🏴‍☠️ 🤯 ABSURDIST SCOFFLAW TEX “GOV” ABBOTT BLOWN AWAY IN ROUND I OF “BUOY BATTLE!” — Texas Federal Judge Rejects Ludicrous “Invasion Defense!”

Priscilla Alvarez
CNN Digital Expansion 2019, Priscilla Alvarez
Politics Reporter, CNN

Priscilla Alvarez reports for CNN:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/06/politics/texas-mexico-border-water-barriers-migrants/index.html

CNN  —

A federal judge ordered Texas to remove floating barriers in the Rio Grande and barred the state from building new or placing additional buoys in the river, according to a Wednesday court filing, marking a victory for the Biden administration.

Judge David Alan Ezra ordered Texas to take down the barriers by September 15 at its own expense.

The border buoys have been a hot button immigration issue since they were deployed in the Rio Grande as part of Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security initiative known as Operation Lone Star. The Justice Department had sued the state of Texas in July claiming that the buoys were installed unlawfully and asking the judge to force the state to remove them.

In the lawsuit, filed in US District Court in the Western District of Texas, the Justice Department alleged that Texas and Abbott violated the Rivers and Harbors Appropriation Act by building a structure in US water without permission from United States Army Corps of Engineers and sought an injunction to bar Texas from building additional barriers in the river. The Republican governor, meanwhile, has argued the buoys are intended to deter migrants from crossing into the state from Mexico.

Texas swiftly appealed the judge’s order.

. . . .

Ezra also found Texas’ self-defense argument – that the barriers have been placed in the face of invasion – “unconvincing.”

. . . .

Ezra also found Texas’ self-defense argument – that the barriers have been placed in the face of invasion – “unconvincing.”

. . . .

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

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

Who knows how this will play out in the 5th Circuit and the Supremes, given the composition of those courts. But, at least for a day, Judge Ezra has brought some common sense and the rule of law to bear on out of control grandstanding Texas “Governor” Greg Abbott. 

In addition to being cruel and illegal, Abbott’s $140 million buoy boondoggle is predictably a failure from a deterrence standpoint. See, e.g., https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwi-5saEvpiBAxUXpIkEHU1VBwoQFnoECBoQAQ&url=https://www.livemint.com/news/texas-floating-border-wall-fails-to-deter-migrants-11693942981798.html&usg=AOvVaw0TX6bBkO0Fv0MezJLQPJkk&opi=89978449. (Although Abbott and his White Nationalist supporters falsely claim otherwise.) But, as my friends Dan Kowalski and Judge “Sir Jeffrey” Chase often say, effective deterrence isn’t the point — the cruelty and dehumanization is!

We should also remember that the vast majority of those whom Abbott and the nativists bogusly call “invaders” seek only to turn themselves in to U.S. authorities so they can exercise their clear legal rights to apply for asylum — rights that attach regardless of status or manner of entering the U.S. (Rights that also have improperly been diminished and impeded by the Biden Administration’s ill-advised asylum regulations, currently under legal challenge).  

If successful (under a legal system intentionally rigged against them), these so-called “invaders” will use their skills and work ethic to expand our economy and help Americans prosper while saving their lives and those of their families. To anybody other than Abbott and other White Nationalists, that sounds like a potential “win-win” that could and should be “leveraged” for everyone’s benefit!

Judge Ezra’s opinion in the aptly-named U.S. v. Abbott can be found here:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txwd.1172749163/gov.uscourts.txwd.1172749163.50.0.pdf?ftag=YHF4eb9d17

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-07-23

🤯JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT BIDEN ADMINISTRATION IMMIGRATION POLICIES COULDN’T GET DUMBER, SURPRISE! — Administration Struggles To Cajole “Allies” Into Leading Armed Invasion Of Haiti To Save America From “Invasion” Of Black Refugees!🏴‍☠️— Naturally, US Would Remain On Sidelines While Others Do “Dirty Work!” 🤮

Dead Haitians
American poses with dead Haitian revolutionaries after being killed by US Marine machine gun fire – 10-11-1915.jpg. Past US armed invasions of Haiti to protect our interests haven’t done much to improve the lives of the Haitian people.
Public Realm

I’m a fool to do your dirty work

Oh yeah

I don’t wanna do your dirty work

No more

I’m a fool to do your dirty work

Oh yeah

— Dan, Steely, “Dirty Work” 

https://www.google.com/search?q=dirty+work+lyrics&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari

NY Times: As Haiti Unravels, U.S. Officials Push to Send in an Armed Foreign Force

https://lnkd.in/eg9VM88S

 

As Haiti Unravels, U.S. Officials Push to Send in an Armed Foreign Force

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

U.S. seeks to prompt armed invasion of Haiti by OTHER countries to protect US from Haitian refugees seeking freedom and a new life! What could possibly go wrong?

Nothing shakes up brave US security officials like some unarmed Black individuals in leaky boats risking their lives to “breathe free” and to contribute to the U.S. economy in the process!

Really! There must be about “two Democrats in the world” who think this crackpot scheme is a good idea. Unfortunately, they are employed by the Biden Administration and in charge of “immigration policy!”

Sorry, Casey, but I have to keep saying it: “Can’t anyone here play this game?” Apparently not!

Casey Stengel
“Casey Stengel might understand the Biden Administration’s immigration policies. The rest of us not so much.”
PHOTO: Rudi Reit
Creative Commons

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-30-22

⚖️🗽 RAPPAPORT & STOCK URGE ACTION ON AFGHAN REFUGEES!

Nolan Rappaport
Nolan Rappaport
Contributor, The Hill
Margaret Stock, Esquire
Margaret Stock, Esquire
Anchorage, Alaska
PHOTO: Law firm

Nolan sends this summary of his latest on The Hill:

Afghans who helped us deserve better immigration treatment

Nolan Rappaport, opinion contributor

 

 

As the Afghan government and military fell to the Taliban after U.S. troops were withdrawn from Afghanistan, the U.S. hastily evacuated American citizens and 76,000 Afghans who had helped the U.S. in its 20-year war against the Taliban.

 

It is a year later now, and most of the Afghan evacuees still have temporary immigration status, which means that they may be subject to removal when their status expires. This isn’t right.  We should be taking better care of them.

 

It is more than just an obligation to people who put themselves in peril to help the United States.

 

According to Margaret D. Stock, a retired military officer, “Correcting for this inaction is a matter of national security — in future conflicts, why would anyone risk their lives by serving alongside our soldiers or providing critical translation services if the U.S. can’t keep our promises to them when we depart?”

 

It wouldn’t be taking this long to meet the needs of the Afghans if our immigration system weren’t overwhelmed to the point of being dysfunctional.

 

Parole

 

The evacuees who did not have entry documents had to request humanitarian parole, which permits undocumented migrants to be admitted to the United States temporarily for urgent humanitarian or significant public benefit reasons.

 

Approximately 70,192 of them were paroled into the United States between July 30, 2021, and Nov. 15, 2021.

 

Permanent status

 

Congress has enacted a series of legislative provisions which enable certain Afghan nationals to become lawful permanent residents (LPRs) on the basis of a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV).

 

Section 1059 of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2006, authorizes giving SIVs to Afghans who worked with the U.S. Armed Forces or under Chief of Mission (COM) authority as a translator or an interpreter for at least a year.

 

To be eligible for this special immigrant classification, the principal applicant must obtain a favorable written recommendation from the COM or a general or flag officer in the relevant Armed Forces unit.

 

Afghans who were employed by or on behalf of the U.S. government or the International security Assistance Force in Afghanistan may be eligible for SIV status under section 602(b) of the Afghan Allies Protection Act of 2009.

 

Roadblock

As of July 18, 2022, there were 74,274 principal applicants in the SIV pipeline. This number does not include spouses and children. And the applications have to be processed by USCIS, which is experiencing a backlog crisis.

 

Read more at https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/3605096-afghans-who-helped-us-deserve-better-immigration-treatment/

 

Published originally on The Hill.

 

Nolan Rappaport was detailed to the House Judiciary Committee as an Executive Branch Immigration Law Expert for three years. He subsequently served as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims for four years. Prior to working on the Judiciary Committee, he wrote decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals for 20 years. Follow him athttps://www.blogger.com/blog/posts/2306123393080132994

 

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

Read Nolan’s full op-ed at the link.

When experts like Nolan and Margaret are saying the same thing, everyone should listen and act accordingly!

In addition to fair and equitable treatment for our allies, we must resume and expand fair and humane treatment for all refugees, including, most important, those seeking legal refuge at our borders. Many of them actually come from broken countries where the the U.S. has left a “large footprint,” like Haiti and Latin America. 

It is long past time to make the legal requirement set forth in the Refugee Act of 1980 — any individual in the US or arriving at our border may apply for asylum “irrespective of status” — a reality rather than a cruel hoax. Contrary to some disgracefully wrong-headed court decisions, this statutory requirement implicitly requires that opportunity to be in full compliance with due process. 

Otherwise, to state the obvious, it’s no opportunity at all — just a legal charade. Unfortunately, that is what much of our broken, dysfunctional, and unjust asylum and refugee systems look like now!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-19-22

🇺🇸🗽MAINELY HELPFUL: Maine Immigration Attorneys, Communities Reach Out To Afghan Refugees, Even As Evacuation Ends With Far Too Many Left Behind!  — Our Obligation To Help Refugees Does Not End With The Last Troop Departure!

From the Portland Press Herald:

https://www.pressherald.com/2021/08/30/afghans-attorneys-in-maine-anxiously-work-to-help-families-evacuate-by-deadline/

LOCAL & STATE Posted 4:00 AM

Afghans, attorneys in Maine anxiously work to help families evacuate by deadline

With the evacuation deadline looming Tuesday, Afghan Americans in Maine and their lawyers struggle to bring loved ones to safety.

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BY KELLEY BOUCHARDSTAFF WRITER

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23 COMMENTS

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Masuma Sayed, a member of Maine’s Afghan-American community, is struggling to help family members flee Afghanistan before Aug. 31. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

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A trio of parakeets fills Masuma Sayed’s home in Portland with soft tweets as she recalls her recent visit to Afghanistan.

She returned to her native city of Kandahar in May, her first trip back in 28 years. She visited her mother’s grave, where as a teenager she would release birds that she bought in a shop on the way to the cemetery. Her mother loved birds, and so does she.

Sayed, 43, did not release birds when she was at her mother’s grave in May. Her heart was heavy, burdened by the memory of the evening that Taliban members burst into her family’s home and killed her mother and older sister, leaving behind their bullet-riddled bodies. Her sister was targeted because she was about to marry a soldier in the ruling government.

Her mother’s last words were whispered pleas to cover her sister’s face and bring her a cup of water.

Through the years, Sayed has lost 10 family members at the hands of the Taliban, including a brother-in-law and his brother, who were killed in June because they worked as contractors with U.S. forces. She’s trying to save more than 20 family members from a similar fate.

“Now I am the voice of my family,” Sayed said. “They cannot speak for themselves.”

Sayed is among a small but committed group of Afghan Americans, immigration lawyers and other Mainers who are anxiously trying to help evacuate people from Afghanistan by Tuesday’s deadline. There are about 50 to 70 Afghan families in Maine, or about 500 people, some of whom came here after helping U.S.-led forces oust the Taliban from power in 2001.

It’s a frustrating, confusing and rapidly changing situation that has called for extraordinary collaboration and sharing information across the country and the globe. Social service agencies and church groups in Maine are pitching in, doing what they can to provide assistance from 6,500 miles away.

“We know there is a huge humanitarian crisis going on and a lot of people in need,” said Sally Cloutier, chief operating officer at The Opportunity Alliance, a social service agency in Portland.

The Opportunity Alliance hosted a Zoom meeting last Thursday with Afghan Americans and other Mainers who are desperately trying to assist in the evacuation. Cloutier and her staff offered to support Afghan families in their efforts and pledged to hold a follow-up meeting this week to learn what more can be done.

. . . .

Jennifer Atkinson Esquire
Jennifer Atkinson, Esquire
Damariscotta, ME
PHOTO: Law firm

“This is a rapidly evolving and extremely fluid situation,” said Jennifer Atkinson, an immigration lawyer in Damariscotta who is helping a Portland family that is trying to get loved ones out of Afghanistan.

“We’re certainly learning every day, every hour,” said Philip Mantis, legal director at the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project in Portland.Without necessary paperwork, financial resources and commercial flights, getting out of Afghanistan is extremely difficult and dangerous, the lawyers explained.

Atkinson, who is helping her Portland clients pro bono, said she was discussing various options with them, including how their family members might “go to ground” and stay safe while in hiding. Trying to get out through Pakistan or other border crossings would be extremely “dicey,” Atkinson said.

One Afghan woman spoke tearfully during the meeting through an interpreter. She said her husband and son were waiting at Kabul’s airport, and that a nephew had been seriously injured but was unable to get medical care amid the chaos.

Immediately after the meeting, Atkinson put the woman in touch with an organization that is connecting Afghans who need medical care with doctors and nurses who are still in Afghanistan and willing to help. As of Friday, the boy was on his way to a hospital. Further information was unavailable.

“People are coming out of the woodwork to help,” Atkinson said. “We’re all trying to do everything we can to get people out.”

Atkinson said an email network has developed, including immigration lawyers and others across the United States and beyond, who are trying to expedite evacuations. All are searching for clear, verifiable information on how to get documentation and secure a safe flight out of the region.

RELATED

A Bates College senior from Kabul helps save her family from the Taliban

“We’re getting information second or third hand, so we’re never sure exactly what’s going on,” Atkinson said. “Many of us are acting as travel agents as well as attorneys.”

Margaret Stock, Esquire
Margaret Stock, Esquire
Anchorage, Alaska
PHOTO: Law firm

One person providing clarity and straight answers on that email network is Margaret Stock, an immigration and citizenship attorney in Anchorage, Alaska. She’s also a retired Army lieutenant colonel and a top expert in noncombatant evacuation operations like the one that’s been happening in Afghanistan.

Stock said the U.S. government has spent million of dollars developing strategies and training personnel to properly plan and execute evacuations of U.S. citizens and allies when ending a military action or withdrawing from a threatened area. The Department of Defense published a 200-page manual on how to do it in 2010 and updated it in 2015.

“They don’t seem to be following the manual,” Stock said Thursday in a phone interview.

Stock said the manual calls for various government branches and nongovernmental organizations to form a planning task force as soon as an evacuation date is known. The Trump administration negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban in February 2020 that excluded the Afghan government, freed 5,000 imprisoned Taliban soldiers and set May 1, 2021, as the final withdrawal date.

Stock said she helped the Department of Homeland Security organize the first task force-type planning meeting for the Afghanistan operation, which was held last Wednesday. The Department of Defense wasn’t included, she said.

“They should have had that meeting a long time ago,” Stock said. “I was asking them to have it back in February. The minute (former President Trump) said we were going to pull out, they should have started planning.”

Some aspects of the evacuation seem to have gone relatively well so far, Stock said, such as the actual military airlifts out of Kabul. But the United States shouldn’t have given up Bagram Air Base, which would have been a more secure airlift center than Kabul’s airport, she said. And it should have developed a comprehensive roster of everyone who needed to be evacuated and how best to get them out.

Stock also questioned why U.S. citizens were allowed to travel to Afghanistan as the evacuation date neared, including a group of exchange students. And she noted the lack of planning for special circumstances, such as young children who might lack necessary passports. Last week, an Afghan woman was turned away at the airport because her baby, a U.S. citizen by her American husband, didn’t have a passport, Stock said.

“There’s a lot of fear right now,” Stock said. “People are facing a terrible decision to sit tight and hope things get better, or try to get to the airport and hope to get out.”

. . . .

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Read the complete article at the link.

Maine has been welcoming to refugees from all countries. And, with good reason! The Maine economy is heavily dependent on the skills of refugees and other migrants.

Sadly, too many we might have saved were left behind. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/30/evacuation-may-be-ending-americas-responsibility-afghan-friends-left-behind-is-not/

While our military is out, the human trauma is still unfolding. The refugee flow is likely to continue long after the fall of Afghanistan, just as it did with with Vietnam, at the time I started my Government service at the Legacy INS. The inadequacy of the procedures then in effect led to the Refugee Act of 1980. 

Our current effort is hampered by the illegal and immoral destruction of the refugee admission program by Trump nativists. But, the Biden Administration has been dilatory in restoring functionality, and has disturbingly failed to maximize the use of all available tools and avenues for refugee admissions under the Refugee Act of 1980.

Spojmie Nasiri,
Spojmie Nasiri, Esquire
San Francisco, CA
PHOTO: Law firmQ!

Spojmie Nasiri, an Afghan American immigration attorney in the Bay Area, said several of her clients are stuck in Kabul and more resources are needed to assist those arriving in the U.S.

“You don’t get people out in 11 days,” she said. “We’re going to see the catastrophe of this for decades to come.”

https://click.email.latimes.com/?qs=eb18f936dca65058507db94589f8ea73bec2984425c8abd1eeacda7d2444113f9420d386225ad486181085b4bed866c4cf2d22683ccc8d6c

Tragically, Afghan allies who trusted our Government might well pay with their lives for our failure to live up to our promises and obligations.

🇺🇸🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-31-21

HISTORY: White Guys Can’t Ride! — What Can You Do But Get Some Black Guys To Show ‘Em How? — Just Don’t Let Them Walk Across The All-White “Campus!” 

Blacks at West Point
African Americans, who were part of the Army cavalry units known as Buffalo Soldiers, were brought in to teach horsemanship to cadets at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., in 1907. In the 1920s, they played on a segregated football team. (National Archives and Records Administration)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/02/22/west-point-black-football-team/

Michael E. Ruane @ WashPost:

. . . .

“Every stellar general that you might name from World War II would have received their riding instruction and instruction in mounted drill from those Buffalo Soldiers,” said retired Maj. Gen. Fred Gorden, who was the first Black commandant of cadets at West Point, from 1987 to 1989.

“They brought what other White units did not bring,” he said. “They brought excellence. They brought mastery. They brought high discipline. They brought soldiers who were exemplary in appearance … and conduct.”

“Having been the commandant at West Point, you want the example that’s brought before [the cadets] to be the best that the Army has to offer,” he said.

. . . .

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

More of the real history of the US that Trump, Cotton, and the other GOP White Nationalists don’t want you to know!

PWS

2-24-21

🛡⚔️⚖️ROUND TABLE (WITH LOTS OF HELP FROM OUR FRIENDS @ AKIN GUMP) CONTINUES TO AID NDPA ⚖️🗽🦸🏽‍♂️🦸‍♀️IN TAKING IT TO THE EOIR CLOWN SHOW🤡🧟! —  The Forces Of Bigotry, White Nationalism, “Dred Scottification,” & Malicious Incompetence Will Be Driven From The Field & Removed From  The Power They Have So Grossly & Disgracefully Abused! — Read Our Latest Amicus Brief ⚖️🗽👍👨🏽‍⚖️🤵🏻‍♀️👩‍⚖️ In Pangea II Here!

2020.12.30 DE 41 Admin Motion for Leave to File Amicus Brief

Knightess
Knightess of the Round Table
Hon. Ilyce Shugall
Hon. Ilyce Shugall
U.S. Immigraton Judge (Retired)
Jeffrey S. Chase
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog
Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

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Thanks to our friends Steve Schulman 😇 and Michael Stortz 😇 at Akin Gump for their truly outstanding pro bono assistance on this brief.  Couldn’t do it without you!😎

Such an honor to be “fighting the good fight” for due process and fundamental fairness with my colleagues on the Round Table🛡⚔️👩‍⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️👨🏻‍⚖️. We have made a difference in the lives of some of the most vulnerable and deserving among us. 🗽We have also helped educate the Federal Courts and the public on the ugly realities of our failed, unjust, and totally dysfunctional Immigration “Courts” ☠️🤡🦹🏿‍♂️, modern day “Star Chambers” ☠️⚰️😪that have become weaponized appendages of “White Nationalist 🤮🏴‍☠️⚰️👎🏻 nation.”

EYORE
“Eyore In Distress”
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”
Star Chamber Justice
“Justice”
Star Chamber
Style
Four Horsemen
BIA Asylum Panel In Action
Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

Happy New Year! 🍾🥂🎉Looking forward to Jan. 20 and the end of the kakistocracy!👍🏼⚖️🗽😎🇺🇸

PWS

12-31-20

BESS LEVIN @ VANITY FAIR: AS AMERICANS DIE ⚰️ IN RECORD NUMBERS & PUTIN HACKS OUR NATIONAL SECURITY🏴‍☠️, THE WORLD’S MOST EVIL CLOWN 🤡🤮  FLUSHES IT ALL DOWN THE TOILET!🚽

Bess Levin
Bess Levin
Politics & Finance Writer
Vanity Fair

https://mailchi.mp/de1485f0a479/levin-report-trumps-heart-bursting-with-sympathy-for-his-buddy-bob-kraft-2904842?e=adce5e3390

Hey, you know that massive, scary, very likely Russian hack that reportedly breached multiple U.S. government agencies in what may have been the biggest government hack in history? The one that Trump’s former Homeland Security adviser estimates could have affected 18,000 organizations, including most federal government unclassified networks and a number of Fortune 500 companies? The magnitude of which, he says, cannot be overstated? The same one that Donald Trump has said nothing about? Well, no biggie, but apparently hackers also reportedly accessed the networks of the Energy Department and the National Nuclear Security Administration. Which, as you might have guessed, maintain the country’s nuclear weapons stockpile.

Per Politico:

On Thursday, DOE and NNSA officials began coordinating notifications about the breach to their congressional oversight bodies after being briefed by Rocky Campione, the chief information officer at DOE. They found suspicious activity in networks belonging to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories in New Mexico and Washington, the Office of Secure Transportation at NNSA, and the Richland Field Office of the DOE. The hackers have been able to do more damage at FERC than the other agencies, and officials there have evidence of highly malicious activity, the officials said, but did not elaborate.

The attack on DOE is the clearest sign yet that the hackers were able to access the networks belonging to a core part of the U.S. national security enterprise. The hackers are believed to have gained access to the federal agencies’ networks by compromising the software company SolarWinds, which sells IT management products to hundreds of government and private-sector clients…. NNSA is responsible for managing the nation’s nuclear weapons, and while it gets the least attention, it takes up the vast majority of DOE’s budget. Similarly, the Sandia and Los Alamos National Labs conduct atomic research related to both civil nuclear power and nuclear weapons. The Office of Secure Transportation is tasked with moving enriched uranium and other materials critical for maintaining the nuclear stockpile.

While Joe Biden commented on the issue Thursday, saying “Our adversaries should know that, as president, I will not stand idly by in the face of cyber assaults on our nation,” Trump has remained curiously silent, or at least it would be curious had he not made it explicitly clear the last four years that Vladimir Putin, and really, any of his favorite dictators, can often do whatever they want. (The Russian embassy said on Sunday that it had nothing to do with the hack, though experts believe it almost certainly came from a Russian intelligence agency.)

But hey! There may be an entirely reasonable explanation for why Trump hasn’t bothered to address the issue, and it’s that he’s been extremely busy working on much more important issues. No, not fruitlessly attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election, though that does take up a decent amount of his time. In this case, it’s something even bigger:

The U.S. Department of Energy on Tuesday finalized a pair of new rules rolling back water efficiency standards on showerheads and other consumer appliances, punctuating President Donald Trump’s long-documented water flow grievances in the final weeks of his administration. The new showerhead rule goes after the two-and-a-half-gallon-per-minute maximum flow rate set by Congress in the 1990s. Under current federal law, each showerhead in a fixture counts toward that limit collectively—but the Energy Department’s new rule means each showerhead individually can reach the limit set by Congress.

The slate of recent changes align with Trump’s larger dismantling of environmental regulations, and, more specifically, his open disdain for poor water flow. Trump claimed late last year that Americans are flushing their toilets “10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once” and are having difficulty washing their hands. “We have a situation where we’re looking very strongly at sinks and showers and other elements of bathrooms where you turn the faucet on—and in areas where there’s tremendous amounts of water, where the water rushes out to sea because you could never handle it, and you don’t get any water,” the president said last December during a roundtable with small business leaders about deregulatory actions. “You turn on the faucet and you don’t get any water. They take a shower and water comes dripping out. Just dripping out, very quietly dripping out,“ the president continued, lowering his voice as he spoke about the drips.

“Today the Trump Administration affirmed its commitment to reducing regulatory burdens and safeguarding consumer choice,” Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette proudly declared in a statement. “With these rule changes, Americans can choose products that are best suited to meet their individual needs and the needs of their families.” The rollbacks were chastised not only by environmental groups but consumer organizations as well, with Andrew deLaski, executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, saying, “Changing the rules to address one of President Trump’s pet peeves is simply silly. Thousands of showerhead models on the market today meet the standards that Congress set way back in 1992 and provide a great shower.”

In related news, to date it remains unclear why it takes Trump 15 flushes to clear a toilet.

. . . .

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

Red the rest of the “Levin Report” at the link.

While Trump has famously been reported not to bother reading his “daily intelligence briefings” (after all, they are pretty boring, related to work, which has never been a priority, and reportedly written in complete sentences, which are not within his comfort zone), we can be sure that Vladimir Putin and his buddies in the Kremlin are reading them. 

In the meantime, Putin could not ask for a more outrageously tone-deaf, indolent, performance by the Chief Clown 🤡 , Moscow 🇷🇺  Mitch, the GOP, and their cronies and enablers in the period of total national disorder and decay leading into the swearing in of the first real President America has had in four years on January 20, 2021. 

32 days and counting left in the kakistocracy. How many more Americans will needlessly die and suffer before we finally get relief from the deadliest Clown Show 🤡☠️🤮⚰️👎🏻?

PWS

12-19-20

ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS WILL BE TAPPED AS BIDEN’S DHS SECRETARY!

Alejandro Mayorkas
Alejandro Mayorkas
DHS Secretry – Designate
Official DHS Photo
Public Domain

Mayorkas, currently a partner at Wilmer Hale, was Deputy DHS Secretary under Obama from 2013-2016. If confirmed, he will be the first Latino to hold the post. 

He helped design and implement DACA, certainly the most rational, cost effective, and astoundingly successful Executive immigration initiative of the 21st Century. But, then, there was not really much else to choose from in two decades of largely wasteful, counterproductive, “designed to fail uber enforcement” from all Administrations.

On one level, Mayorkas faces “mission impossible”” — reform an agency without mission or recognizable humane values that has been totally out of control over the past four years and has shown that it is infected with institutionalized racism, hate, ignorance, disrespect for the rule of law, rampant unprofessionalism, and overt political corruption at every level.

But, on another level it should be easy for Mayorkas to look good! Following the early departure of Gen. John Kelly, who looked pretty good on paper but showed neither the inclination to understand immigration policy nor the willingness to buck Trump, the agency has been “run” by a succession of toadies and war criminals. The current (NOT) Acting Secretary Chad “Wolfman” Wolf, a “super-hack,” is totally unqualified for the job, and also happens to be serving illegally in an “acting capacity.” That’s an easy act to follow!

Just by respecting the Constitution and the law, simply refraining from overt lying, racism, committing crimes against humanity, and child abuse, and wasting less taxpayer money on stupid walls, detention, and counterproductive “civil” enforcement, Mayorkas will be perceived as a “breath of fresh air” by many long-suffering members of the immigration and human rights community, even if he never accomplishes much else.

Expectations were extraordinarily low for the Trump regime. But, his “chosen toadies and scofflaws” consistently performed far below even our worst fears, demonstrating exceptional “malicious incompetence” at virtually all aspects of their jobs. DOJ and EOIR are by no means the only rings under the “Big Top” 🎪where the deadly “clown show” 🤡 has been in continuous performance for the past four years!

Due Process Forever. Let the Biden Team Know That The Clown Show 🤡 Must Go!

PWS

11-23-20

NATIONAL SECURITY: “THE GENERALS” 🇺🇸 SPEAK OUT AGAIN IN USA TODAY ON TRUMP’S BETRAYAL OF AMERICA! — Bogus “America First” Policy & Moronically Abandoning Traditional Alliances Basically Hand Power To Our Enemies, Say Retired U.S. Marine Leaders!

Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Michael R. Lehnert
Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Michael R. Lehnert
U.S. Marine Corps
(Public Domain)
Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Richard L. Kelly
Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Richard L. Kelly
U.S. Marine Corps
(Public Realm)

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/10/26/trump-international-relations-danger-isolation-policies-column/3726323001/&source=gmail-imap&ust=1604310163000000&usg=AOvVaw043lcH6ubo-vcjqC46nnUL

Over the past 3 1/2 years, President Donald Trump has aggressively pushed an “America First” agenda that has significantly weakened more than seven decades of peaceful cooperation between the United States and her treaty partners around the world. In parallel moves, this president has continued a courtship with Russian President Vladimir Putin and a dangerous, nuclear-armed North Korea while allowing China to extend its geopolitical reach and goal of economic dominance.

Despite the widening of perilous fault lines that have emerged from growing diplomatic tensions, the mercurial and ill-equipped president continues to criticize and undermine, with no intellectual rigor, the post-World War II order that has given us 70 years of relative political and economic stability.

Moreover, Trump’s isolationist moves are progressively weakening America. Withdrawing from the Paris climate accord (ratified by nearly 190 nations, including Russia and China), the Iran nuclear deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, UNESCO, the United Nations Human Rights Council, the World Health Organization and numerous other long-standing international commitments has become part and parcel of his unabashed goal of turning his back — and by extension America’s — on the world.

. . . .

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

Read the full op-ed at the link. This is the final of a “three-part series” in national media. The “first two installments” previously were posted in Courtside: https://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/10/24/🇺🇸🗽retired-marine-generals-speak-out-against-an-unqualified-commander-in-chief-who-endangers-us-all-a-president-who-does-not-lead-by-example-who-do/

The same is true in the related field of international human rights, where we have gone from a former ”beacon of hope” to a notorious racist-driven regime of scofflaws, unabashed human rights violators, and shameless child abusers. 

My appreciation again, on behalf of the “New Due Process Army” and the “Round Table of Former Immigration Judges” to “The Generals” for speaking out so articulately and forcefully.

Vote ‘em out, vote ‘em out!

PWS

10-26-20

EXPOSING THE KAKISTOCRACY 🏴‍☠️ — LATEST TRAC “DATA DIVE” SHOWS WHY THERE ARE LIES, DAMN LIES, & EOIR’S “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” ☠️🤮👎 – The Round Table & Other Immigration Experts, As Well As Some Article III Judges, Have Been Saying It Ever Since “Gonzo” Sessions’s Unethical & Dishonest Opinion In Castro-Tum: “TRAC finds that far from contributing to the backlog, administrative closure has helped reduce the backlog. [T]he EOIR significantly misrepresented the data it used to justify this rule.”

 

 

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse

The Life and Death of Administrative Closure 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

In August 2020, the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR) proposed a new rule that would effectively eliminate administrative closure as a docket management tool for Immigration Judges. The EOIR justified this proposed rule by claiming that administrative closure has “exacerbated both the extent of the existing backlog of immigration court cases and the difficulty in addressing that backlog in a fair and timely manner.” TRAC analyzed the EOIR’s claims as well as the historical data on administrative closure from 1986, and has just published its findings in a detailed report. The link to the report is below.

TRAC’s detailed analysis of the court records on administrative closure yields four key findings. First, administrative closure has been routinely used by Immigration Judges to manage their growing caseloads as well as manage the unresolved overlapping of jurisdictions between the EOIR and other immigration agencies. From FY 1986 to 2020, 6.1 percent (or 376,439) deportation and removal cases had been administratively closed during their lifespan. Each year, between 1 percent and 30 percent of cases are administratively closed, with high percentages of administrative closures during the Reagan and Bush Administrations in the late 1980s and early 1990s and during the Obama Administration between 2012 and 2016.

Second, TRAC finds that far from contributing to the backlog, administrative closure has helped reduce the backlog. If the 292,042 cases that are currently administratively closed and not yet recalendared were brought back onto the Court’s active docket, this would suddenly increase the Court’s active workload from its current backlog at the end of July 2020 of 1,233,307 cases to 1,525,349 cases. This would produce a 24 percent jump in the court’s already clogged hearing schedules, pushing the resolution of other backlogged cases off for many additional months if not years.

Third, data from the Immigration Courts show that immigrants who obtain administrative closure are likely to have followed legal requirements and obtain lawful status. When cases were administratively closed, recalendared, and decided, most immigrants met the legal standard to remain in the country lawfully. For example, for those cases in which the government was seeking removal orders, six out of ten (60.1%) immigrants met the high legal threshold of remaining in the country. The largest proportion of these had their cases terminated since the Court ultimately found there were no longer valid grounds to deport them. Just three out of ten (30.3%) immigrants were ultimately ordered removed.

Fourth, the EOIR significantly misrepresented the data it used to justify this rule. Specifically, the agency claims to show low numbers of case completions during the Obama Administration and high numbers of case completions during the Trump Administration. In reality, the data behind this argument artificially eliminates cases that were administratively closed. Its argument also fails to recognize that average annual case completions per Immigration Judge have actually declined from 737 closures per judge to 657 per judge during the past four years, not increased, perhaps due to the changes introduced by the current Administration.

Read the full report at:

https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/623/

TRAC’s free web query tools which track Immigration Court proceedings have also been updated through July 2020. For an index to the full list of TRAC’s immigration tools and their latest update go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/imm/tools/

If you want to be sure to receive a notification whenever updated data become available, sign up at:

https://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1

Follow us on Twitter at:

https://twitter.com/tracreports

or like us on Facebook:

https://facebook.com/tracreports

TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the US Federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl

David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Syracuse University
Suite 360, Newhouse II
Syracuse, NY 13244-2100
315-443-3563
trac@syr.edu
https://trac.syr.edu

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse is a nonpartisan joint research center of the Whitman School of Management (https://whitman.syr.edu) and the Newhouse School of Public Communications (https://newhouse.syr.edu) at Syracuse University. If you know someone who would like to sign up to receive occasional email announcements and press releases, they may go to https://trac.syr.edu and click on the E-mail Alerts link at the bottom of the page. If you do not wish to receive future email announcements and wish to be removed from our list, please send an email to trac@syr.edu with REMOVE as the subject.

 

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

“Significantly misrepresented” — That’s a euphamism for “blatantly lied.” Of course, that’s what the head of the regime does on life or death matters. So, I suppose we wouldn’t expect anything else from the “toadies on parade” filling out the kakistocracy.

 

Look, you don’t “jack” the backlog to at least twice its “pre-regime” level with twice the number of Immigration Judges without some pretty grotesque mismanagement, cover-ups, falsification of data, dishonesty, and denial of rights to migrants.

 

Moreover, TRAC specifically shows the “false narrative” peddled by the racists in the Trump regime that administrative closing is some type of “evasion” that is not in the public interest. As Judge Richard Leon would say “poppycock.” It’s exactly the opposite! TRAC finds that “data from the Immigration Courts show that immigrants who obtain administrative closure are likely to have followed legal requirements and obtain lawful status.”

 

Administrative closure is a sane, reasonable, well-established, entirely legal, and absolutely necessary procedure. Gee whiz, one of the original proponents of administrative closure and its aggressive use as a docket management tool was the late first Chief Immigration Judge William R. Robie. Chief Judge Robie was a Republican appointee during the Reagan Administration. He also was a devotee of fundamental fairness and judicial efficiency. He had led a number of professional organizations and was known and respected in the DC Legal Community as a “guru of timeliness and efficient legal administration.”

 

What’s abusive are the illegal tactics, lies, and mismanagement at both DOJ and DHS that have been concocted to justify racist, White Nationalist policies that do not serve the public interest!

Due Process Forever!

 

PWS

09-10-20

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

Here’s an Addendum from Margaret Stock:

From: Margaret Stock [mailto:MStock@CASCADIALAWALASKA.COM]
Sent: Saturday, September 12, 2020 10:17 AM
To: Benson, Lenni B.
Cc: Immprof (immprof@lists.ucla.edu)
Subject: Re: [immprof] FW: The Life and Death of Administrative Closure

The Administration is most definitely putting out misleading information (as usual). Example: one often overlooked “administrative closure” group has been members of the US military who got tossed into removal proceedings for one reason or another (usually because of a referred asylum case or failure to file an I751 or denial of an I751 by USCIS). They almost always naturalize after being put into proceedings, then reopen and terminate. Lately, they’ve had to hire a lawyer to keep showing up at master calendar hearings, usually for a couple of years. The judges can’t hear the case because they’ve got naturalization applications pending. But the judges have to keep wasting docket time on them because there’s no such thing as admin closure anymore. It’s foolish and costly for the service members.

Sent from my iPhone

 

 

 

FINALLY, MATTIS SPEAKS OUT, RIPS TRUMP’S DISGRACEFUL REIGN: “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.”

Orion Rummler
Orion Rummler
Breaking News Reporter
AXIOS

https://www.axios.com/james-mattis-trump-protests-f325f239-17f1-4795-b6a4-0ab1587ad210.html?stream=top&utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alerts_all

Orion Rummler reports for AXIOS:

Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis condemned President Trump for making a “mockery of our Constitution” in a statement to The Atlantic on Wednesday, saying he was “appalled” at the president’s response to mass protests in the wake of George Floyd’s killing.

Why it matters: Trump’s former defense secretary had refrained from publicly criticizing his former boss since resigning in 2018.

Full statement:

“I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words “Equal Justice Under Law” are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.

When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.

We must reject any thinking of our cities as a “battlespace” that our uniformed military is called upon to “dominate.” At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict—a false conflict—between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.

James Madison wrote in Federalist 14 that “America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.” We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law.

Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that “The Nazi slogan for destroying us…was ‘Divide and Conquer.’ Our American answer is ‘In Union there is Strength.’” We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.

Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.

We can come through this trying time stronger, and with a renewed sense of purpose and respect for one another. The pandemic has shown us that it is not only our troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the community. Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and their country. We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution. At the same time, we must remember Lincoln’s “better angels,” and listen to them, as we work to unite.

Only by adopting a new path—which means, in truth, returning to the original path of our founding ideals—will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad.”

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

Better late than never. But, what if Mattis had spoken out earlier and helped lead the opposition to Trump. Would things be different now? Where was his leadership when the GOP was ignoring the evidence and failing to vote to convict and remove Trump for clear abuse of his office?

PWS

06-04-20

TRUMP DECIMATES IG RANKS: Unqualified To Lead, “Grifter-in-Chief” Turns To Only Thing He’s Good At: Destroying American Democracy! — Expect Large Chunk Of Your $2 Trillion “Rescue Package” To Line Pockets Of Trump & Cronies As Independent Oversight Dismantled! 💸💸💸

 

Kevin Robillard
Kevin Robillard
Senior Political Reporter
HuffPost

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-coronavirus-corruption-glenn-fine_n_5e8caac7c5b6e1a2e0fabbf5

Kevin Robillard reports for HuffPost:

President Donald Trump removed the inspector general set to probe corruption and provide oversight of the government’s massive response to the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic on Tuesday, the last sign of his disdain for any oversight of his administration.

The $2 trillion coronavirus response law, passed last month, set up a panel of 10 inspectors general to serve as watchdogs as the government tries to limit fraud, wrongdoing and mismanagement. That panel, dubbed the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, selected Fine — who was the acting Pentagon inspector general and is a former Justice Department inspector general — to lead them.

. . . .

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

Read the full article at the link.

Trump got the GOP’s message loud and clear: Destroy away, we will never hold you accountable for any abuse!

Vote Like Your Life Depends On It this November! Because It Does!

PWS

04-07-20

THE RISE OF KAKISTOCRACY, THE FALL OF A NATION: Jennifer Rubin @ WashPost: “An outbreak of incompetence” — “Courtside” Has Been “Sounding The Warning” About The Disastrous Effects Of “Kakistocracy” & “Malicious Incompetence,” Driven By White Nationalist Racism, For Years — Now It’s Putting Everyone In America At Risk!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/03/pandemic-incompetence/

Jennifer Rubin
Jennifer Rubin
Opinion Writer
Washington Post

Jennifer Rubin in the WashPost:

White House adviser Jared Kushner broke the irony meter as he — not someone qualified, such as Anthony S. Fauci — took over the daily coronavirus briefing on Thursday to inform us: “What a lot of the voters are seeing now is that when you elect somebody … think about who will be a competent manager during the time of crisis.”

Yes, President Trump’s voters, along with those who elected the similarly ignorant and slothful Republican governors in Florida and Georgia who failed to act promptly to stem the coronavirus, should remember that next time. Better to elect someone like California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) or Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) rather than someone continually pandering to Trump, resisting readily available scientific advice and attacking the media.

One has the sinking feeling that things are going from bad to worse. Trump and the feds declined to act swiftly, in particular failing to get widespread testing up and running. Now they are failing to remedy the dire medical crisis that their negligence brought on. Kushner said the federal stockpile of medical equipment is for the feds to use, not the states. His father-in-law seems allergic to implementing fully the Defense Production Act, so the bidding war among the states for critical equipment continues.

Republican governors in Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama declined to issue prompt stay-at-home orders. Now? Trump refuses to issue one nationally despite Fauci’s advice. “I don’t understand why that’s not happening,” he said in a CNN interview. “As you said, the tension between federally mandated vs. states’ rights to do what they want is something I don’t want to get into. But if you look at what is going on in this country, I do not understand why we are not doing that. We really should be.” The answer: We have a total lack of federal leadership and competence.

Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic

Congress set up a $350 billion fund for small-business loans. Beginning Friday, many banks promptly announced that they could accept applications in the absence of clear federal guidance. The chaos, confusion and delays surrounding the Small Business Administration loans might make the unemployment insurance process seem like a fine-tuned machine. (Thousands, if not millions, of unemployment claims remain unprocessed due to overwhelming demand.)

The Defense Department is no better. Trump jettisoned a career professional serving as defense secretary (James Mattis) for a meek, subservient aerospace executive. The result is predictable. Politico reports: “Defense Secretary Mark Esper is under fire for the Pentagon’s response to the coronavirus pandemic as lawmakers, national security experts and people throughout the Defense Department’s ranks fault him for a slow and uneven approach to the outbreak.” His most notable action: Supporting the firing of the Navy commander whose letter pleading to allow his sailors to disembark from a floating petri dish, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, was leaked. The military under Trump can forgive war crimes, just not pleas to save men and women in uniform from incompetent superiors.

This is as exasperating as it is frightening. Governors, if you are lucky enough to live in a state with a competent one, can do only so much when, for example, there are no ventilators to be had. The Democratic-led House can only churn out its version of remedial legislation, but it cannot withstand Senate and White House efforts to scuttle anti-fraud, anti-cronyism measures. (“Most big companies that take advantage of the $500 billion corporate bailout in last week’s coronavirus relief bill are unlikely to face restrictions against firing workers or giving bonuses to executives, according to officials familiar with the program.”) And while the House can bird-dog the executive branch as it distributes money, the House cannot do the executive branch’s job for it.

The chaos, confusion and incompetence at the federal level magnify our daily anxiety and uncertainty. We have lost control of our lives, and those supposed to lead us through this ordeal are deepening our national trauma. Years of contempt for expertise, for competent government and for truth itself on the right now haunt us all. God help us.

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

Right on, Jennifer!

As if on cue, about the time I was reading Jennifer’s op-ed, the Blathering Boor was on TV demonstrating his “malicious incompetence” by telling American that we should wear face masks, but then immediately contradicting the message by emphasizing that it was voluntary, not required, and he wouldn’t be doing it. Because he has to meet with dictators, kings, queens, emperors, tyrants, princes, fairy godmothers, etc. Even life or death matters become mere sick jokes under the “Clown Kakistocracy,” where ignorance and lies reign.

This is what I’ve been saying for a long time now. I plugged the term “kakistocracy” into my search engine at Courtside and got seven (7) pages of results going all this way back to this article on April 27, 2018. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2018/04/27/justice-on-ice-sessions-dojs-amnesty-for-white-collar-criminals-beating-up-undocumented-migrants-in-criminal-court-while-doing-a-lousy-job-on-real-crime-numbers-ga/

Here’s  my favorite “Theater of the Absurd” quote from Jennifer’s article: “The military under Trump can forgive war crimes, just not pleas to save men and women in uniform from incompetent superiors.”

So much for the mythical “Gang of Generals” who were supposed to save us from Trump’s “malicious incompetence.” Nope. They all “went long to get along” for awhile and then took cover in vain attempts to save what was left of their shredded reputations. Write a “tell nothing” book, give a few disingenuous interviews, hide on the board of directors of a company profiting from child abuse, whatever! Trump corrupts and destroys everything he touches, including our country!

Unlike those guys, I think there is actually gainful employment out there in the real world for someone like Captain Brett Crozier who puts human lives before a maliciously incompetent “chain of command” looking to cover up its malfeasance. 

It’s not like our military hasn’t always had a certain penchant for punishing those who “speak truth to incompetent power!” Just ask the ghost of “Milwaukee Hero” Gen. Billy Mitchell who got court-martialed for being smarter, more creative, and more courageous than his superiors. Who would ever have ever believed that air power, not horse drawn caissons, would win the next World War? Duh! Certainly none of his immediate superiors in the Army after WW I!

Due Process Forever! Vote The Kakistocracy Out In November!

Vote Like Your Life Depends On It! Because It Does!

PWS

04-03-20

2D CIR. FAULTS BIA’S INCORRECT ANALYSIS OF SALVADORAN WOMAN’S GANG-BASED POLITICAL OPINION ASYLUM CLAIM — Decision Reveals Much Deeper Problems With Politicized & Weaponized Immigration Courts, Lack Of Basic Expertise, Analytical Failures, Systemic Anti-Asylum Bias, Lack Of Due Process & Fundamental Fairness That Article III Courts Are Failing To Effectively Address — Hernandez-Chacon v. Barr — Bonus “PWS Mini-Essay” — “WHY ‘NIBBLING AROUND THE EDGES’ BY ARTICLE IIIs WON’T SOLVE THE CONSTITUTIONAL & HUMAN RIGHTS DISASTERS IN OUR IMMIGRATION COURTS NOR WILL IT RELIEVE THE ARTICLE IIIs FROM RESPONSIBILITY”

http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/7536540c-4285-4262-84b6-e0454e2e1b83/1/doc/17-3903_opn.pdf#xml=http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/7536540c-4285-4262-84b6-e0454e2e1b83/1/hilite/

Hernandez-Chacon v. Barr, 2d Cir., 01-23-20, published

PANEL: WESLEY, CHIN, and BIANCO, Circuit Judges

OPINION BY: Judge Chin

KEY QUOTE: 

2. Political Opinion

To demonstrate that persecution, or a well‐founded fear of

persecution, is on account of an applicantʹs political opinion, the applicant must show that the persecution ʺarises from his or her own political opinion.ʺ Yueqing Zhang v. Gonzales, 426 F.3d 540, 545 (2d Cir. 2005). Thus, the applicant must ʺshow, through direct or circumstantial evidence, that the persecutorʹs motive to persecute arises from the applicant’s political belief.ʺ Id. (emphasis added). The

See Vega‐Ayala v. Lynch, 833 F.3d 34, 40 (1st Cir. 2016) (ʺVega‐Ayalaʹs general reference to the prevalence of domestic violence in El Salvador does little to explain how ʹSalvadoran women in intimate relationships with partners who view them as propertyʹ are meaningfully distinguished from others within Salvadoran society.ʺ). But see Alvarez Lagos v. Barr, 927 F.3d 236, 252‐55 (4th Cir. 2019) (remanding for agency to consider whether ʺgroup of unmarried mothers living under the control of gangs in Honduras qualifies as a ʹparticular social group,ʹʺ where record contained evidence that gang in question did ʺindeed target victims on the basis of their membership in a socially distinct group of unmarried mothersʺ).

‐17‐

 5

persecution may also be on account of an opinion imputed to the applicant by the persecutor, regardless of whether or not this imputation is accurate. See Delgado v. Mukasey, 508 F.3d 702, 706 (2d Cir. 2007) (ʺ[A]n imputed political opinion, whether correctly or incorrectly attributed, can constitute a ground for political persecution.ʺ (internal quotation mark omitted) (quoting Chun Gao v. Gonzales, 424 F.3d 122, 129 (2d Cir. 2005)). The BIA has explained that persecution based on political opinion is established when there is ʺdirect or circumstantial evidence from which it is reasonable to believe that those who harmed the applicant were in part motivated by an assumption that [her] political views were antithetical to those of the government.ʺ Matter of S‐P‐, 21 I. & N. Dec. 486, 494 (B.I.A. 1996); see also Vumi v. Gonzalez, 502 F.3d 150, 157 (2d Cir. 2007).

Here, Hernandez‐Chacon contends that if she is returned to El Salvador she will be persecuted by gang members because of her political opinion ‐‐ her opposition to the male‐dominated social norms in El Salvador and her taking a stance against a culture that perpetuates female subordination and the brutal treatment of women. She argues that when she refused to submit to the violent advances of the gang members, she was taking a stance against a culture of male‐domination and her resistance was therefore a political act.

‐18‐

There is ample evidence in the record to support her claim.6 Gangs control much of El Salvador, including the neighborhood in which Hernandez‐ Chacon lived. The law enforcement systems that would normally protect women ‐‐ police, prosecutors, judges, officials ‐‐ do not have the resources or desire to address the brutal treatment of women, and the Salvadoran justice system ʺfavors aggressors and assassinsʺ and ʺpunish[es] victims of gender violence.ʺ Cert. Adm. Rec. at 147. Yet, Hernandez‐Chacon testified that when the first gang member tried to rape her, she resisted ʺbecause [she had] every right to.ʺ Id. at 193. Three days later, when the same man and two other gang members attacked her, she again resisted, to the point where they beat her until she lost consciousness. She argues that the men targeted her for the second attack ‐‐ and beat her so brutally ‐‐ because she had resisted the advances of an MS gang member and they believed she needed to be punished for her act of defiance. Her now husband likewise stated in his affidavit that Hernandez‐ Chacon will be attacked if she returns to El Salvador because ʺ[s]he has managed to fight them off twice, but that just makes them angrier and if she shows her face again, I think they could kill her.ʺ Id. at 269.

At oral argument, the government forthrightly conceded that it was a ʺpermissibleʺ inference that Hernandez‐Chacon was persecuted for her feminist political ideology, though it argued that the record did not compel that result.

‐19‐

 6

 

While the IJʹs decision was thorough and thoughtful overall, her

analysis of Hernandez‐Chaconʹs political opinion claim was cursory, consisting of the following:

[Hernandez‐Chacon] has also claimed that she had a political opinion. I cannot conclude that her decision to resist the advances of an individual is sufficient to establish that she has articulated a political opinion. In trying to analyze a political opinion claim, the Court has to consider the circumstances under which a respondent not only possessed a political opinion, but the way in which the circumstances under which she articulated that political opinion. In this case she did not advance a political opinion. I find that she simply chose not to be the victim and chose to resist being a victim of a criminal act.

Id. at 153‐54.

The BIA dismissed Hernandez‐Chaconʹs political opinion argument

in a single sentence, in a footnote, rejecting the claim ʺfor the reasons stated in the [IJʹs] decision.ʺ Id. at 5 n.3. The analysis of both the IJ and the BIA was inadequate. See Yueqing Zhang, 426 F.3d at 548‐49 (granting petition for review and remanding case to agency where IJ failed to undertake the ʺcomplex and contextual factual inquiryʺ necessary to determine if persecution was on account of political opinion). We have three areas of concern.

‐20‐

First, the agency concluded that Hernandez‐Chacon ʺdid not advance a political opinion.ʺ Cert. Adm. Record at 154. But this Circuit has held that the analysis of what constitutes political expression for these purposes ʺinvolves a ʹcomplex and contextual factual inquiryʹ into the nature of the asylum applicantʹs activities in relation to the political context in which the dispute took place.ʺ Castro v. Holder, 597 F.3d 93, 101 (2d Cir. 2010) (quoting Yueqing Zhang, 426 F.3d at 548). We have held, for example, that resisting corruption and abuse of power ‐‐ including non‐governmental abuse of power ‐‐ can be an expression of political opinion. See Castro, 597 F.3d at 100 (noting that ʺopposition to government corruption may constitute a political opinion, and retaliation against someone for expressing that opinion may amount to political persecutionʺ); Delgado, 508 F.3d at 706 (holding that refusing to give technical assistance to the FARC in Columbia can be expression of political opinion); Yueqing Zhang, 426 F.3d at 542, 546‐48 (holding that retaliation for opposing corruption of local officials can constitute persecution on account of political opinion); Osorio v. INS, 18 F.3d 1017, 1029‐31 (2d Cir. 1994) (holding that ʺunion activities [can] imply a political opinion,ʺ and not merely economic position). The Fourth Circuit has recently recognized that the refusal to acquiesce to gang violence can constitute

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an expression of political opinion. See Alvarez Lagos, 927 F.3d at 254‐55 (where record contained evidence that gang in question would view refusal to comply with demand for sex as ʺpolitical opposition,ʺ refusal to acquiesce to gang violence and flight to United States could demonstrate imputed anti‐gang political opinion that constitutes protected ground for asylum). Here, the agency did not adequately consider whether Hernandez‐Chaconʹs refusal to acquiesce was ‐‐ or could be seen as ‐‐ an expression of political opinion, given the political context of gang violence and the treatment of women in El Salvador.

Second, the IJ concluded that Hernandez‐Chacon ʺsimply chose to not be a victim.ʺ Cert. Adm. Rec. at 154. But even if Hernandez‐Chacon was motivated in part by her desire not to be a crime victim, her claims do not necessarily fail, as her political opinion need not be her only motivation. See

8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(1)(B)(i) (ʺThe applicant must establish that race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion was or will be at least one central reason for persecuting the applicant.ʺ (emphasis added)); Osorio, 18 F.3d at 1028 (ʺThe plain meaning of the phrase ʹpersecution on account of the victimʹs political opinion,ʹ does not mean persecution solely on account of the victimʹs political opinion.ʺ); see also Vumi, 502 F.3d at 158 (remanding to

‐22‐

agency where BIA failed to engage in mixed‐motive analysis). While Hernandez‐Chacon surely did not want to be a crime victim, she was also taking a stand; as she testified, she had ʺevery rightʺ to resist. As we have held in a different context, ʺopposition to endemic corruption or extortion . . . may have a political dimension when it transcends mere self‐protection and represents a challenge to the legitimacy or authority of the ruling regime.ʺ Yueqing Zhang, 426 F.3d at 547‐48. Here, Hernandez‐Chaconʹs resistance arguably took on a political dimension by transcending mere self‐protection to also constitute a challenge to the authority of the MS gang.

Third, the agency did not consider whether the gang members imputed a political opinion to Hernandez‐Chacon. This Circuit has held that ʺan imputed political opinion, whether correctly or incorrectly attributed, can constitute a ground of political persecution within the meaning of the Immigration and Nationality Act.ʺ Vumi, 502 F.3d at 156 (citations omitted); see Chun Gao, 424 F.3d at 129 (in case of imputed political opinion, question is ʺwhether authorities would have perceived [petitioner] as [a practitioner of Falun Gong] or as a supporter of the movement because of his activitiesʺ). Here, the IJ erred in her political opinion analysis by only considering whether Hernandez‐

‐23‐

Chacon ʺadvance[d]ʺ a political opinion. Cert. Adm. Rec. at 154. The IJ failed to consider whether the attackers imputed an anti‐patriarchy political opinion to her when she resisted their sexual advances, and whether that imputed opinion was a central reason for their decision to target her. See Castro, 597 F.3d at 106 (holding that to properly evaluate a claim of political opinion, IJ must give ʺcareful consideration of the broader political contextʺ). In fact, as the gang members attacked her the second time, one of them told her that because she would not ʺdo this with him in a good way, it was going to happen in a bad way,ʺ Cert. Adm. Rec. at 186, which suggests that the gang members wanted to punish her because they believed she was taking a stand against the pervasive norm of sexual subordination.

We note that the Fourth Circuit recently granted a petition for review in a case involving a woman in Honduras who was threatened by a gang in similar circumstances. The Fourth Circuit concluded that if, as the petitioner alleged, the gang had imputed to her ʺan anti‐gang political opinion, then that imputed opinion would be a central reason for likely persecution if she were returned to Honduras.ʺ See Alvarez Lagos, 927 F.3d at 251. The court held that the IJ erred by not considering the imputed political opinion claim, that is,

‐24‐

whether the gang believed that the petitioner held an anti‐gang political opinion. Id. at 254. Likewise, here, the agency did not adequately consider Hernandez‐ Chaconʹs imputed political opinion claim.

Accordingly, we hold that the agency erred in failing to adequately consider Hernandez‐Chaconʹs claim of persecution or fear of persecution based on actual or imputed political opinion.

CONCLUSION

For the reasons set forth above, the petition is GRANTED with respect to Hernandez‐Chaconʹs political opinion claim and the case is REMANDED to the BIA for proceedings consistent with this opinion.

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

Heather Axford
Heather Axford
Senior Staff Attorney
Central American Legal Assistance
Brooklyn, NY

 

To state the obvious:

  • Many more women from El Salvador should be getting mandatory relief under CAT based on “torture with government acquiescence,” regardless of “nexus” which is not a requirement in CAT cases. Indeed, in a properly functioning and fair system these could probably be “blanket grants” provided the accounts are credible and documented (or they could be the basis for a TPS program for women fleeing the Northern Triangle, thus reducing the burden on the Immigraton Courts);
  • Compare the accurate account of the horrible conditions facing women inEl Salvador set forth by the Immigration Judge and the Second Circuit in this case with the fraudulent and largely fictionalized account presented by unethical Attorney General Sessions in his Matter of A-B– atrocity. Here are some excerpts from Judge Chin’s opinion which shows the real horrors that women face in El Salvador as opposed to he largely fictionalized version fabricated by Sessions:

 

In her decision, the IJ reviewed relevant country conditions in El Salvador, including the prevalence of violence against women and ʺthe dreadful

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practice of El Salvadorʹs justice system to favor aggressors and assassins and to punish victims of gender violence.ʺ Id. at 147. The IJ relied on the declaration of Aracely Bautista Bayona, a lawyer and human rights specialist, who described ʺthe plight of women in El Salvador,ʺ id.,3 and recounted the following:

One of ʺthe most entrenched characteristics of Salvadoran society is machismo, a system of patriarchal gender biases which subject women to the will of men. Salvadorans are taught from early childhood that women are subordinate.ʺ Id. Salvadoran society ʺaccepts and tolerates men who violently punish women for violating these gender rules or disobeying male relatives.ʺ Id. Indeed, in El Salvador, ʺfemicide remain[s] widespread.ʺ Id. at 148; see also U.S. Depʹt of State, Bureau of Democracy, H. R. and Labor, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2015 for El Salvador (2015) (ʺCountry Reportʺ). Gangs in El Salvador view women as the property of men, and gang violence against women outside the gang ʺmanifest[s] itself in a brutality that reflects these extreme machismo attitudes.ʺ Cert. Adm. Rec. at 148.

3

page10image3393429872

The IJ noted that Bayona had ʺfor more than two and a half decades worked and advocated for the rights of women, children, adolescents and youth in the migrant population in El Salvador.ʺ Cert. Adm. Rec. at 138.

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ʺEl Salvador has the highest rate in the world [of femicide] with an average of 12 murders for every 100,000 women.ʺ Id. at 148‐49. As an article on El Salvadorʹs gangs concluded, ʺin a country terrorized by gangsters, it is left to the dead to break the silence on sexual violence . . . , to the bodies of dead women and girls pulled from clandestine graves, raped, battered and sometimes cut to pieces. They attest to the sadistic abuse committed by members of street gangs.ʺ Id. at 149 (quoting El Salvadorʹs Gangs Target Women and Girls, Associated Press, Nov. 6, 2014).

As the State Department has found, rape, sexual crimes, and violence against women are significantly underreported because of societal and cultural pressures on victims and fear of reprisal, and the laws against rape ʺare not effectively enforced.ʺ Country Report at 7. Police corruption in El Salvador is well‐documented, including involvement in extra‐judicial killings and human rights abuses. See id. at 1. The judicial system is also corrupt. While the law provides criminal penalties for official corruption, ʺthe government d[oes] not implement the law effectively, and . . . officials, particularly in the judicial system, often engage[] in corrupt practices with impunity.ʺ Id. at 6. ʺLike Salvadoran society as a whole, law enforcement officials, prosecutors, and judges

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discriminate against women, reduce the priority of womenʹs claims, and otherwise prevent women from accessing legal protections and justice. This results in impunity for aggressors, which reinforces aggressorsʹ perception that they can inflict violence without interference or reprisal.ʺ Cert. Adm. Rec. at 300‐ 01.

The IJ observed that Hernandez‐Chaconʹs experiences were ʺgenerally consistent with the background materials she has submitted in regards to pervasive brutal attacks by El Salvadoran gangs.ʺ Id. at 149‐50.

. . . .

There is ample evidence in the record to support her claim [of political; persecution].6 Gangs control much of El Salvador, including the neighborhood in which Hernandez‐ Chacon lived. The law enforcement systems that would normally protect women ‐‐ police, prosecutors, judges, officials ‐‐ do not have the resources or desire to address the brutal treatment of women, and the Salvadoran justice system ʺfavors aggressors and assassinsʺ and ʺpunish[es] victims of gender violence.ʺ Cert. Adm. Rec. at 147. Yet, Hernandez‐Chacon testified that when the first gang member tried to rape her, she resisted ʺbecause [she had] every right to.ʺ Id. at 193. Three days later, when the same man and two other gang members attacked her, she again resisted, to the point where they beat her until she lost consciousness. She argues that the men targeted her for the second attack ‐‐ and beat her so brutally ‐‐ because she had resisted the advances of an MS gang member and they believed she needed to be punished for her act of defiance. Her now husband likewise stated in his affidavit that Hernandez‐ Chacon will be attacked if she returns to El Salvador because ʺ[s]he has managed to fight them off twice, but that just makes them angrier and if she shows her face again, I think they could kill her.ʺ Id. at 269.

 

At oral argument, the government forthrightly conceded that it was a ʺpermissibleʺ inference that Hernandez‐Chacon was persecuted for her feminist political ideology, though it argued that the record did not compel that result.

 

Here are some additional thoughts about the larger problem exposed by this case:

WHY “NIBBLING AROUND THE EDGES” BY ARTICLE IIIs WON’T SOLVE THE CONSTITUTIONAL & HUMAN RIGHTS DISASTERS IN OUR IMMIGRATION COURTS NOR WILL IT RELIEVE THE ARTICLE IIIs FROM RESPONSIBILITY

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Exclusive for Courtside

Jan. 29, 2020

The Second Circuit’s decision in Hernández-Chacon v. Barr exposes deep fundamental constitutional flaws in our Immigration Court system. While the instructive language on how many women resisting gangs could and should be qualifying for asylum (and many more should be getting relief under the CAT) is refreshing, the remedy, a remand to a failed and constitutionally defective system, is woefully inadequate. 

Indeed, just recently, a fellow Circuit, the Seventh, ripped the BIA for contemptuously disobeying a direct court order. Maybe the Board will pay attention to the Second Circuit’s directive in this case, maybe they won’t. Maybe they will think of a new reason to deny as all too often happens on Circuit Court remands these days. 

I actually have no doubt that the Immigration Judge involved in this case, who recognized the dire situation of women in El Salvador, and grated CAT withholding, will “do the right thing” and grant asylum with the benefit of Judge Chin’s opinion. But, today’s BIA has a number of dedicated “asylum deniers” in its ranks; individuals who as Immigration Judges denied approaching 100% of the asylum claims coming before them, some of them notorious with the private bar for particular hostility to claims from women from the Northern Triangle.

That appeared to be their “selling point” for AG Billy Barr in elevating them to the BIA: Create the same reliable “Asylum Free Zone” at the BIA that has been created by these judges and others like them in other parts of the country. It’s a great way to discourage bona fide asylum claims, which. appears to be the key to the “Barr plan.”

One might ask what Billy Barr is doing running something purporting to be a “court system” in the first place. Outrageous on its face! The short answer: Article III complicity and dereliction of Constitutional duty! But, I’ll get to that later.

What if a panel of “Three Deniers” gets the case on remand? Will Ms Hernandez-Chacon finally get justice? Or, will she and her pro bono lawyer Heather Axford once again have to appeal to the Second Circuit just to force the BIA to finally “get the basics right?”

Individual case remands, even published ones, fail to address the serious underlying issues plaguing our Immigration Courts and threatening the very foundations of our justice system: 1) lack of fundamental knowledge of asylum law on the part of the BIA and the Immigration Courts; 2) an unconstitutional system run, and sometimes staffed, by biased, unethical anti-asylum zealots who consistently send out false or misleading messages; and 3) the inherent unfairness in a system that denies adequate access to counsel and permits the use of coercive detention and outright statutory and constitutional abrogation to consistently harm asylum seekers and others seeking justice.

I. Glaring Lack Of Asylum Legal Competence & Expertise

The Second Circuit noted three major errors in the BIA’s analysis: 1) failing to recognize that the respondent was advancing a “political persecution” argument; 2) misuse  of the concept of “victimization” as a pretext for denying a potentially valid asylum claim; and 3) failure to recognize and address the respondent’s “imputed political opinion.”

None of these mistakes is new. Advocates would tell you that the BIA and Immigration Judges make them all the time.

Nor is getting these things right “rocket science.” Really, all it would take is a body knowledgeable in and committed to the fair and generous interpretation of asylum law intended by the 1951 Convention from which our law stems and reinforced by the Supreme Court in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca in 1987. The correct view has also been reflected in the Second Circuit’s own published jurisprudence, which the Board again ignored in this case.

For example, the Second Circuit instructed the BIA “that that the analysis of what constitutes political expression for these purposes ʺinvolves a ʹcomplex and contextual factual inquiryʹ into the nature of the asylum applicantʹs activities in relation to the political context in which the dispute took place.ʺ Castro v. Holder, 597 F.3d 93, 101 (2d Cir. 2010) (quoting Yueqing Zhang, 426 F.3d at 548).” 

This is hardly a new concept.  For example, Yueqing Zhang was published in 2005, a decade and a half ago, and reinforced by the Second Circuit on several occasions since then. Yet, both the BIA and Immigration Judges continue to ignore it when it suits their purposes. So, why would the Second Circuit believe that the Immigration Courts had suddenly “gotten religion” and would now pay attention to their admonitions on asylum law? 

As pointed out by the Second Circuit, the “mere victim” rationale, often insidiously used by the BIA and some Immigration Judges as an “easy handle” to summarily deny asylum claims, is a disingenuous hoax. All successful asylum applicants are “victims” even if not all “victims” necessarily qualify for asylum. Refugees, entitled to asylum, are a very large subset of “victims.” In this and many other cases, the BIA totally “blew by” the well established, statutorily required “mixed motive” analysis that is “Asylum Law 101.”

Also, the BIA’s failure to recognize and consider the well-established doctrine of “imputed political opinion” is inexcusable in a supposedly “expert” tribunal.

The “Article III blowoff” documented in this case is virtually inevitable in a system where the “judges” at all levels, are subject to arbitrary, unethical, and unconstitutional “performance quotas” and receive “performance evaluations” influenced by biased political officials with an interest in the outcome of cases. Indeed, former Attorney Session essentially told “his” judges that it’s “all about production.” Fairness, Due Process, and scholarship that individuals are entitled to before a tribunal simply don’t enter into the equation.

The Immigration Judge in this case has an outstanding reputation and actually did a careful job in many respects. A competent appellate tribunal would have caught the judge’s mistake on political opinion and remanded for further consideration. The case never should have reached the Second Circuit (think efficiency and why the Immigraton Courts have built unmanageable backlogs).

Moreover, an error like this by a competent and careful judge indicates the need for further positive guidance to judges on recognizing valid asylum claims. Why hasn’t the BIA published precedents reinforcing the very points made by Judge Chin in his Hernández-Chacon opinion and showing how they apply to granting asylum in real life, recurring situations, particularly those involving women from the Northern Triangle?

Instead, and in direct contradiction of the law and controlling jurisprudence, Attorney General Sessions in Matter of A-B- gave an unethical, misogynistic, and intentionally factually distorted suggestion that most women’s claims arising from persecution at the hands of gangs and abusive partners in the Northern Triangle should be “denied” on any available ground, whether warranted or not. Some Immigration Judges have correctly viewed this as “mere dicta.” But, others have viewed it as a potentially “career enhancing tip” about how “the big boss” wanted asylum seekers from the Northern Triangle treated: like dirt, or worse.

Dehumanization has always been a “key part of the plan” for Sessions, his acolyte Stephen Miller, and others of like mind in this Administration. Why have the Article III courts enabled, and in some cases approved, this neo-fascist approach to the law and humanity? That’s a great question to which the answer is not obvious. What’s the purpose of life tenure in office if it doesn’t promote courage to stand up for the rights of vulnerable individuals against invidious  intentional Government tyranny ands systemic abuses?

By ignoring the “pattern or practice” of failure by the BIA and the Immigration Courts to institutionalize the Second Circuit’s many years of prior commands for fair asylum adjudication, while ignoring the glaring, intentional barriers to fair judicial performance put in place by the political controllers of this system, the Second Circuit and the other Article IIIs simply advertise their own fecklessness and also, to some extent, intellectual dishonesty.

II. Institutional Bias Against Asylum Seekers

Both Attorney General Barr and his predecessor Jeff Sessions are biased “cheerleaders” for DHS enforcement; they are totally unqualified to act in a quasi-judicial capacity or to supervise quasi-judicial adjudicators. Their participation in and interference with fair and impartial decision making is a clear violation of Due Process and a mockery of judicial and legal ethics.

A private lawyer who so blatantly “thumbed his or her nose” at prohibitions on conflicts of interest undoubtedly would face discipline or disbarment. Yet, the Second Circuit and their fellow Circuits, as well as the Supremes, have failed to act on these obvious ethical improprieties by the DOJ and its leadership that have a direct negative impact on constitutional Due Process.

Under Trump, Attorneys General have issued number of anti-asylum “precedents” reversing prior law and practice. New Immigration Judges are selected by the Attorney General almost exclusively from the ranks of prosecutors and other Government attorneys. Those with private sector experience or experience representing migrants and asylum seekers are systematically excluded from the judiciary. How is this a fair system?

The Administration and DOJ spew forth an endless stream of anti-immigrant and anti-asylum, propaganda. They also use “performance work plans”and “numerical quotas” to drum into “judges” their responsibility to follow and implement “agency policies” rather than fairly and impartially consider the cases coming before them. This message certainly does not encourage fair and impartial adjudication. The “default message” clearly is “deny, deny, deny.”

One very fundamental problem resulting from this institutional bias against asylum seekers: The BIA’s (and now AG’s) “precedents” providing guidance to Immigration Judges fail to set forth rules and circumstances for granting asylum in meritorious cases. The need for such rules should be obvious from the Supreme Court’s 1987 decision in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca (directing the BIA to implement a generous interpretation of “well-founded fear” standard for asylum) and the BIA’s initial response to Cardoza in Matter of Mogharrabi (directing that asylum could be granted even where the objective chance of persecution is “significantly less than . . . probable”). Most, if not all, Circuit Courts of Appeals followed suit with a series of decisions criticizing the BIA for an “overly restrictive reading” of asylum law, not true to Cardoza and their own precedent in Mogharrabi, in many unpublished cases.

But, quite intentionally in my view, the BIA and Attorney General have now strayed far from these judicial admonitions and abandoned the BIA’s own precedent in Mogharrabi. Instead, today’s administrative “precedents” read like a “how to course” in denying asylum claims. Indeed, from examining these one-sided precedents (no individual has prevailed in an “Attorney General precedent” under this Administration — DHS wins every time), one comes away with the pronounced view that asylum could almost never be granted by an Immigration Judge, no matter how great the harm or compelling the circumstances.

I once participated in an academic conference attended by Circuit Court of Appeals Judges from across the country. Most were astounded to learn how many asylum cases were actually granted by Immigration Judges. From their review of unfailingly negative BIA decisions (skewed, of course, by the Government’s inability to appeal from the BIA, another problem with the current system) they had the impression that asylum was denied nearly 100% of the time (which actually does happen in some Immigration Courts these days, as noted above).

The only way to describe this is “gross institutional corruption” starting at the top with the DOJ and the Attorney General. Even now, under these intentionally restrictive rules, more than 30% of asylum cases are granted at merits hearings before Immigration Judges, although with the lack of effective positive guidance from the BIA those rates are highly inconsistent among judges.

Within the last decade, the majority of cases were actually being granted as the system was slowly progressing toward toward realizing the “spirit of Cardoza and Mogharrabi” However, that progress intentionally was reversed by improper political pressure to deny more Central American cases (a message that actually began under the last Administration and has been “put on steroids” by the current Administration).

III. An Inherently Unfair System

Notwithstanding the need for careful record building and detailed fact-finding as described by the Second Circuit, individuals are not entitled to appointed counsel in Immigraton Court. Through use of intentionally coercive and inhumane detention and “gimmicks” like “Remain in Mexico” the Administration strives to deny fair access to pro bono counsel and to prevent individuals from preparing and documenting complex cases.

The Article IIIs recognize the complexity of asylum cases, yet fail to “connect the dots” with the intentional systemic impediments to fair preparation and presentation thrown up by the government. The “hostile environment” for aliens and their counsel intentionally created in Immigration Court by the DOJ also works to discourage individuals from pursuing claims and getting representation.

The whole system is essentially a judicially-enabled farce. Does the Second Circuit, or anybody else, seriously think that Ms. Hernandez-Chacon would have gotten this far without the time-consuming and outstanding assistance of her pro bono lawyer, Heather Axford, of Central American Legal Assistance in Brooklyn, NY? She’s one of the top asylum litigators in the nation who used to appear before me in Arlington at the beginning of her amazing career!

How many of those “detained in the middle of nowhere,” told to “Remain in Mexico,” or, worse yet, orbited to “failed states” by Border Agents under bogus “Safe Third Country Agreements” have access to someone like Heather Axford? (It doesn’t take much imagination after reading the truth about how women are treated in El Salvador to see the outright fraud committed by the Trump Administration in entering into bogus “Safe Third Country” agreements with El Salvador and other dangerous, failing states). About none! How can the courts allow a system to keep out grinding out systemic abuse to vulnerable human beings without insisting that the essentials for fair hearings be put in place and maintained?

IV.  Conclusion

When obvious legal, analytical, and institutional problems remain unfixed more than a decade after they surfaced, the system is broken! The current Immigration Court system is patently unfair and unconstitutional. By ignoring the glaring systemic unfairness, Article III Courts become part of the problem and subject themselves to charges of fecklessness and dereliction of duty.

It’s long past time for the Article IIIs to take decisive actions to end the national disgrace and humanitarian disaster unfolding in our Immigration Courts daily. History is watching your actions and will be your judge! 

Due Process forever; Complicit courts never!

SEN. CORNYN (R-TX) OK WITH ETHNIC CLEANSING OF KURDS AS LONG AS NO AMERICAN GETS HURT — Genocide (Particularly On Former Allies) Can Get Messy, So Best Get Out Of The Way So You Don’t Get Splattered With Blood On Your Way Out!

Hayley Miller
Hayley Miller
Breaking News Reporter
HuffPost

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/john-cornyn-defends-trump-kurds_n_5db1a0f3e4b0131fa99a9fba

 

Hayley Miller reports for HuffPost:

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) defended President Donald Trump’s widely condemned decision to withdraw American troops from northern Syria, claiming it was an appropriate move if Turkey was “trying to ethnically cleanse” U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in the region.

“If Turkey was planning on coming into northern Syria and trying to ethnically cleanse the Kurds, and U.S. troops were caught in the middle, I am not completely convinced that it was a bad idea to get them out of harm’s way,” Cornyn told reporters Wednesday, reported The Dallas Morning News.

He added, however, that he wishes there had been “more consultation with Congress and others and our allies in the region.”

The Republican lawmaker’s comments came just hours after Trump announced he was lifting sanctions against Turkey, which agreed to a cease-fire against the Kurds in northeast Syria. Trump took credit for the deal, though Democrats and some Republicans say his decision to upend American foreign policy in the region enabled Turkey to launch a military offensive against the Kurds earlier this month.

Fighting between Turkey and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, the main U.S. ally in the fight against the self-declared Islamic State in Syria, has resulted in the deaths of dozens of people and the displacement of thousands more.

During the fighting, Turkish-backed Arab fighters killed Hevrin Khalaf, the head of a Kurdish political party. A militant group posted a gruesome video of her execution online.

Foreign policy experts warned Trump’s decision to essentially abandon the Kurds could lead to their genocide by Turkey, which considers them to be terrorist insurgents. The House overwhelmingly passed a resolution last week to condemn the president’s move.

But Trump patted himself on the back Wednesday, claiming the U.S. and “nobody else” was responsible for avoiding all-out war in northern Syria.

“We have done them a great service and we’ve done a great job for all of them,” Trump said of Turkey, Syria and the Kurds. “And now, we’re getting out. … Let someone else fight over this long-bloodstained sand.”

Cornyn told reporters Wednesday that things need to “play out a little bit” before he could say whether he felt Trump’s decision to lift sanctions was the right move.

Asked Thursday about his “ethnically cleanse” remark, Cornyn appeared to walk it back some.

“I wasn’t very clear,” he told HuffPost. “If the U.S. isn’t committed to stay in Syria, getting our troops out of harm’s way where they might be injured or killed during the inevitable conflict between the Turks and the Kurds was something I was concerned about.”

Igor Bobic contributed reporting.

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

Start a war, abandon your allies, give away their homes in a cease fire, protect the oil fields, lend a hand to Erdogan, Putin, and Assad, three of the worst autocrats around (but not as inept as “autocrat wannabe” Trump). Now that’s a foreign policy that the GOP can be proud of. 

Also, since we have declared Syria to be of “no particular concern” to us, for just whom are we “protecting” the Syrian oil fields: Putin? Assad? Erdogan? Iran?

And from whom? An ISIS that was once largely beaten but that now has been rejuvenated by Trump’s treacherous policies? 

PWS

10-24-19