Maria Sacchetti – Page 2 – immigrationcourtside.com

ACLU COURT EVIDENCE SUGGESTS McALEENAN LIED TO CONGRESS WHILE VIOLATING COURT ORDER ON CHILD SEPARATIONS — Continuing Separations Appear To Be Part Of Intentional Misapplication & Misinterpretation Of Narrow “Exception” — “Best Interests Of Child” Buried Beneath A Web Of Deception

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/aclu-us-has-taken-nearly-1000-child-migrants-from-their-parents-since-judge-ordered-stop-to-border-separations/2019/07/30/bde452d8-b2d5-11e9-8949-5f36ff92706e_story.html

Maria Sacchetti reports for the WashPost:

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union told a federal judge Tuesday that the Trump administration has taken nearly 1,000 migrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border since the judge ordered the United States government to curtail the practice more than a year ago.

In a lengthy court filing in U.S. District Court in San Diego, lawyers wrote that one migrant lost his daughter because a U.S. Border Patrol agent claimed that he had failed to change the girl’s diaper. Another migrant lost his child because of a conviction on a charge of malicious destruction of property with alleged damage of $5. One father, who lawyers say has a speech impediment, was separated from his 4-year-old son because he could not clearly answer Customs and Border Protection agents’ questions.

Acting Homeland Security secretary Kevin McAleenan has said that family separations remain “extraordinarily rare” and happen only when the adults pose a risk to the child because of their criminal record, a communicable disease, abuse or neglect. Of tens of thousands of children taken into custody at the border, 911 children were separated since the June 26, 2018, court order according to the ACLU, which cited statistics as of June 29 that the organization received from the government as part of ongoing legal proceedings.

During a July 12 tour of a detention center in McAllen, Tex., reporters saw almost 400 men being held in cages. They allegedly crossed the border illegally. (The Washington Post)While the judge recognized that parents and children might still be separated when a parent is found to pose a risk to their child, the ACLU and others say federal immigration and border agents are splitting up families for minor alleged offenses — including traffic violations — and urged the judge Tuesday to clarify when such separations should be allowed.Approximately 20 percent of the new separations affected children under 5 years old, the ACLU said, compared with about 4 percent last year.

“They’re taking what was supposed to be a narrow exception for cases where the parent was genuinely a danger to the child and using it as a loophole to continue family separation,” ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt said in an interview. “What everyone understands intuitively and what the medical evidence shows, this will have a devastating effect on the children and possibly cause permanent damage to these children, not to mention the toll on the parents.”

[Accused of gang ties, separated parents struggle to get their kids back]

The Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security declined to comment Tuesday.

The tally of child separations adds to the approximately 2,700 children who were taken from their parents during a chaotic, six-week period from May to June 20 last year, when a Trump administration border crackdown triggered one of the worst crises of his presidency.

The policy sought to deter a crush of asylum seekers, who were surrendering as families at the U.S. southern border, by prosecuting parents for the crime of illegal entry and sending their children to federal shelters. Reports of traumatized, crying children led to widespread demands to reunite the families.

Venezuelan migrant mothers and their children turn themselves in to law enforcement officials to seek asylum after illegally crossing the Rio Grande near Mission, Tex., on July 25. (Loren Elliott/Reuters)

Trump ordered federal officials to stop separating families on June 20, 2018, and said it is the “policy of this Administration to maintain family unity” unless the parent poses “a risk” to the child.

Six days later in San Diego, U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw, an appointee of President George W. Bush, ordered the Trump administration to reunite the families, a process that dragged on for months because the government had failed to track the parents and children after splitting them up. A still-unknown number of families were separated before the policy officially began.

McAleenan, who at the time signed off on the zero tolerance policy and carried it out as commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in May that family separations are “extraordinarily rare” and make up a tiny portion of the now more than 400,000 families taken into custody at the border since the court ruling.

Central American migrants walk along train tracks as they head toward the United States in Saltillo, Mexico, on July 24. (Daniel Becerril/Reuters)

At that time, he testified, about one to three family separations happened out of about 1,500 to 3,000 family members apprehended each day. He also said then that separations occur “under very controlled circumstances.”

Testifying before the U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee on July 18, McAleenan emphasized that the separation process is “carefully governed by policy and by court order” to protect the children.

“This is in the interest of the child,” he said. “It’s overseen by a supervisor, and those decisions are made.”

[IG: Trump administration took thousands more migrant children from parents]

Of the 911 child separations, 678 were for alleged criminal history, the ACLU said Tuesday, citing government records. Offenses included drunken driving, assault and gang affiliation, as well as theft, disorderly conduct and minor property damage.

Many cases lacked details about the alleged crimes, the ACLU said, and several charges were decades old. Among those separated because of concerns about parental fitness were an HIV-positive father of three young daughters and a mother who broke her leg and required surgery.

Child advocates and medical professionals have repeatedly warned that separating children from their parents can lead to lasting severe physical and emotional disorders.

“Forcibly separating children from their parents is like setting a house on fire,” Jack Shonkoff, a pediatrics professor at Harvard Medical School, said in an affidavit included in the ACLU’s motion. “Prolonging that separation is like preventing the first responders from doing their job and letting the fire continue to burn.”

Jennifer Nagda, policy director of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, a child advocate for unaccompanied and separated children, told the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform that the group represented about 120 children and found that nearly all separations were “contrary to the best interests of the child.”

“DHS officials with no child welfare expertise are making split-second decisions, and these decisions have traumatic, lifelong consequences for the children and their families,” Nagda said in her testimony. She also filed an affidavit in the ACLU’s case Tuesday.

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

It’s with very good reason that I consider “Big Mac With Lies” to be one of the most dishonest and dangerous public officials in America.

Some reporters seem to mistakenly “cut him some slack” because he: 1) served in the Obama Administration (which had its own very dismal record on treatment of families and children seeking asylum); and 2) unlike folks such as “Gonzo,” “Cooch Cooch,” Miller, Kobach, et al., he’s not a “lifelong White Nationalist ideologue.”

But, I don’t see how being a liar, apologist, “cover up artist,” and human rights abuser in support of a racist White Nationalist Administration is somehow “better” than being a “true believer” in White Nationalist racism. Falsely claiming that Guatemala and Mexico are “Safe Third Countries,” that asylum applicants won’t show up for hearings (when they almost always do, particularly when they are given access to lawyers and have the system properly explained to them), and falsifying stats to paint an untruly negative picture of asylum seekers from Central America is no less vile than Trump’s lies and racist tweets.

As a lawyer and a graduate of Amherst Collge and Chicago Law, “Big Mac” is cerainly smart enough to know that places like Guatemala and Mexico don’t come remotely close to satisfying the legal definition of a “Safe Third Country.” He also has enough Government immigration enforcement experience to know for sure that the extralegal, cruel, and ineffective “enforcement only” approach he disingenuously advocates as a “Trump toady” won’t come anywhere near to solving the problems driving forced migration or saving the lives of the vulnerable.

I actually have a better understanding of what drives the Trumps, “Gonzos,” Millers, and “Cooch Cooches” of the world than what drives corrupt public servants like McAleenan to violate their oaths of office and to pick on those whose rights and human dignity they should be standing up for, no matter how vile the leadership of the Administration they nominally serve (actually, they serve the American people, not any particular political leader) might be.”Big Mac” is a disgrace to honest Federal civil servants and to all Americans who believe in democracy and “good government.” History must hold him accountable.

PWS

08-01-19

2 1/2 YEARS AFTER ANNOUNCING IT, TRUMP FINALLY GETS HIS EXPANSION OF EXPEDITED REMOVAL!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/trump-administration-to-expand-its-power-to-deport-undocumented-immigrants/2019/07/22/76d09bc4-ac8e-11e9-bc5c-e73b603e7f38_story.html

Maria Sacchetti reports for the Washington Post:

The Trump administration on Tuesday will significantly expand its power to quickly deport undocumented immigrants who have illegally entered the United States within the past two years, using a fast-track deportation process that bypasses immigration judges.

Officials are calling the new strategy, which will take effect immediately, a “necessary response” to the influx of Central Americans and others at the southern border. It will allow immigration authorities to quickly remove immigrants from anywhere they encounter them across the United States, and they expect the approach will help alleviate the nation’s immigration-court backlog and free up space in Immigration and Customs Enforcement jails.

The stated targets of the change are people who sneaked into the United States and do not have an asylum case or immigration-court date pending. Previously, the administration’s policy for “expedited removal” had been limited to migrants caught within 100 miles of the U.S. border who had been in the country for less than two weeks. The new rule would apply to immigrants anywhere in the United States who have been in the country for less than two years — adhering to a time limit included in the 1996 federal law that authorized the expedited process.

“AI will embed intelligence in daily operations to augment our employees, reshape our business practices, and even help create new products and services.” -Michele Goetz, principal analyst, Forrester

Immigrants apprehended in Iowa, Nebraska or other inland states would have to prove to immigration officials that they have been in the United States continuously for the past two years, or they could end up in an immigration jail facing quick deportation. And it could be relatively low-level immigration officers — not officers of a court — making the decisions.

President Trump has promised to deport millions of immigrants and has threatened enforcement raids targeting those in as many as 10 major cities.

Schumer again calls for ‘comprehensive immigration reform’

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) on July 9 outlined Democratic proposals for curbing the flow of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border. (The Washington Post)

Nearly 300,000 of the approximately 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States could be subject to expedited removal, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. The typical undocumented immigrant has lived in the United States for 15 years, according to the Pew Research Center.

Though border apprehensions have fallen in June and July as the Trump administration and Mexico have intensified their crackdown on the southern border, acting Department of Homeland Security chief Kevin McAleenan said in a draft notice Monday that “the implementation of additional measures is a necessary response to the ongoing immigration crisis.” He said the new rule would take effect immediately upon publication in the Federal Register, which is scheduled for Tuesday.

[Trump administration weighs expanding expedited deportation]

“DHS has determined that the volume of illegal entries, and the attendant risks to national security and public safety presented by these illegal entries, warrants this immediate implementation of DHS’s full statutory authority over expedited removal,” McAleenan said in the notice. “DHS expects that the full use of expedited removal statutory authority will strengthen national security, diminish the number of illegal entries, and otherwise ensure the prompt removal of aliens apprehended in the United States.”

Immigration lawyers said that the expansion is unprecedented and effectively gives U.S. agents the power to issue deportation orders without bringing immigrants before a judge or allowing them to speak with a lawyer.

“Under this unlawful plan, immigrants who have lived here for years would be deported with less due process than people get in traffic court,” Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement. “We will sue to end this policy quickly.”

Royce Bernstein Murray of the American Immigration Council also vowed to challenge the policy in court, arguing that the broadened authority allows DHS “to essentially be both prosecutor and judge.”

Guatemalan men deported from the United States board a bus after arriving at an air-force base in Guatemala City last week. (Moises Castillo/AP)

Immigrants’ advocates warned that the policy could ensnare longtime legal residents or even U.S. citizens who have been deported in error before. Vanita Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said she fears the rule will lead to increased racial profiling and turn ICE into a “show-me-your-papers militia.”

“This new directive flows directly from the racist rhetoric that the president has been using for the last week and indeed months, but this new rule is going to terrorize communities of color,” said Gupta, who was head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division under President Barack Obama. “It really reads as a send-them-all-back policy,” she added, referring to the audience’s “Send her back!” chants at a Trump rally last week in response to the president’s attacks on a Somali-born Muslim congresswoman, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).

[Momentary border reprieve rests on a rickety foundation]

David Leopold, a Cleveland immigration lawyer and former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said expanding the expedited-removal program shifts the decision-making to immigration officers who might not have much experience with such a policy and means that many immigrants who might have the right to remain in the country will not be given the opportunity to show it.

“That is going to apply to a huge swath of people,” he said, noting that the rule requires migrants to prove that they have been in the United States for years — a particularly difficult onus when they, by definition, lack legal-immigration documents. “My view is: How are they going to prove it? The burden is on them to prove it. If I can’t prove it, I’m done.”

ICE, which enforces immigration law and makes arrests across the United States, estimates that “a significant number” of undocumented immigrants would be eligible for expedited removal, including at least 20,500 migrants the agency apprehended last fiscal year and more than 6,400 it arrested this year, as of March 30.

McAleenan, in the federal notice, made reference to the Trump administration’s recent efforts to deter migration to the United States on many fronts, an approach that has included pushing asylum claimants back into Mexico to await court hearings, stepped up Mexican enforcement against migrants as they head north, and the threat of ICE raids on families who have final removal orders. McAleenan wrote that the new rule “will reduce incentives” for migrants to enter the United States and swiftly move away from the border to avoid the faster deportation process.

Deported migrants coming from Texas prepare to leave La Aurora Airport Repatriation Center in September in Guatemala City. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

DHS said it has anecdotal evidence that many immigrants smuggled into the United States hide in “safe houses” far from the southern border to avoid the threat of expedited removal. This year officials said 67 undocumented immigrants were found in a safe house in Roswell, N.M. — just beyond 100 miles from the Mexican border — and the year before they found three others, held for ransom, at a house in San Antonio, about 150 miles from the border.

Federal officials said they could make exceptions for people with serious medical conditions or “substantial connections” to the United States, and they said deportation is not necessarily immediate. Officials said they have safeguards in place for migrants who might be U.S. citizens or legal residents.

Asylum officers will interview immigrants who fear returning to their home countries, to determine whether they qualify for asylum or another form of protection, and they potentially could refer them to full deportation proceedings. Unaccompanied minors from non-neighboring countries are not eligible for speedy deportations under federal law.

Expedited removals stem from a 1996 law, signed by President Bill Clinton, that authorized the use of expedited deportations for undocumented immigrants apprehended anywhere in the country who could not prove they had been physically present in the country two years before their apprehension.

In practice, enforcement was far more limited, at first applying to migrants arriving at a port of entry or by sea. In 2004, President George W. Bush expanded expedited removals along the U.S.-Mexico border, allowing for the swift expulsion of immigrants caught within 100 miles of the border who had lived in the country fewer than 14 days. The Bush administration said issuing removal orders bars migrants from reentering the United States and makes it easier to pursue criminal charges against them if they try.

Expedited deportations soared from about 50,000 immigrants in 2004 to 193,000 in 2013, about 44 percent of the total number of people deported that year, according to the American Immigration Council.

Trump sought to expand expedited deportations days after he took office as one of multiple strategies to crack down on illegal immigration at a time when the immigration-court backlog hovered at about 600,000 cases. The plan never materialized, and illegal border crossings sank in the months after he assumed the presidency.

But apprehensions soared during the past year as migrant families from Central America sought refuge in the United States; they often are quickly released to await court hearings because of limits on how long the United States can detain children.

Since then, the immigration-court caseload has spiked to more than 900,000 cases, and ICE has more than 50,000 migrants in custody each day, a record.

In the notice, McAleenan said expedited removal will relieve pressure on detention centers and the courts. He said the courts had fewer than 168,000 cases at the end of fiscal 2004, when DHS expanded expedited removal along the southern border.

Migrants in expedited proceedings spend an average of just more than 11 days in immigration jails, while detainees awaiting “time-consuming” court hearings spend almost 52 days in jail, McAleenan said.

“DHS expects that the New Designation will help mitigate additional backlogs in the immigration courts and will reduce the significant costs to the government associated with full removal proceedings before an immigration judge, including the costs of a longer detention period and government representation in those proceedings,” McAleenan said in the notice.

The Trump administration says the notice is exempt from the Administrative Procedure Act’s public comment requirements, but DHS is seeking comments on the change even though it is slated to take effect immediately upon posting.

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

Well, Trump has the statute on his side here. But, because he is driven by malicious incompetence and racism, that hasn’t always carried the day for him.

Problems with this rollout:

There does not appear to be any legitimate reason for waiving the Administrative Procedures Act’s requirement for advance notice and comment for the regulatory change, particularly given its absurdly long gestation period;
The statute might well be unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause as applied to those whose connection to the border is quite attenuated (likely why prior Administrations chose a much more cautious and limited implementation);
The Trump Administration is likely to engage in overreach in implementation by going after long term residents who are outside the scope of the provision.

Only time will tell whether the Trump Administration’s latest “get tough” action will work, or just add to the Administration’s already remarkable record of litigation incompetence in the Federal Courts.

PWS

07-22-19

PROFILE IN COURAGE: DHS ASYLUM OFFICERS ASK COURT TO HALT TRUMP’S WHITE NATIONALIST, SCOFFLAW, HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES — As Civil Servants Speak Out Against Anti-American Administration, Why Are Some Life Tenured Article III Judges & Immigration Judges Failing In Their Constitutional Duties & As Human Beings?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/u-s-asylum-officers-say-trumps-remain-in-mexico-policy-is-threatening-migrants-lives-ask-federal-court-to-end-it/2019/06/26/863e9e9e-9852-11e9-8d0a-5edd7e2025b1_story.html

Maria Sacchetti reports for WashPost:

U.S. asylum officers slammed President Trump’s policy of forcing migrants to remain in Mexico while they await immigration hearings in the United States, urging a federal appeals court Wednesday to block the administration from continuing the program. The officers, who are directed to implement the policy, said it is threatening migrants’ lives and is “fundamentally contrary to the moral fabric of our Nation.”

The labor union representing asylum officers filed a friend-of-the-court brief that sided with the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups challenging Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols program, which has sent 12,000 asylum-seeking migrants to Mexico since January. The policy aims to deter migrants from coming to the United States and to keep them out of the country while courts weigh their claims.

[Read the U.S. asylum officers’ federal court filing]

The union argued that the policy goes against the nation’s long-standing view that asylum seekers and refugees should have a way to escape persecution in their homelands, with the United States embracing its status as a safe haven since even before it was founded — with the arrival of the Pilgrims in the 17th century. The union said in court papers that the policy is compelling sworn officers to participate in the “widespread violation” of international and federal law — “something that they did not sign up to do when they decided to become asylum and refugee officers for the United States government.”

“Asylum officers are duty bound to protect vulnerable asylum seekers from persecution,” the American Federation of Government Employees Local 1924, which represents 2,500 federal workers, including asylum officers, said in a 37-page court filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in California. “They should not be forced to honor departmental directives that are fundamentally contrary to the moral fabric of our Nation and our international and domestic legal obligations.”

The legal filing is an unusual public rebuke of a sitting president by his own employees, and it plunges a highly trained officer corps that typically operates under secrecy into a public legal battle over one of Trump’s most prized immigration policies.

Under Trump, the asylum division has become a target of internal ire, often assailed for approving most initial asylum screenings and sending migrants to immigration court for a full hearing. Trump administration officials say most cases are denied. Last week, the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Ken Cuccinelli, outraged some asylum officers by sending the staff an email they thought criticized them for approving so many initial screenings.

Trump placed Cuccinelli, an immigration hard-liner and former Virginia attorney general, in the position ostensibly as part of his move to get tough on immigration policy, and the union’s legal filing appears to be directly at odds with that approach.

The policy has been challenged in federal court, with a lower-court judge temporarily halting MPP in April, saying it probably violates federal law. A three-judge appellate panel allowed the program to resume in May while the court considers the policy.

Justice Department lawyers have said in court filings that migrants are filing thousands of sham claims because they virtually guarantee their release into the United States pending a hearing in the backlogged immigration courts. The U.S. government cannot process the migrants’ cases quickly or detain children for long periods, which means some migrants can stay in the country for months or years while waiting for their cases to play out.

[In test of a deterrent, Juarez scrambles before U.S. dumps thousands of migrants]

Three migrants wait near the border shortly after being returned to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico on June 13. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

Ending the program, the government lawyers have said, “would impose immediate, substantial harm on the government’s ability to manage the crisis on our southern border.”

The Justice Department declined to comment on the filing Wednesday. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the program, did not respond to a request for comment.

The influx of Central American migrants at the southern border has overwhelmed the U.S. immigration system. It also has led to a political fight between congressional Democrats and the White House regarding crowded and unsanitary conditions in border holding facilities amid Trump’s push for heightened enforcement. More than 144,000 migrants were taken into custody in May after crossing the southern border, the largest monthly total in more than a decade, and asylum filings have soared.

Trump administration officials this week have been pleading with Congress to approve emergency funding for the humanitarian crisis at the border. The Senate on Wednesday responded, passing a $4.6 billion emergency spending measure amid debates about treatment of migrants and the risks they face as they try to enter the United States, with a graphic photo of a migrant and his young daughter having drowned in the Rio Grande as the backdrop.

In the federal court filing, the asylum officers say they are enforcing the laws as Congress intended, based on approaches and international treaties shaped after World War II and atrocities connected with the Holocaust. Federal laws hinge on the principle of “non-refoulement” — which means people should not be sent back to countries where they could be harmed or killed. To qualify for asylum, migrants must show that they face harm based on their “race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.”

The asylum officers say Mexico is too dangerous for Central American asylum seekers, particularly women, people who are gay, lesbian or transgender, and indigenous minority groups. They cited State Department reports showing that gang violence and activity is widespread and that crimes are rarely solved.

“Mexico is simply not safe for Central American asylum seekers,” the filing said, noting that gangs that terrorized migrants in their home countries might easily follow them into Mexico. “And despite professing a commitment to protecting the rights of people seeking asylum, the Mexican government has proven unable to provide this protection.”

Asylum officers say the U.S. asylum system is “not, as the Administration has claimed, fundamentally broken,” and that they could handle more cases quickly without sending people back to Mexico.

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MPP is “entirely unnecessary, as our immigration system has the foundation and agility necessary to deal with the flow of migrants through our Southern Border,” the officers wrote.

The officers said they fear that MPP is sending asylum seekers back to a country where they are in danger, a violation of federal and international law. The said immigration agents do not ask migrants if they fear persecution or torture in Mexico, and that they only send migrants to asylum officers for screenings if the migrants independently express fear of return.

[Why migrant families are seeking asylum at the border in record numbers]

The latter are granted an initial asylum screening, often by phone or video. But they must prove that they are “more likely than not” going to face persecution in Mexico, a higher bar than in the immigration courts, where migrants are offered safeguards such as access to lawyers, a reading of their rights, and the right to appeal.

“The MPP, however, provides none of these safeguards,” the officers said.

Officials are attempting to extend the program along the nearly 2,000-mile border and are giving Mexico time to expand its shelter capacity, a top official at U.S. Customs and Border Protection has said.

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

So why do Asylum Officers have the courage and integrity to stand up to what is essentially fraud, abuse, and murder of asylum seekers by the Trump Administration when Article III Judges won’t? U.S. Immigration Judges have so spoken out against
Administration abuses through the National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”), although a minority of Immigration Judges have contributed to the problem by engaging in unlawful and unconstitutional bias against asylum seekers.

Obviously, we have the wrong type of individuals holding judicial positions in the U.S., something that the next competent and honest Administration should consider before appointing more complicit “go alongs to get alongs” to any type of bench.

It started with the Supreme’s atrocious and cowardly cop out on the Travel Ban case and has continued. Courage and the willingness to stand up against Government abuses are the primary qualifications for judges.

Other than some U.S. District Court Judges, too few Article IIIs have measured up to the task, and innocent people are being harmed, abused, and killed by Trump and his enablers as a result. The Courts of Appeals who have ignored the glaring Constitutional defects and clearly substandard justice in the Immigration Court system for more than a decade are particularly complicit in this unfolding disaster.

Moreover, as I have pointed out before, the lack of understanding of asylum law and unwillingness to stand up for the legal rights of asylum seekers among some Immigration Judges and too many Article III Judges is simply appalling!

To date, the performance of the Article III Judges on the 9th Circuit on the “Remain in Mexico”/“Die in Mexico” atrocity has been so disastrously deficient and incompetent as to make the wheels come off of the entire Government. This is a “rebellion” that should never have been necessary had the irresponsible, incoherent, and clueless three-“judge” panel that let “Die in Mexico” proceed done their jobs.

Hurrah for the Asylum Corps! Boo to the cowardly and unqualified judges who continue to enable Trump’s destruction of America and of human rights! And “double boo” to the career lawyers at the DOJ defending the Administration’s dishonest and illegal policies with lies and false narratives! Whatever happened to ethical standards for Federal Employees? Why do they apply to Asylum Officers, but not to DOJ “judges” and attorneys?

PWS

06-27-19

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Trump, DHS Promise, “Reign Of Terror” Directed At Families In Ethnic Communities — “Orphaning” U.S. Citizen Children And/Or Feeding Them & Other Vulnerable Kids To MS-13 & Other Gangs As “Fresh Meat” America’s New Objectives! — But, The Law & Reality Could Be Problems For Trump & His Sycophants @ ICE!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/trump-vows-mass-immigration-arrests-removals-of-millions-of-illegal-aliens-starting-next-week/2019/06/17/4e366f5e-916d-11e9-aadb-74e6b2b46f6a_story.html

Nick Miroff & Maria Sacchetti report in WashPost:

President Trump said in a tweet Monday night that U.S. immigration agents are planning to make mass arrests starting “next week,” an apparent reference to a plan in preparation for months that aims to round up thousands of migrant parents and children in a blitz operation across major U.S. cities.

“Next week ICE will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States,” Trump wrote, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “They will be removed as fast as they come in.”

Large-scale ICE enforcement operations are typically kept secret to avoid tipping off targets. In 2018, Trump and other senior officials threatened the mayor of Oakland, Calif., with criminal prosecution for alerting city residents that immigration raids were in the works.

Trump and his senior immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, have been prodding Homeland Security officials to arrest and remove thousands of family members whose deportation orders were expedited by the Justice Department this year as part of a plan known as the “rocket docket.”

In April, acting ICE director Ronald Vitiello and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen were ousted after they hesitated to go forward with the plan, expressing concerns about its preparation, effectiveness and the risk of public outrage from images of migrant children being taken into custody or separated from their families.

Vitiello was replaced at ICE by former FBI and Border Patrol official Mark Morgan, who had impressed the president with statements on cable television in favor of harsh immigration enforcement measures.In his first two weeks on the job at ICE, Morgan has said publicly that he plans to beef up interior enforcement and go after families with deportation orders, insisting that the rulings must be carried out to uphold the integrity of the country’s legal system.

“Our next challenge is going to be interior enforcement,” Morgan told reporters June 4 in Washington. “We will be going after individuals who have gone through due process and who have received final orders of deportation.

“That will include families,” he said, adding that ICE agents will treat the parents and children they arrest “with compassion and humanity.”

[New ICE chief says agency plans to target more families for deportation]

U.S. officials with knowledge of the preparations have said in recent days that the operation was not imminent, and ICE officials said late Monday night that they were not aware that the president planned to divulge their enforcement plans on Twitter.

Executing a large-scale operation of the type under discussion requires hundreds — and perhaps thousands — of U.S. agents and supporting law enforcement personnel, as well as weeks of intelligence gathering and planning to verify addresses and locations of individuals targeted for arrest.

The president’s claim that ICE would be deporting “millions” also was at odds with the reality of the agency’s staffing and budgetary challenges. ICE arrests in the U.S. interior have been declining in recent months because so many agents are busy managing the record surge of migrant families across the southern border with Mexico.

The family arrest plan has been considered even more sensitive than a typical operation because children are involved, and Homeland Security officials retain significant concerns that families will be inadvertently separated by the operation, especially because parents in some households have deportation orders but their children — some of whom are U.S. citizens — might not. Should adults be arrested without their children because they are at school, day care, summer camp or a friend’s house, it is possible parents could be deported while their children are left behind.

[Before Trump’s purge at DHS, top officials challenged plan for mass family arrests]

Supporters of the plan, including Miller, Morgan and ICE Deputy Director Matthew Albence, have argued forcefully that a dramatic and highly publicized operation of this type will send a message to families that are in defiance of deportation orders and could act as a deterrent.

In this file photo from 2015, a man is detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Los Angeles. New raids could target a large number of immigrants in major cities. (John Moore/Getty Images)

According to Homeland Security officials, nearly all unauthorized migrants who came to the United States in 2017 in family groups remain present in the country. Some of those families are awaiting adjudication of asylum claims, but administration officials say a growing number are skipping out on court hearings while hoping to live and work in the United States as long as possible.

Publicizing a future law enforcement operation is unheard of at ICE. Trump administration officials blasted Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf last year for warning immigrants about an impending raid, saying she endangered agents’ safety.

“The Oakland mayor’s decision to publicize her suspicions about ICE operations further increased that risk for my officers and alerted criminal aliens — making clear that this reckless decision was based on her political agenda with the very federal laws that ICE is sworn to uphold,” then-ICE Deputy Director Thomas D. Homan said at the time.

Homan later retired, but last week Trump said Homan would return to public service as his “border czar.” On Fox News, Homan later called that announcement “kind of premature” and said he had not decided whether to accept the job.

Schaaf responded late Monday to the president’s tweet teasing the looming ICE roundups.

“If you continue to threaten, target and terrorize families in my community . . . and if we receive credible information . . . you already know what our values are in Oakland — and we will unapologetically stand up for those values,” she wrote.

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

The pain, terror, racism, and disregard for human rights is real. But, the ability to summarily remove the “millions” of our fellow humans Trump claims as his objective might be limited by both reality (lack of resources) and the law.

Many of those with so-called “final orders” were tried “in absentia.” Many of those never received legal notice of their hearings. (All reputable studies show that asylum applicants who actually understand the system, have fair access to pro bono lawyers, and receive legally sufficient hearing notices appear at rates close to 100% of the time, even if they lose their cases).

If that is the case, and they can get lawyers, they can file a “motion to reopen” for lack of legal notice and receive a statutory stay of removal while both the Immigration Judge, and if denied, the Board of Immigration Appeals rule on the motion. And, the Immigration Courts are totally screwed up and backlogged due to Trump’s and the DOJ’s “malicious incompetence.” So, good luck with that.

Large numbers of deportees would also further destabilize the already “failed states” of the Northern Triangle thus insuring a continuing outward flow. Indeed, some of those deported might well “head north” again — only this time they won’t be dumb enough to entrust themselves to the U.S. legal system.

They will just disappear into the interior where their chances of being found again are probably less than their chances of being harmed in the Northern Triangle. No amount of authoritarian militarization of our internal police force is going to locate and remove 10-11 million people, most of them residing quietly and productively in our communities throughout America.

But, Trump has never been about results. (Nor has DHS for that matter). He’s all about White Nationalist hatred, racism, and appealing to a “base” that long ago abandoned the rest of America (the majority of us) and human values.

And let’s not forget the responsibility of Congress and the Article III Courts who for years have mostly overlooked the glaring Constitutional defects and clear incompetence and bias evident in the Immigration Court system as administered by the Department of Justice. It has taken the Article IIIs’ complicity in a legally defective system to produce these so-called “final orders” in the first place.

Every dead kid, broken family, and new forced gang recruit should be on their collective consciences. And, the primary result of the “New Reign of Terror” will undoubtedly be fear of cooperating with local police in solving crimes, thus making ethnic Americans “perfect victims” who have been abandoned by those who are failing in their legal duties to insure “equal justice for all.”

2020 might be our last chance to save our country and humanity. Don’t blow it! Who knows, the life you save might be your own!

PWS

06-18-19

SCOFFLAWS STUFFED AGAIN: U.S. Judge Finds Trump’s “Remain In Mexico” Program Illegal – Orders Halt! – Malicious Incompetence, Illegal Gimmicks Thwarted – We Need A Government That Follows The Laws!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/federal-judge-blocks-trump-administration-program-forcing-asylum-seekers-to-remain-in-mexico-while-awaiting-court-hearings/2019/04/08/68e96048-5a42-11e9-a00e-050dc7b82693_story.html?utm_term=.137c9c2e12a3

By Maria Sacchetti

April 8 at 5:46 PM

A federal judge on Monday blocked an experimental Trump administration policy that requires asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases make their way through the immigration court system, a major blow to President Trump as border crossings have surged to their highest point in more than a decade.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco enjoined the Migrant Protection Protocols policy days after outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen pledged to expand the program. The policy began in January.

[Read the Migrant Protection Protocols ruling]

Trump has justified blocking asylum seekers from entering the United States by claiming that many asylum seekers are trying to carry out a scam — that they are coached to file false asylum claims knowing that they will be released into the country because of a lack of detention bed space. The administration had hoped to keep more asylum seekers in Mexico — and off U.S. soil — while they await court hearings on their claims.

Migrants who reach U.S. soil — including areas that are outside U.S. border barriers but inside U.S. territory — have the legal right to seek asylum. They generally are either held in detention facilities to await rulings in their cases or are released into the United States.

The policy had been one idea to stem the flow of migrants into the country, but Seeborg said his order ending the policy will take effect at 5 p.m. on April 12. Within two days, he said, the 11 migrants named in the lawsuit must be allowed to enter the United States, and the administration may not implement or expand the program.

The American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups that filed the lawsuit, hailed the ruling as a “very important decision” on an “unpredecented” attempt to block asylum seekers from setting foot on U.S. soil.

“What it will mean is that nobody else can be sent to Mexico,” said Judy Rabinovitz, an ACLU lawyer. “They can’t enforce this policy.”

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

As I had predicted!

PWS

04-08-19

MARIA SACCHETTI @ WASHPOST: Substantial Majority Of Those Migrants Detained in Trump’s “New American Gulag” Have No Criminal Record!

tohhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/national/when-trump-declared-national-emergency-most-detained-immigrants-were-not-criminals/2019/02/22/a332480e-36ad-11e9-a400-e481bf264fdc_story.html

Maria writes:

Before President Trump declared a national emergency on the U.S. southern border on Feb. 15, he cited concerns that the United States was being flooded with murderers, kidnappers and other violent offenders from foreign countries.

According to new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement figures obtained by The Washington Post, the nation’s immigration jails were not filled with such criminals. As of Feb. 9, days before the president’s declaration, nearly 63 percent of the detainees in ICE jails had not been convicted of any crime.

Of the 48,793 immigrants jailed on Feb. 9, the ICE data shows, 18,124 had criminal records. An additional 5,715 people had pending criminal charges, officials said, but they did not provide details. ICE also did not break down the severity of the crimes committed by or attributed to detainees.

An average of 59 percent of detainees in custody during this fiscal year had no criminal history, according to ICE.

“It proves this is a fake emergency,” said Kevin Appleby, policy director at the Center for Migration Studies, a New York-based nonpartisan immigration think tank. “It really shows that what the president’s doing is abusing his power based on false information.”

. . . .

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

Read Maria’s complete article at the above link.

We know that most of the migrants held in the “New American Gulag” (“NAG”) are neither security threats nor realistic dangers to our communities. From my experience many of those held because they are “criminals” have either relatively minor offenses (e.g., driving without a license) or even if the offenses were more serious have long ago completed criminal sentences and have been free in society without recurring problems.

So, why are the “non-criminals” being held in the NAG? Well, DHS would say it’s because they are threats to “abscond” before hearings, citing highly questionable “self-fulfilling” numbers opaquely generated by EOIR and DHS. But outside studies of DHS and EOIR statistics have shown a much different picture.

Individuals with lawyers and applications filed, particularly for asylum, who have the system and their obligations thereunder carefully explained to them in their own language, show up almost all the time for Immigration Court.

Likewise, migrants released on moderate bonds (in the $1.5 to $5K range — much lower than the current “national average”) also appear with regularity, as do those with ankle monitors and other “alternatives to detention.”

Thus, a reasonable Administration genuinely interested in the integrity of the Immigration Court process would severely curtail the use of civil immigration detention, particularly by private entities, which is both wastefully expensive and inhumane.

Instead, they would rely on a proven combination of lower-cost, more humane, and due process promoting alternatives: getting applicants matched with lawyers, pro bono, low bono, or paid; encouraging individuals to locate in communities where lawyers, family resources, and NGOs are available; and using reasonable bonds, ankle monitors and other types of “call in monitoring” to help insure appearance at further hearings.

An improved Immigration Court system where all judges were uniformly fair, impartial, and courteous to applicants and their lawyers, and where asylum was granted more generously in accordance with the standards set forth in the Refugee Act of 1980, the Supreme Court’s decision in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, the BIA’s precedent in Matter of Mogharrabi, and the regulations establishing a strong presumption of future persecution for those who have been persecuted in the past would also help.

Hope tends to draw people. Hostility and bias understandably tend to repel them. As long as we have a U.S. Immigration Court that tolerates, and even aids, abets, and encourages, some biased, anti-asylum, unprofessional judges in the “Jeff Sessions mode” who deny asylum at rates exceeding 90%, it will lack credibility.

Without credibility and a demonstrable commitment to fairness, impartiality, and due process above the DHS’s and the Administration’s often questionable and other times downright bogus “enforcement priorities,” the system will continue to fail our country, inflict unjustifiable harm and suffering on the most vulnerable among us, and indirectly harm every one of us who believes in Constitutional Government and a firm commitment to respecting human rights. Critical examination of the Government’s positions against a rigorous standard of legality, reasonableness, and fundamenal fairness under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to our Constitution is essential to an independent judiciary. It isn’t happening in today’s “captive” Immigration Courts. That’s a national disgrace that must be fixed.

PWS

02-23-19

MARIA SACCHETTI @ WASHPOST WITH A “SOFTER PORTRAIT” OF US BORDER PATROL: Despite The White Nationalist Lies, Fear Mongering, & False Narratives Hurled By Trump Politicos, At The Border, Reality, Kindness, & Simple Humanity Sometimes Win Out!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/you-want-a-cookie-as-families-arrive-en-masse-border-agents-offer-snacks-and-medical-checks/2019/02/19/1b334d5c-1dd7-11e9-9145-3f74070bbdb9_story.html

Maria writes

ORGAN PIPE CACTUS NATIONAL MONUMENT, Ariz. — This cactus forest on the U.S.-Mexico border was quiet one recent day. No mass crossings of migrant families. No sprinters. Just two men caught sneaking into the Arizona desert.

Then U.S. Border Patrol Agent Daniel Hernandez spotted a youth alone under a juniper tree, dressed as if he were headed to church. When the agent approached, the boy quickly surrendered.

“Are you afraid?” Hernandez asked in Spanish. The youth nodded and said his name was Marco and that he was from Guatemala. He was 14 but looked small in an oversize jacket, pressed shirt and pants, and too-large black oxford shoes.

Hernandez lifted his sunglasses to appear less intimidating. He asked Marco who had left him, how he knew where the border was, and whether he carried food and water.

“Are you hungry?” he asked. “When was the last time you ate? Yesterday? You want a cookie?”

The deaths of two Guatemalan children in December and the massive groups of Central American families crossing the border are increasingly transforming the Border Patrol’s role from national security to humanitarian relief, even as President Trump declares the situation a national emergency.

Well over half the people taken into custody in recent months have been parents and children, with hundreds surrendering at a time, often in isolated locations. In other cases, youths such as Marco are dropped off by themselves. More than 1,800 Central American parents and children, a record high, crossed illegally last week on the day Trump went to El Paso to tout the need for a border wall.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen promised “extraordinary protective measures” following the deaths of Jakelin Caal, 7, and Felipe Gómez Alonzo, 8, who crossed into the United States with their fathers. Since then, the federal government says it has dramatically increased its medical staff at the border.

A Mexican man detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection died this week at a medical facility, however. And advocacy groups warn that the remote areas where families are crossing, and the agency’s crowded detention facilities, still pose serious risks — especially for young children.

[Meet Felipe, the boy from Guatemala who died after crossing the U.S. border]

Medical teams from the Coast Guard, the Department of Health and Human Services, and new private contractors have been triaging and examining migrant children on the border. Border agents, hundreds of whom are also paramedics, are patrolling more far-flung areas, backed up by helicopters, buses and SUVs. The U.S. military has also helped with the evaluation and treatment of migrants.

“We’ve been adapting to these new realities,” said a senior adviser for Customs and Border Protection who was allowed to speak only on the condition of anonymity.

The deaths of Jakelin and Felipe remain under investigation, and the official said the Department of Homeland Security so far hasn’t found any sign of a widespread public health crisis on the border. The biggest challenge, Border Patrol agents say, are the large groups of migrants — 200 to 300 people at a time — crossing in distant locations, swamping the agency’s resources.

U.S. Border Patrol agents monitor the border Jan. 18 in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Border Patrol Agent Daniel Hernandez speaks with Marco, a 14-year-old from Guatemala, who was arrested after illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

A U.S. Border Patrol agent drags tires to ease the search for footprints of people crossing the border in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Fifty-eight large groups crossed from October to January, compared with 13 groups over the same period last year.

Some migrants arrive with colds, sprained ankles, broken bones, chicken pox and “gripe,” otherwise known as the flu. A toddler who fell from a moving vehicle in Mexico was brought to the U.S. border in January with a possible broken arm. A teenage girl cracked several vertebrae after slipping from an 18-foot-high border wall in December.

CBP has given Border Patrol agents “enhanced” field guidance to check every child — including those arriving in large groups — and ask if they are sick, injured, dehydrated or hungry. Agents have also stocked up on baby formula, diapers and women’s sanitary supplies in sectors such as Yuma, where 90 percent of border crossers in January were family members and unaccompanied minors.

Migrants who are ill are sent to a hospital. The rest are taken to Border Patrol stations for more-comprehensive screenings. Doctors and nurses check their vital signs, take their medical histories and administer medicine.

In one instance, on Jan. 24, the DHS flew in a physician and other staff via helicopter to a Border Patrol station in the Tucson sector to examine 130 minors. Two youths with high fevers were taken to a hospital.

Still, the huge numbers of families arriving carry significant risk, officials say, because many cross into the United States in less-populated areas, with few agents and limited or no medical facilities.

The CBP official said the agency is deploying general-practitioner physicians who can treat a wide array of people — including children and pregnant women. But the American Academy of Pediatrics said it has urged CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan to hire medics trained in pediatrics, or at least accept volunteer pediatricians, because children require more specialized care.

“Sick children are very different from adults,” said Colleen Kraft, the immediate past president of the academy, whose term ended Dec. 31. “If you don’t have the pediatric training . . . you’re going to miss those children who are becoming very, very ill.”

Doctors and advocates said young children should not be housed in cold and crowded processing cells, where migrants describe sleeping on mats on the floor under silver Mylar blankets.

[The ‘hielera’: A battle for control of thermostats at the U.S. border]

“It’s a law enforcement mentality,” said Marsha Griffin, a pediatrician who volunteers at a shelter in McAllen, Tex., and the co-chair of the academy’s special-interest group on immigrant health. “They are treating people as prisoners, not as children and families.”

On a tour of the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector in January, agents did not allow a Washington Post reporter to visit the cells where migrants are held, citing privacy concerns. But some migrants recently released from those cells and dropped off in vanloads at a Tucson shelter praised the medical attention their children received in federal custody.

Julio, a schoolteacher from Guatemala, said his daughter Jakeline, 15, was taken to the hospital with the flu and had recovered.

“The care was excellent,” he said, speaking at Casa Alitas, a Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona shelter on a palm-tree-lined street. Shelter officials asked that the migrants be identified only by their first names to protect their privacy.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Maria’s excellent article at the above link.

Imagine what could be achieved if the Administration simply followed the law by getting enough Refugee Officers, Inspectors, Asylum Officers, Immigration Judges, Court Clerks, and Private Attorneys to process the cases fairly, efficiently, and in accordance with the law, our international obligations, and Due Process. Folks would be encouraged to apply abroad or at ports of entry. The Border Patrol could actually return to real law enforcement duties.

It wouldn’t cost anything close to $8 billion. And it wouldn’t tie up the Federal Courts with avoidable litigation because of the Administration’s disrespect for the law, our Constitution, and Congressional intent.

It could happen. But, not unless we change to a Non-White-Nationalist Regime. Essentially, everyone including the Border Patrol is being adversely affected by Trump’s bad, and ultimately unsustainable, restrictionist immigration policies.

PWS

02-20-19

MARIA SACCHETTI @ WASHPOST: CRUEL & UNUSUAL: DHS’s “New American Gulag” Is An Unconstitutional, Unaccountable, & Sometimes Deadly “(Bogus) Civil” Prison System For Migrants! — ICE Denials NOT Credible — 14,000 Violations In 2 1/2 Years Is NOT “Accountability!”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/homeland-security-ig-questions-ices-oversight-of-detention-facilities/2019/02/01/baf8b828-263c-11e9-ad53-824486280311_story.html

Maria writes:

Public and private contractors running immigration jails violated federal detention standards thousands of times in recent years — including failing to report allegations of sexual assaults and staff misconduct to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — but were fined only twice, according to a report issued Friday.

The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general called on ICE to improve oversight of facilities that detain roughly half the 45,000 immigrant detainees held every day across the United States, and to do a better job holding federal contractors accountable for their health and safety.

ICE defended its oversight in a letter to the Inspector General that was included in the report, and said generally it can terminate contracts or relocate immigrants if it believes facilities are unsafe.

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ICE documented 14,003 violations from Oct. 1, 2015 through June 30 at 106 facilities nationwide, the report said. The fines assessed by the agency amountedto $3.9 million, or 0.13 percent of the more than $3 billion ICE paid to the contractors during that period.

One facility was fined after “a pattern of repeat deficiencies over a 3-year period, primarily related to health care and mental health standards,” the report said. Another fine followed a Labor Department order against the facility for failing to pay proper wages.

In other cases, the inspector general found, immigration officials granted waivers allowing some contractors to bypass detention standards or avoid punishment for violations. From September 2016 through July, 65 waivers were approved — most for indefinite time periods.

One waiver authorized a facility to use CS gas, or tear gas, even though it is 10 times as toxic as pepper spray.

Another allowed a facility to house detainees who hadserious criminal records alongwith others who had minor records or only immigration violations, a practice that is normally prohibited “to protect detainees who may be at risk of victimization or assault.”

The inspector general said immigration officials lacked formal policies to oversee waivers and that some officials “without clear authority” were granting them.

“Key officials admitted there are no policies, procedures, guidance documents, or instructions to explain how to review waiver requests,” the report said.

The inspector general issued a series of recommendations urging ICE to shore up its oversight of detention facilities and ensure paperwork is included in contracts that will make clear when the agency should impose penalties on contractors that fail to follow federal rules.

In a letter to the inspector general that was included in the report, ICE agreed to make improvements but countered that it has taken strong steps in the past to safeguard immigrant health and safety, even shutting down some facilities because of violations.

“ICE has a strong record of holding detention facilities accountable when deficiencies are identified,” spokesman Matthew Bourke said in a statement.

He said the waiver process in the inspector general’s report is a “rarely used mechanism.”

The report comes as the White House and Congress are preparing for a heated battle over detention funding, building a wall on the southern border and other aspects of President Trump’s immigration crackdown. This week, Democratic lawmakers unveiled a proposal to “significantly” reduce ICE detention beds, require more detention facility inspections, and limit ICE’s leeway to detain more immigrants than Congress allows.

As of Jan. 26, the agency wasdetaining an average of 45,670 immigrants a day this fiscal year, which is about 5,000 more than Congress has authorized in the budget.

The 106 facilities in the report housed an average of 25,000 immigrants a day as of fiscal year 2017. They are under ICE’s direct oversight. About 100 other facilities are run by the U.S. Marshals Service and are not included in the report.

ICE contractors are required to comply with detention standards that outline their responsibilities, the services they must provide to immigrants and what each facility must do to provide a “safe and secure detention environment for staff and detainees,” the report said.

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

No doubt in my mind that DHS is lying and covering up malfeasance, perhaps criminal activity.

Time for 1) some House oversight, 2) accountability for those at DHS and their contractors responsible for these abuses, and 3) Congressional action to phase out and strictly limit DHS’s grossly overused and under supervised detention function.

PWS

02-01-19

JAMES HOHMANN’S “DAILY 202” @ WASHPOST FEATURES “IMMIGRATION WARS”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2018/12/07/daily-202-this-week-foreshadows-the-continuing-escalation-of-the-voting-wars/5c09f8c41b326b67caba2b3e/?utm_term=.9f4f797e7296

THE IMMIGRATION WARS:

— An undocumented woman who works as a housekeeper at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J., told her story to the New York Times. Miriam Jordan reports: “[Victorina] Morales’s journey from cultivating corn in rural Guatemala to fluffing pillows at an exclusive golf resort took her from the southwest border, where she said she crossed illegally in 1999, to the horse country of New Jersey, where she was hired at the Trump property in 2013 with documents she said were phony. She said she was not the only worker at the club who was in the country illegally. Sandra Diaz, 46, a native of Costa Rica who is now a legal resident of the United States, said she, too, was undocumented when she worked at Bedminster between 2010 and 2013.

“The two women said they worked for years as part of a group of housekeeping, maintenance and landscaping employees at the golf club that included a number of undocumented workers, though they could not say precisely how many. There is no evidence that Mr. Trump or Trump Organization executives knew of their immigration status. But at least two supervisors at the club were aware of it, the women said, and took steps to help workers evade detection and keep their jobs. …

“During the presidential campaign, when the Trump International Hotel opened for business in Washington, Mr. Trump boasted that he had used an electronic verification system, E-Verify, to ensure that only those legally entitled to work were hired. ‘We didn’t have one illegal immigrant on the job,’ Mr. Trump said then. But throughout his campaign and his administration, Ms. Morales, 45, has been reporting for work at Mr. Trump’s golf course in Bedminster, where she is still on the payroll. An employee of the golf course drives her and a group of others to work every day, she says, because it is known that they cannot legally obtain driver’s licenses.”

— Morales said mistreatment by her supervisor helped motivate her to come forward. Nick Miroff, Tracy Jan and David A. Fahrenthold report: “In an interview Thursday evening with The Washington Post from her attorney’s office, Morales said she has not been fired or heard from her employer since the publication of the Times article, in which she said she presented phony identity documents when she was hired at Trump National Golf Club. Morales said she was scheduled to report to work Friday but did not plan to go, and said she made the decision to come forward because of mistreatment by her direct supervisor at the golf resort, including what she described as ‘physical abuse’ on three occasions.”

— Monthly border arrests reached a new high for the Trump presidency last month. Miroff reports: “During a month when the president’s attention was fixed on caravan groups of Central American migrants streaming into the Mexican border city of Tijuana, large groups of parents with children crossed into southern Arizona and the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas with far less fanfare. U.S. Customs and Border Protection detained 25,172 members of ‘family units’ in November, the highest number ever recorded, as well as 5,283 ‘unaccompanied minors.’ Combined, those two groups accounted for nearly 60 percent of all border arrests in November. Overall, CBP arrested or denied entry to 62,456 border-crossers in November, up from 60,772 in October.”

— Trump claimed without evidence that border officials are “bracing for a massive surge.” “Arizona, together with our Military and Border Patrol, is bracing for a massive surge at a NON-WALLED area. WE WILL NOT LET THEM THROUGH. Big danger,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Nancy and Chuck must approve Boarder Security and the Wall!”

— A growing number of immigrants facing deportation argue they would return to grave danger in their home countries, putting increased pressure on a strained legal system. Maria Sacchetti reports: “In a shaky voice, [Santos] Chirino described the MS-13 gang attack that had nearly killed him, his decision to testify against the assailants in a Northern Virginia courtroom and the threats that came next. … ‘I’m sure they are going to kill me,’ Chirino, a married father of two teenagers, told the judge. … [He] believed Chirino was afraid to return to Honduras. But the judge ruled that he could not stay in the United States. … Nearly a year after he was deported, his 18-year-old daughter and 19-year-old son arrived in the Arlington immigration court for their own asylum hearing. They were accompanied by their father’s lawyer, Benjamin Osorio. ‘Your honor, this is a difficult case,’ Osorio told Judge John Bryant, asking to speed the process. ‘I represented their father, Santos Chirino Cruz. . . . I lost the case in this courtroom . . . . He was murdered in April.’ ”

— The president and House Democrats appear to have no appetite for an immigration compromise involving border wall funding and the “dreamers.” David Nakamura reports: “Trump and Democratic leaders are rejecting talk of a grand bargain on immigration that would provide $25 billion for the wall at the U.S.-Mexico border in exchange for permanent legal status, and possible citizenship, for up to 1.7 million young undocumented immigrants known as ‘dreamers.’ That plan was reportedly on the table in January before the White House derailed the talks by insisting on additional concessions, including slashing legal immigration and speeding up deportations. Asked by reporters Thursday whether House Democrats would be interested in the original deal, possible incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) bluntly replied: ‘No.’ The wall money and the dreamers ‘are two different subjects,’ she said.”

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

Please note the reference to the article by Maria Sacchetti about “Death and The Arlington Immigraton Court” that I posted last night. https://wp.me/p8eeJm-3mV

You can read the rest of the “Daily 202” for today at the above link.

PWS

12-07-18

“CLOWN COURT:” NOT SO FUNNY WHEN THE SENTENCE IS DEATH — Administration’s Policies Aim At Making Already Broken System More Unfair, Arbitrary, Deadly!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/local/asylum-deported-ms-13-honduras/?utm_term=.28c1c97d4da9&wpisrc=nl_buzz&wpmm=1

Maria Sacchetti reports for the Washington Post:

On the day he pleaded for his life in federal immigration court, Santos Chirino lifted his shirt and showed his scars.

Judge Thomas Snow watched the middle-aged construction worker on a big-screen television in Arlington, Va., 170 miles away from the immigration jail where Chirino was being held.

In a shaky voice, Chirino described the MS-13 gang attack that had nearly killed him, his decision to testify against the assailants in a Northern Virginia courtroom and the threats that came next. His brother’s windshield, smashed. Strangers snapping their photos at a restaurant. A gang member who said they were waiting for him in Honduras.

“I’m sure they are going to kill me,” Chirino, a married father of two teenagers, told the judge.

It was 2016, the last year of the Obama administration, and Chirino was seeking special permission to remain in the United States. His fate lay with Snow, one of hundreds of administrative judges working for the U.S. Justice Department’s clogged immigration courts.

Their task has become more urgent, and more difficult, under President Trump as the number of asylum requests has soared and the administration tries to clear the backlog and close what the president calls legal loopholes.

In the process, the White House is narrowing the path to safety for migrants in an asylum system where it’s never been easy to win.

Snow believed Chirino was afraid to return to Honduras. But the judge ruled that he could not stay in the United States.

Nearly a year after he was deported, his 18-year-old daughter and 19-year-old son arrived in the Arlington immigration court for their own asylum hearing. They were accompanied by their father’s lawyer, Benjamin Osorio.

“Your honor, this is a difficult case,” Osorio told Judge John Bryant, asking to speed the process. “I represented their father, Santos Chirino Cruz. . . . I lost the case in this courtroom . . . . He was murdered in April.”

When Osorio paused, the judge blanched and stammered.

“You said their father’s case — did I understand I heard [it]?” Bryant asked, eyes wide.

“No,” Osorio said. “In this court. Not before your honor.”

“Well good, because — all right, my blood pressure can go down now,” Bryant said. “Yeah. I mean. Okay.”

The immigration courts declined a request for comment from Snow. But in an essay published in USA Today — after Chirino was deported but before he was killed — the judge said deportation cases could be heartbreaking.

“Sometimes, there is not much to go on other than the person’s own testimony,” he wrote. “Yet this is not a decision we want to get wrong. I’ve probably been fooled and granted asylum to some who didn’t deserve it. I hope and pray I have not denied asylum to some who did.”

Santos Chirino was killed in April 2017 after he was denied asylum and deported.

Sitting in judgment

Chirino’s daughter and son, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for their safety, are among 750,000 immigrants facing deportation in the U.S. immigration courts. A growing number, like Chirino and his family, say they would be in grave danger back home.

A decade ago, 1 in 100 border crossers was seeking asylum or humanitarian relief, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. Now it’s 1 in 3. The intensifying caseload — nearly 120,000 asylum cases filed last year alone, four times the number in 2014 — has upped the pressure on one of America’s most secret and controversial court systems.

Judges say they must handle “death-penalty” cases in a traffic court setting, with inadequate budgets and grueling caseloads. Most records aren’t public, most defendants don’t speak English and many don’t have lawyers to represent them. Cases often involve complex tales of rape, torture and murder. Approval rates can vary widely.

The Trump administration has imposed production quotas and ordered judges to close cases more quickly. They also must enforce a stricter view on who deserves protection in the United States.

Under federal immigration law, fear isn’t enough to keep someone from being deported. Asylum applicants must prove they are a target based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group, which for years has included being a victim of gang or domestic violence.

Before he was forced to resign Nov. 7 , Attorney General Jeff Sessions ruled that victims of gangs or domestic abuse generally would not qualify for asylum. He told a crop of new immigration judges that “the vast majority” of claims are invalid, and warned them not to rule based on a sense of “sympathy.”

“Your job is to apply the law — even in tough cases,” Sessions said.

Immigration Judge Lawrence Burman, the secretary-treasurer of the National Association of Immigration Judges , said “there’s a lot of unfairness” that could result from Trump’s crackdown. “We sometimes send people back to situations where they’re going to be killed,” said Burman, who serves at the Arlington immigration court. “Who wants to do that?”

The government doesn’t track what happens after asylum seekers and other immigrants are ordered deported. But Columbia University’s Global Migration Project recently tracked more than 60 people killed or harmed after being deported.

Judges’ powers are limited, immigration lawyers say, by outdated asylum laws that were designed to protect people from repressive governments rather than gangs or other threats. In Central America, many migrants flee towns where gangs and drug cartels are in control, not the government. If migrants don’t meet the strict definition of an asylee, judges must send them back to dangerous situations.

“It can be depressing. We’ve had judges quit because of that . . . or they just couldn’t stand it anymore,” Burman said. “You have to fit into a strict category, and if you don’t fit into a category, then you can’t get asylum, even if your life is in danger.”

Grafitti with a scratched-out MS-13 gang tag, near the home of Santos Chirino’s family in Virginia. Translated, the graffiti says, “If you are not of the [MS], don’t speak to me.”

‘Best of luck to you and your family’

At Chirino’s asylum hearing, Snow gently urged him to slow down as he testified from Farmville Detention Center in Virginia over the immigration court’s often glitchy version of Skype.

Osorio laid out evidence that his client’s life was in danger, according to an audio recording of the hearing. He explained how MS-13 gang members had stabbed Chirino with a screwdriver at a soccer game in Northern Virginia in 2002, and his testimony had helped send them to jail. At least one man was deported to Honduras. Now the U.S. government was trying to expel Chirino for his role in a 2015 bar fight, which he said started when gang members there snapped his photo.

Chirino told Snow he believed the police could protect him if he stayed in the United States. Osorio said gang members could easily “finish the job that they started” in Honduras, where gang violence is rampant and most serious crimes are never solved. Chirino’s friends and relatives echoed that belief in letters to the court. “Death is waiting for him,” wrote his uncle, Felipe Chirino, in Honduras.

“He can never go back,” wrote his brother, Jose Chirino, in Virginia.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement prosecutor Elizabeth Dewar expressed skepticism that Chirino was really in danger after so many years away from Honduras. Noting that Chirino never reported the threats against him to the police, she told Snow: “Those aren’t the actions of someone that is in fear for their life.”

Santos Chirino explains why he’s afraid to go back to Honduras

6:21

After more than two hours in court, Snow was unsure. Immigration judges often dictate their decisions immediately after a hearing. But Snow, an appointee of President George W. Bush, said cases increasingly were too complex for that, and he didn’t want to “rush this one through.”

“I’ll do it as quickly as I can,” he told the lawyers.

“Sir?” He turned to Chirino on the television screen. “There are some complicated issues and I feel to be fair to you I need to do a written decision. . . .

“Either way, no matter how the case goes, it’s unlikely I’ll see you again. So best of luck to you and your family in the future.”

Snow’s options were limited by a technicality. Chirino could not qualify for full asylum because he failed to apply for the protection within a year of arriving in the United States or soon after the gang attack.

But the judge could still halt Chirino’s deportation temporarily, under either the Immigration and Nationality Act or the Convention Against Torture, because of the danger he would face in Honduras.

Unlike asylum, those protections do not lead to U.S. citizenship. They also are much harder to grant. Applicants must prove that there’s a “clear probability” of harm — at least 51 percent. To win asylum, in contrast, they must prove there is a 10 percent chance they’ll be harmed if they are deported.

In a ruling three months later, Snow wrote that Chirino fell short of the high standard the law required: He hadn’t proved that MS-13 would find him in Honduras, or that they were even looking for him.

“The Court is sympathetic to the risks facing the respondent,” Snow wrote. But the evidence, he said, was “insufficient to support a clear probability” that he’d be killed.

‘Should I have pitched it a different way?’: Lawyer reflects on Santos Chirino’s asylum case

A different prison

Osorio urged Chirino to appeal. The construction worker told Osorio that he couldn’t stand being locked up. Chirino paced the closet-like meeting room where they met and sobbed through the glass when his family visited. Some detainees — especially hardened criminals — can withstand the months or years of detention it takes to win their cases, immigration attorneys say. Others unravel. Their hair falls out, they lose weight. Some have committed suicide.

When Chirino gave up, Osorio felt so disheartened he offered to represent his children free.

Chirino was deported Aug. 26, 2016. His brother Belarmino, also convicted in the bar fight, had been sent back a month earlier.

Their parents’ home became a different kind of jail.

“I fear for my life on a daily basis,” Chirino wrote in an affidavit to support his children’s cases, explaining that he rarely went outside. He said MS-13 would probably kill his children if they returned to Honduras “because they are part of my family.”

On April 9, 2017 — Chirino’s 38th birthday — he decided to venture out, relatives said. He loved soccer, and in Virginia he used to play on a team named after his hometown.

He and Belarmino went to the city of Nacaome to watch a game. After they arrived, family members said, the air filled with popping sounds and screams.

Chirino was found in a red Toyota pickup, shot in the throat. His brother was on the ground, near a rock allegedly used to bash him in the head. Police recovered five bullet casings.

Relatives called Chirino’s wife and children with news of the deaths. Then his daughter phoned Osorio’s office, screaming.

The lawyer instructed her to gather the death certificates, police documents and gruesome photos that had been posted to a Honduran news website. He said he would use them as evidence for the teens’ asylum cases. And he wrote a letter to Snow, with the gory documents attached.

“Santos was murdered by purported gang members,” Osorio wrote. “Santos was telling the truth.”

The official record on the brothers’ murders remains unclear. Relatives said the brothers were attacked by gang members. But an initial police report provided by the family said people had been drinking and a fight ensued.

Honduran officials did not respond to multiple requests for information about the case.

Santos Chirino’s daughter, above, and son were brought to the United States in 2014 as threats against the family began to escalate. They are seeking asylum and are waiting for their case to be heard in Arlington immigration court.

An uncertain future

Four months after the killings, Chirino’s children arrived for a scheduling hearing in Bryant’s courtroom in Arlington. Unlike their father, they appeared in person beside Osorio, sinking uneasily into the cushioned chairs.

The siblings were raised by their grandparents in Honduras. In 2014, as threats against his family continued to escalate, Chirino and his wife brought the children to the United States.

Chirino wouldn’t let his daughter take an after-school job, telling her to study hard so she could one day become a nurse.

Now she and her brother were facing deportation too.

“I want to extend my deepest sympathy upon the death of your father,” Bryant told the siblings, after Osorio explained what had happened. “My father died many, many years ago . . . I understand how painful that is.”

“It is even more painful because of the manner in which your father died,” he added, as Chirino’s daughter wiped her eyes.

Bryant scheduled a full deportation hearing for March 2018. A snowstorm postponed it. The judge’s next available date was in 2020.

Immigration lawyer explains Santos Chirino’s death in court

1:41

Osorio says it is unclear how the Trump administration’s recent changes in asylum policy will affect the siblings’ cases. But the answer could come sooner than expected.

On Nov. 24, Chirino’s son, who had recently turned 21, was charged in Loudoun County with public intoxication and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Police had stopped the car he was riding in and arrested the driver for speeding and other charges.

After posting bail on the misdemeanor charges, Chirino’s son was transferred to Farmville, where his father had been held. ICE released him on bond, his sister said. Osorio is waiting to hear whether a new immigration hearing will be scheduled for him.

The attorney says he will do everything possible to ensure that the young man and his sister can remain in the United States. Their mother, Chirino’s widow, has kidney disease and is on dialysis, hoping for a transplant. Her condition is one of the factors Osorio plans to raise in court.

He has won other asylum cases since Chirino’s death, victories he describes as bittersweet.

“And this is what haunts me,” he emailed late one night. “Did I leave something laying on the table? Or is that just the dumb luck of our system, that in a different court, with a different judge and a different prosecutor, you get an entirely different outcome based on supposedly the same law?”

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

Go to the link for pictures by Carolyn Van Houten, recordings from the actual hearing, and an interview with Attorney Benjamin Osorio.

This happened during the last Administration at Arlington. Arlington is rightfully considered to be one of the best U.S. Immigration Courts with fair, scholarly, courageous judges who generally have been able to resist political pressure from above to cut corners and “send enforcement messages.” I saw nothing in this article to change that impression.

The decency, humanity, courage, and competency under pressure of judges like Judge John M. Bryant and Judge Lawrence O. Burman also comes through. That’s what the system should be promoting and attracting (but isn’t). Maria also movingly portrays the anguish and self-examination of a smart, caring, competent, hard-working immigration attorney like Benjamin Osorio.

But, even in Arlington, we all recognized that we were operating under less than ideal conditions that increased the likelihood of life-threatening mistakes and miscarriages of justice. And, even before Trump and Sessions, we were constrained by unduly restrictive interpretations of asylum law and intentional docket manipulation by DOJ politicos intended to reduce the number of asylum grants, prevent “the floodgates from opening,” and “send enforcement messages.” All of these are highly improper roles for what is supposed to be a Due Process focused, fair, and impartial court system.

Sadly, situations like Maria describes can’t always be prevented. I know Judge Snow to be a fair, scholarly, and conscientious jurist who always is aware of and considers the human implications of his decisions, as all of us did at Arlington. This comes through in the quote from his article in USA Today highlighted by Maria above.

If things like this happened in Arlington before Trump and Sessions, it certainly raises the question of what’s happening elsewhere right now. In some other Immigration Courts some judges are well-known for their enforcement bias, thin knowledge, and lack of professionalism.

Rather than instituting necessary reforms to restore Due Process, recognize migrants’ rights, require professionalism, and make judges showing anti-asylum, anti-female, and anti-migrant biases accountable, under Trump the Department of Justice has gone in exactly the opposite direction. “Worst practices” have been instituted, precedents and rules promoting fairness for asylum applicants reversed, judges encouraged to misapply asylum law to produce more denials and removals, the BIA turned into a rubber stamp for enforcement, and judges showing pro-DHS and anti-migrant bias insulated from accountability and empowered to crank out more decisions that deny Due Process.

One of the most despicable of the many despicable and dishonest things that Jeff Sessions did was to minimize and mock the stresses put on the respondents, their conscientious lawyers, the judges, the court staff, and the DHS litigation staff by the system he was maladministering. While a decent human being and a competent Attorney General could and should have dealt with these honestly with an eye toward working cooperatively with all concerned to build a better, fairer, less stressful system, Sessions intentionally did the opposite. He insulted lawyers, made biased, unethical statements to Immigration Judges, hurled racially inspired false narratives at asylum applicants and migrants, manipulated and stacked the law against asylum applicants, artificially “jacked up” backlogs, and ratcheted up the stress levels on the judges by demeaning them with “production quotas.” (Other than that, he was a great guy.)

Contrary to what Jeff Sessions said, being a U.S. Immigration Judge is one of the toughest judicial jobs out there, requiring a very healthy dose of sympathy, empathy, and compassion, in addition to critical examination of claims under a legal framework and our Constitution.

I had to remove some individuals I found to be in danger because I couldn’t fit them into any of the protections available under law. But, it certainly made me uncomfortable. I did it only reluctantly after exploring all possible options including, in some cases, “pushing” ICE to exercise “prosecutorial discretion” in some humanitarian situations. That’s what “real judging” is about, not the simplistic, de-humanized, mechanized assembly line enforcement function falsely promoted by Sessions.

We should be concerned about laws and interpretations that fail to protect lives. We should be working hard to insure, to the maximum extent possible, that we save lives rather than returning folks to death. We must insure that no biased, unethical, and unprincipled person like Jeff Sessions ever gets personal control of this important court system in the future.

Instead, the Trump Administration is working overtime to guarantee more miscarriages of justice, violate international laws, and achieve more preventable deaths of innocent folks. We should all be deeply ashamed of what America has become under Trump.

PWS

12-06-18

MILLER & TRUMP ADMINISTRATION HATCHING ANOTHER ILLEGAL CHILD SEPARATION PROGRAM AS THEIR CRUEL & COUNTERPRODUCTIVE WHITE NATIONALIST ENFORCEMENT CONTINUES TO FAIL!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/trump-administration-weighs-new-family-separation-effort-at-border/2018/10/12/45895cce-cd7b-11e8-920f-dd52e1ae4570_story.html?utm_term=.e82d531c008e

Nick Miroff, Josh Dawsey, & Maria Sacchetti report for WashPost:

The White House is actively considering plans that could again separate parents and children at the U.S.-Mexico border, hoping to reverse soaring numbers of families attempting to cross illegally into the United States, according to several administration officials with direct knowledge of the effort.

One option under consideration is for the government to detain asylum-seeking families together for up to 20 days, then give parents a choice — stay in family detention with their child for months or years as their immigration case proceeds, or allow children to be taken to a government shelter so other relatives or guardians can seek custody.

That option — called “binary choice” — is one of several under consideration amid the president’s frustration over border security. Trump has been unable to fulfill key promises to build a border wall and end what he calls “catch and release,” a process that began under past administrations in which most detained families are quickly freed to await immigration hearings. The number of migrant family members arrested and charged with illegally crossing the border jumped 38 percent in August and is now at a record level, according to Department of Homeland Security officials.

Senior administration officials say they are not planning to revive the chaotic forced separations carried out by the Trump administration in May and June that spawned an enormous political backlash and led to a court order to reunite families.

But they feel compelled to do something, and officials say senior White House adviser Stephen Miller is advocating for tougher measures because he believes the springtime separations worked as an effective deterrent to illegal crossings.

At least 2,500 children were taken from their parents over a period of six weeks. Crossings by families declined slightly in May, June and July before surging again in August. September numbers are expected to be even higher.

While some migrants worried about separations, others felt seeking asylum was worth the risk

For some seeking asylum, family separations were worth the risk: ‘Whatever it took, we had to get to this country’ (Zoeann Murphy, Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post)

While some inside the White House and DHS are concerned about the “optics” and political blowback of renewed separations, Miller and others are determined to act, according to officials briefed on the deliberations. There have been several high-level meetings in the White House in recent weeks about the issue. The “binary choice” option is seen as one that could be tried out fairly quickly.

“Career law enforcement professionals in the U.S. government are working to analyze and evaluate options that would protect the American people, prevent the horrific actions of child smuggling, and stop drug cartels from pouring into our communities,” deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley said in an emailed statement.

Any effort to expand family detentions and resume separations would face multiple logistical and legal hurdles.

It would require overcoming the communication and data management failures that plagued the first effort, when Border Patrol agents, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials and Department of Health and Human Services caseworkers struggled to keep track of separated parents and children.

The Trump administration believes it is on solid legal ground, according to two officials, in part because U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw, who ordered the government to reunite separated families in June, approved the binary-choice approach in one of his rulings. But a Congressional Research Service report last month said “practical and legal barriers” remain to using that approach in the future and said releasing families together in the United States is “the only clearly viable option under current law.”

‘Administration officials said the CRS report cited earlier legal rulings. But the American Civil Liberties Union, which launched the separations lawsuit, disputed that interpretation and said it would oppose any attempt at expanded family detentions or separations.

“The government need not, and legally may not, indiscriminately detain families who present no flight risk or danger,” ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said in an email. “It is deeply troubling that this Administration continues to look for ways to cause harm to small children.”

Another hurdle is that the government does not have detention space for a large number of additional families. ICE has three “family residential centers” with a combined capacity of roughly 3,000 parents and children. With more than four times that many arriving each month, it is unclear where the government would hold all the parents who would opt to remain with their children.

But Trump said in his June 20 executive order halting family separations that the administration’s policy is to keep parents and children together, “including by detaining” them. In recent weeks, federal officials have taken steps to expand their ability to do that.

In addition to considering “binary choice” and other options, officials have proposed new rules that would allow them to withdraw from a 1997 federal court agreement that bars ICE from keeping children in custody for more than 20 days.

The rules would give ICE greater flexibility to expand family detention centers and potentially hold parents and children longer, though lawyers say this would be likely to end up in court.

Officials have also imposed production quotas on immigration judges and are searching for more ways to speed up the calendar in its courts to adjudicate cases more quickly.

Federal officials arguing for the tougher measures say the rising number of family crossings is a sign of asylum fraud. DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has blasted smugglers for charging migrants thousands of dollars to ferry them into the United States, knowing that “legal loopholes” will force the administration to release them pending a court hearing. Federal officials say released families are rarely deported.

Advocates for immigrants counter that asylum seekers are fleeing violence and acute poverty, mainly in Central America, and deserve to have a full hearing before an immigration judge.

“There is currently a crisis at our southern border,” DHS spokeswoman Katie Waldman said in a statement, adding, “DHS will continue to enforce the law humanely, and will continue to examine a range of options to secure our nation’s borders.”

In southern Arizona, so many families have crossed in the past 10 days that the government has been releasing them en masse to shelters and charities. A lack of available bus tickets has stranded hundreds of parents and children in Tucson, where they sleep on Red Cross cots in a church gymnasium.

At a Senate hearing Wednesday, Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.) told Nielsen that migrants were “flooding into the community” and that authorities there had “no ability to do anything about it.”

Nielsen said lawmakers needs to give DHS more latitude to hold families with children in detention until their cases can be fully adjudicated — a process that can take months or years because of huge court backlogs.

DHS officials have seen the biggest increase this year in families arriving from Guatemala, where smugglers called “coyotes” tell migrants they can avoid detention and deportation by bringing a child, according to some community leaders in that country.

On Friday, Nielsen called for a regional effort to combat smuggling and violence in the region and to “heighten our penalties for traffickers.”

“I think there’s more that we can do to hold them responsible, particularly those who traffic in children,” she said in a speech in Washington at the second Conference on Prosperity and Security in Central America.

More than 90,000 adults with children were caught at the southwest border in the first 11 months of fiscal 2018. The previous high for a single year was 77,600 in 2016

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

My recollection is that 1) the DOJ conceded in court that a policy of intentionally separating families is unconstitutional; and 2) Federal Courts have held that detention of individuals who are neither security risks nor likely to abscond for the primary purpose of “deterrence” is illegal.

So, if this facially illegal program is put into action, why shouldn’t Stephen Miller go to jail and be held personally liable for all the damages he causes with his scofflaw racist policies? Why shouldn’t Nielsen, Sessions, and others who are part of the Miller White Nationalist scheme also be held personally liable?

More cruelty, more wasting of taxpayer resources, more abuse of the judicial process by the Trump Administration.

Oh, and by the way. although today’s out of control U.S. Immigration Court backlogs began with “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” during the Bush II and Obama Administrations, Sessions and the Trump Administration have pushed them to astounding new levels with their incompetence and anti-asylum bias. Don’t blame the victims for the Government’s irresponsible actions!

If folks who believe in human decency and the rule of law don’t get out and vote, these abuses and degradations of our national values will continue.

PWS

10-12-18

GONZO’S WORLD: DHS IG REPORT SLAMS GONZO’S “KIDDIE GULAG” WHILE CRITICISM OF INTENTIONAL CHILD ABUSE BY HIM AND OTHERS IN THE ADMINISTRATION CONTINUES TO MOUNT — Will The Article IIIs Eventually Draw The Line Between Incompetence & Intentional, Malicious Violations Of Constitutional Rights & Hold Gonzo & His Collaborators in DHS & ORR Personally Liable Under “Bivens?”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trumps-family-separation-policy-was-flawed-from-the-start-watchdog-review-says/2018/10/01/c7134d86-c5ba-11e8-9b1c-a90f1daae309_story.html

By Nick Miroff , Maria Sacchetti and Seung Min Kim

October 1 at 7:44 PM

The Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” crackdown at the border this spring was troubled from the outset by planning shortfalls, widespread communication failures and administrative indifference to the separation of small children from their parents, according to an unpublished report by the Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog.

The report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is the government’s first attempt to autopsy the chaos produced between May 5 and June 20, when President Trump abruptly halted the separations under mounting pressure from his party and members of his family.

The DHS Office of Inspector General’s review found at least 860 migrant children were left in Border Patrol holding cells longer than the 72-hour limit mandated by U.S. courts, with one minor confined for 12 days and another for 25.

Many of those children were put in chain-link holding pens in the Rio Grande Valley of southern Texas. The facilities were designed as short-term way stations, lacking beds and showers, while the children awaited transfer to shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services.

U.S. border officials in the Rio Grande Valley sector, the busiest for illegal crossings along the nearly 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, held at least 564 children longer than they were supposed to, according to the report. Officials in the El Paso sector held 297 children over the legal limit.

The investigators describe a poorly coordinated interagency process that left distraught parents with little or no knowledge of their children’s whereabouts. In other instances, U.S. officials were forced to share minors’ files on Microsoft Word documents sent as email attachments because the government’s internal systems couldn’t communicate.

“Each step of this manual process is vulnerable to human error, increasing the risk that a child could become lost in the system,” the report found.

Based on observations conducted by DHS inspectors at multiple facilities along the border in late June, agents separated children too young to talk from their parents in a way that courted disaster, the report says.

“Border Patrol does not provide pre-verbal children with wrist bracelets or other means of identification, nor does Border Patrol fingerprint or photograph most children during processing to ensure that they can be easily linked with the proper file,” the report said.

“It is a priority of our agency to process and transfer all individuals in our custody to the appropriate longer-term detention agency as soon as possible,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which includes Border Patrol, said in a statement. “The safety and well-being of unaccompanied alien children . . . is our highest responsibility, and we work closely with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement to ensure the timely and secure transfer of all unaccompanied minors in our custody as soon as placement is available from HHS.”

In its Sept. 14 response to the inspector general’s report, DHS acknowledged the “lack of information technology integration” across the key immigration systems and “sometimes” holding children beyond the 72-hour limit.

Jim Crumpacker, the DHS official who responded to the report, said the agency held children longer mainly because HHS shelter space was unavailable. But he said transferring children to less-restrictive settings is a priority.

[‘Deleted families: What went wrong with Trump’s family separation effort]

On June 23, three days after the executive order halting the separations, DHS announced it had developed a “central database” with HHS containing location information for separated parents and minors that both departments could access to reunite families. The inspector general found no evidence of such a database, the report said.

“The OIG team asked several [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] employees, including those involved with DHS’ reunification efforts at ICE Headquarters, if they knew of such a database, and they did not,” it states. “DHS has since acknowledged to the OIG that there is no ‘direct electronic interface’ between DHS and HHS tracking systems.”

Inspectors said they continue to have doubts about the accuracy and reliability of information provided by DHS about the scope of the family separations.

In late June, a federal judge ordered the government to reunite more than 2,500 children taken from their parents, but three months later, more than 100 of those minors remain in federal custody.

The inspector general’s report also found that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) restricted the flow of asylum seekers at legal ports of entry and may have inadvertently prompted them to cross illegally. One woman said an officer had turned her away three times, so she crossed illegally.

At one border crossing, the inspection team saw CBP attempt to increase its detention space by “converting former offices into makeshift hold rooms.”

The observations were made by teams of lawyers, inspectors and criminal investigators sent to the border amid concerns raised by members of Congress and the public. They made unannounced visits to CBP and ICE facilities in the border cities of El Paso and McAllen, Tex.

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

Meanwhile, over at Vanity Fair, Isobel Thompson give us the “skinny” on how the self-created “Kiddie Gulag” that Sessions, Stevie Miller, and Nielsen love so much has turned into total chaos, with the most vulnerable kids among us as its victims. We’ll be feeling the effects of these cruel, inhuman, and unconstitutional policies for generations!

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/10/donald-trump-child-detention-crisis-is-getting-worse

Three months after Donald Trump gave in to global opprobrium and discontinued his administration’s policy of separating children from their parents at the Mexican border, the stark impact of his zero-tolerance directive continues to unfold, with reports emerging that, in the space of a year, the number of migrant children detained by the U.S. government has spiked from 2,400 to over 13,000—despite the number of monthly border crossings remaining relatively unchanged. The increase, along with the fact that the average detainment period has jumped from 34 to 59 days, has resulted in an accommodation crisis. As a result, hundreds of children—some wearing belts inscribed with their emergency-contact information—have been packed onto buses, transported for hours, and deposited at a tented city in a stretch of desert in Tornillo, West Texas. According to The New York Times, these journeys typically occur in the middle of the night and on short notice, to prevent children from fleeing.

The optics of the child-separation crisis have been some of the worst in history for the Trump administration, and the tent city in Tornillo is no exception. The facility is reportedly run according to “guidelines” provided by the Department of Health and Human Services, but access to legal aid is limited, and children—who sleep in bunks divided by gender into blocks of 20—are given academic workbooks, but no formal teaching. In theory, the hundreds of children being sent to Tornillo every week should be held for just a short period of time; the center first opened in June as a temporary space for about 400. Since then, however, it has been expanded to accommodate 3,800 occupants for an indefinite period.

Again, the lag time is largely thanks to the White House. Typically, children labeled “unaccompanied minors” are held in federal custody until they can be paired with sponsors, who house them as their immigration case filters through the courts. But thanks to the harsh rhetoric embraced by the White House, such sponsors are now in short supply. They’re often undocumented immigrants themselves, which means that in this environment, claiming a child would put them at risk for deportation. In June, that risk became even more acute when authorities announced that potential sponsors would have to submit their fingerprints, as well as those of any adults living in their household: data that would then be passed to immigration authorities. Matthew Albence, who works for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, unwittingly illustrated the problem when he testified before Congress last week that I.C.E. had arrested multiple people who had applied to sponsor unaccompanied minors. Almost three-quarters had no criminal record.

Over time, the number of detained children is only expected to increase. According to The Washington Post, the flood of Central American immigrants moving north, driven by “hunger, joblessness, and the gravitational pull of the American economy,” shows no sign of abating. The number of men who cross the border with children has reportedly risen from 7,896 in 2016 to 16,667 this year, while instances of migrants falsely claiming children as their own have reportedly increased “threefold.” “Economic opportunity and governance play much larger roles in affecting the decision for migrants to take the trip north to the United States,” Kevin McAleenan, a border-security official, told the Post, adding that “a sustained campaign that addresses both push and pull factors” is “the only solution to this crisis.”

Given the attitude of the current administration, such a campaign seems unlikely to materialize. With Congress poorly positioned to pass comprehensive immigration reform, and a suddenly swamped detention system draining money and resources and damaging the mental health of thousands of children, the escalating crisis seems poised to become an ever more serious self-inflicted thorn in the president’s side. Although the White House is confident that, as hard-liner Stephen Miller boasts, it can’t lose on immigration, it will at some point be forced to acknowledge that its draconian strategy has morphed into chaos.

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

Wonder if any of these evil dudes who along with Sessions helped plan and implement the “Kiddie Gulag” knowing that it was likely in violation of the Constitution (in Federal court, DOJ lawyers didn’t even contest that a policy of intentional child separation would be unconstitutional) took out the “Bivens Insurance” offered to USG employees at relatively low-cost (I sure did!).

The only good news is that they are likely to be tied up in law suits seeking damages against them in their personal capacities for the rest of their lives!

So, perhaps there will eventually be some justice! But, that’s still won’t help traumatized kids whose lives have been screwed up forever as an illegal, immoral, and bogus, “deterrent” by a racist White Nationalist regime.

PWS

10-02-18

WASHPOST CHRONICLES THE TRUMP/SESSIONS SELF-CREATED HUMAN RIGHTS DISASTER — Incredible Cruelty, Incompetence, Bias, & Just Plain Old Stupidity!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/deleted-families-what-went-wrong-with-trumps-family-separation-effort/2018/07/28/54bcdcc6-90cb-11e8-8322-b5482bf5e0f5_story.html

Nick Miroff, Amy Goldstein, and Maria Sacchetti report for the Washington Post:

Social Issues

‘Deleted’ families: What went wrong with Trump’s family-separation effort

5:41

Why hundreds of migrant children are still separated from their parents

Hundreds of migrant children remain in custody after the Trump Administration scrambled to reunite separated families under a court-imposed deadline.(Jon Gerberg/The Washington Post)

By Nick Miroff, Amy Goldstein and Maria SacchettiJuly 28 at 1:15 PMEmail the author

When a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to reunify migrant families separated at the border, the government’s cleanup crews faced an immediate problem.

They weren’t sure who the families were, let alone what to call them.

Customs and Border Protection databases had categories for “family units,” and “unaccompanied alien children” who arrive without parents. They did not have a distinct classification for more than 2,600 children who had been taken from their families and placed in government shelters.

So agents came up with a new term: “deleted family units.”

But when they sent that information to the refugee office at the Department of Health and Human Services, which was told to facilitate the reunifications, the office’s database did not have a column for families with that designation.

The crucial tool for fixing the problem was crippled. Caseworkers and government health officials had to sift by hand through the files of all the nearly 12,000 migrant children in HHS custody to figure out which ones had arrived with parents, where the adults were jailed and how to put the families back together.

Compounding failures to record, classify and keep track of migrant parents and children pulled apart by President Trump’s “zero tolerance” border crackdown were at the core of what is now widely regarded as one of the biggest debacles of his presidency. The rapid implementation and sudden reversal of the policy whiplashed multiple federal agencies, forcing the activation of an HHS command center ordinarily used to handle hurricanes and other catastrophes.

After his 30-day deadline to reunite the “deleted” families passed Thursday, U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw lambasted the government for its lack of preparation and coordination.

“There were three agencies, and each was like its own stovepipe. Each had its own boss, and they did not communicate,” Sabraw said Friday at a court hearing in San Diego. “What was lost in the process was the family. The parents didn’t know where the children were, and the children didn’t know where the parents were. And the government didn’t know either.”

This account of the separation plan’s implementation and sudden demise is based on court records as well as interviews with more than 20 current and former government officials, advocates and contractors, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to give candid views and diagnose mistakes.

Trump officials have insisted that they were not doing anything extraordinary and were simply upholding the law. The administration saw the separations as a powerful tool to deter illegal border crossings and did not anticipate the raw emotional backlash from separating thousands of families to prosecute the parents for crossing the border illegally…

. . . .

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Read “the team’s” entire much, much more detailed article at the link! By the end you will be disgusted by this Administrtion’s intentional dehumanization, stunning incompetence, dishonesty, and lack of any sense whatsoever of responsible government or prudent use of taxpayer resources.

No wonder deficits are soaring while essential services are being cut. This Administration consistently and intentionally misuses our taxpayer dollars on counterproductive and totally misguided efforts such as this which have little or nothing whatsoever to do with legitimate law enforcement. And think of the monumental amounts of attorney and court time being wasted because of the Government’s lawless, racially motivated actions! What if these efforts and resources were it toward actually solving problems, rather than creating them?

The Administraton’s explanations don’t make sense. In court before Judge Sabraw, DOJ attorneys have always conceded that intentional separation of children from parents for deterrence purposes would be unconstitutional. They initially claimed that there was no such policy.

But, it’s clear that separating children from parents for deterrence was exactly what Sessions, Nielsen, and others in the Administration intended. Moreover, they had no intention of ever reuniting the children with families, which is why they didn’t bother to set up a system to keep track of them,

This seems like a very clear and intentional violation of our Constitution and lack of candor before a tribunal by Sessions, not to mention failure to fully and in good faith comply with the court’s order. That should lead to civil liability under Bivens or punishment for contempt of court, or both.

Also, seems that the DOJ lawyers who misrepresented the nature of the program their boss was running should be in line for disciplinary action from the District Court and from their respective state bars. One would only have had to watch a Sessions news clip (as many reporters did) to know that what they were telling the court was untrue or at least required some further explanation from Sessions.

Back to Eugene Robinson. Why are we putting families seeking the protection of the law in jail instead of dishonest, disingenuous scofflaws like Jeff Sessions? Maybe “Ol Gonzo” shouldn’t be up in front of the young neo-Nazis leading “lock her up” chants. What goes around comes around!

And, if I were Judge Sabraw, I might want to know why Sessions was out there leading nationalist chants rather than busting his tail to comply fully with the court’s order for reunification of families.

We need regime change! Vote the scofflaws and their enablers out of office in November! Vote only for candidates pledged to hold Jeff Sessions and the other scofflaws in this Administration accountable for their actions through meaningful oversight (of which there has been none since Trump took office).

PWS

07-28-18

CRUEL & UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT: DHS KAKISTOCRACY WANTS TO TARGET FAMILIES WITH CHILDREN FOR SEPARATION AND CRIMINAL PROSECUTION OF PARENTS AS PART OF WAR ON HUMANITY AT OUR SOUTHERN BORDER – Every American Will Bear The Stain Of Our Government’s Actions!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/top-homeland-security-officials-urge-criminal-prosecution-of-parents-who-cross-border-with-children/2018/04/26/a0bdcee0-4964-11e8-8b5a-3b1697adcc2a_story.html

Maria Sacchetti reports for WashPost:

The nation’s top immigration and border officials are urging Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to detain and prosecute all parents caught crossing the Mexican border illegally with their children, a stark change in policy that would result in the separation of families that until now have mostly been kept together.

If approved, the zero-tolerance measure could split up thousands of families, although officials say they would not prosecute those who turn themselves in at legal ports of entry and claim asylum. More than 20,000 of the 30,000 migrants who sought asylum during the first quarter — the period from October-December — of the current fiscal year crossed the border illegally.

In a memorandum that outlines the proposal and was obtained by The Washington Post, officials say that threatening adults with criminal charges and prison time would be the “most effective” way to reverse the steadily rising number of attempted crossings. Most parents now caught crossing the border illegally with their children are quickly released to await civil deportation hearings.

The memo sent to Nielsen on Monday — and signed by acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Thomas Homan, Director of Citizenship and Immigration Services L. Francis Cissna and Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin K. McAleenan — said attempted crossings by parents with children increased to nearly 700 a day last week, the highest level since 2016. The officials predicted that the number will continue to rise if Nielsen does not act.

Lee Gelernt, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who has filed a federal lawsuit in California over earlier instances of family separations at the border, said the proposal would make “children as young as 2 and 3 years old pawns in a cruel public policy experiment.”

. . . .

Philip G. Schrag, a Georgetown law professor and asylum expert, said that expanding the forced separation of parents and children could cause severe psychological harm to families that ultimately might have legal grounds under federal asylum law to remain in the United States permanently.

“I think it’s absolutely wrenching psychologically and terrible for both the children and the parents,” he said. “What are we doing to those children psychologically that will haunt us years down the road if they become Americans?”

Federal officials say asylum applications have skyrocketed in recent years, raising concerns about fraud. Advocates for immigrants say those seeking asylum have legitimate claims under federal law and are fleeing some of the world’s most dangerous countries.

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

Read Maria’s complete article at the link.

I associate myself completely with the remarks of my good friend and Georgetown Law colleague Professor Phil Schrag. Cruelty to children is stupid, counterproductive — children are our future — and morally wrong. It will definitely haunt us as a country for generations to come. It’s largely what I said before about the misguided policies of the Obama Administration. But, as with many things, the Trump Administration takes every dumb and wrong immigration policy of the past and multiplies it.

PWS

04-27-18

GONZO’S WORLD: LATEST DUE PROCESS OUTRAGE: ATTACK ON LEGAL RIGHTS PROGRAM IN IMMIGRATION COURT — Dumping On The Most Vulnerable & Those Trying To Help Them Is A Gonzo Specialty! — “This is a blatant attempt by the administration to strip detained immigrants of even the pretense of due-process rights,” said Mary Meg McCarthy, executive director of the National Immigrant Justice Center, one of the organizations that offers the legal services with Vera.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/justice-dept-to-halt-legal-advice-program-for-immigrants-in-detention/2018/04/10/40b668aa-3cfc-11e8-974f-aacd97698cef_story.html?utm_term=.c604b3ff4532

Maria Sacchetti reports for the Washington Post:

The U.S. immigration courts will temporarily halt a program that offers legal assistance to detained foreign nationals facing deportation while it audits the program’s cost-effectiveness, a federal official said Tuesday.

Officials informed the Vera Institute of Justice that starting this month it will pause the nonprofit’s Legal Orientation Program, which last year held information sessions for 53,000 immigrants in more than a dozen states, including California and Texas.

The federal government will also evaluate Vera’s “help desk,” which offers tips to non-detained immigrants facing deportation proceedings in the Chicago, Miami, New York, Los Angeles and San Antonio courts.

The Executive Office for Immigration Review, which runs the Justice Department’s immigration courts, said the government wants to “conduct efficiency reviews which have not taken place in six years.” An immigration court official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the audit has not been formally announced, said the review will examine the cost-effectiveness of the federally funded programs and whether they duplicate efforts within the court system. He noted, for example, that immigration judges are already required to inform immigrants of their rights before a hearing, including their right to find a lawyer at their own expense.

But advocates said the programs administered by Vera and a network of 18 other nonprofits are a legal lifeline for undocumented immigrants.

“This is a blatant attempt by the administration to strip detained immigrants of even the pretense of due-process rights,” said Mary Meg McCarthy, executive director of the National Immigrant Justice Center, one of the organizations that offers the legal services with Vera.

In a statement, the Vera Institute said a 2012 study by the Justice Department concluded that the program was “a cost-effective and efficient way to promote due process” that saved the government nearly $18 million over one year.

The Trump administration has also clashed with the Vera Institute over whether its subcontractors were informing undocumented immigrant girls in Department of Health and Human Services custody about their right to an abortion. The issue was later resolved.

The Justice Department is ramping up efforts to cut an immigration court backlog of 650,000 cases in half by 2020. Attorney General Jeff Sessions last week imposed production quotas on immigration judges to spur them to clear cases more quickly.

Immigration courts are separate from U.S. criminal courts, where defendants are entitled to a government-appointed lawyer if they cannot pay for their own legal counsel.

The Vera Institute said approximately 8 in 10 detainees in immigration court face a government prosecutor without a lawyer.

The Executive Office for Immigration Review says on its website that it launched the legal-aid program in 2003, during the administration of George W. Bush, to orient immigrants so that court proceedings would move more quickly.

In Vera’s Legal Orientation Program, lawyers and others hold hour-long group information sessions with detainees to explain their rights, how the court process works and their possible defenses to deportation in federal law, such as seeking asylum if they are in fear for their lives. They also meet with detainees individually and refer detainees to free or low-cost lawyers, but do not represent them in court.

“Experience has shown that the LOP has had positive effects on the immigration court process: detained individuals make wiser, more informed, decisions and are more likely to obtain representation; non-profit organizations reach a wider audience of people with minimal resources; and, cases are more likely to be completed faster, resulting in fewer court hearings and less time spent in detention,” the agency’s website says.

The help desk answers questions and provides similar information to immigrants who are not detained but are facing deportation.

Maria Sacchetti covers immigration for The Washington Post. She previously reported for the Boston Globe.

Follow @mariasacchetti

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The idea expressed by an “anonymous” DOJ official that the brief, often rote “in court” warnings given by Immigration Judges in open court can take the place of a “Know Your Rights” session being conducted in advance, out of court by Vera is preposterous. The “average” initial hearing or “Master Calendar” takes fewer than 10 minutes. My former Arlington Immigration Court colleague Judge Lawrence O. Burman was once “clocked” by a reporter at seven minutes per case, and he is probably more thorough than most Immigration Judges. Moreover, with Immigration Judges being pressured to churn out more final orders of removal faster, required warnings are just one of the aspects of Due Process that are likely to be truncated as Sessions’s “haste makes waste” initiative continues to destroy even the appearance of justice in our U.S. Immigration Courts.

In other words this totally bogus “audit” couldn’t come at a worse time for the beleaguered Immigration Judges of the U.S. Immigration Courts and particularly the often defenseless immigrants who come before them seeking (but far too often not finding) the justice supposedly “guaranteed” to them by our Constitution.

In my long experience, “Know Your Rights” presentations, which often allowed individuals to assess their cases and retain lawyers before their first Immigration Court appearance were one of the best “bang for the buck” programs ever undertaken by EOIR. Immigration Judges relied heavily on them to “keep the line moving” without denying due process.

Sessions methodically is stripping U.S. Immigration Judges of the tools that allow them to do their jobs fairly and efficiently: administrative closing, continuances, ability to control their own court schedules, time and resources to do research and write opinions, and now the assistance of the “Know Your Rights” Programs.

Harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all. Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions is a coward who consistently uses bogus narratives and specious reasons to pick on the most vulnerable in our legal system. Join the New Due Process Army and stand up to Gonzo and his anti-American, anti-Constitutional, anti-human agenda! Today, Gonzo is eliminating immigrants’ rights. Tomorrow it will be YOUR RIGHTS. Who will stand up for YOU if you remain silent while the weak and dispossessed are attacked by Gonzo and his ilk!

PWS

04-11-18

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