🏴‍☠️ TRUMP, MILLER, & SESSIONS ARE GONE! — BUT, FIVE YEARS LATER, THE PAIN & SUFFERING FROM THEIR CRUEL, UNCONSTITUTIONAL “CHILD SEPARATION” POLICY CONTINUES — Miriam Jordan Reports For The NYT!

Sessions in a cage
Jeff Sessions’ Cage by J.D. Crowe, Alabama Media Group/AL.com
Republished under license
Miriam Jordan
Miriam Jordan, National Immigration Reporter, NY Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/11/us/migrant-family-separations-citizens.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Miriam Jordan @ NYT:

April 11, 2023

6 MIN READ

LOS ANGELES — The Trump administration intentionally separated thousands of migrant children from their parents at the southern border in the spring of 2018, an aggressive attempt to discourage family crossings that caused lasting trauma and drew widespread condemnation.

What is only now becoming clear, however, is that a significant number of U.S. citizen children were also removed from their parents under the so-called zero tolerance policy, in which migrant parents were criminally prosecuted and jailed for crossing the border without authorization.

Hundreds, and possibly as many as 1,000, children born to immigrant parents in the United States were removed from them at the border, according to lawyers and immigrant advocates who are working with the government to find the families.

In many cases, the U.S.-born children were placed into foster care for lengthy periods, and some have yet to be reunited with their parents, lost in the system nearly five years after the separations took place.

. . . .

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Read Miriam’s full article at the link.

Notably, no accountability for public officials who intentionally violate human rights!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-12-23

DUE PROCESS & RULE OF LAW PREVAIL ANYWAY — USD JUDGE TIGAR STOPS TRUMP’S ASYLUM TRAVESTY FOR NOW! — Conflicting Decisions On Same Day!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/us/asylum-ruling-tro.html

Miriam Jordan
Miriam Jordan, National Immigration Reporter, NY Times
Zolan Kanno-Youngs
Zolan Kanno-Youngs
Reporter, NY Times

Miriam Jordan & Zolan Kanno-Youngs report for The NY Times:

LOS ANGELES — A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to continue accepting asylum claims from all eligible migrants arriving in the United States, temporarily thwarting the president’s latest attempt to stanch the flow of migrants crossing the southern border.

Judge Jon S. Tigar of the United States District Court in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction against a new rule that would have effectively banned asylum claims in the United States for most Central American migrants, who have been arriving in record numbers this year. It would have also affected many migrants from Africa, Asia and other regions.

The decision came on the same day that a federal judge in Washington, hearing a separate challenge, let the new rule stand, briefly delivering the administration a win. But Judge Tigar’s order prevents the rule from being carried out until the legal issues can be debated more fully.

The rule, which has been applied on a limited basis in Texas, requires migrants to apply for and be denied asylum in the first safe country they arrive in on their way to the United States — in many of the current cases, Mexico — before applying for protections here. Because migrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala make up the vast majority of asylum seekers arriving at the southern border, the policy would virtually terminate asylum there.

“This new rule is likely invalid because it is inconsistent with the existing asylum laws,” Judge Tigar wrote in his ruling on Wednesday, adding that the government’s decision to put it in place was “arbitrary and capricious.”

The government, which is expected to appeal the decision, has said that the rule intends to prevent exploitation of the asylum system by those who unlawfully immigrate to the United States. By clogging the immigration courts with meritless claims, the government argues, these applicants harm asylum seekers with legitimate cases who must wait longer to secure the protection they deserve.

Under the policy, which the administration announced on July 15, only immigrants who have officially lost their bids for asylum in another country or who have been victims of “severe” human trafficking are permitted to apply in the United States.

Hondurans and Salvadorans have to apply for asylum and be denied in Guatemala or Mexico before they become eligible to apply in the United States, and Guatemalans have to apply and be denied in Mexico.

The policy reversed longstanding asylum laws that ensure people can seek safe haven no matter how they got to the United States. On July 16, the day the new rule went into effect — initially in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas — the American Civil Liberties Union challenged the policy in court in San Francisco. The case in Washington was filed separately by two advocacy organizations, the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, or Raices.

“The court recognized, as it did with the first asylum ban, that the Trump administration was attempting an unlawful end run around asylum protections enacted by Congress,” said Lee Gelernt, the A.C.L.U. lawyer who argued the case in San Francisco.

The groups challenging the rule argued that immigration laws enacted by Congress expressly state that a person is ineligible for asylum only if the applicant is “firmly resettled” in another country before arriving in the United States. The laws also require an asylum seeker to request protection elsewhere only if the United States has entered into an agreement with that country and the applicant was guaranteed a “full and fair procedure” there, they said.

Judge Tigar agreed. “The rule provides none of these protections,” he said in his ruling.

During a hearing in the case on Wednesday, a lawyer for the Justice Department, Scott Stewart, said that a large influx of migrant families had spawned a “crisis” that had become “particularly stark” and created a “strain” on the asylum system.

“Migrants understand the basics of the incentives and are informed about how changes in law and policy can affect their options,” Mr. Stewart told the judge.

Judge Tigar voiced concern about forcing asylum seekers to apply for protection in Mexico or Guatemala. “We don’t see how anyone could read this record and think those are safe countries,” he said, referring to the rule’s language that migrants must apply to the first safe country.

The judge also said that the government did not address the “adequacy of the asylum system in Guatemala,” which is not equipped to handle a surge in applications.

Charanya Krishnaswami, advocacy director for the Americas at Amnesty International, said it was inhumane and cruel to force people fleeing violence to seek safety in places that are as dangerous as the homes they fled. “Everyone seeking protection has the right to humane treatment and a fair asylum process under U.S. and international law,” she said.

In federal court in Washington, two advocacy groups made similar arguments against the new policy.

But that judge, Timothy J. Kelly, found that the groups did not sufficiently support their claim that “irreparable harm” would be done to the plaintiffs in the case if the policy were not blocked. While the rule would affect migrants seeking asylum, the judge said, “the plaintiffs before me here are not asylum seekers.”

“They are only two organizations, one of which operates in the D.C. area, far from the southern border,” he added.

In recent years, the number of migrants petitioning for asylum has skyrocketed.

Migrant families and unaccompanied children have been turning themselves in to Border Patrol agents and then requesting asylum, which typically enables them to remain in the United States for years as their cases wind through the backlogged immigration courts. Only about 20 percent of them ultimately win asylum, according to the government, and many of those whose applications are rejected remain in the country unlawfully.

The administration announced the new asylum policy despite the fact that Guatemala and Mexico had not agreed to the plan, which means those countries have made no assurances that they would grant asylum to migrants intending to go to the United States. Talks with Guatemala broke down and the country’s president, Jimmy Morales, backed out of a meeting that had been scheduled for July 15 at the White House. On Wednesday, President Trump said that his administration was considering imposing tariffs on Guatemalan exports or taxing money sent home by migrants.

The new asylum rule is just one of many efforts by the Trump administration to curb the entry of migrants.

At ports of entry, Customs and Border Protection agents have significantly slowed the processing of applicants through metering — limiting how many migrants are processed to as few as a dozen per day.

And some 16,000 migrants are waiting in Mexican border towns like Tijuana under a policy commonly referred to as “Remain in Mexico,” which forces asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until the day of their court hearing. The policy makes it more difficult for the migrants to secure a lawyer to represent them in the United States, undermining their chances of winning protections.

In November, President Trump unveiled a separate policy that banned migrants from applying for asylum if they failed to make the request at a legal checkpoint. Judge Tigar, who was also hearing that case, issued a temporary restraining order blocking that rule. The case is currently on appeal in the Ninth Circuit.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs reported from Washington, and Miriam Jordan from Los Angeles.

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It’s a much more reasonable order than that issued by Judge Kelly in DC earlier in the day which declared “open season” on asylum seekers. Judge Tigar has been on the front lines of Trump’s war on Due Process and the rule of law. Significantly, he pointed out the absurdity of the Trump Administration’s outrageous scofflaw attempt to classify Guatemala, one of the most dangerous countries in the world, without a functioning asylum system, as a bogus “safe third country.”

It’s on to the appellate courts!

PWS

07-24-19

TRUMP’S WHITE NATIONALIST DRIVEN “MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE” HAS MADE THE BORDER SITUATION WORSE — Refugees, Many Of Them Abused Women & Children, & Other Vulnerable Migrants Are Being “Re-Victimized” By An Administration That Spreads Racist-Inspired Lies, Mocks The Rule Of Law, & Has Abandoned Human Decency!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/us/immigration-border-mexico.html

Manny Fernandez

Michael D. Shear, Miriam Jordan, and Manny Fernandez report for the NY Times:

. . . .

American diplomats say the best way to confront that kind of lawlessness is with the hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid that has been flowing to Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras for several years, designed to bolster the rule of law and improve the economy.

Image

At the Good Neighbor Settlement House in Brownsville, migrants rest, exhausted, after a meal.
At the Good Neighbor Settlement House in Brownsville, migrants rest, exhausted, after a meal.CreditIlana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times

Last week, Mr. Trump abruptly abandoned those efforts, ordering the State Department to scrap about $500 million in aid to the three countries. Mr. Trump’s decision has been criticized by members of both parties, who call it shortsighted.

Likewise, critics say that Mr. Trump’s repeated denigration of Mexico over the years — including his insistence on building a border wall — risks undermining Mexico’s willingness to help to keep Central American migrants from traveling to the United States.

“This is the first Mexican administration that has even been oriented toward doing that,” Ms. Meissner, the Clinton administration immigration commissioner, said.

But blaming other countries and painting those coming across the border from Mexico as a national security threat has never failed to animate Mr. Trump’s core supporters — the ones who helped deliver him the White House in 2016.

“It’s an invasion,” Mr. Trump declared in February, after Congress denied him money to build a wall. “We have an invasion of drugs and criminals coming into our country.”

In fact, the migrants are mostly victims of the broken immigration system. They are not, by and large, killers, rapists or gang members. Most do not carry drugs. They have learned how to make asylum claims, just as the law allows them to do. And nearly all of them are scared — of being shipped off to Mexico, separated from their children, sent to prison. Scared, especially, of going home.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Caitlin Dickerson contributed reporting.

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This is just the conclusion of the much longer article that you can read at the above link.

Unless and until the U.S. recognizes the situation for what it is — Forced Migration —- there can be no effective solutions.

Tone-deaf (and worse) legislators and policy makers (mostly in the GOP) refuse to recognize the fundamental truth — Forced Migrants are Forced Migrants — they ultimately won’t be deterred by harsh laws, malicious prosecutions, biased judges, unfair “expeditious returns,” inhumane imprisonments, racist rhetoric, or any of the other often tried always failed enforcement policies that this Administration and its supporters so love.

The other fundamental truth that Trump ignores is that refugees, asylees, and other forced migrants overall have a positive impact on receiving countries.  They are a human force that should be regulated but not generally avoided. Indeed, that’s a “win-win” formula for success that should replace our current Administration’s insistence on intentionally turning migration situations from opportunities for success into otherwise avoidable “lose-lose” situations.

What will work is dealing with the root causes of forced migration; providing feasible alternatives to coming to the U.S.; fairly and timely adjudicating applications for protection; assimilation; and in some cases truly voluntary, interest-based decisions to return to a country of origin after conditions improve (not expulsion or forced returns).

Targeting human smugglers, drug smugglers, persecutors, and other types of criminals through sophisticated, intelligence-biased undercover-type operations could also be effective.

International cooperation and involvement of the UNHCR and other humanitarian NGOs is also essential.

Better government produces better results; that’s not “rocket science.”

PWS

04-10-19

SCOFFLAWS OUTED AGAIN: U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE BLOCKS TRUMP’S ILLEGAL ATTACK ON ASYLUM LAW: ORDERS PROCESSING OF ALL WHO APPLY TO RESUME! — “Whatever the scope of the president’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden!”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/us/judge-denies-trump-asylum-policy.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Miriam Jordan reports for the NY Times:

LOS ANGELES — A federal judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to resume accepting asylum claims from migrants no matter where or how they entered the United States, dealing at least a temporary setback to the president’s attempt to clamp down on a huge wave of Central Americans crossing the border.

Judge Jon S. Tigar of the United States District Court in San Francisco issued a temporary restraining order that blocks the government from carrying out a new rule that denies protections to people who enter the country illegally. The order, which suspends the rule until the case is decided by the court, applies nationally.

“Whatever the scope of the president’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden,” Mr. Tigar wrote in his order.

As a caravan of several thousand people journeyed toward the Southwest border, President Trump signed a proclamation on Nov. 9 that banned migrants from applying for asylum if they failed to make the request at a legal checkpoint. Only those who entered the country through a port of entry would be eligible, he said, invoking national security powers to protect the integrity of the United States borders.

Within days, the administration submitted a rule to the federal registry, letting it go into effect immediately and without the customary period for public comment.

But the rule overhauled longstanding asylum laws that ensure people fleeing persecution can seek safety in the United States, regardless of how they entered the country. Advocacy groups, including the Southern Poverty Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union, swiftly sued the administration for effectively introducing what they deemed an asylum ban.

The advocacy groups accused the government of “violating Congress’s clear command that manner of entry cannot constitute a categorical asylum bar” in their complaint. They also said the administration had violated federal guidelines by not allowing public comment on the rule.

But Trump administration officials defended the regulatory change, arguing that the president was responding to a surge in migrants seeking asylum based on frivolous claims, which ultimately lead their cases to be denied by an immigration judge. The migrants then ignore any orders to leave, and remain unlawfully in the country.

”The president has sought to halt this dangerous and illegal practice and regain control of the border,” government lawyers said in court filings.

Mr. Trump, who had made stanching illegal immigration a top priority since his days on the campaign trail, has made no secret of his frustration over the swelling number of migrants heading to the United States. The president ordered more than 5,000 active-duty troops to the border to prevent the migrants from entering.

The new rule was widely regarded as an effort to deter Central Americans, many of whom request asylum once they reach the United States, often without inspection, from making the journey over land from their countries to the border.

United States immigration laws stipulate that foreigners who touch American soil are eligible to apply for asylum. They cannot be deported immediately. They are eligible to have a so-called credible fear interview with an asylum officer, a cursory screening that the overwhelming majority of applicants pass. As result, most of the migrants are released with a date to appear in court.

In recent years, more and more migrants have availed of the asylum process, often after entering the United States illegally. A record 23,121 migrants traveling as families were detained at the border in October. Many of the families turn themselves in to the Border Patrol rather than queue up to request asylum at a port of entry.

The Trump administration believes the migrants are exploiting asylum laws to immigrate illegally to the United States. Soaring arrivals have exacerbated a huge backlog of pending cases in the immigration courts, which recently broke the one-million mark. Many migrants skip their court dates, only to remain illegally in the country, which Mr. Trump derides as “catch and release.”

But advocates argue that many migrants are victims of violence or persecution and are entitled to seek sanctuary. Gangs are ubiquitous across El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, where lawlessness and corruption enable them to kill with impunity.

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Entirely predictable. “Many of the families turn themselves in to the Border Patrol rather than queue up to request asylum at a port of entry.”

Why aren’t ethical requirements being enforced on Government lawyers who present and defend these clearly frivolous positions in court?  Knowingly and intentionally depriving individuals of statutory, civil, and constitutional rights, while tying up Federal Judges and other “officers of the court” on frivolous political stunts directed at harming individuals on the basis of race and nationality must, at some point, be deterred!

These are not criminal proceedings, and the Administration is not entitled to a “presumption of innocence” for its lawless actions. At some point, ethical lawyers have an obligation “not to serve” a lawless Administration and to publicly disclose and oppose the Administration’s intentionally illegal actions and intentional wrongdoing aimed at migrants and communities of color in the U.S.  “Job security” doesn’t entitle Government employees, let alone those who also are members of the bar, to violate their oaths to uphold the Constitution.

And no, no matter how much the GOP appointees might want to do so, the Supremes can’t authorize the President to rewrite the clear terms of the law at his whim.

PWS

11-20-18

MIRIAM JORDAN @ NYT – CREDIBLE FEAR APPROVALS FOR REFUGEES AT BORDER PLUNGE AS A RESULT OF SESSIONS’S ASSAULT ON DUE PROCESS, WOMEN, HISPANICS, & THE US ASYLUM SYSTEM – ACLU Sues To Thwart White Nationalist AG’s Efforts To Make Border A Killing Field For The Most Vulnerable Among Us!

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/07/us/migrants-asylum-credible-fear.html

Miriam writes for the NY Times:

Nine years ago, a Guatemalan woman named Irene said, she watched as gangs murdered her husband in front of her when he refused to pay them a “tax,” or extortion fee, to keep the family musical-instruments business open. Some of the assailants were imprisoned, and she continued to run the shop on her own.

Recently, though, the menace resumed, she said. The perpetrators, fresh out of prison, threatened to kill Irene if she did not pay. Fearing for her life, she fled to the United States with her 17-year-old daughter. They arrived at the southwest border seeking asylum on June 13.

Under the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance border enforcement policy, the 47-year-old woman was detained and her daughter was sent to a shelter. A few weeks later, Irene had her initial interview with an asylum officer, the first hurdle applicants must clear in the asylum process.

The officer, who conducted the interview over the phone, determined that Irene had not proved a “credible fear” of persecution if she returned home. Irene was dumbstruck. What was their definition of fear?

“I can’t go back to my country,” Irene, who asked that only her first name be used because she feared reprisals, said this week in a phone interview. “They’ll kill me if I go back.”

Immigration attorneys and advocates report that asylum applicants in recent months are failing their crucial initial screenings with asylum officers at the border in record numbers, the first sign that the Trump administration is carrying out promises to reduce the number of people granted asylum in the United States and limit the conditions under which it is granted.

New reports that people are being rejected at the border with only a cursory review of their claims has raised an alarm among immigrant advocates, who warn that many of those with legitimate claims are being sent home to face danger, or even death, despite international laws that guarantee the right of the persecuted to seek sanctuary in other countries.

Behind the new practices are recent changes to asylum adjudication unveiled by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in June. Critics have said those changes render it all but impossible for those fleeing domestic abuse, gang brutality and other violence to win protection in the United States.

Mr. Sessions’s decision was codified in a memo issued in July to the officers at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services who conduct credible-fear interviews at the border.

. . . .

Data suggests that the number of people succeeding in making a case for credible fear began to decline sharply earlier this year, even before Mr. Sessions announced his new legal guidance.

According to figures collected and released by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, which tracks immigration statistics, findings of credible fear in immigration court began to “plummet” in what appeared to be a “dramatic change” during 2018. During the six months ending in June, only 14.7 percent of the case reviews in immigration court found the asylum seeker had a credible fear. Approval levels were twice that level during the last six months of 2017, the researchers found.

Eileen Blessinger, the attorney representing Irene, the Guatemalan woman, tweeted a photograph on July 12 of a stack of papers. “This is what 29 blanket credible-fear interview denials looks like,” she wrote, noting that among her clients who had been detained apart from their children, “every single separated parent” who was interviewed had received a negative determination.

She said that the trend has persisted since last month’s tweet.

“I haven’t met a single person in the last few weeks who passed their credible-fear interview,” said Allegra Love, executive director of the Santa Fe Dreamers Project, who leads a team of lawyers assisting migrants in detention in New Mexico. She added, “We have never seen such a high volume of denials.”

On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the new policies, which it argues violate due process “in numerous respects” and effectively close the door to asylum to people fleeing domestic abuse and gang brutality.

The lawsuit, filed in the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, asks the judge to declare the new credible-fear policies illegal and to enjoin the government from applying the new standards.

“This is a naked attempt by the Trump administration to eviscerate our country’s asylum protections,” Jennifer Chang Newell, the managing attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement. “It’s clear the administration’s goal is to deny and deport as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.”

. . . .

Paul W. Schmidt, who retired as an immigration judge in 2016, said it appears that the attorney general’s move to reinterpret judicial precedent was “very intentional — to undermine claimants from Central America.”

“Sessions has made it much, much more difficult to fit your case into a category for relief, even if you have suffered very serious harm,” said Mr. Schmidt, who served as chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals from 1995 to 2001.

One case decided before Mr. Session’s decision provides an example of how such cases were often handled in the past. In 2015, a Guatemalan woman named Ana decided that she and her then 11-year-old daughter could no longer endure the relentless psychological and physical aggression inflicted on them by her former partner. They had reported the abuse to local police, to no avail, and finally journeyed north to seek refuge in the United States.

Ana passed the credible-fear interview and moved with her daughter to Kentucky, where a lawyer helped them make their case before an immigration judge.

In early June, a week before Mr. Sessions’s new legal guidance, Ana was granted asylum and the right to remain legally in the United States. “I thank God we can be where we are safe, instead of returning to danger,” she said.

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Read Miriam’s entire story at the link.
I’ve heard USCIS officials claim that “nothing has changed” in the credible fear interview process or results as the result of Sessions’s rewrite of asylum law in Matter of A-B-, and his overtly anti-asylum, anti-Hispanic, anti-female message which has certainly been echoed by the actions of USCIS Director Cissna. Cissna has removed “customer service” (read “human service”) from the agency’s mission. I have been and remain highly skeptical of those claims of “business as usual.”
Perhaps those officials need to go down to the border and watch while the “Irenes of the world” are improperly blocked by their officers from even having a chance to put on a full asylum case before an Immigration Judge. This is neither Due Process nor is it compliance with the Refugee Act of 1980, the 1951 Refugee Convention, and the Convention Against Torture. It’s disgusting, plain and simple! A low point in U.S. history for which even career Civil Servants who are “going along to get along” with Sessions’s vile and lawless message have to bear some responsibility. And that definitely includes some U.S. Immigration Judges “rubber stamping” these parodies of justice. History is recording who you are and what you have done and continue to do.
Indeed, what is “their definition of fear?” Obviously, nothing suffered or to be suffered by those with brown skins under the Sessions regime.
For years, even before Trump, the law has been intentionally manipulated and unfairly tilted against asylum seekers from Central America by “captive” judges working for the DOJ and responding to political pressure to reduce the flow of refugees across the Southern Border. But, Sessions has removed all vestiges of Due Process and legality —  he overtly seeks to send vulnerable asylum seekers back to danger zones without fair hearings.
If these folks could get lawyers, gather evidence, and have a fair hearing before an impartial judge, and an interpretation of protection law consistent with the generous aims of the Refugee Act of 1980 and the international Convention that it implements, and a right to seek corrective review before “real courts” (those not working for Sessions) they would have a decent chance of qualifying for protection. Beyond that, even those who don’t satisfy all of the arcane technical requirements for asylum often face life-threatening danger in countries where the government protection system has broken down or joined forces with gangs and abusers. They should also be offered some type of at least temporary refuge.That’s exactly what the 1959 Convention and Protocol contemplated and some other countries have implemented. 
Some day, we as a nation will be held accountable, if only by history, for what Trump, Sessions, and the White Nationalists are doing to refugees and migrants of color under the cover of, but actually in contravention of, the law (and human decency). But those who are “going along to get along” by not standing up to these abuses of Executive Power, Due Process, and human rights will also be complicit!
PWS
08-08-18

WE MUST STOP DETAINING AND ABUSING CHILDREN! — Government’s Own Doctors “Blow Whistle” On How We Are Permanently Damaging Kids! — “[T]heir report uncovered problems including a child who lost a third of his body weight and an infant with bleeding of the brain that went undiagnosed for five days.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/us/migrant-children-family-detention-doctors.html?rref=collection%2Fbyline%2Fmiriam-jordan&action=click&contentCollection=undefined&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection

Miriam Jordan reports for the NY Times:

LOS ANGELES — The Trump administration, faced with a public outcry over the separation of migrant families at the Southwest border, has said it is exploring a major expansion of family detention centers. But two of the government’s own medical consultants said this week that they had identified a “high risk of harm” to migrant children housed at such facilities.

A series of 10 investigations over the past four years, conducted during both the Obama and Trump administrations, “frequently revealed serious compliance issues resulting in harm to children,” the two physicians, Scott Allen and Pamela McPherson, said in a letter to the Senate’s Whistleblower Protection Caucus.

The doctors said they had “watched in horror” as migrant children were separated from their families over the past several months in a bid to deter illegal border crossers. But they cautioned that the Trump administration’s fallback position may not be much better.

“The likely alternative — detention of children with a parent — also poses high risk of harm to children and their families,” said the doctors, who currently serve as “subject-matter experts” for the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. “In our professional opinion, there is no amount of programming that can ameliorate the harms created by the very act of confining children to detention centers.”

The examinations described in their report uncovered problems including a child who lost a third of his body weight and an infant with bleeding of the brain that went undiagnosed for five days.

In a separate filing this week with a court in Los Angeles, lawyers who conducted more than 200 interviews with migrant parents and children said they had collected “shocking and atrocious” reports about conditions at various government-run detention centers, especially at the initial processing centers operated by Customs and Border Protection along the Southwest border.

The interviews in that case were conducted over the past two months, although similar reports of unpleasant and even dangerous conditions in border processing facilities had emerged even before President Trump took office and imposed the current crackdown on the border.

In the latest interviews, migrants reported freezing conditions, filthy toilets, inadequate water and food that alternately was frozen or made them vomit. “The burritos were spoiled,” one wrote. “The ham looked green,” said another.

One woman, identified in the court filing as Lidia, said she and her 4-year-old son had to wait eight hours for water when they arrived at the processing center and were given only frozen sandwiches that could not be eaten. “My son was crying from hunger,” she said.

. . . .
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Read the rest of Mariam’s article about the shocking degradation of human rights, human dignity, common sense, and moral values being carried out by this Administration, outrageously (and falsely) in the “name of the people.”
We need to both remove unsuitable individuals like Trump, Sessions, and Nielsen from office, and hold them fully accountable for the abuses they are committing! There is nothing that folks like Trump and Sessions fear more than being held accountable for their intentional misconduct! Like all child abusers, they think they can “get away with it.”
PWS
07-21-18

NYT: NO, THIS ISN’T OUT OF A CHARLES DICKENS NOVEL – IT’S ABOUT HOW KIDS ARE TREATED IN JEFF SESSIONS’S “AMERICAN KIDDIE GULAG” – “[T]he environments range from impersonally austere to nearly bucolic, save for the fact that the children are formidably discouraged from leaving and their parents or guardians are nowhere in sight.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/14/us/migrant-children-shelters.html?emc=edit_nn_20180715&nl=morning-briefing&nlid=7921388620180715&te=1

Do not misbehave. Do not sit on the floor. Do not share your food. Do not use nicknames. Also, it is best not to cry. Doing so might hurt your case.

Lights out by 9 p.m. and lights on at dawn, after which make your bed according to the step-by-step instructions posted on the wall. Wash and mop the bathroom, scrubbing the sinks and toilets. Then it is time to form a line for the walk to breakfast.

“You had to get in line for everything,” recalled Leticia, a girl from Guatemala.

Small, slight and with long black hair, Leticia was separated from her mother after they illegally crossed the border in late May. She was sent to a shelter in South Texas — one of more than 100 government-contracted detention facilities for migrant children around the country that are a rough blend of boarding school, day care center and medium security lockup. They are reserved for the likes of Leticia, 12, and her brother, Walter, 10.

The facility’s list of no-no’s also included this: Do not touch another child, even if that child is your hermanito or hermanita — your little brother or sister.

Leticia had hoped to give her little brother a reassuring hug. But “they told me I couldn’t touch him,” she recalled.

In response to an international outcry, President Trump recently issued an executive order to end his administration’s practice, first widely put into effect in May, of forcibly removing children from migrant parents who had entered the country illegally. Under that “zero-tolerance” policy for border enforcement, thousands of children were sent to holding facilities, sometimes hundreds or thousands of miles from where their parents were being held for criminal prosecution.

Last week, in trying to comply with a court order, the government returned slightly more than half of the 103 children under the age of 5 to their migrant parents.

But more than 2,800 children — some of them separated from their parents, some of them classified at the border as “unaccompanied minors” — remain in these facilities, where the environments range from impersonally austere to nearly bucolic, save for the fact that the children are formidably discouraged from leaving and their parents or guardians are nowhere in sight.

Depending on several variables, including happenstance, a child might be sent to a 33-acre youth shelter in Yonkers that features picnic tables, sports fields and even an outdoor pool. “Like summer camp,” said Representative Eliot L. Engel, a Democrat of New York who recently visited the campus.

Or that child could wind up at a converted motel along a tired Tucson strip of discount stores, gas stations and budget motels. Recreation takes place in a grassless compound, and the old motel’s damaged swimming pool is covered up.

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Migrant children in a recreation area at a shelter in Brownsville, Tex.CreditLoren Elliott/Reuters

Still, some elements of these detention centers seem universally shared, whether they are in northern Illinois or South Texas. The multiple rules. The wake-up calls and the lights-out calls. The several hours of schooling every day, which might include a civics class in American history and laws, though not necessarily the ones that led to their incarceration.

Most of all, these facilities are united by a collective sense of aching uncertainty — scores of children gathered under a roof who have no idea when they will see their parents again.

Leticia wrote letters from the shelter in South Texas to her mother, who was being held in Arizona, to tell her how much she missed her. She would quickly write these notes after she had finished her math worksheets, she said, so as not to violate yet another rule: No writing in your dorm room. No mail.

She kept the letters safe in a folder for the day when she and her mother would be reunited, though that still hasn’t happened. “I have a stack of them,” she said.

Another child asked her lawyer to post a letter to her detained mother, since she had not heard from her in the three weeks since they had been separated.

“Mommy, I love you and adore you and miss you so much,” the girl wrote in curvy block letters. And then she implored: “Please, Mom, communicate. Please, Mom. I hope that you’re OK and remember, you are the best thing in my life.”

The complicated matters of immigration reform and border enforcement have vexed American presidents for at least two generations. The Trump administration entered the White House in 2017 with a pledge to end the problems, and for several months, it chose one of the harshest deterrents ever employed by a modern president: the separation of migrant children from their parents.

This is what a few of those children will remember.

No Touching, No Running

Diego Magalhães, a Brazilian boy with a mop of curly brown hair, spent 43 days in a Chicago facility after being separated from his mother, Sirley Paixao, when they crossed the border in late May. He did not cry, just as he had promised her when they parted. He was proud of this. He is 10.

He spent the first night on the floor of a processing center with other children, then boarded an airplane the next day. “I thought they were taking me to see my mother,” he said. He was wrong.

Once in Chicago, he was handed new clothes that he likened to a uniform: shirts, two pairs of shorts, a sweatsuit, boxers and some items for hygiene. He was then assigned to a room with three other boys, including Diogo, 9, and Leonardo, 10, both from Brazil.

The three became fast friends, going to class together, playing lots of soccer and earning “big brother” status for being good role models for younger children. They were rewarded the privilege of playing video games.

There were rules. You couldn’t touch others. You couldn’t run. You had to wake up at 6:30 on weekdays, with the staff making banging noises until you got out of bed.

“You had to clean the bathroom,” Diego said. “I scrubbed the bathroom. We had to remove the trash bag full of dirty toilet paper. Everyone had to do it.”

Diego and the 15 other boys in their unit ate together. They had rice and beans, salami, some vegetables, the occasional pizza, and sometimes cake and ice cream. The burritos, he said, were bad.

Apart from worrying about when he would see his mother again, Diego said that he was not afraid, because he always behaved. He knew to watch for a staff member “who was not a good guy.” He had seen what happened to Adonias, a small boy from Guatemala who had fits and threw things around.

“They applied injections because he was very agitated,” Diego said. “He would destroy things.”

A person he described as “the doctor” injected Adonias in the middle of a class, Diego said. “He would fall asleep.”

Diego managed to stay calm, in part because he had promised his mother he would. Last week, a federal judge in Chicago ordered that Diego be reunited with his family. Before he left, he made time to say goodbye to Leonardo.

“We said ‘Ciao, good luck,” Diego recalled. “Have a good life.”

But because of the rules, the two boys did not hug.

. . . .

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Read the full story at the link.

This is America in the age of Trump & Sessions. A few of these kids might get to stay in the U.S. Most will be returned (with little or no Due Process) to countries will they will be targeted, harassed, brutalized, extorted, impressed, and/or perhaps killed by gangs that operate more or less with impunity from weak and corrupt police and governments. Indeed, contrary to the false blathering of Sessions & co., gangs and cartels are the “de facto government” in some areas of the Norther Triangle. Those kids that survive to adulthood will have these memories of the United States and how we treated them at their time of most need.

PWS

07-15-18

NATION OF CHILD ABUSERS: IT’S NOW THE OFFICIAL POLICY OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATON – The Damage: Irreparable – The Stain On Our National Values: Indelible!

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/07/us/children-immigration-borders-family-separation.html

Miriam Jordan reports for the NY Times:

When he landed in Michigan in late May, all the weary little boy carried was a trash bag stuffed with dirty clothes from his dayslong trek across Mexico, and two small pieces of paper — one a stick-figure drawing of his family from Honduras, the other a sketch of his father, who had been arrested and led away after they arrived at the United States border in El Paso.

An American government escort handed over the 5-year-old child, identified on his travel documents as José, to the American woman whose family was entrusted with caring for him. He refused to take her hand. He did not cry. He was silent on the ride “home.”

The first few nights, he cried himself to sleep. Then it turned into “just moaning and moaning,” said Janice, his foster mother. He recently slept through the night for the first time, though he still insists on tucking the family pictures under his pillow.

José’s separation from his father is part of the Trump administration’s latest and most widely debated border enforcement policy. Last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the government would criminally prosecute everyone who crosses the border illegally, a directive that is already leading to the breakup of hundreds of migrant families and channeling children into shelters and foster homes across the country.

The goal, according to administration officials, is to discourage Central American families from making the perilous journey to the United States’ southwest border, where they have been arriving in swelling numbers this year to claim asylum.

In just the first two weeks under President Trump’s new policy, 638 parents who arrived with 658 children had been prosecuted, administration officials told Congress.

Kirstjen Nielsen, the homeland security secretary, emphasized that separating families was not the aim but merely the effect of a decision to step up prosecutions of those who cross the border illegally. “We do not have a policy to separate children from their parents. Our policy is, if you break the law we will prosecute you,” she told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on May 15.

She said the Trump administration is doing a better job than its predecessors in assuring that migrant children are placed with sponsors who are carefully screened. “We can make sure that the children go to people who are actually family members and who are not traffickers and who won’t abuse them,” she said.

Whether the policy will succeed as a deterrent remains an open question. What is clear is that it is creating heartbreak and trauma for those subjected to it, with parents and children often unaware of one another’s whereabouts.

. . . .

In several letters to the Department of Homeland Security, the American Academy of Pediatrics has urged an end to parent-child separation, which researchers have said can cause lifelong trauma in children. When the policy was unveiled, the academy’s president, Dr. Colleen Kraft, said she was dismayed at its “sweeping cruelty.”

José’s last name and that of his foster family, as well as where they live, are not being published in order to protect their privacy.

Since his arrival in Michigan, family members said, a day has not gone by when the boy has failed to ask in Spanish, “When will I see my papa?”

They tell him the truth. They do not know. No one knows.

José’s father is in detention, and parent and child until this week had not spoken since they were taken into the custody of United States authorities.

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Immigrants near McAllen, Tex., in April. Last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the government would criminally prosecute everyone who crosses the border illegally.CreditLoren Elliott/Reuters

“I am watching history happen before my eyes. It’s horrendous,” said Janice, 53.

Janice, her husband, Chris, and their two teenage daughters have firsthand experience with underage migrants. They are among a number of families who have in recent years provided a temporary home, called transitional foster care, to minors seeking refuge in the United States, usually after fleeing violence and economic uncertainty in Honduras, El Salvador or Guatemala.

In the last two years, 12 children, including two sets of siblings, have occupied the room upstairs with its soothing white-and-light-blue walls and twin beds with colorful bedding. All had arrived in the United States alone and remained in the family’s care for a few weeks or months until a long-term sponsor already in the country, often a relative, was identified and cleared by the authorities to receive them.

“They had access to their parents on a daily basis,” Janice said. “They talked to them on the phone. We have done video chats with Mom and Dad and siblings with every placement — except now.”

José is the first child they have hosted who crossed the border with a parent, rather than alone, then was forcibly separated and left with no ability to contact them. On his flight to Michigan were two other Central American boys in similar circumstances who were placed with families in the area.

The majority of youths apprehended at the border over the past several years have been housed in government shelters and most of them are teenagers who came alone, often expecting to join family members already in the United States. About 11,000 children are currently in these facilities, which are at 95 percent capacity, according to Kenneth Wolfe, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services. The department has reserved an additional 1,218 beds in various places for migrant children, including some at military bases, he said.

On May 10, three days after Mr. Sessions announced the zero-tolerance policy, the government issued a call for proposals from “shelter care providers, including group homes and transitional foster care” in anticipation of a surge in children separated from their parents who would require housing.

. . . .

“For two days, he didn’t shower, he didn’t change his clothes. I literally had to peel the socks off his feet. They were so old and smelly,” Janice said. “I realized that he didn’t want anyone to take anything away from him.”

Image

A drawing of José’s father. Since the child’s arrival in Michigan, his foster family said, a day has not gone by when he has failed to ask in Spanish, “When will I see my papa?”

The one thing that animated him was discussing his “photos,” as he called the family drawings.

He introduced mi familia,” pointing to the figures of his parents, brother and younger sister. Staring intensely at the sketch of his father, with a slight mustache and a cap, he repeated his name out loud again and again.

It was “just me and him” on the trip from Honduras, he told Janice one night as he lay in bed shuffling the pictures, taking turns looking at one and then the other.

“He holds onto the two pictures for dear life,” Janice said, through tears. “It’s heart-wrenching.”

Janice does not blame José’s parents for putting him through the ordeal.

In early May, she traveled to Central America to see for herself the conditions on the ground, and returned convinced that gang-fueled violence, extortion and recruitment of children were compelling parents to make the arduous journey over land with their children to the United States. “I have nothing but sorrow and compassion for the families,” she said.

When sirens pierced the quiet of the night last week, José’s eyes widened with fear. “La violencia, la violencia,” he said. The family assured him that it was not violence; it was fire trucks.

In recent days, the boy began attending a multi-age kindergarten at Bethany with about a dozen other migrant children.

. . . .

Earlier this week, José spoke with his parents for the first time since their lives had diverged. The phone calls were separate: His father remains in detention, and his mother is in Honduras.

The calls went smoothly, according to the case manager.

But they changed everything. Somehow, it had sunk in that there was no way of knowing when he would see his family. “It triggered all the separation trauma again,” said Janice.

She tried to offer him his toys, but he erupted in anger, screaming and crying at the kitchen table for almost an hour.

“It was really hard to watch. The look on his face was anguish,” said Janice, her voice breaking.

When his fury subsided, the boy collapsed on the kitchen floor, still sobbing. “Mama, Papa,” he said, over and over.

Nearby lay the family pictures, which he had flung on the floor.

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Read the entire, totally disturbing and enraging, article at the link.
Is this the way we want to be remembered by our children, grandchildren, and future generations? As nation that put cruel, arrogant, and inhumane individuals in charge of our Government and then stood by and watched while they abused children, spread xenophobia, enriched the rich, mocked ethics, and thumbed their noses at human decency.
Assuming that the “Joses of the world” live to grow up, there will be a horrible price to pay for future generations of Americans as they are forced to come to grips with the grotesque human rights abuses committed in the name of a perverted nationalism. Very much like the reckoning that the Catholic Church has had to undergo for tolerating and covering up decades and generations of sexual, physical, and mental abuse of youth!
Get out the vote to limit the power of the horrible minority that has taken over our Government and our nation and to eventually remove them from office at all levels. America cannot and will not “be great again” until the stain of Trumpism is removed from our national Government!
Due Process Forever! Trump & Sessions, Never!
Join the New Due Process Army today!
PWS
06-07-18

TPS: TRUMP ADMINISTRATION TO END HAITIAN TPS IN JULY 2019!

Miriam Jordan reports for the NYT:

“The Trump administration is ending a humanitarian program that has allowed some 59,000 Haitians to live and work in the United States since an earthquake ravaged their country in 2010, officials said on Monday.
Haitians with what is known as temporary protected status will be expected to leave the United States by July 2019 or face deportation.
The decision, while not a complete surprise, set off immediate dismay among Haitian communities in South Florida, New York and beyond. Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, is still struggling to rebuild from the earthquake and relies heavily on money its expatriates send to relatives back home.
The Haitian government had asked the Trump administration to extend the protected status.”

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On the bright side, Congress has 18 months to come up with a permanent solution.

PWS

11-20-17

H-2B Nonimmigrant Visa Dispute Hits US Seasonal Industries!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/08/us/summer-jobs-visas.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Miriam Jordan reports in the NY Times:

“Mackinac Island has a permanent population of about 500 people and just as many horses, but no cars. From May to October, the picturesque Michigan getaway relies on about 3,000 workers to power its economic engine: summer tourism.

Historically, up to a third of those workers are foreigners, including Mexicans, Filipinos, Canadians and Jamaicans, who are hired on seasonal visas. But when many of the island’s business owners applied for those visas this year, they heard from the government that none were left.

So at the Iroquois Hotel, a Victorian property on the waterfront where rooms command up to $1,200 a night, the owner is trying to figure out how to maintain its high standards without 30 Jamaican housekeepers. Other hotels are contemplating closing off whole sections. Even those who own the ubiquitous horses are wondering if they will have enough workers.

“It’s urgent for us to get more visas to save the season,” Brad Chambers, who operates horse tours and taxis, said.

The island whose selling point is being stuck in time is now suffering because it is stuck in the middle of a modern-day struggle over jobs and who should be doing them. So, too, are a number of the regional industries that define the American summer but have increasingly relied on non-American workers, from vacation spots in Maine and Minnesota to Gulf Coast shrimpers and the salmon fisheries of Alaska.”

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So, how does having unused hotel rooms and unprocessed fish help U.S. Workers? An employer has to show unsuccessful efforts to recruit US workers to get a petition approved in the first place.

Exploitation of foreign workers is another question. That requires more vigorous inspection and investigation by the USDOL. But, these are exactly the kinds of regulatory inspection and enforcement jobs that the Trump Administration seeks to eliminate under the guise of  “”lessening the buurden” on US employers!

PWS

06-08-17

DACA Status Revoked — Woman Faces Removal!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/10/us/immigrant-daca-deportation.html?_r=0

Miriam Jordan reports in the NYT:

“Jessica Colotl embodied the debate over illegal immigration when she was locked up for 37 days and nearly sent back to Mexico after an Atlanta-area police officer caught her driving without a license in 2010.

To supporters, including her sorority sisters, the president of her college and the immigrant advocates who publicized her case, hers was an example of police overreach and the need to safeguard ambitious young students from deportation. To others, she was an illegal immigrant, plain and simple, who also was abusing the system by attending a public college at discounted tuition.

She returned to college — paying full price, because of a new Georgia law inspired by her case — completed her degree and qualified for a program started by President Barack Obama in 2012, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which protects some undocumented youth from deportation.

“Since then, I have been working and doing well for myself,” Ms. Colotl, now 28, said in an interview this week. “I thought that all the legal battles were behind me.”

That was until Ms. Colotl, who was brought to the United States by her parents as a child, learned Monday that her DACA status had been revoked, thrusting her into the national immigration debate anew.

With a new president in the White House, she is once again facing deportation.

Dustin Baxter, Ms. Colotl’s lawyer, on Tuesday requested that a federal judge in Atlanta intervene and reinstate her DACA protection.

“We are taking an innocent girl who has done nothing but contribute to the society she has been a part of since she was 11 and making her a villain and poster child for Trump’s deportation policies,” Mr. Baxter said in an interview.

About 750,000 immigrants have benefited from DACA, and even as he has promised to crack down on illegal immigration, President Trump has said repeatedly that he will not target DACA recipients, also known as Dreamers.”

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Read the full story at the link.

The question is whether this is just a random action by DHS or does it represent a systematic program to essentially “re-adjudicate” all DACA approvals of individuals who had any arrests or other involvement with the criminal justice system?

PWS

05-13-17