🇺🇸🗽 INSPIRING AMERICA: Dreamer Viridiana Chabolla “Pays It Forward” — Big Time! — “How can I help aside from placing my hopes in a Congress that is more concerned about building borders than dealing with these issues?”

 

Viridiana Chabolla ’13, who was brought to the U.S. from Mexico at 2 years old, on the day she became a U.S. citizen in 2021.
Viridiana Chabolla ’13, who was brought to the U.S. from Mexico at 2 years old, on the day she became a U.S. citizen in 2021.
PHOTO: Pamona College Magazine

https://magazine.pomona.edu/2023/summer/all-the-way-to-the-supreme-court/

Carla Maria Guerrero writes in Pomona College Magazine: 

There are not a lot of big wins for Viridiana Chabolla ’13 in her line of work. It’s not for a lack of trying, or a lack of sweat and tears. Her commitment has been tested over the years but she remains determined. Chabolla is an attorney working in immigration law. The landscape is grim, she says. It can be heartbreaking. Demoralizing. She’s not just an attorney. She is an immigrant, too, and for most of her life she was undocumented.

In February, the Los Angeles Times wrote a story about one of her recent clients. Leonel Contreras, a U.S. Army veteran, was a legal permanent resident before being deported to Mexico after serving time for a nonviolent crime. Contreras had grown up in the U.S., but after his deportation he worked and lived in Tijuana for at least a decade before the Immigrant Defenders Law Center in Los Angeles took his case and Chabolla helped him return to his family members in California. He became a U.S. citizen earlier this year.

“It’s really nice to wave an American flag at a naturalization ceremony,” says Chabolla, who began working at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef) in October 2021. “Immigration law is so harsh and when it’s not harsh, it’s just not helpful. It’s hard to have a win. When you have those moments, you have to grab on and make them last.”

Chabolla was born in Guanajuato, Mexico. Her mother came to the U.S. to escape a bad relationship and start a new life. A 2-year-old Chabolla and the rest of her mother’s family joined her soon after. Chabolla grew up with her grandparents, aunts and cousins all living close to each other in East Los Angeles. “I’d remember seeing my mom and aunts getting ready for work at ridiculous hours of the day,” she says of the early-morning hubbub. “I remember always being surrounded by people and conversations. There were a lot of disagreements but a lot of love.”

When she was 11, Chabolla met a group of lawyers who worked in East L.A. Although she didn’t know what exactly they did, she recalls thinking that they seemed to hold a lot of power. They seemed to have some kind of authority to help her and others like her—people who were not born in the U.S.

It was during Chabolla’s junior year at Pomona that the Obama administration established an immigration policy that changed her life. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) allowed certain immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and also become eligible for a work permit.

For the first time, Chabolla was able to have a job on campus. She saved her first pay stub. It wasn’t much in terms of money, but it was significant for Chabolla.

With DACA, Chabolla’s future seemed a bit brighter. She could now apply for jobs after graduation. Her first work after Pomona was as an organizer with the pro bono legal services nonprofit Public Counsel, a choice that set her on a course for a win of historic proportions.

For four years, Chabolla took down the stories of plaintiffs for cases being handled by Public Counsel. As time passed, she began to feel more empowered to share her immigration status with her director, Mark Rosenbaum, even as the national political landscape was transitioning from an Obama presidency to a Trump one.

“When Trump was elected, I broke down,” she says. She remembers Rosenbaum calling her to tell her she didn’t have to go to work the next day: “Go be with your family, go through your emotions,” he told her.

“We didn’t know what Trump would do first. We just hit the ground running,” says Chabolla, who worked on the defense case for Daniel Ramirez Medina, the first person to have his DACA permit taken away. “With everything going on, we focused on putting out fires. Trump wasn’t taking out DACA in one go just yet. He was creating all of this panic everywhere first.”

Her time at Public Counsel rekindled Chabolla’s original interest in law.

“I kept thinking of the best way I could help others. I loved the idea of gaining new knowledge, and a degree in law would allow me to have a sense of power,” she says. The attorneys at Public Counsel, like her boss Rosenbaum, not only practiced law and led big cases but they also wrote articles and taught university-level courses.

In September of 2017, the Trump administration announced it was officially rescinding DACA. Chabolla had just started at the UC Irvine School of Law. Her initial response was to focus on school and wait.

Then Chabolla got a call from Rosenbaum. “He called me to be a plaintiff in a case against the United States. I felt terrified.”

Chabolla phoned her mother and her family. “If I shared my story, I would have to share their story,” she says. She also was married by then and discussed the possible ramifications with her husband.

Her family was supportive. Chabolla felt compelled to help.

The Public Counsel lawsuit led by Rosenbaum was filed as Garcia v. United States. As it made its way through the higher courts, it was merged with four other cases and ultimately became known as Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California by the time it reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

As a plaintiff in the case, Chabolla shared her story with a lawyer for a written declaration. While she never testified before any judges, she did have to share her immigration story multiple times as the case garnered national media attention.

On June 18, 2020, the Supreme Court delivered its 5-4 decision blocking the Trump administration’s elimination of DACA. Chabolla was in Washington for the hearing. “A few of us got to go inside,” she recalls. “Some DACA students were there, too. And it was really powerful. These justices were hearing arguments on this huge case…but I know maybe for them all cases they hear are huge. But we occupied half the room and that was really powerful and really unusual.”

Chabolla took notes during the hearing. “I remember writing down something that Justice [Sonia] Sotomayor said: ‘This is not about the law; this is about our choice to destroy lives.’

“So much of what Trump did was done without following administrative law,” explains Chabolla about how they “won” this case. “Trump didn’t follow procedure,” she says. “If they had taken their time and done it right, it would have passed. But I remember taking the win.”

Chabolla, who had just recently become a U.S. resident through marriage, remembers feeling relief for the DACA community.

“The DACA victory in the Supreme Court is a testament to the vision, commitment and tireless efforts of many, and Viri’s name would surely be at the top of that list,” says Rosenbaum. “I had the privilege of working with Viri at Public Counsel, first as an organizer…and then to come forward as a plaintiff in Garcia to inspire others to do the same and make the case that our nation needs DACA recipients to build a kinder and more inclusive community for all of us.”

Upon returning home, Chabolla once again focused on school—it was her second-to-last semester at UC Irvine. She spent a year as a graduate legal assistant with the Office of the Attorney General for the California Department of Justice. It was a tough gig for a newly graduated lawyer. After one year, she left for her current job as a staff attorney at ImmDef, a legal services nonprofit with a post-conviction unit that drew her interest. “They take on clients who have criminal convictions like possession of marijuana from 40 years ago with deportation orders—deportation is not a fair punishment for everyone.

“Many of our clients have been living here as legal permanent residents for more than 20 years. Most find out they’re getting deported just when they’re going to be released,” she says. “The statistics show that immigrants commit fewer crimes than the general population and our clients have already served their time—in jail, or prison, they’ve paid their dues and they’ve even paid their fines. Adding deportation is a way of saying ‘I don’t like that you’re an immigrant.’ It’s extra punishment.”

The work is tough. “My supervisor has shared that sometimes we have to redefine what a win is,” says Chabolla. “It makes up partially for the times when we have a clinic and all these people show up thinking they can apply for residency when they actually can’t.”

She says that the immigrants she talks to are so full of hope. They believe that an attorney—like herself—can do it all. “Every situation is different. No lawyer has a miracle cure.

“It’s heartbreaking to know how many people are becoming elders who don’t have a nest egg, who paid taxes into the system but they can’t access Social Security, can’t access Medicare,” Chabolla adds. “It’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about in the past two years: How can I help aside from placing my hopes in a Congress that is more concerned about building borders than dealing with these issues?”

In 2021, Chabolla became a U.S. citizen. The day was bittersweet and laden with guilt. “It was one of those moments where I felt I was further abandoning my undocumented community, but I know that’s not true,” she says. Although her mother recently became a U.S. resident, some of her family remains undocumented.

Chabolla says she’s been able to find some balance as an ally who was once directly impacted by immigration policies. “I’m trying to find a place where I can remain hopeful in my job and be a zealous lawyer and advocate.”

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

Congrats and way to go Viri! You have already established yourself as a “New Generation Leader” of the NDPA! Awesome! 

For years, the GOP has been mindlessly blocking various versions of DACA, at a great human cost as well as a huge cost to our nation. Dreamers who are able to achieve citizenship, without special help from Congress, and other “New Generation” members of the NDPA must follow the lead of Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-MI) by getting into the “power structure” and forcing long overdue progressive changes. 

Thanks to Chief Justice Roberts, the Supremes got this one right, barely 5-4. One vote has made a huge difference in literally hundreds of thousands of lives, and helped to shape American’s future for the better. By contrast, the Trump Administration’s failed attempts to undo this important program was a disgraceful abuse of Government resources! The inability of GOP-controlled states to let this issue go — essentially too keep bullying and threatening some of the most productive and deserving members of our society — is beyond disgusting.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-20-23

🤮 ANOTHER SUPREME GRIFTER: Like Thomas, Alito Finds That Accepting Largess From GOP Billionaires With Business Before The Court Just Comes With The Job — His WSJ “Defense” Flunks “The Straight-Face Test!” 🤣

Justice Alito gets acquainted with billionaires he hardly knew while holding salmon he never previously met and NOT drinking $1,000 peer bottle wine. His "fish story" in the WSJ is a real whopper!Photo: Pro Publica
Justice Alito gets acquainted with billionaires he hardly knew while holding salmon he never previously met and NOT drinking $1,000 per bottle wine. His “fish story” in the WSJ is a real whopper!
Photo: Pro Publica
Jay Kuo
Jay Kuo
American Author, Producer, CEO of The Social Edge
PHOTO: Facebook

Jay Kuo writes in Substack:

In some ways it was bound to happen. For months the public focus has been on Justice Clarence Thomas. Per excellent reporting by ProPublica, Thomas had secretly accepted myriad unreported gifts from billionaire-with-an-archvillain’s-name Harlan Crow: lavish private flights, luxury trips, years of private tuition for a family member, and money for the sale and renovation of his mother’s home (where she still lives rent free). With all that rotting out in the open, it was naturally time to look at the records and practices of other justices who seem to operate outside ethical rules.

This time in the barrel belongs to Justice Samuel Alito, the author and possible leaker of the Dobbs decision that struck down 50 years of federal abortion rights protections under Roe v. Wade. Like Justice Thomas, Alito has been cozy with his own billionaire, hedge fund owner Paul Singer. According to a new blockbuster report from ProPublica by the same team of reporters who brought us the corrupt tales of Justice Thomas, billionaire Singer flew Alito to Alaska on a private plane for a salmon fishing retreat back in 2008.

These billionaires sure like making friends with Supreme Court justices.

As with Thomas and Crow, Alito never disclosed the trip or his relationship with Singer, even though Singer had many cases that regularly came before the Court for review. This included a doozy in which Alito joined the majority in handing Singer’s company an outcome worth $2.4 billion. More on that below.

This controversy is further unique because Alito, seeking to get out ahead of the story, went to his buddies at the Wall Street Journal Opinions department and got them to publish an OpEd written by him entitled “ProPublica Misleads Its Readers.” It purported to “respond” to the ProPublica report hours before it was published. It is awkward and frankly embarrassing to see a justice opine on something he hasn’t even read, all in the hopes of saving his own petard.

Alito’s stated rationales for why he didn’t report the trip, along with his downplaying of his relationship with Singer, are unconvincing and in many ways ludicrous. More on that below, too. But his words do nothing to change the fact that we now have two sitting justices who are trying to explain away apparent efforts to buy influence with the Court.

As Ronald Reagan once put it, if you’re explaining, you’re losing.

Let’s look at the basic facts uncovered in the ProPublica reporting, and then at Alito’s lame responses in his OpEd. If Chief Justice John Roberts thought the scrutiny and collapsing public faith in the High Court had subsided, he thought wrong.

. . . .

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

Read Jay’s full op-Ed at the link.

Alito’s “defense” explained in plain English:

Here’s the deal. I’m only a humble Supreme’s Justice, so I didn’t really understand Federal ethics law. Rather than wasting time getting an opinion from an impartial expert, I looked at what others (defined as “my GOP judicial cronies Clarence Thomas and the late Antonin Scalia”) were doing. I reasonably concluded that since the wine I was served at dinner cost less than $1,000 a bottle, there was no problem.

Moreover, please understand that I hardly knew the guy who offered me the $100,000 trip on his private jet. That’s why I found it necessary to take a vacant seat on his private jet, to keep it from going to waste.

Since that put me in Alaska anyway, I figured why not get in a couple of days of salmon fishing with some GOP fat cat donors while roughing it in $1,000/night rustic accommodations like most Alaskans live in. It put me more in touch with the average billionaire and allowed me to empathize with their dire predicament in a socialist society.

Moreover, I’m a busy guy. How could I possibly know or predict that some of these random billionaires would have business before our Court or would have their financial interests materially affected by our rulings?

Would the “woke crowd” at Pro Publica be raising a stink if I had taken the same trip with homeless folks or asylum applicants being flown to Alaska by Gov. DeSantis or Gov. Abbott. I doubt it! Clearly, the liberal media’s double standard is being applied here.

These outrageous charges against me and GOP billionaires I hardly know are just more proof that under Democrats, America has become hostile territory for billionaires. No “reasonable person” (defined as a “GOP Judge who hobnobs with billionaires they hardly know”) would see an “appearance of impropriety” here!

How many “average American reasonable persons” other than me find themselves harassed by the press just for weekending with random billionaires in Alaska? None! Has there ever been a clearer case of media bullying?

As I always say, ignorance of the law is no excuse when applied to poor criminal defendants or unrepresented immigrants who can’t understand the complexities and illogic of our immigration laws. But, I’m not a criminal defendant nor am I a migrant, who, in my view, isn’t a “person” at all under our Constitution. Let them eat cake or drink $1,000 bottles of wine. Moreover, bad judgement is not a crime nor is it a legal disqualification from being a Justice and continuing to pass final, un-reviewable judgement on others.

Finally, I want to say that I am being persecuted by far left journalists who are threatening to publish facts in an article I’ve not yet read. They gave me a chance to respond in advance, but I stonewalled it in favor of an op-ed that was immediately run by my buddies over at the WSJ editorial board. That’s what any “reasonable person” would do when falsely accused of accepting favors from billionaires they hardly know.

Let’s look at this another way. Immigration Judge X accepts a $100,000 private plane ride and a couple of days of salmon fishing and uber-expensive dinners at an exclusive, $1,000 per night fishing camp in Alaska. Judge X claims that he barely knew the guy who offered him the trip, but merely went to keep an otherwise vacant seat on the private plane from going unused. Judge X was later shocked to learn that his benefactor’s spouse had a removal case pending before Judge X, which Judge X later heard and decided in the spouse’s favor. 

Raise your hand 🙋🏼‍♀️if you think Judge X would still have a job after these facts surfaced! Would Judge X get a chance to “rebut the allegations in advance” in the WSJ?

Think that there is “equal justice for all” in America?

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-22-23

👨‍⚖️BREAKING: C.J. ROBERTS ISSUES TEMP STAY IN FIGHT TO END TITLE 42 CHARADE!

Michelle Hackman
Michelle Hackman
Immigration Reporter
Wall Street Journal

Michelle Hackman reports for the WSJ:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-administration-races-to-change-asylum-rules-as-title-42-expiration-looms-11671460300?st=wjf0spwkrvg9wrw&reflink=article_copyURL_share

  

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The temporary stay doesn’t address the merits. It just allows the full Court to consider the the State GOP AG’s frivolous challenge to reinstitution of the rule of law at the Southern border which was set to take effect on Wednesday, Dec. 22.

Frivolous as the challenge might be, it’s unclear how the current GOP-dominated Supremes will react to this latest right-wing abuse of our legal system and war on human rights and the rule of law!

Stay tuned!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-19-22

🏴‍☠️🤯👎🏽 CRUMBLING INSTITUTIONS: OF COURSE THE OUT OF TOUCH, POLITICIZED SUPREMES’ GOP MAJORITY IS SHEDDING LEGITIMACY AS THEY IMPLEMENT AN EXTREME FAR-RIGHT POLITICAL AGENDA WITHOUT LEGAL BASIS! — C.J. Roberts’s Incredibly Lame Claim Otherwise Proves It!

John Roberts
His defense of the indefensible went over like a lead balloon with those whose lives have been upended by the radical right Justices’ political agenda!

Every time a GOP politico or media sycophant preferences remarks with “I’m not a racist,” you know that some outrageous racist statement is about to follow. What they are doing is dishonestly attempting to preemptively “shift the blame and focus” to those who call out their vile, dishonest conduct!

Over the weekend, Chief Justice John Roberts, drifted down a similar discredited path of disingenuous “preemptive denial.” In a ludicrously tone deaf statement that echoed Tricky Dick’s “I’m not a crook” speech, Roberts lamely attempted to defend the legitimacy of his Court’s stripping of fundamental human rights from women. In doing so, he basically reinforced critics’ points about the Court’s illegitimate, extralegal, right-wing, political war on individual and human rights with a good bit of misogyny thrown in!

Richard Nixon
Nixon’s “I’m not a crook speech” convinced many that he was, indeed, a crook. Roberts’s “My Court isn’t illegitimate just because it advances a far-right political agenda speech” is heading in the same direction!
PHOTO: Twitter

Never mind that the Court basically aligned itself with authoritarian theocrats promoting “forced birth” and overt subjugation of a woman’s fundamental right to decide whether or not to reproduce. Indeed, advancing that minority political agenda was the fundamental reason why Roberts and his GOP crew are on the Court in the first place! To pretend otherwise is off the wall!

There are some strong moral, societal, economic, and  medical arguments to be made about why women should or should not choose to have children. Under the First Amendment, both those who favor abortion and those who oppose it have always been free to argue their points. 

But, the idea that these choices should be removed from those directly concerned and placed in the hands of political and religious authorities is preposterous. Lacking convincing arguments to persuade all women facing that choice to their side, the far right theocracy did a preemptive strike! And, their “wholly-owned Justices” went along!

Needless to say, Roberts’s insultingly disingenuous defense of the indefensible did not fare well with informed critics. 

Former Sen. Claire McCaskill, now an MSNBC analyist, On Meet the Press:

On Sunday, McCaskill – an MSNBC political analyst – tore into Roberts for taking the country backward and recalled that the jurists who signed onto Alito’s originalist rationalization misled the public during their respective Senate confirmation hearings.

“He’s so so out of touch. I mean really, this interview shows why the numbers for the Supreme Court are so bad. For him to say something like that, he just doesn’t get it. You don’t take away a right that’s been around for 50 years and you don’t have a party go to extremes of trying to make sure rape victims have to have forced birth,” McCaskill said.

“You don’t do that and not have it splash back on the Supreme Court,” she continued. “And they all said they respected precedent when they were confirmed. I heard them. America heard them. Clearly, they didn’t, and you can feel me getting angry at John Roberts right now because he knows better when he says that stuff.”

Professor (and former prosecutor) Joyce White Vance, Professor Leah Litman, Professor Stephen I. Vladeck, Political Scientist Norman Ornstein:

https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/claire-mccaskill-john-roberts-roe/

“Roberts’s failure to understand why the court has lost credibility with so many Americans smacks of ‘Let them eat cake,’ ” Joyce White Vance, a former prosecutor and a distinguished professor of the practice of law at the University of Alabama law school, told me. “The Supreme Court has a proud history of defending our rights, not taking them away. The Roberts court will go down in history as the first one” to strip away people’s rights.

University of Michigan law professor Leah Litman said: “I would be embarrassed to say something that naive and divorced from reality if I had said it as a first-year law student. For the chief justice to say it is just an insult to the intellect of everyone who knows anything about the court, American democracy and politics.”

. . .

If Roberts and the conservative bloc were to engage in just a tiny amount of self-reflection, they would understand that their own actions have brought them to this point. Law professor Stephen I. Vladeck, of the University of Texas school of law, asked me rhetorically: “If the court’s legitimacy doesn’t come from public acceptance of the principled nature of its decision-making, where does it come from?”

While Roberts might not have written the most egregious opinions, he has joined in them, from the abortion ruling in Dobbs, to the prayer-in-schools ruling in Bremerton, to a Brnovich decision on voting rights, written by Alito, that “blatantly ignored the plain language of the law and rewrote it to fit his partisan and ideological views,” as political scientist Norman Ornstein told me. Moreover, Ornstein said, it is Roberts who has “ignored Clarence Thomas’s blatant conflicts of interest and continues to oppose applying the judicial code of ethics to the Supreme Court, even as its credibility plummets.”

He concluded: “John G. Roberts Jr. is far from the worst justice undermining the fundamental legitimacy of the court, but he is surely culpable.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/12/roberts-criticism-supreme-court-whining/

Jennifer Rubin, WashPost opinion writer:

The court has failed to regulate itself and instead has abused its power. None of the six right-wing justices acknowledge, nor do they signal they want to halt, the conduct that has lost the public’s confidence.

So it’s up to Congress and the president to shore up the court’s credibility. Allocating more seats to correct the damage done by Sen. Mitch McConnell’s court-packing, imposing term limits on all justices and enacting a mandatory code of ethics would be good places to start.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/12/roberts-criticism-supreme-court-whining/

Eric Lutz in Vanity Fair:

But it’s not just the outcome, which decimated a right Americans had held for five decades and put a variety of other privacy rights in jeopardy. It’s the way that decision — and others on guns, climate change, and religion — recently came to pass.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/09/john-roberts-defends-supreme-court-against-legitimacy-questions

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In this case, Roberts would have done better to confine himself to “calling balls and strikes.” Sadly, he and his GOP colleagues have gotten out from behind the plate and taken the field in their “Federalist Society” uniforms. He’s going to have to learn to live with objections and catcalls from those in the stands who see what’s really going on here and are understandably upset about the Court’s overreach, substandard legal performance, lack of accountability, absence of self-awareness, and, yes, lack of legitimacy.

Better judges for a better, fairer America — from the Immigration Courts to the Supremes! 

By the way, we can’t change the Supremes overnight. But, Biden, Harris, & Garland COULD have reformed, repaired, and legitimized the Immigration Courts, including the BIA, that they control. That they have failed to do so is the biggest “unforced error” of the Biden Administration — one that will haunt Democrats and Americans for ages! 

Every day Garland’s parody of a court system, still largely bearing the unmistakable stamp of White Nationalists Sessions, Barr and Miller, continues to run roughshod over individual rights, often in life or death cases, while degrading the judicial process. Misogyny and racism are also on full display, as a disproportionate brunt of their unprofessional, wrong-headed, result-oriented “any reason to deny” decision-making falls on refugee women of color (and often on their accompanying children).

There is a very direct connection between “DHS agents in robes” in our Immigration Courts and “right-wing politicos in robes” at the Supremes. Part of the idea is to “normalize” injustice directed at “the other” — just so long as YOUR life isn’t directly affected, who cares? It’s also known as “Dred Scottification.”  It’s the “polar opposite” of Dr. Martin Luther King’s observation that “injustice anywhere is a threat to  justice everywhere.” If Dems don’t “connect the dots,” they might not be able to save our democracy!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-12-22.

😎⚖️🗽👍UNEXPECTED BOOST FOR DUE PROCESS & HUMANITY! — SUPREMES ALLOW BIDEN TO TERMINATE SCOFFLAW, CRUEL, FAILED “REMAIN IN MEXICO” TRAVESTY (A/K/A “LET ‘EM DIE ☠️⚰️IN MEXICO”) INITIATED BY TRUMP! — Biden v. Texas, Narrow 5-4 Majority Thwarts White Nationalist Initiative — C.J. Roberts (Opinion), joined by Justices Kavanaugh, Breyer, Sotomayor, & Kagan Save Humanity, Rule of Law, For Now! 

Here’s a link to the decision:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21-954_7l48.pdf

Here’s the Syllabus by Court staff:

(Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2021 1

Syllabus

NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Syllabus

BIDEN ET AL. v. TEXAS ET AL.

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR

THE FIFTH CIRCUIT

No. 21–954. Argued April 26, 2022—Decided June 30, 2022

In January 2019, the Department of Homeland Security began to implement the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP). Under MPP, certain non-Mexican nationals arriving by land from Mexico were returned to Mexico to await the results of their removal proceedings under section 1229a of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). MPP was implemented pursuant to a provision of the INA that applies to aliens “arriving on land . . . from a foreign territory contiguous to the United States” and provides that the Secretary of Homeland Security “may return the alien to that territory pending a proceeding under section 1229a.” 8 U. S. C. §1225(b)(2)(C). Following a change in Presidential administrations, the Biden administration announced that it would suspend the program, and on June 1, 2021, the Secretary of Homeland Security issued a memorandum officially terminating it.

The States of Texas and Missouri (respondents) brought suit in the Northern District of Texas against the Secretary and others, asserting that the June 1 Memorandum violated the INA and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The District Court entered judgment for respondents. The court first concluded that terminating MPP would violate the INA, reasoning that section 1225 of the INA “provides the government two options” with respect to illegal entrants: mandatory detention pursuant to section 1225(b)(2)(A) or contiguous-territory re- turn pursuant to section 1225(b)(2)(C). 554 F. Supp. 3d 818, 852. Be- cause the Government was unable to meet its mandatory detention obligations under section 1225(b)(2)(A) due to resource constraints, the court reasoned, terminating MPP would necessarily lead to the systemic violation of section 1225 as illegal entrants were released into the United States. Second, the District Court concluded that the June 1 Memorandum was arbitrary and capricious in violation of the APA.

2

BIDEN v. TEXAS Syllabus

The District Court vacated the June 1 Memorandum and remanded to DHS. It also imposed a nationwide injunction ordering the Government to “enforce and implement MPP in good faith until such a time as it has been lawfully rescinded in compliance with the APA and until such a time as the federal government has sufficient detention capacity to detain all aliens subject to mandatory detention under [section 1225] without releasing any aliens because of a lack of detention re- sources.” Id., at 857 (emphasis in original).

While the Government’s appeal was pending, the Secretary released the October 29 Memoranda, which again announced the termination of MPP and explained anew his reasons for doing so. The Government then moved to vacate the injunction on the ground that the October 29 Memoranda had superseded the June 1 Memorandum. But the Court of Appeals denied the motion and instead affirmed the District Court’s judgment in full. With respect to the INA question, the Court of Ap- peals agreed with the District Court’s analysis that terminating the program would violate the INA, concluding that the return policy was mandatory so long as illegal entrants were being released into the United States. The Court of Appeals also held that “[t]he October 29 Memoranda did not constitute a new and separately reviewable ‘final agency action.’ ” 20 F. 4th 928, 951.

Held: The Government’s rescission of MPP did not violate section 1225 of the INA, and the October 29 Memoranda constituted final agency action. Pp. 8–25.

(a) Beginning with jurisdiction, the injunction that the District Court entered in this case violated 8 U. S. C. §1252(f )(1). See Garland v. Aleman Gonzalez, 596 U. S. ___, ___. But section 1252(f )(1) does not deprive this Court of jurisdiction to reach the merits of an appeal even where a lower court enters a form of relief barred by that provision. Section 1252(f )(1) withdraws a district court’s “jurisdiction or authority” to grant a particular form of relief. It does not deprive lower courts of all subject matter jurisdiction over claims brought under sections 1221 through 1232 of the INA.

The text of the provision makes that clear. Section 1252(f )(1) deprives courts of the power to issue a specific category of remedies: those that “enjoin or restrain the operation of ” the relevant sections of the statute. And Congress included that language in a provision whose title—“Limit on injunctive relief ”—makes clear the narrowness of its scope. Moreover, the provision contains a parenthetical that explicitly preserves this Court’s power to enter injunctive relief. If section 1252(f )(1) deprived lower courts of subject matter jurisdiction to adjudicate any non-individual claims under sections 1221 through 1232, no such claims could ever arrive at this Court, rendering the specific carveout for Supreme Court injunctive relief nugatory.

Cite as: 597 U. S. ____ (2022) 3 Syllabus

Statutory structure likewise confirms this conclusion. Elsewhere in section 1252, where Congress intended to deny subject matter jurisdiction over a particular class of claims, it did so unambiguously. See, e.g., §1252(a)(2) (entitled “Matters not subject to judicial review”). Finally, this Court previously encountered a virtually identical situation in Nielsen v. Preap, 586 U. S. ___, and proceeded to reach the merits of the suit notwithstanding the District Court’s apparent violation of section 1252(f )(1). Pp. 8–13.

(b) Turning to the merits, section 1225(b)(2)(C) provides: “In the case of an alien . . . who is arriving on land . . . from a foreign territory contiguous to the United States, the [Secretary] may return the alien to that territory pending a proceeding under section 1229a.” Section 1225(b)(2)(C) plainly confers a discretionary authority to return aliens to Mexico. This Court has “repeatedly observed” that “the word ‘may’ clearly connotes discretion.” Opati v. Republic of Sudan, 590 U. S. ___, ___.

Respondents and the Court of Appeals concede that point, but urge an inference from the statutory structure: because section 1225(b)(2)(A) makes detention mandatory, they argue, the otherwise- discretionary return authority in section 1225(b)(2)(C) becomes mandatory when the Secretary violates that mandate. The problem is that the statute does not say anything like that. The statute says “may.” If Congress had intended section 1225(b)(2)(C) to operate as a mandatory cure of any noncompliance with the Government’s detention obligations, it would not have conveyed that intention through an unspoken inference in conflict with the unambiguous, express term “may.” The contiguous-territory return authority in section 1225(b)(2)(C) is discretionary—and remains discretionary notwithstanding any violation of section 1225(b)(2)(A).

The historical context in which section 1225(b)(2)(C) was adopted confirms the plain import of its text. Section 1225(b)(2)(C) was added to the statute more than 90 years after the “shall be detained” language that appears in section 1225(b)(2)(A). And the provision was enacted in response to a BIA decision that had questioned the legality of the contiguous-territory return practice. Moreover, since its enactment, every Presidential administration has interpreted section 1225(b)(2)(C) as purely discretionary, notwithstanding the consistent shortfall of funds to comply with section 1225(b)(2)(A).

The foreign affairs consequences of mandating the exercise of contiguous-territory return likewise confirm that the Court of Appeals erred. Interpreting section 1225(b)(2)(C) as a mandate imposes a significant burden upon the Executive’s ability to conduct diplomatic relations with Mexico, one that Congress likely did not intend section 1225(b)(2)(C) to impose. And finally, the availability of parole as an

4

BIDEN v. TEXAS Syllabus

alternative means of processing applicants for admission, see 8 U. S. C. §1182(d)(5)(A), additionally makes clear that the Court of Ap- peals erred in holding that the INA required the Government to continue implementing MPP. Pp. 13–18.

(c) The Court of Appeals also erred in holding that “[t]he October 29 Memoranda did not constitute a new and separately reviewable ‘final agency action.’ ” 20 F. 4th, at 951. Once the District Court vacated the June 1 Memorandum and remanded to DHS for further consideration, DHS had two options: elaborate on its original reasons for taking action or “ ‘deal with the problem afresh’ by taking new agency action.” Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of Univ. of Cal., 591 U. S. ___, ___. The Secretary selected the second option from Regents: He accepted the District Court’s vacatur and dealt with the problem afresh. The October 29 Memoranda were therefore final agency action for the same reasons that the June 1 Memorandum was final agency action: Both “mark[ed] the ‘consummation’ of the agency’s decisionmaking process” and resulted in “rights and obligations [being] determined.” Bennett v. Spear, 520 U. S. 154, 178.

The various rationales offered by respondents and the Court of Ap- peals in support of the contrary conclusion lack merit. First, the Court of Appeals erred to the extent it understood itself to be reviewing an abstract decision apart from the specific agency actions contained in the June 1 Memorandum and October 29 Memoranda. Second, and relatedly, the October 29 Memoranda were not a mere post hoc rationalization of the June 1 Memorandum. The prohibition on post hoc rationalization applies only when the agency proceeds by the first option from Regents. Here, the Secretary chose the second option from Re- gents and “issue[d] a new rescission bolstered by new reasons absent from the [June 1] Memorandum.” 591 U. S., at ___. Having returned to the drawing table, the Secretary was not subject to the charge of post hoc rationalization.

Third, respondents invoke Department of Commerce v. New York, 588 U. S. ___. But nothing in this record suggests a “significant mis- match between the decision the Secretary made and the rationale he provided.” Id., at ___. Relatedly, the Court of Appeals charged that the Secretary failed to proceed with a sufficiently open mind. But this Court has previously rejected criticisms of agency closemindedness based on an identity between proposed and final agency action. See Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania, 591 U. S. ___, ___. Finally, the Court of Appeals erred to the extent it viewed the Government’s decision to appeal the District Court’s in- junction as relevant to the question of the October 29 Memoranda’s status as final agency action. Nothing prevents an agency from under- taking new agency action while simultaneously appealing an adverse

Cite as: 597 U. S. ____ (2022) 5 Syllabus

judgment against its original action. Pp. 18–25. 20 F. 4th 928, reversed and remanded.

ROBERTS, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, KAGAN, and KAVANAUGH, JJ., joined. KAVANAUGH, J., filed a concurring opinion. ALITO, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which THOMAS and GORSUCH, JJ., joined. BARRETT, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which THOMAS, ALITO, and GORSUCH, JJ., joined as to all but the first sentence.

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

Credit where credit is due. At least in this particular case, Chief Justice Roberts and the much-maligned Justice Kavanaugh probably have saved many lives of already-born humans. 

Breyer’s “Last Hurrah.” I think this was Justice Breyer’s last case, fittingly a victory for reasonableness and humanity. As of noon today, he was succeeded by Justice Ketanj Brown Jackson, the first African American female Justice! Good luck to her. I hope she can convince her right-wing colleagues to “do the right thing” on at least a few cases!

Not out of the woods yet? The case now goes back to to the 5th Circuit and a Trumpy USDJ — not the best forum for asylum applicants seeking justice. 

Will they do better? Ending the toxic, inhumane, and ineffective “Remain in Mexico Program” is one thing. Replacing it with a viable asylum adjudication system that will actually efficiently grant protection to the many refugees at our border who have been victims of a biased, anti-asylum, non-expert decision-making process is quite another. It starts with tossing the BIA and the many EOIR Judges who aren’t following asylum law and aren’t able to grant asylum and replacing them with real expert judges who can get the job done, positively guide Asylum Officers, and make sure they follow proper legal interpretations. To date, that’s been something that Garland and the Administration have been unwilling and/or unable to do — at least to the extent required to make due process, fundamental fairness, and the rule of law functional at our borders.

Glimmer of hope (maybe)? In her dissent, Justice Amy Coney Barrett went to great lengths to come up with reasons not to take jurisdiction over this “life or death” matter in its current posture. But, unlike the other three dissenters, she stated that she agreed with the majority “on the merits” of the case. That makes it at least possible that there could be as many as six potential votes for fair and humane treatment of asylum applicants by the Administration if the jurisdictional hurdle can be overcome. No guarantees. But something to think about — particularly in light of Alito’s snarky, White Nationalist nonsense and anti-immigrant myths reflected in his separate dissenting opinion. 

Alioto defines “rock bottom” judicial performance. For example, in the first paragraph of his dissent, Alito says this:

In fiscal year 2021, the Border Patrol reported more than 1.7 million encounters with aliens along the Mexican border.1 When it appears that one of these aliens is not admissible, may the Government simply release the alien in this country and hope that the alien will show up for the hearing at which his or her entitlement to remain will be decided?

First he mis-states the law. By no means are all individuals who come to the border or are apprehended in the vicinity thereof entitled to “hearings” on admissibility. All of those without entry documents are subject to summary removal by a DHS Enforcement Agent. Only those who claim a fear of return to their home countries are entitled to an expeditious review of their claims by a (supposedly) well-trained Asylum Officer. Further, only those who establish the necessary “credible fear” of harm (or in some cases a “reasonable fear”) are entitled to have their cases for asylum determined on the merits by either an Asylum Officer or an EOIR Immigration Judge (or both). So, many of those appearing at the border are summarily removed without any hearings at all.

Thousands of those who pass credible fear and are awaiting “merits hearings” are imprisoned in DHS facilities in conditions that probably would fail constitutional scrutiny if applied to convicted felons. Those poor conditions are intended, at least in part, to demoralize and coerce individuals into abandoning claims for protection. They also exponentially decrease the chances of receiving competent pro bono representation and documenting and presenting their cases for life-preserving protection. This is significant, because they too often face EOIR judges with questionable expert judicial qualifications who are essentially “programmed to deny asylum.” Indeed, a “Garland gimmick” for recent arrivals — so-called “expedited dockets” — produced nearly 100% asylum denials as compared with the nationwide rate of 67%. For years, ICE detention centers, many of them operated by private contractors, have been notorious as places “where asylum cases go to die.” 

Contrary to the bogus implication of Alito’s statement that one has to “hope” that individuals show up for hearings, many have immigration bonds — some punatively high. When given a chance to obtain qualified representation, and thereby to understand the system and their obligations thereunder, the vast majority of asylum applicants voluntarily appear at their hearings (some many times due to the EOIR practice of  “Aimless Docket Reshuffling”), win or lose. And, perhaps not surprisingly, they succeed in winning their cases at rates that are many times higher than those forced to proceed without representation.

Indeed, a government actually interested in making the legal system work, rather than ginning up nativist myths about asylum seekers, would cut the “cruel and inhumane gimmicks” like “Remain in Mexico” and detention in the “New American Gulag” (NAG”) and instead invest in training competent pro bono or “low bono” representatives, temporarily resettling applicants to those jurisdictions with good NGOs and where the Immigration Judges are known to be scholarly and fair in evaluating asylum cases, and replacing poorly qualified Immigration Judges with experts able to competently perform these life or death functions at the “retail level” of our justice system in a fair and efficient matter consistent with due process.

Alito also repeats, apparently for prejudicial dramatic effect, the oft-used but potentially misleading figure of 1.7 million “encounters” by CBP. But, since the legal asylum system at our border was improperly dismantled by the Trump Administration, many of these represent the same individual or individuals, repeatedly encountered and illegally returned without any process whatsoever, who seek only the legal forum to present their claim to authorities to which they are entitled under both domestic and international law. This right has been systematically denied to them by both the Trump and Biden Administrations and by mal-functioning Federal Judges, at all levels, who have failed to uphold the rule of law as it applies to the most vulnerable among us. Additionally, a knowledgeable jurist would take any statistics furnished by the notoriously unreliable DHS with a “grain of salt.”

The lack of understanding of how immigration law operates, the nativist-driven misinterpretations by the Trump Administration embodied in this dissent, and the lack of intellectual integrity in furthering nativist myths and intentional exaggerations to describe a group of individuals who merely seek legal justice under both our laws and international standards is a graphic illustration of who does not belong on our highest Court. If we are really committed to equal justice and fundamental fairness in the American justice system, we should insist that all of those nominated for our Supreme Court demonstrate significant experience representing individual foreign nationals in the Immigration Courts — the “life or death retail level” of our justice system. 

Right now, those so-called “courts” are an embarrassing and dysfunctional “parody of justice” to which neither Justice Alito nor any of his colleagues would want to submit their own lives and futures or those of anyone they truly cared about. That’s the very definition of dehumanization and “Dred Scottification of the other” that Justice Alito seems so curiously eager to advance. Perhaps, that’s because he lacks the necessary empathy and perspective to see life from “the other side of the bench” as the rest of humanity does. 

I’d like to think that Alito is capable of change and growth. Most, if not all, humans are. After all, he’s appointed for life, so he isn’t going anywhere soon. But, I won’t hold my breath.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-29-30

 

🚙🏞HEADING FOR THE HILLS: RADICAL ACTIVIST, RIGHTY, GOP SUPREMES EMPOWER GUNS, STRIP WOMEN OF RIGHTS, HEAD OUT FOR SUMMER VACATION, LEAVING BEHIND CHAOS & A DARK CLOUD HANGING OVER OUR DEMOCRACY’S FUTURE!😱

Dana Milbank
Dana Milbank
Opinion Columnist
Washington Post

Dana Milbank @ WashPost:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/25/roe-guns-supreme-court-radicals-maximum-chaos/

Nobody should be surprised that the Supreme Court’s conservative justices on Friday jettisoned nearly 50 years of precedent upon precedent in overturning Roe v. Wade. Heck, they didn’t even honor their own precedent articulated 24 hours earlier.

In their opinion Thursday morning forcing New York and other densely populated states to allow more handguns in public, the conservative majority, led by Justice Clarence Thomas, argued that medieval law imposing arms restrictions — specifically, the 1328 Statute of Northampton — “has little bearing on the Second Amendment” because it was “enacted … more than 450 years before the ratification of the Constitution.”

Yet in their ruling Friday morning in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, setting women’s rights back half a century (and cracking the door to banning same-sex marriage and contraception), the conservative justices, led by Samuel Alito (who was also in the guns majority) and joined by Thomas, argued precisely the opposite. They justified abortion bans by citing, among others, “Henry de Bracton’s 13th-century treatise.” That was written circa 1250 and referred to monsters, duels, burning at the stake — and to women as property, “inferior” to men.

The right-wing majority’s selective application of history reveals the larger fraud in this pair of landmark rulings: Their reasoning is not legal but political, not principled but partisan.

Still, there is a commonality to the rulings. Both decisions foment maximum chaos and were delivered with flagrant disregard for the instability and disorder they will cause.

Ruth Marcus: The radical conservative majority’s damage to the Supreme Court cannot be undone

The high court was meant to be the guarantor of law and order. But the conservative justices, intoxicated by their supermajority, have abandoned their solemn duty to promote stability in the law and are actively spreading real-world disruption.

Worse, this invitation to disorder comes as the nation is trying to restore the rule of law after a coup attempt led by a president who appointed three of the five justices in the abortion majority. The spouse of a fourth — Ginni Thomas, Clarence’s wife — aggressively pushed state legislators and the White House to overthrow the election. Yet Thomas, the senior associate justice, has refused to recuse himself from related cases.

After decades of crocodile tears over imagined “judicial activism,” the conservative supermajority has shed all judicial modesty and embraced radicalism. The liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Stephen G. Breyer, wrote in their Dobbs dissent that the majority’s brazen rejection of stare decisis, respect for precedent, “breaches a core rule-of-law principle, designed to promote constancy in the law.”

Opinion: The Supreme Court’s radical abortion ruling begins a dangerous new era

Even Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who joined the gun ruling, scolded fellow conservatives for blithely overturning the Roe v. Wade super-precedent. “Surely we should adhere closely to principles of judicial restraint here, where the broader path the court chooses entails repudiating a constitutional right we have not only previously recognized, but also expressly reaffirmed,” Roberts wrote. The majority’s “dramatic and consequential ruling is unnecessary,” he said, “a serious jolt to the legal system” that could have been avoided with a narrower decision that would have been “markedly less unsettling.”

Alito, in his (characteristically) sneering opinion in the abortion case, dismissed Roberts as unprincipled and public opinion as an “extraneous” concern. He likewise dismissed the pain the ruling would cause, writing that “this Court is ill-equipped to assess ‘generalized assertions about the national psyche.’ ” He washed his hands of answering the “empirical question” of “the effect of the abortion right … on the lives of women.”

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Milbank’s op-ed at the link.

It would be tempting to breathe a “sigh of relief” that while off on their taxpayer-underwritten summer frolic, the “Gang of 6” can’t do any more damage to our Constitution, our nation, our institutions, or humanity. But, unfortunately, that’s not completely true. If and when their party calls on them, they can always go into “emergency session.” 

So let’s hope that there will be no further “emergencies” this summer other than the disorder and divisions already caused by their disingenuous political decrees masquerading as (very thinly to tragicomically inept and inconsistent) “jurisprudence.”

Still, those who enjoy their humanity and their rights (other than gun rights)  shouldn’t get too complacent. Vacation will end; the Supremes will be back at it in October — looking for more ways to turn back the clock and “Dred Scottify the other,” even though the majority of Americans actually are “some kind of other.” With a little help from their GOP friends, they will disenfranchise and dehumanize one group at a time until rights and political power look largely like they did in 1789 — when free White men of property ruled.

As for CJ Roberts, after years of trying to put a “genial spin” on the mockery of a fair, impartial, and qualified judiciary incubating at his Supremes, he has totally lost control of the far-right extremists appointed by his party and, in some cases, pushed through the process in a highly irregular manner. Hard to have much sympathy there. 

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-27-22

⚖️👎🏽ETHICS: WSJ INVESTIGATION FINDS WIDESPREAD VIOLATIONS OF CONFLICT OF INTEREST RULES BY U.S. JUDGES! — 131 Judges Illegally Ruled on 685 Cases In Which They Had A Prohibited Financial Interest! 

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/131-federal-judges-broke-the-law-by-hearing-cases-where-they-had-a-financial-interest-11632834421

131 Federal Judges Broke the Law by Hearing Cases Where They Had a Financial Interest

The judges failed to recuse themselves from 685 lawsuits from 2010 to 2018 involving firms in which they or their family held shares, a Wall Street Journal investigation found

By James V. Grimaldi, Coulter Jones and Joe Palazzolo

Sept. 28, 2021 9:07 am ET

 

More than 130 federal judges have violated U.S. law and judicial ethics by overseeing court cases involving companies in which they or their family owned stock.

A Wall Street Journal investigation found that judges have improperly failed to disqualify themselves from 685 court cases around the nation since 2010. The jurists were appointed by nearly every president from Lyndon Johnson to Donald Trump.

About two-thirds of federal district judges disclosed holdings of individual stocks, and nearly one of every five who did heard at least one case involving those stocks.

Alerted to the violations by the Journal, 56 of the judges have directed court clerks to notify parties in 329 lawsuits that they should have recused themselves. That means new judges might be assigned, potentially upending rulings.

When judges participated in such cases, about two-thirds of their rulings on motions that were contested came down in favor of their or their family’s financial interests.

. . . .

******************
Read the full article at the link.

This is seriously bad stuff that should never have happened.

Admittedly, Federal conflict of interest rules can be both complicated and annoying. But, complicated legal issues are these judges’ “specialty.” “Ignorance is no excuse” is a common judicial cliche!

Even at EOIR, judges got decent training in these types of ethical requirements, including examples that covered the types of conflicts uncovered by the WSJ; they were fairly rare at EOIR given the subject matter at issue in most cases and the relatively modest financial circumstances of most Immigration Judges, many of whom were career civil servants.

Other types of potential conflicts or “appearance” issues did arise more frequently at EOIR. We were advised “When in doubt, sit it out!”

Obviously, the Administrative Office for U.S. Courts (“AOUSC”) isn’t doing its job here! It appears that using the same public information available to the WSJ reporters, the AOUSC could have not only discovered these conflicts much earlier (perhaps before decisions were rendered) but also set up an automated system for discovering potential conflicts in advance. Jones Day had such a system when I was there three decades ago!

Chief Justice John Roberts must insist that all Article III Judges take their ethical obligations more seriously and that they become thoroughly familiar with the requirements applicable to them. And, he should demand that the AOUSC provide the necessary training and monitor compliance with an automated conflicts identification system!

PWS

09-28-21

⚖️🤮👨🏻‍⚖️☠️ SUPREMELY BAD! — There’s a “problem with late-night emergency orders written as haikus on Post-it notes stuck to the front doors of the Supreme Court . . . !” — The return of “Dred Scottification” & covering for naked White Nationalist policies by our highest Court throws the entire U.S. justice system into chaos!

Grim Reaper
A robed GOP Justice, carrying a copy of Dred Scott and the tool of right-wing extremism, heads for secret meeting to take action against brown-skinned refugees!
Image: Hernan Fednan, Creative Commons License
Dahlia Lithwick
Dahlia Lithwick
Supreme Court Reporter
Slate
Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain
Mark Joseph Stern
Mark Joseph Stern
Reporter, Slate

 

 

https://apple.news/ACG8I3-YvTh2RWP68SwTi2A

The Supreme Court Has Let a Lone Trump Judge Take Over Biden’s Foreign Policy

The six conservative justices blessed a rogue decision reviving Trump’s odious attack on refugees.

by Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern

AUGUST 25 2021 8:47 PM

On Tuesday night, the Supreme Court issued one of the most radical orders in recent memory—and it did it in three sentences, unsigned. By a 6–3 vote, the conservative justices attacked the president’s authority to conduct foreign policy (a principle it had vehemently preserved throughout the Trump presidency) by compelling the Biden administration to revive Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which required all asylum-seekers who arrive at the Southern border—including many fleeing violence in Central America—to wait for their U.S. immigration hearings in Mexico. This 2019 policy, the product of extensive negotiations between the Trump administration and the Mexican government, has been suspended for about 17 months. On Aug. 13, however, a single federal judge issued a nationwide injunction ordering the government to reinstate the long-dormant program immediately. Late Tuesday, the Supreme Court blessed this unprecedented hostile takeover of the executive’s immigration policies without bothering to explain how or why.

The implications of Tuesday’s decision are profoundly disturbing. . . .

Perhaps the most perverse aspect of the litigation over “Remain in Mexico”—also known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, or MPP—is that the policy itself is illegal. The Immigration and Nationality Act does allow the government to return a narrow class of migrants to “contiguous territory” while they await hearings. But, as a federal appeals court explained in 2020, the law does not allow the government to send the vast majority of asylum-seekers back to Mexico to await hearings. Doing so violates the United States’ treaty obligations as implemented in the INA, which bar the government from sending refugees back to countries where they fear persecution.

. . . .

As we have suggested in the recent past, the problem with late-night emergency orders written as haikus on Post-it notes stuck to the front doors of the Supreme Court isn’t just that the parties must scramble, without guidance, to discern what it is the court wants them to do. In this case, perhaps tens of thousands of desperate asylum-seekers and their families have absolutely no clue as to what the law is now and why. We have no idea what even constitutes an emergency, or which parties have standing, or what the legal reasoning might be.

Not very long ago, the high court used its shadow docket to spank what it deemed runaway district court judges arrogating power to set immigration policy in violation of Trump’s orders. Now, the same shadow docket is being used to hand federal immigration powers to runaway district court judges, with no rule or principle set forth beyond the fact that Biden should just lose, because they say so.

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

Under Roberts, the Supremes are looking more and more like the deadly EOIR Star Chambers/Clown Courts!☠️⚰️🤡 Shamefully, the “Roberts Six” have “revived” the “essence” of perhaps the worst Supremes’ decision in U.S. history, Dred Scott, and gotten away with applying it to people of color in the 21st Century!

They have elevated utter BS and fabricated “injuries” manufactured in bad faith by vile right wing GOP State AGs over the human rights, lives, and human dignity of refugees seeking asylum! In particular, they have targeted bown-skinned women, children, and families legally seeking refuge! This is progress? Seems like the definition of “judicial cowardice” to me!

What kind of  “crimes against humanity” are the “GOP 6” complicit in? Try refugees “kidnapped, raped and even killed as a direct result of this policy. They came to our doorstep with a belief in America — and our government sent them into danger.” https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-08-24/supreme-court-biden-ending-trumps-remain-in-mexico-policy?utm_id=36127&sfmc_id=2413253

Meanwhile Garland inexcusably has failed to reform his Immigration Courts by replacing unqualified Immigration Judges and BIA Appellate Judges selected by his predecessors under highly questionable procedures with well-qualified progressive judges who are experts in due process and human rights.

Building a progressive Immigration Judiciary at EOIR is absolutely necessary to developing the legal skills to hold the anti-American far right at bay and eventually creating a better Article III Judiciary that will actually stand up for due process and equal justice for all persons in America. Something the “Roberts 6” have scandalously and spinelessly failed to do!🤮👎🏽

Better Judges for better America! 

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-26-21

⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️👨🏻‍⚖️👩‍⚖️THE JUDICIARY: Has Justice Kagan Been Reading “Courtside?” (Her Recent Dissent Sounds Like It!)  — Plus:  The New Face Of A Better Federal Judiciary That Represents American Society Rather Than The Federalist Society?

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/02/covid-elena-kagan-supreme-court-kill.html

From Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent in South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom:

I fervently hope that the Court’s intervention will not worsen the Nation’s COVID crisis. But if this decision causes suffering, we will not pay. Our marble halls are now closed to the public, and our life tenure forever insulates us from responsibility for our errors. That would seem good reason to avoid disrupting a State’s pandemic response. But the Court forges ahead regardless, insisting that science-based policy yield to judicial edict.

Justice Elena Kagan
Justice Elena Kagan
Photo: Mike Ball
Creative Commons License

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

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ketanji-brown-jackson-dc-appeals-court/2021/02/05/543bfeda-67f1-11eb-8468-21bc48f07fe5_story.html

Ruth Marcus writes about U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in WashPost: 

 . . . .

Still, Jackson, named to the district court by Obama in 2013, brings to the bench an intriguing — and for the Democratic Party’s restless progressives, attractive — piece of career diversity as well: experience as a public defender.

No current Supreme Court justice has the perspective of having been a public defender, representing indigent defendants, although several — Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Sonia Sotomayor and Brett M. Kavanaugh, in his role as associate independent counsel — have prosecutorial experience.

For Jackson, the daughter of two public school teachers (her father later became a lawyer), the criminal justice system has an unusually personal wrinkle as well: Her uncle was convicted of a low-level drug crime when she was a senior in high school, and was sentenced to life in prison under a draconian three-strikes law. (He had been convicted previously of two minor offenses.) He ended up receiving clemency from Obama after serving three decades.

She also brings the real-world perspective of a working mother. In a remarkably candid speech at the University of Georgia in 2017, Jackson described the challenges she encountered juggling private practice at a major law firm, marriage to a surgeon and motherhood to two young daughters.

“I think it is not possible to overstate the degree of difficulty that many young women, and especially new mothers, face in the law firm context,” she observed. “The hours are long; the workflow is unpredictable; you have little control over your time and schedule; and you start to feel as though the demands of the billable hour are constantly in conflict with the needs of your children and your family responsibilities.” How refreshing to hear from a self-confessed non-Superwoman.

. . . .

But a more obscure ruling, involving William Pierce, a deaf D.C. man who was imprisoned for 51 days after a domestic dispute, may offer more insight into Jackson’s belief in law as a mechanism for achieving justice. Corrections officials did nothing to accommodate Pierce’s disability, as the law requires, ignoring his repeated requests for a sign-language interpreter.

Jackson assailed prison officials’ “willful blindness regarding Pierce’s need for accommodation.” She said it was “astonishing” for D.C. to claim that it had done enough, when “prison employees took no steps whatsoever” to figure out how to help him. And she took the unusual step of ruling for Pierce even before trial.

You can learn a lot about a judge by the way she handles the biggest-profile cases, involving those at the highest levels of government. But perhaps the more revealing test is how she applies the law to help those with the least power and the greatest need for justice.

U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson
U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson
Washington D.C.
Official Photo
Creative Commons License

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

Read the full articles at the above links. “Willful blindness” and intentional abuses intended to “dehumanize” are daily occurrences in our warped and broken “immigration justice system” as almost any immigration/human rights/civil rights lawyer could tell you. It just operates below the radar screen, on the border, or in foreign countries (to which vulnerable humans seeking legal refuge are arbitrarily and capriciously “orbited”) where the very human trauma, torture, sickness, desolation, despair, and death are “out of sight, out of mind” to most Federal Judges and Justices. 

Yes, eventually journalists and historians will document for posterity the disastrous human rights abuses in which the Federal Judiciary is complicit. But, by then it will be far too late for those who have suffered and died while those in black robes shirked their legal and moral duties!

Judge Jackson understands exactly what’s missing from today’s all too often elitist, non-diverse, non-representative Federal Judiciary (including much of the Immigration Judiciary) who are tone-deaf to, and insulated from, responsibility for the human trauma and injustice caused by their bad decisions.  

Additionally, I can assure Justice Kagan that vulnerable refugees and asylum seekers (including children) have died and unnecessarily suffered lifetime trauma from the Supremes’ willful failure to enforce the Constitution against overt Executive tyranny in cases involving the “Remain in Mexico” (“Let ‘Em Die In Mexico”) Program, return of asylum seekers to torture and death with no due process whatsoever, and the “Muslim Ban.” 

Indeed, the Supremes’ majority’s abdication of responsibility in the latter case led directly to Trump’s eventual insurrection against the Capitol. He was assured early on by Roberts and others that he was above the Constitution, uncountable, and exempt from normal conventions governing human decency and treatment of the most vulnerable among us in the 21st Century. I/O/W, “Dred Scottification” of the “other”  — a 21st Century “Jim Crow Regime” — was A-OK with the GOP Supremes’ majority “forever insulat[ed] . . . from responsibility for [their] errors.”

Today in particular, our nation still struggles with the sense of impunity and unaccountability improperly conferred by a dilatory Supremes’ majority on their party  and its leader. Insurrection, violence, attempted overthrow of democracy — it’s all “no problem” to a tone-deaf Supremes’ majority unconcerned with the fate of our democracy.

After all, the Trump’s magamoron rioters weren’t storming their marble halls — just those of the supposedly co-equal branch across the street. But, what might have happened if they had actually stood up against Trump? He might have identified them as “the enemy” and sent his rioters their way! Worth thinking about, Oh Cloistered Ones far removed from the pain and suffering you help cause and countenance!

A better judiciary 🧑🏽‍⚖️👨🏻‍⚖️👩‍⚖️ for a better America! Bring on the “practical scholars” and those with actual experience representing the mostly vulnerable among us (asylum seekers are a prime example) in court. 

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-09-21

🇺🇸🗽⚖️MORE GOOD NEWS FOR AMERICA AS TRUMP KAKISTOCRACY☠️🦹🏿‍♂️⚰️ FINALLY COMES TO AN END: Biden Will Move Immediately For Sane, Humane, Practical Immigration Policies — Wants To Put Trump’s Cruel, Racist, Stupid Abuses Of Humanity, Common Sense, Rule Of Law, & America’s Immigrant Heritage In The Rear-View Mirror! — Promises Reversal Of DHS’s Role As White Nationalist “Political Police Force”🏴‍☠️☠️ That Beat Up On the Most Vulnerable While Ignoring Real Security Threat Posed By Trump-Inspired Righty Domestic Terrorists!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-immigration-plan/2021/01/18/f0526824-59a8-11eb-a976-bad6431e03e2_story.html

Seung Min Kim reports for WashPost:

President-elect Joe Biden will roll out a sweeping overhaul of nation’s immigration laws the day he is inaugurated, including an eight-year pathway to citizenship for immigrants without legal status and an expansion of refugee admissions, along with an enforcement plan that deploys technology to patrol the border.

Biden’s legislative proposal, which will be sent to Congress on Wednesday, also includes a heavy focus on addressing the root causes of migration from Central America, a key part of Biden’s foreign policy portfolio when he served as vice president.

The centerpiece of the plan from Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris is the eight-year pathway, which would put millions of qualifying immigrants in a temporary status for five years and then grant them a green card once they meet certain requirements such as a background check and payment of taxes. They would be able to apply for citizenship three years later.

. . . .

The focus on Central America reflects the message that Biden has relayed to senior officials in the region: that he will advocate for policy changes aimed at what drives scores of migrants there to come to the United States illegally to seek safe harbor.

“Ultimately, you cannot solve problems of migration unless you attack the root causes of what causes that migration,” one official said, pointing to the various reasons — from economic to safety — that drive migrants to flee their home countries. “He knows that in particular is the case in Central America.”

Transition officials are aware of recent reports of the increased numbers of migrants at or heading to the border in anticipation of the end of Trump’s presidency, and urged them to stay in their home countries. They emphasized that newly arriving immigrants would not qualify for the legalization program that Biden proposes.

Biden wants to move the refugee and asylum systems “back to a more humane and orderly process,” the official said. But “it’s also been made clear that that isn’t a switch you flip overnight from the 19th to the 20th, especially when you’re working with agencies and processes that have been so gutted by the previous administration.”

Biden hopes to reinstate a program granting minors from Central America temporary legal residence in the United States. The Trump administration terminated the program in August 2017, officials said. The administration also wants to set up a reunification program for Central American relatives of U.S. citizens that would allow those who have been already approved for U.S. residency to be admitted into the country, rather than waiting at home for an opening. The program would be similar to ones that existed for Cubans and Haitians but also were ended by the Trump administration.

The Biden proposal also would put in place a refugee admissions program at multiple processing centers abroad that would better help identify and screen those who would qualify to be admitted as refugees into the United States.

As for border enforcement, the plan calls on the Department of Homeland Security to develop a proposal that uses technology and other similar infrastructure to implement new security measures along the border, both at and between ports of entry. Biden has long vowed not to expand the border wall Trump has marginally extended.

“This is not a wall; this is not taking money from [the Department of Defense],” a transition official said, referring to how Trump helped to finance his wall after pledging Mexico would pay for it. “It’s a very different approach.”

. . . .

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

Read the complete article at the link.

This is a welcome change from the poorly conceived, often ill-informed approach to immigration by the Obama Administration. It appears that Biden and Harris have actually “listened to the experts” and acted a accordingly.

The concentration on addressing the reality of Central American migration and dealing honestly and constructively with its root causes in a sensible and humane way is also refreshing. Using intelligence and technology to address real border security issues (as opposed to squandering resources on politically manufactured ones) also shows promise.

Julia Edwards Ainsley
Julia Edwards Ainsley
NBC Correspondent
Justice & DHS
Outside Justice Dep’t
Photo: Victoria Pickering https://www.flickr.com/photos/vpickering/

NBC star reporter Julia Edwards Ainsley just broke a story on how under the Trump regime, DHS wasted lots of time and money “beating up on” and denying the legal rights of migrants and asylum seekers and ripping apart families while ignoring or mishandling the real threats to our national security presented by right wing domestic terrorists. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/capitol-riot-exposed-flaws-trump-s-dhs-focused-immigration-not-n1254464

Many of the latter were  energized by the Trump/DHS program of White Nationalist racist fear-mongering and intentionally false anti-immigrant, anti-due-process narratives. That’s what “applied malicious incompetence” looks like — DHS and EOIR are two of the most egregious examples in a regime that raised it to an “art form.” It will take an aggressive and far-reaching “house cleaning” to get these agencies that have abandoned the common good and now operate “on the dark side” back on track.

The immediate “knee-jerk opposition” to rational, practical, fact-based immigration reform by notorious White Nationalist racist Sen. Tom Cotton (R-ARK) shows that Team Biden is on the right track to disavow the toxic institutionalized racism and biased policies of the Trump regime and move America along the path to racial justice and realistic, progressive immigration policies that will further the national interest and lead to a better future for all!

It’s a great, if long overdue, start to getting beyond Jim Crow and “Dred Scottification” and saving and enhancing our democracy! But, the proof will be in the results!

Biden, of course, will also face the formidable challenges of dealing with the human carnage left behind by the Trump regime’s disastrous mis-handling of COVID-19, economic inequality, the environment, racial justice, and foreign policy where American “prestige” has plummeted to levels not seen since the days of the Barbary Pirates.

He also must address a failing Federal Justice System that, particularly at its appellate levels, did not effectively stand up to the Trump regime’s  unrelenting assault on human decency and American democracy. Indeed, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a consistently competent and courageous Justice among our failing Supremes, offered this final harsh but true assessment of her GOP colleagues’ malfeasance in a death penalty case: “This is not justice.”https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/not-justice-justice-sonia-sotomayor-offers-fierce-dissent-death-penalty-n1254554

You could say that about almost everything in the departing, defeated White Nationalist regime!

I’ll note for the record that among other things, the Supremes’ tone-deaf majority has been responsible for letting bona fide asylum seekers rot in squalor in camps in Mexico while waiting for non-existent “due process,” and also authorized the imposition of potential death sentences and torture on asylum seekers within our jurisdiction without any whit of due process.

The GOP majority’s disgraceful failure to stand up for voting rights of African Americans, Latinos, and other voters of color has also deepened racial injustice in America and helped usher in a horrible “Jim Crow Revival” pushed, incited, and enabled by the GOP, “The Party of the Failed Insurrection.”

Any competent first-year law student might ask “How could this happen in America?” That’s a question that Roberts and his gang of fellow Trump enablers and apologists will have to answer before the “court of history!”

🇺🇸🗽⚖️👍🏼Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-19-21

CRIME BLOTTER: CHILD ABUSE🤮☠️⚰️🦹🏿‍♀️: DOJ IG REPORT CONFIRMS WHAT COURTSIDE & OTHERS KNEW FROM THE START: Trump, Sessions, Miller, Rosenstein, Hamilton Are Cowards🐓, Lying 🤥 Criminals, Child Abusers🦹🏿‍♀️, Who Belong Behind Bars For Intentionally Abusing Asylum Seeking Families & Kids & Then Having Their Sleazy DOJ Lawyers Lie To Federal Judges! — What Happened To “Due Diligence” As An Ethical Requirement For Government Lawyers?

Trump Regime Emoji
Trump Regime
Kiddie Gulag
Trump’s Legacy
Kiddie Gulag
Sessions in a cage
Jeff Sessions’ Cage by J.D. Crowe, Alabama Media Group/AL.com
Republished under license
Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions
“Police Brutality? What Police Brutality?”
Stephen Miller Monster
Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com, Republished under license
Stephen Miller Cartoon
Stephen Miller & Count Olaf
Evil Twins, Notorious Child Abusers
Stephen Miller & Wife
“Gauleiter Muller & Eva Braun” Yuck it Up In The Comfort Of “Public Welfare Dole” While Looking Forward to Planning Together for More “Crimes Against Humanity,” Abusing Children, Dehumanizing Persons of Color, Spreading Lies & False Narratives, & Targeting World’s Most Vulnerable Refugees 🤮☠️⚰️🦹🏿‍♂️ — Sure Looks Like “Welfare Fraud” to Me!

 

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=newssearch&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjByaGq6p7uAhVwuVkKHXiFC34QxfQBCFMwBA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fkval.com%2Fnewsletter-daily%2Fmerkley-calls-for-prosecution-of-trump-officials-after-report-on-child-separation-policy&usg=AOvVaw1vnWzv2UxSmymy6iLrVQ-o

 

 

By KVAL CBS (Eugene, OR) News Staff:

 

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon has called for the investigation and prosecution of current and former Trump administration officials after the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General released “a disturbing report confirming that the Trump administration knew their zero tolerance policy would lead to family separations,” the Oregon Democrat said in a statement.

“We finally have more answers about how this diabolical plan came to be,” Merkley said. “It is crystal clear that Jeff Sessions, Stephen Miller, Chad Wolf, Kirstjen Nielsen and other senior Trump administration officials were not only fully aware that their policy would have traumatizing impacts on families, but also that their intention was to inflict that trauma as a means to deter people from coming to America in search of a better life.”

The senator added “it’s now confirmed that they committed perjury by lying to Congress about their intentions and actions in order to avoid accountability for their monstrous initiative.”

In June 2018, Merkley traveled to Texas and attempted to enter a child detention center in a former Walmart, calling attention to the practice of separating and detaining children apart from their families.

“The intentional infliction of harm on innocent children is unforgivable and has no place on our soil,” Merkley said Thursday. “The architects should be investigated and prosecuted to the full extent of the law for any crimes connected with both the atrocities and the cover-up.”

Merkley returned to the border 6 more times and advocated for families to be reunited – and for people seeking refuge “from gang violence, murder, rape, and extortion in their home countries” be allowed to make their case – something the senator alleges the Trump adminitration has not allowed in keeping with the law.

“America is at its strongest when we embrace our historic role as a beacon of hope for persecuted people from around the world,” Merkley said. “I am determined to work with the Biden administration to ensure that we turn that vision into a reality, and to hold the perpetrators of the Trump administration’s cruelty fully accountable.”

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

Couldn’t have said it better myself, Senator! Right on! Remarkable how all it takes is an armed insurrection against our Capitol and our democracy generated by the Traitor Prez and supported by far, far too many cowardly, anti-American members of his “Party of Treason” to get folks “thinking like Courtside.” 

Even if the criminals described by the IG escape prosecution for their crimes, the new IG Report and the additional documents that certainly will come to light once the Trump kakistocracy is removed should provide enough evidence to keep these wretched fascist creatures and their families tied up in civil litigation for the rest of their miserable and worthless lives!

To date, only Senator James Langford (R-OK) has had the decency to apologize for his role in supporting Trump’s beyond bogus, treasonous, insurrectionist claims of “election fraud” or a stolen election. Where are the apologies from the rest of the cowardly GOP traitors and toadies who supported and/or enabled Trump and his band of racist thugs over the past four years? Why is scumbag Rep. Jim Jordan walking around with a bogus “Medal of Freedom” for spreading lies and encouraging sedition, rather than sitting in a jail cell awaiting trial?

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

“Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions. Child abuser and racist plotter remains at large, after having the shameless audacity to run for the U.S. Senate again, being defeated by Magamoron “Coach Tubby Traitorville (a blithering idiot who obviously got hit by one too many flying tackling dummy).

“Gauleiter Stepan Muller.” Hiding out on the public dole in the seat of corruption and insurrection (formerly and soon again to be known as the “White House”) with his repulsive “Eva Braun substitute” and carrying out more “crimes against humanity” to the end.

Rod Rosenstein. Hiding out, hanging his head in (belated, fake) shame and making the big bucks at King & Spaulding. Will need them after he is dismissed from his law firm, disbarred, and has to pay legal fees and damages to the families he traumatized.

Gene (No Relation to Alex) Hamilton. Still grifting on public welfare at the DOJ until next Wednesday. First cowardly “Waffern SS Member” to publicly take the “Nuremberg defense:” I was only following Der Fuhrer’s orders.” But, he won’t be the last.

Donald J. “Big Loser/Traitor” Trump. Hiding out in White House basement and planning flight from DC after initiating botched coup attempt against his own Government.

Victims of Failed Regime’s “Crimes Against Humanity.” Already sentenced to a lifetime of pain, suffering, and trauma by Large Banana Republic that shirked its legal and moral duties.

Accountability for this “gang of White Nationalist thugs” is important!

Also, Judge Garland needs to look into the conduct of the DOJ lawyers who defended the regime’s transparent lies and false claims that there was “no child separation policy.” These turkeys 🦃  took no responsibility for their clients’ ongoing crimes and cover ups. Indeed, outrageously, they got away with making it the burden of the plaintiffs’ lawyers to reunite families the Government intentionally and illegally separated without any plans for reunification.

The invidious racist, unconstitutional motives of criminals like Trump, Miller, Sessions, Hamilton, and Rosenstein was no secret. Except for the degree of Rosenstein’s involvement, it was widely reported at the time. Trump was a well-established liar whose public statements and rationales should have been assumed false until proven true. (Ask yourself what would happen to a corporate lawyer who took at face value and presented to a court as “facts” or a “defense” in a civil suit false statements by a corrupt CEO with a long-standing record of fraud, racism, and dishonesty.)

Also, what was the a racist hack like Sessions (the report also reveals that he was as totally incompetent as a lawyer as he was devoid of human decency) doing running border enforcement programs that had intentionally been removed from the AG’s portfolio by Congress when DHS was created? How does that fit with “Gonzo’s” transparently unethical and unconstitutional actions as a “quasi-judicial officer” in interfering with due process at the EOIR Clown Show🤡/Star Chamber🦹🏿‍♂️?

This IG report is just the “tip of the iceberg” of the institutionalized racism and systemic misconduct that polluted the immigration kakistocracy at DOJ and DHS during the Trump regime. The failings of the U.S. Justice system from top to bottom, starting with the Supremes’  consistent failure to critically examine the regime’s transparent pattern of unconstitutional, racist, biased behavior culminating  in an insurrection can’t be “swept under the carpet.”

Nor can their enabling of the White Nationalist immigration agenda of “Dred Scottification” pushed by unethical SG Noel Francisco! In a well-functioning democracy, the Trumpist thugs’ child abuse should have been stopped in its tracks. Thanks to the failure of legal, ethical, and moral leadership by Roberts and his righty GOP buddies, it wasn’t!

The entire beyond disgraceful and patently illegal “zero tolerance program” instituted by Gonzo was a grotesque misuse of public funds and abuse of prosecutorial discretion. Real crimes (the Trump regime has been an absolute boon to serious criminals from the Oval Office on down) went un-prosecuted and un-investigated. The conduct of U.S. Attorneys, Federal Judges, and U.S. Magistrate Judges along the border who shirked their duties and participated in the legal farce taking place in our criminal justice system also needs to be examined.

Those of us who lived through Watergate can see that this time around, under extraordinarily poor leadership generated by an anti-American GOP, the response of all three branches of our Federal Government to the overt threats to our Constitution and democracy posed by a dishonest Executive fell disturbingly below the bipartisan levels that saved our nation from Nixon.

That’s why the critical democratic standard of a “peaceful and orderly transfer of power” has fallen by the wayside and the Biden-Harris Inauguration will take place in an armed camp. Ironically, the man administering the oath to President Biden, Chief Justice John Roberts and his GOP colleagues on the Supremes bear a major responsibility for democracy’s peril and the pain and suffering of those like separated families whom they failed to protect from Executive abuses!

As I’ve said before, although it won’t happen, the resignations of Roberts and his fellow GOP Justices should be on President Biden’s desk on the morning of January 21. That would be a real start on healing, restoring democracy, and reinstituting human decency and respect for human lives and the rule of law in America.

(Let’s not forget that ethics-challenged Justices Thomas and Coney Barrett showed up at what essentially was a “MAGA campaign rally” at the White House on the eve of the election that eventually resulted in impeachable acts of insurrection and sedition by a patently dishonest and dangerous Chief Executive whose unfitness to govern was more than clear by that time. Honestly, it’s going to take more than a black robe to cover the shame of these dudes who stand for protecting and enabling tyranny and against justice for the people. If nothing else, it’s high time for a Democrat-led Congress to impose at least some minimal ethical standards on the Supremes, since they appear to have none to mention. That’s, of course, after they come to grips with the treason of GOP guys like Cruz and Hawley who should be expelled and barred from public “service” (treason?) for life.)

🇺🇸⚖️🗽👎🏻Due Process Forever! Cowardly thugs, 🥷🏻magamorons, 🦹🏿‍♂️ and their enablers, never!

PWS

01-16-21

 

THE SADNESS OF PROPHECY WITHOUT POWER: Two Years Ago, I Gave A Speech Warning Of The Consequences Of “1939 Germany” — Now, We’re In “Germany 1938” With 1939 Just An Election Away! — Moscow Mitch, Lindsey The Toad, Texas Ted & The Rest Of The GOP Fellow Travelers & Cultists Would Be Right At Home With Franz van Papen!

 

This morning, Joe Hagan wrote in The Hive For Vanity Fair:

On the latest episode of Inside the Hive, former Republican strategist Stuart Stevens described the GOP under Donald Trump as a party of cynics, stooges, racists, and obsequious enablers whose profiles in cowardice bear an uncomfortable resemblance to 1930s Germany. “When I talk to Republican politicians, I hear Franz von Papen,” he says, referencing the German chancellor who convinced Germans that so-called radical leftists were a far greater threat than Adolf Hitler. “They all know that Trump is an idiot. They all know that he’s uniquely unqualified to be president. But they convinced themselves that he was a necessity.”

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/09/ex-republican-strategist-surveys-the-wreckage-of-trumps-gop

All too disturbingly true. For those who didn‘t notice, the GOP now has no platform. None! They are nakedly running on lies, racism, fear, White Supremacy, hate, misogyny, xenophobia, intentionally false narratives, anti-science, anti-intellectualism, and corruption. Sound familiar? It should to those of us who studied Modern European History and World War II. 

Two years ago, before the International Association of Refugee & Migration Judges meeting at Georgetown Law, fresh from a visit to the Holocaust Museum in DC, I gave a speech warning of a return to “Eve of the Holocaust thinking.” 

It was, of course, “extreme hubris and total self-delusion” to think anyone was paying attention. Nevertheless, it doesn’t lessen my “extreme sadness” of watching the disintegration of our nation, without being able to prevent it.

Here’s a “reprint” of that speech from the Summer of 2018:

JUST SAY NO TO 1939: HOW JUDGES CAN SAVE LIVES, UPHOLD THE CONVENTION, AND MAINTAIN INTEGRITY IN THE AGE OF OVERT GOVERNMENTAL BIAS TOWARD REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS

IMPLICIT BIAS IARMJ 08-03-18

JUST SAY NO TO 1939:  HOW JUDGES CAN SAVE LIVES, UPHOLD THE CONVENTION, AND MAINTAIN INTEGRITY IN THE AGE OF OVERT GOVERNMENTAL BIAS TOWARD REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS

 

By Paul Wickham Schmidt,

U.S. Immigration Judge, Retired

Americas Conference

International Association of Refugee & Migration Judges

Georgetown Law

August 4, 2018

INTRODUCTION

 

Good afternoon. I am pleased to be here. Some twenty years ago, along with then Chief U.S. Immigration Judge Michael J. Creppy, I helped found this Association, in Warsaw. I believe that I’m the only “survivor” of that illustrious group of “Original Charter Signers” present today. And, whoever now has possession of that sacred Charter can attest that my signature today remains exactly as it was then, boldly scrawling over those of my colleagues and the last paragraph of the document.

 

As the Americas’ Chapter Vice President, welcome and thank you for coming, supporting, and contributing to our organization and this great conference. I also welcome you to the beautiful campus of Georgetown Law where I am on the adjunct faculty.

 

I thank Dean Treanor; my long-time friend and colleague Professor Andy Schoenholtz, and all the other wonderful members of our Georgetown family; the IARMJ; Associate Director Jennifer Higgins, Dimple Dhabalia, and the rest of their team at USCIS; and, of course, our Americas President Justice Russell Zinn and the amazing Ross Patee from the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board who have been so supportive and worked so hard to make this conference a success.

 

I recognize that this is the coveted “immediately after lunch slot” when folks might rather be taking a nap. But, as the American country singer Toby Keith would say “It’s me, baby, with you wake up call!” In other words, I’m going to give you a glimpse into the “parallel universe” being operted in the United States.

 

In the past, at this point I would give my comprehensive disclaimer. Now that I’m retired, I can skip that part. But, I do want to “hold harmless” both the Association and Georgetown for my remarks. The views I express this afternoon are mine, and mine alone. I’m going to tell you exactly what I think. No “party line,” no “bureaucratic doublespeak,” so “sugar coating.” Just the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!

 

I have good news and bad news. The good news is that we don’t have an implicit bias problem in the U.S. asylum adjudication system. The bad news: The bias is now, unfortunately, quite explicit.

 

Here’s a quote about refugees: “I guarantee you they are bad. They are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people.”

 

Here’s another one: “We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country. When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order.”

 

Here’s another referencing the presence of an estimated 11 million undocumented residents of the U.S.: “Over the last 30 years, there have been many reasons for this failure. I’d like to talk about just one—the fraud and abuse in our asylum system.”

 

Here’s yet another: “We’ve had situations in which a person comes to the United States and says they are a victim of domestic violence, therefore they are entitled to enter the United States. Well, that’s obviously false but some judges have gone along with that.”

 

You might think that these anti-asylum, and in many cases anti-Latino, anti-female, anti-child, anti-asylum seeker, de-humanizing statements were made by members of some fringe, xenophobic group. But no, the first two are from our President; the second two are from our Attorney General.

 

These are the very officials who should be insuring that the life-saving humanitarian protection purposes of the Refugee Act of 1980 and the Convention Against Torture are fully carried out and that our country fully complies with the letter and spirit of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees which is binding on our country under the 1967 Protocol.

 

Let me read you a quote that I published yesterday on my blog, immigrationcourtside.com, from a young civil servant resigning their position with “EOIR,” otherwise known as our Immigration Court system, or, alternatively, as the sad little donkey from Winnie the Pooh.

 

I was born and raised in a country that bears an indelible and shameful scar—the birth and spreading of fascism. An ideology that, through its different permutations, almost brought the world as we know it to an end. Sadly, history has taught me that good countries do bad things—sometimes indescribably atrocious things. So, I have very little tolerance for authoritarianism, extremism, and unilateral and undemocratic usurpations of Constitutional rights. I believe that DOJ-EOIR’s plan to implement individual annual numerical performance measures—i.e., quotas—on Immigration Judges violates the Due Process clause of the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution, and the DOJ’s own mission to “ensure the fair and impartial administration of justice.” This is not the job I signed up for. I strongly believe in the positive value of government, and that the legitimacy of our agency—and any other governmental institution for that matter—is given by “the People’s” belief in its integrity, fairness, and commitment to serve “the People.” But when the government, with its unparalleled might and coercive force, infringes on constitutionally enshrined rights, I only have two choices: (1) to become complicitous in what I believe is a flagrant constitutional violation, or (2) to resign and to hold the government accountable as a private citizen. I choose to resign because I cannot in good conscience continue serving my country within EOIR.

 

Strong words, my friends. But, words that are absolutely indicative of the travesty of justice unfolding daily in the U.S. Immigration Courts, particularly with respect to women, children, and other asylum seekers –- the most vulnerable among us. Indeed, the conspicuous absence from this conference of anyone currently serving as a judge in the U.S. Immigration Courts tells you all you really need to know about what’s happening in today’s U.S. justice system.

 

Today, as we meet to thoughtfully discuss how to save refugees, the reality is that U.S. Government officials are working feverishly at the White House and the U.S. Department of Justice on plans to end the U.S. refugee and asylum programs as we know them and to reduce U.S. legal immigration to about “zero.”

 

Sadly, the U.S. is not alone in these high-level attacks on the very foundations of our Convention and international protection. National leaders in Europe and other so-called “liberal democracies” — who appear to have erased the forces and circumstances that led to World War II and its aftermath from their collective memory banks — have made similar statements deriding the influence of immigrants and the arrival of desperate asylum seekers. In short, here and elsewhere our Convention and our entire international protection system are under attacks unprecedented during my career of more than four decades in the area of immigration and refugee protection.

 

As a result, judges and adjudicators throughout the world, like you, are under extreme pressure to narrow interpretations, expedite hearings, view asylum seekers in a negative manner, and produce more denials of protection.

 

So, how do we as adjudicators remain loyal to the principles of our Convention and retain our own integrity under such pressures? And, more to the point, what can I, as someone no longer involved in the day-to-day fray, contribute to you and this conference?

 

Of course, you could always do what I did — retire and fulfill a longtime dream of becoming an internet “gonzo journalist.” But, I recognize that not everyone is in a position to do that.

 

Moreover, if all the “good guys” who believe in our Convention, human rights, human dignity, and fair process leave the scene, who will be left to vindicate the rights of refugees and asylum seekers to protection? Certainly not the political folks who are nominally in charge of the protection system in the US and elsewhere.

 

So, this afternoon, I’m returning to that which brought this Association together two decades ago in Warsaw: our united commitment to the letter and spirit of the 1951 Convention; additionally, our commitment to fairness, education, international approaches, group problem solving, promoting best practices, and mutual support.

 

In the balance of my presentation, I’m going to tell you four things, taken from our Convention, that I hope will help you survive, prosper, and advance the aims of our Convention in an age of nationalist, anti-refugee, anti-asylum, anti-immigrant rhetoric.

 

 

 

 

BODY

 

Protect, Don’t Reject

 

First, “protect, don’t reject.” Our noble Convention was inspired by the horrors of World War II and its aftermath. Many of you will have a chance to see this first hand at the Holocaust Museum.

 

Our Convention is a solemn commitment not to repeat disgraceful incidents such as the vessel St. Louis, which has also been memorialized in that Museum. For those of you who don’t know, in 1939 just prior to the outbreak of World War II a ship of German Jewish refugees unsuccessfully sought refuge in Cuba, the United States, and Canada, only to be rejected for some of the same spurious and racist reasons we now hear on a regular basis used to describe, deride, and de-humanize refugees. As a result, they were forced to return to Europe on the eve of World War II, where hundreds who should and could have been saved instead perished in the Holocaust that followed.

 

Since the beginning of our Convention, the UNHCR has urged signatory countries to implement and carry out “a generous asylum policy!” Beyond that, paragraphs 26 and 27 of the UN Handbookreiterate “Recommendation E” of the Convention delegates. This is the hope that Convention refugee protections will be extended to those in flight who might not fully satisfy all of the technical requirements of the “refugee” definition.

 

Therefore, I call on each of you to be constantly looking for legitimate ways in which to extend, rather than restrict, the life-saving protections offered by our Convention.

 

Give The “Benefit Of The Doubt”

 

Second, “give the benefit of the doubt.” Throughout our Convention, there is a consistent theme of recognizing the difficult, often desperate, situation of refugees and asylum seekers and attendant difficulties in proof, recollection, and presentation of claims. Therefore, our Convention exhorts us in at least four separate paragraphs, to give the applicant “the benefit of the doubt” in assessing and adjudicating claims.

 

As a sitting judge, I found that this, along with the intentionally generous “well-founded fear” standard, enunciated in the “refugee” definition and reinforced in 1987 by the U.S. Supreme Court and early decisions of our Board of Immigration Appeals implementing the Supreme Court’s directive, often tipped the balance in favor of asylum seekers in “close cases.”

 

 

 

 

Don’t Blame The Victims

 

Third, “don’t blame the victims.” The purpose of our Convention is to protect victims of persecution, not to blame them for all societal ills, real and fabricated, that face a receiving signatory country. Too much of today’s heated rhetoric characterizes legitimate asylum seekers and their families as threats to the security, welfare, heath, and stability of some of the richest and most powerful countries in the world, based on scant to non-existent evidence and xenophobic myths.

 

In my experience, nobody really wants to be a refugee. Almost everyone would prefer living a peaceful, productive stable life in their country of nationality. But, for reasons beyond the refugee’s control, that is not always possible.

 

Yes, there are some instances of asylum fraud. But, my experience has been that our DHS does an excellent job of ferreting out, prosecuting, and taking down the major fraud operations. And, they seldom, if ever, involve the types of claims we’re now seeing at our Southern Border.

 

I’m also aware that receiving significant numbers of refugee claimants over a relatively short period of time can place burdens on receiving countries. But, the answer certainly is not to blame the desperate individuals fleeing for their lives and their often pro bono advocates!

 

The answer set forth in our Convention is for signatory countries to work together and with the UNHCR to address the issues that are causing refugee flows and to cooperate in distributing refugee populations and in achieving generous uniform interpretations of the Convention to discourage “forum shopping.” Clearly, cranking up denials, using inhumane and unnecessary detention, stirring up xenophobic fervor, and limiting or blocking proper access to the refugee and asylum adjudication system are neither appropriate nor effective solutions under our Convention.

 

 

 

 

Give Detailed, Well-Reasoned, Individualized Decisions

 

Fourth, and finally, “give detailed, well-reasoned, individualized decisions.” These are the types of decisions encouraged by our Convention and to promote which our Association was formed. Avoid stereotypes and generalities based on national origin; avoid personal judgments on the decision to flee or seek asylum; avoid political statements; be able to explain your decision in legally sufficient, yet plainly understandable terms to the applicant, and where necessary, to the national government.

 

Most of all, treat refugee and asylum applicants with impartiality and the uniform respect, sensitivity, and fairness to which each is entitled, regardless of whether or not their claim under our Convention succeeds.

 

CONCLUSION

 

In conclusion, I fully recognize that times are tough in the “refugee world.” Indeed, as I tell my Georgetown students, each morning when I wake up, I’m thankful for two things: first, that I woke up, never a given at my age; second, that I’m not a refugee.

 

But, I submit that tough times are exactly when great, independent, and courageous judging and adjudication are necessary to protect both applicants from harm and governments from doing unwise and sometimes illegal and immoral things that they will later regret.

 

I have offered you four fairly straightforward ways in which adhering to the spirit of our Convention can help you, as judges and adjudicators, retain integrity while complying with the law: protect, don’t reject; give the benefit of the doubt; don’t blame the victims; and give detailed, well-reasoned, individualized decisions.

 

Hopefully, these suggestions will also insure that all of you will still be around and employed for our next conference.

 

Thanks for listening, have a great rest of our conference, and do great things! May Due Process and the spirit of our noble Convention and our great organization guide you every day in your work and in your personal life! Due Process forever!

 

 

(08-06-18)

 

 

 

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

In addition to the Moscow Mitches, Grahams, and other corrupt GOP pols who have sold out our nation, the disgraceful performance of Chief Justice John Roberts and his GOP colleagues in the face of the regime’s overtly racist, White Nationalist, deadly abuses of asylum seekers in violation of the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the Constitution, the Refugee Act of 1980 (b/t/w, ignored and abrogated, but never repealed), the Geneva Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol, and the Convention Against Torture will fit well within the “Judicial Aid and Complicity Section” of the future “Museum Honoring Victims of Crimes Against Humanity Committed By The Trump Regime.”  

The Constitution is remarkably clear: All “persons” within the jurisdiction of the U.S. are entitled to due process and equal protection under our laws. Unquestionably, refugees seeking legal protection within our court system, some actually being detained, deported, or forced to relocate by our Government, are within our jurisdiction. An L1 law student knows that! It’s not rocket science!

So, the only way that the Supremes’ majority could abrogate legally required protections is through intentionally disingenuous “legal mumbo jumbo and gobbledygook” and ridiculous “legal fictions” that, at heart, convert refugees and migrants of color into “non-persons” under the law. Similar to their approach to the voting rights of African Americans and Latinos.

That’s how you abandon your duties to your fellow human beings and tank on your Constitutional oaths. Sounds pretty overtly racist to me. And, I must say, it sounds pretty racist to most lawyers who understand immigration and human rights laws.

Too bad and too late for those deserving justice and protection, men, women, children, members of the LGBTQ community, religious and political activists, most highly vulnerable and semi-defenseless in the face of lawless tyranny, whose lives have been sacrificed or ruined forever by lousy, ideological, tone-deaf, anti-human-dignity judging. 

It’s too late for them. But, it’s not too late for America to turn away from 1939 and advance to a better 2021 with a commitment to making “equal justice for all” under the law a reality rather than a cruel, unfulfilled, bogus promise! That would at least honor the memory of the dead, tortured, raped, broken, mutilated, and ruined who have been unnecessarily sacrificed by the GOP and their complicit judges who failed in their duties to our Constitution and to humanity.

We can’t change yesterday. But, we can stop repeating its mistakes!

 

PWS

09-11-20

🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️WELCOME TO COLFAX, LA: DEADLY WHITE SUPREMACY DEEPLY ROOTED IN U.S. LEGAL HISTORY: “The Colfax Massacre” Lives On In Roberts’ Court’s Willingness To Sacrifice Constitutional, Statutory, & Human Rights Of People Of Color To The Trump/Miller Nakedly White Supremacist & Clearly Illegal Agenda!

Colfax Massacre
Gathering the dead after the Colfax massacre, published in Harper’s Weekly, May 10, 1873

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/28/opinion/black-lives-civil-rights.html?referringSource=articleShare

From The NY Times:

By William Briggs and Jon Krakauer

The authors are writers.

  • Aug. 28, 2020

. . . .

In March 1876, Bradley and his fellow Supreme Court justices decreed that he was correct in rescinding the convictions of William Cruikshank and the other white defendants, ruling that although the 14th Amendment gave the federal government authority to act against violations of civil rights by state governments, it did not apply to acts of racist violence by private citizens against other citizens. Furthermore, the court ludicrously declared, the prosecution failed to show that crimes against the murdered Black men were committed “on account of their race or color.” All 98 defendants escaped accountability, emboldening white supremacists across the land.

The Cruikshank decision reinforced a grotesque judicial precedent that severely limited the power of the federal government to prosecute violent crimes against the formerly enslaved. Given free rein by the Supreme Court, white supremacists continued their coordinated campaign of terror against Black people, hastening the demise of Reconstruction. By 1877, every Southern state had been “redeemed,” and they would remain under the control of their white redeemers for decades.

By eviscerating crucial protections of the 14th Amendment, the Cruikshank ruling ensured that the most basic constitutional rights of Black citizens would be denied well into the 20th century. The crabbed, inhumane logic of Cruikshank provided legal cover that allowed systemic racism to flourish and denied civil rights to millions of Americans, perpetuating what John Lewis called a “soul-wrenching, existential struggle.”

A straight line can be drawn from Colfax and Cruikshank to the race riots in East St. Louis in 1917 and in Omaha, Chicago and other cities two years later; to the abhorrent crimes committed in the 1921 Tulsa race massacre; to the criminal brutality unleashed on African-Americans in Selma and Birmingham, Ala., in the 1960s; to the present-day instances of police and white nationalist violence in Ferguson, Mo., Charlottesville, Va., and now Kenosha, Wis.; to the shameful, plain-sight attempts to suppress the Black vote in the 2020 elections. Lest we forget that white supremacy and racial injustice are still endemic in America, we need to remember Colfax and the lasting harm it wrought.

William Briggs is an emeritus professor of mathematics at the University of Colorado, Denver, and author of “How America Got Its Guns: A History of Gun Violence in America.” Jon Krakauer is the author of numerous books, including “Into Thin Air” and “Missoula.”

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

Read the full article at the link. 

I’ve previously highlighted the Colfax Easter Massacre and the  Supremes’ disgusting historical ties to racism, White Supremacy, and the suppression and murder of people of color on Courtside! 

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2017/04/16/history-lest-we-forget-the-u-s-justice-system-the-supreme-court-have-sometimes-been-on-the-wrong-side-of-history-justice-remembering-the-easter-sunday-massacre-in-colfax-la-the-racist-su/

It’s an ugly and disturbing story. But, the worst part is that the ugliness is being repeated in the bogus, White Supremacist friendly jurisprudence of the Roberts’ Court’s GOP majority!

Great deference is given to the illegal and overtly racist schemes of Trump, Miller and their cronies. By contrast, short shrift is given to the voting rights of African Americans and Hispanic Americans. The rights and lives of asylum seekers and other migrants are treated as beyond the realm of humanity. Who cares what abuses the scofflaw regime heaps on them. After all, they aren’t really “persons” entitled to exist. 

Pulling out a few toenails? Hey, A-OK with the JR Five just as long as it’s not their toenails and their exalted positions protect them from having to hear the screams of the tormented or get blood and gore all over their pristine black robes!🤮⚰️☠️👎🏻

It’s called “Dred Scottification” or “dehumanization of the other.” It has no place in 21st Century America. And, neither do the public officials and complicit Justices and judges who enable rampant racism and inhumanity. The “JR Five” would have felt right at home on the “Cruikshank Court.” They are masters at finding disingenuous legal gobbledygook to avoid protecting the rights and lives of people of color from invidiously Executive tyranny and abuse!

Had enough? If we want equal justice under law in America, we must start by taking back control of our nation at the ballot box. Get enough voters and even the Trump regime and the GOP Supremes won’t be able to suppress the results and keep the majority from exercising political power.

This November, vote like your life, our nation, and the world’s future depend on it! Because they do! And, this may be our last chance to save our sinking Ship of State!

PWS

08-30-20

🏴‍☠️☠️👎🏻NATIONAL SECURITY: The Threat Isn’t On The Streets Of Portland Or From The Virtually Non-Existent & Largely Mythical “Antifa” — Leaving Aside The Existential Threat Posed By Trump, The Biggest Threat To America’s Future Existence Is On Our Payroll & Operates With Impunity  From The 5th Floor Of The USDOJ — “Billy The Bigot” Barr Is Hell-Bent On Seeing The US Become A Hitlerian/Putinist State! — “It isn’t arguable; it’s wrong.” — So Why Does The “JR Five” Give Billy A Pass While Failing To Protect Humanity & The Rule of Law?

From the LA Times:

https://edition.pagesuite.com/popovers/dynamic_article_popover.aspx?guid=9c0e081f-1c63-4c31-af1d-af5fddcb108d&v=sdk

What makes Barr a danger to democracy

The attorney general channels Trump

HARRY LITMAN

Atty. Gen. William Barr left us with a terrifying certainty in the wake of his testimony Tuesday in front of the House Judiciary Committee: Under him, the Department of Justice stands ready to advance any pro-Trump policy, justifying it on the basis of a blinkered, tenuous view of the facts and the law, or maybe just Barr’s personal ideological intuitions.

For all its finger-wagging, the Judiciary Committee is not in a position to constrain the attorney general. There is no real brake on Barr’s conduct short of a Trump loss in November. Or, to adopt Barr’s own unsettling gloss, a Trump loss that is sufficiently “clear” that he and his boss would accept it.

Since the hearing, commentators have seized on a couple of blows that Democrats on the Judiciary Committee — Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) primarily — landed on the attorney general. But there was nothing close to a knockdown, and the hard facts remain: The House will not impeach Barr and President Trump will continue to give him full rein.

It’s no secret that the Democrats in Congress (and more than half of the country) view Barr as Mephistopheles — dishonest, partisan, corrupt, even racist. He did nothing Tuesday to try to revise that view; in fact, he seemed indifferent to it.

Norms of evenhandedness, professionalism and especially political disinterest, which traditionally check U.S. attorneys general, do not moderate his conduct. He championed every partisan act his DOJ has taken on the president’s behalf, blandly claiming they reflected the faithful application of the rule of law.

For example, when he defended the highly unusual deployment of federal agents in Portland, Ore., Barr described a “Batman”-like dystopia in which a few U.S. marshals were beset by a marauding horde of uncontrollable professional anarchists. If that were accurate, it would be hard to quibble with sending in the feds.

But the justification dries up immediately if the protests were, as a lot of the reporting on the ground indicates, largely peaceful, and if local law enforcement were capable of defending the Portland federal courthouse and separating lawbreakers from peaceful protestors. (The announcement Wednesday that the Department of Homeland Security’s mystery troops were withdrawing suggests the argument for the invasion was tenuous all along.)

Or consider Barr’s legally tortured defense of the president’s memo attempting to exclude immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally from the 2020 census. The plain language of the 14th Amendment, as well as a unanimous opinion of the Supreme Court, leaves no room for argument: Everyone who “inhabits” the U.S. must be counted.

But Barr claims that Congress has delegated to the Commerce Department an ability to advance an Orwellian definition of “inhabitant.” He called it an “arguable position.” It isn’t arguable; it’s wrong.

And given that it is the attorney general’s job to uphold the law of the land, he shouldn’t even bring up the theory, regardless of the half- or quarter-baked views of the president.

Barr’s partisan proclamations went on and on, with this whopper as a high point: “From my experience, the president has played a role properly and traditionally played by presidents.”

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the op-ed at the link.

Beyond Congressional fecklessness, perhaps the most disturbing and scary aspect of Billy’s anti-democracy, anti-humanity, racist agenda is that it has received only “light pushback” from the supposedly independent Article III Courts, particularly the Supremes’ majority led by Roberts.

Private practitioners who made the types of specious, disingenuous, and wrong arguments to Federal Courts advanced by Billy and fellow Trump toady Solicitor General Noel Francisco and their minions would probably have been disbarred or even in jail by now. Not only do these guys continue their wanton destruction of our legal system, but Roberts & Co. sometimes actually reward the DOJ’s fraud, racism, and bad faith. 

Crooked and corrupt politicos are one thing. But, Supreme Court Justices who won’t call them out for their invidious motivations, won’t stand up for equal justice under law, allow racist abuses in the guise of patently bogus “national security” and Executive prerogative pretexts, won’t protect refugees, asylum seekers, children, or migrants of color, favor tyranny over humanity, and allow their courts to be paralyzed by frivolous Government litigation, dilatory appeals, and transparently bogus procedural gimmicks are the real problem here!  

As Litman points out, despite the “smokescreens” thrown up by Barr and complicit courts, there’s really no ambiguity about what’s happening here. It’s straightforward! It’s a full scale attack on our justice system, our democracy, and our humanity by a bunch of would-be facist thugs operating out of the Executive Branch of our Government. America needs better Justices and Federal Judges who will cut through the legalistic BS, show courage, have integrity,  and stand up for democracy, humanity, and equal justice for all!

Due Process Forever! Complicit Courts Never!

 

PWS

08-03-20

👍IT’S A START, BUT STILL A LONG, LONG WAY TO GO: House-Passed Bill To Begin Removing The Stain Of Trump’s White Nationalism Is Also A Long-Overdue Exposure & Put Down Of Roberts’ Court’s Abject Failure To Stand For Equal Justice For All & Against Trump’s Overtly Unconstitutional Bigotry & “Dred Scottificaton” Of The Other!  

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/23/house-votes-remove-moral-stain-trumps-immigration-policies/

Jason Rezaian writes in WashPost:

In 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump pledged sweeping changes to immigration policy. As president, Trump has succeeded — despite a broad public outcry and many legal roadblocks — in implementing many of his proposed restrictions through a series of executive orders.

Now Congress is pushing back. On Wednesday the House passed the No Ban Act, legislation introduced last year by Sen Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.). The act aims to repeal Trump’s ban on arrivals from majority-Muslim countries and prevent future presidents from issuing discriminatory bans on foreign nationals or followers of specific religions.

“Throughout the history of the U.S., we’ve had a series of tragic nativist chapters in our history,” Coons told me this week. “Did I think we’d be facing another one? No. But when Donald Trump announced his candidacy, I remember thinking I am so glad I live in a country where a man like this couldn’t be president. I was wrong, and we’ve seen how damaging that has been.”

In recent months, the novel coronavirus pandemic, the associated economic downturn, and protests over police killings of African Americans have diverted public attention from Trump’s immigration policies. But they must not be forgotten.

Trump’s plans for an immigration ban have inspired widespread outrage. Some dismissed Trump’s words as empty threats, noting that they were probably unconstitutional. But Trump pressed ahead as soon as he took office.

The first iteration of what became known as the Muslim ban halted entry into the United States of citizens from seven countries, five of which are majority-Muslim.

Since then we’ve watched as immigration officials have separated kids from their parents in detention centers, with at least one of them dying in custody. The images of children in cages provoked an intense backlash and could end up costing Trump at the polls — to the extent that his policies have led his own voters, especially college-educated white Republican women, to question his xenophobic and racist policies.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Jason’s op-ed at the above link.

Somewhat like Sen. Coons, I originally thought that there would be some institutional integrity and moral courage even among the more conservative members of our Judiciary, particularly among the Supremes. After all, there have been at least a few times in our history when judges across the ideological and political spectrum have stood together against the evils of racism, religious bigotry, and hate.

It’s not like Trump, Miller, Bannon, Sessions, Ross, and their hate-mongering cronies were ever particularly subtle about their invidious intent (although, to be fair, I was at the very beginning willing to give Sessions “the benefit of the doubt,” until I saw that his assurances to the Senate were lies under oath in the face of the deep moral corruption and bigotry that infected his whole being).

Boy was I wrong! Right from the git go, even with the advantage of clear evidence of invidious intent, ridiculously transparent and overtly dishonest “pretexts,” (some publicly contradicted by Trump in mid-stream) and the vast majority of lower Federal Court Judges pointing the way with cogent opinions standing up to the Trump charade and endless parade of hate, the Supremes majority tanked. Where the rights of “the other” particularly Muslims and persons color are concerned, they fully embraced Trump’s unconstitutional and tyrannical program of hate and bias thinly disguised as legitimate exercises of Executive Power.  They became willing “Dred Scottifiers!”

Perhaps just as seriously, the Supremes’ “normalized” demonstrable lies, false narratives, and dishonesty as attributes that were to be expected and tolerated from our Chief Executive. What a crock! Ordinary persons are held to basic standards of honesty and candor when dealing with the Government and with Government tribunals. But the President is above it all. While, later on, the Supremes fecklessly claimed that “nobody is above the law,” their actions have shown a disturbing and intellectually dishonest unwillingness to require Trump and his regime to comply with the basics of the rule of law and to act with even a minimal level of candor and honesty.

We can’t vote the “JR Five” out of their lifetime sinecures. But, our democracy does enable us to take the actions necessary to insure that folks like the “JR Five” and other Federal Judges who embrace racism, bigotry, and political corruption over the “equal justice and real due process for all persons” required by our Constitution are not selected to serve in the future in positions requiring legal experiences and moral qualifications that they so obviously lack.

Better judges for a better America. This November, vote like the future of humanity depends on it. Because it does!

 

Due Process Forever!

 

PWS

 

07-23-20