Civil Rights Division – immigrationcourtside.com

😒LOOKING THE OTHER WAY @ GARLAND’S DOJ: ☠️ Deadly Civil & Human Rights Violations Inflicted On Individuals Of Color By DHS/DOJ’s “New American Gulag!”

Alexandra Martinez
Senior Reporter
Prism
PHOTO: Prism

https://notify.dailykos.com/ss/c/atcYNHk4Eh2YdGnwBh-YDCxDIu4OO3SBv2TLoLPFt2czW0dtkj0znJv8y4_fpHhZU-HKs2U4–r_uxxFUTYhHuROxyBNaXybIMjYeD4ksiM97Shwx3b4Hq5WHNh5rUrm37DeupxU-lbnh-mAH_2w53MFbvc01bSsPa27VYNOiTFTIZoVASZIjao4JD7V00kVtSWTDOR1EfZJMNtRdbyStg/3k5/0Fp_rVbkQQqEJZKJd3JlJg/h4/jpbX9uAFBiBfKOSRVHl30U7E_t1pnXvo0RlNJi-44fA

In the early morning on Feb. 4, Jose boarded a packed airplane in Illinois filled with handcuffed immigrant detainees just like him. They were en route to another detention center in Oklahoma after theirs was ordered close. During the hour-and-35-minute flight, several people appeared ill, coughing and sniffling, but no one was able to socially distance. A few days later, Jose began experiencing the worst kind of sickness he had ever felt. He had contracted COVID-19. Jose joins the 1,126 other immigrants in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention who are currently being monitored and tested positive for the virus, representing a 395% surge in COVID-19 cases since January when there were only 285 reported cases.

“I was scared at one point. I’ve never been sick like that in my life,” Jose said. “I thought, ‘I’m going to die here.’”

Jose, who has asked to withhold his last name to protect his identity, is 25 years old and has lived in the U.S. since he came with his parents from Mexico at age seven; he has been in immigration detention for three months. He was originally detained in Illinois at McHenry County Jail, but when Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the Illinois Way Forward Act, banning private and county-run immigration detention, Jose was one of 17 people from McHenry County Jail transferred to the Kay County Jail in Oklahoma.

“We really want to focus on getting releases and getting folks out of detention, instead of transfers to another facility,” said Gabriela Viera, advocacy manager at the Detention Watch Network. “We need to continue shutting down facilities until we are in a place where there are no more facilities for people to be transferred to.”

Another person in a different immigrant detention center, Jorge, was transferred from a facility in New York to Krome Detention Center in Homestead, Florida. According to advocates from the Queer Detainee Empowerment Project, he was exposed to COVID-19 and tested positive for the virus. Jorge has confirmed widespread reports that there is a complete disregard for the virus within the detention center, with no access to hand sanitizer or vaccines.

According to the National Immigrant Justice Center, both McHenry County Jail and the Jerome Combs Detention Center in Kankakee County experienced COVID-19 outbreaks among the ICE population at the time of these transfers. Advocates, public health experts, and members of Congress raised the alarm to Chicago Field Office Director Sylvie Renda in the days before the transfers about the risks of moving people to jails out of state under these circumstances, but ultimately, about 30 people were transferred from McHenry and Kankakee to Oklahoma, Indiana, and Texas.

“There was no distance between us,” Jose said. “When we got there, they just put us all in the dorm room.”

About four days after arriving in Oklahoma, Jose began feeling sick. His body ached, his sinuses were congested, and he had difficulty standing, especially during routine phone calls where there are no chairs provided. The extreme cold at night only worsened his symptoms, and he developed body shivers, chest pain, and a fever. He put in two requests to see the medic before he was finally tested for COVID-19 and confirmed that he had the virus.

“They’re not testing people regularly, and they’re not socially distancing, they’re not providing people with sufficient hygiene products,” said Diana Rashid, National Immigrant Justice Center’s managing attorney, who is representing Jose in his release request. “The spread is just going to continue.”

The medic gave him fever-reducing medication and vitamin D. He was returned to his 20-person pod and was told to remain in his bunk and try to self-isolate within his dorm room the size of a small basketball court.

“I thought they were going to move me to a cell alone,” Jose said. “But, they just left me in the room. I think I even got someone else sick.”

Jose is now recovering and feels better, but at least one other person has tested positive, with a total of nine positive cases in the detention center, according to ICE. But, Jose says that number may be even larger due to underreporting. When a person tests positive, they are put under quarantine for 10 days, meaning they cannot interact with other pods. Even worse, they are not taken out of their rooms for their court hearings, postponing an already delayed process and forcing them to stay in detention longer than necessary. According to Rashid, it would take about two to four weeks to get the first hearing in Chicago’s immigration court after a person is first detained.

“Everyone’s cases stalled for those who are in quarantine,” said Rashid.

Jose, who has been in quarantine for a majority of his detention, says that people are getting frustrated and desperate with the continued prolonging of their cases. Some are even considering signing the removal papers out of desperation.

“I just want to go ahead with my court proceedings and get out of here,” said Jose. “I want to make it to the light at the end of the tunnel.”

Immigration advocates hope more states will follow Illinois and close their detention centers. A total of 41 people were released from these jails during January in Illinois, but they believe that everyone, including Jose, should have been released on the current ICE enforcement memo guidelines. Advocates are also continuing to push for Congress to cut funding for immigration detention and enforcement and hope to invest in vital programs that uplift their communities instead, like health care, affordable housing, and education.

Prism is a BIPOC-led non-profit news outlet that centers the people, places, and issues currently underreported by national media. We’re committed to producing the kind of journalism that treats Black, Indigenous, and people of color, women, the LGBTQ+ community, and other invisibilized groups as the experts on our own lived experiences, our resilience, and our fights for justice. Sign up for our email list to get our stories in your inbox, and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

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Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights, Kristen Clarke looks for civil rights violations by state and local governments. Yet, she studiously ignores those being committed in broad daylight by her boss’s dysfunctional and biased Immigration Courts and the immigration detention empire he enables, supports, and defends.

As Alexandra’s report notes, one well-known result of prolonged detention in intentionally unsafe and substandard conditions is to “duress” individuals into giving up legal rights. Could there be a clearer violation of our Constitution going on right under Garland’s nose? I doubt it! But, no stand against these clear abuses. It’s as if “Gonzo” Sessions, “Billy the Bigot” Barr, and “Gauleiter” Stephen Miller were still calling the shots for Garland!

“The New American Gulag” (“NAG”) operates right under the noses of civil rights honcho Kristen Clarke and her boss AG Merrick Garland with their blessing. Indeed, they have “embedded courts” in the NAG! So much for the Biden Administration’s commitment to civil rights. GULAG PHOTO: Public Realm.

Almost from the “git go,” the Biden Administration has avoided dealing effectively and honestly with the “second (or third) class justice system” being inflicted by the DOJ, disproportionately targeting individuals of color and ethnic communities in America! It’s a rather glaring case of “do as I say, not as I do” that doesn’t appear to have escaped the notice of some Trump Article III judges. They turn the DOJ’s spineless “Dred Scottification” and “Miller Lite” actions and arguments back against them to undermine racial justice, fundamental fairness, and truth in all areas.

In a truly revolting🤮, yet highly revealing, interview with Savannah “Why Am I Giving Air Time To This Bad Dude” Guthrie on today’s Today Show, “Billy the Bigot” Barr made it clear that he considers corruption, lies, fascism, racism, and the final destruction of American democracy a “small price to pay” to fight the “real problem:” Progressive, humane, values-based governance in the common public interest.

But, somehow, Garland and others in the Biden Administration see no reasons to take a stand against this dangerous nonsense!

Remember folks, BTB is the overt racist who casually and glibly told Lester Holt that “Black Lives Matter” is the “Big Lie!” He knows there will be no accountability for GOP enablers like him! Who’s the next “exclusive” for the NBC News crew, the Grand Dragon of the KKK? And, you can bet that if empowered again, the GOP will have no problem reviving the “White Nationalist Clown Show”🤡 @ DOJ.

That leaves the fight for the future of our nation to the NDPA and others who believe that America doesn’t necessarily have to spiral downhill into a “MAGAland” grave, ⚰️ but could actually become something better than we are today! It’s not a given that we can build a better nation and a better world, but it is a possibility.

Will the next generation stand up for a better future for everyone, or fulfill the nasty, backward-looking vision of lies, hate, and intolerance that BTB and the rest of the GOP right have mapped out for them?

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-07-22

🇺🇸🗽⚖️GEORGE W. BUSH INSTITUTE REPORT: GENDER VIOLENCE ☠️⚰️DRIVES CONTINUING REFUGEE FLOW TO U.S. — Dishonesty Of Sessions’s Misogynistic Attack In Matter Of A-B- 🤮 Exposed Again! — Yet, Garland Fails To Take Action To End Misogyny, Anti-Asylum Culture @ EOIR, Even As He Also Fails To Insist On The Restoration Of The Rule Of Law @ Our Borders! — WHY?🤯

Gender Violence in Central America — Gender Violence continues to to be endemic in Latin America! Yet, shockingly, its victims, refugee women of color, can expect little protection in Garland’s Immigration Courts still applying Jeff Sessions’s inaccurate, misogynistic precedent in Matter of A-B- and continuing to be staffed by too many “judges” selected or promoted by the Trump Administration because of their perceived willingness to support anti-asylum policies targeting many women of color! Recently Garland outraged progressives by appointing 17 “Miller/Barr Holdovers” to powerful, life or death, Immigration Judge positions while eschewing better-qualified progressive experts from the private sector who could bring diversity and gender and racial justice to his dysfunctional Immigration “Courts!”
PHOTO: UNHCR website

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2021/06/03/abuse-of-women-and-children-at-root-of-immigration-crisis/

Abused women at border — Migrant women carry children in the rain at an intake area after turning themselves in upon crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, late Tuesday, May 11, 2021, in La Joya, Texas. The U.S. government continues to report large numbers of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border with an increase in adult crossers. But families and unaccompanied children are still arriving in dramatic numbers despite the weather changing in the Rio Grande Valley registering hotter days and nights. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)(Gregory Bull)

By Natalie Gonnella-Platts and Jenny Villatoro In the Dallas Morning News:

When U.S. Border Patrol found him in the Texas desert, 10-year-old Wilton was crying, “they abandoned me.” Exhausted and alone, his image went viral — a poignant visual of the struggle faced by thousands seeking safety.

But Wilton’s story actually began in Nicaragua when his mother, Meylin, wasn’t able to get legal protection from an abusive partner. Mother and son fled to the United States, seeking asylum, but were expelled under a public health rule and sent to Mexico, where they were kidnapped, according to an account in El Pais. Meylin’s brother in Miami could pay only half the ransom — enough for Wilton alone to be released.

Although Meylin was ultimately released and reunited with her son, the tale that led to Wilton’s arrival at the border as an unaccompanied minor isn’t unique. It illustrates the fact that gender-based violence, revictimization and lack of justice affect children, families and communities thousands of miles away. It also highlights the importance of a safe and legal pathway into the United States for survivors of gender-based violence and other asylum-seekers. For many, arriving at the U.S. border seeking asylum is the only legal pathway available.

Immigration reform in the United States is essential to assuring that we have a secure and efficient border, a system flexible enough to handle changes in migrant flows, and the capacity to treat each migrant with dignity. But more needs to be done in the migrants’ home countries, too, so that they are not forced to flee for their safety in the first place.

Any comprehensive plan on Central America and immigration reform should address gender inequity and gender-based violence.

They are not siloed issues to acknowledge only when horrific stories of femicide and human trafficking force us to pay attention. Rather, they are deeply entangled with broader challenges of corruption and poverty. Proposed solutions shouldn’t overlook the impact of gender-based violence on migrant flows, economic development, education and health.

Fourteen of the 25 most dangerous places for women are in the Western Hemisphere, including countries within Central America. Patriarchy and gang violence subject women and girls to abhorrent actions of abuse and control.

Honduras and El Salvador saw some of the highest incidences of femicide within Latin America in 2019, at rates of 6.2 and 3.3 per 100,000, respectively. In Guatemala, adolescent girls are at a high risk of being “disappeared,” with 8 out of every 10,000 girls between the ages of 15 and 17 reported missing each year.

COVID 19-related lockdowns are being exploited by gangs looking to strengthen control: El Salvador alone has seen a 70% increase in gender-based violence since the beginning of the pandemic. And lockdowns have forced vulnerable individuals to stay in close proximity to their perpetrators. Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador reported an increase in intrafamily violence, with El Salvador reporting an increase in intrafamily femicides as well.

Justice systems and access to services need to be strengthened to ensure adequate protection for all under the law. Legal protections often are inhibited by weak institutions, corruption and a culture of impunity toward perpetrators.

According to a 2017 national survey, two-thirds of Salvadoran women over the age of 15 have experienced violence, but only 6% have ever reported it. While laws against child marriage exist across the region, in some countries about 1 in 3 young women are in a union before age 18. Post-trauma support and efforts that inform Central American women of their rights and agency are critical interventions that could help women like Meylin.

Females have been disproportionately affected by the devastating impact of hurricanes Eta and Iota, but the status of women and girls is chronically overlooked in response efforts, exacerbating the risk of violence.

Women and girls must be seen and heard. Greater focus on gender and age-disaggregated data collection and in tracking the effectiveness and efficiency of legal systems is crucial. And women and their lived experiences need to be more fully represented at all leadership levels.

Finally, direct outreach to local communities should be a priority for U.S. government and private sector-led programs. This includes resource and capacity support for advocates and organizations that serve as lifelines for those affected by violence, often at great personal risk. Engagement with men and boys is equally imperative.

How can anyone be expected to thrive when her day-to-day priority is simply to survive? The United States needs to recognize that gender-based violence and gender inequity drive migration.

Immigration reform must include strategies to address the root causes of migration from Central America in effective and lasting ways to prevent situations like Wilton’s and Meylin’s. Women and girls must be front and center in these solutions.

Natalie Gonnella-Platts serves as the director of the Women’s Initiative at the George W. Bush Institute.

Jenny Villatoro is an associate for the George W. Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative.

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“Deterrents” and illegally abusing asylum seekers DON’T WORK! It’s not that difficult a concept. Indeed, these misguided attempts at deterrence have been failing consistently under Administrations of both parties for the past four decades. One would think that an “enlightened nation” would try a different approach rather than simply repeating the costly failures of the past in various forms.

What we need are functioning refugee and asylum systems, led and staffed by progressive experts, operating from INSIDE Government, that will grant status to qualified refugee women in a fair and timely manner and set favorable precedents even while separately addressing the endemic problems in the “refugee-sending countries.” Of course, it will result in more legal immigration of refugees and asylum seekers to the U.S. That’s a good thing for both us and those individuals, not something to be feared or unlawfully and dishonestly “deterred!”

With stagnating population growth, we should welcome and facilitate legal immigration of courageous, talented, dedicated refugee women from all countries and their children through the refugee, asylum, and a much more robust legal immigration system!

Thanks to NDPA warrior-queen Debi Sanders for sending in this item. This report should be great evidence for those litigating to halt the Garland misogyny mess at EOIR and, sadly, to some extent in U.S. Courts of Appeals that have chosen to sweep both reality of what’s happening in the Northern Triangle and the patent unconstitutionality of a system governed by bogus precedents entered or promoted by AG’s affiliated with DHS Enforcement who also packed and reshaped the immigration “judiciary” in the image of nativist restrictionists! However, compelling as it is, the report only adds to the existing body of documentation of the dishonest approach by Administrations of both parties to Latin American asylum claims, particularly those of women and children.

For Pete’s sake, first and second year law students know that the EOIR travesty is unconstitutional! Why are life-tenured Article III Judges covering it up? Hopefully, history will take note of their mal-performance on the bench! These guys are life-tenured! So, what’s their excuse for not upholding the Constitution against clear Congressional and Executive abuses?

Hard for me to say this. But, former President George W. Bush is doing more for human rights, gender rights, civil rights, and immigrants rights’ than Garland or anyone else at the Biden DOJ! At least he speaks out publicly for the humanity and contributions of migrants and for their fair and generous treatment, which is more than any member of the Biden Administration has done as they continue to mistake softening the rhetoric with taking firm action to reverse White Nationalist policies and replace them with readily achievable progressive ones.

Meanwhile, despite pleas from nearly every expert, progressive, human rights, immigrants’ rights, and gender rights group in the U.S., Garland continues to allow Sessions’s wrong, toxic, and misogynistic decision in Matter of A-B – to remain in place and threaten the lives of female refugees while ignoring the misogynistic, anti-asylum, culture inculcated by Sessions and Barr at EOIR that continues to flourish and daily dish out abuse to migrants and their representatives without meaningful consequences.

Judge Merrick Garland — “ . . . while this guy continues to apply misogynistic precedents, eschew progressive experts, recycle failed ‘Aimless Docket Reshuffling’ gimmicks, and allow the Trump-era anti-asylum culture to continue to flourish at EOIR and DOJ?” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland
Official White House Photo
Public Realm

What, indeed, is someone like AAG Vanita Gupta doing with herself at Garland’s anti-progressive, and anti-due-process mess at DOJ? Why are folks like her and Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke there in the first place if they aren’t going to stand up to Garland’s tone-deaf, inept approach to gender rights, human rights, and racial justice @ EOIR? How, on earth, do you lead a “Civil Rights Division” while turning a blind eye to grotesque violations of civil and human rights going on daily in your “Boss’s” wholly owned “court” system that functions like no “real court” in America? What’s DAG Lisa Monaco doing presiding over a gender disaster at EOIR? It’s straight out of “Jim Crow!”

James “Jim” Crow
Symbol of American Racism, still right at home at Garland’s EOIR!

Woman Tortured — “She struggled madly in the torturing Ray” — “Do Garland, Monaco, Gupta, & Clarke work in ‘sound-proofed offices’ where they can’t hear our tortured screams and moans? What’s wrong with those guys? We’re suffering and dying while they are fiddling and diddling!”
Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

And, I wouldn’t say that Vice President Harris is looking very good either, as she “swallows the whistle” on notorious scofflaw human rights violations that she was well aware of from her time in the Senate! Doesn’t anyone in the Biden Administration have the backbone to speak up for human rights, human decency, and restoring the rule of law? Is it REALLY our position that following the Constitution, our statutory laws, and the international treaties to which we are party is beyond the capabilities of the U.S. Government? If so, what, may I ask, is the difference between us an any third world dictatorship where laws have no meaning?

Vice President Kamala Harris — Vice President Kamala D. Harris. “Our first African-American, AAPI, child of immigrants VEEP seems curiously deaf and indifferent to the gross abuses being heaped on migrants and women of color at EOIR and at our Souther Border! What’s her excuse for turning her back on the progressive, human rights, gender equality groups that helped put her in office. Why is she remaining silent as Garland continues to appoint Billy Barr’s hand-selected non-progressive, non-diverse Immigration Judges to a life-determining “judiciary” that the Biden Administration wholly controls? How can you create a progressive, diverse, Article III Judiciary that will promote racial equity when you’re unwilling to apply those values and selection criteria to a huge judiciary that you actually control? What message are you sending to ‘next generation progressive attorneys of color’ when you allow Garland to ignore them in favor of lesser qualified candidates? Why aren’t you out there actively recruiting more attorneys of color and other underrepresented groups for the Immigration Judiciary rather than allowing Garland to use same-old, same old bogus “USA Jobs Phantom recruitments?” Lots of unanswered questions here!
Vice President of the United States
(Official Senate Photo)

I can’t figure it out! But, I do know that Garland’s lousy stewardship at EOIR, failure to speak out for fundamental fairness, usher in progressive changes, and restore due process @ EOIR has reached “crisis proportions” affecting our entire justice system and threatening democracy!

Hopefully, progressive advocacy, human rights, and civil rights groups will keep up the pressure and demands for long, long, long overdue and readily achievable changes at EOIR: in leadership, precedents, culture, and administration of justice! (Get this: Garland just created yet another bogus “Dedicated Docket” without a functional e-filing system to make it work! That’s “Aimless Docket Reshuffling 101,” as anyone who has actually had to deal with the mess in his Immigration Courts could tell him. But, he’s apparently not interested!) Right now, it’s an unmitigated “disaster zone” continuing to spiral downward!

There is a direct link between the “Dred Scottification of the other” that Garland countenances at EOIR and the overall failure of our justice system to deal effectively with institutionalized racism! The U.S. has a long, disreputable history of treating women and persons of color as “non persons” under the Constitution. Much of it traces to our immigration laws where “the others” are routinely dehumanized, stereotyped, demonized, and abused by those who falsely claim to be furthering the “rule of law!” We will NOT achieve racial justice for all in America until we deal with the festering wounds intentionally inflicted on women, children, and people of color in our immigration system, at EOIR, and illegally continuing at our borders!

By choice, Garland now “owns” the misogynistic, anti-due-process, anti-asylum disaster @ EOIR. Make him deal with it in a constructive way!

🇺🇸🗽⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever! Garland’s continued tolerance of misogyny and the anti-due-process, anti-asylum culture at EOIR, NEVER! Stop Garland’s continuing misogynistic nonsense before more refugee women and people of color needlessly die! What’s it going to take finally to get some “real justice @ Justice?”

PWS

06-05-21

WASHINGTON POST: VOTING RIGHTS ARE THE CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE OF OUR AGE — AS USUAL, JEFF SESSIONS IS SQUARELY ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/voter-suppression-is-the-civil-rights-issue-of-this-era/2017/08/19/926c8b58-81f3-11e7-902a-2a9f2d808496_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-b%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.1bfaa722c738

“Yet even if all 1,500 Confederate symbols across the country were removed overnight by some sudden supernatural force, the pernicious crusade to roll back voting rights would continue apace, with voters of color suffering its effects disproportionately. Pushing back hard against those who would purge voter rolls, demand forms of voter ID that many Americans don’t possess, and limit times and venues for voting — this should be a paramount cause for the Trump era.

In statehouse after statehouse where Republicans hold majorities, the playbook is well established, and the tactics are becoming increasingly aggressive.

Mr. Trump’s voter fraud commission is at the vanguard of this crusade, and the fix is in. Its vice chairman, Kris Kobach, is the nation’s most determined, litigious and resourceful champion of voter suppression. Under his tutelage, the commission is likely to recommend measures whose effect will be that new obstacles to voting would be taken up in state legislatures. Millions of voters are at risk of disenfranchisement from this effort, and the knock-on effects of such a mass act of disempowerment are dizzying.

The events in Charlottesville and the president’s apologia for the right-wing extremists there should mobilize anyone passionate about civil rights. There would be no better target for their energies than the clear and present danger to the most fundamental right in any democracy: the vote.”

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Read the complete article at the link.

Sessions and his Civil Rights Division are supposed to be out there defending the right of citizens, particularly minorities, to vote. Instead, he has thrown the weight of the Justice Department to those GOP hacks seeking to suppress the vote. Meanwhile the Civil Rights Division is thinking of perverse ways to abuse Civil Rights laws by using them to promote white privilege and white supremacy.

Sen. Liz Warren was silenced by McConnell when she told the truth about Sessions’s continuing racism. She was right.

PWS

08-20-17

CIVIL RIGHTS: Sessions Discovers America’s REAL Civil Rights Crisis — Insufficient White Privilege — Every White Kid Should Have Have Preferred Admission (How Else Do You Think Trump & Some Of His Cronies Got Into Good Schools?) — Gonzo Wants To Use Taxpayer $$$ To Turn Civil Rights Laws Against Blacks & Other Minorities!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/us/politics/trump-affirmative-action-universities.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Charlie Savage reports for the NY Times:

“WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is preparing to redirect resources of the Justice Department’s civil rights division toward investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants, according to a document obtained by The New York Times.

The document, an internal announcement to the civil rights division, seeks current lawyers interested in working for a new project on “investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions.”

The announcement suggests that the project will be run out of the division’s front office, where the Trump administration’s political appointees work, rather than its Educational Opportunities Section, which is run by career civil servants and normally handles work involving schools and universities.

The document does not explicitly identify whom the Justice Department considers at risk of discrimination because of affirmative action admissions policies. But the phrasing it uses, “intentional race-based discrimination,” cuts to the heart of programs designed to bring more minority students to university campuses.

Supporters and critics of the project said it was clearly targeting admissions programs that can give members of generally disadvantaged groups, like black and Latino students, an edge over other applicants with comparable or higher test scores.

The project is another sign that the civil rights division is taking on a conservative tilt under President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. It follows other changes in Justice Department policy on voting rights, gay rights and police reforms.

. . . .

The pending start of the affirmative action project — division lawyers who want to work on it must submit their résumés by Aug. 9, the announcement said — joins a series of changes involving civil rights law since Mr. Trump’s inauguration.

In a lawsuit challenging Texas’ strict voter identification law, the Justice Department switched its position, dropping the claim that the law was intentionally discriminatory and later declaring that the law had been fixed. Mr. Sessions has also made clear he is not interested in using consent decrees to impose reforms on troubled police departments and has initiated a sweeping review of existing agreements.

Last week, the Justice Department, without being asked, filed a brief in a private employment discrimination lawsuit. It urged an appeals court not to interpret the ban on sex-based discrimination in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as covering sexual orientation. The Obama administration had shied from taking a stand on that question.

Vanita Gupta, who ran the civil rights division in the Obama administration’s second term and is now president of the liberal Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, noted that the briefs in the Texas voter identification and gay-rights cases were signed only by Trump administration political appointees, not career officials, just as the affirmative action project will apparently be run directly by the division’s front office.

“The fact that the position is in the political front office, and not in the career section that enforces antidiscrimination laws for education, suggests that this person will be carrying out an agenda aimed at undermining diversity in higher education without needing to say it,” Ms. Gupta said.

The civil rights division has been a recurring culture-war battleground as it passed between Democratic and Republican administrations.”

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Wow! Talk about waste, fraud, and abuse by political officials at the DOJ! Oh, GAO, where art thou when the country needs you? Assuming that any minorities can still vote by the time Sessions and Trump get through — a big if — they might want to consider turning out for candidates who will support the “original intent” of Civil Rights laws, rather than perverting them to further entrench the White (Largely Male) GOP Establishment.

PWS

08-02-17

HUFFPOST: How White Nationalist “Know Nothing” Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions Tanked Needed Police Reform In Chicago Without Even BOTHERING TO READ The DOJ’s 160 Page Report!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/doj-police-reform-jeff-sessions-chicago_us_58f50a77e4b0da2ff86254cf?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000 report on HuffPost:

Ryan J. Reilly & Kim Bellware report in HuffPost:

“CHICAGO ― In the final months of the Obama administration, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division scrambled to complete its biggest-ever investigation of a city police department: a 13-month probe of Chicago’s 12,000-strong police force that wrapped up just a week before President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

For more than a year, the division’s lawyers reviewed thousands of Chicago Police Department documents, visited all 22 police districts, went on 60 ride-alongs, reviewed 170 police shooting files, examined over 425 incidents of less-lethal force, interviewed 340 department members and talked to about 1,000 Chicago residents.

Their final report, issued Jan. 13, recognized the tough job officers had in Chicago as they dealt with spiking gun violence, and praised the “diligent efforts and brave actions of countless” officers. But a “breach in trust” eroded Chicago’s ability to prevent crime, because officers were able to escape accountability when they broke the law, the report found. Because “trust and effectiveness in combating violent crime are inextricably intertwined,” the report found “broad, fundamental reform” was needed in Chicago.

Without a formal legal agreement to reform — known as a consent decree — and independent monitoring, the report concluded, reform efforts in Chicago were “not likely to be successful.”

Jeff Sessions, Trump’s attorney general, disagrees. In recent weeks, Sessions has expressed deep skepticism about the role of the federal government in fixing broken police departments, leaving serious doubts about the ultimate outcome of the Justice Department’s work in Chicago.

Sessions wants the Justice Department to serve as the “leading advocate for law enforcement in America.” While admitting he hadn’t read the full Chicago report, he called it “anecdotal” and “not so scientifically based.” Earlier this month in Baltimore, a Justice Department lawyer said Sessions had “grave concerns” about an agreement previously reached between that city and the Obama administration. A federal judge signed off on the deal over Sessions’ objections.

In an interview with a conservative radio host this month, Sessions seemed to suggest that Justice Department investigations and consent decrees were resulting in “big crime increases.” In an op-ed for USA Today last week, Sessions wrote that consent decrees could amount to “harmful federal intrusion” that could “cost more lives by handcuffing the police instead of the criminals.” There’s too much focus on “a small number of police who are bad actors,” Sessions wrote, and “too many people believe the solution is to impose consent decrees that discourage the proactive policing that keeps our cities safe.”

Chicago has a serious violent crime problem. Last year was the deadliest in the city in two decades, with 762 homicides. But supporters of police reform like Jonathan Smith, a former official in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said that Sessions was “simply wrong” to suggest that crime goes up as a result of reform (or, in Chicago’s case, an investigation). DOJ investigations can increase community confidence in police departments and make people safer, Smith argued.

A protester takes part in a weekly nighttime peace march through the streets of a South Side Chicago neighborhood on September 16, 2016.

“In communities like Baltimore and Chicago where certain neighborhoods are experiencing gun violence, the problems long predate Justice Department involvement,” said Smith. “The issues in those communities are linked to weakened gun laws that create easy access to firearms, lack of opportunity for jobs and housing and a history of police misconduct that creates mistrust between police and the communities they serve. Lack of police accountability is often a significant contributing factor in a spike in crime because of community mistrust.”

Lorie Fridell, a criminologist and police bias expert from whom the Chicago’s Police Accountability Task Force solicited information for its report released last year, said DOJ investigations not only help to usher in badly need reforms to the specific departments probed, but other departments also rely on the reports to determine if their own departments are meeting constitutional standards.

“I think it’s very unfortunate the DOJ is no longer going to prioritize police reform,” Fridell said. ”The future of police reform is therefore going to have to come from the ground up. It’s going to be important for concerned individuals to demand high-quality policing.”

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Read the complete HuffPost article at the above link. And, for those of you who would like to be better informed than AG “Gonzo Apocalypto” about the need for serious police reform in Chicago, you can read the complete DOJ Civil Rights Division report here: https://www.justice.gov/opa/file/925846/download.

Sen. Liz Warren, Sen. Cory Booker, and others who opposed Sessions’s nomination to be AG, and told the truth about his white nationalist views (which he tried to conceal/downplay during his confirmation hearing, in addition to lying under oath about his Russian contacts) were right!

PWS

04-29-17

MORE TRUMPIAN DISCONNECT — THE WAR ON AMERICAN CITIZENS’ RIGHTS CONTINUES: Sessions’s DOJ “Civil Rights” Div. Sent Out To Undercut Civil Rights In Baltimore Court Case — “Unprecedented And Extraordinary” — “We Are In Uncharted Territory” — “Dissed” Citizen-Victim Left In Tears By DOJ Action — In The “World Of Sessions,” Citizens’ Constitutional Rights Take Back Seat To “Fighting Crime” — Duh, Isn’t Unwarranted/Unnecessary Police Violence A Crime, Jeff? — Liz Was “Right On!”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/justice-department-expresses-skepticism-in-court-over-baltimore-police-consent-decree/2017/04/06/64d2a756-1a40-11e7-9887-1a5314b56a08_story.html

Peter Hermann and Justin Jouvenal report in the Washington Post:

“BALTIMORE — A Justice Department attorney expressed “grave concerns” Thursday about moving forward with a federal plan to make changes to this city’s police department, telling a federal judge that the Trump administration prefers that revisions be made and overseen by local government.

The hearing to gather public input on the proposed consent decree became a clash over the future of police departments, as Baltimore residents affected by police shootings and beatings forcefully pushed back against any delays.

The hearing came just days after U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that he would have top deputies review such agreements with departments nationwide.

Sessions said he wanted to ensure the agreements align with administration priorities of promoting officer safety and morale while fighting violent crime, but advocates say the move could stymie much-needed changes to departments in the wake of high-profile police shootings of minorities in recent years.

The tension was on display Thursday, as well as an unusual role reversal — the Justice Department distanced itself from its plan negotiated by President Barack Obama’s administration, while Baltimore officials, residents and activists openly embraced it.

“Please do not delay this decree,” implored Greta Carter-Willis, whose 14-year-old son was fatally shot by a police officer several years ago. “We need to turn this police department around.”

She later broke down crying.

The consent decree follows a blistering Justice Department report that found widespread constitutional violations and discrimination in the Baltimore Police Department. The report was prompted by the 2015 death of Freddie Gray, who was fatally injured in police custody.

John Gore, the acting assistant attorney general for the civil rights division of Justice, said in court Thursday that the department wanted a 30-day delay on a decision to implement the plan “so new leadership can reanalyze and engage with the city as necessary.

Ultimately, “it is up to local communities to try and work with police to try and ensure reforms are implemented fully,” Gore said. “We have grave concerns that this consent decree is what is needed” as the means to change the police force and help fight crime.”

. . . .

Jonathan Smith, executive director of the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, called the situation in Baltimore “unprecedented and extraordinary.” He said there is no precedent for a lead party to pull out after a consent decree is signed and the matter is before the court. “We are in uncharted territory.”

Smith, was in the Justice Department’s civil rights division under the Obama administration from 2010 through 2015 and negotiated a consent decree with the New Orleans Police Department.”

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The grotesque spectacle of Jeff Sessions in charge of the U.S. Department of Justice continues to get more jaw-dropping every day.

It wasn’t long ago that Senate Majority Leader Mitch “Nuke Em” McConnell (R-KY) shut down Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) while she was trying to “complete the record” on Sessions’s total unsuitability to be in charge of overseeing the delivery of justice in America and protecting the constitutional rights of all Americans (which actually includes immigrants who are entitled to constitutional due process protections). Everybody who doubted the truth of her message owes Sen. Warren a huge apology. And, those Senators who voted to confirm Sessions as AG should be ashamed.

Ever wonder how much damage one man can do the the U.S. justice system? Well, we’re finding out. And, it isn’t pretty.

PWS

04/07/17

Former Obama DOJ Civil Rights Officials Blast Sessions On Local Policing! — Seattle Finds Sessions Dead Wrong, Fed’s Intervention & Consent Decrees Make Dramatic Improvements, Save Citizens & Police From Unnecessary Violence!

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/opinion/dont-let-jeff-sessions-undermine-police-reform.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_ty_20170406&nl=opinion-today&nl_art=9&nlid=79213886&ref=headline&te=1&_r=0&referer=

Op-Ed in the NY Times:

By VANITA GUPTA and COREY STOUGHTON
APRIL 5, 2017
“Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently ordered a review of federal agreements with a number of local law enforcement agencies aimed at reforming troubled departments. As a first step, the Justice Department on Monday asked a judge to delay a consent decree that would overhaul Baltimore’s police force.

On its face, Mr. Sessions’s order simply asks whether the consent decrees promote public safety, support officers, respect local control and are warranted. But underlying the order is the Trump administration’s belief that efforts to align police practices with the Constitution have compromised public safety and thrown police officers under the bus.

This couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Countless police chiefs and mayors are vocal about wanting federal reform or have emerged from the consent decree process remarking that their departments were the better for it. Mr. Sessions claims to want to revert to local control, but he should listen to local officials like Baltimore’s police commissioner, Kevin Davis, who called the Justice Department’s request to delay the reform agreement “a punch in the gut” and noted that “a consent decree will make the Baltimore police department better both with the crime fight and our community relationships.”

No matter what review Mr. Sessions conducts, he cannot unilaterally undo these reform agreements. That’s because the district courts that oversee them will ultimately decide their fate. In addition, the reforms are negotiated with local elected officials and law enforcement leaders, with extensive input from grass-roots organizations, police unions, officers and civilians. Mr. Sessions can try to undermine them, but many of the reforms are durable.

That’s good, because communities around the country need this work to continue. In cities like Ferguson, Mo., Chicago and Baltimore, federal reform addresses unconstitutional stops, searches and arrests, and excessive and retaliatory force. These problems erode trust between police departments and the communities they serve, trust that is essential to effective policing as well as officer and public safety.
Rebuilding these ties is also necessary for preventing and solving crime. Few in law enforcement would disagree with this. When we worked on police reform at the Justice Department, we heard over and over again from officers and community members during our investigations in Baltimore and Chicago that relationships had broken down so badly, witnesses sometimes refused to share vital information and victims declined police assistance.

Mr. Sessions’s suggestion that the Justice Department’s policing agreements interfere with proactive policing is likewise baseless. There is no question that lawful stops, arrests and, at times, the use of force are all necessary tools for ensuring public safety. But Baltimore’s misguided zero-tolerance policing strategy, for example, severely damaged police-community relations, especially in black neighborhoods. Even the Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police acknowledged that officers felt “pressure to achieve numbers for perception’s sake.”

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

And, Seattle’s recent experience shows that Federal intervention and consent decrees improve policing and saves lives, as shown by this report in the Seattle Times:

“Five years after the U.S. Justice Department found Seattle police officers too often resorted to excessive force, the federal monitor overseeing court-ordered reforms issued a glowing report Thursday concluding the department has carried out a dramatic turnaround.

Crediting Mayor Ed Murray, Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole and, most of all, the Seattle Police Department’s men and women, the monitor, Merrick Bobb, found overall use of force is down and, when officers do use it, it is largely handled in a reasonable way consistent with department policies.
As a result, Bobb found the department to be in substantial compliance — formally known as initial compliance — with core provisions of a 2012 consent decree that required the city to adopt new policies and training to address excessive force.
“The significance and importance of this finding cannot be understated, as this report makes clear,” Bobb wrote in the 102-page assessment. “It represents a singular and foundational milestone on SPD’s road to full and effective compliance — and represents Seattle crystallizing into a model of policing for the 21st century.”

Moreover, use of force has dropped even as officer injuries have not gone up and crime, by most measures, has not increased, Bobb and his monitoring team write in the report.

O’Toole shared the results in a departmentwide email Monday afternoon, saying, “In short, the Monitor’s assessment confirms the data that SPD reported on earlier this year: of the hundreds of thousands of unique incidents to which SPD officers respond every year, only a small fraction of one percent result in any use of force.”

The report, which has been in the works for some time, comes days after U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered Justice Department officials to conduct a review of reform agreements with more than a dozen police agencies nationwide to determine whether they, among other things, undermine officer safety and crime fighting.

While the order could undercut newer agreements reached under the civil-rights emphasis during the Obama administration, officials have said it is unlikely to affect Seattle’s pact because it is under the firm control of a federal judge.

The judge, James Robart, has shown an unwavering commitment to Seattle’s consent decree, even declaring “black lives matter” during a court hearing, and earlier this year halted the Trump administration’s first travel ban.
In a statement Tuesday, Murray said, “Our progress under the Consent Decree cannot be undone by empty bureaucratic threats. Our police department is well into the process of reform and will continue this work. We are too far along for President Trump to pull us away from justice.”

Read the complete article here: http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/in-major-step-federal-monitor-finds-seattle-police-use-of-force-reforms-are-working/?utm_source=The+Seattle+Times&utm_campaign=fe0fd2fdf6-Alert_Dramatic_turnaround_in_Seattle_PD’s_use_of_f&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5beb38b61e-fe0fd2fdf6-122767877

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

Must be hard for current and former DOJ Civil Rights Division attorneys, who have spent years painstakingly investigating, drafting, and negotiating agreements to promote effective, constitutional policing to see their work being trashed by a guy who has spent most of his career trying to limit civil and human rights. Been there myself, in a somewhat different context, and it’s very disheartening and maddening.

While I don’t have much optimism that career attorneys in the DOJ will be able to stand up to Sessions and keep their jobs, it is encouraging that many of the jurisdictions, police departments, and Federal Judges involved in the consent decree process intend to keep the ball rolling despite Session’s attempts to undermine their efforts.

And, certainly advocates, like Gupta and Stoughton in their new “private sector” positions, intend to keep the pressure on even if it means doing battle with the Trumped-up Sessions version of the DOJ. Forget civil rights, gotta keep a close eye on what those H-1B workers and their employers are up to.

PWS

04-06-17

WashPost: Administration Warns Employers Not To Use H-1B Program To “Dis” U.S. Workers!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/us-tells-companies-not-to-overlook-qualified-americans/2017/04/04/87fa4e06-1909-11e7-8598-9a99da559f9e_story.html?utm_term=.fe6b3da5783c

Sadie Gurman reports for the AP:

“WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has issued a stern warning to U.S. companies as they begin applying for coveted skilled-worker visas, cautioning that it would investigate and prosecute those who overlook qualified American workers for jobs.

The message came on the opening day of applications for American employers seeking visas known as H-1B, which are used mostly by technology companies to bring in programmers and other specialized workers from other countries.

“U.S. workers should not be placed in a disfavored status, and the department is wholeheartedly committed to investigating and vigorously prosecuting these claims,” Tom Wheeler, acting head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement.

The Obama administration sued companies for violating the Immigration and Nationality Act’s anti-discrimination provisions, including businesses that favored foreigners over U.S. workers. But Monday’s warning in a news release at the start of the visa process appeared to be a first-of-its kind signal to employers not to put American workers at a disadvantage.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services also announced that it would step up its reviews of employers that use H-1B visas, saying “too many American workers who are qualified, willing and deserving to work in these fields have been ignored or unfairly disadvantaged.”

The statements were the latest indication that even legal immigration will be scrutinized under the Trump administration.”

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

Interesting that Jeff Sessions and the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division are getting so involved in the H-1B program. Normally, H-1B enforcement would be a matter for the DHS, the U.S. Department of Labor, and the Office of Special Counsel for Unfair Immigration-Related Employment Practices at the DOJ. But, I suppose without any voting rights or police abuse cases to investigate, the Civil Rights Division will have some time on its hands for taking on some new immigration enforcement responsibilities.

Another thought. Rather than battling the Administration over the H-1B program and threatening to move tech operations to Canada and elsewhere if their demands are not met, why don’t U.S. tech companies and Democrats “think outside the box.”

Why not make areas of the “Rust Belt” with willing workers and high unemployment the new “Silicon Valley East?” Use H-1Bs to re-train U.S. workers for permanent jobs in technology. Build new offices or refurbish abandoned plants. Establish training programs with local community colleges and technical colleges. Fund some opioid addiction treatment programs to get capable workers off of drugs and into jobs where they have some future. Support regional airports in “the hinterlands” that Trump is trying to shut down.

Trump seems only vaguely interested in addressing the real problems of unemployed and underemployed workers. If he actually does succeed in so-called “health care reform,” (that is transferring money from the needy to the rich) their situation will become immeasurably worse. Futile grandstanding like relaxing environmental controls for an “ain’t gonna happen” revival of the coal industry, appointing Gov. Chris “The Bridge” Christie to a form a new governmental committee on opioid addiction, or having Jeff Sessions divert the Civil Rights Division into H-1B investigations aren’t serious attempts to address the issues.

But, so far, the Dems and the leaders of the tech industry have been largely MIA on practical solutions to these problems that Trump seems unlikely to address in any realistic manner. So, while the Dems are tilting at the “Gorsuch Windmill,” which I can guarantee you isn’t a concern for most “Dems turned Trump voters” in the Rust Belt, the opportunity for real leadership, genuine concern for U.S. workers, and demonstrated problem solving is going by the boards. Maybe that’s how Donald Trump became President with 46.4% of the vote.

Just proving once again the Trump might not have to act presidential or accomplish much of positive value to be a two-term President. And, as he has already shown, he can do that relatively easily even if he never attains the approval of the majority of Americans.

PWS

04/04/17

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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