PROFESSOR DANIEL PENA — Supremes Anti-Latino Decision In Jennings v. Rodriguez Threatens The Due Process Rights of All Americans — When The Thugs Come for YOU, Who Will Stand Up For YOUR Rights If YOU Stand By While Others’ Rights Are Trashed?

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/supreme-court-s-latest-immigration-ruling-formalizes-terror-against-latinos-ncna851966

Pena writes:

“The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Jennings v. Rodriguez on Tuesday is a bizarre and dark new development in the American experiment. Not only because it’s a breakdown of the court’s ability to properly interpret the constitution (as they formally institutionalize a de facto second class of citizens), but because it’s a dereliction of the court’s duty as a part of a system of checks and balances designed to protect the constitutional rights of people in this country, regardless of country of origin, from a tyrannical government that would subvert our founding document for political or racist ends.

This ruling only formalizes what many of us in the Latinx community have known for generations: that the perpetuation of systems and laws that instill fear in immigrants (detained or not) is a form of state-sponsored terror. Now the court is complicit and part of that terror. And as pathways to legal status for immigrants come under attack by the current administration, this kind of terror is increasingly designed to incarcerate people for no other reason than for their inability to access pathways toward legal status — which is how this ruling will likely be used by this current administration.

The court ruled in Jennings v. Rodriguez that all immigrants, even those with protected legal status or asylum seekers, do not have a right to periodic bond hearing after detention, which makes it possible for them to be detained indefinitely. The defendant, Alejandro Rodriguez, who was brought to the United States from Mexico as an infant and became a permanent legal resident, was detained for three years for joy riding and possession of a controlled substance; the ACLU was fighting for his right to a hearing.

 A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent. David Maung / Bloomberg Via Getty Images

It comes a day after another Supreme Court decision not to rule on the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which in effect leaves that program safe for at least another year. But while the ruling on DACA might give the impression of an impartial system of courts, the latter development undermines that illusion by giving this discriminatory Trump administration its seal of approval in the name of the law.

All three branches are now in sync with their consensus to terrorize detained immigrants, documented and undocumented alike. And the explicit message of this ruling against Rodriguez is that, no matter your legal status, the constitution does not work for you if you’re an immigrant. You can be extracted from the American fabric for seemingly arbitrary reasons, by virtue of that now-institutionalized second class status.

What we’ve seen is the majority of this court, our last branch of un-bought government, actively buying out of the idea of America as a melting pot, as a nation of immigrants who deserve certain unalienable rights, not unlike life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents serve an employment audit notice at a 7-Eleven convenience store on January 10, 2018, in Los Angeles. Chris Carlson / AP

This should be a wake-up call to anyone who thought (maybe still thinks) that they have nothing to fear because they are documented, or that they have nothing to fear because they’re not Latinx, or that they have nothing to fear because they are another type of immigrant, or they have nothing to fear because they’ve done nothing wrong. The ruling makes it possible to target, criminalize and then indefinitely detain someone for no other offense than being systematically denied a pathway toward legal status in the first place — or even if they did.”

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

Read Pena’s full article at the link.

I’ve pointed out before that it’s still not clear on what side of history this version of the Supremes stand. So far, as a group, they have shown little backbone or desire to stand up to the Trump Administrations’s all-out assaults on the Constitution, the “rule of law,” and human rights. That could be a big mistake, since the Trumpsters, to a man (not many women in the “land of misogyny”) have shown total disrespect and disdain for judges at all levels, particularly Federal Judges.

Latinos must get to the polls in larger numbers and “un-elect” at all levels a GOP that has largely gone over to a White Nationalist, anti-Latino racist agenda. Votes are power! That’s why the GOP cherishes voter suppression and gerrymandering so much.

PWS

03-04-18

 

WHEN EVERYTHING & EVERYBODY IS A PRIORITY, THERE ARE NO PRIORITIES — WHAT “GONZO” IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT IS REALLY ABOUT!

At CNN, the “Amazing Tal” has it all for you:

Happy Friday!
Hope you’re battening down the hatches during this Nor’easter.
You may have already seen, but wanted to send you my latest story this morning, a deep dive into immigration arrests.
Have a great weekend and stay safe!
Tal

http://www.cnn.com/2018/03/02/politics/ice-immigration-deportations/index.html

How Trump changed the rules to arrest more non-criminal immigrants
By Tal Kopan, CNN
A businessman and father from Ohio. An Arizona mother. The Indiana husband of a Trump supporter. They were unassuming members of their community, parents of US citizens and undocumented. And they were deported by the Trump administration.
It’s left many wondering why the US government is arresting and deporting a number of individuals who have often lived in the country for decades, checked in regularly with immigration officials and posed no danger to their community. Many have family members who are American citizens, including school-aged children.
President Donald Trump famously said in a presidential debate that his focus is getting the “bad hombres” and the “bad, bad people” out first to secure the border, but one of his first actions after taking office was an executive order that effectively granted immigration agents the authority to arrest and detain any undocumented immigrant they wanted.
Where the Obama administration focused deportation efforts almost exclusively on criminals and national security threats, as well as immigrants who recently arrived illegally, the Trump administration has also targeted immigrants with what are called final orders of removal — an order from a judge that a person can be deported and has no more appeals left.
In Trump’s first year, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 109,000 criminals and 46,000 people without criminal records — a 171% increase in the number of non-criminal individuals arrested over 2016.
The Trump administration regularly says its focus is criminals and safety threats, but has also repeatedly made clear that no one in the country illegally will be exempted from enforcement.
“We target criminal aliens, but we’re not going to exempt an entire class of (non)citizens,” Department of Homeland Security spokesman Tyler Houlton told reporters Wednesday.
“All of those in violation of immigration laws may be subject to immigration arrest, detention and, if found removable by final order, removal from the United States,” ICE spokeswoman Sarah Rodriguez added in a statement.
Critics say including people with decades-old final orders of removal as priorities is more about boosting numbers by targeting easily catchable individuals than about public safety threats.
“A final order of removal is absolutely not indicative of a person’s threat to public safety,” said former Obama administration ICE chief and DHS counsel John Sandweg. “You cannot equate convicted criminals with final orders of removal.”
Sandweg said that people with final orders, especially those who are checking in regularly with ICE, are easy to locate and can be immediately deported without much legal recourse. Identifying and locating criminals and gang members takes more investigative work.
There are more than 90,000 people on so-called orders of supervision who check in regularly with ICE officials, according to the agency. And there are more than 1 million who have removal proceedings pending or who have been ordered to leave the country but have not.
As a result of the change in ICE policy, headlines about heart-wrenching cases of deportation separating children from parents or caregivers have been a regular occurrence.
The story of Amer Adi, an Ohio businessman who lived in the US nearly 40 years, and has a wife and four daughters who are all American citizens, drew national media coverage last month. Through a complicated dispute about his first marriage, Adi lost his status and was ordered deported in 2009, but ICE never opted to remove him from the country. His congressman even introduced a bill to protect Adi, saying he was a “pillar” of the community, but last fall, ICE told Adi to prepare to be deported.
At a check-in on January 15, he was taken into custody and not allowed to see his family before being put on a plane back to his home country of Jordan on January 30.
“We shouldn’t spend one penny on low-hanging fruit,” said Sarah Saldana, the most recent director of ICE before Trump’s inauguration. “What we should be spending money is on getting people who are truly a threat to public safety.”

‘ICE fugitives’
The Trump administration has subtly blurred the distinction between criminals and those with final orders of removal, which is a civil, not criminal charge.
ICE has combined “ICE fugitives” — people who have been ordered to leave the country but haven’t yet — with convicted criminals who have pending criminal charges and reinstated final orders of removal, allowing the agency to say 92% of those arrested under Trump had criminal convictions or one of the other factors — when the number with criminal records is closer to 70%.
With an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US, ICE has typically had resources to arrest and deport only roughly 150,000-250,000 individuals per year — requiring the agency to make choices about who to prioritize to proactively seek out for arrest.
ICE says its mission is carrying out the law and that it “must” deport these individuals.
“The immigration laws of the United States allow an alien to pursue relief from removal; however, once they have exhausted all due process and appeals, they remain subject to a final order of removal from an immigration judge and that order must be carried out,” said Rodriguez. “Failing to carry out final orders of removal would be inconsistent with the entire federal framework of immigration enforcement established by Congress, and undermine the integrity of the US immigration system.”
Administration officials also argue the publicizing of these cases sends a message to would-be border crossers that undocumented immigrants are never safe in the US, even when sympathetic.
“If we don’t fix these loopholes, we’re going to entice others to make that dangerous journey,” ICE Director Tom Homan told the President at a roundtable earlier last month. “So it’s just not about law enforcement, it’s about saving lives.”

Limited resources
But Saldana and other former immigration officials question the prudence of going after that population indiscriminately, saying it diverts resources from more serious security concerns.
If 20 officers are assigned to identify targets with final orders, “those are 20 officers who won’t be out focused on finding gang members or criminals,” said Bo Cooper, a career official who served as general counsel of ICE’s predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
“When there are a finite amount of resources, choices you make come at the expense of other choices,” Cooper said. “It really is a significant policy choice.”
Sandweg said the Obama administration in 2014 changed its priorities to move away from those with old removal orders in order to give itself more resources to pick up targets from jails, which can be hours away from ICE offices, when they get word that a criminal could be detained on immigration charges.
Sandweg and Cooper noted that other law enforcement agencies also prioritize — the Drug Enforcement Administration doesn’t bother with low-level marijuana possession, but focuses on cartels, Sandweg said — and it’s a part of agency culture.
“Setting enforcement priorities is not micromanagement, that’s what every law enforcement agency does,” agreed Cooper.
As for whether ICE was handcuffed during the Obama era, Saldana said that even in Trump’s executive order, there is room for discretion.
“That’s silly,” Saldana said. “Can you imagine having 11, 12 million in the system? The cost would be extraordinary, so you have to make priorities and work that way. … You can’t sweep everybody into one category. Not everyone is a contributor to society, and not everyone is a criminal.”

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

Homan’s shtick about “saving lives” is as preposterous as it is insulting! The “dangers” of seeking to come to the US actually are well known by those making the journey. Whether they are educated or not, they are smart, brave, resourceful people — the kinds of folks we actually could use more of in America.

What Homan and others (including some of the jurists at all levels hearing these cases and getting the results wrong) fail to recognize is that the dangers of remaining in failed states controlled by gangs and corrupt politicos is much greater than the dangers of the journey and the chance of being returned. That being the case, folks have been coming and will continue to come, no matter how nasty and arbitrary we are and no matter how much we mock our Constitution, our own laws on asylum and protection, and the international standards to which we claim adherence.

Too many of those being returned were denied relief under arcane legal standards even when the judges hearing the cases acknowledged that they had established a likelihood of persecution or death upon return. But, they failed to show a “nexus to a protected ground” or “government acquiescence” as those terms are often intentionally restrictively defined by the BIA and some courts.

I know that I had such cases, and I can’t say as anyone ever understood why I was sending them back to possible severe harm or death. Homan and others like him don’t actually have to pronounce such judgments on other human beings face to face as do U.S. Immigration Judges. Neither do the Appellate Immigration Judges sitting in the “BIA Tower” in Falls Church, VA for that matter!

But, the DHS always has discretion as to whether to execute such an order. How on earth does sending productive members of our society and others who have committed no crimes back to be killed, extorted, raped, or forced to join gangs “save lives.” What total hypocrisy!

Indeed, the only “message” we’re actually sending to such folks is that they might as well join the gangs because their lives don’t matter to us. There will be a reckoning for such attitudes for Homan and others some day, even if its only that the judgement of history and the shame of future generations for their lack of empathy, intellectual honesty, common sense, and humanity!

We can diminish ourselves as a nation, but that won‘t stop human migration!

PWS

03-03-18

RIGHT ON: PLEASE, NO MORE UNNEEDED (& LIKELY UNQUALIFIED) IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AGENTS!

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=3a949d5d-7e98-4470-b733-ea9a25c5a389

From today’s LA Times Op-Ed:

“By Christine Stenglein and John Hudak
Customs and Border Protection last year awarded a $297-million contract for assistance in recruiting and hiring the 5,000 border patrol agents President Trump believes we need to combat “the recent surge of illegal immigration at the southern border with Mexico.”

Those bold numbers may please the Make America Great Again crowd, but it will be exceedingly difficult to find qualified agents, or to deploy them effectively since the border is actually quieter than ever.

Under the Clinton administration, it took 27 applicants to yield one Border Patrol officer. And the hiring ratio has gotten worse. In spring last year, when Customs and Border Protection requested bids for private contractors to help fulfill Trump’s order, it wrote that it now takes 133 applicants to hire one full-time employee.

A private contractor may improve on those figures by designing a new recruitment strategy and implementing it in labor markets that Customs and Border Protection hasn’t previously tapped. The contractor may not repeat the agency’s past mistakes, like spending millions on polygraph tests for applicants who have already admitted to disqualifying offenses like human trafficking. Still, it’s a tough task. The contractor needs to find men and women who will be willing to work in remote areas, can pass the physical fitness requirements and haven’t touched marijuana in at least two years.

But let’s imagine that Customs and Border Protection succeeds in hiring, training and equipping all 5,000 new officers and manages to hang on to the roughly 20,000 agents it already has (which hasn’t been easy up to this point). Are they as urgently needed as the executive order would have us believe? The best evidence available tells us the answer is “absolutely not.”

In 2017, the number of people apprehended at the border fell 26% compared with the previous year, and the totals haven’t been this low since the Nixon administration. The “recent surge of illegal immigration at the southern border with Mexico,” the president’s basis for his border security push, likely reflects only a temporary rise in apprehensions from 2015 to 2016. If you zoom out, that’s a blip in a long, downward trend, from more than 111,000 apprehensions in 2004 to fewer than 30,000 last year.

Besides, Customs and Border Protection itself doesn’t even seem to know where it would be optimal to deploy additional personnel or whether they’re needed at all. According to a special report from the Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General, “Neither CBP nor ICE could provide complete data to support the operational need or deployment strategies for the additional … agents and officers they were directed to hire.”

A suddenly larger law enforcement agency, with numerous new recruits and without a clear deployment strategy, isn’t just a financial liability, but a safety risk.

Another Homeland Security Inspector General report found numerous problems with DHS agencies keeping track of and securing their equipment. Customs and Border Protection, for instance, did not have an accurate firearm inventory and one agent left his gun in a backpack at a gym, where it was stolen.

Adding an enormous number of employees to an agency that faces administrative dysfunction and has no coherent plan to detail new agents will create a scenario in which costs will be high and benefits may be quite low.

There’s negligence and inefficiency, and then there’s actual malfeasance. In the spring of 2016, around the time Trump was starting to make inflammatory speeches about immigrants, the Homeland Security Advisory Council cautioned that Customs and Border Protection’s disciplinary process was “broken.” It urged the agency to hire an adequate number of internal investigators and described serious dysfunction in the handling of complaints and disciplinary cases.

For major areas of concern like domestic violence and alcohol abuse, it found that the agency lagged behind standard law enforcement practices. A host of harmful activities, from bribery to alleged sexual assault, have come to light and caused problems for Customs and Border Protection in the past.

The risk is that Trump’s hiring surge at the border will please his base, while accomplishing little and increasing the possibility of policy failure.

Christine Stenglein is a research assistant at the Brookings Institution. John Hudak is a senior fellow in governance studies at Brookings.”

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

Meanwhile, Head ICEman Tom Homan would like more agents so he could violate the Constitution by arresting and prosecuting local officials who refuse to take part in ICE’s “Gonzo” Immigration Enforcement program. That’s even though to date Federal Courts have unanimously found sanctions on states and localities for refusing to act as ICE enforcement agents unconstitutional.

DHS (much like the US Immigration Courts) is an administrative mess! DHS should be required to account for both their current use of enforcement personnel (including filling all current vacancies with qualified agents) and plans for future deployment before any additional enforcement agents are authorized.

As I have suggested, under the Trump Administration, DHS is being turned into an “internal security police force.” Today, they are treading on the rights of migrants, Latinos, and their supporters. Tomorrow, it could be YOUR rights at stake.

Tell your legislators NO ADDITIONAL DHS ENFORCEMENT AGENTS!

PWS

01-08-18

 

ICE Director Sarah R. Saldana Responds To Retired U.S. Immigration Judges’ Oct. 31, 2016 Letter Expressing Concerns About Immigration Detention Policy!

Here is Secretary Johnson’s response, written by ICE Director Sarah R. Saldana, to the Oct. 31, 2016 letter expressing concerns about detention policy written by a group of twelve retired U.S. Immigration Judges and Board of Immigration Appeals Members, including me.
Not really much new or unexpected here.  But, it was nice of Director Saldana to write such a lengthy reply and summary of the policies.

The Director attached the “Report of the Subcommittee on Privatized Immigration Detention Facilities” dated Dec. 1, 2016, which has previously been released.  I had  seen this document.  The most remarkable part is the “dissenting opinion” of Subcommittee Member Marshall Fitz of the Emerson Collective contained at FN 14:

“Separate views of subcommittee member Marshall Fitz on this recommendation:
Based on the review this subcommittee conducted, I respectfully dissent from the conclusion that reliance on private prisons should, or inevitably must, continue. I concede, as reflected in this recommendation, that overall enforcement policy, historical reliance on private prisons, and geographic concerns are presently driving reliance on private facilities. I also acknowledge that any shift away from such reliance would take years,carry significant costs,and require congressionalpartnership.As a result, I understand the position adopted by the s ubcommittee, but I disagree that these obstacles require our deference to the status quo.

First, in my estimation, the review undertaken by the subcommittee points directly toward the inferiority of the private prison model from the perspective of governance and conditions.To be sure, fiscal and flexibility considerations represented countervailing factors. However, on balance, my preliminary judgment, based on the evidence we actually gathered as part of this review, is that a measured but deliberate shift away from the private prison model is warranted.

Second, as the body of this report acknowledges, the short time line and tools at our disposal necessarily limited the depth of our review. As such, I emphasize the preliminary nature of my judgment above. I believe, however, that recommendation (1) likewise should have acknowledged that process constraints rendered any firm conclusion on the appropriate mix of detention models premature.

Third, a number of key issues that went beyond the scope of this review are too consequential and too integral to allow for a fully informed decision on federal versus private detention models. Ameaningful determination on the best detention model in light of all relevant factors demands deeper investigation. Any such investigation should consider a broader set of questions regarding the most effective and humane approach to civil detention as well as whether alternatives to detention could lead to diminished reliance on physical incarceration. Absent that type of thorough review, I cannot, in good conscience, agree that status quo reliance on the continuation of the private detention model is warranted or appropriate.

Aside from this fundamental question, I strongly concur in the remainder of the subcommittee’s recommendations regarding steps that should be taken immediately to improve the conditions, inspections, and oversight of extant facilities.”

Significantly, a substantial majority of the Committee that reviewed the Report and forwarded it to Secretary Johnson joined the dissent. Stripped of all the bureaucratic double speak, the Committee basically recommended that DHS get out of the private detention business.

The question is, with a change of Administrations in the offing, will anyone pay attention?  Perhaps.  Incoming DHS Secretary Gen. John Kelly impresses me as a thoughtful leader who does not want to spend his tenure fighting “wrongful death” and “substandard conditions” lawsuits, which is where this is going unless somebody in charge both adopts and expedites the exit from private detention.

Gen. Kelly also has a reputation as someone who was firmly committed to protecting human rights while in the military.  So, I also have to doubt if he wants to have his reputation suffer just to save a few bucks on civil detention (which seems to have been the traditional DHS mode of operation).  At least, that’s what I hope.  Only time will tell.

The full Subcommittee Report and the original retired judges’ letter are at the links below.

PWS

01/12/17

85436 Enclosure-Detenton Report

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/newsheadlines/archive/2016/11/01/former-bia-members-and-ijs-blast-refugee-detention-regime.aspx?Redirected=true