Category: Haiti

⚖️THE GIBSON REPORT — 06-13-22 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, Managing Attorney, NIJC — Biden Administration’s Increase In Haitian Deportations Undermines “Los Angeles Declaration” From The Git Go — “Do As I Say, Not As I Do,” Still Administration’s “Message” On Immigration, Racial Justice, Human Rights!

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

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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

 

Some immigrants can be detained at least six months without bond hearing, Supreme Court rules

CNN: The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the federal government can continue to detain certain immigrants in removal proceedings without giving them a bond hearing after six months, in case where the Biden administration has prevailed over the immigration activists who opposed the government in the case.

 

Federal judge in Texas throws out Biden administration immigration enforcement guidelines

CNN: A federal judge in Texas vacated guidelines set by the Biden administration over who is to be prioritized for immigration enforcement, according to a Friday ruling.

 

The Supreme Court gives lawsuit immunity to Border Patrol agents who violate the Constitution

Vox: Justice Clarence Thomas’s majority opinion in Egbert v. Boule, moreover, has implications that stretch far beyond the border. Egbert guts a seminal Supreme Court precedent, Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents (1971), which established that federal law enforcement officers who violate the Constitution may be individually sued — and potentially be required to compensate their victims for their illegal actions.

 

Biden and Latin American Leaders Announce Migration Deal

NYT: The agreement, called the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection, commits the United States to taking 20,000 refugees from Latin America during the next two years, a threefold increase, according to White House officials. Mr. Biden also pledged to increase the number of seasonal worker visas from Central America and Haiti by 11,500.

 

U.S. Accelerated Expulsions of Haitian Migrants in May

NYT: The Biden administration expelled nearly 4,000 Haitians on 36 deportation flights in May — a significant increase over the previous three months — after renegotiating agreements with the island nation, which has been crippled by gang violence and an expanding humanitarian crisis.

 

ICE searched LexisNexis Database over 1 million times in just seven months

Intercept_: Immigration and Customs Enforcement searched a massive database of personal information provided by LexisNexis over 1.2 million times in just a seven-month period in 2021, according to documents reviewed by The Intercept. Critics say the staggering search volume confirms fears that the data broker is enabling the mass surveillance and deportation of immigrants.

 

Lawyers for migrants say U.S. officials slowed family reunifications

WaPo: Weeks into the Trump administration’s family-separation policy, immigration officials fired off emails saying something was awry. The children were being reunited too quickly with their parents, an official wrote on a Friday night in late May 2018.

 

ICE limits migrants’ legal rights, raising deportation risk, ACLU report says

USA Today: Immigrants detained in civil cases face “monumental barriers in finding and communicating with attorneys,” which renders their right to legal representation “essentially meaningless,” according to the report released Thursday.

 

ICE To Consider Military Service In Deportation Decisions

Law360: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will take into account whether noncitizens have served in the U.S. military when making decisions about whether to try to deport them, the agency announced Tuesday.

 

Big Tech calls for Biden administration to let foreign workers’ adult kids stay in the US

CNN: Without intervention, as many as 200,000 children in the United States risk “aging out” of their parents’ immigration status and face having to enter the immigration system as adults themselves, the companies wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

 

Mexico issues nearly 7,000 temporary documents and transit visas to migrants

NPR: In its statement, the Mexican migration agency did not specify what kind of documents were issued but most of the migrants showed papers that gave them a period of one month or more to leave the country or begin regularization procedures in Mexico. Most want to use the documents to reach the U.S. border.

 

Venezuelans big presence in caravan after visa requirement

AP: Before that change, Venezuelans had flown to Mexico City or Cancun as tourists and then made their way comfortably to the border. Many made it from home to the U.S. border in as little as four days.

 

U.S. loosens restrictions on Cuba travel, remittances amid summit blowback

Reuters: The United States on Wednesday moved to lift some Trump-era restrictions on remittances and travel to Cuba even as it fended off criticism for blocking the Communist-run island and long-time foe from attending a regional summit this week.

 

LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES

 

Justices Deny Right To Bond Hearing For Migrants

Law360: The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled that immigrants do not have a right to bond hearings when the government can show they are a flight risk, and that district courts lack the authority to order the government to provide such hearings on a class-wide basis.

 

Justices Refuse To Broaden Border Agents’ Personal Liability

Law360: Border agents can’t be sued in federal court for damages over alleged constitutional violations, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday, citing concerns that broadening the legal liability of agents could negatively impact national security.

 

Fake SSN Card Is Grounds For Deportation, 9th Circ. Says

Law360: The Ninth Circuit denied a Honduran man’s bid to stay in the U.S., finding that his conviction in California for possessing a forged social security card with a counterfeit government seal is grounds for deportation as a crime involving moral turpitude.

 

CA9 On Particularly Serious Crime: Mendoza-Garcia V. Garland

LexisNexis[The BIA] applied a “presumption” that Petitioner’s conviction was a particularly serious crime and required him to “rebut” this presumption…The BIA committed an error of law, and abused its discretion, in failing to apply the correct legal standards in assessing whether Petitioner’s offense was a “particularly serious crime.”

 

IJ Distinguishes Jaco, Grants Asylum (PSG = Honduran Women)

LexisNexis: The particular social group of “Honduran women” was not at issue in Jaco, however, and the Fifth Circuit’s comment related to this group was incidental to the disposition of the case. Therefore, the Fifth Circuit’s comment regarding “Honduran women” as a particular social group is dicta and is not binding on this Court’s decision.

 

Texas Judge Axes Biden’s ICE Enforcement Policy Nationwide

Law360: A Texas federal judge on Friday threw out the Biden administration’s policy for prioritizing immigration enforcement, saying the guidance ran counter to a legal requirement to detain certain categories of immigrants.

 

Biden’s ICE Curbs Can’t Moot Immigrant Activists’ Speech Suit

Law360: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement couldn’t shake off claims that it targeted its critics for removal, as a Washington federal judge ruled on Thursday that the Biden administration’s curbs on immigration enforcement operations didn’t moot the retaliation suit.

 

Immigrants’ Negligence Claim Axed In $6M Suit Against Gov’t

Law360: A Washington federal judge tossed a negligence claim against the federal government from a father and son seeking $6 million after being forcibly separated at the southern border, saying the pair did not allege the government owed a duty of care.

 

Indiana Challenges Biden’s Immigrant Parole-Granting Policy

Law360: The Biden administration is facing yet another lawsuit over its immigration policies at the Southern border, this time from the state of Indiana, alleging that the administration is unlawfully granting parole to migrants and burdening state taxpayers as a result.

 

Asylum-Seekers Accuse USCIS Of Preventing Work Eligibility

Law360: A group of asylum-seekers have hit U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services with a proposed class action, saying its policies and practices unlawfully prevent them and other asylum applicants from obtaining work authorization pending decisions on their asylum claims.

 

4th Circ. Revives Immigration Judges’ Free Speech Suit

Law360: The Fourth Circuit has revived a challenge by federal immigration judges to a Trump-era policy barring them from speaking up about the immigration courts, after a labor official formally dissolved their union.

 

DC Circ. Urged To Nix Order Busting Immigration Judge Union

Law360: The National Association of Immigration Judges asked the D.C. Circuit in a petition late Wednesday to overturn the Federal Labor Relations Authority’s 2020 decision that immigration judges cannot unionize, arguing that the FLRA’s order violated its members’ due process rights and protected liberty interest in joining a labor union.

 

DHS Notice of Designation of Cameroon for TPS

AILA: DHS notice of the designation of Cameroon for TPS for 18 months, effective 6/7/22 through 12/7/23. (87 FR 34706, 6/7/22)

 

USCIS Issues Policy Alert on SIJ Classification and Adjustment of Status

AILA: USCIS updated policy guidance to incorporate changes from the Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) Final Rule, including updated citations, new definitions, and clarifications. The updates apply to SIJ petitions and AOS applications filed or pending on or after 4/7/22.

 

CBP Announces Spanish Option for I-94 Features in the CBP One Mobile App

AILA: CBP announced that users of the CPB One mobile application will be able to select a Spanish-language version of the features that allow them to file applications for or receive electronic versions of I-94s. More information about Form I-94 is available.

 

CDC Lifts Requirement that International Air Travelers Have Negative COVID Test

AILA: The CDC issued an order rescinding a 17-month-old requirement that people arriving in the country by air test negative for COVID-19, effective at 12:01 am (ET) on Sunday, June 11, 2022, saying it is “not currently necessary.”

 

USCIS to Issue Corrected Form I-765 Receipt Notices

AILA: From May 4, 2022, to June 2, 2022, USCIS issued certain I-765 receipt notices with incorrect information. Corrected notices with language confirming the 540-day automatic extension should reach affected applicants by the third week of June.

 

DOS Announces Expansion of Immigrant Visa Processing in Havana to Include All Immediate Relative Categories

AILA: DOS announced that the U.S. Embassy Havana will schedule all immediate relative immigrant visa appointments to include spouses and children under 21 of U.S. citizens (IR/CR-1 and IR/CR-2), with interviews beginning in July 2022. More information in notice.

 

ICE to Consider Military Service When Determining Civil Immigration Enforcement

AILA: ICE announced a policy directive to consider U.S. military service when making discretionary determinations with regard to civil immigration enforcement actions against noncitizens.

 

State Dept. Looks For Refugee Resettlement Project Ideas

Law360: The U.S. State Department said it is seeking project ideas from nonprofits and other institutions on how to strengthen its refugee resettlement program in areas such as housing, community engagement and program participation.

 

RESOURCES

 

GENERAL RESOURCES

 

EVENTS

 

NIJC EVENTS

 

 

GENERAL EVENTS

 

Note: CLINIC has cancelled and will be rescheduling two previously listed COIL courses.

 

 

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Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)

Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship

National Immigrant Justice Center

A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program

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

www.immigrantjustice.org | Facebook | Twitter

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As I said, there are good reasons to be skeptical that the “Los Angeles Declaration” is anything other than meaningless rhetoric meant to deflect attention from the Biden Administration’s actual dismal performance on human rights, racial justice, and immigration.  https://immigrationcourtside.com/2022/06/12/%f0%9f%8c%8ethe-americas-the-l-a-declaration-on-migration-protection-blueprint-for-action-or-more-empty-rhetoric/

It would be hard to imagine an action more out of line with the “LAD” than ramping up deportations of Black migrants to the dangerous, chaotic, failed state of Haiti. As the article from the NYT highlighted by Elizabeth above says:

The situation in Haiti has worsened over the past year. The International Organization for Migration, the largest nongovernmental aid group there, said that there were more than 200 kidnappings in May. Poverty is everywhere, and nearly half the country does not have adequate access to affordable and healthy food, according to the United Nations.

. . . .

In September, the Biden administration gave the organization $13.1 million intended to help Haitians getting off expulsion flights, providing cash and other assistance to help them to reintegrate. Many had been living in other countries in South America for years before making the journey to the United States.

The situation in Haiti has worsened over the past year. The International Organization for Migration, the largest nongovernmental aid group there, said that there were more than 200 kidnappings in May. Poverty is everywhere, and nearly half the country does not have adequate access to affordable and healthy food, according to the United Nations.

. . . .

The systemic issues that drive migration out of Haiti are expected to come up during the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles this week. Haiti’s interim prime minister, Ariel Henry, is in attendance.

President Biden ran for office promising to bring compassion to U.S. immigration policies, particularly those involving asylum. But rolling out new policies amid a sharp increase in migration and during a pandemic has proved difficult. Some Trump-era policies remain in place.

So, why is the Administration squandering  money, resources, and, incredibly, the goodwill of folks who actually voted for Biden/Harris to “ramp up” deportations and exclusions of migrants of color, many of them asylum applicants subject to a biased and unfair system, when we could actually use their skills in our economy, as this quote from an article by Dany Bahar at Brookings points out:

At the same time, 2021 resulted in the highest number of migrants entering or attempting to enter through the southern border to the United States. There is no reason to think this won’t continue in 2022. These migrants, mostly from the Northern Triangle countries (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador), are desperate to join the U.S. labor force, as they flee poor economic conditions—particularly after the economic slowdown caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic—as well as violence and instability in general. In response to this flow, the Biden-Harris administration has focused on significantly

increasing investment toward Central America, including Mexico, while at the same time telling immigrants in Guatemala “

do not come.”

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Dany Bahar

Nonresident Senior Fellow – Global Economy and Development

Twitter dany_bahar

The irony is clear; if there was any time in the modern history of the United States to promote a flexibilization of its migration policies, it is now. It is the most efficient and easiest way to offer a smart solution to the unprecedented tightness in U.S. labor markets. It is a no-brainer for several reasons.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2022/02/24/president-biden-tear-down-those-walls-and-let-immigrants-take-jobs-in-high-demand/

It might be a “no brainer,” as Dany says, but it appears to be “above the pay grade” of Biden’s inept immigration policy team. They seem to be mostly “Stephen Miller fellow travelers.” Why? 

I suppose the only “silver lining” is that I can always count on inept policy officials in the Biden Administration to prove my points about what a horrible job they are doing for immigrants, for racial justice, for Due Process of law, for America, and for humanity!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-14-22

Related posts:

  1. TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION POLICY: “MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE!” — Also, ICE Intentionally Falsifies Court Hearing Dates — Where Is The Accountability?
  2. Michael Paarlberg @ THE GUARDIAN: HOW WACKO & COUNTERPRODUCTIVE IS TRUMP/SESSIONS “GONZO” IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT? — Who Screws Their Friends & Productive Residents While Empowering Multinational Gangs? — “[MS-13] can’t really be described accurately as a single gang but is rather a network of gangs with little centralized authority and a franchised name, whose street value only increases with each press conference by Trump and Sessions. . . . There aren’t many beneficiaries of Trump’s immigration policy, but there’s at least one: MS-13 couldn’t have asked for a better president than Trump.”
  3. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”
  4. 🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️👎🏻KAKISTOCRACY HAS CONSEQUENCES: CLIMATE MIGRATION IS ONE OF THEM! — Trump’s Stupidity & Cruelty On Immigration Climate Science, & Disease Control Promises Horrible Global Human Disaster For Future Generations — Empowering & Enabling A Moron Is Always A Very Bad Idea!  — No Idiotic Wall Or “Drill Baby Drill” Insanity Is Going To Prevent This Human Catastrophe We Are Inflicting On Those Who Follow!

🤮INEFFECTIVE ASSISTANCE/DEFECTIVE COURTS — 3rd Cir. Exposes Massive Due Process Failure @ Garland’s EOIR! — St. Ford v. A.G.

 

https://www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/211729p.pdf

From Judge Roth’s opinion:

The need for effective assistance of counsel applies in immigration law just as it does in criminal law. Aliens, many of whom do not speak English and some of whom are detained before their immigration hearings, can be particularly susceptible to the consequences of ineffective lawyers.

 

Petitioner Arckange Saint Ford paid a lawyer to represent him in removal proceedings, but Saint Ford’s requests for relief from deportation were denied after the lawyer failed to present important and easily available evidence going to the heart of Saint Ford’s claims. Saint Ford retained new counsel, and his new lawyer asked the Board of Immigration Appeals to reopen his case because of his former attorney’s ineffective assistance. The Board declined to do so. Because Saint Ford presents a meritorious ineffective-assistance claim, we will vacate the Board’s decision and remand.

And concurring Judge Ambro had a harsh assessment of the IJ, the BIA, and most of all A.G. Garland, who has been remarkably “tone deaf” about correcting the grotesque expertise and due process problems in his “wholly owned, astoundingly dysfunctional” Immigration “Courts:”

Arckange Saint Ford will get a second shot at canceling the Government’s order of removal—that’s what matters. The majority is remanding because of his former counsel’s deficient performance at Saint Ford’s removal hearing. I agree with that and concur in full.

But former counsel was not the only one who made significant missteps at the hearing. The Immigration Judge did as well. I therefore would have granted Saint Ford’s initial petition for review and remanded on that basis. I write separately to explain these errors in the hope that similar ones will not be made at Saint Ford’s new hearing.

. . . .

Here, though it was reasonable to request Saint Ford corroborate his testimony about the identity and motive of his harassers, the IJ did not tell him what corroboration she needed or give him a chance to present that evidence. There is no indication she engaged in the Abdulai inquiry as required before skipping straight to “hold[ing] the lack of corroboration against [Saint Ford].” Id. (alterations adopted). She went from first to third across the pitcher’s mound. Our Abdulai inquiry is there to ensure these important corners aren’t cut.

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What’s wrong with this picture? Going on two decades after the enactment of the REAL ID Act, this IJ gets basic corroboration wrong on a life or death asylum case. Then, she compounds the error by failing to apply a two-decades old circuit precedent. The case sails through the BIA. Then, Garland’s OIL defends the indefensible. “Corner cutting” has become institutionalized, permitted, and even encouraged in today’s broken  EOIR!

Meanwhile, it’s left to Circuit Judge Ambro to do the jobs of Garland, his failed BIA, and an IJ badly in need of remedial training! This is an expert tribunal? This is justice? This is due process? Gimmie a break! 

This is squarely on Garland! He enables and defends defective, due-process-denying decisions by EOIR. His grotesque failure to appoint and empower a BIA that will end this nonsense and insist on competent legal performance from ALL Immigration Judges in these life or death cases is disgraceful!

Cases like this also “give lie” to the bogus claims that today’s EOIR is comprised of “experts” who can be trusted to remedy due process defects, model best practices, or (perhaps most absurdly) insure that the rights of all respondents, including the unrepresented, are protected. Why is a Dem Administration running a “due process denial machine?” Why is OIL defending the indefensible? Why is Garland still the AG, despite showing little interest and scant skill in creating a due process/fundamental fairness oriented tribunal at the “retail level” of our staggering justice system! 

You don’t have to be a “rocket scientist” to trace the disrespect for the Constitutional, statutory, and human rights of migrants, largely individuals of color, to hate crimes, misogyny, curtailment of voting rights, and disrespect for equal justice and racial justice throughout our nation. The stunningly poor performance of the U.S. Immigration Courts under Garland also sets an unfortunate tone for the staggering and highly politicized Federal Court system from bottom to top!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-19-22

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️JUDICIAL REVIEW — C.A. 2 — Brace Of Bad BIA Bobbles On Basics Brings “Culture Of Denial” Into Focus — Justice Will Continue To Be Illusive @ EOIR 👎🏽 Until Garland Steps Up & Replaces His Fatally Flawed BIA With Real Judges Who Are Progressive Practical Scholars In Immigration, Due Process, Human Rights, With A Firm Commitment To Bringing Racial & Gender Equity To Now-Disgraced Immigration Courts!🤮
  2. ⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️👨🏻‍⚖️🗽COURT REFORM: GW IMMIGRATION CLINIC STUDENTS WEIGH IN ON ARTICLE I — Emphasize Critical Due Process Need To Entirely Remove AG From Decision-Making Process!
  3. 🧑🏽‍⚖️⚖️🗽🇺🇸WHO’S JUDGE IS IT ANYWAY? — The Crisis Of Independence In Our Immigration Courts! — Coming April 7, 2021! — Sponsored By The HNBA! — Don’t Miss It!
  4. 🆘🤮IS 11TH CIR. GROWING WEARY OF GARLAND’S SCOFFLAW BIA? —Two Trips To The Circuit, & The BIA Still Violates Own Regulations, Ignores Precedent, Spouts Gibberish While OIL’s Defense Of This Nonsense & Malfeasance By EOIR Raises Serious Ethical Questions! — THAMOTAR v. U.S. ATT’Y GEN. — Garland’s Dysfunctional & Systematically Unjust Courts Undermine OUR Democracy☠️ — Demand An IMMEDIATE End To The Scofflaw Nonsense🤡 🧹 At OUR Justice Department! 🏴‍☠️

CATHERINE @ WASHPOST “GETS IT!” — Why Are The Biden Administration & Some Dem Pols “Running Scared” From What Should Be A Big Win? — Many Of The Legal,Workers We Need Are Patiently Waiting @ The Border For Processing & Legal Admission — Dems Need To Stop “Shaking In Their Boots” & Start “Shaking Their Tails” To “Pre-Process” Refugees For An Orderly Restoration Of The Rule Of Law On May 23!

Catherine Rampell
Catherine Rampell
Opinion Columnist
Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/11/democrats-missing-real-immigration-threat-workers-economy/

Opinion: Democrats are missing the bigger immigration issue

By Catherine Rampell

Democrats are terrified that a coming border surge might tank their midterm chances.

But they have largely ignored a much more serious immigration-related political risk. The problem in the months ahead isn’t that the United States will allow in too many immigrants; it’s that we’ll admit too few, particularly the kinds of workers who can fill critical labor-market shortages.

The Biden administration recently announced it would soon end Title 42, a Trump-era border-control policy. Citing the public health emergency when it invoked the policy in March 2020, the Trump team used the pandemic as a pretext to expel all arriving migrants without first allowing them to apply for asylum, as they have a legal right to do. Public health experts and immigration advocates — and many elected Democrats — have long condemned the policy, which has been used to carry out more than 1.7 million migrant expulsions.

President Biden’s own appointees have called the policy illegal and inhumane, with multiple high-level officials blasting it when they resigned. But Biden delayed reversing Title 42, fearing bad optics and attacks from Fox News. (Which arguably was going to attack him as an “open borders” president regardless.)

As expected, right-wingers are now catastrophizing about the looming “Armageddon” that will follow Title 42′s unwinding.

As a result, some worried Democrats are demanding that Biden keep this (likely illegal) policy in place. They have been so fixated on bad-faith right-wing attacks that they have missed the bigger, and much more serious, immigration-related liability: the millions of immigrants whose absence from the U.S. workforce is putting upward pressure on inflation.

Which Democrats are being blamed for, and which voters appear to care much more about.

The United States is experiencing inflationary levels not seen in four decades. Americans are unhappy, and they are more than five times as likely to cite “inflation,” “cost of living” or the economy in general than immigration as the nation’s biggest problem. These economic concerns are, however, rooted at least partly in immigration policy.

Worker shortages are pervasive, with vacancies hovering around record highs. The resulting disruptions to supply chains and normal business operations have raised costs for companies and consumers. Some of these “missing” workers retired; some dropped out of the labor force because of care issues or illness. But a huge chunk were foreign-born workers who either never arrived in the United States in recent years or who were already here but have been forced out of their jobs because of government incompetence.

There are about 1.8 million fewer working-age immigrants in the United States today than would be the case if pre-2020 immigration trends had continued unchanged, economic researchers Giovanni Peri and Reem Zaiour estimate. Unsurprisingly, they also find that industries that had a higher percentage of foreign workers in 2019 — such as hospitality and food services — tend to have higher rates of unfilled jobs now.

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These immigrants, legal and otherwise, are “missing” because of a combination of Trump policies, covid-19 (which the Trump administration cited to justify imposing even more immigration restrictions) and Biden’s foot-dragging.

Although Biden pledged more humane and efficient immigration policies when he ran for president, he has been slow to reverse many of President Donald Trump’s onerous paperwork requirements and other policies designed to reduce legal immigration. Biden’s sluggishness owes partly to the magnitude of the challenge of rebuilding the U.S. immigration infrastructure — and partly to that deep Democratic fear of how Fox News et al. might portray any efforts to help immigrants.

As a result, last year, the United States experienced the lowest levels of new international migration in decades, census data shows.

. . . .

A border surge is infinitely more telegenic and attack-ad-friendly than backlogged paperwork. But the missing immigrant workforce is what more directly affects voters’ pocketbooks — and, by extension, Democrats’ political fortunes.

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

Read Catherine’s complete article at the link!

There is no need for a self-created “border surge” on May 23! We have a potentially quite efficient asylum screening and adjudication process in our existing law. If it were properly staffed and run, with competent legal and judicial  oversight, asylum seekers would use it — even if “success” is far from guaranteed. 

Experience has shown that asylum seekers in the U.S. who are represented, and therefore understand the system and their obligations, faithfully appear for hearings nearly 100% of the time, even when they appear likely to lose. Just because we as a nation have lost faith in our ability to operate under the the rule of law doesn’t mean that asylum seekers have! Obviously folks who have “hung around” in Mexico, in life-threatening conditions, for months or years, believing in a false promise of future fair and humane treatment by the U.S. aren’t as easily persuaded that our legal system is a sham as are our own politicos, bureaucrats, and pundits.

Sure, folks without asylum claims and those who don’t trust the system will continue to attempt unauthorized entry — particularly if the legal system lacks credibility, thus allowing smugglers to convince migrants to evade it.

But, with a robust asylum system functioning at ports of entry, CBP won’t be diverted by squandering resources “apprehending” (a serious misnomer) individuals who want nothing more than a fair and timely chance to present their asylum claims. CBP can concentrate their resources on those who truly intend to evade the legal system.

Even without the bogus Title 42, the law provides more than adequate tools for dealing with unauthorized entry. Those without documents are subject to “summary removal” by CBP Agents. Those subject to summary removal who claim asylum can be promptly screened for “credible fear” by trained USCIS Asylum Officers. Those who “flunk” credible fear are summarily removed under the existing order. Those who “pass” can be funneled into the legal asylum system and processed accordingly.

If you are a believer in “deterrence theory” for migrants who don’t have credible asylum claims, then the “expedited summary removal process” provides just that. No need to illegally invoke Title 42!

If the Obama, Trump, and now Biden Administrations had spent time and resources training Asylum Officers and reforming the Immigration Courts, instead of screwing around with futile (sometimes illegal) “enforcement only” gimmicks, idiotic walls, inhumane, expensive detention, inane messaging, and deterrence, there wouldn’t be largely manufactured “border emergencies.” Just a variety of fairly predictable “humanitarian situations” and opportunities to show how the rule of law works in a functioning democracy.

For example, the much feared and ballyhooed “caravan” that had Trump scared out of his (already limited) wits moved in “slow motion” to the border. A competent Administration could have processed them fairly, humanely, and timely upon arrival or shortly thereafter. Indeed, a competent Administration probably would have worked with the Mexican authorities and the UNHCR to have processed members of  those “caravans” for refugee status, in an orderly manner, at a point in Mexico well-removed from our border!

If, after truly fair, humane, and timely processing at ports of entry few qualified (I deem this unlikely under a truly fair and  competent system, but perhaps possible, who really knows, since we have been “chicken” to fairly adjudicate asylum claims from Latin American and the Caribbean for many years), then there’s your “legal deterrent” (for those who believe in deterrents) to those who might seek to come in the future.

“Caravans” don’t cross the border irregularly unless legal ports or entry are closed or de facto unvailable to them. Even then, most asylum seekers in caravans would prefer to wait for legal processing if it were available in a predictable, orderly, humane, fair, and timely manner. The Trump kakistocracy’s decision NOT to follow asylum laws and procedures at ports of entry actually caused unnecessary chaos, created danger, and provoked and encouraged unauthorized entries. The Biden Administration has, unfathomably, followed in Trump’s footsteps!

The “missing piece” for decades, across Administrations of both parties, has been a robust, realistic, well-staffed “outside the US” refugee processing system for Latin America and the Caribbean. If we REALLY don’t want folks “trying their luck” on asylum at the border, then give them honest and prompt answers to their refugee claims in or nearer to the countries in conflict they are fleeing.

The current law is by no means perfect. But, it’s a whole lot better than the politicos and bureaucrats who, for most of the past four decades, have failed to take straightforward, achievable steps to “make it work.” Refugee admissions overseas, and asylum admissions in the U.S. and at our borders, are a key element of our legal immigration system. It’s time to stop pretending otherwise!

And, as Catherine cogently points out, rapidly approving work authorizations and all types of applications for legal immigration under existing law also should have been “low hanging fruit” for the Biden Administration. A group of summer college students could have been trained in short order to wipe out the backlog of Employment Authorization Documents (“EADs”) during the summer of 2021. 

Even now, with just a little initiative, creativity, and energy, USCIS could hire and train summer employees to handle many routine and repetitive “adjudications.” All “adjudications” are NOT equal! EAD backlogs, intentionally created by the Trump kakistocracy, are totally unnecessary and inexcusable under Biden. 

How many retired Asylum Officers, USCIS Adjudicators with asylum experience, retired Immigration Judges, retired BIA staff attorneys, and retired Congressional immigration staffers has USCIS “rehired” during the past year to prepare for the reopening of the border?  If they haven’t, why not? It’s not too late to get more qualified individuals on board temporarily and give them to tools they need to fairly and timely process credible fear cases. 

How many agreements has USCIS entered with NGOs to prescreen, organize into orderly lists, and, where necessary, represent individuals now waiting at or near the Southern Border. If not, why not get some of those agreements into effect on an “expedited” basis by next Monday?

In Government, everything seems to be a candidate for bogus “expedited treatment” EXCEPT common sense, readily available measures that actually solve problems! Why is that? What’s an Administration that got elected by claiming “Government can work” going to do to prove that before May 23! Stop “making excuses for failure” and start solving problems!

It’s not rocket science! Dems must stop “hand wringing” about what they didn’t do in the last year and start making the system work under current conditions. That’s what “good government” is supposed to do! 

Poland, a country of fewer than 40 million about the size of a large U.S. state, was able to handle 4-5 million Ukrainian refugees in a matter of weeks. Meanwhile the US is “paralyzed” by the idea that 60,000 might apply with more than a month of lead time to prepare, and an established, if now suspended, legal framework to use. Not to mention that Biden had more than a year’s “advance notice” that the asylum system would need rebuilding and rejuvenation at the Souther border. Gimmie a break! The Biden Administration was put in office largely to “make Government work” — not to mindlessly repeat GOP White Nationalist “woe is me” talking points!

On a smaller scale, religious organizations and voluntary agencies mobilized and organized almost overnight to assist the U.S. Government in processing Ukrainian refugees at the border. Why couldn’t those efforts be expanded and replicated for the largely non-White refugee hopefuls currently waiting? Why create an “emergency” that needn’t be? Why not put more time, effort, and creativity into ACHIEVING success, rather than thinking of excuses for anticipated failure or shifting blame to the “victims?”

Honestly, as the late, great political pundit
Casey Stengel would have said, “can’t anyone here play this game?”

Casey Stengel
“Time and time again, the Biden Administration’s inept and unprincipled approach to immigration and human rights leaves this guy scratching his head.”
PHOTO: Rudi Reit
Creative Commons

Also, Catherine Rampell understands the complex issues of immigration better than any “top level” official in the Biden Administration that I’m aware of. If they aren’t going to hire her, they should at least heed her advice. It’s free, accessible, clearly and succinctly written, and almost always “spot on!”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-14-22

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🇺🇸👍🏼🗽DEAN KEVIN JOHNSON’S SUCCINCT RESPONSE TO GREG ABBOTT’S PREDICTABLE SOUTHERN BORDER BS IS WORTH A READ! — PLUS: ARELIS HERNANDEZ OF WASHPOST WITH SOME MUCH-NEEDED TRUTH & PERSPECTIVE FROM THOSE ACTUALLY LIVING ON THE SOUTHERN BORDER: “We need more lawyers and judges, not more troops or technology.”
  2. ICRC: “Migration is not going to stop. If you try to prevent it or strictly regulate it, people start to pile up at the borders, which is happening in Mexico and other countries.”
  3. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  4. 🤯PROGRAMMED TO FAIL:  LACK OF LEADERSHIP, EXPERTISE, COURAGE, COMMITMENT TO RULE OF LAW, RACIAL AWARENESS, & AN ATTORNEY GENERAL “ON VACATION” PLAGUES BIDEN’S BUNGLED BORDER POLICY! — Is Appeasing GOP White Nationalists With Racist Policies While Scorning The Rule of Law & Dissing Progressive Supporters REALLY A Great “Strategy” For Biden & Harris?  🤮 — NY Times Reports

🤯PROGRAMMED TO FAIL:  LACK OF LEADERSHIP, EXPERTISE, COURAGE, COMMITMENT TO RULE OF LAW, RACIAL AWARENESS, & AN ATTORNEY GENERAL “ON VACATION” PLAGUES BIDEN’S BUNGLED BORDER POLICY! — Is Appeasing GOP White Nationalists With Racist Policies While Scorning The Rule of Law & Dissing Progressive Supporters REALLY A Great “Strategy” For Biden & Harris?  🤮 — NY Times Reports

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/09/us/politics/biden-border-immigration.html?referringSource=articleShare

By Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Michael D. Shear and Eileen Sullivan

WASHINGTON — President Biden was livid.

He had been in office only two months and there was already a crisis at the southwest border. Thousands of migrant children were jammed into unsanitary Border Patrol stations. Republicans were accusing Mr. Biden of flinging open the borders. And his aides were blaming one another.

Facing his bickering staff in the Oval Office that day in late March 2021, Mr. Biden grew so angry at their attempts to duck responsibility that he erupted.

Who do I need to fire, he demanded, to fix this?

Mr. Biden came into office promising to dismantle what he described as the inhumane immigration policies of President Donald J. Trump. But the episode, recounted by several people who attended or were briefed on the meeting, helps explain why that effort remains incomplete: For much of Mr. Biden’s presidency so far, the White House has been divided by furious debates over how — and whether — to proceed in the face of a surge of migrants crossing the southwest border.

. . . .

****************^

Read the complete article at the link.

Not rocket 🚀 science:

  • Note to Susan Rice & Ron Klain: There will be no racial justice in America without immigrant justice.
  • Asylum is the law, NOT a “policy option” or a “strategy.”
  • The Attorney General has an obligation to insist that the law be followed or to resign.
  • How on earth could anyone think that the border can be fixed without addressing the extreme dysfunction and Trump White Nationalist bias in the Immigration Courts?
  • How do you run on a promise to restore asylum at the border without having a plan in hand to do that on Inauguration Day?
  • Ports of entry “reopened” remarkably quickly for White asylum seekers from Ukraine, using cooperation among the DHS, Mexico, and volunteer groups. So, it’s very “doable.” What’s lacking here appears to be the will and the motivation to treat asylum seekers of color fairly and humanely.
  • Is the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ on permanent LOA? What does Kristen Clarke, AAG for Civil Rights, do to earn her paycheck? Whatever happened to Associate AG Vanita Gupta, a former civil rights and racial justice maven, who has turned her back on America’s most glaring and serious racial justice problems, at the border and in her Department’s dysfunctional “courts,” and disappeared into the bowls of Garland’s bureaucracy, never to be heard from again?
  • So, following the law and treating persons of color fairly and humanely at our borders will create “chaos” (it should do nothing of the sort, with competent leadership and personnel) and might be “bad politics” for “moderate Dems.” Gimmie a break! 
  • Why not just consider all asylum applicants to be “constructively White persons” and proceed accordingly?
  • Why is appeasing GOP White Nationalist nativists, who wouldn’t support Biden no matter what he does at the border, more important to the Administration than keeping promises to supporters who actually worked to put Biden, Harris, and, derivatively, folks like Rice, Klain, Mayorkas, and Garland in office?
  • Repubs do remember who their key supporters are, and act accordingly, even when those actions are illegal, immoral, counterproductive, and often unpopular. Dems, by contrast, are afraid to follow the law and do the right thing to make good on promises to their supporters!
  • America actually needs more legal immigrants. Many of them are waiting at the border for justice long delayed. Perhaps, an Administration who can’t see that and turn it into a “win-win” doesn’t deserve to be in office. 

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-10-22

Related posts:

  1. 🇺🇸🏴‍☠️RACE IN AMERICA: CARRIE ROSENBAUM “GETS IT,” EVEN AS MAYORKAS, GARLAND, HARRIS & THE OTHER BIDEN HYPOCRITES PRETEND NOT TO:  “Immigration reform, and a more robust application of the Equal Protection doctrine to all those inside the country, and at our borders, is necessary to move towards meaningfully dismantling systemic racism.”
  2. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  3. 🇺🇸🗽⚖️GEORGE W. BUSH INSTITUTE REPORT: GENDER VIOLENCE ☠️⚰️DRIVES CONTINUING REFUGEE FLOW TO U.S. — Dishonesty Of Sessions’s Misogynistic Attack In Matter Of A-B- 🤮 Exposed Again! — Yet, Garland Fails To Take Action To End Misogyny, Anti-Asylum Culture @ EOIR, Even As He Also Fails To Insist On The Restoration Of The Rule Of Law @ Our Borders! —  WHY?🤯
  4. 😰NO HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR FAMILIES IN “THE NEW AMERICAN GULAG”☠️⚰️ — As Kakistocracy Of War Criminals 🤮🏴‍☠️ Departs, Will President Biden Have The Wisdom & Guts To Move Beyond “The Dem Border Alarmists” & Get The Progressive Leaders 🦸🏽‍♂️⚖️ From The NDPA In Place To Bring Due Process & Order To The Border?🗽🇺🇸

👎🏽👩🏾‍🦱RACE @ THE BORDER: RECENTLY ARRIVED WHITE REFUGEES GO TO FRONT OF LINE WHILE BLACK & LATINO ASYLUM SEEKERS WAIT IN SQUALOR! 🏴‍☠️ — Volunteers Fill Gap In DHS Preparedness!

 

Elliott Spagat
Elliott Spagat
Reporter
Associated Press

Elliot Spagat for HuffPost:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ap-lt-ukraine-refugees-united-states_n_624ff4bde4b0e97a350f8346

TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — The United States has sharply increased the number of Ukrainians admitted to the country at the Mexican border as even more refugees fleeing the Russian invasion follow the same circuitous route.

A government recreation center in the Mexican border city of Tijuana grew to about 1,000 refugees Thursday, according to city officials. A canopy under which children played soccer only two days earlier was packed with people in rows of chairs and lined with bunk beds.

Tijuana has suddenly become a final stop for Ukrainians seeking refuge in the United States, where they are drawn by friends and families ready to host them and are convinced the U.S. will be a more suitable haven than Europe.

Word has spread rapidly on social media that a loose volunteer coalition, largely from Slavic churches in the western United States, is guiding hundreds of refugees daily from the Tijuana airport to temporary shelters, where they wait two to four days for U.S officials to admit them on humanitarian parole. In less than two weeks, volunteers worked with U.S. and Mexican officials to build a remarkably efficient and expanding network to provide food, security, transportation and shelter.

. . . .

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

Read the full article at the link.

Volunteers to the rescue, largely as I predicted!

But, why can’t NGOs and DHS work together to run similar orderly processing programs for asylum applicants from Haiti, Latin America, Cameroon, Ethiopia, and the rest of the world, some of whom have been patiently waiting in vain for years for fair processing that never comes!  As CGRS and others have pointed out, there are many legitimate, readily grantable asylum claims among “the waiting.” See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2022/04/08/%f0%9f%8f%b4%e2%98%a0%ef%b8%8f%e2%98%a0%ef%b8%8f%f0%9f%91%8e%f0%9f%8f%bdgroups-expose-racism-myths-in-biden-administrations-abuse-of-haitian-asylum-seekers-each/

Why not begin screening, processing, and admitting these refugees now, rather than creating an unnecessary and artificial rush on May 23?

It would take only modest creativity to invoke legal refugee admission procedures and begin processing of Haitians, Central Americans, Ukrainians, and other refugees directly from camps in Mexico and other countries. That would allow immediate legal admission, thus bypassing both the overloaded Asylum Office and Garland’s dysfunctional Immigration Courts. 

Refugee admissions would also facilitate Government grants and other funding for resettlement in communities across America.

Not rocket science!🚀 So, why doesn’t the Biden Administration “get it?” Was VP Harris too busy celebrating the historic, yet largely symbolic, confirmation of soon to be Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to address the real, life or death problems of immigrants and asylum seekers of color who are being mistreated and abused by White Nationalist programs, policies and “official attitudes” at our borders?

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-09-22

Related posts:

  1. 🗽⚖️🇺🇸LEE GELERNT @ ACLU SAYS BIDEN ADMINISTRATION “cannot farm out the asylum system.” Yet, That Appears To Be Largely What They Are Doing Under New, Previously Unpublicized Program!
  2. 👍🏼🗽⚖️🙂🇺🇸BREAKING: IN A STUNNING REVERSAL, BIDEN ADMINISTRATION WILL BEGIN DISMANTLING “REMAIN IN MEXICO” PROGRAM BY SCREENING & ADMITTING THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN AWAITING ASYLUM HEARINGS! — Processing To Begin On Feb. 19!
  3. 😰NO HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR FAMILIES IN “THE NEW AMERICAN GULAG”☠️⚰️ — As Kakistocracy Of War Criminals 🤮🏴‍☠️ Departs, Will President Biden Have The Wisdom & Guts To Move Beyond “The Dem Border Alarmists” & Get The Progressive Leaders 🦸🏽‍♂️⚖️ From The NDPA In Place To Bring Due Process & Order To The Border?🗽🇺🇸
  4. 🏴‍☠️☠️👎🏽GROUPS EXPOSE RACISM, MYTHS IN BIDEN ADMINISTRATION’S ABUSE OF HAITIAN ASYLUM SEEKERS! — “Each day that the Title 42 policy remains in effect, it places Haitians directly in harm’s way.”

🇺🇸🗽⚖️👍🏾🤗 D.C. VALUES COALITION’S GREAT RESPONSE TO ABBOTT’S 🤮🏴‍☠️ LATEST RACIST STUNT: “DC welcomes all immigrants, including DACA recipients, TPS holders, refugees and asylum seekers from all nations to our area, offering them help and support.”

Adina Appelbaum
Adina Appelbaum
Director, Immigration Impact Lab
CAIR Coalition
PHOTO: “30 Under 30” from Forbes

https://www.caircoalition.org/news-clip/dc-values-coalition-statement-response-governor-abbotts-announcement

DC Values Coalition Statement in Response to Governor Abbott’s Announcement

Apr 08, 2022

On Wednesday, April 6, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas announced he will start busing immigrants to Washington, DC in response to the decision by the government to end Title 42. Title 42 is a cruel policy, which used the pandemic as an excuse to expel families and individuals from the United States under the guise of public health.

We as the DC Values Coalition condemn Governor Abbott’s announcement. We do not believe in using human beings to make political statements. Regardless of what happens next, DC welcomes all immigrants, including DACA recipients, TPS holders, refugees and asylum seekers from all nations to our area, offering them help and support.

Organizations in the DC Values Coalition will support these individuals with their needs and make sure that DC remains a place that is welcoming and safe for immigrants. We will also push to guarantee they are not detained and we will continue to advocate for ICE to exercise discretion in detention and deportation efforts.

The DC Values Coalition is a coalition of DC-based immigration legal and social service providers that seeks to defend immigrants’ rights.

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

Many thanks to all concerned for this terrific response! I particularly appreciate the efforts of my friend Adina Appelbaum of CAIR Coalition, my former star student in Refugee Law & Policy at Georgetown Law, a former Arlington Immigration Court Legal Intern, and a “charter member” of the NDPA.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-08-22

 

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🗽MORE TRUTH ABOUT THE SOUTHERN BORDER FROM ONE OF AMERICA’S 🇺🇸 LEADING HUMAN RIGHTS EXPERTS: “Real Needs, Not Fictitious Crises Account For The Situation at US-Mexico Border,” By Donald Kerwin Center For Migration Studies
  2. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  3. 🗽⚖️🇺🇸LEE GELERNT @ ACLU SAYS BIDEN ADMINISTRATION “cannot farm out the asylum system.” Yet, That Appears To Be Largely What They Are Doing Under New, Previously Unpublicized Program!
  4. 🇺🇸🗽⚖️GEORGE W. BUSH INSTITUTE REPORT: GENDER VIOLENCE ☠️⚰️DRIVES CONTINUING REFUGEE FLOW TO U.S. — Dishonesty Of Sessions’s Misogynistic Attack In Matter Of A-B- 🤮 Exposed Again! — Yet, Garland Fails To Take Action To End Misogyny, Anti-Asylum Culture @ EOIR, Even As He Also Fails To Insist On The Restoration Of The Rule Of Law @ Our Borders! —  WHY?🤯

🏴‍☠️☠️👎🏽GROUPS EXPOSE RACISM, MYTHS IN BIDEN ADMINISTRATION’S ABUSE OF HAITIAN ASYLUM SEEKERS! — “Each day that the Title 42 policy remains in effect, it places Haitians directly in harm’s way.”

 

Karen Musalo
Professor Karen Musalo
Director, Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, Hastings Law

https://cgrs.uchastings.edu/sites/default/files/Tijuana%20Factsheet_2022.04.07%20FINAL%20v2_0.pdf

Protection Delayed is Protection Denied:i Factsheet on Title 42 Expulsions, Haitian Asylum Seekers in Tijuana, and the U.S. Government’s Ongoing Evasion of Duty

April 7, 2022

An estimated 10,000 Black migrants, predominantly asylum seekers from Haiti, currently reside in Tijuana where they face discrimination and violence.ii Since the imposition of Title 42, the United States has refused to permit nearly all individuals their legal right to seek asylum and has instead conducted mass expulsions.iii Title 42 has had a particularly devastating impact on Haitians, who have been expelled en masse without being screened for their fear of harm in Haiti despite “obligations under both domestic and international law that prohibit return of individuals to persecution and torture.”iv

Most Haitians arrive in Mexico following a dangerous overland route from Brazil or Chile; these countries took in Haitian nationals in the wake of Haiti’s devastating magnitude 7.0 earthquake in 2010.v The aftermath of the 2010 earthquake remains significant: it claimed between 200,000- 300,000 lives, left over a million people homeless, and set in motion a decade of political instability, impunity, and violence.vi

In July 2021, Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated.vii In August 2021, another magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck the country.viii A devastating tropical storm followed just two days later. The destruction from the powerful natural disasters overlayed onto the political power vacuum, exacerbating the already dire conditions. 4.3 million Haitians are experiencing acute food insecurity, fuel shortages and blackouts are the norm, and 1.5 million Haitians have been affected by gang violence.ix Complicity between state officials and criminal gangs has been documented, including incidents where “perpetrators raped and tortured residents based on political associations.”x According to Human Rights Watch, “the justice system can barely operate in a context of security and institutional breakdowns” and thus people in Haiti “face a high risk of violence and have no effective access to protection or justice.”xi

The United States recognized the dangers posed to people if they are returned to Haiti and granted an 18-month Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to prevent deportations of any Haitian people already present in the country before July 29, 2021.xii Despite this limited protection, over 20,000 people have been returned to Haiti during the first year of the Biden administration.xiii Many of those expelled had been in a makeshift encampment in Del Rio, Texas in September 2021, where they were denied access to sufficient food, water, and medical care.xiv Many were also subjected to physical violence and intimidation. The last several months have seen expulsions occur unabated with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) conducting “near daily flights to Haiti.”xv Additional flights of adults and families with babies and young children are scheduled for April. The majority of these returns occur under Title 42, denying individuals the chance to apply for asylum, even if they requested it and face dangers which would qualify them for protection.xvi

1

The information in this factsheet was compiled from interviews conducted from March 7-11, 2022, by a delegation from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law’s Hastings-to-Haiti Partnership (HHP) organization in collaboration with the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies (CGRS), the Haitian Bridge Alliance (HBA), and the École Supérieure Catholique de Droit de Jérémie (ESCDROJ). The delegation interviewed 123 Haitians across six different shelters in Tijuana. Interviewees were asked about why they left Haiti and what they have experienced as Black Kreyol-speakers traveling through Mexico and other Latin American countries.

There is a common misconception that Haitians are “economic migrants” and not refugees entitled to protection. But the stories revealed in these interviews belie such assertions. Haitians face imminent threats to their physical safety, and even death, should they be returned to the country—and face further dangers in Mexico—and they should have the opportunity to claim their legal right to asylum and reunify with family members in the United States.xvii Each day that the Title 42 policy remains in effect, it places Haitians directly in harm’s way.

. . . .

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

Read the complete report at the link.

The conclusions and recommendations are, not surprisingly, similar to some I have made. See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/wp-admin/about.php

But, given the extraordinarily poor performance of the Biden Administration on racial justice issues relating to asylum at the border, I’m afraid that the preparation to make the asylum system function in a fair and orderly manner come May 23 is going to fall largely to NGOs and advocates. 

Of particularly disturbing note is the Garland DOJ’s total failure to intervene to stop the blatant and illegal racism at our border and to vindicate the rule of law! Indeed, Garland’s failure to reorganize EOIR and hire competent, expert administrators and judges to take charge of his broken, backlogged, and biased asylum system is likely to be a “stone around the neck of justice” as we move forward. 

But, expecting the Biden Administration to stand up for racial justice for Haitians and other non-White asylum seekers at the border unfortunately appears to be wishful thinking. 

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-08-22

Related posts:

  1. 🇺🇸🗽⚖️GEORGE W. BUSH INSTITUTE REPORT: GENDER VIOLENCE ☠️⚰️DRIVES CONTINUING REFUGEE FLOW TO U.S. — Dishonesty Of Sessions’s Misogynistic Attack In Matter Of A-B- 🤮 Exposed Again! — Yet, Garland Fails To Take Action To End Misogyny, Anti-Asylum Culture @ EOIR, Even As He Also Fails To Insist On The Restoration Of The Rule Of Law @ Our Borders! —  WHY?🤯
  2. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  3. 🗽⚖️🇺🇸LEE GELERNT @ ACLU SAYS BIDEN ADMINISTRATION “cannot farm out the asylum system.” Yet, That Appears To Be Largely What They Are Doing Under New, Previously Unpublicized Program!
  4. ICRC: “Migration is not going to stop. If you try to prevent it or strictly regulate it, people start to pile up at the borders, which is happening in Mexico and other countries.”

🗽“RAPID PROCESSING” BY DHS WORKING FOR WHITE REFUGEES @ SOUTHERN BORDER! — WHY NOT ALSO FOR REFUGEES OF COLOR WHO HAVE WAITED MONTHS OR YEARS FOR JUSTICE?⚖️

 

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/border-baja-california/story/2022-04-06/cbp-ukrainians-pedwest

Roughly 2,300 Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion are currently waiting in Tijuana, according to the mayor’s office

BY KATE MORRISSEY, ALEXANDRA MENDOZA

Kate Morrissey
Kate Morrissey
Immigration & Human Rights Reporter
San Diego Union Tribune

APRIL 6, 2022 1:33 PM PT

Customs and Border Protection officials are now processing Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion of their country at the San Diego-Tijuana border through a pedestrian crossing that remains closed to the general public.

The move, according to volunteers helping the Ukrainians and the Tijuana mayor’s office, is to speed up how many Ukrainians border officials can process in a day. PedWest, the pedestrian crossing at the western end of the San Ysidro Port of Entry, has been closed to general traffic for the past two years.

At around 6 a.m. Wednesday morning, a busload of Ukrainians arrived at El Chaparral plaza on the south side of the crossing. That is where a camp of hundreds of mostly Central American and Mexican asylum seekers were camped for months, waiting for the Biden administration to open processing for refugee screenings. Mexican authorities bulldozed the camp in February, and the Biden administration has said that asylum processing won’t resume until May 23, with the exception of the Ukrainians.

. . . .

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

The rest of the story is at the link.

I’ve been advocating (obviously unsuccessfully) for this type of preferred processing of asylum applicants to be applied to ALL NATIONALITIES, regardless of race or ethnicity, in advance of the May 23 date for the end of the Title 42 charade. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2022/04/02/%f0%9f%97%bd%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f-cdc-announces-end-of-covid-bar-but-only-7-weeks-from-now-compare-what-dhs-should-have-said-with-what-they-did-say-with-51/

DHS, with the assistance of NGOs, UNHCR, and other volunteers from the human rights community can screen those waiting over the next six weeks to insure that applicants with the strongest claims are moved to the front of the line in advance or even admitted under an “exception” (DHS seems to be able to invent these at their whim) before May 23.

That’s the way to establish an orderly, fair, and humane transition back to the rule of law at all border ports of entry!  

Additionally, because Garland has basically abdicated his duty to restructure and restaff the Immigration Courts to provide fair, positive interpretations of what asylum cases should be granted and to establish practical evidentiary and proof standards, the Asylum Office can work with the UNHCR and asylum experts to fill the gap. 

While the BIA might be intentionally short on positive asylum guidance, there are plenty of decent Circuit decisions and some unpublished IJ decisions out there that point the way toward a fair, generous, functional legal asylum system that will actually fulfill the humanitarian promise of older precedents. Cases such as the Supreme’s decision in Cardoza Fonseca; the BIA’s complimentary positive guidance in cases like Matter of Mogharrabi, Matter of Kasinga, Matter of O-Z- & I-Z-, and Matter of A-R-C-G-; and the regulations establishing a “presumption of future persecution” based on past persecution all point the way toward a much more generous, practical, and humane interpretation and application of U.S. asylum law. 

Honest interpretations of asylum law disgracefully fell into disuse as the Trump regime improperly “weaponized” the Immigration Courts against asylum seekers and attempted to replace qualified Asylum Officers with patently unqualified Border Patrol Agents. But, despite a lackadaisical performance to date, the Biden Administration still has a golden opportunity to reverse the mistakes of the past and to lead the way to a better future. Whether they will take that opportunity remains to be seen! 

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-07-22

Related posts:

  1. 👍🏼🗽⚖️🙂🇺🇸BREAKING: IN A STUNNING REVERSAL, BIDEN ADMINISTRATION WILL BEGIN DISMANTLING “REMAIN IN MEXICO” PROGRAM BY SCREENING & ADMITTING THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN AWAITING ASYLUM HEARINGS! — Processing To Begin On Feb. 19!
  2. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  3. ☹️”TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE” — Asylum Seekers Stranded In Mexico See Promise To Lift Title 42 Blockade With Mixture Of Hope, Skepticism, & Confusion! — Under Trump, & Now Biden, U.S. Human Rights Laws & Our Constitution Have Become “Game Of Whack A Mole!” — Human Lives & The Rule Of Law A “Joke” To Border Patrol Agents!
  4. 😰NO HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR FAMILIES IN “THE NEW AMERICAN GULAG”☠️⚰️ — As Kakistocracy Of War Criminals 🤮🏴‍☠️ Departs, Will President Biden Have The Wisdom & Guts To Move Beyond “The Dem Border Alarmists” & Get The Progressive Leaders 🦸🏽‍♂️⚖️ From The NDPA In Place To Bring Due Process & Order To The Border?🗽🇺🇸

🤯WILL DEMS BLOW CHANCE TO UNITE AGAINST RACISM & SHOW HOW RULE OF LAW WORKS FOR ASYLUM SEEKERS @ BORDER? —“[W]hy shouldn’t it be a win for the president, too, comporting to his pledge for a more humane immigration system?”🗽⚖️🇺🇸

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2022/4/5/2090184/-GOP-states-waste-no-time-suing-over-Biden-admin-s-termination-of-anti-asylum-Title-42-policy

Gabe Ortiz
Gabe Ortiz
Staff Writer
The Daily Kos
PHOTO: dailycos.com

Gabe Ortiz in the Daily Kos:

. . . .

Republicans will use Title 42’s rollback “to fearmonger in an election year, using nativist talking points based on falsehoods,” The Boston Globe columnist Marcela García writes. “An invasion is coming! Expect chaos at the border! Yet those sound bites ignore the fact that Title 42 utterly failed even as a border management mechanism: Data show that migrant encounters surged to a record high during the policy.”

Marcela Garcia
Marcela Garcia
Associate
Editor and Columnist
Boston Globe
PICTURE: bostonglobe.com

“For Biden and the Democrats, the end of this disastrous policy should not be framed as a political headache, butas an opportunity to demonstrate that it is possible and suitable to process asylum applications in an orderly, legal, and humane way at the US-Mexico border,” she continued, noting new policy intended to speed up asylum processing, and a plan “that includes directing more resources and personnel to the southern border.”

pastedGraphic.png

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick

@ReichlinMelnick

·

Apr 5, 2022

What a mess. Everyone is now openly admitting Title 42 has nothing to do with public health and speaking of it purely in terms of an immigration deterrent—which it isn’t. Title 42 drove up apprehension numbers! There have been 750,000 repeat crossings thanks to Title 42.

pastedGraphic_1.png

Marianne LeVine

@marianne_levine

Tester:”Ending Title 42 is expected to cause a significant increase of migration to the United States and put more pressure on an already broken system. These problems do not only affect the southern border, but put more strain on those working to secure the northern border”

pastedGraphic.png

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick

@ReichlinMelnick

The amount of lies and misinformation about Title 42 is hitting a fever pitch. Title 42 has been an abject failure. It’s not about public health and it’s a terrible deterrent.

It’s shut down the asylum system at the ports of entry and forced desperate people into crossing.

4:25 PM · Apr 5, 2022

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García is right. For as long as we can successfully keep this policy from continued use, it should be framed as a huge step forward for U.S. asylum law and a victory for vulnerable people who have been blocked from their U.S. asylum rights for more than two years. Isn’t restoring asylum law, especially in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, undoubtedly a good thing? And why shouldn’t it be a win for the president, too, comporting to his pledge for a more humane immigration system?

Or we can just let Stephen Miller and racist border agents keep controlling the narrative, with his lies that restoring U.S. asylum rights “will mean armageddon,” and the agents’ union claiming supposed “mass chaos.”

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

It’s past time for ALL Dem pols and EVERYONE in the Biden Administration to stop enabling racist false narratives about refugees and asylum seekers (and, for Garland to stop “defending the indefensible”)! And, that means that one way or another, the Biden Administration needs to get off their tails and put in place a system to “process asylum applications in an orderly, legal, and humane way at the US-Mexico border.” 

It’s very possible! And, it’s no less than what Biden and other Dems promised when they ran in 2020 and solicited the votes of the human/rights, racial justice communities!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-07-22

Related posts:

  1. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  2. ⚖️🗽MORE TRUTH ABOUT THE SOUTHERN BORDER FROM ONE OF AMERICA’S 🇺🇸 LEADING HUMAN RIGHTS EXPERTS: “Real Needs, Not Fictitious Crises Account For The Situation at US-Mexico Border,” By Donald Kerwin Center For Migration Studies
  3. 👍🏼⚖️🗽MAJORITY OF ASYLUM SEEKERS WIN THEIR CASES, EVEN IN A BROKEN & BIASED  SYSTEM INTENTIONALLY STACKED AGAINST THEM — But, Only, If They Can Get To A “Merits Adjudication!” — Nativist Lies, Myths, Driving USG Policies Exposed! — Why USCIS & EOIR Self-Created Backlogs Primarily Shaft Those Deserving Legal Protection Of Some Type!
  4. 🇺🇸🏴‍☠️RACE IN AMERICA: CARRIE ROSENBAUM “GETS IT,” EVEN AS MAYORKAS, GARLAND, HARRIS & THE OTHER BIDEN HYPOCRITES PRETEND NOT TO:  “Immigration reform, and a more robust application of the Equal Protection doctrine to all those inside the country, and at our borders, is necessary to move towards meaningfully dismantling systemic racism.”

☹️”TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE” — Asylum Seekers Stranded In Mexico See Promise To Lift Title 42 Blockade With Mixture Of Hope, Skepticism, & Confusion! — Under Trump, & Now Biden, U.S. Human Rights Laws & Our Constitution Have Become “Game Of Whack A Mole!” — Human Lives & The Rule Of Law A “Joke” To Border Patrol Agents!

Whack-A-Mole
The Biden Administration’s vision for asylum seekers is a game of chance with the odds rigged heavily against them.
Circus Circus Reno – 2021-11-14 – Sarah Stierch 05.jpg
Creative Commons License
Emily Green
Emily Green
Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist
PHOTO: Twitter

 

Emily Green reports for Vice News:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3abwb9/title-42-mexico-migrants-stuck

REYNOSA, Mexico — A 2-1/2 year old boy dragged an oversized suitcase along the sidewalk excitedly, on the edge of a cramped migrant encampment straddling the U.S.-Mexico border. Every few seconds, he looked behind him to make sure his parents were still there. But the boy wasn’t going anywhere, and the suitcase was empty, much like the yearned-for promise of being finally allowed to enter the United States. The boy, born in Brazil, and his parents, from Haiti, have spent five months living in a tent just feet from the U.S. border.

“We will stay here until we can go to the other side,” the boy’s father said.

On April 1, the Biden administration announced that on May 23, it will rescind Title 42, the pandemic-era, public-health policy that allowed for the automatic expulsion of more than a million migrants to Mexico and other countries. The policy is why the little boy and his parents hadn’t sought asylum. They’re scared that if they crossed into the U.S. and asked for protection, they’ll be deported to Haiti. They instead opted to wait in Reynosa, despite its reputation as one of Mexico’s most dangerous cities.

World News

The US Admitted a Group of Russians at the Border Under Secret Deal With Mexico

DAVID NORIEGA, DAVID MORA

03.28.22

The repeal of the Trump-era rule is expected to trigger an influx of migrants to the U.S.-Mexico border. Already, around 2,500 people are living in the public plaza here at the edge of the border, their tents packed together so tightly there’s barely room to walk. While the policy change won’t take effect for a month and a half, the response on both sides of the international line couldn’t be more different.

In the U.S., officials are busy expanding border facilities and sending more personnel to staff emergency operations. In Mexico meanwhile, most of the tens of thousands of asylum seekers who’ve been waiting for months to cross legally at a port of entry have received no information from authorities and seem completely in the dark about what’s to come. There are no guidelines for who gets to enter first, nor instructions about when and where to cross, or even a line to sign up for.

Compounding the confusion, many of the migrants have no idea why they were denied entry to the U.S to request asylum in the first place. They have only the vaguest notion of Title 42, and what its repeal could mean for them. The information they have largely comes via word of mouth, which human smugglers frequently spin to sell their services.

But migrants may be headed towards disappointment as Title 42 winds down and another restrictive immigration policy is likely ramped up.

World News

The US Admitted a Group of Russians at the Border Under Secret Deal With Mexico

DAVID NORIEGA, DAVID MORA

03.28.22

Jacki, a Honduran woman who has spent six months in the encampment with her four-year-old daughter, learned of Title 42’s end through a reporter (not this one). Jacki and the other migrants interviewed for this story declined to provide their last names. “We are all excited… but… I don’t know,” Jacki said. “It’s too good to be true.”

She may be right. Department of Homeland Security officials said that in the wake of winding down Title 42, it will increase its use of the policy known as Migrant Protection Protocols, or “Remain in Mexico,” which requires asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases are decided. It’s possible that asylum seekers stranded in some of Mexico’s most dangerous border cities by Title 42 could finally enter the U.S. and ask for protection, only to be returned to Mexico under Remain in Mexico.

The Biden administration has also expanded “Remain in Mexico” to include Haitians, who make up the fastest-growing group of migrants in Reynosa. Even with Title 42 gone, gaining legal entry into the U.S. is uncertain at best.

For migrants, U.S. immigration policy can feel like a game of whack-a-mole. From Feb. 2021 to Dec. 2021, during Biden’s first year in office, immigration agents allowed roughly 29 percent of migrants encountered at the southern border to enter the U.S. and plead their case before an immigration judge, according to the American Immigration Council, which advocates on behalf of migrants. The rest were summarily expelled under Title 42 to Mexico or another country, or sent to ICE detention.

. . . .

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

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

The way to start breaking backlogs and restoring confidence in the rule of law is to identify and prioritize asylum grants! 

That’s precisely the opposite of the misguided border policies that Administrations of both parties have followed for the past two decades: Move unrepresented individuals to the front of the line and issue lots of bogus in absentias and hasty denials in a perverted, and highly ineffective, attempt to use our legal system as a “deterrent” and to “send don’t come messages.”

The Biden Administration should have a team of trained Refugee Officers and Asylum Officers in Mexico, now, working with pro bono advocates and NGOs to identify and “pre-process/pre-approve” asylum cases that can be granted on May 23 or shortly thereafter. That would start clearing out the camps in Mexico, reducing processing backlogs, and lessening pressure on the Immigration Courts. Incidentally, it would also provide needed potential legal workers for the U.S. economy.

It would also establish the credibility of the asylum processing program (something now in tatters) at legal ports of entry. That, in turn, would incentivize individuals to use orderly asylum processing rather than being lured by smugglers into attempting dangerous irregular entries. 

A major overlooked fact in the restrictionist babble (disgustingly repeated even by some Administration officials and Dem politicos) about “illegal border crossings” is that the U.S. has had no transparent legal asylum system at ports of entry for years. Our Government’s failure, has empowered smugglers, encouraged irregular entry, and endangered asylum seekers. Amazingly, despite years of bad faith, dishonesty, and insulting “die elsewhere” racist messages, tens of thousands of individuals have waited patiently on the Mexican side of the Southern Border, in horrid and life-threatening conditions, for appointments, hearings, and adjudications that have never happened and that are often biased and unfair on those occasions when they did take place.  

The Biden Administration should also be working in Mexico with NGOs to provide accurate information (NOT “stay home and die” propaganda) about the U.S. Asylum program, the legal documentation requirements, opportunities for representation and counseling, and what will happen after May 23. Given the lack of honesty, transparency, accuracy, and humanity in many “official” USG pronouncements, it’s no wonder desperate folks seek information and guidance elsewhere.

An essential part of the foregoing is to establish officially-maintained prioritized processing lists for ports of entry. As noted in Emily’s article, informal “do it yourself” lists are being maintained by unofficial and unregulated “gatekeepers.” This has been a key reason why the U.S. system lacks credibility and orderliness.

It’s not “rocket science.” 🚀 But, as usual, when it comes to immigration, human rights, and equal justice, the Biden Administration lacks dynamic expert leadership, a positive vision of immigration, and the ability to “pick off the low hanging fruit.”  

As I have pointed out before, in the absence of a plan, the best hope for an orderly transition to a restored legal asylum program might well be NGOs and volunteers who could step in where the Administration is failing! https://immigrationcourtside.com/2022/04/02/%f0%9f%97%bd%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f-cdc-announces-end-of-covid-bar-but-only-7-weeks-from-now-compare-what-dhs-should-have-said-with-what-they-did-say-with-51/

🗽🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-06-22

Related posts:

  1. 👍🏼🗽⚖️🙂🇺🇸BREAKING: IN A STUNNING REVERSAL, BIDEN ADMINISTRATION WILL BEGIN DISMANTLING “REMAIN IN MEXICO” PROGRAM BY SCREENING & ADMITTING THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN AWAITING ASYLUM HEARINGS! — Processing To Begin On Feb. 19!
  2. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  3. 🇺🇸🗽⚖️GEORGE W. BUSH INSTITUTE REPORT: GENDER VIOLENCE ☠️⚰️DRIVES CONTINUING REFUGEE FLOW TO U.S. — Dishonesty Of Sessions’s Misogynistic Attack In Matter Of A-B- 🤮 Exposed Again! — Yet, Garland Fails To Take Action To End Misogyny, Anti-Asylum Culture @ EOIR, Even As He Also Fails To Insist On The Restoration Of The Rule Of Law @ Our Borders! —  WHY?🤯
  4. ⚖️🗽MORE TRUTH ABOUT THE SOUTHERN BORDER FROM ONE OF AMERICA’S 🇺🇸 LEADING HUMAN RIGHTS EXPERTS: “Real Needs, Not Fictitious Crises Account For The Situation at US-Mexico Border,” By Donald Kerwin Center For Migration Studies

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

Related posts:

  1. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  2. 🇺🇸🏴‍☠️RACE IN AMERICA: CARRIE ROSENBAUM “GETS IT,” EVEN AS MAYORKAS, GARLAND, HARRIS & THE OTHER BIDEN HYPOCRITES PRETEND NOT TO:  “Immigration reform, and a more robust application of the Equal Protection doctrine to all those inside the country, and at our borders, is necessary to move towards meaningfully dismantling systemic racism.”
  3. ⚖️🗽MORE TRUTH ABOUT THE SOUTHERN BORDER FROM ONE OF AMERICA’S 🇺🇸 LEADING HUMAN RIGHTS EXPERTS: “Real Needs, Not Fictitious Crises Account For The Situation at US-Mexico Border,” By Donald Kerwin Center For Migration Studies
  4. 🏴‍☠️CLOSING THE BORDER TO LEGAL ASYLUM SEEKERS IS A VIOLATION OF BOTH DOMESTIC & INTERNATIONAL LAW — It’s Neither Something To Tout (Biden Administration) Nor A Solution (GOP) (Except, Perhaps, In The “Hitlerian” Sense) — Our Inability To Solve A Humanitarian Situation By Acting Lawfully, Sensibly, & Humanely Is A Sign Of Gross National Weakness Spurred By Unwillingness To See The Human Tragedies We Are Promoting! — And The Lousy, Misleading, & Tone-Deaf Reporting By The Some Of The “Mainstream Media” Is Making It Worse! — Leon Krauze & Suzanne Gamboa With Simple Truths About Human Migration That Neither Pols Nor Nativists Want You To Hear! — PLUS BONUS COVERAGE: Friday Mini-Essay: “Degrading Ourselves As A Nation Won’t Stop Human Migration”

🏴‍☠️⚰️BIDEN’S BORDER RACISM: Whites Secretly Allowed In To Apply For Asylum, While Blacks Rounded Up, Abused, Returned To Danger And/Or Death Without Any Chance To Apply!

 

Two recent news items illustrate the rampant racism at work in the Biden Administration’s Illegal use of the Title 42 charade to eliminate the rule of law at the border:

#VICENews #NewsInitially Rejected by the US, Russians Are Secretly Hustled Over the Border:

https://youtu.be/ARgTwHv9vSA

Blacks and other folks of color seeking asylum — dehumanized and deported without regard to the rule of law:

Beyond the Bridge: Documented Human Rights Abuses and Civil Rights Violations Against Haitian Migrants in the Del Rio, Texas Encampment

RFK Human Rights, Haitian Bridge Alliance, March 2022

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

On  Garland’s watch:

    • Racism runs rampant in immigration enforcement and policy;
    • Backlogs continue to grow and fester across the immigration system;
    • Immigration Courts remain dysfunctional, inept, and biased toward DHS Enforcement; and
    • There is no accountability for anything.

Maybe Trump did win that second term, at least as far as Garland’s DOJ is concerned!

After more than a year of not getting the job done, politicos and some border legislators of both parties are debating whether to continue to violate the law, the Constitution, and human rights of asylum seekers of color because Garland and Mayorkas have failed to get a legal asylum system in place at the border — despite having a number of “blueprints” on how it could successfully be done.

Clearly, there is NO public health justification whatsoever for the continued Title 42 farce — it has become an obvious pretext for violating the law because some politicos think it’s convenient and expedient to do so. Those like Garland, Monaco, Gupta, and Clarke who are supposed to stand up for equal justice, racial justice, the rule of law, and protections for the most vulnerable among us have “taken a dive!”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-30-22

Related posts:

  1. 🇺🇸🗽⚖️GEORGE W. BUSH INSTITUTE REPORT: GENDER VIOLENCE ☠️⚰️DRIVES CONTINUING REFUGEE FLOW TO U.S. — Dishonesty Of Sessions’s Misogynistic Attack In Matter Of A-B- 🤮 Exposed Again! — Yet, Garland Fails To Take Action To End Misogyny, Anti-Asylum Culture @ EOIR, Even As He Also Fails To Insist On The Restoration Of The Rule Of Law @ Our Borders! —  WHY?🤯
  2. ⚖️🗽MORE TRUTH ABOUT THE SOUTHERN BORDER FROM ONE OF AMERICA’S 🇺🇸 LEADING HUMAN RIGHTS EXPERTS: “Real Needs, Not Fictitious Crises Account For The Situation at US-Mexico Border,” By Donald Kerwin Center For Migration Studies
  3. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  4. ICRC: “Migration is not going to stop. If you try to prevent it or strictly regulate it, people start to pile up at the borders, which is happening in Mexico and other countries.”

🗽END THE “DOUBLE STANDARD” FOR REFUGEES — All Refugees Must Be Treated With Respect, Dignity, & In Accordance With The International Legal Standards! 

 

Nikolái Ingistov-García
Nikolái Ingistov-García Lecturer in Spanish Language and Latin American Studies at UC Riverside


http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=7fe1b555-69d3-499c-b9cc-3deaebd50a26

A glaring double standard on refugees

The portrayal and treatment of Ukrainians fleeing war and of Haitian, Central American and Mexican asylum seekers also fleeing deadly violence could not be more different

By Nikolái Ingistov-García

. . . .

Over the course of that weekend, I watched how the Ukrainian refugee crisis grew day by day. I read that Airbnb was paying for thousands of refugees to stay in their rooms. Thousands of Europeans in dozens of countries opened their doors to Ukrainians. I was encouraged but bothered at the same time. Media outlets all over the world from the left, right and center praised the courage of these refugees, and some reporters called them heroes.

An overwhelming majority of my students in my classes at UCR are Latino. Several of them are refugees from Latin America, and a few are “Dreamers.” I asked if any of them noticed anything with this growing refugee crisis in Eastern Europe, and several were quick to point out the double standard.

A few weeks before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine started, my class watched interviews about the forced sterilization of Latina refugees at an immigration detention center in Georgia. We discussed the Latino children fleeing Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala who are being held in U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement detention centers to this day. The double standard in the me-dia’s portrayal of the Ukrainian refugees in Europe compared with the images of Haitian, Central American and Mexican migrants at the Mexican border was obvious to everyone in my class.

I thought about the tens of thousands of refugees fleeing Ukraine and the tens of thousands of refugees who have had to flee their homes in Central America, Mexico and other parts of Latin America because of wars, dictatorships, gang warfare and cartel terrorism. Refugees and migrants who are uprooted from their homes all go through trauma whether they come from Latinoamérica or Eastern Europe.

The images of people fleeing Ukraine shook me as I remembered my family’s histories from Ukraine and Mexico, with both sides leaving their homelands for a better life.

. . . .

Ukraine and Mexico came together to form my family in the borderland of Los Angeles. My Chicano-Mexican-Russian-Ukrainian border-crossing identity hurts as I watch Putin’s war unfold while more waves of Latin American and, very recently, Ukrainian refugees arrive at the Tijuana-U.S. border. My hope is that out of this tragedy, future refugees that come to the Mexican border, whether they are from Honduras or Ukraine, are treated with equal dignity — which all of them deserve.

Nikolái Ingistov-García is a lecturer in Spanish languageand Latin American Studies at UC Riverside.

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

Ukrainian refugees are “courageous heroes.” Meanwhile, equally brave and deserving refugees of color from Haiti, Latin America, and Africa are dehumanized, degraded, and removed to potential death or danger without a thought and in violation of law. 

They are often called by the misnomer “illegal migrants” — or worse! Ironically, however, the refugees arriving at Southern Border, even if not “invited,” are exercising internationally and domestically recognized legal rights to apply for asylum and other legal protections from involuntary return, some mandatory!

Of course, as intelligent humans, they don’t wait in vain or line up for “imaginary invitations” that will never come! We have no viable refugee programs for Haiti, Africa, and Latin America. Indeed, after four years of Trump and one of Biden we barely have any refugee programs anywhere! Even worse, we have immorally and illegally closed legal ports of entry to asylum seekers. So, having left refugees no viable legal avenues for seeking refuge in the U.S., a right guaranteed by both statute and international convention, we dehumanize and degrade them for using the only “self-help” methods available! Talk about chutzpah!  

It’s actually folks like Vice President Harris, Secretary Mayorkas, AG Garland, and his band of scofflaw lawyers at the DOJ who are the “illegals” in this  scenario. The Biden Administration is hardly the first to turn refugee and asylum laws as well as the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of our Constitution on their heads.

The Trump regime gloried in violating the law and mistreating refugees simply for the cruelty, racism, and hate involved. Shockingly, with a some exceptions, life-tenured Federal Judges gave them a pass — particularly at the Supremes which developed their own “special double standard” to dehumanize and “Dred Scottify” immigrants of color!

The Biden Administration sweeps their own gross misconduct and racially charged “double standards” under the rug! Under Garland, the DOJ has “gone along to get along” and even disgracefully defended illegal, immoral, and deadly removals without any process at all. In doing so, they have advanced some of the same discredited myths and disingenuous pretexts developed by Miller, Sessions, Barr and the Jim Crow White Nationalist nativists!

The “mainstream media” give excruciatingly detailed coverage of the humanitarian plight of Ukrainian refugees. Meanwhile, the similar humanitarian plight of vulnerable equally deserving refugees of color, like Ukrainians many of them desperate women and children, gets little coverage outside of a few specialized reporters. 

Of course, beyond the rhetoric, the Biden Administration has actually done very little to help even Ukrainian refugees beyond hollow expressions of sympathy and using them as “props” in the “war of words” with Putin. Leadership is a combination of rhetoric backed with action! 

Our refugee and asylum systems are in shambles, without the leadership and expertise in place to respond to either predictable refugee flows or humanitarian catastrophes in a practical and effective way. That needs to end! But, unfortunately, its hard to see the current, spineless (non) leadership from Harris, Mayorkas, Garland, and others in this Administration getting the job done!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-21-22

Related posts:

  1. 🇺🇸😎⚖️🗽👍🏼LAW YOU CAN USE:  Michelle Mendez and CLINIC Publish A New Practice Advisory on Opening & Closing Statements in Immigration Court
  2. 🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️KAKISTOCRACY WATCH: AILA Blasts Appointment Of Prosecutors Without Judicial Qualifications To Top Judicial Positions in Billy the Bigot’s Weaponized Anti-Due-Process “Court” System — Dysfunction, Bias, Illegitimate Decisions Run Rampant As Congress, Article IIIs Fail to Enforce U.S. Constitution!
  3. FROM THE HEIGHTS OF KASINGA TO THE DEPTHS OF AMERICA’S DEADLY STAR CHAMBERS: Will The Biden Administration Tap The New Due Process Army To Fix EOIR & Save Our Nation? 
  4. 🇺🇸🏴‍☠️RACE IN AMERICA: CARRIE ROSENBAUM “GETS IT,” EVEN AS MAYORKAS, GARLAND, HARRIS & THE OTHER BIDEN HYPOCRITES PRETEND NOT TO:  “Immigration reform, and a more robust application of the Equal Protection doctrine to all those inside the country, and at our borders, is necessary to move towards meaningfully dismantling systemic racism.”

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🤮👎🏽 ILLEGAL & IMMORAL: HRC’s Stunning Indictment Of Biden Administration’s Continuing Abuse Of Legal Asylum Seekers — “The Title 42 policy discriminatorily targets Haitian and other Black asylum seekers, spurs disorder at the border, undermines security, and separates families.”

“Floaters”
Although most senior Biden Administration officials work hard to avoid the border and confronting scenes like this, trauma, death, destruction, and dehumanization of the world’s most vulnerable will remain as indelible parts of their toxic legacies. “Floaters — How The World’s Richest Country Responds To Asylum Seekers”
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)
Stephen Miller Monster
Carrying on and defending this guy’s cruel, inhuman, deadly, dishonest, and illegal policies wasn’t part of the Biden-Harris campaign pledge. Or was it? Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com

From ImmigrationProf Blog:

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/outsidenews/posts/two-years-of-suffering-biden-administration-continues-use-of-discredited-title-42-order-to-flout-refugee-law

Two Years of Suffering: Biden Administration Continues Use of Discredited Title 42 Order to Flout Refugee Law

Human Rights First, Mar. 16, 2022

“For two years, the U.S. government has illegally blocked and expelled people seeking refuge at the southern U.S. border despite U.S. laws and treaties created to protect them. Since March 20, 2020, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has used orders from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), purportedly issued under Title 42 of U.S. law, to prevent asylum seekers from requesting U.S. asylum and returning thousands to persecution, torture, and other horrific violence. In March 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit found that the use of Title 42 to expel people to places where they would face persecution or torture is likely illegal, violating U.S. refugee laws and international treaty obligations.

The grave human rights abuses faced by people turned away under Title 42 continue to mount every day that U.S. officials allow this policy’s use to evade refugee law. Human Rights First has now tracked at least 9,886 kidnappings, torture, rape, and other violent attacks on people blocked in or expelled to Mexico due to the Title 42 policy under the Biden administration – a new record of suffering.

Flouting refugee protection laws as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic is not and never was justified as a public health measure. Initially issued by the CDC under orders from senior Trump administration officials and despite objections by CDC experts, the Biden administration has continued the policy for migration policy and/or political reasons, according to various reports. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky re-issued a new version of the Title 42 order in August 2021, and has subsequently repeatedly extended it. The CDC must review whether to continue, modify, or end the Title 42 order by March 30, 2022.

Epidemiologists and medical experts have exhaustively established that Title 42 does not protect public health, and in fact exacerbates the spread of COVID-19. The claimed public health justification for the Title 42 order has become even more transparently unjustified as the administration lifts other pandemic-related international travel restrictions and with mask mandates lifted in all 50 U.S. states. In March 2022, the CDC partially terminated the Title 42 order as to unaccompanied children following a federal court ruling that would have compelled the resumption of expulsions of unaccompanied children. In a notice explaining the decision, the CDC cited declining COVID-19 cases nationwide, including in communities along the U.S.-Mexico border, increased vaccination rates in the United States and countries of origin, and widespread availability of COVID-19 testing and other mitigation measures at facilities receiving migrants. Despite these factors applying equally to all people seeking refuge in the United States, the CDC has so far disingenuously maintained the Title 42 order to expel families and adults.

At this shameful second anniversary of the Title 42 policy, the Biden administration continues to illegally turn away asylum seekers without access to the U.S. asylum system. It is carrying out dangerous expulsions to countries refugees have fled, including: El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, and Mexico, as well as expelling some Venezuelans to Colombia. The Title 42 policy discriminatorily targets Haitian and other Black asylum seekers, spurs disorder at the border, undermines security, and separates families. While some Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion have been allowed to cross into the United States at southern border ports of entry, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) continues to cite Title 42 to illegally block others and to discriminatorily turn away many asylum seekers of other nationalities and races who have often been waiting for months or years in danger in Mexico to seek U.S. asylum protection.

The Biden administration must immediately end this disastrous policy and restart the asylum processes required under U.S. law along the border, including at ports of entry, as Human Rights First has recommended. In recent weeks, dozens of members of Congress have publicly called for an end to the Title 42 policy with Senate leadership condemning the Biden administration’s decision to continuing sending asylum seekers “back to persecution and torture” as “wrong.” The United States has the capacity to welcome people seeking refuge. Many faith- and community-based organizations along the border and throughout the United States are standing by ready to assist the families, adults, and children seeking refuge.

This factsheet updates prior research on the Title 42 policy by Human Rights First in February 2022, January 2022, December 2021, November 2021 (with Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project), October 2021, August 2021, July 2021 (with Hope Border Institute), June 2021, May 2021 (with RAICES and Interfaith Welcome Coalition), April 2021 (with Al Otro Lado and Haitian Bridge Alliance), December 2020, and May 2020.”

pastedGraphic.png

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How will Harris, Mayorkas, Garland, Walenksy, and other senior Biden Administration officials who have spinelessly furthered these inexcusable, illegal, abusive, and deadly anti-humanitarian policies deal with their toxic legacies? Also, Deputy AG Lisa Monaco, Associate AG Vanita Gupta, SG Liz Prelogar, and Assistant AG for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke stand out as irresponsible, “look the other way,” fundamentally flawed public officials who have failed to “rise to the occasion” in the time of democracy’s and humanity’s greatest needs! Carrying out “Miller Lite,” Jim Crow, xenophobic, racially targeted policies, often endorsing false narratives and using obvious pretexts, directed against some of the world’s most courageous, vulnerable humans, deserving of humane treatment and fair access to refuge, is “NOT OK!” 

Perhaps the most telling observation about our exercise in national failure is this:

The United States has the capacity to welcome people seeking refuge. Many faith- and community-based organizations along the border and throughout the United States are standing by ready to assist the families, adults, and children seeking refuge.

It’s not rocket science! All it would have taken to get his right would be some political courage and empowering those with the skills and vision to change the way we treat refugees, asylees, and other immigrants!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-2.0-22

Related posts:

  1. 🇺🇸🏴‍☠️RACE IN AMERICA: CARRIE ROSENBAUM “GETS IT,” EVEN AS MAYORKAS, GARLAND, HARRIS & THE OTHER BIDEN HYPOCRITES PRETEND NOT TO:  “Immigration reform, and a more robust application of the Equal Protection doctrine to all those inside the country, and at our borders, is necessary to move towards meaningfully dismantling systemic racism.”
  2. 👹🎃HALLOWEEN HORROR 🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️👎🏻REICHSREPORT: GRUPPENFUHRER MILLER REVEALS “REICHSPLAN” FOR EXTERMINATION OF IMMIGRATION, ASYLUM, REFUGE BY EXECUTIVE DECREE!  — “The Final Solution??”  — Parents, Protect Your Kids, Families, & Your Country From This Grotesque Un-American Monster!
  3. 🇺🇸🗽⚖️MORE GOOD NEWS FOR AMERICA AS TRUMP KAKISTOCRACY☠️🦹🏿‍♂️⚰️ FINALLY COMES TO AN END: Biden Will Move Immediately For Sane, Humane, Practical Immigration Policies — Wants To Put Trump’s Cruel, Racist, Stupid Abuses Of Humanity, Common Sense, Rule Of Law, & America’s Immigrant Heritage In The Rear-View Mirror! — Promises Reversal Of DHS’s Role As White Nationalist “Political Police Force”🏴‍☠️☠️ That Beat Up On the Most Vulnerable While Ignoring Real Security Threat Posed By Trump-Inspired Righty Domestic Terrorists!
  4. 🏴‍☠️CLOSING THE BORDER TO LEGAL ASYLUM SEEKERS IS A VIOLATION OF BOTH DOMESTIC & INTERNATIONAL LAW — It’s Neither Something To Tout (Biden Administration) Nor A Solution (GOP) (Except, Perhaps, In The “Hitlerian” Sense) — Our Inability To Solve A Humanitarian Situation By Acting Lawfully, Sensibly, & Humanely Is A Sign Of Gross National Weakness Spurred By Unwillingness To See The Human Tragedies We Are Promoting! — And The Lousy, Misleading, & Tone-Deaf Reporting By The Some Of The “Mainstream Media” Is Making It Worse! — Leon Krauze & Suzanne Gamboa With Simple Truths About Human Migration That Neither Pols Nor Nativists Want You To Hear! — PLUS BONUS COVERAGE: Friday Mini-Essay: “Degrading Ourselves As A Nation Won’t Stop Human Migration”

☠️👎🏽 UNMITIGATED DUE PROCESS DISASTER! 🤮 — GARLAND’S TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL “COURTS” DAMAGE HUMANITY, DEGRADE AMERICAN JUSTICE!🏴‍☠️

Alexandra Villarreal
Alexandra Villarreal
Freelance Reporter
The Guardian

Alexandra Villarreal reports for The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/21/us-immigration-courts-cases-backlog-understaffing?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

. . . .

On the line are millions of futures. Undocumented immigrants who fear being split from their American children and spouses, people facing persecution and death in their countries of origin, or those being sent to countries they haven’t seen in decades are all fighting for fair play and often literally their lives in courts ill-equipped to do them justice.

“Let’s make it absolutely clear: due process is suffering,” said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. “There’s just no way around that.”

Chishti said he sees all the hallmarks of a strong administrative law system suffering in the nation’s immigration courts, which are housed under the Department of Justice in the executive branch of the federal government, not within the judicial branch.

“It is a system in crisis,” he said.

After Trump made hardline anti-immigration policies pivotal to his 2016 presidential campaign, he flooded courts with judges more inclined to order deportations, Reuters reported.

His administration hired so many new immigration judges so hastily that the American Bar Association warned of “under-qualified or potentially biased judges”, many of whom had no immigration experience.

And as officials such as then-attorney general Jeff Sessions made sweeping proclamations that “the vast majority of asylum claims are not valid”, judges simultaneously confronted performance metrics demanding they each race through at least 700 cases a year.

Yet in the roughly 70 US immigration courts across the country, judges are deciding complex cases with potentially lethal consequences.

People ranging from asylum seekers forced to wait in Mexico to unaccompanied children crossing the border on foot, to longtime undocumented residents with families stateside end up appearing in court, often without attorneys to help them parse the country’s byzantine laws.

In a process smacking of a zip code lottery, one judge in New York may grant nearly 95% of asylum petitions while colleagues in Atlanta almost universally deny similar requests, creating a patchwork of standards.

. . . .

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Read Alexandra’s full report at the link.

Alfred E. Neumann
Garland’s stubbornly indolent approach to racial justice and due process at “Justice” endangers the lives of millions of vulnerable humans! PHOTO: Wikipedia Commons

Not news to Courtside readers or the millions whose lives and futures are caught up in Garland’s totally dysfunctional morass! And, that doesn’t even include hundreds of thousands of migrants orbited to danger under bogus “border closure” gimmicks that Garland and his ethically-challenged DOJ continue to defend!

While Garland and his top lieutenants might be too willfully tone deaf to “get it,” many legislators are “connecting the dots” between the systemic racial injustice and indifference to human life exhibited in Garland’s failed immigration justice system and the endemic problem of racial justice in America.  See, e.g., https://www.menendez.senate.gov/newsroom/press/menendez-booker-lead-100-congressional-colleagues-in-urging-president-biden-to-reverse-inhumane-immigration-policies-impacting-black-migrants

There will be no racial justice in America without immigrant justice!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-21-22

Related posts:

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  2. 😰NO HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR FAMILIES IN “THE NEW AMERICAN GULAG”☠️⚰️ — As Kakistocracy Of War Criminals 🤮🏴‍☠️ Departs, Will President Biden Have The Wisdom & Guts To Move Beyond “The Dem Border Alarmists” & Get The Progressive Leaders 🦸🏽‍♂️⚖️ From The NDPA In Place To Bring Due Process & Order To The Border?🗽🇺🇸
  3. PURE BS 💩 — TRUMP’S “BIG LIE” ABOUT MIGRANT APPEARANCES FOR HEARINGS BOGUS AS $3 BILL 🤮👎🏻— Replacing DHS/EOIR With Rational, Qualified, Fact-Based Governance & Real Judiciary Could Bring Appearance Rate Close To 100%!  — Two Items From ImmigrationProf Blog!
  4. ROUND TABLE CHAMPION 🛡⚔️JUDGE PAUL GRUSSENDORF SPEAKS OUT FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCES ON REGIME’S IMMIGRATION ATROCITIES, ☠️🤮⚰️ URGENT NEED FOR PRACTICAL HUMANITARIAN REFORMS — “The sham is that no law enforcement body in the country, federal or state, has a zero tolerance policy, simply because no one has the resources to detain, charge, prosecute, adjudicate and jail all offenders. (This stark reality is in fact the reason for the plea bargaining system in criminal court).”