"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
Cornell Law School and the Cornell Migrations Initiative, along with other organizations, are hosting a free public webinar on Wednesday March 9 from 1-2 pm ET entitled “After the Fall: The Future of Afghan Allies Fleeing the Taliban.”
Six months after the fall of Afghanistan, a lot has been done, but a lot remains to be done.The United States evacuated over 100,000 Afghans to the United States or third countries.Yet an estimated 200,000 Afghans who helped the U.S. military or government remain in Afghanistan, fearing persecution and famine.Moreover, those who have made it to the United States have mostly entered on humanitarian parole, which is a temporary status that expires after two years.They need ways to remain in the United States permanently.
Learn what Cornell University and other organizations have done to assist Afghans at risk, what remains to be done, and how you can help.
Speakers include Joel Kelsey, chief of staff to U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal; Chis Purdy, director of Veterans for American Ideals and Outreach at Human Rights First; Nell Cady-Kruse from the Evacuate Our Allies Coalition; Camille Mackler, executive director of Immigrant ARC; and Katie Rahmlow, a Cornell law student who has worked on several Afghan cases. Cornell law professor Stephen Yale-Loehr, who directs an Afghanistan asylum clinic at Cornell Law School, will moderate.
Trump supporters and hangers-on boast the “success” of Trump’s immigration policies, demonstrated by the supposed drop in illegal entries. But this is merely an “out of sight, out of mind” approach to managing a very real problem. It was a giant sleight of hand which hid the actual number of people seeking entry into the U.S. Biden’s policies have pulled back the curtain and like so many other aspects of Trump’s administration, it is clear that the claims of success are nothing more than fantasies.
And yet the Biden administration is not off the hook. While it did agree to permit unaccompanied children to enter the U.S. despite the Title 42 ban, it did so following a preliminary injunction issued by a federal court last November. DHS continues to expel families, as well as single men and women, under the existing Title 42 order.
. . . .
Despite the clear moral and legal imperatives to stop Title 42 expulsions, the Biden administration is clearly worried that returning to pre-pandemic processing of asylum seekers will overwhelm the system. It is also clear that they fear a political backlash if critics are able to characterize the border as out of control.
Taking these final steps takes courage and political will. Those of us who support the rights of asylum seekers have to let the administration know that doing the right thing will not tarnish its reputation and that we will work even harder to ensure that making good on humane immigration policy is not political suicide.
Protecting asylum seekers is a woman’s issue of the first order. We must encourage and challenge both the administration and Congress to live up to U.S. obligations. We must turn out at the voting booth to support candidates and elected officials who act on behalf of asylum seekers. And we must push back, every way we can, against those who hope to weaponize the border in a callous effort to turn following the law into a political liability.
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Read Mary’s complete article at the link. Many thanks to Judge Alex Manuel of the ABA’s National Conference of the Administrative Law Judiciary for passing this along.
Surprisingly, “forced migration,” is exactly what it says it is: “FORCED migration” — not optional! As I have pointed out before: “We can diminish ourselves as nation (and are doing so), but it won’t stop human migration.”
Refugees come, because that’s what refugees do. They often come when the world is in crisis, because that’s one of the primary reasons why refugees flee. They seldom come in an orderly manner because flight to save your life doesn’t lend itself to “regularity.” How many Jews perished in Nazi-controlled areas before and during WWII waiting for visas that were never going to come?
And, what brings refugees to our borders actually has little to do with inane statements of politicos, bureaucrats, border cops, and the media. One of the main consequences of illegally “closing the border to asylum seekers” is that large numbers simply enter between ports of entry. Those who used to turn themselves in to the Border Patrol are encouraged by our short-sighted policies and unwillingness to follow our own laws just to keep on going.
We’d certainly do much better if we “canned” all the Trump-era illegal, racist nonsense, reopened border ports to asylum seekers, and encouraged them to apply there or in locations abroad. But, to make that happen we would also have to review their claims in a timely, fair, and humane manner — not “rocket science,” yet something that largely has eluded our nation, particularly since 2014.
It’s achievable. But not without much better leadership coming from experts who actually know how to deal with refugee situations in a humane and effective manner. Failed bureaucrats and grandstanding politicos, those who usually “drive the train heading for a wreck,” can’t do the job! That’s been proved time and again! Why do we insist on repeating all our mistakes? Cruelty and threats simply aren’t effective.
To emphasize Mary’s concluding point about women’s concerns, Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions and Neo-Nazi Stephen Miller made misogyny a focus of their vicious attack on people of color seeking asylum. It started with Sessions’s atrocious decision ignorantly and unlawfully targeting women refugees in Matter of A-B- and continued through Miller’s now-enjoined effort to unlawfully eradicate gender-based asylum grants. Never mind that women form the largest group of clearly identifiable refugees in the world and that femicide and violence against them driven by sexual antipathy and issues of control are rampant worldwide, particularly in the Northern Triangle.
But, a large problem here is that more than two months into the Biden Administration, Attorney General Merrick Garland has yet to repudiate Matter of A-B- and the other debilitating racist and misogynist “precedents” and grotesquely illegal anti-asylum policies of Sessions and Barr. Worse yet, he has neither stood up for the reinstatement of asylum laws and compliance with Constitutionally-required due process at the border, nor has he removed and replaced “his” Board of Immigration Appeals and taken steps to curb those of “his” Immigration “Judges” who are still engaged in furthering the Sessions/Barr White Nationalist, misogynist, anti-asylum agenda!
Interesting lack of action from a distinguished former Federal Judge who several months ago claimed great gratitude that his ancestors were given refuge from harm by the U.S. Is there some reason that those people of color and others now arriving at our borders and claiming legal protections under our laws are less deserving of fair, generous, and humane treatment?
Judge Garland’s View Of Proper Treatment of Women Seeking Asylum? Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
“In late 2017, a witness in a courtroom in Billings, Montana, testified that one of the other witnesses, Miguel Reynaga Hernandez (“Reynaga”), was “not a legal citizen.” On the basis of this statement, the Justice of the Peace presiding over the hearing spoke with the local Sheriff’s Office and asked that Reynaga be “picked up.” Deputy Sheriff Derrek Skinner responded to the call. Outside the courtroom, Skinner asked Reynaga for identification and questioned him regarding his immigration status in the United States. Reynaga produced an expired Mexican consular identification card but was unable to provide detailed information regarding his immigration status because he does not speak English fluently. Skinner then placed Reynaga in handcuffs, searched his person, and escorted him to a patrol car outside the courthouse. With Reynaga waiting in the back of the patrol car, Skinner ran a warrants check and, after Reynaga’s record came back clean, asked Immigration and Custom Enforcement (“ICE”) if the agency had any interest in Reynaga. Reynaga was ultimately taken to an ICE facility and remained in custody for three months. Upon his release, Reynaga sued Skinner and Pedro Hernandez, the presiding Justice of the Peace (“Hernandez”), under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violating his Fourth Amendment rights. On cross-motions for summary judgment, the district court denied each defendant qualified immunity and held that Reynaga’s Fourth Amendment rights had been violated. Skinner and Hernandez interlocutorily appeal the court’s denial of qualified immunity. We affirm.”
From NWIRP: “This decision is important as it makes clear that state and local law enforcement officers may be held liable under the civil rights statute if they unlawfully detain community members in order to turn them over to immigration enforcement,” said Matt Adams, legal director for NWIRP. “Police officers—and even local judicial officials—may be held accountable when, instead of serving the community, they take it upon themselves to stop people based on their suspected immigration status, the language they speak, or their ethnicity or the color of their skin.” “The harm that [Judge Hernandez and Deputy Skinner] did to me is hard to explain,” said Mr. Reynaga in reacting to the court of appeals decision. “It’s something that lives in me and in my family now. It’s hard to describe what this harm represents to a person. But I’m very grateful for the work NWIRP has done for me. I’m very happy and proud that now immigrants here in Montana and in other states can know that we also have rights.” Following the court of appeals decision, Mr. Reynaga’s case will return to the district court for further proceedings on the damages he is entitled to in light of the violation of his constitutional rights.”
[Hats way off to Matt Adams (argued), Leila Kang, Aaron Korthuis, and Anne Recinos, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, Seattle, Washington, and Shahid Haque, Border Crossing Law Firm P.C., Helena, Montana; for Plaintiff-Appellee!]
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Who knows what the Supremes might do on on this? So far they have been reluctant to enforce the Constitution against racism in law enforcement. Remember, they recently gave the Border Patrol a license to unconstitutionally shoot and kill a Mexican kid across the border in Mexico. And, the Supremes majority has happily found ways to impose possible death sentences on legal asylum seekers of color without any meaningful process at all.
The “JR Five” aren’t particularly creative thinkers —except when it comes to thinking of ways to dehumanize (“Dred Scottify”) persons of color under our Constitution. Then they often are happy to fabricate any rationale to deny due process and equal protection under our laws.
PRESIDENT TRUMP promised that the $2 trillion economic stimulus bill he signed in March, providing direct payments to tens of millions of Americans, would “deliver urgently needed relief to our nation’s families, workers and businesses.” But more out of spite than in the furtherance of any rational policy goal, several million Americans were specifically excluded from the relief plan: U.S. citizens who are children or spouses of undocumented immigrants.
In the midst of a pandemic ravaging the nation, lawmakers and the administration saw fit to insert and enact that provision of the law, for no apparent reason beyond its punitive effect. The vast majority of the nation’s babies, toddlers, middle-schoolers and teenagers younger than 17 are eligible for $500 payments — generally rendered to their parents — but not if either their mother or father is an unauthorized immigrant.
Nor can U.S. citizen parents receive the $1,200 payment to which they would otherwise be entitled if they file taxes jointly with an undocumented spouse. A household consisting of a married couple with two U.S. citizen children, which would otherwise qualify for $3,400 in benefits, would receive nothing if the undocumented mother filed a joint return with her citizen husband.
[[Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic]]
Singling out children for punishment arising from their parents’ immigration status is a senseless act of vengeance. The Trump administration’s attitudes toward legal and illegal immigrants are morally odious and pragmatically misguided, yet this policy stands out as uniquely cruel given that the immigration status of parents does not exclude their U.S. citizen children from receiving a host of other federal benefits, including welfare, food stamps and housing assistance.
What’s particularly senseless is that the administration’s policy of impoverishing households that include undocumented immigrants coincides with a moment in which the nation’s food supply — heavily dependent on those very immigrants — is in peril. By the government’s own estimate, half of all field hands in the country, more than 1 million workers, are illegal immigrants whose labor has been deemed “essential” to keeping grocery shelves stocked with meat and produce. Other such immigrants may have lost jobs this spring in restaurants or as custodians and child-care workers, and are already struggling to care for their children.
A lawsuit has been filed in federal court in Maryland by advocates at Georgetown University Law Center on behalf of the citizen children of unauthorized immigrants. The plaintiffs include a 7-month-old girl, a 9-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy. The punitive policy will make it more difficult for the children to be adequately fed, housed and clothed at a time of economic duress.
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The effect of the measure is to make second-class citizens of several million American children, nearly all born in this country, and to intensify their family’s suffering even as unemployment tightens its grip. The unconstitutionality of such a discriminatory policy, which flies in the face of the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process, is rivaled only by its mean-spiritedness.
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It’s what happens when Congress and the Courts fail to stand up to irrationality and tyranny.
This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!
BIA CHAIR DAVID NEAL “RETIRES” — Likely Forced Out For Not Being On “Team Trump”
By Paul Wickham Schmidt
Sources say that the long expected announcement was made by e-mail today. Neal was a Republican with close ties to Senator and then Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas. Interestingly, he was appointed Chair in 2012, during the Obama Administration. Some have claimed that to “grease the skids,” he presented himself then as a RINO (“Republican In Name Only”).
If true, that strategy wouldn’t be career enhancing under the Trump regime at DOJ, where even long term GOP politicos are often considered insufficiently racist and restrictionist on immigration. Witness the fate of long time GOP operative L. Francis Cissna over at USCIS and DHS. Or, the way that the DOJ happily joined Trump in trashing the integrity of former GOP appointees Jim Comey and Bob Mueller.
No word on a replacement. But, we can expect someone who will make Attila the Hun look like a moderate on human rights and Due Process of law.
Next BIA Chair?
Wishful thinking liberals can claim that American legal and Constitutional institutions are “standing up” to Trump’s White Nationalist authoritarianism. In reality, they are rolling over and dissolving before our eyes.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) barked at female sex-crime victims, “Grow up!” He called Christine Blasey Ford a “pleasing” witness. He shooed women away with a flick of his wrist. Hatch also posted “an uncorroborated account from a Utah man questioning the legitimacy and sexual preferences” of Julie Swetnick, one of Brett M. Kavanaugh’s accusers. The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board raked him over the coals:
The despicable attack launched by Sen. Orrin Hatch and the Senate Judiciary Committee — more precisely, the Republicans on that committee — on one of the women who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault is a textbook example of why more victims do not come forward.
Worse, it betrays a positively medieval attitude toward all women as sex objects who cannot be believed or taken seriously.
Not a single Republican spoke up to criticize him. One would think someone would point out that he brought dishonor on himself, his party and the Senate. But clearly Republicans take no umbrage at such conduct.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley(R-Iowa) attempted to excuse the lack of a single Republican woman — ever — on the Judiciary Committee. “It’s a lot of work — maybe they don’t want to do it.”Kavanaugh snapped and sneered at female senators on the Judiciary Committee. Republicans didn’t bat an eye or hold it against him. He was just mad, you see.
President Trump repeated the calumny that if the attack was “as bad” as Ford said she’d have gone to the police. He declared it was a “scary time” for young men. He openly mocked Ford at a rally to gin up his base’s anger. Republican apologists said he was just explaining the facts. He actually misrepresented her testimony, falsely claiming she couldn’t recall many facts — the neighborhood of the house where she was attacked. William Saletan called out Trump and his defenders: “It’s true that Ford can’t recall important details about place and time. It’s true that she can’t recall how she got to the house or how she left. It’s true that every accused person is entitled to a presumption of innocence. But Trump’s portrayal of Ford’s testimony wasn’t true. It was a pack of lies. And people who defend it, like Lindsey Graham, are liars too.”
Trump and other Republicans accused sex-crime victims protesting Kavanaugh as protesters paid by George Soros (a Jewish left-wing billionaire whose name is routinely invoked in anti-Semitic attacks). The GOP Senate whip, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), called the victims a “mob” and echoed the bogus claim that they were paid protesters. They deny victims’ very existence; they are non-persons — props sent by opponents to ruin a man’s life.
Graham snorted that he’d hear what “the lady has to say” and then vote Kavanaugh in. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he’d “plow right through” (more like plow over) Ford’s testimony and confirm Kavanaugh. Republicans’ defense of Kavanaugh — that Ford and others were props of a left-wing plot and therefore lacked agency of their own — evidences the party’s attitude toward women.
You cannot say a party that embraces a deeply misogynistic president who bragged about sexually assaulting women and mocked and taunted a sex-crime victim; accepted a blatantly insufficient investigation of credible sex crimes against women in lieu of a serious one that the White House counsel knew would be disastrous; repeatedly insulted and dismissed sex-crime victims exercising their constitutional rights; has never put a single woman on the Judiciary Committee (and then blames its own female members for being too lazy); and whips up male resentment of female accusers is a party that respects women. Its members resent women. They scorn women. They exclude women. They use women to maintain their grip on power. But they do not respect them.
What’s worse is that Republicans who would never engage in this cruel and demeaning behavior themselves don’t bat an eye when their party’s leaders do so. Acceptance of Trump’s misogyny — like their rationalization of the president’s overt racism — becomes a necessity for loyal Republicans. If it bothers a Republican, he or she dare not say so. One either agrees or ignores or rationalizes such conduct, or one decide it’s a small price to pay (“it” being the humiliation of women) for tax cuts and judges. It’s just words, you know.
The Republican Party no longer bothers to conceal its loathing of immigrants, its contempt for a free press, its disdain for the rule of law or its views on women. Indeed, these things now define a party that survives by inflaming white male resentment. Without women to kick around, how would they get their judge on the court or their guys to the polls?
Women with this ordeal seared into the hippocampus of their brains will vote in November. Women are expected to forget or move on? I don’t think so.
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Yup! Need to vote!
The “Club” is in power because too many non-members failed to vote. And, those young men who DON’T aspire to grow up to be Trump, Sessions, Hatch, Kavanaugh, Graham, Grassley, Steve King, Kobach, or Stephen Miller had better unite with their “non-Club sisters” to vote the Good Old Boys (and their women supporters and enablers) out of office.
If nothing else, last week shows the futility of demonstrating, public opinion polls, writing op-Ed’s, running commercials, and protesting when you don’t have the votes. Put the energy into winning elections! That’s what the Club does. And, it might be the only thing they are right about.
The attorney general charged that the freedom to practice religion in America has come “under attack” in the nation’s current “cultural climate.”
A “dangerous movement, undetected by many, but real, is now challenging and eroding our great tradition of religious freedom …. It must be confronted … and defeated,” he added.
“We’ve seen nuns ordered to buy contraceptives. We’ve seen United States senators ask judicial and executive branch nominees about dogma …. We’ve all seen the ordeal faced so bravely by Jack Phillips,” Sessions added, referring to the Colorado baker who won a religious liberty challenge to LGBTQ anti-discrimination law in the U.S. Supreme Court after refusing to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
Sessions called freedom of religion “indeed our first freedom being the first listed right in the First Amendment” and said that the Trump administration is “actively seeking to accommodate people of faith.”
Sessions touted his department’s prosecution of attacks on religion, among them court actions shielding about 90 plaintiffs from Obama-era requirements that employer health insurance cover contraception, an amicus brief “we were proud to file” on behalf of Phillips, and indictments in an arson attack and threats directed at two mosques.
Twitter exploded, with critics charging that the Religious Liberty Task Force was a front to protect religious zealots attacking LGBTQ rights and an unconstitutional push to marry church and state on the altar of Christianity.
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Read the entire Article, including the “Twitter Storm” at the link. Some pretty funny but “right on” reactions!
Yet another taxpayer-financed scam by our corrupt and bigoted Attorney General. Obviously this is a thinly disguised effort to use Government funding and power to promote and establish far right-wing Christian views and biases.
Don’t expect any help for Muslims targeted for hate crimes, irrationally excluded under the “Travel Ban,” or targeted by anti-Muslim pronouncements of Administration officials and GOP right-wing politicos. Don’t expect any assistance or protection for those religious groups actually engaged in “God’s work on earth” and carrying out Christ’s true humanitarian, forgiving teachings by providing help to migrants and resisting inhumane and illegal Administration policies. Don’t expect any help for Bhuddists, atheists, deists, or any other non-right-wing Christian groups trying to vindicate their First Amendment rights. Don’t expect any help for members of the LGBTQ community whose rights are being trampled upon by so-called Christians who promote intolerance, discrimination, humiliation, de-humanization, and hate in the name of false “religious expression.”
Interestingly, Sessions himself has been charged within the Methodist Church (of which my wife and I are members) with violation of teachings of Christ and the Church’s own rules and values.
He’s a total scofflaw and a fraud, seeking to impose his corrupt, inhumane, intolerant views on the rest of us by abusing his Government position and squandering taxpayer funds on an anti-Constitutional attempt to establish particular “so-called Christian views” as the law of the land.
Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman report for the NYT:
“WASHINGTON — President Trump ordered the firing last June of Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel overseeing the Russia investigation, according to four people told of the matter, but ultimately backed down after the White House counsel threatened to resign rather than carry out the directive.
The West Wing confrontation marks the first time Mr. Trump is known to have tried to fire the special counsel. Mr. Mueller learned about the episode in recent months as his investigators interviewed current and former senior White House officials in his inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice.
Amid the first wave of news media reports that Mr. Mueller was examining a possible obstruction case, the president began to argue that Mr. Mueller had three conflicts of interest that disqualified him from overseeing the investigation, two of the people said.
First, he claimed that a dispute years ago over fees at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va., had prompted Mr. Mueller, the F.B.I. director at the time, to resign his membership. The president also said Mr. Mueller could not be impartial because he had most recently worked for the law firm that previously represented the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Finally, the president said, Mr. Mueller had been interviewed to return as the F.B.I. director the day before he was appointed special counsel in May.
After receiving the president’s order to fire Mr. Mueller, the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, refused to ask the Justice Department to dismiss the special counsel, saying he would quit instead, the people said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing a continuing investigation.”
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Read the complete story at the link.
More “not-so-bright Third World dictator” than “stable genius.” The minority of Americans who voted for this evil clown have debased our once-great nation! And the GOP continues to enable the destruction of American democracy and values.
“The Supreme Court on Monday granted President Trump’s request that his revised travel ban be enforced fully while legal challenges to it proceed in lower courts.
The justices approved a request from the president’s lawyers to lift restrictions on the order — which bans most travelers from eight nations, most with Muslim majorities — that had been imposed by lower courts.
The court gave no reason for its decision, but said it expected lower court review of the executive orders to proceed quickly. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor would have kept in place partial stays on the order.
Judges in two judicial circuits — the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco — had cast doubt on Trump’s third executive order banning almost all travel from certain countries.
Oral arguments are scheduled for soon in both federal appeals court cases on whether the ban exceeds the president’s broad powers on immigration.
The latest iteration — the third ban that Trump has ordered — blocks various people from eight countries — Syria, Libya, Iran, Yemen, Chad, Somalia, North Korea and Venezuela. Six of the countries have Muslim majorities.”
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Read the complete article at the link.
Yeah, I know that this technically isn’t a “decision on the merits.” But that’s what we call “legal BS.”
The majority of Supremes are clearly signaling that they expect the lower courts to rule in Trump’s favor. If they don’t get the message, the Supreme majority will cream them “on the merits.” If there were a realistic chance of the plaintiffs prevailing, the Supremes wouldn’t have lifted the injunction imposed below.
Nolan and others who said that “Travel Ban 3.0” was a “slam dunk” winner for the Trumpsters were correct. It’s basically “open season” on Muslims, refugees, and others on the Administration’s “hit parade.” Any change will have to come at the ballot box!
