😩TIRED OF PANDERING POLITICOS BASHING HUMAN RIGHTS & DEHUMANIZING BORDER COVERAGE BY THE MEDIA? — Here’s Some Straight Talk On The Border From Migration Expert Harvard Law Professor Gerald L. Neuman! ⚖️🗽 — “There is danger that any new legislation would decrease protection, which would mean that we would be taking no steps forward, and several steps backward, and that nonetheless, issues about migration would remain just as divisive as they are now.”🤯

Professor Gerald L. Neuman
Professor Gerald L. Neuman
J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law
Harvard Law
PHOTO: Harvard Law

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2024/02/immigration-roars-back-in-headlines-time-finally-come-for-reforms/

Liz Mineo, Staff Writer, interviews Professor Neuman in The Harvard Gazette:

. . . .

What should be done about border security, enforcement, and the immigration court backlog?

In terms of enforcement, there is no easy solution. A border fence is merely a symbol and no solution. Clearly, the adjudication system needs more resources, and adjustments to improve both efficiency and fairness. For both sides, justice delayed is justice denied, and that should be an important part of the focus.

Another priority, contrary to some claims, is to reduce reliance on detention. The U.S. is engaged in arbitrary detention of migrants who really don’t need to be detained; they could be subject to surveillance.

The country should also respect its international obligations not to send people back to countries where they will be persecuted, tortured, or killed. It cannot suspend its international obligations on that front, and it should not openly violate them, as it did under COVID.

What measures should be taken to reduce the flow of migrants into the U.S?

In terms of enforcement, the important point to stress is that this is not an issue that the U.S. can solve unilaterally. There must be a regional solution. It’s obvious to anyone who looks at the logistics of the problem that the solutions depend on cooperation with Mexico. Congress can’t just impose a solution and assume that Mexico will go along with it. More broadly, there are other countries that need to be involved in protecting refugees and in solving some of the problems that lead to migration.

Some experts say the asylum system is a parallel immigration system and that it should be revamped. What’s your take on this?

I’d like to use the term asylum broadly, not legalistically, to cover forms of protection from persecution, killing, and torture. The U.S. asylum system is too opaque and too inconsistent: Valid claims may be rejected, and claims that are made in perfectly good faith may turn out to be invalid.

On the other hand, some people seek desperately to come to the U.S. for reasons that are not covered by asylum, such as poverty, loss of livelihood, or to join family members. The system needs to winnow those claims out while remaining open to valid claims for protection. It would also benefit from greater clarity on which claims are valid, and from more consistent adjudication, but now, the system is not meeting its obligations to persecuted people.

Finally, what are your realistic hopes for changes in immigration policies?

For now, my hopes would be that any new legislation would increase funding and would help give the public the sense that the border situation is being addressed.

And meanwhile that the executive would use the authority that it already has to manage the situation better, including by negotiating with other countries. The executive should resist efforts that obstruct its compliance with its obligations.

There is danger that any new legislation would decrease protection, which would mean that we would be taking no steps forward, and several steps backward, and that nonetheless, issues about migration would remain just as divisive as they are now.

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

Read the full (edited) interview at the link.

“Decrease protection” seems to be a toxic bipartisan goal of Congress and the Administration. What’s preventing it? They can’t agree on the amount of cruelty, suffering, and dehumanization to inflict on vulnerable forced migrants who overwhelmingly seek only to have the USG process their legal claims for protection in a fair and timely manner! That reality has clearly been lost in the rancid, one-sided, often secret “negotiations” in Congress; the insipid statements of the Biden Administration promising more border closures, cruel, inhuman, degrading, expensive, and wasteful detention; and treacherous “bipartisan” abrogation of well-established “life or death” legal rights to fair consideration of claims!

Professor Neuman says “this is not an issue that the U.S. can solve unilaterally.” There is general consensus among migration experts on this fundamental truth! Yet, Congress and the Administration keep pretending otherwise, with little critical, informed “pushback” from the media.

Why isn’t Kristen Welker interviewing Professor Neuman and other migration experts, rather than making “Meet the Press” a “Foxlike Forum” for those promoting White Nationalist lies about the border and national security? Welker hasn’t bothered to inform herself about the human lives and human rights involved with forced migration at the border. Therefore, her feeble attempts to stop GOP nativist politicos from rambling on with their border myths are somewhere between ineffective to pathetic, but certainly must be maddening to anyone involved with assisting the actual humans seeking protection under our dysfunctional legal system!

Remarkably, but not surprisingly, many of Professor Neuman’s points relate directly or indirectly to the failure of AG Merrick Garland (amazingly, a former Article III Circuit Judge) and his lieutenants to reform EOIR and get it working in “real time.” The ideas for fixing EOIR and the enlightened expert leadership to do it are available in the private sector. See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2023/12/19/⚖%EF%B8%8F🤯👩🏽⚖%EF%B8%8F👨🏻⚖%EF%B8%8F-as-garlands-backlog-hits-3-million-way-past-time-to-clean/.

Garland’s inexcusable failure to fix EOIR and get it working fairly, professionally, expertly, and in real time is a drag on the Biden Administration immigration policies and an existential threat to our democracy!

Inexcusable indeed! 🤯

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-08-24

 

⚖️🗽 THERE ARE WAYS TO HARMONIZE & HARNESS THE REALITY & HUGE POSITIVE POTENTIAL OF GLOBAL HUMAN MIGRATION— They Are Neither “Simple” Nor “Immediate” — But “Deterrence Only” Definitely Is NOT Among Them!☠️

Amy E. Pope
Amy E. Pope
Director General
International Organization for Migration
PHOTO: IOM
Filippo Grandi
Filippo Grandi
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
PHOTO: UNHCR

From Time Magazine:

https://time.com/6344740/global-immigration-system-reform/

IDEAS

BY AMY E. POPE AND FILIPPO GRANDIDECEMBER 11, 2023 11:43 AM EST

Pope is the Director General (DG) of the International Organization for Migration; Grandi is the UN High Commissioner for Refugees

F

rom the sands of the Sahel to the waters of the Mediterranean, from the wilderness of the Darien in Central America to the Bay of Bengal, millions of refugees and migrants journey along routes that are synonymous with desperation, exploitation and lost lives. As the heads of the two U.N. agencies that protect and support people on the move, we believe this is one of the great global challenges of our time.

The loudest political response has been to claim that only tougher action can resolve it. Most recently, a number European states have announced  plans to “offshore” or simply deport asylum seekers and/or make conditions around immigration and asylum more hostile.

Such plans are increasingly in vogue. They are also wrong. They overly concentrate on deterrence, control and law enforcement, and disregard the fundamental right to seek asylum. This approach is ineffective and irresponsible, leaving people stranded or compelling them to take even greater risks.

We do not want to understate the scale of the challenge created by today’s population movements. But to meet it, bigger thinking and bolder leadership are needed. The right strategy would tackle every stage of the journey, through a comprehensive and route-based approach of engagement. So, what should such a strategy look like?

First, we need to address the issues that compel people to leave home in the first place. Resolving conflicts, improving security, reinforcing human rights, providing sustained and reliable financial support to boost growth and resilience—all address the root causes of displacement and migration by investing in people’s futures. Failing to make these investments and cutting development aid are false economies.

Nonetheless, millions of people have no choice but to leave home—protracted conflicts, widescale rights abuses, intolerable poverty, and the devastating effects of climate change are just some of the causes. Yet the same point applies: offer hope and opportunity and people will take it.

. . . .

Two ingredients are essential for our proposals to succeed: cooperation and real responsibility-sharing between governments, even in these divisive times; and attention to every part of the journey. An approach focused mainly on deterrence will fail—indeed, it is already failing.

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

Border Death
During this Christmas season, GOP Nativists in Congress, their Dem enablers, and the Biden Administration are “debating” how many forced migrant men, women, and children should be killed, tortured, maimed, imprisoned, separated, or otherwise irreparably damaged at the U.S. Border to secure more bombs and weapons for foreign wars!  This is a monument for those who have died attempting to cross the US-Mexican border. Each coffin represents a year and the number of dead. It is a protest against the effects of Operation Guardian. Taken at the Tijuana-San Diego border.
Tomas Castelazo
To comply with the use and licensing terms of this image, the following text must must be included with the image when published in any medium, failure to do so constitutes a violation of the licensing terms and copyright infringement: © Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

Read the complete article at the link!

“Offer hope and opportunity and people will take it!” That’s essentially what the Supremes said 35 years ago in the landmark decision INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca requiring a suitably generous interpretation and application of the international “refugee” definition that also governs asylum. 

Over the next several decades, slow but noticeable progress was made toward “realizing the full promise of Cardoza.” At one point, largely as a result of some Court of Appeals interventions, and a few positive BIA precedents granting asylum in the mid to late 1990’s, the “combined protection granted rate” for asylum, withholding, and CAT by EOIR, the primary precedent-setter and adjudicator of asylum law in the Executive Branch, exceeded 60% for those actually able to get to merits hearings in the somewhat haphazard system. 

However, over the past several Administrations most of that progress has been reversed, sometimes intentionally, other times negligently. The dysfunction, mounting backlogs, poor precedents, lack of asylum expertise, endless “any reason to deny gimmicks,” and the dreaded “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” have made a mockery of justice for asylum seekers at EOIR. It has also generated a tidal wave of failure and mindless attempts by the USG to evade the rule of law and their responsibilities to fairly adjudicate asylum claims that goes far beyond our borders.

None of the nativist, restrictionist, proposals now being discussed in the Senate would help this situation! Indeed, they would undoubtedly make everything worse in the long run! They will also compromise our national security and enrich and embolden human smugglers and cartels. Nativist deterrence is definitely a “lose-lose proposition” even if many U.S. politicos are unwilling or unable to admit that!

In many ways, the “head in the sand” approach of prosperous nations to human migration reminds me of their past attempts to deny or ignore the effect of climate change — something that is directly related to forced migration and not adequately addressed by the post WW II refugee framework.

I was heartened to see among the recommendations in this article:

But this is not just about policies and strategies. It means engaging more closely with the people in mixed movements, such as offering practical and legal advice on accessing protection, to guidance on applying for third-country options. Such a chain of engagement might require new, bespoke models of collaboration but, if done strategically, would address a range of situations.\

This supports the recent proposal that Retired Wisconsin Judge Thomas Lister and I published on “Courtside” for the creation of a volunteer group of “Judges Without Borders” (“JW/OB”). https://immigrationcourtside.com/2023/12/13/%F0%9F%91%A9%F0%9F%8F%BD%E2%9A%96%EF%B8%8F%F0%9F%91%A8%F0%9F%8F%BB%E2%9A%96%EF%B8%8F-%E2%9A%96%EF%B8%8F%F0%9F%97%BDjudges-without-borders-an-innovative-op/

Volunteer retired judges from various State and Federal systems could potentially assist the USG and NGOs by advance screening applicants, inside and outside the U.S., for asylum with an eye toward helping individuals make good choices and directing those unable to meet the current refugee and asylum criteria to humane alternatives. It’s exactly the type of new, creative, “model of collaboration” (and cost efficiency) that the authors recommend!

Given the current state of the world, with active wars on several fronts, and many corrupt and/or repressive governments, it’s highly likely that forced migration will continue to increase in the foreseeable future. That makes it essential that developed nations work with each other and humanitarian experts on viable, durable solutions that recognize the complexity, the opportunities, and the inevitability of human migration. 

On Meet the Press today, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) spouted virtually every “border myth” in the book, without much effective pushback from moderator Kristen Welker. In particular, Welker continued her practice of not featuring any experts who actually work with forced migrants at the border. Meanwhile, Graham was unwilling to condemn Trump’s Hitlerian language about immigrants “poisoning the blood” despite numerous opportunities by Welker for him to do so.

What Graham didn’t do, and Welker didn’t press him on, was establish any connection between eliminating asylum and either reducing terrorist threats or fighting drug smuggling which has been shown time and again to have little or nothing to do with individuals struggling to get appointments through “CBP One” or turning themselves in to CBP upon entry to submit to asylum screening.

Additionally, Graham continued to repeat, without evidence (other than one lame anecdote), the nativist claim that almost nobody coming to the border has a legitimate fear of return. That contradicts almost all reports from those who actually work with forced migrants at the border and elsewhere. It’s also remarkable because the vast majority of those who have been allowed into the U.S. in the past year have not had an opportunity to document and present their claims in the fair merits hearing required by law. Yet the “border debate” remains largely one-sided and reality free!

That’s not to minimize the failure of the Biden Administration to heed expert advice and make major administrative, personnel, and expertise changes in the asylum adjudication system and the Immigration Courts on “Day One.” Nor does it excuse their failure to set up an organized, mutually beneficial, system for resettling those screened the into the country away from border points of entry.

Again, the absence of coherent rational discussion of asylum adjudication by experts by Meet the Press and other so-called “mainstream media” is both telling and disturbing. Certainly, internationally-recognized experts like Filippo Grande and Amy Pope must be available to Welker. Why don’t we ever hear from them?

Demand that Congress and the Biden Administration stop the toxic nonsense of “trading” the lives and rights of forced migrants for bombs and weapons to fight foreign wars. It’s time to get serious about developing immigration and refugee policies that operate in the “real world” of human migration, eschew expensive, cruel, proven to fail “deterrence only,” and give primacy to the humanity and rights of migrants and the opportunities they present for our world’s future!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-16-23

⚖️ GIVING CONTEXT TO THE GOP’s OVERHYPED “BORDER TERRORIST” CLAIMS: Experts Set The Record Straight!

Maria Ramirez Uribe
Maria Ramirez Uribe
Immigration Reporter
PolitiFact
PHOTO: PolitiFact.com

Maria Ramirez Uribe reports for PolitiFact:

https://www.politifact.com/article/2023/oct/27/ask-politifact-how-many-people-on-the-terrorist-wa/

Some Republican lawmakers are flagging Hamas’ attack on Israel as an example of why more security is needed at the southern U.S. border. Hamas militants breached a border fence and attacked Israeli villages bordering the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7.

“Potential terrorists are attempting to cross our southern border. In September alone, 18 illegal immigrants on the terror watchlist were caught at the border,” U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., posted Oct. 21 on X. “The attack on Israel should serve as a warning as to why we must secure the border.”

The next day, U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., also mentioned the terrorist watchlist on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”

“We just caught 18 people, just last month, on the FBI terrorist watchlist, coming across our border,” McCarthy said. “More than 160 have done it this year, a record breaking.”

U.S. immigration officials have encountered rising numbers of people on the watchlist. But not everyone on the list is a terrorist, and not everyone encountered is allowed to enter the country.

Terrorism and immigration experts say that the threat of attacks in the U.S. and Israel are incomparable.

“They both involve borders, but the comparison ends there,” David Bier, an immigration expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, previously told us. “People aren’t crossing the border to conduct terrorist attacks or take over parts of the United States. A very small percentage may come to commit ordinary crimes, like selling drugs, but overwhelmingly, they are coming for economic opportunity and freedom.”

McCarthy’s office did not respond to our query for more information. A Blackburn spokesperson pointed us to a Fox News reporter’s post on X. Customs and Border Protection did not confirm whether 18 people were stopped in September.

Here’s what we know about who is on the terrorist watchlist, and what the data can and can’t tell us.

. . . .

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

Read Maria’s complete article which includes comments from real experts like Professor Stephen Yale Loehr, Professor Denise Gilman, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, and others in addition to David Bier. They stand in sharp and long overdue contrast with the GOP’s alarmist, out of context, claims.

It’s little wonder that a party of anti-democracy activists, insurrectionists, and election deniers would want to deflect attention from themselves onto folks who are overwhelmingly coming to save their lives and to work hard and contribute to our economic growth! 

I have previously “called out” Kristen Welker and NBC’s Meet the Press for giving McCarthy an unnecessary public forum for his alarmist narrative. See, e.g.,  https://immigrationcourtside.com/2023/10/23/🚩politics-gops-bakuninist-clown-show-sows-american-chaos🤮☠️/. Worse yet, there was no effective “pushback” from Welker on McCarthy’s attempt to blame vulnerable asylum seekers for the political disorder and threats to our democracy that he and his righty GOP buddies helped sow!

Many thanks to Maria for setting the record straight and to the experts who were interviewed from her article! You actually did the “due diligence” that Welker and others often brush off when “doing immigration.”

Those wanting to learn about what’s really happening at the border and what reasonable improvements might actually be possible will get a chance to hear from Professor Yale Loehr and  Muzaffar Chishti in a webinar upcoming on Nov. 7. See https://immigrationcourtside.com/2023/10/25/🗽tired-of-border-bs-from-nativist-pols-media-bureaucrats-get-the-real-skinny-from-the-experts-yale-loehr-chishti-on-nov-7-zoom-option-availab/.

Of course border security is important! A significant, achievable improvement would be to establish a fair, timely, functional asylum screening and adjudication system at ports of entry so that those seeking asylum will be motivated to use it (rather than attempting  to “punish” and “deter” those who can’t use the current dysfunctional DHS/EOIR “system.”) That would give CBP a chance to concentrate on the real law enforcement challenge: identifying and stopping those who seek to harm the U.S. That’s going to take even better intelligence and more sophisticated efforts.

I also wouldn’t minimize that, as pointed out by the experts, CBP has been able to identify and deny entry to individuals on their list. That’s a sign of success, not failure!

To state the obvious, further cutting or restricting asylum (as many in the GOP disingenuously advocate) would only force even more of those seeking refuge into the hands of smugglers and push them into the dangerous lands between ports of entry. Misdirecting enforcement resources to fruitlessly and improperly trying to “deter” and “apprehend” those legitimately seeking refuge will only further dilute the attention that CBP can pay to any real dangers lurking at the border!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-30-23

🚩POLITICS: GOP’S BAKUNINIST CLOWN SHOW SOWS AMERICAN CHAOS!🤮☠️

Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876)Anarchist PHOTO: Wikipedia While nobody in today’s GOP is close to being on an intellectual level with the “Father of Modern Anarchy,” they are staunch disciples of his disruptive philosophy.
Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876)
Anarchist
PHOTO: Wikipedia
While nobody in today’s GOP is close to being on an intellectual level with the “Father of Modern Anarchy,” they are staunch disciples of his disruptive philosophy.

BAKUNINIST — One who advocates revolutionary anarchism. 

Jackie Calmes in the LA Times:

Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes
National Columnist
LA Times
PHOTO: Shorenstein Center, Harvard University

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=0544106b-7413-483c-9f58-c0b43ca7853d

. . . .

And that’s because so many in the party — elected officials and voters — won’t be led. Republicans have the majority in the House, but it’s a majority in name only. In reality, the House Republicans are an amalgam of competing factions, from right to far-right to extremist, and party members genuinely loathe one another more than they dislike Democrats.

Conservative media and social media stardom have turned even the most junior and otherwise inconsequential figures — say, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, the architect of this speaker-less anarchy — into power brokers who insist on having their sway. Like-minded conservative voters — small-dollar donors steeped in Fox News — bankroll the chaos agents; Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, that Georgia peach of a provocateur, is among Congress’ most successful fundraisers.

Here’s how insurgent and “Beetlejuice” fan Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado explained why House Republicans have failed to agree on a speaker: “There are 224 alpha males and alpha females who are here in the Republican Party. We are here because we convinced hundreds of thousands of people that we are leaders.”

No matter how this speaker mess ends — and it must somehow end — that perverse reward system will remain. And the House under Republican “leadership” will be all but ungovernable through the 2024 election.

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi had a similarly thin Democratic majority yet managed to keep her party factions united and to shepherd into law major legislation, some of it bipartisan. But here’s the difference: Democrats believe in governance. Too many Republicans do not; their credo has shifted over the last quarter century from small government to anti-government. We’re watching the result.

Again, take it from a Republican: “Frankly, it doesn’t matter who the speaker is,” Rep. Mike Lawler of New York said, “because if we [Republicans] can’t govern as a group, as a conference, it doesn’t matter.”

Jordan, true to his brand as a belligerent, on Friday insisted on a third House vote for speaker. As widely predicted, he lost by even more votes than on the earlier ballots. He and his allies talked of pressing his candidacy through the weekend; after all, McCarthy was elected in January on the 15th ballot. But in a closed-door caucus and with secret ballots, Republicans voted to yank Jordan’s nomination as speaker.

His refusal to accept that he was not going to be speaker until the reality was forced on him was hardly a surprise. Jordan still won’t concede that Donald Trump lost reelection. He declined to do so yet again at a news conference Friday morning. His stubborn opposition to democracy — that’s what it is — only underscored why Jordan should never be the speaker.

The sad fact, however, is that Jordan’s reprehensible role as Trump’s chief congressional lieutenant in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection wasn’t even much of a factor in opponents’ thinking. Nor was the fact that as speaker, this unrepentant election denier could have sabotaged the certification of the 2024 presidential vote if the Republican lost.

Instead, the reasons Jordan’s foes gave were personal, political or both. Some blamed him for stoking the death threats against them and their families. One, Rep. Drew Ferguson of Georgia, said Republicans don’t “need a bully as the speaker.”

But they need someone — the country needs someone — so Congress can function. Government funding runs out Nov. 17. Biden is sending a request for aid to Ukraine and Israel. Other essential legislation, including agriculture and defense bills, are pending.

Many Republicans are trying to shift the blame for the fiasco onto Democrats because they all opposed McCarthy and then Jordan — as if Republicans would’ve voted to retain Pelosi had an insurgent Democrat ever moved, like Gaetz did against McCarthy, to unseat her.

But they know the blame actually lies with themselves — thus the name-calling and near-fisticuffs.

They need to come together, if only temporarily. And then voters should fire them in 2024.

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

Today’s GOP is a thuggy gang of anarchists out to destroy America and destabilize the world — mostly because they believe they can, and complicit GOP voters have inflicted these ignorant, valueless, yet existentially dangerous, clowns upon the rest of us!

Totally classless and obstructionist till the end, Jordan forced his colleagues to vote to rescind his never-viable nomination for Speaker after losing three floor votes by increasing margins. By contrast, Scalise, the Conference’s initial nominee over Jordan withdrew without a vote upon determining that he lacked the votes to win the job.

Appearing on CNN Sunday, former GOP Representative Liz Cheney described some of her erstwhile colleagues as “White supremacists,” “anti-semitic,” and “involved directly” in the illegitimate attempt to seize power and overturn Biden’s election. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/liz-cheney-kevin-mccarthy-house-gop_n_6535ea7ce4b0689b3fbcfc66.

Yet, inexplicably, some in the “mainstream media”continue to treat the GOP as a “normal” opposition party. In one of a continuing string of jaw-droppingly poor choices for guests, NBC’s Kristen Walker gave deposed ex-Speaker McCarthy a forum to engage in a “Trumpian liefest” of mythic proportions, outrageously attempting to blame Dems, the Border, Biden, Jeffries, the GOP insurrectionists he empowered, and just about anyone but himself for the debacle he helped engineer and his morally bankrupt party carried out!

Every viewer should have felt dumber after watching Welker fruitlessly try to control the astounding stream of lies, nonsense, doublespeak, and intentional misrepresentations coming out of McCarthy. Honestly, that’s what Fox News, Breitbart, and the Examiner are for! No need to give shallow politicos with absolutely nothing to contribute another forum! I’ve always been a Kristen Welker fan, but her first month as moderator of Meet the Press can only be described as something between tragic and horrible.

As Calmes says, “fire [the GOP] in 2024.” The future of America, the world, and humanity might depend on the n common sense and decency of the majority of voters!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-23-23

☠️⚰️ “I WANT TO DIE,” SAYS 7-YEAR OLD VICTIM OF AMERICA’S FAILURE TO HONOR ASYLUM LAWS! — “Biden’s Wall” Of Bad Tech & Bad Bureaucracy Cheaper, More Effective At Inflicting “Cruelty For Cruelty’s Sake” Than “Trump’s Folly!”🤮

Biden Statue of Liberty
Biden Betrays Promises to Refugees
Steve Sack @ Star Tribune
Republished under license

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/03/11/asylum-seekers-mexico-border-app/

Arelis R. Hernandez
Arelis R. Hernandez
Southern Border Reporter
Washington Post

Arelis R. Hernandez reports for WashPost:

MATAMOROS, Mexico — It was supposed to be his last day in Mexico. The 7-year-old Venezuelan boy beamed as he bade farewell to his teacher, Liliana Carlos, at a school for migrant children living in tents while waiting for their chance to enter the United States.

His family, finally, had obtained an appointment in February with U.S. Customs and Border Protection after weeks of trying to use a new app to secure a slot.

Now they hoped to be allowed to begin a new life in America. No more sleeping on the ground. No more threats of kidnapping. No more watching his mother cry.

But instead of the safety his family longed for inside the United States, the boy returned to the Sidewalk School, inconsolable, his teacher recalled. CBP officials on the border bridge sent back about 50 families, including his. They’d all made appointments online as family units. But agents were now enforcing a rule requiring each child to register individually.

“We are never going to leave,” Carlos recounted the boy telling her as she ushered the wailing child into an alcove known as the “calm corner.”

. . . .

Two weeks after the boy was sent back to the Sidewalk School, Carlos said her once hopeful student still doesn’t have a new appointment. The child’s name is being withheld by The Washington Post out of concerns for his safety.

She tried to console him, she recalled, but he was despondent, telling her: “I want to die.”

. . . .

Within a northern Mexico safe house, a 30-something-year-old asylum seeker ran his fingers across the bumpy scar tissue that had healed unevenly around his wrists. The marks are remnants of the torture he endured two weeks earlier.

His voice quivered as he recalled black-clad kidnappers ambushing the house where he was living at 1 a.m. in late January. They bound his hands and feet with electric cables and threw him in the trunk of a vehicle.

For two days, he was repeatedly burned and beaten.

The Washington Post is withholding the man’s name and other identifying characteristics for safety reasons because he is still in Mexico. But the man showed a reporter the lacerations and described how men pistol-whipped and beat him. Dark circular scars mark the spots on his legs where his captors pressed lit cigarettes into his flesh.

“The app doesn’t feel fair,” said the man, who was denied an exemption to the Title 42 rule barring most migrants from entering and has failed to secure an appointment. “I need protection in the United States.”

. . . .

Nearby in Reynosa, a three-acre lot covered in human feces near a sandy river peninsula overrun by Mexican cartel members sits adjacent to a camp for migrants.

They sleep and eat 50 feet away from the open pit. Soiled toilet paper clings to cactus needles. A toxic plume of nostril-singeing smoke rises over the encampment from a trash heap at the river’s edge where plastic burns.

Nearby, a collection of tall glass candles bearing the image of La Santa Muerte, a Grim Reaper-like Mexican folk saint worshiped by narcos, have been placed in a circle drawn into the sand.

This is Camp Rio, where at least 1,000 Haitian asylum seekers are spending each day they can’t get an appointment.

Many Black migrants are pushed to the fringes of border cities to wait in subhuman conditions. They have more difficulty accessing shelters than those with lighter skin and often experience racism in Mexico.

. . .

The crowd of people around the attorneys swelled. Parents with upcoming dates wondered what would happen if they sent their small children across the bridge alone as unaccompanied minors. D’Cruz begged them not to.

“If we don’t, we will lose everything we’ve worked for,” a woman from Nicaragua said, pressing her bewildered daughter against her leg.

Advocates counted between 40 and 50 children surrendered at the bridge alone days later.

Back at the Sidewalk School, the number of children enrolled has swelled. Carlos, the coordinator, said they went from teaching a handful of kids each day to more three dozen in recent weeks. She said that means more and more children, and their families, aren’t getting appointments.

The longer they despair in Mexico, parents say, the more they consider sending their children to the United States alone.

Valentina Sanchez, 24, of Venezuela, and her husband had appointments in February. Their 3-year-old son did not. He crossed and she stayed behind with the toddler.

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

Read the complete article at the link. 

Folks, tragically, we’ve seen in the last few days how totally unsafe Mexico is even for U.S. citizens! Yet, the Biden Administration thinks it’s “A-OK” to propose illegally repelling tens of thousands of non-Mexicans back to danger, torture, exploitation, and death without fairly considering their legal claims for refuge and without insuring that those making such life and death decisions are actually qualified to do so (hint, many aren’t). 

At the current rate of 800 “interviews” per day, it would take the Administration four months just to process the 100,000 humans already waiting at the border (4 interviews/officer/day). If the Administration had started with a plan to hire and train 1,000 Asylum Officers over the more than 2.5 years they have been in office, the job could be done in less than a month! 

The Administration can (and does) make all the false claims that “CBP One” works that it wants. As Arelis and others who actually interface with asylum seekers on the border have documented, the facts say otherwise!

I happened to be watching “Meet The Press” with Chuck Todd. House Judiciary Chair Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) said we need a “surge” of Asylum Officers to the border, grant asylum to those who qualify, remove those who don’t, use more TPS strategically, and open more pathways to legal immigration. Not “rocket science” by any measure!

Yet, although Biden has “dabbled” in some of these initiatives, he still has no systemic plan for reinstating asylum law in a fair and effective manner at the border. Sen. Menendez correctly noted that if Biden continues on the course he has charted, he will go down as the “Asylum Denier In Chief.”

Senator Menendez also said that if Biden has the poor judgement to reinstitute “family detention,” it will fail just as it did in both the Obama and Trump Administrations. He characterized having eliminated family detention upon  assuming office as one of the best moves that Biden has made on immigration. Talk about “taking points off the scoreboard!”

Thanks to Arelis Hernandez and a few other reporters who refuse to let the human disaster of the Biden Administration’s treacherous abandonment of the law at the border and the values it represents go unnoticed! It doesn’t have to be this way! 

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-12-237

⚖️ THE GIBSON REPORT — 11-07-22 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Managing Attorney, NIJC — HEADLINERS: Analysts Agree: Immigrants Are “Political Toast” Regardless of Midterms’ Outcome — Neither Party Sees Legal Immigration, Human Rights, Rule of Law, Racial Justice As “Electoral Winners!” — Garland’s DOJ “On A Roll” In Courts Of Appeal, Snuffing Asylum Claims in 2d (2x), 3rd, 8th, & 9th Circuits!

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

pastedGraphic.png

 

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

NEWS

 

Analysts Don’t Expect Significant Changes in Immigration Policy After the Midterms

VOA: The three analysts said that no one is willing to form a framework to write immigration legislation because they do not see an electoral advantage. See also Democrats Twist and Turn on Immigration as Republicans Attack in Waves; Canada plans record immigration targets amid labour crunch.

 

Attention Travelers: New Rules Will Require More Caution When Entering USA

Forbes: Evidently, USCBP is eliminating the passport entry stamp to streamline the entry process. So now, foreign nationals will only have access to the Form I-94 website as proof of their lawful immigration status.

 

Abrupt New Border Expulsions Split Venezuelan Families

NYT: The decision to expel Venezuelans under a pandemic-era policy that allows swift expulsions, previously applied mainly to Mexicans and Central Americans, has had the unintended effect of trapping many Venezuelan families on opposite sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. See also Tougher US Asylum Laws Trigger Drop in Venezuelan Migrants Traveling Through Panama; Migrants Encounter ‘Chaos and Confusion’ in New York Immigration Courts; Nearly 500 Venezuelans admitted to U.S., thousands approved via new plan.

Accounts of migrants’ documents being confiscated by border officials prompt federal review

CBS: The department confirmed the review when asked to respond to accounts from migrants who told “60 Minutes” that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials along the U.S.-Mexico border kept their documents, despite agency policy instructing agents to return migrants’ personal property unless they are fraudulent.

 

130+ Civil Rights Groups Call On President Biden To Include Immigrants In Pardon Process

NIJC: More than 130 immigration, criminal justice, and civil rights organizations released a letter today urging the Biden administration to include immigrants in the pardon process.

 

Over 100 Orgs Want Visits For Detained Immigrants Restored

Law360: More than 100 immigrant rights organizations are urging the Biden administration to fully reinstate visitation at immigration detention facilities, saying in a Thursday letter that visitation is crucial for detainees’ mental health and monitoring human rights violations.

 

ACLU condemns Texas Border Patrol agents’ use of pepper balls against protesting migrants

SA Current: The ACLU is condemning the actions of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents allegedly caught on video firing pepper balls at a group of Venezuelan migrants protesting along the banks of the Rio Grande River near El Paso.

 

LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES

 

2nd Circ. Won’t Review Honduran Man, Son’s Asylum Request

Law360: The Second Circuit on Wednesday declined to review a decision denying an asylum application from a Honduran man and his son who claim they will be killed by gang members if they return home, finding the Board of Immigration Appeals properly reviewed the immigration judge’s decision.

 

2nd Circ. Won’t Revive Ecuadorian’s Asylum Bid

Law360: The Second Circuit on Tuesday backed the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeal’s decision to apply a persecution motive standard used in asylum requests to an Ecuadorian’s withholding of removal request, saying it was reasonable for the agency to do so.

 

3rd Circ. Nixes Asylum Over Evangelical Christianity Link

Law360: The Third Circuit on Tuesday knocked down a Guatemalan man’s asylum bid after concluding he failed to back up his fears of violence in the Central American nation based on gang recruitment efforts and his rejection of gangs due to his evangelical Christian faith.

 

8th Circ. Denies Family’s Asylum Bid Over Gang Fears

Law360: The Eighth Circuit has upheld a Board of Immigration Appeals ruling that denied a family asylum based on alleged gang threats for lack of evidence that the government of El Salvador could not or would not protect them.

 

9th Circ. Upholds Ruling Denying Bisexual Man Asylum

Law360: A Mexican citizen who said police and criminal gangs would torture him for being bisexual and suffering from mental illness if he is deported a third time

 

9th Circ. Backs Juvenile Immigrant Adjudication Deadline

Law360: The Ninth Circuit on Thursday backed an order requiring U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to adjudicate Special Immigrant Juvenile petitions within 180 days, rejecting the government’s argument that a lower court relied on “stale evidence” and disregarded hardship considerations.

 

States Cry Foul Over Steep Drop In Title 42 Haitian Expulsions

Law360: Republican state attorneys general accused the Biden administration of violating an injunction requiring it to repel migrants from the border under pandemic-era restrictions, saying a sharp drop in Haitian expulsions indicated the administration was selectively lifting the so-called Title 42 border block.

 

DHS Begins Limited Implementation of DACA Final Rule

AILA: On 10/31/22, DHS began limited implementation of the DACA final rule. USCIS will continue to accept and process applications for deferred action, work authorization, and advance parole for current DACA recipients. Due to litigation, USCIS will accept but cannot process initial DACA requests.

 

EOIR 30-Day Notice and Request for Comments on Proposed Revisions to Forms EOIR-42A and EOIR-42B

AILA: EOIR 30-day notice and request for comments on proposed revisions to Form EOIR-42A and Form EOIR-42B. Comments are due 12/5/22. (87 FR 66326, 11/3/22)

 

EOIR 30-Day Notice and Request for Comments on Proposed Revisions to Form EOIR-31A

AILA: EOIR 30-day notice-and-comment period for proposed revisions to Form EOIR-31A, which allows an organization to seek accreditation or renewal of accreditation of a non-attorney representative to appear before EOIR and/or DHS. Comments are due by 12/5/22.

 

CIS Ombudsman Introduces Revised Form for Requesting Case Assistance

AILA: The CIS Ombudsman’s Office updated the DHS Form 7001, Request for Case Assistance, used for requesting case assistance.

 

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

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

Supposedly, the main political issues right now are the economy and inflation. But, the economy and inflation are largely determined by the Fed, markets, global conditions, weather, and a certain amount of pure luck — all things beyond the direct control of the political branches of the USG.  

As mentioned by Chuck Todd on last Sunday’s NBC “Meet the Press,” many experts say that the most effective tool that the Administration and Congress have to improve the economy without triggering a recession is to increase legal immigration — sooner rather than later. But, neither party is interested. The GOP sees an anti-immigrant stance as a key to political success. And, the Dems are “actively disinterested” in the issue. So, the opportunity passes.

But, the reality is that, in the long run, no amount of shipping containers, walls, prisons, family separations, deportations, exclusions to death or despair, hate rhetoric, or restrictive legal roadblocks will halt the future flow of human migration, and not incidentally, the internal relocation in America as certain areas become “unlivable.” 

According to a government report published in today’s Washington Post:

 The U.S. can expect more forced migration and displacement

Already, the authors of Monday’s report said, major storms such as Hurricane Maria, as well as extended droughts that strained lives and livelihoods, have led people to leave their homes in search of more-stable places.

In the hotter world that lies ahead, they write, additional climate impacts — along with other factors such as the housing market, job trends and pandemics — are expected to increasingly influence migration patterns.

“More severe wildfires in California, sea level rise in Florida, and more frequent flooding in Texas are expected to displace millions of people, while climate-driven economic changes abroad continue to increase the rate of emigration to the United States,” the report finds.

Such shifts are inherently complicated and fraught.

Several Indigenous tribes in coastal regions, facing fast-rising seas, have already sought government help to relocate, but have struggled to do so without significant hurdles.

“Forced migrations and displacements disrupt social networks, decrease housing security, and exacerbate grief, anxiety and mental health outcomes,” the authors write.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/11/07/cop27-climate-change-report-us/

Neither political party appears serious about addressing these migration realities — already underway. The ideas that we can wall ourselves off, invest in “sending countries,” detain, and deport our way out of migration are not  “solutions.”  

Failure to act boldly and expansively on legal immigration will create a huge class of exploitable, disenfranchised, extralegal residents and plenty of work for border agents, internal police, righty judges, and jailers. It will also be a huge boon to smugglers and cartels who basically will “own” the American migration franchise. But, in the long run, building a large “underground humanity” won’t be enough to offset the “downside” of lacking a robust, realistic, orderly, legal immigration process.

Eventually, those nation-states that figure out how to harness, welcome, and distribute the power of human migration will rule the future. Right now, America’s leaders, of both parties, seem wedded to a “sure to fail” approach of either opposing or ignoring the realities and unlimited potential of human migration. Too bad — for all of us!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-08-22

IT’S HELL TO BE A  REFUGEE! 😭— But, It Still Pays To Be White! — Racism Dominates US Border Policy As Ukrainians Welcomed, Black & Brown Refugees, Not So Much!🤮 — “Racial Justice” Takes a L.O.A. At Mayorkas’s DHS & Garland’s DOJ!

 

Haitians at the Border
U.S. Border Patrol Haiti
By Bart van Leeuwan
“Haitians and other refugees of color probably wish they could pass for White Ukrainians!”
Republished by license

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/04/02/with-no-direct-pathways-united-states-hundreds-ukrainian-refugees-are-gathering-us-mexico-border/

Kevin Sieff
Kevin Sieff
Latin America Correspondent
Washington Post

Kevin Sieff reports for WashPost:

. . . .

Tijuana was often indifferent to the iterations of migrants and refugees who arrived here. But the support for Ukrainians was immediate.

“We will work together so you can achieve your dream,” said the city’s mayor, Montserrat Caballero, when she visited the encampment on Thursday. “Welcome to Tijuana.”

On Friday evening, one woman serenaded the refugees while strumming an acoustic guitar. An inebriated American man handed hundreds of dollars in cash to a Ukrainian American volunteer, cursing out Russian President Vladimir Putin as he distributed the money.

“I love Ukrainians,” he slurred.

No. 319 was 21-year-old Svyastoslav Urusky, from Lviv, whose grandparents lived in Sacramento and were waiting for him on the other side of the border crossing.

Like many of the Ukrainians in Tijuana, Urusky had visited U.S. embassies and consulates in European capitals after leaving Ukraine, inquiring about a path to refugee status in the United States.

“They told us, ‘Sorry, we don’t have any options for you yet,’ ” Urusky recounted an embassy official in Poland saying.

So he and his family, after reading the guidance on a Telegram channel, booked flights to Mexico. At 1 p.m. on Friday afternoon, his number was called.

. . . .

At the Tijuana border crossing, U.S. officials have given orders that only Ukrainians can be put on the list. A policy known as Title 42, due to be lifted in May, has prevented asylum seekers from crossing the border to make their claims since the beginning of the pandemic. It has been used in about 1.7 million migrant expulsions over the past two years.

On Friday, a family of Honduran asylum seekers, turned away at the border, passed by the Ukrainian encampment to ask for small change.

U.S. officials have carved out an exemption to Title 42 for Ukrainians. But many Russians are fleeing simultaneously, including some with Ukrainian relatives. No. 939 was a Ukrainian woman whose 18-year-old son had a Russian passport.

“Will they let us across?” she asked a volunteer. No one could answer.

. . . .

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

Read the complete story at the link.

I’m in favor of fair, humane, generous, and dignified treatment of all refugees and asylum seekers! That’s actually what our laws and international treaties to which we are party require. 

Sadly, under Trump, the U.S. Government, aided to a large extent by feckless and often right-leaning Federal Courts, simply “normalized” racism-driven violations of legal and human rights. So far has our political system and the rule of law deteriorated that the Biden Administration, and even some Dem pols (e.g., Joe Manchin, Henry Cuellar), speak of illegal racist treatment of refugees and migrants as “options” and “strategies” rather than legal and moral perversions. 

According to these folks, we should check the polls, keep an eye on the midterms, and heed the chatter on Sunday talk shows before deciding whether it’s “good policy” to treat persons of color as human beings entitled to seek legal protection or whether to keep knowingly and intentionally violating the law by treating their lives as expendable because it might “play better” at the polls. (It actually won’t).

Perhaps the “low point” of the recent discussion of the long-overdue, still well in the future, elimination of the “illegal Title 42 ruse” came on Meet the Press with Chuck Todd. There, Chuck quipped that an anonymous Biden Administration source had said something to the effect of: “It’s a long time till May 23, perhaps we’ll have a ‘new strain’ of COVID by then.” 

In other words, perhaps not surprisingly given their scofflaw, racist, demeaning, and dehumanizing actions at the border to date, some within the Biden Administration are secretly (or not so secretly) “hoping” for another “fake emergency.” That will allow them to continue to violate the legal and human rights of Haitians, Latin Americans, and other persons of color while offering preferential treatment to their White Brothers & Sisters (“folks just like us”) fleeing Ukraine!

Once you violate our law 1.7 million times, with deadly, disastrous human consequences, it’s hard to stop! It’s also hard to talk credibly about “equal justice” and the “rule of law” when your actions repeatedly are contrary to both. That’s a problem that the Biden Administration, and particularly Garland and his complicit group at DOJ, have yet to come to grips with!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-04-22

🗽OVER 100 CIVIL & HUMAN RIGHTS NGOS PROTEST BIDEN ADMINISTRATION’S FAILURE TO RESTORE RULE OF LAW FOR REFUGEES @ BORDER! — Continued Use Of Title 42 To Suspend Asylum Blasted By Experts: “The administration’s recent actions highlighted above are in direct contravention of the goal to repair the broken immigration system you inherited.”

Biden Muddled Liberty MessageBiden Muddled Liberty Message

Biden Border Message
“Border Message”
By Steve Sack
Reproduced under license

Here is the letter:

Joint-Letter-to-President-Biden-on-Expulsion-Flights-to-Southern-Mexico-and-Forthcoming-Changes-to-Asylum-Processing_8132021

 

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

  • Confirms and amplifies they absurdity and wrongness of US District Judge Kacsmaryk’s recent decision to “restore” the unlawful, cruel, inhumane, and unnecessary MPP (“Let ‘Em Die In Mexico”) https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/08/14/%e2%98%a0%ef%b8%8f%e2%9a%b0%ef%b8%8falternate-universe-where-human-rights-human-dignity-due-process-dont-matter-trumpist-usdj-shafts-asylum-seekers-of-color-by-reinstating/;
  • As the human rights situations in Afghanistan, Haiti, and the Northern Triangle continue to unravel, the lack of a coherent, operational, legally sound, properly generous refugee and asylum program will continue to haunt the Administration;
  • In particular, the disgraceful failure to establish a strong, consistent, humane, and protection-oriented interpretation of gender-based asylum to protect women, who are disproportionately targeted for persecution, torture, and other violence, will cost lives of the most vulnerable and be a lasting stain on our nation. (I just listened to Peter Baker, NBC WH Correspondent, on Meet the Press, characterize Afghanistan under the Taliban as a “nation of spouse beaters!”)

The need to fix our our refugee and asylum systems immediately was obvious on January 20, 2021. Why, after 7 months it still is nowhere close to being accomplished is less obvious!

The turmoil in Afghanistan and Haiti and the ongoing human rights disasters in Latin America, all reasonably predictable, are going to increase the human and political problems flowing from a failure to take human rights seriously and to bring the practical human rights experts necessary to solve these issues constructively into the Government power structure! In the end, human rights are everyone’s rights! We ignore that at our peril!

Ironically, while protecting women from persecution and improving their lives was used as a justification by Administrations of both parties for our continuing military presence in Afghanistan, now, as the “end game” plays out in real time, it appears to have been largely reduced to a “talking point” (or a “news feature”) without any discernible plan for protecting or saving Afghan female refugees. Sadly politicos and officials from both parties seem more interested in using women’s lives as “cover” for two decades of ultimately futile presence there than with actually saving any lives now. Indeed, if we treat Afghan women refugees with the inhumane indifference we have continued to heap on female refugees seeking legal asylum at our Southern Border, their outlook is beyond grim. 

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-15-21

NBC’S CHUCK TODD (INEXCUSABLY) INVITES CORRUPT ANTI-AMERICAN TRUMP CONSPIRACY PEDDLER/MORON RON JOHNSON (R-WI) TO “MEET THE PRESS” — The Results Were Predictably Absurd & Disgraceful!

Trump Bogus Election
Attribution: Bogus election? by Bruce Plante,
PoliticalCartoons.com
Republished under license

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/chuck-todd-rips-senator-ron-johnson-arsonist-1109216/

Peter Wade Reports for Rolling Stone:

Meet the Press host Chuck Todd pulled no punches during an interview with staunch Trump ally Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) on Sunday morning.

After an explainer of Johnson’s and other officeholders’ planned attempt to subvert democracy by opposing the certification of the Electoral College vote for President-elect Joe Biden on Wednesday, the host laid into the Trump sycophant for pretending to try to fix a problem that the president and lawmakers, like Johnson, duped supporters into believing in the first place.

“You made an allegation that there was widespread fraud. You have failed to offer specific evidence of that widespread fraud. But you’re demanding an investigation on the grounds that there are allegations of widespread fraud,” the host said.

Todd continued, “So essentially, you’re the arsonist here. President Trump is the arsonist here. You’ve started this fire. And now you’re saying, ‘Woah, look at this. Oh my God. All these people believe what we told them,’ because you didn’t have the guts to tell the truth that this election was fair.”

The Republican senator responded as all Trump defenders do, by blaming the media.

. . . .

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

Read the complete article at the link.

There is no excuse for Ron Johnson.

But, there is also no excuse for Chuck Todd giving this vile, dim-witted, total hack a forum for his lies, conspiracy theories, and “Putinesque” anti-American propaganda! Not like he hasn’t demonstrated his toadiness and dishonesty on MTP before!

A disgrace to the Badger State!

Hey, when even former Veep Dick “Dr. Strangelove” Cheney says it’s over, joining a bipartisan group of 10 former Defense Secretaries, it’s over!https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/former-defense-secretaries-rebuke-trump-election/2021/01/03/1c708f64-4de5-11eb-b2e8-3339e73d9da2_story.html

 

PWS

01-04-21

🇺🇸🗽⚖️MAYORKAS APPOINTMENT @ DHS SIGNALS MOVE AWAY FROM RACISM, WHITE NATIONALISM, STUPID NATIVISM AS “POLICIES” – If Confirmed, Can He Finally Bring Sanity, Humanity, Fiscal Responsibility, & Focus On Legitimate Law Enforcement & “National Security” (Rather Than A String Of Fabricated Anti-Immigration Actions Motivated By Overt Racism, Political Opportunism, & Invidious Religious Discrimination) To A Politicized Agency Gone Bezerk? — “This is it. The change we needed, hallelujah,” Says GOP Pundit Al Cardenas!

Suzanne Gamboa
Suzanne Suzanne Gamboa, Political Editor, NBCLatino, NBC NewsDate: October 21, 2013
Place: Washington, DC
Credit: Maria Patricia Leiva/OAS
Creative Commons License
Al Cardenas
Al Cardenas
Last of A Dying GOP Breed?
Al Cardenas speaking at CPAC FL in Orlando, Florida.
Gage Skidmore, Photo
Creative Commons
Alejandro Mayorkas
Alejandro Mayorkas
DHS Secretry – Designate
Official DHS Photo
Public Domain

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/first-latino-tapped-head-dhs-signals-shift-trump-s-hard-n1248716

 

 

From Suzanne Gamboa @ NBC News:

 

Alejandro Mayorkas, the first Latino chosen for President-elect Joe Biden’s Cabinet, will head a Department of Homeland Security that is expected to drastically overhaul President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration policies, as well as put Mayorkas at the forefront of the new administration’s anti-terrorism strategy.

Mayorkas will be the first Latino and first immigrant to head the Department of Homeland Security, if confirmed by the Senate. The highest-ranking Cuban American in the Obama administration, Mayorkas was deputy secretary of DHS under then-Secretary Jeh Johnson, and before that was the director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, a part of DHS that oversees granting citizenship and other immigration benefits.

Mayorkas, if confirmed, will take over the nation’s third-largest agency in terms of employees, one that was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and that oversees several smaller agencies such as Customs and Border Protection, Transportation Security, the Coast Guard and the Secret Service.

 

President-elect Biden names Alejandro Mayorkas for Homeland Security Chief

NOV. 23, 202003:15

The Trump administration has drastically transformed the nation’s immigration system with over 400 executive actions — including refusing entry to asylum-seekers, taking children from parents at the border and restricting travel to the U.S. by Muslims.

There will be pressure on the Biden administration to act quickly on immigration and uphold pledges he made on the campaign trail, such as ending travel bans and protecting young immigrants, known as Dreamers, and to take such actions in the first 100 days of his administration.

Much of Trump’s immigration policy was the work of his adviser Stephen Miller, who cited and promoted white nationalist beliefs in emails leaked to the Southern Poverty Law Center last year.

 

. . . .

 

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

Read the rest of Suzanne’s report at the link.

 

 

Al Cardenas has been one of very few Republicans to appear on “Meet the Press” over the past four years who has 1) dealt with facts, and 2) said something worthwhile. The normal GOP guest on MTP is either a Trump toady or a disingenuous apologist for the worst and most corrupt Administration in U.S. history.

 

I do suggest that Al needs to sit down and have a “heart to heart” with his Senate buddies Marco Rubio and  Ted Cruz as well as lots of Cuban-Americans in Florida about the future of America.  They don’t seem to be on the same page, or indeed even in the same universe, as Al and the substantial majority of American voters.

 

This also illustrates the vital importance to DHS reform of a strong, due process, human rights, efficiency oriented, “best practices” EOIR with expert judges from the NDPA in leadership positions and on the BIA (and eventually the Immigration Courts). In the past, true reform at DHS has often been inhibited by refusal of supervisors and line officials to follow “policies sent out from Washington” specifically designed to enhance individual justice, insert reality, and promote docket and litigation responsibility and efficiency. In other words, the type of practical, reasonable, humane, experience-based prosecutorial discretion policies that every other law enforcement agency in the U.S., save DHS, routinely follows.

 

DHS reforms won’t be fully effective unless preceded by an EOIR under new leadership with an expert, courageous, independent due process committed BIA unswervingly dedicated to protecting the rights of asylum seekers and other migrants and effectively requiring DHS to operate within the law and conform to rational, practical, non-discriminatory policies. The talent is out there, just waiting be tapped!

 

A friend recently asked me what I expected to happen when the U.S. asylum system is reinstituted as President-Elect Biden and Vice President Harris have pledged. Here’s my answer:

 

[The Biden Administration] will get them [asylum applications] adjudicated in a timely and professional manner; more will qualify for protection, thereby allowing more of the work to be shifted to the Asylum Office; the refugee program will expand; America will prosper!

 

I hope I’m right. But, it won’t happen without a “new awakening and some new faces” at EOIR. Remember, it’s not rocket science!

 

Due Process Forever!

 

PWS

11-25-20

 

 

 

 

 

🤡☹️A COURT W/O FRIENDS (THAT ISN’T A “COURT” AT ALL): EOIR Director Adopts Amicus’s Suggested Clarification, Then Shoots Messenger — Matter of Bay Area Legal Services, Inc. (“Bay Area II”)

Michelle Mendez
Michelle Mendez
Defending Vulnerable Populations Director
Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (“CLINIC”)
EYORE
“Eyore In Distress”
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”

Michelle Mendez responds for CLINIC to McHenry’s latest decision in an e-mail to Dan Kowalski at LexisNexis Immigration Community:

Subject: [immprof] RE: Matter of BAY AREA LEGAL SERVICES, INC., 28 I&N Dec. 16 (DIR 2020)

 

Dan, thank you for sharing this new decision from EOIR Director McHenry.

 

This second decision in Matter of BAY AREA LEGAL SERVICES, INC. from EOIR Director McHenry may seem to come out of nowhere so, since the decision is aimed at CLINIC, we would like to provide background.

CLINIC’s network is comprised of approximately 380 immigration legal services organizations many of which have successfully relied on Recognition and Accreditation program to expand their legal services capacity in serving low-income immigrant communities. In support of our network, CLINIC has specifically catered to the needs of Accredited Representatives by, as examples, designing trial skills and legal writing trainings just for them and supporting them on their accreditation applications to EOIR. Given our expertise and interest in the Recognition and Accreditation program, when EOIR Director McHenry issued a call for amicus briefs on Recognition and Accreditation issues, CLINIC submitted a brief and we later learned, via the (first) decision in Matter of BAY AREA LEGAL SERVICES, 27 I&N Dec. 837 (DIR 2020), that we were the sole org to appear as amicus.

 

Unfortunately, in Matter of BAY AREA LEGAL SERVICES, 27 I&N Dec. 837 (DIR 2020), EOIR Director McHenry’s discussion of the skills needed to attain full accreditations was vague, unclear, and therefore confusing. Footnotes 13 and 14 in the decision appear to fault the applicant for full accreditation status for not practicing before EOIR before being granted full accreditation. At worst, the decision could lead one to infer that accredited representatives had to engage in unauthorized practice of immigration law to get the skills needed for full accreditation. We brought this issue to EOIR Director McHenry’s attention and he entertained our feedback during a phone conversation while disagreeing with our concerns. While the phone call was ultimately unhelpful as to this issue, we were able to discern just how unfamiliar he is with the Recognition and Accreditation program. At one point he stated that it was “totally conceivable that [accredited representatives] have some litigation experience.” It is not totally conceivable and we informed him of this too. After our call we sent EOIR Director McHenry the attached letter. We followed up with EOIR Director McHenry on Tuesday. On Wednesday he responded that “a type of formal response is forthcoming.” On Thursday he issued this second, published decision in which he chastises us for challenging him when we, as mere amicus curiae, have “no authority” to do so. However, you will notice that he also took the opportunity to clarify the very points we told him were vague and problematic. Of course, EOIR Director McHenry did not have to go the published decision route to deal with our concerns, but he preferred to project his power above being collaborative. And we have some concerns that EOIR will use this decision to prevent amici from following up to clear errors in other decisions where the respondent was pro se or the decision addresses in absentia orders.  While I am surprised that CLINIC seemingly made him feel threatened, as a respected retired IJ said, it is an “honor to be called out in something like this.”

 

I am not on the ICLINIC@LIST.MSU.EDU listserv so if someone could forward this email to them, I would be grateful. Thank you.

 

Michelle N. Mendez (she/her/ella/elle)

Director, Defending Vulnerable Populations Program

Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC)

Here’s a link to McHenry’s decision in Bay Area II:

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.justice.gov_eoir_page_file_1291786_download&d=DwMFAw&c=euGZstcaTDllvimEN8b7jXrwqOf-v5A_CdpgnVfiiMM&r=Wq374DTv_PXfIom65XBqoA&m=YJ89kw8K2uqLIw5FdRsilIr3v_T7ai5C3pv9pIngFJM&s=9RKJ0zaLqmRz-W92NyUtHQFB12wC4rz5tVptNEOgYrw&e=

And, here’s a link to the CLINIC letter to McHenry that apparently spurred Bay Area II:

McHenry amend request final

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

So, CLINIC, the sole Amicus, with much more experience in the Recognition & Accreditation Program than McHenry, offers McHenry some helpful suggestions for clarifying his decision. He should have thanked them and issued an amended decision on his own, as “real courts” sometimes do.

Instead, McHenry threw a hissy fit, imagining that his “authority” was being challenged. While making the suggested clarification, he took the occasion unnecessarily and inappropriately to publicly dump on the Amicus who helped him. 

Clearly, the act of an arrogant, yet insecure, person who knows he’s “way over his head” in his job. Sound familiar? But, hardly anything we didn’t already know about the awful legal and management mess at EOIR. And, in many ways a microcosm of the multiple disasters and institutional breakdowns sweeping our nation in the Age of the (Not So) Great Imposter.

I was gratified yesterday to hear former Ambassador Susan Rice on Meet the Press  “channel Courtside” by referring to Trump’s so-called intelligence advisors as a “Clown Show” 🤡 in connection with the “Putin’s bounty fiasco.” On the other hand, that our national intelligence is in the hands of sycophantic clowns advising the “Chief Clown” is a cause for grave concern.

The involvement of the EOIR Director in any form of case adjudication is highly questionable from an historical and ethical standpoint. Here’s my previous “mini-history” of the Director position from Courtside: https://immigrationcourtside.com/2017/07/06/katherine-m-reilly-named-acting-deputy-director-of-eoir-also-a-mini-history-of-eoir-directors/

Suffice it to say that McHenry’s performance is powerful evidence of the reasons why the Director of EOIR should be abolished, hopefully as part of Article I legislation, and replaced with an “Executive Director,” a purely administrative position with no judicial or “legal policy” functions, and subordinate to and reporting to the Chief Appellate Judge  who would replace the BIA Chair. The recent attempts to “reinsert” an improper adjudicative and “policy” role for the Director is yet another example of the gross legal, ethical, and management failures of EOIR under Trump’s DOJ kakistocracy. 

Due Process Forever!  Clown Courts,🤡 Never!

PWS

07-05-20

🏴‍☠️🆘 AMERICAN NIGHTMARE: THIS DEADLY ☠️🤮 “CLOWN SHOW” 🤡 IS A “COURT” SYSTEM? — You’ve GOT To Be Kidding! — “’Everyone feels the message is, nobody cares if you die as long as we get our numbers,’ said one worker in the office. . . . ‘I feel like half the time, I’m working on Trump’s reelection,’ said an employee in the office who spoke anonymously because of concerns about retaliation. ‘This is just a piece for him to tout when reelection time comes up about how much he’s getting done.’” — Politico’s Betsy Woodruff Swan Takes Us Inside “HQ” In  America’s Most Morally Corrupt Court System, Where “Trumpian” Contempt For Due Process & Human Lives ☠️ Extends To Its Own Employees, Many Of Them Lower-Paid Clerical Staff!

Betsy Woodruff Swan
Betsy Woodruff Swan
FederalLaw Enforcement Reporter
Politico

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/23/doj-union-immigration-deportation-coronavirus-202075

Betsy Woodruff Swan reports for Politico:

The union for lawyers and support staff who handle Justice Department immigration appeals says their office’s working conditions put workers’ lives in danger. And employees in the DOJ office handling those immigration appeals said many suspect it’s because the department prioritizes high deportation numbers over worker safety.

“I feel like half the time, I’m working on Trump’s reelection,” said an employee in the office who spoke anonymously because of concerns about retaliation. “This is just a piece for him to tout when reelection time comes up about how much he’s getting done.”

It’s an accusation a spokesperson for the office vehemently denied. But the conflict is no longer being kept in the DOJ family; the president of that union recently filed a complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), saying management requires too many people to come into the office, putting workers at risk of contracting Covid-19, the sickness caused by the novel coronavirus. Concerns in the office about worker safety were first reported by Government Executive.

At issue are working conditions in DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR). The office oversees America’s immigration courts––which are part of the Justice Department––and lawyers there handle appeals from immigrants fighting deportation orders. Those courts face a mammoth backlog of more than one million cases, by Syracuse University’s count. Despite hiring more immigration judges, the backlog has doubled under the Trump administration.

EOIR leaders have maximized how much telework employees there can do, the spokesperson said, adding that the office “takes the safety, health, and well-being of its employees very seriously.”

But the OSHA complaint, which Politico reviewed, says the office is violating a federal law mandating workplaces be free of “hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm.”

“The agency’s actions described below are proliferating the spread of a known and deadly contagion both within our building and to our surrounding communities,” the complaint reads. The office policies “are expected to result in death and severe health complications and/or possible life-long disabilities,” it says.

The office requires most support staff to come in, rather than telework, as they deal with physical pieces of paper and files as part of their work, per the complaint. The few who can work from home can only do so once a week, and on rotating days because they share the same laptop, the complaint reads. At work, support staff sit in cubicles in a shared area, “in direct breathing paths of each other,” it says.

Nancy Sykes, the president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 3525, filed the complaint on behalf of the union. It represents non-managerial Board of Immigration Appeals employees in the office, including attorneys, paralegals, clerks, and legal assistants.

The EOIR spokesperson, meanwhile, said the office is working to implement coronavirus guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Office of Personnel Management, and the General Services Administration.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Betsy’s report at the link. Long a superstar at The Daily Beast, and an articulate “repeat panelist” on “Meet the Press” with Chuck Todd, it’s great to have Betsy “back on the immigration beat” as a part of her “new portfolio” over at Politico. I’ve always found Betsy’s clear prose and insightful analysis enlightening!

Typically within the Trump immigration kakistocracy, the harshest consequences fall jump-on the most vulnerable. In Immigration Court, it’s often unrepresented asylum seekers, some of them mere children, being railroaded through the system with regard to neither due process nor a legally correct application of asylum law. Here, the brunt of the latest EOIR assault on human dignity during the pandemic appears to fall on the support staff at the “bottom of the totem pole” of EOIR’s “bloated at the top,” yet astoundingly misdirected and consequently inefficient, bureaucracy. What a way to run the railroad — even a “Deportation Railroad!” 🚂

As my good friend and Round Table colleague, Judge Jeffrey Chase said: “In spite of having very genuine concerns, the BIA staff are generally off the radar. Thanks to Betsy for spotlighting them. The BIA staff union and the NAIJ put out a joint statement yesterday; let’s hope this begins a period of increased communication and cooperation.”

Many of us “old timers” remember a bygone era when the BIA staff was considered one of the premier places for career attorneys to work at the DOJ. This was largely because staff were treated “like family.” The BIA, in cooperation with the union, actually “pioneered” things like “flexible work schedules” and “work from home” at the DOJ. That union (of which I actually was among the “founding members” back in the 1970’s) was perhaps the first one at the DOJ to represent the interests of both attorneys and support staff. Those times sadly are long gone. 

As I’ve mentioned before, under the Trump regime, EOIR “non-management” employees at all levels levels are treated with a disrespect, intentional demeaning, and callous disregard for health and welfare usually reserved for those poor souls trapped in what passes for an immigration justice system under the White Nationalist driven Trump regime. Risking employees’ lives to promote Trump’s reelection agenda? That’s actually illegal on a number of accounts. But, don’t expect any corrective actions in an era where the “rule of law” has been willfully distorted and undermined as Congress and the Article IIIs simply melt away under Trump’s contemptuous scofflaw onslaught.

Unhappily, as Betsy’s article highlights, there appears to be little chance of meaningful change unless and until enough employees actually start dropping dead, by which time it will be too late. 

But, as I keep pointing out, there are “other villains” here. Despite DOJ/EOIR efforts to suppress truth, all of this basically is happening in “plain sight,” as we know from folks like Judge Ashley Tabaddor, the NAIJ, the BIA union, former Judges on the Round Table who are speaking out, courageous employees willing to “blow the whistle” anonymously, as well as reporters like Betsy, Erich Wagner at  Government Executive (who “broke” this story), and Malathi Nayak at Bloomberg News, to name just a few. The unconstitutional mockery of Due Process, immigration, and asylum laws in Immigration Court hearings is documented in verbatim transcripts available to the Article III Courts and the Congress. 

Yet, Congress and the Article III Courts let these grotesque abuses within our justice system go on largely unabated. It’s a disgusting and disturbing saga of the breakdown of America’s democratic institutions and their replacement by an authoritarian, “Third-World style” kakistocracy, headed by a dangerously incompetent and unrestrained clown 🤡 whom those charged with protecting us and our institutions refuse to hold accountable. 

This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!🇺🇸 We need “regime change” at all levels. And, that certainly includes a better, more courageous, more scholarly Federal Judiciary that understands immigration and human rights, believes in Due Process and fundamental fairness for all under law, and will finally stand up and put an end to these gross abuses if Congress doesn’t act first. Obviously, it’s also essential to get a new Executive committed to advancing, rather than destroying, our Constitution and the rule of law and who will strive for best, rather than worst, practices in all phases of government. 

Due Process Forever! Clown Courts 🤡☠️ Never!

PWS

04-23-20

NY TIMES BLASTED FOR GIVING FORUM TO WHITE NATIONALIST PROPAGANDA FROM CIS SHILL! — “The organization has gained credibility by writing pseudo-science ‘research’ papers that are little more than racist ideology dressed up in scholarly language.”

 

 

Sebastian Murdock
Sebastian Murdock
Senior Reporter
HuffPost

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/new-york-times-anti-immigration-op-ed-hate-group_n_5e21d9d8c5b673621f752f9c

The Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-immigration think tank, is categorized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

BY SEBASTIAN MURDOCK

SENIOR REPORTER

HIUFFPOST

The New York Times published an op-ed decrying immigration by an author claiming to be a “liberal restrictionist” who is in fact attached to a known hate group.

The column, published Friday, was written by , “a senior research fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies,” according to the biography listed under his byline.

CIS, which calls itself “an independent, non-partisan, non-profit, research organization,” is a known hate group that has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-immigrant movement that hires racist writers and associates with white nationalists.

“I’m a Liberal Who Thinks Immigration Must Be Restricted,” Kammer’s headline reads. The piece begins with an anecdote about how immigrants take the jobs of American-born workers and later claims “many liberal Democrats” want illegal immigration to run rampant:

Now many liberal Democrats, including those who call for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, seek to erase the distinction between legal and illegal immigration. Under the banner of inclusiveness, equality, human rights, racial reconciliation and reparations for American interventions in the third world, those liberals demand sanctuary for those who make it past the Border Patrol or overstay a visa. Few speak openly of open borders, but that is essentially what they are calling for.

Throughout the piece, Kammer seems set on reminding readers that he is liberal, even if his views might suggest otherwise.

“That’s why I call myself a liberal restrictionist,” Kammer, a former journalist, writes. “I have long considered myself a moderate liberal, in part because Democrats have always been the allies of working people.”

White House adviser Stephen Miller, a white nationalist, has cited CIS when speaking about immigration, and in 2011, the group released a report attempting to connect immigration with the creation of future terrorists, calling them “terror babies.”

The organization has gained credibility by writing pseudo-science “research” papers that are little more than racist ideology dressed up in scholarly language. According to the SPLC, “longtime CIS executive director Mark Krikorian’s contributions to the immigration policy debate rarely rise above petulant commentary dashed with extremist statements.”

Running a column by an author employed by a known hate group is the latest in the Times’s run of publishing racist pieces in its opinion section. In December, columnist and known bedbug Bret Stephens cited a study by a white nationalist that falsely claimed Ashkenazi Jews have a higher IQ than other races. The study he cited “traffics in centuries-old anti-Semitic tropes,” according to the SPLC.

Do better, New York Times.

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

Ben Mathis-Lilley
Ben Mathis-Lilley
Chief News Blogger
SLATE

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/01/times-op-ed-white-nationalist-center-for-immigration-studies.html

THE SLATEST

Times Taps White Nationalist Organization for Thought-Provoking Perspective on Immigration

By BEN MATHIS-LILLEY

JAN 17, 20206:42 PM

The New York Times opinion section under editor James Bennet ostensibly aims to challenge the paper’s predominately liberal readers by presenting them with thoughtful critiques of their worldview. In practice, it runs pieces like this recent argument that launching a war against Iran would end attacks against American interests in the Middle East—which was written by a veteran of the Bush administration who had predicted confidently in a 2003 piece also published by the Times that launching a war against Iraq would end attacks against American interests in the Middle East. There was no acknowledgment in the new piece of the old one, as an opinion section committed to intellectual honesty might require, nor was it particularly challenging in the sense of being difficult to rebut. But it did make people on the left feel bad, and like they were losing their minds, which is the bar that Bennet’s section requires an argument to clear.

The essay “I’m a Liberal Who Thinks Immigration Must Be Restricted,” published in the Times Thursday, may represent the nadir of this approach. It makes a familiar argument: that “the left” believes in a “post-national” system of open borders which sacrifices the interests of native-born working Americans to the interests of low-skilled foreign immigrants who drive down wages and disrupt the cultural cohesiveness of their communities. It argues for respecting a distinction between legal and illegal immigration and asserts that Donald Trump’s position on immigration can be appreciated, in a non-racist way, as “a patriotic battle to defend common people.” It accuses Trump’s critics of having had their minds addled by “tribal passions” and a fetish for conflict “between ethnic groups,” and it proposes a “conciliatory” policy that would offer amnesty to existing undocumented workers but institute a crackdown regime of visa enforcement that would prevent future undocumented individuals from finding jobs.

The familiarity of the article’s arguments is matched by the familiarity of its flaws. While large-scale immigration is, in fact, believed by some non-racists to flatten wages at the bottom of the pay scale, it’s also known to accelerate rather than retard economic expansion overall, and tends to be supported by progressives who advocate for other means of increasing working-class wages and sharing the benefits of GDP growth. The distinction between “legal” and “illegal” immigration is not some ancient, race-agnostic pillar of global affairs, but rather a concept that was instituted in the United States in the early 20th century to explicitly discriminate against Asian, southern European, and eastern European individuals and expanded in the 1960s to explicitly discriminate against Mexicans. Trump’s support is strongest in areas where there are fewer undocumented immigrants, not more, and he lost four of the five states that have the highest undocumented populations per capita. Many of the most immigration-heavy and ethnically diverse cities in the U.S. are also the safest and wealthiest and are considered so desirable to live in by migrating native-born Americans that they are experiencing housing crises.

As to whether criticizing an administration that instituted the premeditated, systematic separation of young children from their parents after they applied legally for asylum is a matter of unseemly “tribal passions,” or whether support for the principles of inclusive American citizenship described on the Statue of Liberty constitutes “post-national” anti-patriotism, perhaps we can agree to disagree.

More concerning than any of these specific problems, though, is the piece’s provenance: It’s written by someone named Jerry Kammer, a fellow at a think tank called the Center for Immigration Studies. Kammer has made a career out of covering immigration policy, he writes, for two reasons: “I was fascinated by its human, political and moral complexity. I also wanted to push back against the campaign by activist groups to label restrictionism as inherently racist.” He expresses regret that “odious people” with white-power affiliations have given the cause of cutting back on immigration a “bad name.”

What neither Kammer nor the Times discloses is that the Center for Immigration Studies was in fact founded by these people, most prominent among them a white nationalist named John Tanton who died last year. Tanton, as the Southern Poverty Law Center has documented, believed that the United States needed to maintain a “European-American majority, and a clear one at that”; he founded CIS, he wrote in the 1980s, in order to give his ideas the appearance of independent “credibility.”

Kammer does write that he disagrees with “some of the center’s hard-line positions.” Among his more hard-line colleagues at CIS are a writer named Jason Richwine, who contributed to a journal founded by white supremacist Richard Spencer and who has said that “IQ” is the “most important” difference between racial groups. (As the SPLC has documented, CIS has circulated literally hundreds of articles by explicit white supremacists like Spencer via links in its weekly newsletter. Its director once accused Barack Obama of trying to “foment race war.”) A statement of purpose on the CIS website is credited to longtime Tanton collaborator Dan Stein, who once complained that mass immigration was a tool developed by “Ted Kennedy and his political allies” in approximately 1958 to “retaliate against Anglo-Saxon dominance.”

In 1997, the Wall Street Journal wrote about Tanton in a piece called “The Intellectual Roots of Nativism.” It was a scathing article which noted that Tanton had once described the immigrant’s contribution to society as “defecating and creating garbage and looking for jobs.” The piece expressed concern that “otherwise sober-minded conservatives” and “reasonable critics of immigration” were affiliating themselves with his ideas. The author of that WSJ article, a 28-year-old journalist named Tucker Carlson, has since made the career-advancing decision to embrace Tanton-style nativism; he was in the news not too long ago for complaining in his role as a Fox News host that immigrants make the United States physically “dirtier.”

Whatever space ever existed between mainstream conservatism and white-power nationalism, Carlson demonstrates, has collapsed. And it turns out that the “odious people” that Kammer references in the Times are actually his colleagues and forebears, who created his organization so that policies intended to perpetuate “European-American” and “Anglo-Saxon” superiority could be laundered into the respectable discourse. What else is there to say but: It worked!

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

So, we have a White Nationalist in the White House assisted by neo-Nazi advisor Stephen Miller actually turning nativism into “Government policy.” Other white supremacists are scattered in key positions throughout the Government, particularly the immigration bureaucracy. Trump tweets and right-wing media put out a constant barrage of nativist lies, misrepresentations, false narratives, and racial, ethnic, and religious slurs.

So, just why is it that the “mainstream media” owes White Nationalists yet another forum to spread their nativist propaganda?

It’s not limited, of course, to just the Times. The WashPost regularly publishes largely fact and value free right-wing blather from professional shills like Marc Thiessen and Hugh Hewitt under the guise of “op-eds.”

And Chuck Todd regularly invites GOP congenital liars and Trump toadies like Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to spread their lies, false narratives, and debunked “conspiracy theories” from the “bully pulpit” of “Meet the Press.” To top it off, Chuck then appears to be flabbergasted that when he confronts these guys with truth and facts, they “double down” continuing to lie to his face, ignore established facts, and spread Putinesque conspiracy theories. 

Fact is, most of the Trump agenda is corrupt, counterfactual, unethical, inhumane, divisive, and corrosive to American democracy. We receive enough of it from lots of sources every day, pretty much 24-7-365. Is it really necessary for those supposedly dedicated to truth and democracy to give more free “air time” to nativist shills spreading their racially corrosive, divisive, anti-democracy propaganda?

PWS

01-18-20

HISTORY W/ HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: Remembering Dec.7, 1941, Exposing Those Who Betray Its Legacy —“The interests of reactionary American leaders and Russian president Putin run parallel.”

Heather Cox Richardson
Heather Cox Richardson
Historian
Professor, Boston College

 

December 7, 2019

Dec 8 pastedGraphic.png

On the sunny Sunday morning of December 7, 1941, Messman Doris Miller had served breakfast aboard the U.S.S. West Virginia, stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and was collecting laundry when the first of nine Japanese torpedoes hit the ship. In the deadly confusion, Miller reported to an officer, who told him to help move the ship’s mortally wounded captain off the bridge. Unable to move him far, Miller sheltered the captain behind the ship’s conning tower. Then another officer ordered Miller to pass ammunition to him as he started up one of the two abandoned anti-aircraft guns in front of the conning tower. Miller had not been trained to use the guns because, as a black man, his naval assignment was to serve the white officers. But while the officer was distracted, Miller began to fire one of the guns. He fired it until he ran out of ammunition. Then he helped to move injured sailors to safety before he and the other survivors abandoned the West Virginia, which sank to the bottom of Pearl Harbor.

That night, America declared war on Japan. Japan declared war on America the next day, and four days later, on December 11, 1941, Italy and Germany both declared war on America. “The powers of the steel pact, Fascist Italy and Nationalist Socialist Germany, ever closely linked, participate from today on the side of heroic Japan against the United States of America,” Italian leader Benito Mussolini said. “We shall win.” Of course they would. Mussolini and Germany’s leader, Adolf Hitler, believed the mongrel Americans had been corrupted by Jews and “Negroes,” and could never conquer their own organized military machine.

The steel pact, as Mussolini called it, was the vanguard of his new political ideology. That ideology was called fascism, and he and Hitler thought would destroy democracy once and for all.

Mussolini had been a socialist as a young man and had grown terribly frustrated at how hard it was to organize people. No matter how hard socialists tried, they seemed unable to convince ordinary people that they must rise up and take over the country’s means of production.

The efficiency of World War One inspired Mussolini. He gave up on socialism and developed a new political theory that rejected the equality that defined democracy. He came to believe that a few leaders must take a nation toward progress by directing the actions of the rest. These men must organize the people as they had been during wartime, ruthlessly suppressing all opposition and directing the economy so that business and politicians worked together. And, logically, that select group of leaders would elevate a single man, who would become an all-powerful dictator. To weld their followers into an efficient machine, they demonized opponents into an “other” that their followers could hate.

This system of government was called “fascism,” after the Latin word “fasces,” which were a bundle of sticks bound together. The idea is that each stick can be easily broken alone, but as a bundle are unbreakable. (It was a common symbol: in fact, Lincoln’s hand rests on fasces in the statue at the Lincoln Memorial.) Italy adopted fascism, and Mussolini inspired others, notably Germany’s Adolf Hitler. Those leaders came to believe that their system was the ideology of the future, and they set out to destroy the messy, inefficient democracy that stood in their way.

America fought World War Two to defend democracy from fascism. And while fascism preserved hierarchies in society, democracy called on all men as equals. Of the more than 16 million Americans who served in the war, more than 1.2 million were African American men and women, 500,000 were Latinos, and more than 550,000 Jews were part of the military. Among the many ethnic groups who fought, Native Americans served at a higher percentage than any other ethnic group—more than a third of able-bodied men from 18-50 joined the service—and among those 25,000 soldiers were the men who developed the famous “Code Talk,” based in tribal languages, that Hitler’s codebreakers never cracked.

The American president at the time, Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt, hammered home that the war was about the survival of democracy. Fascists insisted that they were moving their country forward fast and efficiently—claiming the trains ran on time, for example, although in reality they didn’t— but FDR constantly noted that the people in Italy and Germany were begging for food and shelter from the soldiers of democratic countries.

Ultimately, the struggle between fascism and democracy was the question of equality. Were all men really created equal, or were some born to lead the rest, whom they held subservient to their will?

Based in the principle that all men are created equal, democracy, FDR reminded Americans again and again, was the best possible government. Thanks to armies made up of men and women from all races and ethnicities—a mongrel population– the Allies won the war against fascism, and it seemed that democracy would dominate the world forever.

But as the impulse of WWII pushed Americans toward a more just and inclusive society after it, those determined not to share power warned their supporters that including people of color and women as equals in society would threaten their own liberty. Those reactionary leaders rode that fear into control of our government, and now, once again, democracy is under attack by those who believe some people are better than others.

In June 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that democracy is obsolete. He believes that a few oligarchs should run the world while the rest of us do as we are told, and he is doing his best to destroy both American democracy and the international structures, like NATO, that hold it in place. The interests of reactionary American leaders and Russian president Putin run parallel. Astonishingly, that affinity has recently come out into the open. Some of our leaders are publicly echoing Putin’s propaganda, apparently willing to work with him to undermine the principles on which our nation rests so long as it means they can stay in power.

Will we permit the destruction of American democracy on our watch?

When America came under attack before, people like Doris Miller refused to let that happen. For all that American democracy still discriminated against him, it gave him room to stand up for the concept of human equality. He did so until 1943, when he laid down his life for it. Promoted to cook after the Navy sent him on a publicity tour, Miller was assigned to a new ship, the U. S. S. Liscome Bay, which was struck by a Japanese torpedo on November 24, 1943. It sank in minutes, taking two-thirds of the crew, including Miller, with it.

I hear a lot these days about how American democracy is doomed and the oligarchs will win. Maybe. But the beauty of our system is that it gives us people like Doris Miller.

Even better, it makes us people like Doris Miller.

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Who would have thought that Putinist fascism would take over such a large portion of the U.S. Government without firing a shot?

“Will we permit the destruction of American democracy on our watch?” Interesting question on which, unfortunately, the jury is still out.

Anyone who watched Ted “Out Of Cruz Control” (R-RUS) suck up to and double down on V. Putin’s & Trump’s favorite false narrative about the Ukraine on “Meet the Press” yesterday couldn’t be too optimistic for the survival of our democracy if the GOP has any say in the matter! Chuck Todd was left almost speechless by Cruz’s outright lies and  Putinist propaganda!

PWS

12-09-19 

SUPER STOOGE: Sen. John N. Kennedy (R-LA) Doubles Down On Putin’s False Ukraine Narrative On “Meet The Press” — Chuck Todd Incredulous At Trump Sycophant Senator’s Pressing Debunked Claim!

Felicia Sonmez
Felicia Sonmez
National Political Reporter
WAshington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/sen-kennedy-says-both-ukraine-and-russia-interfered-in-2016-election-despite-intelligence-communitys-assessment/2019/12/01/09652dd8-1459-11ea-9110-3b34ce1d92b1_story.html

By Felicia Sonmez @ WashPost:

Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) said Sunday that both Russia and Ukraine interfered in the 2016 presidential election, despite the intelligence community’s assessment that only Russia did so.

The comments mark Kennedy’s latest attempt to shift the focus away from the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia worked to help elect President Trump, following a Fox News Channel interview last week from which he later backtracked.

They also come as Democrats press forward with their impeachment inquiry into Trump, with the House Intelligence Committee expected to meet Tuesday to approve the release of a report on its findings on Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.

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WATCH: @ChuckTodd asks @SenJohnKennedy if he is “at all concerned that he has been duped” into believing that former Ukraine president worked for the Clinton campaign in 2016 #MTP #IfItsSunday@SenJohnKennedy: “No, just read the articles.”

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Asked about conservative columnist Michael Gerson’s criticism of his incorrect claim to Fox that Ukraine, not Russia, might have been behind the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails in 2016, Kennedy said he disagrees with the suggestion that he’s turning a blind eye to the truth.

“I think both Russia and Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election,” Kennedy told host Chuck Todd on NBC News’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

Todd pressed Kennedy on whether he was concerned that he had been “duped” by Russian propaganda, noting reports that U.S. intelligence officials recently briefed senators that “this is a Russian intelligence propaganda campaign in order to get people like you to say these things about Ukraine.”

Kennedy responded that he had received no such warning.

“I wasn’t briefed. Dr. Hill is entitled to her opinion,” Kennedy said, referring to former National Security Council Russia adviser Fiona Hill, who testified in the impeachment inquiry last month.

In her public testimony, Hill warned that several Trump allies had spread unfounded allegations that Ukraine, rather than Russia, had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

“This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services,” she said.

Kennedy argued Sunday that Ukraine’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 campaign have been “very well-documented,” citing reporting by the Economist, the Financial Times, the Washington Examiner and others.

“Does that mean that Ukrainian, the Ukrainian leaders were more aggressive than Russia? No. Russia was very aggressive and they’re much more sophisticated. But the fact that Russia was so aggressive does not exclude the fact that President Poroshenko actively worked for Secretary Clinton,” Kennedy said, referring to former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko.

Despite Kennedy’s claim, there is no evidence that the Ukrainian government engaged in a large-scale effort to aid Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Todd responded to the Louisiana Republican’s remarks with disbelief.

“I mean, my goodness, wait a minute, Senator Kennedy,” he said. “You now have the president of Ukraine saying he actively worked for the Democratic nominee for president. I mean, now come on.”

Todd then displayed a photo of Russian President Vladi­mir Putin and the text of remarks Putin made at a “Russia Calling!” economic forum in Moscow on Nov. 20. At the event, Putin expressed pleasure that talk of interference in the 2016 U.S. election has shifted away from Russia and to Ukraine during the impeachment hearings.

“Thank God,” Putin said. “No one is accusing us of interfering in the United States elections anymore. Now they’re accusing Ukraine. We’ll let them deal with that themselves.”

Todd then pressed Kennedy: “You realize the only other person selling this argument outside the United States is this man, Vladimir Putin. … You have done exactly what the Russian operation is trying to get American politicians to do. Are you at all concerned that you’ve been duped?”

“No, because you — just read the articles,” Kennedy replied.

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This article illustrates a continuing problem: you can’t have a real discussion or dialogue about impeachment with any Republican because they just keep repeating the Putin/Trump “party line” of demonstrable lies.  

One of the reports cited by Kennedy, a 2017 Politico article, has since been largely debunked:

After the Politico report came out, other media outlets went to work examining the allegations and found there wasn’t anything to them. The Washington Post reported in July 2017:

“While the Politico story does detail apparent willingness among embassy staffers to help Chalupa and also more broadly documents ways in which Ukrainian officials appeared to prefer Clinton’s candidacy, what’s missing is evidence of a concerted effort driven by Kiev.

U.S. intelligence agencies believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally directed his intelligence agencies to hack into and release private information from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. That effort included hackers from two different intelligence agencies which spent months inside the DNC network before releasing thousands of pages of documents to the public.

…“

By contrast, Politico’s report details the work of one person who was researching Manafort with help from inside the Ukrainian Embassy and who, at some undetermined point, provided info to the Clinton campaign, though she worked for the DNC as a consultant until shortly before the party conventions. That, coupled with the Manafort ledger revelation, is the full scope of the Ukrainian plot that’s been revealed. A weak link to the Ukrainians and a weaker link to the Clinton campaign.

On the July 17, 2017, edition of CNN’s New Day, David Stern, co-author of the original Politico article, said the questions about the involvement of some Ukrainian elements were not equivalent to the many stories about Russian government actions in 2016.

From the July 17, 2017, edition of CNN’s New Day:

“But when you dig down into the details, they’re very, very different,” Stern said, “and it’s important to note the difference there. Now, we said in our article … that we don’t have, as far as we can see, the type of top-down and wide, broad attack on the American election that was being alleged.”

https://www.mediamatters.org/trump-impeachment-inquiry/right-wing-media-wrongly-cite-politico-revive-trumps-ukraine-conspiracy

So, between the credible testimony of Dr. Fiona Hill, supported by the U.S. intelligence community, and a debunked report from Politico and others, Kennedy chooses to believe the latter over the former. Go figure! No doubt Putin is thinking “useful idiot” whenever he sees Kennedy peddle his Kremlin propaganda on TV.

There was a time long ago when the GOP would have been all over any politician helping Russia undermine America’s electoral process and national security. No longer. Now the GOP is the “Party of Putin,” actively working to destroy our nation.

In that respect, you should check out this article today from Post “Fact-Checker” Glenn Kessler: “Not enough Pinocchios for Trump’s CrowdStrike obsession” https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/12/02/not-enough-pinocchios-trumps-crowdstrike-obsession/.

Once, folks would have been aghast at an American President spreading Putin’s false narratives. Now, it “just another day in the Oval Office.” Just one of the many ways in which Trump has demeaned our nation and our political processes. And, it doesn’t even “move the needle” among Trump’s supporters who have abandoned our country and our national interests. 

PWS

12-02-19