🗽⚖️STACEY ABRAMS @ WASHPOST: The GOP Is Out To Gut Democracy! — Here’s What It Will Take To Save It! — “No thinking person can deny that the communities of color disproportionately suffering and dying from this pandemic are also the people whose votes — and ability to hold failed leaders accountable — have been continuously suppressed.”

Stacey Abrams
Stacey Abrams
Democratic Political Strategist & Voting Rights Maven
Photo: TV Sister via YouTube
Creative Commons License

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/07/stacey-abrams-democracy-test-future/

. . . .

Make no mistake: Democracy may have survived this year, but President Biden and Vice President Harris were elected despite, not thanks to, weakened electoral systems. Together with the Democratic Congress, they now have the opportunity to implement reforms that reaffirm our nation’s promises that our country represents and works for everyone. We as Democrats must act before it is too late.

Our democratic system faces extraordinary threats today because of sustained attacks from Republican leaders who throw up roadblocks to voting and, among the worst actors, stoke the flames of white supremacy and hyper-nationalism to cling to power. There can be no clearer example than the covid-19 pandemic. The deaths of more than 450,000 people in the richest country in the world are symptomatic of a democracy in crisis and a political system that rewards cronyism over competence. Despite strong public support for the Centers for Disease Control’s work, the Affordable Care Act, and other economic justice and safety-net policies that could save lives, millions nevertheless continue to contract the disease without adequate access to health care.

No thinking person can deny that the communities of color disproportionately suffering and dying from this pandemic are also the people whose votes — and ability to hold failed leaders accountable — have been continuously suppressed.

The pandemic has been a collision of tragedy and corroded institutions, and the challenge is in how we respond. We can either engage in collective amnesia about what we have just lived through, and leave an unaccountable government in place, or we can rise to meet this moment by fixing the broken social compact. Defeating Trump was not enough. Meaningful progress on health care, racial justice and the economy requires aggressive action on voting rights, partisan gerrymandering and campaign finance.

One of the first steps must be an overhaul of the Senate filibuster, which has long been wielded as a cudgel against the needs of millions who struggle. Today, the parliamentary trick creates a more sinister threat to our nation: the ability of a minority of senators, who represent 41.5 million fewer people than the Senate majority, to block progress favored by most Americans.

Democrats in Congress must fully embrace their mandate to fast-track democracy reforms that give voters a fair fight, rather than allowing undemocratic systems to be used as tools and excuses to perpetuate that same system. This is a moment of both historic imperative and, with unified Democratic control of the White House and Congress, historic opportunity.

The agenda to restore democracy also includes passing the For the People Act to protect and expand voting rights, fight gerrymandering and reduce the influence of money in politics; the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore the full protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act; and the Protecting Our Democracy Act to constrain the corruption of future presidents who deem themselves above the law. These landmark bills have broad-based support, and would have passed long ago were it not for obstructionist leaders who fear losing their own influence if the American people have more power of their own.

. . . .

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

The Trump GOP lies, insurrections, and blatantly false claims attempting to undermine the very clear Biden-Harris victory have been a smokescreen for the real voting problems — the unrelenting efforts of the GOP — “The Party of the New Jim Crow” — to suppress the votes of Americans of color. Read the rest of Abrams’s op-ed at the link.

And, as Abrams cogently points out, one reason for the denial, downplaying, and maliciously incompetent mishandling of the pandemic by the Trump regime was that so many of the victims were among communities of color — those they never cared about and whose humanity they continuously tried to deny and disparage. Death is a great way of disenfranchising minority voters. Not to mention a little fear and intimidation thrown in for a good measure.

There is a very clear connection between the dehumanization of asylum seekers and other migrants and the disenfranchisement of voters of color. It’s all part of “Dred Scottification” — a disgraceful practice sanctioned by none other than the GOP’s Supremes’ majority!

Our future as a nation depends on Judge Garland, Vanita Gupta, and their incoming team at DOJ “connecting the dots” — beginning with dismantling and replacing the White Nationalist nativist kakistocracy at EOIR. Immigrants’ rights are civil rights are human rights! The GOP actually “gets” that (in a purely negative way)! Will the Dems finally show that they do too!

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-09-21

☠️⚰️DEATH IN THE GULAG: 4TH COVID DEATH @ ICE STEWART IS 1ST FOR BIDEN ADMINISTRATION — Killer Policies, Grossly Incompetent Administration, & White-Nationalist Cruelty Across The Immigration Bureaucracy @ DHS & DOJ Need Immediate Attention! — Delay = Death, & Death Doesn’t Care Whether It’s Biden Or Trump!

Grim Reaper
G. Reaper Approaches ICE Gulag With “Imbedded Captive Star Chamber”
Image: Hernan Fednan, Creative Commons License

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Special to Courtside

Feb. 1, 2021

Today, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported the first death in the ICE/EOIR Stewart Detention Gulag under the Biden Administration. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiA4Iet8cjuAhUpF1kFHeRDBD4QFjAAegQIAhAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ajc.com%2Fnews%2Ffourth-ice-detainee-dies-from-covid-19-in-southwest-georgia%2FTNPDEQCTD5AJNEJG3AB5UODNGQ%2F&usg=AOvVaw0dRM3U1mG3KNQFzmiINivM

It was the first reported death at the Stewart Gulag since the Trump regime’s final killing in December 2020.

With “Caretaker Bureaucrats” in charge @ DHS & DOJ, the deadly migrant killing, harming, and terrorizing policies continue unabated. Indeed, as far as I can tell, seedy DOJ lawyers are pushing forward with defending the very cruel, stupid, inhumane, and illegal policies and bankrupt legal positions that the Trump immigration kakistocracy made infamous. The same policies that Biden and Harris campaigned against! EOIR continues to crank out skewed anti-immigrant, anti-asylum jurisprudence. 

The current policies are killers; the bodies continue to pile up, even if they are (quite intentionally) in obscure places like Lumpkin, GA, the “no persons land” near the Mexican border, and in dangerous and corrupt foreign nations where our Government mindlessly “orbits” other human beings without regard to what it will happen to them. 

For now, these stories of death, despair, and unnecessary human suffering are largely “out of sight, out of mind.” But, they are being documented and eventually history will highlight those, from the Roberts’ Court on down, who abjured their duties to their fellow humans and abused their positions of public trust. 

Due Process Forever! Death ⚰️ in The New American Gulag ☠️, never!

PWS

02-01-21

🇺🇸BLACK LIVES MATTER AT THE POLLS: African-American Voters’ Extraordinary Efforts In Georgia Key To Ending GOP’s Jim Crow Kakistocracy, Saving American Democracy! — A “Blueprint” For Voting The Party Of Racists, Grifters, & Domestic Terrorists Out Of Their Undeserved Political Power Across America?

 

Trump Regime Emoji
Trump Regime

https://apple.news/AEyxZl76nQ86rGOIEK0E5uA

Ryan Brooks reports for BuzzFeed:

Democrat Jon Ossoff won his tight Senate race, with both Georgia Democrats defeating their Republican runoff opponents in historic victories for a stunning rebuke of President Donald Trump in a state that had been a Republican stronghold for years. With Ossoff joining Democrat Raphael Warnock in the Senate, their party will be able to take total control of Congress.

Warnock is the first Black person elected to represent Georgia in the Senate and will be one of only three Black people in the Senate once his term begins. Ossoff, 33, would be the youngest member of the Senate.

The results are a testament to the decades-long political organizing of Black women in Georgia who worked toward expanding the electorate and protecting voting rights in the state.

“It is with humility that I thank the people of Georgia for electing me to serve you in the United States Senate. Thank you for the trust that you have placed in me,” Ossoff said in a video streamed online on Wednesday morning. Hours before, the campaign of his opponent, Sen. David Perdue, said it “will require time and transparency to be certain the results are fair and accurate.”

It is a close race. Decision Desk HQ has projected Ossoff will win. The vote-counting firm currently has Ossoff leading Republican Perdue by about .4% of the vote — about 16,000 votes — which is within the .5% threshold that allows Perdue to call for a recount. Georgia officials will continue counting the few remaining votes today, which are expected in areas that lean Democrat.

Ossoff’s win would push the Senate into a 50-50 split, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris serving as a tie-breaking vote. The split would effectively give Democrats control of the Senate, removing the chamber from Sen. Mitch McConnell’s iron grip and dramatically expanding the possibilities for President-elect Joe Biden’s first years in office.

A litany of Black women-led voter registration groups like Stacey Abrams’s New Georgia Project and Black Voters Matter fanned out across the state in recent years to register new voters and to protect voters from being purged from rolls. In the weeks ahead of the runoff, Progressive grassroots groups organizing across the state made the shift toward door knocking and in-person canvassing after the party largely avoided the strategy during the general election because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump, on the other hand, spent the intervening two months claiming Georgia’s election was rigged against him — it was not, as the state’s Republican elected leaders frequently reminded him — attacking establishment Republicans in the state, and undermining the Republican base’s faith in the electoral process, and pushing lawsuits that largely focused on invalidating votes in majority Black cities. Perdue and Loeffler, then both serving in the Senate, often echoed Trump’s false claims about election fraud on the campaign trail and in the final days of the race they announced that they would support Senators who objected to certifying the electoral college results.

The runoff was defined by Trump’s meddling in the state’s election results after his loss in November and his failed last-ditch attempt to get more direct aid to people in the coronavirus relief package that passed Congress in December.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the article at the link.

Congrats and deep appreciation to the amazing Stacey Abrams and her colleagues for bailing out America with their smarts, courage, hard work, and determination to stand up to the White Nationalists and beat them at the polls. Working harder and being smarter than the GOP!

The GOP has now “come out of the closet” and embraced (or empowered) its once-obscured “core beliefs” of treason, lies, racism, hate, selfishness, ignorance, incompetent governance, and destruction of our democracy. Even today, traitors Ted Cruz  & Josh Hawley disingenuously try to play the “victim” in the face of calls to hold them responsible for their false and treasonous criminal conduct. 

These guys knowingly promoted lies and White Nationalist conspiracy theories that helped stroke the totally unjustified “anger” of Trumpist GOP thugs who actually endangered the safety of Congressional members of both parties! How sick 🤮 is that! Talk about folks who deserve condemnation and removal from public office, if not jail sentences!

The majority of us who believe in democracy, diversity, humanity, truth, our Constitution, and social justice must redouble our efforts to insure that the anti-American cancer of GOP minority rule never infects our nation again! 

The folks in Georgia have shown us that no matter how difficult or time consuming the fight might be, it can be won through democratic institutions; with effort, courage, and perseverance, our nation can be rescued from the GOP traitors who have “held us hostage” for the past four years!

The GOP has “hitched its wheelless and soulless wagon” to one of the vilest human beings and biggest losers in our national political history.  We can’t let them off the hook!

Belatedly, Congressional toadies like Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham, and Cabinet toadies, like Mrs. Mitch and Betsy D, who happily enabled and furthered the violent, racist, White Nationalist agenda of Trump, Miller and the rest of the thugocracy/kakistocracy are trying to put some distance between themselves and their party’s treason and mis-governance. I heard mindless and dishonest Trump supporters on local TV try to disclaim the logical consequences of their supporting and voting for an immoral, dishonest, anti-American, insurrectionist scumbag!

Just think of the total disaster that would have ensued if the maliciously incompetent traitor they voted for had actually won, rather than being thrashed by more than 7 million popular votes and 74 electoral votes! These folks are threatening my country, our health and safety, and the world’s future with their ignorance, lies, and disloyalty. I’m tired of them and their vile White Nationalist nonsense that played out at my Capitol this week!

Don’t let them get away with this deadly, disingenuous, BS! Follow Stacey Abrams and others! Start working hard now to throw every elected GOP traitor out of office in 2022! Democracy and the modern GOP are incompatible! This is a battle for our country, the heart and soul of our nation, and humanity. We can’t afford to let the party of treason and racism win!

Yes, as Joe Biden says, America needs a legitimate, principled opposition party. Sadly, the GOP party doesn’t fit the bill and won’t unless it jettisons its White Nationalist racist agenda of lies, false narratives, and wacko conspiracy theories and moves into the 21st Century with the rest of us!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽👍🏼Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-08-21

🏀🇺🇸⚖️SPORTS/POLITICS/SOCIAL JUSTICE: WNBA Players Help Oust Racist Grifter Loeffler — Rallying Cry Against Totally Unqualified Trumpist “Senator” Was “VOTE WARNOCK”

Candace Buckner
Candace Buckner
Sports Reporter
Washington Post
PHOTO: Washingtonpost.com

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/01/07/wnba-loeffler-warnock-senate-atlanta-dream/

Candace Buckner reports for WashPost:

For the women of the WNBA, the push to expel one of their league’s owners from office — and ultimately help tip the balance of the U.S. Senate — started with two words on a plain black T-shirt.

It was summer. Amid nationwide protests against racial injustice, Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), co-owner of the Atlanta Dream, had sent a letter to the league that denounced its support of the Black Lives Matter movement, parroting President Trump’s rhetoric as she fought to keep her seat.

Loeffler’s embrace of Trumpism had shocked those who had known her as an inclusive boss in a league dominated by Black women. But it appeared to be working: She was leading the crowded race, while one of her opponents, the Rev. Raphael Warnock (D), polled at only 9 percent.

Then WNBA players responded. They rejected Loeffler’s letter. And in early August, players from across the league, including those from her own team, wore shirts that read “VOTE WARNOCK.”

[How politics transformed Kelly Loeffler from hoops junkie to WNBA villain]

In the three days that followed, Warnock’s campaign raised more than $236,000 and added nearly 4,000 followers on Twitter. His support grew from there, catapulting him into a runoff with Loeffler. And on Tuesday, he defeated Loeffler and soon will become the first Black senator from Georgia. Jon Ossoff’s win in a race called Wednesday gave Democrats slim control over the Senate, with Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris as the tiebreaking vote.

WNBA players, many of whom are overseas with international teams, spent Wednesday celebrating their assist — and wondering what it means for Loeffler’s future in the league.

“It’s a special moment for us because we’re constantly at the forefront of every issue, but we don’t get the respect we deserve,” said Washington Mystics guard Natasha Cloud, who opted out of this past season to focus on social justice causes. “Whether it’s on the court or off the court in our influence. You have a moment like this where you can’t say we didn’t help determine the outcome.”

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the article at the link.

Sports activism matters! 

GOP Trumpist traitors like Loeffler and Perdue can be removed from power, one by one! The brave, talented women of the WNBA 🏀🗽🇺🇸represent the kind of inspired, courageous leadership America needs in the future. Compare them with the despicable, GOP-enabled cowards, traitors, and morons who stormed our Capitol.

No more Loefflers — defeat all the GOP traitors, fellow travelers, enablers, and disgusting spineless toadies! The anti-American rot in the GOP goes far beyond the outrageous stupidity, treason, cruelty, overt racism, and criminality of Trump! Trumpism is an ugly malicious disease🤮 that must be defeated, in all it’s vicious and unpatriotic forms🏴‍☠️, for America’s survival!🇺🇸

⚖️🗽🇺🇸👍🏼Due Process Forever! GOP Trumpist traitors ☠️ 🏴‍☠️ never!

PWS

01-08-21

🇺🇸⚖️🗽AMERICAN DEMOCRACY, GEORGIA VOTERS, WARNOCK, OSSOFF, BIDEN, HARRIS, ABRAMS, AFRICAN AMERICANS BIG WINNERS — Racist Grifters Loeffler & Perdue Ousted, Mitch Dethroned, Trump Biggest Loser In US History, GOP Sedition Thwarted, Even As Trump, “Traitor Ted,” & Other Anti-American Lowlifes Seek To Destroy Our Democracy!

Trump Regime Emoji
Trump Regime

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/06/georgias-voters-end-trump-era-definitively/

E. J. Dionne in WashPost:

Thanks to the voters of Georgia, the 2020 election looks very different than it did 48 hours ago. Barring a highly unlikely shift in the vote count, President-elect Joe Biden will now govern with a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House. The margins will be thin, but the power of Republicans to obstruct has been sharply diminished.

And the political map of the United States looks very different, too. Four years ago, it was unimaginable that Democratic control of the elected branches of the federal government would be cemented by victories in Senate races in Georgia. The Rev. Raphael Warnock won and Jon Ossoff leads in a state that had not elected a Democrat to the Senate in two decades.

The likely outcome put an exclamation point on Biden’s success and a dagger into the Trump era. President Trump almost certainly hurt Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, both directly and indirectly.

Trump’s insistence, against all the evidence, that the November vote in Republican-led Georgia was fraudulently counted split his party and may have discouraged GOP turnout on Tuesday. And Republicans will confront the reality that some voters drawn to the polls when Trump is on the ballot have no interest in participating when he’s not. They are more Trumpublicans than Republicans.

But the president did still more damage to his party by denigrating the $600 stimulus checks in the recently passed economic relief package and calling for $2,000 payments instead. His unexpected veto threat played directly into the argument made by both Warnock and Ossoff: that only Democrats could be trusted to deliver relief to the economically ailing, including the middle class.

Ossoff was unabashed in appealing directly to voters’ immediate interests: “You send me and Reverend Warnock to the Senate, and we will put money in your pocket.” Biden was equally direct when he campaigned for the Democratic duo on the eve of the election. “If you send Jon and the reverend to Washington, those $2,000 checks are going out the door, restoring hope and decency and honor to so many people struggling right now,” Biden said. “If you send Sens. Perdue and Loeffler back to Washington, those checks will never get there. It’s just that simple.”

Last November, exit polls showed that voters most worried about the pandemic tended toward Democrats, while those worried about the economy leaned Republican. This led critics on the Democratic left, but also from elsewhere in the party, to argue that its candidates had failed to define a clear economic message.

Warnock and Ossoff did not make that mistake when they were given a second chance in the runoffs. Their defining issues were economic, and their victories would make it far easier for Biden to enact a large new relief package, a major infrastructure program, and expansions in health-care coverage and child care — as well as democracy reforms and voting-rights protections.

Georgia’s outcome also showed that the swing of middle-class suburban voters toward the Democrats was not a one-off reaction to Trump. Democrats feared and Republicans hoped that, with Trump defeated, at least some Republican-inclined anti-Trump voters would come home to the GOP on Tuesday. They didn’t — and were likely put off when Perdue and Loeffler embraced Trump’s efforts to nullify the November votes of their own state and elsewhere.

The contest also lifted up the power of organizing. Led by Stacey Abrams, the Democrats’ 2018 gubernatorial candidate, civil rights and voting rights groups registered hundreds of thousands of new Georgia voters. They lifted Biden to his 11,779-vote victory in the state and then went back to work, registering more voters for the runoff and getting them to cast ballots. The result: turnout for the runoff that came remarkably close to matching November’s levels while Warnock and, likely, Ossoff secured margins larger than Biden’s.

. . . . 

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

Read the full article at the link.

Thank you, Georgia!

With the “Demented Fascist Sore Loser” and “Traitor Ted” Cruz & company stoking the fires of sedition in the streets and revving up an attack on the Capitol through their knowingly bogus anti-American, White Supremacist hate speech, false narratives, vile lies, and baseless conspiracy theories, it’s time to put the GOP to bed for good. 

There also should be a move to censure and eventually remove from office through the ballot box Cruz, Hawley, McCarthy, Johnson and the rest of the GOP clowns and traitors whose lies and pandering to Trump stoked this outrage and have brought our nation to the precipice of anarchy. The voters of Georgia have showed us how with hard work, the right pro-humanity message, even against the odds, the anti-democracy GOP can be removed from office at all levels.

Not surprisingly, the Traitor Trump Treason Twitter Account has been “locked.” Too little, too late!

Moscow Mitch and other GOP toadies’ protestations in support of American democracy are far too little, far too late!  They are the nihilists who have joined Trump in subverting American democracy and committing “crimes against humanity.” They should not escape accountability!

Then there are still GOP scumbags who refuse to condemn Trump or acknowledge the crimes of his thug rioters! They must be removed from public office, now!

The 81 million of us who saved American democracy need to work hard through legal means to make sure that the anti-democracy minority (“GOP”) never seizes power again! The GOP has proved its disloyalty to our Constitutional order.

It’s time for the GOP to be dissolved and replaced by a legitimate opposition. Even now, scummy GOP legislators insist on delaying the electoral process with bogus claims. I’m tired of indulging these evil clowns and subversives, and particularly, their ignorant anti-American supporters.

⚖️🗽🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-06-21

SIGN OF THE TIMES/HOPE FOR THE FUTURE? — U.S. JUDGE IN “ASYLUM FREE ZONE OF GEORGIA” REQUIRES SCOFFLAW REGIME TO FOLLOW CONSTITUTION IN BOND HEARINGS — Another Key Victory For NDPA Star Patrick Taurel & The Gang @ Clark Hill PLC! — But, Will The Dems Finally Follow Up With Bold, Decisive Action, To Fix EOIR, ⚖️👩🏻‍⚖️Or Throw Immigrants & Their Advocates “Under the Bus” Once Again!🤮⚰️

Patrick Taurel
Patrick Taurel
Senior Attorney
Clark Hill PLC
D.C.

 

Subject: Victory in M.D. Ga. – gov’t bears burden of justifying detention in 236(a) bond proceedings by clear & convincing evidence

 

Dear colleagues,

 

I’m pleased to share the attached opinion authored by Judge Hugh Lawson of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia finding that the Due Process Clause requires the government in 236(a) bond proceedings to bear the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence that the noncitizen’s detention is justified. The decision follows in the footsteps of cases like Velasco Lopez v. Decker, No. 19-2284-cv, 2020 WL 6278204 (2d Cir. Oct. 27, 2020), Dubon Miranda v. Barr, 463 F. Supp. 3d 632 (D. Md. 2020), and Pensamiento v. McDonald, 315 F. Supp. 3d 684 (D. Mass. 2018).

 

The bulk of the opinion is devoted to applying the Mathews v. Eldridge balancing test. Notably, the court rejects the argument advanced by the government here and in other cases like Velasco Lopez that the Supreme Court’s civil detention cases have no purchase in the immigration context. Citing Zadvydas and Justice Souter’s concurring and dissenting opinion in Demore, the court finds that the government’s position “belies the fact that the Supreme Court regularly relies upon civil confinement cases to inform its due process analysis in immigration cases.” “[I]mmigration detention,” the court explains, “is an extraordinary liberty deprivation that must be carefully limited.”

 

Other items of note:

  • We argued, cribbing liberally from Mary Holper’s exceptional law review article, The Beast of Burden in Immigration Bond Hearings, 67 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 75 (2016), that the BIA’s decision in Matter of Adeniji, 22 I&N Dec. 1102 (BIA 1999) was arbitrary and capricious under the APA. The court does not reach that issue but does recognize that the regulation the BIA relied on in Adeniji to allocate the burden on the noncitizen “does not apply to IJs determining release at bond hearings.”
  • The court acknowledges that under 236(a) the “IJ may … set conditions of release such as subjecting the noncitizen to electronic monitoring.”
  • For those practicing in the Eleventh Circuit where the government continues to cite Sopo v. U.S. Att’y Gen., 825 F. 3d 1199 (11th Cir. 2016) when it suits the government’s interests, the judge recognized that that case confers no precedential value in light of its vacatur.

 

Best regards,

Patrick

 

Patrick Taurel
CLARK HILL PLC

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

Congrats, Patrick!

The case is Gao v. Paulk:  Here’s a copy of Judge Lawson’s decision:

Gao v. Paulk et al, 20-cv-93-HL-MSH, ECF No. 38, Order Rejecting Report and Recommendation

Here’s my favorite quote:

Petitioner has already experienced a severe liberty deprivation. Two years of immigration detention imitates the Government’s punishment of individuals convicted of serious offenses. See 18 U.S.C. § 3156(a)(2) (“‘[F]elony’ means an offense punishable by a maximum term of imprisonment of more than one year….”); 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B) (“‘[V]iolent felony’ means any crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year . . . .”); 18 U.S.C. §3559(a). Petitioner now faces a third year of incarceration—though the Government has “no . . . punitive interest” in civil confinement, and he “may not be punished.” Foucha, 504 U.S. at 80. 

Reality check:

I did lots of non-detained cases involving natives of the PRC in 13 years on the Arlington bench. Perhaps a couple failed to show for their asylum merits hearings, but if so, I don’t remember it. The PRC is always among the “league leaders” in EOIR asylum grants and applicants from there have little reason not to show up for their hearings. That’s particularly true of someone represented by Patrick Taurel and Clark Hill!

So, this detention has little, if anything, to do with insuring appearance at immigration hearings. And, by the Government’s own admission, it has nothing whatsoever to do with protecting the public from danger. 

So, what’s it all about? It’s illegal punishment for applying for asylum and asserting rights, intended to “deter” other individuals from doing so, and to enrich those profiting from gross and abusive over-detention of foreign nationals, as well as throwing “red meat” to the political right wing. 

And, perhaps nowhere is the abuse of our system worse than in the Georgia Immigration Courts which have correctly been characterized as an “Asylum Free Zone” where unconstitutional, unlawful, and biased judging and demeaning of asylum applicants and their representatives has been allowed to flourish and “turned into an art.” 

Will the Biden-Harris Administration end these perversions of justice occurring in broad daylight? It’s not rocket science:

  • Adopt the proper constitutional rule for bond cases set forth by the court in this and other cases;
  • Remove the current BIA and replace them with real appellate judges: experts in asylum, human rights, and due process, who will insure equal justice and fundamental fairness for every single individual stuck in the now out of control, dysfunctional, and intentionally unfair EOIR system;
  • Have a real BIA crack down on the “judicial outliers” in Georgia and require them to follow the proper Cardoza/Mogharrabi generous asylum standards, stop illegal and wasteful detention, treat everyone with respect and human dignity, and follow best (not worst) practices, or find other jobs more suited to their anti-immigrant philosophies.

Or, will the incoming Administration follow in the footsteps of the Obama Administration by ignoring or papering over the problems causing deep dysfunction and mockery of the rule of law, due process, and best practices at EOIR.

There are only two ways of approaching the EOIR mess: solve it by bringing in the NDPA, or become a part of it. The choice is easy. 

But, sadly, not so easy that past Democratic Administrations have figured it out! And rumors that some of the same folks whose poor, ineffectual, wrong-headed approach to both immigration policy and administration of the immigration bureaucracy, as well as gross lack of appreciation for the Immigration Courts and their proper role, helped empower Stephen Miller & company to wreak havoc on our democracy and humanity are being seriously considered for high level posts in the incoming Administration are discouraging to say the least. 

Leaving the true “defenders of the faith” out in the cold once again, while rewarding those who weren’t fighting on the front lines to save democracy, and “didn’t get it” the last time the Democrats had power, could be the death knell for both the Democratic Party and our nation. 

Sad, but true. And you heard it first on Courtside!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-17-20

KILLERS ON THE LOOSE: CATHERINE SHOICHET @ CNN EXPOSES HOW IN THE “NEW AMERICAN GULAG” UNDER TRUMP & SESISONS ICE LITERALLY GETS AWAY WITH MURDER!

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2018/08/us/ice-detention-stewart-georgia/?utm_content=chapter_01

Catherine Shoichet reports for CNN;

Miguel Montilla was in the law library when the banging started.

Over and over he heard it – the sound of a man screaming as he pounded the wall of the cell next door.

When a guard came by, Montilla listened. The man in Cell 102 said he was suffering from psychosis.

“I hear voices talking to me,” he said. “And they’re bothering the shit out of me.”

Montilla climbed on a toilet and spoke through a vent. He wanted to offer some words of comfort to a fellow detainee – to tell him things were going to get better.

“Hey, man. You OK, man? Calm down. Don’t worry about it. You’re gonna be out of here soon.”

But things got worse for the man in Cell 102.

Two weeks later, Montilla heard a jarring noise again – the sound of a man ramming into the wall of his cell.

Boom.

This time, there would be no words of comfort.

Jeancarlo Alfonso Jimenez Joseph, the 27-year-old who’d been locked inside Cell 102 for 18 days, hadn’t just banged into the wall of his cell. He’d tied one end of a white bed sheet around a sprinkler head and the other end around his neck.

The night he died in May 2017, Jimenez was one of more than two dozen people in solitary at the Stewart Detention Center, a hulking complex just outside Lumpkin, Georgia, that can house nearly 2,000 immigrants.

He was the fourth detainee to die in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in 2017 and the 170th since the agency began in 2003.

. . . .

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

Read Catherine’s entire article at the link.

Yes, prior Administrations are also to blame for this miscarriage of justice. But, the information on the dangerousness and lack of justification for most immigration detention was well-developed and readily available when Trump took over. Instead of dong what a rational Administration might have done, curtailing detention with an eye to phasing it out altogether except in unusual circumstances involving dangerous criminals, Sessions and Trump decided to “double down” on what they knew was a deadly and unnecessary practice.

PWS

08-24-18

ROBIN UREVICH TAKES US INSIDE THE DEADLY “NEW AMERICAN GULAG” OPERATED BY THE DHS — “Civil Detainees” Are Dying At A Rate Of About One Per Month In The Hands Of Our Government — Many Think Some Of These Deaths Were Preventable!

The fabulous investigative reporter Robin Urevich with continuing coverage from Capitol & Main’s “Deadly Detention Series:”

https://capitalandmain.com/deadly-detention-self-portrait-of-a-tragedy-0314

“Deadly Detention: Self-Portrait of a Tragedy

Co-published by International Business Times
The missteps and errors of ICE and its contractors have led to concerns about the safety of immigrant detainees with mental health issues.

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Robin Urevich

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Photo: Robin Urevich


A suicidal detainee never got the mental health care he needed and was placed in a cell that contained a known suicide hazard,
a ceiling sprinkler head.


Co-published by International Business Times

Sometime after midnight in mid-May of 2017, 27-year old JeanCarlo Jimenez Joseph fashioned a noose from a bed sheet and hanged himself in his solitary confinement cell at the Stewart Detention Center, located in the pine woods of southwest Georgia. Stewart’s low-slung complex lies behind two tall chain-linked fences, each crowned with huge spirals of glinting barbed wire. Beginning in 2006, the facility began to house undocumented immigrants detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Jimenez’s fall sounded like a sledgehammer blow, said 20-year-old Abel Ramirez Blanco, who was also in segregation at Stewart that night. Another detainee, Miguel Montilla, had peered through the metal grate on his door and saw guard Freddy Wims frantically knocking at Jimenez’s cell door. “He got on the walkie-talkie and started screaming,” Montilla said.

“I looked in the door and I didn’t see him,” Wims would later remember. Wims scanned the small cell until, he said, “I looked over in the corner by the commode and he was hanging there by the sheet.”

Within hours, Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents descended on Stewart, about 140 miles south of Atlanta, to find out if foul play had been involved in Jimenez’s death. It wasn’t. But the investigation, which generated audio interviews of Stewart staff and detainees, along with recordings of Jimenez’s personal phone calls and official documents, revealed that CoreCivic, the for-profit prison company that operates Stewart for ICE, and ICE Health Services Corps, which provides health care at Stewart, cut corners and skirted federal detention rules. The organizations’ missteps and errors have led to concerns about the safety of immigrant detainees with mental health issues.

Also Read: “Hell in the Middle of a Pine Forest”

The probe disclosed that Jimenez repeatedly displayed suicidal behavior, but never got the mental health care he needed. He was also placed in a cell that contained a known suicide hazard, a ceiling sprinkler head, upon which he affixed his makeshift noose. Freddy Wims was assigned to check Jimenez’s cell every half hour, but didn’t do so. Instead, he falsified his logs to make it appear he had, and he was later fired. Stewart’s warden, Bill Spivey, retired after Jimenez’s death; a CoreCivic spokesman told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the two events were unrelated. Spivey couldn’t be reached for comment for this article.


Psychiatrist: Placing a suicidal prisoner in solitary confinement is like placing someone with bad asthma in a burning building.


CoreCivic’s spokesman, Jonathan Burns, didn’t respond to questions about Jimenez’s death and detention. Instead, he wrote in an email, “CoreCivic is deeply committed to providing a safe, humane and appropriate environment for those entrusted to our care, while also delivering cost-effective solutions to the challenges our government partners face.” ICE spokeswoman Tamara Spicer wrote in an email that she couldn’t answer questions about the case because it is “still undergoing a comprehensive review that has not been released.”

Jimenez had been in solitary for 19 days at the time of his death — punishment for what his sister would tell investigators was an earlier suicide attempt. He had leapt from a second-floor walkway in his dormitory, and later repeatedly told detention center personnel, “I am Julius Caesar for real.” He was physically unhurt, but Stewart staff were aware he was suffering from mental illness and had a history of suicide attempts, documents show. Still, after his jump, Jimenez saw a nurse who quickly cleared him for placement in a 13-by-7-foot segregation cell alone for 23 hours a day. After that, his suffering seemed to intensify.

“Placing a suicidal prisoner in segregation is like placing someone with bad asthma in a burning building,” Terry Kupers, a Bay Area psychiatrist who has studied solitary confinement and who reviewed some of the documents in Jimenez’s case, noted in an email. He added that half of successful prison suicides occur among the three to eight percent of prisoners in solitary confinement.

Jimenez wasn’t put on suicide watch, or even ordered monitored more frequently than the normal half-hour checks. He continued to display alarming behavior. Montilla told the GBI that he and a guard had heard Jimenez screaming and banging on his cell wall two weeks before his death. “Man, I’m suffering from psychosis and I hear voices talking to me and they’re bothering the shit out of me,” Montilla recalled Jimenez saying.

Registered Nurse Shuntelle Anderson told a GBI agent that some five days before his death, she saw Jimenez banging the metal mirror in his cell. He told her, “These fucking voices, they won’t leave me the fuck alone …They’re telling me to commit suicide…but I don’t want to harm myself.”


See Interactive Map of U.S. Detention Deaths


Jimenez asked Anderson for a higher dose of the anti-psychotic drug Risperidone, which he’d previously been prescribed at a North Carolina mental health facility. It was at least the second such request he’d made at Stewart — where he received only a fourth of his normal dosage.

Anderson told investigators she left a note for the facility’s behavioral health counselor, Kimberly Calvery, saying that Jimenez wanted more medication. Calvery arranged for him to speak with the detention center’s psychiatrist but Jimenez didn’t live long enough to keep the appointment, which was scheduled later in the morning he died. Calvery later told investigators that Jimenez “never showed any suicidal tendencies at the Stewart Detention Center.”


Homeland Security reported that at the Stewart Detention Center solitary confinement, which  isn’t supposed to be punitive, appeared to be sometimes used to punish trivial offenses.

 


“He was such a good kid,” Anderson told investigators in the hours after Jimenez’s death. Earlier that night, she’d given him medication and he’d shared a self-portrait he’d been working on. “It was very nice, very detailed and last night, when I went down there, he said, ‘Look, I finished it.’” Anderson said. Guards and detainees also described Jimenez as mostly lucid and friendly, despite his occasional outbursts, quirky comments and a propensity to call himself Julius Caesar.

In a December 2017 report, “Concerns about ICE Detainee Treatment and Care at Detention Facilities,” the Homeland Security inspector general wrote that at Stewart and three other facilities (which are operated by county governments), “We identified problems that undermine the protection of detainees’ rights, their humane treatment, and the provision of a safe and healthy environment.” The IG’s staff wrote that immigration detention isn’t supposed to be punitive, and noted that at three of the facilities, including Stewart, segregation or solitary confinement appeared to be sometimes used to punish trivial offenses. At Stewart, the inspectors also found that showers were moldy and lacked cold water in some cases, and some bathrooms had no hot water, and that medical care, even for painful conditions, had been delayed for detainees.


Since 2003, 179 immigrant detainees have died in custody, many from preventable causes, like pneumonia and alcohol withdrawal.


Additionally, despite Jimenez’s nonviolent crimes, he was classified as a high-risk detainee. He had been convicted of marijuana possession, petty theft and an assault charge that arose from an unwanted hug he gave a woman in Raleigh, North Carolina. He was issued a red jumpsuit to signal his danger level and housed with others who were similarly classified. The inspector general’s report flagged misclassification of detainees as a problem at Stewart. While there, Jimenez wavered between wanting to wage a court battle to stay in the U.S., and paying for his own return to Panama through a process called voluntary departure. But, before he could take the first steps to fight his case, he ran into roadblocks, including the failure of the detention center to send a set of documents that Jimenez’s attorney had requested.

 Since 2003, 179 immigrant detainees have died in custody, many from preventable causes, like pneumonia and alcohol withdrawal. Human rights groups point to dozens of others who endure painful medical conditions and must wait for care or never receive it at all.

Like Jimenez, they’ve been dropped into a ballooning system whose rapid growth and diffuse nature would make it hard for the government to closely monitor, even if it attempted to do so.

ICE had fewer than 7,500 detention beds in 1995. Now the system is 500 percent bigger, with nearly 40,000 beds nationwide in 200 facilities that operate under three different sets of government standards. The Trump administration plans to add 12,000 more beds this year alone even as vulnerable detainees currently fall through the cracks.


JeanCarlo Jimenez completed his self-portrait and tied knots in a white bed sheet to shorten it. A guard  observed him jumping rope with it.


Federal officials largely maintain a hands-off approach, leaving it to private prison companies like CoreCivic and the GEO Group to run day-to-day affairs. The companies tend to run them like prisons and not as the civil detention facilities that the law says they are.

Photo: Robin Urevich

“Contractors operating facilities for ICE typically have backgrounds in corrections, and this shapes how they administer their ICE detention facilities,” said Kevin Landy, who led the Obama administration’s immigration detention reform efforts as the head of ICE’s Office of Detention Policy and Planning.

“Problems such as medical care, the way disciplinary proceedings are administered, the lack of sensitivity to detainee needs, and conditions generally reflect the problems writ large in our correctional system,” Landy said.

At Stewart, these problems have been particularly acute, said attorney Azadeh Shahshahani, whose group, Project South, monitors conditions at Stewart. “The facility needs to be shut down. It’s beyond redemption.”

Jimenez had come to the United States from Panama when he was 10, graduated from high school in Kansas, and considered himself American, even though he lived in the U.S. without documents most of his life. Public records show he even registered to vote in North Carolina — as a Republican.

“When I heard what happened, it blew my mind,” said Matt Schott, who was about four years older than Jean Jimenez and now works for an oil and gas exploration company in Kansas. Jimenez was 19 when he and his sister, Karina Kelly, came to Matt’s church, and they became friends 12 years ago. “He brought a lot of laughter to everybody,” Schott said, recalling Jean’s huge open smile. In photos, he’s beaming, showing a mouthful of teeth and wearing a big afro.

“Jean would just show up at the house. We’d play Christian worship music, and be up till 3 or 4 in the morning. We would get a bunch of food and go to a park,” Schott remembered. A video on Jean’s Facebook page shows him executing expert dance moves as friends play instruments outdoors.

Schott said when they began to share more of their lives, Jean tearfully told Matt he was undocumented and had to hide in plain sight. “He had big dreams. He wanted to start an architecture firm and had already named it — Eyes Design.”

Except for a few Facebook messages they exchanged, Schott lost track of Jimenez after the latter moved to North Carolina with his mother and stepfather about eight years ago. While there, Jimenez had obtained protection from deportation through the Obama administration’s DACA or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

But, in the six months before he was detained, his mental health declined. He was hospitalized twice for psychotic episodes and lost his DACA status. Jimenez also had the misfortune of being arrested just as President Trump took office. The new administration had declared that anyone in the country illegally was fair game for immigration enforcement, even if they’d committed no crime or if their crimes were as minor as Jimenez’s. He was transferred to ICE custody.

For Jimenez the prospect of deportation to Panama, a country he had left behind as a child, was scary, his sister Karina wrote in a chronology of conversations with her brother that she sent to the family’s attorney. “Game is over,” Kelly recalled Jimenez saying. But before being shipped to Panama, he would be held at Stewart, arguably one of the most troubled detention centers in the country.

About six weeks into his detention a fellow detainee punched Jimenez in the groin and busted his lip. Jimenez was punished with his first stint in solitary — even though he was the victim in the attack and the detention center’s camera shows he didn’t fight back.

“I’m tired of this life,” Jimenez told his stepfather Gilberto Rodriguez in a recorded phone call soon after, his voice sounding uncharacteristically weary.

“Don’t give up, you can start over,” Rodriguez counseled. “In God’s name you’re getting out…we have to do this together.”

Just two days before his death, Jimenez’s mother, Nerina Joseph, and Rodriguez made the trip from Raleigh, North Carolina, to visit him. “She reported that he was so happy to see them, and they had the best 60 minutes a mother in her shoes could ever ask for,” Karina Kelly wrote.

Still, Jimenez’s mother was concerned about his well-being, and stopped by El Refugio, a hospitality center in Lumpkin, Georgia, where detention center visitors can find a meal and place to sleep. El Refugio volunteers also visit detainees, and Joseph requested that someone check on Jimenez. A volunteer attempted to see him the next day, but was turned away because Stewart personnel mistakenly said Jimenez couldn’t receive visitors. Records show there were no such restrictions on Jimenez’s visits.

Later that night, Jimenez completed his self-portrait, and tied knots in a white bed sheet to shorten it. A guard even observed him jumping rope with the sheet a few hours before he died and asked him about it. Jimenez replied he was staying in shape and the guard took no further action.

Ten days after Jimenez’s suicide, a fellow detainee, Abel Ramirez Blanco, told GBI investigator Justin Lowthorpe that he had listened in his cell as guards, nurses and finally paramedics labored over Jimenez’s lifeless body, and an automatic defibrillator blared robotic CPR instructions.

A videotape of the scene inside Jimenez’s cell shows nurses Shuntelle Anderson and Davis English desperately trying to resuscitate Jimenez. Anderson yells for guards to call 911. “I’m calling an ambulance,” a voice answers. Records from a regional 911 center show paramedics were called six minutes after Wims radioed a medical emergency, and arrived in Jimenez’s cell some seven minutes after they were called.

ICE inspectors haven’t yet weighed in on Jimenez’s case. But in studying a 2013 suicide, ICE reviewers criticized staff at a Pennsylvania facility for waiting four minutes to call 911, writing that the Mayo Clinic and the American Heart Association recommend calling 911 before beginning CPR.

Jimenez was eventually taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead less than 15 minutes after his arrival.

Red caution tape was placed in the shape of a large X on Jimenez’s cell door. Inside the cell, steel shelves held his art supplies, his artwork and a plastic instant-noodle soup bowl with some of the broth still in it. On his wall Jimenez had written, “The grave cometh. Halleluyah.”

A death like Jimenez’s “could have happened to me,” Ramirez told GBI agent Lowthorpe, because of his own anxiety and depression. Ramirez said Stewart staff didn’t help him when he reported those symptoms. Instead, he was thrown in segregation where he witnessed Jimenez’s suicide, and began to feel even more desperate.

Matt Schott struggled to reconcile his friend’s death with his Christian faith. “People believe you commit suicide and you go to hell,” Schott said. “I can’t believe that about Jean because I knew who he really was. I love the guy and I believe one day I’ll see him again.”

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

https://capitalandmain.com/deadly-detention-hell-middle-pine-forest-0314

“DEADLY DETENTION

Deadly Detention: Hell in the Middle of a Pine Forest

Immigrant detainees represent more than $38 million a year for CoreCivic, a for-profit prison company that is the largest employer in one of Georgia’s poorest counties.

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Robin Urevich

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Photo: Robin Urevich


Former ICE Guard: “They’re always putting them in the hole — in segregation. And they manhandle people.”


Deep in a Georgia pine forest, two hours south of Atlanta, early morning mist rises in wisps over the Stewart Detention Center, a facility run by CoreCivic, one of the nation’s largest for-profit prison companies. The bucolic scene clashes with the tall, barbed wire-topped chain-link fences surrounding the center, and the echoing shouts, crackling radios and slamming doors inside the walls. Technically, the roughly 1,700 men here aren’t prisoners, but civil detainees being held for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as they plead their cases to remain in the United States, or as the government prepares their deportations.

Also Read: “Self-Portrait of a Tragedy”

The detainees represent more than $38 million a year for CoreCivic — the government pays the company nearly $62 a day per man. It is the largest employer in Stewart County, one of Georgia’s poorest.

Immigrant rights groups have charged that the conditions here are not only indistinguishable from those in prison, they are downright abusive. In fact, a December 2017 Homeland Security Inspector General’s report expressed concerns about human rights abuses and, last month, Joseph Romero, a retired ICE officer who served as a guard, told Capital & Main that he resigned a supervisor job at Stewart in 2016 because he didn’t like the way people were treated.


Guatemalan Asylum Seeker: “It is hell in here. I wouldn’t even recommend it to a person I hate.”


“They’re always putting them in the hole — in segregation,” Romero said. “And they manhandle people. They think they can take care of their problems like that.” Romero noted that few officers speak Spanish, so there is little understanding or communication between guards and detainees.

JeanCarlo Jimenez Joseph’s suicide by hanging while in solitary confinement last May and 33-year-old Cuban national Yulio Castro Garrido’s death from pneumonia last December have brought these concerns to the fore.

Jimenez was mentally ill and had been in solitary for 19 days when he died — four days longer than the United Nations Rapporteur on Torture considers torture.


See Interactive Map of U.S. Detention Deaths


“It is hell in here. I wouldn’t even recommend it to a person I hate,” said Wilhen Hill Barrientos, a 23-year-old Guatemalan asylum seeker who has been in detention — at Stewart, the Atlanta Detention Center and at the Irwin Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia — since 2015.

In addition to many other abuses that he alleges — rotten food, forced work and abuse by guards — Hill has also served 60 days in isolation. He said it was retaliation for a grievance he’d filed. He was placed in solitary, ostensibly because he’d been exposed to chickenpox; however, other detainees who, like Hill, reported they’d had the disease as children were released.


CoreCivic documents show that detainees were in isolation for such offenses as “horse playing.”


ICE detention standards specify that isolation is to be used only to punish the three most serious categories of rule violations, and only “when alternative dispositions may inadequately regulate the detainee’s behavior.”

But CoreCivic documents released after Jimenez’s suicide show that on the day that he died, detainees were in isolation for such offenses as “horse playing,” “refusal to obey staff” or “conduct that disrupts.” Four men had been in solitary for more than 60 days. One of them, Sylvester Smith, who was deported to Sierra Leone at the end of 2017, served at least four months in isolation. His charges were variously listed as “being found guilty of a combination of th…” (the word is cut off on CoreCivic’s restricted housing roster) and “failure to obey.”

After Jimenez died, however, then-warden Bill Spivey held weekly meetings aimed at reducing the number of people in solitary. By October 2017, documents show, there were just 10 people in isolation, but when Spivey retired and an assistant warden took over, the census more than doubled. CoreCivic spokesman Jonathan Burns didn’t respond to emailed questions about the current number of men in segregation.

Joseph Romero, the former ICE officer who worked at Stewart, is tall and graying with a full mustache and beard. He is proud of his ICE career but thinks the for-profit detention model the government has adopted has to go.

“They should go back and have these detention centers run by Immigration, not by private contractors,” Romero said. ICE officers treat people better, because they value their careers, Romero said. “You’re making a lot more money, you have retirement and better benefits. After 20 years, you can retire. At CCA [now known as CoreCivic], you have nothing.”


A detainee says guards call detainees “wetbacks” and “dogs,” and have greeted each other with Nazi salutes.


What’s more, Romero said, Stewart was understaffed: It wasn’t uncommon for officers to work double shifts and return to work eight hours later. “That’s why they’re so irritated,” he said. Equipment was also substandard, Romero claimed. He describes gun holsters that lack the safety snap that prevents a gun from being snatched by a thief or would-be attacker.

Romero said he wanted to try to change conditions for the better at Stewart, but found resistance from a tight, insular group that ran the place, and realized he could do little. Then he witnessed an incident that convinced him it was time to leave.

He saw two guards walking a handcuffed detainee to segregation. One of them “got in the guy’s face,” Romero recalled, and the detainee head-butted the guard. “The next thing you know the guard starting punching on the guy,” Romero said. He later watched a video of the beating with his co-workers, and Romero was taken aback by their reaction. “They said he asked for it, and I’m like wait a sec… If you’re in handcuffs why would I hit you? I have total control of you.”

The guard who threw the punch got fired, and a training session followed. But Romero doesn’t know if it had any effect because he left shortly thereafter.

Hill Barrientos said from his vantage point as a detainee, Stewart is worse than it was in 2016 when Romero was there. He believes Trump’s election signaled to detention officers that they could disrespect detainees with impunity.

Guards call detainees “wetbacks” and “dogs,” Hill Barrientos charged. He said that he’s even seen white detention officers greet each other with a Nazi salute. Health care is hard for detainees to obtain, Hill Barrientos said. He worked in the kitchen with Castro Garrido, who, he said, grew increasingly sicker because he was required to work instead of being allowed time to seek medical attention. ICE initially reported in its news release about Castro’s death that he had refused medical attention, an account that was widely reported. But the agency later corrected its news release to say that Castro’s case “was resistant to some forms of medical intervention.”

Hill’s lawyer, Glenn Fogle, thinks poor detention conditions are part of the government’s aggressive deportation strategy. “That’s the whole idea — to hold people in those horrible places to make them give up,” Fogle said.

Hill said he cannot give up — he would be killed by gang members who had threatened and extorted him if he is returned to Guatemala. His case is virtually identical to that of his two brothers and a sister, all of whom have already been granted asylum, Fogle said. Still, his case has been denied. Judges at Stewart grant asylum in few cases, so Hill Barrientos now pins his hopes on the Bureau of Immigration Appeals, which is currently considering his case.

“The people that give me strength are my mother and my daughter,” Hill Barrientos said. “So I keep fighting.”

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

Please hit the above links to get the great graphics accompanying Robin’s articles at Capital & Main! Many thanks, Robin, for your courageous and timely reporting!

This is the “New American Gulag” (“NAG”)!

It certainly had its antecedents in prior Administrations of both political parties. But, the Trump/Sessions/Miller/Kelly/Nielsen/Homan crew have taken it to new depths!

What kind of country does this to individuals whose only “crime” is to want to exercise their statutory and constitutional rights to a fair hearing and a fair adjudication of claims that their lives and safety will be endangered if returned to their native countries?

Is the NAG really how we want to be remembered by our children and grandchildren? If not, get out there and vote for politicians who have the backbone and moral courage to end this kind of Neo-Nazi, Neo-Stalinist approach to human rights! And, send those who have helped fund and promote these affronts to American values into permanent retirement. 

Also, don’t forget this, in part, is the disgraceful result of the Supreme Court majority’s failure to step up and defend our Constitution in Jennings v. Rodriguez. What if it were their relatives dying in the NAG? Time for judges at all levels of our justice system to get out of the “Ivory Tower” and start applying the law in the enlightened HUMAN terms that the Founding Fathers might have envisioned. 

PWS

03-16-18

PRACTICAL SCHOLARSHIP — PROFESSOR LAILA HLASS @ TULANE LAW TAKES ON “GUILT BY ASSOCIATION” AND “IMPLICIT BIAS “ IN IMMIGRATION ADJUDICATIONS INVOLVING GANG ALLEGATIONS!

HERE’S PROFESSOR HLASS:

 

HERE’S THE “ABSTRACT:”

The School to Deportation Pipeline

60 Pages Posted: 8 Mar 2018

Laila Hlass

Tulane University – Law School

Date Written: 2018

Abstract

The United States immigration regime has a long and sordid history of explicit racism, including limiting citizenship to free whites, excluding Chinese immigrants, deporting massive numbers of Mexican immigrants and U.S. citizens of Mexican ancestry, and implementing a national quotas system preferencing Western Europeans. More subtle bias has seeped into the system through the convergence of the criminal and immigration law regimes. Immigration enforcement has seen a rise in mass immigrant detention and deportation, bolstered by provocative language casting immigrants as undeserving undesirables: criminals, gang members, and terrorists. Immigrant children, particularly black and Latino boys, are increasingly finding themselves in the crosshairs of a punitive immigration system, over-policing within schools, and law enforcement, all of which can be compounded by racial biases and a lack of special protections for youth in the immigration regime. The confluence of these systems results in a trajectory that has been referred to as “the school to deportation pipeline.”

Gang allegations in immigration proceedings are an emerging practice in this trajectory. Using non-uniform and broad guidelines, law enforcement, school officials, and immigration agents may label immigrant youth as gang-affiliated based on youths’ clothes, friends, or even where they live. These allegations serve as the basis to detain, deny bond, deny immigration benefits, and deport youth in growing numbers. This Article posits that gang allegations are a natural outgrowth of the convergence of the criminal and immigration schemes, serving as a means to preserve racial inequality. This Article further suggests excluding the consideration of gang allegations from immigration adjudications because their use undermines fundamental fairness. Finally, this Article proposes a three-pronged approach to counter the use of gang allegations, including initiatives to interrupt bias, take youthfulness into account, and increase access to counsel in immigration proceedings.

Keywords: Immigration, Children, Deportation, Immigration Representation, migrant youth, school-to-deportation-pipeline, race, gangs

Hlass, Laila, The School to Deportation Pipeline (2018). Georgia State University Law Review, Vol. 34, No. 3, 2018; Tulane Public Law Research Paper No. 18-1. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3132754
HERE ARE SOME “KEY QUOTES:”
“To be sure, the problem of gang violence in this country is a serious one. It is a problem that requires sustained attention to the complex (and diverse) sociological and neurological reasons that young people decide to associate with gangs or, as the case may be, disengage from them.27 Those concerns, however important, are beyond the scope of this Article. Instead, the goal of this Article is to shed light on the practical realities faced by immigrant youth caught in the school to deportation pipeline, where entrenched biases and insufficient procedural safeguards virtually guarantee their removal based on gang affiliation, no matter how flimsy the evidence supporting that label.28”
. . . .
“Gang allegations in immigration proceedings are part of the immigration regime’s long and ignoble history of explicit and implicit racism. Immigrant children, particularly youth of color, increasingly find themselves in the crosshairs of a punitive immigration system and subject to over-policing within schools and by law enforcement. These factors converge with existing racial biases and a lack of special protections for youth in the immigration regime, creating a perfect storm. To address this problem, gang allegations and related evidence should be excluded from immigration adjudications due to their unreliability and prejudicial nature. Furthermore, safeguards must be implemented to address this phenomenon, particularly as gang allegations appear to be on the rise. The immigration agency should attempt to interrupt adjudicator bias through education, improved decision-making conditions, and data collection. Secondly, youth should explicitly be a positive factor in discretion and bond decisions. Finally, to stall the school to deportation pipeline, children should have access to representation in immigration adjudications.”
AND, HERE’S A LINK TO THE FULL ARTICLE IN THE GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW:
***************************************
Laila was my colleague at Georgetown Law when she was a Fellow at the CALS Asylum Clinic. In fact, she was a “Guest Lecturer” in my Immigration Law & Policy class.
Although Laila takes the much  more scholarly approach, I have been saying consistently that this Administration’s harsh rhetoric and strictly law enforcement approach to diminishing the power of gangs is not only likely to fail, but is almost guaranteed to make the problems worse.  Indeed, it’s basically an “on rhetorical steroids” version of the gang enforcement policies that have consistently been failing since the Reagan Administration.
But, we now have folks in charge who glory in their ignorance and bias. Consequently, they refuse to learn from past mistakes and will not embrace more effective community-based strategies that over time would deal with the causes of gang membership and help reduce gang violence.
PWS
03-14-18

FEAR AND LOATHING IN ATLANTA: The Worst Place In America To Be Undocumented?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/us/atlanta-immigration-arrests.html

Vivian Yee writes in the NY Times:

“CHAMBLEE, Ga. — Not many notice when the SUVs arrive.

Around 5 a.m., when the immigration agents pull into the parking lot of the Chamblee Heights apartments, 16 miles from downtown Atlanta, only one person is on the lookout.

Cristina Monteros catches sight of the cars with the telltale tinted windows from her small apartment near the front, where she runs a day care, and calls her downstairs neighbor: ICE is here.

The neighbor dials another, who passes it on. It takes less than 15 minutes for everyone in the complex to hear about “la migra,” whereupon they shut their doors and hold their breath. Some show up late to work, and others skip it altogether. The school bus might leave some children behind.

“It’s just us helping each other out,” said Ms. Monteros, 35. “There’s fear every day.”

Few places in the United States have simultaneously beckoned undocumented immigrants and penalized them for coming like metropolitan Atlanta, a boomtown of construction and service jobs where conservative politics and new national policies have turned every waking day into a gamble.

President Trump has declared anyone living in the country illegally a target for arrest and deportation, driving up the number of immigration arrests by more than 40 percent this year. While the Obama administration deported record numbers of undocumented immigrants, it directed federal agents to focus on arresting serious criminals and recent arrivals. The current administration has erased those guidelines, allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to arrest and deport anyone here illegally.

Freed of constraints, the regional ICE office in Atlanta made nearly 80 percent more arrests in the first half of this year than it did in the same period last year, the largest increase of any field office in the country.

It has had help. Local sheriffs and the police have been working with federal agents to identify and detain immigrants, a model of cooperation that the Trump administration is rapidly trying to expand throughout the country.

Every few hours, an unauthorized immigrant is booked into a county jail on charges as serious as assault and as minor as failing to signal a right turn. Then the jail alerts ICE — contrary to what happens in the so-called sanctuary cities repeatedly denounced by Mr. Trump, where local authorities refuse to turn immigrants over to the federal agency except in cases involving the gravest crimes.

Atlanta’s immigrants can do little but hide. At strip-mall taquerias and fruit stands, business has lagged. Word of the arrests flows through neighborhood phone trees, and Facebook has become an early-warning system for people desperate for clues about where ICE is operating. All around the metropolitan area, cabs and Uber cars are picking up immigrants who know driving their own cars may get them no further than detention.

. . . .

An analysis of one month of Gwinnett County jail records from this summer shows that 184 of the 2,726 people booked and charged at the jail were held for immigration authorities. Almost two-thirds of those detained for ICE had been charged with a traffic infraction such as failing to stay in their lane, speeding or driving without a license. Others were booked on charges including assault, child molestation and drug possession.

Advocates for immigrants have accused officers in 287(g) counties of targeting Hispanic drivers, a claim local police have denied.

“Local law enforcement is just chasing Latinos all over the place for tiny traffic infractions,” said Adelina Nicholls, the executive director of the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights.

But to Butch Conway, the longtime sheriff of Gwinnett County, there is no reason his deputies should not turn in immigrants caught driving without a license. They are, after all, doubly breaking the law.

“I find it offensive that they just thumb their nose at our laws and operate vehicles they are not licensed to operate,” Mr. Conway said in a 2010 interview, “on top of the fact that they are here illegally.” (Through a spokeswoman, he declined to comment for this article.)

In nearby Cobb County, Maria Hernandez, a school janitor from Mexico, was arrested while driving home from work one night in May. An officer conducting a random license tag check, a common practice in some police departments, had determined through a state database that the tag had been suspended because the car lacked insurance. After pulling over Ms. Hernandez, the officer then discovered she had no driver’s license.

Her boss tried to bail her out of the Cobb County jail, but was told that the money would go to waste: She was headed to immigration detention, where she would spend three days trying to explain that she was a single mother with a sick child. Estefania, her 13-year-old daughter, was being treated for depression after a suicide attempt.

Ms. Hernandez was released, given an ankle monitor and told to report back with a plane ticket. (A lawyer has helped delay the deportation.)

Her car, in fact, was insured; the officer had called in the wrong license tag, according to a Cobb County Police Department spokesman, Sgt. Dana Pierce.

Sergeant Pierce said it made no difference, given Ms. Hernandez’s lack of a driver’s license. Generally, “there is no singling out of any race, creed, color, religion or anything else,” the sergeant said.

But by the time the mistake was discovered, it was too late. Ms. Hernandez was already being booked into the county jail.”

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Read Yee’s complete article at the link.

As has been noted before on this blog, the U.S. Immigration Courts in Georgia also have the reputation of being most anti-migrant in the country.

PWS

11-26-17