🇺🇸ROBERT REICH: THE REAL THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY IS TRUMP/MAGA BORDER BS 🏴‍☠️: ‼️”Since he entered politics, Donald Trump has fanned nativist fears and bigotry. Now he’s moving into full-throttled neofascism, using the actual language of Hitler to attack immigrants!”🤮

Robert Reich
Robert Reich
Former US Secretary of Labor
Professor of Public Policy
CAL Berkeley
Creative Commons License

Reich writes on Substack:

https://substack.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.pFgdPGiZaWguI8B4HaJ1QZ0qI3oVZMTyRpUJ6dNXc1I?

Friends,

The long-awaited bipartisan Senate deal on immigration contains no real reforms, such as a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. It’s all about “securing” the border.

pastedGraphic.png

Biden and Senate Democrats have caved to Senate Republican hardliners. Among other restrictions, the bill would make it much harder for people to apply for asylum.

On Friday evening Biden called the bill “the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country.”

Then Biden went further — endorsing a full border shutdown. He said the bill “would give me, as President, a new emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed. And if given that authority, I would use it the day I sign the bill into law.”

I very much doubt Biden would shut the border if he signs this bill into law.

So what’s going on here? The underlying politics here has nothing to do with funding Ukraine. It doesn’t have to do with reforming immigration. It doesn’t even have much to do with the practical challenge of securing the border.

It has everything to do with the 2024 election, in which border security has become a big issue.

The nation does have to take reasonable action to stem the illegal flow of immigrants. But Trump has stoked American’s fears with lies (see below).

Trump and Biden are engaged in a giant pre-election kabuki fight over the border.

Biden wants to take the border issue away from Trump and figures this bill will do it. Which is exactly why Trump doesn’t want the bill enacted. “As the leader of our party, there is zero chance I will support this horrible, open-borders betrayal of America,” Trump said on Saturday. “It’s not going to happen, and I’ll fight it all the way.”

Trump says he welcomes criticism from GOP senators. “Please, blame it on me. Please, because they were getting ready to pass a very bad bill.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, Trump’s lapdog-in-chief, says the bill is “dead on arrival” in the House. Besides, he now says, it isn’t needed because Biden already has all the authority he needs to close the border.

Um … just last year, Johnson argued that Congress must tighten immigration laws to strengthen the president’s hand. When he was president, Trump sought similar additional authority from Congress.

Meanwhile, House Republicans are about to begin impeachment proceedings against Alejandro Mayorkas, homeland security secretary, for allegedly being too soft on border security — even though Mayorkas worked with Senate Republicans to come up with this hardline border deal.

We need to deal with the border, but Republicans are now the ones sitting on their hands because they’re beholden to Trump. We also need to deal with immigration in a humane way by offering a broad and reasonable path to citizenship, but Democrats seem to have forgotten this basic goal.

The public, meanwhile, is utterly confused by Trump’s demagoguing. Here are Trump’s biggest lies, followed by the truth.

Trump claims Biden doesn’t want to stem illegal immigration and has created an “open border.”

Rubbish. Since he took office, Biden has consistently asked for additional funding for border control.

Republicans have just as consistently refused. They’ve voted to cut Customs and Border Protection funding in spending bills and blocked passage of Biden’s $106 billion national security supplemental that includes border funding.

Trump blames the drug crisis on illegal immigration.

Bull. While large amounts of fentanyl and other deadly drugs have been flowing into the United States from Mexico, 90 percent arrives through official ports of entry, not via immigrants illegally crossing the border. Research by the conservative Cato Institute found that more than 86 percent of the people convicted of trafficking fentanyl across the border in 2021 were U.S. citizens.

Trump claims that undocumented immigrants are terrorists.

Baloney. America’s southern border has not been an entry point for terrorists. For almost a half-century, no American has been killed or injured in a terrorist attack in the United States that involved someone who crossed the border illegally.

Trump says undocumented immigrants are stealing American jobs.

Nonsense. Evidence shows immigrants are not taking jobs that American workers want. The surge across the border is not increasing unemployment. Far from it: Unemployment has been below 4 percent for roughly two years, far lower than the long-term average rate of 5.71 percent. It’s now 3.7 percent.

Trump claims undocumented immigrants are responsible for more crime in America.

More BS. In fact, a 2020 study by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, cited by the Department of Justice, showed that undocumented immigrants have “substantially” lower crime rates than native-born citizens and legal immigrants. Despite the recent surge in illegal immigration, America’s homicide rate has fallen nearly 13 percent since 2022 — the largest decrease on record. Local law enforcement agencies are also reporting drops in violent crime.

Since he entered politics, Donald Trump has fanned nativist fears and bigotry.

Now he’s moving into full-throttled neofascism, using the actual language of Hitler to attack immigrants — charging that undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” and saying they’re “like a military invasion. Drugs, criminals, gang members and terrorists are pouring into our country at record levels. We’ve never seen anything like it. They’re taking over our cities.” He promises to use the U.S. military to round up undocumented immigrants and put them into “camps.”

The parallels with Nazi Germany are chilling. In 1932, the canny Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels called for “a thick wall around Germany,” to protect against immigrants. “Certainly we want to build a wall, a protective wall.”

Trump and his enablers want us to forget that almost all of us are the descendants of immigrants who fled persecution, or were brought to America under duress, or simply sought better lives for themselves and their descendants.

Immigration has been good for America. As the median age of Americans continues to rise, we’ll need more young people from around the world.

The central question shouldn’t be how to secure our borders. It should be how to create an orderly and humane path to citizenship.

Share

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Kabuki
“Kabuki Theater” with human lives! The REAL “national security threats” — Trump, Abbott, DeSantis, and their MAGA toadies like MAGAMike — subvert our democracy in plain view! 
ATTRIBUTION: Creative Commons 2.0

Lost in the overheated and too often misleading media hype of this issue is a simple truth: Congress and Administrations of both parties have failed to fulfill our Government’s duties under international and domestic laws (which are based on international requirements) to establish a fair, generous, expert, timely asylum adjudication system — one that complies with due process and actually gives asylum applicants the required “benefit of the doubt.”

Now, in a show of supreme political cowardice, egged on by the White Nationalist right and their lies, politicos of both parties and in all three branches of Government seek to cover up their failure by punishing and endangering the lives of their victims! The latter are legal asylum seekers — human beings — who overwhelmingly present themselves to authorities at the border in an orderly fashion to get a fair adjudication of their claims. Our Government routinely denies them that fundamental right through ridiculous delays, bad precedents, poor quality adjudications, underfunding, deficient leadership, and coercive gimmicks like bogus prosecutions, imprisonment, denial of access to counsel, and illegal and immoral family separation.

Meanwhile, Dems are failing to stand up for the human and legal right to seek asylum, which is being violated right and left and which the “Senate compromise” promises even more scofflaw violations of human rights and basic human dignity. 

We can diminish ourselves as a nation, but it won’t stop human migration — particularly forced migration!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever! MAGA Fascism Never!

PWS

01-30-24

🗽⚖️🇺🇸💡 BEATRIZ LOPEZ ON SUBSTACK: Biden & Dems Need Solutions, NOT Demagoguery: “Trying to out-Republican the Republican on immigration is the most asinine tactic that does nothing to galvanize the base or win over swing voters.“

Beatriz Lopez
Beatriz Lopez
Deputy Director
Immigration Hub
PHOTO: Immigration Hub

From The Narrative Intervention on Substack:

https://open.substack.com/pub/beatrizlopez/p/how-president-biden-should-message?r=1se78m&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

On Friday, President Biden put out a statement that had President Ronald Reagan rolling in his grave and Lady Liberty weeping on the New York harbor. He led not with the values of an Irish Catholic whose ancestors emigrated to Seneca Falls, but rather a tyrant who he defeated in 2020: “[The bipartisan bill] would give me, as President, a new emergency authority to shut the border down when it becomes overwhelmed. And if given that authority, I would use it the day I sign the bill into law.”

Biden’s close cadre of advisors, just like the emperor’s tailors, convinced him he should not drape his posture with the ethos and promise of a nation of immigrants, but rather nakedly and shamelessly attempt to scare people with a “tough act.”

As an unwavering Democrat, I have never felt more ashamed to call President Biden my president. That statement was absolutely heart-breaking and goes against everything we stand as a party and country. I refuse to be a bystander in the crowd watching the naked emperor as his tailors wager this deal and statement a political win.

First, let’s start with the so-called bipartisan deal. Let’s call it for what it is: a concession of Trump-era policies in exchange for foreign aid. Yes, Ukraine is important. And yes, addressing the U.S. southern border is equally as important. But none of these two issues should have ever been tied together. But here we are. And since we’re here, what we know through reports and statements by President Biden and Senator Lankford is that the new expulsion authority and other measures in the bill would not only exacerbate the situation at the border – not actually stop people from fleeing dangerous conditions and coming to the border – but also jeopardize the lives of vulnerable children and families while setting a point-of-no-return precedent that will give Trump the keys to Pandora’s box should he be re-elected.

So who is Biden winning over with the promise of shutting the border down? Independents? Democrats? This logic is based on the theory that being equally as “tough” as Republicans is a winning strategy. Trying to out-Republican the Republican on immigration is the most asinine tactic that does nothing to galvanize the base or win over swing voters. And I get it – many pollsters and Democratic operatives are quick to show that their tough messages resonate with swing or moderate voters. It’s easy to come to that conclusion when you’ve probably gone head to head with weak “progressive” messages and dismiss how it demoralizes the base. Here’s a real life example of what happens when you actually try it on for size: check out the muted reaction Biden received when he reiterated he would shut the border down in a speech to Democrats and others.

We’ve got two major problems that Biden’s close advisors are ignoring: bad policies and bad messaging. But I’m going to focus on messaging solutions as it will take big electoral wins and a public narrative shift to deliver a major immigration overhaul in Congress, which is what we really need to address the issue in the 21st century.

Follow the formula: (1) tap into voters’ nostalgia and shared values reminding them what immigration means to them personally and the country (think Reagan’s last speech); (2) pivot to galvanizing, simple and sensible solutions (path to citizenship, orderly and humane border security, smart technology and resources, lawful pathways for those seeking refuge and to meet America’s economic demands, etc.); and (3) directly contrast against Trump and Republicans (define them on the issue as cruel (family separation), impractical (wasteful border wall) and/or unwilling to deal in bipartisan fashion).

Use Trump and Gov. Abbott as your foils. They are gifts to President Biden, his campaign and Democrats in general. These two maniacs, one of whom is openly defying the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, are standing on the wrong side of history, willing to have blood on their hands and soil the values and image of America. This is Biden’s JFK moment who with dignity and courage challenged Governor Wallace even when public sentiment was divided. Bottom line – when you honor our founding principles of freedom, opportunity and the pursuit of happiness and stand up to tyrants, you always end up on the right side of history.

Saturate: repeat, repeat, and repeat the formula in remarks, online, ads and other forms of paid communications. Trump and the GOP are outspending and out-talking Democrats on this issue and it’s why we’re starting at a deficit on the issue.

The promise and action to deliver boldly and big. Immigration will always be a challenge if Biden doesn’t start laying the groundwork and ensure creative and courageous solutions such as (1) offering a path to legal status, within his authority, to Dreamers and long-settled immigrant families in the U.S. and (2) publicly working with willing governors and mayors across the country who either need the federal government’s help or are eager to welcome new immigrants who will invigorate their towns and cities and fill labor shortages. The Biden administration needs to go on offense, publicly and loudly.

Latinos and other mixed-status families are getting a bit exasperated with waiting for a path to citizenship. Biden needs to remind them that he hasn’t forgotten them. And instead of avoiding what’s happening in Democratic-led cities, Biden should embrace it as an opportunity for more bipartisanship and creative problem-solving that’ll meet the demands of cities and states in need of workers and consumers, such as Erie, PA and Utah. It’s a chance to talk “economy” and solutions – Americans love solutions!

It’s never too late to rectify the course. Biden and his tailors need to begin sewing back the fabric that’ll bring together his coalition of progressives, moderates and all those who do not want Trump and MAGA Republicans to return to office.

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

Great analysis, Beatriz! Sad, that nobody in power is paying attention. The “race to the bottom” on human rights and equal justice in America appears to be accelerating!🤮

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-29-24

🇺🇸🗽⚖️😎 THERE’S STILL SOME INSPIRING NEWS TO REPORT: 1) CHICAGO PASTORS WELCOME BUSSES; 2) GW LAW CLINIC STUDENTS HELP NEW ARRIVALS; 3) W&M LAW CLINIC WINS 27 CASES; 4) NDPA STAR KIM WILLIAMS, ESQ, TRIUMPHS OVER GARLAND DOJ’S “NEXUS NONSENSE” IN 1ST CIR; 5) HRF’S ROBYN BARNARD CALLS OUT BIDEN’S THREAT TO TRASH ASYLUM; 6) CEO BILL PENZY LIKES & APPRECIATES IMMIGRANTS!

🇺🇸🗽⚖️😎 THERE’S STILL SOME INSPIRING NEWS TO REPORT: 1) CHICAGO PASTORS WELCOME BUSSES; 2) GW LAW CLINIC STUDENTS HELP NEW ARRIVALS; 3) W&M LAW CLINIC WINS 27 CASES; 4) NDPA STAR KIM WILLIAMS, ESQ, TRIUMPHS OVER GARLAND DOJ’S “NEXUS NONSENSE” IN 1ST CIR; 5) HRF’S ROBYN BARNARD CALLS OUT BIDEN’S THREAT TO TRASH ASYLUM; 6) CEO BILL PENZY LIKES & APPRECIATES IMMIGRANTS!

 

  1. Pastors Welcome Busses

Rebekah Barber reports for religionnews.com:

https://religionnews.com/2024/01/17/chicago-pastors-help-the-city-grapple-with-flood-of-migrants/

Chicago Pastors Welcome
Locals and migrants attend a banquet at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago on Nov. 30, 2023. (Photo by Max Li)

(RNS) — Chicago was already facing a homelessness crisis before Texas’ Republican governor, Greg Abbott, began directing thousands of migrants entering his state to Democratic bastions that had declared themselves migrant-friendly sanctuary cities.

Since the transfers began in April 2022, more than 20,000 migrants, many of them destitute Venezuelans, have arrived, and many Chicagoans have expressed concerns that the city’s resources are being drained and have accused government officials of failing to communicate about the migrants’ cost and their fates.

At the same time, advocates for the migrants, especially community organizers in more vulnerable neighborhoods, have pushed back against attempts to pit two marginalized groups against each other. These groups have stepped up to support the new arrivals and in many cases have found allies in local faith leaders.

. . . .

Black said the majority of community residents want to find a way to both support the migrants and build support for a part of Chicago that has been historically underserved and underresourced. At the banquet at First Presbyterian, a speaker from Southside Together Organizing for Power, a community organizing group, talked about what it means to have Black and brown unity.

“It’s basically founded on this idea that there’s no scarcity,” Black said. “Not only is there enough for everybody — for the asylum-seekers, and the historically disenfranchised populations of South Side Chicago.”

He added, “We have so much more to gain from our unity than from the division which is being manufactured and orchestrated by interests that don’t want these communities to get the resources they need.”

This article was produced as part of the RNS/Interfaith America Religion Journalism Fellowship.

2) GW Law Clinic Students Help New Arrivals

From Professor Alberto Benítez:

Newcomer Fair at Langdon Elementary for families who have recently arrived from Texas and Arkansas via bus

I report that today Immigration Clinic student-attorneys Raisa Shah, Jennifer Juang-Korol, and I participated in the Newcomer Fair that the District of Columbia Public Schools sponsored at Langdon Elementary for families who have recently arrived from Texas and Arkansas via bus, primarily Venezuelans living in DC shelters. We shared immigration and social services information, GW swag, and met lots of cute kids. We were the only law school that participated. Please see the attached. 

Professor Alberto Benitez
Professor Alberto Benítez & GW Immigration Clinic Student-Attorneys Raisa Shah & Jennifer Juang-Korol Staff The Table @ Newcomer Fair!

3) W&M Law Clinic Wins 27 Cases

Professor J. Nicole Medved reports on LinkedIn:

Over the holidays, the Immigration Clinic received approval notices in TWENTY-SEVEN applications that we’ve filed in the last calendar year. 🎉  Among those 27 approvals were approvals for #asylum, #lawfulpermanentresidency, #DACA, #TPS, and #workpermits. It has been so exciting to see–and share–the fantastic news with our clients, students, and alumni who worked on these cases!

Clinic students prepare Temporary Protected Status and work permit applications. (Spring 2023)
Clinic students prepare Temporary Protected Status and work permit applications. (Spring 2023)

4) NDPA Superstar Kim Williams Triumphs Over Garland DOJ’s “Nexus Nonsense” In 1st Cir

From Dan Kowalski @LexisNexis:

Major CA1 Victory: Pineda-Maldonado v. Garland

http://media.ca1.uscourts.gov/pdf.opinions/20-1912P-01A.pdf

https://www.lexisnexis.com/community/insights/legal/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/major-ca1-victory-pineda-maldonado-v-garland

“Ricardo Jose Pineda-Maldonado (“Pineda-Maldonado”) is a native and citizen of El Salvador. He petitions for review of the decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) that denied his application for asylum and claims for withholding of removal and protection under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). We grant the petition, vacate the BIA’s decision, and remand for further proceedings consistent with this decision.”

[Please read the entire 31-page decision.  It is a solid beat-down for the IJ and the BIA.  Hats way off to Kim Williams and team!  Listen to the oral argument here.]

Kim Williams
Kim Williams, Esquire
Rubin Pomerleau PC
PHOTO: LinkedIn

5) HRF’s Robyn Barnard Calls Out Biden’s Threat To Trash Asylum

Robyn Barnard
Robyn Barnard
Associate Director of Refugee Advocacy
Human Rights First
PHOTO: Linkedin

Robyn writes on LinkedIn:

Have been thinking a lot about this statement & questioning how we got here. Anyone who works in this space knows just how complicated our laws & system are, the challenges global crises present, all compounded by recent attempts to totally destroy our immigration system. We know this is hard. However, the President has had at his service very smart ppl, experts, not to mention those in NGO space w decades of experience who have provided him reams of recommendation papers from before he was elected President, all wanting to help him to succeed at making the immigration system more efficient, more fair, but I’d guess most also came out of 4 yrs of Trump wanting to ensure we treat ppl w dignity & respect their basic human rights. If only he would listen.

How did the President go from vowing to “restore asylum” & “stop kids in cages” to essentially trying to out-Trump Trump? I wish we had a President who had the political courage to stand by immigrants, to stand in public & declare why detention, border walls, & summary deportations don’t work, & to invest in humane & smart solutions. The truly enraging thing about this is he will never win in his gross political posturing despite throwing migrants under the bus, or more aptly–literally to the cartels–the Right will never be satisfied & now he has put himself on record as in favor of Trump’s policies. 

Shame. Shame on whoever had a hand in this hateful declaration and shame on the leader who put his name to it.

6) CEO Bill Penzy Likes & Appreciates Immigrants

Penzys Logo
Penzys Logo
FROM: Facebook

Penzy, CEO of Penzy’s Spices in Wauwatosa, WI (my home town — graduated from Tosa East in ‘66) writes:

And despite all the Republican anger, it really is okay to say you like what immigrants do and have always done for this country. So much hard work. So much tasty food. What’s not to like? They need somewhere their hard work can amount to something, and we have plenty of space, and more work to do than we can do ourselves..

Immigrants give us the chance to be kind, decent humans. Let’s be kind, decent humans.

Thanks for caring enough to cook and caring about so much more.

You are awesome,

Bill
bill@penzeys.com

 ************************

Even in a time of “politicos’ bipartisan national fear-mongering, irresponsibility, and trashing of human rights,” courageous NDPA “freedom fighters” still stand up for human dignity and the right to asylum! 

Three cheers for the good guys! 📣📣📣

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-28-24

🗽🤯 ASYLUM SEEKERS & OTHER REFUGEES ARE FORCED MIGRANTS WHO MAKE OUTSIZED CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERCA ONCE ALLOWED TO WORK — They Can’t Understand Why Biden & Dems Are Abandoning Them By Giving In To GOP White Nationalists — Human Lives Shouldn’t Be Bargaining Chips! — Biden Vows To “Shut Down The Border,” But MAGAMike Says It’s “Not Enough” Cruelty,🏴‍☠️ As “Bipartisan Race To The Bottom” 🤮 Heats Up & Media Suffers Amnesia! 🤕

Border Death
Human lives and human dignity at our border have become mere “bargaining chips” and “collateral damage” to cowardly negotiators of both parties. Will history hold them accountable for their outrageous and immoral conduct? This is a monument for those who have died attempting to cross the US-Mexican border. Each coffin represents a year and the number of dead. It is a protest against the effects of Operation Guardian. Taken at the Tijuana-San Diego border.
Tomas Castelazo
n order to comply with the use and licensing terms of this image, the following text must must be included with the image when published in any medium, failure to do so constitutes a violation of the licensing terms and copyright infringement: © Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/23/us/politics/parole-immigration-biden-congress.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Zolan Kanno-Youngs reports for the NYT:

Artem Marchuk needed to escape Ukraine or die. He didn’t see any other options.

He and his wife and children had been living in Bakhmut, the site of the war’s deadliest battle. Even when they made it out of the city, nothing in Ukraine felt safe.

“My kids were very hungry,” Artem’s wife, Yana, said in an interview from the family’s home in Baltimore, where the U.S. government resettled them in 2022. “There was darkness everywhere.”

The Marchuks are among more than a million people whom the Biden administration has allowed into the United States over the past three years under an authority called humanitarian parole, which allows people without visas to live and work in the United States temporarily. Parole has been extended to Ukrainians, Afghans and thousands of people south of the U.S.-Mexico border fleeing poverty and war.

Now the program is at the heart of a battle in Congress over legislation that would unlock billions of dollars in military aid for some of President Biden’s top foreign policy priorities, such as Ukraine and Israel.

Republicans want to see a severe crackdown on immigration in exchange for their votes to approve the military aid — and restricting the number of people granted parole is one of their demands.

For Mr. Marchuk, the fact that a program that saved his family has become a bargaining chip on Capitol Hill feels wrong. Although the latest version of the deal would mostly spare Ukrainians seeking parole, he feels a deep sense of solidarity with other people — regardless of their nationality — who may be left behind if Congress imposes limits on the program.

Americans, he said, should welcome people like his family. Mr. Marchuk, a former technology in Ukraine, said he has found work helping other refugees with the advocacy organization Global Refuge, as well as driving for DoorDash, UPS and Amazon since he arrived in Baltimore.

“Refugees deliver these packages,” said Mr. Marchuk, 36. “American citizens who have an education,” he said, very often don’t want to work as drivers.

. . . .

The particulars of the deal in Congress are still being negotiated. A deal that is being discussed in the Senate seeks to reduce parole numbers by tightening immigration enforcement at the southern border.

That would not have a direct impact on the route that many Ukrainians took to America, since they generally do not arrive by the southern border. (Some Ukrainians do make it to the United States that way, however.)

But there is still deep uncertainty about whether the program will survive without changes.

Even some congressional Democrats who oppose substantially changing the parole program have acknowledged they may need to give in to some Republican demands to limit the program if they have any chance of passing the military aid package.

. . . .

As lawmakers debate the merits of the parole program, some immigrants in the United States say all the political talk glosses over the calamities in their home countries.

“People are dying left and right, being kidnapped and it’s just impossible,” said Valerie Laveus, who came to America from Haiti nearly 20 years ago and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2008. “I am concerned because I feel like a lot of times these people are having these conversations and they’re forgetting the human factor. They’re forgetting that they’re talking about lives.”

. . . .

Mr. Biden’s allies say restricting use of parole would very likely backfire.

“It means that people in desperate circumstances, who need protection, who need to leave, who need to flee, their options will be more limited, which increases the likelihood they choose the dangerous option of coming to the border,” said Cecilia Muñoz, one of Mr. Biden’s top immigration officials during the transition and co-chair of Welcome.US, an organization that helps Americans sponsor the resettlement of refugees to the United States.

Karoun Demirjian contributed reporting.

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

Notably, according to this article, Congress appears ready to carve out a “White Guy Exception” for Ukrainians arriving from Europe. So much for the idea that current immigration policy by both parties isn’t “race driven” — with Hispanics and Blacks generally on the short end of the stick. 

Remarkably none of the politicos “negotiating” away the lives of others have the guts to bear witness to the human pain, misery, torture, and death they are about to inflict on those seeking refuge at our Southern Border. The GOP recently did a disgusting “dog and pony” show at the border, but refused to meet, despite requests, with their intended human victims, those assisting them, and local humanitarian religious groups and NGOs. See https://immigrationcourtside.com/2024/01/11/%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f-expert-to-congress-fix-your-border-mess-stop-picking-on-asylum-applicants-ruth-ellen-wasem-the-messenger-do-they-really-think-that-raising-the-bar-will-dete/.

By contrast, high level politicos of the Biden Administration and Congressional Dems avoid the border like the plague, except for the few who represent border districts. They are not that much different from GOP nativists. They refuse to engage with border experts, those who have devoted their lives to assisting forced migrants at the border, and the migrants themselves, who certainly will face severe harm, even death, due to the cowardly “sellout” by Congressional Dems and the Administration.

Let’s be very clear about the documented consequences of eliminating asylum at the border:

NEW YORK – With Congress considering codifying additional policies that will trap asylum seekers in Mexico, Human Rights First today reports that it has tracked over 1,300 reports of torture, kidnapping, rape, extortion, and other violent attacks on asylum seekers and migrants stranded in Mexico since the administration’s asylum ban was enacted in May.  

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwifws7dj_yDAxUSEVkFHUZmC50QFnoECA0QAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fhumanrightsfirst.org%2Flibrary%2Fhuman-rights-first-details-violence-against-asylum-seekers-at-u-s-border%2F%23%3A~%3Atext%3DNEW%2520YORK%2520%25E2%2580%2593%2520With%2520Congress%2520considering%2Cstranded%2520in%2520Mexico%2520since%2520the&usg=AOvVaw0Q1cbvPBwyaGST5Aww5e_z&opi=89978449

Basically, those pushing to appease the GOP White Nationalist restrictionists at the border are knowingly and intentionally advocating for deadly human rights violations! How is that acceptable?

Foreign-born workers consistently have a higher labor market participation rate than native-born workers. https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-immigrants-are-in-the-american-workforce/. Consequently, there is little reason to doubt that new waves of migration ultimately will benefit the U.S., particularly the many U.S. cities, large and small, in danger of depopulation and “death.” Ironically, many of the localities with the most to gain from robust migration are in “red” states. https://apple.news/AQkO0JQjKS9aXF-V-RD9-_Q

Instead of planning to avoid these “ghost towns,” using the influx of individuals who seek to help us as an opportunity, we’re “strategizing” and spending huge amounts of money expelling, “deterring,” imprisoning, rejecting, dehumanizing, and even killing those who seek refuge!

There are legitimate issues as to how to “front” services for asylum seekers until they can obtain work authorization and find jobs. THIS, is where bipartisan cooperation, creative solutions, and resources could be focused, rather than exclusively on counterproductive and expensive gimmicks to punish, deter, and deny. But, there’s no chance of that!

Instead, in an example of how far the one-sided debate has departed from reality and human decency, Biden now vows to “shut the border” if Congress will only give him the authority! https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/01/26/biden-vows-shut-down-an-overwhelmed-border-if-senate-deal-passes/. But, that’s apparently not enough cruelty and xenophobia for MAGAMike and his White Nationalist insurrectionists! They seek eradication of the lives and humanity of anybody with the temerity to seek refuge in the U.S. 

Lost in this latest burst of bipartisan xenophobia are the “Dreamers” who are part of our nation’s future. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/01/26/congress-border-deal-daca-immigration-dreamers/. Although already contributing mightily to our nation’s success, they too are victims of the political cowardice and dehumanization that is now par for the course on both sides of the aisle.

And so it goes, ever onward and downward. The media has developed amnesia on the well-documented unmitigated disaster and cascade of human suffering that our nation’s most recent border shutdown generated. As stated by expert Aaron Reichlin-Melnick on “X:”

Will the DC press (not those on the immigration beat) continue to ignore the fact that the last time we “shut down the border” under Title 42, it did not work and in fact led to 15 out of 20 of the highest months for border apprehensions in the 21st century?

We don’t know yet who the “winners” of the 2024 election will be, other than traffickers, cartels, exploiters, private prison corporations, undertakers, and body bag makers! But, we already know the “losers:” asylum seekers, Dreamers, human rights, persons of color, and those brave souls who continue to stand up for truth and equal justice for all!

Dem politicos and the Administration seem to be counting on the view that the Trump GOP is so horrible and antithetic to democracy that Dems can afford to dehumanize migrants, ignore their supporters, and break campaign promises without consequences. Just what they are getting in return isn’t obvious. From an immigrants rights’ and humanitarian standpoint, it’s “zilch.”

With Dems supposedly in charge of the Presidency and the the Senate, why are they ready to gift GOP restrictionists with what many have characterized as a “generational chance” to destroy asylum, hamstring legal immigration avenues, and squander even more money on hyper-cruel, race-driven, “sure to fail” border militarization and human rights violations?

Talk about “selling your soul!” That appears to have become the Democrats’ mantra in 2024. Whether it will prove a successful political strategy, remains to be seen!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-26-24

📚 BOOKS:  “The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America,” By Saket Soni — Free Webinar!

Saket Soni
Saket Soni
Author
Creative Commons License

Professor Steve Yale-Loehr of Cornell Law writes: 

Join us for a free webinar Tuesday February 6 at 2 pm EST on Immigration Slavery in America: A True Story of Forced Labor and Liberation

Author Saket Soni and panelists will discuss his book The Great Escape, which tells the astonishing true story of a group of immigrants trapped in the largest human trafficking scheme in modern U.S. history. Weaving a deeply personal journey with a riveting tale of modern-day forced labor, The Great Escape — named a 2023 best book of the year by the New York Times, NPR, and Amazon — takes us into the hidden lives of the foreign workers that America relies on to rebuild after climate disasters. 

Saket Soni is a labor organizer and human rights strategist working at the intersection of racial justice, migrant rights, and climate change. Joining him on the webinar is New Yorker staff writer Sarah Stillman, who writes on immigration and detention issues. Cornell Law School professor Stephen Yale-Loehr will moderate the discussion. Among other things, the panelists will put this tale of human slavery into the larger context of our broken immigration system.

The webinar is cosponsored by the Cornell Migrations Initiative and the Cornell Law School Migration and Human Rights Program.

To register for this free webinar, go to https://ecornell.cornell.edu/keynotes/overview/K020624/ If you can’t make the live version of the webinar, still register to get the recording afterward.  

Feel free to forward to others.  

Stephen Yale-Loehr              

Professor of Immigration Law Practice, Cornell Law School

Faculty Director, Immigration Law and Policy Program

Faculty Fellow, Migrations Initiative

Co-director, Asylum Appeals Clinic                   

Co-Author, Immigration Law & Procedure Treatise 

Of Counsel, Miller Mayer

Phone: 607-379-9707

e-mail: SWY1@cornell.edu      

Twitter: @syaleloehr  

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

Undoubtedly, if the plans of a “bipartisan” group of legally and morally challenged politicos to effectively do away with our legal asylum system comes to fruition, it will feed the extralegal system run by cartels and smugglers, thereby leading to even more exploitation of migrant labor in America!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-24-24

 

⚖️😮‍💨 MR. LINCOLN 5, JEFF DAVIS 4 — Union Guts Out A Narrow Win Over Confederates Before Supremes — 4 Reb Judges Appointed By GOP Dissent! — The Erstwhile “Party Of Lincoln” Has Lost It’s Way!

Jay Kuo
Jay Kuo
American Author, Producer, CEO of The Social Edge
PHOTO: Facebook

https://statuskuo.substack.com/p/on-a-razors-edge?r=330z7&utm_medium=email

Jay Kuo writes in The Status Kuo on Substack:

On Monday, the Supreme Court lifted an injunction that had prevented the Border Patrol from cutting and removing concertina razor wire that the state of Texas had installed along a migrant crossing at the Rio Grande.

Federal officials view the razor wire as exceedingly dangerous because it could trap bodies in rapid flowing waters, leading to drownings. According to officials, last week three family members—a mother and her two children—died at the river in part because Texas guard and state troopers prevented the Border Patrol from reaching them.

The conservative Fifth Circuit had ordered the injunction put in place pending its final decision, keeping the razor wire intact. But a slim majority of the Supreme Court, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining the three liberals, overruled the panel.

At stake is more than whether the Border Patrol can safely do its job and help prevent deaths like those that occurred last week. Our entire federal system is premised upon the principle that the federal government has exclusive authority to enforce border policy. States like Texas should not have the right to run interference or act as if they are the border patrol.

And yet, four extremist justices—Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh—would have left the federal government powerless for now to remove a dangerous barrier illegally erected by Texas.

The latest battle over the border should be viewed within the broader question of what is the proper role of the states when it comes to immigration. And this isn’t the only battle that Texas Governor Greg Abbott and extremist Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton have picked to try and claim more of that power for the states.

Today, I’ll discuss how the Supreme Court came to review this case about the cutting and removal of razor wire at the border. Then I’ll zoom out so we can see how this fits into a larger challenge to federal authority over immigration.

pastedGraphic.pngSubscribed

Razor wire and the Texas federal courts

When Texas first erected razor wire at the river—the kind designed to catch clothing and tear flesh—it was roundly condemned by human rights organizations, and legal scholars quickly pointed out that Texas was acting extrajudicially. After all, at the border, it is the federal government that oversees enforcement, including what kinds of barriers to erect and how to treat and handle migrants. Many of the border crossings are by asylum seekers, and they are therefore there legally in accordance with international law.

Allowing Texas to insert itself as a state actor would upend all traditional notions of federalism and the limit of states’ rights when it comes to questions of homeland security. But a federal district judge and later the Fifth Circuit didn’t see it that way. On December 19, 2023, a panel in New Orleans temporarily barred Border Patrol agents from cutting or removing the wire in the area around Eagle Pass, with an exception for “medical emergencies.” This was a shocking opinion given its apparent disregard of settled law establishing exclusive federal power over immigration policies and execution.

U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued that the injunction barred border agents from doing their jobs, specifically, from having clear access to the U.S.-Mexico border and “reaching migrants who have already entered U.S. territory.” Moreover, the exception for medical emergencies was insufficient because it takes time to cut through the wire, and while the clock is ticking there is a “very real” risk of serious injury or death for those trapped.

Texas claimed that federal border agents were not actually apprehending and processing migrants even after they passed through the gaps in the wire that had been cut by the feds some twenty times. The state had property rights of its own, Texas argued, as well as an interest in stopping “deadly fentanyl,” human trafficking,” and to “minimize the risks to people, both U.S. citizens and migrants, of drowning while making perilous journeys to and through illegal points of entry.” (The fentanyl argument is a red herring; the vast percentage of fentanyl entering the country arrives not via migrants crossing the river at the border, which would be a decidedly foolish way to try and transport drugs, but through smuggling by U.S. citizens and legal residents.)

In January, Texas upped the stakes by moving to block federal agents entirely from the area where they normally launch patrol boats and conduct mobile surveillance. This contributed to the three family members’ deaths because fedeal agents had no clear access to the river. In fact, they couldn’t even determine whether a “medical emergency” was occurring, as Prelogar pointed out.

Prelogar won her appeal for the U.S. government and got the injunction lifted by the High Court, but by only a single vote.

The State of Texas keeps trying to enforce national border policy

Governor Abbott has a multi-billion dollar program in place called “Operation Lone Star” that includes massive allocation of personnel to the border, the erecting of illegal and often dangerous barriers, and most recently a new law that authorizes state and local law enforcement to arrest migrants crossing from Mexico.

This has set up yet another showdown with the federal government. That law goes into effect in March, and it is seen as a test case to challenge a 2012 case, Arizona v. United States, that narrowly left the power to determine immigration policy to the federal government, not the states.

Texas and Louisiana already lost a case where they had challenged the Biden administration’s immigration guidelines and its deportation policies. Those guidelines had been halted nationwide by a federal judge in Texas, who ruled they violated federal law. In that case, by a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court initially and rather alarmingly had allowed the injunction to remain in place. But ultimately it ruled 8-1 in June of 2023 against Texas and Louisiana, with only Justice Alito in dissent, reaffirming the federal government’s central role on matters of immigration policy.

Where things go from here

Governor Abbott and state Attorney General Paxton remain keen to find where the new conservative majority on SCOTUS might rule their way. So they keep pushing and testing the limits. In the razor wire case, while there’s no way to know why four extremist justices dissented from the lifting of the injunction—and it conceivably could have been because the full matter will be taken up shortly anyway by the Fifth Circuit in February—the impression it has left is unmistakable.

As CNN legal analyst and University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck observed, “Whatever one thinks of current immigration policy, it ought not to be that controversial that states cannot prevent the federal government from enforcing federal law—lest we set the stage for Democratic-led states to similarly attempt to frustrate the enforcement of federal policies by Republican presidents.” He added, “That four justices would still have left the lower-court injunction in place will be taken, rightly or wrongly, as a sign that some of those longstanding principles of constitutional federalism might be in a degree of flux.”

In response to the loss before the Supreme Court, a spokesman for Abbott put out a statement claiming that the “absence of razor wire and other deterrence strategies encourages migrants to make unsafe and illegal crossings between ports of entry.” He added that the governor “will continue fighting to defend Texas’ property and its constitutional authority to secure the border.”

But this assertion about unsafe crossings was disputed by federal officials, underscoring the need for a single government policy. Said a White House spokesperson, “Enforcement of immigration law is a federal responsibility. Rather than helping to reduce irregular migration, the State of Texas has only made it harder for frontline personnel to do their jobs and to apply consequences under the law. We can enforce our laws and administer them safely, humanely, and in an orderly way.”

This was for now only a battle over a temporary injunction. The Fifth Circuit will next consider the full case in February, incluing whether to lift the injunction permanently. But it will do so with an understanding that five SCOTUS justices view Texas as unlikely to succeed on the merits. An appeal back up to the Supreme Court is likely, no matter which side prevails at the appellate level.

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

Texas’s legal argument was frivolous. The vote at the Supremes should have been 9-0. That it wasn’t should make us all fear for our country’s future as a nation that operates under the rule of law!

Jeff Davis
Jefferson Davis
Racist, traitor, insurrectionist
President of Confederate Stares of America
Public Realm
 John C. Calhoun
John C.Calhoun
White Supremacist, racist, nullifier
U.S. Vice President
Public Realm

Jeff Davis and John C. Calhoun would be proud of the dissenters — although, ironically, those two “nullifiers” wouldn’t even recognize one of the dissenters, Justice Thomas, as a “person” with any rights at all, let alone the ability to sit on our highest Federal Court! Remarkably, despite claiming to be a student of history, Thomas was unable to connect the dots between Calhoun’s and Davis’s rebellious, racist, dehumanization of African Americans and Greg Abbot’s rebellious, racist, dehumanization of legal asylum seekers of color!

The Federal Government’s authority to stop State Governments seeking to nullify and deny Federal authority matters! That’s particularly true when those acts of nullification are based on racial animus! That today’s righty-dominated Supremes won’t unite behind this straightforward principle of Federalism is a blow to equal protection under the Constitution!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-24-23 

🤯 MORE GOP BORDER BS EXPOSED: TRUMP’S “NEW AMERICAN GULAG:” ☠️ Incredibly Expensive, Intentionally Cruel, Basically Ineffective!

David J. Bier
David J. Bier
Associate Director of Immigration Studies
Cato Institute
PHOTO: Cato Institute

https://www.cato.org/blog/trumps-detention-surge-failed-significantly-increase-removals

David J. Bier writes for Cato Institute:

President Biden is asking Congress for $13.6 billion to fund border enforcement operations, a significant portion of which will go to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain more immigrants. This strategy is reminiscent of President Trump’s administration, which also poured resources into ICE detention in 2018 and 2019, but that effort produced very little change in the number of ICE removals—the stated goal for both Trump and Biden.

. . . .

In fact, President Biden is proposing to increase ICE detention by only 9,000 beds, from the current 37,000 to 46,000. The federal government should detain and deport individuals who pose national security and public safety threats to the United States, but it should not spend taxpayer dollars on useless anti‐ immigrant theater. Moreover, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties has found that ICE detention sites routinely mistreat their detainees in ways that are “barbaric,” and there is no reason to expose anyone unnecessarily to this type of treatment.

A more effective approach to address the border issue is to facilitate legal immigration: let people come legally. This approach has been demonstrated to work, would reduce government expenditures, and make the immigration process more orderly.

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

Read David’s full article, with charts and data, at the above link.

As David points out, the  “New American Gulag” is bad for our nation and humanity. Unhappily, though, it’s good for the corporations who run private prisons. They also provide jobs in out of the way places where migrants are stashed. And, they contribute money and lobby politicos of both parties. That’s why human rights lose out almost every time in the immigration debate. 

Immigration enforcement is an “industry” where failure = success! The more detention, apprehension, and deportation fail, the greater demand there is by politicos for more of it!

You can bet that when the coming waves of “enhanced” repression and human rights violations predictably fail, there will be demands for even harsher and more expensive enforcement, imprisonment, and deportations to deadly places!

It’s a dangerous, degrading, wasteful cycle that America just can’t seem to break. There are too many interests that see the human and fiscal misery of the “Gulag” as a profit center or a political advantage and therefore are disinterested in what works or the common good.

Bullying
Even some Dems find that joining the white nationalist bullies in degrading and dehumanizing migrants of color is a “better political strategy” than standing up for the human rights of those who can’t vote!
Bully – The Noun Project icon from the Noun Project
Date 18 December 2017
This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication

As my friend Dan Kowalski often says, “the cruelty is the point.” Dehumanization, degradation, and gratuitous abuse of migrants of color is both highly profitable and politically advantageous for those on the right. So much so, that often even Democrats and some so-called “liberals” are afraid to oppose it and find their best “strategy” is to align with or enable the playground bullies! After all, they figure, it’s “only migrants from s—-hole countries whose lives and humanity are at stake.” Nothing to be gained from defending vulnerable persons!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-22-24

🇺🇸🗽⚖️👏 ROBERT REICH EXPOSES THE GOP’S BIG LIES ABOUT THE BORDER!

Robert Reich
Robert Reich
Former US Secretary of Labor
Professor of Public Policy
CAL Berkeley
Creative Commons License

“The GOP’s five biggest border lies debunked!” Here’s the video:

https://youtu.be/vJwom3uYyV8?si=adufn9c400aRzSFK

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

Unfortunately, the GOP’s “big lie campaign” works! Truth, by contrast, apparently has little power to persuade. 

Heck, 14 so-called “Democrat” Reps voted for the GOP’s disingenuous White Nationalist border agenda! https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/01/17/congress/house-gop-biden-border-rebuke-dems-00136221.

That’s something for human rights activists and progressives to remember when some of these same spineless folks pelt your inbox with requests for your hard-earned dollars and your vote to help them save democracy — a democracy that they and their GOP nativist buddies don’t really believe in or defend!

And, it’s not like the Administration can explain their border policies either! They would just like to change the topic. Biden won’t defend his own policies and is looking to cut a deal with the GOP to trade the lives and human rights of asylum seekers for bombs and guns for Israel and Ukraine! See https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-says-senate-may-come-border-deal-early-week-rcna134832.

Another example of truth losing out: Despite irrefutable evidence to the contrary, a substantial majority of GOP voters believe Trump’s “stolen election” lies. https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/70-percent-republicans-falsely-believe-stolen-election-trump/. And, whether or not they actually believe Trump’s falsehoods, almost no GOP office-holders, at any level, have the guts to challenge his absurdist claims.

Indeed, in one of the very few documented examples of voting irregularities, a Virginia county shorted President Biden more than 1,000 votes which would have increased his margin of victory over Trump. See https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwin8b6Rn-yDAxUOFVkFHVOyAeUQFnoECBAQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fapnews.com%2Farticle%2Fvirginia-election-errors-biden-trump-6555f052332d06c83ef797852f81fa72&usg=AOvVaw0j63WbXyd0xLTmDhe0Lz3f&opi=89978449.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-20-24

🗽⚖️ AS CONGRESS & ADMINISTRATION DITHER OVER GOP’S OUTRAGEOUS NATIVIST DEMANDS, LONG OVERDUE DUE PROCESS & STRUCTURAL REFORMS LANGUISH, LEAVING ASYLUM-SEEKING REFUGEES TWISTING IN THE WIND! — A Report On The Ever Growing EOIR Backlog From AP’s Giovanna Dell’Orto!

Giovanna Dell’Orto!
Giovanna Dell’Orto
Journalist, Global Region
Associated Press
PHOTO: X.com

 

Giovanna writes:

https://apnews.com/article/immigration-asylum-border-courts-deportation-miami-56098ced64bf136172f0224113dabeb6

BY GIOVANNA DELL’ORTO

Updated 8:32 AM EST, January 15, 2024

Share

MIAMI (AP) — Eight months after crossing the Rio Grande into the United States, a couple in their 20s sat in an immigration court in Miami with their three young children. Through an interpreter, they asked a judge to give them more time to find an attorney to file for asylum and not be deported back to Honduras, where gangs threatened them.

Judge Christina Martyak agreed to a three-month extension, referred Aarón Rodriguéz and Cindy Baneza to free legal aid provided by the Catholic Archdiocese of Miami in the same courthouse — and their case remains one of the unprecedented 3 million currently pending in immigration courts around the United States.

Fueled by record-breaking increases in migrants who seek asylum after being apprehended for crossing the border illegally, the court backlog has grown by more than 1 million over the last fiscal year and it’s now triple what it was in 2019, according to government data compiled by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

Judges, attorneys and migrant advocates worry that’s rendering an already strained system unworkable, as it often takes several years to grant asylum-seekers a new stable life and to deport those with no right to remain in the country.

. . . .

Experts like retired judge Paul Schmidt, who also served as government immigration counsel while the last major reform was enacted nearly forty years ago, say the broken system can only be fixed with major policy changes. An example would be allowing most asylum cases to be solved administratively or through streamlined processes instead of litigated in courts.

“The situation has gotten progressively worse since the Obama administration, when it really started getting out of hand,” said Schmidt, who in 2016, his last year on the bench, was scheduling cases seven years out.

. . . .

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

At the above link, read Giovanna’s excellent full article, based on interviews with those who actually are involved in trying to make this dysfunctional system function. Thanks, Giovanna, for shedding some light on the real, potentially solvable, “human rights crisis” enveloping and threatening the entire U.S. legal system. Contrary to “popular blather,” fulfilling our legal obligations to refugees is not primarily a “law enforcement” issue and won’t be solved by more border militarization and violations of individual rights of asylum seekers and other migrants!

There are lots of ways to start fixing this system! Gosh knows, most of them have been covered here on Courtside, sometimes several times, and they are all publicly available on the internet with just a few clicks. See, e.g., 

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2024/01/11/%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f-expert-to-congress-fix-your-border-mess-stop-picking-on-asylum-applicants-ruth-ellen-wasem-the-messenger-do-they-really-think-that-raising-the-bar-will-dete/

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2023/12/19/%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f%f0%9f%a4%af%f0%9f%91%a9%f0%9f%8f%bd%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f%f0%9f%91%a8%f0%9f%8f%bb%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f-as-garlands-backlog-hits-3-million-way-past-time-to-clean/.

The “debate” on the Hill defines “legislative malpractice!” The voices of legal integrity, experience, and practicality aren’t being heard! Also, lots of great ideas from experts on fixing EOIR are stuffed in the “Biden Transition Team” files squirreled away in some basement cubbyhole at Garland’s DOJ.

But most politicos aren’t interested in listening to the experts, nor do they seem motivated to understand the real human problems at the border, in the broken Immigration Courts, and how many of the things they are considering will make the situation worse while empowering smugglers and cartels! Those are real human corpses piling up along the border, carried out of immigration prisons, being abused in Mexico, and floating in the river — mostly due to the brain-dead “enforcement only” policies now being given an overdose of steroids by congressional negotiators.

So, things just keep deteriorating. Many in the backlog who deserve a chance at a permanent place in our society, and the ability to contribute to their full abilities and potential, remain in limbo! That’s bad for them and for us as a society!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-16-24

⚠️ STRONG ECONOMY, LOW UNEMPLOYMENT, RISING WAGES, FALLING INFLATION — WITH NO REAL ISSUES & NO POSITIVE ACHIEVEMENTS, GOP’S 2024 MAGA CAMPAIGN FOCUSES ON LIES & HATE DIRECTED @ MIGRANTS! — Here’s The Truth About The Border & Immigration We Need To Keep Emphasizing!

Stephen Miller Monster
This guy’s ugly presence and vile racist views hang over the 2024 election campaign and Congressional negotiations. Why? Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com

From Popular Information/Substack:

Chicago in January with flip flops

JUDD LEGUM, TESNIM ZEKERIA, AND REBECCA CROSBY
JAN 4

Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) says he has transported 95,000 migrants from the Texas border to New York, Washington, DC, and other cities. On New Year’s Eve, Abbott flew hundreds of migrants — including many children — to the Rockford airport in Illinois, 30 miles outside of Chicago. It was snowing upon their arrival, and some of the migrants had no coats or shoes. Others were wearing flip-flops. The migrants were then loaded onto buses chartered by Abbott and dropped off in various suburbs.

Abbott says that he is transporting migrants to “sanctuary cities” as punishment for the cities’ permissive policies. A “sanctuary city” is a derisive term used by the right to describe a city that chooses not to volunteer local law enforcement resources to assist federal immigration agents. But in this case, the issue is largely irrelevant. The overwhelming majority of people being used as pawns by Abbott are in the United States legally.

One approach to deterring migrants is ignoring human rights and making the ordeal as traumatic as possible. That appears to be Abbott’s strategy. But it is not the law.

The Refugee Act of 1980, which passed Congress unanimously, gives migrants inside the United States the right to claim asylum based on “a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” It was enacted “in part to make amends for the country’s shameful refusal to accept Jewish refugees during the Holocaust.”

Previously, most people seeking to cross the southern border of the United States came from Mexico. They were generally seeking seasonal work inside the United States and, therefore, sought to evade detection by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). But beginning in 2010, there was an influx of migrants from Central America fleeing gang violence, racial discrimination, and extreme poverty. More recently, political and economic disruption has prompted an increase in migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Haiti. These new migrants are seeking legal asylum and want to present themselves to border agents — not evade them.

Migrants are being transported by Abbott to places where housing is expensive and in short supply. Most asylum-seekers would like to work to support their families, but the law does not allow them to receive a work permit for 180 days. Because of bureaucratic delays, asylum-seekers often wait a year or more before they are able to work legally.

Abbott also says his efforts are in protest of President Joe Biden’s “open border policies.” Biden has not opened the border. He did recently repeal Title 42, the Trump-era program that denied migrants the right to seek asylum, citing the public health emergency created by the COVID pandemic. Title 42 was legally questionable from the outset, but its continued use after other pandemic-related restrictions were lifted was indefensible. Title 42 also encouraged repeated border crossings. After Title 42 was imposed, “migrant encounters reported by CBP increased every month for 15 straight months.” Under Title 42, many migrants were deported immediately, and no record was created. This meant there was an incentive for migrants to attempt to cross the border again and again until they were successful.

Despite the rhetoric of Abbott and other prominent Republican officials, Biden has taken a hard line against migrants. Some advocates believe that Biden’s efforts to deter migrants from crossing the southern border have exceeded his legal authority.

The truth about Biden’s immigration policy

During his campaign for president in 2020, Biden vowed to undo Trump-era immigration policies. His promises included not building “another foot of wall” on the border and a pledge to stop using private prisons as immigration detention centers. On day one of his presidency, Biden proposed legislation “to restore humanity and American values to our immigration system.” His plan, known as the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, would have created pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, increased assistance to Central America, and strengthened oversight and accountability of border operations.

The bill, however, died in Congress. Since then, Biden has only managed to make modest changes to immigration — like overruling Trump’s Muslim Ban and creating a task force to reunify separated migrant families. For the most part, experts say, Biden has continued many of Trump’s policy decisions.

Earlier this year, for example, Biden imposed new restrictive rules for asylum seekers who are not from Mexico. Dubbed by critics as the “Asylum Ban,” the rule assumes most migrants are ineligible for asylum and were similar to ones previously proposed (but never implemented) by Trump. In most cases, migrants will only be considered for asylum if they make an appointment in advance through a smart phone app, CBP One. There are far more people seeking asylum each day than appointments available through the app. In October 2023, the Biden administration announced that it was waiving 26 federal laws to construct up to 20 miles of the border wall in Texas.

A Washington Post analysis found that “nearly 18,000” family members were deported in fiscal year 2023 – about 3,000 more than were deported under Trump in fiscal year 2020. Since Biden took office, the number of migrants detained by ICE has also more than doubled. The majority of these people, the ACLU says, are held in private detention facilities. According to the group, the share of migrants detained in facilities “owned or operated by private prison corporations” has increased under Biden. In some instances, the administration has even kept open detention facilities “that its own oversight agencies have recommended for closure in light of abusive conditions and safety risks.”

Last month, immigration advocacy groups alleged in a federal complaint that officials have “forced asylum seekers to remain in CBP custody in open-air detention sites along the U.S.-Mexico border in California.” The group accuses CBP agents of forcing migrants to wait in “dangerous, exposed conditions” and “failing to provide the adequate food, water, sanitation, shelter, and medical care required under the law.” So far, at least one migrant has died while waiting outside.

Texas passes its own immigration law

On December 18, Abbott signed a law, Senate Bill 4 (SB 4), that will allow state law enforcement to arrest migrants in Texas. The new state law would make it illegal to cross into Texas from Mexico without using an official port of entry. This practice is already illegal under federal law. But now state law enforcement officers will be permitted to arrest individuals based on their suspected immigration status.

Migrants who violate SB 4 could be “charged with a Class B misdemeanor, which carries a punishment of up to six months in jail.” Repeat offenders could face a second-degree felony charge, which carries a prison sentence of up to 20 years. Charges may be dropped by a judge if the individual agrees to return to Mexico. The law is scheduled to take effect on March 5.

SB 4 includes exceptions for migrants in “public or private schools; churches and other places of worship; health care facilities; and facilities that provide forensic medical examinations to sexual assault survivors,” but does not protect those on college or university campuses. The law does not require that law enforcement officers complete any additional training on immigration law, “despite the fact it would authorize them to quickly make decisions about a person’s immigration status.”

Opponents argue that SB 4 is unconstitutional because the federal government, not Texas, is responsible for enforcing immigration laws. On December 28, the Justice Department sent a letter to Abbott stating that SB 4 “violates the United States Constitution.” Yesterday, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Texas and Abbott. The lawsuit states that “Texas cannot run its own immigration system” and that SB 4 “intrude[s] on the federal government’s exclusive authority to regulate the entry and removal of noncitizens, frustrate[s] the United States’ immigration operations and proceedings, and interfere[s] with U.S. foreign relations.”

The lawsuit cites Arizona v. United States, a 2012 Supreme Court case in which the Court struck down aspects of a similar Arizona law that aimed to establish immigration enforcement at the state level. In the case, the Court “declared most of [the law] unconstitutional under the federal government’s preemptive power over immigration.”

In response to the December letter, Abbott posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “The Biden Admin. not only refuses to enforce current U.S. immigration laws, they now want to stop Texas from enforcing laws against illegal immigration,” Abbott said in the post. According to NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth, when signing SB 4 into law, Abbott said, “We think that Texas already has a constitutional [right] to do this but we also welcome a Supreme Court decision that would overturn the precedent set in the Arizona case.”

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HISTORICAL NOTE: The article states that the Refugee Act of 1980 “passed Congress unanimously.” But, that isn’t completely accurate.

There was indeed very strong bipartisan support for that Act. It passed the Senate, 88-0. 

A different version of the bill overwhelmingly passed the House, 328-47. Therefore, a Conference Committee was formed to resolve differences.

The Conference Committee report largely adopted the Senate version. The Conference bill unanimously passed the Senate again. But, the vote in the House was closer, 207-192, with 34 Representatives abstaining.

The above summary was reconstructed from the outstanding historical article by refugee guru Professors Deborah Anker and Michael Posner in the San Diego Law Review (1981) with an assist from my own recollection of events in which I long ago participated. https://digital.sandiego.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1735&context=sdlr.

Another helpful resource that I consulted is Ballotpedia. 

https://ballotpedia.org/Refugee_Act_of_1980.

The Popular Information article reprinted above does very accurately set forth the lies, misinformation, and invidious intent behind the GOP’s attack on and attempt to dehumanize legal asylum seekers! 

When a party has no issues, no accomplishments, and no plans for governing in a responsible way, “ginning up” hate, resentment, and “revenge” with lies, misrepresentations, and myths becomes a “strategy.” And somehow, the mainstream media largely falls for it.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-06-24

⚖️🗽👏 ESTHER NIEVES OF WICKER PARK, IL “GETS” THE MESSAGE OF CHRISTMAS 😇 & THE HUMANITY OF ASYLUM SEEKERS, EVEN IF OUR LEADERS (AND TOO MANY “FOLLOWERS”) DO NOT!🤯☹️👎

Description Immigrants & Refugees Welcome - Banner on Facade - Pilsen - Chicago - Illinois - USA Date Taken on 18 February 2017, 10:55 Source Immigrants & Refugees Welcome - Banner on Facade - Pilsen - Chicago - Illinois - USA Author Adam Jones from Kelowna, BC, Canada

Description Immigrants & Refugees Welcome – Banner on Facade – Pilsen – Chicago – Illinois – USA
Date Taken on 18 February 2017, 10:55
Source Immigrants & Refugees Welcome – Banner on Facade – Pilsen – Chicago – Illinois – USA
Author Adam Jones from Kelowna, BC, Canada
Creative Commons License

From the Chicago Sun Times:

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2023/11/30/23982579/migrants-families-racism-venezuela-chicago-tents-nuclear-power-plant-war-letters

Migrants are cut from the same cloth as the rest of us

One of the words I have not heard to describe migrants — but is a more accurate than the negative portrayals — is “families.”

By  Letters to the Editor   Nov 30, 2023, 5:11pm EST

With the holidays upon us, there will undoubtedly be plenty of work parties, shopping sprees with kids in tow and the ubiquitous family gatherings. The coming months will also challenge us to wear layers of clothes and wrap ourselves and our loved ones in blanket-like coats. I am fortunate to have plenty of gloves, scarves, coats and boots.

Others are less fortunate. The unfortunate ones include the “new arrivals,” most of whom have never experienced a Chicago winter. Since the migrants’ arrival, critics have taken to the airwaves offering their comments about the tents, buses, use of police stations, encroachment on city streets, and, what they believe is the destruction of the city’s social and economic fabric. Descriptions of migrants are also disconcerting: liars, troublemakers, thieves, wayward parents using their kids to manipulate the immigration system and outsiders trying to live off the municipal dough.

One of the words I have not heard but is a more accurate depiction of the new arrivals is families. The buses full of people reflect a multi-generational exit from countries steeped in turmoil and unrest: infants, children, parents, or other caretakers. Describing those who arrive as families could lead us to consider them fully human, more like us. Instead, we use words that create a chasm that places the migrants at an arm’s distance from us, society and our city.

Throughout the next month, love, joy, harmony and peace will be words we will likely hear daily in songs, written in holiday cards and celebrated in plays and movies that bring friends and families together. Some will celebrate the season by remembering the birth of a unique child. Warned to flee to ensure the safety of his wife and newborn child, the family patriarch left for other lands. Wouldn’t it be remarkable if we could see the face of this child in the faces of the children we see coming here? Perhaps we can take the first step by using words that remove the stigma and distance between us and the “new arrivals.” The words? Families, of course.

Esther Nieves, Wicker Park

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

Yup, contrary to the absolute, hateful, BS from Trump, Johnson, and the rest of the MAGA right, and the disgraceful indifference of too many Dems, most migrants want: 1) security, 2) opportunity, and 3) a better future, particularly for family. That’s what I found over more than 13 years on the trial bench at the Immigration Court. Basically, what all of us want from life!

Migrants deserve fair, humane, dignified treatment from the U.S. and our legal system, regardless of whether they ultimately are able to meet the legal criteria to remain!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-24-23

⚖️🤯👩🏽‍⚖️👨🏻‍⚖️ AS GARLAND’S BACKLOG HITS 3 MILLION, WAY PAST TIME TO CLEAN HOUSE, 🧹 BRING IN COMPETENT EXPERTS, 🧐 & START IMPLEMENTING THE “MPI PLAN” FOR BACKLOG REDUCTION & DUE PROCESS! — Empower “The Magnificent Seven” To Take The Field & Bring Order From Chaos!

 

Amateur Night
As predicted by experts from the “git go,” AG Merrick Garland’s indolent, half-baked approach to his most important responsibility — bringing justice and functionality to his Immigration Courts, has been a disastrous failure endangering our entire democracy!
PHOTO: Thomas Hawk
Creative Commons
Amateur Night

Here’s the latest report from TRAC documenting how former Federal Judge Merrick Garland’s failure to fulfill his most important duty — reforming and fixing the U.S. Immigration Courts, has built backlog at record paces and undermined our democracy:

https://trac.syr.edu/reports/734

Here’s the “action plan” that’s been publicly available since July 2023 — “Rethinking The U.S. Immigration Court System” — yet largely, and disastrously ignored by Garland, his lieutenants, and the Biden Administration:

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/publications/mpi-courts-report-2023_final.pdf

Executive Summary

The U.S. immigration courts—and the nation’s immigration enforcement system they support—face
an unprecedented crisis. With a backlog of almost 2 million cases, it often takes years to decide cases. Moreover, the recent growth in the caseload is daunting. In fiscal year (FY) 2022, immigration courts received approximately 708,000 new cases, which is 160,000 more than in any previous year. Such numbers, coupled with the courts’ resource constraints and decision-making processes, ensure that the court system will continue to lose ground.

For asylum cases, which now make up 40 percent
of the caseload, the breakdown is even more dire. Noncitizens wait an average of four years for a hearing on their asylum claims to be scheduled,
and longer for a final decision. Those eligible for protection are thus deprived of receiving it in a timely manner, while those denied asylum are unlikely

to be returned to their countries of origin, having
established family and community ties in the United
States during the intervening years. The combination
of years-long backlogs and unlikely returns lies at the
heart of our broken asylum system. That brokenness contributes to the pull factors driving today’s migration to the U.S.-Mexico border, thereby undermining the integrity of the asylum and immigration adjudicative systems, and immigration enforcement overall.

Many of the factors contributing to the dramatic rise in the courts’ caseload have deep and wide-reaching roots, from long-standing operational challenges in administering the courts to new crises in the Americas that have intensified both humanitarian protection needs and other migration pressures. The scale of these twin challenges has made it more urgent than ever to address them together. In the aftermath of lifting the pandemic-era border expulsion policy known as Title 42 in May 2023, the Biden administration is implementing wide-ranging new border policies and strategies that establish incentives and disincentives linking how migrants enter the United States with their access to the asylum system. But timely, fair decisions are also central to the success of this new regime.

While many other studies have outlined wholesale changes in the immigration court system that only Congress can enact, such legislative action seems unlikely, at least in the near term. Thus, this report calls
for changes that can be made by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the agency within the Department of Justice (DOJ) that houses the immigration courts, as it is presently organized. Because the immigration courts are administrative bodies, the executive branch has considerable latitude in determining their policies and procedures. The changes laid out in this report hold great potential to improve the courts’ performance and, in turn, enhance the effectiveness of the U.S. immigration system more broadly.

Some steps in this direction are already being taken. The Biden administration has streamlined certain important policies and procedures at EOIR. Nonetheless, these courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals

page4image2846206864

2 million

cases in the backlog

About 650

immigration judges nationwide

Less than 500

cases completed per judge in most recent years

page4image2845099584

1

AT THE BREAKING POINT: RETHINKING THE U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT SYSTEM

(BIA), which reviews appeals from immigration court decisions, fall short of meeting the hallmarks of a well- functioning adjudicatory system: that decisions be accurate, efficiently made, consistent across both judges and jurisdictions, and accepted as fair by the public and the parties in the case.

Related issues of caseload quantity and decision quality have given rise to the difficulties EOIR is confronting. Under the Trump administration, the reopening of thousands of administratively closed cases and increased interior enforcement led to rising court caseloads. And since 2016, increased border crossings have accounted for growing numbers of new cases, many of them involving asylum claims.

Cases are also taking longer to complete. While pandemic-related restrictions played a role in this slowdown, case completion rates had in fact already been declining. In FY 2009, each immigration judge completed about 1,000 cases per year. By FY 2021, the completion rate had decreased to slightly more than 200 cases per year, even as the number of immigration judges grew. Thus, more judges alone are not the answer. Slow hiring, high turnover, and a lack of support staff have resulted in overwhelmed judges whose productivity has decreased as the backlog has grown.

Concerns about the quality of decision-making by immigration courts and the BIA have existed for decades. More than one in five immigration court decisions were appealed to the BIA in FY 2020, and appeals of BIA decisions have inundated the federal courts. Federal court opinions have pointed to errors of statutory interpretation and faulty reasoning when overturning decisions. Policy changes at

the BIA, ever-changing docket priorities from one
administration to the next, and some recent Supreme
Court directives have contributed to the diminished
adjudicative quality. Wide variances in case outcomes among immigration judges at the same court and across different courts around the country further point to quality concerns; for example, the rate at which individual immigration judges denied asylum claims ranged from 1 to 100 percent in FY 2017–22.

EOIR has increasingly turned to technology to manage its dockets, primarily through video-conferencing court proceedings. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated its use of internet-based hearings. Four important, yet at times competing, considerations are central when evaluating how technology—and particularly video-conferencing tools—are used in immigration proceedings: efficiency, the impact of technical difficulties, security issues, and concerns about due process.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attorneys who prosecute removal cases also play an important role in the court system. Their use of prosecutorial discretion, along with judges’ docket management tools, help shape which cases flow through the system, and how.

Legal defense representation—or the lack of it—is a critical issue plaguing the immigration court system. Noncitizens in immigration proceedings, which are civil in nature, are not entitled to free legal counsel, as

The rate at which asylum claims are denied varies widely, from

1% with one judge to

page5image2955219344

100%

with another in FY 2017-22

page5image2948753808

2

AT THE BREAKING POINT: RETHINKING THE U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT SYSTEM

defendants in criminal proceedings are. But they can face life-changing, and sometimes life-threatening, circumstances when subject to an order of removal from the United States. Studies have repeatedly found that representation in immigration proceedings improves due process and fair outcomes for noncitizens. It also improves efficiency, as represented noncitizens move more quickly through immigration court. Lawyers, accredited representatives, immigration help desks, and legal orientation programs aid some noncitizens through this process. But many more move through complex proceedings pro se (i.e., unrepresented).

Federal funding for representation of noncitizens in removal proceedings is effectively barred. Public funding at the state and local levels has increased the availability of representation for some noncitizens. A large share of representation is provided by nonprofit legal services organizations and pro bono law firm resources. Nonetheless, representation is fragmented and insufficient, given the scale of need.

One element of this system that has seen notable signs of change in recent years has been how border management feeds into the courts’ caseload. The Biden administration began implementing a new
asylum processing rule at the southwest border in June 2022 that aims to ease the growing pressures on immigration courts.1 The rule authorizes asylum officers, who are part of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to make the final decision in asylum cases instead of immigration judges. Asylum seekers whose claims are denied by an asylum officer can still appeal the decision, but on an expedited timeline. As such, the rule holds the potential to reduce the growth of the immigration court backlog and shorten adjudication times to months instead of years.

Since lifting the Title 42 expulsion policy, the Biden administration has paused implementation of the asylum rule due to competing demands for asylum officer resources. But returning to the rule, and strengthening EOIR’s functioning overall, will be important for managing the flow of cases into the immigration courts and the courts’ ability to keep pace with them. Doing so depends on the court system using technology better, more strategically exercising discretion in removal proceedings, and increasing access to legal representation so that courts deliver decisions that are both timely and fair.

This report’s analysis of the issues facing the nation’s immigration courts and its recommendations for addressing them reflect research and conversations with a diverse group of stakeholders—legal service providers, immigration lawyers and advocates, current and former immigration judges, BIA members and administrators, academics, and other experts who have administered, practiced before, and studied the immigration court system. The report urges EOIR and DHS, in its role as the agency whose decisions and referrals come before EOIR, to work together to:

Strengthen the immigration court system’s management and efficiency

► Schedule new cases on a “last-in, first-decided” basis. Such a reset to the system, which has proven successful in the past, could bring processing times on new cases down to months, rather than years.

1 This rule draws in part on proposals made in an earlier Migration Policy Institute (MPI) report: Doris Meissner, Faye Hipsman, and T. Alexander Aleinikoff, The U.S. Asylum System in Crisis: Charting a Way Forward (Washington, DC: MPI, 2018).

page6image2955637376

3

AT THE BREAKING POINT: RETHINKING THE U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT SYSTEM

Because this disadvantages cases that have already been waiting for a long time, it should be treated as a temporary, emergency measure alongside policy and procedural reforms that protect fairness and promote efficiency more broadly. Shifting resources back to adjudicating older cases, as timeliness is established with incoming cases, is essential for shrinking the growth and size of the backlog, which should be among the courts’ highest priorities.

  • ►  Terminate cases that do not meet the administration’s prosecutorial guidelines, which focus priorities on felons, security threats, and recent entrants. One approach to this would be to task ICE attorneys with triaging backlog cases to determine which could be fast-tracked for grants of relief or for removal. Such efforts would allow the courts and ICE attorneys to focus on more serious cases, especially those involving criminal charges.
  • ►  Centralize case referrals from DHS. Instead of the current practice of having all three DHS immigration agencies (ICE, USCIS, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection) refer cases separately to EOIR, ICE attorneys should initiate all cases. As de facto prosecutors, they are best positioned to determine the legal sufficiency and priority for moving cases the government has an interest in pursuing.
  • ►  Establish two tiers of immigration judges—magistrate and merits judges—modeled on existing state and federal court systems where judges and staff are assigned to different roles or dockets so that cases move through the adjudication system efficiently and expeditiously.
  • ►  Expand the use of specialized dockets or courts that handle cases involving specific groups of noncitizens or require certain subject matter expertise, such as juveniles, families, reviews of credible fear determinations, cancellation of removal, adjustment of status, and voluntary departure.Restart the asylum officer rule and provide the support needed to implement it

► Establish a dedicated docket for the asylum officer rule’s streamlined appeal proceedings. As the most far-reaching reform the Biden administration has introduced for strengthening management of the asylum and immigration court systems, implementing the rule effectively is key to reducing the pace of caseload growth in the court system and discouraging weak claims.

Upgrade how the courts use technology

► Ensure that technology is used to make immigration courts fairer for everyone involved, such as by holding hearings remotely when parties would be unable to attend an in-person hearing. Special attention should be paid to how the use of technology can affect detained noncitizens and vulnerable populations such as children.

Increase access to legal representation

► Establish a new unit within EOIR devoted to coordinating the agency’s efforts to expand representation. The unit should collaborate with nongovernmental stakeholders to make representation of detained noncitizens a priority and to allow partially accredited representatives— some of whom may be non-lawyers—to appear in immigration court for limited functions.

4

AT THE BREAKING POINT: RETHINKING THE U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT SYSTEM

  • ►  Develop new and innovative ways to scale up representation by coordinating with lawyers who take responsibility for specific aspects of cases or non-lawyers who are specially trained and supervised
    to do so. Legal service providers should build a multi-stage, collaborative online system that enables representation by lawyers or non-lawyers in specific stages of a case for which they have the requisite expertise (e.g., filing forms, attending bond or master calendar hearings, or seeking relief ). This approach requires creating e-files for cases, with files moving from one representative or provider to another as cases progress, resulting in both expert representation at each stage and greater efficiency in moving cases forward overall.
  • ►  Encourage efforts by state and local governments to provide and/or increase funding to support representation, especially given current restrictions on federal funding of representation in most removal cases.

Despite efforts by successive administrations to bring
the immigration court system’s unwieldy caseload
under control and to improve the quality of its
decision-making, the courts remain mired in crisis.
And while many of the most pressing problems have
roots that stretch back decades, they have in recent
years reached a breaking point. The measures
proposed in this report hold the potential to reduce
case volumes, increase the pace of decision-making,
and improve the quality of adjudications. They would
also mitigate migration pull factors that result from
years-long waits for decisions. The deeply interconnected nature of the nation’s immigration court system and its immigration enforcement and asylum systems mean that such efforts to modernize and fully resource the courts are critical to the health of the U.S. immigration system overall.

page8image2847247216

The deeply interconnected nature of the nation’s immigration court system and its immigration enforcement
and asylum systems mean that such efforts to modernize and fully resource the courts are critical to the health of the U.S. immigration system overall.

BOX 1
About the Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy Project

This report is part of a multiyear Migration Policy Institute (MPI) project, Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy. At a time when U.S. immigration realities are changing rapidly, this initiative has been generating a big- picture, evidence-driven vision of the role immigration can and should play in America’s future. It provides research, analysis, and policy ideas and proposals—both administrative and legislative—that reflect these new realities and needs for immigration to better align with U.S. national interests.

The research, analyses, and convenings conducted for MPI’s Rethinking initiative address critical immigration issues, which include economic competitiveness, national security, and changing demographic trends, as well as issues of immigration enforcement and administering the nation’s immigration system.

To learn more about the project and read other reports and policy briefs generated by the Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy initiative, see bit.ly/RethinkingImmigration.

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Read the full report at the link.

Not the first time I’ve said this, but it’s time for “Amateur Night @ The Bijou” (“A/K/A Merrick Garland’s failed EOIR”) to end! Reassign the EOIR senior management folks who have demonstrated “beyond any reasonable doubt” their inability to provide dynamic, due process with efficiency management and visiononary leadership and to solve pressing problems. (This includes the inability to stand up and “just say no” to bonehead “gimmicks” like Garland’s due-process-denying, quality diminishing, backlog-building, “expedited dockets”). 

It’s not an exaggeration to say that the anti-asylum, anti-human rights, anti-reality charade now playing out in Congress is driven in large part by Garland’s three-year failure to do his job by getting functionality and due process focused leadership into EOIR.

Bring in a competent, expert executive team, hand them the MPI Plan, and empower them to move whatever “bureaucratic mountains” need to be moved to get results, including, but not limited to, major personnel changes at the BIA and in Immigration Courts and taking a “hard line” with counterproductive performance by DHS (actually “just a party” before the Immigration Courts, NOT “their bosses!”) 

Bring in these experts:

  • Judge (Retired) Dana Leigh Marks
  • Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr
  • Dean Kevin Johnson
  • Michelle Mendez (NIPNLG)
  • Professor Michele Pistone
  • Jason “The Asylumist” Dzubow
  • Wendy Young (KIND)

Task this “Magnificent Seven” — folks with centuries of practical expertise and creative ideas for actually solving humanitarian problems (rather than making them worse, as per the ongoing travesty on the Hill) — with turning around the EOIR disaster; support and empower them to achieve results and to reject politicized bureaucratic meddling from DOJ and elsewhere! Make the long-unfilled “promise of INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca”  — a legitimate, properly generous, practical, efficient asylum and refugee adjudication system that complies with international and domestic law and simple human decency — a reality!

This is about rebuilding America’s most important and consequential court system, NOT running an “government agency!”

This is also the “demand” that Congressional Dems SHOULD be making of the Biden Administration, instead of engaging in disgraceful (non) “bargaining” with GOP nativists that seek an end to asylum and an increase to human suffering and ensure continuing humanitarian disaster at our borders!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-19-23

😢 CRIES IN THE WILDERNESS: The Voices Of Experience & Reasonableness Are Being Drowned Out By Nativism, Butt-Covering, & Imagined Political Expediency In The One-Sided “Border Debate” Taking Place In The Senate!

Melissa Del Bosque
Melissa Del Bosque
Border Reporter
PHOTO: Melissadelbosque.com
Caitlyn Yates Fellow Strauss Center for International Law & Security PHOTO: Strauss Center
Caitlyn Yates
Fellow
Strauss Center for International Law & Security
PHOTO: Strauss Center

This podcast from Melissa Del Bosque of The Border Chronicle and Caitlyn Yates, who actually works with migrants in the Darien Gap, gives real life perspective on the humanitarian crisis and all the reasons why more cruelty, punishment, and deadly deterrence isn’t going to solve the flow of forced migrants. But, unhappily, policy makers aren’t interested in the voices of those who actually have experience with forced migrants, nor are they interested in learning from the forced migrants themselves — a logical — if constantly ignored — starting point for making sound policy decisions!

https://substack.com/app-link/post?publication_id=373432&post_id=139696609&utm_source=post-email-title&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1se78m&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMDgxNTc5OTAsInBvc3RfaWQiOjEzOTY5NjYwOSwiaWF0IjoxNzAyMzkzMzIwLCJleHAiOjE3MDQ5ODUzMjAsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0zNzM0MzIiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.CSjTGVDSTEoVPMU3vd7l-vjE2t6LYzS6bfkSQ-qMOcU

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

In the Wilderness
Migration and human rights experts have excelled in court and academia. Yet, they have been consigned to wander the political wilderness, their wisdom, expertise, and real world solutions are routinely ignored or mindlessly rejected by both political parties.
Colmar – Unterlinden Museum – The Isenheim Altarpiece 1512-16 by Matthias Grünewald (ca 1470-1528) – Visit of Saint Anthony the Great to Saint Paul the Hermit in the Wilderness
Creative Commons

Four “takeaways” on what a consensus on migration should be:

  1. Human migration is real;
  2. Forced migration is largely beyond the unilateral control of any one nation;
  3. Deterrence alone won’t stop migration;
  4. More legal pathways for migration are necessary.

We’re a long way from that needed consensus right now!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-16-23

🤯 “DESPERATE PEOPLE DO DESPERATE THINGS!”

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

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

REBECCA SANTANA

Associated Press

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

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

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

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

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

. . . .

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

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

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

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

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

. . . .

WHAT MIGHT THESE CHANGES DO?

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

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

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

“Desperate people do desperate things,” he said.

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

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

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-14-23

🤯AS PARTIES BICKER & NATIVIST GOP GOVS SHAMELESSLY WASTE PUBLIC FUNDS, REAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR ORDERLY RESETTLEMENT IN THE “RUST BELT” ARE BEING WASTED!— Rachel Perić, Executive Director Of Welcoming America Aims To Change The Narrative!

Rachel Perić
Rachel Perić
Executive Director
Welcoming America
PHOTO: X

Rachel writes on LinkedIn:

 

As I head to Geneva to participate in the UN Global Refugee Forum, representing Welcoming America and also as a proud member of the Refugee Council USA (RCUSA), it’s timely to see this narrative-shifting story in the The Washington Post about the power of local leaders to advance a #welcoming infrastructure and reframe who #belongs in an era of migration.   

I’m looking forward to presenting more on the movement to show that – far from the narratives of scarcity and chaos being presented by the far right – cities and towns, large and small, rural and urban, are showing that abundance, capacity, and human rights can be driving values.  And also putting these values into practice through policies that earn them the designation of #certifiedwelcoming.

Thank you to Pittsburgh Mayor Gainey and his staff, especially Feyisola Akintola (formerly Alabi) MBA, MSUS, featured in this story, for your inspiring leadership and commitment. 

And to so many others across the country and globe who are lighting the way.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/12/08/pittsburgh-immigration-new-york-chicago/

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You can read the WashPost article at the link above.

The WashPost article by Tim Craig is one of the more insightful pieces on migration and the border published by the “mainstream media” recently. This is a great story! Why has the Biden Administration done such a horrible job of asylum seeker resettlement? Also, seems like some missed potential for NGOs to fill the gap in getting folks to places where they are needed and will be appreciated.

 

“We are not here to reject any immigration. As a matter of fact, we want to make this the most safe, welcoming, thriving place in America, and you can’t do that without immigration,” Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey (D) said in an interview, adding that he does not make distinctions on the basis of someone’s immigration status or how the person entered the country. “Why wouldn’t we want them?”

Thanks so much for your dynamic, inspirational, humanitarian leadership, Rachel! The Administration, Congress, and the media would do well to pay more attention to what experts like you are saying and reject the cruel, anti-humanitarian, false narratives that currently appear to be “guiding” the one-sided asylum “debate” in Congress!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-10-23