittle the contributions that immigrants and their families make. “Under the current broken system, a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives,” Trump claimed Tuesday — a claim that isn’t true, as current law only allows citizens or permanent residents to sponsor immediate relatives. Some of the president’s allies, such as Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), don’t even want people like me to be citizens in the first place: My parents were not citizens or permanent residents when I was born, and King has introduced legislation to prevent children of people like them from becoming citizens at birth. Under these visions for America, I would not have been able to work in the White House; I would not have been able to sponsor my mother for permanent residency; and my mother would have been unable to help me and my children accomplish what we have accomplished.

ADVERTISEMENT

I ask only that people look at me and my family, especially my mother, as part of the positive impact that immigrants have in America. Both of my parents were born in Honduras (no doubt one of the places the president had in mind when he made a scatological reference to the countries of origin of many immigrants). Thanks to the compassion and vision of our current policies, though, my mother made a lasting contribution to our nation: the well-being and advancement of me and my three children. No one looking at us would ever think “Norwegian.” But surely they would think that we embody the American spirit.”

*************************

Come on, Carlos! You’re a smart guy! What did you expect from a party that embraces outspoken anti-Latino, White Nationalist, racists like Steve King, Jeff Sessions, Kris Kobach, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and Donald Trump?

Your achievements and past contributions are meaningless. It’s your a Brown skin, Hispanic race, and immigrant heritage that they hate and denigrate!

So, instead of asking why and lamenting the overt racism that has become a key part of the GOP agenda (just that Hispanics have replaced African-Americans as the primary target), why not do the “smart” thing and switch over to the Democratic Party where the American Dream isn’t restricted to rich White Guys?

PWS

02-04-18

EUGENE ROBINSION @ WASHPOST & DAVID BROOKS @ NY TIMES: GOP IMMIGRATION RESTRICTIONISTS’ PROPOSALS TO CUT LEGAL IMMIGRATION LEVELS HAVE NO RATIONAL BASIS! – That’s Going To Be A Big Problem In Trying To Forge A “Compromise!”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-trying-to-make-america-white-again/2018/01/29/9afa7afa-053d-11e8-8777-2a059f168dd2_story.html

Robinson writes:

“. . . .

There’s a simple question here: Do you believe in America or not?

Throughout its history, the country has accepted waves of mostly low-skilled immigrants — German, Irish, Italian, Eastern European, now Latino. There are highly skilled immigrants, too; African newcomers, for example, are better-educated than the U.S. population as a whole, and an estimated 63 percent of people holding “computer and mathematical” jobs in Silicon Valley are foreign-born. But most immigrants over the years have arrived bearing not much more than grit, ambition and a dream.

Does an influx of workers with entry-level skills tend to depress wages? That’s the wrong question. Instead, we should be asking why the federal minimum wage is so low as to be almost irrelevant.

And we should recognize that immigration gives the United States a tremendous competitive advantage. In other advanced countries, populations are aging rapidly. Immigration provides a steady stream of younger workers whose brain and brawn keep programs such as Medicare and Social Security viable.

The only coherent — if despicable — arguments for Trump’s plan are racial and cultural. The way they used to put it in the Jim Crow days was succinct: White is right.”

*********************************************

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/opinion/east-germany-immigration-usa.html

Meanwhile, over at the NY Times, Brooks writes:

“. . . .

The results are just as clear as in the German case. Between 2014 and 2016 the counties that embrace diversity accounted for 72 percent of the nation’s increased economic output and two-thirds of the new jobs. The approximately 85 percent of counties that support restrictionists like Donald Trump accounted for a measly 28 percent of the growth.

Republicans’ problem is that since George W. Bush left town they’ve become the East Germans of the 21st century. They have embraced a cultural model that produces low growth and low dynamism. No wonder they want to erect a wall.

Progressives say Republicans oppose immigration because of bigotry. But it’s not that simple. It’s more accurate to say restrictionists are stuck in a mono-cultural system that undermines their own values: industry, faithfulness and self-discipline. Of course they react with defensive animosity to the immigrants who out-hustle and out-build them. You’d react negatively, too, if confronted with people who are better versions of what you wish you were yourself.”

**************************************

You can can read the complete versions of both op-eds, which I highly recommend, at the above links.

Yup!
When you’re coming from the same places as Jim Crow and the East Germans, there is no acceptable “rational basis” for the restrictionist agenda. It’s bad for America as well as for immigrants. But, it’s difficult or impossible to make rational arguments against deeply held, factually incorrect, irrational beliefs, particularly those based on racial, economic, cultural, and class bias. That’s probably why rational “immigration reform” has been, and remains, so difficult to achieve.

And, having seen thousands of migrants and their families come before me at the Arlington Immigration Court over the years, gotten to know many of their stories, and having represented immigrants, entrepreneurs, and businesses during my time in private practice, there is no doubt that Brooks is right: they “out-hustle and out-build” many of those “native-born” Americans who despise and look down on them.

And, it’s not just the doctors, professors, and top execs — folks who pound nails, lay foundations, make food, sweep floors, put on roofs , and pick our produce are also performing essential services that keep our country going — and, in many if not all cases, doing it better than the rest of us could or would. Really, how long would YOU last picking lettuce or laying shingles on a 100 degree day? And, how GOOD would you really be at it? There is more “skill” to so-called “unskilled” work than most of us in the “privileged classes” want to admit!

PWS

01-30-18

GONZO’S WORLD: SOMEBODY’S GOT TO DO TRUMP’S “DIRTY WORK” AT JUSTICE — GONZO WELCOMES THE CHANCE – “CHATTER ON THE STREET” SAYS HE’S BEEN TERRIFIC AT IMPLEMENTING RACIST, WHITE NATIONALIST AGENDA AND “DECONSTRUCTING” JUSTICE IN AMERICA! – Damage To Rights Of American Blacks, Latinos, Gays, and Other “Targeted Groups” Could Be Long Lasting!

“Dirty Work” by Steely Dan.

Check it out here:

http://www.metrolyrics.com/dirty-work-lyrics-steely-dan.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/01/23/its-looking-more-and-more-like-jeff-sessions-is-doing-trumps-political-dirty-work/?utm_term=.20948af9517b

Aaron Blake reports for the Washington Post:

“The defining moment of Jeff Sessions’s time as attorney general has been when he recused himself from oversight of the Russia investigation. That quickly led to the appointment of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who is now extensively probing President Trump. And by all accounts, it seriously strained Sessions’s relationship with Trump, who thinks Sessions should be protecting him and doing his bidding.

But there are increasing signs that Sessions has indeed done plenty of Trump’s bidding behind closed doors. And he’s done it on some dicey and very politically tinged issues — so much so that he made Trump’s second FBI director deeply uncomfortable with the whole thing.

The Post’s Devlin Barrett and Philip Rucker report that Sessions has pressured FBI Director Christopher A. Wray to get rid of his deputy Andrew McCabe, a holdover from James B. Comey’s FBI and favorite target for Republicans alleging bias in federal law enforcement. Some have reported that Wray even threatened to resign; The Post is reporting that he did not explicitly do so.

Here’s the meat of it all:

Sessions, Republican lawmakers and some members of the Trump administration have argued for weeks that Wray should conduct some kind of housecleaning by demoting or reassigning senior aides to his predecessor, Comey, according to people familiar with the matter. These people added that Sessions himself is under tremendous political pressure from conservative lawmakers and White House officials who have complained that the bureaucracy of federal law enforcement is biased against the president.

Trump has made no secret of his distaste for McCabe, even tweeting about it repeatedly after McCabe announced last month that he would soon retire, when he becomes eligible for full pension benefits. Trump’s tweets date back to the summer and have focused on McCabe’s wife’s run for the Virginia state legislature as a Democrat and ties to Hillary Clinton.

. . . .

In other words, Trump has publicly stated his preference for Sessions to try to get rid of McCabe, and he has suggested Wray do it as well. Now we find out Sessions did indeed attempt it, and Wray resisted it.

But it’s only the latest evidence that Sessions and his Justice Department are taking specific actions that Trump has publicly urged, even as they, in some cases, risk looking like they are in service to Trump’s political goals.

The New York Times reported recently that a Sessions aide went to Capitol Hill last year seeking derogatory information about Comey at a time when Trump clearly had his eyes on firing Comey. (A Justice Department spokesman has denied this occurred.) There are also reports that the Justice Department is considering a revival of its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, which Trump has repeatedly called for. And back in August, Sessions announced a ramped-up effort to root out leakers in the federal government — just days after Trump tweeted that Sessions had taken “a VERY weak position” on the issue.

(Remarkably, Trump actually hit Sessions for his weak positions on both leakers and Clinton’s emails in the same tweet. The Justice Department now appears to be addressing both.)

The Post’s Josh Dawsey and Matt Zapotosky even reported last month that Sessions has engaged in an all-out campaign to regain Trump’s faith by pointing to things the Justice Department has done in service of Trump’s agenda. That’s a pretty remarkable state of affairs.

Some of these things are issues on which Sessions has clearly sided with Trump, especially the dangers of leakers. So it’s perhaps no surprise Sessions would pursue them. But the fact that Trump called for these actions before Sessions was reported to have taken them sure makes it look like he’s taking direction from Trump — or at least succumbing to pressure that Trump and others have brought to bear.

Sessions has also, notably, resisted that pressure at times. During congressional testimony in November, he very publicly shunned a Republican lawmaker’s conspiracy theory — one to which Trump has also alluded — about how the federal government may have colluded with Democrats to spy on Trump’s campaign. Sessions said the issue didn’t rise to the level of appointing a special counsel.

But the picture of what Sessions is doing behind the scenes is increasingly suggesting that Trump’s very public hints that his attorney general should do this or that have often resulted in those specific actions. And especially when it comes to things such as trying to force out McCabe or reportedly dig up dirt on Comey, it sure makes it look like Sessions is using his authorities to try to address Trump’s political aims.

And for an attorney general who leads the federal law enforcement that is currently investigating the president and his team, that’s a perception problem, at best.”

*******************************************

Read Blake’s full article, complete with “Tweet Texts,” at the link.

Meanwhile “chatter” surrounding the DOJ credits Sessions for doing a “bang up” job of implementing his racist, White Nationalist agenda at Justice. Basically, according to some, he’s very effectively shifting the Government’s resources, focus, and litigating capacity to insuring  that no element of White privilege or far-Right religious intolerance goes unprotected.

At the same time, he’s using basically bogus or at least highly misleading “statistics” to “rev up” racist fervor against immigrant, primarily Latino communities and Democratic local officials who won’t go along with his program of attempting to draw false connections between immigrants and crime and terrorism. Meanwhile, he essentially has consigned the rights of African-Americans, Latinos, Immigrants, Migrants, Women who seek abortions, and the LGBTQ community to the “trash-bin of Justice.” Many who care about the future of racial equality and social justice in America are concerned that this type of “deep damage” to our justice system can’t easily be undone or repaired, even after Sessions and his “wrecking crew” finally depart the “Halls of Injustice.”

Reportedly, Sessions has been ably assisted in his campaign “to take the justice out of Justice” by Associate Attorney General Rachel B. Brand, the “number three” person at Justice. Brand, a former Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy under Bush II, DOJ “vet,” and apparent “true believer” in the Radical Right, maintains a much “lower profile” than the ever controversial Sessions. But, apparently she and those under her excel at undoing and “deconstructing” all of the “social justice” achievements of the Obama Administration.

Following the “Watergate Disaster” in the 1970, where the Nixon Administration’s blatant politicization of the DOJ became a national scandal, succeeding Administrations, in my view, more or less “backed off” of obvious political partisanship at the DOJ. But, as Watergate becomes a “mere tiny image in the rearview mirror,” that “tradition of restraint” has gradually eroded. Sounds to me like the “Watergate Era” has basically returned to the DOJ. This time, and quite sadly for our Constitutional system of Government and the U.S. Justice System, there is some doubt as to whether it will ever depart again.

PWS

01-28-18

 

 

 

THE “DREAMERS’’ ARE OUR FUTURE – THEY’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE – WE CAN DO THE SMART THING, WELCOME & INTEGRATE THEM INTO OUR SOCIETY – OR WE CAN “JERK ‘EM AROUND” THE WRONG WAY – But They’re Here To Stay, Either Way! — “What you’re seeing in the Dreamers is a reflection of the American ideals!”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/27/the-civil-rights-issue-of-our-time-how-dreamers-came-to-dominate-us-politics?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Lauren Gambino reports for The Guardian:

“In 2006, Arizona passed a ballot initiative that barred students without legal immigration status from receiving in-state tuition rates at public universities and colleges.

Dulce Matuz, an electrical-engineering major at Arizona State, ran to find her professor.

Bursting into tears, she told him something she had only ever shared with her closest friends. She was undocumented.

“It felt good to tell my story,” she told the Guardian this week. “It was like a weight had been lifted.”

The law meant Matuz would have to pay the out-of-state tuition rate, which she could not afford. But the next day, her professor gave her a flier advertising scholarships for “people in your situation”.

Matuz had thought she was the only undocumented student on one of the largest campuses in the country. She was wrong.

One by one they shed their anonymity, in effect daring law enforcement to target them.

It was a risky move, especially in a state which was then a cauldron of anti-immigrant sentiment. But the students weren’t alone. Thousands of young immigrants came forward to demand a future in the country where they were raised. Each had a name and a story.

Itzel. Irving. Allyson. Justino. Ivy. Yuridia. Luna. Jhoana. Jesus. Osmar. Christian. Indira. Karen. Reyna. Sheridan. Concepcion. Angelica. Greisa. Adrian.

Collectively, they are known as Dreamers, young people without immigration status who were brought to the US as children. Over the last decade, they’ve gone from the “shadows” to the center stage of US politics, and their fate now dangles before an irascible president and a gridlocked Congress.

‘Trump Dreamers’

In September, Donald Trump ended Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca), an Obama-era program that lifted the threat of deportation for Dreamers.

The administration argued that Obama had overstepped his authority. But Trump did give Dreamers a six-month grace period and called on Congress to pass legislation.

“If the Dreamers are able to lead a fight that results in a radical, nativist administration signing into law their freedom, it would be a testament only to how much moral and political power the Dreamers have built,” said Frank Sharry, a long-time advocate of immigration reform and executive director of America’s Voice.

Conservatives suggest Trump is uniquely qualified to succeed where predecessors have failed, to achieve immigration reform, precisely because of his credibility among fierce opponents of illegal immigration.

At a meeting earlier this month, for example, Trump promised to “take the heat” if Republicans passed legislation.

“President Obama tried and couldn’t fix immigration, President Bush tried and couldn’t do it,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina who is pushing bipartisan immigration reform.

Timeline

​Donald Trump and Dreamers: a timeline of mixed messages​

“I believe President Trump can. Today’s Daca recipients can be tomorrow’s Trump Dreamers.”

Polling has consistently shown that a large majority of Americans – 87% in one recent survey – support protections for Dreamers. But general anti-immigrant fervor has stalled efforts to pass legislation and conservatives remain divided over whether Dreamers should ever be allowed to be citizens.

Rounds of negotiations have yielded no solution, only a brief shutdown of the federal government during which Democrats tried to force lawmakers to extend legal status to the Dreamers.

Depending on the day, lawmakers and the president are either on the verge of striking a deal or as far apart as ever. Trump was elected after championing hard-line immigration policies but he has demanded both a “bill of love” and a border wall.

This week, the White House released a proposal that offered a pathway to citizenship for up to 1.8 million undocumented young people – in exchange for a $25bn “trust fund” for a border wall, a crackdown on undocumented migrants and changes to the migration system.

The offer did not go down well, either with Trump’s base or with progressives ranged against him. Immigration hardliners crowned Trump “Amnesty Don”. Advocates for reform rejected the offer as an attempt to seal America’s borders.

In a statement issued on Friday, Chris Murphy, a Connecticut senator, called the offer “a total non-starter” that “preyed on the worst kind of prejudice”, using Dreamers “as a bargaining chip to build a wall and rip thousands of families apart”.

Trump, meanwhile, tweeted that Daca reform had “been made increasingly difficult by the fact that [Senate minority leader] Cryin’ Chuck Schumer took such a beating over the shutdown that he is unable to act on immigration!”

Dreamers say the fight is only beginning.

Matuz became a US citizen in 2016, a decade after she “came out of the shadows”. But she still identifies strongly with her fellow Dreamers.

“We still haven’t achieved what we set out to achieve,” she said.

’They’re speaking up’

The Dreamer movement came of age during the Obama administration. But legislation to build a path to citizenship was introduced to Congress in 2001.

But after the attacks, as concerns over national security and terrorism dominated public life, the immigration debate shifted sharply. The bill stalled. It was reintroduced several times, without success.

Nonetheless, the Dreamers continued to galvanize public support. They escalated their tactics, staging sit ins and actions that risked arrest.

“There was a time when they used to be very quiet,” Durbin said recently at a rally. “Not any more. They’re speaking up and we’re proud that they are.”

The Dreamers’ fight for citizenship, Durbin has said, is the “civil rights issue of our time”.

In December 2010, the Dream Act was brought to the floor. It failed again. In 2012, months before the presidential election, Barack Obama established Daca.

Recipients had to have entered the US before their 16th birthday, which means the oldest beneficiaries are now 35.

The most common age of entry to the US was three while the median age was six, according to a report by the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank in Washington.

Quick guide

What is Daca and who are the Dreamers?

Eight hundred thousand people qualified, the vast majority of them Latino, according to data from US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Nearly 80% were born in Mexico.

The largest numbers of recipients now live in California and other border states such as Texas and Arizona. They are more likely than their ineligible counterparts to hold a college degree and a higher-skilled job, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute.

“What you’re seeing in the Dreamers is a reflection of the American ideals,” said Daniel Garza, president of the conservative Libre Institute, a free-market Latino advocacy group founded by the Koch brothers.

“When one breathes freedom it manifests itself. And now that these kids have a shot at directing their own future or setting a path toward their own future, let’s remove those barriers and allow them that opportunity.”

‘I’m not alone’

Over the last several months, Dreamers have been in Washington, walking the halls of Congress.

They wear light orange shirts with a comic book POW! bubble with the words: “Clean Dream Act Now.”

They sleep on church floors and friends’ couches; a few missed final exams to join protests in December, when there was a flicker of hope that legislation might receive a vote.

Greisa Martínez Rosas, 29, has been among them, leading members in song at rallies on the lawn in front of the capitol building, in between meetings with members of Congress.

She was eight when she and her father staked out a spot on the Rio Grande river and crossed from Mexico into Texas. She laid seashells to mark the place. The next day, her family swam into the United States.

Profile

Who are the Dreamers?

Fighting for a Dream Act has given her purpose, she said, and she is now advocacy and policy director at United We Dream, a national organization that campaigns for migrant rights. She has three younger sisters, one of them also undocumented.

“I am really lucky to be doing this,” she said. “It gives meaning to a lot of the pain and helps me deal with a lot of the trauma growing up undocumented.

“The reality is that I’m not alone. My story isn’t special. That’s why it’s so important that we wage this fight.”

The Dreamers rejected Trump’s latest proposal, even though it would allow a pathway to citizenship for more than twice the number of Daca recipients.

“We are not willing to accept an immigration deal that takes our country 10 steps back no matter how badly we want reprieve,” Martínez Rosas said. “That’s how much we love this country.”

*************************************************

The problem isn’t the Dreamers. It’s the 13% of so of White Nationalist citizens who have forgotten their own immigrant heritage and have abandoned human decency, compassion, and common sense in the process. Unfortunately, this minority has, and continues to wield, a disproportionate share of political power.

PWS

01-27-18