TED HESSON @ POLITICO: What’s REALLY Happening At The Border — Not Surprisingly, It Bears Little Resemblance To Trump’s Largely False & Contrived “Panic Narratives” — Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) Says: “In my community when these families are released, the community … scrambles and works hard to create hospitality centers, to feed these people, to help get them to their final destination. If we can do it with a fraction of the resources and power of the federal government, surely DHS can find a better solution.”

https://politi.co/2FtPtru

Ted Hesson, Immigration, Pro — Staff mugshots photographed Feb. 20, 2018. (M. Scott Mahaskey/Politico)

Ted Hesson reports for Politico:

The border crisis that President Donald Trump used to justify declaring a national emergency was never real, but a different crisis at the border is now starting to escalate as immigration officials hold hundreds of parents and children in makeshift facilities, including a parking lot.

During a press conference in El Paso, Texas, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan argued Wednesday that a surge of incoming Central American migrants has pushed the U.S. immigration system to a “breaking point” and that all available resources should be devoted to manage it.

Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), a freshman lawmaker who represents El Paso, fumed Thursday over the border situation — which she also described as a crisis — during an interview after leaving the House floor.

“They knew that the numbers would increase,” she said. “Why were they not planning?”

Here’s what’s really happening now at the border:

The president’s frequent claims that unprecedented numbers of undocumented migrants are streaming into the country remain untrue. (Twice as many came during the 1990s and early 2000s.) And President Trump’s caricature of border-crossers as violent criminals is still belied by study after study showing that immigrants in general, and undocumented immigrants in particular, commit fewer crimes than the native-born.

“We have a capacity crisis, if you want to think of it that way,” Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) told POLITICO. “We don’t have capacity to deal with the populations that they’re getting at the border right now.”

Border Patrol anticipates that it will apprehend more than 55,000 family members in March, by far the highest monthly total since such record-keeping began in fiscal year 2012. The warmer spring and summer months ahead will likely bring even higher numbers.

The adult men from Mexico who a decade ago constituted most border migrants were able to be returned more swiftly, often simply by walking them across the border. While they were detained, the men required comparatively little in the way of social or medical services.

Furthermore, a 2008 federal law and related bilateral agreement allowed the U.S. to repatriate Mexican unaccompanied minors rapidly. The law, called the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, does not similarly authorize quick deportation for children from Central America.

By contrast, the greater volume of children among the new Central American migrants imposes on immigration agencies a need for more psychologists, nutritionists, educators and a host of others. Border officials contend that with the rise in families and children, more migrants have health issues than in the past.

Federal court orders in recent years have limited to 20 days the time children can be kept in detention, which means border agents often must release families into the interior. Such releases speed up processing, but demoralize agents and may encourage more migration, McAleenan argued.

The current migratory flow is also different because of the greater proportion of asylum applications at the border in recent years. Central American families arriving at the border frequently seek such refuge, which puts them into an immigration process that can take years to resolve.

The Trump administration argues that the asylum claims largely lack merit, but immigration court statistics don’t back that up. Roughly 25 percent of defensive asylum applications were approved by an immigration judge in fiscal year 2017, with 41 percent denied and 34 percent resolved in another manner, such as a withdrawn application.

Still, immigration hard-liners contend that lax asylum laws have been a magnet for Central Americans.

Mark Krikorian, director of the restrictionist Center for Immigration Studies, compared the current influx at the border to Europe’s migratory surge in 2015.

“We are seeing an Angela Merkel-style disaster on the border caused by loopholes in our laws that the Democrats refuse to even consider changing,” he said.

Democrats and advocates argue that the Trump administration’s response has exacerbated problems at the border.

Administration officials have known for months — arguably years — that more migrant families could trek to the United States, yet they appear to have been caught flat-footed.

During McAleenan’s press conference in El Paso Wednesday, reporters observed hundreds of parents and children held in a parking lot converted into a makeshift detention center.

“That’s their solution? That’s not a solution,” Escobar said. “In my community when these families are released, the community … scrambles and works hard to create hospitality centers, to feed these people, to help get them to their final destination. If we can do it with a fraction of the resources and power of the federal government, surely DHS can find a better solution.”

“They’ve been acting and responding in the same way over the last five years despite the change in the migration pattern,” she said.

The spending package approved by Congress in February included $192 million to construct a large processing center for migrant families in El Paso. The facility will house multiple agencies that deal with families in one building, but will take six months to a year to become functional, according to Escobar.

In the meantime, the Texas Democrat argues that if Trump truly deems immigration a national emergency, he should work harder to house and care for incoming migrants, perhaps with Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers or Red Cross assistance.

Under a January 2017 Trump executive order, federal immigration officials remain tasked with arresting and detaining as many migrants as possible, without a system of prioritization. Advocates contend the enforcement push has sapped resources that could be used to address the care and custody of newly arrived migrant families.

“They just detain any grandpa or mom that they find in the interior and they don’t prioritize who they should be putting in detention,” said Kerri Talbot, a director with the Washington, D.C.-based Immigration Hub. “They don’t need any more money, they need a new strategy.”

Under its “zero tolerance” strategy, the Trump administration sought to prosecute all suspect border crossers for illegal entry. Children couldn’t travel with their parents to criminal detention facilities, so they were reclassified as “unaccompanied” and transferred to the custody of the Health and Human Services Department. Thousands of families were split apart from April until June, only to see Trump reverse the policy and a federal judge order families reunited.

The administration also has sought to keep asylum-seeking migrants in Mexico for longer periods of time.

Using a practice known as “metering,” border officials have forced families to wait in Mexico, only accepting a certain number of asylum applicants at ports of entry each day.

“They’re afraid of waiting in Mexico until they can get in at the port,” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “They’re balancing that against their desire to do it legally. And I definitely think its emboldening the smugglers to go to those who are waiting.”

McAleenan acknowledged during a December Senate committee hearing that metering could lead to an increase in the number of people attempting to cross the border illegally, saying it’s “certainly a concern.”

Still, the Trump administration has moved forward with a separate policy to keep asylum seekers in Mexico for extended periods of time.

The administration’s “remain in Mexico” policy — announced in late December and now implemented in several areas along the border — forces certain non-Mexican asylum seekers to wait in Mexico during the duration of an asylum case.

At the same time, the administration has moved slowly to disperse funding to address root causes of migration in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

POLITICO reported this week that hundreds of millions in aid dollars remain stalled at the White House budget office as aides wonder how seriously to take Trump’s threats to cut the funding.

“Mexico is doing NOTHING to help stop the flow of illegal immigrants to our Country. They are all talk and no action,“ Trump tweeted Thursday. “Likewise, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have taken our money for years, and do Nothing. The Dems don’t care, such BAD laws. May close the Southern Border!“

Trump’s unwise threat to “close” the Southern Border could turn a humanitarian situation into a self-created international crisis. And, Trump continues to be the “best friend” of smugglers, cartels, and gangs.
There is a clear and present threat to our national security. It’s not desperate refugees (mostly women, children, and families) seeking to exercise their legal rights; unfortunately, it’s our President.
PWS
03-31-19

THE ART OF SOCIAL JUSTICE — HON. POLLY WEBBER’S TRIPTYCH “REFUGEE DILEMMA” HITS THE ROAD!

 

  1.  a) “Fleeing From Persecution;” b) “Caught in the Covfefe;” c) “Safe Haven;”
  2. The stories behold each rug by the artist, Hon. Polly Webber;
  3. Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase & Hon. Polly Webber admiring “Caught in the Covfefe” during a break at the 2019 FBA New York Asylum & Immigration Law Conference at NY Law School on March 8, 2019;
  4. Closeup of “Caught in the Covfefe.”

Art powerfully expresses the overwhelming need to fight for social justice and human dignity in the age of Trump’s unabashed cruelty, racism, and White Nationalism.

It’s even more powerful when the artist is Retired U.S. Immigration Judge Polly Webber (a proud member of “Our Gang” of retired judges) who has spent her life promoting Due Process, fundamental fairness, justice, and the rule of law in American immigration. She has served as an immigration attorney, former President of AILA, U.S. Immigration Judge, and now amazing textile artist bringing her full and rich life and deeply held humane values to the forefront of her art.

Thanks, Polly, for using your many talents to inspire a new generation of the “New Due Process Army!”

I’m only sorry that my photos don’t do justice to Polly’s art. Hopefully, the “real deal” will come to a venue near you in the future!

PWS

03-10-19

 

 

COLBY KING @ WASHPOST: The “Original Dreamers” Were Disenfranchised African Americans! — “That fight must continue on behalf of today’s dreamers, the disenfranchised, the demeaned and left out, and all freedom-loving people in this nation.“

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-black-men-of-the-civil-war-were-americas-original-dreamers/2019/02/15/8c00088e-30a8-11e9-813a-0ab2f17e305b_story.html

Colby King writes in WashPost:

Today, a wall looms large in my thoughts. It isn’t the structure President Trump has in mind for our southern border. I’m thinking of the Wall of Honor at the African American Civil War Memorial, located at Vermont Avenue and U Street NW.

Listed on the wall are the names of 209,145 U.S. Colored Troops who fought during the Civil War. One of those names is that of Isaiah King, my great-grandfather.

I think of those courageous black men as America’s original “dreamers.”

Today’s dreamers are in their teens and 20s, having arrived in this country as children. King’s generation of dreamers were former slaves or descendants of slaves brought to these shores against their will.

However, the black men who fought in the Civil War had the same status as today’s dreamers: noncitizens without a discernable path to citizenship.

My great-grandfather was born in the slave-holding city of Washington in 1848, but his mother was a freed woman. She moved the family to New Bedford, Mass., when he was 4. Around the time of his 17th birthday, Isaiah King enlistedin the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry (Colored), thinking, “I would have it easier riding than walking,” he told the New Bedford Evening Standard in an interview on the eve of Memorial Day services in 1932.

Black men such as my great-grandfather signed on to fight for a Union in which the right to citizenship was reserved for white people. The Supreme Court ruled in Dred Scott v. Sandford, in 1857, that black people were not citizens of the United States. Putting it bluntly, the high court said black people were “so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

In his book “The Fifth Massachusetts Colored Cavalry in the Civil War,” Steven M. LaBarre cited the first disparity: It was enshrined in the Second Confiscation and Militia Act of July 17, 1862, which authorized recruitment of black men into the Union army. The law stated that a “person of African descent [of any rank] . . . shall receive ten dollars per month . . . three dollars of which monthly pay may be in clothing.” White privates at the time received $13 per month plus a $3.50 clothing allowance. It wasn’t until July 15, 1864, that Congress granted equal pay to black soldiers.

Yet, serve they did.

As evidence of the regard in which they were held, LaBarre quoted Massachusetts Gov. John Albion Andrew’s commendation of the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry when it was launched: “In this hour of hope for our common country and for themselves; at a time when they hold the destiny of their race in their own grasp; and when its certain emancipation from prejudice, as well as slavery, is in the hands of those now invited to unite in the final blow which will annihilate the rebel power, let no brave and strong man hesitate. One cannot exaggerate the call sounding in the ears of all men, in whose veins flows the blood of Africa, and whose color has been the badge of slavery. It offers the opportunity of years, crowded into an hour.”

According to National Archives, by the end of the Civil War, roughly 179,000 black men were serving as soldiers — 10 percent of the Union army — and 19,000 served in the Union navy. Nearly 40,000 black soldiers died over the course of the war — 30,000 of infection or disease. By war’s end, 16 black soldiers had been awarded the Medal of Honor .

King came back to the capital in May 1864 as a private with the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry to defend the city against attack by Confederate troops. His unit participated in the Siege of Petersburg. They guarded Confederate prisoners at Point Lookout, Md. And his unit was among the first Union regiments to enter Richmond, capital of the dying Confederacy, on April 3, 1865.

The Civil War ended, but not his service. Three months later, the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry was sent to Texas to defend against threats from Mexico. (Sound familiar?) He was mustered out of service on Oct. 31, 1865, at Clarksville, Tex. — still not a citizen of the United States.

The men with names on the African American Civil War Memorial’s Wall of Honor fought and died to end two centuries of slavery, without being able to count democracy as their own.

For their descendants, the fight for full rights, for full participation in every part of our democracy, goes on.

That fight must continue on behalf of today’s dreamers, the disenfranchised, the demeaned and left out, and all freedom-loving people in this nation.

Read more from Colbert King’s archive.

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

Thanks, Colby, for putting the current plight of “Dreamers” (and I might add refugees and other migrants who are serving, contributing, and building our society despite their disenfranchisement and the government-sponsored dehumanization being inflicted upon them) in the historical context of the fight for civil rights and human dignity in America.

That’s why the “21st Century Jim Crows” like Trump, Sessions, Stephen Miller, Sen. Tom Cotton, Rep. Steve King, and others (largely associated with the GOP) are so pernicious. Like the “Jim Crows of the past,” these guys use degrading racial stereotypes, intentionally false narratives, and bogus “rule of law” arguments to generate hate and bias, sow division, and use the law to suppress and violate rights rather than advancing them.

While sycophant DHS Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen does not appear to be an “ideological racist,” her mindless and disingenuous parroting of the Trump White Nationalist “party lies” and “enforcement” (read “de-humanization”) agenda certainly makes her a “functional racist.”

It’s quite outrageous and dangerous that individuals with these types of views have been elevated to powerful public offices in the modern era, after the death of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn?

PWS

02-16-19

TAL @ SF CHRON WITH SOME GOOD NEWS ABOUT WHAT’S IN THE “BORDER SECURITY” BILL THAT TRUMP (APPARENTLY) WILL SIGN BEFORE DECLARING HIS TOTALLY BOGUS “NATIONAL EMERGENCY!”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Funding-deal-blocks-ICE-from-arresting-adults-13617721.php

Funding deal blocks ICE from arresting adults taking in undocumented children

By Tal Kopan

WASHINGTON — A government funding deal on the verge of congressional passage would block federal officers from arresting undocumented immigrants solely because they come forward to take in migrant children.

The constraint on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency comes after The Chronicle reported that the government had made scores of such arrests — including more than 100 people who were taken into custody from July through November despite having no criminal record. Immigrant and child welfare advocates had assailed the practice as endangering young people by keeping them in detention longer and by giving immigrants an incentive to conceal potential sponsors’ true identities.

The population of undocumented children in government custody skyrocketed to record levels as immigration officials investigated the potential sponsors.

The ban on arresting sponsors with no criminal record is included in a bill to fund roughly one-quarter of the government through September. The appropriations legislation is the product of weeks of intense negotiations to avert a repeat of the partial shutdown that began Dec. 22 and lasted 35 days.

The Senate passed the bill Thursday and the House was expected to follow suit before government funding runs out Friday. The White House said President Trump would sign it.

House Democrats pushed strongly for the provision during negotiations over the funding package, said a Democratic aide who was not authorized to speak publicly about the talks. Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz offered the specific legislative language.

“Arresting potential sponsors only ensures that children who flee dangerous circumstances will languish longer in overly crowded detention facilities,” Wasserman Schultz said. “Democrats agree, this cruel, immoral Trump trap does nothing to make America safer.”

At issue is the process of finding homes for undocumented immigrant children who come to the U.S. by themselves or are separated from an adult at the border.

Those children end up detained in a national network of shelters until they can be released to an adult, usually a relative. The shelters are designed to be a temporary bridge for often-traumatized children to more stable homes, in which they can pursue their case to stay in the country legally.

To sponsor a child, adults have long had to go through background checks for any criminal history or other red flags that might endanger the child. Immigration status is not weighed as a risk factor.

But last year the Trump administration added additional layers of review, including working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to run fingerprints of potential sponsors. That caused concern within the immigrant community that sponsors, many of whom are undocumented themselves, could be ensnared in the administration’s no-limits immigration enforcement. The revelation that ICE had in turn used that information to arrest potential sponsors, most of whom had no criminal record, confirmed that fear.

Under the administration’s policies, the number of children in custody reached nearly 15,000, breaking records even after the government halted the practice it implemented in spring 2018 of separating families at the border. In December, the Department of Health and Human Services stopped requiring that every additional adult in a sponsor’s home be fingerprinted, a practice that had greatly slowed the process, keeping children detained longer. Since then, the number of children in custody has dropped to 11,500.

The government funding bill bars the administration from detaining or moving to deport undocumented immigrants based solely on information provided by Health and Human Services, which runs the unaccompanied children program, unless it provides evidence of a past child abuse-related felony or potential human trafficking.

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

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

Thanks, Tal, for putting the Chron “on top” of this grotesque mistreatment of children by the Trump Administration. Obviously, your courageous and timely reporting of abuses of human rights that DHS was trying to hide from public view has had a “real life” impact on legislation and people’s lives.

The intentional abuses of children and families that the Trump Administration is perpetrating in the name of our country is simply outrageous! Bad things happen to countries that make child abuse a national policy!

It also shows that the Democrats are right in challenging funding for abusive, wasteful, and unnecessary DHS detention. While they lacked the votes to succeed this time around, the battle certainly will continue, on both legislative and litigation fronts. As it does so, the full range of abuses, corruption, and unethical behavior by the Administration and DHS will be exposed and recorded for posterity.

As I’ve said before, it’s time for Article III Judges who have been lied to by Administration officials and whose orders to reunite families have been arrogantly ignored by the Trump Administration to put some of the Administration officials who have planned and carried out these gross human right abuses and thumbed their noses at court orders in jail for contempt.

Again, Tal, thanks for all you do for “truth, justice, and the American way!” And, thanks to conscientious legislators of both parties who helped put these restrictions on anti-social behavior in place. When the system works for the greater good, everyone benefits.

PWS

02-15-19

MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/11/jeff-sessions-donald-trump-resign-disgrace.html

Stern writes:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigned on Wednesday at the request of Donald Trump. He served a little less than two years as the head of the Department of Justice. During that time, Sessions used his immense power to make America a crueler, more brutal place. He was one of the most sadistic and unscrupulous attorneys general in American history.

At the Department of Justice, Sessions enforced the law in a manner that harmed racial minorities, immigrants, and LGBTQ people. He rolled backObama-era drug sentencing reforms in an effort to keep nonviolent offenders locked away for longer. He reversed a policy that limited the DOJ’s use of private prisons. He undermined consent decrees with law enforcement agencies that had a history of misconduct and killed a program that helped local agencies bring their policing in line with constitutional requirements. And he lobbied against bipartisan sentencing reform, falsely claiming that such legislation would benefit “a highly dangerous cohort of criminals.”

Meanwhile, Sessions mobilized the DOJ’s attorneys to torture immigrant minors in other ways. He fought in court to keep undocumented teenagers pregnant against their will, defending the Trump administration’s decision to block their access to abortion. His Justice Department made the astonishing claim that the federal government could decide that forced birth was in the “best interest” of children. It also revealed these minors’ pregnancies to family members who threatened to abuse them. And when the American Civil Liberties Union defeated this position in court, his DOJ launched a failed legal assault on individual ACLU lawyers for daring to defend their clients.

The guiding principle of Sessions’ career is animus toward people who are unlike him. While serving in the Senate, he voted against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act because it expressly protected LGBTQ women. He opposed immigration reform, including relief for young people brought to America by their parents as children. He voted against the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. He voted against a federal hate crime bill protecting gay people. Before that, as Alabama attorney general, he tried to prevent LGBTQ students from meeting at a public university. But as U.S. attorney general, he positioned himself as an impassioned defender of campus free speech.

While Sessions doesn’t identify as a white nationalist, his agenda as attorney general abetted the cause of white nationalism. His policies were designed to make the country more white by keeping out Hispanics and locking up blacks. His tenure will remain a permanent stain on the Department of Justice. Thousands of people were brutalized by his bigotry, and our country will not soon recover from the malice he unleashed.

His successor could be even worse.

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

Can’t overstate the intentional damage that this immoral, intellectually dishonest, and bigoted man has done to millions of human lives and the moral and legal fabric of our country. “The Father of the New American Gulag,” America’s most notorious unpunished child abuser, and the destroyer of Due Process in our U.S. Immigration Courts are among a few of his many unsavory legacies!

The scary thing: Stern is right — “His successor could be even worse.”  If so, the survival of our Constitution and our nation will be at risk!

PWS

11-06-18

POPULATION OF TENT CITIES IN TRUMP’S “KIDDIE GULAG” HAS INCREASED 5X – The Solution, According To Trump, Sessions, Nielsen, & Miller: Detain Even More Children & Families For Longer Periods Of Time!

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/amberjamieson/tornillo-tent-city?utm_term=.oolylVZRJr#.oolylVZRJr

Amber Jamieson reports for BuzzFeed News:

TORNILLO, Texas — Having immigrant teens live in the “tent city” in Tornillo, Texas, was always supposed to be a temporary solution, after the Trump administration’s policy of separating immigrant families at the border meant the government didn’t have enough beds in the shelter system.

It opened in June, and the contractor running the site had a 30-day contract. At that time, 326 children were being housed there.

But four months after its opening, the shelter 30 miles outside of El Paso has grown into a bustling town. It now holds nearly five times its initial population — roughly 1,500 teens — and its contract has been extended until at least Dec. 31.

The tent city’s purpose has changed as well. Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services, the federal agency responsible for the care of unaccompanied child immigrants, say none of the teens currently housed there were detained as a result of family separations. It now holds immigrant children who crossed the border without an adult, in theory as a last stage of their stay in the vast US shelter bureaucracy.

And as the shelter expands, administrative issues have cropped up concerning legal representation and FBI background checks — extending many teens’ stays longer than what HHS says is the average.

Tornillo now has a new football field, math and English classes, and more than 100 tent structures. Staffers zipped around in carts between dozens of portable offices offering mental health services, emergency medical care, legal services, and even a barber. A huge emergency tent has been turned into a sleeping hall for 300 teenage girls, decorated with paper chains and lanterns.

BuzzFeed News toured the Tornillo facility for the second time on Friday, as part of a group of reporters. Like the first and only other tour, instructions were strict. No photographs or recording devices were allowed, and reporters were not permitted to use the names of employees or speak with the teens living at the camp — though HHS was more lenient on the last rule during Friday’s tour. The only photos were provided by the government.

The facility in Tornillo, Texas.

HHS

The facility in Tornillo, Texas.

“I frankly thought we were done here in July,” the facility’s incident commander, who works for the contractor BCFS, told reporters Friday. He spoke from a new command center that is nearly triple the size of the office he occupied in June.

Back then, the same incident commander, who is in charge of running the shelter, called the Trump administration’s family separation policy — which created the need for Tornillo — “an incredibly dumb, stupid decision.” With the rollback of that policy, he said he expected the camp to shut soon afterward.

“I’m still here, ’cause otherwise, where are these kids going?” the commander said.

Only children between ages 13 and 17 stay at the Tornillo facility, which is now the largest in the HHS’s nationwide system. Pregnant teens, and teens requiring behavioral medication, are not allowed — “we’re too big, too high-profile,” the incident commander explained.

Officials said the average length of time that teens spend at Tornillo is 25 days. Yet many of the teens living at the camp have spent weeks or even months in HHS shelters before arriving at Tornillo. In order to clear out those other facilities, teens are sent to the tent shelter to await final processing before they are released to a sponsor in the US.

“This is a last stop, if you will,” said Mark Weber, a spokesperson for HHS.

Ten teens in Tornillo BuzzFeed News encountered had spent between three to five months in government detention — significantly more than the 59 days that HHS says is the average stay for an unaccompanied immigrant minor in its care. That average is up from 48 days in 2017, and around 30 days during the Obama administration.

Christopher Smith / HHS Photo Christopher Smith

And even after arriving in Tornillo, the young occupants find themselves facing a fresh final set of administrative hurdles that threaten to complicate or delay their stay in the US shelter system.

One of the teens BuzzFeed News spoke with last week, a 16-year-old girl from Guatemala, told reporters that she’d been in Tornillo exactly one month on Saturday. Before being transferred to Texas, she had spent four months in an HHS shelter in Miami, meaning she’d already spent five months in HHS care. She was uncertain how much longer she’d remain there.

Her brother, who lives in Texas and had been in the US for a decade, is trying to sponsor her, which should secure her release. But he is undocumented, and he told her that her caseworker is not sure if he will be able to act as a sponsor.

She didn’t want to go back to Guatemala, where her parents are. “I suffered a lot in the journey [to the United States], and what, for nothing?” she said.

Another teenage girl standing next to her told reporters she’d also come to Tornillo from the Miami shelter at the same time, and that she’d crossed the border four months earlier.

The delays stem in part from a new requirement — that the FBI perform a fingerprint background check — imposed by the Trump administration on family members and other adults who wish to sponsor an unaccompanied immigrant minor.

Those changes are delaying how long kids are staying in care, and have created the ongoing need for Tornillo to operate as a temporary shelter to handle the overflow from permanent HHS shelters, said the incident commander. He added that more than half of the children at the Tornillo shelter are there because of FBI delays.

Christopher Smith / HHS Photo Christopher Smith

“It is the extra precaution that HHS has put in place for sponsors,” said the incident commander on Friday. “That is absolutely what has caused this, without any question whatsoever.”

While he applauded the extra care HHS has taken to ensure the safety of unaccompanied minors, the incident commander criticized the length of time the FBI takes to do fingerprint checks. On Friday, 826 of the kids in Tornillo were still awaiting the results of fingerprint checks, the final step needed before they are released, he said.

“I think it should be done quickly,” the incident commander said. “I don’t understand why it’s taking so long. It seems like a system issue. … That is frustrating to me.”

He noted that it takes time to do background checks, but said that HHS is “working through the process [with the FBI] and working to speed it up.” He did not provide further details.

Asked if the teens who end up in Tornillo spend longer than the average stay in the shelter system, Weber replied: “I don’t think that’s [true]. … These kids are very close to being released.”

Weber also argued that the need for the Tornillo facility is “driven by the number of kids crossing the border” — which this year, he said, is set to be the third highest on record. Around 50,000 unaccompanied minors are expected to cross the border this year.

Christopher Smith / HHS Photo Christopher Smith

On Thursday, BuzzFeed News visited the juvenile immigration proceedings in downtown El Paso. Eleven teenage boys from the Tornillo facility, aged between 15 and 17, had been given notice to appear in court on that day.

The boys were dressed in new, matching navy and white polo shirts, denim jeans or khakis, and black, braided leather belts. They had fresh haircuts.

The judge asked the boys if they had copies of their Notices to Appear, a charging document issued by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement informing them of removal proceedings, and read the date on which each NTA had been issued. Dates ranged from June 6 until July 1, meaning the teenagers had been in HHS care for a minimum of over three months — longer than the average stay.

None of the boys had legal representation at the court hearing — they were just accompanied to court by a BCFS employee. All of them asked the judge to delay their cases so they could find an immigration lawyer. They were given until late January to do so.

The HHS spokesperson said it’s just not his agency’s job. “Yes, children are appearing in court, but that is not part of HHS’s responsibility,” Weber told reporters on Friday. “Those legal options are pursued basically after they are released from us.”

Juveniles facing immigration proceedings do not have the right to a government-appointed lawyer. Weber said the children who appeared in court would absolutely have received legal help beforehand.

Everyone in HHS care receives a “Know Your Rights” training, Weber said, and upon arrival to Tornillo, the teenagers are again reminded that they are able to speak with a lawyer. Ten legal representatives — a combination of lawyers and social workers from different legal organizations — are on hand on weekdays in Tornillo to meet with children.

But those lawyers don’t formally represent them. They offer advice to the children.

And those representatives only meet with detainees if the teen specifically asks to see a lawyer, the incident commander said. He estimated that of the approximately 3,100 teens who have been housed at Tornillo since it opened, only about 400 had requested and received a meeting with a legal representative.

Christopher Smith / HHS Photo Christopher Smith

Moreover, to organize a meeting with the lawyers, the children must fill out a form — a difficult task for many of the children at Tornillo. The incident commander said most of the facility’s residents are at a fourth-grade learning level.

Asked how children in the care of HHS with very little education were supposed to be able to navigate the legal system alone, or even the process of arranging and interacting with a lawyer, Weber acknowledged that “negotiating the legal system is incredibly difficult.”

Although the incident commander is hopeful the facility will close on Dec. 31, Weber didn’t commit to that deadline. “It depends how many kids come,” he said.

The facility — its population peaked at 1,637 on Sept. 28 — has 1,400 beds on standby in two giant tents. This is in case the Homestead shelter in Florida — another temporary facility that opened during the family separation crisis — needs to evacuate due to a hurricane.

In immigration court Thursday, Judge Robert S. Hough, who oversees all juvenile immigration proceedings in El Paso, asked the BCFS employee assisting the children before him about Tornillo’s supposed Dec. 31 closing date.

“Hurry up and wrap it up before you get any bigger,” suggested the judge.

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Once the smokescreen of all the Trump lies and racism clears, how could we ever explain to future generations what we have done to the most vulnerable among us and to children, young people, and young families that are our world’s future?  I guess it will go along with explaining how have we let Trump and his grifter buddies destroy, pollute, and poison the universe that also belongs to future generations.

PWS

10-15-18

 

SOME ARTICLE III JUDGES “JUST SAY NO” TO SESSIONS’S “ZERO TOLERANCE” ABUSES OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/us-judges-balk-at-ice-detention-of-defendants-granted-bail-under-trump-zero-tolerance-push/2018/10/10/ccd42830-c4f7-11e8-b2b5-79270f9cce17_story.html

Spencer Hsu reports for WashPost:

Judges in the nation’s federal criminal courts increasingly are balking at what they call unlawful efforts by U.S. immigration authorities to continue to detain people charged with entering the country illegally, even after they have been granted bail.

The rulings complicate the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” crackdown on defendants who are charged with illegally crossing the border but whom judges have determined do not pose a flight or safety risk.

The decisions force prosecutors to make a choice — charge defendants with illegal entry or reentry and risk that a federal judge releases them pending trial, or keep suspects locked up in civil detention pending deportation proceedings and forgo criminal prosecution.

A recent ruling by a federal judge in Washington highlights the human and legal issues at stake, the case of a dishwasher from El Salvador who has a wife and two children in the District, where he returned after two deportations.

The surge in such criminal cases stems from an April 2017 announcement by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions prioritizing Justice Department prosecutions of entry and reentry crimes. More than 60,000 people have faced such criminal charges since then, with twice as many new prosecutions this July, the most recent month for which data is available, compared with the same month in 2017, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which monitors cases.

Individuals caught without documents on a first offense can be charged with a misdemeanor, but anyone caught in the United States after a prior deportation can be charged with a felony and face more than a year in prison. Immigration-related prosecutions are now the majority of all federal criminal cases, stretching far beyond states bordering Mexico.


Attorney General Jeff Sessions early this month in Ohio. (Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch/AP)

Advocates for immigrants say the recent court rulings may limit the use of the criminal charges to pressure defendants to abandon efforts to stay in the United States. The impact on overall removal efforts remains to be seen, but courts appear to be pushing back at an expansion of authority by prosecutors and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In the District, one rejection of the tougher tactics came from U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, a 1987 appointee of President Ronald Reagan. On Sept. 26. Lamberth said the government cannot have it both ways — asking federal courts to deny bail to defendants awaiting criminal trial and then, if a judge disagrees, holding them anyway in the immigration system.

The decision came in the case of Jaime Omar Vasquez-Benitez, 38, who court papers say was picking food up at a restaurant in July when D.C. police stopped him for suspected gang activity and turned him over to ICE. Federal public defenders say Vasquez-Benitez had quit a gang and fears for his life if he is deported.

He was charged in August with felony reentry despite deportation orders in 2008 and 2014.

A federal magistrate and district judge ruled Vasquez-Benitez should be released on bail, but U.S. marshals returned him to ICE custody. Defense attorneys moved to enforce the release order, and the case ended up in front of Lamberth after Vasquez-Benitez was indicted.

Lamberth ruled that a landmark 1966 U.S. bail statute specifically covers migrants and must “trump” more-general immigration laws, releasing Vasquez-Benitez into a high-intensity supervision program. He wrote that courts have long “upheld as sacrosanct” the principle that no one can act as prosecutor and judge at the same time, and that the Justice Department cannot ignore bail rulings any more than it can shrug off a defendant’s right to a speedy trial.

The judge said prosecutors can pursue both criminal charges and civil removal cases against defendants but must abide by a judge’s decision to grant bail. Or they can forgo charges and keep defendants locked up in civil detention while pursuing deportation.

People detained without valid immigration documents may well be worse off if uncharged, “languishing” indefinitely without speedy trial or access to bail in ICE detention camps far from families or counsel, the judge noted.

“Nevertheless, the government can do that” under immigration law, Lamberth wrote. “But so long as the government invokes the jurisdiction of a federal court, the government must consent to the Court’s custodial dominion over the criminal defendants before it.”

A decision on whether to appeal is pending. Bill Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office for the District, said the office was reviewing the ruling.

In a July 2017 Justice Department bulletin to 94 U.S. attorney offices nationwide, Oregon federal prosecutor Gregory R. Nyhus said that federal criminal statutes and civil immigration laws “are reconcilable” and that “courts should be encouraged to harmonize these statutes rather than focusing on [one] to the complete exclusion of the other.”

The government’s position — that it can hold Vasquez-Benitez strictly for deportation on a reinstated removal order, unrelated to his prosecution — has yet to be decided by an appeals court.

Rulings by trial judges in similar cases have varied.

Since July 2017, federal judges in Washington, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Detroit, Cleveland and Austin have rejected the government’s approach, drawing on a 2012 district court opinion in Oregon and a similar 2015 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit that “the executive branch has a choice to make” between holding an undocumented person for deportation or prosecuting that person under criminal law and the Constitution.

Federal judges in Buffalo and Philadelphia have come down on the other side, saying that criminal and immigration laws can “coexist” on “parallel” tracks. Before the Trump administration, prosecutors would typically drop criminal charges to pursue civil removal if a previously deported defendant won bail.

Yihong “Julie” Mao, staff attorney with the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, said the group was “heartened” by court rulings upholding undocumented immigrants’ right to bail and pretrial release based on family and community ties. She added: “This is fundamentally a separation-of-powers issue. The Department of Justice cannot be both judge and prosecutor.”

Mary Petras, an assistant federal public defender who is representing Vasquez-Benitez in the District, declined to comment.

In court filings, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Clair Kohl argued that the defendant’s case is not covered by the 2012 ruling, because ICE is holding him solely to deport him, not to prosecute him.

The Salvadoran man was first arrested in 1997, falsely claimed Mexican citizenship and was allowed to go to Mexico, according to court papers. He was deported in 2008 after serving a three-year sentence for felony obstruction of justice in the District and again in 2014, before he was caught for a fourth time this July.

Prosecutors would have prosecuted Vasquez-Benitez even in past years because of what they said in court papers was his “threatening, violent behavior” and felony criminal conviction. Vasquez-Benitez was convicted of obstruction of justice for telling a woman in 2005 she would “pay the consequences” if she called the police, and a 2014 arrest warrant in El Salvador said he has been charged with extortion, prosecutors said.

“There may come a time . . . [when] immigration proceedings have concluded . . . forcing the United States to choose between physical removal and continuation of this criminal case. That time, however, has not yet come,” wrote Kohl and Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Dewar in an unsuccessful effort to detain the man.

Petras told the court the man is a longtime restaurant worker, and his wife works part time as a hotel housekeeper. Both have family nearby, and the couple’s 3-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son attended a recent court hearing.

Petras argued the man posed no flight risk, because he is seeking to halt his deportation after gang members in El Salvador sent him a message warning that he had “signed his death warrant” by quitting the gang and removing gang tattoos.

The lawyer said the fact that her client has lived in the Washington area for years and returned shows that he “wants to be here and that he has no intent or incentive to flee.”

Read more:

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Compare what is happening in DC and some other jurisdictions with the “go along to get along” approach by some U.S. District Judges and U.S. Magistrate Judges along the border whom I have criticized in prior posts. The latter have allowed Sessions, Nielsen, and co. to turn their courts into “assembly line justice” — the kind that Session is implementing in his “wholly owned” U.S. Immigration Courts.

It’s pretty clear from the published reports that almost none of those being railroaded through that system actually understand the full immigration implications of their guilty pleas, nor do they understand how they can apply for asylum and what other rights they might have under the “civil immigration system.” Indeed, accepting guilty pleas without insuring that those entering the pleas fully understand the civil immigration situation and implications, including the likelihood of indefinite civil immigration detention and possible denial of a chance for a full hearing before an Immigration Judge, is arguably a violation of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Padilla v. Kentucky.

I also have a “personal recollection” of Judge Royce Lamberth from decades ago when he was the Chief of the Civil Division at the U.S. Attorneys Office for DC and I was the Deputy General Counsel/Acting General Counsel at the “Legacy INS.” On several occasions I had to trek over from the “Central Office” in the “Chester Arthur Building” at 4th and Eye St., NW to the U.S. Courthouse complex on 5th Street to explain and justify the INS position to Royce.

He was known as a formidable individual, even in those days — a chief litigator who brooked no-nonsense from USG Agencies and who was concerned with maintaining the Government’s reputation for integrity and legal excellence before the U.S. Courts. That probably has much to do with how he got nominated and confirmed to be a U.S. District Judge and why he still brooks no-nonsense from the “Masters of Nonsense” in the Trump Administration.

PWS

10-13-18

MILLER & TRUMP ADMINISTRATION HATCHING ANOTHER ILLEGAL CHILD SEPARATION PROGRAM AS THEIR CRUEL & COUNTERPRODUCTIVE WHITE NATIONALIST ENFORCEMENT CONTINUES TO FAIL!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/trump-administration-weighs-new-family-separation-effort-at-border/2018/10/12/45895cce-cd7b-11e8-920f-dd52e1ae4570_story.html?utm_term=.e82d531c008e

Nick Miroff, Josh Dawsey, & Maria Sacchetti report for WashPost:

The White House is actively considering plans that could again separate parents and children at the U.S.-Mexico border, hoping to reverse soaring numbers of families attempting to cross illegally into the United States, according to several administration officials with direct knowledge of the effort.

One option under consideration is for the government to detain asylum-seeking families together for up to 20 days, then give parents a choice — stay in family detention with their child for months or years as their immigration case proceeds, or allow children to be taken to a government shelter so other relatives or guardians can seek custody.

That option — called “binary choice” — is one of several under consideration amid the president’s frustration over border security. Trump has been unable to fulfill key promises to build a border wall and end what he calls “catch and release,” a process that began under past administrations in which most detained families are quickly freed to await immigration hearings. The number of migrant family members arrested and charged with illegally crossing the border jumped 38 percent in August and is now at a record level, according to Department of Homeland Security officials.

Senior administration officials say they are not planning to revive the chaotic forced separations carried out by the Trump administration in May and June that spawned an enormous political backlash and led to a court order to reunite families.

But they feel compelled to do something, and officials say senior White House adviser Stephen Miller is advocating for tougher measures because he believes the springtime separations worked as an effective deterrent to illegal crossings.

At least 2,500 children were taken from their parents over a period of six weeks. Crossings by families declined slightly in May, June and July before surging again in August. September numbers are expected to be even higher.

While some migrants worried about separations, others felt seeking asylum was worth the risk

For some seeking asylum, family separations were worth the risk: ‘Whatever it took, we had to get to this country’

While some inside the White House and DHS are concerned about the “optics” and political blowback of renewed separations, Miller and others are determined to act, according to officials briefed on the deliberations. There have been several high-level meetings in the White House in recent weeks about the issue. The “binary choice” option is seen as one that could be tried out fairly quickly.

“Career law enforcement professionals in the U.S. government are working to analyze and evaluate options that would protect the American people, prevent the horrific actions of child smuggling, and stop drug cartels from pouring into our communities,” deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley said in an emailed statement.

Any effort to expand family detentions and resume separations would face multiple logistical and legal hurdles.

It would require overcoming the communication and data management failures that plagued the first effort, when Border Patrol agents, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials and Department of Health and Human Services caseworkers struggled to keep track of separated parents and children.

The Trump administration believes it is on solid legal ground, according to two officials, in part because U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw, who ordered the government to reunite separated families in June, approved the binary-choice approach in one of his rulings. But a Congressional Research Service report last month said “practical and legal barriers” remain to using that approach in the future and said releasing families together in the United States is “the only clearly viable option under current law.”

‘Administration officials said the CRS report cited earlier legal rulings. But the American Civil Liberties Union, which launched the separations lawsuit, disputed that interpretation and said it would oppose any attempt at expanded family detentions or separations.

“The government need not, and legally may not, indiscriminately detain families who present no flight risk or danger,” ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said in an email. “It is deeply troubling that this Administration continues to look for ways to cause harm to small children.”

Another hurdle is that the government does not have detention space for a large number of additional families. ICE has three “family residential centers” with a combined capacity of roughly 3,000 parents and children. With more than four times that many arriving each month, it is unclear where the government would hold all the parents who would opt to remain with their children.

But Trump said in his June 20 executive order halting family separations that the administration’s policy is to keep parents and children together, “including by detaining” them. In recent weeks, federal officials have taken steps to expand their ability to do that.

In addition to considering “binary choice” and other options, officials have proposed new rules that would allow them to withdraw from a 1997 federal court agreement that bars ICE from keeping children in custody for more than 20 days.

The rules would give ICE greater flexibility to expand family detention centers and potentially hold parents and children longer, though lawyers say this would be likely to end up in court.

Officials have also imposed production quotas on immigration judges and are searching for more ways to speed up the calendar in its courts to adjudicate cases more quickly.

Federal officials arguing for the tougher measures say the rising number of family crossings is a sign of asylum fraud. DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has blasted smugglers for charging migrants thousands of dollars to ferry them into the United States, knowing that “legal loopholes” will force the administration to release them pending a court hearing. Federal officials say released families are rarely deported.

Advocates for immigrants counter that asylum seekers are fleeing violence and acute poverty, mainly in Central America, and deserve to have a full hearing before an immigration judge.

“There is currently a crisis at our southern border,” DHS spokeswoman Katie Waldman said in a statement, adding, “DHS will continue to enforce the law humanely, and will continue to examine a range of options to secure our nation’s borders.”

In southern Arizona, so many families have crossed in the past 10 days that the government has been releasing them en masse to shelters and charities. A lack of available bus tickets has stranded hundreds of parents and children in Tucson, where they sleep on Red Cross cots in a church gymnasium.

At a Senate hearing Wednesday, Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.) told Nielsen that migrants were “flooding into the community” and that authorities there had “no ability to do anything about it.”

Nielsen said lawmakers needs to give DHS more latitude to hold families with children in detention until their cases can be fully adjudicated — a process that can take months or years because of huge court backlogs.

DHS officials have seen the biggest increase this year in families arriving from Guatemala, where smugglers called “coyotes” tell migrants they can avoid detention and deportation by bringing a child, according to some community leaders in that country.

On Friday, Nielsen called for a regional effort to combat smuggling and violence in the region and to “heighten our penalties for traffickers.”

“I think there’s more that we can do to hold them responsible, particularly those who traffic in children,” she said in a speech in Washington at the second Conference on Prosperity and Security in Central America.

More than 90,000 adults with children were caught at the southwest border in the first 11 months of fiscal 2018. The previous high for a single year was 77,600 in 2016

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My recollection is that 1) the DOJ conceded in court that a policy of intentionally separating families is unconstitutional; and 2) Federal Courts have held that detention of individuals who are neither security risks nor likely to abscond for the primary purpose of “deterrence” is illegal.

So, if this facially illegal program is put into action, why shouldn’t Stephen Miller go to jail and be held personally liable for all the damages he causes with his scofflaw racist policies? Why shouldn’t Nielsen, Sessions, and others who are part of the Miller White Nationalist scheme also be held personally liable?

More cruelty, more wasting of taxpayer resources, more abuse of the judicial process by the Trump Administration.

Oh, and by the way. although today’s out of control U.S. Immigration Court backlogs began with “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” during the Bush II and Obama Administrations, Sessions and the Trump Administration have pushed them to astounding new levels with their incompetence and anti-asylum bias. Don’t blame the victims for the Government’s irresponsible actions!

If folks who believe in human decency and the rule of law don’t get out and vote, these abuses and degradations of our national values will continue.

PWS

10-12-18

GONZO’S WORLD: DHS IG REPORT SLAMS GONZO’S “KIDDIE GULAG” WHILE CRITICISM OF INTENTIONAL CHILD ABUSE BY HIM AND OTHERS IN THE ADMINISTRATION CONTINUES TO MOUNT — Will The Article IIIs Eventually Draw The Line Between Incompetence & Intentional, Malicious Violations Of Constitutional Rights & Hold Gonzo & His Collaborators in DHS & ORR Personally Liable Under “Bivens?”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trumps-family-separation-policy-was-flawed-from-the-start-watchdog-review-says/2018/10/01/c7134d86-c5ba-11e8-9b1c-a90f1daae309_story.html

 

October 1 at 7:44 PM

The Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” crackdown at the border this spring was troubled from the outset by planning shortfalls, widespread communication failures and administrative indifference to the separation of small children from their parents, according to an unpublished report by the Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog.

The report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is the government’s first attempt to autopsy the chaos produced between May 5 and June 20, when President Trump abruptly halted the separations under mounting pressure from his party and members of his family.

The DHS Office of Inspector General’s review found at least 860 migrant children were left in Border Patrol holding cells longer than the 72-hour limit mandated by U.S. courts, with one minor confined for 12 days and another for 25.

Many of those children were put in chain-link holding pens in the Rio Grande Valley of southern Texas. The facilities were designed as short-term way stations, lacking beds and showers, while the children awaited transfer to shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services.

U.S. border officials in the Rio Grande Valley sector, the busiest for illegal crossings along the nearly 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, held at least 564 children longer than they were supposed to, according to the report. Officials in the El Paso sector held 297 children over the legal limit.

The investigators describe a poorly coordinated interagency process that left distraught parents with little or no knowledge of their children’s whereabouts. In other instances, U.S. officials were forced to share minors’ files on Microsoft Word documents sent as email attachments because the government’s internal systems couldn’t communicate.

“Each step of this manual process is vulnerable to human error, increasing the risk that a child could become lost in the system,” the report found.

Based on observations conducted by DHS inspectors at multiple facilities along the border in late June, agents separated children too young to talk from their parents in a way that courted disaster, the report says.

“Border Patrol does not provide pre-verbal children with wrist bracelets or other means of identification, nor does Border Patrol fingerprint or photograph most children during processing to ensure that they can be easily linked with the proper file,” the report said.

“It is a priority of our agency to process and transfer all individuals in our custody to the appropriate longer-term detention agency as soon as possible,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which includes Border Patrol, said in a statement. “The safety and well-being of unaccompanied alien children . . . is our highest responsibility, and we work closely with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement to ensure the timely and secure transfer of all unaccompanied minors in our custody as soon as placement is available from HHS.”

In its Sept. 14 response to the inspector general’s report, DHS acknowledged the “lack of information technology integration” across the key immigration systems and “sometimes” holding children beyond the 72-hour limit.

Jim Crumpacker, the DHS official who responded to the report, said the agency held children longer mainly because HHS shelter space was unavailable. But he said transferring children to less-restrictive settings is a priority.

On June 23, three days after the executive order halting the separations, DHS announced it had developed a “central database” with HHS containing location information for separated parents and minors that both departments could access to reunite families. The inspector general found no evidence of such a database, the report said.

“The OIG team asked several [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] employees, including those involved with DHS’ reunification efforts at ICE Headquarters, if they knew of such a database, and they did not,” it states. “DHS has since acknowledged to the OIG that there is no ‘direct electronic interface’ between DHS and HHS tracking systems.”

Inspectors said they continue to have doubts about the accuracy and reliability of information provided by DHS about the scope of the family separations.

In late June, a federal judge ordered the government to reunite more than 2,500 children taken from their parents, but three months later, more than 100 of those minors remain in federal custody.

The inspector general’s report also found that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) restricted the flow of asylum seekers at legal ports of entry and may have inadvertently prompted them to cross illegally. One woman said an officer had turned her away three times, so she crossed illegally.

At one border crossing, the inspection team saw CBP attempt to increase its detention space by “converting former offices into makeshift hold rooms.”

The observations were made by teams of lawyers, inspectors and criminal investigators sent to the border amid concerns raised by members of Congress and the public. They made unannounced visits to CBP and ICE facilities in the border cities of El Paso and McAllen, Tex.

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Meanwhile, over at Vanity Fair, Isobel Thompson give us the “skinny” on how the self-created “Kiddie Gulag” that Sessions, Stevie Miller, and Nielsen love so much has turned into total chaos, with the most vulnerable kids among us as its victims. We’ll be feeling the effects of these cruel, inhuman, and unconstitutional policies for generations!

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/10/donald-trump-child-detention-crisis-is-getting-worse

Three months after Donald Trump gave in to global opprobrium and discontinued his administration’s policy of separating children from their parents at the Mexican border, the stark impact of his zero-tolerance directive continues to unfold, with reports emerging that, in the space of a year, the number of migrant children detained by the U.S. government has spiked from 2,400 to over 13,000—despite the number of monthly border crossings remaining relatively unchanged. The increase, along with the fact that the average detainment period has jumped from 34 to 59 days, has resulted in an accommodation crisis. As a result, hundreds of children—some wearing belts inscribed with their emergency-contact information—have been packed onto buses, transported for hours, and deposited at a tented city in a stretch of desert in Tornillo, West Texas. According to The New York Times, these journeys typically occur in the middle of the night and on short notice, to prevent children from fleeing.

The optics of the child-separation crisis have been some of the worst in history for the Trump administration, and the tent city in Tornillo is no exception. The facility is reportedly run according to “guidelines” provided by the Department of Health and Human Services, but access to legal aid is limited, and children—who sleep in bunks divided by gender into blocks of 20—are given academic workbooks, but no formal teaching. In theory, the hundreds of children being sent to Tornillo every week should be held for just a short period of time; the center first opened in June as a temporary space for about 400. Since then, however, it has been expanded to accommodate 3,800 occupants for an indefinite period.

Again, the lag time is largely thanks to the White House. Typically, children labeled “unaccompanied minors” are held in federal custody until they can be paired with sponsors, who house them as their immigration case filters through the courts. But thanks to the harsh rhetoric embraced by the White House, such sponsors are now in short supply. They’re often undocumented immigrants themselves, which means that in this environment, claiming a child would put them at risk for deportation. In June, that risk became even more acute when authorities announced that potential sponsors would have to submit their fingerprints, as well as those of any adults living in their household: data that would then be passed to immigration authorities. Matthew Albence, who works for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, unwittingly illustrated the problem when he testified before Congress last week that I.C.E. had arrested multiple people who had applied to sponsor unaccompanied minors. Almost three-quarters had no criminal record.

Over time, the number of detained children is only expected to increase. According to The Washington Post, the flood of Central American immigrants moving north, driven by “hunger, joblessness, and the gravitational pull of the American economy,” shows no sign of abating. The number of men who cross the border with children has reportedly risen from 7,896 in 2016 to 16,667 this year, while instances of migrants falsely claiming children as their own have reportedly increased “threefold.” “Economic opportunity and governance play much larger roles in affecting the decision for migrants to take the trip north to the United States,” Kevin McAleenan, a border-security official, told the Post, adding that “a sustained campaign that addresses both push and pull factors” is “the only solution to this crisis.”

Given the attitude of the current administration, such a campaign seems unlikely to materialize. With Congress poorly positioned to pass comprehensive immigration reform, and a suddenly swamped detention system draining money and resources and damaging the mental health of thousands of children, the escalating crisis seems poised to become an ever more serious self-inflicted thorn in the president’s side. Although the White House is confident that, as hard-liner Stephen Miller boasts, it can’t lose on immigration, it will at some point be forced to acknowledge that its draconian strategy has morphed into chaos.

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Wonder if any of these evil dudes who along with Sessions helped plan and  implement the “Kiddie Gulag” knowing that it was likely in violation of the Constitution (in Federal court, DOJ lawyers didn’t even contest that a policy of intentional child separation would be unconstitutional) took out the “Bivens Insurance” offered to USG employees at relatively low-cost (I sure did!).

The only good news is that they are likely to be tied up in law suits seeking damages against them in their personal capacities for the rest of their lives!

So, perhaps there will eventually be some justice! But, that’s still won’t help traumatized kids whose lives have been screwed up forever as an illegal, immoral, and bogus, “deterrent” by a racist White Nationalist regime.

PWS

10-02-18

JOIN THE NEW DUE PROCESS ARMY (“NDPA”) & FIGHT AGAINST JEFF SESSIONS & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST ATTACK ON DUE PROCESS IN OUR IMMIGRATION COURTS! — Attend This Free Panel @ GW Law Tomorrow, Tuesday, Oct. 2 @ 3 PM

Immigration, Family Separation, Detention and Beyond: Where is the US Heading?
Alberto M. Benitez
Professor of Clinical Law Director of Immigration Clinic, GW Law
Michelle Brane
Director, Migrant Rights and Justice Program, Women’s Refugee Commission
Royce B. Murray
Policy Director American Immigration Council
This panel will discuss current issues related to the enforcement of immigration laws in the United States. The panelists will shed light on recent matters that have attracted significant media coverage, such as family separation policies, the practice of detaining families seeking asylum, and the plan advanced by the Trump Administration affecting immigrants seeking welfare benefits. The panel will discuss the domestic law implications of these issues, as well as their international law repercussions.
Closing Remarks: Paulina Vera, Supervisory Attorney, Immigration Law Clinic, GW Law Moderator: Rosa Celorio, Associate Dean, International & Comparative Legal Studies, GW Law
Tuesday, October 2, 2018 3:00-4:30 p.m.
Jacob Burns Moot Court Room [Lerner 101] Light Refreshments

THE HILL: MOCKING OUR HISTORY: Trump’s Racist White Nationalist Refugee & Asylum Policies Run Counter To Everything America Stands For!

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/409132-bucking-history-trumps-asylum-policy-does-not-represent-america

Bucking history: Trump’s asylum policy does not represent America

Bucking history: Trump’s asylum policy does not represent America

Do we know who we are as a nation?

Nursing infants separated from their mothers. Children warehoused in cages, then moved to tent cities without parents. Thousands of youngsters unaccounted for after separation at the border. Officials fumble and point fingers trying to lay the blame elsewhere. America’s human and humane dimensions seem lost. Is this who we are as a nation?

Even before American independence, settlers in the New World frequently saw themselves as morally superior: residents of the “city on the hill” serving as a beacon to others. While this beacon sometimes dimmed, we usually regained our moral compass with the passage of time — and a period of historical reflection.

Refugees and asylum seekers proliferate in the world as we close our doors to them. What has been our historical record?

The persecution of Jews in Germany was well known before Europe exploded in war in 1939, even though the death camps had not been established. Just before combat began, thousands of Jewish parents were able to send their children to safety in Great Britain and Canada. The Czech Kindertransport alone saved 669 children. These acts of hospitality by other countries are now almost universally praised — in contrast to the nearly insurmountable barriers erected then by the U.S.

After World War II, America did resettle some hundreds of thousands of refugees collected in Europe’s Displaced Persons camps. We did so while trying to avert our eyes from refugee surges in Asia. After the 1956 Hungarian Uprising and the 1968 Czech revolt, we helped resettle many of those who fled their native land via West Germany.

Closer to home, as Castro’s grip on Cuba tightened, thousands of Cuban youngsters came to the U.S on the “Peter Pan” flights (1960–1962). They came without their parents, and with no assurance of being reunited with them. Our country was (and remains today) at odds with Cuba politically, yet we welcomed these children and integrated them into our society.

In the two decades following the Vietnam War we resettled over a million refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. I know because I was in charge of elements of those programs, intermittently from 1975 to 1989.

The Vietnam programs had a separate category for unaccompanied minors. We worked closely with refugee camp administrators in countries of first asylum to afford these vulnerable children special protection in the refugee camps, and the potential for rapid resettlement in the U.S. and elsewhere. Yes, we were aware of, and dealt with, attempts at misrepresentation. And yes, we suspected that some refugee parents may have callously risked a child’s life to provide an “anchor” for the parent’s future migration. But the child was there.

When I was with the refugee programs in Malaysia and Thailand, my duties included urging the host countries to treat all asylum seekers humanely. In that we proudly led by example. U.S. policy then was dictated by the greater good of protecting minors who were at risk through no fault of their own. Now, decades later, many of those refugees who entered our country in poverty have become personally successful, greatly contributing to our country. They include doctors, teachers, senior military officers, scholars and job-creating entrepreneurs.

Today, on our southwest border, we are confronted by a similar challenge. Today our response is much different, and contrary to our basic values. Rather than offering asylum seekers a cloak of protection, our government seems to purposely make their lives as harsh as possible (and at great expense). Is separating families, caging children, and pressuring people to request removal who we are? Now the pretext of investigating the suitability of placing a minor in a relative’s home in the U.S. has become a vehicle for finding more deportees!

This is, alas, done to the cheers of a minority of people in America. Does it make our nation “great”?

Who are we as a nation anyway? Do we know?

Bruce A. Beardsley is a retired U.S. diplomat. During his 31 years in the Foreign Service, he oversaw what were then the U.S.’s largest refugee (in Thailand) and visa (in Mexico and the Philippines) operations.

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Do you want to leave an inspirational legacy to future generations of Americans? Then, rise up and vote the Kakistocracy, put in place by a minority of voters, out of office!

PWS

09-30-18

NIGHT MOVES: Immigrant Kids Rousted From Their Beds & Taken To The “New American Kiddie Gulag!”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/30/us/migrant-children-tent-city-texas.html

Caitlin Dickerson reports for the NY Times:

Migrant Children Moved Under Cover of Darkness to a Texas Tent City

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Migrant children at a detention facility in Tornillo, Tex.CreditCreditMike Blake/Reuters

In shelters from Kansas to New York, hundreds of migrant children have been roused in the middle of the night in recent weeks and loaded onto buses with backpacks and snacks for a cross-country journey to their new home: a barren tent city on a sprawling patch of desert in West Texas.

Until now, most undocumented children being held by federal immigration authorities had been housed in private foster homes or shelters, sleeping two or three to a room. They received formal schooling and regular visits with legal representatives assigned to their immigration cases.

But in the rows of sand-colored tents in Tornillo, Tex., children in groups of 20, separated by gender, sleep lined up in bunks. There is no school: The children are given workbooks that they have no obligation to complete. Access to legal services is limited.

These midnight voyages are playing out across the country, as the federal government struggles to find room for more than 13,000 detained migrant children — the largest population ever — whose numbers have increased more than fivefold since last year.

The average length of time that migrant children spend in custody has nearly doubled over the same period, from 34 days to 59, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees their care.

To deal with the surging shelter populations, which have hovered near 90 percent of capacity since May, a mass reshuffling is underway and shows no signs of slowing. Hundreds of children are being shipped from shelters to West Texas each week, totaling more than 1,600 so far.

The camp in Tornillo operates like a small, pop-up city, about 35 miles southeast of El Paso on the Mexico border, complete with portable toilets. Air-conditioned tents that vary in size are used for housing, recreation and medical care. Originally opened in June for 30 days with a capacity of 400, it expanded in September to be able to house 3,800, and is now expected to remain open at least through the end of the year.

“It is common to use influx shelters as done on military bases in the past, and the intent is to use these temporary facilities only as long as needed,” said Evelyn Stauffer, a spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services Department.

Ms. Stauffer said the need for the tent city reflected serious problems in the immigration system.

“The number of families and unaccompanied alien children apprehended are a symptom of the larger problem, namely a broken immigration system,” Ms. Stauffer said. “Their ages and the hazardous journey they take make unaccompanied alien children vulnerable to human trafficking, exploitation and abuse. That is why H.H.S. joins the president in calling on Congress to reform this broken system.”

But the mass transfers are raising alarm among immigrant advocates, who were already concerned about the lengthy periods of time migrant children are spending in federal custody.

The roughly 100 shelters that have, until now, been the main location for housing detained migrant children are licensed and monitored by state child welfare authorities, who impose requirements on safety and education as well as staff hiring and training.

The tent city in Tornillo, on the other hand, is unregulated, except for guidelines created by the Department of Health and Human Services. For example, schooling is not required there, as it is in regular migrant children shelters.

Mark Greenberg, who oversaw the care of migrant children under President Barack Obama, helped to craft the emergency shelter guidelines. He said the agency tried “to the greatest extent possible” to ensure that conditions in facilities like the one at Tornillo would mirror those in regular shelters, “but there are some ways in which that’s difficult or impossible to do.”

Several shelter workers, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being fired, described what they said has become standard practice for moving the children: In order to avoid escape attempts, the moves are carried out late at night because children will be less likely to try to run away. For the same reason, children are generally given little advance warning that they will be moved.

At one shelter in the Midwest whose occupants were among those recently transferred to Tornillo, about two dozen children were given just a few hours’ notice last week before they were loaded onto buses — any longer than that, according to one of the shelter workers, and the children may have panicked or tried to flee.

The children wore belts etched in pen with phone numbers for their emergency contacts. One young boy asked the shelter worker if he would be taken care of in Texas. The shelter worker replied that he would, and told him that by moving, he was making space for other children like him who were stuck at the border and needed a place to live.

Some staff members cried when they learned of the move, the shelter worker said, fearing what was in store for the children who had been in their care. Others tried to protest. But managers explained that tough choices had to be made to deal with the overflowing population.

The system for sheltering migrant children came under strain this summer, when the already large numbers were boosted by more than 2,500 young border crossers who were separated from their parents under the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy. But those children were only a fraction of the total number who are currently detained.

Most of the detained children crossed the border alone, without their parents. Some crossed illegally; others are seeking asylum.

Children who are deemed “unaccompanied minors,” either because they were separated from their parents or crossed the border alone, are held in federal custody until they can be matched with sponsors, usually relatives or family friends, who agree to house them while their immigration cases play out in the courts.

The move to Texas is meant to be temporary. Rather than send new arrivals there, the government is sending children who are likely to be released sooner, and will spend less time there—mainly older children, ages 13 to 17, who are considered close to being placed with sponsors. Still, because sponsorship placements are often protracted, immigrant advocates said there was a possibility that many of the children could be living in the tent city for months.

“Obviously we have concerns about kids falling through the cracks, not getting sufficient attention if they need attention, not getting the emotional or mental health care that they need,” said Leah Chavla, a lawyer with the Women’s Refugee Commission, an advocacy group.

“This cannot be the right solution,” Ms. Chavla said. “We need to focus on making sure that kids can get placed with sponsors and get out of custody.”

The number of detained migrant children has spiked even though monthly border crossings have remained relatively unchanged, in part because harsh rhetoric and policies introduced by the Trump administration have made it harder to place children with sponsors.

Traditionally, most sponsors have been undocumented immigrants themselves, and have feared jeopardizing their own ability to remain in the country by stepping forward to claim a child. The risk increased in June, when federal authorities announced that potential sponsors and other adult members of their households would have to submit fingerprints, and that the data would be shared with immigration authorities.

Last week, Matthew Albence, a senior official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, testified before Congress that the agency had arrested dozens of people who applied to sponsor unaccompanied minors. The agency later confirmed that 70 percent of those arrested did not have prior criminal records.

“Close to 80 percent of the individuals that are either sponsors or household members of sponsors are here in the country illegally, and a large chunk of those are criminal aliens. So we are continuing to pursue those individuals,” Mr. Albence said.

Seeking to process the children more quickly, officials introduced new rules that will require some of them to appear in court within a month of being detained, rather than after 60 days, which was the previous standard, according to shelter workers. Many will appear via video conference call, rather than in person, to plead their case for legal status to an immigration judge. Those who are deemed ineligible for relief will be swiftly deported.

The longer that children remain in custody, the more likely they are to become anxious or depressed, which can lead to violent outbursts or escape attempts, according to shelter workers and reports that have emerged from the system in recent months.

Advocates said those concerns are heightened at a larger facility like Tornillo, where signs that a child is struggling are more likely to be overlooked, because of its size. They added that moving children to the tent city without providing enough time to prepare them emotionally or to say goodbye to friends could compound trauma that many are already struggling with.

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If you don’t want to turn back the clock to 1939, get out the vote to remove this scofflaw, White Nationalist, racist Administration from power before it’s too late!

PWS

09-30-18

SURPRISE: NIELSEN SIGNED OFF ON FAMILY SEPARATION POLICY THAT SHE DENIED WAS DHS POLICY! — What Else Is She Hiding?

uhhttps://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.openthegovernment.org_node_5713&d=DwMGaQ&c=clK7kQUTWtAVEOVIgvi0NU5BOUHhpN0H8p7CSfnc_gI&r=5P7-gWBTtD9g2EDR8U0pyQ5iVCpXWh5b63SXxj7pZPM&m=unT_1oNELS6RLAvG9nD3R77o2os6sYCenMRq-R_-2rM&s=JD8fUd4fq0fv1ffIr52beFm1wXvxZTyYd5Z8tkgmYR0&e=

Newly released memo reveals secretary of homeland security signed off on family separation policy

Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen previously denied existence of policy

Open the Government and the Project On Government Oversight have obtained documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requestthat provides new insights into internal decision-making behind the separation of thousands of parents from their children at the border earlier this year.

The biggest revelation in the documents is a memo dated April 23, in which top Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials urged criminal prosecution of parents crossing the border with children—the policy that led to the crisis that continues today. The memo, first reported on by the Washington Post on April 26, but never previously published, provides evidence that Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen signed off on a policy of family separation despite her repeated claims denying that there was such a policy. The Post appears to have obtained a copy of the memo prior to its signature.

The memo states that DHS could “permissibly direct the separation of parents or legal guardians and minors held in immigration detention so that the parent or legal guardian can be prosecuted.” It outlines three options for implementing “zero tolerance,” the policy of increased prosecution of immigration violations. Of these, it recommends “Option 3,” referring for prosecution all adults crossing the border without authorization, “including those presenting with a family unit,” as the “most effective.”

The last page of the memo contains a signature approving Option 3, but the signature—almost certainly Nielsen’s, given that the memo is addressed to her—was blacked out by FOIA officers on privacy grounds. FOIA officials also appear to have redacted the date of the signature indicating approval.

Open the Government and the Project On Government Oversight intend to appeal the redaction of the memo. The Secretary of Homeland Security is a high-level public official; using privacy exemptions to hide her role in major policy decisions is unacceptable.

Open the Government and the Project On Government Oversight did obtain an unsigned, unredacted copy of the same memo, but are unable to post the full document for reasons of source protection. The full memo recommends prosecuting and separating parents because:

…it is very difficult to complete immigration proceedings and remove adults who are present as part of FMUAs [family units] at the border. In fact, only 10 percent of non-Mexican FMUA apprehended during the Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 surge have been repatriated in the nearly four years since their illegal crossing. Of these options, prosecuting all amenable adults will increase the consequences for illegally entering the United States by enforcing existing law, protect children being smuggled by adults through transnational criminal organizations, and have the greatest impact on current flows.

The memo references a pilot of the zero tolerance/family separation policies in the Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector, which the Project On Government Oversight has previously investigated. The memo does not discuss any plan for reuniting separated families, or the harmful effects of separation on children, nor does it reflect any input from the government agencies who would be responsible for caring for the separated children.

The records released in response to the FOIA also include internal DHS directives sent in June and July following court orders to stop separating families, and internal emails discussing failed efforts to bring families back together. One troubling email explains that in July, DHS leadership instructed employees to deport families as quickly as possible, as a way of clearing out space for new families. The email raises questions on whether those deportations violated due-process protections.

At least 182 children remain separated from their parents months after a court-imposed deadline requiring the administration to reunite all of the separated families, according to a court filing dated September 20. The government has not taken all necessary measures to reunify families, according to immigration rights lawyers and non-profit groups.

Katherine Hawkins, an investigator at POGO, said of the DHS documents, “This is a small part of what must be an extensive paper trail on family separation, which needs to be made public so that the officials responsible can be held to account.”

“The newly disclosed documents provide a window into the internal policymaking behind the crisis that continues to haunt thousands of children,” said Lisa Rosenberg, Executive Director of Open the Government. “The administration needs to make available records that are still secret in order to fully understand why decisions were made to separate children from their families, and who made them.”

Read the newly released documents:

Part 1; Part 2; Part 3
CBP response letter

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I’ve raised this point several times before. There is obviously a “paper trail” here, and some agency lawyers knew the truth about the policy that Nielsen was denying publicly and in court.

So, where is the “due diligence” from the DOJ lawyers representing Nielsen, Sessions, the DHS, and DOJ in court? Did the DHS attorneys who knew what the true policy was call the DOJ attorneys and tell them to retract their court denials? Did the DOJ lawyers check with their DHS/ICE colleagues before telling a court that a policy they conceded was unconstitutional wasn’t in effect?

Who is lying here and what has happened to the code of ethics (formerly?) applicable to Government lawyers? And why aren’t more Federal Judges “pushing back” on DOJ attorneys for their sometimes obviously untrue and other times thinly reasoned and meagerly supported positions in court?

While Trump is the undisputed “King of Liars,” Sessions and Nielsen also have well-established reputations for intentional lack of candor and twisting and misrepresenting facts, particularly on immigration policies. So why isn’t there some higher duty on Government lawyers to do “due diligence” when dealing with these known liars?

Thanks to the fabulous Dan Kowalski over at LexisNexis for passing this item along.

PWS

09-26-18

 

Continue reading SURPRISE: NIELSEN SIGNED OFF ON FAMILY SEPARATION POLICY THAT SHE DENIED WAS DHS POLICY! — What Else Is She Hiding?

THE TRUMP ADMINISRATION IS SEPARATING FAMILIES: THIS LOW-COST SEMINAR FROM THE WOMEN’S BAR ASSOCIATION OF DC WILL SHOW YOU HOW TO REUNITE THEM! — Featuring An All-Star Faculty Headlined By Hon. Lawrence O. Burman

https://www.wbadc.org/ev_calendar_day.asp?date=9%2F27%2F18&eventid=84

The Immigration Crisis: Reuniting Families

Start Date: 9/27/2018 6:00 PM EDT
End Date: 9/27/2018 8:00 PM EDT

Venue Name: Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP

Location:

1111 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC  United States  20004

Presented by: Community Projects/Legal Advocacy
Co-Sponsored by: Immigration Law Forum

Featuring:
The Honorable Lawrence O. Burman,
on behalf of the National Association of Immigration Judges
Lindsy Miles-Hare, Pro Bono Coordinating Attorney, Ayuda
Christie Turner-Herbas, Deputy Director of Legal Services, KIND
Kathryn Finley, Managing Attorney, Tahirih Justice Center
Astrid Lockwood, Attorney, The Federal Practice Group
Julia Bizer, Esq. Staff Attorney, CAIR Coalition
Michael Lukens, Esq. Pro Bono Director; Operations Director, CAIR Coalition
Natalie Roisman, National Leadership Team, Lawyer Moms of America

Our panelists are on the front lines of today’s immigration issues, providing both legal and support services. Our program will include a discussion of the current challenges and how they are being met. Additionally, organizations will provide a pathway for the WBA and its members to get involved.

Following the panel discussion, we have planned a “Day of Service” (Date: TBD), for which WBA members will be able to volunteer for discrete activities that meet the needs of each organization.

Cost:
Advance Registration

Members $25
Non-Members $35

After 09/25/2018
Members $30
Non-Members $40

Thank-you to our host Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP!

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If you have heard or appeared before my distinguished former Arlington Immigration Court colleague Judge Larry Burman, you know what he “brings to the table.” And, if you haven’t, you have a real treat in store. Trust me, he’s not only super knowledgeable and down to earth, but also very funny! He’s also a big supporter of “Bench & Bar” functions and Continuing Legal Education.

Judge Burman, of course, appears solely in his capacity as an Officer of the National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”).

Many thanks to my good friend Attorney Pauline Schwartz of the Women’s Bar Association of DC for forwarding this important item.

PWS

09-23-18

 

THE HILL: NOLAN COMMENTS ON THE ADMINISTRATION’S FAMILY DETENTION PROPOSAL

http://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/406656-trump-moves-to-detain-immigrant-children-with-their-parents

 

Family Pictures

Nolan writes:

. . . .

Proposed regulation

On Sept. 7, the Trump administration filed a proposed rule to establish final regulations that would replace the Settlement Agreement.

According to DHS, the proposed regulations would implement the relevant, substantive terms of the Settlement Agreement with minor revisions to accommodate changed circumstances, and to implement closely-related provisions in the Homeland Security Act of 2002, and the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008.

The main benefit would be the creation of a federal licensing scheme for additional Family Residential Centers that would provide care for alien minors and their parents.

According to the American Immigration Council, “shifting the licensing and oversight of facilities that hold children to DHS is profoundly problematic, given the lack of expertise the department has in child welfare and its poor track record on oversight of adult facilities.”

Maybe, but if a challenge to the regulation goes to court, the main issue is likely to be whether administration officials can bypass an explicit statutory provision requiring mandatory detention in expedited removal proceedings with a settlement agreement.

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Go on over to The Hill at the link to read the rest of Nolan’s article which contains summaries of the Flores settlement and the expedited removal process.

PWS

09-17-18