🇺🇸🗽 THE ENTREPRENEURS AT OUR DOOR!

 

John Fanestil
John Fanestil
American Author & Human Rights Activist
PHOTO: Amazon.com
The International Organization for Migration (IOM), UNCTAD and UNHCR launched the Global Photo Exhibition on Migration and Entrepreneurship at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.Date 18 November 2019, 12:36 Source Romain Langlois Author UNCTAD
The International Organization for Migration (IOM), UNCTAD and UNHCR launched the Global Photo Exhibition on Migration and Entrepreneurship at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.
Date 18 November 2019, 12:36
Source Romain Langlois
Author UNCTAD
Creative Commons 2.0 License

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/commentary/story/2024-03-13/opinion-migrants-i-have-met-in-tijuana-display-a-powerful-sense-of-purpose-and-drive

John Fanestil reports from the border in the San Diego Union Tribune:

. . . .

By the time migrants get to Mexico’s northern border, they also demonstrate a clear understanding that they are engaged in an inherently participatory enterprise. The migrant shelters in Tijuana are poor and under-resourced — sometimes desperately so — but they do not lack in human leadership and initiative. Leaders at migrant shelters remind me of young people working on classroom projects in university settings, or participating in community organizations and social movements, or launching new ventures or start-ups in “co-working” environments.

. . . .

But to characterize migrants arriving at our southern border as driven primarily by criminal and malevolent motives is a misdiagnosis of the highest order. Perhaps U.S. authorities should start documenting how many “migrant entrepreneurs” they are detaining at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Fanestil works for Via International, a San Diego nonprofit that runs a migrant-focused program in Tijuana called “Via Migrante.” He lives in La Mesa.

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Read Fanestil’s complete article at the link.

It’s hardly a secret (although it’s something GOP White Nationalists don’t want you to know) that asylum seekers and other immigrants are overwhelmingly “risk takers” who are willing to “put their lives on the line” and often make outsized contributions to the nations who welcome them. That’s also why “deterrence gimmicks” — no matter how cruel, expensive, and wasteful — ultimately fail.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-17-24

😎🤮 CONTRAST: AS CONGRESS, FEDS FAIL, SOME STATES STEP UP AND LEAD THE WAY ON ASSISTING MIGRANTS 🗽😎, WHILE GOP STATES DOUBLE DOWN ON CRUELTY, STUPIDITY, GROSS SQUANDERING OF PUBLIC FUNDS! 🏴‍☠️🤮 — Reports From Emerson Collective & Border News Show Contrast

Wall Hits Sea
The border between Tijuana and California. Studies indicate an increase in the number of drowned migrants at this point on the border. David Ludwig’s photo is licensed as Attribution-ShareAlike.
Certainly, Biden & the Dems can promote a better version of “border security” than this deadly and ultimately failed “hangover of Trumpism!”
  1. Some States Step Up With Innovation & Humanity, While GOP-Led States Fall Down On Migrant Reception, Assistance, Resettlement — From Emerson Collective

https://substack.com/redirect/75874ce8-e696-4b78-9496-2d47a6f109e6?j=eyJ1IjoiMXNlNzhtIn0.8hVV2FxILD3e6tMtjfLdJqJhstwOJgxvhGPCBO-pvCg

STATE LEVEL DIVERGENCE IN RESPONSE TO THE MIGRATION SURGE

While legislative reform continues to be blocked at the federal level, states across the country have adopted diametrically opposed responses to the surge of migrants that have reached the U.S.-Mexico border in search of safety and economic opportunity.

On one side of the split screen, we see real innovation happening with 20 states now having dedicated, high-level staff focused on immigrant integration and building a more welcoming, inclusive America. That includes programs designed to better incorporate immigrants and refugees into state workforce systems, expand the capacity of legal and direct service providers, and ensure access to other support systems that welcome new arrivals with dignity and care.

On the other side of the screen, we see Governor Abbott (TX) continuing to sow constitutional chaos. Building on his claim that Texas has a “right to self-defense” that supersedes the Constitution – a claim endorsed by 25 Republican governors – he announced his intention to “build an 80-acre base to house up to 1,800 Texas National Guard members near Eagle Pass.” This base could “expand to incorporate up to 2,300 personnel” and “cements a large law enforcement infrastructure in the region,” The state is also targeting a Catholic migrant shelter with “human smuggling”, elevating the state’s challenge to federal supremacy over immigration and border enforcement.

We are undoubtedly facing a unique set of pressures at our southern border and in states and cities throughout the country as a result of historic levels of migration throughout the hemisphere. Our current inability to effectively respond to these pressures is the result of decades of Congressional failure to forge compromise on the contours of a flexible system that can effectively manage migration. As states take steps to fill the breach, we are seeing very different visions of what the future may hold.

2) U.S. Judge In Texas Tosses GOP States’ Frivolous Challenge To Successful Parole Program — From The Border News

https://open.substack.com/pub/bordercenter/p/drownings-spike-along-san-diego-coastline?r=1se78m&utm_medium=ios

🌍 Humanitarian Asylum Program Survives States’ Challenge, Federal Judge Upholds Entry for Migrants from Four Countries

The Associated Press’s Eric Gay.- A federal judge in Texas dismissed a lawsuit from Republican-led states challenging a Biden administration program that allows a certain number of migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to enter the U.S. on humanitarian grounds. U.S. District Judge Drew B. Tipton ruled that the states failed to demonstrate financial harm caused by the humanitarian parole program, which admits up to 30,000 asylum seekers each month from the specified countries. The program aims to offer lawful pathways while reducing unauthorized border crossings. The White House hailed the ruling, emphasizing the program’s role in addressing labor shortages and enhancing border management. Despite the legal challenge, over 357,000 individuals have benefited from the program, with Haitians being the largest group. The decision underscores the administration’s use of parole authority for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit, marking an important victory for immigration advocates and the migrants they serve.

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

Notes:

How unhinged was Texas’s parole challenge?  U.S. District Judge Drew B. Tipton is a Trump appointee, certainly not known for being sympathetic to migrants or the Biden Administration. Previously, he probably was best known for his attempt to block the so-called “Mayorkas Memo” on prosecutorial discretion, which decision later was overturned by the Supremes. See, e.g.https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/08/19/%f0%9f%8f%b4%e2%80%8d%e2%98%a0%ef%b8%8f%f0%9f%a4%aetexas-style-racism-trumpy-usd-judge-tipton-in-bid-to-take-over-ice-reinstate-gonzo-white-nationalist-enforcement-directed-at-comm/.

Biden must step up on reception and resettlement. This should be a huge “win-win” for the Administration and the nation. With some states, localities, and NGOs already doing the “heavy lifting,” what’s needed is White House leadership and resources! That’s exactly what Heidi Altman of NIJC and other experts recommend with a White House Task Force.  See, e.g.,https://immigrationcourtside.com/2024/03/10/%F0%9F%A4%AE-the-presidential-candidates-are-feeding-us-fear-driven-bs-%F0%9F%92%A9-on-the-border-w-o-meaningful-pushback-from-the-complicit-media-get-some-constructive-practical-humane/. 

But, without new expert, dynamic “kick ass” leadership, empowered to supersede those currently bobbling this program at the national level, it will remain a sore point, a horrendous missed opportunity for the Administration, and a “de-energizer” for his core progressive supporters. 

Come on, Joe, lead and build on the good work already done by your friends, rather than undermining it by spreading the fears and parroting “lite” versions of the xenophobic approaches of your opponents! Instead of challenging Trump to join you in “closing the border to asylum seekers,” invite everyone to join you in developing and implementing humane, achievable, solutions for fairer and more efficient asylum processing at the border and elsewhere!

Biden must “lose the Miller Lite BS on the border” and tout his successes, like the parole program. Joe, Joe, Joe! Think it through! Trump is going to “win” the “race to the bottom on the border” because he’s a natural “bottom dweller.” So, you need to pivot and emphasize and expand upon the positive things you have done to solve migration problems, like these parole programs! 

Additionally, as recently pointed out by David J. Bier of the Cato Institute, your legally and morally correct decision to eliminate the scofflaw Title 42 “bogus border closing” has resulted in an unprecedented drop in the “number of known successful evasions of Border Patrol (“gotaways”) [which] have fallen to just 800 per day in fiscal year 2024.” See  https://substack.com/redirect/a275d25f-333e-4e38-9951-2b452d9b1ea3?j=eyJ1IjoiMXNlNzhtIn0.8hVV2FxILD3e6tMtjfLdJqJhstwOJgxvhGPCBO-pvCg.

Logically, re-opening ports of entry for asylum claims (despite the huge widespread problems with “CBP One”) and incentivizing those who can’t wait at the ports to turn themselves in to CBP in an orderly manner for asylum screening after crossing elsewhere (despite both physical impediments and artificial legal obstacles to doing so) works to reduce the number of those seeking to avoid screening! This is directly contrary to the nativist blather surrounding Title 42!  

As Bier says, “This should force the many members of Congress and the administration who opposed ending Title 42 to rethink their position.” While there is zero chance that the GOP will do this, because their position is based on spreading fear and xenophobia for perceived political gain, you and your advisors should reverse your disastrous public stance on how to best promote real, durable, achievable border security.

As Heidi and others have cogently suggested, future success will come from investing in better asylum screening, processing, adjudication, and resettlement, NOT from bombastic threats to “close the border” and effectively eliminate the fundamental right to seek asylum! 

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-11-24

 

🤮 THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES ARE FEEDING US FEAR-DRIVEN BS 💩 ON THE BORDER (W/O Meaningful Pushback From the Complicit Media) — Get Some Constructive, Practical, Humane Alternatives From Rev. Craig Mousin and NIJC Policy Director Heidi Altman On The “Lawful Assembly” Podcast! 💡🗽😎⚖️

Rev. Craig Mousin
Rev. Craig Mousin
PHOTO: DePaul Website
Heidi Altman
Heidi Altman
Director of Policy
National Immigrant Justice Center
PHOTO: fcnl.org

Craig on Linkedin:

Instead of listening to our two primary presidential contenders vie over which one is tougher on immigration, let’s consider reframing the debate for a meaningful immigration reform that benefits our nation instead of depriving it of resources wasted on ineffective enforcement policies:

Let’s Reshape Immigration Policy

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Today we talk about 10 points to reshape and improve immigration policy in the USA. We used the National Immigrant Justice Center’s 10 points as a backdrop for our discussion:

Let’s Reshape Immigration Policy

Lawful Assembly

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https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lets-reshape-immigration-policy/id1724492762?i=1000648467773

  • Show Notes 

Today we talk about 10 points to reshape and improve immigration policy in the USA. We used the National Immigrant Justice Center’s 10 points as a backdrop for our discussion:

https://immigrantjustice.org/staff/blog/humane-solutions-work-10-ways-biden-administration-should-reshape-immigration-policy

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-02-29/immigration-crisis-border-migrants-united-states-mexico-election-biden-trump

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

Listen to the podcast and get a copy of NIJC’s “ 10 points” at the above links.

Thanks, Craig, for highlighting the work of my friend and former Georgetown Law colleague Heidi Altman, Director of Policy at NIJC. Heidi is the embodiment of what real leadership, innovation, humane, creative thought on immigration and the border looks like. She stands in dramatic contrast to the pathetic fear mongering (Trump) and fear of standing up for values (Biden) “leadership” coming from our candidates and reflected in the failure of politicos of both parties to embrace humane, cooperative, beneficial solutions for those seeking asylum at the border.

Heidi is a particularly great representative and leadership role model for Women’s History Month.  

I had additional thoughts on this podcast:

  • Better judges, not just more judges. To be effective and efficient, EOIR judges at both levels must be recognized experts in asylum, human rights, and due process who are not afraid to set positive precedents, grant protection to those who qualify under a properly generous interpretation of the law, simplify evidentiary requirements and state them in clear, practical terms, establish and enforce best practices, and steadfastly oppose the political abuse of the Immigration Courts as “deterrents” or as extensions of DHS enforcement. The failure of Garland to clean house at EOIR, particularly the BIA, and of Mayorkas to do likewise at the Asylum Office has been a national disaster driving much of the “disorder at the border.”
  • Incorporate “Judges Without Borders” into the solutions. See  https://immigrationcourtside.com/wp-admin/about.php. It’s a great concept waiting to happen!
  • Invest in VIISTA Villanova and other innovative programs to expand pro bono and low bono representation. See https://www1.villanova.edu/university/professional-studies/academics/professional-education/viista.html. Reach beyond lawyers and NGOs to train students, retirees, social justice advocates, and “ordinary citizens” who want to help by becoming “Accredited Representatives” for “Recognized Organizations” and represent asylum seekers before the AO and EOIR. The programs is top-notch, online, and “scalable.” The Biden Administration’s failure to tap into it and “leverage” it is another dramatic failure of leadership.
  • Better leadership needed in the Biden Administration. As we have seen over the last three years, all the great ideas (and there is a plethora of them) in the world are meaningless without the dynamic, courageous, effective leadership to make it happen! Garland, Mayorkas, the White House Domestic Policy Office, and the Biden Campaign are dramatic negative examples of folks who lack  the hands-on expertise, courage, creativity, and skills to lead on effective administrative immigration reform. I endorse Heidi’s proposal to create a White House Task Force. But, without expert, dynamic, empowered leadership, that Task Force will be ineffective. (Take it from me, over 35-years in the USG, I was on lots of “task forces” and other “action/study groups” whose voluminous reports and well-meaning proposals went directly into a dusty file cabinet or paper shredder.) Think Julian Castro, Dean Kevin Johnson, Judge Dana Marks, Professor Karen Musalo, Beatriz Lopez, Professor Michele Pistone, Anna Gallagher, Camille Mackler, Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr, Heidi Altman, Alex Aleinikoff, Mary Meg McCarthy, Paula Fitzgerald, et al — any of these folks, or a combination, or other “battle tested experts” like them would be head and shoulders over the inept gang advising on and “implementing” (and I use this term loosely) immigration policy for the Administration and the campaign. Leadership counts! And, time’s a wasting to start fixing this asylum system before the election!
  • Acquiescence gets Dems the same place as activist racism. I “get” that the nativist border agenda now being shoved down our throats by both campaigns is driven by GOP fear-mongering and Dem acquiescence. That’s classic Jim Crow! I doubt that every White person south of the Mason-Dixon Line during my youth was overtly racist. Yet, a whole bunch of them were happy to acquiesce in segregation (and worse) because it served their political, social, or business purposes. For example, ”I’ve personally got nothing against Blacks, but if I hired one at my store all my business would go elsewhere.” In calling for “bipartisan” joining with the Trump-generated racist proposal to “close the  border,” Biden and many of his supporters are basically endorsing a lawless, cruel, anti-humanitarian program that couldn’t succeed if enacted. Does that he might be doing it as an act of “political strategy,” “shifting the blame,” or “one-upmanship,” rather than “genuine” racism, xenophobia, and hate, like Trump and MAGA nation, somehow make it more palatable? Not to me!
  • Stop the candidate’s negative campaigning. If Joe can’t think of anything better to say about human rights and the border than to point fingers at the GOP and try and match Trump’s cruelty, lawlessness, and stupidity on the issue, better he say nothing at all. 
  • Don’t get suckered by “whataboutism.” Undoubtedly, there are those in our community genuinely concerned that helping asylum seekers resettle and succeed will deflect resources and attention from existing problems like homelessness and poverty. Nevertheless, few, if any, of my friends and acquaintances who have actually spent their lives, or substantial portions thereof, helping the less fortunate in our communities express this fear. They believe that that if we treat all of our fellow humans as humans, we can expand opportunities and economic activities across the board so that there will be enough for everyone. It’s a  derivation of something we say every Sunday at the community church we attend: “All are welcome at Christ’s table.” Also, asylum seekers and other migrants disproportionately give back to communities, particularly low income communities, rural communities, or others in need. By contrast, many of those raising these fears are the same GOP folks who steadfastly want to cut meals for kids, slash after-school programs, defund proven-to-work programs that reduce poverty, and restrict or limit other existing aid programs. It’s not like these folks would “repurpose” any of the very limited funds spent on assisting migrants to helping the homeless or the less fortunate. No, they would almost certainly spend it on more deadly, yet ineffective walls, “civil” prisons, unnecessary tax cuts for the wealthy, and/or more counterproductive, wasteful, costly border militarization. Don’t get suckered by their “crocodile tears” for the poor and needy!

Contrary to the BS 💩 that is peddled every day by the presidential candidates, spineless politicos of both parties, and the mainstream media, the border is solvable with common sense, humane, innovative legal reforms. More cruel, wasteful, and essentially mindless enforcement and restriction is NOT the answer, nor will it ever be!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-10-24

🗽 THE HUMANITY, DECENCY, HOPE, & PATIENCE OF THOSE SEEKING LEGAL REFUGE @ OUR BORDER CONTRASTS WITH THE BIPARTISAN LIES, MYTHS, & BIAS DRIVING OUR HORRIBLE POLITICAL “DIALOGUE” — “U.S. politicians treat migrants as dangerous, flat, or faceless, and claim enforcement is the only solution to the ‘crisis.’ A shelter in Nogales offers a different perspective.” — Todd Miller @ The Border Chronicle Reports From South Of The Border!

 

Todd Miller
Todd Miller
Border Correspondent
Border Chronicle
PHOTO: Coder Chron

https://open.substack.com/pub/theborderchronicle/p/the-garden-at-the-migrant-shelter?r=1se78m&utm_medium=ios

Todd writes:

When we entered the garden, Tomás’s face relaxed. We were at the Casa de la Misericordia de Todas las Naciones in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, where he had resided for six months with his wife, Cristina, and three children. Before we entered the garden, Cristina and Tomás told me that a criminal group had abducted their 20-year-old son, Carlos, in the small rural community where they lived in the mountains of the Mexican state of Guerrero. Carlos returned to the family, but they knew he was under threat, that the whole family was in danger. As we spoke under the shade of a large tree, children raced around and played on a swing set in front of a yellow building that housed primarily mothers with young children. About 120 people, including entire families, were staying at this shelter, which was designed for people seeking asylum. Cristina did most of the talking, but at the end Tomás asked me if I wanted to see the garden. Cristina had to return to the kitchen, which was her responsibility this week. For his part, Tomás had been the encargado of the garden, in charge of it, he told me, since they arrived.

He showed me the radishes, the calabazas, the zanahoria. He showed me what remained of the tomatoes and chiles that got blasted by the cold. He showed me the lombrices, earthworms burrowing in the composting soil topped with banana peels. As he showed me all the plants, Tomás talked about how much he loved farming, how much he loved planting seeds, how much he liked caring for these plants and watching them grow. In Guerrero he had tended his milpa (small parcel of land) of squash, beans, and corn every day. As he spoke, I tried to envision his rural mountain community; over the years I have met many campesinos, small farmers, across southern Mexico, in his state of Guerrero, in Oaxaca, in Chiapas. Having knelt in the soil of the milpas before, I understood how this small garden in Nogales was like a sanctuary, especially in the face of a scary situation, as Cristina and Tomás had told me, away from home, away from your roots, your child’s life in danger, wondering if you would get asylum. When they arrived six months earlier, they applied for asylum on the glitchy, confusing, and difficult-to-use CBP One app with the help of staff at the Casa, a service they offer to all people staying in the shelter. Tomás told me that when things got stressful, “I come here to the garden. And the stress goes away.” He made a motion with his hand. His hand then touched the soil, searching for the plants. He looked up, and his face was serene.

From where we talked in the garden, we had a sweeping view of Nogales. The Casa is perched on a hill above a working-class neighborhood called Bella Vista, where the bustle often starts in the early morning as maquila workers head to the factories. For line workers making Samsonite suitcases, General Electric lightbulbs, or Masterlocks, the wages are a pittance—giving Nogales a feel of a city in constant strain and struggle.

Also, from the Casa you can look north toward the border with Arizona. Last Thursday, President Joe Biden and Donald Trump came to the border in “dueling visits,” but in faraway Brownsville and Eagle Pass, Texas. People like Tomás and Cristina and family were in the news again, not as their full human selves but as flat numbers and statistics. The “narrative of overwhelm,” as Erika Pinheiro put to The Border Chronicle in an audio interview, was full steam ahead. Alarmist rhetoric filled the airwaves, including the omnipresent “record numbers” of people crossing in every report. In Brownsville, in a proposal that might have seemed like fiction if we went back in time to the 2020 campaign, Biden challenged Trump to “show a little spine” and help him tighten the border by supporting the enforcement-heavy border bill shot down by the Senate in early February. For Trump’s part, he referred to people crossing the border as the “Joe Biden invasion”and as a “vicious violation to our country.” At this point in a heating-up U.S. presidential campaign, the age-old depiction of migrants as either dangerous or a mass of faceless numbers arriving to the benevolent U.S. doorstep was in full effect. More enforcement, both sides were clearly stating, was the solution.

Tomás knelt down to the soil. He showed me the garlic and onions he had planted as an experiment. “Do you want to try a radish?” he asked me in Spanish. “Yes,” I said, “please.” He plucked a radish out of the soil. I wiped off the soil and took a bite. I don’t know if it was because I was hungry (I was), or if it was the force of the stories Tomás and Cristina had shared (probably that too), or just watching Tomás work the soil, tenderly touch the plants, his face soft and concentrated, the perils of asylum-seeker limbo temporarily forgotten, that I knew that this type of care would render something delicious. The radish was so succulent that I finished it too quickly, but I was too bashful to ask for another, even though I wanted one. We could still hear the voices of playing kids coming up from below; there were people from all over Mexico, from Central America, from Peru, Colombia, and from across the world like China, Iran, and Senegal. Before talking with Tomás and Cristina, I visited the tortillería, where three young men worked making tortillas. I visited a workshop where people made weavings and other art projects. 

I visited a gigantic bread oven—where people from different countries baked bread in their own traditions, and I visited the kitchen and dining room where banners celebrating the Chinese New Year hung from the walls. One new year celebratory sign read in English, “Be patient, Be light, Be love, Be you!” Another read in Spanish, “La amabilidad es la llave de todas las fortunas” (Friendliness is the key to all fortune). 

The shelter is run by its director, Alma Angélica Macías, but the effort was a community one, and a binational one. I was there with a small group of people from the Good Shepherd UCC church in Arizona who bring food to the Casa every Thursday. And given that the shelter allows people to stay as long as the asylum process takes, the Casa had a feel of a multinational hub where people of different nationalities had formed deep bonds, and as I stood there with Tomás, I was moved by this beautiful, alternative view of the border that rarely sees the light of day in the media.

Right as I was about to leave the garden, Tomás’s 20-year-old son came to ask him a question. Tomás introduced me to Carlos, and as I looked into his young face, I remembered the threats to his life that had led them there. As I stood waiting, they talked among themselves, and I thought again about the presidential race, the constant push for more border enforcement, the rightward drift of that debate, the talk that the U.S. government was going to clamp down even harder on asylum seekers—all while watching the father and son talk in calm, sweet tones in that lovely garden. When they were finished, there was a pause. One last moment to take in the garden and the sweeping view around us. I used the pause to thank Tomás for showing me the garden, for showing me his gift with the land. I didn’t know what to say except that I thought it was beautiful and that I felt inspired. And then—after a quick, tender, and vulnerable look to young Carlos, who was still by his side—Tomás told me, as if he didn’t want to have to say it, “I hope they give us asylum.”

*For the story, I altered the names of the family from Guerrero at the request of the shelter.

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

Click the above link for the original article with Todd’s wonderful border photography!

As I often say, we can diminish ourselves as a nation, (as both Trump and Biden are doing with their “misleading dehumanizing rhetoric” and spineless “scapegoating”), but it won’t stop human migration. Dehumanization and victimization in the end highlight the humanity of the victims while diminishing the dehumanizers.

Notably, this family has spent months trying “to do things the right way” by scheduling an appointment through the woefully inadequate “CBP One App” and appointment system. Yet, it appears that they have not even been given the interview to which they are entitled by law, nor have they been given a date for the fair merits adjudication they deserve! 

The immense backlogs that everyone complains about (and which actually hurt legitimate asylum seekers like Tomás and his family) are largely self-created by years of USG over-investment in ridiculously expensive and ultimately ineffective enforcement accompanied by grotesque “under-investment” in timely, professional, and humane screening and adjudication of claims. 

Both Biden and Trump know or should know that “the app” and the system it engenders are hopelessly defective. Yet, rather than moving to fix it (Biden) or urging supporters to invest in fixing it (Trump), both candidates shamelessly dump on the victims of their joint misfeasance and urge “further punishment” of those victims, apparently to “CTAs” for their own legal and moral failures. 

Such is the “bogus border debate” — actually not a “debate” but rather a “one-sided nationalistic lie-fest” highlighted by obscene finger-pointing and journalistic malpractice on a catastrophic scale. All this happens with human lives and the very future of our democratic republic hanging in the balance!

Eventually, the judgement history on this disingenuous “bipartisan exercise in neofascism” will fall on the shameless politicos, the complicit media, and those who fail to call them out for their lies and misdeeds. Whether that judgement will come in time to save Tomás, Cristina, Carlos, and others like them seeking only justice and humanity from our nation is a different question. Like Tomás, one can only hope! 

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-08-24

☠️ THE REAL BORDER CRISIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE BS 💩 BEING HURLED BY POLITICOS & THE MEDIA! — Todd Miller Reports From The Border For The Border Chronicle — “‘Border crisis’ rarely refers to people like the injured, sick, wet, and shivering asylum seekers at the border, who on Saturday included children and pregnant women.”

Asylum seekers walk along the border wall near Sasabe in 34-degree weather after snowfall on February 10. (Photo credit: David Damian Figueroa)
Asylum seekers walk along the border wall near Sasabe in 34-degree weather after snowfall on February 10. (Photo credit: David Damian Figueroa)
Todd Miller
Todd Miller
Border Correspondent
The Border Chronicle
PHOTO: Coder Chron

 

https://open.substack.com/pub/theborderchronicle/p/what-is-the-border-crisis-a-snowstorm?r=1se78m&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

. . . .

During the week, the term “border crisis” was featured prominently in the national airwaves in both political rhetoric and media coverage. Perhaps the term would be appropriate and accurate if it referred to people freezing in the snow and rain, or dying crossing the desert in the summer. Yet, even though thousands have died crossing the world’s most dangerous land border—including record numbers in the past two years—this is almost never mentioned in media reports on the “border crisis.” Instead, the most prominent “crisis” is the right wing narrative of an overrun, open border. Everything else follows. The Border Patrol is overwhelmed. The enforcement apparatus is overwhelmed. Washington is overwhelmed. An NBC headline alarmingly suggested that ICE and CBP might have budget shortfalls, or entirely run out of money (spoiler: that’s not going to happen). “Border crisis” has been used so frequently that it has become both abstract and mind numbing, a term deployed either to gain political points or to justify more funding for border and immigration enforcement, which has received more than a hefty $400 billion since DHS opened its doors in 2003. “Border crisis” rarely refers to people like the injured, sick, wet, and shivering asylum seekers at the border, who on Saturday included children and pregnant women.

Perhaps instead of portraying the border as in crisis, we should say that the border, by its very design, creates crisis. I thought about this on Monday when I went down with a group of Green Valley Samaritan volunteers to where the asylum seekers had crossed. The snow was gone, but the mud puddles were not. The makeshift camp where many of the 400 people had stayed was empty. I kneeled by a tent made of aluminum blankets where a single kid’s sandal was on the ground. I meditated on that sandal and wondered how many times I’d seen this same scenario over the decades in Arizona—a kid’s Mickey Mouse suitcase, a stuffed animal, a small pair of pants or a shirt—in places where people had camped. How many times had I seen the electrolyte bottles, black bottles, empty tin cans in desolate places of the desert where people couldn’t possibly carry enough water to get where they were going?

A child’s sandal left behind at the makeshift camp along the border near Sasabe on February 12. (Photo credit: Todd Miller)
A child’s sandal left behind at the makeshift camp along the border near Sasabe on February 12. (Photo credit: Todd Miller)

The border is designed to create crisis; that is the deterrence strategy. Right next to the camp were two idly parked Caterpillar excavators, presumably used to construct the border wall. Staring at them over the tents and makeshift shelters, I assumed that it was machinery from Spencer Construction—a company that received more than $600 million in contracts from CBP in the summer—for “border maintenance.” Now Spencer construction crews cruise up and down the border road, “filling in the gaps” of the border wall, as the Biden administration puts it. They filled in one such gap much closer to Sasabe several months ago, and now people crossed much farther away. With its focus on enforcement, the now-rejected border bill would have injected $14.4 billion into CBP and ICE (on top of a 2024 budget that was already more than $28 billion), including more funds for wall construction. Also included in the bill was money dedicated to surveillance technology, such as more autonomous towers (in addition to the nearly 400 such towers already installed), and the further digitization of the border, including systems for taking DNA samples from border crossers, and ground and maritime drone systems (yes, boat drones). Detention Watch Network describes the bill’s proposed expansion of ICE’s detention and deportation apparatus as the “largest appropriation of funds for immigration detention custody and surveillance operations in ICE’s history,” which included a daily capacity for detainment rising from 34,000 people to 50,000. Mind you, many of ICE’s detention facilities are run by private companies, so, as with surveillance, the profit motive is always lurking behind the scenes.

In short, the bill was what GOP lawmakers wanted, yet they rejected it. Democrats such as Chuck Schumer and Kyrsten Sinema (or excuse me ex-Democrat, now independent) lamented that Republicans weren’t taking the border seriously—an accurate critique, since the bill was only offering more fortification, including an unprecedented provision that gave Washington the authority to shut down the border (though it was unclear what closing the border meant exactly). Even more confusing was that Donald Trump opposed ramping up enforcement. It all makes sense, however, when the election is considered: Trump wants to run against Biden on this issue, but he can hardly do that if Biden is pounding the iron fist. As ABC News reported, “Trump probably still does benefit politically from a protracted [and manufactured!] border crisis.” However, Senator Chris Murphy, who was the chief Democratic negotiator for the bill, wrote: “Republicans can’t claim that the border is in crisis and then vote against the bipartisan bill, written by their own leadership, that would fix the problem.” He concluded, “Quite simply, we risk losing the 2024 election if we do not seize this opportunity to go on offense on the issue of the border and turn the tables on Republicans on a key fall voting issue.” The Senate Democrats took Murphy’s challenge and went on the offensive with a slick video on Twitter showing Democrats as hardline border enforcers. For his part, Biden stated, “Every day between now and November the American people are going to know the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends.” In other words, the so-called border crisis has become a race to see which candidate can better fortify the border.

As for the people freezing and in various states of medical distress, this border cold war (and the proposed border bill) only makes matters worse. On top of that, according to a press release by No More Deaths on Saturday, Border Patrol agents told the humanitarian aid organization that they were “informed of the situation,” of people stranded in potentially life-threatening conditions, “but did not plan to drive out to address it.” Volunteers began to transport people from the border wall to the Border Patrol substation, also known as its processing center, so refugees could turn themselves in. Volunteers reported that Border Patrol agents in Sasabe detained and threatened them, and took pictures of their driver’s licenses. At one point there was a “rolling roadblock” of Border Patrol trucks. One volunteer reported a situation in which two agents spoke to them at “yelling volume” that seemed to be “backed with a bunch of anger.” The agents told the volunteers that they were “breaking the law” and threatened to arrest them and impound vehicles. But the volunteers persisted, driving the 15 miles or so back to retrieve more people. More and more asylum seekers assembled in front of the Border Patrol processing center. Eventually, the school in Sasabe was opened as a temporary shelter for the night. By the end of the day, the humanitarian aid organizations evacuated every person from the border. On Sunday morning all migrants were in Border Patrol custody. And as Arizona Public Media reported, “Seemingly at odds with the aid workers’ account, Customs and Border Protection says they prioritized the humanitarian response to the migrants abandoned in the cold.”

By the time I arrived on Monday, the real crisis had come and gone. There was the shoe, the blankets now drying on the mesquite trees, the construction workers driving up and down the road in their vehicles, and a 30-foot border wall meant to push people further into the desert. No More Deaths and Samaritans volunteers cleaned up the mess in the aftermath. What played out was not just a battle between humanitarian aid and the Border Patrol. It was a battle over what the crisis really was.

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

Read the complete article at the link.

Sigh! 😮‍💨

So, our brave nation and our courageous leaders are “existentially threatened” by a bunch of desperate unarmed people patiently waiting in misery to turn themselves in to the Border Patrol for asylum screening because our Government can’t process them in a fair and timely manner through legal ports of entry as required by law! That’s despite the relative predictability of flows of forced migrants and their slow progress toward the border.

If our “intelligence” services can’t foresee very public flows of forced migrants northward, and our nation can’t prepare to fulfill our legal and moral obligations to our fellow humans, Lord help us!

$600 million for annual “border maintenance,” but not enough trained Asylum Officers to screen asylum seekers at ports of entry? $28 billion for ineffective “deterrence,” but they can’t run resettlement programs that get asylum seekers and those granted asylum to the many places in the U.S. that need their skills? Gimmie a break!

This is the human face 😢 of our shameful and preventable bipartisan failure to meet our legal, humanitarian, and moral obligations to forced migrants at the border and elsewhere! No wonder cowardly politicos and complicit media don’t have the guts to “look their victims in the eye!”👁️ 🐥

And, the failed bogus bipartisan Senate bill that the Administration and many Dems tout and the media fawn over, would have done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING  to solve this real humanitarian crisis at the border. Indeed, as almost all real border experts agree, it would have made the suffering and dereliction of duty by our Government immeasurably worse for these our fellow humans in need!

Thanks to folks like Todd Miller and Melissa del Bosque for bearing witness, speaking truth, and refusing to let our nation’s grotesque abuses of, and intentional misrepresentations about, forced migrants be swept under the carpet.

 

Border Death
Cowardly U.S. politicos and the media don’t want to take responsibility for the foreseeable deadly consequences of their chronic border failures. They would rather see their victims dead and buried, preferably on the other side of the border where they will be “out of sight, out of mind!” This is a monument for those who have died attempting to cross the US-Mexican border. Each coffin represents a year and the number of dead. It is a protest against the effects of Operation Guardian. Taken at the Tijuana-San Diego border.
Tomas Castelazo
To comply with the use and licensing terms of this image, the following text must must be included with the image when published in any medium, failure to do so constitutes a violation of the licensing terms and copyright infringement: © Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-16-24

📖 BOOKS: BLITZING ⚡️ BORDER MYTHS & SACKING 🏈 SELECTIVE HISTORICAL AMNESIA — Jonathan Blitzer Takes On Generations Of Official Misconduct, Human Misery At The Border — PLUS: Here’s Your Chance To Hear From Those Migrants Whose Voices Are Ignored By U.S. Politicos & Media, Courtesy Of Immigration Law & Justice Network & The Hope Border Institute!

Jonathan Blitzer
Jonathan Blitzer
American Author & Staff Writer, The New Yorker
PHGOTO: Linkedin

Read Manuel Roig-Franzia’s WashPost review of Jonathan Blitzer’s book “Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here:”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/02/05/everyone-gone-here-blitzer-review/

Blitzer’s villains include “[n]umerous U.S. institutions, bureaucrats, and presidents” who supported and enabled “savage governments responsible for vast numbers of people killed — many of them poor and Indigenous.” 

Blitzer has particular contempt for “one of the most ineptly titled American officials ever — the State Department’s assistant secretary for human rights, Elliott Abrams — [who] tried to suppress information about the massacre of 978 people, including 477 children, in the Salvadoran village of Mozote.” Abrams, later was convicted of misdemeanors for withholding information from Congress in connection with the Iran-Contra scandal, but was pardoned by Bush I. 

Our political bureaucracy continues to have infinite capacity for inventing intentionally misleading, mocking titles that directly contravene truth, particularly when it comes to abusing human rights. For example, the so-called “Migrant Protection Protocols” (a/k/a “Remain in Mexico”) were quite specifically intended to unlawfully reject migrants who had established a “credible fear” of persecution! The MPP resulted in numerous “publicly documented cases of rape, kidnapping, assault, and other crimes committed against individuals sent back under MPP.” See https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjq1pmw_qWEAxUwL1kFHUbSDMIQFnoECBAQAw&url=https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/migrant-protection-protocols#:~:text=According%20to%20Human%20Rights%20First,individuals%20sent%20back%20under%20MPP.&usg=AOvVaw2ehZRBR_jXYoI41NZZN2DK&opi=8997844.

According to U.S. District Judge Jesus Bernal, the MPP “trapped [] asylum seekers in Mexico in dangerous conditions that impeded their ability to access the U.S. asylum system or obtain legal representation.” See https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjLgaLW_6WEAxUqFmIAHb5MDlEQFnoECCYQAQ&url=https://immigrationimpact.com/2023/03/24/where-the-migrant-protection-protocols-stand-four-years/&usg=AOvVaw18vgP5kU86mgTigCBEFLNY&opi=89978449%0A%0A.

Among Blitzer’s unsung heroes are “relentless US. immigration advocates,” the late Rep. Joe Moakley (D-MA) who “grasped all the nuances of U.S.-manufactured border crises,” and of course, an “array of migrants” who bravely persevered in the face of treacherous, dishonest, ill-informed, and often deadly U.S. immigration policies intended to “break them” and destroy their humanity. That disgraceful process continues today — on steroids!

The review ends on a perhaps unexpectedly optimistic note:

And yet, after reading Blitzer’s book, one can’t help but think that the impossible might be possible — that maybe, just maybe, this could be fixed. He’s not trying to lay out a set of policy solutions. He’s making a more nuanced plea, a rejection of the “selective amnesia” of politics in favor of a deeper understanding of how we — as a nation and as a region — got here.

It is a book with a “mission,” he writes, a nudge for U.S. decision-makers and a platform for voices on the other side of the border, a “kind of go-between: to tell each side’s story to the other; to find a way to bring the Homeland Security officials into the housing-complex basement; and to allow the migrants in the basement to participate, for once, in the privileged backroom conversations that decide their fate.”

Hopefully, those with the power to change things will listen.

Manuel Roig-Franzia is a Washington Post features writer and formerly served as The Post’s bureau chief in Miami and Mexico.

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Following up on the last point — the “seldom-heard and never-heeded by our politicos and media” voices of those whose lives and humanity are threatened by our failed policies, this Thursday, Feb. 15, @ 3 PM EST, Immigration Law & Justice Network & The Hope Border Institute will present a free webinar, “Stop The War On The Border: Migrants Speak: 

pastedGraphic.png

Stop the War on the Border: Migrants Speak – Detengan la Guerra en la Frontera: Migrantes Hablan

Date & Time

Feb 15, 2024 03:00 PM in

Description

ILJ Network and our partners invite you to participate in this webinar and hear directly from migrants in the northern Mexican border and the U.S. interior on how restrictions to asylum and humanitarian parole impact their lives.

ILJ Network y compañeros de coaliciones los invita a participar en este evento virtual para escuchar directamente de migrantes, ubicados entre la parte Norte de México y el interior de los Estados Unidos, acerca de cómo dichas restricciones al derecho de asilo y de parole humanitario impactan sus vidas.

Webinar Registration

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_efx1ZeUqTCmSOVCBNTRxrg#/registration?os=ipad

Information you provide when registering will be shared with the account owner and host and can be used and shared by them in accordance with their Terms and Privacy Policy.

This is very timely! Rarely do we hear from those whose lives, dignity, and safety are being bargained away and devalued as if they were “commodities” at the disposal of disingenuous politicos and interests who have turned their misery and desperation into “profit centers” and political rallying cries.

🏈🏆Finally, on another topic, congrats to Coach Andy Reid, Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, the rest of the Kansas City Chiefs, and “Chiefs’ Superfan” Taylor Swift on their second consecutive Lombardi Trophy and third in five seasons.  As almost everyone in sleep-deprived America knows by now, KC outlasted the SF 49ers in yesterday’s Super Bowl ending with a thrilling overtime finish 25-22!

For everyone else, including my Green Bay Packers, it’s “wait till next season!”😎

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-12-24

🧐 GW LAW PROF ALBERTO BENITEZ AMONG EXPERTS REFUTING GOP FALSE CLAIM 🤥 THAT BIDEN CURRENTLY CAN “CLOSE THE BORDER!” 🚫

“NDPA Hall of Famer” GW Law Immigration Clinic Director Professor Alberto Benítez & Co-Director Professor Paulina Vera

 

https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/south-texas-el-paso/news/2024/02/06/president-biden-authority-border-shutdown-

Reena Diamante reports for the Spectrum News El Paso:

. . . .

“A president doesn’t have the unilateral authority to shut down the border. If a president did, the prior president would have done it,” said Alberto Benitez, director of the Immigration Clinic at George Washington University Law School. “Even the prior president, who had a particular perspective on immigration, never shut down the border. There needs to be buy-in from Congress that a border shutdown is necessary, which there never has been.”

. . . .

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

You can read the full article at the link.

Professor Benitez modestly quipped that this was: “My five seconds of fame on Spectrum News!”

You are always in the “NDPA Hall of Fame,” my friend!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-10-24

𝐗𝐗𝐗𝐗𝐗 “SEX & THE COURTHOUSE” 🤯 — A Tragicomic 🎭 Series Starring Judge Merrick Garland & DAG Lisa Monaco As Clueless Leaders Of A Failed Court System Where The Focus Is On Something Other Than Delivery Of Justice!

Sarah Jessica Parker
Sarah Jessica Parker will NOT be appearing in the Garland/Monaco production of “Sex And The Courthouse!”
Photo by Shawn Miller/Library of Congress. Public Domain.

Law360 (February 5, 2024, 6:23 PM EST) — The U.S. Department of Justice will pay $1.2 million to resolve a suit from a former staff assistant who said a California immigration judge routinely subjected her to explicit, lewd comments and once told her he would “make her straight” if they had sex.

By Grace Elletson

This article is “paywalled.” Those with Law360 access can get all the details.

But, the final settlement agreement is public and should give you a picture of  what’s happening inside Garland’s often-secretive and dysfunctional “courts.”

Escoto

The Plot

On January 22, 2021, two days after President Joe Biden’s inauguration, then SF Chron reporter Tal Kopan ran an extensive, well-documented expose of the widespread sexual harassment problems at EOIR, the home of the U.S. Immigration Courts at the USDOJ. The story was picked up by other publications. Also, it was highlighted in that day’s edition of “Courtside,” along with a strong suggestion for immediate action addressed to incoming AG Judge Merrick Garland and AAG Vanita Gupta (a former, now very former, “civil rights maven”), both of whom had been nominated but not yet confirmed. See  https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/01/22/🇺🇸⚖%EF%B8%8Fnote-to-judge-garland-and-vanita-gupta-misogyny🤮-is-running-rampant-in-the-eoir-courts-soon-to-be-your/.

Tal Kopan
Tal Kopan, Deputy Washington Bureau Chief for the Boston Globe. As a reporter for the S.F. Chron in 2021, she ripped the covers off massive sexual harassment problems at EOIR.

Six months later, in apparent response to Tal’s article, Deputy AG Lisa Monaco pledged to root out sexual harassment at DOJ, formed a committee (a bureaucratic device often used for “task avoidance”), and directed it to report within six months. See https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/07/31/⚖%EF%B8%8Ftal-sf-chron-gets-action-on-sexual-harassment-eoir-rest-of-doj-report-on-problems-in-immigration-courts-finally-spurs-positive-response-but-biden-continue/.

Lisa Monaco
Lisa Monaco, Deputy AG. In apparent response to Kopan’s expose, Monaco established a committee to look into sexual harassment at EOIR and the rest of DOJ. But, not surprisingly, the recent $1.2 million settlement with a former EOIR female staff member shows that complaints languish, resolutions are opaque, and wronged individuals have to force action by suing in Federal Court! 
Official USG Photo, Public Realm

It now appears that Monaco’s efforts at reform have been just as lackadaisical as her implementation of Biden’s Executive order on regulations improving the treatment of gender-based claims at EOIR and elsewhere in Government, and her and her boss’s disturbingly inept approach to EOIR reform generally! 

True, many of the actual incidents covered by the complaint in this case happened before Biden took office. See https://immigrationcourtside.com/2023/05/04/%F0%9F%A4%AF-former-employees-explosive-federal-court-allegations-not-everyone-in-eoir-management-focused-on-guaranteeing-fairness-due-process/. But, the plaintiff’s termination by EOIR and her filing of administrative complaints that appear to have been “brushed off” by DOJ took place in 2021 and 2022, after Garland and Monaco assumed office and well after the endemic problems with sexual harassment at EOIR were public knowledge. 

Yet, even with clear notice of the festering problems and an opportunity to address them in a way that would “change culture,” it required the institution of a Federal lawsuit by the plaintiff to obtain action and an effective remedy, almost three years after her termination.

Alfred E. Neumann
After years of overt anti-asylum bias and misogyny from Sessions and Barr, long suffering respondents, practitioners, and many EOIR employees expected a “due process/good government renaissance” under former Federal Judge and Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. However, despite a few improvements, Garland has “floated above” the chaos and lack of quality control that daily vex and plague those trapped in his dysfunctional, hopelessly backlogged “courts.”
PHOTO: Wikipedia Commons

It’s difficult to quantify the actual costs of EOIR mismanagement by Garland and his political lieutenants. After all, how do you put a money value on wrongful deportations, denial of constitutional rights, being subjected to substandard anti-immigrant decision making, bad precedents, “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”) on steroids, poorly trained judges, years stuck in limbo without the relief to which you are entitled, the effect of statistics manipulated to downplay the number of legal refugees stuck in EOIR’s hellish 3 million+ backlog, “courts” intentionally located in obscure inaccessible locations within the “New American Gulag” (“NAG”) run by DHS, and the overall “customer unfriendly” and often intentionally coercive mess to which those who practice before EOIR and those whose fate is in EOIR’s hands are subjected every working day? You can’t!

Nor is the waste of finite USG resources on chronic structural inefficiencies, boneheaded schemes to expedite dockets as “deterrents,” and ill-advised “defenses of the indefensible” in Federal Courts easy to value. But, in this case, we can quantify the cost to taxpayers of Garland’s and Monaco’s poor leadership — $1.2 million!

I wonder how many qualified accredited representatives a real problem solver and due process innovator like Professor Michele Pistone at VIISTA Villanova could train with that kind of money? 

The poor leadership of Garland on immigration matters and the lousy performance of EOIR continue to be drags on the Biden Administration and our justice system. It didn’t have to be this way!

No Longer in the Cast: Former Associate AG Vanita Gupta, who left DOJ after three years of “failing to connect the dots” among civil rights, the rule of law, and the glaring violations of human rights and due process taking place at EOIR and the rest of the immigration bureaucracy. Literally, these abuses took place right under her nose, but apparently below her radar screen!

During Gupta’s tenure, the already horrible treatment of asylum seekers and other migrants of color within EOIR and the immigration bureaucracy actually deteriorated in many ways. Gupta is a sad, yet classic, example of what routinely happens to progressives once they are invited into the “halls of power” within the Government: They get co-opted into defending the status quo and the dangerous fiction of “revolution by evolution.” See, e.g., Perry Bacon, Jr., https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/02/06/equity-diversity-inclusion-progressivism-limits/.

Just ask neo-Nazi Stephen Miller how “revolution” really works! He spent every day of his tenure in the Trump Administration single-mindedly working to dehumanize and demonize immigrants, particularly those of color and women, and to strip them of their already overly-limited rights. He paid no attention whatsoever to criticism, naysaying, and resistance from within or without. He took every “defeat” in Federal Court as an invitation to do something even worse and more outrageous.

While Gupta, despite her lofty position and civil right creds, was unable to materially improve the situation of migrants, Miller undid decades of progress on due process, racial justice, gender justice, and good government. Much of the damage he inflicted remains imbedded in the system, at DOJ, DHS, and elsewhere, as do many of those who willingly and enthusiastically assisted him.

The contrast between Gupta’s and Miller’s accomplishments and government “legacies” is a stunning illustration of the difference between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to immigrants’ rights, human rights, and racial justice — the fundamentals of governing. Democrat “political strategists” are belatedly “wondering and wandering” what to do about an “enthusiasm gap” with their core progressive voters who put Biden and Harris in office. The answer is staring them right in the face: Results matter!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-09-24

 

🇺🇸⚖️🗽👏AYUDA ISSUES STATEMENT SUPPORTING HUMAN RIGHTS AT BORDER, OPPOSING “BIPARTISAN” ATTACK ON ASYLUM!

Laura Trask Director of Development & Communications AYUDA
Laura Trask
Director of Development & Communications
AYUDA

Senate Funding Deal Places the Lives of Immigrants Seeking Safety at Risk

by Alicja Johnson | Feb 5, 2024 | Ayuda news, Post

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:

Laura Trask
Director of Development & Communications
media@ayuda.com

Washington, D.C. (February 5, 2024) – Yesterday, Senate negotiators released language for the supplemental funding bill that would dramatically alter the U.S. asylum system in exchange for foreign aid and humanitarian assistance.

Ayuda joins immigrant communities and advocacy organizations across the country in strongly condemning this proposal that would lead to more families separated, children detained, and asylum seekers sent back to face persecution and even death.

Amongst many of the draconian changes proposed, this legislation would create a new authority, with narrow exceptions, that would allow officials to summarily expel asylum seekers. It would also restrict screening standards for asylum seekers and expedite asylum claims to the extent that many will not be able to access counsel or adequately represent themselves.

Ayuda and our partner organizations believe there are far more effective solutions to immigration policy failures. We call on the Senate to reject this framework, disentangle humanitarian assistance from changes that would eviscerate U.S. asylum law, and recommit themselves to building compassionate and humane immigration system.

###

About Ayuda:
Ayuda provides direct legal, social, and language access services to low-income immigrants in Washington D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. Since 1973, Ayuda has served more than 150,000 immigrants throughout the region. Ayuda is the only nonprofit service provider in the area that provides a wide range of immigration and family law assistance, social services, and language access support for all immigrants – including women, men, and children – from anywhere in the world.

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

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a proud member of the AYUDA Advisory Council.

I’m pleased to be part of an organization that stands up for human rights and the right to seek asylum and opposes scofflaw proposals to “punish” legal asylum seekers for the USG’s decades-long failure to establish a fair, accessible, timely asylum screening and adjudication system as required by law.

Many thanks to Paula Fitzgerald, Laura Trask, Alicja Johnson, and the rest of the “Due Process Team” at AYUDA for issuing this statement!

As predicted by Austin Kocher, it looks like the same politicos who put together this ill-advised, anti-human-rights proposal are now going to “kill it!” See https://immigrationcourtside.com/2024/02/05/%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f-senate-immigration-bill%f0%9f%93%9c-austin-kocher-on-substack-dont-get-too-excited-or-upset-spend-your-limited-emotional-energy-on-something-else-because-i-don/.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-07-24

A PWS MINI-ESSAY: “COMPREHENSIVE YET SUPERFICIAL: NYTimes History Misses The Point Of Why The Border Continues To Vex U.S. & Kill The Most Vulnerable!“

Border Death
Something is definitely wrong with this deadly “border vision” promoted by pandering politicos and the mainstream media! Could it be reality, humanity, and opportunity? This is a monument for those who have died attempting to cross the US-Mexican border. Each coffin represents a year and the number of dead. It is a protest against the effects of Operation Guardian. Taken at the Tijuana-San Diego border.
Tomas Castelazo
To comply with the use and licensing terms of this image, the following text must must be included with the image when published in any medium, failure to do so constitutes a violation of the licensing terms and copyright infringement: © Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.

COMPREHENSIVE YET SUPERFICIAL: NYTimes History Misses The Point Of Why The Border Continues To Vex U.S. & Kill The Most Vulnerable!

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Courtside Exclusive

January 31, 2024

Alexandria, VA. This is a long and informative article: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/us/politics/biden-border-crisis-immigration.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare. But, it’s not helpful if we want to bring “order to our border.”

So, let’s just focus on the real problem:

People close to Mr. Biden said he had always supported enforcing the law. Some of his top aides, such as Susan E. Rice, who served as his domestic policy adviser until last summer, and Jake Sullivan, his national security adviser, embodied that tough-minded approach.

“Migrants and asylum seekers absolutely should not believe those in the region peddling the idea that the border will suddenly be fully open to process everyone on Day 1,” Ms. Rice had said early on in Mr. Biden’s presidency.

Contrary to these border myths, which the NYT article does not really adequately take on, “the law” requires that individuals be given a chance to apply for asylum regardless of “status” and “entry point.” Congress provided a “quick screening” process called “credible fear” to deal with “mass migration” situations.

Assuming for the sake of argument that “the law” also requires that individuals be “detained” while credible fear screening and adjudication of claims by those who pass takes place, four elements are necessary for the legal system to work in a fair and timely manner.

  1. Humane, NGO-operated reception centers, with on-site representation available, in locations preferably removed from the immediate border for screening to take place; 
  2. A huge corps of true expert Asylum Officers to do credible fear screening and outright grant clearly valid cases wherever possible; 
  3. A large corps of true expert Immigration Judges and BIA Appellate Judges to guide Asylum Officers, review their work, and, where the case can’t be granted at first instance, conduct timely full adjudication of claims for those who pass credible fear, prioritizing those claims most likely to succeed; 
  4. A functional resettlement program for those granted asylum and those whose cases require more in-depth process.

These four steps are the core of what real law enforcement at the border is all about! Prioritize them, accomplish them, and the other pieces will fall in place. 

Contrary to Susan Rice, Jake Sullivan, and what the NYT article suggests, a plan to accomplish this 1) isn’t rocket science; 2) does not require legislation; and 3) needed to be “ready to go” with dynamic, courageous, due-process-focused leadership on Day 1 of the Administration or very shortly thereafter.

As always in Government, it’s a question of priorities, courage, and leadership. Despite the “overabundance” of proven, creative legal and administrative talent then in the private sector, most of whom were available to assist Biden, the Administration was not “ready to roll” with this program on Day 1 (as Steven Miller was with his vile “kill asylum and asylum seekers” agenda). 

Sadly, even today, the Administration has not come close to putting in place any of these four critical requirements for success. It was highly predictable to any informed expert that forced migrants would continue to arrive at the border in large numbers and that GOP White Nationalists would “leverage” the Administration’s failure to achieve order at the border.

There is something else that’s completely predicable: That, if passed (a big if), the “nativist-driven compromise” now being “debated” by Congress and the Administration will NOT solve the humanitarian issue of forced migration BUT WILL create more death, trauma, and failure at the border and beyond. 

Until America elects humanitarian-focused, problem-solving leaders with the vision to regularize fair asylum processing and the courage and skills to implement it, our border will continue to be a godawful mess: Just as GOP White Nationalists want! And, the great opportunity presented by talented asylum seekers who want only to save their and their families’ lives while helping us succeed will be squandered. 

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-31-23

 

🇺🇸🗽⚖️👏 ROBERT REICH EXPOSES THE GOP’S BIG LIES ABOUT THE BORDER!

Robert Reich
Robert Reich
Former US Secretary of Labor
Professor of Public Policy
CAL Berkeley
Creative Commons License

“The GOP’s five biggest border lies debunked!” Here’s the video:

https://youtu.be/vJwom3uYyV8?si=adufn9c400aRzSFK

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

Unfortunately, the GOP’s “big lie campaign” works! Truth, by contrast, apparently has little power to persuade. 

Heck, 14 so-called “Democrat” Reps voted for the GOP’s disingenuous White Nationalist border agenda! https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/01/17/congress/house-gop-biden-border-rebuke-dems-00136221.

That’s something for human rights activists and progressives to remember when some of these same spineless folks pelt your inbox with requests for your hard-earned dollars and your vote to help them save democracy — a democracy that they and their GOP nativist buddies don’t really believe in or defend!

And, it’s not like the Administration can explain their border policies either! They would just like to change the topic. Biden won’t defend his own policies and is looking to cut a deal with the GOP to trade the lives and human rights of asylum seekers for bombs and guns for Israel and Ukraine! See https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-says-senate-may-come-border-deal-early-week-rcna134832.

Another example of truth losing out: Despite irrefutable evidence to the contrary, a substantial majority of GOP voters believe Trump’s “stolen election” lies. https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/70-percent-republicans-falsely-believe-stolen-election-trump/. And, whether or not they actually believe Trump’s falsehoods, almost no GOP office-holders, at any level, have the guts to challenge his absurdist claims.

Indeed, in one of the very few documented examples of voting irregularities, a Virginia county shorted President Biden more than 1,000 votes which would have increased his margin of victory over Trump. See https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwin8b6Rn-yDAxUOFVkFHVOyAeUQFnoECBAQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fapnews.com%2Farticle%2Fvirginia-election-errors-biden-trump-6555f052332d06c83ef797852f81fa72&usg=AOvVaw0j63WbXyd0xLTmDhe0Lz3f&opi=89978449.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-20-24

🗽⚖️ AS CONGRESS & ADMINISTRATION DITHER OVER GOP’S OUTRAGEOUS NATIVIST DEMANDS, LONG OVERDUE DUE PROCESS & STRUCTURAL REFORMS LANGUISH, LEAVING ASYLUM-SEEKING REFUGEES TWISTING IN THE WIND! — A Report On The Ever Growing EOIR Backlog From AP’s Giovanna Dell’Orto!

Giovanna Dell’Orto!
Giovanna Dell’Orto
Journalist, Global Region
Associated Press
PHOTO: X.com

 

Giovanna writes:

https://apnews.com/article/immigration-asylum-border-courts-deportation-miami-56098ced64bf136172f0224113dabeb6

BY GIOVANNA DELL’ORTO

Updated 8:32 AM EST, January 15, 2024

Share

MIAMI (AP) — Eight months after crossing the Rio Grande into the United States, a couple in their 20s sat in an immigration court in Miami with their three young children. Through an interpreter, they asked a judge to give them more time to find an attorney to file for asylum and not be deported back to Honduras, where gangs threatened them.

Judge Christina Martyak agreed to a three-month extension, referred Aarón Rodriguéz and Cindy Baneza to free legal aid provided by the Catholic Archdiocese of Miami in the same courthouse — and their case remains one of the unprecedented 3 million currently pending in immigration courts around the United States.

Fueled by record-breaking increases in migrants who seek asylum after being apprehended for crossing the border illegally, the court backlog has grown by more than 1 million over the last fiscal year and it’s now triple what it was in 2019, according to government data compiled by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

Judges, attorneys and migrant advocates worry that’s rendering an already strained system unworkable, as it often takes several years to grant asylum-seekers a new stable life and to deport those with no right to remain in the country.

. . . .

Experts like retired judge Paul Schmidt, who also served as government immigration counsel while the last major reform was enacted nearly forty years ago, say the broken system can only be fixed with major policy changes. An example would be allowing most asylum cases to be solved administratively or through streamlined processes instead of litigated in courts.

“The situation has gotten progressively worse since the Obama administration, when it really started getting out of hand,” said Schmidt, who in 2016, his last year on the bench, was scheduling cases seven years out.

. . . .

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

At the above link, read Giovanna’s excellent full article, based on interviews with those who actually are involved in trying to make this dysfunctional system function. Thanks, Giovanna, for shedding some light on the real, potentially solvable, “human rights crisis” enveloping and threatening the entire U.S. legal system. Contrary to “popular blather,” fulfilling our legal obligations to refugees is not primarily a “law enforcement” issue and won’t be solved by more border militarization and violations of individual rights of asylum seekers and other migrants!

There are lots of ways to start fixing this system! Gosh knows, most of them have been covered here on Courtside, sometimes several times, and they are all publicly available on the internet with just a few clicks. See, e.g., 

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2024/01/11/%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f-expert-to-congress-fix-your-border-mess-stop-picking-on-asylum-applicants-ruth-ellen-wasem-the-messenger-do-they-really-think-that-raising-the-bar-will-dete/

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2023/12/19/%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f%f0%9f%a4%af%f0%9f%91%a9%f0%9f%8f%bd%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f%f0%9f%91%a8%f0%9f%8f%bb%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f-as-garlands-backlog-hits-3-million-way-past-time-to-clean/.

The “debate” on the Hill defines “legislative malpractice!” The voices of legal integrity, experience, and practicality aren’t being heard! Also, lots of great ideas from experts on fixing EOIR are stuffed in the “Biden Transition Team” files squirreled away in some basement cubbyhole at Garland’s DOJ.

But most politicos aren’t interested in listening to the experts, nor do they seem motivated to understand the real human problems at the border, in the broken Immigration Courts, and how many of the things they are considering will make the situation worse while empowering smugglers and cartels! Those are real human corpses piling up along the border, carried out of immigration prisons, being abused in Mexico, and floating in the river — mostly due to the brain-dead “enforcement only” policies now being given an overdose of steroids by congressional negotiators.

So, things just keep deteriorating. Many in the backlog who deserve a chance at a permanent place in our society, and the ability to contribute to their full abilities and potential, remain in limbo! That’s bad for them and for us as a society!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-16-24

☠️⚰️🤯 MARY MEG McCARTHY @ CHI SUN TIMES:  Elected Officials Must Be Held Accountable 👎 For Unnecessary Migrant Deaths!

Mary Meg McCarthy
Mary Meg McCarthy
Executive Director
National Immigrant Justice Center
PHOTO: Linkedin
Remain in Mexico
A girl peers out from an encampment at the U.S.-Mexico border where she and several hundred people waited to present themselves to U.S. immigration to seek asylum. Politicos of both parties disgracefully treat the lives of asylum seekers as “collateral damage” and apparently expect no consequences from their deadly, inhumane, and often illegal actions against legal asylum seekers!  / Photo by David Maung

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2023/12/21/24007965/migrant-death-jean-carlos-martinez-rivero-immigration-chicago-city-council-israel-gaza

Elected officials must act to prevent more migrant deaths

The United States has the resources to welcome new neighbors, but it is going to take cooperation, from the White House to the mayor’s office, to prevent further loss of life and improve safety for migrants.

By  Letters to the Editor   Dec 21, 2023, 3:32pm CST

It was heartbreaking to learn of the death of 5-year-old Jean Carlos Martinez Rivero, who had been living with his family at a privately contracted Chicago migrant shelter. This tragedy must be a wakeup call for all levels of government to start working together to protect people’s basic human rights at a time of increasing global humanitarian displacement.

For months, community members raised concerns about conditions inside the city’s shelters and volunteered to help better meet migrants’ basic needs. The accounts of life inside the shelter now coming to light are disturbingly similar to those that my colleagues at the National Immigrant Justice Center hear from clients held in immigration detention centers.

The city and the companies profiting from shelter contracts must be held accountable.

No doubt, the city has been forced to face the unprecedented challenge of welcoming thousands of new neighbors with minimal support from the federal government. The Biden administration and Congress must also be held accountable to repair the broken immigration system, support cities like Chicago that are welcoming migrants, and provide legal pathways so new arrivals have access to employment, secure housing and safety.

Jean Carlos’ death occurred at the same time the Biden administration and some U.S. senators are considering signing off on extreme anti-immigrant legislation in exchange for military aid for Ukraine and Israel.

The proposals under negotiation would create permanent new barriers to asylum protection and put U.S. immigrant communities at heightened risk of mass deportations. The proposals are structured to put Black, Brown and Indigenous communities at most risk.

Biden seems to have lost sight of his prior promises to defend immigrants’ rights, not to mention the U.S. government’s obligations to uphold international human rights law. Chicagoans should be holding our own Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth accountable to loudly oppose these proposals.

The United States has the resources to welcome new neighbors, but it is going to take cooperation at every level — from the White House to the mayor’s office — to prevent further loss of life and improve access to safety for migrant communities.

Mary Meg McCarthy, executive director, National Immigrant Justice Center

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

Unfortunately, accountability seems unlikely unless it happens at the ballot box.  The GOP has become the party of inhumanity, irresponsibility, and immunity. And, although the Biden Administration and “wobbly” Dems tend to avoid overtly dehumanizing asylum seekers with their language, their actions and attitudes too often mirror those of Trump, Miller, and the GOP nativists. Indeed, quite disgustingly, politicos of both parties appear to expect to harvest political gains from the blood of migrants!   🤮

The Senate is basically engaging in “bipartisan” negations to knowingly and intentionally violate domestic and international protection laws, abrogate constitutional due process, and increase the number of unnecessary deaths of asylum seekers. That arrogant politicos, on both sides of the aisle, although primarily the GOP, openly advocate for such actions shows just how little fear of any type of accountability they have. 

In many ways, that’s precisely the message that Trump and his MAGAmaniacs have been pushing — intentionally hateful and inflammatory language, followed by horrible, sometimes deadly, actions with little or no fear of any type of accountability.  Sadly, the Dems seem to think that a program of cowardly acquiescence, rather than principled opposition, is the key to political success.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

01–03-23

🇺🇸🗽⚖️ ANOTHER VIEW, FROM DAN KOWALSKI @ SUBSTACK: “An Opportunity, Not a Crisis — Let them in. Give them work permits. Watch America thrive!”

Dan Kowalski
Dan Kowalski
Online Editor of the LexisNexis Immigration Law Community (ILC)

An Opportunity, Not a Crisis

Let them in. Give them work permits. Watch America thrive.

DAN KOWALSKI
DEC 29
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READ IN APPpastedGraphic_5.png

Reading* the news, it appears that many are freaking out about the “crisis” along the U.S. / Mexico border.

In fact, there is no crisis. Yes, there are logistical problems around feeding and housing migrants, and legal problems around sorting out their legal claims in immigration court.

Thanks for reading Dan’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Pledge your support

But the numbers are the numbers: “[T]he past decade has seen unusually slow growth in immigration. In fact, the period from 2012 to 2022 saw slower growth in the immigrant share of the population than the 2000s, 1990s, 1980s and 1970s. You have to go all the way back to the 1960s, when the immigrant population actually shrank, to find a lower growth rate.” – David J. Bier, Oct. 3, 2023

America is graying. We need more immigrants, not fewer, and the younger the better. “With the national unemployment rate reaching a historic low of 3.4% in 2023—and states like Massachusetts (2.5%) and Pennsylvania (3.5%) reaching record lows—employers and elected officials have been desperate to find new workers.” – Andrew Kreighbaum, Dec. 29, 2023.

But under current law, it can take many months, if ever, for migrants to obtain work permits. Meanwhile, they are forced to work for cash, under the table, exposed to horrible working conditions, sub-market wages and the continual threat of deportation. Once they have work permits, however, they gain bargaining power.

Hein de Haas, professor of sociology at the University of Amsterdam, and the author of How Migration Really Works, says: “Fundamental choices have to be made. For example, do we want to live in a society in which more and more work – transport, construction, cleaning, care of elderly people and children, food provision – is outsourced to a new class of servants made up mainly of migrant workers? Do we want a large agricultural sector that partly relies on subsidies and is dependent on migrants for the necessary labour? The present reality shows that we cannot divorce debates about immigration from broader debates about inequality, labour, social justice and, most importantly, the kind of society we want to live in.”

Many years ago I was “on the bus” for a border journalism junket. With me was Wall Street Journal editorial writer Jason Riley. His 2008 book, Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders, is still fresh as a daisy.

Look I get it: I was lucky enough to grow up bilingual, enjoy the benefits of “higher ed,” and travel a lot, so I am not afraid of immigrants. Many Americans aren’t so lucky. Still, unless we are OK with China and India eating our economic lunch, we need to face facts and let in more immigrants, stat.

* Pro Tip: Never watch television.

Thanks for reading Dan’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Pledge your support

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

There’s plenty of empirical support for Dan’s view that we are largely creating a “crisis” while missing a golden opportunity. Indeed, while the U.S. is the world’s richest and most powerful nation, many smaller and poorer countries are able to resettle more asylum seekers, refugees, and other types of forced migrants, by both absolute numbers and proportion. See, e.g., https://www.nrc.no/shorthand/fr/a-few-countries-take-responsibility-for-most-of-the-worlds-refugees/index.html.

What we appear to have is more of a politically-driven crisis of lack of confidence, political will, and basic competence to manage a humanitarian situation that is predictable, largely inevitable, and an opportunity to harness the human capital of migration — the same energy that actually built our nation and made it great. We’ve wasted huge amounts of money, resources, and time on cruel, failed, counterproductive enforcement gimmicks, while underfunding and failing to creatively update adjudication and resettlement functions. 

Sadly and disturbingly, politicos of both parties and the Administration are basically pledging and scheming to ignore the advice of experts and creative problem-solvers and to do an even worse job next year and into the future. They will certainly leave a scurrilous trail of fraud, waste, abuse, cruelty, futility, failure, death, and missed oportunities in their wake — if we let them get away with it!

Austin Kocher, Ph.D.
Austin Kocher, Ph.D.
Research Assistant Professor
TRAC-Syracuse
PHOTO: Syracuse U.

Dan’s essay also reminds me of another recent Substack essay from immigration expert and statistical guru, Professor Austin Kocher. Austin’s theory is that backlogs in and of themselves might not be as bad as we often portray them — particularly in light of the alternatives and the intentional failures to make obvious reforms to improve the “robustness” and fairness of our immigraton system. See  https://austinkocher.substack.com/p/3-million-cases-are-now-pending-in.

Here’s the core of what Austin says:

First, it is worth questioning our basic assumptions about whether the “backlog”, as it is somewhat sensationally referred to, is actually a bad thing. Unlike the Obama administration, when the rapid growth of court cases was more attributable to people who lived in the U.S. for a long time getting caught up in interior enforcement, the recent growth is almost entirely due to the arrival of asylum seekers into the country. If you believe that asylum seekers deserve an opportunity to have their cases heard, then these numbers might be a positive sign. More people will have at least a nominal opportunity to apply for asylum instead of being turned away outright at the border.

Second, it remains absurd to me that the current practice in the U.S. is to force recently arrived asylum seekers into court in front of an immigration judge rather than to direct their cases toward asylum officers at USCIS who are trained for precisely this purpose. Immigration courts were designed to adjudicate cases of non-citizens who are suspected of violating U.S. immigration laws. The courts are adversarial environments that, as far as I can tell, require far more taxpayer resources and migrant resources than non-adversarial asylum interviews do. The fact that there are 3 million cases in court is, to me, an indictment of a system that treats humanitarian crises through the lens of quasi-criminalization.

Third, since no real change is likely forthcoming, I think we should rethink our sensationalization of the backlog number and simply accept the growing immigration court backlog much like we accept the U.S. national debt ticker in New York City.2 It’s just going to keep going up unless something absolutely fundamental changes about the world we live in. Get over it. This is how things work now. We need to end the delusional thinking that reforms—even much-needed reforms, such as the creation of an independent court system—are going to “solve” the backlog. The U.S. immigration system either needs radically rethought or we need to simply accept that the number of pending cases will reach 4 million, 5 million, or 6 million cases in the next few years.

Lastly, if we really want to solve the backlog, the easiest way to resolve the backlog is for Congress to give everyone with an NTA (i.e., everyone with a pending court case) and who meets certain minimal criteria a special visa that regularizes their status and puts them on a path to citizenship just like other lawful permanent residents. Yes, yes—I know that not everyone will like that solution for political reasons, but at least admit that you don’t like it for political reasons, not because it wouldn’t solve the backlog (because it would). After all, the US Census Bureau is already forecasting absolute population decline in the US within our lifetimes. Three million new citizens now wouldn’t solve that problem, but it might not hurt in the long run.

I was struck by his second point. One of the positive regulatory changes made by the Biden Administration was to confer authority on USCIS Asylum Officers to grant asylum immediately, at the border or in reception centers, rather than referring all arriving asylum seekers who pass credible fear to the Immigration Courts. Nevertheless, as I among many pointed out, the Administration had neither the personnel nor the training in place to make this change effective.

I also argued that without a new BIA of expert Appellate Judges and exceptionally-well-qualified asylum expert Immigration Judges assigned to key Immigration Courts to provide dynamic leadership, de facto supervision, and a series of far better positive precedents guiding adjudicators to grant asylum in many repetitive situations, this positive change was doomed to failure.

Sure enough, the Administration botched the implementation — running inept, timid, and minute “pilot programs” that could only be termed “sad jokes.” To make matters worse, when recently faced with a humanitarian situation at the border, where a “surge” of qualified Asylum Officers working with NGOs to screen arrivals could have made a huge difference, the Administration inexplicably “suspended” this most useful part of their regulations. Meanwhile, they opted to keep more problematic provisions in effect.

To compound the problem, nativist GOP State AGs mounted frivolous court challenges to the expanded role of Asylum Officers. Stripped of its legal gobbledygook, they essentially and absurdly argued that the Administration lacked authority to empower statutory Asylum Officers to grant asylum.  

Dan’s essay found favor with well-known expert Careen Shannon:

This post about the opportunity presented by migrants who want to live in the United States is a sensible message with which to end the year. Kudos to Dan Kowalski for stating what should be obvious but apparently cannot be repeated often enough.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-31-23

🤮☠️ AS CONGRESS ENGAGES IN TRUTH & REALITY FREE (NON) DEBATE ON HOW TO INFLICT MORE CRUELTY AND MAYHEM ON VULNERABLE ASYLUM SEEKERS, THE REAL IMMIGRATION PROBLEMS GO UNADDRESSED — “No Fair Day” Documents Continuing Abuse Of Kids In Immigration Court!

Stephen Miller Cartoon
Stephen Miller & Count Olaf. Despite promises to the contrary, the Biden Administration still channels Stephen Miller in its approach to kids in court. And, now they are working with GOP nativists and wobbly Dems in Congress to make things even worse, for kids and other asylum seekers! 
Evil Twins, Notorious Child Abusers

A new “white paper” investigation from UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy documents shocking abuses already being inflicted on children Immigration Court even as Congress and the Administration look for more ways to strip asylum seekers of legal rights and human dignity:

https://law.ucla.edu/sites/default/files/PDFs/Center_for_Immigration_Law_and_Policy/No_Fair_Day_Children_in_Immigration_Court_White_Paper.pdf

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This white paper provides a comprehensive assessment of the Biden

administration’s treatment of children facing removal in immigra-

tion court. While much attention has rightly been given to the Biden

administration’s border and asylum policy, less attention has been

paid to child-specific policies in immigration court. This matters

both because tens of thousands of removal orders have been issued

against children during the Biden administration, and because chil-

dren’s cases present unique legal issues—including most obviously

that children generally bear little, if any, legal responsibility for the

situations in which they find themselves.

We find that the Biden administration took important steps at the

outset to protect children in ways the prior administration did

not. The decision to exempt children from the border expulsion

policy known as Title 42 was particularly significant in this respect.

However, for children who were permitted to enter the system and

ordered to appear for proceedings in immigration court, the Biden

administration has largely continued the policies of previous admin-

istrations. Those policies have utterly failed to protect the rights of

children in court.

These failures are all the more striking because they have continued

even as the administration has signaled support for the principle

that children deserve legal representation in immigration court as

a matter of basic fairness. Department of Homeland Security Sec-

retary Mayorkas—the nation’s foremost immigration enforcement

official—has repeatedly stated that he does not believe children can

receive fair removal hearings without legal representation, even as

prosecutors under his purview have proceeded with thousands of

such hearings and obtained thousands of removal orders against

unrepresented children through those grossly unfair processes.

The administration’s policies toward children in immigration court

have far-reaching impacts. In the first five months of Fiscal Year 2022,

almost one third of all new cases in immigration court involved chil-

dren, including tens of thousands of children under the age of five.1

Some of these children are “unaccompanied” because they arrived

1 TRAC, One-Third of New Immigration Court Cases

Are Children; One in Eight Are 0-4 Years of Age

(Mar. 17, 2022), https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/

reports/681/.

NO FAIR DAY: THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION’S TREATMENT OF CHILDREN IN IMMIGRATION COURT 3

alone, while others are in “consolidated proceedings” with their fami-

lies. The immigration system, and the Biden administration, has failed

both. Many of these children proceeded without counsel, and a huge

number of children have been ordered removed for failure to appear.

We explain why these two policies—the imposition of in absentia

removal orders against unrepresented children and the failure to

provide counsel—are unlawful, and we provide recommendations

for how the Biden administration can remedy this crisis.

. . . .

It should be obvious that immigration court proceedings are far too

complex for children to navigate without legal representation. As

Secretary Mayorkas acknowledged earlier this year, “a nine-year-old

child cannot navigate the immigration system.”44 Attorneys General

under the Obama administration made similar statements, as had

the government’s own expert in litigation challenging the failure to

provide counsel for children several years ago.45 Prior to that conces-

sion, one supervisory immigration judge was extensively ridiculed

for stating his view that he could teach three- and four-year-olds to

understand immigration law and represent themselves in immi-

gration court.46 Yet, despite the obvious absurdity of that view, the

Biden administration’s immigration courts—like the immigration

courts of all prior administrations—recognize no age below which

children cannot proceed without a lawyer in court.

. . . .

CONCLUSION

Despite taking some strong symbolic and practical steps in its early

days, the Biden administration has failed children in immigration

court under its watch. In the last three years, Immigration Judges

have issued removal orders against tens of thousands of children in

violation of basic due process principles. Though the administration

has not enforced most of those removal orders, nothing will stop a

future administration from doing so without ever providing those

children a fair day in court.

But there is time to reverse course. We urge the administration to

adopt the concrete recommendations laid out in this paper: prohibit

the issuance of in absentia removal orders against unrepresented

children; terminate the Dedicated Docket; and ensure legal represen-

tation for all children in removal proceedings. To do so would make

real the Biden administration’s promise of a fair and humane immi-

gration system for children.

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

Read the complete report at the above link.

This should be a fixable problem! Instead, Congress and the Administration are fixated on making things worse for children and other legal asylum seekers at the border. What’s happening in the Senate now is neither a “negotiation” nor does it have much to do with “national security.” 

It’s mostly about bullying the most vulnerable while diverting attention from the failure of all three branches of Government to address human migration and human rights in an rational, lawful, and constructive manner.

Artificially inflating and manipulating “in absentia” order statistics has been a long-time practice of EOIR under Administrations of both parties. The DOJ and EOIR use their own unfair procedures to paint a false picture of individuals evading the system. 

In reality, statistics show that the overwhelming majority of those able to secure representation and therefore understand the “system” want fair merits decisions on their asylum applications. 

But, as many who, unlike Garland and his minions, have actually practiced in the dysfunctional Immigration Courts know, getting a timely merits hearing on meritorious, already-prepared cases can be “mission impossible” in a system wedded to “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and lacking in dynamic due-process-focused expert leadership!

Additionally, “notice” problems at EOIR are endemic — now reaching the Supremes for the third time (after being blown out on the first two trips) in a “supreme dereliction of duty” by Garland’s DOJ. Haphazard notice procedures and endless delays are also major contributors to the abuse of children in Immigraton Court. 

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-18-23