I’M NOT THE ONLY RETIRED JUDGE TO “CALL OUT” JOHN ROBERTS FOR BETRAYAL OF CONSTITUTIONAL DUTY, DESTRUCTION OF AMERICAN VALUES, INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY, & SUPREME COMPLICITY IN THE FACE OF TYRANNY! — Retired Hawaii State Judge James Dannenberg: “You are allowing the Court to become an “errand boy” for an administration that has little respect for the rule of law. The Court, under your leadership and with your votes, has wantonly flouted established precedent. Your “conservative” majority has cynically undermined basic freedoms by hypocritically weaponizing others.”

I https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/judge-james-dannenberg-supreme-court-bar-roberts-letter.html

Dahlia Lithwick
Dahlia Lithwick
Legal Reporter
Slate
Hon. James Dannenberg
Honorable James Dannenberg
Retired State Judge
Hawaii

Dahlia Lithwick reports for Slate:

James Dannenberg is a retired Hawaii state judge. He sat on the District Court of the 1st Circuit of the state judiciary for 27 years. Before that, he served as the deputy attorney general of Hawaii. He was also an adjunct professor at the University of Hawaii Richardson School of Law, teaching federal jurisdiction for more than a decade. He has appeared on briefs and petitions as part of the most prestigious association of attorneys in the country: the Supreme Court Bar. The lawyers admitted to practice before the high court enjoy preferred seating at arguments and access to the court library, and are deemed members of the legal elite. Above all, the bar stands as a sprawling national signifier that the work of the court, the legitimacy of the institution, and the business of justice is bolstered by tens of thousands of lawyers across the nation.

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On Wednesday, Dannenberg tendered a letter of resignation from the Supreme Court Bar to Chief Justice John Roberts. He has been a member of that bar since 1972. In his letter, reprinted in full below, Dannenberg compares the current Supreme Court, with its boundless solicitude for the rights of the wealthy, the privileged, and the comfortable, to the court that ushered in the Lochner era in the early 20th century, a period of profound judicial activism that put a heavy thumb on the scale for big business, banking, and insurance interests, and ruled consistently against child labor, fair wages, and labor regulations.

The Chief Justice of the United States

One First Street, N.E.

Washington, D.C. 20543

March 11, 2020

Dear Chief Justice Roberts:

I hereby resign my membership in the Supreme Court Bar.

This was not an easy decision. I have been a member of the Supreme Court Bar since 1972, far longer than you have, and appeared before the Court, both in person and on briefs, on several occasions as Deputy and First Deputy Attorney General of Hawaii before being appointed as a Hawaii District Court judge in 1986. I have a high regard for the work of the Federal Judiciary and taught the Federal Courts course at the University of Hawaii Richardson School of Law for a decade in the 1980s and 1990s. This due regard spanned the tenures of Chief Justices Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist before your appointment and confirmation in 2005. I have not always agreed with the Court’s decisions, but until recently I have generally seen them as products of mainstream legal reasoning, whether liberal or conservative. The legal conservatism I have respected– that of, for example, Justice Lewis Powell, Alexander Bickel or Paul Bator– at a minimum enshrined the idea of stare decisis and eschewed the idea of radical change in legal doctrine for political ends.

I can no longer say that with any confidence. You are doing far more— and far worse– than “calling balls and strikes.” You are allowing the Court to become an “errand boy” for an administration that has little respect for the rule of law.

The Court, under your leadership and with your votes, has wantonly flouted established precedent. Your “conservative” majority has cynically undermined basic freedoms by hypocritically weaponizing others. The ideas of free speech and religious liberty have been transmogrified to allow officially sanctioned bigotry and discrimination, as well as to elevate the grossest forms of political bribery beyond the ability of the federal government or states to rationally regulate it. More than a score of decisions during your tenure have overturned established precedents—some more than forty years old– and you voted with the majority in most. There is nothing “conservative” about this trend. This is radical “legal activism” at its worst.

Without trying to write a law review article, I believe that the Court majority, under your leadership, has become little more than a result-oriented extension of the right wing of the Republican Party, as vetted by the Federalist Society. Yes, politics has always been a factor in the Court’s history, but not to today’s extent. Even routine rules of statutory construction get subverted or ignored to achieve transparently political goals. The rationales of “textualism” and “originalism” are mere fig leaves masking right wing political goals; sheer casuistry.

Your public pronouncements suggest that you seem concerned about the legitimacy of the Court in today’s polarized environment. We all should be. Yet your actions, despite a few bromides about objectivity, say otherwise.

It is clear to me that your Court is willfully hurtling back to the cruel days of Lochner and even Plessy. The only constitutional freedoms ultimately recognized may soon be limited to those useful to wealthy, Republican, White, straight, Christian, and armed males— and the corporations they control. This is wrong. Period. This is not America.

I predict that your legacy will ultimately be as diminished as that of Chief Justice Melville Fuller, who presided over both Plessy and Lochner. It still could become that of his revered fellow Justice John Harlan the elder, an honest conservative, but I doubt that it will. Feel free to prove me wrong.

The Supreme Court of the United States is respected when it wields authority and not mere power. As has often been said, you are infallible because you are final, but not the other way around.

I no longer have respect for you or your majority, and I have little hope for change. I can’t vote you out of office because you have life tenure, but I can withdraw whatever insignificant support my Bar membership might seem to provide.

Please remove my name from the rolls.

With deepest regret,

James Dannenberg

**********

So true. I’d also compare JR’s subservience to a transparently racist, White Nationalist, authoritarian agenda to White Supremacist darling Chief Justice Roger Taney, author of the Dred Scott decision. Roberts is knowingly enabling the “Dred Scottifing” of Hispanics, African Americans, Muslims, political opponents, the LGBTQ community, journalists, minority voters, and a host of others on the authoritarian regime’s “enemies” list.

At a time when America needs a Chief Justice with the courage and integrity to stand up for our Constitution, the rule of law, and the lives of the most vulnerable among us, we instead get Roberts.

J.R. Is quick to stand up for the rights of corporations, guns, and the Executive. But, when it comes to the rights of individuals — things like due process, human rights, and the right to be treated with human dignity, he’s nowhere to be found. 


One of the most grotesque failures to stand up for our Constitution, the legal rights of asylum seekers to fair adjudication, and human rights was J.R. & his Supremes’ majority’s granting of the regime’s bogus emergency stay in Wolf v. Innovation Law Labhttps://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/03/11/let-the-killing-continue-predictably-supremes-game-system-to-give-thumbs-up-to-let-em-die-in-mexico-brown-lives-dont-matter/

Only Justice Sotomayor had the guts and intellectual integrity to stand up for the future of humanity, simple human decency, and the rule of law by voting to deny the regime’s fraudulent stay request. Typically, Roberts & Co. didn’t even have the decency and intellectual honesty to provide a rationale for their life-threatening action. A reasoned decision is one of the “minimal requirements for due process” that Roberts and the Supremes’ majority ignore on a regular basis when rolling over for Trump toady Solicitor General Noel Francisco and his transparently fabricated “emergencies.” Francisco is another one whose disingenuous role and disregard for legal ethics in carrying out Trump’s wanton cruelty and human rights abuses should never be forgotten.

The damage caused by Roberts’s failure to lead and protect humanity isn’t legalistic or academic. It’s “real harm” to “real people.”

Let’s get “up close and personal” with what happens to individuals who fled to our country seeking only due process and fair and humane treatment, just to find Roberts’s and his Supremes’ immorality and warped sense of justice.

Here’s what Roberts’s complicity looks like:

The burns from the acid attack Elizabeth endured while she was kidnapped.
The burns from the acid attack Elizabeth endured while she was kidnapped.
The acid burned all the way through to the bone in Elizabeth's left ankle.
The acid burned all the way through to the bone in Elizabeth’s left ankle. Courtesy of Elizabeth.
Courtesy of Elizabeth Elizabeth's acid burns.
Courtesy of Elizabeth
Elizabeth’s acid burns.

That’s right folks. Torture, proudly presented to you by Chief Justice John Roberts and the majority of the United States Supreme Court. Who would have thought it could happen here? Like Judge Dannenberg, I spent a lifetime respecting the Supreme Court and even defending their decisions, including ones with which I disagreed. That has ended with the corruption, dishonesty, and inhumanity of the Roberts Court in the Age of Trump. Unworthy of America. Unworthy by of respect.

And here’s some narrative to go with it from Adolfo Flores over at BuzzFeed News:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/adolfoflores/asylum-seeker-tortured-mexico

. . . .

Elizabeth left her home in Guatemala after being brutally beaten by the father of her daughter. She went to the police who refused to help her despite filing a complaint against him. The beatings in front of her daughter continued. Fearing that one day soon he’d kill her, Elizabeth left with her daughter.

“There’s a reason why there are so many femicides,” Elizabeth said.

The pair arrived near Ciudad Juárez in late July. She got off a bus she took with her daughter that was supposed to take them to Ciudad Juárez and got into what she believed was an Uber. She asked the driver to take her to the bridge that connects the city to El Paso. But as the city lights started to fade and the streets turned to desert and cliffs, Elizabeth realized the driver was taking her away from the city.

For about 12 days she was kept inside a dirty home, occasionally fed old food, and assaulted. Different men touched her genital area and licked her breasts in front of her daughter, according to documents provided by her attorneys. She wasn’t raped, but later had brownish discharge from her vagina she believes was the result of the men hurting her with an object or fingers.

Her attorneys said they believe the men were in the cartel, but don’t know for sure. They threatened to rape her and her daughter if she didn’t provide them with a number to call family for ransom. After days of holding her for ransom that her family couldn’t pay, the men threw chemical acid on her legs that resulted in second-degree burns. Despite closing her eyes and covering her ears, her then-10-year-old daughter could hear her mother’s screams, later telling Elizabeth she would never forget the sound of them.

At one point their kidnappers went outside and her daughter realized they left the door open. Elizabeth was too weak and in too much pain from the acid burns, but her daughter persisted.

“‘I don’t want them to kill us, torture us, or do something worse,'” Elizabeth recalled her daughter saying. “‘I can’t take this anymore, I feel like I’m going to die from sadness.'”

The pair ran from the house and were eventually chased by their kidnappers, armed with large black weapons, Elizabeth said. She fainted from the pain and heat, so her daughter ran ahead and flagged down police officers who called for help. A helicopter arrived shortly after to pick up Elizabeth.

Elizabeth woke up in a hospital and was discharged after seven days despite her left ankle still bleeding and with the bone exposed. Elizabeth said the hospital was overcrowded and didn’t have enough space, but believes she was discharged quickly because she was an immigrant and not a priority for the hospital’s staff.

She was taken to a shelter that was later closed due to bad conditions. At a second shelter, the director and staff helped cure her ankle — which smelled and cause her to fear she would get gangrene — with medication and topical creams because Elizabeth was too scared to venture outside.

In November, Elizabeth had recovered enough to walk, so she went with her daughter to the Arizona border and presented herself to CBP officers to request asylum. She told them about her attack and was taken to a hospital in Tucson to be medically screened. The doctor prescribed her medication to avoid infection. Then CBP sent her back to Ciudad Juárez.

On Jan. 31, Palazzo and other attorneys walked with her to a border crossing and asked that she be allowed to fight her case in the US. She was interviewed on the phone by the asylum officer who later said she failed.

While Elizabeth was in Ciudad Juárez, the shelter operators asked her if she could watch the door while they ran an errand. A shootout occurred shortly after between criminals and police near the shelter. Men who were running from the police ran up to the shelter’s doors and told Elizabeth to let them in. She faced them and refused, but they threatened to come back for revenge before running off.

Last week, a day before Elizabeth was due at a court hearing in El Paso, she was in the streets of Ciudad Juárez when one of her kidnappers approached her and recognized her. Filled with dread, Elizabeth and her daughter quickly made their way to the shelter to hide. Her fear then was that the men would come looking for her there.

The next day, on Friday, she went to her immigration court hearing in El Paso. She joined other immigrants in MPP who present themselves at the border in the predawn hours of the day to be transported to immigration court. Her plan was to ask for another non-refoulement interview, but that same morning, a federal appeals court blocked the Trump administration policy.

For the entire day, attorneys, immigrants, and advocates tried to understand what the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ order affirming a 2019 preliminary injunction meant for people stuck in Mexico, but also what would happen to those who had court hearings in the US that day, like Elizabeth. Sending them back would surely violate the judges’ order, some immigration attorneys said.

By Friday night, the 9th Circuit stayed its initial order blocking the Trump administration from enforcing MPP and the policy was allowed to continue. Still, Elizabeth and her daughter remained in CBP custody, and attorneys weren’t sure authorities were going to release her into the US.

She was interviewed three times about her fears of being sent back to Mexico. Her daughter told a US asylum officer about the nightmares she has, how she can’t sleep, and that she had trouble eating. Eventually, Elizabeth was told she passed her interview, was released Monday with an ankle monitor, and sent to reunite with family in Kansas.

Elizabeth was worried about the costs of continuing to receive medical care in the US for her acid burns, but she is determined to start a new chapter in her life.

“I’ve suffered a lot,” she said, “but for the first time in a long time, I feel safe.”

UPDATE

March 7, 2020, at 12:54 a.m.

This post was updated to include the more than 1,000 public reports of rape, torture, kidnapping, and other violence against immigrants sent back to Mexico.

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There are lots of Elizabeths out there who have been silenced, some forever, by the likes of Roberts and other “unjust judges.” But, eventually, their stories will be told in all their grim and horrifying detail. At that point, folks like Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and their enablers will attempt to “rewrite history,” to eschew moral and legal responsibility and shift the blame elsewhere with the “usual BS” like “just following the law,” “calling balls and strikes,” “just following orders.” Those are largely the same pathetic excuses offered by those who advanced the cause of human slavery, created Jim Crow, enabled genocide against Native Americans, and helped Hitler.

One of the most important tasks of the younger generation of the New Due Process Army is to bear witness and insure that J.R. & Co. don’t “get away with murder,” literally. Their job is to insure that the stories of those wronged by enablers of the Trump regime are heard loudly and clearly; to confront the complicit with the judgements of history; to insure that the descendants of those who “stood small” and failed humanity know who their ancestors “really were” when the chips were down; and to make sure that history never again repeats itself in the form of John Roberts or anyone like him being allowed to hold positions of great trust and public responsibility in our judiciary.

Take a good like at the pictures above of Elizabeth’s legs and ankles. Those aren’t the results of somebody legitimately “just calling balls and strikes.” Roberts has “struck out.” Unfortunately, however, the rules allow him to continue to play the game to the detriment of our nation and human decency and the continued torment of those to whom he has willfully and inexcusably  denied justice.

Due Process Forever; The Complicity of John Roberts, Never! 

 

PWS

03-14-20

INSIDE TRUMP’S “NEW AMERICAN GULAG” — This Fox Is Licking Her Lips, Getting Ready To Devour Hens As Regime Pokes Congress In The Eyes With Sharp Sticks!

Hamed Aleaziz
Hamed Aleaziz
Immigration Reporter
BuzzFeed News
Julie Kirchner
Julie Kirshner
Anti-Immigrant Activist
DHS Official
“Fox in Hen House”

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/immigration-hardliner-detention-ombudsman

Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News:

The Trump administration has named a hardline former leader of an anti-immigration group to help set up a new role created by Congress to oversee complaints of civil rights violations in detention centers and help those affected by misconduct, according to an internal memo obtained by BuzzFeed News.

The Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman was created in the most recent appropriations bill to “address issues that arise in DHS detention facilities” and remain independent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement or US Customs and Border Protection. The office will report directly to the secretary of Homeland Security.

Ken Cuccinelli, the controversial second-in-command at the Department of Homeland Security, appointed Julie Kirchner, former leader of FAIR, a group that advocated for policies that restrict immigration, to help set up the office, according to the memo. Cuccinelli also tapped Tracy Short — a former top ICE official who signed memos during the Trump administration to stop the agency from granting reprieves for certain immigrants facing deportation — to also help figure out the plans for the office.

“To spearhead this effort, I have asked Julie Kirchner, outgoing Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, and Tracy Short, Senior Advisor at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to work with senior leadership and staff within the Department to lay the proper foundation for the [office],” according to the memo, which was dated Jan. 28.

Congress provided $10 million for the office to address issues of misconduct by DHS officials in detention centers, establish a process to oversee complaints made against immigration officials, inspect facilities, provide recommendations for improvement, and potentially help those whose rights have been violated while in custody.

“In the immediate days and weeks Julie and Tracy will be contacting a variety of individuals across the Department to solicit their input and request information regarding the formation of this new office,” Cuccinelli wrote.

Kirchner was initially picked as the ombudsman at USCIS in 2017, before her departure in the role was announced late last year.

When her appointment was originally announced in 2017, advocacy groups were outraged, due to her background at FAIR, which the Southern Poverty Law Center had labeled a hate group and “America’s most influential anti-immigrant organization.”

“Kirchner’s new position is a very powerful one, which it makes it all the more disturbing considering her past work,” the SPLC said at the time.

The move to appoint Kirchner and Short to help “lay the proper foundation” for the office will likely spur criticism from Congressional officials.

“That’s like letting the fox watch the hens,” said one congressional staffer in a message to BuzzFeed News.

John Sandweg, former acting head of ICE during the Obama administration, said the move was not surprising, but potentially indicative of how the administration sees the role.

“These are the architects of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies,” he said. “It’s not a surprise they would try to build this thing in a way that makes it as less impactful as possible and seems inconsistent with the intent of Congress when they created the office. We have to wait to see what the end product is.”

DHS did not immediately comment.

ICE has expanded the number of people it detains to record levels under President Trump. As of late January, the agency was detaining nearly 41,000 immigrants. The peak came last summer, when around 55,000 immigrants were in custody in local jails and private prisons across the country.

In December, the House Oversight and Reform Committee announced it had opened an investigation into the medical care of immigrant detainees in the wake of a BuzzFeed News story that revealed a series of allegations of substandard care from a whistleblower.

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

Totally corrupt!

“Wait and see what the end product is?” John Sandweg, are you really so naive that you think Kirchner will do her job and help detainees to be treated like humans? Come on, man! No way! We already know what’s going too happen. And, it will be the exact opposite of what Congress intended in enacting this legislation. But, it’s not like Congress, or the courts for that matter, hold this regime accountable for scofflaw conduct.

She’s there to insure that cruel and inhuman treatment are the norms, there is no accountability, and that the legion of DHS detention abuses (the “core concept” of the “New American Gulag”) are covered up. In other words, to insure maximum dehumanization, a key part of the regime’s nativist agenda. What in Julie Kirchner’s anti-immigrant zealotry, or Tracy Short’s for that matter, would make you think that there is any “ambiguity” on how this will play out?

Keep those court cases rolling! Notwithstanding their tendency toward complicity, eventually, at least some Federal Judges hopefully can be “shamed” into enforcing laws protecting migrants, recognizing human rights, and requiring human dignity in DHS’s treatment of detainees (most of whom don’t belong in “uncivil” detention in the first place).

PWS

01-30-20

ADOLFO FLORES @ BUZZFEED: More On The EOIR “Tent Court” Farce!

Adolfo Flores
Adolfo Flores
Immigration Reporter
BuzzFeed News
Laura Lynch
Laura Lynch
Senior Policy Counsel
AILA

 

See below Buzzfeed’s latest story about tent court access.

Immigration “Tent Courts” Aren’t Allowing Full Public Access, Attorneys Say

Observers and reporters can’t watch what some consider to be the most important part of an immigration proceeding.

Adolfo FloresBuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted on January 13, 2020, at 4:23 p.m. ET

The Trump administration recently agreed to open its “tent courts,” makeshift tribunals where immigrants made to wait in Mexico attend hearings, but lawyers and legal observers say the set up still fails to give the public full access.

Attorneys and advocates said the government is still keeping the public out of what some consider to be the most important part of immigration court proceedings by using judges located inside a Fort Worth, Texas, facility that is closed to the public. The hearings are where immigrants get the opportunity to present arguments and evidence as to why they should be allowed to stay in the US.

Judges at the Fort Worth Immigration Adjudication Center, which the public has no access to, are overseeing the individual merits hearings via video that’s beamed into “tent courts” in Brownsville, Texas. At the same time, the public has also been barred from attending the hearings in person at the “tent court,” effectively closing off public access.

“It’s highly problematic,” said Laura Lynch, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “Using these adjudication centers and judges is clearly intentional. The agency is trying to operate these cases in secret.”

The facilities in Falls Church, Virginia, and Fort Worth were created by the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which oversees the nation’s immigration courts, as a way to reduce its growing case backlog.

Denying public access is especially concerning because most immigrants in “Remain in Mexico,” formally known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), are not represented by an attorney, Lynch said. An analysis of 56,004 MPP hearings found that only 4% of immigrants are represented by a lawyer, the rest are having to make their case on their own.

“Many immigrants are walking into these tent courts unrepresented,” Lynch said. “And there’s no way to observe them.”

EOIR refused to confirm whether judges at the adjudication center were listening to merits hearings in Brownsville. But attorneys with clients at the Brownsville “tent court” confirmed to BuzzFeed News that they’ve had cases before judges at the Fort Worth adjudication center and have been rescheduled to judges there in the future.

“All immigration judges hear all case types. Due to pending litigation, we have no further comment,” said Kathryn Mattingly, a spokesperson for EOIR.

The Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In September, DHS opened two temporary court facilities along the Texas border, one in Brownsville and another in Laredo for immigrants in the “Remain in Mexico” program. Judges in brick and mortar courts throughout the US, officials said, would hear their cases and make rulings via video.

When the “tent courts” started their first hearings, they were immediately criticized for its lack of transparency because reporters, legal observers, and the public couldn’t attend hearings from inside.

Instead, DHS and EOIR said the public could attend the hearings by going to the courtroom where the immigration judges, who would be video conferenced into the “tent courts,” were physically at. But that’s not possible when immigration judges hear merits hearings from adjudication centers closed to the public.

In general, immigration courts are open to the public, although according to the Justice Department, immigrants can request that merits hearings be closed.

At the Brownsville “tent courts,” however, merits hearings are closed automatically by design, said Andrew Udelsman, a fellow in the Texas Civil Rights Project’s racial and economic justice program.

“The case right now appears to be a blanket rule that the public has no access to MPP merits proceedings and that is illegal,” Udelsman told BuzzFeed News. “There is a First Amendment right of public access to court proceedings. That right is being violated by this blanket denial of access to merit proceedings.”

Demonstators, all part of a grassroots group called Witness at the Border supported by ACLU Texas and Children’s Defense Fund Texas, gather to protest outside the Brownsville “tent courts.”

Last week, Reynaldo Leaños Jr., a reporter with Texas Public Radio, tried to attend a merits hearing at the Brownsville “tent court” after a Cuban asylum-seeker invited him to attend. Yet private security contracted by the government told Leaños no one was allowed into the hearings.

Asked by BuzzFeed News why that was the case, a security guard with Ahtna at the facility, who declined to give his name, said it was because the shipping containers the merits hearings are held in were too small to accommodate additional members of the public.

Norma Sepulveda, an immigration attorney who had a hearing last week in Brownsville with a judge located in Fort Worth, said it was “ridiculous” that the merits hearings were being held inside small shipping containers that only fit seven people.

“I don’t know why they put us in these tiny rooms to hold the hearings other than to say there’s no space for anyone else to be present,” Sepulveda told BuzzFeed News. “These hearings are being scheduled with these judges intentionally to be able to conduct them without any oversight.”

Sepulveda said her client’s son, a resident of the US, was initially listed as a witness in the case and was allowed into the room. However, when Sepulveda said she was no longer going to call him to testify he was removed from the room by private security.

“It’s clear to me that the policy is no spectators, if you will, and no family support for individual hearings,” Sepulveda said.

Private security at the “tent courts” in Brownsville also enforcing different rules from one day to the next, that legal observers and attorneys said don’t make sense.

On the first day the public was allowed into the Brownsville facilities, private security agents said reporters weren’t allowed to attend hearings with a pen and notepad. Yet, on the second day they did allow journalists to take notes, but not observers like Udelsman of the Texas Civil Rights Project.

Private security officials are also only allowing the public to view master calendar hearings, the first time people see a judge, which tend to be short preliminary hearings. Requests to attend different master calendar hearings, other than the one room made available, were denied.

“They’re preventing anybody from being able to explain in the most accurate manner possible, what’s happening,” Udelsman said. “You’re prohibiting the public from knowing what’s happening in the courtroom and making life as difficult as possible for the few people who are able to report on what’s happening.”

Laura A. Lynch, Esq.

Senior Policy Counsel

Direct: 202.507.7627 I Email: llynch@aila.org

 

American Immigration Lawyers Association

Main: 202.507.7600 I Fax: 202.783.7853 I www.aila.org

1331 G Street NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20005

 

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

Thanks for passing this along and for all you do, Laura!

 

“Secret proceedings” and lack of transparency are key steps toward any neo-fascist state!

 

Due Process Forever!

 

PWS

01-14-20

 

 

 

 

HAMED ALEAZIZ @ BUZZFEED: REGIME KID KILLERS ENABLED BY COMPLICIT FEDERAL COURTS THAT IGNORE THE CONSTITUTION & ACT AS IF THEY ARE IMMUNE FROM THE HUMAN MISERY THEY COUNTENANCE!

Hamed Aleaziz
Hamed Aleaziz
Immigration Reporter
BuzzFeed News

A Child’s Forehead Partially Removed, Four Deaths, The Wrong Medicine — A Secret Report Exposes Health Care For Jailed Immigrants

BuzzFeed News Reporter

Immigrants held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement jails around the US received medical care so bad it resulted in two preventable surgeries, including an 8-year-old boy who had to have part of his forehead removed, and contributed to four deaths, according to an internal complaint from an agency whistleblower.

The allegations appear in an explosive Department of Homeland Security memo, obtained by BuzzFeed News, containing reports of detainees being given incorrect medication, suffering from delays in treating withdrawal symptoms, and one who was allowed to become so mentally unstable he lacerated his own penis and required reparative surgery.

To Read the Full Whistleblower Report, click here.

The whistleblower reported that three people had died in ICE lockup after receiving inadequate medical treatment or oversight, and said official reports on a fourth person’s death were “very misleading.” One man died from meningitis following “grossly negligent” care. Another killed himself after saying he would do exactly that months earlier.

The allegations were laid out in a March 20 memorandum signed by Cameron Quinn, DHS’s officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and sent to top ICE leadership. The memo describes the whistleblower as someone within the ICE Health Service Corps, or IHSC, which provides medical care and oversight for detainees in the agency’s custody. BuzzFeed News does not know the person’s identity.

The whistleblower’s allegations were first received by the Homeland Security’s inspector general in April 2018. In July of that year, the inspector general sent the allegations to Quinn’s office, which will investigate the medical care and oversight IHSC provides at a time when President Donald Trump demonizes immigrants, detains them in record numbers, and enacts restrictive policies to keep them out of the US.

The allegations in the DHS memo, if corroborated, are a cry from someone working for ICE echoing what advocates, lawsuits, and other media reports have been saying for years: The medical care ICE provides and oversees for immigrants in private and local jails could be very bad.

This internal memo is one of a trove of remarkable secret documents — including emails, briefing materials, and draft reports — BuzzFeed News has obtained throughout 2019 uncovering how the Trump administration’s immigration policies were formed and executed, and how those policies confused or harmed people who sought to immigrate to the US. These records have revealed how immigrants locked up at the US border had no access to showers and how children were held in closed and crowded cells; that US border officials apparently pressured the asylum office to deny immigrants entry into the US; that a Texas detention center waited more than seven hours to transfer an ailing 37-year-old Mexican man to a hospital, where he died from bleeding in his brain; and that in the final days before launching a controversial plan to deport Central American asylum-seekers to Guatemala, US officials scrambled to answer basic questions such as how people would get shelter, food, and social services.

BuzzFeed News has retyped the memo based on the whistleblower’s allegations, providing its full text, because metadata or other information in the original could compromise a source’s identity. BuzzFeed News redacted the names of most immigrants and ICE middle managers and their contact information.

[Make more work like this possible: Become a BuzzFeed News member today.]

The memo describes what happened to 17 different immigrants who were held at nine facilities across six states, from Georgia to Washington. The allegations include:

That immigrants received incorrect medications. One man was given an antidepressant instead of an antipsychotic drug, likely worsening his condition. Another was given aspirin despite having thin blood — he nearly died.

That four immigrants endured severe withdrawal symptoms while in ICE custody. One man addicted to opioids was the subject of a “medication error”; two men with a benzodiazepine addiction saw delays in treatment; and one man “went into severe alcohol withdrawal and delirium and was admitted to the hospital in the intensive care unit.”

That IHSC leadership was unresponsive or even dishonest when confronted. They “failed to take appropriate action” when told of policy violations in 10 of the cases; “did not respond” to concerns about one case in which a detainee with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma died under “deplorable” conditions; and were “erroneous” and told others to “hold off” when looking into several cases.

Overall, the memo says, the whistleblower alleged that IHSC “has systematically provided inadequate medical and mental health care and oversight to immigration detainees across the U.S.” The memo also says the inspector general will investigate the whistleblower’s allegation that they were retaliated against for raising the issues.

The memo was distributed within the agency — but a former senior ICE official who was aware of the allegations and the response told BuzzFeed News that ICE leadership appeared to not take a close look at the allegations.

“This is significant and very damning,” the former official, who requested anonymity in order to speak freely, said. “It blows up a lot of the ICE responses to allegations of poor medical care and about how it provides ‘the highest care of detainees.’ This makes that seem pretty false, which it is.”

An ICE spokesperson told BuzzFeed News in a statement it “is committed to ensuring that those in our custody reside in secure, humane environments and under appropriate conditions of confinement. The agency takes very seriously the health, safety and welfare of those in our care, including those who come into ICE custody with prior medical conditions or who have never before received appropriate medical care. It also uses a multi-layered inspections program to ensure its facilities meet a certain threshold of care as outlined in our contracts with facilities, as well as the National Detention Standards and the Performance Based National Detention Standards.”

The agency added that it maintains a detainee helpline and created an independent oversight body “to conduct independent oversight of detention conditions for ICE detainees through facility reviews and targeted site visits.” The agency also said senior officials have a council that examines serious issues, especially “critical incidents,” to make sure leadership knows about incidents and “and that all required investigation and coordination is undertaken in a timely fashion.”

[Read ICE’s full statement here.]

ICE referred BuzzFeed News to DHS for questions about investigations into the memo’s allegations. DHS didn’t return a request for comment by deadline.

A detainee receives prescribed medications from an employee at the regional detention center for immigrants in Tacoma, recently renamed the Northwest ICE Processing Center, Sept. 10.

ICE has expanded the number of people it detains to record levels under Trump. Thousands of immigrants in its custody had passed their initial asylum screenings, a practice that in the past generally led to release from custody.

The peak came this summer when around 55,000 immigrants were in custody in local jails and private prisons across the country. To pay for it all, DHS had to transfer money earmarked for disaster relief and other efforts. In recent weeks, it has dipped to around 44,000 people in custody, still above the numbers during the Obama administration.

In the 2019 fiscal year, eight people died in ICE custody. The highest number of deaths in recent years came in the 2017 fiscal year, which included the end of the Obama administration, when 12 people died in ICE custody.

ICE’s sprawling detention system relies on a variety of methods to provide medical care. In some facilities, the agency provides it directly; in others, it has a few ICE employees assist private or public contractors; and in many, it oversees care provided by a contractor.

On Dec. 5, 2017, an 8-year-old boy’s mother told officials at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley that her son’s earache had been worsening for two weeks, the memo says. Medical personnel diagnosed him with swimmer’s ear — an external ear infection — and gave him ear drops.

More than two weeks later, on Dec. 23, the boy had seizures and was taken to the hospital. Doctors there diagnosed him with Pott’s puffy tumor, a rare infection inside the skull that spread from the child’s ear to his facial bone and formed abscesses under the skull. To treat it, they surgically removed part of the boy’s frontal bone, which makes up the forehead.

The whistleblower said that ICE’s Medical Quality Management Unit analyzed the case, and found that the “inadequate medical care provided by [the detention center] was a contributory factor resulting in harm.”

The quality control unit’s report was forwarded to IHSC leadership who, the whistleblower said, “failed to take appropriate action.”

“Allegedly, delayed medical care and misdiagnosis led to an infection that spread from the child’s ear to his facial bone, requiring a partial bone resection. According to the information provided, on December 5, 2017, the child’s mother first reported that her child had a progressively worsening earache for the past two weeks. The child was subsequently treated using nursing guidelines for Allergies/Fever/Pain, diagnosed with Swimmer’s Ear, and given ear drops. However, on December 23, 2017, the child was noted to have seizure activity and was transferred to the hospital where he was diagnosed with Pott’s Puffy Tumor with epidural and subdural abscess resulting in partial frontal bone resection. Further, the complainant alleged that MQMU performed an analysis of the case and found that the inadequate medical care provided by STFRC was a contributory factor resulting in harm. MQMU’s report was forwarded to IHSC leadership and MQMU requested findings and/or interventions from Clinical Services, yet IHSC leadership failed to take appropriate action.’

At the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, a man was “was reportedly bleeding through his skin and having vision changes,” the whistleblower said.

Instead of taking him to the hospital, a doctor continued his aspirin regimen — which thins the blood — for six days “despite [the detainee] having extremely thin blood,” the memo reads.

The result was “his coughing up large amounts of blood.” He was taken “in critical condition” to the hospital, where he was “not expected to survive.”

The quality control unit reviewed the case “and determined that that Asprin therapy may have caused harm that could have resulted in a fatality.”

“A delay in care,” the memo reads, “occurred after medical staff were notified of the detainee’s critical lab result that should have resulted in immediate medical intervention.”

The quality control unit notified IHSC of “policy and procedure violations,” the memo reads, but “leadership failed to take appropriate action.”

“Allegedly, a delay in care occurred after medical staff were notified of the detainee’s critical lab result that should have resulted in immediate medical intervention.[Name withheld by BuzzFeed News] was reportedly bleeding through his skin and having vision changes. Despite having extremely thin blood, the physician allegedly kept him on aspirin regimen for six days, resulting in his coughing up large amounts of blood. [Name withheld by BuzzFeed News] was taken to the hospital in critical condition and not expected to survive. MQMU performed an analysis of the case and determined that that Asprin therapy may have caused harm that could have resulted in a fatality. The findings were forwarded to IHSC leadership for consideration of a root cause analysis, yet IHSC leadership failed to take appropriate action.’

And at the Eloy Federal Contract Facility in Arizona, the quality control unit notified the detention center’s psychiatrist several times about an immigrant’s “worsening psychosis-related symptoms, but the psychiatrist failed to treat him,” the memo reads.

The man “became so unstable that he lacerated his penis, requiring hospitalization and surgery.”

“According to the complaint, IHSC Medical Quality Management Unit (“MQMU’) notified the facility psychiatrist several times about[Name withheld by BuzzFeed News] worsening psychosis-related symptoms, but the psychiatrist failed to treat him. [Name withheld by BuzzFeed News] allegedly became so unstable that he lacerated his penis, requiring hospitalization and surgery.’

A detainee rests at the infirmary of Port Isabel Detention Center in Texas.

The whistleblower referred to the case of Ronald Cruz, whose real name is Ronal Romero.

Romero came to the US in 2002 and lived for more than a decade in Missouri, where he found a community of friends and worked long hours at local restaurants in management positions, his family told BuzzFeed News.

In January 2016, he was convicted of driving under the influence and sentenced to two days in jail. Romero had a previous deportation order, and was picked up by ICE officials and sent back to Honduras.

Ronal Romero

Romero returned to the US because of the lack of opportunity and dangerous conditions in his home country, his family said. Romero was arrested by Customs and Border Protection officials on May 9, 2018, and was transferred to ICE’s Port Isabel Detention Center in Los Fresnos, Texas, on May 14.

By the next day, he began feeling sick and was in serious pain, according to a death review conducted by ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility and obtained by the Project on Government Oversight.

He told the medical staff at the ICE facility that he had been receiving ear drops and antibiotics for an ear infection while he was in CBP custody. He was treated and given medication. But later that day he became confused, not knowing where he was, and had trouble waking up. He died the next day in a hospital.

His family did not hear from him while he was in ICE custody, they said, and his death came as a shock: “I cried deeply — I was like a father and an oldest brother to him,” said one of his brothers, who requested anonymity to speak freely. Their father, the brothers explained, had been murdered years ago in Honduras.

An autopsy performed by a private entity found that Cruz died of “sepsis complication with meningitis.” An internal death review conducted by ICE found the facility was compliant with its medical standards.

But the whistleblower called the medical care rendered to Cruz “grossly negligent” and challenged ICE’s review, alleging “that the mortality review committee was erroneous in concluding that the care rendered to Mr. Cruz was appropriate.”

Cruz’s two older brothers have tried to convince people that the treatment their brother received was substandard.

“I’m grateful to the whistleblower for the strength to share this information in this way — it’s very sad what happened with my brother,” one of Cruz’s siblings told BuzzFeed News. “We believe he should be here with us. He was our little brother — he was everything to us. He was treated like an animal.”

Andrew Free, an immigration attorney in Georgia who represents Cruz’s family, said the existence of the memo was illuminating: “To hear an insider who has knowledge of government records saying this was grossly negligent is at once tragic, and oddly validating.”

“You should know,” his older brother said, “he was a hard worker who treated others well. He wasn’t a bad person. He was a good brother and a good friend.”

“According to the complainant, the medical care rendered to Mr. Cruz was ‘grossly negligent.’ Mr. Cruz’s preliminary cause of death on May 16, 2018 was ruled as meningitis. The complainant alleged that the mortality review committee was erroneous in concluding that the care rendered to Mr. Cruz was appropriate.’

The whistleblower alleged other widespread issues, such as detainees with psychological problems who were allegedly left without observation or provided incorrect medication.

Officials were notified about Efrain De La Rosa’s deteriorating mental health at Stewart Detention Facility in Lumpkin, Georgia. De La Rosa said on April 26, 2018, that he’d be dead in three days — he killed himself about 11 weeks later.

“Mr. De La Rosa’s preliminary cause of death was ruled a suicide. According to the complainant, IHSC leadership was notified of Mr. De La Rosa’s deteriorating mental health condition via SEN report on several occasions between April 25, 2018 and May 6, 2018. On April 26, 2018, a SEN report indicated that while on suicide watch, Mr. De La Rosa’s had stated to staff that he would be dead in three days. The complainant noted that several months earlier, IHSC leadership directed MQMU to cease reviewing SEN and segregation reports, despite concerns raised to IHSC leadership that this restriction could negatively impact detainee safety.’

De La Rosa has been the subject of investigations by the Intercept, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the Young Turks. The Young Turks previously obtained an internal email sent to ICE’s current acting director, Matthew Albence, that relayed issues with ICE’s medical care.

These outlets reported that De La Rosa was diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and was being held in solitary confinement on suicide watch. He seemed obsessed with death. When he was transferred from a mental health facility to Stewart, the staff there didn’t register his issues. ICE said it is “committed to the health and welfare of all those in its custody and is undertaking a comprehensive agency-wide review of this incident.”

One man at Eloy Federal Contract Facility in Arizona was supposed to receive antipsychotic medication — but allegedly got antidepressants instead, the memo said, “which likely worsened his psychosis.” Senior leadership allegedly told colleagues “to ‘hold off’ on notifying IHSC Clinical Services unless and until the detainee became psychotic and suicidal again.”

“Allegedly, [Name withheld by BuzzFeed News] was not treated appropriately for serious mental illness with psychotic-like symptoms. According to the complainant, MQMU warned IHSC senior leadership on two occasions about [Name withheld by BuzzFeed News] increased risk of adverse outcomes due to his auditory hallucinations and suicidal ideations. This allegedly resulted in [Name withheld by BuzzFeed News] not receiving anti-psychotic medication, despite the IHSC chief psychiatrist’s agreement with the MQMU’s findings and recommendation that [Name withheld by BuzzFeed News] receive anti-psychotic medication. Instead, [Name withheld by BuzzFeed News] received an anti-depressant which likely worsened his psychosis. The complainant further claimed that following MQMU’s second notification of inadequate mental health care and treatment, IHSC senior leadership allegedly advised MQMU to ‘hold off’ on notifying IHSC Clinical Services unless and until the detainee became psychotic and suicidal again.’

Four cases alleged forcible medication at two facilities: the El Paso Service Processing Center in Texas and the Jena/LaSalle Detention Facility in Louisiana. In these cases, the memo was concerned with “policy and procedure violations” around the injections. And each time, the memo said, “IHSC leadership failed to take appropriate action.”

Both cases in Louisiana involved forced injections of Ativan, a medication that aims to treat patients with mental illness and agitation. There, a woman was sent to the hospital for erratic behavior and convulsions. When she returned, she was found eating toilet paper and Styrofoam. She was allegedly “given forced intramuscular injection of Ativan.”

“[Name withheld by BuzzFeed News] was sent to the hospital Emergency Room due to erratic behavior and convulsions. When she returned to the facility, she was observed eating toilet paper and styrofoam in the Medical Housing Unit (MHU). According to the complainant, [Name withheld by BuzzFeed News] was placed at higher than normal risk for mental status deterioration and given forced intramuscular injection of Ativan. Further, the complainant alleged that MQMU performed an analysis of the case and the findings included policy and procedure violations, which were forwarded to IHSC leadership for review and action, yet IHSC leadership failed to take appropriate action.’ “Allegedly, [Name withheld by BuzzFeed News] was forcibly medicated with multiple Ativan injections for repeated behavioral issues. Further, MQMU performed an analysis of the case and the findings included policy and procedure violations, which were forwarded to IHSC leadership for review and action, yet IHSC leadership dialed to take appropriate action.’ “According to the information provided, [Name withheld by BuzzFeed News] was observed with a sweatshirt around his neck and four correctional officers held him down while medical staff administered ahaloperidol intramuscularly by force. According to the complainant, MQMU performed an analysis of the case and the findings included policy and procedure violations, which were forwarded to IHSC leadership for review and action, yet, IHSC leadership failed to take appropriate action.’ “Allegedly, [Name withheld by BuzzFeed News] was forcibly medicated for reported behavioral issues. MQMU performed an analysis of the case and the findings included policy and procedure violations, which were forwarded to IHSC leadership for review and action, yet IHSC leadership failed to take appropriate action.’

In at least four cases, detainees were allegedly not appropriately treated for their alcohol or opioid withdrawal.

“Allegedly, facility medical staff did not follow policies and procedures concerning withdrawal protocols for [Name withheld by BuzzFeed News] alcohol withdrawal. [Name withheld by BuzzFeed News] a stated during his intake screening that he consumed one bottle of vodka and two bottles of beer daily. [Name withheld by BuzzFeed News] subsequently went into severe alcohol withdrawal and delirium and was admitted to the hospital in the intensive care unit (ICU). Further, according to the complainant, MQMU performed an analysis of the case and the findings included policy and procedure violations, which were forwarded to IHSC leadership for review and action, yet IHSC leadership failed to take appropriate action.’ “Allegedly, facility medical staff did not follow policies and procedures concerning withdrawal protocols for [Name withheld by BuzzFeed News] opioid withdrawal. According to the complainant, the detainee was not treated until MQMU staff called the facility following a review of a significant event notification (SEN). The detainee was subsequently found to be in severe benzodiazepine withdrawal and was admitted to the hospital. Further, the complainant alleges that MQMU performed an analysis of the case and the findings included policy and procedure violations, which were forwarded to IHSC leadership for review and action, yet IHSC leadership failed to take appropriate action.’ “Allegedly, facility medical staff did not follow policies and procedures concerning withdrawal protocols for [Name withheld by BuzzFeed News] benzodiazepines withdrawal. According to the complainant, medical staff did not address his withdrawal at intake, despite his reporting high levels of daily consumption of benzodiazepines. [Name withheld by BuzzFeed News] subsequently went into drug withdrawal seizures and was admitted to the hospital. Further, the complainant alleges that MQMU performed an analysis of the case and the findings included policy and procedure violations, which were forwarded to IHSC leadership for review and action, yet IHSC leadership failed to take appropriate action.’ “Allegedly, facility medical staff did not follow policies and procedures concerning withdrawal protocols for [Name withheld by BuzzFeed News] opioid withdrawal, and a medication error occurred during the course of his treatment. Further, according to the complainant, MQMU performed an analysis of the case and the findings included policy and procedure violations, which were forwarded to the IHSC leadership for review and action, yet IHSC leadership failed to take appropriate action.’

And Roger Rayson died in ICE custody at the LaSalle Detention Facility of bleeding in the brain. The whistleblower described the care provided to him as “deplorable.”

“According to the complainant, Mr. Rayson healthcare was “deplorable.’Mr. Rayson’s preliminary cause of death was ruled as subdural hemorrhages resulting in a traumatic brain injury. The complainant claimed that multiple requests for the Uniform Corrective Action Plan (UCAP) and Root Cause Analysis (RCA) were made to IHSC leadership, but IHSC did not respond.’

Rayson, a 47-year-old Jamaican immigrant, died approximately two months after being taken into ICE custody and a month “after being transferred to a hospital for nausea, vomiting, and pain,” according to a report by four advocacy groups. At the hospital, the report said he was diagnosed with “a fast-growing but treatable form of non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and died nine days later.”

Medical experts interviewed by BuzzFeed News said the series of allegations required additional scrutiny, including from Congress.

“The allegations, if they are true, are serious and deserve really careful scrutiny about what went wrong, why it went wrong, and it is very possible they represent a more fundamental problem with the ICE health care system,” said Marc Stern, a public health expert and faculty member at the University of Washington.

Homer Venters, a former chief medical officer for the New York City jail system who has closely studied care in correctional facilities, told BuzzFeed News he was concerned that “IHSC is not acting in a way to not repeat the same type of preventable death over and over in different places around the country.”

Venters said that, in his experience, when health professionals such as the whistleblower take their complaints outside of their own system, “they do so because they don’t see a path to improving the system from the inside — they don’t see hope for addressing what are detention-related deaths that are preventable that flow from lack of access to quality health services.”

A box for grievances is seen in the cafeteria at the ICE South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, Aug. 23.

ICE has been criticized for its detainee medical care for years. In 2019 alone, the family of an Iranian man who the ACLU claims failed to receive proper treatment for methadone withdrawal and later died in ICE custody in Colorado sued the private prison contractor he was held in, GEO Group. In August, immigrant advocates sued ICE on behalf of 15 individuals detained at 8 different facilities in 6 states over what they described as the federal government’s failure to provide adequate medical and mental health treatment. The groups allege that the detainees have been denied necessary surgeries or even provided medication, such as insulin, for serious medical issues.

ICE officials have long said that they are dedicated to providing timely and comprehensive medical care to immigrants in their custody, noting that they have access to a daily sick call and 24-hour emergency care. The agency has publicized that it spends more than $269 million each year on health care services.

The former senior ICE official told BuzzFeed News that some at the agency brush away allegations of substandard medical care. “‘The care is better than they got in their home countries’ — you hear that a lot,” the former official said.

The official said it was unlikely that the agency would dramatically alter or add resources to its medical care system.

“It’s not going to happen under this administration,” the former official said. “That would take away money from beds and they are high on beds. They are not going to want to use that money in a different way.” ●

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From the Supremes on down, Article III Courts have had more than ample opportunities to put an end to unconstitutional, arbitrary, punitive imprisonment through the disingenuous fiction of “civil” detention. The dead bodies are piling up at their ivory tower doors.

Perhaps if their kids and grandkids foreheads were being hacked off, we’d get the judicial courage and integrity needed to stop the unlawful killing of the most vulnerable among us. 

Until we do, the slaughter of the innocents will continue!

The cruel irony:  If convicted criminals were treated this way the Article IIIs would hold it unconstitutional in an eye blink.

Constantly Confront Complicit Courts 4 Change!

PWS

12-13-19

TRUMP REGIME ORDERS OFFICERS TO IGNORE EVIDENCE, VIOLATE HUMAN RIGHTS OF ASYLUM SEEKERS — “‘We are being asked to violate human rights,’” the asylum officer told BuzzFeed News.”

Hamed Aleaziz
Hamed Aleaziz
Immigration Reporter
BuzzFeed News

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/asylum-officers-guatemala-deport-central-guidance

Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News:

US immigration officers implementing a Trump administration plan to deport asylum-seekers from Central America to Guatemala were provided materials this week detailing the dangers faced by those in the country, including gangs, violence, and killings with “high levels of impunity.”

The “resource guide” on Guatemala was given to asylum officers as part of materials to implement a controversial policy to deport adult asylum-seekers from El Salvador and Honduras to Guatemala. The guide, which was obtained by BuzzFeed News, relies primarily on public sources: academic publications, research from Human Rights Watch and other organizations, and news reports.

A Human Rights Watch report from 2018 that was included in the guide for asylum officers, said “Violence and extortion by powerful criminal organizations remain serious problems in Guatemala. Gang-related violence is an important factor prompting people, including unaccompanied youth, to leave the country.”

The research provided to the officers confirmed some of their worst fears about sending people to the country.

“Being told to send asylum-seekers to Guatemala without even a screening on their claim while also being given research explaining, in detail, the incredible danger that exists throughout the country is extensively frustrating,” said one asylum officer, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. “This agreement feels like a pretext to get rid of as many asylum claims as possible.”

pastedGraphic.png

Emilio Espejel / AP

Central American migrants wait at the El Chaparral border crossing in Tijuana, Mexico.

The Trump administration began this week carrying out its controversial new policy of deporting to Guatemala adults from El Salvador and Honduras who have sought asylum at the southern US border. DHS officials confirmed an initial flight to Guatemala in a Thursday press briefing.

The Trump administration says the plan is a key element in its strategy to deter migration at the border and another method to restrict asylum-seekers from entering the US. Advocates and asylum officers previously told BuzzFeed News that the unprecedented plan lacks legality and organization, and will lead immigrants to be placed in dangerous circumstances.

“Data from Guatemala’s Attorney General’s Office shows that nearly 8,400 extortion complaints were filed in 2017, but less than 700 convictions made,” reads one research paper linked in the guide to asylum officers on extortion issues in the country. “Amid such high levels of impunity, fear of reprisals for not paying extortion demands is a huge concern among victims.” A link to a Guardian article titled “Guatemala in grip of ‘mafia coalition,’ says UN body in scathing corruption report,” is also included, among other stories detailing major safety issues in the country.

US Citizenship and Immigration Services officials included the guidance in an email to asylum officers across the country Wednesday morning in a notice that implementation of the policy would begin, according to a copy of the email provided to BuzzFeed News.

Under the policy, border officials in the El Paso, Texas, area will refer a small number of adult asylum-seekers from El Salvador and Honduras who have recently arrived at the border to asylum officers for interviews, according to two sources with knowledge of the process.

BuzzFeed News recently revealed that, up until late last week, Department of Homeland Security officials were still scrambling to resolve critical details about the Guatemala plan. “There is uncertainty as to who will provide orientation services for migrants as well as who will provide shelter, food, transportation, and other care,” read a DHS brief drafted for Acting Secretary Chad Wolf in the run-up to a meeting Friday with Guatemala Interior Minister Enrique Degenhart.

Guatemala is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere and has the sixth-highest rate of malnutrition in the world. Nearly half of the country suffers from chronic malnutrition, with the prevalence reaching about 70% in some indigenous areas, according to a 2018 report from USAID.

The country has struggled with violence but has seen a drop in murders in recent years, with a homicide rate of 22.4 per 100,000 people. By comparison, the US had a homicide rate of 5.3 per 100,000.

“We are being asked to violate human rights,” the asylum officer told BuzzFeed News.

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

Summary: Government officials routinely and openly violate human rights of asylum seekers and other migrants with impunity.

Sounds like something out of the Country Reports for some of the repressive states that I used to deal with in deciding asylum cases as an Immigration Judge. 

Now, it describes the United States.

Even before Trump, the U.S. had a rather poor record of holding human rights violators accountable. The folks who mapped out the clearly illegal “torture program” during the Bush II Administration were never held accountable. Indeed, several of them were actually rewarded despite their involvement in immoral and illegal actions.

PWS

11-22-19

JUDICIAL MALFEASANCE AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS: FECKLESS FEDERAL COURTS STAND BY & WATCH WHILE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ORBITS ASYLUM SEEKERS INTO THE VOID — Apparently Both The Law & Human Lives Have Ceased To Have Meaning For Those Blessed With Lifetime Tenure & No Accountability For Human Rights Abuses!

Hamed Aleaziz
Hamed Aleaziz
Immigration Reporter
BuzzFeed News

https://apple.news/AijtlVW8iRqm87hLGuQq7uA

Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News:

Trump Is Sending Asylum-Seekers To Guatemala. His Administration Privately Admitted It Had No Idea What Would Happen To Them Next.

BuzzFeed News Reporter

A group of Guatemalan migrants deported from the US arrive at the Air Force base in Guatemala City on Sept. 5.

In the final days before launching a controversial plan to send asylum-seekers arriving at the US border to Guatemala, Department of Homeland Security officials were still scrambling to figure out critical details, including how those seeking protection would obtain shelter, food, and access to orientation services, according to government briefing materials obtained by BuzzFeed News.

Despite the questions, the documents indicate that DHS planned to send 12 asylum-seekers on the first flight to Guatemala, a Central American country that has struggled with violent crime, and was tentatively scheduled to depart on Tuesday.

The materials, drawn up last week for newly appointed acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf, suggest that department officials were trying to finalize key details regarding the implementation of a complicated proposal to send asylum-seekers arriving at the US border to Guatemala as part of a deal similar to a safe third country agreement.

The plan has been highlighted by the Trump administration as a key element in its strategy to deter migration at the border and another method to restrict asylum-seekers from entering the US.

“There is uncertainty as to who will provide orientation services for migrants as well as who will provide shelter, food, transportation, and other care,” read the DHS brief, drafted for Wolf in the run-up to a meeting Friday with Guatemala’s Interior Minister Enrique Degenhart. The implementation plan spelled out that Guatemala would provide the services but recently there had been “confusion” as to whether that would happen, according to the materials.

Wolf was urged to raise the issues with Degenhart in their meeting and clarify the outstanding issues.

“The U.S. needs confirmation from the [Government of Guatemala] that they will provide shelter, transportation, and food,” the briefing materials read. “If not, the U.S. and [Government of Guatemala] need to brainstorm other avenues of assistance.”

It is unclear if the planned flight is still scheduled to take off.

Trump administration officials have said that partnering with countries in Central America ultimately benefits the US by cutting down on the number of asylum-seekers attempting to make the journey to the US. Advocates counter that such agreements place vulnerable populations in countries that lack systems for adequate asylum processing and have high murder rates and rampant crime.

Guatemala is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere and has the sixth-highest rate of malnutrition in the world. Nearly half of the country suffers from chronic malnutrition, with the prevalence reaching about 70% in some indigenous areas of Guatemala, according to a 2018 report from USAID.

The country has struggled with violence but has seen a drop in murders in recent years, with a homicide rate of 22.4 per 100,000 people. By comparison, the US had a homicide rate of 5.3 per 100,000.

A recent United Nations report also found that about 98% of crimes in Guatemala went unpunished in 2018.

The government posted regulations on Monday that clear the way for asylum officers to begin screening asylum-seekers under the plan. The interim final rule, which takes effect Tuesday, creates a process for asylum-officers to screen migrants thrust into the plan. In short, unless an asylum-seeker can prove it is “more likely than not” that they will be persecuted or tortured in Guatemala, they will be removed to the country to obtain protections there.

Administration officials have previously told congressional staffers that more than 200 individuals had applied for asylum in Guatemala, but only 18 had been processed.

While DHS officials have in the past heralded the involvement of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in helping build up Guatemala’s nascent asylum system, the briefing materials suggest that those efforts have been rocky, at best.

“It is our understanding that for some time now there has been friction between the [Government of Guatemala] and UNHCR regarding UNHCR’s role in the implementation” of the plan, according to the briefs. The UN has told US government officials it would provide orientation services for asylum-seekers who have been sent back to Guatemala.

But Guatemalan officials have told the US that UNHCR would not have access to their “reception centers and asylum programs.”

On Saturday, Reuters reported that US officials said asylum-seekers forced into the plan would not be flown to remote areas of Guatemala, an option the Central American country had proposed.

“All airports are being analyzed,” Degenhart told Reuters. “There are some that’ll qualify but others that won’t.”

The agreement could be one way for the Trump administration to attempt to safeguard a potential court overturn of its policy banning asylum for those who cross through a third country.

While the Supreme Court allowed for the policy to continue while the case continues in a federal appeals court challenge, it’s unclear whether the justices or the federal appellate court will ultimately side with the Trump administration.

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

So, the Supremes and the 9th Circuit are “ruminating” about these issues while folks are dying or being sent off to oblivion by an Administration notorious for its operational incompetence and its bad faith approach to immigration and asylum laws. How is that a “Safe Third Country” or a “right to apply for asylum regardless of status?” How is that performing the judicial duties for which they supposedly are being paid?

Meanwhile, corrupt immoral Administration officials are out there touting these programs as “deterrents” — not a means of fair adjudication or actual protection under our laws and international Conventions. So, why are Federal Appellate Judges and Supreme Court Justices so oblivious to truth? 

Hopefully, law schools are bringing up a new generation of lawyers that pay more attention to ethics, take the time to understand the human side of the law, and who will be courageous enough to stand up for individuals’ human rights against Government overreach. Obviously, too many of the preceding generations of “lawyers turned appellate judges” flunked on all counts.

Maybe a period of time representing migrants pro bono should be an absolute requirement for future Federal Judicial appointments. No matter how you look at it, we’re experiencing an institutional meltdown in the Federal Appellate Judiciary that, when combined with a lawless authoritarian Administration run wild, is endangering both our country and humanity.

PWS

11-19-19

WHILE IMPOTENT CONGRESS & FECKLESS ARTICLE IIIs TURN THEIR COLLECTIVE BACKS: THINK THAT U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT HASN’T BECOME “CLOWN COURT” WITH POTENTIALLY DEADLY CONSEQUENCES? – Try This Out For Size: “Border Patrol Agents Are Writing ‘Facebook’ As A Street Address For Asylum-Seekers Forced To Wait In Mexico: ‘It’s wild…People are having to make things up as they go along.’”

Adolfo Flores
Adolfo Flores
Immigration Reporter
BuzzFeed News

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/adolfoflores/asylum-notice-border-appear-facebook-mexico

Adolfo Flores reports for BuzzFeed News:

An asylum-seeker from Honduras who presented himself at the southern border this summer seeking protection was forced to wait in Mexico until his court date in the United States. In case the government needed to contact him, a Border Patrol officer listed an address on his forms: “Facebook.”

The man, who asked to only be identified by his last name Gutierrez, told BuzzFeed News that shortly before he was sent back to Mexico along with his family, a Border Patrol agent asked him to confirm that a shortened version of his name was indeed the one he used on Facebook.

“I said ‘Yes, why?'” Gutierrez recalled. “The agent told me ‘Because that’s how we’re going to send you information about your court case.’ I thought that was strange, but what could I do?”

The form Gutierrez was given, called a Notice to Appear (NTA), is a charging document issued by the Department of Homeland Security that includes information on where an immigrant must present themselves for their first court hearing, and critically, should include an address where the applicant can be contacted if the time, date, or location of the hearing is changed.

If an immigrant fails to appear at court hearings they run the risk of being ordered deported in absentia by an immigration judge, which makes having accurate and detailed information on the forms crucial for asylum-seekers.

Gutierrez said he was never contacted about his case via Facebook and it’s unclear how DHS officials would contact an immigrant via social media.

 

A US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) spokesperson did not respond to questions about why an agent would write “Facebook” as a known address, or whether the agency was using immigrants’ social media accounts as a way to inform them of any changes or updates to their hearings.

Attorneys and advocates working with asylum-seekers at the border, including those forced to wait in Mexico under the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) said they’ve seen other notices with “Facebook” addresses, or no address at all.

“‘Facebook’ is the most egregious example of the Department of Homeland Security doing away with the aspect of proper notice,” Leidy Perez-Davis, policy counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association told BuzzFeed News. “Facebook is not an adequate way to serve an NTA.”

Perez-Davis said she’s heard from other attorneys who had viewed documents from immigrants with improper or inadequate addresses such as shelters, which are often already full or only allow immigrants to remain there for a few days. Asylum-seekers are often given initial US court dates months in the future.

“This is procedurally incorrect, but DHS has been doing it anyway because there hasn’t been oversight on insufficient NTAs,” Perez-Davis said.

An immigrant in Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), shows documents to a US border agent at Paso del Norte border bridge to attend a court hearing for asylum seekers.In June 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that an immigrant’s notice to appear was invalid because it didn’t have the date or location of his scheduled court appearance. Attorneys have pointed to the ruling to argue that NTAs with inadequate information should also be invalid.

The Trump administration policy, also known as “Remain in Mexico,” has seen more than 47,000 asylum-seekers sent back to the country, straining local resources that help immigrants in the border communities. In addition to facing violence, kidnappings, and discrimination, some immigrants live on the streets and rely on donations to feed themselves.

If an immigrant receives an improperly addressed notice to appear, they can challenge whether it was legally serviced in court, Perez-Davis said, giving an immigrant the chance to reopen their case if they do not appear at their scheduled hearing and are ordered removed in their absence.

“It goes back to the issue of due process,” Perez-Davis said. “They can’t initiate proceedings without telling someone the details of the proceedings.”

Zoe Bowman, a law student who interned with Al Otro Lado, a binational border rights project and legal service provider, said she saw at least five immigrant NTAs that had “Facebook” listed as the known address. The first of which she saw in May or June of this year.

“It’s wild,” Bowman told BuzzFeed News. “Some wouldn’t have any addresses listed at all.”

The US asylum process is not set up for cases to be fought from Mexico, making the issue uncharted territory for the US government, immigrants, and attorneys, Bowman said.

“The issues with the NTAs is just one branch of that,” Bowman said. “People are having to make things up as they go along.”

Many of the other asylum-seekers returned to Mexico along with Gutierrez left for their home countries almost immediately. Gutierrez tried to wait for his court date, but only lasted three weeks in Tijuana. Facing a months-long wait for their first court hearing without money or space in a shelter, Gutierrez said he decided to go back to Honduras with his family.

“Tijuana is dangerous, I can’t be traveling with my family to the bridge at 4 a.m.,” Gutierrez said of the early hour he was expected to appear at a border crossing for his hearing. “We were in Mexico without money or a place to stay, I couldn’t make my daughter suffer through that.”

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

Yup! This won’t go down as one the finest moments for America, the Executive, the Article III Courts, or any of the folks involved in implementing what can only be termed a program of blatantly illegal and overt human rights abuses.

 

Those of us fighting for our Constitution, human life, and the true rule of law appear to be losing the battle for the time being, given the cowardly and inept performances of those few institutions like Congress, the Supremes, and Article III Appellate Courts who could put an end to these travesties and require reform and compliance with the Constitution and the rule of law respecting treatment of refugee applicants.

 

But, we are making a legal and historical record of who stood up for human rights and who planned, executed, and enabled what can only be termed “crimes against humanity.”

This week’s coveted “Five Clown Award” goes jointly to the Supremes and Congress for their joint catastrophic failure to put an end to this illegal nonsense and reestablish Due Process and the Rule of Law.

🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡

 

PWS

 

09-27-19

EOIR’S OUTRAGEOUS RIPOFF: As EOIR’s “Product” Gets Shoddier Every Day, & Due Process Is Eradicated, Bogus “Court” System’s Proposed 900% Appeal Fee Increase Is An Affront to U.S. Justice System!  

Hamed Aleaziz
Hamed Aleaziz
Immigration Reporter
BuzzFeed News

 

https://apple.news/AYnwPWRJnTi28JVAGnuMzgw

 

 

Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News:

The Trump administration is pushing a proposal to drastically increase fees for immigrants appealing deportation cases or legally attempting to get judges to reconsider their claims in court, according to a draft regulation obtained by BuzzFeed News.

The increase in fees, if instituted, could lead to a substantial shift in how and whether immigrants appeal judges’ decisions in deportation cases. It would also raise due process issues that will likely be challenged by advocates.

In a draft Department of Justice regulation obtained by BuzzFeed News, officials have proposed that immigrants pay $975 to request an appeal of an immigration judge’s ruling and $895 to request a case be reopened or reconsidered with the Board of Immigration Appeals. Proposed regulations are not immediately enacted and require a 60-day comment period.

Currently, the fee to apply for each of these requests is $110.

Such a jump in application prices would represent the latest attempt by the Trump administration to alter the immigration system. Experts believe, if enacted, the increases will impact certain immigrants’ very ability to obtain legal status and protections.

“They are essentially depriving people of the right to appeal — that is big money. It’s a substantial increase of fees that’s beyond the reach of people,” said Rebecca Jamil, a former immigration judge in San Francisco.

A spokesperson for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, an office in the Department of Justice, told BuzzFeed News: “DOJ generally does not confirm or comment on media speculation about regulations. Notably, however, despite inflation and rising administrative costs, EOIR fees have remained the same since 1986—despite increases in fees across many other areas of the federal government over the same period.”

Immigrants would still be able to apply for a fee waiver under the regulation.

Jamil said the fees could have an especially large impact on people currently in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention or who were sent to wait in Mexico while their asylum cases are processed through the US immigration courts. For these two populations, the ability to obtain the appropriate money could be impossible.

“This feels like the fees are being increased as obstacles for aliens to access the courts,” she said. “That’s where it becomes problematic.”

Trump officials have already started a monumental overhaul of the immigration court, placing quotas on the number of cases that judges should complete every year, ending their ability to indefinitely suspend certain cases, restricting when asylum can be granted, and pouring thousands of previously closed cases back into court dockets.

The number of appeals under the administration have increased to more than 30,000 in the 2018 fiscal year.

“The administration has not put an emphasis on the due process of immigrants — these fees seem to be in light with that pattern,” said Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. “I absolutely think this will deter people from appealing decisions, even if they are unjust.”

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

Of course, injustice and unabashed White Nationalist racism is the whole point!

You can bet that corrupt DOJ politicos and their EOIR sycophants will direct that virtually all fee waivers be denied, or that the fee waiver process will be made so complicated and burdensome that nobody will be able to complete it. Now we know exactly what sent former BIA Chair David Neal into an early (coerced) “retirement.”

 

As long as many Article III judges refuse to uphold their oaths of office by stopping to this nonsense, and “Moscow Mitch” & his pals control Congress, the Trump Administration and Billy Barr will continue their outrageous, relentless attack on the American justice system.

 

And, don’t think that just because YOU aren’t an immigrant Hispanic, Black, or LGBTQ, your rights aren’t on the chopping block. They are!

Trump and his disgraceful and existentially dangerous version of the GOP anti-American party mean nothing less than the total annihilation of American democracy and all of the institutions that were supposed to be protecting our individual rights from blatant overreach by a would-be authoritarian neo-fascist regime.

 

It starts, but doesn’t end, with the tanking of the Supreme Court and the continuing mockery of the U.S. Constitution by “Moscow Mitch.”

 

PWS

 

09-17-19

 

 

GOV’S OWN WATCHDOG CONFIRMS IT: Trump Administration Abused Migrant Children With Impunity!

Adolfo Flores
Adolfo Flores
Immigration Reporter
BuzzFeed News

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/adolfoflores/separated-immigrant-children-suffered-mental-trauma-ptsd

Adolfo Flores reports for BuzzFeed News:

A government watchdog report published Wednesday said immigrant children who were separated from their parents at the border by the Trump administration last year suffered increased post-traumatic stress and trauma.

Some unaccompanied immigrant children who end up at government facilities already experienced physical or sexual abuse in the countries they fled, or violence on the journey to the US, the report said. The trauma was only made worse by the “zero tolerance” policy that led to thousands of children being systematically separated from their parents by immigration authorities in the spring of 2018.

Separated children experienced heightened levels of anxiety, fear, and PTSD compared with children who were not taken from their parents, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General said. Its report looked at facilities funded by HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement, which had custody over children who were separated from their parents or who arrived in the US unaccompanied by an adult.

“Some separated children expressed acute grief that caused them to cry inconsolably,” the report said. “Children who believed their parents had abandoned them were angry and confused. Other children expressed feelings of fear or guilt and became concerned for their parents’ welfare.”

The report offered additional details on the effects the Trump administration’s systematic family separations had on immigrant children and how the trauma was made worse by federal agencies’ lack of preparedness and poor record-keeping.

One 7- or 8-year-old boy who was separated from his father believed his dad had been killed and that he would also be killed. The child ended up in emergency psychiatric care.

dical director said separated children felt physical manifestations of their psychological pain and made statements like “every heartbeat hurts” or “I can’t feel my heart.”

The increased mental health issues were made worse by the difficulty in finding the parents of separated children and being able to set up phone calls with the kids ­— due to the government’s lack of record-keeping for separated children.

During the height of family separations at the border, statements from federal authorities revealed the Trump administration had little to no planning for how the children and parents would eventually be reunited.

At a court hearing in 2018 before a judge who ordered the Trump administration to reunite separated children, Justice Department attorneys acknowledged that the government is uncertain it knows the whereabouts of all the parents of 101 children under the age of 5. Around the same time, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told reporters that the agency was scrambling to be sure it knew the location of all the children who’d been separated from their parents.

Program directors at facilities holding separated children said the process for reuniting children covered by the judge’s order changed frequently and with little notice, adding to the stress and mental health needs of these kids.

Some reunifications were scheduled with little notice, were suddenly canceled, or were delayed. In one case, a girl was moved from a facility in Florida to a facility in Texas to be reunited with her father, but after making several trips to the detention center, she was sent back to Florida “in shambles” without ever seeing her dad.

Another HHS OIG report, the result of 45 visits to facilities and a review of some employee files last year, found that some facilities holding unaccompanied immigrant children didn’t have proof of employees’ FBI fingerprint or Child Protective Services background checks.

Half of the facilities allowed employees to start working with children before getting the results of either the FBI fingerprint check or the CPS check, or both, the report said. Ten employees worked with children for a year or more with no prior FBI criminal background check.

Amy Frontz, assistant inspector general for audit services, said that for the employees that they were able to eventually get background information, no disqualifying factors were found. And an OIG spokesperson said, “We don’t have information at this time that the lack of background checks resulted in any specific abuse or assault cases.”

“However, some employees when we completed our work did not have have an FBI background check or CPS check,” Frontz said.

Frontz noted that in 2018, HHS OIG released a memo that staff at the “tent city” in Tornillo, Texas, that was holding hundreds of immigration children, were not undergoing FBI fingerprint checks. After more than 1,500 employees had their background checks conducted following the memo, 26 people were terminated because of their results, Frontz said.

An OIG statement was updated to reflect they don’t have information at this time that the lack of background checks resulted in any specific abuse or assault cases.

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

Donald Trump, Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, Kirsten Nielsen, Stephen Miller, and a host of other dangerous child abusers, some masquerading as U.S. Government officials, remain at large. They should be considered armed with lies, false narratives, illegal schemes, and toxic White Nationalist restrictionist agendas and extremely dangerous to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

PWS

09-05-19

IMMIGRATION COURTS: “MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE ON STEROIDS” — With Court System Reeling & Asylum Applicants Suffering, Administration Plans Another Round Of Massive “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”), Reports Hamed Aleaziz @ BuzzFeed News!

Hamed Aleaziz
Hamed Aleaziz
Immigration Reporter
BuzzFeed News

 

https://apple.news/A3UINub7KSjuOLcKAHDJMLw

Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News:

A Surge Of Immigration Judges Are Expected To Handle The Cases Of Thousands Forced To Wait In Mexico

“This will wreak havoc on court dockets across the country,” said one immigration court official.

Hamed Aleaziz

BuzzFeed News Reporter

A 10-month-old boy, whose family fled violence in El Salvador, waits in a tent in Tijuana, Mexico, for an immigration court hearing in the US.

Department of Homeland Security officials expect about 150 immigration judges from across the US will be selected to handle cases involving asylum-seekers forced to remain in Mexico while their cases proceed, according to a source with knowledge of the matter, a massive potential increase in assignments that threatens to overwhelm an already struggling court system.  

Around a dozen judges currently presiding over courts in San Diego and El Paso, Texas, handle the cases of people referred under Migration Protection Protocols, the controversial Trump administration policy forcing asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico as their cases move through the immigration system. While the cases can take months or years to be scheduled, the number of individuals included in the program has expanded to more than 35,000, according to figures obtained by BuzzFeed News.

The Trump administration hopes to change that by soon opening facilities along the border to handle the cases. Officials plan to open two border courts in Texas — in Laredo and Brownsville — by the middle of September, in which they will hear up to 20 cases per day, according to a government briefing document obtained by BuzzFeed News. A DHS spokesperson said the date the facilities would open was still to be determined.

On Tuesday, Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, who chairs the House DHS Appropriations Subcommittee, revealed in a letter that the agency had plans to transfer $155 million in federal disaster funds to Immigration and Customs Enforcement to help fund the new facilities.

The cases heard at the border are expected to be conducted primarily via video teleconferencing, allowing for more judges across the country to be brought into the process. Assistants, working on contract, will help organize the hearings by taking roll call, send case documents to judges in other locations, and operate the video systems, according to a separate DHS planning document obtained by BuzzFeed News.

Judges assigned these cases could be forced to delay other asylum and deportation hearings that had already been scheduled, causing a ripple effect and further growing an already bloated court backlog of hundreds of thousands of cases.

People wait inside an immigration court in Miami.

“Once again immigration judges from courts across the country will have to push their home court dockets aside to preside televideo at border courts,” said one immigration court official who could not speak publicly on the matter. “This will wreak havoc on court dockets across the country.”

At a San Diego court that has presided over many “Remain in Mexico” cases for months, judges have been told to prioritize the hearings over others, according to a source with knowledge of the change. As a result, some immigrants who have waited for months or years for their previously scheduled cases will likely have their hearings delayed.

“The prioritization of MPP cases will place a huge burden on the immigration courts,” said a DOJ official involved with immigration matters. “Additionally, the postponement of previously scheduled cases will cause the backlog to grow even more, as the completion of these cases will be further delayed for months or even years.”

Rebecca Jamil, a former immigration judge under the Trump administration, said that the cases on judge’s dockets don’t go away when they are assigned new cases.

“Those families have been waiting for years to have their cases heard, and now will wait another two or three years, and due process is denied by the delay — evidence becomes stale, witnesses die, country conditions change,” she said.

The Department of Justice, which oversees the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which manages the nation’s immigration courts, is prepared to meet the demands from the DHS on any hearings, an agency spokesperson said.

The potential changes come as data revealed by Syracuse University indicates that asylum-seekers forced to wait in Mexico rarely have legal representation; just 1% of individuals are accompanied by attorneys at their hearings.

The Remain in Mexico program is one of the few hardline Trump immigration policies that has thus far survived a court injunction. While a federal court judge in San Francisco blocked the policy earlier this year, a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel allowed it to continue as a legal challenge works its way through the court process.

Asylum-seekers who were returned to Mexico under the Trump administration have faced consequences of remaining there, according to advocacy group Human Rights First. The group found more than 100 cases of people returned under the program alleging rapes, kidnappings, sexual exploitation, or assault, according to a report released this month.

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

This is the result of the complete abdication of duty by the Ninth Circuit in Innovation Law Lab v. McAleenan, that lifted a proper, life-saving U.S. District Court injunction and allowed the Administration’s patently illegal and immoral “Kill ‘Em in Mexico Program” to proceed.

The solution:  There is no such thing as a “fair” asylum denial under this program. Yes, not everyone meets the criteria. But, everyone is entitled to a fair chance to present a claim, free from duress, coercion, and biased judging, which is not happening. 

Advocates must flood the Ninth Circuit and the other border circuits with petitions for review and other types of court actions forcing these complicit Article III “Ivory Tower Judges,” who believe they have removed themselves from the fray, with the human carnage resulting from their gross dereliction of duty to enforce the statutory and Constitutional rights of asylum seekers.

The disgusting and spineless performance of the Article IIIs in light of the Administration’s bogus, illegal actions to “deter” legitimate asylum seekers is nothing short of a national disgrace. If not corrected, it will rightfully tarnish the reputation of the Federal Courts and the individual judges involved for generations to come.

PWS

08-30-19

WHITE NATIONALIST ADMINISTRATION HAS BEEN SENDING RACIST, ANTI-SEMITIC, HATE PROPAGANDA TO FEDERAL EMPLOYEES SINCE TAKING OFFICE! — Claims That Agencies Were Unaware Of Content Debunked!

Hamed Aleaziz
Hamed Aleaziz
Immigration Reporter
BuzzFeed News

 https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/vdare-doj-dol-epoch-times

Hamed Aleaziz & Co. report for BuzzFeed News:

Federal Agencies Have Been Sending Employees Links To White Nationalist And Conspiracy Websites For Months

A BuzzFeed News investigation found that an arm of the Justice Department and the Department of Labor have shared stories from VDare, a white nationalist publication, with federal employees on multiple occasions over the last two years.

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Hamed Aleaziz

BuzzFeed News Reporter

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Ryan Mac

BuzzFeed News Reporter

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Jeremy Singer-Vine

BuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted on August 23, 2019, at 7:15 p.m. ET

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Leah Millis / Reuters

U.S. Attorney General William Barr

An arm of the Justice Department regularly sent summaries and links to articles from an online white nationalist publication over the last year, a BuzzFeed News investigation has found. In addition, similar newsletters sent to the Labor Department, ICE, HUD, and the Department of Homeland Security included links and content from hyperpartisan and conspiracy-oriented publishers.

In daily bulletins about media coverage for the department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which runs the nation’s immigration courts, a government contractor sometimes included links to VDare, an anti-Semitic and racist site whose editor who has claimed that American culture is under threat from nonwhite peoples. That contractor, a Dade City, Florida–based company called TechMIS, also compiles newsletters for other agencies, including the Department of Labor, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Office of Housing and Urban Development.

While these newsletters typically shared articles from local and mainstream national news outlets — including BuzzFeed News — they also regularly delivered content from partisan publications touting anti-immigration rhetoric and conspiracy theories. Among these publications: the Western Journal, a hyperpartisan publisher whose founder once questioned if then-presidential candidate Barack Obama was Muslim, and the Epoch Times, a newspaper associated with the Chinese Falun Gong movement and whose related media properties have backed QAnon, a conspiracy theory claiming a group of high-ranking officials known as the “Deep State” is subverting President Donald Trump’s goals.

On Thursday, BuzzFeed News reported that an immigration judges union sent a letter of complaint to EOIR for its inclusion in an August newsletter of a VDare blog post that attacked its members with anti-Semitic slurs. After publication of that story, an EOIR press secretary said that the Department of Justice “condemns Anti-Semitism in the strongest terms” and that the post should not have been included. A former senior DOJ official said that the email in question was “generated by a third-party vendor that utilizes keyword searches to produce news clippings for staff. It is not reviewed or approved by staff before it is transmitted.”

“That’s absolutely incorrect,” said TechMIS CEO Steven Mains, adding that EOIR was the most specific and particular of the company’s clients. The agency’s staff would review its work “down to misspellings” if there was anything wrong before sending, he said.

A cursory review of EOIR newsletters by BuzzFeed News found two more mentions of VDare articles; Mains confirmed those and noted there were four others, saying that VDare had been included on seven occasions out of about 20,000 links and articles sent from September 2018, when TechMIS’s relationship with the organization began.

“These discoveries are deeply disturbing,” said Becca Lewis, a research affiliate at Data & Society, who studies online radicalization. “Unfortunately, they mark a continuation of a long history in which government agencies, and particularly law enforcement agencies, have promoted and enforced white supremacist and racist agendas. This also unfortunately shows that many white supremacist and far-right publications that seem to be on the ‘fringes’ of society actually have huge mainstream influence and impact.”

“Many white supremacist and far-right publications that seem to be on the ‘fringes’ of society actually have huge mainstream influence and impact.”

On Friday afternoon, immigration court employees were informed that they would no longer receive the briefing and were told to subscribe to a DOJ-wide briefing if they were interested. This instruction was sent hours after BuzzFeed News reached out to DOJ officials for comment on the discovery of the additional VDare links.

“After review of our daily news aggregation emails, we have determined that the sampling was over inclusive and contained non-news sources,” EOIR spokesperson Kathryn Mattingly said in a statement. “EOIR will no longer be distributing a daily news briefing to its staff. EOIR strongly condemns anti-Semitism and white nationalism. Those hateful beliefs do not reflect the views of EOIR employees and the Department of Justice.”

She aded that EOIR would not be renewing its contract with TechMIS.

One immigration court employee told BuzzFeed News they perceived a shift in the news sources included in their emailed media briefings after Trump took office.

“It shows an increasing effort to politically charge the perspective of immigration judges who are being tasked with being neutral judges who apply the law,” said the employee, who was not authorized to speak on the matter publicly. “The administration has been taking steps to make the court a political weapon in various ways, some big, some small, this is just one example.”

BuzzFeed News found that the Department of Labor also linked to VDare in a February 2017 newsletter. Daily bulletins for EOIR, the Labor Department, ICE, HUD, and the Department of Homeland Security included links from the Western Journal and Epoch Times. Links to the New American — the magazine of the John Birch Society, a far-right group that pushed conspiracy theories that Obama wasn’t born in the US — were also in some of those newsletters.

Mains said that TechMIS uses a combination of automated systems and human editors to find stories around certain keywords that are relevant to each agency. He noted that his company was “not chartered in any way to censor the news” and had not heard of VDare until Thursday when he was asked by EOIR to no longer include the white nationalist site on digests moving forward.

“We presented the news — the entire universe of news,” he told BuzzFeed News on Friday. “Including a link did not mean there was in any way an endorsement of anything that was in there. There was stuff from the left, far left, right, far right.”

Among other publications included in the newsletters were the Washington Post, New York Times, HuffPost, the Intercept, Fox News, Breitbart News, Daily Caller, and Daily Wire. Of the fringe and conspiracy sites, the Epoch Times was by far cited the most number of times. BuzzFeed News found citations of the publication in more than 120 EOIR newsletters.

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TechMIS / Via TechMIS

An EOIR newsletter from July 24 included this summary and link to a VDare post. The linked story includes a mention of a “zerg rush” of immigrants coming across the border.

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In one VDare post sent to EOIR employees in July, a blogger wrote that the “deep state” had scuttled previous efforts to enforce fast-track deportations. The post includes a mention of a “zerg rush” of immigrants coming across the border.

“We will see if Kevin McAleenan will implement this expansion. I think not. Sabotage is his specialty,” the piece concludes. The sentence links to posts about McAleenan that feature anti-trans comments about the acting DHS secretary, describing him as a “Ladyboy DACA, #DeepState operative” and “Tranny Kirstjen Nielsen,” a derogatory reference to the recently departed Homeland secretary.

In a story posted on New American and circulated to ICE staffers earlier this month, an author references an “invasion” of immigrants at the border. “Border patrol officials have said as much for months, but House and Senate Democrats, who hope to keep illegals coming in to swell the ranks of the party, have ignored them,” the post read.

Shawn Neudauer, a spokesperson for ICE, said the agency sends the clippings to a subset of its employees. The news briefing is delivered through an email service to the employees after the agency receives the brief from the contractor. He said the agency scans the briefings, which also include links to mainstream news outlets, as a way to understand how they are being written about online.

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“Most federal agencies monitor news and clipping services capture headlines from web-published stories,” he said in an email. “It says absolutely nothing about the value of the material received — only noting whatever source said whatever ‘thing’ — which happens to be fairly useful in combating false narratives about the critical work out special agents and officers do every day.”

When asked about publications including the Epoch Times, the New American, and the Western Journal, Mains said he had never heard of or read them. TechMIS, he said, had been working with government agencies since 2012, and while most newsletters are sent to agencies without review, the EOIR staff is more “hands on” than the rest.

“We’re here to react to the needs of the government,” Mains added.

In April, a VDare story about the “border asylum crisis” found its way into the EOIR newsletter. Railing on the current state of the practice of asylum in the US, it also excerpted part of another article that mentioned the “deep state” for open borders.

“Like I say, I hope somebody in the administration is reading this,” the author wrote.

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

Yup, no surprises here! Of course, they know what‘s in their “clips!“ If they didn’t, it would be negligent contract administration. And, it’s no coincidence that vile attacks on union leaders occur as Barr moves to “decertify” the Judges’ Union.  Are they going to post material from Antifa. No way? Tweets from “The Squad” criticizing Trump? Not likely; that could be career threatening. DOJ’s dishonesty — and Barr’s cowardice — says it all!

PWS

08-23-19

HATE ON THE DOCKET: As Administration’s Attacks On Judicial Independence Mount, DOJ/EOIR Pelt Immigration Judges With White Nationalist Hate Group’s Racist, Anti-Semitic Propaganda! — Slurs Target Union Officials Leading The Resistance To DOJ’s Union-Busting Effort!

Hamed Aleaziz
Hamed Aleaziz
Immigration Reporter
BuzzFeed News

https://apple.news/AAsWdQ8tyR365PO0Me_6IZg

Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News:

The Justice Department Sent Immigration Judges A White Nationalist Blog Post With Anti-Semitic Attacks

BuzzFeed News Reporter

Attorney General William Barr

An email sent from the Justice Department to all immigration court employees this week included a link to an article posted on a white nationalist website that “ directly attacks sitting immigration judges with racial and ethnically tinged slurs,” according to a letter sent by an immigration judges union and obtained by BuzzFeed News.  

According to the National Association of Immigration Judges, the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) sent court employees a link to a blog post from VDare, a white nationalist website, in its morning news briefing earlier this week that included anti-Semitic attacks on judges.

The briefings are sent to court employees every weekday and include links to various immigration news items. BuzzFeed News confirmed the link to a blog post was sent to immigration court employees Monday. The post detailed a recent move by the Justice Department to decertify the immigration judges union.

A letter Thursday from union chief Ashley Tabaddor to James McHenry, the director of the Justice Department’s EOIR, said the link to the VDare post angered many judges.

“The post features links and content that directly attacks sitting immigration judges with racial and ethnically tinged slurs and the label ‘Kritarch.’ The reference to Kritarch in a negative tone is deeply offensive and Anti-Semitic,” wrote Tabaddor. The VDare post includes pictures of judges with the term “kritarch” preceding their names.

Tabaddor said the term kritarchy is a reference to ancient Israel during a time of rule by a system of judges.

“VDare’s use of the term in a pejorative manner casts Jewish history in a negative light as an Anti-Semitic trope of Jews seeking power and control,” she wrote.

Tabaddor called on McHenry to take immediate action over the distribution of white nationalist content.

“Publication and dissemination of a white supremacist, anti-semitic website throughout the EOIR is antithetical to the goals and ideals of the Department of Justice,” she wrote. The court, Tabaddor wrote, should immediately withdraw the email and issue an apology to all immigration judges, including those mentioned in the post.

“Separately, EOIR should take all appropriate safety and security measures for all judges given the tone and tenor of this posting,” she wrote.

After publication of this article, a DOJ spokesperson told BuzzFeed News the email briefing was compiled by a contractor and should not have included a link to the VDare post.

“The daily EOIR morning news briefings are compiled by a contractor and the blog post should not have been included,” the spokesperson said.

EOIR Assistant Press Secretary Kathryn Mattingly told BuzzFeed News that “the daily EOIR morning news briefings are compiled by a contractor and the blog post should not have been included. The Department of Justice condemns Anti-Semitism in the strongest terms.”  

A former senior DOJ official said that the email in question was “generated by a third-party vendor that utilizes keyword searches to produce news clippings for staff. It is not reviewed or approved by staff before it is transmitted.”

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So, it’s “mere coincidence” that the two Judges leading the NAIJ’s resistance are specifically targeted with slurs within a few days of the DOJ’s filing of a petition to “decertify” the NAIJ? Not credible! 

Coincidence that a White Nationalist racist Administration biased against asylum seekers  distributes White Nationalist hate propaganda directed at Immigration Judges who stand up for Due Process? Unlikely!

No, starting with Trump & Sessions, this Administration has had a long-term love affair with White Supremacist hate groups. It’s no coincidence that acts of violence by White Nationalist domestic terrorists have increased under Trump. While the DOJ and DHS are busy reviving up baseless fear and loathing of foreigners, the real threats to our national security by White Nationalist domestic terrorists, and frankly by the Trump Administration itself, are left unaddressed and not so subtly encouraged.

There are lots of scummy characters involved in the latest assault on Due Process, fundamental fairness, and simple human decency by Trump’s DOJ.

But there is another major enabler at fault here: the unconstitutional and unethical placement of “judges” within a law enforcement agency has been painfully obvious for years.  Yet, life tenured Federal Judges have looked the other way as clearly substandard adjudications have emanated from the Immigration Courts under the last three Administrations. Kind of a “who cares” attitude where rights of foreign nationals are involved. 

Now, however, as in the Bush II Administration, U.S. citizen judges are being targeted for harassment and career derailment because of their views. 

Trump and his henchmen have already made it clear that they will target anyone who fails to roll over for their White Nationalist agenda, judge or not. Myopic Federal Judges who fail to hold the Administration accountable for abuses and to put an end to the “EOIR travesty” might well find themselves on the receiving end of the Administration’s racist hate campaign at some point.  Who will stand up for the rights of those unwilling to stand up for others?

PWS

08-22-19

PWS

DHS OFFICIAL ON TRUMP’S LATEST RACIST ATTACK ON ASYLUM: “IT’S F***ED Up!”— Racists Are Running Our Country With “Malicious Incompetence” — That’s a BIG Problem For Everyone, Not Just Those Targeted By Their Outrageous White Nationalist Attacks!

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/trump-asylum-central-americans

Hamed Aleaziz
Hamed Aleaziz
Reporter
BuzzFeed News

Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News:

The US will end asylum protections for Central Americans and others who cross through Mexico to reach the southern border, the Trump administration announced Monday, a sweeping, unprecedented move that will quickly be challenged in court.

The new move, which bars asylum for any individual who crosses through a third country but does not apply there for protection before reaching the US southern border, takes effect Tuesday in the form of a regulatory change.

It becomes the latest in a series of attempts by the Trump administration to actively deter asylum seekers from reaching the border. The details of the plan and efforts to implement it were first reported by BuzzFeed News in May, and experts say it would keep hundreds of thousands of people fleeing violence from entering the US.

“With one regulation the US is nearly entirely turning its back on this asylum flow,” Sarah Pierce, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, told BuzzFeed News.

Multiple Department of Homeland Security officials who spoke with BuzzFeed News voiced concerns about the administration’s move.

“It’s fucked up,” one official said. “There’s a reason people apply for asylum in the US — we have a robust asylum system. Other countries on the route to the southern border don’t.”

pastedGraphic.png

Rodrigo Abd / AP

Another said it would be blocked in court.

“Flatly inconsistent with our treaty obligations. Flies in the face of decades of case law. Destined to be enjoined and or struck down immediately,” the official said.

Another DHS official said the move was not only mistaken, but it would backfire on the administration.

“This administration continues to pervert the 1980 Refugee Act and its later amendments by passing regulations that burden its own employees with overly cumbersome, ill-conceived new ‘standards,'” the official said. “This rule will effect all those who reach our southern land border but may have fled from anywhere in the world. It does nothing to fix our broken immigration system, which is at its breaking point because the administration’s mismanagement.”

Administration officials have been working on the plan for weeks, considering it a potential solution to the high rate of families crossing the border.

“Until Congress can act, this interim rule will help reduce a major ‘pull’ factor driving irregular migration to the United States and enable DHS and [the Department of Justice] to more quickly and efficiently process cases originating from the southern border, leading to fewer individuals transiting through Mexico on a dangerous journey,” said acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan.

Advocates said they would move to sue immediately.

Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the group would immediately sue.

“The Trump administration is trying to unilaterally reverse our country’s legal and moral commitment to protect those fleeing danger. This new rule is patently unlawful and we will sue swiftly,” he said.

The ACLU previously filed a lawsuit over the administration’s attempt to ban asylum for those who crossed the border without authorization. The policy was later blocked in federal court and has since not been implemented.

pastedGraphic_1.png

Oliver De Ros / AP

The new regulation would make anyone traveling through Mexico by land to the southern border ineligible for asylum if they did not first seek protection before reaching the US. Immigrants could attempt to receive protection through a process that would be much more difficult.

The ban would apply not just to Central Americans but other non-Mexican nationalities, including Cubans, Haitians, and Venezuelans who in recent months have applied for asylum at the southern border in higher numbers.

The new rule allows for a few exceptions, including if an immigrant was a victim of severe human trafficking or if they traveled through a third country that did not have adequate asylum protections. The person could also avoid the new ban if they can prove that they applied for protection in a third country and later were ordered a final denial. It’s unclear how many people could fit these categories.

“This latest regulation is an attempt to close down one of the few remaining avenues for people in need of protection,” said Ur Jaddou, former chief counsel for the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. “The only ray of light for those seeking safety is that Congress was clear when it enacted the asylum law and this attempt to circumvent it by regulation will likely see the same fate of other Trump administration attacks on the law and result in a federal court injunction.”

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

Only the Article III Courts can stop this continuing outrage. But, will they do their job before the country descends into total chaos and the race wars that Trump and the GOP are openly promoting? 

PWS

07-16-19

JUDICIAL BRAIN DRAIN: As Outlaw Administration Attacks Due Process & Attempts To Institutionalize Xenophobic Bias, Experienced, Conscientious U.S. Immigration Judges Head For The Exits – Abandonment Of Scholarship, Fairness, Commitment To Due Process Threatens Entire U.S. Justice System!

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/immigration-policy-judge-resign-trump

Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News:

Being An Immigration Judge Was Their Dream. Under Trump, It Became Untenable.

“It has become so emotionally brutal and exhausting that many people I know are leaving or talking about finding an exit strategy,” said one immigration judge. “Morale has never, ever been lower.”

Posted on February 13, 2019, at 6:15 p.m. ET

Former immigration judge Rebecca Jamil in Fremont, California, on Dec. 28, 2018.

Constanza Hevia for BuzzFeed News

Former immigration judge Rebecca Jamil in Fremont, California, on Dec. 28, 2018.

SAN FRANCISCO — Rebecca Jamil was sitting in a nondescript hotel ballroom in suburban Virginia when she realized that her dream job — being an immigration judge — was no longer tenable. It was June 11, 2018, and then–attorney general Jeff Sessions, her boss, was speaking to a room packed with immigration judges, running through his list of usual complaints over what was, in his estimation, a broken asylum system.

Toward the end of the speech, Sessions let slip some big news: He had decided whether domestic abuse and gang victims could be granted asylum in the US. Advocates, attorneys, and judges had been waiting months to see what Sessions, who in his role as attorney general had the power to review cases, would do. After all, it would determine the fate of thousands of asylum-seekers, many fleeing dangerous situations in Central America.

Sessions didn’t reveal to the room the details of his ruling but Jamil, based in San Francisco since she was appointed in 2016, learned later that day that the attorney general had decided to dramatically restrict asylum protections for domestic abuse victims.

“I’d seen the faces of these families,” the 43-year-old judge said. “They weren’t abstractions to me.”

Hundreds of people overflow onto the sidewalk in a line snaking around the block outside a US immigration office with numerous courtrooms in San Francisco.

Eric Risberg / AP

Hundreds of people overflow onto the sidewalk in a line snaking around the block outside a US immigration office with numerous courtrooms in San Francisco.

Jamil, a mother of two young daughters, had been shaken by the images and sounds that came as a result of the Trump administration’s policy to separate families at the border. As a judge who oversaw primarily cases of women and children fleeing abuse and dangers abroad, this was the last straw.

Soon after, she stepped down from the court.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she told friends. “I felt that I couldn’t be ‘Rebecca Jamil, representative of the attorney general’ while these things were going on.”

In many ways, her resignation underscores the tenuous position of immigration judges, who are overseen by the attorney general and susceptible to the shifting winds of each administration. To avoid potential conflicts, the union that represents the judges has long called for its court to be an independent body, separate from the Department of Justice.

The Trump administration has undertaken a monumental overhaul of the way immigration judges, which total around 400 across the country, work: placing quotas on the number of cases they should complete every year, ending their ability to indefinitely suspend certain cases, restricting when asylum can be granted, and pouring thousands of previously closed cases back into court dockets.

In the meantime, the case backlog has jumped to more than 800,000 under the administration and wait times have continued to skyrocket to hundreds of days.

The quotas in particular have made judges feel as if they were cogs in a deportation machine, as opposed to neutral arbiters given time to thoughtfully analyze the merits of each case.

“The job has become exceedingly more difficult as the court has veered even farther away from being administered as a court rather than a law enforcement bureaucracy,” said Ashley Tabaddor, an immigration judge who heads the National Association of Immigration Judges, a union representing around 350 judges.

And it’s not just Jamil who has departed because of the massive changes to the court undertaken by the Trump administration, according to observers within the Department of Justice and those on the outside. While some, like Jamil, have resigned, others have retired early in large part because of the policies instituted under Trump, they said.

For those remaining at the immigration court, the mood is bleak.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks during a news conference on Oct. 16, 2018.

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks during a news conference on Oct. 16, 2018.

“It has become so emotionally brutal and exhausting that many people I know are leaving or talking about finding an exit strategy,” said one immigration judge who declined to be named. “Morale has never, ever been lower.”

Another Justice Department official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, told BuzzFeed News, “It is exhausting when you feel undervalued by the people at the top of your organization, especially when they are motivated by partisanship and have not spent their careers doing the job that you do.”

Tabaddor, the head of the union, said that her group has noticed a higher rate of retirements and resignations than in the past because of the way judges have been treated under Trump.

Some have been bold in their timing. John Richardson, a former immigration judge in Phoenix, stepped down on Sep. 30, 2018 — the day before the administration instituted a quota for the number of cases to be completed by judges.

“The timing of my retirement was a direct result of the draconian policies of the Administration, the relegation of [judges] to the status of ‘action officers’ who deport as many people as possible as soon as possible with only token due process, and blaming [judges] for the immigration crisis caused by decades of neglect and under funding of the Immigration Courts,” he said in a statement to BuzzFeed News.

Another judge who resigned from the bench in September told staff members in a goodbye email, “I know things are getting difficult for you at [the Executive Office for Immigration Review], but I believe all you will ‘ride through the storm’ and ‘come out with a smile.’”

There have long been work challenges for immigration judges, including heavy caseloads and assignments, leading to comparatively high burnout rates. Justice Department officials told BuzzFeed News that concerns over retirements were nothing new.

According to the agency, from the beginning of fiscal year 2014 through Feb. 12, 2019, 94 immigration judges have retired, separated, or died. More than a third of those judges, 32, have left since Oct. 1, 2017. The agency does not track why judges leave their positions.

To those within the court and others who have recently retired, the situation has worsened to an unprecedented level. Richardson, the former judge in Phoenix, said he would have continued presiding over immigration cases if the status quo had remained.

“Yes, I was 75 years old with over 50 years of honorable federal service with the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice, but had no plans for retirement as long as I was treated with respect, appreciated, and provided adequate support,” he said. “I had 28 years as an IJ and very much enjoyed my job, even with the poor funding and lack of support by Congress and the White House during that 28 years.”

Jeff Chase, a former immigration judge who stepped down years ago and who speaks regularly with others who’ve left the bench, was blunt in his characterization.

“The fastest growth industry is former immigration judges,” Chase said. Those still on the bench have told him, “It’s horrible. Whatever you think it is, it is much, much worse.”

In the meantime, the Trump administration has hired more than 100 judges to not only fill the vacancies of those who’ve retired but to add numbers to the bench. It’s a rehauling of the courts that could “have a drastic impact,” according to Chase.

Many of the judges retiring in recent months are experienced jurists, hired by the Clinton administration in the mid to late ’90s, he said. These judges, Chase said, were more willing to push back on claims made in court by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement or to allow immigrants extended time to make their cases in what could otherwise be a rushed procedure.

In their place, Chase said, are judges hired by the new administration with case completion quotas, a two-year probation period, and a mandate to avoid showing sympathy for the people appearing before them.

“Even if it doesn’t show up on the sheet, just the level of humanity, that makes a huge difference — that’s what this administration is trying to remove from the immigration judge corps,” he said.

Rebecca Jamil holds her immigration judge certificate.

Constanza Hevia for BuzzFeed News

Rebecca Jamil holds her immigration judge certificate.

For her part, Jamil wanted to become an immigration judge from the earliest moments of her legal career. After working as a staff attorney at the 9th Circuit US Court of Appeals, she joined the government as a prosecutor with ICE in 2011, where she was able to use discretion to focus deportation efforts on those with serious criminal backgrounds. Under the Trump administration, ICE attorneys have been told that nearly all undocumented immigrants are priorities for deportation.

In 2014, Jamil took a chance to fulfill her dream: She applied to become an immigration judge. It was a 17-month process, full of drawn-out interviews in Washington, DC, but finally, in 2015 she received a phone call informing her that she got the job.

“I thought, and I must have told most people I know, that this is the last job that I would ever have. It’s all I wanted to do,” she said.

Jamil dedicated herself to the exhausting career. She oversaw a docket made up primarily of families and regularly heard cases in which women and children applied for asylum based on abuse that they had experienced by partners and family members abroad.

Day in and day out, Jamil heard intense testimony of physical and sexual violence against women and children.

“You’re sitting in a windowless room and people tell you the very worst parts of their life and you have to decide if it is enough to stay in the US,” she said. “That is very tiring day after day to be the person who makes that decision.”

Then, under the Trump administration, things started to change. In 2018, Sessions instituted a new policy, severely limiting when judges could suspend certain cases. Suddenly, her docket expanded and she wasn’t allowed to decide which cases deserved to remain in court and which didn’t.

Jamil and fellow immigration judges were in attendance at the Virginia conference where Sessions spoke for annual trainings on courtroom procedure. The year before, jurists heard substantive legal updates and trainings on bias in the courtroom.

This version of the training, however, felt different.

“The entire conference was profoundly disturbing. Do things as fast as possible. There was an overarching theme of disbelieving aliens and their claims and how to remove people faster,” Jamil said. “That is not what I saw my job as an immigration judge to be. I was not trained to do that.”

Soon after she returned home, Jamil put in her resignation. Her colleagues fretted, probing her about whether she had considered the type of judge that could fill her spot on the bench and the impact that could have.

She didn’t have an answer, but she knew that she couldn’t do it any longer.

“Family separations; Sessions making his own case law on asylum; when we could continue cases — I could no longer sit below the seal of the Department of Justice and represent the Department of Justice at that point,” Jamil said. “They just chipped away at our authority on a daily basis. It felt like we weren’t really judges. It was frustrating and demoralizing.”

A former colleague, Laura Ramirez, worked for years as an immigration judge in San Francisco. In December, she retired at the earliest date possible, five days after she turned 60.

The changes put in place by the Trump administration, especially the case quotas, and the politicization of her job, became too much to handle.

The loss of judges like Jamil and others could be immeasurable to both immigrants and Department of Homeland Security attorneys, Ramirez said.

“For the system of justice, there’s these highly qualified, fair, thoughtful people who are being squeezed out of the system for political reasons, basically,” she said. “If people like her are squeezed out, it’s a loss to people who appear before her. The system can’t be fair if good people like her are pushed out.”

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Forcing the “best, brightest, and fairest” out. Reinforcing “worst practices.” Enabling judges with well-established records of anti-asylum, nationality-based, and misogynistic bias. Attacking those private attorneys who steadfastly defended legal and Constitutional rights that were being systematically undermined by the Administration. Blaming others for his own incompetence and lack of scholarship. That’s what the “Sessions program” was all about.

The only good news: folks like Judge Jamil, Judge Ramirez, Judge Richardson, and Judge Chase are now part of the ever-growing “Our Gang” of retired Immigraton Judges helping others to fight the injustices and destruction of Due Process being pushed by the Trump Administration and a DOJ that has abandoned its mission in favor of a White Nationalist political agenda. Our voices are being heard in support of the efforts of the “New Due Process Army.”

And, while I doubt that anyone outside of Trump and Miller can match the viscous lies, racism, and knowingly false narratives of Sessions, I wouldn’t expect much improvement under Barr. Barr thought Sessions was “the greatest thing since sliced bread.” That, more than the Mueller investigation, should have caused all Democrats to vote against his confirmation. He’ll just “lose” some of the overtly racist and inflammatory lingo of the White Nationalist restrictionists and attack immigrants on the basis of bogus “strict enforcement” platitudes.

Every American who believes in our Constitution and thinks that America is different from the “Banana Republics” we often criticize will be threatened by this development. Malicious harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all; and the collapse of one of the “building blocks” at the “retail level” of the American justice system will adversely affect everybody’s ability to get justice with fairness and impartiality.

Many of us don’t think we will need fair, independent, and impartial courts until we do. Once the Trump Administration destroys them, they won’t easily be rebuilt.

Who will defend your rights when the time comes if you stand by and watch the rights of others being trampled?

PWS

02-14-19

 

 

BUZZFEED NEWS: “Our Gang” Leader Judge Jeffrey Chase Blasts Nielsen’s Latest Disingenuous Attack On Legal Asylum Seekers — “Outrageous Move”

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/the-trump-administration-will-start-sending-some-asylum

Hamed Aleaziz reports:

SAN FRANCISCO — Central American migrants seeking asylum at the US–Mexico border will be forced to remain in Mexico while their cases in the US are being processed, the Trump administration said Thursday.

The unprecedented policy change will take effect on Friday with the return of the first group of migrants at the border crossing between San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico, according to Vox.

The policy, titled the Migrant Protection Protocols, is the latest attempt by the Trump administration to discourage migrants, including asylum-seekers, from trying to enter the United States. Previous attempts, such as banning asylum for those who crossed without authorization, were blocked by the courts, and this effort also is likely to face a challenge in court.

Under the policy, certain migrants at the border will receive a “notice to appear” in US immigration court and will be returned to Mexico until their hearing, according to a Department of Homeland Security fact sheet. The Mexican government, according to the agency, has provided the ability for those individuals to stay in the country until their court dates in the US. On the day of their hearing, migrants will be taken to US immigration courts for their cases to be heard.

Unaccompanied children will be excluded from the policy and those from “vulnerable populations” may be excluded on a case-by-case basis.

“We have implemented an unprecedented action that will address the ongoing humanitarian and security crisis at our Southern border,” said Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. “For far too long, our immigration system has been exploited by smugglers, traffickers, and those who have no legal right to remain in the United States. The Migrant Protection Protocols represent a methodical commonsense approach to exercising our statutory authority to require certain individuals to await their court proceedings in Mexico.”

A US official close to the process who is critical of the policy told BuzzFeed News it would lead migrants to “revert to sneaking in rather than going to ports of entry” and cause “more deaths in the desert.”

The Trump administration informed the Mexican government that it was going to be enacting the policy based on a statute stating that certain individuals can be sent back to the contiguous country they arrived from.

BuzzFeed News first reported that the administration was considering such a policy back in November.

Trump administration officials have accused asylum-seekers of gaming the US system, requesting asylum that they know they won’t qualify for so that they can remain in the country for months or years while immigration courts hear their cases.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, said the policy was a circumvention of the country’s immigration laws.

“Today’s announcement creates more questions than answers. Even putting aside the unlawfulness of this action, we do not know where these asylum-seekers will be held, who will be responsible for their safety, how and where their hearings will take place, or how access to counsel will be handled,” she said in a statement Thursday.

Jeff Chase, a former immigration judge, said the move was outrageous.

“We should be allowing asylum-seekers to enter and pursue their claims according to the international legal norms,” he said. “It will obviously be much more difficult for asylum-seekers to obtain counsel and to meaningfully participate in increasingly complex legal claims from outside the country.”

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Right on, Jeffrey! Thanks for expressing our outrage in the dishonest, deceitful, inhumane, and counterproductive actions of shallow Trump sycophant Nielsen. Another mess is sure to follow. Despite her claims, and Nielsen is an established liar, everything I’ve read indicates that Mexico is unready to implement this if it involves more than a few hundred individuals. And, if the program were that small, it wouldn’t be worth doing. The Trump Administration of incompetents has yet to carry out any major new program without screwups.

What if Trump, Nielsen, DOJ, and EOIR just did their jobs by generously and efficiently granting asylum as mandated by the Refugee Act, the Supremes in CardozaFonseca, and, ironically, the BIA’s own well-established but seldom enforced precedent Mogharrabi?

What if we took 50,000 refugees directly from the Northern Triangle, as we easily could and should do?

What if the Administration worked with, rather than against, pro bono groups and NGOs so that asylum seekers could fairly and efficiently move through the system consistent with Due Process?

What if DHS enforcement actually concentrated on potential “bad guys” rather than getting sidetracked by treating refugee families like criminals?

What if Trump treated refugees like the deserving and productive human beings that they have been throughout our history and welcomed and integrated them into our society?

What if he stopped using false narratives and restrictionist White Nationalist racist lies to make policy?

What if he cut the often illegal, always “built to fail,” and grossly fiscally wasteful gimmicks, smoke, mirrors, and job avoidance and just got the job done?

We’d actually be on the way to making America great again. Too bad that neither the Trump Administration nor the GOP seems interested in doing the real work of making government function within the law and advancing the real general public interests!

PWS

01-25-19