🏴‍☠️MAYORKAS DOUBLES DOWN ON USE OF TRUMP’S BOGUS TITLE 42 RATIONALE TO DEPORT HAITIANS — ABSURDLY & DISINGENUOUSLY CLAIMS HAITI IS “SAFE” FOR RETURNS!

Amanda Holpuch
Amanda Holpuch
Reporter
The Guardian

Amanda Holpuch reports for The Guardian: 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/26/haiti-deportations-covid-biden-homeland-secretary-mayorkas?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

The US homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, on Sunday defended the Biden administration’s decision to send thousands of Haitians to a home country they fled because of natural disasters and political turmoil.

White House criticizes border agents who rounded up migrants on horseback

Mayorkas told NBC’s Meet the Press the removals were justified because of the coronavirus pandemic, a point disputed by advocates and public health experts.

“The Centers for Disease Control [and Prevention, or CDC] has a Title 42 authority that we exercise to protect the migrants themselves, to protect the local communities, our personnel and the American public,” Mayorkas said.

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“The pandemic is not behind us. Title 42 is a public health policy, not an immigration policy.”

Since Donald Trump’s administration implemented Title 42 in March 2020, advocates and dozens of public health experts have called for its end.

Under Title 42, people who attempt to cross the border are returned to Mexico or deported to their home countries without an opportunity to test asylum claims.

In January, Joe Biden stopped the rule from applying to children. Despite that, at least 22 babies and children were deported to Haiti in February.

More than 30 public health experts wrote to Mayorkas and the head of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky, earlier this month, saying Title 42 was “scientifically baseless and politically motivated”.

This coalition has repeatedly said the policy violates the right to seek asylum and ignores how basic public health measures can reduce the spread of Covid-19.

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“Title 42 runs counter to the government’s own commitment to address Covid-19 globally,” the coalition said. “The absence of effective Covid-19 mitigation services at the border and the expulsion of people to situations in which they may be exposed to Covid-19 and unable to practice prevention are contrary to the US government commitment to address Covid-19 globally.”

On Sunday, Mayorkas told CNN about 4,000 Haitians who arrived in the past two weeks have been expelled, 13,000 others had been allowed to enter the US to pursue their immigration cases in court and 8,000 had voluntarily chosen to return to Mexico.

NBC’s Meet the Press host Chuck Todd questioned Mayorkas about why thousands were being sent to Haiti even though they had traveled to the US from South America.

“These are Haitian nationals,” Mayorkas said. “Some of them don’t have documents from the countries from which they just left. So they are subject to removal.”

. . . .

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

Of course, Haiti clearly is not a safe place to return migrants:

‘They treated us like animals’: Haitians angry and in despair at being deported from US

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/sep/26/they-treated-us-like-animals-haitians-angry-and-in-despair-at-being-deported-from-us?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

‘They treated us like animals’: Haitians angry and in despair at being deported from US

Haitian deportees arriving from Texas say they were ‘rounded up like cattle and shackled like criminals’

Joe Parkin Daniels in Port-au-Prince

Published:

05:00 Sunday, 26 September 2021

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When Evens Delva waded across the Rio Grande with his wife and two daughters, he had dreams of starting a new life in Florida. But less than a week later, he and his family stepped on to the tarmac in Port-au-Prince, the sweltering and chaotic capital of Haiti, with nothing except traumatic memories and a feeling of bubbling anger.

Delva, along with nearly 2,000 other Haitians, was deported from southern Texas this week to Haiti, despite having lived in Chile for the past six years and having few remaining connections to his home country. His younger daughter, who is four, does not hold Haitian citizenship, having been born in Chile, and speaks more Spanish than Haitian Creole.

“I don’t know what we’ll do, we don’t have anywhere to stay or anyone to call,” the 40-year-old said, moments after getting off the plane in the blistering midday Caribbean heat. “All I know is that this is the last place I want to be.”

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Evens Delva and his wife at Port-au-Prince airport in Haiti on Friday after being deported from Texas. Photograph: Joe Parkin Daniels/The Guardian

It is not hard to understand why. Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, is mired in overlapping crises. Gasoline shortages and blackouts are a daily reality, while warring gangs routinely kidnap for ransom and wage battle on the streets.

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The grim situation only worsened when the president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated in his home on 7 July, triggering a political power struggle and further instability and street violence. On 14 August, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck the country’s poor southern peninsula, killing more than 2,200 people and leaving tens of thousands homeless.

US envoy to Haiti resigns over ‘inhumane’ decision to deport migrants

The Biden administration’s decision to deport thousands of Haitians under such circumstances drew opprobrium around the world, and prompted the US envoy to Haiti to resign in protest. Haiti is “a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs in control of daily life”, he wrote in his resignation letter. “Surging migration to our borders will only grow as we add to Haiti’s unacceptable misery.”

Last week, the world was shocked by images of police officers on horseback charging at desperate Haitian migrants near a camp of 12,000, set up under the Del Río-Ciudad Acuña International Bridge. Delva was on his way to buy food and water for his family when the cavalry charge sent him and dozens of his compatriots running in a frenzy.

“We were rounded up like cattle and shackled like criminals,” he said, having spent the six-hour flight from San Antonio with his hands and legs tied.

“They treated us like animals,” added Maria, his wife.. “We’ll never forget how that felt.”

. . . .

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

David Shipler
David K.Shipler
American Author
PHOTO: Twitter

David Shipler does a great job of exposing the hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty of Mayorkas and other Biden Administration immigration officials.

America’s Callous Border

 

By David K. Shipler

Several years ago, a gray-haired passport control official at Heathrow Airport in London, noting “writer” under “occupation” on my landing card, asked me what I wrote. I was finishing a book on civil liberties, I told him, with a chapter on immigration. That caught his interest. He leaned forward, glanced around, lowered his voice and said, “I loathe borders.”

Funny line of work you’re in, I said. We shared a chuckle, he stamped my passport, and I crossed the border that he loathed.

We have nation states, and so we have borders. Dictatorships need them to keep people in, lest their countries be drained of the talented and the aspiring. Democracies need them to keep people out—often those with talent and aspiration who are fleeing to safety and opportunity. So far, the United States is lucky enough to be the latter. So far.

When desperate fathers and mothers are drawn with admiring naïveté to the beacon of America, when they carry their children through months of torment by mountain jungles and predatory gangs, when their courage and towering fortitude set them apart from the masses, shouldn’t they be embraced when they reach the final border of a nation of fellow immigrants that touts its compassion and humanity?

Cut through the crazy tangle of immigration laws, regulations, and inconsistent enforcement to the essential ethic, and the answer is an obvious yes. But the obvious is not obvious in the White House or in the Department of Homeland Security or in the ranks of the beleaguered Border Patrol, whose horsemen scramble, as if herding cattle, to intercept frantic Haitians wading from the Rio Grande onto the banks of freedom and promise.

Instead, a new torment is found: Haitians with enough grit to leave their country a decade or so ago and build lives on the margins in Brazil, Chile, and elsewhere are taken from their first steps onto U.S. soil and summarily—summarily, without due process—deported. And where to? To Haiti, a failed state where many have long since lost family or work or even places of shelter. To Haiti, which has collapsed into such violence and disarray that the State Department warns Americans on its website: “Do not travel to Haiti due to kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and COVID-19.”

What is wrong with the air in the White House? Is there not enough oxygen? What accounts for the impaired thinking that seems to transcend administrations, from Republican to Democratic. Where is the regard for human dignity? Why is it so often absent in the calculations that create policy? 

Donald Trump wore callousness on his sleeve and was proud of it. His base hooted its applause at his vilification of Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug dealers. By contrast, Joe Biden wears a badge of empathy. His mantra is compassion. “Horrible” and “outrageous” were the words he found to describe the photographed attacks on Haitians from horseback. He halted the use of horses and vowed that agents responsible “will pay.” He also said, “It’s simply not who we are.”

But it is who we are. The images have been compared to old photos of white overseers on horseback commanding enslaved Blacks in the fields. The Border Patrol in cowboy hats have been compared to Texas Rangers “who were celebrated for their excellent ‘tracking skills’ that were put to use to hunt and capture enslaved people,” said historian Monica Martinez of the University of Texas.

These are compelling analogies with painful resonance. They are also flawed as parallels, for the Black migrants at the border are not slaves. They are clamoring to be here, crossing illegally, seeing the border as a threshold. They were not brought here in chains against their will. Some are being removed in chains against their will.

Nevertheless, in a sense they are enslaved by their blackness. If white Canadians tried this up north, does anybody truly believe that they would be treated as the Black Haitians are? Animating America’s conscience should not require reaching back to the sin of slavery. The present ought to be enough.

Our borders always put our split personality on display: We are cruel and welcoming, hateful and helpful, defined by doors closed at times to entire ethnic groups and then opened to invigorate the nation with willing hands and vital contributions.

In fact, if the country is not sufficiently moved by simple morality, then it might consider self-interest. The U.S. population growth rate has been falling steadily since 2008, dropping to a mere 0.58 percent from 2020 to 2021. Many regions lack skilled workers, as homeowners and small business owners and even hospitals can testify from trying to hire carpenters, plumbers, electricians, welders, mechanics, and nurses. We should have winced when one Haitian deportee was quoted as describing himself as a welder and carpenter.

Using abuse to manipulate determined people did not work under Trump—a lesson that Biden and his advisers might have learned. Trump’s administration separated children from their parents at the border, his aides reasoning that families heading north would get the message and—what?–abandon their fortitude and survival instincts, turn around, and head back to life-threatening misery?

So, too Biden officials are reportedly figuring that tossing Haitian expatriates into Haiti’s maelstrom will dissuade others from coming. In other words, don’t be humane, and folks will give up. But they won’t give up. They will still roll the dice, because there’s always a chance, especially since some are being allowed to stay, at least for a while, pending proper examination of their asylum claims as the law requires. When your ship has sunk, you don’t stop clinging to a piece of flotsam just because some shipmates have slipped off into the sea.

What the Biden White House needs is somebody in an influential position who has made this journey, who has shepherded family and children through jungles and ganglands to reach this supposedly promised land. That official might bring to the Oval Office a glimmer of understanding and respect for the force of personality and perseverance that drive a person toward our callous border.

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

Something about the DHS Secretary job seem to require checking honesty, common sense, historical perspective, and humanity at the door, not to mention the true “rule of law.”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-26-21

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️LOSING FAITH IN THEIR OWN COMMITMENTS & COMPETENCE: Restoring The Rule Of Law At The Border Should Result In A Fairer, More Humane, More Realistic Asylum System, Encouraging Applicants To Apply Through Legal Channels, While Resulting In More Legal Immigration, Which America Needs, & Allowing CBP To Focus On Real Law Enforcement — Unfortunately, The Biden Administration Doubts Its Own Campaign Promises, As Well As Its Competence To Govern  — Administration Apparently Hopes Righty Courts Will Continue To “Force” Them To Carry Out “Miller Lite” Cruelty & Futility While Absolving Them Of Moral & Political Responsibility For The Ongoing Human Carnage!

“Floaters”
“Floaters — How The World’s Richest Country Responds To Asylum Seekers” — According to the NYT, Biden immigration policy officials always shared this vision of “ultimate border deterrence” with Gauleiter Stephen Miller. Now, they are secretly relieved that Trump’s righty judges have “forced” them to continue running a lawless border and killing asylum seekers without legal process.
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/06/world/americas/mexico-migrants-asylum-border.html

Natalie Kitroeff
Natalie Kitroeff
Foreign Correspondent
NY Times
PHOTO: NY Times

By Natalie Kitroeff

Sept. 6, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET

MATAMOROS, Mexico — When the Supreme Court effectively revived a cornerstone of Trump-era migration policy late last month, it looked like a major defeat for President Biden.

After all, Mr. Biden had condemned the policy — which requires asylum seekers to wait in Mexico — as “inhumane” and suspended it on his first day in office, part of an aggressive push to dismantle former President Donald J. Trump’s harshest migration policies.

But among some Biden officials, the Supreme Court’s order was quietly greeted with something other than dismay, current and former officials said: It brought some measure of relief.

Before that ruling, Mr. Biden’s steps to begin loosening the reins on migration had been quickly followed by a surge of people heading north, overwhelming the southwest border of the United States. Apprehensions of migrants hit a two-decade high in July, a trend officials fear will continue into the fall.

Concern had already been building inside the Biden administration that the speed of its immigration changes may have encouraged migrants to stream toward the United States, current and former officials said.

In fact, some Biden officials were already talking about reviving Mr. Trump’s policy in a limited way to deter migration, said the officials, who have worked on immigration policy but were not authorized to speak publicly about the administration’s internal debates on the issue. Then the Supreme Court order came, providing the Biden administration with the political cover to adopt the policy in some form without provoking as much ire from Democrats who reviled Mr. Trump’s border policies.

Now, the officials say, they have an opportunity to take a step back, come up with a more humane version of Mr. Trump’s policy and, they hope, reduce the enormous number of people arriving at the border.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Natalie’s article at the link.

Who would have thought that neo-Nazi Stephen Miller would be the real winner of the 2020 election?

Stephen Miller Monster
When he ”wins,” America and humanity “lose.” But, apparently that’s “A-OK” with some Biden Administration officials who lack the expertise, ability, courage, and political will to establish the rule of law for asylum seekers at our Southern Border! Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com.

Five decades of experience, including plenty of wall and fence building, civil detention, expedited dockets, restrictive interpretations, criminal prosecutions, family detentions, toddlers without lawyers, money to corrupt foreign governments, “don’t come, we don’t want you and care nothing about your lives messages,” in English and Spanish, says the Biden version of the “Miller Lite” approach will fail and ultimately expand the extralegal population of the U.S.

Of course, it also will kill more desperate humans in the desert, in Mexico, in squalid “camps,” and back in their home countries. Just so long as it’s “out of sight, out of mind.” The great thing about desert deaths is that often the bodies are never found or identified. Therefore, nothing can be proved, and it’s like these people “never happened.” It’s a real bureaucratic triumph! Foreign deaths are almost as good, as they seldom get much “play” in U.S. media and always can be blamed on something other than failed U.S. policies or foreign interventions.

I’d already observed that the DOJ’s “defense” of undoing Trump immigration policies seemed as half-hearted as it was ineffective. Perhaps their lackadaisical approach came right from the top!

And, the “policy geniuses” in the Biden Administration who think “Miller-Lite Time” will be a political “happy hour” (at humanity’s expense) should remember that the right will still successfully label them as “open borders” just as they did when Obama established himself as “deporter-in-chief!”

Meanwhile, their former progressive supporters will see through the false humane rhetoric. Does it really matter if we call individuals “foreign nationals” rather than “illegals” while we’re illegally exterminating them?

I’m afraid we know the answer to “Casey’s question:” NO!

Casey Stengel
”Sorry, Casey! Not only can’t anyone in the Biden Administration ‘play this game,’ they don’t even have the guts to suit up! They view a ‘forfeit’ to “Team Miller” as good as a ‘W.’ Remember, it’s not THEIR family, friends, or relatives dying at our border. It’s just ‘the other guys,’ so who cares? When it comes to U.S. immigration policy, foreign nationals all too often find that their lives and human dignity are just another form of expendable political capital.”
PHOTO: Rudi Rest
Creative Commons

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-06-21

☠️⚰️TRUMP/BIDEN ILLEGAL BORDER CLOSURES, DISMANTLING OF ASYLUM SYSTEM ARE KILLERS!🤮 —  Asylum Seekers Have A Right To Apply For Protection, & We Have A Legal & Moral Obligation To Protect Those Qualified Under An Honest Application Of Asylum Laws — Molly Hennessy Fiske Reports In LA Times On “Death By Scofflaw Policy” — Open The Ports Of Entry & Treat Asylum Seekers Fairly & Generously!

 

 

Molly Hennessy-Fiske
Molly Hennessy-Fiske
Houston Bureau Chief
LA Times

https://apple.news/AG5wZ–G0T-2-rX8YfJpNog

Losing Rosario: A mother sent her daughter across the border. Before they could reunite, one died

Texas’ Brooks County and the Rio Grande Valley to the south have been popular smuggling routes for decades. Six months into 2021, deaths in the county had already reached 55, up from a total of 34 last year.

FALFURRIAS, TEXAS — Black feathers fell from circling vultures and snagged in the matted yellow grass. The ranch manager eyed the terrain and followed the stench. He found the woman’s body, like so many others in the south Texas brush: splayed in the weeds, arms dark with decay, raised above her head as if in surrender. 

The rancher knew what to do. He had come upon 15 such migrants over the years. He called Brooks County sheriff’s dispatchers. They issued a Code 500, a dead body call, summoning a deputy, two Border Patrol agents, a justice of the peace and a funeral director.

They met the rancher shortly before noon at the gate of Los Palos Ranch, about 75 miles north of the border. Together they waded through knee-high, thorny weeds, mindful that the June heat rouses rattlesnakes from their burrows. The men gazed down to where she lay — face gone, skull picked clean by scavengers, hair and lower jaw dragged a few feet from a body not yet skeletal.

They guessed the woman had died of exhaustion or dehydration. 

“They wait over there and move at night,” said the rancher, pointing to a nearby stand of mesquite, where he and his wife sometimes spy the passing shadows of those heading north. 

The deputy wrapped the body in a white sheet. He then lifted it into a gray bag and helped the funeral director load it into the back of his Ford Explorer for transport to the sheriff’s morgue. It would be fingerprinted and tested for the coronavirus. The men found no trace of a name. It would be days before fingerprints told investigators that the woman was Rosario Yanira Girón de Orellana, a 41-year-old single mother who had traveled more than 1,500 miles from El Salvador. 

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Molly’s report at the link.

Rather than recognizing the realities of the refugee situation in the Northern Triangle, Administrations of both parties have engaged in “killer policies.” But, not surprisingly to those who understand the situation, it hasn’t stopped individuals fleeing for their lives from failed states (for which we bear substantial responsibility). 

Even death hasn’t proved to be a significant deterrent. So, why not just admit many of these folks legally, using available protection mechanisms administered by qualified Asylum Officers and better Immigration Judges? Why not encourage asylum seekers to apply at ports of entry by treating them fairly, respectfully, and humanely? Asylum is a legal and moral obligation, not an “option” or a “deterrent,”

We can diminish ourselves as a nation (and have done so), but it won’t stop human migration!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-18-21

⚖️😎👍🏼DUE PROCESS PROGRESS! — House EOIR Appropriations Bill Contains $50 Million For Representation Of Kids & Families Seeking Asylum!

 

Kids in court
“This is due process?”
PHOTO: The Daily Beast

From: Jennifer Quigley <QuigleyJ@humanrightsfirst.org>

Subject: Fw: [EXT]-Good news on funding for legal representation!

Date: July 16, 2021 at 9:40:20 AM EDT

To: Asylum Working Group <asylum-working-group@googlegroups.com>

ICYMI

From: Greg Chen <GChen@aila.org>

Sent: Friday, July 16, 2021 9:30 AM

To: amigos@theimmigrationhub.org <amigos@theimmigrationhub.org>

Subject: [EXT]-Good news on funding for legal representation!

Email originates externally.

Greetings colleagues,

Yesterday House Appropriations Committee passed the CJS appropriations bill for FY 2022 for the Justice Department and other agencies. Importantly, the bill includes a historic $50 million for DOJ to pilot legal representation programs for people in removal proceedings. This is a big step for federal funding for legal counsel. Hooray!

Kudos to all the organizations in the working group on legal representation and access to counsel who have been fighting for this.Of course, we don’t have the money yet and will need to protect this language in the House and get comparable language, hopefully even more funding in the Senate. We have collectively been pushing for $200M.

The bill and draft report language are below.Collected resources on legal representation are available here: Ensuring Legal Representation for People Facing Removal. i

Committee-passed bill text on legal representation:

“(29) $50,000,000 for a grant pilot program to provide legal representation to immigrant children and families seeking asylum and other forms of legal protection in the United States;

Committee-passed report language on legal representation:

“Legal Representation Pilot for Immigrant Children and Families.—The Committee provides $50,000,000 for the Department to establish a competitive grant program to qualified non-profit organizations for a pilot program to increase representation for immigrant children and families in civil proceedings. The amount is $35,000,000 above the request and $50,000,000 above the fiscal year 2021 level. The Committee recognizes the compelling need to ensure due process for children and families who seek asylum and who must navigate a complex legal system for processing of asylum claims. The Committee supports coordination with grantees and organizations who offer other types of legal assistance or services to immigrants seeking asylum or other forms of legal protection. As with any new pilot program, the Committee expects the Department to assess this program with metrics that will be scaled appropriately to evaluate how this initial investment could be further enhanced to represent a larger portion of un-represented individuals and the impact that it may have on improving attendance rates and decreasing court costs. Within 90 days of enactment of this Act, the OJP shall brief the Committee on its implementation plan for this pilot.

Gregory Z. Chen, Esq.

Senior Director of Government Relations

Direct: 202-507-7615 I Cell: 202.716-5818 I Email: gchen@aila.org

American Immigration Lawyers Association

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

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

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You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups “amigos” group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to amigos+unsubscribe@theimmigrationhub.org.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/theimmigrationhub.org/d/msgid/amigos/BLAPR17MB4146DD8C7890895D5A71BC94CC119%40BLAPR17MB4146.namprd17.prod.outlook.com.

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups “Asylum Working Group” group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to asylum-working-group+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/asylum-working-group/MN2PR14MB4190DF799A8555389730297FA8119%40MN2PR14MB4190.namprd14.prod.outlook.com.

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

Congrats to all involved! Let’s keep up the momentum until we get universal representation!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-16-21

☠️🤮⚰️DUE PROCESS MOCKED: UNDUE POLITICAL INFLUENCE IN IMMIGRATION COURT LEADS TO IMPROPER DENIAL OF LIFE-SAVING PROTECTION TO KIDS! — “Political influence from the executive branch combined with local environmental pressures can affect how immigration judges rule. Most importantly, these influences can lead to some children not receiving asylum when they might otherwise be entitled to it.”

EYORE
“Eyore In Distress”
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”

Unaccompanied immigrant minors wait on July 2, 2019 in Los Ebanos, Texas to be transported to a U.S. Border Patrol processing center after entering the U.S. to seek political asylum. John Moore/Getty Images

US immigration judges considering asylum for unaccompanied minors are ‘significantly influenced’ by politics

July 13, 2021 8.30am EDT

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The news over the past months has been saturated with stories about another “surge” of unaccompanied minors crossing the southern border of the U.S.

In March 2021, the number of unaccompanied minors apprehended in the U.S. reached an all-time monthly high of 18,890. This surpassed the previous monthly high of 11,681 in May 2019.

One question not addressed in many of these stories is: How many of these children actually receive asylum and are allowed to stay in the country?

The people who make those decisions are immigration judges. Their decisions are supposed to be based on whether these children have fears of being persecuted in their home countries and whether these fears are realistic.

But our research examining the period from early October 2013 until the end of September 2017 shows that these judges were influenced by factors outside of the case. Political factors such as ideology, political party of the president who appointed them and who was president at the time they decided the case significantly influenced whether these children were allowed to stay in the country.

Aside from political factors, immigration judges are also influenced by local contexts, such as unemployment levels, the number of uninsured children and size of Latino population in the places where they work.

Unaccompanied minors and asylum

Under U.S. law, an unaccompanied minor is a child under 18 years old who does not have lawful immigration status and no parent or legal guardian in the country who can provide care or custody.

Unaccompanied minors cannot be refused entry or removed from the country without legal process because of the 1993 Supreme Court case Reno v. Flores. In 2008, new legislation allowed asylum officers to grant these children asylum at the U.S. border. If the asylum officer denies asylum to the minor, the minor may request asylum before an immigration judge.

Because immigration judges are not appointed under Article III of the Constitution, as federal judges are, they have less independence than those federal judges. According to current Justice Department rules, immigration judges are appointed by the attorney general and they act as his or her delegates.

Political pressure

In order to learn what factors affect the grant of relief to unaccompanied minors, we obtained data on their asylum applications from Oct. 2, 2013 to Sept. 29, 2017, covering over 10,000 cases from 280 different judges in 46 counties and 27 states.

Only 327 of the unaccompanied minors actually received asylum; 2,867 were deported and 455 chose to voluntarily leave.

An additional 6,645 children were allowed to stay in the country. Of those, 3,589 had their case administratively closed, which allows judges to suspend the case indefinitely without hearing and deciding on it. The remaining 3,056 had their case terminated, which means that the case against the child was dismissed.

The fate of unaccompanied minors entering the US

A review of about 10,000 asylum applications for unaccompanied minors from October 2, 2013 to September 29, 2017 found the majority of the minors were allowed to stay (in green), most because a judge either dismissed or indefinitely suspended the case against them. Only 327 were granted asylum.

Bar charts grouped to show significantly more unaccompanied minors were allowed to stay.

2,000 cases

2,867

455

3,589

3,056

327

Removed

Voluntarily Departed

Administrative Closure

Case dismissed

Received asylum

Chart: The Conversation/CC-BY-ND Source: Daniel Braaten and Claire Nolasco Braaten Get the data

pastedGraphic_3.png

We ran a statistical analysis of political factors that may influence immigration judges’ decision: judicial ideology, political party of the appointing president and whether the decision was made before or during the Trump administration.

Following previous research on immigration judge’s ideology, we determined a judge’s ideology by considering their prior work experiences. Based on this research, we determined that some experiences, such as working for immigration agencies, are associated with more conservative views on immigration and asylum issues.

Conversely, work experiences in an immigration or non-immigration-related nonprofit or academia are associated with more liberal views. Our analysis showed that immigration judges with more liberal judicial ideology were more likely to rule in favor of granting asylum to these children.

Judges’ ideology can influence asylum decisions

Immigration judges who are more liberal tended to allow unaccompanied children to stay in the U.S. more often, compared to more conservative judges. Ideology was determined from each judge’s prior work and ranges from 1-11, most conservative to most liberal.

Area chart showing how children allowed to stay rose with more liberal judges.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

0

50

100%

Likelihood unaccompanied minor is allowed to stay

Data from 2013-2017

Chart: The Conversation/CC-BY-ND Source: Daniel Braaten and Claire Nolasco Braaten Get the data

pastedGraphic_3.png

We also found that judges who were appointed by a Democratic attorney general were more likely to rule in favor of the minors.

Political party of attorney general who appointed the judge

Immigration judges appointed by Democrats were more likely to allow unaccompanied minors seeking asylum to stay in the U.S. than those appointed by Republicans.

Bar charts showing judges appointed by Democrats were more like to allow unaccompanied children to stay in the U.S., but GOP-appointed numbers were also above 62%.

Republican

62.9%

Democratic

69.5%

Data from 2013-2017

Chart: The Conversation/CC-BY-ND Source: Daniel Braaten and Claire Nolasco Braaten Get the data

pastedGraphic_3.png

Finally, statistical analysis showed that immigration judges were less likely to grant relief during the eight months of the Trump administration compared to the last three years of the Obama administration.

President at the time the case was decided

Immigration judges were more likely to allow unaccompanied minors seeking asylum to stay in the U.S. during the Obama administration than during the Trump administration.

Trump

54%

Obama

67.7%

Data from 2013-2017

Chart: The Conversation/CC-BY-ND Source: Daniel Braaten and Claire Nolasco Braaten Get the data

pastedGraphic_3.png

Why did politics and judges’ ideology play into their decisions?

We believe it’s because immigration judges are subject to political pressure from the president, indirectly, because they are appointed by the attorney general, who is also a presidential appointee and carries out the president’s policies and wishes.

Local environment

Pressure from the executive branch was not the only factor we concluded had influenced whether these children got to stay in the U.S. or were turned away. Aside from political and ideological values, judges may also have been influenced by their local contexts.

For example, we found that immigration judges in places with more Latinos were more likely to let these children stay. Conversely, immigration judges in states with lots of poor children were less likely to let these children stay than judges in states with relatively fewer poor kids.

Latino population in the county

In counties with larger Latino populations, judges were more likely to allow unaccompanied minors seeking asylum to stay in the U.S. The horizontal axis shows the percentage of the county’s population that is Latino.

20% Latino

40

60

80

0

20

40

60

80

100% likelihood unaccompanied minor is allowed to stay

Data from 2013-2017

Chart: The Conversation/CC-BY-ND Source: Daniel Braaten and Claire Nolasco Braaten Get the data

pastedGraphic_3.png

Asylum decisions can be life-or-death matters. Although immigration judges consider the requirements of asylum law, they are also influenced by nonlegal factors when making decisions.

Political influence from the executive branch combined with local environmental pressures can affect how immigration judges rule. Most importantly, these influences can lead to some children not receiving asylum when they might otherwise be entitled to it.

[The Conversation’s Politics + Society editors pick need-to-know stories. Sign up for Politics Weekly.]

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Republished under Creative Commons license.

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

Go to this link for the original article with pictures and graphs:  https://theconversation.com/us-immigration-judges-considering-asylum-for-unaccompanied-minors-are-significantly-influenced-by-politics-160071

This article confirms two things I have said over and over:

  1. Garland’s failure, to date, to replace the BIA with better qualified progressive judges with expertise gained by representing asylum seekers; plus
  2. His “giveaway” of 17 critical Immigration Judge positions to those selected by “Billy the Bigot” Barr under badly flawed procedures;

will unquestionably cost some children and other refugees their lives. Immigration Judge positions are life or death — we need an Attorney General who treats them that way!

Immigration Judge appointments, particularly those at the appellate (BIA level), need to be treated by Democratic Administrations with the same care, seriousness, and strategy as Article III judicial appointments, perhaps more! Few Article III Judges, including the Supremes, affect more lives and have a bigger impact on America’s future than Immigration Judges. 

The last two GOP Administrations “got” the negative power for destruction and dehumanization inherent in a “captive” court system that actively pursues misguided nativist policies and receives only sporadic supervision and attention from the Article IIIs. By contrast, the Obama Administration failed to “mine EOIR’s potential” for progressive due process advancements and building a corps of dynamic, courageous progressive judges.  

So far, while perhaps exceeding the passively inept approach of the Obama Administration, the Biden Administration has also failed to achieve the radical, yet logical and obvious, reforms and decisive personnel actions necessary to undo the damage caused by the White Nationalist xenophobia of the Trump kakistocracy. 

The Immigration Courts have the potential to become “model progressive courts” that could lead the way to better practices and more constitutionally and legally sound jurisprudence throughout the Federal Judiciary. Whether the Biden Administration grasps and acts boldly on that potential, or squanders it as past Democratic Administrations have done, remains to be seen.

But, that question is far from “academic.” The survival of our democratic republic is likely to depend to a great extent on whether the Biden Administration can bring in the progressive experts who finally will “get EOIR right!”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-16-21

🏴‍☠️☠️🤮CRUELTY, UNCONSTITUTIONALITY, COVER-UPS, UNACCOUNTABILITY MARKED TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION KAKISTOCRACY — Victims Suffer, “Perps” Walk Free! 

Sessions in a cage
Jeff Sessions’ Cage by J.D. Crowe, Alabama Media Group/AL.com
Republished under license

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/07/09/trump-separated-families-yuma-2017/

Kevin Sieff reports @ WashPost:

. . . .

Some of the parents separated under the Yuma program still remain apart from their children four years later. Others are missing — lawyers and advocates have been unable to locate them since they were deported alone. The children separated in Yuma in 2017 were as young as 10 months old, according to government data.

The new information shows the difficulty of accounting for aspects of the Trump administration’s immigration policy, an ever-changing series of measures aimed at stopping migrants from crossing the border. Even the impact of family separation — perhaps the most scrutinized U.S. immigration policy of the last half-century — is not fully understood.

[They were one of the first families separated at the border. Two and a half years later, they’re still apart.]

Though the formal period in which the Trump Administration’s “zero tolerance” policy was implemented spanned only April to June 2018, it’s now clear that separations began roughly a year before that along some stretches of the border. More than 5,600 families were separated between mid-2017 and mid-2018, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The Biden administration is investigating whether more previously unregistered separations might have occurred earlier in Trump’s term.

. . . .

The ACLU, which was given access to government data through a court order, has catalogued cases that hint at the policy’s global impact.

In August of 2017, for example, a father from Tajikistan was separated from his 4-year-old daughter. In October of 2017, a mother from Romania was separated from her 6-year-old son. In April of 2018, three siblings from Nigeria — 12, 14 and 16 years old — were separated from their dad. In December 2017, a two year old boy from Brazil was separated from his father.

“We know from the documents provided in the litigation that families separated by the Trump administration came not just from Central America but all over the world,” said Lee Gelernt, the lead attorney on the ACLU’s family separation litigation. “Which will make the process of putting this all back together that much more difficult.”

Maria Sachetti and Nick Miroff contributed to this report.

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

Disturbingly, the harm is irreparable in many cases, the Biden Administration has continued the illegal suspension of asylum laws at the border while also failing to effectively address the continuing unconstitutional mess in Garland’s dysfunctional Immigration “Courts” that aren’t courts at all!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-12-21

🤮🏴‍☠️👎🏽RACE-BASED CHILD ABUSE & SEXUAL ABUSE OF KIDS MUST STOP — Demand An End To Scofflaw Behavior By Our Government!

Crimes Against Humanity
Thomas Cizauskas Crimes against humanity
Creative Commons License — The Biden Administration promised to stop these crimes committed by our Government, but hasn’t.

https://www.newsweek.com/we-fled-honduras-fearing-our-lives-immigration-officers-abused-my-child-opinion-1605760p

Daniel Paz writes in Newsweek:

“Welcome to hell.”

 

Those were the words I heard from an immigration officer not long after I entered the United States near El Paso, Texas in May 2018. I thought I had just reached safety with Angie, my 7-year-old daughter. I was wrong.

Once we arrived at the border, immigration officers processed me and my daughter at a detention facility, and led us to a crowded cell packed with 50 to 60 other families. It smelled terrible—like urine—and everything was gray. We were so cold. They didn’t even offer us one of the cellophane blankets you see on TV. I had to take my shirt off to wrap it around Angie and keep her warm. I was shivering.

pastedGraphic.png

The journey to this point had been excruciatingly painful. Fearing for our lives, we had to make the decision to flee. I had a good life in Honduras. I was a businessman and I owned my own home. I knew it would be hard to leave everything I worked so hard to build behind. Starting a new life in a new country with a different culture wouldn’t be easy. But desperate circumstances called for desperate measures. Hope of reaching a safe place for my family kept me going.

At the detention center, many fathers began hearing rumors that immigration officials were going to take our children away from us. Take them where? Take my daughter? To another cell? A new facility? On the inside I was panicking, but I knew I needed to show strength for my daughter. I needed to be brave and prepare her if the rumors were true. You will contact your grandparents in Ohio, I told Angie.

In the cell, we practiced memorizing their phone numbers, repeating them over and over. To be extra safe, I then wrote the numbers with a ball-point pen on my daughter’s arm, her belly, her foot and on the inside of her jeans hoping she’d have the chance to make a phone call before immigration officials washed off the ink.

Then my nightmare happened. They came to take our children. I witnessed pain, agonizing cries and a deep sense of helplessness. Some of the immigration officers joked as they handcuffed the parents. Others expressed a cruelty I never would have expected. Rather than trying to ease our pain, they were somehow enjoying their power. As if they believed their actions were the right thing to do. I don’t know how anyone believes separating a child from a parent is right.

. . . .

While being transferred to a detention facility for children, an immigration officer sexually abused her. When she fought back, the officer threatened her, saying if she told anyone she would never see her parents again. Then Angie witnessed the same officer sexually abuse two girls who were even younger than her. Angie stayed quiet about the experience even months after we were reunited.

We were reunited after several weeks, though the separation felt eternal. The Angie the U.S. government returned to me is not the same girl they took out of my arms in that detention center. She cannot forget what happened to her. And she wants me to share what happened to her because she is worried the officer who abused her is still an immigration official. We do not know the officer’s name—let alone whether the officer is still working in government.

“What if that officer is still hurting other kids?” Angie asked me.

As a father I want to tell Angie not to worry. That is why I am asking President Joe Biden to act. Reuniting families and making sure they have immigration status in the U.S. is critical—but it is not enough. The government can make a huge difference in the lives of thousands of asylum seekers who are being turned away at the border right now. All asylum seekers should be allowed to seek protection and refuge in the U.S. without fear.

The government must also investigate every allegation of sexual abuse and mistreatment by immigration officers. Those officers must immediately be identified and removed from their positions so they cannot hurt anyone else. President Biden, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice together have the ability to ensure that families like mine can begin to heal.

It is hell to leave your home and risk everything so your child can be safe. It shouldn’t be hell once you have reached what you thought would be a safe haven.

After entering the United States to seek safety, Daniel Paz and his daughter were separated for several weeks. Paz and his family were reunited in 2018 and have since won asylum. He is a committed advocate for other families who have faced similar trauma.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.

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

Who would have thought that nearly six months into the Biden Administration our Government would still be abusing asylum seekers and ignoring the Constitution, mocking the rule of law, and degrading humanity?

So, how is it that Garland, Monaco, Gupta, and Clarke intend to combat racism and unequal justice in America when they have failed to re-establish the rule of law for asylum seekers at the border and continue to run an unjust and grossly mismanaged “court system” @ EOIR filled with too many “Miller Lite” judges?

Tell the Biden Administration and Judge Garland that we need progressive reforms, now! EOIR would be a great starting place!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-06-21

⚠️🚸V.P. HARRIS IS GOING TO THE BORDER: SHE SHOULD TALK WITH THE REAL VICTIMS OF HER GOVERNMENT’S, ILLEGAL, WRONG-HEADED, IMMORAL, AND INEFFECTIVE BORDER DETERRENCE POLICIES — Avoid The CBP “Dog & Pony Show,” & The GOP’s Cowardly “Gunboat Cruz” — Cross Over The Border, View The Human Rights Catastrophe We Have Created, Understand People Have A Right To Seek Legal Refuge, & Fix The Legal Asylum System At Ports Of Entry & Immigration Courts With Humane, Practical Experts! — “The vice president seems to have bought into the… I can’t use another word, but the nativist party line, that somehow these immigrants are the cause of the problem when, in fact, they’re the victims of multiple problems in many cases.” — Stop Blaming, Shaming, & Dehumanizing The Victims & Start Fixing Our Asylum System & Solving The Problems That Force Them To Migrate!

“Floaters”
“Sadly, over the last two decades the US has been unable to get beyond this vision of ‘deterrence’ of legal asylum seekers.“ — Floaters — “How The World’s Richest Country Responds To Asylum Seekers”
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)
Vice President Kamala Harris
Vice President Kamala D. Harris
Vice President of the United States. — “So far, she hasn’t gotten beyond the mistakes of the past, either. Taking a tour with CBP won’t help.”
(Official Senate Photo)

https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2021/06/17/vice-president-kamala-harris-us-mexico-border-immigration-unaccompanied

J.D. Long-Garcia writes in America Magazine:

Last week, Ms. Harris traveled to Guatemala to meet with President Alejandro Giammattei and expressed the Biden administration’s goal to “help Guatelmalans find hope at home.” During a press conference on June 7, she told Guatemalans thinking of making the journey north to the United States: “Do not come. Do not come.”

pastedGraphic.png“O.K., that’s like saying, ‘Stay home and die,’” according to the Rev. Pat Murphy, a Scalabrini priest who runs the Casa del Migrante shelter in Tijuana, Baja California. “That message is falling on deaf ears.”

If Ms. Harris does travel to the border, Father Murphy said, she should be sure to make a visit to the Mexican side. “If she just stays on her side, she’s not going to find much,” he said.

In Tijuana, Ms. Harris would see a camp of 2,000 asylum seekers near the port of entry, Father Murphy said. “If she looked a little further, she would see the people who are victims of violence in Tijuana and Mexicali and other places,” he said. Migrants may be eager to escape bad situations in their home countries, Father Murphy said, but they often do not understand how difficult conditions at the border are “until they’re stuck in the middle of [a border city] with no place to go.”

“You can’t understand [border realities] by talking to government officials. You have to talk to the people who are working with migrants and hear about the suffering.”

At diminished capacity because of the pandemic, migrant shelters are full. The United States has started to accept some vulnerable people, like families with children with an illness or those being persecuted because of their sexual orientation, Father Murphy said. But there are also hundreds deported every day.

He believes if the vice president did decide to visit the border, it would be worth her while. “You can’t understand [border realities] by talking to government officials,” Father Murphy said. “You have to talk to the people who are working with migrants and hear about the suffering.”

. . . .

Donald M. Kerwin
Donald M. Kerwin
Executive Director
Center for Migration Studies

Donald Kerwin, the executive director of the Center for Migration Studies in New York, also noted that people have a right not to migrate—to stay in their home country. He sees immigration policy as an arena for a fruitful convergence of Catholic social teaching, international law and contemporary human rights principles.

The Biden administration’s recognition of the forces that drive migration should be applauded, but it can address root causes while re-establishing humane asylum policies at the border.

“States are responsible for ensuring that people can flourish at home,” he said. “But it’s an empty right at this point in many communities in the Northern Triangle countries. They’re facing impossible conditions, caused by natural disasters, climate change, gang violence and extraordinary poverty. So people have a right to flee those impossible conditions and seek lives that are worthy of human dignity. In some cases, that means leaving their countries.”

When they do leave their home countries, people have the right to seek protection wherever they can find it, Mr. Kerwin said. “The vice president seems to have bought into the… I can’t use another word, but the nativist party line, that somehow these immigrants are the cause of the problem when, in fact, they’re the victims of multiple problems in many cases.”

The United States needs a functioning refugee resettlement system, an asylum system and robust humanitarian programs to address the conditions in Central America that are driving people to migrate, he said. “They’re not in place right now,” Mr. Kerwin said, “and until they are in place, people will reluctantly, at a terrible cost…continue to migrate.”

If Ms. Harris visits the border, Mr. Kerwin suggested she speak with migrants that have entered the United States, starting with the children. “Find out why they’ve come, what drove them to the United States and also see what their situation is currently, in often overcrowded facilities,” he said. “At that point, it would be clear as day that these folks are not a problem. These folks fled terrible problems, but they themselves are not the problem.”

Earlier this month, more than 20 bishops, Vatican representatives and leaders of Catholic organizations met for an emergency immigration meeting at Mundelein Seminary, outside of Chicago. Mr. Kerwin, who attended the meeting, said organizers displayed notes written by immigrant children, often addressed to God.

“It’s clear from reading these notes that these are lovely children, who miss their parents and worry about them and are in difficult situations that are not of their own making. And that the United States should do right by them,” he said. “And the right thing is to protect them and reunify them with family members.”

Chloe Gunther, America intern, contributed to this story.

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

Read the full article at the link.

Politicians of both parties are averse to the truth. They don’t have the courage and backbone for it! But the truth is quite simple, if somewhat “inconvenient.”  

Unless and until we can solve the problems driving refugees to flee the Northern Triangle, we will have to take more of them. We should welcome them through an orderly legal system, including a robust, properly staffed, and honestly administered legal refugee and asylum system. 

Alternatively, we could continue our current policies of immorally and illegally killing some on the journey, “snuffing” some in the desert (where their bodies might never be found and “counted”), and enriching smugglers and cartels who will eventually get many determined survivors into the interior. 

There, they will join our highly exploitable, yet politically expedient for both parties (for differing reasons), “extralegal population.” A  limited number will be “in the wrong place at the wrong time” and be arbitrarily removed by ICE, usually at costs that far exceed any demonstrable benefits. Even fewer will commit misconduct leading to their arrest and removal.

But the bulk of them will blend in somehow and do what’s necessary for themselves and their families to survive, as has been happening for decades and generations. They will also enrich and improve our nation in ways both predictable and unpredictable. Some will eventually find it possible and advantageous to return to their nations of origin, most won’t. 

It would be far better for both the migrants and our nation, not to mention humanity as a whole, if we included the bulk of those forced to come here in our legal immigration system. But, whether we are enlightened enough “to do it the right way” or not, they will come as long as the alternatives are starvation, death, unspeakable abuse, and unending despair. 

Migration is both our oldest and most persistent human phenomenon and an essential survival skill for humanity. It’s going to take more than inane walls, cruel and illegal imprisonment in American Gulags, unworkable laws, mindless, yet expensive, enforcement, nativist rhetoric, bad judges, and cowardly politicians sending “don’t come” messages to make them “die in place.” Our politicians might be not be bright or brave enough to face reality — but, I guarantee that the forced migrants we like to dehumanize and look down upon are much smarter, braver, more aware, and far more creative, adaptable, and capable than we think!

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-24-21

 

🆘🏴‍☠️ “ROGUE DEPARTMENT” 🤮— PROGRESSIVE IMMIGRATION/HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS WERE THE FIRST TO ALERT AMERICA TO THE UNBRIDLED CORRUPTION AT TRUMP’S DOJ AND THE ASTOUNDING ETHICAL FAILURES & MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE AMONG ITS EMPLOYEES! — Garland Might Think That “Going Slow” While DOJ Dishes Out Injustice Is “A-OK“ — Many Of Us Don’t!

 

Sessions in a cage
Jeff Sessions’ Cage by J.D. Crowe, Alabama Media Group/AL.com
Republished under license
Billy Barr Consigliere
Bill Barr Consigliere
Artist: Pat Bagley
Salt Lake Tribune
Reproduced under license

Judge Garland wonders whether there could be some “problems” with these guys and their corrupt agendas. Meanwhile, his DOJ continues to sink deeper into the muck every day! Hey, what’s the rush? It’s “only justice” and human lives at stake here! Garland seems to think that can’t compare with protecting important “Departmental prerogatives” to cover up past and perpetuate future injustices @ Justice! He’s wrong! Dead wrong in some cases!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/21/trump-doj-bill-bar-attorney-general-justice-department?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Peter Stone reports for The Guardian:

Donald Trump never did much to hide his dangerous belief that the US justice department and the attorneys general who helmed it should serve as his own personal lawyers and follow his political orders, regardless of norms and the law.

Former senior DoJ officials say the former president aggressively prodded his attorneys general to go after his enemies, protect his friends and his interests, and these moves succeeded with alarming results until Trump’s last few months in office.

The martyr who may rise again: Christian right’s faith in Trump not shaken

But now with Joe Biden sitting in the Oval Office, Merrick Garland as attorney general and Democrats controlling Congress, more and more revelations are emerging about just how far Trump’s justice department went rogue. New inquiries have been set up to investigate the scale of wrongdoing.

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Trump’s disdain for legal principles and the constitution revealed itself repeatedly – especially during Bill Barr’s tenure as attorney general, during most of 2019 and 2020. During Barr’s term in office, Trump ignored the tradition of justice as a separate branch of government, and flouted the principle of the rule of law, say former top justice lawyers and congressional Democrats.

In Barr, Trump appeared to find someone almost entirely aligned with the idea of doing his bidding. Barr sought to undermine the conclusions of Robert Mueller’s inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 elections, independent congressional oversight, and Trump critics in and out of government, while taking decisions that benefited close Trump allies.

But more political abuses have emerged, with revelations that – starting under attorney general Jeff Sessions in 2018 – subpoenas were issued in a classified leak inquiry to obtain communications records of top Democrats on the House intelligence committee. Targets were Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, who were investigating Kremlin election meddling, and also several committee staffers and journalists.

Democrats in Congress, as well as Garland, have forcefully denounced these Trumpian tactics. Garland has asked the department’s inspector general to launch his own inquiry, and examine the subpoenas involving members of Congress and the media. Congressional committees are eyeing their own investigations into the department’s extraordinary behavior.

“There was one thing after another where DoJ acted inappropriately and violated the fundamental principle that law enforcement must be even-handed. The DoJ must always make clear that no person is above the law,” said Donald Ayer, deputy attorney general in the George HW Bush administration.

Ayer thinks there could be more revelations to come. “The latest disclosure of subpoenas issued almost three years ago shows we don’t yet know the full extent of the misconduct that was engaged in.”

. . . .

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

Read the full article at the link. Once again, thanks to Don Ayer, a former colleague in both public and private practice, for speaking out!

  • Don Ayer
    Don Ayer
    American Lawyer
    Former U.S. Deputy Attorney General
    Photo: www.ali.org

The record of anti-immigrant, White Nationalist bias at EOIR and the DOJ’s “Dred Scott” approach to justice for asylum applicants and other migrants is crystal clear! Thanks to the NDPA, courageous journalists, some “inside sources,” and the remarkable number of rebuffs from Federal Courts, the record on misfeasance and bias at EOIR, OIL, and the SG’s Office is clear. 

For example, there is no “issue” that Sessions’s “child separation policy” violated the Constitution, that he and other Government officials like Rod Rosenstein and Kristen Nielsen lied about it ( ‘We Need to Take Away Children,’ No Matter How Young, Justice Dept. Officials Said
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/06/us/politics/family-separation-border-immigration-jeff-sessions-rod-rosenstein.html?referringSource=articleShare), and that the DOJ attorneys defending this abomination at least failed to do “due diligence” and probably misrepresented to Federal Courts.

In many illegal child separation cases, as the Biden Administration is discovering, the damage is irreparable! Yet, only the the victims have suffered! The “perps” go about their daily business without accountability!

Every day, Garland’s lackadaisical approach to restoring “justice @ Justice” and his apparent indifference to individual human rights and fair judging continue to harm vulnerable asylum seekers and other individuals and disintegrate our legal system. It’s “not OK!”

Progressives and members of the NDPA must recognize, if they haven’t already, that they can’t count on Garland! They will have to continue to use litigation, legislation, oversight, FOIA, public opinion, and political pressure to get the immediate common sense progressive reforms and overdue personnel changes that Garland, Monaco, Gupta, and Clarke are avoiding. Garland might view “justice” as too abstract a concept to require his immediate attention. Many of us don’t agree! 

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-22-21

💡NOLAN RAPPAPORT @ THE HILL SAYS BIDEN DIDN’T GO FAR ENOUGH WITH HIS CENTRAL AMERICAN MINORS’ (“CAM”) PROGRAM — He’s Right!

Nolan Rappaport
Family Pictures
Nolan Rappaport
Opinion Writer
The Hill

Biden’s program for migrant children doesn’t go far enough

By Nolan Rappaport

Former President Barack Obama established the Central American Minors (CAM) Program in December 2014 to provide in-country refugee processing for children in the Northern Triangle Countries (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) as a safe, legal, and orderly alternative to them making the dangerous journey to the United States to apply for asylum.

 

But Obama only made the program available to Northern Triangle children who had a parent who was already physically present in the United States and had lawful status.

 

The Trump administration phased out the CAM program in fiscal 2018 because “the vast majority of individuals accessing the program were not eligible for refugee resettlement.”

 

On March 10, 2021, the Biden administration announced that it had restarted the CAM program to reunite children from the Northern Triangle countries with parents who are lawfully present in the United States. Biden also wants to save Northern Triangle children from having to make the dangerous journey to the United States in the hands of smugglers.

 

That’s a noble intent: The trip across the border is incredibly dangerous.

 

On June 15, 2021, Biden announced an expansion of the CAM program which specified that parents and legal guardians lawfully present in the United States may apply on behalf of the children — this now includes parents or legal guardians in the following legal status categories: Permanent Resident Status; Temporary Protected Status; Parole; Deferred ActionDeferred Enforced Departure; and Withholding of Removal.

 

According to David Bier, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, this is a great improvement over requiring children to come to the United States in the hands of smugglers; however, it remains to be seen whether it will dissuade families from sending their children here with smugglers.

 

Biden’s CAM program may be more generous than the Obama administration’s CAM program, but I think Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) was right when he observed that illegal crossings were not reduced when the Obama administration tried this program years ago, and there’s no reason to think it will have that effect now.

 

Moreover, Biden should know that his revised CAM program is not going to be an effective alternative to making the dangerous journey with smugglers. His administration has acknowledged that only 40 percent of the children from the Northern Triangle who were apprehended at the border this year had a parent in the United States.

 

I don’t understand why he didn’t make it available to all Northern Triangle children who have a persecution claim. He didn’t have to limit the program to children who have parents or guardians in the United States.

 

Read more at https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/559334-bidens-program-for-northern-triangle-children-doesnt-go-far-enough

 

Published originally on The Hill.

 

Nolan Rappaport was detailed to the House Judiciary Committee as an Executive Branch Immigration Law Expert for three years. He subsequently served as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims for four years. Prior to working on the Judiciary Committee, he wrote decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals for 20 years.  Follow him at https://nolanrappaport.blogspot.com

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

Thanks, Nolan! Go on over to The Hill and read Nolan’s complete article.

Nolan’s proposal sure seems like good government and common sense to me. This expanded policy should be relatively non-controversial. Like Nolan, I don’t understand why the Biden Administration is “missing the obvious here.” Every step helps in better and more humanely managing Central American asylum applications. I’ll bet there are even qualified retired immigration officials from USCIS and Immigration Judges and BIA staff from DOJ who would be willing to return as “rehirees” and travel to Central America to work on a program like Nolan proposes.  

Gotta “pick the low hanging fruit,” as Nolan suggests!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-21-21 

NOT ROCKET SCIENCE, 🚀 BUT BIDEN ADMINISTRATION LACKS EXPERT PROGRESSIVE LEADERSHIP WHO “GETS IT” — Will VP Harris Be Able To Break Out Of The “Death Spiral” ☠️ Of “Proven, Guaranteed To Fail” Racist Immigration Deterrence? — “It’s Groundhog Day at the border, and Biden is mindlessly laying the foundation for more problems in a few years. We’ve watched it all play out before. Immigration deterrence doesn’t work.” 

“Floaters”
“Floaters — How The World’s Richest Country Responds To Asylum Seekers”. — “The reality of racial justice and the rule of law for people of color at our Southern Border is rather sobering, as the Biden Administration fails to usher in needed progressive reforms. How many more people will die because this Administration won’t follow the Constitution, The Refugee Act, and our international obligations? We’ll never achieve racial justice so long as dehumanization of people of color is our official policy, carried out by a broken and dysfunctional DOJ!”
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)
Vice President Kamala Harris
Vice President Kamala D. Harris
Vice President of the United States — “Will she be able to get beyond the mistakes of the past and put rationality, humanity, and the rule of law in place at the Southern Border. So far, the results of her leadership are NOT encouraging for those who believe in progressive, humanitarian, legal policies.”
(Official Senate Photo)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/03/immigration-mexico-guatemala-kamala-harris-biden-border-reform/

Opinion by James Fredrick in WashPost

June 3 at 3:44 PM ET

James Fredrick is a multimedia journalist based in Mexico City and covers migration, crime, politics and sports.

. . . .

Obama tried deterring migrants with his characteristic lawyerly tact. Trump did it with his cruel, petty impulsiveness. Biden is doing it with his folksy toughness. The styles are different, but the results of immigration deterrence will always be the same.

We’re trapped in this cycle because the U.S. government refuses to listen to migrants. Having met hundreds of migrants during my years reporting in Mexico and Central America, it’s obvious why deterrence doesn’t work: What’s at home is worse than anything the United States could threaten. Most migrants don’t want to leave home. But they do because violent death or crippling destitution is all that’s left.

Failing to actually come up with a solution, we of the “greatest country on Earth” become tremendously feeble and defensive at the arrival of a few thousand immigrant children. But there is another way.

We must treat immigration as a civil and humanitarian issue, not a criminal one. Criminalizing people fleeing violence, persecution, climate change or economic hardship exacerbates these problems. So decriminalize border crossings and rebuild border facilities as welcome centers, not jails. Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection agents at the border should be social workers, not cops.

If Trump’s family separation atrocity showed us anything, it’s that millions of Americans want to help immigrants in need. The United States should cooperate more with these groups. There are already large networks around the country that can provide housing, food, legal services, education and medical services to immigrants. Why rely on expensive armed border agents instead of willing, motivated humanitarian groups?

Immigration laws should also address the challenges of the 21st century. In addition to decriminalizing border crossings, our immigration laws rely on outdated quotas and corrupt, abusive worker programs. Asylum law is a relic of the Cold War and doesn’t reflect the world today.

Finally, Washington should stop making the problems worse with bad foreign policy. Despite numerous abuses, scandals and criminal allegations involving Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, the Biden administration refuses to denounce him, though many think he is responsible for the conditions Hondurans are fleeing. In fact, Biden administration officials are working with Hernández to try to prevent Hondurans from fleeing. He’s just one example in a long history of U.S. meddling to prop up corrupt, abusive, U.S.-friendly regimes. No amount of U.S. dollars in aid can make up for bad foreign policy.

President Biden can’t stop the crisis today. After all, he helped create it. But he can make sure this is the last “border crisis” we face.

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

Read the complete op-ed at the link.

Ah, “mindlessly” — one of my favorite terms, usually applied these days to Garland and his inept team at DOJ! Actually, Frederick isn’t the only one to figure this out! 

The problem remains, as I have stated over and over, the toxic failure of the Biden Administration to bring progressive experts in immigration, human rights, civil rights, and “applied due process” into Government and empower them to solve the problems! It’s bizarrely compounded by the disgraceful unwillingness of those few in the Biden Administration, like Vanita Gupta and Kristen Clarke, who actually know better, to speak up for racial justice, social justice, human rights, and human dignity at the DOJ! 

Unless VP Harris wakes up, convinces her boss, and brings in the progressive experts, she’s headed for the abyss, taking thousands of vulnerable refugees and, perhaps, American democracy down with her! 

Refusal to listen: to migrants, their representatives, experts, our “better angels,” and common sense! The same problems, over and over, Administration after Administration, decade after decade! The same “built to fail” policies repeated! 

The truth is in front of the Biden Administration! But, like Garland, Mayorkas, and others leading the way over the cliff, Biden and Harris can’t see it! They appear to have “tuned out” those desperately trying to keep them from plunging over the precipice! So tragic, so unnecessary, so threatening to American democracy and the future of humanity!

🇺🇸🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-05-21

🇺🇸🗽⚖️GEORGE W. BUSH INSTITUTE REPORT: GENDER VIOLENCE ☠️⚰️DRIVES CONTINUING REFUGEE FLOW TO U.S. — Dishonesty Of Sessions’s Misogynistic Attack In Matter Of A-B- 🤮 Exposed Again! — Yet, Garland Fails To Take Action To End Misogyny, Anti-Asylum Culture @ EOIR, Even As He Also Fails To Insist On The Restoration Of The Rule Of Law @ Our Borders! —  WHY?🤯

 

Gender Violence in Central America
Gender Violence continues to to be endemic in Latin America! Yet, shockingly, its victims, refugee women of color, can expect little protection in Garland’s Immigration Courts still applying Jeff Sessions’s inaccurate, misogynistic precedent in Matter of A-B- and continuing to be staffed by too many “judges” selected or promoted by the Trump Administration because of their perceived willingness to support anti-asylum policies targeting many women of color! Recently Garland outraged progressives by appointing 17 “Miller/Barr Holdovers” to powerful, life or death, Immigration Judge positions while eschewing better-qualified progressive experts from the private sector who could bring diversity and gender and racial justice to his dysfunctional Immigration “Courts!” 
PHOTO: UNHCR website

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2021/06/03/abuse-of-women-and-children-at-root-of-immigration-crisis/

Abused women at border
Migrant women carry children in the rain at an intake area after turning themselves in upon crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, late Tuesday, May 11, 2021, in La Joya, Texas. The U.S. government continues to report large numbers of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border with an increase in adult crossers. But families and unaccompanied children are still arriving in dramatic numbers despite the weather changing in the Rio Grande Valley registering hotter days and nights. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)(Gregory Bull)
Natalie Gonnella-Platts
Natalie Gonnella-Platts
Director, Women’s Initiative
George W. Bush Institute
PHOTO: Bush Institute
Jenny Villatoro
Jenny Villatoro
Associate, George W. Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative
PHOTO: George W. Bush Institute

By Natalie Gonnella-Platts and Jenny Villatoro In the Dallas Morning News:

When U.S. Border Patrol found him in the Texas desert, 10-year-old Wilton was crying, “they abandoned me.” Exhausted and alone, his image went viral — a poignant visual of the struggle faced by thousands seeking safety.

But Wilton’s story actually began in Nicaragua when his mother, Meylin, wasn’t able to get legal protection from an abusive partner. Mother and son fled to the United States, seeking asylum, but were expelled under a public health rule and sent to Mexico, where they were kidnapped, according to an account in El Pais. Meylin’s brother in Miami could pay only half the ransom — enough for Wilton alone to be released.

Although Meylin was ultimately released and reunited with her son, the tale that led to Wilton’s arrival at the border as an unaccompanied minor isn’t unique. It illustrates the fact that gender-based violence, revictimization and lack of justice affect children, families and communities thousands of miles away. It also highlights the importance of a safe and legal pathway into the United States for survivors of gender-based violence and other asylum-seekers. For many, arriving at the U.S. border seeking asylum is the only legal pathway available.

Immigration reform in the United States is essential to assuring that we have a secure and efficient border, a system flexible enough to handle changes in migrant flows, and the capacity to treat each migrant with dignity. But more needs to be done in the migrants’ home countries, too, so that they are not forced to flee for their safety in the first place.

Any comprehensive plan on Central America and immigration reform should address gender inequity and gender-based violence.

They are not siloed issues to acknowledge only when horrific stories of femicide and human trafficking force us to pay attention. Rather, they are deeply entangled with broader challenges of corruption and poverty. Proposed solutions shouldn’t overlook the impact of gender-based violence on migrant flows, economic development, education and health.

Fourteen of the 25 most dangerous places for women are in the Western Hemisphere, including countries within Central America. Patriarchy and gang violence subject women and girls to abhorrent actions of abuse and control.

Honduras and El Salvador saw some of the highest incidences of femicide within Latin America in 2019, at rates of 6.2 and 3.3 per 100,000, respectively. In Guatemala, adolescent girls are at a high risk of being “disappeared,” with 8 out of every 10,000 girls between the ages of 15 and 17 reported missing each year.

COVID 19-related lockdowns are being exploited by gangs looking to strengthen control: El Salvador alone has seen a 70% increase in gender-based violence since the beginning of the pandemic. And lockdowns have forced vulnerable individuals to stay in close proximity to their perpetrators. Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador reported an increase in intrafamily violence, with El Salvador reporting an increase in intrafamily femicides as well.

Justice systems and access to services need to be strengthened to ensure adequate protection for all under the law. Legal protections often are inhibited by weak institutions, corruption and a culture of impunity toward perpetrators.

According to a 2017 national survey, two-thirds of Salvadoran women over the age of 15 have experienced violence, but only 6% have ever reported it. While laws against child marriage exist across the region, in some countries about 1 in 3 young women are in a union before age 18. Post-trauma support and efforts that inform Central American women of their rights and agency are critical interventions that could help women like Meylin.

Females have been disproportionately affected by the devastating impact of hurricanes Eta and Iota, but the status of women and girls is chronically overlooked in response efforts, exacerbating the risk of violence.

Women and girls must be seen and heard. Greater focus on gender and age-disaggregated data collection and in tracking the effectiveness and efficiency of legal systems is crucial. And women and their lived experiences need to be more fully represented at all leadership levels.

Finally, direct outreach to local communities should be a priority for U.S. government and private sector-led programs. This includes resource and capacity support for advocates and organizations that serve as lifelines for those affected by violence, often at great personal risk. Engagement with men and boys is equally imperative.

How can anyone be expected to thrive when her day-to-day priority is simply to survive? The United States needs to recognize that gender-based violence and gender inequity drive migration.

Immigration reform must include strategies to address the root causes of migration from Central America in effective and lasting ways to prevent situations like Wilton’s and Meylin’s. Women and girls must be front and center in these solutions.

Natalie Gonnella-Platts serves as the director of the Women’s Initiative at the George W. Bush Institute.

Jenny Villatoro is an associate for the George W. Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative.

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

“Deterrents” and illegally abusing asylum seekers DON’T WORK! It’s not that difficult a concept. Indeed, these misguided attempts at deterrence have been failing consistently under Administrations of both parties for the past four decades. One would think that an “enlightened nation” would try a different approach rather than simply repeating the costly failures of the past in various forms.

What we need are functioning refugee and asylum systems, led and staffed by progressive experts, operating from INSIDE Government, that will grant status to qualified refugee women in a fair and timely manner and set favorable precedents even while separately addressing the endemic problems in the “refugee-sending countries.” Of course, it will result in more legal immigration of refugees and asylum seekers to the U.S. That’s a good thing for both us and those individuals, not something to be feared or unlawfully and dishonestly “deterred!”

With stagnating population growth, we should welcome and facilitate legal immigration of courageous, talented, dedicated refugee women from all countries and their children through the refugee, asylum, and a much more robust legal immigration system! 

Debi Sanders
Debi Sanders ESQ
“Warrior Queen” of the NDPA
PHOTO: law.uva.edu

Thanks to NDPA warrior-queen Debi Sanders for sending in this item. This report should be great evidence for those litigating to halt the Garland misogyny mess at EOIR and, sadly, to some extent in U.S. Courts of Appeals that have chosen to sweep both reality of what’s happening in the Northern Triangle and the patent unconstitutionality of a system governed by bogus precedents entered or promoted by AG’s affiliated with DHS Enforcement who also packed and reshaped the immigration “judiciary” in the image of nativist restrictionists! However, compelling as it is, the report only adds to the existing body of documentation of the dishonest approach by Administrations of both parties to Latin American asylum claims, particularly those of women and children.

For Pete’s sake, first and second year law students know that the EOIR travesty is unconstitutional! Why are life-tenured Article III Judges covering it up? Hopefully, history will take note of their mal-performance on the bench! These guys are life-tenured! So, what’s their excuse for not upholding the Constitution against clear Congressional and Executive abuses?

Hard for me to say this. But, former President George W. Bush is doing more for human rights, gender rights, civil rights, and immigrants rights’ than Garland or anyone else at the Biden DOJ! At least he speaks out publicly for the humanity and contributions of migrants and for their fair and generous treatment, which is more than any member of the Biden Administration has done as they continue to mistake softening the rhetoric with taking firm action to reverse White Nationalist policies and replace them with readily achievable progressive ones.

George W. Bush
030114-O-0000D-001.President George W. Bush. Photo by Eric Draper, White House. “Why is this guy willing to speak up for immigrants’ rights . . . .

Meanwhile, despite pleas from nearly every expert, progressive, human rights, immigrants’ rights, and gender rights group in the U.S., Garland continues to allow Sessions’s wrong, toxic, and misogynistic decision in Matter of A-B – to remain in place and threaten the lives of female refugees while ignoring the misogynistic, anti-asylum, culture inculcated by Sessions and Barr at EOIR that continues to flourish and daily dish out abuse to migrants and their representatives without meaningful consequences. 

Judge Merrick Garland
“ . . . while this guy continues to apply misogynistic precedents, eschew progressive experts, recycle failed ‘Aimless Docket Reshuffling’ gimmicks, and allow the Trump-era anti-asylum culture to continue to flourish at EOIR and DOJ?” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland
Official White House Photo
Public Realm

What, indeed, is someone like AAG Vanita Gupta doing with herself at Garland’s anti-progressive, and anti-due-process mess at DOJ? Why are folks like her and Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke there in the first place if they aren’t going to stand up to Garland’s tone-deaf, inept approach to gender rights, human rights, and racial justice @ EOIR? How, on earth, do you lead a “Civil Rights Division” while turning a blind eye to grotesque violations of civil and human rights going on daily in your “Boss’s” wholly owned “court” system that functions like no “real court” in America? What’s DAG Lisa Monaco doing presiding over a gender disaster at EOIR? It’s straight out of “Jim Crow!” 

James “Jim” Crow
James “Jim” Crow
Symbol of American Racism, still right at home at Garland’s EOIR!
Woman Tortured
“She struggled madly in the torturing Ray” — “Do Garland, Monaco, Gupta, & Clarke work in ‘sound-proofed offices’ where they can’t hear our tortured screams and moans? What’s wrong with those guys? We’re suffering and dying while they are fiddling and diddling!”
Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

And, I wouldn’t say that Vice President Harris is looking very good either, as she “swallows the whistle” on notorious scofflaw human rights violations that she was well aware of from her time in the Senate! Doesn’t anyone in the Biden Administration have the backbone to speak up for human rights, human decency, and restoring the rule of law? Is it REALLY our position that following the Constitution, our statutory laws, and the international treaties to which we are party is beyond the capabilities of the U.S. Government? If so, what, may I ask, is the difference between us an any third world dictatorship where laws have no meaning?

Vice President Kamala Harris
Vice President Kamala D. Harris. “Our first African-American, AAPI, child of immigrants VEEP seems curiously deaf and indifferent to the gross abuses being heaped on migrants and women of color at EOIR and at our Souther Border! What’s her excuse for turning her back on the progressive, human rights, gender equality groups that helped put her in office. Why is she remaining silent as Garland continues to appoint Billy Barr’s hand-selected non-progressive, non-diverse Immigration Judges to a life-determining “judiciary” that the Biden Administration wholly controls? How can you create a progressive, diverse, Article III Judiciary that will promote racial equity when you’re unwilling to apply those values and selection criteria to a huge judiciary that you actually control? What message are you sending to ‘next generation progressive attorneys of color’ when you allow Garland to ignore them in favor of lesser qualified candidates? Why aren’t you out there actively recruiting more attorneys of color and other underrepresented groups for the Immigration Judiciary rather than allowing Garland to use same-old, same old bogus “USA Jobs Phantom recruitments?” Lots of unanswered questions here!
Vice President of the United States
(Official Senate Photo)

I can’t figure it out! But, I do know that Garland’s lousy stewardship at EOIR, failure to speak out for fundamental fairness, usher in progressive changes, and restore due process @ EOIR has reached “crisis proportions” affecting our entire justice system and threatening democracy!

Hopefully, progressive advocacy, human rights, and civil rights groups will keep up the pressure and demands for long, long, long overdue and readily achievable changes at EOIR: in leadership, precedents, culture, and administration of justice! (Get this: Garland just created yet another bogus “Dedicated Docket” without a functional e-filing system to make it work! That’s “Aimless Docket Reshuffling 101,” as anyone who has actually had to deal with the mess in his Immigration Courts could tell him. But, he’s apparently not interested!) Right now, it’s an unmitigated “disaster zone” continuing to spiral downward!

There is a direct link between the “Dred Scottification of the other” that Garland countenances at EOIR and the overall failure of our justice system to deal effectively with institutionalized racism! The U.S. has a long, disreputable history of treating women and persons of color as “non persons” under the Constitution. Much of it traces to our immigration laws where “the others” are routinely dehumanized, stereotyped, demonized, and abused by those who falsely claim to be furthering the “rule of law!” We will NOT achieve racial justice for all in America until we deal with the festering wounds intentionally inflicted on women, children, and people of color in our immigration system, at EOIR, and illegally continuing at our borders! 

By choice, Garland now “owns” the misogynistic, anti-due-process, anti-asylum disaster @ EOIR. Make him deal with it in a constructive way!

🇺🇸🗽⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever! Garland’s continued tolerance of misogyny and the anti-due-process, anti-asylum culture at EOIR, NEVER! Stop Garland’s continuing misogynistic nonsense before more refugee women and people of color needlessly die! What’s it going to take finally to get some “real justice @ Justice?”

PWS

06-05-21

 

⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️JUDICIAL REVIEW — C.A. 2 — Brace Of Bad BIA Bobbles On Basics Brings “Culture Of Denial” Into Focus — Justice Will Continue To Be Illusive @ EOIR 👎🏽 Until Garland Steps Up & Replaces His Fatally Flawed BIA With Real Judges Who Are Progressive Practical Scholars In Immigration, Due Process, Human Rights, With A Firm Commitment To Bringing Racial & Gender Equity To Now-Disgraced Immigration Courts!🤮

Judge Merrick Garland
Attorney General Hon. Merrick B. Garland — Are these really what “A” papers looked like when he was at Harvard Law? If not, how come it’s now “good enough for government work” when it’s only the lives of the most vulnerable among us at stake?”
Official White House  Photo
Public Realm
Dan Kowalski
Dan Kowalski
Online Editor of the LexisNexis Immigration Law Community (ILC)

Dan Kowalski forwards these two 2d Circuit reversals on basic “bread and butter” issues: 1) mental competency (BIA unable or unwilling to follow own precedent); 2) credibility; 3) corroboration; 4) consideration of testimony and evidence:

https://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/85d225f1-0b15-44a9-8890-80f9027d12b5/3/doc/18-1083_so.pdf#xml=https://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/85d225f1-0b15-44a9-8890-80f9027d12b5/3/hilite/

https://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/57161a21-b70c-4b36-9a38-ff6a88d12453/14/doc/19-1370_so.pdf#xml=https://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/57161a21-b70c-4b36-9a38-ff6a88d12453/14/hilite/

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

These aren’t “cases of first impression,” “Circuit splits,” complex questions involving state law, unusual Constitutional issues, or difficult applications of treaties or international law. No, these are the “basics” of fair, competent adjudication in Immigration Court. Things most law students would get correct that IJs and BIA Appellate Judges are getting wrong on a daily basis in their “race to deny.”

Don’t kid yourself! For every one of these “caught and outed” by Circuit Courts, dozens are wrongly railroaded out of America because they are unrepresented, can’t afford to pursue judicial review in the Article IIIs, or are duressed and demoralized by unconstitutional detention and other coercive methods applied by the “unethical partnership” between EOIR and ICE enforcement.

Others have the misfortune to be in the 5th Circuit, the 11th Circuit, or draw Circuit panels who are happy to “keep,the line moving” by indolently “rubber stamping” EOIR’s “Dred Scottification” of “the other.” After all, dead or deported (or both) migrants can’t complain and don’t exercise any societal power! “Dead/deported men or women don’t talk.”☠️⚰️ But, members of the NDPA will preserve and tell their stories of unnecessary human suffering and degradation for them! We will insure that Garland, Monaco, Gupta, and others in the Biden Administration who ignored their desperate moans and tortured screams in their time of direst need are held accountable!🤮

Unfortunately, these decisions are unpublished. They should be published! It’s critically important that the daily gross miscarriages of justice @ EOIR be publicly documented, citable as precedent, and serve as a permanent record of perhaps the most unconstitutional and corrupt episode in modern American legal history.

It’s also essential to keep the pressure on Garland and his so far feckless lieutenants to fix the problem: 

  • Remove the Trump/Miller holdovers @ EOIR;
  • Prune out the “go along to get along” deadwood;
  • Rescind the improper hiring of 17 “Billy the Bigot” judicial selections (including the one absurdist selection by “AG for a Day Monty Python” — talk about a “poke in the eyes with a sharp stick” to progressives);
  • Bring in top notch progressive practical scholars as leaders and REAL judges at both the appellate and trial levels of EOIR –  NOW;
  • Make the “no brainer” changes to eradicate Trump-era unethical, xenophobic “precedents” and inane “rules” and establish due process and fundamental fairness, including, of course, racial and gender equity in decision making.

So far, Garland has pretended that the “Culture of Denial” flourishing under his nose at HIS EOIR doesn’t exist! It does exist — big time — and it continues to get worse, threaten more lives, and squander more resources every day! 

Due process (not to mention simple human decency) requires bold, immediate ACTION. Garland’s continued dawdling and inaction raises the issue of what is the purpose of an Attorney General who allows his “delegees” (basically Stephen Miller’s “judges”) to violate due process every day! There is no more important issue facing the DOJ today. Garland’s silence and inaction raise serious questions about his suitability to serve as the American public’s top lawyer!

Miller Lite
Garland, Monaco, and Gupta appear to be enjoying their “Miller Lite Happy Hour @ DOJ.” Those communities of color and women suffering from their indolence and inaction, not so much! — “Miller Lite” – Garland’s Vision of “Justice @ Justice” for Communities of Color
Woman Tortured
Abused, battered refugee women don’t appear to be enjoying “Miller Lite Time” @ DOJ quite the way Garland, Monaco, and Gupta are! Hard to hold that 16 oz. can when your hands are shackled and you are being “racked” by A-B-, L-E-A-, Castro-Tum and other “Miller brewed” precedents. “She struggled madly in the torturing Ray”
Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons


🗽⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-24-21

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️SCOFFLAW ADMINISTRATION: Biden, Garland, Mayorkas Continue Trump Policies That Fuel Kidnapping Of Asylum Applicants, Aid Smugglers! — Molly O’Toole Reports @ LAT!

Molly O’Toole
Molly O’Toole
Immigration Reporter
LA Times
Source: LA Times website

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=3c4571fa-1131-4b45-8fd5-a1903b21b58f

By Molly O’Toole

WASHINGTON — With shaking hands, Karen Cruz Caceres manages to hit record on the call.

“How many days have you gone without food?” she asks into the phone.

Tani, her younger sister, is heard sobbing. “Help me,” she gets out.

Cruz Caceres assures her: “I am going to pay today. I’ll make another deposit.”

The April 1 call ends abruptly, and Cruz Caceres stops recording.

A week before, Cruz Caceres, a single mother from Honduras who won asylum in Tennessee, had gotten another call that upended her already precarious life: Kidnappers in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, had abducted her pregnant sister Tani and Tani’s 4-year-old son, and they wanted more than $20,000, according to a video recording of the call and messages reviewed by the Los Angeles Times. The family asked The Times not to use her sister’s last name, for fear of retribution from the kidnappers in Mexico and gangs back home.

Tani, 33, and her son were kidnapped on March 25, Cruz Caceres and lawyers said — just after U.S. authorities expelled them from Texas alongside other mothers and children under a Trump-era pandemic policy known as Title 42, which President Biden has continued.

The unprecedented policy, which relies on an obscure 1944 public health statute to indefinitely close the border to “nonessential” travel, has made migrant children and parents easy prey for the criminal groups waiting just on the other side. Biden’s continued reliance on Title 42 to quickly remove the vast majority of migrants at the southern border without due process contrasts with his pledge to restore “human dignity” to a U.S. immigration system targeted by former President Trump.

“My sister and my nephew were told they were going to kill them and feed them to the dogs,” Cruz Caceres told The Times. “If [U.S. officials] want to deport them back to their country, why don’t they do it now like prior presidents did?” she asked. “Why dump them to try their luck in the most dangerous cities in Mexico, to get abducted by kidnappers?”

The abduction of migrants in northern Mexico and the extortion from U.S. family members isn’t new, lawyers, experts and officials told The Times — what’s new is the reliance on Title 42 to expel thousands of these already vulnerable families, leaving them at the mercy of kidnappers and other criminals.

Since the Trump administration implemented Title 42 in March last year amid a global pandemic, U.S. border officials have carried out more than 630,000 expulsions under the policy, some 240,000 since Biden took office in January, according to a Times analysis of the latest government data.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Molly’s article at the link.

The Biden Administration ran and took office on a platform of kinder, saner policies that would restore human rights and the rule of law at the border. So far, that promise has been a deadly lie!

Arbitrarily and unlawfully closing legal ports of entry to asylum seekers and abrogating asylum and refugee laws plays directly into the hands of human smugglers and cartels while expanding the extralegal immigration system and the resulting underground of undocumented residents. Many of these individuals could and should have been legally admitted through legal channels if we had a functioning immigration system overseen by fair, impartial, expert Immigration Courts staffed with well-qualified progressive Immigration Judges.

Inevitably and predictably,  these gross government failures lead to the type of human tragedy that occurred yesterday when a smuggling boat sank off the California coast, killing at least three and injuring dozens. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-05-02/boat-capsizes-off-coast-of-point-loma

Naturally, with no legal asylum system in place, and with asylum seekers arbitrarily rejected at legal ports of entry, as described in Molly’s article, desperate individuals will turn to smugglers to achieve refuge. It’s not rocket science; but sadly the human tragedy that illegal, inhumane government policies cause at our border appear to be “out of sight, out of mind” to Judge Garland and other Biden Administration officials. That is, until the dead bodies start to pile up on their doorsteps!

“Floaters”
“Floaters — How The World’s Richest Country Responds To Asylum Seekers”
This appears to be the Garland, Monaco, Gupta view of human rights and the rule of law for asylum seeker! What if we thought of these folks as our fellow human beings, rather than statistics or problems to be “deterred” through illegal, deadly, and ultimately ineffective policies? What if Garland replaced Miller’s nativist “judges” with REAL progressive Immigration Judges who are experts in asylum and due process and have the guts to grant legal protection to eligible migrants in a prompt, fair, and timely manner and to demand that DHS Asylum Officers do likewise?  (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)

🇺🇸⚖️🗽😎🧑🏽‍⚖️👨🏻‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-03-21

⚖️🗽🏆NDPA NEWS: Superstar 🌟 Clinical Prof. Erin Barbato Named Clinical Teacher Of The Year @ U.W. Law!

 

Professor Erin Barbato
Professor Erin Barbato
Director, Immigrant Justice Clinic
UW Law
Photo source: UW Law

 

ARD, BARBATO, AND COLLINS NAMED UW LAW SCHOOL TEACHERS OF THE YEAR

Each spring, UW Law School celebrates excellence in teaching through its Teacher of the Year awards. UW Law School’s annual teaching awards demonstrate the value placed on excellent teaching. Our faculty engage and inspire UW Law students through thoughtful pedagogy, and we are proud to honor them for this important work.

The honorees for outstanding classroom, clinical and adjunct instruction in 2020 include:

  • BJ Ard, Classroom Teacher of the Year. BJ Ard is an Assistant Professor of Law whose teaching and scholarship focusing on intellectual property, privacy, and technology. Ard earned his law degree and doctorate from Yale in 2017. He joined the UW Law School in 2018.
  • Erin M. Barbato, Clinical Teacher of the Year. Barbato is the director of UW Law School’s Immigrant Justice Clinic (IJC) and a Clinical Professor of Law. In 2013, she joined the Law School as an adjunct professor with a focus on immigration law before becoming the IJC director in 2018. Under her supervision, students learn how to represent individuals in removal proceedings and with humanitarian-based immigration relief. Barbato received her law degree from Marquette University Law School in 2006.
  • Susan Collins, Adjunct Teacher of the Year. Collins teaches an introduction for estate planning and drafting. Collins earned her law degree in 1995, graduating cum laude from UW Law. Collins worked for Associated Bank as a senior vice president and fiduciary law senior counsel until 2018.

Submitted by Law School News on April 15, 2021

This article appears in the categories: Articles, Faculty

Related employee profiles: BJ Ard, Erin Barbato, Susan Collins

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Congratulations, Erin, my friend and colleague So very proud of you and all you have achieved at my alma mater. “Badgers changing the world, for the better!”

Bucky Badger
Bucky Badger
UW Mascot

This is a “Big Deal!” As Erin tells me:

The award is based on votes and comments from students. It means a lot to me as I think it reflects that the students of UW Law recognize the importance of representing people in removal proceedings. They are future due process warriors.

Erin has been an inspirational role model for a new generation of law students, taking groups to the border to save lives, engaging in “retail level” litigation in Immigration Court that advances justice in the most meaningful way possible, and publicizing the seminal role that immigrant justice plays in social justice in America. She is also a thinker and scholar who sees due process, human rights, and racial justice issues with a clarity lacking in all too many of today’s out of touch politicians, policy makers, and judges.

Erin also was a guest lecturer in my Immigration Law & Policy course course at Georgetown Law. Her “stories and pictures from the border” brought home to my students the gross violations of human and constitutional rights going on in our dysfunctional Immigration Courts on a daily basis. 

Erin is one of the many “practical scholars” out there who should be “on the inside” at EOIR, DHS, and the Article III Courts!

Congrats again, Erin, and Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-25-21