JASON JOHNSON @ WASHPOST: YES, TRUMP IS A RACIST, AS ARE MILLER, SESSIONS, BANNON & THE REST OF THE WHITE NATIONALIST CREW — “If you think a racial slur is the only way to determine if the president is racist, you haven’t been paying attention, and you don’t understand what racism is.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/08/15/is-trump-a-racist-you-dont-need-an-n-word-tape-to-know/?utm_term=.427cd1460cea

Jason Johnson writes in the Washington Post:

Associate professor at Morgan State University and politics editor for the Root

August 15

Omarosa Manigault Newman — who once declared that “every critic, every detractor will have to bow down to President Trump” — evolved from mentee to frenemy to antagonist before her nonstop media blitz promoting her new post-White House tell-all, during which she’s touted the existence of a recording of Trump using the n-word. It’s all sent the White House scrambling, with the president tweetingMonday that “I don’t have that word in my vocabulary, and never have.” Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Tuesday she “can’t guarantee” Americans will never hear audio of Trump using the slur.

It doesn’t matter.

Trump is a racist. That doesn’t hinge on whether he uttered one particular epithet, no matter how ugly it is. It’s about the totality of his presidency, and after 18 months you can see his racial animus throughout his policy initiatives whether you hear it on tape or not.

ADVERTISING

Over the course of his career, well before he took office, Trump’s antipathy toward people of color has been plainly evident. In the ’70s, his real estate company was the subject of a federal investigation that found his employees had secretly marked the paperwork of minority apartment rental applicants with codes such as “C” for “colored.” After black and Latino teenagers were charged with sexually assaulting a white woman in Central Park, he took out full-page ads in New York City newspapers calling for the return of the death penalty. He never backtracked or apologized when the teenagers’ convictions were overturned. He championed birtherism, and wouldn’t disavow the conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya until the end of his 2016 presidential campaign. As president, he’s targeted African American athletes for criticism, whether it’s ranting, “Get that son of a bitch off the field,” in reference to professional football players silently protesting police brutality or tweeting that:

Calling African American Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) a “low IQ person” is now a routine bit at his political rallies. He was quoted referring to Haiti, El Salvador and various African nations as “shithole” countries. He announced his campaign in 2015 by referring to Mexican immigrants as “rapists.” Later that year, he called for the United States to implement a “total and complete” Muslim ban.

After taking office, he hired xenophobes such as Stephen Miller — an architect of the ban, whose hostility toward immigrants is so stark, and hypocritical, that his uncle excoriated him this week in an essay for Politico Magazine, writing of Miller and Trump that “they repeat the insults and false accusations of earlier generations against these refugees to make them seem less than human.”

I could go on. The point is that Trump’s view of nonwhites is out in the open. As Slate’s Christina Cauterucci notes, there’s every reason “to believe that an n-word tape wouldn’t torpedo Trump’s presidency”; there’s no indication his supporters “will turn against him because he used a racial slur.” Trump’s words and deeds over time have demonstrated his racism — it doesn’t hinge on being outed, Paula Deen-style, by a tape of him using the word. Racism hardly ever does.

I’m not saying it would be okay for Trump to use any variation of the n-word — in jest, in anger, singing along to the lyrics of a song, with or without the hard “R.” But the feverish speculation about whether he ever deployed the term wrongly implies that a verdict on his racist character turns on its use. What matters more about Trump are the positions he’s taken and the policy choices he’s made that harm communities of color. In his first year as president, Trump evolved from mere interpersonal racist to racist enabler when he proclaimed there were “very fine people, on both sides” when white supremacists and anti-racist protesters converged in Charlottesville last year. Jeff Sessions, a senator from Alabama who, three decades ago, was denieda federal judgeship by the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee over concerns that he was a racist, was installed by Trump as attorney general.

Since assuming that role, Sessions has worked to undermine consent decrees meant to restrain racially abusive police departments and explicitly articulated the administration’s intent to use family separation to deter immigration. The Department of Education, under Secretary Betsy DeVos, is dismissing hundreds of civil rights complaints, supposedly in the name of efficiency. Trump hired Manigault Newman as a liaison to black constituent groups based on their reality TV relationship and, according to him, her willingness to say “GREAT things” about him, despite almost universal criticism of her appointment and subsequent work by African American Republicans and Democrats.

Being a racist — which entails belief in a fixed racial hierarchy and the power to act upon that belief in commerce, government or social spaces — is not now, and never has been, about one word or one slip of the tongue. It is about the ability of those in power to use public and private resources to enforce a racial hierarchy, whether that means having black people arrested for sitting in Starbucks, refusing to hire or promote qualified black job applicants or staffing a presidential administration with people who tolerate or encourage white nationalists. Trump’s statements and his approach to governance suggest he believes in a set racial hierarchy, and the possible existence of a hyped tape doesn’t change that. So far, and as far as I know, no one’s produced audio of white nationalist participants in last Sunday’s Unite the Right 2 rally in Washington using the n-word. Presumably, by the logic of some Trump defenders, that would mean there’s no proof they’re racist, either.

If American public discourse on race continues to revolve around a game of “gotcha,” with sentiments and smoking guns, divorced from an acknowledgment of how racists use their power, we won’t make any progress, during this administration or any other.

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

Johnson states a simple truth that some don’t want to acknowledge. But, racist anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-refugee, anti-Mexican American, xenophobic “dog whistles” were at the heart of Trump’s campaign and remain at the heart of his policies, particularly on immigration, refugees, and law enforcement.

Does that mean that the majority of Americans who don’t endorse racism don’t need to deal with the fact that Trump is President and that Sessions and Miller are exercising outsized control over our justice system? Or that today’s Trumpist GOP isn’t your grandparents’ GOP (in my case, my parents’ GOP) and, although they might occasionally mutter a few insincere “tisk, tisk’s,” are firmly committed to enabling Trump and his racist policies including, of course, voter disenfranchisement. Of course not. Just think of how African-Americans, Hispanics, and liberals had to deal in practical terms with Southern political power in the age of Jim Crow (which is basically the “Age of Jeff Sessions”).

But, it is essential for us to know and acknowledge who and what we are dealing with and not to let political expediency totally obscure the harsh truth. Trump is a racist. And, that sad but true fact will continue to influence all of his policies for as long as he remains in office. Indeed, “Exhibit 1,” is the failure of the GOP to achieve “no-brainer” Dreamer protection over the last two years and the stubborn insistence of Sessions and others in the GOP to keep tying up our courts with bogus attempts to terminate already limited protections for those who aren’t going anywhere in the first place.

PWS

08-18-18

 

LA TIMES: SESSIONS PERSECUTES BROWN SKINNED FEMALE REFUGEES — THERE IS NOTHING “EASY” ABOUT BEING AN ABUSED WOMAN OR AN ASYLUM APPLICANT!

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=7d04de4c-1e76-4711-9b90-dac191234d79

Jazmine Ulloa reports for the LA Times:

WASHINGTON — Xiomara started dating him when she was 17. He was different then, not yet the man who pushed drugs and ran with a gang. Not the man who she says berated and raped her, who roused her out of bed some mornings only to beat her.

Not the man who choked her with an electrical cord, or put a gun to her head while she screamed, then begged, “Please, please don’t kill me — I love you.”

Fleeing El Salvador with their daughter, then 4, the 23-year-old mother pleaded for help at a port of entry in El Paso on a chilly day in December 2016.

After nearly two years, her petition for asylum remains caught in a backlog of more than 310,000 other claims. But while she has waited for a ruling, her chance of success has plunged.

Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions in June issued a decision meant to block most victims of domestic abuse and gang violence from winning asylum, saying that “private criminal acts” generally are not grounds to seek refuge in the U.S. Already, that ruling has narrowed the path for legal refuge for tens of thousands of people attempting to flee strife and poverty in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

“You can tell there is something happening,” said longtime immigration attorney Carlos A. Garcia, who in mid-July spoke to more than 70 women in one cell block at a family detention center in Texas. Most had received denials of their claims that they have what the law deems a “credible fear of persecution.”

“More than I’ve ever seen before,” he said.

In North Carolina, where federal immigration agents sparked criticism last month when they arrested two domestic-violence survivors at a courthouse, some immigration judges are refusing to hear any asylum claims based on allegations of domestic abuse. Other immigration judges are asking for more detailed evidence of abuse at the outset of a case, a problem for victims who often leave their homes with few written records.

Under the Refugee Act of 1980, judges can grant asylum, which allows a person to stay in the U.S. legally, only to people escaping persecution based on religion, race, nationality, political opinion or membership in “a particular social group.”

As drug war violence escalated over the last two decades in Mexico and Central America, fueled by a U.S. demand for drugs and waged by gangs partly grown on American streets, human rights lawyers pushed to have victims of domestic violence or gang crime considered part of such a social group when their governments don’t protect them.

After years of argument, they won a major victory in 2014 when the highest U.S. immigration court, the Board of Immigration Appeals, ruled in favor of a woman from Guatemala who fled a husband who had beaten and raped her with impunity.

Sessions, in June, used his legal authority over the immigration system to reverse that decision, deciding a case brought by a woman identified in court as A.B.

“Asylum was never meant to alleviate all problems — even all serious problems — that people face every day all over the world,” he said, ruling that in most cases asylum should be limited to those who can show they were directly persecuted by the government, not victims of “private violence.”

Immigration advocates reacted with outrage.

Karen Musalo, a co-counsel for A.B. and a professor at the UC Hastings College of Law, called the decision “a return to the dark ages of refugee law,” a move inconsistent with a steadily evolving principle “that women’s rights are human rights.”

Neither the government, nor the police, could help Xiomara in her rural town, where gangs were deeply embedded.

“Are you kidding?” she said, asking to be identified by only her first name out of concern about possible retaliation. “I would go to the police department and wouldn’t come back alive — if I came back at all.”

Within a year of when they started dating, she said, her boyfriend began drinking and doing drugs, making friends with the wrong crowd. He grew meaner, more violent.

One day he put a gun to her head, her asylum claim says. On another evening, on the roof of his home after another fight, she had been weeping in the dark, when she felt a cord tighten around her neck.

“He would have killed me if his family hadn’t appeared,” she said.

Other women offer similar stories.

Candelaria, 49, who also asked that her last name not be used, said she left an abusive husband of 20 years in Honduras after his drinking became more severe. And always the criminal bands of men roamed.

“My children sent me a photo of me in those days, and I look so old, so sad,” said Candelaria, whose asylum case has been pending for four years.

For more than two decades, United Nations officials and human rights lawyers have argued that women victimized by domestic violence in societies where police refuse to help are being persecuted because of their gender and should be treated as refugees entitled to asylum.

But Sessions and other administration officials have a different view, and they have made a broad effort to curb the path to asylum. The number of people entering the U.S. by claiming asylum has risen sharply in recent years, and administration officials have portrayed the process as a “loophole” in the nation’s immigration laws.

In October, Sessions labeled asylum an “easy ticket to illegal entry into the United States” and called on immigration judges to elevate “the threshold standard of proof in credible fear interviews.” In March, he restricted who could be entitled to full hearings. From May to June, federal officials limited asylum seekers from gaining access through ports of entry, with people waiting for weeks at some of the busiest crossings in Southern California.

The government does not keep precise data on how many domestic-violence survivors claim asylum, but figures released last month give a glimpse of the effect that Sessions’ decision has begun to have at one of the earliest stages of the asylum process.

The American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday filed a lawsuit on behalf of 12 parents and children it says were wrongly found not to have a credible fear of return. U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan on Thursday stopped the deportation of a mother and her daughter in the case, threatening to hold Sessions in contempt.

For domestic-abuse survivors waiting for hearings, the uncertainty has been excruciating.

Candelaria wants to go home, but her older children back in Honduras tell her to have hope.

“ ‘You’ve endured enough,’ they tell me,” she said.

Xiomara, now 25, won’t have her asylum hearing for another year.

For months, she scraped by on meager wages, baby-sitting and waiting on tables. She was relieved to find a job at a factory that pays $10 an hour.

The American dream is “one big lie,” she now says.

But at least here, she said, she and her daughter are alive.

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

People like Xiomara are wonderful folks, genuine refugees, deserving of protection, who will contribute to our country. As my friend and legal scholar Professor Karen Musalo cogently said, Sessions is leading “a return to the dark ages of refugee law,” a move inconsistent with a steadily evolving principle “that women’s rights are human rights.” But, the “New Due Process Army” (Karen is one of the “Commanding Generals”) isn’t going to let him get away with this outrageous attack on human rights, women’s rights, and human decency.

Due Process Forever, Jeff Sessions Never!

PWS

08-13-18

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LA TIMES: FAILURE IN A NUTSHELL: HOW THE TRUMP/SESSIONS/MILLER/ WHITE NATIONALIST IMMIGRATION AGENDA HAS BEEN A DISASTER FOR AMERICA IN EVERY WAY! — GOP Congress Shares Blame For This Mess!

It’s been six weeks since a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to fix the crisis it created when it separated more than 2,500 children from their parents under a heartless policy designed to deter desperate families from entering the United States illegally. But the job of reunification still isn’t done, in part because the government failed to devise a system to track the separated families.

Some 400 parents reportedly have already been deported without their children, and the government apparently has no idea how to reach them. It’s a colossal snafu that is as appalling as it is inexplicable. Among the many inhumane immigration enforcement policies adopted in the first two years of the Trump reign, history may well regard this bit of idiocy as the worst.

Or perhaps not; the competition hasn’t closed yet. In fact, the Pentagon is working on plans, at Trump’s direction, to house 20,000 detained immigrants — including children this time — in secured areas of military bases while they await deportation proceedings. Yes, the Obama administration did something similar when it tried to deal with the inflow of unaccompanied minors from Central America. It was a bad idea then, and it’s a bad idea now; kids don’t belong in prisons on military bases. Under a court order, the government cannot hold minors for more than 20 days before releasing them to the custody of their parents, other relatives or vetted guardians.

When it comes to immigration, there has been such a flood of bad policies and ham-handed enforcement acts since Trump took office that it can be hard to keep it all straight.

First there was the ban on travel of people from mostly Muslim countries and then the effort to eliminate protections for so-called Dreamers who have been living in the country illegally since arriving as children. Hard-line Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions has inserted himself in the immigration court system and overridden previous decisions over who qualifies for asylum; not surprisingly, the number of people granted protection has dropped as a result. President Trump also has throttled the flow of refugees resettled here; last year, for the first time since the passage of the 1980 U.S. Refugee Act, the United States resettled fewer refugees than the rest of the world, a significant step away from what had been an area of global leadership. (Over the last 40 years, the U.S. has been responsible for 75% of the world’s permanently resettled refugees.)

Then there’s this: The White House is reportedly drafting a plan that would allow immigration officials to deny citizenship, green cards and residency visas to immigrants if they or family members have used certain government programs, such as food stamps, the earned income tax credit or Obamacare.

And this: The now largely abandoned“zero tolerance” policy of filing misdemeanor criminal charges against people crossing the border illegally led to a surge of cases in federal court districts along the Southwest border as non-immigration criminal prosecutions plummeted, according to an analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. In fact, non-immigration prosecutions fell from 1,093 (1 in 7 prosecutions) in March to 703 (1 in 17 prosecutions) in June, suggesting that serious crimes are taking a back seat to misdemeanor border crossing.

Meanwhile, a Government Accountability Office report this week questions how U.S. Customs and Border Patrol set priorities in planning where to build Trump’s border wall, and said the agency failed to account for wide variations in terrain in estimating the cost — which means that extending the existing border walls and fences another 722 miles could cost more than the administration’s $18-billion estimate. And while the president crows that the wall will secure the border, it won’t, experts say. People will still find a way around, over or under it. And most drug smuggling already comes hidden in motor vehicles passing through monitored ports of entry. At best, Trump’s wall — if Congress is insane enough to approve funding — would be little more than a symbol of his arrogance, and of this country’s determination to seal itself off from the world.

Trump’s immigration policy has been characterized by unnecessary detention and inadequate monitoring that has allowed for abuses at detention centers — including sexual assaults and forced medication of children. The immigration court system is now overwhelmed by a backlog of 733,000 cases.

In short, it’s been a disaster. And through all of these fiascoes, there have been zero serious efforts in Congress or by the president for comprehensive reform of a system everyone acknowledges is broken.

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

Regime change is the only answer, beginning this November and continuing until Trump and his toxically incompetent White Nationalist Cabal are removed from office!

America is a great country that could reach its full potential and regain both economic and moral leadership among the world’s nations. But, it’s never going to happen while the majority of us are being governed by short-sighted, incompetent White Nationalists bent on letting their racist agenda destroy our country. Oh, and they are corrupt grifters too, never a good sign in leadership!

PWS

08-11-18

 

 

 

KATY TUR LIVE, 08-10-19: MSNBC Correspondent Jacob Soboroff & I Discuss Jeff Sessions’s Contemptuous Behavior Toward Courts & Migrants With Katy!

Here’s the link to Katy’s entire show for August 10, 2018. My segment begins at 35:25:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9NoDoSiFtII

 

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

Thanks Katy and Jacob. It was an honor to be on with you.

Glad that the Sessions’s war on deserving asylum seekers and Due Process as well as his disrespectful treatment of asylum seekers, the judiciary, and our justice system is finally getting notice. One way or another, he will eventually be held accountable for the damage he is doing to humanity and to our country.

PWS

08-10-18

CATHERINE RAMPELL @ WASHPOST: HOW THE TRUMP/SESSIONS WHITE NATIONALIST CABAL PLANS MORE CHILD ABUSE – THIS TIME U.S. CITIZENS – WHILE FURTHER DIMINISHING US AS A NATION – All In The Name Of Xenophobic Racism!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/three-reasons-trumps-new-immigration-rule-should-make-your-blood-boil/2018/08/09/1f59a7fe-9b4c-11e8-8d5e-c6c594024954_story.html?utm_term=.01d421f3f621

Catherine Rampell reports for the Washington Post:

Once again, the Trump administration is looking to punish immigrants. And once again, innocent children are getting hurt in the process.

This time, however, many of those innocent children are likely to be U.S. citizens.

On Tuesday, NBC News reported that the Trump administration is readying a new rule that should make your blood boil. The initiative, in the works for more than a year, would make it harder for legal immigrants to receive either green cards or citizenship if they — or anyone in their households — has ever benefited from a long list of safety-net programs. These include the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), food stamps or even health insurance purchased on the Obamacare exchanges.

Three points are worth emphasizing here.

First is that, again, this policy would apply to immigrants who are in the country legally . It’s not about punishing people for “sneaking across the border,” that apparently unforgivable transgression that Trump officials have previously used to justify state-sanctioned child abuse. And, in any case, undocumented immigrants are already excluded from nearly all federal anti-poverty programs.

As such, the proposal fits into President Trump’s agenda to dramatically cut levels of legal immigration, despite his rhetorical focus on the undocumented.

Second, this rule is ostensibly about making sure immigrants are self-sufficient and not a drain on public coffers. But NBC reports that the rule could disqualify immigrants making as much as 250 percent of the poverty level.

Moreover, an immigrant’s past use of benefits does not necessarily mean he or she will need them forever. Even the immigrant populations that you might expect to have the most trouble achieving economic self-sufficiency have proved to be a good long-term investment for the nation’s fiscal health.

For instance, refugees initially cost the government money; they need a lot of help, after all, given that they often arrive penniless and without proficient English-language skills. But over time, their work and wage prospects improve and, by their fifth year here, they pay more in taxes than they received in benefits on average, according to a government report commissioned and subsequently suppressed by the Trump administration last year. (The report eventually leaked to the New York Times.)

Third, and most important, is that under the proposal, it’s not only immigrants who must forgo safety-net benefits if they don’t wish to be penalized by the immigration system. It is everyonein a given immigrant’s household.

That includes — based on an earlier leaked draft of the proposal published by The Post — an immigrant’s own children, even if those children are U.S. citizens who independently qualify for safety-net benefits.

That’s right. Legal-immigrant moms and dads may soon face a choice between (A) guaranteeing their U.S.-born children medical care, preschool classes and infant formula today, or (B) not threatening their own ability to qualify for green cards or citizenship tomorrow.

The universe of U.S.-citizen children who could be affected is large. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that, in Medicaid and CHIP enrollment alone in 2016, about 5.8 million citizen children had a noncitizen parent.

The rule has not yet been issued. But various versions of it have leaked over the past year and a half. These have received coverage in foreign-language media, and fears about changes to immigration policy already appear to be discouraging participation in services meant to help low-income American children.

Including, perhaps most distressingly, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), a critical lifeline that provides access to food, prenatal care, breast pumps and other services for low-income mothers and children. WIC was listed in the draft rule published by The Post, and it’s not clear whether it remains in the latest version; but, either way, some immigrant parents and parents-to-be are already unenrolling, just in case.

“I had one family come and tell me, ‘Please remove us from WIC program, all services, medical, dental, everything,’ ” says Aliya S. Haq, the nutrition services supervisor at International Community Health Services in Seattle. The family had a child less than a year old who needed medical attention, but Haq could not convince them the benefits outweighed the risks of staying in the program.

Another patient, who is pregnant, asked to stop receiving prenatal assistance because she’s applying for citizenship.

Haq said the clinic’s WIC enrollment has fallen by about 10 percent over the past year; she worries daily about whether infant and maternal mortality rates will worsen, and whether there will be a negative effect on the brain development and long-term health of newborns.

Any policy that discourages, even a little bit, poor families’ use of such services is not just heartless. From an economic perspective, it is foolish. We need healthy, well-nourished, well-educated children to become healthy, well-nourished, productive workers.

But once again, children and the economic future they represent are the casualties of Trump’s casual cruelty.

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

Catherine is being too kind to the Trumpsters. So, I’ll lay it on the line for you. This isn’t just “casual cruelty.” It’s intentional racist, xenophobic cruelty of the kind that Trump, Sessions, and Miller have promoted throughout their sordid careers.

We need regime change. In the meantime, here’s hoping that the New Due Process Army will keep these outrageous, racist, irrational, and unneeded regulations changes tied up in litigation until the White Nationalist regime can be thrown out of office.

PWS

08-09-18

WASHPOST: UNABATED CHILD ABUSE IN SESSIONS’S “KIDDIE GULAG!” – “[C]hildren as young as 14 stripped naked, shackled, strapped to chairs, their heads encased in bags, left for days or longer in solitary confinement, and in some cases beaten and bruised — it sounded like a scene from the Soviet gulag.“

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/migrant-kids-were-stripped-drugged-locked-away-so-much-for-compassion/2018/08/05/84a779d0-95b4-11e8-a679-b09212fb69c2_story.html?utm_term=.d6d444c5d042

August 5 at 6:27 PM

WHEN ACCOUNTS of abuse emerged in June from a detention center for migrant minors in Virginia — children as young as 14 stripped naked, shackled, strapped to chairs, their heads encased in bags, left for days or longer in solitary confinement, and in some cases beaten and bruised — it sounded like a scene from the Soviet gulag. This institution, the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center, near Staunton, couldn’t possibly be in America. And if it was, it had to be an extreme outlier — a place that, while overseen by the Office of Refugee Resettlement at the Department of Health and Human Services, simply could not typify the federal government’s handling of children, undocumented or not, who make their way into this country.

But abuses alleged at that jail in Virginia turn out to be no worse than those inflicted, on even younger children, at another facility under ORR’s purview in Texas. Last Monday, a federal judge, incensed that underage migrants at the Shiloh Residential Treatment Center, south of Houston, had been routinely administered psychotropic drugs without parental consent, denied water as a means of punishment and forbidden from making private phone calls, ordered undocumented minors there transferred elsewhere.

Not the Soviet gulag. These things are taking place in America.

Not just coincidentally, it is President Trump’s America. True, documented abuses at both facilities pre-date Mr. Trump’s administration; at Shiloh, in particular, there have been harrowing reports of mistreatment for years. Yet the president, who has referred to illegal immigrants as “animals” and “rapists” who “infest” the United States, is a serial, casual dehumanizer of immigrants, particularly Hispanic ones. The signals he sends, amplified by Twitter, are heard everywhere. If unauthorized immigrants are vermin, as the president implies, then it’s legitimate to treat them as such — to tie them up, lock them away solo, dehydrate and drug them.

The most recent findings, concerning Shiloh, run by a private contractor and overseen by ORR, are shocking. Staff members there admitted they had administered psychotropic medication to children without bothering to seek consent from parents, relatives or guardians. Officials said “extreme psychiatric symptoms” justified medicating the children on an emergency basis — a fine explanation, except that the drugs were administered routinely in the morning and at night. (And sometimes the children were told the drugs were “vitamins.”) The children’s testimony led U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee to reject the government’s arguments, wondering how “emergencies” could occur with such clocklike precision.

Some of the minors confined at Shiloh, which houses 44 children, three-quarters of them immigrants, described abjectly cruel treatment, prompting the judge to order officials at the facility to provide water as needed to those confined there and permit them private phone calls. That a necessity so basic as the provision of water is the subject of a judicial order is a measure of the official depravity that has gripped Shiloh.

2:58
Opinion | Trump’s anti-immigrant tactics are eerily familiar to some Japanese Americans

The tools that normalized Japanese American imprisonment during World War II are being deployed against asylum-seeking immigrants today.

HHS officials make a point of sounding compassionate when they describe their concern for the thousands of migrant children under their supervision. Those fine words are belied by actual conditions in real-world facilities for which the department is responsible.

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There are plenty of villains here. But the primary culprits are Sessions, Trump, and Miller who have continued to push a racially motivated program of dehumanization of Hispanic migrants, and illegal, immoral, and damaging detention of children and families in the face of clear evidence of its impropriety and its ineffectiveness as a deterrent.
I’m not saying that other DHS and ORR officials don’t belong in jail. Obviously, the evil clown who went before Congress and compared “Kiddie Gulags” to summer camps belongs behind bars. Trump might well be unreachable except for impeachment. But, Sessions, Nielsen, Lloyd and others responsible for these grotesque abuses enjoy no such protections.
Yes, this is ORR. But the Department of Justice is responsible for taking affirmative action to end these abuses by the Government. Instead, Sessions has been second only to Trump in promoting racism, false narratives, child abuse, xenophobia, and disregard of the legal rights and human rights of migrants, particularly the most vulnerable — children, women, LGBTQ, the mentally ill, etc. In  the case before Judge Gee, he unethically ordered his DOJ lawyers to “defend the indefensible.”
What kind of nation refuses to hold blatant, unrepentant, public child abusers accountable for their crimes?
PWS
08-06-18

“JUST SAY NO TO 1939: HOW JUDGES CAN SAVE LIVES, UPHOLD THE CONVENTION, AND MAINTAIN INTEGRITY IN THE AGE OF OVERT GOVERNMENTAL BIAS TOWARD REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS” — My Remarks To The Americas Conference Of The International Association Of Refugee & Migration Judges, August 4, 2018

IMPLICIT BIAS IARMJ 08-03-18

JUST SAY NO TO 1939:  HOW JUDGES CAN SAVE LIVES, UPHOLD THE CONVENTION, AND MAINTAIN INTEGRITY IN THE AGE OF OVERT GOVERNMENTAL BIAS TOWARD REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS

 

By Paul Wickham Schmidt,

U.S. Immigration Judge, Retired

 

Americas Conference

International Association of Refugee & Migration Judges

 

Georgetown Law

August 4, 2018

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Good afternoon. I am pleased to be here. Some twenty years ago, along with then Chief U.S. Immigration Judge Michael J. Creppy, I helped found this Association, in Warsaw. I believe that I’m the only “survivor” of that illustrious group of “Original Charter Signers” present today. And, whoever now has possession of that sacred Charter can attest that my signature today remains exactly as it was then, boldly scrawling over those of my colleagues and the last paragraph of the document.

 

As the Americas’ Chapter Vice President, welcome and thank you for coming, supporting, and contributing to our organization and this great conference. I also welcome you to the beautiful campus of Georgetown Law where I am on the adjunct faculty.

 

I thank Dean Treanor; my long-time friend and colleague Professor Andy Schoenholtz, and all the other wonderful members of our Georgetown family; the IARMJ; Associate Director Jennifer Higgins, Dimple Dhabalia, and the rest of their team at USCIS; and, of course, our Americas President Justice Russell Zinn and the amazing Ross Patee from the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board who have been so supportive and worked so hard to make this conference a success.

 

I recognize that this is the coveted “immediately after lunch slot” when folks might rather be taking a nap. But, as the American country singer Toby Keith would say “It’s me, baby, with you wake up call!” In other words, I’m going to give you a glimpse into the “parallel universe” being operted in the United States.

 

In the past, at this point I would give my comprehensive disclaimer. Now that I’m retired, I can skip that part. But, I do want to “hold harmless” both the Association and Georgetown for my remarks. The views I express this afternoon are mine, and mine alone. I’m going to tell you exactly what I think. No “party line,” no “bureaucratic doublespeak,” so “sugar coating.” Just the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!

 

I have good news and bad news. The good news is that we don’t have an implicit bias problem in the U.S. asylum adjudication system. The bad news: The bias is now, unfortunately, quite explicit.

 

Here’s a quote about refugees: “I guarantee you they are bad. They are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people.”

 

Here’s another one: “We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country. When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order.”

 

Here’s another referencing the presence of an estimated 11 million undocumented residents of the U.S.: “Over the last 30 years, there have been many reasons for this failure. I’d like to talk about just one—the fraud and abuse in our asylum system.”

 

Here’s yet another: “We’ve had situations in which a person comes to the United States and says they are a victim of domestic violence, therefore they are entitled to enter the United States. Well, that’s obviously false but some judges have gone along with that.”

 

You might think that these anti-asylum, and in many cases anti-Latino, anti-female, anti-child, anti-asylum seeker, de-humanizing statements were made by members of some fringe, xenophobic group. But no, the first two are from our President; the second two are from our Attorney General.

 

These are the very officials who should be insuring that the life-saving humanitarian protection purposes of the Refugee Act of 1980 and the Convention Against Torture are fully carried out and that our country fully complies with the letter and spirit of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees which is binding on our country under the 1967 Protocol.

 

Let me read you a quote that I published yesterday on my blog, immigrationcourtside.com, from a young civil servant resigning their position with “EOIR,” otherwise known as our Immigration Court system, or, alternatively, as the sad little donkey from Winnie the Pooh.

 

I was born and raised in a country that bears an indelible and shameful scar—the birth and spreading of fascism. An ideology that, through its different permutations, almost brought the world as we know it to an end. Sadly, history has taught me that good countries do bad things—sometimes indescribably atrocious things. So, I have very little tolerance for authoritarianism, extremism, and unilateral and undemocratic usurpations of Constitutional rights. I believe that DOJ-EOIR’s plan to implement individual annual numerical performance measures—i.e., quotas—on Immigration Judges violates the Due Process clause of the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution, and the DOJ’s own mission to “ensure the fair and impartial administration of justice.” This is not the job I signed up for. I strongly believe in the positive value of government, and that the legitimacy of our agency—and any other governmental institution for that matter—is given by “the People’s” belief in its integrity, fairness, and commitment to serve “the People.” But when the government, with its unparalleled might and coercive force, infringes on constitutionally enshrined rights, I only have two choices: (1) to become complicitous in what I believe is a flagrant constitutional violation, or (2) to resign and to hold the government accountable as a private citizen. I choose to resign because I cannot in good conscience continue serving my country within EOIR.

 

Strong words, my friends. But, words that are absolutely indicative of the travesty of justice unfolding daily in the U.S. Immigration Courts, particularly with respect to women, children, and other asylum seekers –- the most vulnerable among us. Indeed, the conspicuous absence from this conference of anyone currently serving as a judge in the U.S. Immigration Courts tells you all you really need to know about what’s happening in today’s U.S. justice system.

 

Today, as we meet to thoughtfully discuss how to save refugees, the reality is that U.S. Government officials are working feverishly at the White House and the U.S. Department of Justice on plans to end the U.S. refugee and asylum programs as we know them and to reduce U.S. legal immigration to about “zero.”

 

Sadly, the U.S. is not alone in these high-level attacks on the very foundations of our Convention and international protection. National leaders in Europe and other so-called “liberal democracies” — who appear to have erased the forces and circumstances that led to World War II and its aftermath from their collective memory banks — have made similar statements deriding the influence of immigrants and the arrival of desperate asylum seekers. In short, here and elsewhere our Convention and our entire international protection system are under attacks unprecedented during my career of more than four decades in the area of immigration and refugee protection.

 

As a result, judges and adjudicators throughout the world, like you, are under extreme pressure to narrow interpretations, expedite hearings, view asylum seekers in a negative manner, and produce more denials of protection.

 

So, how do we as adjudicators remain loyal to the principles of our Convention and retain our own integrity under such pressures? And, more to the point, what can I, as someone no longer involved in the day-to-day fray, contribute to you and this conference?

 

Of course, you could always do what I did — retire and fulfill a longtime dream of becoming an internet “gonzo journalist.” But, I recognize that not everyone is in a position to do that.

 

Moreover, if all the “good guys” who believe in our Convention, human rights, human dignity, and fair process leave the scene, who will be left to vindicate the rights of refugees and asylum seekers to protection? Certainly not the political folks who are nominally in charge of the protection system in the US and elsewhere.

 

So, this afternoon, I’m returning to that which brought this Association together two decades ago in Warsaw: our united commitment to the letter and spirit of the 1951 Convention; additionally, our commitment to fairness, education, international approaches, group problem solving, promoting best practices, and mutual support.

 

In the balance of my presentation, I’m going to tell you four things, taken from our Convention, that I hope will help you survive, prosper, and advance the aims of our Convention in an age of nationalist, anti-refugee, anti-asylum, anti-immigrant rhetoric.

 

 

 

 

BODY

 

Protect, Don’t Reject

 

First, “protect, don’t reject.” Our noble Convention was inspired by the horrors of World War II and its aftermath. Many of you will have a chance to see this first hand at the Holocaust Museum.

 

Our Convention is a solemn commitment not to repeat disgraceful incidents such as the vessel St. Louis, which has also been memorialized in that Museum. For those of you who don’t know, in 1939 just prior to the outbreak of World War II a ship of German Jewish refugees unsuccessfully sought refuge in Cuba, the United States, and Canada, only to be rejected for some of the same spurious and racist reasons we now hear on a regular basis used to describe, deride, and de-humanize refugees. As a result, they were forced to return to Europe on the eve of World War II, where hundreds who should and could have been saved instead perished in the Holocaust that followed.

 

Since the beginning of our Convention, the UNHCR has urged signatory countries to implement and carry out “a generous asylum policy!” Beyond that, paragraphs 26 and 27 of the UN Handbookreiterate “Recommendation E” of the Convention delegates. This is the hope that Convention refugee protections will be extended to those in flight who might not fully satisfy all of the technical requirements of the “refugee” definition.

 

Therefore, I call on each of you to be constantly looking for legitimate ways in which to extend, rather than restrict, the life-saving protections offered by our Convention.

 

Give The “Benefit Of The Doubt”

 

Second, “give the benefit of the doubt.” Throughout our Convention, there is a consistent theme of recognizing the difficult, often desperate, situation of refugees and asylum seekers and attendant difficulties in proof, recollection, and presentation of claims. Therefore, our Convention exhorts us in at least four separate paragraphs, to give the applicant “the benefit of the doubt” in assessing and adjudicating claims.

 

As a sitting judge, I found that this, along with the intentionally generous “well-founded fear” standard, enunciated in the “refugee” definition and reinforced in 1987 by the U.S. Supreme Court and early decisions of our Board of Immigration Appeals implementing the Supreme Court’s directive, often tipped the balance in favor of asylum seekers in “close cases.”

 

 

 

 

Don’t Blame The Victims

 

Third, “don’t blame the victims.” The purpose of our Convention is to protect victims of persecution, not to blame them for all societal ills, real and fabricated, that face a receiving signatory country. Too much of today’s heated rhetoric characterizes legitimate asylum seekers and their families as threats to the security, welfare, heath, and stability of some of the richest and most powerful countries in the world, based on scant to non-existent evidence and xenophobic myths.

 

In my experience, nobody really wants to be a refugee. Almost everyone would prefer living a peaceful, productive stable life in their country of nationality. But, for reasons beyond the refugee’s control, that is not always possible.

 

Yes, there are some instances of asylum fraud. But, my experience has been that our DHS does an excellent job of ferreting out, prosecuting, and taking down the major fraud operations. And, they seldom, if ever, involve the types of claims we’re now seeing at our Southern Border.

 

I’m also aware that receiving significant numbers of refugee claimants over a relatively short period of time can place burdens on receiving countries. But, the answer certainly is not to blame the desperate individuals fleeing for their lives and their often pro bono advocates!

 

The answer set forth in our Convention is for signatory countries to work together and with the UNHCR to address the issues that are causing refugee flows and to cooperate in distributing refugee populations and in achieving generous uniform interpretations of the Convention to discourage “forum shopping.” Clearly, cranking up denials, using inhumane and unnecessary detention, stirring up xenophobic fervor, and limiting or blocking proper access to the refugee and asylum adjudication system are neither appropriate nor effective solutions under our Convention.

 

 

 

 

Give Detailed, Well-Reasoned, Individualized Decisions

 

Fourth, and finally, “give detailed, well-reasoned, individualized decisions.” These are the types of decisions encouraged by our Convention and to promote which our Association was formed. Avoid stereotypes and generalities based on national origin; avoid personal judgments on the decision to flee or seek asylum; avoid political statements; be able to explain your decision in legally sufficient, yet plainly understandable terms to the applicant, and where necessary, to the national government.

 

Most of all, treat refugee and asylum applicants with impartiality and the uniform respect, sensitivity, and fairness to which each is entitled, regardless of whether or not their claim under our Convention succeeds.

 

CONCLUSION

 

In conclusion, I fully recognize that times are tough in the “refugee world.” Indeed, as I tell my Georgetown students, each morning when I wake up, I’m thankful for two things: first, that I woke up, never a given at my age; second, that I’m not a refugee.

 

But, I submit that tough times are exactly when great, independent, and courageous judging and adjudication are necessary to protect both applicants from harm and governments from doing unwise and sometimes illegal and immoral things that they will later regret.

 

I have offered you four fairly straightforward ways in which adhering to the spirit of our Convention can help you, as judges and adjudicators, retain integrity while complying with the law: protect, don’t reject; give the benefit of the doubt; don’t blame the victims; and give detailed, well-reasoned, individualized decisions.

 

Hopefully, these suggestions will also insure that all of you will still be around and employed for our next conference.

 

Thanks for listening, have a great rest of our conference, and do great things! May Due Process and the spirit of our noble Convention and our great organization guide you every day in your work and in your personal life! Due Process forever!

 

 

(08-06-18)

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PWS

08-06-18

 

 

 

 

SCOFFLAWS OUTED AGAIN: FEDERAL COURTS DELIVER “DOUBLE BODY SLAM” TO TRUMP & SESSIONS ON CHILD SEPARATION, DACA!

Judge slams Trump admin for suggesting ACLU, others should find deported parents

By Tal Kopan, CNN

A federal judge called the Trump administration’s slowness to track down migrant parents it had separated from their children and then deported “unacceptable,” saying the responsibility is “100%” on the government.

The stern admonishment from District Judge Dana Sabraw came a day after the administration argued that immigrant advocacy groups — not the government — should be responsible for tracking down the more than 500 parents it had separated from their children at the border and deported without them.

Sabraw said during a Friday phone hearing that if the government doesn’t track down the parents, it will have “permanently orphaned” their children.

“The reality is there are still close to 500 parents that have not been located, many of these parents were removed from the country without their child, all of this is the result of the government’s separation and then inability and failure to track and reunite,” Sabraw said.

“And the reality is that for every parent who is not located, there will be a permanent orphaned child, and that is 100% the responsibility of the administration,” he added.

Sabraw instructed the administration to name one or two officials to be a single point of command in the reunification effort, and to submit a detailed plan for how they will reunify children with parents either deported or, in a smaller number of cases, released into the US.

“In reviewing the status report it appears that only 12 or 13 of close to 500 parents have been located, which is just unacceptable at this point,” Sabraw said.

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/08/03/politics/trump-administration-aclu-deported-parents/index.html

 

Judge again says DACA must be restored

By Tal Kopan and Dan Berman

A federal judge on Friday again said the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program should be fully restored.

Judge John Bates said the Trump administration still has failed to justify its proposal to end DACA, the Obama-era program that has protected nearly 800,000 young undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children from deportation.

Bates agreed to delay his ruling for 20 days to give the administration time to respond and appeal, if it chooses.

More (being updated):http://www.cnn.com/2018/08/03/politics/daca-ruling/index.html

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Basically the Administration is “flicking the middle finger” at Judge Sabraw and his family reunification order. And, they are also doing the same thing to Judge Bates by nonchalantly screwing 800,000 young people, American’s future, without providing any legal rationale.

As a former judge, I actually understand why these judges are letting this “roll off their backs” and focusing on making the Administration solve the problems they created. Judges have to be the “adults in the room” even in an Administration of infantile minds.

But, at some point, a lawyer like Sessions who thumbs his nose at judicial orders and fails to provide any legal support for a litigating position that affects 800,000 American residents should face disciplinary proceedings. Not only has the Administration’s response been unacceptable, but so has the professional and ethical performance of Sessions and his DOJ lawyers. What about “Bivens liability” for Sessions and other Administration officials who knowingly and intentionally violated Constitutional rights in the child separation program, had their attorneys lie to the court about the very existence of the policy,  and refused to take responsibility for fixing it.

Perhaps when this is over. But, then again, maybe not.

PWS

08-03-18

 

AYUDA: TRUMP ADMINISTRATION CONTINUES TO ADVANCE MISOGYNIST AGENDA WITH WAR ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE VICTIMS!

From the great folks over at AYUDA (pictured above):

New Trump Policy Puts Victims of Abuse at Risk

The Trump administration is again, putting families—especially women and children—in harm’s way as he continues his unrelenting assault on immigrant families.

We all saw the photos and heard the cries of children in cages at the border. But you probably haven’t heard about how the administration is making victims of human trafficking, domestic violence, sexual assault and other crimes even more vulnerable. Due to a new Trump administration policy, many more abused immigrants will likely face deportation and thousands more will be encouraged to stay in the shadows and remain with their abusers.

President Trump is turning an agency tasked with granting visas, work authorization, and other permits to immigrants into another cog in the deportation machine. On July 5th, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) released a memothat dramatically broadens when the agency may issue a Notice To Appear (NTA), the document that begins an immigrant’s journey towards deportation. In the past, USCIS could issue NTAs but it typically did so only in limited cases. The new agency guidance dramatically expands USCIS’s immigration enforcement function and allows USCIS to issue NTAs for any case it denies when the applicant is found to be unlawfully present.

For our country’s most vulnerable immigrants, the impact of this memo is dramatic. Currently, a capped number of immigrants may apply for visas as victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking and other serious crimes. Congress created these visas to help law enforcement identify and prosecute perpetrators of abuse. To access these limited visas, immigrant victims must help law enforcement authorities in the investigation or prosecution of criminal activities. Victims’ engagement with law enforcement makes it more likely that police and prosecutors can bring successful cases against offenders, enabling them to reduce crime in our communities. For domestic violence victims, these visas serve an additional purpose. If you are undocumented and your abusive spouse has legal status, your dependency and vulnerability is compounded. Giving the abused spouse legal status is critical to help break down a power imbalance in these relationships.

The July 5th guidance threatens victims’ ability to safely apply for immigration relief. When immigrant victims consider seeking legal immigration status, they will question: is it worth possibly being deported? In some cities, already we know that fewer immigrants are reporting their experiences of domestic violence because of fear of deportation. Here in the DC metro area and across the nation, we will likely to see a drop in the number of abused immigrants seeking legal status.

At Ayuda, we are on the frontlines of serving some of the most vulnerable immigrants living in our community. Our organization provides immigration and family law representation, social services, and language access support for low-income immigrants who choose to make the Washington area home. Take for example Maria*, a typical Ayuda client whose strength and resilience are anything but typical. Maria was living with the father of her two children in the United States. He drank heavily and was emotionally and physically abusive towards her. He would regularly force her to have sex with him and beat her when she would not comply. He punched her, pushed her to the ground and pulled her hair. He would even beat and berate her when the children were present. Maria finally decided that she could not raise her children witnessing constant abuse by their father and she fled to a friend’s home who brought her to Ayuda. Ayuda attorneys and social services staff were there to support Maria and help make plans to ensure her safety, show her a pathway to achieving her independence from her abuser through filing a U visa (for victims of crimes) and help her start a new road on her way to a new American dream.

Now, immigrants like Maria will face even more impossible choices. If they want to help police and seek legal status, they will put themselves in the crosshairs of the deportation apparatus.

Even in this divided, hyper-partisan era, bipartisan public outcry resulted in a reversal of the inhumane family separation policy at the border. Prominent leaders in both parties who spoke out for families at the border must now raise their voices once again for vulnerable immigrant victims living here in our communities.

*Name changed to protect client identity

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

Just when you think that the Trump/Sessions White Nationalist regime might have hit rock bottom, they dig down even further. Joining and supporting great organizations like AYUDA, which protect the rights and futures of all Americans (regardless of status), is a terrific way to join the “New Due Process Army.”

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a proud Member of AYUDA’s Advisory Council

PWS

08-02-18

GONZO’S WORLD: AG’S LATEST SCAM, “RELIGIOUS LIBERTY TASK FORCE” @ USDOJ WIDELY PANNED!

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/twitter-sessions-religious-liberty-task-force_us_5b5f92bae4b0b15aba9bfcff

Mary Pappenfuss reports for HuffPost:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Monday that the U.S. Justice Department is launching a “religious liberty task force” — and Twitter erupted.

The new unit will aid the department in fully implementing the religious liberty legal “guidance” issued last year under President Donald Trump’s direction, Sessions said in a speech at the Justice Department’s Religious Liberty Summit in Washington.

The attorney general charged that the freedom to practice religion in America has come “under attack” in the nation’s current “cultural climate.”

A “dangerous movement, undetected by many, but real, is now challenging and eroding our great tradition of religious freedom …. It must be confronted … and defeated,” he added.

“We’ve seen nuns ordered to buy contraceptives. We’ve seen United States senators ask judicial and executive branch nominees about dogma …. We’ve all seen the ordeal faced so bravely by Jack Phillips,” Sessions added, referring to the Colorado baker who won a religious liberty challenge to LGBTQ anti-discrimination law in the U.S. Supreme Court after refusing to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.

Sessions called freedom of religion “indeed our first freedom being the first listed right in the First Amendment” and said that the Trump administration is “actively seeking to accommodate people of faith.”

Sessions touted his department’s prosecution of attacks on religion, among them court actions shielding about 90 plaintiffs from Obama-era requirements that employer health insurance cover contraception, an amicus brief “we were proud to file” on behalf of Phillips, and indictments in an arson attack and threats directed at two mosques.

Twitter exploded, with critics charging that the Religious Liberty Task Force was a front to protect religious zealots attacking LGBTQ rights and an unconstitutional push to marry church and state on the altar of Christianity.

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

Read the entire Article, including the “Twitter Storm” at the link. Some pretty funny but “right on” reactions!

Yet another taxpayer-financed scam by our corrupt and bigoted Attorney General. Obviously this is a thinly disguised effort to use Government funding and power to promote and establish far right-wing Christian views and biases.

Don’t expect any help for Muslims targeted for hate crimes, irrationally excluded under the “Travel Ban,” or targeted by anti-Muslim pronouncements of Administration officials and GOP right-wing politicos. Don’t expect any assistance or protection for those religious groups actually engaged in “God’s work on earth” and carrying out Christ’s true humanitarian, forgiving teachings by providing help to migrants and resisting inhumane and illegal Administration policies. Don’t expect any help for Bhuddists, atheists, deists, or any other non-right-wing Christian groups trying to vindicate their First Amendment rights. Don’t expect any help for members of the LGBTQ community whose rights are being trampled upon by so-called Christians who promote intolerance, discrimination, humiliation, de-humanization, and hate in the name of false “religious expression.”

Interestingly, Sessions himself has been charged within the Methodist Church (of which my wife and I are members) with violation of teachings of Christ and the Church’s own rules and values.

He’s a total scofflaw and a fraud, seeking to impose his corrupt, inhumane, intolerant views on the rest of us by abusing his Government position and squandering taxpayer funds on an anti-Constitutional  attempt to establish particular “so-called Christian views” as the law of the land.

PWS

08-01-18

 

 

TRAC: THE SESSIONS EFFECT — DENIALS OF DAY IN COURT FOR ASYLUM SEEKERS SPIKE — Country Conditions Remain Horrible & Asylum Statute Hasn’t Changed, But Many More Asylum Applicants Now Denied Access To Immigration Court Hearings — Huge Individual Discrepancies Among Judges On “Credible Fear” Findings!

==========================================
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
==========================================
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Greetings. Immigration Court outcomes in credible fear reviews (CFR) have recently undergone a dramatic change. Starting in January 2018, court findings of credible fear began to plummet. By June 2018, only 14.7 percent of the CFR court decisions found the asylum seeker had a “credible fear.” This was just half the level that had prevailed during the last six months of 2017.
These very recent data from the Immigration Court provide an early look at how the landscape for gaining asylum may be shifting under the current administration. Unless asylum seekers, including parents with children, arriving at the southwest border pass this initial CFR review, they are not even allowed to apply for asylum. As a consequence, individuals who don’t pass these reviews face being quickly deported back to their home countries.

The latest available case-by-case court records obtained and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University document that depending upon the particular Immigration Court undertaking the credible fear review, the proportion of asylum seekers passing this screening step varied from as little as 1 percent all the way up to 60 percent – a sixty-fold difference. Since October 2015, for example, at least half passed their credible fear reviews when these were conducted by the Immigration Courts in Arlington, Virginia (60% passed), Chicago, Illinois (52% passed), Pearsall, Texas (51% passed), and Baltimore, Maryland (50% passed). In contrast, few were found to have credible fear when their review took place in Immigration Courts based in Lumpkin, Georgia (only 1% passed) and Atlanta, Georgia (only 2% passed).

Which judge is assigned to undertake this review can also have a dramatic impact. Judges on the Pearsall, Texas and San Antonio, Texas Immigration Courts found as few as 4 percent demonstrated credible fear, while others on the same two courts found 94 percent with such fear.

Previous reports by TRAC and others have long documented wide judge-to-judge disparities in asylum decisions. This report breaks new ground in showing that similar differences also exist earlier in the asylum process in the determination of who is allowed to apply for asylum.

To read the full report, including specifics for each Immigration Court, go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/523/

In addition, many of TRAC’s free query tools – which track the court’s overall backlog, new DHS filings, court dispositions and much more – have now been updated through June 2018. For an index to the full list of TRAC’s immigration tools go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/imm/tools/

If you want to be sure to receive notifications whenever updated data become available, sign up at:

http://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1&list=imm

or follow us on Twitter @tracreports or like us on Facebook:

http://facebook.com/tracreports

TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the U.S. federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl

David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Syracuse University
Suite 360, Newhouse II   
Syracuse, NY 13244-2100
315-443-3563

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To state the obvious, if we believe in our Constitution and the Bill of Rights, we simply can’t tolerate a “court” run, improperly influenced, and manipulated by a xenophobic, White Nationalist, racist enforcement zealot like Jeff Session.

Time for “regime change” that includes an independent U.S. Immigration Court dedicated to insuring Due Process! Get out the vote this fall!

PWS

08-01-18

EUGENE ROBINSON @ WASHPOST: RACIST, WHITE NATIONALIST ADMINISTRATION DEHUMANIZES MIGRANTS OF COLOR — “All of this is happening because Trump has no respect for law or due process and no sense of empathy. He was reportedly upset this spring by a rise in border crossings by asylum-seekers, who by law had to be allowed to stay pending resolution of their claims. He and Sessions seized upon the pretext — for which they have not provided evidence — that children were being “trafficked” into the country for some reason.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/does-the-trump-administration-see-central-americans-as-human/2018/07/30/90dc17d4-9432-11e8-810c-5fa705927d54_story.html?utm_term=.17b3b808d283

Robinson writes:

. . . .

If you have children, imagine how you would feel seeing them taken away like that. Hug your kids. Imagine not knowing where they are or whether you’ll ever get to hug them again.

Now imagine the terror and despair those 711 “ineligible” children must feel. It is monstrous to gratuitously inflict such pain. It is, in a word, torture.

In 120 cases, according to the government, a parent “waived” reunification with the child. This claim cannot be taken at face value, however, since immigration advocates cite widespread reports of parents being coerced or fooled into signing documents they did not understand.

Human nature binds parents with their children. It shocks and depresses me to have to write this, but I wonder whether Trump and his minions see these Central Americans — brown-skinned, with indigenous features — as fully human.

In 431 cases involving children between 5 and 17, officials reported, the parents have been deported. Where are they now? How could the government let this happen? If these parents were going to be denied permission to stay in the United States, what was the big hurry to kick them out? Why couldn’t the administration wait until their children could be brought back from wherever they were being kept?

Even more incredibly, in 79 cases, the children’s parents have been released into the United States. In other words, the parents have some legal status — but the government has their children.

And in 94 cases, according to Trump administration officials, the parents cannot be located. What are the odds, do you think, that these men and women will ever be found? Where do parents go to begin the process of tracking down their children? How do you tell a 5-year-old that she may never see her mother and father again?

That’s the reported situation for children 5 and older. The government is also still holding 46 children younger than 5 whom officials cannot or will not give back to their parents. Think of the trauma being inflicted on 2-year-olds — to make a political point.

All of this is happening because Trump has no respect for law or due process and no sense of empathy. He was reportedly upset this spring by a rise in border crossings by asylum-seekers, who by law had to be allowed to stay pending resolution of their claims. He and Sessions seized upon the pretext — for which they have not provided evidence — that children were being “trafficked” into the country for some reason.

“If you’re smuggling a child, then we’re going to prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you, probably, as required by law,” Sessions said in May. “If you don’t want your child separated, then don’t bring them across the border illegally.”

Think, for a moment, of the millions of Irish, Italian, Eastern European and other immigrants who “smuggled” children into the United States — families such as Trump’s own. The only difference is that those earlier immigrants, though sometimes rejected at first, came to be seen as white.

Brown immigrants need not apply. Not if they want to see their kids again.

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

Read Robinson’s complete op-ed at the above link.

“Right on” Eugene! We need “regime change,” sooner rather than later. And, we still don’t have an answer to Eugene’s earlier question: When, if ever, will Sessions and other Trump Administration officials be held accountable for their intentionally lawless and unconstitutional behavior?

PWS

07-31-18

WE MUST STOP DETAINING AND ABUSING CHILDREN! — Government’s Own Doctors “Blow Whistle” On How We Are Permanently Damaging Kids! — “[T]heir report uncovered problems including a child who lost a third of his body weight and an infant with bleeding of the brain that went undiagnosed for five days.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/us/migrant-children-family-detention-doctors.html?rref=collection%2Fbyline%2Fmiriam-jordan&action=click&contentCollection=undefined&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection

Miriam Jordan reports for the NY Times:

LOS ANGELES — The Trump administration, faced with a public outcry over the separation of migrant families at the Southwest border, has said it is exploring a major expansion of family detention centers. But two of the government’s own medical consultants said this week that they had identified a “high risk of harm” to migrant children housed at such facilities.

A series of 10 investigations over the past four years, conducted during both the Obama and Trump administrations, “frequently revealed serious compliance issues resulting in harm to children,” the two physicians, Scott Allen and Pamela McPherson, said in a letter to the Senate’s Whistleblower Protection Caucus.

The doctors said they had “watched in horror” as migrant children were separated from their families over the past several months in a bid to deter illegal border crossers. But they cautioned that the Trump administration’s fallback position may not be much better.

“The likely alternative — detention of children with a parent — also poses high risk of harm to children and their families,” said the doctors, who currently serve as “subject-matter experts” for the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. “In our professional opinion, there is no amount of programming that can ameliorate the harms created by the very act of confining children to detention centers.”

The examinations described in their report uncovered problems including a child who lost a third of his body weight and an infant with bleeding of the brain that went undiagnosed for five days.

In a separate filing this week with a court in Los Angeles, lawyers who conducted more than 200 interviews with migrant parents and children said they had collected “shocking and atrocious” reports about conditions at various government-run detention centers, especially at the initial processing centers operated by Customs and Border Protection along the Southwest border.

The interviews in that case were conducted over the past two months, although similar reports of unpleasant and even dangerous conditions in border processing facilities had emerged even before President Trump took office and imposed the current crackdown on the border.

In the latest interviews, migrants reported freezing conditions, filthy toilets, inadequate water and food that alternately was frozen or made them vomit. “The burritos were spoiled,” one wrote. “The ham looked green,” said another.

One woman, identified in the court filing as Lidia, said she and her 4-year-old son had to wait eight hours for water when they arrived at the processing center and were given only frozen sandwiches that could not be eaten. “My son was crying from hunger,” she said.

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Read the rest of Mariam’s article about the shocking degradation of human rights, human dignity, common sense, and moral values being carried out by this Administration, outrageously (and falsely) in the “name of the people.”
We need to both remove unsuitable individuals like Trump, Sessions, and Nielsen from office, and hold them fully accountable for the abuses they are committing! There is nothing that folks like Trump and Sessions fear more than being held accountable for their intentional misconduct! Like all child abusers, they think they can “get away with it.”
PWS
07-21-18

FINALLY, SOME “PUSHBACK” IN THE ARTICLE III COURTS ON THE TRUMP/SESSIONS POLICY OF CHILD ABUSE AND DENIAL OF DUE PROCESS! – “New Lawsuit Seeks Due Process for Detained Kids”

Go on over to Dan Kowalski’s LexisNexis Immigration Community at this link to see how advocacy groups are striking back in behalf of defenseless children being tormented, tortured, and abused by our Government! 

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/immigration-law-blog/archive/2018/07/18/new-lawsuit-seeks-due-process-for-detained-kids.aspx?Redirected=true

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They come fleeing persecution in the Northern Triangle, only to find persecution and torture of a different type here. And, this is certainly “Government sponsored” persecution, even by “the Jeff Sessions test.”

Is this really how we want to be known to the world and remembered by future generations?

PWS

07-21-18

 

GONZO’S WORLD: REPORTS OF TORTURE & ABUSE OF KIDS IN SESSIONS’S “NEW AMERICAN GULAG!” – “Keylin says, U.S. Border Patrol guards would kick her body to keep her awake throughout the night. The 16-year-old, whose last name was redacted from court documents, told a lawyer that she would lie in fear on the cement floor of the Border Patrol station in Texas, surrounded by chain-link fence.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/migrant-children-detail-experiences-border-patrol-stations-detention-centers_us_5b4d13ffe4b0de86f485ade8

Angelina Chapin reports for HuffPost:

Over the course of four days in June, Keylin says, U.S. Border Patrol guards would kick her body to keep her awake throughout the night. The 16-year-old, whose last name was redacted from court documents, told a lawyer that she would lie in fear on the cement floor of the Border Patrol station in Texas, surrounded by chain-link fence. She was separated from her mother, who had been held at gunpoint three times in Honduras, after they crossed the U.S. border.

According to a court filing, Keylin says the female guards also made girls “strip naked” in front of them before taking a shower, so they could leer at their bodies (her mother, Daise, corroborated her daughter’s account in a statement she gave to a lawyer). She adds that guards called the group of migrants “filthy” and “made fun of us.”

Keylin barely ate because she says the food was frozen, and she wasn’t given a toothbrush or toothpaste. Though she says the cells were so cold that she shivered and developed pain in her leg, the teen kept quiet. The guards said that anyone with an injury would be detained longer, and she couldn’t take that chance.

“I was very frightened and depressed the entire time,” Keylin told a lawyer on June 29, after she had been transferred to a family detention center and reunited with her mother. “I am still depressed. I also have nightmares and a lot of anxiety because of the separation.” At the time of their June 29 declaration, there was no plan for Keylin and her mother’s release.

HuffPost learned that the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law filed a report in a federal court in Los Angeles on Monday with more than 200 accounts from migrant children and their parents, detailing the horrific conditions they face in Border Patrol stations, Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities and detention centers. The allegations, which HuffPost reviewed, include physical and verbal assault, untenable sleeping conditions and unsanitary drinking water.

A girl from Central America rests on thermal blankets at a detention facility run by the U.S. Border Patrol on Sept. 8, 2014,

JOHN MOORE VIA GETTY IMAGES
A girl from Central America rests on thermal blankets at a detention facility run by the U.S. Border Patrol on Sept. 8, 2014, in McAllen, Texas. 

Peter Schey, the executive director of the law center’s foundation, wrote in the case filing that roughly 90 percent of the testimony he and a team of about 100 lawyers collected is “shocking and atrocious” and that the children they’ve spoken to were “crying, trembling, hungry, thirsty, sleepless, sick, and terrified.”

“The treatment of these children amounts to torture,” Schey told HuffPost, adding that the situation has become worse under the Trump administration. “We see a policy of enforced hunger, enforced dehydration and enforced sleeplessness coupled with routine insults and physical assaults.”

ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CPB) did not return HuffPost’s requests for comment.

Over the past two months, Schey and other lawyers have conducted interviews with migrant parents and children, some of whom were separated from one another under Trump’s zero tolerance policy, which stepped up the use of criminal prosecutions. The court filing does not include the current status of each child, and most said they were not told of their legal rights, including the right to be speedily released to a legal guardian or relative.

On July 27, the attorney will argue in federal court that the stations and facilities housing children are failing to meet the basic standards for hygiene, food, sleeping conditions and medical care, which are outlined in a 1997 court case called the Flores settlement.

Once migrants cross the border, they are put in short-term Border Patrol stations for a few days before being transferred to detention centers or shelters. While some kids have reported good conditions in longer-term shelters ― friendly staff, movie nights and field trips ― advocates and immigration experts have long considered Border Patrol facilities to be inhumane.

In May, Dixiana, whose last name is edited out along with those of all the other migrants interviewed in the court filing, says she was separated from her mother and taken to a Border Patrol station known as a “hielera” ― Spanish for “ice box” in reference to the cold temperature. The 10-year-old from Honduras told a lawyer her cell was so crowded that she and other girls had to sleep on the floor or while sitting up under bright lights.

She cried at the thought of never seeing her mother again, as did others in her cell.

For breakfast, Dixiana says a guard gave her a frozen ham sandwich but failed to bring her and her cellmates water. “The ham was black,” she told a lawyer. “I took one bite, but did not eat the rest because of the taste.” (One mother from Honduras said, “You could feel the ice when you bit into the sandwich.”)

After 12 hours, Dixiana was transferred to what she calls the “perrera”―Spanish for “dog house,” a reference to the chain-link fencing ― where she could see her mom in another cell. At one point when she was half asleep, Dixiana says a male officer kicked her awake while looking for a girl with a similar name to hers. Over the course of the next few days, she sat in a windowless cell with no idea if it was day or night, crying because she missed her mother.

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The statements collected by lawyers clearly show that Border Patrol stations are no place for children. One mother, Floridalma, described how she and her 3-year-old were put in a 10-by-10-foot room with three other mothers and their children. Since they had only two mattresses, the group slept with their heads on the padding and their bodies on the cement floor.

Children at Customs and Border Protection's Rio Grande Valley Centralized Processing Center in Rio Grande City, Texas, on Jun

U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION VIA REUTERS
Children at Customs and Border Protection’s Rio Grande Valley Centralized Processing Center in Rio Grande City, Texas, on June 17.

Ruth, the mother of a 7-year-old boy, says the Border Patrol station was so cold that children were crying and getting sick. While she was separated from her son, she watched other women’s children get fevers, vomit and cough, while the guards refused to provide medicine.

The Border Patrol stations also fail to meet basic hygiene standards, according to the court filing. Many of the children describe the guards giving them water that tasted like chlorine. “I only drank it twice because I didn’t trust it,” said Justin, a 13-year-old from El Salvador. “It made me feel funny in my stomach the times I drank it.“ One mother, named Yojana, said, “We had to drink water from the toilet to keep hydrated.”

Children described going more than five days without bathing and having limited access to soap, toothbrushes and toothpaste. Fatima says that her 8-year-old daughter had to wear soiled underwear for two days because the guards wouldn’t allow her to use the shower.

Children also spoke to lawyers about issues in family detention centers and Office of Refugee Resettlement shelters, where they are detained for longer periods of time. Since June 8, 15-year-old Elmer has been staying in Casa Padre, America’s largest migrant children’s shelter, which MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff described as resembling a “prison or jail.”

Elmer says that he is always hungry because there’s not enough food and that he wasn’t allowed to see a doctor when he felt sick. The 16-year-old says he told a lawyer that, although the boys, ages 10 to 17, are allowed outside for two hours a day, it is “unbearable” because there is nothing to protect them from the scorching sun. Elmer says that the guards don’t allow him to go to church and that he is rarely given any alone time in his room to process his feelings of loneliness and anxiety.

In addition to the horrible conditions within stations and shelters, children complained about the staff. The case filing contains multiple accounts of kids who say they were kicked by guards while sleeping, as well as instances of verbal abuse. Sixteen-year-old Erick says the guards in a California Border Patrol station call him and the other Guatemalan boys “burros,” the Spanish word for “donkey” or “stupid.” Another youth, whose name was completely blacked out in the court filing, said to a lawyer: “When I told the CPB officer that my mother was killed they made fun of me and said that I was ‘weak.’ I did not feel comfortable after that sharing my fear.”

While pediatricians and counselors have spoken about the long-term trauma that will result from family separation, children say in the court filing that their guards are less sympathetic.

Since Sergio was separated from his father and taken to Casa Padre in early June, he’s become so consumed with worry he can’t sleep. The 16-year-old has only been able to speak with his dad for 20 minutes in the last 45 days, and he told a lawyer that his father is getting deported. When a guard found him crying in the bathroom one night, Sergio said the man accused him of being a “crybaby,” an insult he followed with an English phrase that another boy translated as “swear words.” “The way I have been treated makes me feel like I don’t matter,” he said, “like I am trash.”

Schey, who conducted interviews with children in Casa Padre last week, said the separated kids he spoke with are “traumatized.” “They are not getting mental health services. They are experiencing depression and anxiety… and nightmares and sleeplessness.”

The law center’s court filing, which is more than 1,500 pages long, paints a dark picture of the cruel conditions many migrant children suffer through. On July 27, Schey will present their declarations in federal court and ask U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee to appoint an independent monitor who has the power to make sure facilities are meeting the standards outlined in the Flores settlement.

“This story is more than just separating children from their parents,” he told HuffPost. “The bigger picture is forced starvation and sleeplessness and terrorizing these children.”

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What kind of country puts innocent kids in abusive prisons while letting their abusers hold public office?

PW*

07-19-18