🗽⚖️ REFUGEE EXPERT BILL FRELICK @ THE HILL: HUMAN RIGHTS ARE NON-NEGOTIABLE!

Bill Frelick
Bill Frelick
Director
Refugee and Migrant Rights Divisiong
Human Rights Watch

https://thehill-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/thehill.com/opinion/immigration/4380120-biden-must-not-trade-away-the-right-to-seek-asylum/amp/

On the eve of a U.S. presidential election year and under the shadow of wars in Ukraine and Gaza, asylum seekers and refugees have become chips on the Capitol Hill bargaining table.

What risks being lost in this high-stakes game is a recognition that fundamental human rights are not negotiable, including “the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution” enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

. . . .

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Read the rest of Bill’s article at the link.

Echoes what many of have saying for a long time! The problem is that the politicos of both parties have abandoned due process (except as it applies to them personally or to their cronies) and human rights.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-30-23

☠️🤯 HISTORIC SETTLEMENT OF FAMILY SEPARATION CASE SHOWS LEGAL & MORAL BANKRUPTCY OF TRUMP’S “OFFICIAL CHILD ABUSE PROGRAM!” — So Why Are Spineless Dems On The Hill & In The Biden Administration “Negotiating” With GOP Sponsors Of Even Worse “Crimes Against Humanity?”🤮 — “It does represent, in my view, one of the most shameful chapters in the history of our country,” U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw said!

Maria Sacchetti
Maria Sacchetti
Immigration Reporter, Washington Post

Maria Sachetti reports for WashPost:

Federal judge approves settlement barring migrant family separations

A federal judge approved a settlement that prohibits U.S. officials from separating migrant families for crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.

By Maria Sacchetti

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2023/12/08/trump-migrants-family-separations-biden/

Download The Washington Post app.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2023/12/08/trump-migrants-family-separations-biden/

. . . .

The settlement involves a 2018 lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union to block the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, which called for separating parents from their children to prosecute the adults for crossing the border illegally. Officials sent parents to detention centers and children to shelters, without a plan to reunite them, under the policy. Some were apart for months, some for years.

“It does represent, in my view, one of the most shameful chapters in the history of our country,” U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw said before he approved the settlement in a hearing that recalled the shock and disbelief surrounding the policy in 2018.

Under the settlement approved Friday, crossing the border illegally will no longer be a reason to separate a family, at least for the next eight years, which is how long that provision will last, lawyers said. The Justice Department has said the government will not prosecute parents for crossing the border without permission, a misdemeanor, or for the felony crime of reentering after being deported.

The settlement also offers aid to once-separated families so that they may apply to stay in the United States permanently. Those who were deported may apply to come back. Their immigration records will be cleared, giving them a fresh start on applying for humanitarian protection such as asylum.

Once they are in the United States, formerly separated families may apply for three-year work permits, six months of housing assistance and one year of medical care, according to the settlement. The families also are eligible for three years of counseling under the settlement.

Sabraw, a Republican nominee, declared the separations unlawful and ordered the families reunited in June 2018, after President Donald Trump halted the policy amid widespread condemnation.

Trump’s zero-tolerance policy ran from May to June 2018. Later, investigations determined that officials separated migrant families throughout Trump’s four-year term, which ended in January 2021.

Biden administration officials said the Trump administration separated more than 4,000 children from their parents, though past estimates have put that figure as high as 5,500. Lawyers for the ACLU, which represented the migrant families in court, estimated that as many as 1,000 children may still be separated from their parents. Advocates are trying to track them down.

The ACLU has called the case the most significant settlement in the organization’s 103-year history.

“This settlement brings much needed help to these brutalized children but there remains significant work to ensure that every family is now reunited and to monitor that no future administration tries to circumvent the agreement and reenact the same horrific policy,” Lee Gelernt, an ACLU lawyer and the lead counsel in the case, said in a statement.

. . . .

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Read the rest of Maria’s report at the link!

The human and fiscal costs of this illegal policy, developed and implemented by GOP White Nationalist child abusers, is beyond comprehension! Some of the damage can never be repaired!

Notably, there has never been any accountability for the architects of this clearly unconstitutional abuse and the Government attorneys who failed to do “due diligence” and misrepresented the facts surrounding child separation in Federal Court. The truth was only brought out when the ACLU was forced to do the DOJ’s job for it! It’s also curious how a prohibition on clearly unconstitutional conduct could have only an “eight year shelf life.”

But, there are even worse developments on the horizon — immoral, illegal, and unconscionable policies under consideration that will dwarf even this horrible episode in terms of  preventable deaths, disregard for humanity, dereliction of duty, moral cowardice, and degradation of our nation!   

Stephen Miller Monster
Why are Dems ignoring their “core supporters” and negotiating with this notorious human rights abuser! Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com

So why are Dem legislators and the Administration “negotiating” even more outrageous legal violations, moral transgressions, and human rights abuses with the GOP? Talk about “shameful!” If Dems don’t get some backbone and live up to their professed values and the law, “shameful” will have a whole new meaning!

Here’s a link to tell your Congressional representatives to “just say no” to the truly repulsive proposals to bully and inflict pointless harm on the most vulnerable and to arrogantly violate human rights on a massive scale being pushed by the  GOP and some so-called Dems.  https://lnkd.in/gp2RteRr.

 Trading away human rights that are not yours to dispose of for unrelated foreign military aid is beyond unconscionable! 🤮

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-09-23

🇺🇸⚖️🗽 THE POLITICS OF SOCIAL JUSTICE: PROGRESSIVES WIN KEY RACES IN WISCONSIN & CHICAGO!😎 — Instead Of “Running Away” From The Humanitarian Values That Got Them Elected, Biden, Harris, & So-Called “Centrist Dems” Should Be Embracing The Practical, Universal Values Of Due Process, Fundamental Fairness, Equal Justice Under Law & The Human Dignity Of All!

Equal Justice
Equal Justice
FROM: United Nations, Creative Commons LIcense

From HuffPost:

Liberals Take Control Of Wisconsin Supreme Court

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/janet-protasiewicz-wins-wisconsin-supreme-court-race_n_642c7201e4b0ba5d603c81ed

Brandon Johnson, Progressive Union Organizer, Elected Mayor Of Chicago

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/brandon-johnson-elected-chicago-mayor_n_642caf1be4b0ba5d603cc31a

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It’s also remarkable, if not surprising, that 33,000 of us, many representing larger groups, filed written comments OPPOSING Biden’s tone-deaf, anti-due-process, anti-rule-of-law, racially-targeted, designed-to-fail, Stephen-Miller-inspired “death to asylum (and asylum seekers)” proposed regulations!  https://default.salsalabs.org/Ta42828aa-7c89-4fca-a530-ab64d55d9cdf/e9c83407-de3b-4bcf-a318-704cbcd599a2. As someone who spent considerable time analyzing public comments on regulations during my career, that’s an astounding show of unified opposition.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that Biden, Harris, Garland, Mayorkas, or anyone else in the Administration will listen. But, they should! 

Unfortunately, the ridiculously short 30-day comment period and that this major reversal of the positions and values that Biden and Harris campaigned upon, without meaningful input and discussion with experts who actually understand the borders and have been present there, indicates that the the comments are likely to be largely ignored. That’s going to lead to big time litigation — from both progressives and GOP nativist/restrictionists. 

But, discouragingly, the Biden Administration has shown itself to be willing to tie up time and resources insanely (and not necessarily successfully) doing battle with its own would-be supporters rather than fighting the right! Just who they think is going to be the “winner” here — other than, perhaps, Donald Trump and Jim Crow  — is beyond me!

James “Jim” Crow
James “Jim” Crow
Symbol of American Racism. Biden’s ill-advised and tone-deaf nativist asylum policies appear designed to appease this guy rather than to please those who actually voted for him and other Democratic candidates!

Instead of “running away” in the face of the GOP’s scurrilous “Anti-Woke Campaign:” targeting immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Jews, Muslims, women’s reproductive rights, teachers, free speech, libraries, public education, medical science, the environment, social justice, the Federal Government, voting rights, unions, the working poor, and just about all “mainstream American” individual freedoms, the Biden Administration and Dems in general should stand up for what’s actually great about America and against the GOP’s vile, ignorant, hateful “culture warriors” and “Jim Crow racists and misogynists. Defending the legal rights and humanity of asylum seekers and other migrants would be a good place to start a real defense of American values and democracy! That is, if someone in power were really interested in those things!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-05-23

⚖️🗽👍🏼👨🏾‍⚖️ BREAKING: US DISTRICT JUDGE EMMET G. SULLIVAN VACATES USG’S TITLE 42 ABUSE, ORDERS BIDEN ADMINISTRATION TO ENFORCE ASYLUM LAW! — Refuses Stay — Rips Knowingly Illegal & Life Threatening Actions By Corrupt Officials Of Both Administrations!  — Fraudulent Public Health “Pretext” Finally Exposed!

Hon. Emmet G. Sullivan
Hon. Emmet G. Sullivan
US District Judge
DC

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/15/border-ruling-title-42/

By Maria Sacchetti and Spencer S. Hsu

November 15, 2022 at 4:46 p.m. ET

A federal judge on Tuesday struck down a Donald Trump-era policy used by U.S. border officials to quickly expel migrants because of the covid pandemic, saying the ban had little proven benefit to public health even as it shunted migrants to dangerous places.

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in the District of Columbia vacated the order known as Title 42, effectively restoring asylum seekers’ access to the borders for the first time since the Trump administration issued it during the earliest days of the pandemic.

The decision — which takes effect immediately — knocks down one of the last remaining barriers to asylum from the Trump administration, advocates for immigrants said. It also poses an immediate logistical challenge for the Biden administration after two consecutive years of record apprehensions on the U.S.-Mexico border, with the possibility that the numbers could grow.

Biden officials have long worried about a mass rush to the border creating an emergency similar to the one that occurred in Del Rio, Texas, in Sept. 2021, when thousands of migrants crossed illegally and overwhelmed U.S. agents, creating a squalid camp on the banks of the Rio Grande that embarrassed the Biden administration.

Sullivan’s ruling also comes days after top border official Chris Magnus resigned under pressure after clashing with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

The Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security had no immediate response to the ruling.

The American Civil Liberties Union, one of the organizations that brought the lawsuit on behalf of migrants, said Sullivan’s decision to vacate the Title 42 policy means the policy ends for all migrants, including families and adults traveling without children.

“Title 42 unfortunately had a long shelf life but has finally been ended, and that will mean enormous relief to desperate asylum seekers,” said ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt.

Sullivan also made clear that that he would not stay his order pending appeal, leaving it to a higher court to do so if the Biden administration sought more time to address the ruling. 

. . . .

Key Quote: 

Sullivan wrote that the federal officials knew the order “would likely expel migrants to locations with a ‘high probability’ of ‘persecution, torture, violent assaults, or rape’ ” — and did so anyway.

“It is unreasonable for the CDC to assume that it can ignore the consequences of any actions it chooses to take in the pursuit of fulfilling its goals,” Sullivan wrote. “It is undisputed that the impact on migrants was indeed dire.”

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The horrific consequences for lawful asylum seekers subjected to this unlawful policy have indeed been “dire:” rape, assault, kidnapping, beating, torture, extortion, starvation, illness, sickness, death, family separation, despair, to name a few. 

By contrast, there have been NO consequences for Stephen Miller and the other Trump Administration officials who fabricated and directed this ruse on the justice system and attack on humanity and the rule of law! Nor have there been any consequences for lower level officials who “went along to get along” with what they knew or should have known to be deadly abuses of our laws. 

Additionally, Biden officials who continued to violate the law and even concocted ways of expanding its illegal and immoral use have escaped accountability and continue in their jobs. DOJ lawyers who failed to do “due diligence” and defended a policy based on pretext, misrepresentations of fact, racism, and xenophobia have also continued to operate in the “ethical twilight zone” that normally would have serious professional consequences!

Of course the whole history of the Title 42 charade ☠️🤮has been one of one step forward and three steps back. The corrupt decision-making extends to unqualified right-wing zealots with lifetime sinecures on the Federal Article III bench and to equally corrupt GOP state AG’s for their dishonest scheme to force continued illegal Title 42  expulsions. 

So, despite these “crimes against humanity,” don’t expect that “heads will roll!” Given the current sorry state of our Federal Courts and the DOJ, it’s not certain that Judge Sullivan’s order will actually have effect or that asylum seekers will ever get the fundamentally fair and humane treatment to which they are entitled.

But, I am certain that this will eventually go down in history as one of the most disgraceful intentional abrogations of law, with the most drastic consequences for humanity and our nation’s reputation, in 21st Century legal history!

It’s also worthy of note that rather than getting the asylum system properly staffed and trained, bringing in Immigration Judges with the required expertise, installing a BIA of expert judges capable of issuing correct, realistic, generous, practical asylum precedents, working cooperatively with the private bar to facilitate representation, and developing an orderly process for resettlement (away from the border) of asylum applicants who pass credible fear, Garland, Mayorkas, and a White House officials have dithered away two years of time without getting the necessary robust, fair, expert, efficient, timely asylum adjudication system up and running!

The advice and pleas of experts and advocates have been “tuned out” or ignored by those in charge! Now, as all of us predicted, the “chickens have come home to roost” for the Administration’s indifferent, incompetent, and lackadaisical  approach to the biggest racial justice and human rights crisis facing our nation.

Thanks Judge Sullivan! Thanks ACLU! Apologies to the hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers wronged by the cowardly failure of America to uphold our laws, Constitution, and international obligations — that “subset” of victims who are still alive despite our Government’s grotesque misconduct!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-15-22

🤯BILL FRELICK @ THE HILL BLASTS BIDEN’S SCOFFLAW, ELITIST MISTREATMENT OF VENEZUELAN REFUGEES! — Welcome A Few Of The Well-To-Do, Give Others In Need The Screw! 🔩☠️ — Whatever Happened To The Refugee Act of 1980 & The Rule Of Law?

Statue of Liberty
Too many Biden Administration Immigration officials appear to share Stephen Miller’s “upside down” view of the Statue of Liberty, in whole or in part! Why can’t they just follow the Refugee Act of 1980 and establish the robust, timely, generous legal approach to refugees and asylum seekers that best serves America?
Bill Frelick
Bill Frelick
Director
Refugee and Migrant Rights Division
Human Rights Watch

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/3704714-bidens-new-plan-no-help-for-desperate-venezuelan-refugees/

Refugees are people who flee for their lives. Escape from danger and abuse is usually chaotic, sudden, desperate. The Biden administration’s rollout of its new policy for Venezuelan refugees seems oblivious to this refugee reality and risks doing more harm than good.

. . . .

Announcing the program on Oct. 12, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas said Venezuelans who enter irregularly “will be returned to Mexico.”

He didn’t mention — and appeared to disregard — U.S. law, which recognizes that anyone who arrives in the United States has the right to seek asylum “whether or not at a designated port of arrival” and “irrespective of such alien’s status.”

The impact of this announcement, “effective immediately,” was the summary return to Mexico without examination of their asylum claims of any Venezuelans entering the United States without authorization. Mexico has given no assurances that it will examine their refugee claims or provide asylum to those who fear return to Venezuela. In fact, the 4,050 Venezuelans expelled to Mexico since the implementation of the policy have been given visas valid for only one week and instructed to leave the country.

. . . .

With the Biden administration’s plan in effect, we might as well apply a blowtorch to Emma Lazarus’s welcoming poem at the foot of the Statue of Liberty and chisel in a new message: “Give me your well-rested, your well-to-do, your properly ticketed jet-setters yearning to breathe free.”

Bill Frelick is the refugee rights director at Human Rights Watch. Follow him on Twitter @BillFrelick.

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Read Bill’s complete op-ed act the link. Bill is one of many “practical experts” who would do a much better job than current Administration politicos in establishing and running a refugee and asylum program that would comply with the law,  due process, human dignity, and America’s best interests. Why is Biden following the lead of his “clueless (and spineless) crew?”

The Refugee Act of 1980 was enacted and amended to deal with these situations! Robust, realistic refugee programs outside the U.S. should encourage many refugees to apply, be screened abroad, and admitted legally. 

Other refugees arriving at our border can be promptly screened for credible fear. Those who fail that test can be summarily removed in accordance with existing law. 

Those who pass that test should have access to counsel and receive timely, expert adjudications, with full appeal rights, under the generous “well founded fear” (1 in 10 chance) international standard established by the Refugee Act. See, e.g., INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca (Supremes); Matter of Mogharrabi (BIA).

It’s not “rocket science!” With dynamic, experienced refugee experts running the system and “practical scholars” with expertise in refugee processing and human rights laws serving as USCIS Asylum Officers and EOIR judges at the trial and appellate levels the legal system should be flexible enough to deal with all refugee situations in an orderly manner.

Many, probably a majority, of today’s asylum seekers should be granted asylum and admitted to the U.S. in full legal status, authorized to work, and on their way to green cards and eventual citizenship. Like those admitted from abroad, they could also be made eligible for certain resettlement assistance to facilitate integration into American communities who undoubtedly will benefit from their presence.

The more robust, realistic, and timely our overseas refugee programs become, the fewer refugees who will be forced to apply for asylum at our borders. Also, real, bold, dynamic humanitarian leadership, including accepting our fair share of refugees and asylees, could persuade other countries signatory to the Geneva Refugee Convention to do likewise.

No insurmountable backlogs; no bewildered individuals wandering around the U.S. in limbo waiting for hearings that will never happen; few “no shows;” no long-term detention; no botched, biased “any reason to deny” decisions from unqualified officers and judges leading to years of litigation cluttering our legal system, no diverting Border Patrol resources from real law enforcement, no refugees huddled under bridges or sitting on street corners in Mexico!

It’s not “pie in the sky!” It’s the way our legal system could and should work with competent leadership and the very best available adjudicators and judges! It would support the proper, important role of refugees as an essential component of LEGAL IMMIGRATION, not an “exception” or “loophole” as racists and nativists like to falsely argue.

Instead of demonstrating the competence and integrity to use existing law to deal with refugee and asylum situations, the Biden Administration resorts to ad hoc political gimmicks. Essentially, the “RA80” has been repealed “administratively.” Effectively, we’re back to the “ad hoc” arbitrary approaches we used prior to ‘80 (which I worked on during the Ford Administration, and where I recollect I first heard of Bill Frelick). 

I doubt that the late Senator Ted Kennedy, former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, and the rest of the group who helped shepherd the Refugee Act of 1980 through Congress would have thought that using Border Patrol Agents as Asylum Officers or packing the Immigration Courts and the BIA with judges prone to deny almost every asylum claim, regardless of facts or proper legal standards, was the “key to success!”

Congress specifically intended to eliminate the use of parole to deal with refugees except in extremely unusual circumstances, not present here. Biden’s latest ill-advised gimmick violates that premise. It’s totally inexcusable, as the refugee flow from Venezuela is neither new nor unpredictable. I was granting Venezuelan asylum cases before I retired in June 2016. Even then, there were legions of documentation, much of it generated by the USG, condemning the repressive regime in Venezuela and documenting the persecution of those who resisted!

A better AG would say “No” to these improper evasions of existing law. But, we have Merrick “What Me Worry” Garland! His botching of the Immigration Courts has been combined with a gross failure to stand up for equal justice for migrants (particularly those of color) across the board! America and refugees deserve better from our chief lawyer.

The Refugee Act of 1980 actually provides all the tools and flexibility the Biden Administration needs to establish order on the border and properly and fairly process refugees and asylees. Why won’t they use them?

Alfred E. Neumann
AG Merrick Garland has “looked the other way” while the Biden Administration flaunts applicable protection laws in and outside the U.S. He also runs a dysfunctional “court system” where anti-asylum bias, worst practices, poorly qualified decision makers, and grotesque inconsistencies undermine the legal rights of asylum seekers and other refugees. Doesn’t America deserve more competence from its top lawyer?
PHOTO: Wikipedia Commons

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-28-22

⚖️THE GIBSON REPORT — 10-03-22 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Managing Attorney, NIJC — Biden’s Asylum Reform Dud! — After 4 Months, Badly Flawed Program Has Protected Only 24 Refugees, As Bias, Lack of Vision, & Anti-Asylum Culture Continue To Plague Biden Administration’s Human Rights “Non-Policies!”

 


Elizabeth Gibson
Elizabeth Gibson
Managing Attorney
National Immigrant Justice Center
Publisher of “The Gibson Report”

Weekly Briefing

 

This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.

 

CONTENTS (jump to section)

  • ◦NEWS
  • ◦LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES
  • ◦RESOURCES
  • ◦EVENTS

 

PRACTICAL UPDATES

 

EOIR Updates FOIA Request Process

 

USCIS Extends Green Card Validity Extension to 24 Months for Green Card Renewals

 

Extension of Temporary Waiver of 60-Day Rule for Civil Surgeon Signatures on Form I-693

 

NEWS

 

Migrant deaths at the U.S.-Mexico border hit a record high, in part due to drownings

NPR: This has been the deadliest year ever for migrants trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. More than 800 migrants have died border-wide in the fiscal year that ends this week, according to internal government figures shared by a senior Border Patrol official.

 

Biden Is Hoping Small Changes Go a Long Way on Immigration

NYT: For now, the changes are tiny; only 99 people since the end of May have completed what are called asylum merits interviews with an asylum officer and been fully evaluated under the new rules. Of those, 24 have been granted asylum, while most of the rest have had their cases sent back to the immigration court system for an appeal.

 

Biden Maintains Current Cap on Refugee Entries

NYT: The decision to leave the cap at 125,000 was a contrast with the Trump administration, which severely restricted entry, but advocacy groups said migrants were still processed too slowly.

 

ICE Increases Use of Ankle Monitors and Smartphones to Monitor Immigrants

TRAC: The number of people in Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Alternative to Detention (ATD) program has officially crossed 300,000 people for the first time, reaching 316,700 according to data released this week. See also The App ICE Forces You To Download; 70-hour weeks, taking selfies for Ice: life as a migrant trucker in California.

 

White House hosts meeting of 19 Western Hemisphere nations to begin coordinated efforts on migrants

CNN: National security adviser Jake Sullivan and homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall, among other White House officials, met with the representatives of 19 countries at the White House to iron out the implementation of that declaration and appoint a special coordinator for each country, according to the senior administration official.

 

Texas Jail Warden Charged With Killing Migrant Was Previously Accused Of Serious Abuses

Intercept: The Warden of what was once one of the nation’s most notorious immigration detention facilities was arrested this week after allegedly killing one migrant and wounding another in the desert of rural West Texas.

 

Immigrants Provide Huge Benefits To U.S. Taxpayers

Forbes: Compelling new research finds immigrants, including those with less than a high school degree, provide enormous fiscal benefits and a significant subsidy to U.S. taxpayers.

 

Border-crossing asylum-seekers hit six-year high in Canada

Reuters: In the first eight months of 2022, Royal Canadian Mounted Police intercepted 23,358 asylum-seekers crossing into the country at unofficial entry points, 13% more than all of 2017, when an influx of border-crossers at Roxham Road, near the Quebec-New York border, made international headlines.

 

‘Real People That We Care About Are Being Exploited’

Politico: Because cannabis remains illegal at a federal level, all employers — even those licensed at the state level — lack access to E-Verify, a government service that helps businesses verify immigration status. They also cannot use visa programs like H-2A and H-2B, which facilitate legal immigration of farmworkers in other industries… The Oregon legislature in the last 12 months set aside more than $31 million for law enforcement and advocacy groups working to combat illicit cannabis cultivation and help undocumented workers in the industry.

 

Come along as we connect the dots between climate, migration and the far-right

NPR: What is the connection between climate change, the movement of people around the globe, and the rise of xenophobic politicians? That’s the overarching question we’re hoping to answer with this reporting trip.

 

LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES

 

Justices To Review If 5th Circ. Fairly Rebuffed Removal Case

Law360: The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to review whether the Fifth Circuit was right to reject a Guatemalan woman’s deportation case on the grounds that she hadn’t gone through a final round of administrative appeals.

 

3rd Circ. Upholds Toss Of Illegal Immigrant’s Firearm Appeal

Law360: The Third Circuit has affirmed an Eastern District of Pennsylvania federal judge’s rejection of a Dominican Republic citizen’s appeal of his conviction on firearm and immigration law offenses — albeit for different reasons than the lower court.

 

DC Judge Won’t Force Consular Interviews For Visa Winners

Law360: The State Department will not have to schedule visa interviews for 12 winners of the 2022 Diversity Visa Lottery, after a D.C. federal judge found that the selectees didn’t show a high likelihood of proving that the Biden administration unlawfully delayed their interviews.

 

Judge Faults BIA For Nixing Visa Petition Over Prior Marriage

Law360: An Ohio federal judge on Wednesday said the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals wrongly tossed a woman’s visa petition for her Ghanian husband over a previous “sham marriage,” saying whether the prior marriage was actually fake was open to dispute.

 

ACLU Says Feds Ignored FOIA For ICE Detainee Counsel Info

Law360: The American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday hit the U.S. Department of Homeland Security with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in D.C. federal court, accusing the agency of improperly withholding access to records regarding U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees’ access to counsel.

 

Feds want psychological tests for parents of separated kids

AP: The request comes in a lawsuit filed by migrants seeking compensation from the government after thousands of children were taken from parents in a policy maligned as inhumane by political and religious leaders around the world. Settlement talks with attorneys and the government broke down late last year.

 

Groups: Retaliation after migrants report detention center

AP: A companion complaint Wednesday to the office of civil rights at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security documents retaliation, including restrictions on access to legal representation and a falsified accusation of misconduct against an immigrant under the Prison Rape Elimination Act.

 

U.S. whistleblowers aiding migrant children feared retaliation, watchdog report says

Reuters: Two U.S. government employees said they experienced retaliation after they sounded alarms about the conditions at Fort Bliss, which has been used for emergency housing since March 2021, according to the report issued by the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) inspector general’s office.

 

Secretary Mayorkas Extends and Redesignates Temporary Protected Status for Burma

USCIS: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today announced an extension of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Burma for an additional 18 months, from Nov. 26, 2022, through May 25, 2024, due to extraordinary and temporary conditions in Burma that prevent individuals from safely returning.

 

RESOURCES

 

 

EVENTS

 

 

To sign up for additional NIJC newsletters, visit:  https://immigrantjustice.org/subscribe.

 

You now can change your email settings or search the archives using the Google Group. If you are receiving this briefing from a third party, you can visit the Google Group and request to be added. If you receive an error, make sure you click request access.

 

Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)

Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship

National Immigrant Justice Center

A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program

224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org

www.immigrantjustice.org | Facebook | Twitter

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Launch Dud
Despite disingenuous claims otherwise, the overhyped “launch” of asylum “reform” has been a “dud” — producing little for the Administration but even less for legitimate refugees and due process advocates caught up in the mind-boggling dysfunction of the failed Mayorkas/Garland asylum system.
PHOTO: NASA/Joel Kowsky
Public Realm

As border deaths continue to soar, nativist GOP Governors use humans as political pawns, and conditions in refugee sending countries deteriorate, the Biden Administration’s failed human rights/racial justice bureaucracy has no answers!

By attempting to replicate, remarkably even touting, the unrealistically high denial rates produced by the previous system — too often the result of badly flawed adjudications, poorly trained officers and judges, lack of effective representation, chronic systemic anti-asylum bias, and overly restrictive, anti-asylum precedents produced by a BIA loaded with anti-asylum zealots by the Trump Administration — Mayorkas and Garland have basically guaranteed continuing human rights abuses and defective adjudication of claims.

Truth is, even during the height of the overt anti-asylum program of the Trump Administration, approximately 70% of those whose claims were “referred” by the Asylum Office were eventually granted protection in Immigration Court. 

According to Human Rights First (“HRF”), an international human rights organization, in Fiscal Year 2021, 68% of asylum cases referred to immigration court by the AO were subsequently granted protection.[1] With nearly 70% of claims being granted in FY2021, this represents a clear and apparent waste of judicial resources.

https://www.immigrationissues.com/asylum-cases-referred-to-immigration-court-too-often/

And, this was with a legal system with overly restrictive precedents that clearly and improperly manipulated generous asylum laws AGAINST refugees, often hindered effective representation, and was “overseen” by many Immigration Judges who were hand-selected or retained by the Trump DOJ because they were “programmed to deny” asylum at outrageous rates. By granting only a pathetic 24 of 99 cases that actually were decided over four months, and “referring” the rest to Garland’s beyond dysfunctional “courts” (currently fighting an indescribably stupid all-out “war” with NGOs and pro bono attorneys), Mayorkas hasn’t come anywhere close to “leveraging” the system to locate, prioritize, timely grant many more legitimate cases, and drastically reduce the huge number of  unnecessary referrals to EOIR.

Rather than “cleaning house” at USCIS and EOIR, bringing in dynamic, qualified leaders, expert adjudicators and judges who can timely recognize the many legitimate claims, working with NGOs and pro bono groups to get all asylum seekers represented, and utilizing the expert training resources that currently exist outside Government, Mayorkas and Garland are perpetrating the same anti-asylum myths spewed out by Miller, Trump, and company! Essentially, instead of fixing the fatal flaws in the current system, the Biden Administration has chosen to institutionalize and expedite them! That’s insane!

The Biden Administration’s failure to do the butt-kicking, bold, thoughtful work necessary to establish robust, timely, efficient, refugee and asylum systems is dragging down our legal system, promoting racial injustice, perpetrating xenophobic myths, advancing “worst practices,” harming, sometimes killing, legitimate refugees fleeing repressive regimes, and denying American communities legal residents who could be using their skills to help build a stronger economy and a better future for America.

With thousands of asylum seekers from countries where persecution is well-documented being “orbited” by nativist GOP Governors, the Biden Administration was presented with a golden opportunity to work with NGOs, states, and local governments to coordinate resettlement, get them competently represented, and grant asylum in a fair and timely manner, thus demonstrating how an improved asylum system could work with proper staffing, attitudes, and legal guidance. Instead, the Administration has chosen to waste time on a “thudding dud” of a pilot that shows a stunning lack of leadership, courage, imagination, initiative, humanity, and respect for the rule of law!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-05-22

🌎THE AMERICAS: THE L.A. DECLARATION ON MIGRATION & PROTECTION — Blueprint For Action Or More Empty Rhetoric?

 

Here’s what the document says:

https://pm.gc.ca/en/news/statements/2022/06/10/los-angeles-declaration-migration-and-protection

Lot of promises, no specifics, as you can see!

Here’s the “White House Fact Sheet” which lists specifics from apparent “side agreements” by the various signatories:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/06/10/fact-sheet-the-los-angeles-declaration-on-migration-and-protection-u-s-government-and-foreign-partner-deliverables/

Here’s “critical commentary” from one observer:

Tyler Mattiace, an Americas division researcher with Human Rights Watch who closely followed the declaration’s drafting process, said that this type of multilateral approach is long overdue to assist “the millions of people all across the continent who have fled their homes either because of violence or persecution or human rights abuses.”

“They often face serious abuses that are many times the result of the fact that government either tries to prevent them from seeking protection or make[s] it difficult for them to obtain legal status or implement enforcement strategies to lead to them taking dangerous migration routes where they suffer abuses,” he said.

He said the declaration is a departure from what’s happening on the ground at the U.S.-Mexico border, where immigration enforcement officials keep expelling asylum seekers under Title 42, a COVID-19-related health measure implemented under former President Trump and maintained by Biden. The measure is tied up in the courts.

“The declaration is a major step forward, but it could be meaningless unless Biden immediately does everything possible to restore access to asylum at the U.S. border and ends other abuses, other anti-immigration policies,” Mattiace continued. “The U.S. also has to stop focusing immigration policy on efforts to outsource immigration enforcement to other governments in the region.”

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=dae611a5-6dfe-4e35-a4df-3329cdc3866b

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

I like to be optimistic. Nevertheless, color me skeptical on this. 

The ultimate success of this type of initiative will depend on courageous, enlightened, bold, dynamic leadership from the U.S. That’s not currently in the cards. 

Right now, the U.S. is in violation of various international migration agreements, domestic law, and the Due Process Clause of our Constitution. Our legal asylum, refugee, Immigration Court, and adjudication of legal status systems are a dysfunctional mess. Proposals for necessary, practical reforms have been ignored by the Administration, blocked by Trump Federal Judges, or not gotten off the ground. That’s NOT a “leadership posture” that is going to inspire and persuade other nations.

For example, the much ballyhooed “Asylum Regulation Reforms” are moving forward in a flawed “Beta test mode,” with no leadership, no practical precedents, incompetent judicial review, and a few dumb “in your face” features (like proposing to relocate asylum applicants to cities in Texas, where the EOIR asylum denial rates approach 100%, a move apparently specifically intended to spur xenophobic reactions from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott). 

Here’s one of the “key commitments” from the U.S. taken from the above White House “Fact Sheet”:

  • The United States will commit to resettle 20,000 refugees from the Americas during Fiscal Years 2023 to 2024. This represents a three-fold increase from this year and reflects the Biden Administration’s strong commitment to welcoming refugees. The protection needs are significant in the Western Hemisphere. More than 5 million Venezuelans have been displaced in the Americas, and hundreds of thousands more people from other countries across Latin America and the Caribbean are also displaced [across borders]. As the United States scales up its resettlement operations in the Americas, we call on other governments to do the same.

20,000 over two years? (Or is it 20,000 per year over two years — doesn’t really matter?) Are you kidding me? That wouldn’t begin to address the current situation on the Southern Border. Indeed, it wouldn’t even cover all the individuals already determined to have a “credible fear” of persecution who have been waiting, some for years, for processing under the cruel, illegal, and ineptly administered “Remain in Mexico” program. 

As Tyler Mattaice from HRW observes, the problem involves millions of individuals. Yet, we’re talking about accepting a few thousand more as a solution? Not going to cut it!

I’d also be mildly surprised if the U.S. even fulfills this exceptionally modest commitment. Over the past few years, the U.S. hasn’t even filled it’s “historically meager quotas.” And, the once proud U.S. Refugee Program, which relied heavily on NGOs for success, has been shredded — intentionally left in tatters by the Trump regime. If the Biden Administration has been able to rebuild it to the necessary size and operational strength, they have kept it a secret from most of us!

A realistic “low ball” starting number for Western Hemisphere refugees would be more like 100,000 in each of the next two years! Even this well might not be enough. 

Moreover, a competent Administration could actually have processed and admitted thousands of qualified refugees waiting in Mexico over the past 18 months, thereby at least beginning to reduce pressure on the border and the asylum adjudication system. 

Whether folks want to admit it or not, we are going to experience substantially more immigration from the Americas. It could be mostly legal or mostly extralegal — that’s our choice. 

But, no totally bogus Title 42 extension, wall, prison, family separation, cruelty, punitive law, prosecution, militarization of the border, racist rhetoric, “don’t come” message in three languages, or Federalist Society Federal Judge is going to halt the natural flow of human migration. Nor can migration be largely “outsourced” to smaller countries in the Hemisphere.

International cooperation is great! That’s what the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention and subsequent 1967 Protocol are all about. But, logically, we can expect other countries to “proportionalize” their responses to what they see the U.S. doing. 

Moreover, we have to consider that, for example, Colombia, a much smaller and poorer country than the U.S., with its own set of problems, has already taken in 1.7 million Venezuelan refugees. That dwarfs our so-called “crisis” at the Mexican border. https://www.worldbank.org/en/results/2021/10/31/supporting-colombian-host-communities-and-venezuelan-migrants-during-the-covid-19-pandemic

Realistically, is Colombia going to want to help us resettle Venezuelan refugees waiting at our Southern Border? Don’t count on it!

If you “add up” all of the numbers and commitments from all the countries contained in the “Fact Sheet,” it wouldn’t even come close to solving the current flow at our Southern Border, let alone make a dent in the Hemisphere-wide movement of individuals.

Dealing with the “root causes” of migration is also a great idea, if hardly a new one. Problem is, many of the “sending countries,” Northern Triangle, Haiti, Venezuela, are functionally failed states. Unless someone has a “silver bullet solution” addressing this sad fact — and nobody has one to date — this isn’t going to happen in the short run. It’s a decades if not generations long project. Worthy, to be sure. But not a way of effectively addressing today’s realities and migration pressures.

So, I see the same “aura of unreality” and unwillingness to face the facts hanging over the LA Declaration that has crippled our immigration and human rights policies over the past several decades. And, as refugee situations have continued to get worse, so has the “dream world” inhabited by those countries fortunate to be prosperous and stable enough to be “refugee destinations” become more pronounced and increasingly untethered to reality and humanity. 

Sorry, but that’s not a “formula for success!” 

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-12-22

FINALLY, LEADING DEMS IN CONGRESS DEMAND END TO BIDEN’S TITLE 42 CHARADE! — NDPA  All-Star 🌟🦸🏻‍♀️ Blaine Bookey Speaks Out For Ukrainians & Other Legal Asylum Seekers Being Abused 🤮  By Biden Administration @ The Southern Border!

 

Maria Sacchetti
Maria Sacchetti
Immigration Reporter, Washington Post

MarIa Sacchetti reports for WashPost:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/03/10/title42-border-asylum-democrats-trump/

Leading Senate Democrats demanded that the Biden administration immediately end a Trump-era policy that blocks asylum-seeking migrants from crossing land borders into the United States, after lawyers said U.S. Customs and Border Protection expelled a single mother of three who had traveled from Ukraine to Mexico seeking refuge.

Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) cited the “desperate” Ukrainian family at a news conference Thursday and said he was deeply disappointed that the Biden administration has dragged out the Trump-era policy, which a federal appeals court in D.C. last week called “questionable.” The Trump administration issued the order two years ago under Title 42, which is the public health code. Since then, officials have expelled more than 1.6 million migrants to countries such as Haiti and Mexico.

“The United States is supposed to welcome refugees with open arms, not put them in additional danger by denying them a chance to plead their case and leaving them at the mercy of criminals and smugglers,” Schumer said, joined by advocates for immigrants. “Now’s the time to stop the madness.”

Courts issue new directives to Biden on border expulsions

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, added that the policy “has created life-threatening conditions” for migrants. He called on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which issued the order under President Donald Trump and has extended it under President Biden, to rescind it.

. . . .

Sofiia, 34, who asked to be identified only by her first name because she has family sheltering in their basements in Ukraine, said in a telephone interview that her family had enjoyed a good life there. She worked as a Hebrew teacher and lived in her father’s house. They left as bombs grew closer.

“I was seriously afraid for my life and the life of my kids,” she said in English, one of four languages that she speaks.

She said she and her children — ages 6, 12 and 14 — flung suitcases stuffed with clothes and medicines into her old Citroen and drove straight to Moldova, the closest border, and then into Romania, where they traveled to Germany and caught a flight to Mexico. She said that they tried to enter legally twice, once by car and again by foot, and that officials rejected them both times, citing the Title 42 order.

“I was surprised that they don’t even want to listen,” she said. “I was trying to tell them that I have tests and I am vaccinated but they told me, ‘No, no, no, no, no.’”

She said she does not speak Spanish and was crying on the bridge in Mexico when lawyer Blaine Bookey spotted her. Bookey, the legal director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at the University of California’s Hastings law school, was there with her students to aid Haitian migrants facing similar troubles.

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Bookey said Customs and Border Protection told her that they would consider admitting the Ukrainian family. They were planning to try again Thursday, she said, adding that shelters in Mexico are filled with other would-be refugees who are not eligible to enter.

“There’s families like this that are showing up at the border from all sorts of countries from similar levels of violence. They deserve process to apply for asylum,” Bookey said. “This case really brings it home for people how just problematic this policy is.”

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

Read Maria’s full article at the link.

  • Rhetoric over action!
  • “Do as I say, not as I do!”

 

  • More cowardly performances from AG Garland and SG Prelogar who continue to “defend the indefensible,” putting politics over their constitutional duty to speak up for due process, human rights, racial justice, adherence to international conventions, and the rule of law.

 

  • The “COVID emergency” appears to be “over” everywhere in the U.S., even in areas with significant infection rates, EXCEPT for asylum seekers at the Southern Border who never were a major threat anyway.

 

  • “Saying no” to desperate Ukrainian mothers and children seeking refuge in the U.S. That’s ”law enforcement?” That’s how your tax dollars are being spent? Do these count as “border apprehensions?”

The Dem leaders are right to speak out. But, they waited far too long to do so. This travesty has been going on since Day 1 of the Biden Administration.

The only “hero” 🌟 here is Blaine Bookey and others like her who have the guts and courage to stand up for equal justice for all when politicos, judges, and public officials “tank!”

Blaine Bookey
Blaine Bookey
Legal Director
Center for Gender & Refugee Studies @ Hastings Law
Photo: CGRS website

Meanwhile, although the opposition to Biden’s scofflaw policy hasn’t restored the rule of law for most asylum seekers, it might have generated at least a modest reaction. CBS News reports that the CDC has revoked the (bogus) Title 42 authority to bar the entry of unaccompanied children seeking asylum.  News: https://apple.news/Anfp9S-UAQFqT5PWRc-8u2A

This appears to be a response to the attack on this group of vulnerable children by Trump-appointed righty anti-immigrant zealot U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman and his motley gang of  GOP state AGs. See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2022/03/05/%f0%9f%a4%aftitle-42-madness-even-as-dc-circuit-bars-returns-to-persecution-or-torture-trump-federal-judge-in-texas-abuses-children%f0%9f%a4%ae%e2%98%a0%ef%b8%8f-circuit-findings-of-ill/

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-12-22

⚖️🗽CHAMPIONS OF JUSTICE, MAKING A DIFFERENCE: 🛡⚔️ Round Table’s Fight For Better Policies, Best Practices, Earns Acclaim!

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

From “Sir Jeffrey” Chase:

Our statement yesterday on MPP was referenced and quoted by CNN at the end of this article by Priscilla Alvarez and Geneva Sands on the MPP restart:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/06/politics/biden-remain-in-mexico/index.html

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

This morning, Democracy Now referenced our letter in a segment covering the issue, saying:

 A group of former immigration judges released a statement condemning the return of the program as the “antithesis of fairness.”  

Here is the link:

https://www.democracynow.org/2021/12/7/biden_trump_era_remain_in_mexico

Furthermore, in oral arguments before the Supreme Court yesterday in Patel v. Garland, our amicus brief received a brief mention:

  • JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: — questions, how 

  • 10  could an appellate court — and this question 

  • 11  cuts both ways, so — but how can an appellate 

  • 12  court look at a cold record and determine a 

  • 13  factual error when it relates to credibility, 

  • 14  for example, or something like that? Just give 

  • 15  me some examples where this will matter, I 

  • 16  guess. 

  • 17  MR. FLEMING: Well, there — as the 

  • 18  amici, the American Immigration Lawyers 

  • 19  Association and the EOIR judges, point out, it 

  • 20  — it’s not uncommon.Best, Jeff

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

And, here’s more coverage from Human Rights First:

Courtesy Paul Ratje — AFP via Getty Images

 

A man sits in a migrant camp near Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico.

The new version of MPP expands its focus to asylum seekers from across the hemisphere, stranding even more people seeking safety in dangerous conditions at the border.

 

Kennji Kizuka, Associate Director for Research and Analysis, Refugee Protection, appeared on Democracy Now! and detailed the many human rights violations faced by asylum seekers processed under the “Remain in Mexico” policy.

 

“It’s extraordinarily concerning that the Biden administration is not only restarting this policy but expanding it,” said Kizuka.

Human Rights First also announced the resumption of our research documenting the human rights abuses suffered by people turned away to wait in danger under MPP.

 

Human Rights First’s Associate Attorney, Refugee Protection Julia Neusner and Advocacy Strategist for Refugee Protection Ana Ortega Villegas are on the ground in Ciudad Juárez to monitor the first days of MPP’s reinstatement.  Please follow their live updates and other reports through Human Rights First’s twitter account.

Our team’s view of the Mexican government’s

staging area in Cuidad Juárez for Remain in Mexico 2.0

 

Our position is gaining widespread support from those who understand the issue.  The Roundtable of Former Immigration Judges condemned

MPP as the “antithesis of fairness,” concluding that there has been “no greater affront to due process, fairness and transparency,” and called for administration to “permanently end the program.”

 

The union for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) asylum officers tasked with MPP screenings call it “irredeemably flawed.”  They said that restarting MPP “makes our members complicit in violations of U.S. federal law and binding international treaty obligations of non-refoulement that they have sworn to uphold.”

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

So proud to be a part of this group and so grateful for the leadership of colleagues like Judges Jeffrey Chase, Ilyce Shugall, Lory Rosenberg, Carol King, Joan Churchill, Denise Slavin, Sue Roy, John Gossart, Charles Honeyman, Charlie Pazar, Sarah Burr, Cecelia Espenoza, Bruce Einhorn, Tue Phan-Quang, Bob Weisel, Paul Grussendorf, Jennie Giambastini, and many, many, many others! 

As an “appreciative fellow NDPA member” told me yesterday, “it’s a true team effort!“ This type of teamwork for the public good was once encouraged at EOIR and even incorporated into the “leadership vision,” but now, sadly, it has “fallen by the wayside” in what has basically become a “haste makes waste race to the bottom.”

Fortunately, the Round Table and other members of the NDPA still share a “vision of what American justice should look like” and are willing to speak up for what’s legal and right rather than just “expedient!”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-09-21

ICE Continues To Use Inaccurate Police Data To Dictate Arrests and Deportations

By: Sophia Barba

On February 18, 2021, DHS published a memorandum for all ICE employees to prioritize immigrants who have been recorded as having gang affiliation for deportation and removal. ICE’s practice of using police data to identify immigrants who have been listed as being gang affiliates is not new. In 2017, ICE came under fire for their FALCON system, which gathered information as far-ranging as local police reports, social media, criminal and civil asset forfeiture records, cell phone information and even data collected by the CIA and NSA. What’s more, the information used to identify immigrants as gang-affiliated is largely inaccurate, and often mistakenly identifies individuals without much oversight. Many critics have emphasized that these systems record people using racial markers, or loosely substantiated relationships or networks, which make overgeneralized speculations about potential gang members, rather than relying on more substantial evidence. Since this data cannot be easily accessed, people who are placed on these lists often have no recourse to contest the categorization until it is too late. As Max Rivlin-Nadler from The Appeal stated,

This ‘information imbalance’ that immigrants experience when facing deportation is immense — often they’re not told exactly what has qualified them as a “gang member,” nor given the opportunity to correct records that local or federal law enforcement might be keeping on them.” 

Human Rights Watch, and several other organizations, have publicly denounced the February 18 memo, stating that the practice does nothing more than to perpetuate a heavily racialized policy that significantly eats away at immigrants’ due process rights. 

Here is some more background: 

LA Times reports gang databases are filled with errors.

Oregonian reports gang databases include largely just minorities 

Lawsuits claimed that gang databases were being used to provide weak support for deportations

 

SUZANNE MONYK @  LAW360:  Experts Say New Asylum Rule Unconstitutional Because It Guts Due Process🏴‍☠️, Effectively Repeals Asylum Statute, Will Result in Near 100% Denial Rate — While Denials & Illegal “Deportations to Death☠️” Will Soar, Asylum Seekers Not Likely to be Deterred From Coming, Meaning That Court Backlogs & Avoidable Litigation Will Continue to Mushroom!

Suzanne Monyak
Suzanne Monyak
Senior Reporter, Immigration
Law360

https://www.law360.com/articles/1282494/planned-asylum-overhaul-threatens-migrants-due-process

Analysis

Planned Asylum Overhaul Threatens Migrants’ Due Process

By Suzanne Monyak | June 12, 2020, 9:34 PM EDT

The Trump administration’s proposed overhaul of the U.S. asylum process, calling for more power for immigration judges and asylum officers, could hinder migrants’ access to counsel in an already fast-tracked immigration system.

The proposal, posted in a 161-page rule Wednesday night, aims to speed up procedures and raise the standards for migrants seeking protection in the U.S. at every step, while minimizing the amount of time a migrant has to consult with an attorney before facing key decisions in their case.

“It certainly sets a tone by the government that fairness, just basic day-in-court due process, is no longer valued,” said Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, director for the Center for Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Penn State Law, University Park, Pennsylvania.

The proposed rule, which will publish in the Federal Register on Monday, suggests a slew of changes to the U.S. asylum system that immigrant advocates say would constitute the most sweeping changes to the system yet and cut off access for the majority of applicants.

Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration law professor at Cornell University Law School, said that it was as if administration officials took every precedential immigration appellate decision, executive order and policy that narrowed asylum eligibility under this administration and “wrapped them all in one huge Frankenstein rule that would effectively gut our asylum system.”

Among a litany of changes, the rule, if finalized, would revise the standards to qualify for asylum and other fear-based relief, including by narrowing what types of social groups individuals can claim membership in, as well as the very definitions of “persecution” and “torture.”

In doing so, the proposal effectively bars all forms of gender-based claims, for example, as well as claims from individuals fleeing domestic violence.

These tighter definitions and higher standards would make it difficult even for asylum-seekers who are represented to win their cases, attorneys said.

“I worry about how a rule like this can cause a chilling effect on private law firms, or even BigLaw, from even engaging with this work on a pro bono level because it’s just so challenging and this rule only puts up those barriers even more,” said Wadhia.

But for migrants without lawyers, the barrier to entry is particularly profound. For instance, the rule permits immigration judges to pretermit asylum applications, or deny an application that the judge determines doesn’t pass muster before the migrant can ever appear before the court.

This could pose real challenges for migrants who may not be familiar with U.S. asylum law or even fluent in English, but who are not guaranteed attorneys in immigration court.

“If you’re unrepresented, give me a break,” said Lenni B. Benson, a professor at New York Law School who founded the Safe Passage Project. “I don’t think my law students understand ‘nexus’ even if they’ve studied it,” she added, referring to the requirement that an individual’s persecution have a “nexus” to, or be motivated by, their participation in a certain social group.

Dree Collopy of Benach Collopy LLP, who chairs the American Immigration Lawyers Association‘s asylum committee, told Law360 that she thought the pretermission authority was the most striking attack on due process in the proposal, noting that some immigration judges have asylum denial rates of 90% or higher.

“Giving all judges the authority to end an asylum application with no hearing at all is pretty jaw-dropping,” she said. “Those 90%-denial-rate judges are doing that with the respondent in front of them who’s already testifying about the persecution they’ve suffered or their fear.”

The proposal also allows asylum officers, who are employed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and are not required to have earned law degrees, to deem affirmative asylum applications frivolous, and to do so based on a broader definition of “frivolous.”

Currently, applicants must knowingly fabricate evidence in an asylum application for it be deemed frivolous. But the proposal would lower that standard, while expanding the definition of “frivolous” to include applications based on foreclosed law or that are considered to lack legal merit.

The penalty for a frivolous application is steep. If an immigration judge agrees that the application is frivolous under the expanded term, the applicant would be ineligible for all forms of immigration benefits in the U.S. for making a weak asylum claim, Collopy said.

“And under the new regulation, everything is a weak application,” she added.

Benson also said that allowing asylum officers to deny applications conflicts with a mandate that those asylum screenings not be adversarial.

When consulting for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security during the Obama administration, Benson had once supported giving asylum officers more authority to grant asylum requests on the spot when migrants present with strong cases from the get-go. But with this proposal, DHS “took that idea,” but then went “the negative way,” she said.

. . . .

“I can’t even think of a single client I have right now that could get around this,” Collopy said.

“It’s a fairly well-crafted rule,” said Yale-Loehr. “They clearly have been working on this for months.”

But it may not be strong enough to ultimately survive a court challenge, he said.

The proposal was met with an onslaught of opposition from immigrant advocates and lawmakers, drawing sharp rebukes from Amnesty International, the American Immigration Council and AILA, as well as from House Democrats.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who leads the committee’s immigration panel, slammed the proposal in a Thursday statement as an attempt “to rewrite our immigration laws in direct contravention of duly enacted statutes and clear congressional intent.”

If the rule is finalized — the timing is tight during an election year — attorneys said it would likely face a constitutional challenge alleging that it doesn’t square with the due process clause by infringing on an individual’s right to access the U.S. asylum system.

And while the administration will consider public feedback before the policy takes effect, attorneys said it could still be vulnerable to a court challenge claiming it violates administrative law.

Benson said the proposed rule fails to explain why its interpretation of federal immigration law should trump federal court precedent.

“They can’t just do it, as much as they might like to, with the wave of a magic wand called notice-and-comment rulemaking,” she said.

Yale-Loehr predicted a court challenge to the policy, if finalized, could go the way of DHS’ public charge rule, which was struck down by multiple lower courts, and recently by a federal court of appeals, but was allowed by the U.S. Supreme Court to take effect while lawsuits continued.

If the policy is in place for any amount of time, it will likely lead to migrants with strong claims for protection being turned away, attorneys said. But Yale-Loehr didn’t believe it would lead to fewer asylum claims.

“If you’re fleeing persecution, you’re not stopping to read a 160-page rule,” he said. “You’re fleeing for your life, and no rule is going to change that fact.”

–Editing by Kelly Duncan.

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

Read Suzanne’s full analysis at the above link.

Although nominally designed to address the current Immigration Court backlog by encouraging or even mandating summary denial without due process of nearly 100% of asylum claims, as observed in the article, the exact opposite is likely to happen with respect to backlog reduction.

As Professor Steve Yale-Loehr points out, finalization of these regulations would undoubtedly provoke a flood of new litigation. True, the Supreme Court to date has failed to take seriously their precedents requiring due process for asylum seekers and other migrants. But, enough lower Federal Courts have been willing to initially step up to the plate that reversals and remands for fair hearings before Immigration Judges will occur on a regular basis in a number of jurisdictions. 

This will require time-consuming “redos from scratch” before Immigration Judges that will take precedence on already backlogged dockets. It will also lead to a patchwork system of asylum rules pending the Supreme Court deciding what’s legally snd constitutionally required.

While based on the Court Majority’s lack of concern for due process, statutory integrity, and fundamental fairness for asylum seekers, particularly those of color, shown by the last few major tests of Trump Administration “constitutional statutory, and equal justice eradication” by Executive Order and regulation, one can never be certain what the future will hold. 

With four Justices who have fairly consistently voted to uphold or act least not interfere with asylum seekers’ challenges to illegal policies and regulations, a slight change in either the composition of the Court or the philosophy of the majority Justices could produce different results. 

As the link between systemic lack of equal justice under the Constitution for African Americans and the attacks on justice for asylum seekers, immigrants, and other people of color becomes clearer, some of the Justices who have enabled the Administration’s xenophobic anti-immigrant, anti-asylum programs might want to rethink their positions. That’s particularly true in light of the lack of a sound factual basis for such programs. 

As good advocates continue to document the deadly results and inhumanity, as well as the administrative failures, of the Trump-Miller White nationalist program, even those justices who have to date been blind to what they were enabling might have to take notice and reflect further on both the legal moral obligations we owe to our fellow human beings.

In perhaps the most famous Supreme Court asylum opinion, INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U.S. 421, 436-37 (1987), Justice Stevens said: 

If one thing is clear from the legislative history of the new definition of “refugee,” and indeed the entire 1980 Act, it is that one of Congress’ primary purposes was to bring United States refugee law into conformance with the 1967 United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, 19 U.S.T. 6223, T.I.A.S. No. 6577, to which the United. States acceded in 1968.

These proposed regulations are the exact opposite: without legislation, essentially repealing the Refugee Act of 1980 and ending  U.S. compliance with the international refugee and asylum protection instruments to which we are party. Frankly, today’s Court majority appears, without any reasonable explanation, to have drifted away from Cardoza’s humanity and generous flexibility in favor of endorsing and enabling various immigration restrictionist schemes intended to weaponize asylum laws and processes against asylum seekers. But, are they really going to allow the Administration to overrule (and essentially mock) Cardoza by regulation? Perhaps, but such fecklessness will have much larger consequences for the Court and our nation.

Are baby jails, kids in cages, rape, beating, torture, child abuse, clearly rigged biased adjudications, predetermined results, death sentences without due process, bodies floating in the Rio Grande, and in some cases assisting femicide, ethnic cleansing, and religious and political repression really the legacy that the majority of today’s Justices wish to leave behind? Is that how they want to be remembered by future generations? 

Scholars and well-respected legal advocates like Professor Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr, Professor Lenni Benson, and Dree Collopy have great expertise in immigration and asylum laws and an interest in reducing backlogs and creating functional Immigration Courts consistent with due process and Constitutional rights. Like Professor Benson, they have contributed practical ideas for increasing due process while reducing court backlogs. Instead of turning their good ideas, like “fast track grants and more qualified representation of asylum seekers, on their heads, why not enlist their help in fixing the current broken system?

We need a government that will engage in dialogue with experts to solve problems rather than unilaterally promoting more illegal, unwise, and inhumane attacks on, and gimmicks to avoid, the legal, due process, and human rights of asylum seekers. 

As Professor Yale-Loehr presciently says at the end of Suzanne’s article:

“If you’re fleeing persecution, you’re not stopping to read a 160-page rule,” he said. “You’re fleeing for your life, and no rule is going to change that fact.”

Isn’t it time for our Supreme Court Justices, legislators, and  policy makers to to recognize the truth of that statement and require our asylum system and our Immigration Courts to operate in the real world of refugees?

Due Process Forever! Complicity Never!

PWS

06-16-20

HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE TIME OF PANDEMIC: Morally Right & Essential To Health! 🗽 — But, Trump, Miller, & The White Nationalists Care Only About Preserving Their Own Power!👎🏻

Kenneth Roth
Kennith Roth
Executive Director
Human Rights Watch

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/06/we-can-beat-virus-only-by-protecting-human-rights/

Kennith Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch writes in WashPost:

Some governments around the world are using the pandemic to claim that human rights are a luxury we cannot afford. With the crisis as a pretext, they are arresting critics, intensifying surveillance and seizing broad emergency powers. The underlying assumption is clear: Safeguarding human rights is a nicety that must be jettisoned when times get tough.

In fact, though, the pandemic has also turned out to be an opportunity to promote human rights — not only as a matter of principle but also for reasons of pragmatism. The crisis has shown that officials who ignore human rights jeopardize our health, while respecting human rights is the best public health strategy.

Good health policy, for example, requires timely access to accurate information so governments can quickly respond to any threat. The early stages of the pandemic in Wuhan, China, illustrate the danger of suppressing speech about public health.

. . . .

Perhaps the ultimate threat is from governments that assume excessively broad “emergency” powers. International human rights law recognizes that certain rights — such as our right to travel or congregate during an infectious-disease outbreak — must give way in time of crisis, so long as restrictions are lawful, necessary and proportionate. Yet leaders around the world are using the pandemic to strengthen their rule, dismantle checks and balances, and escape accountability at the expense of our rights. All of these behaviors run counter to effective health-care policy and can easily backfire.

When systems of democratic accountability are in place, politicians, journalists and civic activists can push back if leaders such as Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, John Magufuli of Tanzania, or Donald Trump in the United States downplay the virus or prioritize their electoral fortunes.

[The Opinions section is looking for stories of how the coronavirus has affected people of all walks of life. Write to us.]

That pushback is precluded when leaders use the pandemic to undermine restraints on their power, such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Egypt’s Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, Cambodia’s Hun Sen and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele. Their records in containing the coronavirus contrast unfavorably with such open and transparent leaders as New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen and Germany’s Angela Merkel.

In the end, those who treat human rights as an obstacle to public health have it backward. Respecting human rights is not only the right thing to do. It is also essential if governments are to protect the public’s health rather than their own grasp on power.

P***************

Read the complete article at the link.

Undoubtedly, Trump, Miller, and the rest of the White Nationalists are out to destroy America by attacking human rights and using the pandemic as a justification. And, officials of DHS and DOJ who parrot this nonsense, as well as the Federal Judges who “go along to get along” with abrogation of international standards and human rights based on bogus “emergency” rationales are also guilty.

They only way to get our country and our humanity back is to vote the Trumpists out at all levels of the Government which will allow us to start appointing better Federal Judges who put the Constitution, individual rights, and human rights first.

Due Process Forever. Complicity in the Face of Tyranny, Never!

PWS

05-06-20

NDPA RESOURCES: Bill Frelick at Human Rights Watch With Tons of Helpful Links For Refugee/Human Rights Advocates!

Bill Frelick
Bill Frelick
Director
Refugee and Migrant Rights Division
Human Rights Watch

Friends of the Refugee and Migrant Rights Division
April 2020 Newsletter

 

Dear Friends,

 

First, I hope all of you are in good health and will stay that way. Around the world, all eyes are on the spread of the COVID-19 virus. The pandemic is challenging families, communities, health care systems, and governments. There is no doubting the severity of the public health crisis we are facing, not only for each of you, but in many ways, especially, for the refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants we serve.

 

You can find Human Rights Watch’s work on the coronavirus here.

 

Going forward, I will be doing advocacy work relating to COVID-19 and migrants, and am looking at doing a global project focused on alternatives to immigration detention. Nadia Hardman, see below for intro, is collaborating with our Lebanon researcher on a project on Coronavirus-related discriminatory restrictions on Syrian refugees in Lebanon. She will also be working with our Asia Division on COVID19-related discriminatory restrictions on IDPs in Rakhine state, Myanmar, and on Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. As the #stayhome hashtag circulates on twitter, we will demonstrate how difficult it is for refugee and migrants living in crowded and confined spaces with limited access to basic hygiene and sanitation, to conform to social distancing and other public health recommendations. In this time of crisis, no one should be left behind.

 

We have two major updates to share with you outside of our COVID-19 response. As you can see up top, we have a new name: The Refugee and Migrant Rights Division. In fact, although we previously were only called Refugee Rights, we have worked on migrant rights all along. I’m happy to report that Human Rights Watch has taken a decision to make the rights of migrants a cross-divisional priority for the organization and so our colleagues throughout the organization will be devoting additional resources to this work, which is critically important, now more than ever.

 

I also want to introduce you to our new Refugee and Migrant Rights researcher, Nadia Hardman. Nadia comes to us from the International Rescue Committee, where she was a senior protection officer for Syrian refugees in Lebanon. Before that, she worked with internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Iraq, based in Mosul, with the Norwegian Refugee Council. Nadia has worked with refugee and IDP populations in Myanmar, Thailand, and Palestine and was a Program Lawyer for the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute working on rule of law issues in Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Egypt, and Tajikistan. She is a qualified UK lawyer with a Masters in Human Rights from University College London. She speaks fluent French and Italian and will be based in our Beirut office.

 

Nadia recently returned from Turkey where she and Gerry Simpson were researching pushbacks from the Greek border. She and Gerry wrote Greece: Violence Against Asylum Seekers at Border: Detained, Assaulted, Stripped, Summarily Deported and produced this compelling video while there. In introducing the report, Nadia said, “The European Union is hiding behind a shield of Greek security force abuse instead of helping Greece protect asylum seekers and relocate them safely throughout the EU. The EU should protect people in need rather than support forces who beat, rob, strip, and dump asylum seekers and migrants back across the river.”

 

Simultaneously with Gerry and Nadia’s work in Turkey, I was on the island of Lesbos in Greece documenting vigilante violence against refugees and migrants and the humanitarian NGOs who serve them. While there, I wrote Gunshots, summary trials, deportations: the reality for refugees in the EU-Turkey stand-off for Euro News and this accompanying video(with apologies for my thumb in the lens). Just before the full threat of Coronavirus seized everyone’s attention, I spent time in the severely overcrowded and unsanitary Moria camp where I recorded this video on the mob violence that was causing humanitarian organizations to suspend their operations and deepening anxiety and lack of adequate services in the camp. As bad as things were for the 20,000 or so people living in the Moria camp, built to accommodate fewer than 3,000, things appeared even worse for new arrivals who were not allowed to lodge asylum claims and who the Greek government was threatening to send directly back to Turkey or their home countries. I did this video about the first arrivals who were being kept on a naval vessel docked at the Mytilene harbor. The PBS Newshour did a piece on Moria camp/Lesbos, which includes my take on the situation there.I went on TRT and discussed the EU announcement that they were prepared to pay migrants in Greece US$2,225 if they volunteered to go back to their home countries.

 

 

Of course, our work on the rest of the world continues. I particularly wanted to draw your attention to the landmark report from our US Program colleagues, Alison Parker and Elizabeth Kennedy, Deported to Danger: United States Deportation Policies Expose Salvadorans to Death and Abuse, a report that identified 138 cases of Salvadorans who had been killed since 2013 after being deported from the United States.

 

We have been actively engaged in fighting the various Trump administration initiatives to eviscerate the right to seek asylum in the United States and to bring refugee resettlement to a virtual standstill. We are currently working on the asylum cooperative agreements that the United States has concluded with El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala after much arm twisting, as well as the Remain in Mexico program that has stranded thousands of asylum seekers just across the US southern border. See the links below for publications relating to this work.

 

For those with a taste for longer range thinking about what is needed to fix the US asylum system, please check out my What’s Wrong with Temporary Protected Status and How to Fix It: Exploring a Complementary Protection Regime in the Journal of Migration and Human Security and, Central American Women Fleeing Domestic Violence Deserve Refugee Status in The Hill, in which I argue that gender should be recognized comparably as a protected ground for asylum as race, nationality or religion. And for those looking for ideas on how to reform the international refugee regime, please check It is Time to Change the Definition of Refugee: Climate Change is an Existential Threat to Humanity Should Be Included in Legislation on Asylum Seeking, which I did for Al-Jazeera.

 

Below my signature is a selection of some more of our work during the past several months to defend the rights of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants around the world.

 

We realize that many of the people on this mailing list are themselves engaged in non-profit humanitarian and human rights work relating to refugees and displaced people, and are not in a position to help us financially. However, if you think this work is worthwhile and you are able to contribute to enable us to continue to conduct research and effective advocacy on these and other important issues, we ask our friends to consider contributing to support Human Rights Watch’s Refugee and Migrant Rights Division. You can do so simply by clicking the Donate button at the end of my signature.

 

Follow @Nadia_Hardman and @BillFrelick on Twitter for updates on human rights issues concerning migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees.

 

With best regards,

 

Bill Frelick

Director

Refugee and Migrant Rights Division

Human Rights Watch

1275 K Street, NW

Suite 1100

Washington, DC 20005

 

Tel: 202-612-4344

Mobile: 240-593-1747

Skype: bill.frelick

Fax: 202-612-4333

Follow on Twitter: BillFrelick

Web: www.hrw.org

 

Global

December 24, 2019 Refugees All Over the World Pressured to Go Back Home in 2019

 

Europe/Central Asia

March 17, 2020 Greece: Violence Against Asylum Seekers at Border

March 16, 2020 Greek Vessel Takes Syrians, Afghans to Closed Camp

March 12, 2020 US: COVID-19 Threatens People Behind Bars

March 10, 2020 Greece/EU: Allow New Arrivals to Claim Asylum

March 6, 2020 Interview: What’s Happening to Refugees in Greece

March 6, 2020 Gunshots, Summary Trials, Deportations

March 4, 2020 Greece/EU: Urgently Relocate Lone Children

March 4, 2020 Greece/EU: Respect Rights, Ease Suffering at Borders

February 18, 2020 EU Turns Its Back on Migrants in Distress

February 12, 2020 Italy: Halt Abusive Migration Cooperation with Libya

January 31, 2020 Italy: Revoke Abusive Anti-Asylum Decrees

January 20, 2020 Britain Cannot Turn Its Back on Lone Children Now

January 9, 2020 Kazakhstan: Improper Prosecution of Asylum Seekers from China

December 18, 2019 Greece: Unaccompanied Children at Risk

December 17, 2019 Rohingya Children Need an Advocate in Brussels

December 4, 2019 France Drops Plan to Give Boats to Libya

December 4, 2019 Greece: Camp Conditions Endanger Women, Girls

November 8, 2019 EU: Address Croatia Border Pushbacks

October 29, 2019 Greece: Asylum Overhaul Threatens Rights

October 24, 2019 Turkey: Syrians Being Deported to Danger

October 19, 2019 Bosnia Should Immediately Close Inhumane Migrant Camp

October 3, 2019 EU Governments Face Crucial Decision on Shared Sea Rescue Responsibility

September 5, 2019 Italy’s New Government Should Undo Its Worst Migration Policies

September 5, 2019 Subject to Whim: The Treatment of Unaccompanied Migrant Children in the French Hautes-Alpes

 

Asia/Pacific

February 13, 2020 Christians Abducted, Attacked in Bangladesh Refugee Camp

January 29, 2020 A Step Forward for 10,000 Rohingya Refugee Children

January 28, 2020 It Is Time to Change the Definition of Refugee

January 14, 2020 Australia: National Security Laws Chill Free Speech

January 14, 2020 Myanmar: Seeking International Justice for Rohingya

December 16, 2019 “I’m Happy, But I Am Also Broken for Those Left Behind”: Life After Manus and Nauru

December 3, 2019 “Are We Not Human?”: Denial of Education for Rohingya Refugee Children in Bangladesh

December 2, 2019 Bangladesh: Rohingya Children Denied Education

November 26, 2019 Bangladesh Turning Refugee Camps into Open-Air Prisons

November 13, 2019 Papua New Guinea: Detainees Denied Lawyers, Family Access

November 12, 2019 South Korea Deports Two From North to Likely Abuse

September 30, 2019 Bangladesh: Halt Plans to Fence-In Rohingya Refugees

September 13, 2019 Bangladesh: Internet Blackout on Rohingya Refugees

September 7, 2019 Bangladesh: Clampdown on Rohingya Refugees

September 2, 2019 “Where His Blood Fell”: A Rohingya Widow’s Call for Justice

August 22, 2019 Myanmar: Crimes Against Rohingya Go Unpunished

August 20, 2019 Myanmar/Bangladesh: Halt Rohingya Returns

 

Middle East/Africa

March 5, 2020 Interview: Libya’s Chaos Explained

December 20, 2019 Winter Looms For Lebanon’s Syrian Refugees

December 12, 2019 Tanzania: Burundians Pressured into Leaving

November 27, 2019 Kurdistan Region of Iraq: Refugees’ Movements Restricted

November 7, 2019 “Repatriation” of Syrians in Turkey Needs EU Action

October 29, 2019 Tanzania: Asylum Seekers Coerced into Going Home

September 19, 2019 Tanzania: Protect Burundians Facing Abuse

September 11, 2019 Justice, Delayed in Libya

August 15, 2019 Ethiopians Abused on Gulf Migration Route

 

Americas

March 3, 2020 Children Sent to Mexico Under Trump Face Abuses, Trauma

February 12, 2020 US: ‘Remain in Mexico’ Program Harming Children

February 10, 2020 The US Deported Them, Ignoring Their Pleas. Then They Were Killed.

February 7, 2020 US Congress Investigates Policy Harming Asylum Seekers

February 5, 2020 Deported to Danger: United States Deportation Policies Expose Salvadorans to Death and Abuse

February 5, 2020 US: Deported Salvadorans Abused, Killed

January 29, 2020 Q&A: Trump Administration’s “Remain in Mexico” Program

January 29, 2020 US: Returns to Mexico Threaten Rights, Security

January 14, 2020 US: Punitive Policies Undercut Rights

December 9, 2019 Utah Governor to Trump: ‘Allow Us to Accept More Refugees’

December 6, 2019 Brazil Grants Asylum to 21,000 Venezuelans in a Single Day

November 25, 2019 US Should Cease Returning Asylum Seekers to Mexico

November 18, 2019 America Should Not Lag Behind on Protecting Children

November 16, 2019 US to Refugees: Poor Asylum Seekers Need Not Apply

October 18, 2019 Cuban Man Dies in US Immigration Custody

October 14, 2019 US Columbus Day Holiday Celebrates a Shameful Past

September 27, 2019 US Refugee Action Has Worldwide Impact

September 25, 2019 US Move Puts More Asylum Seekers at Risk

September 3, 2019 US: Suit Over Indefinite Detention of Children

August 31, 2019 The Long Journey to the US Border

August 21, 2019 US: New Rules Allow Indefinite Detention of Children

 

 

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

Thanks to my good friend and tireless human rights warrior Debi Sanders for sending this my way.

Check out Bill’s latest op-ed over at The Hill here:

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/491789-essential-travel-in-a-time-of-pandemic#.XpSOvUVLrMI.twitter

 

PWS

 

04-16-20

COMPLICITY WATCH: Justice Sonia Sotomayor Calls Out “Men In Black” For Perverting Rules To Advance Trump/Miller White Nationalist Nativist Immigration Agenda!

Mark Joseph Stern
Mark Joseph Stern
Reporter, Slate

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/02/sotomayor-trump-wealth-test-bias-dissent.html

Mark Joseph Stern reports for Slate:

. . . .

Put simply: When some of the most despised and powerless among us ask the Supreme Court to spare their lives, the conservative justices turn a cold shoulder. When the Trump administration demands permission to implement some cruel, nativist, and potentially unlawful immigration restrictions, the conservatives bend over backward to give it everything it wants. There is nothing “fair and balanced” about the court’s double standard that favors the government over everyone else. And, as Sotomayor implies, this flagrant bias creates the disturbing impression that the Trump administration has a majority of the court in its pocket. 

Read the full article at the above link.

Here’s a link to Justice Sotomayor’s full dissent in Wolf v. Cook County:

SotomayorPublicChargeDissetn19a905_7m48

Justice Sonia Sotomayor
Justice Sonia Sotomayor

Here’s a “key quote” from Justice Sotomayor’s dissent:

These facts—all of which undermine the Government’s assertion of irreparable harm—show two things, one about the Government’s conduct and one about this Court’s own. First, the Government has come to treat “th[e] exceptional mechanism” of stay relief “as a new normal.” Barr v. East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, 588 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting from grant of stay) (slip op., at 5). Claiming one emergency after another, the Government has recently sought stays in an unprecedented number of cases, demanding immediate attention and consuming lim- ited Court resources in each. And with each successive ap- plication, of course, its cries of urgency ring increasingly hollow. Indeed, its behavior relating to the public-charge

6 WOLF v. COOK COUNTY SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting

rule in particular shows how much its own definition of ir- reparable harm has shifted. Having first sought a stay in the New York cases based, in large part, on the purported harm created by a nationwide injunction, it now disclaims that rationale and insists that the harm is its temporary inability to enforce its goals in one State.

Second, this Court is partly to blame for the breakdown in the appellate process. That is because the Court—in this case, the New York cases, and many others—has been all too quick to grant the Government’s “reflexiv[e]” requests. Ibid. But make no mistake: Such a shift in the Court’s own behavior comes at a cost.

Stay applications force the Court to consider important statutory and constitutional questions that have not been ventilated fully in the lower courts, on abbreviated timeta- bles and without oral argument. They upend the normal appellate process, putting a thumb on the scale in favor of the party that won a stay. (Here, the Government touts that in granting a stay in the New York cases, this Court “necessarily concluded that if the court of appeals were to uphold the preliminary injunctio[n], the Court likely would grant a petition for a writ of certiorari” and that “there was a fair prospect the Court would rule in favor of the govern- ment.” Application 3.) They demand extensive time and resources when the Court’s intervention may well be unnec- essary—particularly when, as here, a court of appeals is poised to decide the issue for itself.

Perhaps most troublingly, the Court’s recent behavior on stay applications has benefited one litigant over all others. This Court often permits executions—where the risk of ir- reparable harm is the loss of life—to proceed, justifying many of those decisions on purported failures “to raise any potentially meritorious claims in a timely manner.” Mur- phy v. Collier, 587 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (second statement of KAVANAUGH, J.) (slip op., at 4); see also id., at ___ (ALITO, J., joined by THOMAS and GORSUCH, JJ., dissenting from grant of stay) (slip op., at 6) (“When courts do not have ad- equate time to consider a claim, the decisionmaking process may be compromised”); cf. Dunn v. Ray, 586 U. S. ___ (2019) (overturning the grant of a stay of execution). Yet the Court’s concerns over quick decisions wither when prodded by the Government in far less compelling circumstances— where the Government itself chose to wait to seek relief, and where its claimed harm is continuation of a 20-year status quo in one State. I fear that this disparity in treatment erodes the fair and balanced decision making process that this Court must strive to protect.

I respectfully dissent.

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

Of course, the regime’s use of manufactured and clearly bogus “national emergencies” or fake appeals to “national security” is a perversion of both fact and law, as well as a mocking of Constitutional separation of powers. This obscenely transparent legal ruse essentially was invited by the Roberts and his GOP brethren. Roberts somewhat disingenuously claims to  be a “student of history.” But, whether he takes responsibility for it or not, he has basically invited Trump & Miller to start a new “Reichstag Fire” almost every week with migrants, asylum seekers, Latinos, and the less affluent as the “designated usual suspects.”

Powerful as her dissent is, Justice Sotomayor actually understates the case against her GOP colleagues. Every racist, White Nationalist, nativist, and/or authoritarian movement in American history has been enabled, advanced, and protected by morally corrupt and intellectually dishonest jurists who have intentionally provided “legal cover” for those official misdeeds. How about “states rights,” “separate but equal,” “plenary power,” and a host of other now discredited legal doctrines used to justify everything from slavery to denying voting, and other Constitutional rights including life itself to African Americans? They were all used to “cover” for actions that might more properly have been considered “crimes against humanity.”

Who knows what legal blather Roberts and his four fellow rightist toadies will come up with to further promote the destruction of humanity and the disintegration of American democracy at the hands of Trump, Miller, Barr, Putin, and the rest of the gang?

But, courageous “outings” like those by Justice Sotomayor will help insure that history will be able to trace the bloody path of needless deaths, ruined lives, wasted human potential, official hate mongering, and unspeakable human misery they are unleashing directly to their doors and hold them accountable in a way that our current system has disgracefully failed to do.

 

Trump was right about at least one thing: There are indeed “GOP Justices” on the Supremes wholly owned by him and his party. They consistently put GOP rightist ideology and and authoritarianism above the Constitution, human rights, the rule of law, intellectual honesty, and simple human decency. Other than that, they’re a “great bunch of guys!”

Due Process Forever; Complicit Courts Never!

PWS

02-22-20

COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/02/18/judges-meeting-trump/

Fred Barbash
Fred Barbash
Legal Reporter
Washington Post

Fred Barbash reports for the WashPost:

By

Fred Barbash

Feb. 18, 2020 at 3:16 a.m. EST

The head of the Federal Judges Association is taking the extraordinary step of calling an emergency meeting to address the intervention in politically sensitive cases by President Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr.

U.S. District Judge Cynthia M. Rufe, the Philadelphia-based judge who heads the voluntary association of around 1,100 life-term federal judges, told USA Today that the issue “could not wait.” The association, founded in 1982, ordinarily concerns itself with matters of judicial compensation and legislation affecting the federal judiciary.

Republicans defend Barr as Klobuchar looks forward to testimony

Lawmakers and White House counselor Kellyanne Conway commented Feb. 16 on President Trump’s tweets and the conduct of Attorney General William P. Barr. (The Washington Post)

On Sunday, more than 1,100 former Justice Department employees released a public letter calling on Barr to resign over the Stone case.

More than 1,100 ex-Justice Department officials call for Barr’s resignation

A search of news articles since the group’s creation revealed nothing like a meeting to deal with the conduct of a president or attorney general.

Rufe, appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, could not be reached for comment late Monday.

The action follows a week of turmoil that included the president tweeting his outrage over the length of sentence recommended by career federal prosecutors for his friend Roger Stone and the decision by Barr to withdraw that recommendation.

In between, Trump singled out the judge in the Stone case, Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court in Washington, for personal attacks, accusing her of bias and spreading a falsehood about her record.

“There are plenty of issues that we are concerned about,” Rufe said to USA Today. “We’ll talk all this through.”

Trump began disparaging federal judges who have ruled against his interests before he took office, starting with U.S. District Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel. After Curiel ruled against Trump in 2016 in a pair of lawsuits detailing predatory marketing practices at Trump University in San Diego, Trump described him as “a hater of Donald Trump,” adding that he believed the Indiana-born judge was “Mexican.”

Trump keeps lashing out at judges

President Trump has a history of denouncing judges over rulings that have negatively affected him personally as well as his administration’s policies. (Drea Cornejo/The Washington Post)

Faced with more than 100 adverse rulings in the federal courts, Trump has continued verbal attacks on judges.

Rufe’s comments gave no hint of what the association could or would do in response.

Some individual judges have already spoken out critically about Trump’s attacks generally, among them U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman, a colleague of Jackson’s in Washington, and most recently, the chief judge of the court in Washington, Beryl A. Howell.

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

In reality, judges were among those inside Germany who might have effectively challenged Hitler’s authority, the legitimacy of the Nazi regime, and the hundreds of laws that restricted political freedoms, civil rights, and guarantees of property and security. And yet, the overwhelming majority did not. Instead, over the 12 years of Nazi rule, during which time judges heard countless cases, most not only upheld the law but interpreted it in broad and far-reaching ways that facilitated, rather than hindered, the Nazis ability to carry out their agenda.

 

— United States Holocaust Museum, Law, Justice, and the Holocaust, at 8 (July 2018)

How soon we forget!

Will Trump & Barr eventually separate Article III Judges’ families or send them to danger zones in Mexico or the Northern Triangle to “deter” rulings against the regime? Will Mark Morgan and Chad Wolf then declare “victory?” Will their families be scattered to various parts of the “New American Gulag” with no plans to reunite them? Will they be put on trial for their lives without access to lawyers? Are there costs for failing to take a “united stand” for the rule of law, Constitutional Due Process, human rights, and the human dignity of the most vulnerable among us?

Why does it take the case of a lifetime sleaze-ball like Roger Stone to get the “life-tenured ones” to “wake up” to the attacks on humanity and the rule of law going on under noses for the past three years?

Complicity has costs!

Due Process Forever; Complicit Courts Never!

PWS

02-18-20