☠️👎🏼 ANOTHER SUPER-SHODDY PERFORMANCE BY BIA ON CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM OUTED BY 9TH CIR. — Reyes-Corado v. Garland

Four Horsemen
BIA Asylum Panel In Action. It’s hard to ignore the BIA’s violent, deadly, abuse of asylum seekers, particularly those of color. But, somehow, Merrick Garland, Lisa Monaco, Vanita Gupta, Kristen Clarke, and other DOJ officials manage to look the other way, as do Congressional Dems! Too busy fecklessly complaining about Justice Clarence Thomas to look at their own house?
Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

SUMMARY** Immigration

The panel granted a petition for review of the Board of Immigration Appealsdenial of Francisco Reyes-Corados motion to reopen removal proceedings based on changed circumstances, and remanded.

The Board denied reopening based, in part, on Reyes- Corados failure to include a new application for relief, as required by 8 C.F.R. § 1003.2(c)(1). The government acknowledged that under Aliyev v. Barr, 971 F.3d 1085 (9th Cir. 2020), the Board erred to the extent it relied on Reyes- Corados failure to submit a new asylum application for relief. Here, however, unlike in Aliyev, Reyes-Corado did not include his original asylum application with his motion to reopen. Consistent with the plain text of § 1003.2(c)(1) and various persuasive authorities, the panel held that a motion to reopen that adds new circumstances to a previously considered application need not be accompanied by an application for relief.

The Board also denied reopening after concluding that Reyes-Corado did not establish materially changed country conditions to warrant an exception to the time limitation on his motion to reopen. Reyes-Corado initially sought asylum relief based on threats he received from his uncles family members to discourage him from avenging his fathers murder by his uncles family. The Board previously concluded that personal retribution, rather than a protected

** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

REYES-CORADO V. GARLAND 3

 ground, was the central motivation for the threats of harm. In his motion to reopen, Reyes-Corado presented evidence of persistent and intensifying threats.

As an initial matter, the panel explained that the changed circumstances Reyes-Corado presented were entirely outside of his control, and thus were properly understood as changed country conditions, not changed personal circumstances. The panel also held that these changed circumstances were material to Reyes-Corados claims for relief because they rebutted the agencys previous determination that Reyes-Corado had failed to establish the requisite nexus between the harm he feared and his membership in a familial particular social group. The panel explained that the Boards previous nexus rationale was undermined by the fact that the threats, harassment, and violence persisted despite the lack of any retribution by Reyes-Corados family against his uncles family for at least fourteen years after Reyes-Corados fathers murder, and where multiple additional family members were targeted, including elderly and young family members who would be unlikely to carry out any retribution. Thus, the panel held that the Board abused its discretion in concluding that Reyes-Corados evidence was not qualitatively different than the evidence at his original hearing.

The panel also declined to uphold the Boards determination that Reyes-Corado failed to establish prima facie eligibility for relief because Reyes-Corados new evidence likely undermined the Boards prior nexus finding, and the Board applied the improperly high one central reason” nexus standard to Reyes-Corados withholding of removal claim, rather than the less demanding a reason” standard.

4 REYES-CORADO V. GARLAND

 The panel remanded for the Board to reconsider whether Reyes-Corado established prima facie eligibility for relief and to otherwise reevaluate the motion to reopen in light of the principles set forth in the opinion.

COUNSEL

David A. Schlesinger

(argued), Kai Medeiros, and Paulina

Reyes, Jacobs & Schlesinger LLP, San Diego, California, for Petitioner.

 

Enitan O. Otunla (argued), Trial Attorney; Bernard A. Joseph, Senior Litigation Counsel; Joseph H. Hunt, Assistant Attorney General; Office of Immigration Litigation, Civil Division, United States Department of Justice; Washington, D.C.; for Respondent.

OPINION

KOH, Circuit Judge:

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Congrats to David A. Schlesinger & colleagues!

I’ve often discussed  EOIR’s all-too-frequent use of bogus nexus determinations – basically turning normal legal rules on causation on their head – to deny protection to bona fide refugees, particularly those from Latin America and Haiti.

There is a growing body of evidence that EOIR is systematically unfair to Central American asylum applicants. But, Garland, his lieutenants, and Congressional Dems have basically looked the other way as this stunning, widespread denial of due process and equal protection under our Constitution continues to unfold in plain view on their watch! Why? Where’s the dynamic, values-based, expert, ethical leadership we should expect from a Dem Administration?

This particular example of substandard “judging” literally reeks of pre-judgement and “endemic any reason to denialism!”

Dems wring their collective hands about Justice Clarence Thomas, who is essentially unaccountable and untouchable! But, they have done little or nothing to address serious competence, bias, and ethical issues festering in a major “life or death” Federal Court System they totally control!

Lots of “talk,” not much “walk” from Dems!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-15-23

🇺🇸⚖️🗽 ANDREA R. FLORES @ NYT: We Know That “Uber Deterrence” Fails At The Border — Title 42 Debacle Under Trump Proves It: Biden Must Abandon The Restrictionist Remnants & Restore Legality & Integrity To Our Current Refugee & Asylum Systems!

Andrea Flores
Andrea Flores
Vice President for Immigration Policy and Campaigns at FWD.us.
PHOTO: Linkedin

https://nl.nytimes.com/f/newsletter/H7Demr4HzkuwqSIi_5Cg4g~~/AAAAAQA~/RgRmt1VqP0TpaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubnl0aW1lcy5jb20vMjAyMy8wOC8xMC9vcGluaW9uL2FzeWx1bS1zZWVrZXJzLWltbWlncmF0aW9uLXJlZm9ybS5odG1sP2NhbXBhaWduX2lkPTM5JmVtYz1lZGl0X3R5XzIwMjMwODEwJmluc3RhbmNlX2lkPTk5NzE5Jm5sPW9waW5pb24tdG9kYXkmcmVnaV9pZD03OTIxMzg4NiZzZWdtZW50X2lkPTE0MTYxOCZ0ZT0xJnVzZXJfaWQ9OGExZjQ3Mzc0MGIyNTNkOGZhNGMyM2IwNjY3MjI3MzdXA255dEIKZNNq0NRk4LcZOlISamVubmluZ3MxMkBhb2wuY29tWAQAAAAD

Andrea writes in a NYT Op-Ed:

U.S. asylum laws were designed to protect people fleeing harm. They were enacted in the decades following the Holocaust to ensure that the United States never again turned away people fleeing persecution. But now, many blame these laws for the chaos and inhumanity at the nation’s southern border.

The biggest blow to America’s commitment to asylum came during the pandemic, when former President Donald Trump invoked Title 42, an emergency measure that allowed border agents to turn away asylum seekers, under the justification of preventing the spread of the virus.

When Title 42 restrictions were lifted in May, President Biden enacted a carrot-and-stick approach aimed at deterring new asylum seekers from traveling by foot to the border. These new measures included a set of legal pathways, including a parole program that allows people from select countries, including Cuba and Haiti, to legally enter the country for at least two years, provided they have a financial sponsor in the United States. Doing so has discouraged would-be migrants from taking a dangerous trek with a smuggler, often through multiple continents.

This approach would have been a great step forward if it wasn’t paired with a counter measure that prohibits some asylum-seekers at the border from applying for protection in the United States. The vast majority of migrants must secure an appointment at an official port of entry, which are difficult to obtain, or else they will be subject to expedited removal if they cannot prove that they sought legal protection in another country along the way.

. . . .

If proponents of a secure border are serious about lowering border crossing numbers and decreasing unauthorized migration, they should support Mr. Biden’s attempts to create new legal pathways. Instead, a coalition of Republican attorneys general is challenging the president’s parole program. In Congress, Senate Republicans are trying to eliminate the same parole authority that allowed Afghans to temporarily resettle in the United States. There have been no challenges to the use of the parole authority to bring Ukrainians to the United States.

These actions reveal that our current fight over the border is not about the number of people trying to come here — it is about which should be allowed to come. American voters may not have strong opinions about the future of the asylum system or the legal pathways being created, but voters of both parties dislike the chaos and human suffering that have subsumed this issue for the past 10 years. Over a million American citizens have signed up to sponsor migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

At a moment of record global displacement, we can’t keep waiting for Congress to modernize our immigration laws. Safe legal pathways are good for the people who use our immigration system. Mr. Biden has taken some critical steps to give migrants better options, but with no hope of congressional action in the near future, more is needed.

Andrea R. Flores is the vice president for immigration policy and campaigns at FWD.us.


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Read the complete op-ed at the link.

Much of what Andrea says echoes what I have said over and over on Courtside and has been repeatedly recommended by experts, who are then largely ignored by the Biden Administration. 

As I have argued before, the “low hanging fruit” here would be EOIR reform: A new BIA of “practical scholars;” better IJs with proven asylum and human rights experience; ending “Aimless Docket Reshuffling On Steroids” (which drives many poor policy and legal decisions); and getting some dynamic, fearless, expert leadership on human rights and immigration at the DOJ — which is either the driver or the facilitator of many of the problems at the border, depending on how you look at it.  

We can also see how Garland’s lackluster performance on immigration affects other areas of justice such as civil rights, women’s rights, and LGBTQ rights, to name a few of the most obvious ones. Nobody at today’s DOJ appears to possess the “big picture” knowledge and experience to “connect the dots” on these critical issues.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever

PWS

08-10-23

⚖️ ATTENTION NDPA LITIGATORS & PROSPECTIVE LITIGATORS! — Join Our Round Table Colleague Judge Carol King & The National Institute For Trial Advocacy (“NITA”) For Training, Sept. 27-29 in NYC!

Honorable Carol King
Honorable Carol King
U.S. Immigration Judge (Ret.)
Member, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

https://www.nita.org/immigration2023

Carol writes:

I know you are in touch with a lot of young lawyers in the NDPA and wanted to let you know about a wonderful trial skills training I’m involved in.  I’ve been teaching for NITA in trainings focused on trial practice in Immigration Court for a few years now, along with Denise, Eliza, Jeff and others.  This upcoming program in New York is for private counsel and is expensive, but totally worth it for new lawyers (and even experienced lawyers) to hone their trial skills.  Judges appreciate it too!  NITA also does public interest trial skills courses in cooperation with the NLGNIP which are more affordable for lawyers working for non-profits.  If you know any young NDPA lawyers working for firms that can afford this program, I highly recommend it!  Please pass this along to anyone you think would benefit.  Here is the info:

Advocacy in Immigration Matters

.

September 27, 2023 – September 29, 2023

White & Williams LLP

New York, NY

https://www.nita.org/immigration2023

Thanks!

Carol

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Advocacy in Immigration Matters

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White & Williams LLP Times Square Tower, #2900, New York, NY 10036

September 27, 2023 – September 29, 2023

Your Price: $1,945.00

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**Pre-Program Lecture Online scheduled for Friday, September 22, from 12:00 – 1:30 PM EST.**

WHY YOU SHOULD ATTEND

As an immigration defense lawyer, you know that practicing in immigration court is increasingly rife with changes and complexity. NITA recognizes this reality and, in response, has developed Advocacy in Immigration Matters, a specialized and timely program designed to help you rapidly upgrade your skills in representing those facing removal from the United States.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

This is the only trial skills advocacy course available that covers everything you will experience during an immigration trial. From pre-trial to trial, you will receive on-your-feet training and guidance that goes beyond a lecture-focused learning experience. During this three-day program, you will:

  • make and meet objections,
  • conduct direct, cross, and re-direct examinations,
  • accredit a proposed expert witness,
  • obtain the required opinion from an expert witness, and
  • offer a concise yet compelling closing argument.

All of this will be done in small groups of your peers, with feedback and at a pace that will help boost your performance.

The instructors—some of the most experienced immigration trial lawyers and judges in the country—will share constructive feedback and specific ideas on how to refine your skills. As you watch your peers perform, you will also absorb the “teachable moments” from their performance and instructor critique, which means each layer of learning is continually reinforced by what you hear, see, and most importantly, do.

After three days, you will be able to step into the courtroom with the confidence and practical skills you need to be a good advocate for your client.

In addition, to supplement this “learning-by-doing,” you will have access to NITA’s trial skills video lectures and watch the faculty demonstrate skills. Furthermore, NITA will offer a pre-program, one-and-a-half-hour session on case analysis that will be foundational to the rest of the program and will ensure that participants seek and present the information most relevant to the assigned particular social group.

In just three days, this Advocacy in Immigration Matters program—as with the other time-tested, premier programming that NITA is known for—will swiftly refine your trial practice, leaving you with greater skill and confidence that shows up where it matters the most: when you stand shoulder-to-shoulder with your client in the courtroom.

NITA’s LEARNING-BY-DOING METHOD

NITA’s learning-by-doing method allows you to take calculated risks without ever jeopardizing your client’s case or your own reputation. It is a safe space to learn and practice. This course will employ the tried-and-true learning-by-doing method by providing ALL participants the opportunity to apply their learned skills as if they are presenting in court. You get to participate and observe, learning not only from your mistakes and triumphs but those of your fellow participants as well.

Expert faculty will provide you with constructive feedback, and you will have the option of recording yourself on your phone, which allows you to see and hear yourself the way judges and juries do. But unlike in a trial where there are real stakes at risk, at NITA you will have the opportunity to correct your mistakes, eliminate any bad habits you may have developed, and refine your trial skills.

When you return to your office, you will feel empowered by having learned skills that will serve you the rest of your career.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

You should!

Although some removal defense cases may not go to trial because of prosecutorial discretion, learning and refining your trial skills will translate into better outcomes for your clients.

Honing your trial skills will improve virtually every aspect of the many things you do as a litigator from negotiating with the OPLA assistant chief counsel to convincing the immigration judge to grant your client relief.

YOUR REGISTRATION INCLUDES

  • One-on-one personalized feedback and coaching from NITA faculty
  • Case materials
  • One credit toward the NITA Advocate Designation.

NITA FACULTY

Learn more about each faculty member’s professional background and their NITA webcasts, podcast episodes, publications, and programs by clicking their bio link below.

WHAT ARE PEOPLE SAYING ABOUT THIS COURSE?

“I would highly recommend this course to immigration practitioners. It was especially helpful for me as someone who began practicing during COVID, but I could see that the skills would also be useful to practice for more experienced practitioners. The course was 100% worth it and I came out of it feeling more confident in my ability to do defensive work.” — NITA – NIPNLG “Advocacy in Immigration Matters” course attendee (August 2022)

“This was literally the most useful training I’ve had in the legal field, including law school, internships and many other PD opportunities I’ve tried to take advantage of. I think in the legal profession, there’s such an emphasis on being right and being prepared that we have a hard time taking risks and messing up. Even in trainings and simulations, I participated very little because I felt like there was this very high amount of minimum knowledge that I needed, didn’t have, and didn’t know how to get. I guess I figured everyone had learned this in debate or Model UN, which I never did. But somehow, the instructors created this baseline understanding that we’re there to learn, we can start from zero, and messing up is welcomed because it shows we’re taking risks. I feel much more ready to work on my cases. What’s more, in a field where burnout is so high, I feel excited to prep for trial now.” — Advocacy in Immigration Matters online course attendee (April 2022)

“In the over twenty years I had the honor to serve as an immigration judge, I frequently saw attorneys who, although bright, dedicated and familiar with their clients’ cases, had very limited understanding of evidentiary rules, proper forms of direct and cross-examination, effective storytelling, and the art of closing argument. These basic trial skills are not usually part of a law school curriculum, and once engaged in the practice of law most attorneys do not take the time to develop or hone their skills, other than by “trial and error,” which is, sadly, sometimes at the expense of their clients. The NITA program provides a unique opportunity to develop these extremely important skills. I encourage those who are seeking to represent asylum seekers in Immigration Court to consider taking advantage of this unique and valuable opportunity.” — Hon. Eliza C. Klein, United States Immigration Judge (Ret.)

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Every dollar you give to The NITA Foundation helps a public service lawyer receive advocacy training that would otherwise be out of reach.

DONATE TODAY

FACULTY

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Carol King

Solo

Carol M King Law Office

BIO

Michelle Mendez

Director of Legal Resources and Training

National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild Inc

BIO

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Tom Swett

Attorney at Law

SWETT LIMITED

BIO

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Victoria Neilson

Supervising Attorney

National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild Inc

BIO

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This is truly an All-Star Faculty of folks who have “walked the walk,” saved many lives, and changed countless futures for the better over their distinguished and varied careers!

I have worked with NITA on developing and presenting advocacy training for VIISTA Villanova. This is a collection of “total pros” dedicated to making America’s courts function at the highest possible level.

Also, as you know from reading publications like LexisNexus, ImmigrationProf Blog, The Jeffrey Chase Blog, and Courtside, LITIGATION MATTERS! Every week, we alert our readers to successful efforts that are having a real life impact and literally changing the face of American law!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-27-23

🏴‍☠️ ADMINISTRATIONS CHANGE, BUT SCOFFLAW MISTREATMENT OF ASYLUM SEEKERS DOESN’T — US District Judge Jon S. Tigar Blows Away 💨 Biden Administration’s Bogus Asylum Rules — Again! — Round Table 🛡⚔️ Weighs In On Winning Side — Again! — Order Delayed Pending Filing of Appeal, So The Carnage Continues for Now!☠️

Border Death
Dem A.G. Merrick Garland’s indifference to asylum laws, racial justice, due process, and the reality of seeking asylum at the border has become astoundingly grotesque!                                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

 

EBSC III MSJ order

Here’s a report from Hon. “Sir Jeffrey” Chase of the Round Table:

Hi all: As you know, our group filed an amicus brief in East Bay Sanctuary v. Garland, challenging the new rules at the border that would make most of those unable to get an online appointment through an app ineligible to apply for asylum.

District Court Judge Jon Tigar just issued the attached order granting summary judgment to plaintiffs and denying defendants’ motion for summary judgment.

From Judge Tigar’s order:

“Congress granted the agencies authority to impose additional conditions on asylum eligibility, but only those consistent with section 1158…Two of the conditions imposed by the Rule have been previously found to be inconsistent with Section 1158…

The Court concludes that the Rule is contrary to law because it presumes ineligible for asylum noncitizens who enter between ports of entry, using a manner of entry that Congress expressly intended should not affect access to asylum. The Rule is also contrary to law because it presumes ineligible for asylum noncitizens who fail to apply for protection in a transit country, despite Congress’s clear intent that such a factor should only limit access to asylum where the transit country actually presents a safe option.”

The order is stayed for 14 days to allow the government to appeal.

Our group has once again helped make a difference in providing fairness and due process. Congrats to all.

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

Congrats to the plaintiffs and to my Round Table colleagues!

This was basically a blowout for the plaintiffs on all issues! The USG argument essentially was that complying with the law would be too difficult and/or politically unpopular. Therefore, they have chosen to violate the law and to use rather transparent pretexts (actually misrepresentations about the bogus “presumption”) to evade it. 

Really, folks, how do we have a Dem AG who 1) approves such complete legal nonsense; 2) advances essentially frivolous and disingenuous arguments in an attempt to defend the indefensible; and 3) can’t make the legal system for asylum work in a fair and legal manner at EOIR or DHS?

How immoral and intellectually dishonest are Garland’s arguments. Here’s one of my favorite passages from Judge Tigar’s opinion:

While they wait for an adjudication, applicants for asylum must remain in Mexico, where migrants are generally at heightened risk of violence by both state and non-state actors.

See, e.g., PC 32446–68 (2022 State Department report noting credible reports of gender-based violence against migrants; reports of migrants being tortured by migration authorities; “numerous instances” of armed groups targeting migrants for kidnapping, extortion, and homicide; and that asylum seekers and migrants were vulnerable to forced labor); PC 22839–42 (NGO report documenting violent crimes against 13,480 migrants in Mexico, by both state and non-state actors, between January 2021 and December 2022); PC 76248–87 (table of crimes summarized in preceding report); PC 21752–58 (2022 NGO report discussing gender-based violence in northern Mexico border cities, including against LGBTQI+ and Black migrants); PC 21610–11 (2022 NGO report concerning gender-based violence against Venezuelan women and LGBTIQ+ migrants in southern Mexico).16

16 In addition to these examples, the record is replete with additional documentation of the extraordinary risk of violence many migrants face in Mexico. See, e.g., PC 22129–30 (2023 news report documenting instances of kidnapping of asylum seekers in northern Mexico); PC 23247–50 (2022 news report quoting Chihuahua state police chief stating that “organized criminal gangs are financing their operations through migrant trafficking”); PC 23082 (2023 NGO report discussing treatment of migrants and asylum seekers); PC 20937–43 (2021 NGO report documenting kidnapping and extortion of Venezuelan migrants in Mexico); PC 29740–29744 (2021 NGO report documenting instances of rape, kidnapping, and other violence experienced by migrant women in Mexico); PC 75946–48 (2022 NGO report documenting violence against migrants in Mexico); AR 4881 (2022 NGO report noting that asylum seekers from Central America have been pursued across the border and found in southern Mexico by their persecutors).

Only somebody who avoids the border, has never represented asylum seekers there, and is impervious to facts and reality could make such outlandish arguments in favor of an outrageously deficient and illegal “policy.” Sounds like something out of the “Stephen Miller Playbook!” Why is it coming from a Dem AG?

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-25-23

🇺🇸⚖️🌟 NDPA ALL-STAR PROFESSOR PAULINA VERA NAMED ONE OF LAWYERS OF COLOR’S INAUGURAL “WONDERFUL WOMEN!”

 

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The Jacob Burns Community Legal Clinics at The George Washington University Law School

The Jacob Burns Community Legal Clinics at The George Washington University Law School

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Professor Paulina Vera has been named one of Lawyers of Color’s inaugural “Wonderful Women,” which recognizes dynamic women attorneys working in law firms, companies, and government agencies who show promise in their careers and demonstrate a strong commitment to advancing diversity in the legal profession! If you’re interested, the press release can be found here: https://lnkd.in/gGAC-85F

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Paulina Vera
Paulina Vera
GW Law Faculty Profile

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Congratulations again, Paulina, my friend! So well deserved!  Can’t wait to see you on the bench @ EOIR, some other Federal Judgeship, or another high-level leadership position. 

Paulina was a (Legacy) Arlington Immigraton Court Intern and a “charter member” of the NDPA!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-24-23

🇺🇸🗽 INSPIRING AMERICA: Dreamer Viridiana Chabolla “Pays It Forward” — Big Time! — “How can I help aside from placing my hopes in a Congress that is more concerned about building borders than dealing with these issues?”

 

Viridiana Chabolla ’13, who was brought to the U.S. from Mexico at 2 years old, on the day she became a U.S. citizen in 2021.
Viridiana Chabolla ’13, who was brought to the U.S. from Mexico at 2 years old, on the day she became a U.S. citizen in 2021.
PHOTO: Pamona College Magazine

https://magazine.pomona.edu/2023/summer/all-the-way-to-the-supreme-court/

Carla Maria Guerrero writes in Pomona College Magazine: 

There are not a lot of big wins for Viridiana Chabolla ’13 in her line of work. It’s not for a lack of trying, or a lack of sweat and tears. Her commitment has been tested over the years but she remains determined. Chabolla is an attorney working in immigration law. The landscape is grim, she says. It can be heartbreaking. Demoralizing. She’s not just an attorney. She is an immigrant, too, and for most of her life she was undocumented.

In February, the Los Angeles Times wrote a story about one of her recent clients. Leonel Contreras, a U.S. Army veteran, was a legal permanent resident before being deported to Mexico after serving time for a nonviolent crime. Contreras had grown up in the U.S., but after his deportation he worked and lived in Tijuana for at least a decade before the Immigrant Defenders Law Center in Los Angeles took his case and Chabolla helped him return to his family members in California. He became a U.S. citizen earlier this year.

“It’s really nice to wave an American flag at a naturalization ceremony,” says Chabolla, who began working at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef) in October 2021. “Immigration law is so harsh and when it’s not harsh, it’s just not helpful. It’s hard to have a win. When you have those moments, you have to grab on and make them last.”

Chabolla was born in Guanajuato, Mexico. Her mother came to the U.S. to escape a bad relationship and start a new life. A 2-year-old Chabolla and the rest of her mother’s family joined her soon after. Chabolla grew up with her grandparents, aunts and cousins all living close to each other in East Los Angeles. “I’d remember seeing my mom and aunts getting ready for work at ridiculous hours of the day,” she says of the early-morning hubbub. “I remember always being surrounded by people and conversations. There were a lot of disagreements but a lot of love.”

When she was 11, Chabolla met a group of lawyers who worked in East L.A. Although she didn’t know what exactly they did, she recalls thinking that they seemed to hold a lot of power. They seemed to have some kind of authority to help her and others like her—people who were not born in the U.S.

It was during Chabolla’s junior year at Pomona that the Obama administration established an immigration policy that changed her life. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) allowed certain immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and also become eligible for a work permit.

For the first time, Chabolla was able to have a job on campus. She saved her first pay stub. It wasn’t much in terms of money, but it was significant for Chabolla.

With DACA, Chabolla’s future seemed a bit brighter. She could now apply for jobs after graduation. Her first work after Pomona was as an organizer with the pro bono legal services nonprofit Public Counsel, a choice that set her on a course for a win of historic proportions.

For four years, Chabolla took down the stories of plaintiffs for cases being handled by Public Counsel. As time passed, she began to feel more empowered to share her immigration status with her director, Mark Rosenbaum, even as the national political landscape was transitioning from an Obama presidency to a Trump one.

“When Trump was elected, I broke down,” she says. She remembers Rosenbaum calling her to tell her she didn’t have to go to work the next day: “Go be with your family, go through your emotions,” he told her.

“We didn’t know what Trump would do first. We just hit the ground running,” says Chabolla, who worked on the defense case for Daniel Ramirez Medina, the first person to have his DACA permit taken away. “With everything going on, we focused on putting out fires. Trump wasn’t taking out DACA in one go just yet. He was creating all of this panic everywhere first.”

Her time at Public Counsel rekindled Chabolla’s original interest in law.

“I kept thinking of the best way I could help others. I loved the idea of gaining new knowledge, and a degree in law would allow me to have a sense of power,” she says. The attorneys at Public Counsel, like her boss Rosenbaum, not only practiced law and led big cases but they also wrote articles and taught university-level courses.

In September of 2017, the Trump administration announced it was officially rescinding DACA. Chabolla had just started at the UC Irvine School of Law. Her initial response was to focus on school and wait.

Then Chabolla got a call from Rosenbaum. “He called me to be a plaintiff in a case against the United States. I felt terrified.”

Chabolla phoned her mother and her family. “If I shared my story, I would have to share their story,” she says. She also was married by then and discussed the possible ramifications with her husband.

Her family was supportive. Chabolla felt compelled to help.

The Public Counsel lawsuit led by Rosenbaum was filed as Garcia v. United States. As it made its way through the higher courts, it was merged with four other cases and ultimately became known as Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California by the time it reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

As a plaintiff in the case, Chabolla shared her story with a lawyer for a written declaration. While she never testified before any judges, she did have to share her immigration story multiple times as the case garnered national media attention.

On June 18, 2020, the Supreme Court delivered its 5-4 decision blocking the Trump administration’s elimination of DACA. Chabolla was in Washington for the hearing. “A few of us got to go inside,” she recalls. “Some DACA students were there, too. And it was really powerful. These justices were hearing arguments on this huge case…but I know maybe for them all cases they hear are huge. But we occupied half the room and that was really powerful and really unusual.”

Chabolla took notes during the hearing. “I remember writing down something that Justice [Sonia] Sotomayor said: ‘This is not about the law; this is about our choice to destroy lives.’

“So much of what Trump did was done without following administrative law,” explains Chabolla about how they “won” this case. “Trump didn’t follow procedure,” she says. “If they had taken their time and done it right, it would have passed. But I remember taking the win.”

Chabolla, who had just recently become a U.S. resident through marriage, remembers feeling relief for the DACA community.

“The DACA victory in the Supreme Court is a testament to the vision, commitment and tireless efforts of many, and Viri’s name would surely be at the top of that list,” says Rosenbaum. “I had the privilege of working with Viri at Public Counsel, first as an organizer…and then to come forward as a plaintiff in Garcia to inspire others to do the same and make the case that our nation needs DACA recipients to build a kinder and more inclusive community for all of us.”

Upon returning home, Chabolla once again focused on school—it was her second-to-last semester at UC Irvine. She spent a year as a graduate legal assistant with the Office of the Attorney General for the California Department of Justice. It was a tough gig for a newly graduated lawyer. After one year, she left for her current job as a staff attorney at ImmDef, a legal services nonprofit with a post-conviction unit that drew her interest. “They take on clients who have criminal convictions like possession of marijuana from 40 years ago with deportation orders—deportation is not a fair punishment for everyone.

“Many of our clients have been living here as legal permanent residents for more than 20 years. Most find out they’re getting deported just when they’re going to be released,” she says. “The statistics show that immigrants commit fewer crimes than the general population and our clients have already served their time—in jail, or prison, they’ve paid their dues and they’ve even paid their fines. Adding deportation is a way of saying ‘I don’t like that you’re an immigrant.’ It’s extra punishment.”

The work is tough. “My supervisor has shared that sometimes we have to redefine what a win is,” says Chabolla. “It makes up partially for the times when we have a clinic and all these people show up thinking they can apply for residency when they actually can’t.”

She says that the immigrants she talks to are so full of hope. They believe that an attorney—like herself—can do it all. “Every situation is different. No lawyer has a miracle cure.

“It’s heartbreaking to know how many people are becoming elders who don’t have a nest egg, who paid taxes into the system but they can’t access Social Security, can’t access Medicare,” Chabolla adds. “It’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about in the past two years: How can I help aside from placing my hopes in a Congress that is more concerned about building borders than dealing with these issues?”

In 2021, Chabolla became a U.S. citizen. The day was bittersweet and laden with guilt. “It was one of those moments where I felt I was further abandoning my undocumented community, but I know that’s not true,” she says. Although her mother recently became a U.S. resident, some of her family remains undocumented.

Chabolla says she’s been able to find some balance as an ally who was once directly impacted by immigration policies. “I’m trying to find a place where I can remain hopeful in my job and be a zealous lawyer and advocate.”

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

Congrats and way to go Viri! You have already established yourself as a “New Generation Leader” of the NDPA! Awesome! 

For years, the GOP has been mindlessly blocking various versions of DACA, at a great human cost as well as a huge cost to our nation. Dreamers who are able to achieve citizenship, without special help from Congress, and other “New Generation” members of the NDPA must follow the lead of Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-MI) by getting into the “power structure” and forcing long overdue progressive changes. 

Thanks to Chief Justice Roberts, the Supremes got this one right, barely 5-4. One vote has made a huge difference in literally hundreds of thousands of lives, and helped to shape American’s future for the better. By contrast, the Trump Administration’s failed attempts to undo this important program was a disgraceful abuse of Government resources! The inability of GOP-controlled states to let this issue go — essentially too keep bullying and threatening some of the most productive and deserving members of our society — is beyond disgusting.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-20-23

🗽 BORDER: WashPost’s Maria Sacchetti’s Nuanced Report Is Well Worth A Read: “The perceived success of Biden’s approach depends on which side of the border the migrants are on.” — Right to apply for asylum is a “simple rule” that politicos of both parties lack the will & skill to follow!🤮

Maria Sacchetti
Maria Sacchetti
Immigration Reporter, Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2023/07/18/border-asylum-us-mexico-biden-legal/

Maria writes:

. . . .

Federal law says anyone fleeing persecution may request asylum once they reach U.S. soil, no matter how they got there. Successive administrations have attempted to restrict that simple rule, however, desperate to reduce record numbers of crossings that have overwhelmed the immigration system, leaving many to live for years in the United States without a decision in their cases.

. . . .

One border, two realities

The perceived success of Biden’s approach depends on which side of the border the migrants are on.

Brownsville, an American city of 200,000 on the other side of the Rio Grande from Matamoros, Mexico, is officially under a state of emergency. But that emergency has dissipated in recent months.

The streets are quiet, thanks to a 70 percent drop in illegal border crossers since the new asylum rule and other Biden policy changes took effect. City workers greet the relatively small number of newcomers released from holding facilities and escort them to a curtained-off parking garage and to the first bus out of town.

In Matamoros, however, migrants trying to navigate the new rules are squeezing into shelters, sharing hotel rooms, curling up in a large camp on the dry riverbank or under pop-up tents at a grimy former gas station.

On a pedestrian bridge one hot morning in late June, Mexican authorities shooed away those who did not have an appointment through the app — including some Mexicans, even though the rule change is not supposed to apply to them.

“Let’s go, please,” one officer said to migrants who gathered at the Matamoros edge of the bridge. “Now.”

Advocates for immigrants say it is unlawful for officials to block migrants from crossing borders in search of protection — and unfair to presume they can easily navigate U.S. asylum law and appointments via smartphone apps. The process of requesting asylum is supposed to be simple, they said, because lives are at stake.

But advocates are powerless to navigate around the new rules until the court case is resolved.

In the sweltering heat one recent day, Christina Asencio, a lawyer with Human Rights First, tried to explain to migrants in the Matamoros camps how the system is supposed to work.

. . . .

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

Read Maria’s full article, one of the more balanced treatments I have encountered, at the link.

A few thoughts:

  • Even this fine article misses the biggest point: Most asylum seekers want to “do things the right way.” But there has been no “right way” for years because of  the unlawful and bogus use of Title 42 by both the Trump and Biden Administrations. It’s still being unlawfully restricted by the arbitrary Biden Administration regulations. Yet, remarkably, asylum seekers are willing to risk their lives waiting in Mexico for an opportunity to apply in an orderly, legal manner under a broken and biased system unfairly “rigged” against them! THAT’S the “real big takeaway” about the reduction in unauthorized border crossings. It’s one that that nobody except experts and advocates are willing to fully acknowledge! Indeed, during the Title 42 charade, an asylum seeker’s only chance of getting into the system was to cross without authorization. Otherwise, they would have been summarily returned without any chance to present their claims.
  • Some asylum seekers will qualify for protection, some won’t. That’s what the legal, asylum system is supposed to determine — in a fair, expert, and timely manner. That our asylum system has become dysfunctional and ludicrously backlogged lies squarely with poor performance by Congress, the Executive, and the Courts, in many cases “egged on” by right-wing nativists’ myths and distortions. Blaming the victims — asylum seekers — for massive USG failures over decades is totally disingenuous!
  • Statistically, it’s true that most asylum applicants from the Southern Border do not achieve asylum under our current dysfunctional system. But, the question we should be asking is why aren’t more qualifying, given the horrible conditions in “sending countries” and the generous legal standards — including a presumption of future persecution based on past persecution — that are supposed to apply, but often don’t in practice. 
  • For years, the Executive, through its captive EOIR “courts,” has been unfairly manipulating and intentionally misapplying the law, as well as misreading and ignoring evidence, to achieve unrealistically high asylum denial rates for applicants of color, particularly those arriving at our borders from Latin American and Haiti. See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/justice-betrayed-the-intentional-mistreatment-of-central-american-asylum-applicants-by-the-executive-office-for-immigration-review/; https://immigrationcourtside.com/appellate-litigation-in-todays-broken-and-biased-immigration-court-system-four-steps-to-a-winning-counterattack-by-the-relentless-new-due-process-army/. This continues to happen, as documented by the unusually large number of rebukes by Article III Courts (even some of the most conservative) of the flawed decision-making coming out of Garland’s broken EOIR. See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2023/07/14/🌊-tsunami-of-bad-☠️-bia-decisions-hits-garlands-doj-wrong-on-nexus-4th-2-1-wrong-on-nta-4th-2-1-wrong-on-agfel-8th-wrong-on-past-political-per/.
  • One of the most egregious EOIR-led anti-asylum “scams” is abuse and misuse of the “nexus” requirement for asylum to send legitimate refugees back into harm’s way. See, e.g., immediately preceding reference. “Persecution” must relate to race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. But, the asylum statute does NOT require that that be the sole or even the primary motivation for the persecution. It just has to be “at least one central reason.” And, usually, persecution is carried out by the persecutor for a variety of reasons. It’s called “mixed motive analysis” and EOIR Judges, particularly at the precedent-setting BIA, routinely ignore or mis-apply it to deny grantable claims. 
  • Harm resulting from things like “work, poverty, natural disaster, and bad governments” does not automatically qualify an individual for asylum. But, contrary to what many suggest, neither do these circumstances preclude asylum. For example, while a “natural disaster” might not make an individual a “refugee” under law, if that individual were forced to live in a known danger zone or denied life-saving assistance at least in part because of religious, ethnic, or political identity, that WOULD qualify. Was the infamous “Kristallnacht” in Nazi Germany systemic persecution of Jews for ethic and religious reasons? Or was it “mere vandalism, random violence, and hooliganism?” I would say clearly the former. But, I can imagine today’s BIA attributing it to the latter, to deny protection to a large group of individuals. I adjudicated thousands of asylum cases as both a trial and an appellate judge during 21 years at EOIR. I found that harm where a “protected ground” was “at least one central reason” was the rule, not the exception as EOIR tries so hard to make it.
  • Other often “trumped up” methods EOIR uses for denying valid asylum claims include bogus “adverse credibility” findings; unreasonable “corroboration” requirements; fabricated “reasonable internal relocation” opportunities; nonsensical, ahistorical “changed circumstances” conclusions; ignoring or misconstruing expert testimony; “selective reading” or mis-reading of country background reports; coercive detention in substandard conditions; and restricting or limiting access to counsel. If you think this sounds like a national disgrace on “Garland’s watch,” you’re absolutely right!
  • Undoubtedly, under a properly functioning system, with true expert adjudicators and judges — those whose career experiences demonstrated sound scholarship and understanding of the life-threatening circumstances of asylum seekers and the inherent limitations of both the Asylum office and EOIR — many more asylum cases from those applying at the Southern Border and elsewhere would be granted. So, Government policies based largely on “deterrence” or on the self-fulfilling prophecy that “few will qualify” should be viewed as fatally flawed. Without a better EOIR and an asylum adjudication system run by well-qualified experts, we can’t possibly formulate rational and humane border policies or indeed workable immigration policies at all. Tragically, we’re a long way from that right now!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-19-23

🤮 ALLEGATIONS OF RACISM IN OHIO LATEST SLAM AGAINST MERRICK GARLAND’S FAILED “COURTS!” — “(People) need to know how these courts are just a mockery and that they’re really harming people,” says one Ohio advocate! — Lack of due process, poor performance, systemic racial injustice make Garland’s “courts” a “millstone around the neck” for American Justice and Dems!☠️

 

Lady Injustice
“Lady Injustice” has found a home at Garland’s dysfunctional EOIR! Black Mauritanians and other asylum seekers of color find that the scales of justice are systemically weighted against them when on trial for their lives in AG Garland’s “courts!” 
Public Realm
Danae King
Danae King
Faith & Values & Immigration Reporter
Columbus Dispatch

https://apple.news/AgFzMWECESo-_Tr_S7-sMDg

DANAE KING | USA TODAY NETWORK:

. . . .

In 2020, asylum seekers from Sub-Saharan Africa were deemed not credible in 8.5% of interviews, over 37% more often than, on average, for all nationalities that year, according to an August 2022 U.S. Shadow Report to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, submitted by several advocacy organizations.

“This data further confirms concerns raised about implicit racial and other bias in credibility determinations in US asylum adjudications,” the report states.

The report notes that Black asylum seekers face different treatment in the immigration system than others, including longer than average detention times, trouble finding accurate and adequate interpreters, different treatment in court, lack of access to counsel, purposefully rushed proceedings, biased judges, wrongful denial of asylum and more.

Lynn Tramonte has seen all those scenarios happen in Ohio.

“In immigration court, it’s almost like you’re guilty until proven innocent and they would rather err on the side of deporting a refugee who was tortured than granting asylum to someone who might be lying,” said Tramonte, director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, a group of Ohio immigrants and citizens who work to protect the dignity and rights of all through activism.

Nemecek has also seen judges and government attorneys “team up on (immigrants) and ask all kinds of questions and find them not credible.”

From 2002 to 2022, 713 Mauritanians went before immigration judges in Cleveland, and 443 were denied asylum. Another 28 had another form of relief, such as withholding of removal, and 242 were granted asylum, according to TRAC.

The United States Department of State considers Mauritania so dangerous that it recommends U.S. citizens don’t travel there due to crime and terrorism.

Tramonte wishes judges would do more research on the nations where asylum seekers are coming from.

“They have zero knowledge of documents from other countries or even what it’s like to be tortured,” she said.

A spokesperson for the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) disputed those claims.

. . . .

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

Read  Danae’s full article at the link!

“Courtside” and others have been raising these issues for a long time! Yet, Garland has neither spoken out nor taken action to “clean up” courts that every expert would say are “broken” and need major changes, including better-qualified judges who have true expertise in asylum and human rights! 

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke is totally “MIA” on this serious issue and on the racially-driven travesties in DOJ’s “wholly-owned” court system, in immigration detention centers, and at the Southern Border! Associate AG Vanita Gupta, once a civil rights icon, has “vaporized” on perhaps the biggest, potentially solvable, civil rights/racial justice issue facing America! What’s happening here?

I spent years doing Mauritanian asylum cases on the EOIR Ohio Docket (and, to a lesser extent, in the “Legacy” Arlington Immigration Court). Most were clear grants of asylum! Few were appealed by ICE! Almost none were reversed by the BIA! I doubt that conditions have improved materially since then. 

Unfortunately, mistreatment of Black Mauritanian asylum seekers by EOIR is nothing new. It has a long and disreputable history going back decades.

In the late 1990’s, my now Round Table colleague Judge Lory Diana Rosenberg and I frequently dissented from wrong-headed denials of Mauritanian asylum claims by our BIA colleagues. See, e.g., Matter of M-D-, 23 I&N Dec. 1180, 1185, 1189 (Schmidt, Chairman, Rosenberg, Board Member dissenting), rev’d sub nom, Diallo v. INS, 232 F.3d 279 (2d Cir. 2000). There, the Circuit, in a decision written by Chief Judge Walker, agreed with many of the points raised by Judge Rosenberg and me in our respective dissents: “[T]he BIA failed to: (1) rule explicitly on the credibility of Diallo’s testimony; (2) explain why it was reasonable in this case to expect additional corroboration; or (3) assess the sufficiency of Diallo’s explanations for the absence of corroborating evidence.”

Judge Rosenberg and I were later “rewarded” by AG John Ashcroft by being “purged” from the BIA, along with a minority of other colleagues who had the temerity to stand up for the legal and human rights of migrants! Folks at EOIR “got the message” that standing up for immigrants’ rights and due process could be “career threatening!”

 That, in turn, unleashed a crescendo of sloppy, anti-migrant, dehumanizing decisions emanating from EOIR. Things got so bad so fast that subsequent Bush II AGs Gonzalez and Mukasey were finally forced, under extreme pressure from the Article IIIs, to intervene and put a stop to the most glaring abuses.

But, in fact, the EOIR system never recovered from that debacle. From then on, the BIA has been largely a “captain may I rubber stamp” (credit “Sir Jeffrey” Chase) for DHS Enforcement and each Administration’s political agenda. It’s been a continuous downward spiral, with subsequent AGs either actively encouraging abuses of asylum seekers and other migrants or being “willfully indifferent” to the ongoing legal and human rights disasters on their watches. 

It’s interesting how when the “powers that be” ignore abuses, they don’t go away. They just fester and get worse. Garland’s “what me worry” stewardship over EOIR is a classic example.

As for EOIR’s claim that they are providing IJs with “robust” asylum training, in the words of my friend, Kansas City attorney (and former Arlington intern) Andrea Martinez, “I call BS!” The proof is in the results!

My friend and Round Table colleague Judge “Sir Jeffrey” Chase puts it more elegantly:

In stating that the program is “robust” (i.e. fine as is), who among EOIR’s upper-level leadership is enough of an expert in the topic to make that determination? There are actually recent IJ hires with a great deal of expertise in asylum and CAT, but to my knowledge, they are not the ones creating or presenting the trainings.

EOIR’s asylum and CAT training remains insufficient, and the evidence of this can be found in the deluge of Circuit Court reversals, or even from simply reviewing hearing transcripts. Just compare the USCIS Asylum Officer training program with EOIR’s IJ training materials. A particular problem is the failure to properly train new IJs in the case law of the specific circuit in which they sit. Immigration Judges are largely left to their own devices to learn the law properly.

As the article states, these issues concerning Ohio have been raised before! See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2022/10/07/🏴☠%EF%B8%8F🤮-halls-of-injustice-allegations-of-racism-misogyny-islamophobia-other-bias-have-been-swirling-around-garlands-dysfunctional-eoir/ Yet, there is no response from Garland. If the DOJ has done an investigation, the results should be made public. If not, the public deserves to know why prima facia credible allegations of systemic racism in his Immigration Courts have been ignored or deemed not credible.

Another example of superior asylum training available “on the market” is that developed by Professor Michele Pistone (a true asylum expert who has taught and inspired generations of attorneys now serving in and out of government) at VIISTA Villanova. I am sure that EOIR could have arranged with Professor Pistone to create a “world class” asylum training program for both new and experienced IJs. Indeed, she would have been a logical choice for Garland to have recruited for a senior position at EOIR.

The talent to fix EOIR exists on the open market. However, EOIR can’t be fixed with the senior management team Garland has put, or in some cases left, in place.

In the meantime, the stunningly poor quality, blatant racial insensitivity, and inept judicial administration Garland tolerates at EOIR will continue to be a millstone around the neck of American Justice and the Democratic Party. To what depths Garland will drag both remains to be seen.

Millstone
Garland’s dysfunctional and systemically biased Immigration “Courts” are a millstone around the neck for American Justice and Dems!
Creative Commons license

Finally, where are progressive human and civil rights stalwarts like Sen. Corey Booker (D-NJ) on this issue? Why haven’t they demanded some accountability from Garland? And, whatever happened to our first African-American Veep Kamala Harris? Does she still exist? What’s more important than racial justice in “life or death courts” wholly controlled by her Dem Administration?

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-18-23

🏴‍☠️👎🏼🤮 JUSTICE’S UNJUST “COURTS!” — Recent Reports Highlight Horribly Failed System —Asylum Free Zones, Unqualified Prosecutor-Judges, Deadly Denials, Blatant Information Imbalance, Dehumanizing Treatment, Poor Access To Counsel, Docket Mayhem, Unrealistic Timelines, Biased Outcomes, Indifference To Human Life, Unaccountability, Among The Myriad Problems Flagged By Those Forced To Deal With Garland’s Ongoing Mockery Of Due Process! — EXTRA! — How Poor Legal Performance @ DOJ Skews The Entire Immigration Debate!

injustice
Injustice
Public Realm
Dems spend lots of time whining about the destruction of the Federal Judiciary by GOP right-wing extremists. However, after two years in charge, they have done little to bring due process, fundamental fairness, and judicial expertise to America’s worst courts — the Immigration Courts — which they totally control!

 

Austin Kocher, Ph.D.
Austin Kocher, Ph.D.
Research Assistant Professor
TRAC-Syracuse
PHOTO: Syracuse U.

Two items from Professor Austin Kocher on Substack:

Asylum Seeker Killed in Guatemala after Omaha Immigration Judge Ordered Him Deported

Omaha is now the toughest court in the country for asylum seekers, MPI hosts discussion on immigration courts in crisis, interview with an immigration judge, and more.

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Asylum Seeker Killed in Guatemala after Omaha Immigration Judge Ordered Him Deported austinkocher.substack.com • 1 min read

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7086002474968313856?updateEntityUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_feedUpdate%3A%28V2%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7086002474968313856%29

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

New Research by AILA Reveals Anatomy of an Asylum Case + Online Event

Even the best attorneys require 50-75 hours over several months to complete an asylum case. The Biden admin’s attempts to speed up asylum cases may be ignoring this reality.

…see more

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New Research by AILA Reveals Anatomy of an Asylum Case

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7086001618898296832?updateEntityUrn=urn:li:fs_feedUpdate:(V2,urn:li:activity:7086001618898296832)

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

Lauren Iosue
Lauren Iosue
L-3 & NDPA Member
Georgetown Law
PHOTO: Linkedin

And, this from Lauren Iosue, Georgetown Law L-3 on LinkedIn.

Lauren Iosue

View Lauren Iosue’s profile

• 1st

J.D. Candidate at Georgetown University Law Center

3d •

Through my internship at the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, I observed master calendar hearings in the detained docket in the Florence Immigration Court. I was back in Florence, Arizona, because the court itself is located within the barbed wire of the detention center. Observing the Florence Immigration Court emphasized how dehumanizing removal proceedings can be for detained immigrants. Master calendar hearings are often immigrants’ first interaction with the Court. To start, a guard brought a group of men in jumpsuits to the courtroom and lined them up. The judge read them their rights and then called them individually to discuss their case. Twice I witnessed the wrong person being brought into court where they sat through proceedings until the guards realized and switched them out for the correct person.

The vast majority of Respondents in removal proceedings are unrepresented. There is a blatant information imbalance in immigration court when the immigrant is unrepresented. Oftentimes, pro se detained immigrants do not have access to the resources represented or released Respondents have during their proceedings. Respondents may not know their legal options unless organizations like the Florence Project can speak to them before their hearing and provide them with pro se information packets or represent them. During the hearing, the men did not even have a pen and paper to take notes. Meanwhile, the immigration judge and government attorney have access to technology and a wealth of experience to pull from to make legal arguments.

This is just one example of many – my colleagues and I also observed translation issues and pushback against some men who wished to continue fighting their case. Above all, I’ll leave with this very simple observation: the judge and guards called each man up by his court docket number before his name. If we are to support and uphold the dignity of all people, we must do so especially in systems that look to strip it from them. Providing immigrants with access to a lawyer, if they’d like one, can ensure that people have access to information that allows them to make informed decisions about their case. The Florence Project is one of the organizations working tirelessly to expand access to representation throughout Arizona, and I hope to continue this work after graduating from Georgetown University Law Center next year. #EJAFellowUpdate | Equal Justice America

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

Congrats to Lauren Iosue, and thanks for becoming a member of the NDPA! 😎 The scary thing: As an L-3, Lauren appears to have more “hands on” Immigration Court experience and a far deeper appreciation of the material, sometimes fatal, flaws in the EOIR system, than Garland and his other “top brass” in the DOJ responsible for operating and overseeing this tragic mess! 

Why isn’t “real life” immigration/human rights experience representing individuals in Immigration Court were an absolute requirement for appointment to AG, Deputy AG, Associate AG, Solicitor General, and Assistant AG for Civil (in charge of OIL) in any Dem Administration, at least until such time as the Immigration Courts become an Article I Court removed from the DOJ?

30-years ago, when I was at Jones Day, we were budgeting a minimum of 100 hours of professional time for a pro bono asylum case! That was before the “21st century BIA” added more unnecessary, artificial technicalities to make it more difficult for asylum seekers to win. It’s not “rocket science!” 🚀

Lucy McMillan ESQUIRE
Lucy McMillan ESQUIRE
Chief Pro Bono Counsel
Arnold & Porter
Washington, D.C.
PHOTO: A&P

All Garland would have to do is reach back into his “big law” days at Arnold & Porter (“A&P”). He should pick up his cell phone and call Lucy McMillan, the award-winning Chief Pro Bono Counsel @ A&P.  Ask Lucy what needs to change to get EOIR functioning as a due-process-focused model court system! Better yet, reassign upper “management” at EOIR, and hire Lucy to clean house and restore competence, efficiency, and excellence to his currently disgracefully-dysfunctional “courts!”

As Austin’s posts and the reports he references show, Garland’s indolent, tone-deaf, mal-administration of the Immigration Courts is a national disgrace that undermines democracy and betrays core values of the Democratic Party! How does he get away with it? Thanks to Austin, AILA, Lauren, and others exposing the ongoing “EOIR charade” in a Dem Administration! 

As shown by recent “Courtside” postings about the “Tsunami” 🌊 of Article III “rejections” of lousy BIA decisions, throughout America, many, many more asylum cases could be timely granted with a properly well-qualified, expert BIA setting precedents and forcing judges like those in Omaha to properly and generously apply asylum law or find other jobs! Maximum protection, NOT “maximum rejection,” is the proper and achievable (yet unrealized) objective of asylum laws!

Asylum law, according to the Supremes and even the BIA is supposed to be generously and practically applied — so much so that asylum can and ordinarily should be granted even where the chances are “significantly less” than probable. See Matter of Mogharrabi, 19 I & N Dec. 439, 446 (BIA 1987). 

The problem is that the BIA and EOIR have never effectively implemented and followed the Mogharrabi standard. In recent years, particularly during the Trump debacle, they have moved further than ever away from this proper legal standard while still giving it lip service! Clearly, the IJs in Omaha and other “Asylum Free Zones” are operating outside the realm of asylum law with deadly and destructive consequences. Yet, Garland, a former Federal Judge himself, permits it! Why?

The assumption that most asylum seekers who pass credible fear should ultimately lose on the merits is false and based on intentionally overly restrictive mis-interpretations and mis-applications of asylum law! It’s a particular problem with respect to asylum seekers of color from Latin America and Haiti — a definite racial dimension that DOJ and DHS constantly “sweep under the carpet.” Because of the extraordinarily poor leadership from EOIR, DOJ, and DHS, this “fundamental falsehood of inevitable denial” infects the entire asylum debate and materially influences policies.

A dedicated long-time “hands-on” asylum expert, someone who actually met some of the “Abbott/DeSantis busses,” said that over 70% of those arriving from the border had potentially grantable asylum claims. That’s a far cry from the “nobody from the Southern border will qualify” myth that drives asylum policy by both parties and has even been, rather uncritically, “normalized” by the media.

Fixing EOIR is a prerequisite to an informed discussion of immigration and development of humane, rational, realistic immigration policies. That would be laws and policies based on reality, not myths, distortions, and sometimes downright fabrications.

Competent representation is also an essential part of fixing EOIR. There are ways to achieve it that Garland is ignoring and/or inhibiting. See, e.g., VIISTA Villanova. No excuses!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever,

PWS

07-17-23

🇺🇸🗽💡THE VIEW FROM MAINE IS CLEARER! — Dan Kolbert Of Portland “Gets” What Politicos Of Both Parties Don’t — Migration Happens, Embrace It, Don’t Fear It!😎🇺🇸

View of Linekin Bay, Maine
View of Linekin Bay, Maine

https://www.pressherald.com/2023/07/14/maine-voices-no-walls-are-high-enough-to-keep-out-people-desperate-for-a-safe-place/

Dan Kolbert in the Portland Press Herald:

MAINE VOICES Posted Yesterday at 4:00 AM

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Maine Voices: No walls are high enough to keep out people desperate for a safe place

Instead of wasting precious time trying to shut today’s refugees out, we can prepare for them in a way that could benefit all of us.

BY DAN KOLBERTSPECIAL TO THE PRESS HERALD

Maine Expo
A young girl jumps rope inside the Portland Expo, home to several hundred asylum seekers. Much of the world’s population will be on the move, trying to survive, as sea levels and temperatures rise. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dan Kolbert has lived in Portland’s West End since 1988. He is a building contractor and an author.

In Central America, where corn was first cultivated over millennia and is still the home of many important seed bases, a drought is entering its second decade. It is possible that agriculture will soon be impossible there, along with many parts of Africa and Asia. Rising sea levels will mean many low-lying islands will disappear, and coastal cities will be forced to retreat or be swamped.

All of this means that much of the world’s population will be on the move, searching for a way to survive. Estimates top 1 billion people by mid-century. Here in Portland, we are already seeing previously unimaginable levels of immigration, with hundreds of recent arrivals sleeping in a sports arena, and housing shortages and rising rents forcing many new and established Mainers into the many homeless encampments dotting the city. And we are just getting started.

There are no walls high enough to keep out people desperate for a safe place for them and their families. So we can either spend the precious time that remains on a futile, and cruel, effort to keep people out, or we can prepare for them in a humane way that could have enormous benefits for all of us, new and old Mainers alike.

The first step is housing, and plenty of it. Multi-family housing in Maine has undergone a sea change in recent years. We can build healthy, functional housing with very low heating and cooling loads for much less than all the mediocre, drafty single-family houses we currently build. Greater Portland is home to much of the most expensive real estate in the state, but imagine if we could have planned development surrounding some other cities, like Bangor or Lewiston. Or even smaller population centers like Skowhegan, Farmington or Rumford. We are a sparsely populated state with an aging population – immigrant families could revitalize many parts of the state. In addition to the workforce we desperately need, they would bring children to boost shrinking school enrollments, new cultures and foods, and new outlooks. And of course it would be a big boost to the economies of parts of the state that haven’t always shared in the boom.

Next is finding work for people. We have already seen many immigrants going into health care, and our aging U.S.-born population will only need more services. Some Africans have taken up farming, helping revitalize that economy. In southern Maine, Central Americans are increasingly showing up in construction, where a 20-year-long labor shortage has created enormous demand. And many people show up with important professional skills, needing only some help with language and certifications to resume careers as doctors, engineers, teachers, administrators, etc. Of course we need to reform the work rules, to allow people to find employment much sooner.

It was disappointing to read of the events in Unity. Imagine using this existing, underutilized infrastructure for temporary housing! How many of these new arrivals might see central Maine as a safe, friendly place to establish their new lives?

I am a new Mainer myself, having only lived here for 35 of my 59 years, but my kids can trace their lineage in Maine and Quebec for over 300 years on their mother’s side. As the son of a refugee from the Nazis, I am perhaps more sympathetic to the plight of today’s refugees than others are, but I hope that we can see this as an opportunity to invest in our state, and to demonstrate basic humanity toward people who just want to live.

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You can listen to the audio version at the link!

Dan definitely has the right idea! Seems like whats needed is 1) leadership, 2) organization to match people and skills to local needs, and 3) some seed money” to get an affordable housing program going.

Haley Sweetland Edwards
Haley Sweatband Edwards
Nation Editor
Time Magazine
PHOTO: Pulitzer

Dan’s clear vision reminds me of a prescient article by author and Time Nation Editor Haley Sweetland Edwards that I featured in Courtside in Jan 2019. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/01/27/inconvenient-truth-haley-sweetland-edwards-time-tells-what-trump-miller-cotton-sessions-their-white-nationalist-gang-dont-want-you-to-know-human-migration-is-a-powerful-force-as-old/

Haley said:

The U.S., though founded by Europeans fleeing persecution, now largely reflects the will of its Chief Executive: subverting decades of asylum law and imposing a policy that separated migrant toddlers from their parents and placed children behind cyclone fencing. Trump floated the possibility of revoking birthright citizenship, characterized migrants as “stone cold criminals” and ordered 5,800 active-duty U.S. troops to reinforce the southern border. Italy refused to allow ships carrying rescued migrants to dock at its ports. Hungary passed laws to criminalize the act of helping undocumented people. Anti-immigrant leaders saw their political power grow in the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Sweden, Germany, Finland, Italy and Hungary, and migration continued to be a factor in the Brexit debate in the U.K.

These political reactions fail to grapple with a hard truth: in the long run, new migration is nearly always a boon to host countries. In acting as entrepreneurs and innovators, and by providing inexpensive labor, immigrants overwhelmingly repay in long-term economic contributions what they use in short-term social services, studies show. But to maximize that future good, governments must act -rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.

The unmitigated human rights and racial justice disasters of the Trump years and the troubling difficulty the Biden Administration has had getting beyond that debacle reinforce the accuracy and inevitability of what Haley and Dan are saying.

The future will belong to those nations that learn how to welcome migrants, treat them humanely, screen and accept many of them in a timely, orderly, minimally bureaucratic manner, and utilize their energy, determination, ingenuity, and life skills to build a better future for all.

The open question is whether the U.S. will be among those successful future powers. Or, will the cruel, unrealistic, racially-driven, restrictionist nativism of the GOP right drive us to continue to waste inordinate resources fruitlessly trying to deny, deter, and prevent the inevitable, thus ultimately forcing us down to second or even third tier status. TBD.

In the meantime, here’s another great article from the PPH about how Mainers have led the fight to protect individual rights and freedoms while advancing American progressive values in contravention of the authoritarian neo-fascism sweeping over some so-called “red” states.

Maine has tacked left as nation lurches right in culture wars

Embracing the state motto – ‘I lead’ – Maine lawmakers led in a different direction, safeguarding and expanding access to abortion and gender-affirming care.

Read the full article here!

 https://www.pressherald.com/2023/07/09/maine-has-tacked-left-as-nation-lurches-right-in-culture-wars/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Daily+Headlines%3A++RSS%3AITEM%3ATITLE&utm_campaign=PH+Daily+Headlines+ND+-+NO+SECTIONS

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-15-23

🤯 🤯 DOUBLE TAKEDOWN: 4th Circuit Slams BIA For 1) Mindlessly Trying To “Snuff” Allies From Afghanistan War☠️; & 2) Producing Incomprehensible Legal Gibberish 🤪 In Life Or Death Cases! — Two Recent Cases Show Deep Quality, Expertise Problems In Dem-Controlled “Courts” At The “Retail Level” Of U.S. Justice! 🤯🤬

Ben Winograd
Ben Winograd, Esquire
Immigrant & Refugee Appellate Center
Falls Church, VA

1. Ben Winograd, Esquire, is an all-star appellate litigator who would have made a great BIA Chair/Chief Appellate Judge!

Dan Kowalski @ LexisNexis reports:

CA4 on Internal Relocation: Ullah v. Garland

https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/221026.P.pdf

https://www.lexisnexis.com/community/insights/legal/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca4-on-internal-relocation-ullah-v-garland

“The United States’ war in Afghanistan required regional allies willing to aid the effort. One such ally was Shaker Ullah, a Pakistani businessman who sold supplies to coalition forces. This invoked the wrath of the Pakistani Taliban, which demanded exorbitant payments from Ullah under threat of death. Ullah repeatedly refused, and the Taliban attempted to carry out its threat, promising to hunt him until it succeeded. After losing his business, home, and nearly his life, Ullah fled to the United States seeking asylum. The Immigration Judge and Board of Immigration Appeals both recognized that Ullah suffered past persecution entitling him to a presumption that the Taliban would continue to target him if he returned to Pakistan. But they agreed with the government that because Ullah lived in Islamabad (the capital of Pakistan) for a few weeks without the Taliban finding him, he could live in a new area of the country without fear of reprisal. We disagree. Ullah’s brief sojourn to Islamabad—where he never left the house— doesn’t rebut the presumption that a notorious terrorist organization continues to imperil his life. Since the record would compel any reasonable adjudicator to conclude Ullah faces a well-founded threat of future persecution, we grant Ullah’s petition for review, reverse the Board’s denial of Ullah’s preserved claims, and remand with instructions that the agency grant relief.”

[Hats way off to superlitigator Ben Winograd!  Listen to the oral argument here.]

pastedGraphic.png

Daniel M. Kowalski

Editor-in-Chief

Bender’s Immigration Bulletin (LexisNexis)

cell/text/Signal (512) 826-0323

@dkbib on Twitter

dan@cenizo.com

Free Daily Blog: www.bibdaily.com

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Tamara Jezic ESQUIRE Jezic & Moyse Fairfax, VA PHOTO: J&M

2.  “Legacy” Arlington Immigration Court superstar Tamara Jezic runs circles around EOIR and OIL!

Dan Kowalski @ LexisNexis reports:

Multiple Failures Trigger Remand to BIA: Chen v. Garland

https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/211371.P.pdf

https://www.lexisnexis.com/community/insights/legal/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/multiple-failures-trigger-remand-to-bia-chen-v-garland

“Petitioner Zuowei Chen is a native of China admitted to the United States on a student visa in 2009. Chen now seeks review of a Board of Immigration Appeals order denying his applications for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture. If removed to China, Chen fears, he will be persecuted and tortured by Chinese authorities, who in 2008 allegedly imprisoned and violently beat him because of his Christian beliefs and practices. We find there are aspects of the agency’s decision that require clarification before we can meaningfully review Chen’s claims. Accordingly, we vacate the decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals and remand for further explanation, consistent with this opinion.”

[Hats off to Tamara Jezic!  https://jezicfirm.com/attorneys/tamara-jezic/ Listen to the oral argument here.]

Daniel M. Kowalski

Editor-in-Chief

Bender’s Immigration Bulletin (LexisNexis)

cell/text/Signal (512) 826-0323

@dkbib on Twitter

dan@cenizo.com

Free Daily Blog: www.bibdaily.com

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Notably, and refreshingly, in Ullah, the 4th Circuit took the unusual step of directing the BIA to grant asylum, rather than just remanding for the BIA to screw it up again! In Chen, Trump appointee Circuit Judge Marvin Quattlebaum was part of the unanimous panel! Condemnation of EOIR’s deficient performance is uniting Article III jurists across ideological lines!

The GOP is “out for Garland’s scalp” for all the WRONG reasons! It’s actually Dems who should be demanding an accounting for his inexcusable, miserable, democracy-eroding (non)performance at EOIR!

Garland’s mess at EOIR isn’t “theoretical,” “academic,” or “speculative!” It’s ACTUALLY endangering lives, eroding democracy, and creating unnecessary chaos on a daily basis! His intransigence is also diverting HUGE amounts of resources that could be used to DEFEND American democracy, rather than seeking to hold a tone-deaf Dem Administration accountable!

In the meantime, Dems are fecklessly moaning and groaning about a lawless and ethics-free Supremes. Yet, a Dem Administration is operating a huge, nationwide “court” system presenting these same problems, in spades!♠️

And, the victims of EOIR’s substandard judging are overwhelmingly people of color, literally fighting for their lives in a dysfunctional system that the Biden Administration is unwilling and/or unable to fix. In these cases, the victims were fortunate enough to be represented by two of the “best in the business,” Ben Winograd and Tamara Jezic. But, too many others face this biased and unfair system unrepresented, a situation that Garland not only has failed to remedy, but has made worse in some ways.  What “message, does this send, particularly to the younger cohort of “social justice” voters whom the Dems are counting on for the future?

Trial By Ordeal
Following the 2020 election, human rights advocates and experts expected and deserved dramatic, long overdue progressive improvements in justice at EOIR. Instead, Garland inexplicably has retained many of the most regressive features of injustice at EOIR, developed and reinforced during the Trump years. Frustration abounds, while justice for the most vulnerable among us suffers under a Dem Administration! Woman Being “Tried By Ordeal”
17th Century Woodcut
Public Realm
Source: Ancient Origins Website
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/trial-ordeal-life-or-death-method-judgement-004160

How bad is EOIR under Garland? One informed observer put it this way:

BIA staff attorneys are rewarded for the number of signed decisions per month. With the present make-up of the Board, their only incentive is to crank out denials.

Dems love to talk about “change!” The GOP actually achieves it, even though the results are overwhelmingly negative, regressive, and existentially damaging to democracy! Something’s got to give here!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-08-23

🤯 🤯🤯 COURTSIDE TRIPLE HEADER! — 1) “Why Is It A Continuing Battle To Get The Biden Administration To Follow Asylum Law, As Promised,” Asks Hon. “Sir Jeffrey” Chase? — “If you’re wondering how the new system is working out, according to one report, it has resulted in asylum seekers on the Mexican side of the Laredo port of entry being robbed, kidnapped, and held for ransom.” — 2) Commentary From The Great Lenni Benson: “Confusion Abounds!” — 3) PLUS BONUS BORDER COVERAGE FROM MICA ROSENBERG @ REUTERS: Biden’s Regs Are A Humanitarian, Legal, & Moral Catastrophe Despite BS “Success” Claims From Disingenuous USG Officials! ☠️

Jeffrey S. Chase
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog
Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2023/7/5/bidens-asylum-bar

Biden’s Asylum Bar

I’m sure many of you remember a childhood game called “Mother, May I?” An authority figure would say, “Jeff, take two giant steps forward!” But before doing so, the player would have to ask “Mother, may I?” Those two giant steps could only be taken if the response was “Yes, you may.” Otherwise, if the player took the steps, they were out.

If we were to take this game, direct the request and reply through an app called CBPOne, and make the stakes life or death, the result would be something very similar to the Biden Administration’s latest regulations governing asylum at the southern border.

The new rules are at odds with U.S. law. Congress has already authorized asylum seekers to take the necessary steps up to the border. The very first sentence of 8 U.S.C. § 1158 (the U.S. asylum statute) says that any noncitizen “whether or not at a designated port of arrival” and irrespective of their immigration status may apply for asylum.

And yet, not Congress but two Executive Branch agencies have now added a “Mother, May I?” type obstacle for those seeking to do what the law has long permitted. Under the new rules, the asylum seeker must first ask through a glitchy government phone app for specific permission (in the form of an appointment) before striding up to the border. Otherwise, the asylum seeker is simply not eligible for asylum, no matter how serious the danger they face if removed to their country.

How can Executive Branch agencies issue regulations that so directly contradict the statute those agencies are charged with enforcing? That question is the basis of a lawsuit filed by the ACLU, the National Immigrant Justice Center, and the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies in U.S. District Court.1

Our Round Table of Former Immigration Judges filed an amicus brief in support of petitioners’ arguments. We are in good company, as the USCIS asylum officers’ union filed a persuasive amicus brief as well.2 This means that groups representing the views of the only government officials authorized to decide asylum claims in this country (i.e. immigration judges and asylum officers) are united in opposing the new rule.

In our Round Table brief, we specifically take issue with the government’s false labeling of the new bar as merely a “rebuttable presumption” of asylum ineligibility.

Real rebuttable presumptions have long existed in our asylum regulations. For example, there is a rebuttable presumption that someone who has been persecuted in the past for reasons that give rise to an asylum claim may be persecuted again, unless major changes have since taken place in their country. There is also a presumption that one whose persecutor is the government of their country can’t find safety by simply relocating within that same country.

As you’ve probably noticed, there is a logic that flows in each of those examples from the known facts to the presumption. It is logical to assume that someone who was harmed before might be harmed again if conditions remain the same. The government may rebut the presumption by showing a fundamental change of the type that would put those fears to rest. There is a similar logic in concluding that a government’s reach extends throughout the country it governs. Again, the government may rebut that presumption through evidence establishing an exception to this general rule. In both of these examples, the fact established increases the likelihood of the fact presumed.

Now let’s return to the new rule. Say that a person faces brutal persecution on account of their political opinion if returned to their country. How does the fact that they couldn’t or didn’t get an appointment through a phone app in any way create a presumption that they are not in need of humanitarian protection? There can’t be a presumption if the fact established (i.e. that the person didn’t obtain an appointment through the app) is completely unrelated to the fact presumed (i.e. the person is not in need of asylum).

I believe it matters greatly whether the rule is considered a bar or a presumption. It is Congress that decides who may apply for asylum in this country. Thus, a regulation that admittedly creates a new bar to asylum (particularly where that bar is in direct contradiction to Congressional intent) is likely to be rejected as ultra vires by the courts. And in fact, a very similar bar to this one published by the Trump Administration was enjoined for just that reason.3 Agencies cannot usurp Congress’s role by legislating in the guise of rulemaking.

By attempting to disguise the new bar as merely a “rebuttable presumption,” the agencies seek to increase the odds of the ban passing muster this time. That is exactly the Department of Justice’s argument in its response brief: that its new rule is completely different from the prior administration’s “bar,” because according to DOJ, the new rule “does not treat manner of entry as dispositive, but instead creates a rebuttable presumption that can be overcome…”4

So the “Mother, may I?” regs clearly overstep the agencies’ legal authority. But do they create an equal barrier for all asylum seekers? The answer is no. As stated, the rules require one intending to apply for asylum to first obtain an appointment. Of course, there are more asylum seekers than there are available appointments. As mentioned, the government app through which one tries to secure an appointment, CBPOne, is full of glitches. As Prof. Austin Kocher recently noted, those glitches have impacted who gets those appointments:

the initial release of CBP One was accompanied by a variety of tech failures that did not necessarily undermine CBP’s ability to fill up its appointments calendar for asylum seekers but did create barriers to entry for migrants who were less tech savvy, could not access high-speed Internet, were part of larger families, or, either directly or indirectly, migrants who were darker-skinned or Black.5

That last point refers to the app’s problems with facial recognition that have caused it to reject applicants who are not white.6 As a result of these and other reported scheduling inequities, Sen. Edward Markey wrote to DHS back in February urging the agency to cease use of the app, due to its inaccessibility to many intending applicants, adding that “we cannot allow it to create a tiered system that treats asylum seekers differently based on their economic status — including the ability to pay for travel — language, nationality, or race.”.7

Instead of “ditching the app” as the Senator requested, the agencies instead added an exception to the bar if the noncitizen “demonstrates by a preponderance of the evidence that it was not possible to access or use the DHS scheduling system due to language barrier, illiteracy, significant technical failure, or other ongoing and serious obstacle.”8

However, there is a big catch. Pursuant to the rule, this exception is only available to those without an appointment who make their claim at an actual port of entry.  But observers at points of entry along the southern border report that “practices by U.S. and Mexican authorities restricted asylum seekers without CBP One appointments from physically reaching U.S. ports of entry to make protection requests.”9 So the exception written into the regs is not available in reality, as one seeking to claim it is restricted from reaching the port of entry where it must be claimed, and is barred from claiming the exception if they cross the border elsewhere.

If you’re wondering how the new system is working out, according to one report, it has resulted in asylum seekers on the Mexican side of the Laredo port of entry being robbed, kidnapped, and held for ransom.10 Another article described how some of  those “lucky” enough to have obtained CBPOne appointments at Laredo claimed “that Mexican officials in Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, Texas, had threatened to hold them and make them miss their scheduled asylum appointments unless they paid them.”11 As a result, CBPOne appointments were temporarily suspended for the Laredo port of entry.

One excluded from asylum under these rules may still seek two types of lesser protections called withholding of removal.12 Oddly, under U.S. law, these alternative protections are much more difficult than asylum to qualify for, yet provide far fewer benefits. Asylum is an actual legal status which extends to the spouse and minor children of the asylee, allows for travel abroad, and puts recipients on a path to permanent residence and then citizenship in this country. By contrast, withholding of removal arises when an individual is ordered deported, and only blocks their deportation to a country in which persecution or torture is likely to occur, but otherwise leaves the recipient in limbo. The protection provides no path to family reunification or permanent status, and no right to travel abroad to visit the family members from whom the recipient is left indefinitely separated.

Nevertheless, withholding of removal does save lives. But not satisfied with simply barring asylum, the new regulations also make these lesser forms of protection far more difficult to access. This is because one must first pass something called a “credible fear interview” in order to even have the right to apply for withholding of removal in this country. As those interviews are conducted within days of the asylum-seeker’s arrival, in custody, often before the applicant has had the opportunity to obtain legal counsel or evidence, and possibly while suffering from the effects of persecution, the credible fear standard was intentionally designed to be a low one. The idea is to allow people who might genuinely be at risk the opportunity to fully develop their cases in a full removal proceeding, while only quickly removing those lacking legitimate claims.

But the new regulations raise the burden of proof by requiring the applicant at this very early stage to demonstrate a “reasonable fear” of persecution, which USCIS describes as the exact same standard required for a grant of asylum – i.e. “well-founded fear.13 Again, the lower credible fear standard being replaced was created solely because it isn’t reasonable to expect someone to prove more under the conditions faced by such recent arrivals. This intended safeguard has thus been completely undermined, as one who might only be a day or two in the country must now present a full-blown asylum claim just to earn the chance to have a hearing.

The new process requires non-lawyers to satisfy a complex legal standard they won’t understand, often without the time to seek legal advice or compile the evidence necessary to meet the heightened burden. I have no doubt that the process will result in genuine refugees being denied protection. And once again, the entire reason for placing applicants at such heightened risk is their not having obtained an appointment on a problematic phone app.

Why does the Biden Administration believe all this is necessary? In a recent column, Jamelle Bouie addressed the vows of some Republican presidential candidates to eliminate the constitutional right to birthright citizenship through executive order.14 In addition to presenting a compelling argument as to why this cannot legally be done, Bouie included in his column a wonderful quote from Frederick Douglass: “The outspread wings of the American Eagle are broad enough to shelter all who are likely to come.”

In case the Biden Administration is wondering if it can champion that same sentiment today, in lieu of its convoluted attempt to ban protection to those deserving of it under our laws, the answer is: “Yes, you may.”

(Much thanks to attorneys Ashley Vinson Crawford and Steven Schulman of the law firm of Akin Gump for representing the group of former Immigration Judges and BIA Members on our amicus brief in East Bay Sanctuary.)

Copyright 2023, Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.

Notes:

  1. East Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Biden, No. 18-cv-06810-JST, N.D. Cal. (Filed May 11, 2023).
  2. See Britain Eakin, “Asylum Officers, Ex-Judges Back Suit on Biden Asylum Rule,” Law360, June 8, 2023.
  3. East Bay Sanctuary v. Barr, 964 F.3d 832 (9th Cir. 2020) (holding that the Trump Administration’s asylum bar was inconsistent with our asylum laws).
  4. Defendants’ Reply Brief, East Bay Sanctuary v. Biden, (June 30, 2023) at 8.
  5. Austin Kocher, “Glitches in the Digitization of Asylum: How CBP One Turns Migrants’ Smartphones into Mobile Borders,” mdpi.com, June 20, 2023, https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/13/6/149, section 4.
  6. Melissa del Bosque, “Facial Recognition Bias Frustrates Black Asylum Applicants to US,” The Guardian, Feb. 8, 2023,
  7. “Senator Markey Calls on DHS to Ditch Mobile App Riddled With Glitches, Privacy Problems, For Asylum Seekers,” https://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/senator-markey-calls-on-dhs-to-ditch-mobile-app-riddled-with-glitches-privacy-problems-for-asylum-seekers.
  8. 8 C.F.R. § 1208.33(a)(2)(ii)(B).
  9. International Rescue Committee, “Limits on Access to Asylum After Title 42: One Month of Monitoring U.S.-Mexico Border Ports of Entry” (June 2023), https://www.rescue.org/sites/default/files/2023-06/Limits%20on%20Access%20to%20Asylum%20After%20Title%2042_1.pdf.
  10. Sandra Sanchez, “Kidnappings, Extortion End CBP Asylum Interviews at Laredo-Nuevo Laredo Border Crossing,” Border Report, June 14, 2023, https://www.borderreport.com/immigration/border-crime/kidnappings-extortion-end-cbp-asylum-interviews-at-laredo-nuevo-laredo-border-crossing/?ipid=promo-link-block1.
  11. Valerie Gonzalez and Julie Watson, “U.S. Halts Online Asylum Appointments at Texas Crossing After Extortion Warnings,” A.P., June 12, 2023, https://apnews.com/article/mexico-border-cbp-one-laredo-bfccf8c3f52d9cec2563b40da905a391.
  12. One form of withholding covers persecution for specified reasons; the other applies to torture.
  13. See Asylum Officer Basic Training Course Lesson Plan, “Reasonable Fear and Torture Determinations,” (USCIS, RAIO, 2017) at 11 (“The ‘reasonable possibility’ standard is the same standard required to establish eligibility for asylum (the ‘well- founded fear’ standard).”)
  14. Jamelle Bouie, “Opinion: What Frederick Douglass Knew That Trump and DeSantis Don’t,” NYT, June 30, 2023.

JULY 5, 2023

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It’s an existential problem for our nation when a Dem Administration claims as “success:” failure to recognize the rights of asylum seekers, intentionally evading asylum law, and endangering the lives of asylum seekers!

Lest anyone think the confusion, unfairness, and disorder caused by the Biden/Harris failure to implement competent, professional, expert leadership on human rights is “overhyped,” here’s an “in person” report from Professor Lenni Benson of NY Law School, founder of Safe Passage Project, and a widely reknowned “practical expert” on asylum and human rights.

Professor Lenni B. Benson
Professor Lenni B.Benson
Distinguished Chair of Immigration and Human Rights Law
New York Law School
Founder, Safe Passage Project
PHOTO: NYLS website

 

Sharing an excellent Blog post by retired IJ Jeff Chase on why the CBP One app may be endangering asylum applicants.  See below.

 

Related to the CBP One app was a hearing I observed last Friday, June 30, 2023 in NY City.

 

A self-represented individual was asked by the IJ “were you admitted or inspected” by the government, the Respondent through a Mandarin interpreter said “Yes, through the CBP app.”  The IJ paused. The OPLA attorney was visible on Webex. She was silent.

 

The IJ said “I will note your statement for the record, I find you removable as charged for not having been inspected or admitted.” [The Respondent had declined an opportunity to find an attorney.]

 

I am sure CBP will argue that entry under the app is not an inspection or admission and I haven’t looked carefully at the regulations but the issue is there to perhaps be litigated.

 

The other interesting twist in this particular case was that the government then told the Judge that she could see the Respondent had already completed biometrics and submitted an asylum application, but no application was in either her file nor the Court’s.

The IJ asked, do you have a copy?

The respondent: “On my phone.”

The IJ set a call-up date hearing to have the respondent print out the application and file it with the court in person.

 

I didn’t get a chance to speak to the Respondent, but I wondered if he had perhaps thought his interview with CBP was his asylum application or if he had filed affirmatively with USCIS.

 

Just sharing with this community.

 

Confusion abounds.

“Confusion abounds!” 🤯Why, rather than clarifying and applying the law, would the Administration intentionally create confusion and a host of unnecessary “litigatable issues?” 

Why would they create delay by supposedly having applications for asylum “filed” but unavailable electronically to either ICE or EOIR? 

Why didn’t the Administration recruit and hire real “practical experts” like Lenni Benson and her colleagues to straighten out the asylum system at the border, restore the rule of law, and reform and repopulate the critically important, currently dysfunctional, Immigration Courts and the BIA with well-qualified progressive judges, merit-selected experts in human rights and practical problem solving?

Pleased to join my friend “Sir Jeffrey” in giving a big “shout out” to our Round Table colleagues and superstar NDPA attorneys Steve Schulman, Ashley Vinson Crawford, and their pro bono team at Akin Gump for representing us on the amicus brief in East Bay Sanctuary!

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Anybody naive enough to believe the “party line” from Administration wonks about “success at the border” should heed this “hot off the presses” report from Mica Rosenberg @ Reuters. It confirms the legal and humanitarian disaster at the border resulting from two plus years of mismanagement of asylum by Mayorkas, Garland, and the rest of the Biden immigration politicos who have  failed to undo the humanitarian and legal mess left behind by White Nationalist Stephen Miller and the rest of the Trumpist scofflaws!

Mica Rosenberg
Mica Rosenberg
National Immigration Reporter, Reuters

Mica writes:

We examined the impact of the Biden administration’s new asylum regulation at the U.S.-Mexico border after it replaced the COVID-era Title 42 expulsion policy on May 11.

 

U.S. officials have said the regulation and other Biden immigration policies, that have opened new legal pathways to the US, have dramatically reduced the number of illegal border crossings.

But in the first month of the new policy, Reuters interviews with more than 50 migrants, U.S. and Mexican officials, a review of court records and previously unreported data found:

More than 100,000 migrants waiting in northern Mexico, many trying to snag an appointment on an oversubscribed government run smartphone app; a sharp drop in people passing their initial asylum screenings; more people in detention and tens of thousands of deportations.

 

My colleagues visited the mile-long migrant camp in Matamoros, across the river from Brownsville, Texas, where conditions are deteriorating, including cases of sexual assault in the camp, and we also spoke to a father who crossed the border but was speedily deported while his family was allowed into the US.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immigration-asylum-border/

 

Please read and share and keep in touch.

The report at the above link has many photos illustrating both the cruel stupidity of the Biden program and the amazing resilience of those still hoping, against the odds, to have their legal rights respected and protected by the USG.

Thanks, Mica, for “telling it like it is” and penetrating the “bureaucratic smokescreen” thrown up by the Administration to cover its misdeeds and human rights abuses!🤮

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-06-23

🇺🇸🗽⚖️  MORE JULY 4, 2023 THOUGHTS FROM REAL AMERICAN PATRIOTS!

 

Kelly White ESQ
Kelly White
Director, Detained Adult Program
CAIR Coalition
PHOTO: Linkedin

From Kelly White, Director, CAIR Coalition Detained Adult Program:

https://lnkd.in/em8yNdSH

The Feeling of Freedom

July 3, 2023 by Kelly White, Esq.

I love this country dearly, but not without deep sorrow for the mistakes of my own homeland.  And so, I criticize it because I want this place to mean freedom for everyone.

On July 4th, I will celebrate with my mixed-immigrant, first-generation family, neighbors, and community.  I tell my little one she is an Incan-Viking Warrior (because she is). And that there are places where not everyone is free, including in our own country. But we are working to change that. I try to teach her about refugees and why people flee their homes to come to the United States.

We also talk about family separation. Not long after zero-tolerance began, another child told mine that she “belongs in a cage” after all of us, young and old alike, saw those images. These are the misgivings of small children but also the symptoms of a deeply flawed system and culture. The way the Zero Tolerance Policy desecrated freedom continues to haunt us today.

As the director of CAIR Coalition’s Detained Adult Program, I believe we can help right the path our country is currently on—one that continues to separate families with unrestrained racism and violence.  The family separation crisis is ongoing, senseless, and continues to destroy our communities.

The United States has the largest immigration system in the world and is currently detaining approximately 29,000 immigrants, more than 63 percent of whom have no criminal record.  In addition, the Biden Administration has deported over four million people, the majority for simple civil immigration violations, including not having the correct paperwork.  This should be the least complicated public policy-making decision.

Immigrants’ rights groups need a new platform to stop these inhumane policies.  It should be simple:

  • Stop separating families.
    On an annual average, over 1,500 children in the DMV are impacted by a parent’s detention. Over a thousand children put their best forward as they try to move on with their lives without their parents—over a thousand children!
    Why policies that harm our own children and communities are allowed to continue is heartbreaking.  Our policies must keep families together.
  • Provide Immigrants in deportation proceedings with government-appointed counsel.
    Immigrants in deportation proceedings, including parents, are forced to defend themselves against a government-trained attorney without a right to court-appointed counsel in a language often not their own.  This means children become indefinitely separated from their parents simply because the right to a public-defense counsel is not available in immigration court. One solution would be to support the Fairness to Freedom Act and local programs for the right to counsel.

Being a parent is scary enough because there is very little you have control over in this world, but I know I am free to access the institutions in this country to care for, educate, and protect my child, but not everyone does.

As I celebrate this holiday, I will light fireworks and sparklers and do so as a symbolic spark to action for change and family unity.  I hope you will join me.

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

GW Law Immigration Clinic Director Professor Alberto Benítez & Co-Director Professor Paulina Vera

From Professors Alberto Benitez and Paulina Vera, Co-Directors, GW Law Immigration Clinic:

“Thank you isn’t enough to express how grateful we are.”

On May 22, 2023, V-M- was granted her green card. Her applications were filed on April 18, 2022 and her interview at USCIS was waived. V-M- is the wife of our long-time client, E-K-. The Clinic started representing E-K- in 2009 and helped him obtain asylum, his green card, and then his U.S. citizenship. Once he became a U.S. citizen, he was able to petition for his wife, V-M-, with whom he has two kids, ages 2 and 4. Like E-K-, V-M- is from Cameroon.

Please join me in congratulating Mir Sadra Nabavi and Trisha Kondabala, who both worked on the case.

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

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

From Jay Kuo @ Substack:

https://statuskuo.substack.com/p/independence?utm_medium=email

Today, a personal essay.

When I was little, my Ba would bring out fireworks for the Fourth of July. He acquired them in places like Maryland, where our family would go summer camping on the state beaches, and brought them across state lines to our little suburban enclave in upstate New York. As soon as it was dark enough out, many of our neighbors would gather, the area kids eager to see what Mr. Kuo had in store that year. Sparklers for sure. Sometimes big noisemakers. And always more than a few showstopper rockets with brilliant flourishes of color. He would hand them out to us to dole out to the other children without a thought to liability.

The 1970s were a crazy time.

Subscribed

It didn’t occur to me until much later that there was some irony here. We were the only Chinese American household in the area. With four kids and a house on the corner of two main streets, our family was the center of activity for Tioga Terrace. And on July 4, Ba would bring the magic, developed centuries ago by people who looked like us, gunpowder mixed carefully with binding and coloring agents, bringing wonder and delight.

I understood we were celebrating the independence of America from the British Crown, and I most clearly remember the bicentennial celebration that took place in 1976. Our schools had focused heavily on American history that year, yet most of my understanding of what had transpired 200 years before still came from watching our Founding Fathers sing about it in the movie 1776.

Musical theatre has always been in my DNA.

In that merry portrayal, the heroes of the revolution were towering figures: debonair, erudite, romantic, able to find gallows humor at the darkest of hours. I remember best the musical number around whether slavery should be condemned in the words of the Declaration. It was a terrifying and bewildering song. What did molasses and rum and Bibles have to do with Roots? And I remember vividly poor Thomas Jefferson, the author of that brilliant document, being called out for still practicing slavery on his property.

“I have already resolved to release my slaves,” said a quietly thoughtful Jefferson.

I sincerely believed that earnest and brave man, who thrilled his colleagues with the playing of his violin, his adoring wife Martha swooning to the tune. He was a noble man, to be admired.

We didn’t learn the real truth about Jefferson, or about any of the Founding Fathers, in class. And it wasn’t taught to me in college either, even though I was a political science major. The first person to challenge my view of our any of the Founders was a Black colleague I met during my RA training, who had brought up that we don’t ever teach real history. She cited the story of Jefferson and Sally Hemings, one of the many slaves he owned—a girl he had raped when she was just 14 years old.

I didn’t want to believe it. The Declaration of Independence, and its famous author, were sacred in my mind. The principles they espoused were of the highest order. And in my mind, July 4th was my favorite holiday, next to Christmas. For one day, Ba was cooler than all the other dads, and at least for that day we were the most popular kids in the neighborhood, even though we were not fully American—at least, that’s how it had always felt.

Once the veil was pierced, however, the truth began to burn holes through my mind. I began to question a great deal of the mythology that had been spoonfed to me, really to all of us. Christopher Columbus, that was a shocker. Manifest Destiny. The Chinese Exclusion Act. The Tulsa Massacre. The internment of Japanese Americans. With each revelation, it was hard not to become deeply and irretrievably cynical about our history and the way our country has always acted toward the most vulnerable in America.

There’s a strange thing that happens when you come out the other end of all that. I began to wonder how they did it. How did people like Frederick Douglass, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and even my own hero George Takei still have anything left of faith and belief in this country, after all it had done to them, their families, their communities?

“We hold these truths to be self-evident.”

That all people are equal. That we all possess “unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Those words were revolutionary in their time. And they indeed spawned a revolution. Despite my great disillusionment, they still inspire and hold true for me today. That’s the power of the enduring promise of America. Not that we will always, or even most of the time, get things right, or that we won’t stumble our way into dark and nearly hopeless chapters of genocide, slavery, internment, and yes, growing Christofascism today.

Loving the promise of America isn’t the same as loving what it has done and still does to break that promise, over and over. But I’ve come to appreciate the high value of maintaining our gaze upon that North Star, the one that still shines for liberation, fairness and equality. That the promise has now endured nearly 250 years speaks to our collective and deep desire for hope, even in the face of broad and dehumanizing injustice and inequity.

The America that our white, propertied, slave-holding male Founders envisioned isn’t what we’ve got today. But that’s because we’ve improved upon that vision. For me, the America of tomorrow is a truly multi-racial, multi-denominational, pluralistic democracy, a place of opportunity and prosperity, with no one left behind. That is the vision that sustains me. It’s the one where my Chinese father could hand out fireworks on July 4 to excited, white kids and seem the most American of all the dads.

We inherited both a sacred promise and a big mess from those who came before, and we’re still working on both. The fact that it is so very hard, and we have so very far still to go, is strong evidence of the incredible value of that promise. This is evidenced in great part by how fiercely others will fight with all they have to keep us from it.

But nothing worth fighting for was ever won without a fight. And in the end, the enemies of our unalienable rights will fail. That is the faith I keep.

Happy Independence Day. Our fight continues.

— Jay

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

As Jay says, “the fight continues.” And, the patriots quoted above are on the front lines!

Sad historical footnote: Whatever the “musical version of TJ supposedly ‘resolved,’” the real-life version freed only two enslaved workers in his lifetime and five (including two of his own children) at death. The rest of his enslaved workers and their families were sold upon his death to pay off his monumental debts. Thus, these enslaved African-Americans paid a huge personal price for this “Father of Freedom’s” gross financial mismanagement!

Slavery & Jefferson
For African Americans, working and being owned by the primary drafter of the Declaration of Independence was a bad deal! No freedom, no pay, and almost all of those he owned at death got sold to pay off the debts he left, resulting in the permanent separation of families! This is the real history of our nation that Trump, DeSantis, and other GOP White Nationalist “snowflakes” don’t want you to hear or learn. 
IMAGE: Public realm

According to Wikipedia:

Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, owned more than 600 slaves during his adult life. Jefferson freed two slaves while he lived, and five others were freed after his death, including two of his children from his relationship with his slave (and sister-in-law) Sally Hemings. His other two children with Hemings were allowed to escape without pursuit. After his death, the rest of the slaves were sold to pay off his estate’s debts.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-05-23

🇺🇸🗽⚖️🎇 JULY 4, 2023 — “On True American Patriotism” By Robert Reich In Substack! — “The true meaning of patriotism is the opposite of Trump’s exclusionary White Christian Nationalism.”

Robert Reich
Robert Reich
Former US Secretary of Labor
Professor of Public Policy
CAL Berkeley
Creative Commons License
Naturalization
Naturalization Ceremony
USG Official Photo
Public Domain

https://open.substack.com/pub/robertreich/p/what-is-the-true-meaning-of-patriotism?r=330z7&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=pos

Friends,

On Saturday, Donald Trump conducted the second formal rally of his campaign — in Pickens, South Carolina, where an estimated 50,000 turned up under the scorching sun to hear him.

There, he advanced his version of patriotism based on White Christian Nationalism.

He began by celebrating the town’s namesake, Francis Pickens, who was governor of South Carolina when it was the first to secede from the Union on the eve of the Civil War. Trump assured the crowd he wouldn’t let “them” change the town’s name.

He commended the Supreme Court for rejecting affirmative action “so someone who has not worked as hard will not take your place.”

He saluted the court’s decision to overrule Roe v. Wade so “radical left Democrats will not kill babies.”

He promised to stop “men competing in women’s sports” and prevent classroom teachers from teaching the “wrong” lessons about sexuality or history.

He condemned foreign governments that “send” over the border “people in jails and insane asylums” and promised to deny entry to “all communists and Marxists.”

And he declared America’s most dangerous opponents not to be Russia, China, or North Korea but “enemies within” America.

Rubbish.

The true meaning of patriotism is the opposite of Trump’s exclusionary White Christian Nationalism.

America’s moral mission has been toward greater inclusion — providing equal rights to women, Black people, immigrants, Native Americans, Latinx, LGBTQ+, Muslim, Jewish, atheist, and agnostic.

True patriots don’t fuel racist, religious, or ethnic divisions. Patriots aren’t homophobic or sexist.

Nor are patriots blind to social injustices — whether ongoing or embedded in American history. They don’t ban books or prevent teaching about the sins of the nation’s past.

True patriots are not uncritically devoted to America. They are devoted instead to the ideals of America — the rule of law, equal justice, voting rights and civil rights, freedom of speech and assembly, freedom from fear, and democracy.

True patriots don’t have to express patriotism in symbolic displays of loyalty like standing for the national anthem and waving the American flag.

They express patriotism in taking a fair share of the burdens of keeping the nation going — sacrificing for the common good.

This means paying taxes in full rather than lobbying for lower taxes or seeking tax loopholes or squirreling away money abroad.

It means refraining from making large political contributions that corrupt American democracy.

It means blowing the whistle on abuses of power even at the risk of losing one’s job.

And volunteering time and energy to improving one’s community and country.

Nor is patriotism found in baseless claims that millions of people vote fraudulently. Or in pushing for laws that make it harder for people to vote based on the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

Patriotism lies instead in strengthening democracy — defending the right to vote and ensuring more Americans are heard.

Patriots understand that when they serve the public, their responsibility is to maintain and build public trust in the institutions of democracy.

They don’t put loyalty to their political party above their love of America. They don’t support an attempted coup.

They don’t try to hold onto power after voters have chosen not to reelect them. They don’t make money off their offices.

When serving on the Supreme Court, they recuse themselves from cases where they may appear to have a conflict of interest. They don’t disregard precedent to impose their own ideology.

America’s problem is not as described by Trump and his White Christian Nationalism — that the nation is losing its whiteness or dominant religion, that too many foreigners are crossing its borders, that men are competing in women’s sports or teachers are not celebrating the nation’s history.

America’s problem is that too many Americans — including its lawmakers — are failing to understand what patriotism requires.

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

Happy July 4!😎🇺🇸

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-04-23

 

🏴‍☠️🤯 USG’S FAILED DETERRENCE POLICIES HARM ASYLUM SEEKERS, ENRICH & ENABLE CARTELS! — New Report From Insight Crime! — “The prevention through deterrence policies used by the US government have created an increasingly lucrative black market for human smuggling.”

Stephen Miller Monster
MEXICAN CARTELS NAME STEPHEN MILLER “BIDEN ADMINISTRATION PERSON OF THE YEAR” FOR HIS CONTINUING DEADLY INFLUENCE ON U.S. BORDER POLICIES!  Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com

Insight Crime reports:

https://substack.com/redirect/16f2dc60-a5f2-48e3-89db-9b2eb639d861?j=eyJ1IjoiMmQzZTIifQ.YnB6oyRxafApuirRPkrfQupKbpWIvJ3g2zVXvim2p28

Executive Summary

In 2019, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP).1 What would become known as “remain in Mexico” was the latest in a decades-long effort by successive Republican and Democrat administrations to curb migration by making it increasingly difficult for migrants to enter and stay in the United States.

However, the policies have had numerous unintended consequences, including bolstering criminal organizations along the US-Mexico border. Whereas the smuggling of drugs and weapons used to dominate the cross-border contraband trade, human smuggling has morphed into one of the most lucrative industries for crime groups. It also has made it increasingly dangerous for migrants who face more risks en route and along the US border.

This report aims to highlight the role US policy has played in this transformation, which continues to evolve today. Specifically, it analyzes the ways in which Mexican organized crime groups have become involved in human smuggling as risks rose, prices surged, and migrants began to move through less-traveled corridors. The goal is to inform policymakers who are looking to address irregular migration and combat Mexico’s criminal organizations. We also aim to provide relevant stakeholders with opportunities for positive intervention to mitigate this human suffering by targeting the most violent criminal actors.

The findings are based on two years of desktop and field research across the Mexican states of Baja California, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Sonora, and Tamaulipas, where human smuggling is prominent. It includes dozens of in- person and remote interviews with migrants, asylum seekers, US and Mexican prosecutors, security experts, government officials, religious leaders, and migrant advocates, among others. In addition, we analyzed government data on human smuggling investigations and prosecutions, judicial cases, and previous studies on the topic.

1 US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), “Migrant Protection Protocols,” 24 January 2019.

   insightcrime.org 4

Unintended Consequences: How US Immigration Policy Foments Organized Crime on the US-Mexico Border

2

Major Findings

 

 insightcrime.org 5

1. The prevention through deterrence policies used by the US government have created an increasingly lucrative black market for human smuggling. Transnational criminal networks have assumed greater control over the movement of people and replaced the personalized, community-based nature of human smuggling that once existed.

2. The US government’s immigration policies have provided more opportunities for organized criminal groups to victimize migrants. The policies have, most notably, created a bottleneck along the US-Mexico border where northbound migrants are forced to congregate as they determine whether they are eligible to seek asylum and contemplate alternative ways to enter the country. As a result, they have become highly susceptible to extortion and kidnapping. And over time, restrictive immigration policies have expanded the scope of these lucrative, secondary criminal economies.

3. The US government’s immigration policies and the externalization of immigration enforcement to countries like Mexico have expanded the breadth of official corruption. As the US government has increased its reliance on third countries for enforcement and pushed migrants to remain in these countries, officials from these nations have expanded their illegal operations. These include extortion, kidnapping, and human smuggling rackets.

. . . . 

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

Read and listen to the full report at the above link.

In many ways, this detailed report, based on two years of desk and field research, is a “Duh!” It mostly confirms what experts, advocates, and those who truly understand asylum law and border security have been saying for years. Arrogant politicos from both parties have “tuned out the truth” and suggestions for positive changes, for different reasons.

The GOP has no interest in the truth because it conflicts with and undermines their racist false narrative about “open borders” and “replacement theory.” The Dems, by contrast, basically recognize the racist lies behind the GOP “close the border” narrative. But, once in office, Dem “leaders” lack the political and moral courage to stand up for human rights, the rule of law, and to make the refugee, asylum, and legal immigration systems work, at the border, abroad, and in the interior.

In other words, while nominally opposing the GOP’s nativist/racist/alarmist rhetoric (particularly during elections when votes from progressives and ethic communities are needed), Dem leaders basically accept much of the restrictionist premise. That is, that increased regular legal immigration resulting from well-functioning refugee, asylum, and legal immigration systems that comply with existing laws and due process would be politically unpopular and that the Administration lacks the self-confidence and expertise to manage legal immigration, including asylum, in an orderly, professional, and competent manner that ultimately will greatly benefit both our nation and the immigrants.

Thus, experts and advocates find themselves continually isolated in a deadly and frustrating “no-persons’ land!’ They are armed with undeniable truth and the facts to back it up, yet for transcendent reasons, neither party will give them the time of day.

So, those with the answers are stuck in an endless cycle of law suits, toothless protests, letters in opposition, focus groups, op-eds, law review articles, talking heads, and blogs (like this one) none of which offer much hope of a durable solution. And, in the meantime, the cartels are loving every minute of political failure on the part of America!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-03-23