⚖️ “WINNNG SHOULDN’T BE LOSING” — Cancellation & Life After Winning (“CLAW”) Project Kicks Off With “Keynote Remarks!” — End The Inhumane & Irrational “4,000 Cap” On Cancellation!

Clawmobile
The CLAWmobile — America’s First Due Process Powered Vehicle, Piloted by Attorney Yousof “Joe” Nesari, will be spreading the message to the Commonwealth and beyond!

CANCELLATION & LIFE AFTER WINNING: The CLAW Campaign Kicks Off

Delivered by Paul Wickham Schmidt

CLAW Headquarters, Reston, Virginia

February 27, 2022

Thank you for inviting me this afternoon. I’m honored to be here. Beyond that, I wish to congratulate and thank Neela Nesari and the rest of you for your courage, dedication, and humanity in standing up and speaking out for social justice in America. 

Of course, I will start out by giving you my “standard comprehensive disclaimer.” What I’m about to tell you represents solely my views and not the views or opinions of any individual, institution, organization, or group with which I am associated, have been associated in the past, or might associate with in the future! 

My time on the stage is winding down. But yours, my friends, is just beginning. You are the ones who control your destinies and must decide what kind of world you want to live in and what you want to leave behind for the next generations. 

Relief for families granted cancellation of removal is a “just cause” that should be a “no-brainer” in a fair, well-functioning, human-values-based society. That neither such badly-needed specific remedial changes nor long overdue “big picture” reforms to fix our broken and dysfunctional Immigration Courts, restore fairness and functionality to our shattered refugee and asylum programs, and make our legal immigration system robust, realistic, workable, and serving the national interest says something about our current national mood and our political leadership that should be quite concerning to you as the upcoming generation!   

My friends, both our Immigration Courts and our democratic republic are in a grave existential crisis. There are powerful and well-organized forces with a very dark, exclusive, intolerant, sometimes belligerent vision of America’s future: one that reverses generations of human progress and knowledge and actively promotes intolerance, misinformation, dehumanization, and deconstruction of our democratic institutions and fundamental human values. 

They actively promote an intentionally “whitewashed” version of American history: One that denies the ingenuity, creativity, and forced labor of generations of African Americans who literally built our country!  It disregards the courage, tenacity, skill, and strength of Asian Americans who built our Transcontinental Railroad and literally brought our nation together. And, of course, it dismisses the legions of Hispanic Americans who have been “making America great” since before “America was America,” with their culture, hard work, determination, and commitment to the “real” American dream, not the “whitewashed” version. It basically devalues the essential contributions of almost all non-Western-European immigrants! 

The future envisioned by these dark forces “x’es out” many, probably the majority, of you in this room. It says that their so-called individual rights to do as they please outweigh the common interests of society and humanity as a whole. Yet, few seem willing to challenge them and stand up for the rights and human dignity of  “the others” which are being demeaned, devalued, and, in some cases, erased. Don’t let their darkness, willful ignorance, and often threatening demeanor be your future and that of generations to come. 

Look around you here at the real history and the real America represented by this audience. The future is yours! Don’t let the forces of darkness and a “past that never was” deny your destiny!

Now is the time to take a stand for Due Process, fundamental fairness, human rights, human dignity, social justice, and human decency! Become the “next generation leaders” of the New Due Process Army and fight to make equal justice under law and the constitutional and human rights of everyone a reality rather than an unfulfilled promise! Due process forever!

Thanks again for inviting me and for listening.

 

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It was great to see in the audience some of the former students from my last “pre-pandemic in-person speech” to Professor Dree Collopy’s class at Washington College of Law at American University there as lawyers in the ranks of the NDPA!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-28-22

 

 

    

ARPAIO PARDON ALIGNS TRUMP WITH RADICAL ANTI-FED MOVEMENT!

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/01/joe-arpaio-pardon-sheriffs-movement-215566

Professor Robert Tsai writes in Politico:

“When President Donald Trump pardoned Sheriff Joe Arpaio, calling him a “patriot,” he didn’t just absolve him from the consequences of defying a federal judge. He didn’t merely excuse Arpaio’s racial profiling and illegal immigration sweeps. Trump’s pardon did do all of that. But it also did something more: It boosted a radical theory of law and American history that Arpaio supports, and which is gaining steam across the United States.

It’s called the “constitutional sheriff” movement, and as it grows, it’s increasing the risk of conflict between local law enforcement and federal authorities. Its animating idea is that a sheriff holds ultimate law-enforcement authority in his county—outranking even the federal government within its borders. Though the movement claims deep history in English law, its real roots lie in the more recent fringes of American right-wing thought. And its popularity helps explain why Arpaio’s defiance of federal law shouldn’t be seen as just one grandstanding sheriff crossing a line, but instead should be seen as part of a broader grassroots resistance to constitutional and cultural upheavals during the 20th century.

 

The strange idea that unites all members of this movement is that a sheriff is the highest law enforcement officer within a county’s borders—superior not only to local police, but also to officers and agents of the federal government. The actual influence of sheriff supremacy is hard to measure, but it has been growing in recent years, and today the official constitutional sheriffs’ association boasts 4,500 dues paying members and over 200 sheriffs. Its highest-profile members include Arpaio and David Clarke, who just resigned as sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, reportedly to help Trump in some capacity.

But those figures may underestimate how far its influence extends, and how fully it pervades certain regions of the country. In 2013, Arpaio joined nearly 500 other sheriffs who vowed not to obey any federal law that required them to confiscate guns from private citizens. In Utah, 28 of 30 sheriffs went even further, warning that “[n]o federal official will be permitted to descend upon our constituents and take from them what the Bill of Rights—in particular Amendment II—has given them.”

The constitutional sheriff movement arose from the ashes of the far-right, anti-semitic Posse Comitatus movement of the 1970s and 80s, led by William Potter Gale. The insignia favored by these Christian Patriots was a redesigned sheriff’s badge containing a noose, Bible and sword, to reflect their belief that sheriffs were responsible for the armed defense of citizens and higher law (a combination of their view of the Constitution and Christian Identity teachings). Before the movement collapsed with Gale’s death, its paramilitary figures developed an anti-tax, anti-government agenda that stoked conspiracy theories that Jews were responsible for oppressing farmers through crushing taxes and exorbitant loans. Its foot soldiers gained notoriety when they tried to stop foreclosures in the Midwest and engaged in shootouts with U.S. marshals.

. . . .

Trump’s pardon of Arpaio didn’t just let the sheriff off the hook; it short-circuited the part of the American judicial process designed to hold government accountable, and resolve conflicts between levels of government. It began when a class-action lawsuit was filed in 2007 by individuals who claimed they had been racially profiled during Arpaio’s immigration raids and traffic stops. In 2012, the DOJ intervened in the case to vindicate federal interests in ending discriminatory policing, to stop Arpaio from retaliating against his critics in violation of the First Amendment, and to ensure that non-English detainees didn’t forfeit their rights without understanding them. Arpaio lost the first case and settled with DOJ, but was held in civil contempt of court for continuing to capture migrants without legal authority and for failing to turn over records of these encounters.

During the legal proceedings, Arpaio made the puzzling assertion that he had never violated his oath of office, despite having ignored direct orders from a federal judge. As far as he was concerned, the oath of office gave him the right, indeed even the responsibility, to ignore the federal court. He was merely doing the rightful job of a sheriff, enforcing the laws and Constitution as he saw them, unaccountable to anyone but himself. Now that Arpaio has been pardoned, his place in the pantheon of constitutional sheriffs is secure. And his view of American law and history—one shared by kindred spirits, and one that menaces not just federal law but the Constitution itself—just got a troubling endorsement from the president of the United States.”

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“Sheriff Joe” isn’t a great American as Trump falsely claims. To use Trump’s own term, Sheriff Joe is one “bad hombre” out to destroy America. And, Trump is the biggest threat to the U.S. Constitution in my lifetime. He is a living violation of his oath of Office.

PWS

09-02-17

“STOPPING IMMIGRATION SERVICES SCAMS” — A New Tool For Advocates And Lawmakers!

Prepared by the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (“CLINIC”) and The Washington College of Law at American University.  Here it is:

Stopping-Immigration-Services-Scams-A-Tool-for-Advocates-and-Lawmakers

PWS

07-12-17