🤯 “DESPERATE PEOPLE DO DESPERATE THINGS!”

Rebecca Santana
Rebecca Santana
Homeland Security Reporter
Associated Press
PHOTO: AP

https://www.theitem.com/stories/biden-and-congress-consiering-big-changes-on-immigration,408794

REBECCA SANTANA

Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden is taking a more active role in Senate negotiations about changes to the immigration system that Republicans are demanding in exchange for providing money to Ukraine in its fight against Russia and Israel for the war with Hamas.

The Democratic president has said he is willing to make “significant compromises on the border” as Republicans block the wartime aid in Congress. The White House is expected to get more involved in talks this week as the impasse over changes to border policy has deepened and the money remaining for Ukraine has dwindled.

Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, who is leading the negotiations, pointed to the surge of people entering the U.S. from Mexico and said “it is literally spiraling out of control.”

But many immigration advocates, including some Democrats, say some of the changes being proposed would gut protections for people who desperately need help and would not really ease the chaos at the border.

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, the top Democratic bargainer, said the White House would take a more active role in the talks. But he also panned Republican policy demands so far as “unreasonable.”

. . . .

Critics say the problem is that most people do not end up getting asylum when their case finally makes it to immigration court. But they say migrants know that if they claim asylum, they essentially will be allowed to stay in America for years.

“People aren’t necessarily coming to apply for asylum as much to access that asylum adjudication process,” said Andrew Arthur, a former immigration court judge and fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for less immigration in the U.S.

Some of what lawmakers are discussing would raise the bar that migrants need to meet during that initial credible fear interview. Those who do not meet it would be sent home.

But Paul Schmidt, a retired immigration court judge who blogs about immigration court issues, said the credible fear interview was never intended to be so tough. Migrants are doing the interview soon after arriving at the border from an often arduous and traumatizing journey, he said. Schmidt said the interview is more of an “initial screening” to weed out those with frivolous asylum claims.

Schmidt also questioned the argument that most migrants fail their final asylum screening. He said some immigration judges apply overly restrictive standards and that the system is so backlogged that it is hard to know exactly what the most recent and reliable statistics are.

. . . .

WHAT MIGHT THESE CHANGES DO?

Much of the disagreement over these proposed changes comes down to whether people think deterrence works.

Arthur, the former immigration court judge, thinks it does. He said changes to the credible fear asylum standards and restrictions on the use of humanitarian parole would be a “game changer.” He said it would be a “costly endeavor” as the government would have to detain and deport many more migrants than today. But, he argued, eventually the numbers of people arriving would drop.

But others, like Schmidt, the retired immigration court judge, say migrants are so desperate, they will come anyway and make dangerous journeys to evade Border Patrol.

“Desperate people do desperate things,” he said.

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

Ignoring both the powerful forces that drive human migration and folks who actually work with migrants at the border and in foreign countries seems like a totally insane way to “debate policy.” But, then, whoever said this “nativist-driven debate” on enhanced cruelty, dismantling the rule of law, and de-humanization is rational?

You can read Rebecca’s full article, with an “accessible” explanation of what’s at stake and what’s being proposed at the above link.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-14-23

☠️🤮 DEADLY UNFAIR “COURTS” POTENTIAL “DEATH TRIBUNALS” FOR AFGHAN HAZARA  REFUGEES — Hon “Sir Jeffrey” Chase Speaks Out: “Case law supports granting protection for people who belong to a group long persecuted in their homelands even if an individual cannot prove specific threats, said Chase!”

Julie Watson
Julie Watson
AP California Reporter
PHOTO:Pulitzer Center

https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-deportation-taliban-asylum-us-immigration-court-cabf3bcdec9a62b12f08300d1260cd68

Julie Watson reports for AP:

The Afghan man speaks only Farsi, but he wasn’t worried about representing himself in U.S. immigration court. He believed the details of his asylum claim spoke for themselves.

Mohammad was a university professor, teaching human rights courses in Afghanistan before he fled for the United States. Mohammad is also Hazara, an ethnic minority long persecuted in his country, and he said he was receiving death threats under the Taliban, who reimposed their harsh interpretation of Sunni Islam after taking power in 2021.

He crossed the Texas border in April 2022, surrendered to Border Patrol agents and was detained. A year later, a hearing was held via video conference. His words were translated by a court interpreter in another location, and he said he struggled to express himself — including fear for his life since he was injured in a 2016 suicide bombing.

At the conclusion of the nearly three-hour hearing, the judge denied him asylum. Mohammad said he was later shocked to learn that he had waived his right to appeal the decision.

“I feel alone and that the law wasn’t applied,” said Mohammad, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition that only his first name be used, over fears for the safety of his wife and children, who are still in Afghanistan.

. . . .

Jeffrey S. Chase
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog
Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

Former immigration judge Jeffrey Chase, who reviewed the transcript, said he was surprised John-Baptiste waived Mohammad’s right to appeal and that the Board of Immigration Appeals upheld that decision. Case law supports granting protection for people who belong to a group long persecuted in their homelands even if an individual cannot prove specific threats, said Chase, an adviser to the appeals board.

But Andrew Arthur, another former immigration judge, said John-Baptiste ruled properly.

“The respondent knew what he was filing, understood all of the questions that were asked of him at the hearing, understood the decision, and freely waived his right to appeal,” Arthur, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for immigration restrictions, said via email.

Chase said the hearing appeared rushed, and he believes the case backlog played a role.

“Immigration judges hear death-penalty cases in traffic-court conditions,” said Chase, quoting a colleague. “This is a perfect example.”

Overall, the 600 immigration judges nationwide denied 63% of asylum cases last year, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Individual rates vary wildly, from a Houston judge who denied all 105 asylum requests to a San Francisco one denying only 1% of 108 cases.

John-Baptiste, a career prosecutor appointed during the Trump administration’s final months, denied 72% of his 114 cases.

. . . .

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

Read Julie’s complete article at the link.

Hazaras are an historically persecuted group in Afghanistan whose already perilous situation has demonstrably worsened under the Taliban. See, e.g., https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/blog/urgent-action-needed-hazaras-in-afghanistan-under-attack. This case should have been a “slam dunk grant” under a proper application of precedents like Cardoza and Mogharrabi! Additionally, Hazara claims should be routinely grantable under the “pattern or practice of persecution” regulations that EOIR judges are supposed to apply (but seldom do). 

No wonder this system builds incredible unnecessary backlogs when it botches the easy grants, wastes time on specious, disingenuous reasons for denial, and allows questionably-qualified judges to run roughshod over due process, the rule of law, and binding precedents.

Here’s additional commentary from “Sir Jeffrey:”

Thankfully, the amazing Steve Schulman at Akin Gump took on Mohamed’s case after his pro se hearing, and Human Rights First provided additional support.

(The Round Table was prepared to file an amicus brief on this one at the Fifth Circuit, but an agreement was reached to reopen the case at the IJ level before briefing was due.)

That the Government agreed to reopen this case basically “says it all” about the absurd result in the original hearing and the bogus “waiver” of appeal.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-29-23

📡📻 LISTEN TO MY INTERVIEW ON “TOP OF MIND WITH JULIE ROSE” NOW STREAMING ON SXM 143 & OTHER PLATFORMS: “S3 E5 Does the U.S. Have a Moral Obligation to Asylum Seekers?” — Link Here!

Julie Rose
Julie Rose
Host, Top of Mind
BYU Radio
PHOTO: BYU Radio

http://www.byuradio.org/topofmind

People all around the world look to the United States as a land of opportunity and safety. Every month, tens of thousands of people arrive at US border checkpoints and ask to be granted asylum. Over the last decade, the number of people showing up at the southern U.S. border seeking protection has increased five-fold to more than 200,000 every month. That huge increase has so overwhelmed the system that getting a final answer often takes years. There is bipartisan agreement that the asylum system is broken. How we fix the backlog, though, depends a lot on how we answer the question at the heart of today’s podcast episode: what is our obligation to asylum seekers? Are we responsible for taking these individuals in? We’ll be hearing from two previous asylum seekers about the challenges of seeking asylum in the United States, a writer who had an eye-opening experience learning how America’s asylum process differs from other countries, and two former immigration judges with differing perspectives on how we should implement asylum law in the United States. As we hear each of these perspectives, we’ll consider this question: what do we owe people who are no longer safe or able to prosper in the countries where they happen to have been born?

Podcast Guests: Razak Iyal, sought asylum in the U.S. in 2013, granted asylum in Canada in 2017 Joe Meno, Author of “Between Everything and Nothing: The Journey of Seidu Mohammed and Razak Iyal and the Quest for Asylum” Makaya Revell, CEO of Peace Promise Consulting, granted U.S. asylum in 2022 Andrew Arthur, resident fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, former immigration judge 2006-2014 (York, Pennsylvania) Paul Wickham Schmidt, adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University, former immigration judge 2003-2016 (Arlington, Virginia) **This episode is part of Season 3 on Top of Mind: Finding Fairness. From health and immigration to prisons and pot, how can we get more peace and prosperity for all?

Related Links

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🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-17-23

🏴‍☠️☠️🤮  “THE END OF ASYLUM” — IGNORING THE ADVICE OF ASYLUM EXPERTS AND PROGRESSIVE DEMS, BIDEN ADMINISTRATION SEEKS TO FINISH THE TRUMP/MILLER WHITE NATIONALIST PROGRAM TO KILL ASYLUM AT THE BORDER, WHERE IT IS MOST NECESSARY & GUARANTEED BY STATUTE — Like Trump & Miller, Biden Plans To Strangle ⚰️ Asylum By Evading & Bypassing Statute W/O Legislation — Experts Planning “War Of Resistance” To Administration They Helped Elect, But Now Turns Its Back On Humanity!

Trump Dumping Asylum Seekers in Hondras
Legal asylum seekers from Central America might have thought that cruelty, illegality, and stupidity went out with the Trump Administration. They were wrong! Now Biden proposes to lawlessly “presume denial” of asylum — with no legal basis — and dump legal asylum seekers of color from his “disfavored nations” back into Mexico, whose asylum system is dysfunctional and where abusive treatment of asylum seekers has been well documented and recognized by a Federal Court! Women suffering from gender-based persecution are particular targets of this Administration’s campaign against humanity!
Artist: Monte Wolverton
Reproduced under license

Many groups issued immediate statements of outrage and protest at this cruel, lawless, and intellectually dishonest betrayal! I set forth two of them here:

From the American Immigration Council:

  • PRESS RELEASE

Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security Release Details of Dangerous New Asylum Transit Ban

February 21, 2023

Last modified:

February 21, 2023

WASHINGTON, Feb. 21, 2023—Today, the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S.  Department of Homeland Security released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that will implement a new asylum transit ban—one of the most restrictive border control measures to date under any president. The policy will penalize asylum seekers who cross the border irregularly or fail to apply for protection in other nations they transit through on their way to the United States.

As described in the NPRM, the proposed asylum transit ban rule would all but bar asylum for any non-Mexican who crosses the U.S.-Mexico border between ports of entry, unless they had previously applied for—and been denied—asylum in another country before arrival.

Specifically:

  • The rule would apply to all non-Mexican migrants (except unaccompanied minors) who had not been pre-approved under one of the Biden administration’s parole programs, which are currently open only to certain nationals of 5 countries; pre-register at a port of entry via CBP One or a similar scheduling system (or arrive at a port of entry and demonstrate they could not access the system); or get rejected for asylum in a transit country.
  • During an asylum seeker’s initial screening interview with an asylum officer, the officer will determine whether the new rule applies to them. If so, they will fail their credible fear screening unless they can demonstrate they were subject to an exception such as a medical emergency, severe human trafficking, or imminent danger—which would “rebut the presumption” of ineligibility.
  • Migrants subject to the rule, who do not meet the exceptions above, would be held to a higher standard of screening than is typically used for asylum (“reasonable fear”). If a migrant meets that standard, they will be allowed to apply for asylum before an immigration judge—although the text of the proposed regulation is unclear on whether they would actually be eligible to be granted asylum.
  • Migrants who do not meet the credible or reasonable fear standard can request review of the fear screening process in front of an immigration judge.

Once the regulation is formally published in the Federal Register, the public will have 30 days to comment on the proposal. The administration is legally required to consider and respond to all comments submitted during this period before publishing the final rule, which itself must precede implementing the policy. Given the Biden administration’s expectation that the new rule will be in place for the expiration of the national COVID-19 emergency on May 11, and the potential end of the Title 42 border expulsion policy at that time, the timeline raises substantial concerns that the administration will not fulfill its obligation to seriously consider all comments submitted by the public before the rule is finalized.

Furthermore, the sunset date for the new rule, two years after it becomes effective, is after the end of the current presidential term—making it impossible to guarantee it will not be extended indefinitely.

In 2020, a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel blocked the Trump administration’s asylum transit ban from being applied to thousands of asylum seekers who were unlawfully prevented from accessing the U.S. asylum process. The ban was later vacated by the D.C. District Court.

The American Immigration Council was a part of the Al Otro Lado v. Wolf class action lawsuit on behalf of individual asylum seekers and the legal services organization Al Otro Lado (AOL), which challenged the legality of the previous asylum transit ban as applied to asylum seekers who had been turned back at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Jeremy Robbins
Jeremy Robbins
Executive Director
American Immigration Council
PHOTO: AIC websitel

The following statement is from Jeremy Robbins, Executive Director, The American Immigration Council:

“President Biden committed to restoring access to asylum while on the campaign trail, but today’s proposal is a clear embrace of Trump-style crackdowns on asylum seekers, many of whom are fleeing from globally recognized oppressive regimes. For over four decades, U.S. law has allowed any person in the United States to apply for asylum no matter how they got here. The new proposed rule would all but destroy that promise, by largely reinstating prior asylum bans that were found to be illegal.

“Not only is the new asylum transit ban illegal and immoral, if put into place as proposed, it would create unnecessary barriers to protection that will put the lives of asylum seekers at risk. While the rule purports to be temporary, the precedent it sets—for this president or future presidents—could easily become permanent.

“For generations, the United States has offered a promise that any person fleeing persecution and harm in their home countries could seek asylum, regardless of how they enter the United States. Today’s actions break from his prior promises and threaten a return to some of the most harmful asylum policies of his predecessor—possibly forever.”

###

For more information, contact:

Brianna Dimas 202-507-7557 bdimas@immcouncil.org

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

From the Lutheran Immigration & Refugee Services:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 21, 2022
Contact: Tim Young | tyoung@lirs.org

Washington, D.C. – In preparation for the end of Title 42 asylum restrictions, the Biden administration announced a new proposed rule severely limiting asylum eligibility for those who did not first seek protection in a country they transited through to reach the United States, or who entered without notifying a border agent. The proposed rule will be subject to a 30-day period of public comment before it can take effect.

The new rule mirrors a transit asylum ban first implemented under the Trump administration, which was ultimately struck down by federal judges in multiple courts.  The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) provides that people seeking protection may apply for asylum regardless of manner of entry, and does not require them to have first applied for protection in another country.

Krish O’Mara Vignarajah
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah
CEO
Lutheran Immigrantion & Refugee Service

In response to the proposed asylum eligibility rule, Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, President and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, said:

“This rule reaches into the dustbin of history to resurrect one of the most harmful and illegal anti-asylum policies of the Trump administration. This transit ban defies decades of humanitarian protections enshrined in U.S. law and international agreements, and flagrantly violates President Biden’s own campaign promises to restore asylum. Requiring persecuted people to first seek protection in countries with no functioning asylum systems themselves is a ludicrous and life-threatening proposal.

While the Biden administration has launched a smartphone app for asylum appointments and expanded a temporary parole option for an extremely limited subset of four nationalities, these measures are no substitute for the legal right to seek asylum, regardless of manner of entry. It is generally the most vulnerable asylum seekers who are least likely to be able to navigate a complex app plagued by technical issues, language barriers, and overwhelming demand. Many families face immediate danger and cannot afford to wait for months on end in their country of persecution. To penalize them for making the lifesaving decision to seek safety at our border flies in the face of core American values.

We urge the Biden administration to reverse course before this misguided rule denies protection to those most in need of it. Officials must recognize that decades of deterrence-based policies have had little to no impact in suppressing migration. Instead, they should focus on managing migration humanely through expanded parole programs, efficient refugee processing in the hemisphere, and an equitably accessible asylum system.”

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

Lest anyone believe the absolute BS coming from the Biden Administration that they “had no choice” and that this “wasn’t the choice they wanted,” here’s an article setting forth the many southern border solutions that the Administration ignored or was too incompetent to carry out in their dishonest, immoral pursuit of the anti-asylum “vision” of Stephen Miller and other White Nationalists.

💡💡”There’s many things Biden could do. We published a resource called “Forty-Two Border Solutions That Are Not Title 42.” We could have done 142,” says immigration expert Danilo Zak in The Border Chronicle! The Biden Administration has ignored, failed, or is prepared to shrug off most of them!🤯

Danilo Zak
Danilo Zak
Associate Director of Policy and Advocacy Church World Service
PHOTO: The Border Chronicle

Zak was interviewed by Melissa Del Bosque of The Border Chronicle:

There are many changes that the Biden administration and Congress could make to alleviate suffering at the southern border. Immigration policy expert Danilo Zak recently published a report that offers several solutions, from rebuilding the refugee resettlement program to expanding nonimmigrant work visas to more countries in the Western Hemisphere.

Zak, formerly of the National Immigration Forum, is Associate Director of Policy and Advocacy for the nonprofit Church World Service. He spoke with The Border Chronicle about the increase of forcibly displaced people in the Western Hemisphere and the current situation at the border. “For many, there is no line to get into—no ‘right way’ to come to the U.S.,” Zak says.

Melissa Del Bosque
Melissa Del Bosque
Border Reporter
PHOTO: Melissadelbosque.com

Read the full interview here:

https://open.substack.com/pub/theborderchronicle/p/how-to-alleviate-suffering-at-the?r=330z7&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

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

Notably, better, more robust, use of Refugee Programs established by the Refugee Act of 1980 is among Zak’s “top three.” This is something that I have been “touting” since Biden was elected, but where the Administration has failed to meet the challenge.

And, contrary to what the Administration and others might say, there is nothing unachievable about using refugee programs to deal with emergency humanitarian situations. Also, with respect to cases taking forever to process, no need for that nonsense. It’s a matter of poor bureaucratic execution rather than a defect in the legal authority.

The Refugee Act of 1980 (“RA 80”) is basically a modified version of the “emergency parole, resettle with NGOs, and petition Congress to adjust status” that was used on an ad hoc basis to resettle Indochinese refugees and others on an emergency basis prior to the RA 80. Except, that the criteria, resettlement mechanisms, and adjustment process were all “built in” to the statute. Consequently, although Congress was to be consulted in advance, that process was designed to run smoothly, efficiently, and on an emergency basis if necessary.

While “Congress bashing” is now a favorite pastime of the Executive, Judiciary, and media, in 1980 Congress actually provided a mechanism to regularize the processing of  type of refugee flows now facing the U.S. The statutory flexibility and the legal tools to deal with these situations are in RA 80.

A subsequent Congress even added the “expedited removal” and “credible fear” process so that initial asylum screening could be conducted by expert Asylum Officers at or near the border and those “screened out” would be subject to expedited removal without full hearings in Immigration Court. Clearly, there was never a need for the Title 42 nonsense for any competent Administration.

Basically, if an Administration can run a large-scale parole program, which the Biden Administration did for Afghanistan and is doing now for Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Haiti, it can run a legal refugee program beyond our borders, even in a “country in crisis” if necessary. 

The idea that a statutory scheme specifically designed to have the flexibility deal with future mass refugee situations couldn’t be used to deal with the current humanitarian situation in the Western Hemisphere is pure poppycock!

Also unadulterated BS: The Biden Administration’s proposal to make the “end of asylum” at the southern border “temporary,” for two years! In 2025, the Biden Administration might not even be in office. If there is a GOP Administration, you can be sure that the demise of asylum at the border will become permanent, with or without legislation.

Also, what would be an Administration’s rationale for resuming asylum processing at the southern border in two years. Surely, there will be some other “bogus border crisis” cooked up to extend the bars. And, if there is no such crisis, the claim will be that the bars are “working as intended” so what’s the rationale for terminating them.

The argument that complying with the law by fairly processing asylum seekers regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, or manner of arrival, as the law requires, might actually encourage people to apply for protection will always be there — hanging over cowardly politicos afraid of the consequences of granting protection. Fact is, the current Administration has so little belief in our legal system and their own ability to operate within in, and so little concern for the human lives involved, that they are scared to death of failure. That’s not likely to change in two years — or ever!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-22-23

⚖️🗽SATURDAY MINI-ESSAY: ONE TINY STEP FOR MANKIND: But It’s Going To Take Much More Than Finally Replacing A Few Stunningly Unqualified Judges To Save EOIR!

Four Horsemen
Anti-Asylum Judges In Action! Factual distortions, ignoring evidence, and misapplications of the law are some of the “weapons” wielded by some EOIR judges to stop asylum seekers from getting the life-saving legal protections they deserve! Article III Courts can compound the problem by mis-using “deference” to avoid critical examination of the frequent abuses of humanity and the rule of law inflicted by this parody of a court system.
Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

ONE TINY STEP FOR MANKIND: But It’s Going To Take Much More Than Finally Replacing A Few Stunningly Unqualified Judges To Save EOIR!

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Courtside Exclusive

June 25, 2022

Over the last few weeks the long overdue and essential process of weeding out poorly qualified Immigration Judges — still on “probation” at EOIR — finally got off to a very modest start. 

Imagine yourself as a refugee fighting for your life in an asylum system that’s already stacked against you and where the “judges” work for the Attorney General, part of the Executive Branch’s political and law enforcement apparatus. 

How would you like your life to be in the hands of (now) former Immigration Judge Matthew O’Brien. He was appointed in 2020 by former AG Bill Barr — a staunch defender of the Trump/Miller White Nationalist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant agenda.

Nativism A “Qualification?”

What made O’Brien supposedly “qualified” to be a “fair and impartial” administrative judge? 

Was it his enthusiastic support for the cruel, inhumane, illegal, and unconstitutional “policy” of family separation? See, e.g., https://www.fairus.org/issue/border-security/truth-about-zero-tolerance-and-family-separation-what-americans-need-know.

Thankfully, O’Brien will pass into history. But, the damage inflicted by the “official policy of child abuse” will adversely affect generations.

Or, perhaps it was O’Brien’s intimate connection with a leading nativist group. Immediately prior to his appointment, he was the “Research” Director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (“FAIR”) — a group renowned for sloppy to non-existent “research” and presenting racially-motivated myths and fear mongering as “facts.” 

Here’s a “debunking” of some of their bogus claims by Alex Nowrasteh @ CATO Institute — hardly a “liberal think tank!” https://www.cato.org/blog/fairs-fiscal-burden-illegal-immigration-study-fatally-flawed.

As noted by Nowrasteh, that’s not the only example of FAIR providing “bogus research papers” designed to “rev up hate” and demean the contributions of immigrants both documented and undocumented.

Indeed, recent legitimate scholarly research, based on facts and statistics rather than personal bias, refutes the anti-immigrant myths peddled by FAIR and other nativist shill groups. See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2022/06/13/%f0%9f%93%9abooks-streets-of-gold-americas-untold-story-of-immigrant-success-by-ran-abramitzky-and-leah-boustan-reviewed-by-michael-luca-washpost/.

The Anti-Defamation League (“ADL”), one of America’s most venerable anti-hate, anti-misinformation groups, founded more than a century ago “To stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all,” had this to say about O’Brien’s former employer:

While the majority of the extreme anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. emanates from fringe groups like white supremacists and other nativists, there are a number of well-established anti-immigrant groups such as Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), NumbersUSA and The Remembrance Project which have secured a foothold in mainstream politics, and their members play a major role in promoting divisive, dangerous rhetoric and views that demonize immigrants. A number of these groups have attempted to position themselves as legitimate advocates against “illegal immigration” while using stereotypes, conspiracy theories and outright bigotry to disparage immigrants and hold them responsible for a number of societal ills.  A decade ago, most of this bigotry was directed primarily at Latino immigrants, but today, Muslim and Haitian immigrants, among others, are also targeted.

. . . .

There is a distinct anti-immigrant movement in this country, whose roots can be traced back to the 1970s. Groups such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) hope to influence general audiences with somewhat sanitized versions of their anti-immigrant views. In their worldview, non-citizens do not enjoy any status or privilege, and any path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants or refugees is portrayed as a threat to current citizens. Like some other problematic movements, the anti-immigrant movement also has a more extreme wing, which includes border vigilante groups, as well as groups and individuals that seek to demonize immigrants by using racist, sometimes threatening language.

https://www.adl.org/resources/report/mainstreaming-hate-anti-immigrant-movement-us

Insurmountable Bias

So, perhaps, you say, once actually “on the bench,” Judge O’Brien was able to overcome his biases and knowledge gaps and function as a fair and impartial judicial officer. Nope! Not in the cards!

According to TRAC, O’Brien denied almost every asylum case he heard (96.4% denials). That was, astoundingly, nearly 40% above the average of his colleagues in Arlington and nearly 30% higher than the nationwide asylum denial rate of approximately 67%.

But, to put this in perspective, we have to recognize that this denial rate had already been intentionally and artificially increased by a expanded,”packed,” politicized, “weaponized,” and intentionally “dumbed down” EOIR during the Sessions/Barr era at DOJ. For example, approximately 10 years ago, more than 50% of asylum, cases were being granted annually nationwide, and approximately 75% of the asylum cases in Arlington were granted. See, e.g., https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/judge2014/00001WAS/index.html. And, even then, most asylum experts would have said that the nationwide grant rate was too low.

Gaming The System For Denial

It’s not that conditions in “refugee/asylum sending” countries have gotten better over the past decade! Far from it! The refugee situation today is as bad as it has ever been since WWII and getting worse every day. 

So, why would legal refugee admissions be plunging to record lows (despite a rather disingenuous “increase in the refugee ceiling” by the Biden Administration) and asylum denials up dramatically over the past decade? 

It has little or nothing to do with asylum law or the realities of the worldwide refugee flow, particularly from Latin American and Caribbean countries. No, it has to do with an intentional move, started under Bush II, tolerated or somewhat encouraged in the Obama Administration, but greatly accelerated during the Trump-era, to “kneecap” the legal refugee and asylum processing programs. Indeed, the “near zeroing-out” of refugee and asylum admissions and the illegal replacement of Asylum Officers by totally unqualified CBP Agents by the Trump Administration are two of the most egregious examples. 

This was “complimented” by an intentional move to weaponize the Immigration Courts at EOIR as a tool of Stephen Miller’s White Nationalist immigration enforcement regime. The number of Immigration Judges doubled, hiring was expedited using an opaque and intentionally restrictive process, and most new appointees were from the ranks of prosecutors — some with little or no experience in asylum law. Even conservative commentators like Nolan Rappaport at The Hill expressed grave concerns about the problematic qualifications of many of the new hires.  See, e.g.https://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/02/05/no-expertise-necessary-at-the-new-eoir-immigration-judges-no-longer-need-to-demonstrate-immigration-experience-just-a-willingness-to-send-migrants-to-potential/.

Ironically, the EOIR backlog tripled. Under the “maliciously incompetent management” of the Trump group at DOJ, more judges actually meant more backlog! How is that giving taxpayers “value” for their money?

Some of the new judges, like O’Brien and some of the Immigration Judges “elevated” to the BIA, were appointed specifically because of their established records of anti-asylum bias, rude treatment of attorneys, and dehumanizing treatment of asylum seekers and other migrants. 

“Ignorance And Contempt”

It’s not like O’Brien was just your “garden variety” “conservative jurist.”  (I’ve actually worked with many of the latter over the years). No, he was notorious for his lack of scholarship, rudeness, and bias!

Here are a few of the comments he received on “RateYourJudge.com:”

      • “Rarely grants cases. No knowledge of the law, only there to deny cases. He needs to be removed.”

    • “Biased judge, hates immigrants and even kids of immigrants.”
    • “Incompetent.”
    • “One of the most condescending and self-righteous judges I have had the displeasure to hear. His word choice and tone left absolutely no doubt that he considered the Respondent to be beneath his notice, even to the point of referring to her as “the female Respondent” and to her domestic partner as a “paramour”. I have heard other judges’ oral opinions on very similar sets of facts, and they were accomplished in a fifth of the time with no loss of dignity to anyone.”
    • “This guy’s ignorance about immigration law and contempt for the people who appear before him is staggering. The way he threatens lawyers is reprehensible. EOIR is a disgrace.”
    • “Horrible human being with no business being on the bench. Shame on EOIR for allowing him to continue adjudicating cases.”
    • “Late, abusive, made up his mind before the case even started, frequently interrupted testimony, yelled at immigrants and their lawyer, and refused to listen to anything we said. Ignorant of the law and facts of the case. He should go back to directing hate groups.”
    • “If I could give 0 stars I would.”

https://www.ratemyimmigrationjudge.com/listing/hon-matthew-j-obrien-immigration-judge-arlington-immigration-court/

To be fair:

  • Among the stream of negative comments there were three “positive” comments about O’Brien;
  • Most of the comments both positive and negative were “anonymous” or apparent user “pseudonyms;”
  • RateMyImmigrationJudge” is neither comprehensive nor transparent.

Flunking the “Gold Standard”

So, was O’Brien really as horrible as most experts say? Let’s do another type of “reality check.” 

Among the other IJs at the Arlington Immigration Court, two stand out as widely respected expert jurists who have served for decades across Administrations of both parties. Judge John Milo Bryant was first appointed as an Immigration Judge in 1987 under the Reagan Administration. Judge Lawrence Owen Burman was appointed in 1998 under the Clinton Administration. With 66 years of judicial service between them, they would be considered more or less the “gold standard” for well-qualified, subject matter expert, fair and impartial Immigration Judges.

Significantly, according to the last TRAC report, O’Brien’s asylum grant rate of 3,6% was  approximately 1/15th of Judge Bryant’s and approximately 1/22 of Judge Burman’s. https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/judgereports/. Case closed! O’Brien should never have been on a bench where asylum seekers lives were at stake and expertise and fairness are supposed to be job requirements!

“Worse Than O’Brien”

What about now former Arlington Immigration Judge David White who was removed at the same time as O’Brien? Apparently, during his relatively short tenure (appointed by Barr in 2020), White was unable to deny enough asylum to qualify for TRAC’s system (100 decisions minimum). 

Yet, he made an indelible impression on those “sentenced” to appear before him. Here are comments from RateMyImmigrtionJudge.com:

    • “This judge is absolutely terrible. Unfair and biased. He is only here to deny asylum cases regardless of what the person has been through. Completely misstates the facts, doesn’t know the law so goes after credibility (using those misstated facts) as an excuse to say there’s no past persecution. Absolute disgrace.”

    • “Worst judge ever. The clerks at the Immigration Court told the private bar attorneys that they have NEVER seen this judge approve an asylum case. Not one. They have running bets and jokes about him, but he never grants. He writes the denial during the trial instead of listening to the person testify. He is insulting and rude and not at all compassionate about trauma.”

    • “This is the worst immigration judge in Arlington, hands down. He’s even worse than O’Brien, and O’Brien is an former hate-group director.”

    • “Terrible immigration judge. Had his mind made up well before our hearing. Came in with a prewritten denial that misstated the law. Was rude and dismissive about my client’s trauma.”

Wow! Worse than O’Brien. That’s quite an achievement.

GOP Court Packing

Fact is, the overt politicization, “weaponization,” and “dumbing down” of the Immigration Courts goes back nearly two decades to AG John Ashcroft and the Bush II Administration. Ashcroft reduced the size of the BIA as a gimmick to “purge” the supposedly “liberal” judges — those, including me, who voted to uphold the legal rights of migrants against government overreach. In other words, our “transgression” was to stand up for due process and the individual rights of immigrants — actually “our job” as properly defined.

And, the downward spiral has continued. The DOJ Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) actually confirmed some of the Bush II improper Immigration Judge hires. But, they avoided dealing with the “BIA purge” that got the ball rolling downhill at EOIR! The GOP has been much more skillful than Dems in reshaping the Immigration Courts to their liking.

During the Trump Administration, putting clearly unqualified IJs who were some of rudest highest denying in America on the BIA was certainly “packing” and “stacking” EOIR against legitimate asylum seekers. Again, however, the OIG failed to “seal the deal” regarding this outrageous conduct that has undermined our entire justice system, fed uncontrollable backlog, and cost human lives that should and could have been saved. 

Trump’s “court packing scheme” was no “small potatoes” matter, even if some in the Biden Administration are willfully blind to the continuing human rights and due process disaster at EOIR.

Removing two of the most glaringly unqualified Barr appointees in Arlington is a very modest step by AG Garland in the right direction. But, it’s going to take more, much more, decisive action to clean out the unqualified and the deadwood, bring in true expertise and judicial quality, and restore even a modicum of legitimacy and integrity at EOIR.

Reactionaries’ Predictably Absurdist Reaction 

Meanwhile, even this long overdue, well justified, and all too minimal change at EOIR produced totally absurdist reactions from O’Brien and fellow nativists (including some still “hiding out in plain sight” at DOJ) which were picked up by the Washington Times (of course). Don’t believe a word of it!

To understand what really happened and how small this step really was, get the truth in this analysis from Media Matters.  https://www.mediamatters.org/washington-times/washington-times-pushes-absurd-claim-biden-court-packing-immigration-courts

Tip Of The Iceberg

The removal of guys like O’Brien and White — who never had any business being placed in “quasi-judicial” positions where they exercised life or death authority over refugees of color whose humanity and legal rights they refused to recognize, is just a beginning. The ethical, competence, and judicial attitude rot at EOIR goes much deeper. 

Garland has been dilatory in “cleaning house” at EOIR. Vulnerable individuals who were wrongly rejected rather than properly protected have needlessly suffered, and probably even died, as a result. Poor Immigration Judging and lack of effective, correct, courageous, positive asylum guidance by the BIA has helped fuel a human rights disaster and rule of law collapse at the border!

Perhaps, at long last, Garland has slowly started fixing the unconscionable and unnecessary dysfunction and  intentionally ingrained institutional bias at EOIR. But, I’ll believe it when I see it!

Keep Up The Pressure

In the meantime, it’s critical that NDPA members: 1) keep applying for EOIR judgeships; and 2) ratchet up the pressure and demand the removal of all unqualified Immigration Judges and Appellate Immigration Judges who are undermining sound scholarship, due process, fundamental fairness, and human dignity at EOIR!

Human rights matter! Individual rights matter! Immigrants’ rights matter! Good judges matter!

Today, we are surrounded by too many bad judges, at all levels of our justice system, who reject the first three in favor of warped far-right ideologies, dangerous myths, and disregard for human dignity. The existential battle to get good judges into our system has begun. And, Immigration Courts are the primary theater of action! 

Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-25-22

😴NQRFPT: After A Year Of “Blowing Off” Recs Of Progressive Experts, Garland’s Dysfunctional Courts Appear Shockingly Unprepared To Handle Influx Of Kids!🆘 — Mike LaSusa Reports for Law360 Quoting Me, Among Others!

NQRFPT = “Not Quite Ready For Prime Time” — Unfortunately, it’s a more than apt descriptor for the Biden Administration’s overall inept and tone-deaf approach to due process and immigrants’ rights in the beyond dysfunctional and unjust “Immigration Courts” under EOIR @ Garalnd’s DOJ.

Mike LaSusa
Mike LaSusa
Legal and Natioanl Security Reporter
Law369
PHOTO: Twitter

Influx Of Solo Kids Poses Challenge For Immigration Courts

By Mike LaSusa

Law360 (March 31, 2022, 2:44 PM EDT) — Unaccompanied minors arriving in increasing numbers at the southern U.S. border are likely to face a tough time finding legal representation and navigating an overwhelmed immigration court system that has no special procedures for handling their cases.

The number of unaccompanied children encountered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection has risen sharply over the past year, to an average of more than 10,000 per month, according to CBP data. Those kids’ cases often end up in immigration court, where they are subject to the exact same treatment as adults, no matter their age.

“Nobody really thought of this when the laws were enacted,” said retired Immigration Judge Paul Wickham Schmidt, now an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law. “Everything dealing with kids is kind of an add-on,” he said, referring to special dockets for minors and other initiatives that aren’t expressly laid out in the law but have been tried in various courts over the years.

About a third of the immigration court cases started since October involve people under 18, and of those people, 40% are 4 or under, according to recent statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which operates the courts.

It’s unclear how many of those cases involve unaccompanied children and how many involve kids with adult relatives, and it’s hard to make historical comparisons because of changes in how the EOIR has tracked data on kids’ cases over the years.

But kids’ cases are indeed making up an increasing share of immigration court dockets, according to Jennifer Podkul, vice president of policy and advocacy for Kids in Need of Defense, or KIND, one of the main providers of legal services for migrant kids in the U.S.

“The cases are taking a lot longer because the backlog has increased so much,” Podkul said. Amid the crush of cases, attorneys can be hard to find.

. . . .

The immigration courts should consider “getting some real juvenile judges who actually understand asylum law and have real special training, not just a few hours of canned training, to deal with kids,” said Schmidt, the former immigration judge.

. . . .

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

Those with Law360 access can read Mike’s complete article at the link.

For what seems to be the millionth time with Garland, it’s not “rocket science.”🚀 He should have brought in Jen Podkul, her “boss,” Wendy Young of KIND, or a similar qualified leader from outside Government, to kick tail, roll some heads, clean out the deadwood, and set up a “Juvenile Division” of the Immigration Court staffed with well-qualified “real” judges, experts in asylum law, SIJ status, U & T visas, PD, and due process for vulnerable populations. 

Such judicial talent is out there. But, that’s the problem with Garland! The judicial and leadership talent remain largely “out there” while lesser qualified individuals continue to botch cases and screw up the justice system on a regular basis! Actions have consequences; so do inactions and failure to act decisively and courageously.

And, of course, Garland should have replaced the BIA with real judges — progressive practical scholars who wouldn’t tolerate some of the garbage inflicted on kids by the current out of control, undisciplined, “enforcement biased,” anti-immigrant EOIR system. 

Instead, Garland employs Miller “restrictionist enforcement guru” Tracy Short as his “Chief Immigration Judge” and another “Miller holdover” David Wetmore as BIA Chair. No immigration expert in America would deem either of these guys capable or qualified to insure due process for kids (or, for that matter anyone else) in Immgration Court. 

Yet, more than a year into the Biden Administration, there they are! It’s almost as if Stephen Miller just moved over to DOJ to join his buddy Gene Hamilton in abusing immigrants in Immigration Court. (Technically, Hamilton is gone, but it would be hard to tell from the way Garland and his equally tone-deaf lieutenants have messed up EOIR. Currently, he and Miller are officers of “America First Legal” a neo-fascist group engaged in “aiming to reinstate Trump-era policies that bar unaccompanied migrant children from entering the United States,” according to Wikipedia.)

Meanwhile, the folks with the expertise to solve problems and get the Immigration Courts back on track, like Jen & Wendy, are giving interviews and trying to fix Garland’s ungodly mess from the outside! What’s wrong with this picture? What’s wrong with this Administration?

We’re about to find out! Big time, as Garland’s broken, due-process denying “court” system continues it’s “death spiral,” ☠️ taking lots of kids and other human lives down with it!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-01-22

😰👹👺🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🤮“DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN” — Nicole Narea @ Vox With A Glimpse Of Trump’s Second Term: American Apocalypse — Dark, Ugly, Hateful, Violent, Dishonest, Exclusionary, Stupid, Racist, Diminished, Yet Very White & Privileged — Are People Of Color & Their Allies Really Going To Stand By & Watch While Their Past & Our Future As A Strong, Creative, Tolerant, Diverse, Humane Nation Is Written Out Of History By A Racist GOP & Its Totally Wacko Yet Dangerously Evil Cult Leader?

DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN pastedGraphic.png

Album version

Music & Lyrics by Bruce Springsteen

Well, they’re still racing out at the Trestles

But that blood it never burned in her veins

Now I hear she’s got a house up in Fairview

And a style she’s trying to maintain

Well, if she wants to see me

You can tell her that I’m easily found

Tell her there’s a spot out ‘neath Abram’s Bridge

And tell her there’s a darkness on the edge of town

There’s a darkness on the edge of town

Well, everybody’s got a secret, Sonny

Something that they just can’t face

Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it

They carry it with them every step that they take

Till some day they just cut it loose

Cut it loose or let it drag ’em down

Where no one asks any questions

Or looks too long in your face

In the darkness on the edge of town

In the darkness on the edge of town

Well, now some folks are born into a good life

And other folks get it anyway anyhow

Well, I lost my money and I lost my wife

Them things don’t seem to matter much to me now

Tonight I’ll be on that hill ’cause I can’t stop

I’ll be on that hill with everything I’ve got

Well, lives on the line where dreams are found and lost

I’ll be there on time and I’ll pay the cost

For wanting things that can only be found

In the darkness on the edge of town

In the darkness on the edge of town

——— Source: springsteenlyrics.com, click here for music: https://www.springsteenlyrics.com/lyrics.php?song=darknessontheedgeoftown

Nicole Narea
Nicole Narea
Immigration Reporter
Vox.com

https://apple.news/AyEIE9zXYSTeZ-TvO2TLZAQ

Nicole writes at Vox:

. . . .

As he seeks a second term, [Trump has] also made it clear that he hasn’t finished. He still wants to end the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program once and for all, drive out the millions of unauthorized immigrants living in the US and curb their political power, enact what he calls “merit-based” immigration reform, and pursue a slew of restrictive immigration regulations.

The US has already seen the harms of Trump’s first-term immigration policies, which could cut deeper if he’s given another four years: Legal immigration is plummeting, stymying growth in the labor force and threatening the US’s ability to attract global talent and recover from the coronavirus-induced recession. The US has abdicated its role as a model for how a powerful country should support the world’s most vulnerable people. And the millions of immigrants already living in the US, regardless of their legal status, have been left uncertain of their fate in the country they have come to call home.

Other concerns — including the coronavirus, racial justice, and unemployment — have recently eclipsed immigration as a top motivating issue for voters. But for Trump, who currently lags former Vice President Joe Biden in the polls, restricting immigration proved a winning message in 2016, and he will likely try to replicate that strategy again.

“It’s the thing he keeps going back to,” Douglas Rivlin, director of communication at the immigrant advocacy group America’s Voice, said. “It is his comfort zone — to go after people of color and turn them into sort of the specter of scary, violent people as a political strategy.”

. . . .

Whether any version of that proposal will get traction would largely depend on the makeup of the next Congress and whether Democrats win a majority in the Senate. Most immigration policy experts aren’t convinced that Trump will see success in negotiating with Democrats, but the political calculus could change if Democrats control both chambers of Congress and need Trump to sign their legislation.

It also depends on Republicans acting as a unified front on immigration. So far, pro-business Republicans aren’t challenging the restrictions and travel bans Trump has imposed during the pandemic, and as the US continues to grapple with its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and more than a million Americans are out of work, they will likely continue to follow the president’s lead. But in the long term, they might find themselves at philosophical odds with the anti-immigrant wing of the party.

“I think the reality of the economics of immigration and the sort of more ideological agenda are going to come into conflict,” Rivlin said.

But if Trump can overcome those hurdles, the prize would be substantial: the ability the leave his mark on the immigration system beyond a series of executive actions that could be reversed by the next Democrat who assumes office.

“Merit-based immigration reform would be a legacy for him on immigration, more so than a border wall,” the Bipartisan Policy Institute’s Cardinal-Brown said. “That would have impacts on the future of immigration for decades.”

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

Read the rest of Nicole’s gloomy yet (as always) well-written outlook at the link.

Don’t be fooled. In “Trumpspeak” the term “merit-based” means “race-based” (favoring, of course, White guys, preferably rich, English speaking, and prospective GOP toadies). Again, to state the obvious, a “kakistocracy” by definition lacks the ability to recognize and reward true “merit.” That’s why it’s a “kakistocracy,” not a “meritocracy!”

America is a nation of immigrants. To change that, Trump will have to destroy America, which, as this week’s “clown show of hate, fear, loathing, and complete nonsense” (a/k/a “The GOP Convention”) shows, he and his followers are perfectly willing to do. 

This perverted “vision” of America also ties in well with the Trump/GOP approach to racism and social justice: Ignore injustice and double down on violence administered by the largely White power structure against communities of color. Kill, maim, blame, punish, jail, intimidate, disenfranchise, and dehumanize the victims rather than looking for cooperative ways to solve the problems. Sow fear, hate, and division to insure that institutionalized racism and White grievance will be indelibly ingrained in America! As these self-inflicted grievances play out, the Trump family and its cronies will use the ensuing chaos as a diversion to loot the Treasury and use what remains of “government” to further their own personal interests, without regard to the common welfare. Nice folks!

It’s doubtful that America as the majority of us have envisioned it can survive another four years of Trump’s corruption, racism, and malicious incompetence. Despite some liberal wishful thinking, our democratic institutions and apparently overrated “checks and balances” are crumbling before our eyes. 

The “JR Five” on the Supremes and the GOP Senate already have reached “Penceian levels” (“Pence” rhymes with “incompetence”) of mindless sycophantic subservience to the “Clown Prince” and his entourage. None of them would be able to extract their collective heads from the more than ample Presidential rear to see any daylight during a second term. Trump’s re-election would inevitably convert the “City on The Hill” to a “wealthy universally despised third world kleptocracy.” That’s the real “vision” of Trump and the GOP. (I think that Nicole’s “hypothetical” of a Trump victory and a Dem Senate is the “least likely scenario.”)

This November, vote like your life and the world’s future depend on it! Because they do!

Equal Justice & A Diverse America For All! Trump’s Dark, Evil, Dishonest Vision Of America, Never!

PWS

08-27-20

DEM SENS BLAST REGIME’S CONTINUING DUE PROCESS FARCE IN IMMIGRATION COURTS! – Round Table Member Hon. Charles Honeyman Takes to Airwaves to Call For Independent U.S Immigration Court!

Joel Rose
Joel Rose
Correspondent
NPR
Hon. Charles Honeyman
Honorable Charles Honeyman
Retired U.S. Immigration Judge
Member, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

 

 

https://www.wabe.org/senate-democrats-accuse-justice-department-of-politicizing-immigration-courts/

 

Joel Rose reports for NPR:

 

Senate Democrats Accuse Justice Department Of Politicizing Immigration Courts

JOEL ROSE • FEB 13, 2020

 

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.(left), and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote a letter accusing the Trump administration of politicizing the immigration courts.

CREDIT J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE /  AP

Top Senate Democrats warn that the Trump administration is deliberately undermining the independence of immigration courts.

In a bluntly-worded letter to the Justice Department, which oversees the immigration courts, the senators accuse the administration of waging an “ongoing campaign to erode the independence of immigration courts,” including changing court rules to allow more political influence over decisions, and promoting partisan judges to the Board of Immigration Appeals.

“The administration’s gross mismanagement of these courts,” they write, threatens to do “lasting damage to public confidence in the immigration court system.”

The letter was sent Thursday to Attorney General William Barr. It was signed by nine Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, including Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Richard Durbin of Illinois, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. They are requesting extensive information about the department’s hiring practices for trial-level and appellate judges, among other documents.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter.

The senators’ concerns echo those voiced by former and current immigration judges, including the head of the union representing those judges. Ashley Tabaddor, the president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, testified at a House Judiciary Committee hearing last month that immigration courts should no longer be overseen by the Justice Department.

“The only real and lasting solution is the establishment of an independent Immigration Court,” Tabaddor wrote in her testimony. “It must be free from the constantly changing (often diametrically opposed) politicized policy directives of the Department of Justice.”

The judge’s union has pushed back against productivity quotas for immigration judges, which were announced in 2018. The union also opposed new Trump administration rules that gave more power to the director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, a political appointee.

The Trump administration, for its part, has moved to decertify the judges’ union.

Immigration courts face a massive backlog of more than a million cases. And there’s wide agreement that the court system needs reform. But not everyone believes that removing immigration courts from the Justice Department is the right approach.

“The attorney general and his subordinates are actively working to remedy this problem, by providing the needed resources to the immigration courts,” wrote Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge who is now a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee last month. “Restructuring the immigration courts … will almost certainly not address the core problems that are facing those courts,” Arthur added.

At a time when caseloads are surging, some immigration judges are quitting, citing frustration and exhaustion. Judge Charles Honeyman retired from the Philadelphia Immigration Court in January after 24 years on the job.

“I would want future administrations and the Congress to think of immigration judges as judges, literally, and give them the autonomy and the independence and the confidence to make decisions without political interference or overreach,” he said in an interview with NPR’s Noel King.

“The only way to do that is to create an independent court where the judge makes a decision and the judge isn’t afraid of how many cases he has to complete for the year or whether some political actor is going to be looking over his shoulder and say, I don’t agree with that decision; we’re going to find a way to put pressure on you,” Honeyman said.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

WABE brings you the local stories and national news that you value and trust. Please make a gift today.

 

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

Here’s the letter:

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

 

https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2020-02-13%20Ltr%20to%20AJ%20Barr%20re%20independence%20of%20immigration%20courts%20(004).pdf

***************************************
Thanks, Charlie, my friend, for speaking out so forcefully for Due Process and justice in our Immigration Courts!
After seeing how Trump attacked an Article III life-tenured U.S. District Judge this week, does anyone seriously think that an Immigration Judge, a mere civil servant, who ruled against the Trump/Miller White Nationalist agenda in a case that came to Trump’s attention would retain their job under Billy Barr? After seeing how Trump treated some career civil servants and military officers after they “spoke truth to power” does anyone seriously think that Billy Barr of any other regime sycophant would defend fair and impartial decision making that Trump didn’t like?
No way! So how can ANY foreign national get a fair hearing before a “fake court system” where the prosecution authorities retain the right to change any result that goes against them and to remove subordinates who are supposed to be exercising independent judgement from their jobs if they don’t like the result.
The entire Immigraton Court system is and has been for some time now a cruel, unconstitutional hoax. Why haven’t the Article III Courts, whose judges are protected by life tenure, done their duty by stepping in and putting an end to this unconstitutional dysfunctional mess that is destroying innocent lives and ruining futures?
PWS
02-13-20

HOUSE SUBCOMMITTEE SCHEDULES HEARING FOR TOMORROW (01-29-20) ON DUE PROCESS DISASTER IN U.S. IMMIGRATION COURTS!

https://judiciary.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=2757

Hearings

Courts in Crisis: The State of Judicial Independence and Due Process in U.S. Immigration Courts

Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship

Date: Wednesday, January 29, 2020 – 09:30am

Location: 2141 RHOB

Tags: Immigration and Citizenship

Courts in Crisis: The State of Judicial Independence and Due Process in U.S. Immigration Courts

Witnesses

X The HonorableAndrew R.Arthur

Y Resident Fellow in Law and Policy, Center for Immigration Studies

X Mr.JeremyMcKinney

Y Second Vice President, American Immigration Lawyers Association

X Ms.JudyPerry Martinez

Y President, American Bar Association

X The HonorableA. AshleyTabbador

Y President, National Association of Immigration Judges

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

You can watch live tomorrow by clicking the above link.

The Subcommittee should get an earful from the last three witnesses on the absolute national disgrace and mockery of Constitutional Due Process taking place daily in these weaponized and “captive” courts.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-28-20

NY TIMES BLASTED FOR GIVING FORUM TO WHITE NATIONALIST PROPAGANDA FROM CIS SHILL! — “The organization has gained credibility by writing pseudo-science ‘research’ papers that are little more than racist ideology dressed up in scholarly language.”

 

 

Sebastian Murdock
Sebastian Murdock
Senior Reporter
HuffPost

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/new-york-times-anti-immigration-op-ed-hate-group_n_5e21d9d8c5b673621f752f9c

The Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-immigration think tank, is categorized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

BY SEBASTIAN MURDOCK

SENIOR REPORTER

HIUFFPOST

The New York Times published an op-ed decrying immigration by an author claiming to be a “liberal restrictionist” who is in fact attached to a known hate group.

The column, published Friday, was written by , “a senior research fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies,” according to the biography listed under his byline.

CIS, which calls itself “an independent, non-partisan, non-profit, research organization,” is a known hate group that has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-immigrant movement that hires racist writers and associates with white nationalists.

“I’m a Liberal Who Thinks Immigration Must Be Restricted,” Kammer’s headline reads. The piece begins with an anecdote about how immigrants take the jobs of American-born workers and later claims “many liberal Democrats” want illegal immigration to run rampant:

Now many liberal Democrats, including those who call for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, seek to erase the distinction between legal and illegal immigration. Under the banner of inclusiveness, equality, human rights, racial reconciliation and reparations for American interventions in the third world, those liberals demand sanctuary for those who make it past the Border Patrol or overstay a visa. Few speak openly of open borders, but that is essentially what they are calling for.

Throughout the piece, Kammer seems set on reminding readers that he is liberal, even if his views might suggest otherwise.

“That’s why I call myself a liberal restrictionist,” Kammer, a former journalist, writes. “I have long considered myself a moderate liberal, in part because Democrats have always been the allies of working people.”

White House adviser Stephen Miller, a white nationalist, has cited CIS when speaking about immigration, and in 2011, the group released a report attempting to connect immigration with the creation of future terrorists, calling them “terror babies.”

The organization has gained credibility by writing pseudo-science “research” papers that are little more than racist ideology dressed up in scholarly language. According to the SPLC, “longtime CIS executive director Mark Krikorian’s contributions to the immigration policy debate rarely rise above petulant commentary dashed with extremist statements.”

Running a column by an author employed by a known hate group is the latest in the Times’s run of publishing racist pieces in its opinion section. In December, columnist and known bedbug Bret Stephens cited a study by a white nationalist that falsely claimed Ashkenazi Jews have a higher IQ than other races. The study he cited “traffics in centuries-old anti-Semitic tropes,” according to the SPLC.

Do better, New York Times.

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

Ben Mathis-Lilley
Ben Mathis-Lilley
Chief News Blogger
SLATE

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/01/times-op-ed-white-nationalist-center-for-immigration-studies.html

THE SLATEST

Times Taps White Nationalist Organization for Thought-Provoking Perspective on Immigration

By BEN MATHIS-LILLEY

JAN 17, 20206:42 PM

The New York Times opinion section under editor James Bennet ostensibly aims to challenge the paper’s predominately liberal readers by presenting them with thoughtful critiques of their worldview. In practice, it runs pieces like this recent argument that launching a war against Iran would end attacks against American interests in the Middle East—which was written by a veteran of the Bush administration who had predicted confidently in a 2003 piece also published by the Times that launching a war against Iraq would end attacks against American interests in the Middle East. There was no acknowledgment in the new piece of the old one, as an opinion section committed to intellectual honesty might require, nor was it particularly challenging in the sense of being difficult to rebut. But it did make people on the left feel bad, and like they were losing their minds, which is the bar that Bennet’s section requires an argument to clear.

The essay “I’m a Liberal Who Thinks Immigration Must Be Restricted,” published in the Times Thursday, may represent the nadir of this approach. It makes a familiar argument: that “the left” believes in a “post-national” system of open borders which sacrifices the interests of native-born working Americans to the interests of low-skilled foreign immigrants who drive down wages and disrupt the cultural cohesiveness of their communities. It argues for respecting a distinction between legal and illegal immigration and asserts that Donald Trump’s position on immigration can be appreciated, in a non-racist way, as “a patriotic battle to defend common people.” It accuses Trump’s critics of having had their minds addled by “tribal passions” and a fetish for conflict “between ethnic groups,” and it proposes a “conciliatory” policy that would offer amnesty to existing undocumented workers but institute a crackdown regime of visa enforcement that would prevent future undocumented individuals from finding jobs.

The familiarity of the article’s arguments is matched by the familiarity of its flaws. While large-scale immigration is, in fact, believed by some non-racists to flatten wages at the bottom of the pay scale, it’s also known to accelerate rather than retard economic expansion overall, and tends to be supported by progressives who advocate for other means of increasing working-class wages and sharing the benefits of GDP growth. The distinction between “legal” and “illegal” immigration is not some ancient, race-agnostic pillar of global affairs, but rather a concept that was instituted in the United States in the early 20th century to explicitly discriminate against Asian, southern European, and eastern European individuals and expanded in the 1960s to explicitly discriminate against Mexicans. Trump’s support is strongest in areas where there are fewer undocumented immigrants, not more, and he lost four of the five states that have the highest undocumented populations per capita. Many of the most immigration-heavy and ethnically diverse cities in the U.S. are also the safest and wealthiest and are considered so desirable to live in by migrating native-born Americans that they are experiencing housing crises.

As to whether criticizing an administration that instituted the premeditated, systematic separation of young children from their parents after they applied legally for asylum is a matter of unseemly “tribal passions,” or whether support for the principles of inclusive American citizenship described on the Statue of Liberty constitutes “post-national” anti-patriotism, perhaps we can agree to disagree.

More concerning than any of these specific problems, though, is the piece’s provenance: It’s written by someone named Jerry Kammer, a fellow at a think tank called the Center for Immigration Studies. Kammer has made a career out of covering immigration policy, he writes, for two reasons: “I was fascinated by its human, political and moral complexity. I also wanted to push back against the campaign by activist groups to label restrictionism as inherently racist.” He expresses regret that “odious people” with white-power affiliations have given the cause of cutting back on immigration a “bad name.”

What neither Kammer nor the Times discloses is that the Center for Immigration Studies was in fact founded by these people, most prominent among them a white nationalist named John Tanton who died last year. Tanton, as the Southern Poverty Law Center has documented, believed that the United States needed to maintain a “European-American majority, and a clear one at that”; he founded CIS, he wrote in the 1980s, in order to give his ideas the appearance of independent “credibility.”

Kammer does write that he disagrees with “some of the center’s hard-line positions.” Among his more hard-line colleagues at CIS are a writer named Jason Richwine, who contributed to a journal founded by white supremacist Richard Spencer and who has said that “IQ” is the “most important” difference between racial groups. (As the SPLC has documented, CIS has circulated literally hundreds of articles by explicit white supremacists like Spencer via links in its weekly newsletter. Its director once accused Barack Obama of trying to “foment race war.”) A statement of purpose on the CIS website is credited to longtime Tanton collaborator Dan Stein, who once complained that mass immigration was a tool developed by “Ted Kennedy and his political allies” in approximately 1958 to “retaliate against Anglo-Saxon dominance.”

In 1997, the Wall Street Journal wrote about Tanton in a piece called “The Intellectual Roots of Nativism.” It was a scathing article which noted that Tanton had once described the immigrant’s contribution to society as “defecating and creating garbage and looking for jobs.” The piece expressed concern that “otherwise sober-minded conservatives” and “reasonable critics of immigration” were affiliating themselves with his ideas. The author of that WSJ article, a 28-year-old journalist named Tucker Carlson, has since made the career-advancing decision to embrace Tanton-style nativism; he was in the news not too long ago for complaining in his role as a Fox News host that immigrants make the United States physically “dirtier.”

Whatever space ever existed between mainstream conservatism and white-power nationalism, Carlson demonstrates, has collapsed. And it turns out that the “odious people” that Kammer references in the Times are actually his colleagues and forebears, who created his organization so that policies intended to perpetuate “European-American” and “Anglo-Saxon” superiority could be laundered into the respectable discourse. What else is there to say but: It worked!

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

So, we have a White Nationalist in the White House assisted by neo-Nazi advisor Stephen Miller actually turning nativism into “Government policy.” Other white supremacists are scattered in key positions throughout the Government, particularly the immigration bureaucracy. Trump tweets and right-wing media put out a constant barrage of nativist lies, misrepresentations, false narratives, and racial, ethnic, and religious slurs.

So, just why is it that the “mainstream media” owes White Nationalists yet another forum to spread their nativist propaganda?

It’s not limited, of course, to just the Times. The WashPost regularly publishes largely fact and value free right-wing blather from professional shills like Marc Thiessen and Hugh Hewitt under the guise of “op-eds.”

And Chuck Todd regularly invites GOP congenital liars and Trump toadies like Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to spread their lies, false narratives, and debunked “conspiracy theories” from the “bully pulpit” of “Meet the Press.” To top it off, Chuck then appears to be flabbergasted that when he confronts these guys with truth and facts, they “double down” continuing to lie to his face, ignore established facts, and spread Putinesque conspiracy theories. 

Fact is, most of the Trump agenda is corrupt, counterfactual, unethical, inhumane, divisive, and corrosive to American democracy. We receive enough of it from lots of sources every day, pretty much 24-7-365. Is it really necessary for those supposedly dedicated to truth and democracy to give more free “air time” to nativist shills spreading their racially corrosive, divisive, anti-democracy propaganda?

PWS

01-18-20

ROLLING STONE: HOW STEPHEN MILLER & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST CABAL TOOK OVER OUR GOVERNMENT’S IMMIGRATION APPARATUS: “We used [CIS material] to spin a narrative where immigrants of color were not only dangerous, violent individuals but also posed an existential threat to America,” McHugh told Hatewatch. “We never fact-checked anything. We never called up other organizations to get any other perspective about those studies…. It was understood. You just write it up.”

Andy Kroll
Andy Kroll
Washington Bureau Chief
Rolling Stone

 

https://apple.news/Ai9__HexTRd-ZH51tL17Maw

 

Andy Kroll reports for Rolling Stone:

 

New Emails Expose How Stephen Miller and His Pals Push Trump’s Agenda

For nearly three years, Stephen Miller has used his White House seat to orchestrate the most extreme anti-immigrant agenda in almost a century. But he hasn’t done it alone.

A loose network of lawyers and advisers embedded throughout the Trump administration has worked closely with Miller to carry out the daily effort of pushing through draconian and often inhumane policies like separating migrant families at the border, detaining young migrants in cagelike facilities, and drastically reducing the number of immigrants allowed entry into the country. In other words, Miller, with his white-nationalist mindset and fervor to enact xenophobic policies, is far from an isolated actor. He’s the leader of a broad operation spread across the federal government.

Newly released emails provided to Rolling Stone offer a glimpse of the working relationship between Miller and one of his internal allies and fellow ideologues: a senior adviser at Immigration and Customs Enforcement named Jon Feere. Feere has been a fixture in Miller’s immigration working group where new ideas for cracking down on immigration get conceived. Reading the emails, Feere comes across like Miller’s point man inside ICE, enjoying unfettered access to arguably the most influential aide in the Trump White House, working long hours to advance the administration’s extreme and often inhumane immigration policy.

In the emails, Feere strategizes with Miller about how to use the federal government to amplify their anti-immigration message; tees up potential attacks on prominent Democratic politicians; directly briefs Miller in great detail about upcoming enforcement actions and policy changes in the works; and recommends to Miller people the administration should hire to expedite its immigration agenda. The emails also show that on at least one occasion Feere bypassed his superiors at ICE to deliver updates and advice directly to Miller.

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“Stephen Miller didn’t cut ties with the extremists when he joined the government — he brought them with him,” says Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight, a government watchdog group run by former members of the Obama administration. American Oversight first obtained Feere’s emails through a Freedom of Information Act request and provided them to Rolling Stone.

ICE and the White House did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Before he joined the administration, Feere’s bio says he worked for more than a decade at the rabidly anti-immigrant Center for Immigration Studies, which has played an instrumental role in shaping the administration’s immigration policies. The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled CIS an active hate group. (In January, CIS filed a civil racketeering suit against SPLC’s leaders, but a district judge dismissed the suit.) As a policy analyst there, Feere took hardline positions critical of birthright citizenship as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment and of President Obama’s policies like DACA. He accused Obama of opening the border “to more STDs,” and gave testimony to Congress about restricting birthright citizenship. He wrote favorably of Arizona’s infamous “Show Us Your Papers” law and condemned the DREAM Act, cities that adopt sanctuary status, and Obama’s DACA policy. In 2015, he penned an op-ed titled “How Trump Could Change Birthright Citizenship.”

Feere’s outspokenness didn’t go unnoticed: He advised the 2016 Trump campaign on immigration for several months before taking a job inside the administration. On the morning of Trump’s inauguration, he hit send on a tweet: “It’s time to make immigration policy great again.”

The partnership between Feere and Miller was a natural one. Miller is a big fan of the Center for Immigration Studies. During a keynote address at a CIS event in 2015, he applauded the group for spurring “a debate that far too often operates, like illegal immigrants, in the shadows.” A recent investigation by SPLC’s Hatewatch revealed that Miller shaped Breitbart News’ immigration coverage leading up to the 2016 election by sending at least 46 emails that mentioned CIS research, employees, or contributors to a Breitbart editor named Katie McHugh. Miller sent McHugh the phone number of CIS’s research director and pushed McHugh to use CIS research in her stories, which she often did. (Breitbart fired McHugh in 2017. She says he has since disavowed right-wing extremist politics.)

“We used [CIS material] to spin a narrative where immigrants of color were not only dangerous, violent individuals but also posed an existential threat to America,” McHugh told Hatewatch. “We never fact-checked anything. We never called up other organizations to get any other perspective about those studies…. It was understood. You just write it up.”

After Trump’s victory, Miller brought fellow immigration hardliners with him into the new administration. In addition to Feere, there was Julia Hahn, a Breitbart writer who took a job in the White House, and Julie Kirchner, a former staffer at another prominent anti-immigration group, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), who became an adviser to the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection and later the top ombudsman at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. Because Feere, Hahn, and Kirchner took advisory roles, that meant they didn’t have to be confirmed by the Senate, where they probably would’ve faced harsh questioning for their extreme views.

An active Twitter user before he went into government, Feere’s account went dark after his Inauguration Day tweet. That’s why the emails between Feere, Miller, and other Trump administration officials are useful — they give a rare glimpse at how key figures in the administration have worked behind the scenes to enact the largest crackdown on immigration in this country since the 1920s and ’30s.

“We’ve had quite draconian politics in the past,” says Daniel Tichenor, a professor at the University of Oregon. “But I don’t think we have ever had a modern presidential administration that looked back so longingly to the 1920s and ’30s as the good old days.”

The Feere-Miller emails released to American Oversight run to nearly 500 pages and are heavily redacted. But they’re still one of the few opportunities to see the administration and some of its most hardline members in action on the policy that Trump will be most remembered for: immigration.

One of the most striking emails is a December 22th, 2017, message that Feere sent to Miller and three other administration staffers. It’s a 10-point bulleted memo in which he updates Miller on a slew of different actions underway that he and his colleagues had worked on in the preceding week. The memo is notable because it appears to show how much latitude Feere has at ICE to not only brief the White House but drive forward the administration’s immigration agenda.

Feere says he led a meeting about crafting a new agreement between ICE and the Department of Labor on worksite immigration enforcement actions that would be “more favorable to ICE’s mission” of tracking down and deporting undocumented residents. He describes helping plan an upcoming ICE raid in the Bay Area, and tasking a field office to investigate a New York-based Pakistani American accused of supporting ISIS with bitcoin. He says he stopped an administration response to Amnesty International report on immigration enforcement; located ICE officers and operations “worth highlighting in speeches” for White House speechwriters; and assisted a Fox News contributor and “friendly NGO” on messaging after a draft proposal about separating migrant families had leaked to the media.

What’s notable as well about Feere’s December 22nd memo to Miller is that, according to emails, Feere apparently sent the message straight to Miller and other White House officials without clearing it by his bosses at ICE, who learned about the memo after the fact. “Here is Jon providing a weekly report to [redacted] that neither you or I saw before he sent it,” reads a follow-up email sent to ICE Acting Director Tom Homan by what appears to be Homan’s chief of staff, Tom Blank. (The redacted name is likely Miller’s. Homan declined to comment for the story.)

John Sandweg, who served as acting ICE director under Obama and reviewed the emails between Feere and Miller, says it’s not uncommon for an agency official like Feere to aggressively try to get credit for accomplishments and make the White House aware of what he’s doing. But Sandweg adds that it’s “a little strange” to see an adviser like Feere delivering updates and advice directly to the White House, as Feere did.

“You might have someone like [Feere] coordinating it, doing the grunt work, preparing it,” Sandweg says. “But going directly from him to the White House — that’s unusual. If you’re reporting that kind of detail to the White House, the director wants to sign off on that.”

In another email, sent on February 26th, 2018, Feere appears to forward the name and résumé of a Treasury Department employee for an opening at the Social Security Administration. In a follow-up email, Feere writes: “If we can get [name redacted] into SSA, it would help with information-sharing issues.” Greater access to Social Security information, immigration experts say, could assist ICE in its efforts to track down and deport undocumented residents in the U.S. Feere recommends to Miller that the applicant get a title of “Senior Advisor or similar [which] will ensure he has some clout over there.”

Other emails, while heavily redacted, show Feere’s efforts to build the case against DACA, which defers deportation for undocumented residents brought to the U.S. as children and allows them to receive temporary work permits. He writes in one memo: “DACA recipients include murderers, child molesters, individuals involved in fraud schemes, gang members, and many other types of criminals.” In another email, he writes to Miller on November 30th, 2017, to say that Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom were “silent” on the acquittal of an undocumented resident who was alleged to have shot and murdered 32-year-old Kate Steinle in July 2015, teeing up a potential attack on two nationally known Democrats.

And still other messages show a close working relationship and rapport between Feere and Miller. In one message, Feere asks Miller for a public defense of ICE’s then-acting director, Tom Homan, after Breitbart had published a series of stories that were critical of Homan, who had previously worked in the Obama administration. In another email Miller sends Feere his cellphone number and tells him to call over the weekend. In another, Feere gives Miller a list of “ideas for swift action,” at 7:30 p.m. (The substance of that email is redacted.) And in yet another message, with the subject line “Appropriations,” Miller thanks Feere for his work and tells him to “keep pushing.”

Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, a Penn State law professor and director of the Center for Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, says that Feere’s and CIS’s role in carrying out the administration’s immigration policy marks an ascent to power for one of the most extreme voices — a rise that would have been unthinkable even a decade ago. “They used to be called the loud minority,” Wadhia says. “The fact they’re now helping make immigration policy should be concerning to everyone.”

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

Remember: When Article III Federal Judges use concepts like “jurisdiction,” “deference,” “textualism,” “delegation,” “plenary power,” “discretion,” and “national security” to uphold the Trump/Miller assault on migrants, the rule of law, and our Constitution, what they are really doing is knowingly advancing the White Nationalist agenda while disguising their actions or inactions with often opaque legalisms. How can you rewrite the laws without Congress and in clear disregard of the Constitution, Due Process, Equal Protection, and prohibitions on racial and religious discrimination? Easy, when when the judges who are supposed to stand up for the law against tyranny instead look the other way.

How do you think that Jim Crow survived for at least a century with nary a peep from the Article IIIs about its obvious racist unconstitutionality? That’s the same type of corrupt judicial complicity that Trump, Miller, Barr, and the rest of the White Nationalist gang are counting on here. And, recently, they have been “right on.”

It’s also why despite all the recent revelations and calls by Democrats and opinion writers for his removal, Stephen Miller and his White Nationalist agenda aren’t going anywhere. Much as most Democrats and most pundits don’t want to admit it, Miller now represents the “real” GOP. The idea that GOP politicos will some morning wake up and find themselves appalled by illegality, racism, misogyny, and pandering to the hate agenda, and rediscover human decency, is a dangerous myth.

Note that no matter how outrageously racist, anti-Semitic, anti-American, misogynist, or otherwise hateful and demeaning Trump’s or Miller’s utterances might be, they draw no real condemnation from the GOP. At most, a smattering from the GOP might mutter something like “not useful” or “I wish he had chosen different words.”

And these days, most Federal Appeals Courts find ways to “go along to get along” without acknowledging what’s really going on here. I guess too many Federal Appellate Judges are incapable of seeing themselves and their families as being on the same level of humanity as Trump’s and Miller’s current targets. So, dehumanization and “Dred Scottification” of  “the other” is OK by them. That’s both a shame and a national disgrace.

 

PWS

12-11-19

 

 

 

 

 

KILLER “COURTS:” DUE PROCESS TAKES A DIVE, AS TRUMP REGIME’S WHITE NATIONALIST POLICIES SUPPRESS ASYLUM GRANT RATES IN NEW YORK AND OTHER IMMIGRATION “COURTS” — “Oh, Jesus Christ!” Menkin shouted at the lawyers when he learned a reporter had been present for the hearing. “Don’t you people look around the room? What’s the matter with you?” After the judge expressed his alarm, the reporter was ejected with Gloria’s tearful assent, and so the basis for Judge Menkin’s ruling on Gloria’s asylum petition is not known. The outcome is, though: denied, 30 days to appeal.”

Paul Moses
Paul Moses
Reporter
The Daily Beast
Tim Healy
Tim Healy
Reporter
The Daily Beast

https://apple.news/AYWheKLcqSvWk_toIFrDVLg

Paul Moses, Tim Healy in The Daily Beast:

‘ALL RIGHT, STOP’

Here’s Why the Rejection Rate for Asylum Seekers Has Exploded in America’s Largest Immigration Court in NYC

“It’s basically like the same problem with putting quotas on police officers for tickets.”

The rate of asylum petitions denied in New York City’s busy immigration court has shot up about 17 times times faster than in the rest of the country during the Trump administration’s crackdown—and still Ana was there, a round-faced Honduran woman with a black scarf wrapped turban-like over her hair, a look of fright crossing her dark eyes as the judge asked if she faced danger in her home country.

Her eyes darted over to her helper, a Manhattan lighting designer with New Sanctuary Coalition volunteers to offer moral support—she couldn’t find a lawyer to take her case for free. Then Ana turned back to the judge, or rather, to the video screen that beamed him in from Virginia, and whispered to the court interpreter in Spanish: “My spouse and my son were killed.” Tears welled in her eyes as she said a notorious transnational gang had carried out the slaying.

“Yes we were receiving threats from them,” she added. And that was why, months before her husband and son were slain, she and her 5-year-old daughter had come “through the river,” entering the United States near Piedras Negras, Mexico.

After ruling that she was deportable, the judge gave Ana—The Daily Beast is withholding her real name because of the danger she faces in Honduras—three months to submit a claim for asylum, a possible defense against her removal. “You should start working on that,” the judge told her. As she left the courtroom, Ana hugged the volunteer who’d accompanied her, Joan Racho-Jansen.

New York’s immigration court has long been the asylum capital; it has made two out of every five of the nation’s grants since 2001, while handling a quarter of the caseload. With approval of 55 percent of the petitions in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, it still grants a greater percentage of asylum requests than any other courts except San Francisco and Guam.

But New York’s golden door is slamming shut for far more asylum seekers than in the past, especially for women like Ana.

The asylum denial rate in the New York City immigration court rose from 15 percent in fiscal year 2016, the last full year of the Obama administration, to 44 percent in fiscal year 2019, which ended Sept. 30.  The rest of the country, excluding New York, has been relatively stable, with denials going from 69 percent to 74 percent. That is, the rate of denials in the rest of the country increased by one-ninth, but in New York they almost trebled.

There are other courts where the rate of denials has shot up sharply over the same period: Newark, New Jersey (168 percent); Boston (147 percent); Philadelphia (118 percent). But because of the volume of its caseload, what’s happening in New York is driving the national trend against asylum. For now, in sheer numbers, New York judges still granted more asylum requests over the last year than those in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Arlington, Virginia, the next three largest courts, combined.

An analysis of federal data compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University and interviews with former immigration judges, lawyers, immigrant advocates and experts finds multiple reasons for the sharp shift in the nation’s largest immigration court as compared to the rest of the country:

—Many more migrants are coming to the New York court from Mexico and the “Northern Triangle” of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, and the judges have been far more likely to deny them asylum than in the past: from two out of five cases in the 2016 fiscal year to four out of five cases in the 2019 fiscal year.

—Many veteran New York judges retired, and most of the replacements have a prosecutorial, military, or immigration enforcement background. In the past, appointments were more mixed between former prosecutors and immigrant defenders. Immigration judges are appointed by the U.S. attorney general and work for the Justice Department, not the federal court system.

—All the judges are under heavier pressure from their Justice Department superiors to process cases more quickly, which gives asylum applicants little time to gather witnesses and supporting documents such as police reports. New judges, who are on two years of probation, are under particular pressure because numerical “benchmarks” for completing cases are a critical factor in employee evaluations.

“You have a huge number of new hires in New York,” said Jeffrey Chase, a former New York immigration judge. “The new hires are mostly being chosen because they were former prosecutors. They’re normally of the background that this administration thinks will be statistically more likely to deny cases.”

Judge Jeffrey L. Menkin, who presided in Ana’s case via video hookup, began hearing cases in March. He is based in Falls Church, Virginia, the home of the Executive Office of Immigration Review, the Justice Department agency that runs the immigration courts. He’d been a Justice Department lawyer since 1991, including the previous 12 years as senior counsel for national security for the Office of Immigration Litigation.

Menkin can see only a portion of his New York courtroom on his video feed and as a result, he didn’t realize a Daily Beast reporter was present to watch him conduct an asylum hearing for a Guatemalan woman—we’ll call her Gloria—and her three young children, who were not present.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement took Gloria into custody at the Mexican border in March. Released on bond, she made her way to New York and had an initial immigration court hearing on June 26, one of many cases on a crowded master calendar. She was scheduled for an individual hearing four months later.

At the hearing scheduled three months later on the merits of her case, she decided to present an asylum defense to deportation. Her lawyer asked for a continuance—that is, a new hearing date—while his client waited to receive documentation she’d already requested from Guatemala. The papers were on the way, Gloria said.

Judges in such cases—those that the Department of Homeland Security designates as “family unit”—have been directed to complete them within a year, which is about 15 months faster than the average case resolved for the year ending Sept. 30. Down the hall, other types of cases were being scheduled for 2023. Menkin called the lawyer’s unexpected request for a continuance “nonsense” and “malarkey” and asked: “Are you and your client taking this case seriously?”

The judge then asked if Gloria was requesting a case-closing “voluntary departure,” a return to her homeland that would leave open the option she could apply again to enter the United States.

But Gloria had no intention of going back to Guatemala voluntarily.  So Menkin looked to the government’s lawyer: “DHS, do you want to jump into this cesspool?” The government lawyer objected to granting what would have been the first continuance in Gloria’s case.

And so Menkin refused to re-schedule, telling Gloria and her lawyer that they had to go ahead right then if they wanted to present an asylum defense. Gloria began testifying about threats and beatings that stretched back a decade, beginning after a failed romance with a man who was influential in local politics. Details are being withheld to protect her identity.

She finally fled, she said, when extortionists threatened to hurt her children if she didn’t make monthly payoffs that were beyond her means. When she observed that she and her children were being followed, she decided to leave. After she said she had gone to police three times, Menkin took over the questioning.

“Are you familiar with the contents of your own asylum application?” he asked, pointedly.

“No,” Gloria responded.

Menkin said her asylum application stated she had gone to police once, rather than three times, as she’d just testified. Gloria explained that she had called in the information for the application to an assistant in her lawyer’s office, and didn’t know why it was taken down wrong.

When her lawyer tried to explain, Menkin stopped him, raising his voice: “I did not ask you anything.”

Later, Menkin came back to the discrepancy he’d picked up on. “I don’t know why,” Gloria responded.

“All right, STOP,” Menkin told the woman, who cried through much of the two-hour hearing. Again, he sought to terminate the case, asking the DHS lawyer, “Do I have grounds to dismiss this now?”

“I’m trying to be fair,” she replied.

“We’re all trying to be fair,” Menkin said.

And to be fair, it should be noted that since October 2018, the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) has been evaluating judges’ performance based on the numbers for case completions, timeliness of decisions and the percent of rulings upheld on appeal. “In essence, immigration judges are in the untenable position of being both sworn to uphold judicial standards of impartiality and fairness while being subject to what appears to be politically-motivated performance standards,” according to an American Bar Association report that assailed what it said were unprecedented “production quotas”  for judges.

The pressure is especially strong on judges who, like Menkin, are new hires. They are probationary employees for two years.

Denise Slavin, a former president of the National Association of Immigration Judges who retired from the bench in April after 24 years of service, said the judges’ union had tried to talk EOIR Director James McHenry out of his quotas. “It’s basically like the same problem with putting quotas on police officers for tickets,” she said. “It suggests bias and skews the system to a certain extent.” Told of the details of Gloria’s hearing, she added, “That’s a prime example of the pressure these quotas have on cases… the pressure to get it done right away.”

Kathryn Mattingly, spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Immigration Review, said by email that she couldn’t comment on individual cases, but that all cases are handled on their individual merits. “Each asylum case is unique, with its own set of facts, evidentiary factors, and circumstances,” she wrote. “Asylum cases typically include complex legal and factual issues.”  She also said that Menkin could not comment: “Immigration judges do not give interviews.”

It’s true that each asylum case has its own complex factors. But a 2016 study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office took many of them into account—the asylum seeker’s nationality, language, legal representation, detention status, number of dependents—and determined that there are big differences in how the same “representative applicant” will be treated from one court and one judge to another.

“We saw that grant rates varies very significantly across courts and also across judges,” said Rebecca Gambler, director of the GAO’s Homeland Security and Justice team.

Some experts say that changes in the way the Justice Department has told immigration judges to interpret the law may be having an outsize effect in New York.

Starting with Jeff Sessions, the Trump administration’s attorneys general have used their authority over immigration courts to narrow the judges’ discretion to grant asylum or, in their view, to clarify existing law.

Asylum can be granted to those facing persecution because of “race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” In June 2018, Sessions overturned a precedent that many judges in New York had been using to find that victims of domestic assaults or gang violence could be members of a “particular social group,” especially when police were complicit or helpless. Justice’s ruling in the Matter of A-B-, a Salvadoran woman, seems to have had a particular impact in New York.

“Where there’s a question about a ‘particular social group,’ judges in other parts of the country may have taken a narrower view” already, said Lindsay Nash, a professor at Cardozo Law School in New York and co-director of the Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic.

Mauricio Noroña, a clinical teaching fellow at the same clinic, said new judges would be especially careful to follow the lead in the attorney general’s ruling.

Andrew Arthur, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington and a former immigration judge in York, Pennsylvania, said Sessions’ decision in the Matter of A-B- would particularly affect Central American applicants, whose numbers have increased sharply in New York’s court. Data show that just 8.5 percent of the New York asylum cases were from Central America or Mexico in 2016; in the past year, 32.6 percent were.

Arthur said a larger portion of the New York court’s asylum rulings in the past were for Chinese immigrants, whose arguments for refuge—persecution because of political dissent, religious belief, or the one-child policy—are fairly straightforward under U.S. asylum law. Although the number of Chinese applicants is still increasing, they have fallen as a portion of the New York caseload from 60 percent in 2016 to 28 percent in the past year.

Sessions’ determination against A-B- is being challenged, and lawyers have been exploring other paths to asylum in the meantime. “It’s extremely complicated to prepare cases in this climate of changing law,” said Swapna Reddy, co-executive director of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project. But, she said, “That’s not to say advocates and judges can’t get back to that [higher] grant rate.”

Gloria continued to cry; the DHS lawyer asked that she be given a tissue. The government lawyer’s cross-examination was comparatively gentle, but she questioned why Gloria didn’t move elsewhere within Guatemala and seek police protection.

“He would find out before I even arrived at the police station,” she said of the man she feared. And, she added, “They’re always going to investigate and as for always being on the run, that’s no life for my kids.”

In closing arguments, Gloria’s lawyer said his client had testified credibly and that she legitimately feared her tormentor’s influence. The DHS lawyer did not question Gloria’s credibility, but she said Gloria’s problem was personal, not political—that she could have moved to parts of Guatemala that were beyond the reach of the man’s political influence.

Judge Menkin then declared a 20-minute recess so that he could compose his decision. In the interim, the lawyers discovered that a man sitting in one corner of the small courtroom was a reporter and, when the judge returned to the bench to rule, so informed him.

Immigration court hearings are generally open to the public. There are special rules for asylum cases, however. The court’s practice manual says they “are open to the public unless the respondent expressly requests that they be closed.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ!” Menkin shouted at the lawyers when he learned a reporter had been present for the hearing. “Don’t you people look around the room? What’s the matter with you?”

After the judge expressed his alarm, the reporter was ejected with Gloria’s tearful assent, and so the basis for Judge Menkin’s ruling on Gloria’s asylum petition is not known. The outcome is, though: denied, 30 days to appeal.

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

Sound like Due Process to you? Only if it’s not your life at stake! Wonder how Judge Menkin and others like him would feel if they and their families were subjected to the same type of “judicial” procedure.

In viewing Judge Menkin’s ridiculous denial of a routine continuance, it’s important to understand that the precedent decisions binding Immigration Judges have intentionally over-emphasized the importance of documenting claims – even though documentation is often unavailable or time-consuming to obtain, have properly translated, and serve on the Immigration Judge and ICE in advance of the hearing. Therefore, denying a first continuance for needed preparation is tantamount to “giving the finger” to Due Process!

“Women in Honduras” has been found to be a valid “particular social group” by a number of Immigration Judgers elsewhere. Given the corruption of the Government of Honduras, the political influence of Ana’s tormentor, and the high rate of femicide, it’s highly unlikely that Ana would receive government protection.

The ICE attorney made an absurdist argument that Ana could “safely resettle” elsewhere in Honduras. Honduras is a small country, about the size of Virginia. It has an astronomical murder rate, highly corrupt police, snd almost no viable infrastructure, all important considerations in a legitimate inquiry into relocation. Under these conditions, there is no way that Ana had a “reasonably available internal relocation alternative” in Honduras as described in Federal Regulations. A “real” judge might have grilled ICE counsel about her legally and factually untenable position. But, not Menkin. He apparently had already made up his mind to deny regardless of the law or facts.

In short, before a “fair and impartial” judge with expertise in asylum law this could and should have been an “easy grant” of asylum, even without the additional documentation that could have been presented if the judge had granted a continuance. Instead, it was “orbited” off into a dysfunctional administrative appellate system where results are akin to “Refugee Roulette” highly dependent on the “panel” or individual “Appellate Immigration Judge” to which the case is assigned at the BIA. In this respect, it’s also noteworthy that Barr recently appointed six Immigration Judges with some of the highest asylum denial rates in the country to the BIA. Some “fair and impartial” judiciary!

It also appears that Menkin belatedly and improperly “duressed” Ana into agreeing to a “closed” hearing. Most of the time, once asylum applicants’ attorneys carefully explain to them that public observation and exposure of this “rigged” process might be the only way of getting pressure to change it, they readily agree to have the press present. Also, generally everybody tends to perform better and more professionally when the press or other observers are present (obviously, however, in this particular case, not so much).

First the Trump Regime artificially suppresses asylum grant rates with skewed hiring, improper interpretations of the law, unethical quotas, and pressure on the “judges” to crank out more removal orders. Then, they use the bogus statistics generated by the intentionally flawed and biased process to make a case that most of the asylum claims are non-meritorious.

Notably, even under this clearly biased, overtly anti-asylum procedure, the majority of asylum claims that get decided “on the merits” in New York are still granted. Imagine what the grant rate would be in a truly fair judicial system that properly applied asylum law and the Constitution: 70%, 80%, 90%? We’ll never know, because the regime fears the results of a fair asylum process that fully complies with Due Process: The “dirty little secret” the regime doesn’t want you to know! Talk about “fraud, waste, and abuse!” Something to remember the next time you hear “Cooch Cooch,” “Markie,” Albence, and other Trump sycophants at DHS and DOJ falsely claim that the overwhelming number of asylum applications are without merit.

Judges likes Menkin might want to remember that the truth will eventually “out’ even if too late to save the life of Ana and others like her. When that happens, those judges who put expediency, their jobs, and homage to the Trump Regime’s White Nationalist agenda before the law, Due Process, and human lives will find their “legacies” tarnished forever.

Many thanks to Judge Jeffrey S. Chase and Judge Denise Slavin of our Roundtable of Former Immigration Judges for their usual incisive comments. And a shout out to journalists like Moses and Healy who continue to shed light on the outrageous abuses taking place every day in our Immigration “Courts!”

Ultimately, legal and moral responsibility is on Congress, the Article III Courts, and the voters for allowing this clearly unconstitutional, deadly mess to continue to unfold in the Immigration “Courts” every day. That’s why it’s critical that the New Due Process Army “Constantly Confront Complicit Courts 4 Change.”

Due Process Forever; Complicit (& Corrupt) Courts Never!

 

PWS

 

12-03-19

 

 

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE:  HOW TRUMP’S WHITE NATIONALIST REGIME SEIZED CONTROL OF THE IMMIGRATION BUREAUCRACY & IS USING IT TO RE-CREATE 1924 & PROMOTE ITS AGENDA OF RACIST HATE — Who Needs Legislation When You Have GOP Obstructionists In Congress & Feckless Federal Courts?

https://www.huffpost.com/highline/article/invisible-wall/

Rachel Morris
Rachel Morris
Executive Editor
HuffPost Highline

Rachel Morris writes in Highline:

IN THE TWO YEARS AND 308 DAYS THAT DONALD Trump has been president, he has constructed zero miles of wall along the southern border of the United States. He has, to be fair, replaced or reinforced 76 miles of existing fence and signed it with a sharpie. A private group has also built a barrier less than a mile long with some help from Steve Bannon and money raised on GoFundMe. But along the 2,000 miles from Texas to California, there is no blockade of unscalable steel slats in heat-retaining matte black, no electrified spikes, no moat and no crocodiles. The animating force of Trump’s entire presidency—the idea that radiated a warning of dangerous bigotry to his opponents and a promise of unapologetic nativism to his supporters—will never be built in the way he imagined.

And it doesn’t matter. In the two years and 308 days that Donald Trump has been president, his administration has constructed far more effective barriers to immigration. No new laws have actually been passed. This transformation has mostly come about through subtle administrative shifts—a phrase that vanishes from an internal manual, a form that gets longer, an unannounced revision to a website, a memo, a footnote in a memo. Among immigration lawyers, the cumulative effect of these procedural changes is known as the invisible wall.

In the two years after Trump took office, denials for H1Bs, the most common form of visa for skilled workers, more than doubled. In the same period, wait times for citizenship also doubled, while average processing times for all kinds of visas jumped by 46 percent, even as the quantity of applications went down. In 2018, the United States added just 200,000 immigrants to the population, a startling 70 percent less than the year before.

Before Trump was elected, there was virtually no support within either party for policies that make it harder for foreigners to come here legally. For decades, the Republican consensus has favored tough border security along with high levels of legal immigration. The party’s small restrictionist wing protested from the margins, but it was no match for a pro-immigration coalition encompassing business interests, unions and minority groups. In 2013, then-Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions introduced an amendment that would have lowered the number of people who qualified for green cards and work visas. It got a single vote in committee—his own. As a former senior official at the Department of Homeland Security observed, “If you told me these guys would be able to change the way the U.S. does immigration in two years, I would have laughed.”

. . . .

In November, Cuccinelli was promoted to DHS deputy acting secretary. Kathy Nuebel Kovarik became acting deputy at USCIS and Robert Law, the former FAIR lobbyist, ascended to the head of the policy office. The agency has promised a new flurry of major policy changes before the end of the year. And in what is perhaps the purest expression of the administration’s intentions so far, it started sending Central American asylum seekers to Guatemala with no access to an attorney, no review by an immigration court, far away from the border infrastructure of activists and reporters and lawyers or any form of help at all.

IT’S EASY ENOUGH TO BELIEVE THAT BECAUSE NONE of the Trump administration’s reforms are entrenched in law, they can be overturned as quickly as they were introduced. And yet even though, in theory, the policy memos can all be withdrawn, the “sheer number of both significant and less significant changes is overwhelming,” said Jaddou, the former USCIS chief counsel. “It will take an ambitious plan over a series of years to undo it all.” Formal regulations, like the third-country asylum rule and public charge rule, if it succeeds, will be especially hard to unravel.

The institutional implications run deeper. The backlog of delayed cases will likely take several years to get under control. The administration has promoted six judges with some of the highest asylum denial rates to the Justice Department’s immigration appeals court, including one who threatened to set a dog on a 2-year-old child for failing to be quiet in his courtroom. Those appointments are permanent.

The refugee program, too, will take years to rebuild. The plunge in admissions caused a plunge in funding to the nine resettlement agencies, which have closed more than 100 offices around the country since 2016. That’s a third of their capacity, according to a report by Refugees Council USA. “The whole infrastructure is deteriorating,” said Rodriguez, the former USCIS director. Because the application process is so lengthy, even if a new administration raises refugee admissions on day one, it would take as long as five years before increased numbers of people actually make it to the United States. Consider that in January 2017, the State Department briefly paused in-bound flights for refugees who had finally made it through the gauntlet of health, security and other checks. As of this summer, some of those refugees were still waiting to leave. While the flights were grounded, they missed the two-month window during which all of their documents were current. When one document expires, it can take months to replace, causing others to expire and trapping the refugee in what the report called “a domino effect of expiring validity periods.”

Even harder to repair is the culture shift within USCIS. New visa adjudicators will remain in their jobs long after the political appointees have gone—kings and queens of their own offices. Employees who were promoted for their skeptical inclinations will stay in those positions, setting priorities for subordinates. The multitude of changes at USCIS are the product of an administration that regards immigration as its political lifeblood. There’s no guarantee—or indication—that any of the potential Democratic nominees would apply the same obsessive zeal to overturning them.

Back in 1924, Johnson-Reed’s supporters never anticipated the Holocaust, and yet they expanded its horrors. We don’t know where our own future is headed, but we live in a time of metastasizing instability. Last year, the United Nations’ official tally of refugees passed 70 million, the highest since World War II. Mass migrations, whether because of violence or inequality or environmental calamity or some murky blend of factors that don’t conveniently fit existing laws, are the reality and challenge of our era. There aren’t any easy solutions. But already, what started as a series of small, obscure administrative changes is resulting in unthinkable cruelty. If left to continue, it will, in every sense, redefine what it means to be American.

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

Read Rachel’s entire, much longer, article at the link.

Building Due Process and fundamental fairness is a painstaking incremental process that takes years, sometimes decades, to achieve. Destroying it can happen basically overnight.

This should never have happened if the Supremes had stood up to the Administration’s unconstitutional, factually bogus, racist, religiously targeted “Travel Ban” instead of green-lighting the return of “Jim Crow 2” under a clearly pretextual and fabricated “national security” facade. Judicial complicity and task avoidance enables cruelty and the destruction of democratic institutions (including, ultimately, the independent judiciary).  That’s why the “New Due Process Army” is in it for the long run!

Constantly Confront Complicit Courts 4 Change!

Due Process Forever. White Nationalism Never! Complicit Courts Never!

PWS

11-26-19

TRUMP WILL SUBMIT D.O.A. ELITIST PROPOSAL TO REPLACE REFUGEES & FAMILY IMMIGRANTS WITH SO-CALLED “MERIT BASED” IMMIGRANTS — Likely To Please Neither Dems Nor GOP Nativists!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-to-launch-fresh-immigration-overhaul-bid-11557956429?emailToken=e91bcce392c236a27eb93bec537f274d3Xya4bEDbDZFodGbWxJ/4u0NUXuEAvnPgbSb156wwi6WWZEFlWQFJx37NiRp5fBg1aDR4xXis2M/73eDEh0S7VsigposAuJSIWJu7s2zRoE%3D&reflink=article_email_share

Louise Radnofsky and Natalie Andrews report for the WSJ:

WASH­ING­TON—Pres­i­dent Trump will make a fresh bid Thurs­day to re­make U.S. im­mi­gra­tion pol­icy, propos-ing an ex­pan­sion of skills-based visas off­set by new re­stric­tions on fam­ily mem­bers’ im­mi­gra­tion—a pro­posal likely to ig­nite a dis­pute over is­sues that di­vide po­lit­i­cal par­ties and the coun­try.

Mr. Trump is set to un­veil an im­mi­gra­tion plan de­vised in part by son-in-law and se­nior ad­viser Jared Kush­ner that in­cor­po-rates sev­eral ideas that have been gain­ing cur­rency in Re­pub­li­can cir­cles.

Chief among them: a bill crafted by con­ser­v­a­tive Re­pub­li­cans that would es­tab­lish a visa sys­tem pri­or­i­tiz­ing im­mi­grants based on cri­te­ria such as ed­u­ca­tion, Eng­lish-language abil­ity and high-pay­ing job of­fers.

The pro­posal also would elim­i­nate the di­ver­sity-visa lot­tery long de­rided by Mr. Trump as well as im­mi­gra-tion routes for fam­ily mem­bers such as sib­lings. More­over, it would limit the num­ber of refugees of­fered per­ma­nent res­i­dency to 50,000 a year.

. . . .

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

Those with WSJ access can read the complete article at the link.

More Trump “smoke and mirrors.” No, it isn’t about “diversity” as one Trump toady falsely claims. Trump eliminates the current diversity visas.

It’s largely about the (likely false) assumption by Trump and others in the GOP that they have cleverly defined “merit” in a restrictive way that will bring in more white, English-speaking, highly-educated individuals from Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc. and fewer Africans, Hispanics, Haitians, and Syrians, etc.

Contrary to nativist expectations when the basic current system was enacted in 1965, “immigrants of color” have dramatically increased their share of legal immigration over the past half-century. That has led to a diverse, talented, innovative, dynamic, successful yet “less white” America. According to nativist stereotypes, dumping on family members and  refugees and increasing skill, educational, and English-language requirements will result in a “whiter” (that is “more meritorious”) immigrant population going forward.

However, like the nativists of 1965, Trump and his nativists might be surprised by the likely results of their own stereotypical assumptions. Actually, English-speaking immigrants from Africa, Haiti, the Middle East, Mexico, and Venezuela are among the highest skilled and best educated.

Of course, Trump’s elitist proposal also ignores that some of our greatest needs for immigrants pertain to important, but less glamorous, occupations for which neither education nor instant English language skills are a requirement. To keep our economy moving, we actually need more qualified roofers, construction workers, agricultural workers, child care workers, health assistants, security guards, janitors, landscapers, and convenience store operators than we do rocket scientists.

And, no, Tom Cotton and David Purdue, there aren’t enough “American workers” available to fill all these positions, even at greatly increased wages (which, incidentally, your fat cat GOP business supporters have no intention of paying anyway)! How high would the wages have to be to make guys like Cotton and Purdue give up their legislative sinecures (where they do nothing except show up for a few judicial votes on far right candidates scheduled by McConnell) and lay roofs correctly in 100-degree heat?

Rather than working against market forces to artificially restrict the labor supply, those wanting to improve wages and working conditions for American workers should favor higher minimum wages, aggressive enforcement of wage and hour and OSHA laws, and more unions. But, the GOP hates all of those real solutions.

The proposal also ignores “Dreamers,” which is sure to be a sore point with the Democrats. On the other side, it fails to sharply (and mindlessly) slash overall legal immigration levels as demanded by GOP nativists. While this proposal does not directly target children or dump on refugees from the Northern Triangle based on race and nationality, the ever slimier Trump sycophant Lindsey Graham has introduced a bill that promises to do both.

Beyond the purely humanitarian considerations, refugees make huge contributions to our economy and society.  So, why would we want to screw them over? Family immigrants arrive not only with skills, but with a “leg up”on adjustment and assimilation. So, why would we want to dump on them?

For the most part, this looks more like a Trump campaign backgrounder or a diversion from his endless stream of lies, unethical behavior, and downright stupid actions that are a constant threat to our national security. What it doesn’t look like is a serious bipartisan proposal to give America the robust, expanded, more realistic, market responsive legal immigration, asylum, and refugee systems we need to secure our borders from real dangers (which doesn’t include most asylum seekers and would-be workers) and move America forward in the 21st century. Without regime change and a sea change that would break the GOP’s minority hold on Congress through the Senate, immigration is likely to remain a mess.

PWS

05-17-19

 

 

TAL @ SF CHRON: Barr Moves To Further Dilute Due Process In Immigration Courts — Proposed Regs Likely Will Stack BIA With Restrictionist “Appellate Judges,” Increase Rubber Stamp “Affirmances Without Opinion,” & Encourage Biased Anti-Asylum “Precedents!”

Tal Kopan

Washington Correspondent | San Francisco Chronicle

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Trump-s-new-attorney-general-launches-fresh-13761430.php

Trump’s new attorney general launches fresh changes to immigration courts

By Tal Kopan

WASHINGTON — Attorney General William Barr is making his first major moves on immigration policy since his confirmation, setting up big changes for the courts that decide whether immigrants will stay in the U.S. or be deported.

The Justice Department is on the verge of issuing rule changes that would make it easier for a handful of appellate immigration judges to declare their rulings binding on the entire immigration system, The Chronicle has learned. The changes could also expand the use of single-judge, cursory decisions at the appellate level — all at the same time as a hiring spree that could reshape the court.

The Trump administration bills the moves as efficiency measures to help fix a delay-plagued immigration court system, at a time it is being inundated by asylum seekers at the southern border. Asylum cases can take years to complete, even those that are relatively straightforward.

But advocates for immigrants and attorneys who work in the system fear the efficiency tools could be used to dramatically reshape immigration law to fit President Trump’s political goals.

Trump has repeatedly railed against the immigration court system and suggested doing away with it entirely.

“Congress has to … get rid of the whole asylum system because it doesn’t work,” Trump said this month. “And frankly, we should get rid of judges. You can’t have a court case every time somebody steps their foot on our ground.”

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions frequently cited the immigration-case backlog as dire and made reducing it a central focus of his tenure, though it grew by more than 100,000 cases in that time to its current total of more than 800,000. Recently ousted Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen complained that migrants with weak asylum cases were clogging the system, slowing immigration judges from handling legitimate claims.

Last week, the Justice Department revived a proposed regulation originally initiated during the George W. Bush administration to allow the 21-judge appeals court system that hears immigration cases more latitude to issue cursory opinions without explanation. It would also allow the court to set precedents with only a small minority of appeals judges participating, which could sharply accelerate the administration’s ability to make changes to immigration law that wouldn’t require congressional action.

The proposed regulation has been sent to the White House for review before being made final, according to a government database. The Justice Department declined to comment other than to confirm that it hopes to finalize the rule this year.

The administration’s moves are raising concerns among groups representing immigration judges, attorneys and advocates, following a series of earlier moves that Sessions undertook to overhaul the courts.

“All of these pieces add up to taking away due process and speeding people through to their deportation in some sort of assembly line substitute for justice,” said Jeffrey Chase, a former immigration judge and former senior legal adviser to the immigration appeals court.

The immigration courts operate under the Justice Department and are separate from the U.S. federal court system. The attorney general hires the judges who hear immigrants’ cases and their appeals, and he serves as a one-man Supreme Court with the authority to overturn any decision.

The proposed Justice Department regulation change has two main parts. First, it would allow the immigration courts’ appellate arm, the Board of Immigration Appeals, to more easily issue “affirmances without opinion.” Those affirmances are when a single appeals judge, rather than a three-judge panel, upholds a lower court’s deportation decision without issuing an explanation.

The appeals board would be allowed to consider limited resources — such as a shortage of staff or a crush of cases — to issue such cursory affirmances, something it cannot do now.

Second, the regulation would change the way the appeals board can make its decisions public — the step that gives those decisions the force of binding precedent for all 400 immigration judges and the appeals court itself. In the past, those decisions have dictated what types of gang violence or domestic violence cases qualify for asylum, for example, or what constitutes a vulnerable population in need of protection.

Currently, the appeals board can declare a binding precedent only if a majority of all permanent sitting judges vote to do so. The regulation would do away with that requirement and allow a two-judge majority of any three-judge panel that decides a case to declare it a precedent. It would also give the attorney general that power — allowing him to set as precedent any three-judge panel’s decision he chooses.

At the moment, the appeals court has 15 permanent judges and six temporary fill-ins to decide those cases. The Justice Department has posted job listings to fill those six seats permanently, but would make two key changes from the current system: Appeals judges could serve simultaneously as lower-court immigration judges, and they would not have to relocate to the Board of Immigration Appeals in Falls Church, Va., a suburb of Washington, D.C.

The administration has not explained why previous job postings for these appellate openings have not resulted in hires or why they decided to make the changes to the job description.

The new listings would allow the department to recruit appeals judges without forcing them to move to the Washington area. Critics familiar with the inner workings of the Justice Department fear that officials will handpick appeals appellate judges from the ranks of lower-court judges with the highest deportation rates.

Officials are barred by federal law from considering politics or ideology in picking immigration judges, but the administration has been accused of such motivations. Civil servant Dorothea Lay went public with her allegations when her offer of an appeals board judgeship by the Obama administration was rescinded after Trump took office, on the grounds of lack of commitment. She has filed a complaint with federal watchdogs.

Taken together, the hiring of new appeals immigration judges and greater ability to pump out decisions could accelerate the Trump administration’s reshaping of immigration law in the U.S., all without needing Congress to act.

Trump has pointed to the immigration case backlog as a major contributor to illegal immigration to the U.S. Immigrants often have to wait years for their cases to be heard, sometimes disappear before that date, and in the meantime may receive work permits and put down roots in the U.S.

Sessions took several steps to accelerate the process and make it harder for immigrants to qualify for asylum, though the backlog has still grown. Sessions used his authority as the quasi-Supreme Court of the immigration system to rule that most victims of domestic and gang violence don’t qualify for asylum. A federal judge has blocked the application of that decision to asylum screenings at the border.

Sessions also set case-completion quotas for immigration judges, over the objection of the judges’ union and immigration lawyer associations, and limited their discretion to close or postpone cases.

Art Arthur, a former immigration judge and fellow at the immigration reduction advocacy group Center for Immigration Studies, who has written in favor of most of the Justice Department’s immigration court moves, downplayed the significance of the latest proposed changes.

He argued it made sense for appeals judges to have experience in the lower immigration courts— which is not a job requirement — and that it was important for the system to have “flexibility” to manage its caseload.

“Will there be complaints? There were complaints in the past,” about Bush-era streamlining efforts, including from federal courts, Arthur said. “But I hope that (the Justice Department) has learned from the issues that it had in the past, when it was doing affirmances without opinion, how to do it correctly. With respect to having flexibility as it relates to board members, I don’t have any problem with that at all, so long as it’s clear that an appellate immigration judge is not able to review a decision that that appellate immigration judge issued.”

The union that represents lower-court immigration judges said it was concerned that the Justice Department has not consulted it about the proposed changes. The group, the National Association of Immigration Judges, has been critical of Sessions’ unilateral efforts to expedite the immigration legal process as jeopardizing immigrants’ rights to fair proceedings.

“It’s yet another example where the professionals in the field are not consulted,” said union President Emerita Dana Leigh Marks, an immigration judge in San Francisco. “And that’s just where the immigration judges get frustrated, because we don’t know exactly what it means. It may be terrific, but one would still like to be brought into the decision-making process and have the pros and cons discussed.”

The union, the American Bar Association and the American Association of Immigration Lawyers have all called for removing the immigration court system from the Justice Department and making it an independent legal institution, like the Bankruptcy Courts.

“The policy change really is a reflection of showing how DOJ management can rewrite immigration laws and policies on a whim,” said Laura Lynch, the immigration lawyers association’s senior policy counsel. “Efforts to improve efficiency, they’re important. But they can’t be implemented at the expense of fundamental principles of due process and fairness in the court system.”

One former Justice Department official who worked on the immigration courts noted that any changes in immigration law that result from the court changes are likely to stay in place for years.

“Precedent decisions live on forever, and so once they have that, they’re going to work on issuing precedent decisions, as many as they possibly can,” said Rena Cutlip-Mason, who now works at Tahirih Justice Center, an organization that defends immigrant women and children fleeing gender-based violence. “There’s going to be a lot more precedents, and it’s hard to say what those precedents will be.”

Tal Kopan is The San Francisco Chronicle’s Washington correspondent. Email: tal.kopan@sfchronicle.comTwitter: @talkopan

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

With due respect to my friend Rena Cutlip-Mason, I don’t think we’ll have to guess at “what those precedents will be.” They will all be anti-asylum, restrictionist, and likely misogynistic to boot.

This Administration is virulently anti-due-process and anti immigrant and seeks to “turn back the clock” to an era where only a few, mostly White, mostly male individuals were, often grudgingly, granted asylum. It will be up to the NDPA, the courts, and ultimately the voters and Congress to halt and reverse this latest White Nationalist scofflaw initiative.

Yes, the overt White Nationalism, racism, xenophobia, and disdain for the private bar that leapt from every Sessions pronouncement on immigration is gone. But, buried beneath lots of distracting gibberish and legal gobbledegook is the same White Nationalist restrictionist agenda.

Here’s my take on what is happening here.

  • Trying to promote more use of Affirmance Without Opinion to create assembly line justice;
  • By giving panels authority to set precedent, basically destroys the power of the en banc Board and eliminates it as a deliberative court;
  • Essentially, it allows two “hard line” Board Members on a single panel to rewrite the law in favor of DHS  without participation from their colleagues;
  • By expanding the BIA and spreading out its membership it destroys its already weakened quality as a unitary appellate court and turns it into a rubber stamp operation where “hand-picked hard-liner judges” throughout the country will be able to railroad folks out expeditiously without due process and without any dialogue with any colleagues who might actually have any desire to apply the law fairly;
  • They are obviously hoping that more hard-line precedents will be given more deference by the Courts of Appeals under Chevron and Brand X.
  • Looks like a way of speeding up the “deportation railroad” and making due process simply a fraud — a misleading “judicial veneer” on a fundamentally unjust and politically biased system;
  • I doubt that the Courts of Appeals will buy this nonsense across the board; they didn’t following the bogus “Ashcroft reforms;” but you never know with more Trump appointees on board.
I also think that the contrast between Democrats and the GOP at the DOJ is very telling. For eight years, Democrat Attorneys General dithered around without making any of the needed improvements in the Immigration Courts to address glaring management deficiencies and the Due Process disaster left by the Bush Administration. Indeed, they actually appeared to enjoy running a complacent, captive court system that “went along to go along” with hard-line immigration policies and was afraid to stand up for the Due Process rights of immigrants, particularly asylum seekers.
By contrast, GOP Attorneys General with White Nationalist, restrictionist agendas, like Ashcroft, Sessions, and Barr, move rapidly to wipe out Due Process, institutionalize bias, and eradicate any remnants of conscientious dissent.
Lesson: The next time Democrats control the Executive Branch, we need an Attorney General with a human rights and social justice background whose highest priority is 1) returning the Immigration Courts to an exclusive focus on Due Process and fundamental fairness, and 2) actively supporting legislation “spinning off” the Immigration Court system into a new, legislatively created Article I Immigration Court, free from the various political shenanigans that have plagued and handicapped these courts from functioning in a fair, efficient, and impartial manner over the past two decades.
PWS
04-11-19