ADMINISTRATION CONTINUES TO PILE UNPRECEDENTED CRUELTY ON ASYLUM SEEKERS!  — Latest Target Is Work Authorization!

Bess Levin
Bess Levin
Politics & Finance Writer
Vanity Fair

 

Bess Levin writes for Vanity Fair:

 

TRUMP ADMIN HAS A CRUEL NEW PLAN TO HURT ASYLUM-SEEKERS

Just when you thought it couldn’t get more evil, it rose to the occasion!

BY

BESS LEVIN

NOVEMBER 4, 2019

One of the regular themes of the Trump administration is the idea that there’s no way it will be able to continue outdoing itself when it comes to wildly evil policies. And yet, on a near-daily basis, it rises to the occasion! While its evilness does not discriminate—women, Democrats, the LGBTQ+ community, Muslims, pro athletes, the poor, and the media all get a taste—very often it relates to immigrants, with Team Trump finding new and inventive ways to demonize them and make their lives miserable. Recently that‘s involved deporting kids with cancer, and now it extends to refusing to allow asylum-seekers who work when they come to the U.S.

NBC News reports that the administration is working on a proposal to prevent asylum-seekers from applying for work permits for at least a year after they enter the country. Yes, the same administration under which visa denials for poor Mexicans have “skyrocketed”, and which announced in August that new factors that will count against green card applicants will include not having the money to cover “any reasonably foreseeable medical costs” related to a medical condition, having been approved to receive a public benefit, “financial liabilities,” and a low credit score, among other things. Obviously not being allowed to work for at least a year will no doubt contribute to the likelihood that people will be forced to turn to welfare, or force them to work in the shadow economy. It also doesn’t make a lot of sense for an administration that clearly prefers upwardly mobile immigrants, unless, of course, the point of the policy was to put such individuals between a rock and a group of assholes, and simply discourage them from coming to the country altogether.

The policy is expected to be discussed at a meeting Monday afternoon between Kevin McAleenan, the outgoing acting Homeland Security secretary, and heads of agencies for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to two of the officials. And it is meant to target Mexican families seeking asylum, a demographic that has recently risen while the number of Central Americans has decreased since May.

One of the DHS officials said proponents of the policy believe prolonging the period when Mexicans are not allowed to work while they wait for their claim will deter them from coming to the U.S. in the first place…DHS did not respond to a request for comment.

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Of course, the intent here is to discourage individuals from making the asylum applications that U.S. law entitles them to, but that Trump, with help from complicit courts, has all but extinguished without any legislative changes from Congress.

So, first the Trump Administration artificially and intentionally inflates the Immigration Court backlog through “Aimless Docket Reshuffling,” so that applications take much longer than they should in a fair and professionally administered system. Then they penalize the victims.

 

Meanwhile, the Article III Courts, who should have put an end to this unconstitutional nonsense long before now, continue to compound the problem by allowing a biased, xenophobic Administration to run a major court system as a branch of DHS enforcement.

 

Also, it’s important to remember that these outrages are happening on the watch of “Big Mac With Lies.” Those who care about honest public service and American justice should make a point not to allow “Big Mac” to “reinvent” himself to profit from his wrongdoing and the pain and suffering he has unnecessarily inflicted on asylum seekers and others entitled to justice in America but finding none during “Big Mac’s” tenure as “Trump’s Acting Toady.”

 

Of course, things are going to continue to get worse for humanity when Trump’s new “Acting Toady of Homeland Security,” Chad Wolf takes over.

 

PWS

 

11-06-19

 

 

 

 

TRAC DATA: IMMIGRATION COURTS DISCRIMINATE AGAINST DETAINED INDIVIDUALS AND MEXICAN NATIONALS IN PROCEDING WITHOUT COUNSEL!

http://immigrationimpact.com/2017/10/20/mexican-detained-disadvantaged-immigration-court/

Katie Shepherd reports for Immigration Impact:

“Immigrants facing deportation fare far better if they have a competent attorney representing them. For example, studies show that for asylum seekers, representation generally doubles the likelihood of being granted asylum.

For many, the ability to secure competent representation in immigration court is truly a matter of life and death.  Yet fewer than 30 percent of detained individuals and only two thirds of non-detained individuals are represented in their removal case.

Meanwhile, the government is represented by an attorney in every single case.

While immigrants have a right to counsel in deportation proceedings if they can afford one, they do not have a right to counsel at the government’s expense.

New data released this week by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) confirms that a noncitizen’s ability to obtain a lawyer—and the opportunity to meaningfully defend him or herself against deportation—is determined primarily by nationality and whether or not he or she is detained.

The data analysis reflects what detained immigrants, their family members, and the very small number of attorneys who do detained work already know too well—detained immigrants who attempt to retain an attorney face substantial obstacles.

There are myriad reasons that detained immigrants cannot obtain representation.

Because they are detained, they are unable to travel to meet with an attorney in person and must rely on telephones in the facility to call potential attorneys.  Phone calls can be prohibitively expensive and phones are often not easily accessible.

Attorney visitation rules vary by facility—many of which are located in rural areas, hours from the attorney’s office. Further, many detained immigrants are simply unable to afford a competent attorney.

. . .

The TRAC data also shows that Mexican immigrants are disproportionately disadvantaged in immigration court.  They have the highest detention rate (78 percent), yet the lowest representation rate of all nationalities—only 33 percent according to the report.

More than anything, the recent TRAC numbers emphasize the dire need for increased access to counsel for all immigrants facing deportation, particularly those who are detained.”

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Read the complete article at the link.

The policies being followed by Sessions and the DHS — which encourage more detention in out of the way locations — are specifically designed to diminish representation, increase removals, and deny due process to the most vulnerable among us.

PWS

10-22-17