WHILE MANY PAN THE DEMS FOR “FOLDING” ON SHUTDOWN, DANA MILBANK @ WASHPOST SEES HOPEFUL SIGNS FOR “GOOD GOVERNMENT!” — “[T]here is at least the potential for lawmakers to take the wheel from an erratic and dangerous driver!”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/shutdown-silver-lining-senators-rediscover-their-role-and-moderation-prevails/2018/01/22/3b02db10-ffc5-11e7-9d31-d72cf78dbeee_story.html

Milbank writes:

“The head is missing, but the body is still alive.

The president killed off all attempts at compromise, then went dark after the government shut down, refusing to say what he would support on immigration or even to engage in negotiations. But in this leadership vacuum, something remarkable happened: Twenty-five senators, from both parties, rediscovered their role as lawmakers. They crafted a deal over the weekend that offers a possible path forward, and, in dramatic fashion on the Senate floor Monday, signaled the end of the shutdown with a lopsided 81-to-18 vote.

The agreement may not end in a long-sought immigration deal and a long-term spending plan. Trump could yet kill any deals they reach. And liberal interest groups are furious at what they see as a Democratic surrender. But Monday’s breakthrough shows there is at least the potential for lawmakers to take the wheel from an erratic and dangerous driver.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), announcing his deal with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on the Senate floor Monday afternoon, said he hadn’t even heard from Trump since Friday, before the government closed. “The White House refused to engage in negotiations over the weekend. The great dealmaking president sat on the sidelines,” Schumer said, adding that he reached agreement with McConnell “despite and because of this frustration.”

Looking down from the gallery Monday afternoon, I saw the sort of scene rarely observed any longer in the Capitol: bipartisan camaraderie. Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), two architects of the compromise, were talking, when McConnell, with a chipper “Hey, Chris,” beckoned him for a talk with Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who soon broke off for a word with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) hobnobbed with Coons and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.). Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) put an arm around Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) as he chatted with Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.). During the vote, Manchin sat on the Republican side with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) sat with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

Durbin marveled at the festival of bonhomie. “What I have seen here on the floor of the Senate in the last few days is something we have not seen for years,” he said.

Neither side particularly wanted this shutdown. It was the work of a disengaged president who contributed only mixed signals, confusion and sabotage. After provoking the shutdown by killing a bipartisan compromise to provide legal protection for the “dreamers” (undocumented immigrants who came as children), Trump’s political arm put up a TV ad exploiting the dreamers by saying “Democrats who stand in our way will be complicit in every murder committed by illegal immigrants.”

Trump’s anti-immigrant ad and his racist outburst in the White House last week will only increase Republicans’ long-term political problems, but, in the short term, Republicans succeeded in portraying Democrats as shutting down the government to protect illegal immigrants. And liberal interest groups took the bait. In a conference call just before news of the deal broke Monday morning, a broad array of progressive groups — Planned Parenthood, labor unions, the Human Rights Campaign, the ACLU, MoveOn and Indivisible — joined immigration activists in demanding Democrats refuse to allow the government to reopen without an immediate deal for the dreamers.”

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

I’ve said all along that there is potential for Congress to govern if McConnell, Ryan, and the rest of the GOP leadership would permit it. But, that means ditching the “Hastert Rule” (named, btw, for convicted “perv” and former GOP Speaker Denny Hastert) and thereby “PO’ing” both the “White Nationalist” and “Bakuninist Wings” of the GOP. That’s why it likely won’t happen. Because although they could govern in this manner, in coalition with many Dems, the modern GOP is beholden to both the White Nationalists and the Bakuninists to win elections and have a chance at being in the legislative majority.

In the end, if the Dems want to change the way America is governed for the better, they’re going to have to win some elections — lots of them. And, that’s not going to happen overnight. Although I can appreciate the Dreamers’ frustration, I think they would do better getting behind the Dems, and even the moderate GOP legislators who support them, rather than throwing “spitballs.”

Ironically, the disappearing breed of “GOP moderates” — who played a key role in restarting the Government — could be more effective and wield more power if they were in the minority, rather than being stuck in a majority catering to the extremest elements of a perhaps loud, but certainly a distinct minority, of Americans!

PWS

01-23-18

LA TIMES: TO TRUMP, SESSIONS, & HOMAN: “Don’t Wanna Do Your Dirty Work No More!”

“Don’t Wanna Do Your Dirty Work No More!”

From the song “Dirty Work” by Steely Dan.

Check it out here:

http://www.metrolyrics.com/dirty-work-lyrics-steely-dan.html

From the LA Times Editorial Board:

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=90230fb5-6af6-42da-8b4e-8b07898beeb2

“ICE, don’t expect us to do your job

Offended by the ‘sanctuary state’ legislation, Trump administration petulantly looks for payback.

State and local governments in California rightly recognize that it’s up to the federal government to determine which people living in the country illegally ought to be tracked down and deported. It’s no more the responsibility of local cops to run immigrants to ground than it is for them to sniff out people cheating on their federal income taxes.

There is an important public safety reason for keeping local police and sheriff’s deputies out of the deportation business. If people who are living in the country illegally come to view local law enforcement officers as just another set of immigration agents, they will be far less likely to report crimes or cooperate with investigators. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said last year that fewer Latinos in the city were reporting rapes, spousal abuse and other crimes for fear of being deported under the Trump administration’s policy of stepped-up arrests.

Nevertheless, the Trump administration has made no secret of its disdain for state and local governments that refuse to use their own resources to help Washington enforce federal immigration law. Twice this month, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Thomas Homan said they have asked the Justice Department whether local officials who don’t report residents who are in the country illegally can be charged under the federal law against harboring “aliens.”

Homan also has warned that he will “significantly” increase ICE’s presence in California to ramp up arrests in neighborhoods and on streets as payback for the California Values Act (the “sanctuary state” law adopted last year), which denied ICE agents access to jailsunless they have a warrant. “California better hold on tight,” he said in a Fox News interview. “They’re about to see a lot more special agents, a lot more deportation officers in the state of California.”

That’s not enforcing immigration law. That’s coercion by the federal government to try to compel local officials to, in effect, do their jobs for them. It is also the kind of thuggishness we’d expect from someone like Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, not the president of the United States.

Homan also argued that without the cooperation of local law enforcement, “violent criminal aliens” are being released back onto the streets rather than being deported. “If the politicians in California don’t want to protect their communities, then ICE will,” Homan said.

That’s preposterous. ICE has access to databases that reveal who is incarcerated and when they are scheduled for release. If “violent criminal aliens” reenter their communities, it’s because ICE failed to identify them while in custody and pick them up upon release from prison or jail.

Now comes word that ICE may be planning a massive sweep in Northern California targeting as many as 1,500 immigrants, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. That would be little more than showboating. According to the best estimates, California has about 2.35 million immigrants who are living in the state illegally. No matter how hard he tries, Homan is not going to arrest away that problem. Rather, such draconian enforcement actions — and have no doubt, the impetus comes from President Trump — will do little more than disrupt families and communities.

Just last week, the government deportedprosecutorial discretion Jorge Garcia, 39, who was living in the country illegally but was otherwise a productive and law-abiding member of the community. For years, the federal government had exercised not to enforce a deportation order against him. Garcia arrived in the U.S. as a 10-year-old, grew up in the Detroit area and is married to an American citizen with whom he has two American children. What possible good comes from breaking apart that family?

It’s deplorable that the government is pursuing such a heartless and heavy-handed approach to enforcement in service of a system that is hopelessly broken. A wise president would pursue truly dangerous immigrants who are here illegally, find ways to keep new arrivals out (and ensure visa holders leave when they are supposed to) and work with Congress for a humane resolution to the fate of more than 11 million people who have lived in the U.S. for, on average, more than a decade. But wisdom and this president are opposing forces.”

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For the Trumpsters, it’s never been about “smart,” “efficient,” or “effective” law enforcement. No, it’s always been about White Nationalism, pandering to an extremist base, and turning ICE into more or less of an “internal security police” to terrorize primarily Latino, but also other ethnic and minority, communities. That’s why Congress should “Just Say No” to the Administration’s outrageous requests for yet more DHS enforcement agents (when they aren’t even able to fill their existing vacancies with qualified candidates).

PWS

01-23-18

BESS LEVIN @ VANITY FAIR: “TRUMP’S ENTIRE NATIVIST AGENDA IS BASED ON A LIE” — OF COURSE WE NEED MORE LEGAL FOREIGN WORKERS – AND NOT JUST “ROCKET SCIENTISTS” – EVEN TRUMP’S BUSINESSES CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT ‘EM!

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/01/trumps-entire-nativist-agenda-is-based-on-a-lie-immigration-trump-winery?mbid=nl_th_5a6274f87df577764ae9be8c&CNDID=48297443&spMailingID=12789821&spUserID=MjMzNDQ1MzU1ODE2S0&spJobID=1321960766&spReportId=MTMyMTk2MDc2NgS2

Levin writes:

“They’re taking our jobs . . . They’re taking our money. They’re killing us,” is how then-candidate Donald Trumpcharacterized immigrants in July 2015. For nearly two and a half years, the man who practically founded his campaign on anti-immigrant sentiment—“when Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” was his first attempt at a presidential address—has warned his fellow Americans that immigrants and refugees, regardless of their status, are undermining the economy, driving down wages, and mooching off government benefits at every level. Based on this argument, a man who’s sourced two-thirds of his spouses from Eastern Europe has vowed to increase border control to unprecedented levels; repeatedly demanded a multi-billion-dollar wall that even his chief of staff has called “uninformed”; proffered legislation that would slash legal immigration by 50 percent over the next decade; and made the case that the U.S. should reducethe number of refugees that will be allowed into the country to the lowest level since the Refugee Act of 1980 was created. But one needn’t look further than Trump’s own family business to see that the president’s logic is completely bunk.

Amidst the slew of anti-immigrant rhetoric that spews from the White House on a daily basis, BuzzFeed News reports Trump Winery—an establishment that trades in “Welch’s grape jelly with alcohol” and is owned by Eric Trump—has sought permission to hire 23 more foreign guest workers, according to a Department of Labor petition. The workers were requested under the H-2 visa program, which allows U.S. companies to employ foreign workers on temporary work visas, as long as no qualified U.S. workers want the jobs they’ll be hired to fill. BuzzFeed also reports that companies bearing the Trump name are perennial users of the program, having requested more than 400 H-2 visas since the ex-real-estate developer announced his candidacy. (Neither the White House nor the winery responded to BuzzFeed’s request for comment.)

All of which, ironically, highlights the critical role immigrant labor plays in the U.S. economy—in fact, there is a large amount of evidence that a number of industries (and Mar-a-Lago) wouldn’t survive without it. In April, more than a thousand economists wrote an open letter to the president to give him a refresher on the importance of immigration to the U.S. economy. Separately, experts have estimated that given that as much as 70 percent of the U.S. agricultural workforce doesn’t have valid immigration papers, a wide-scale crackdown could essentially demolish the farming industry. (As Bank of America’s Ethan Harris noted in February, “There’s no way to get people out of the city and into the country to pick crops on short notice without a very dramatic increase in wages”; such an increase would represent a death blow to an industry where profits are already tanking, and which would struggle to afford the spike without passing on massive costs to consumers.) Oh, and remember Trump’s big infrastructure plan—coming any day now!—? Without immigrant labor, it’s basically dead on arrival.

Trump’s White House, of course, has done its best to bury these facts. Back in September, The New York Timesrevealed that after the Department of Health and Human Services found that refugees generated $63 billion more in government revenues than they cost over the past decade, Trump officials, lead by Lady Liberty nemesisStephen Miller, simply rejected the draft. Instead, the three-page report that was ultimately submitted “[used] government data to compare the costs of refugees to Americans and [made] no mention of revenues contributed by refugees.” Presumably, Team Trump will rely on that “data” when it sets the number of refugees the U.S. will take in for the fiscal year, the deadline for which is October 1.”

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Of course we don’t need cuts in legal immigration. And, contrary to what the Trumpsters would have you believe, most adult “family immigrants” work in jobs that are important to our economy. Also, because they have family here, it’s actually easier for them to “adjust and fit in” — something the White Nationalists are always fretting about.

PWS

0123-18

JUSTIN GEORGE @ VICE – HOW TRUMP & SESSIONS ARE TRASHING AMERICA’S CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM!

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbpnkb/trump-has-already-demolished-obamas-criminal-justice-legacy

George writes:

“This story was published in partnership with the Marshall Project.

On criminal justice, Donald J. Trump’s predecessor was a late-blooming activist. By the end of President Barack Obama’s second term, his administration had exhorted prosecutors to stop measuring success by the number of defendants sent away for the maximum, taken a hands-off approach to states legalizing marijuana and urged local courts not to punish the poor with confiscatory fines and fees. His Justice Department intervened in cities where communities had lost trust in their police.

After a few years when he had earned the nickname “Deporter-in-Chief,” Obama pivoted to refocus immigration authorities—in effect, a parallel criminal justice system—on migrants considered dangerous, and created safeguards for those brought here as children. He visited a prison, endorsed congressional reform of mandatory-minimum sentences, and spoke empathetically of the Black Lives Matter movement. He nominated judges regarded as progressives.

In less than a year, President Trump demolished Obama’s legacy.

In its place, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has framed his mission as restoring the “rule of law”, which often means stiffening the spines and limiting the discretion of prosecutors, judges and law officers. And under President Trump’s “America first” mandate, being tough on crime is inextricably tied to being tough on immigration.

“I think all roads in Trump’s rhetoric and Sessions’s rhetoric sort of lead to immigration,” said Ames Grawert, an attorney in the left-leaning Brennan Center’s Justice Program who has been studying the administration’s ideology. “I think that’s going to make it even harder for people trying to advance criminal justice reform because that’s bound up in the president’s mind, in the attorney general’s mind, as an issue that they feel very, very passionately on—restricting immigration of all sorts.”

Here are nine ways Trump has transformed the landscape of criminal justice, just one tumultuous year into his presidency.

He changed the tone

Words matter, and Trump’s words were a loud, often racially charged departure from the reformist talk of being “smart on crime” and making police “guardians, not warriors.” His response to a New York City terrorist truck attack last year reflects the new tone:

“We… have to come up with punishment that’s far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right now,” Trump said. “They’ll go through court for years. And at the end, they’ll be—who knows what happens. We need quick justice and we need strong justice—much quicker and much stronger than we have right now. Because what we have right now is a joke and it’s a laughingstock. And no wonder so much of this stuff takes place.”

The president’s rhetoric seemed to trickle down. Ed Gillespie, the Republican candidate for governor of Virginia, adopted what many call “Trumpism” during his fall campaign, vilifying Democrat Ralph Northam as being soft on crime. His ads accused Democrats of restoring the voting rights of a child pornography collector—targeting one man out of the 168,000 former felons who had had their voting rights restored.

In a hotly contested Alabama senate race, Trump accused the Democrat—a prosecutor who had won convictions against two Klansmen who helped plot the 1963 church bombing that killed four black girls—of being “soft on crime.”

While both of the Republicans lost, prisoner advocates worry the discourse has re-sparked irrational fears and will spook conservatives who have in recent years joined the reform movement. And Trump has not limited his target set to Democrats. He has attacked members of his own party, like Arizona senator Jeff Flake, as “weak on crime and border.”

He wants to keep the “mass” in mass incarceration

Of all the moves Sessions made in 2017, none brought as much consternation from all sides of the political spectrum—from the Koch brothers and Rand Paul to the ACLU and Cory Booker—as this: He revoked the Obama-era instruction to federal prosecutors to be more flexible in charging low-level, nonviolent offenders. Under this policy, federal prosecutions had declined for five consecutive years and, in 2016, were at their lowest level in nearly two decades, according to the Pew Research Center.

Sessions ordered prosecutors to seek the maximum punishment available, prompting widespread fear of a return to the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the federal prisons filled with drug offenders. In what it is calling a budget cut, the Bureau of Prisons has also ordered the closure of several halfway houses, which can extend the length of time soon-to-be released prisoners are spending behind bars.

The administration has also cast doubt on the prospect of legislation aimed at reducing mandatory-minimum sentences and encouraging diversion to drug treatment and mental health care. Governors and advocates who boast of success at reducing state prison populations—notably in red states—met with the president and son-in-law Jared Kushner on January 11 to plead for similar measures in the federal system, but the discussion was largely confined to rehabilitating the incarcerated rather than incarcerating fewer people in the first place. While sentencing reform seems to be fading, there appears to be progress toward a Kushner-led crusade that calls on churches and private businesses to mentor prisoners upon release and help them find jobs and housing. Trump may also look to cut regulations such as licensing requirements that prohibit applicants with felony records from some lines of work.

He made immigration synonymous with crime

Perhaps the most consistent theme of his young administration is that immigrants, especially immigrants of color, are a danger. From the Mexican “rapists” to the “shithole countries” of the third world, the president has played to a base that believes—evidence to the contrary—that immigrants bring crime and displace American workers.

Deportation orders have surged. The Department of Justice said in early December that total orders of removal and voluntary departures were up 34 percent compared with the same time in 2016. Actual removals have not kept pace—in fact, they were at their lowest level since 2006, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University—but it is clear the Trump administration is ramping up ways to deport undocumented immigrants.

The declared ending of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was met with wide consternation from Republicans and Democrats, and is being fought out in courts and bipartisan political negotiations. Trump has given mixed signals as to whether the DACA recipients, brought into the US illegally as children, get to stay, and at what political price. But in the meantime he has ordered an end to protection of refugees from Haiti (at least 60,000) and El Salvador (at least 200,000) who were granted temporary legal status under a bill signed by the first President Bush. And just the other day Sessions limited the power of immigration judges to close complicated cases, a move that could lead to thousands more deportations.

The immigrants-as-menace meme recurs in the argument over “sanctuary cities,” where officials have declined to help in the roundup of the undocumented. Sessions has threatened to withhold federal policing funds from uncooperative venues, so far unsuccessfully.”

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Read the rest of the article at the link.

Ah, the “New American Gulag!”

PWS

01-23-18

JAMAL SMITH @ HUFFPOST: FROM “POST RACIAL” TO “OPENLY RACIST” – But Trump & The GOP White Nationalists Can’t Deport, Exclude, Or Disenfranchise Everyone In America They Despise – In The End History & Demographics (Not to Mention Values) Will Defeat Racism!

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-smith-trump-racist_us_5a59099fe4b03c4189657024

Jamal Smith writes in HuffPost:

“Donald Trump doesn’t need to actually call me “nigger.”

The Central Park Five didn’t need to read it in that ad he published in 1989 calling for their deaths, nor did the tenants in his housing developments who sued him for discrimination in the ’70s. The Mexicans whom Trump branded as “rapists” surely got the gist, as did the Muslims whom he banned from traveling here. It went unsaid when he shared willfully ignorant memes about black crime and complimented the neo-Nazis who terrorized Charlottesville. We hear him loud and clear. It doesn’t matter so much whether you are called a “nigger” when you are being treated like one.

Case in point, last Thursday. “Why do we want these people from all these shithole countries here?” Trump reportedly asked a group of lawmakers meeting with him in the Oval Office about immigration. He’d just finished denigrating Haiti and African nations. To drive home the racism of it all, he added, “We should have more people from places like Norway.” The following day, Trump denied making the comments — but Sen. Dick Durbin, a Illinois Democrat who was in the meeting, said the reports got it right. “He said these hate-filled things and he said them repeatedly,” Durbin said.

A year into Trump’s presidency, we still handle these incidents horribly. Political junkies get hemmed up about which Republican issued the inevitably soft rebuke. Earnest defenders try to prove that these poor, black countries are really great places, as if that should matter. Engage on that level if you wish, but other than perhaps “Who hurt you, Mr. President?” it is past time to ask more urgent questions.

Can a person perform these kinds of racist acts and still function as president of the United States in today’s day and age? How much does trying to bring about a white ethno-state get in the way of doing the actual job? Can you be the birther-in-chief and still be effective as the commander-in-chief? No.

Governing as an open racist certainly isn’t as easy for Trump as it may have been for his hero, Andrew Jackson. Two things stand in his way: the pragmatic functions of the job, and the reality of the country he governs.

These are questions about effectiveness, not sentiment. It’s important that we have a president who functions well, no matter the party, and being a leader who acts like Trump does has proven consequences. He gets in his own way: Courts have blocked his orders, including his efforts to cancel DACA and enact his beloved Muslim ban, thanks to his biased statements. Eleven inmates at Guantanamo are making a similar argument now, since Trump has said he never wants anyone to be released. But even in a systemically racist nation, does racist behavior make the job harder?

Pairing this new barb with the president’s earlier remark about Nigerian visa recipients never wanting to “go back to their huts,” Trump has casually tossed aside any hope of meaningful dialogue and cooperation with industrialized and developing African countries alike — likely ceding that diplomatic space to China and other nations who take Africa seriously. He’s slandered Haitians again needlessly, after previously describing them as “all having AIDS.” If we’ve learned anything about his modus operandi, he will randomly target still other countries with his ire. Moreover, his racist barbs shed a new light on his government’s negligence in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. That’s how he treats black and brown folks who are American citizens. You can see why he wouldn’t think twice about slurring those he considers foreign invaders.

Being a functional modern American president requires effectively managing the nation’s relations with other countries; it also requires a deep investment in the wellbeing of one’s own citizens. On that note, consider what James Baldwin said in a WGBH interview in the spring of 1963. Answering a question about whether he was optimistic or pessimistic about the future of America, the prophetic author said “the future of the Negro in this country is precisely as bright or as dark as the future of the country.” The two fortunes are insoluble, he said. This is the standard by which I judge President Trump and his forebears, above all others. People of color in this country, no matter their national origin, are as much a part of America as he is. Any objective analysis would conclude that improving life for us black folks is commensurate with and key to an improving economy. Is this president governing to truly try to lift all boats in the rising tide?

I never expected him to ever try to meet that standard, let alone try. Even worse, Trump’s staff remains actively complicit. Why else would they tell CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that they predict the president’s “shithole” slur would resonate well with the same base that loved it when he cursed out kneeling NFL players protesting racial injustice?

That rubbish may please his adoring audience, but it is anathema to what the presidency has represented and how it has functioned. If Baldwin is right, if America goes as well as black people go, then how do moments like “shithole” help him govern? The DACA mess is a good example — a bipartisan deal is necessary to keep the government running, and few congressional representatives want to be seen negotiating with known racists. And even on other issues that seem less partisan ― take infrastructure, for example ― Democrats and many Republicans are trying to avoid Trump. Even if the president himself believes that overt racism plays well politically, the work Americans need to get done doesn’t get done.

Trump’s casual racism may have brought him more than electoral success 100 or even 50 years ago, but the country he and his voters want to make “great” again has undergone some irreversible changes since then. Trump is using Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, as a goon squad in his effort to cosmetically whiten the country. Eliminating Temporary Protective Status for Salvadorans, Haitians, and other brown andblack people he considers expendable, the very policy change that prompted his “shithole” remark, is another tool.

The recent comment may be the clearest example of Trump manifesting his personal biases in policy. But even if he destroys thousands of families and kills businesses in the process, he can’t kill or deport them all, as he promised. Not to give a racist advice, but going the white nationalist route with a dwindling base is an eventual loser. That he looks at the America of today and thinks that outright white nationalism could do more than win him an election — with the help of vote suppressors here and abroad — is curious, to say the least. It’s a testimony to how little Trump understands about the job he has and the country he runs.

If Trump cared one half a damn about being an effective leader for anyone who isn’t rich, white and male, he’d listen. But since white Americans are the only ones who seem to have his ear, I’ll share one other important thing Baldwin offered in that same 1963 interview in the hopes that change can come from below. The author laid out, in his way, the path for white Americans to understand their common journey with Americans of color. “What white people have to do,” Baldwin said, “is to try to find out in their own hearts why it was necessary to have a nigger in the first place.” He added, “If I’m not a nigger” — just to be clear, he was not, nor am I — “and you, the white people, invented him, then you’ve got to find out why. And the future of the country depends on … whether or not it’s able to ask that question.”

Donald Trump so badly needs a “nigger.” The people need a real president. We are both out of luck.

Jamil Smith is a journalist and radio host. He covered the 2016 election for MTV News and, in addition to his HuffPost column, is a contributing opinion writer for the Los Angeles Times.”

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Trump, Sessions, and the GOP white Nationalists are definitely moving the country in the wrong direction. The real question, posed by many commentators, is how long, if ever, it will take to repair the damage they are doing to American democracy and our standing in the world. Interestingly, most world leaders see Trump for exactly what he is — an out of his depth clown who is working hard to make American irrelevant in the world — politically first, and eventually, perhaps economically as well.

PWS

01-22-18

THE GIBSON REPORT 01-22-18 – Compiled by Elizabeth Gibson, Esq., NY Legal Assistance Group

THE GIBSON REPORT 01-22-18

TOP UPDATES

“Shutdown

Here’s the general practice alert from AILA. In summary:

EOIR: Varick is open, 26 Fed is not. Clerks have stated that there will be no morning or afternoon non-detained hearings today.

OCC: Until Congress passes an appropriations bill, the Office of Chief Counsel New York will only be receiving and processing mail for detained cases at Varick Street and ICE Hudson Valley. The filing window at 26 Federal Plaza will be closed. You may continue to file documents for the non-detained docket via eService. However, those documents will not be processed until after we return to normal operations.

USCIS: Fee-funded activities remain open. A few specific exceptions are listed here.

Asylum Offices: Open for business as usual.

CBP: Open for business as usual with a few exceptions.

DOL: will cease receiving and processing applications during the shutdown

DOS: scheduled passport and visa services in the United States and overseas will continue

DACA

Who Can File For Renewal Right Now:

o   DACA EXPIRED 9/5/2016 OR LATER (this is 2016 and not 2017)

o   IN CURRENT DACA STATUS – the USCIS website says if your DACA is valid beyond 3/5/2018 you cannot file for renewal, but the legal community is pretty much in agreement that this is an error and that anyone with current DACA status can file for renewal now regardless of expiration date

Who Can File An Initial DACA Application Right Now:

o   Individuals who had DACA previously, but it expired before 9/5/2016

No First Time Initial DACA Applications Are Being Accepted. If someone has never had DACA before they cannot file for the first time now.

BUT: Keep in mind that this can all change any day given appeal to SCOTUS.

TPS

Haiti;

o   Termination of the Designation of Haiti for Temporary Protected Status

o   USCIS Announces Re-Registration Period Now Open for Haitians with TPS

o   USCIS Guidance: Automatic Employment Authorization Document (EAD) Extension (Haiti)

o   Practice Alert: USCIS Extends TPS and EADs for Haitians Whose Applications Remain Unadjudicated

o   DOJ Information on EADs for TPS Haiti

El Salvador:

o   Termination of the Designation of El Salvador for Temporary Protected Status

o   USCIS Announces Re-Registration Period Now Open for Salvadorans with TPS

o   DOJ Information on EADs for TPS El Salvador

Emergency Advance Parole for TPS is being denied at 26 FP: Legal Aid: TPS recipient from El Salvador, whose mother just passed away was denied for emergency advance parole at 26 FP this morning. He was charged the full fee. They asked him how he entered the country. It seems like they are trying to prevent people from curing their entries.

EOIR Updates its Case Priorities and Immigration Court Performance Measures Guidance

EOIR issued a memorandum, that is effective immediately, and applies prospectively to all new cases filed and to all immigration court cases reopened, recalendared, or remanded, and rescinds all other prior memoranda establishing case processing or docketing priorities. AILA Doc. No. 18011834

EOIR Releases OPPM on Change of Venue Requests

EOIR released Operating Policies and Procedures Memorandum 18-01, Change of Venue, stating that every Immigration Judge is required to ensure that “good cause has been shown” before granting a motion for change of venue. This OPPM replaces OPPM 01-02. AILA Doc. No. 18011733. [The memo also suggests that pleadings, removability, and types of relief be settled prior to change of venue from a detained court to a non-detained court and that the first appearance in non-detained court after such a motion be an individual hearing.]

Possible changes for UACs

KIND: L.A. asylum office is letting folks know there will be a few policy implemented for UACs in the next few weeks. The new policy will be to deny UAC jurisdiction for cases in which:

1)      The child is over 18 years old,

2)      The child has reunified with one or both parents, and

3)      The child now has a legal guardian.

Status Docket

NY Immigration Court is now placing cases on a “status docket” if they having something pending before USCIS. This appears to be in lieu of administrative closure.

DHS Opposing Termination for VAWA Adjustments

LSNYC: I recently filed a motion to terminate a removal case because my client’s VAWA petition was approved. The IJ denied the motion because of DHS’s opposition. When I appeared at the master last week, the TA told me they’re no longer agreeing to termination where there’s a VAWA approval. Now I’m forced to handle the client’s adjustment before the IJ, albeit in 2020.

Public Charge Regs

It is anticipated that a proposed rule will be issued by the President that will expand the definition of public charge, as well as its impact on a client’s inadmissibility or deportability in the US. Although this has been rumored for some time, the administration appears to be getting the ball rolling. There is just conjecture at this time about what the proposed rule will be, but it is expected to be expanded to include not just cash assistance and long term institutionalized health, but also food stamps, medicaid, head start. Also expect that order will aim to go after sponsors for reimbursement, when they sponsored someone who later becomes a public charge.

Trump administration’s immigrant-crime hotline releases victims’ personal information

AZ Republic: The release of private information by ICE underscores problems that have surfaced since ICE launched the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement office, or VOICE, to “serve the needs of crime victims and their families who have been affected by crimes committed by individuals with a nexus to immigration.”

Update on Ravi Ragbir

He has been brought to New York from Florida and is now in in the Orange County Correctional facility. He is awaiting a Jan. 29 hearing. He would be thrilled to get letters. Please send a note to: Ravi Ragbir, ID 2018-00097, Orange County Correctional Facility, 110 Wells Farm Road, Goshen New York, 10924.

US border patrol routinely sabotages water left for migrants, report says

The Guardian: United States border patrol agents routinely vandalise containers of water and other supplies left in the Arizona desert for migrants, condemning people to die of thirst in baking temperatures, according to two humanitarian groups.

LITIGATION/CASELAW

Matter of W-Y-C- & H-O-B-, 27 I&N Dec. 189 (BIA 2018)

(1) An applicant seeking asylum or withholding of removal based on membership in a particular social group must clearly indicate on the record before the Immigration Judge the exact delineation of any proposed particular social group.

(2) The Board of Immigration Appeals generally will not address a newly articulated particular social group that was not advanced before the Immigration Judge.

Justices to review travel ban challenge

SCOTUSblog: The Supreme Court will hear oral argument on the challenge to President Donald Trump’s September 24 order, the latest version of what is often known as his “travel ban,” which limited travel from eight countries: Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea, Venezuela and Chad. The announcement came in a brief order.

Trump administration asks Supreme Court to intervene on DACA

SCOTUSblog: [On Jan. 18] the federal government went to the Supreme Court, asking it to intervene immediately in a legal dispute over whether the Trump administration can end DACA – and to rule on the dispute before the court’s summer recess.

CA2 Finds No Federal Subject-Matter Jurisdiction Over Petitioner’s APA Claim

The court found that there was no basis for federal subject-matter jurisdiction over the petitioner’s Administrative Procedure Act (APA) claim challenging USCIS’s denial of jurisdiction over his adjustment of status application. The court found that the APA does not empower courts to set aside agency action where other statutes preclude judicial review and that INA §242(a)(5) is a statute that precludes judicial review of the petitioner’s case. (Singh v. USCIS, 12/22/17) AILA Doc. No. 18011961.

CA6 Holds That BIA Abused Its Discretion by Failing to Credit Petitioner’s Evidence

The court held that the BIA abused its discretion in denying the petitioner’s motion to reopen removal proceedings by failing to credit the facts presented by the petitioner’s evidence that showed that she would be singled out for persecution by a Mexican drug cartel based on her family membership. The court also held that the BIA abused its discretion by summarily rejecting the petitioner’s argument that she could not safely relocate to another area in Mexico. (Trujillo Diaz v. Sessions, 1/17/18) AILA Doc. No. 18011937.

CA1 Denies Petition for Review, Finding No Plausible Claim of Legal Error

The court denied the petition for review where the IJ had previously found that the petitioner’s testimony was insufficient to support her claim that she entered into the marriage on which her immigration petition had been based in good faith. The court found that there was no plausible claim of legal error, and that the court therefore could not substitute its assessment of the evidence for that of the IJ. The court also found that the BIA’s finding that the petitioner had not demonstrated extreme hardship was supported by substantial evidence. (Gaitu v. Sessions, 12/22/17). AILA Doc. No. 18011847.

CA9 Orders Government to Return Individual Removed to Mexico to the United States

the Ninth Circuit issued an order granting the petition for a writ of mandamus, ordering the government to return the petitioner to the United States by 1/16/18 and to provide him with his necessary medications. (Bringas-Rodriguez v. Sessions, 1/12/18). AILA Doc. No. 18011844.

CA1 Dismisses Petitions for Review of Denial of Voluntary Departure for Lack of Jurisdiction

The court dismissed the petitions for review of denial of voluntary departure to both members of a married couple, finding that the court lacked jurisdiction to review the immigration judge’s discretionary decision to deny voluntary departure. (De la Cruz Orellana v. Sessions, 12/18/17)

AILA Doc. No. 18011837

In lawsuits, same-sex couples say U.S. wrongly denied their children citizenship

WaPo; The lawsuits claim the State Department considers Blixt’s and Dvash-Banks’s children born “out of wedlock,” even though both couples are legally married.

ACTIONS

o   AILA: Call for Examples: RFEs or Denials Based on More than 12 Months of Practical Training

o   AILA: Call for Examples: Experiences with Waivers for Individuals Impacted by Travel Ban

o   NYCLU Request for declarations: [NYCLU is] working on an amicus brief in pending habeas litigation before the SDNY in which we want to illustrate that detention is not required or necessary to effectuate removal. We are writing to ask for assistance from practitioners from around the country (1) whose clients have received bag and baggage/departure letters, and/or (2) whose clients have gone through particularly traumatic experiences as a result of ICE revoking an order of supervision (e.g. where a client was suddenly re-detained when they had been planning for an orderly departure or where a client was detained ostensibly on the premise that removal is imminent, only then to sit in detention for weeks). If you have had clients in these situations and are available to complete the attached declaration, please send it to me (jwells@nyclu.org) and the NYU Immigrant Rights Clinic Clinic by the end of Tuesday, January 23, 2018.

o   ACTION ALERT: #SaveTPS for Syria!

o   Take Action: Protect TPS Holders

RESOURCES

DACA Fund Re-Opened for NYC Residents (New Economy Project)

DACA Renewal Infographic (attached)

AILA Practice Alert: Filing DACA Renewal Applications in the Wake of 1/9/18 Court Ruling

MS-13 as a Terrorist Organization: Risks for Central American Asylum Seekers by Jillian Blake

HHS Annual Update of Poverty Guidelines for 2018

How to Walk the Ethical Line-Being Less Stressed Out

Global Migration & Legal Ethics, Part II: Unauthorized Practice of Law and Foreign Corrupt Practice Act Issues

Global Migration & Legal Ethics: Confidentiality Considerations in Working with Foreign Counsel

FOIA Response for Guidance Related to Sworn Statements at Local USCIS Field Offices

HRF: Report Documents Administration’s Shameful Criminal Prosecution of Asylum Seekers at Border

EVENTS

1/22/18 Refuge Redesigned: Immigrants and Asylum Seekers discuss Homelessness and Housing

1/22-23/18 New York Immigration Coalition Member Congress: Strengthening Immigrant NY

1/23/18 FTC Webinar re: fighting fraud and identity theft in New York

1/23/18 USCIS Invitation: Form I-130, Petition for Alien Relative Teleconference

1/24/18 AIC: A half day discussion of the policy changes that are currently underway and what more lie ahead (teleconference option available).

1/25/18 New York’s New Law on Sealing Criminal Records

1/25/18 Aggressive Removal Defense, Part 2: Motions Practice

1/26/18 NYIC: Jummah prayer on the anniversary of No Ban JFK

1/26/18 Before We Were Banned at ArtHelix

1/31/18 NY County DA SuppB Meeting 11am-noon, 80 Centre Street, Fl 5, FJC RSVP.

1/31/18 USCIS Invitation: Human Trafficking Indicators and Immigration Options Available to Victims of Human Trafficking Webinar

2/5/18 NY AILA CLE Deep-Screening for Immigration Relief post-DACA and TPS

2/8/18 Basic Immigration Law 2018

2/8/18 2 CREDIT CLE: Immigration Law-Hot Topics & Survey For The General Practitioners

2/9/18 Asylum, Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, Crime Victim, and Other Immigration Relief 2018

2/17/18 Real People. Real Lives. Women Immigrants of New York at Queens Museum

2/23/18 2018 Immigration and Asylum Law Conference (Federal Bar Association and New York Law School)

4/12/18 AILA 2018 Removal Defense Conference and Webcast

4/30/18 Working with Immigrants: The Intersection of Basic Immigration, Housing, and Domestic Violence Issues in California 2018 (Free)”

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Thanks to the amazing Elizabeth, as always!

Although the “shutdown” appears at least temporarily resolved, I find it interesting (and telling) that notwithstanding the supposed “immigration crisis,” the DOJ opted to declare the vast majority of U.S Immigration Courts and U.S. Immigration Judges handling “non-detained” dockets to be “non-essential.” That would have added many thousands of cases to the backlog caused by “ADR” every day during the shutdown! Also, what a “morale booster” for an already demoralized and dispirited Immigration Court system and its employees!

PWS

01`-22-18

KURT BARDELLA @ HUFFPOST: “Make No Mistake, Trump’s Government Shutdown Is About Racism!” — GOP LATINO LEADER AL CARDENAS SLAMS HIS PARTY’S “LACK OF EMPATHY” ON “MEET THE PRESS!”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-bardella-government-shutdown_us_5a62d025e4b0e563006fd287

Bardella writes:

“Lost in the shitstorm over “shithole” was another equally damning example of President Donald Trump’s blatant racism and sexism. It was an outward display of a mindset that in many ways has paved the way for the government shutdown we’re facing now.

Last week, NBC News reported that last fall, the president of the United States asked a career intelligence analyst “Where are you from?” She responded, “New York,” and that should have ended the conversation. It didn’t.

He asked again, and she responded, “Manhattan.”

For those who have initiated a similar conversation, if you ask twice and you don’t get the answer you are fishing for ― just drop it. Take a hint. We don’t want to go there with you.

Trump, clearly oblivious to this social cue, follows up and asks where “your people” are from.

Finally relenting, the analyst answered that her parents are Korean. At this point, Trump, through his ignorance, has robbed this woman of all the hard work, intellect and skill she has invested into her profession by placing some artificial value on her (and her family’s) ethnicity.

Where she or her parents are from has zero bearing on her job or value. It’s one thing if someone volunteers information about their culture, background, family and upbringing. But until they do, it’s none of your business and should have no role in how you judge, evaluate and view them as professionals or human beings.

Taking it even further, Trump somehow manages to combine sexism with racism by asking why the “pretty Korean lady” wasn’t negotiating with North Korea. The insane thing about this statement is that I’m 100 percent certain that in Trump’s mind, he was paying her a compliment.

What he did was demean and insult a woman who was simply trying to do her job.

Trump owes this “pretty Korean lady” an apology for his ignorant, racist and sexist comments. I don’t think Trump realizes or cares about the consequences that his tone, tenor and words have had in the lives of people who don’t look like him.

Pretty much my entire life, I’ve been asked (primarily by white people) the question that I imagine every “Asian-looking” person cringes at inside: “Where are you from?”

In most cases, I’m certain that the person asking this is not consciously discriminatory, but rather is just completely ignorant of how annoying this question is to people who look like me. Like the career intelligence analyst attempted to do with Trump, I answered the question by saying “New York” or “California” ― where I had spent my childhood and formative years. Inevitably comes the dreaded follow-up: “No, I mean what is your background? Chinese or Japanese?

The puzzled looks I would receive when I responded: “German and Italian” were priceless but also revealing. I simply did not fit into their preordained stereotypical worldviews.

My name is Kurt (German) Bardella (Italian), and I am adopted.

For most of you out there who ask this question of people who look or sound “different,” you’re probably just genuinely curious and mean no harm. You’re just trying to start conversation.

But the case of Trump and the career intelligence professional reveals something much more offensive. It was a glimpse into the racially charged worldview that Trump subscribes to, a worldview that has infected the Republican Party and now led us to a government shutdown.

It’s the same worldview that led to his vulgarly demeaning the lives of would-be immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and nations in Africa. It’s the same worldview that has him obsessed with building a border wall to keep “bad hombres” out of the United States. And it’s the same worldview that drove him to end DACA.

Trump and his Republican enablers are so fixated on enacting these outwardly racist policies that they are willing to preside over a government shutdown to get them.

The shutdown showdown unfolding right now is about much more than government funding. It is about two different portraits representing the American identity. The Trump-GOP viewpoint sees our country as one that is, first and foremost, Caucasian. The Democratic perspective sees a diverse nation of many cultures, backgrounds, languages and customs.

That’s what we are fighting about. It may be more politically expedient for Democrats to back down, but with our national identity hanging in the balance, this is the time to take a stand.

Kurt Bardella was born in Seoul, South Korea, and adopted by two Americans from Rochester, New York, when he was three months old. He currently lives in Arlington, Virginia.

This piece is part of HuffPost’s brand-new Opinion section. For more information on how to pitch us an idea, go here.

Kurt Bardella is a media strategist who previously worked as a spokesperson for Breitbart News, the Daily Caller, Rep. Darrell Issa, Rep. Brian Bilbray and Senator Olympia Snowe.”

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One had only to listen to Senator Tom Cotton on “Meet the Press” yesterday to see how true Bardella’s commentary is. Cotton lied, obfuscated, and generally avoided answering Moderator Chuck Todd’s questions.

Then, he let loose with his biggest fabrication: that somehow legalizing the Dreamers and eventually allowing their parents to legally immigrate would “do damage” to the U.S. which would have to be “offset” by harsher, more restrictive immigration laws! So, in allowing the Dreamers, who are here doing great things for America, and somewhere down the road their parents, some of whom are also here and are also doing great things for America, to become part of our society is a justification for more racially-motivated restrictions on future immigration. What a total crock!

Cotton said:

But it gives them legal status. That’s an amnesty, by adjusting their status from illegal to legal, no matter what you call it. It didn’t give money to build any new border barriers, only to repair past border barriers. It didn’t do anything to stop chain migration. Here’s what the president has been clear on. Here’s what I and so many Senate Republicans have been clear on: we’re willing to protect this population that is in the DACA program. If we do that, though, it’s going to have negative consequences: first, it’s going to lead to more illegal immigration with children. That’s why the security enforcement measures are so important. And second, it means that you’re going to create an entire new population, through chain migration, that can bring in more people into this country that’s not based on their skills and education and so forth. That’s why we have to address chain migration as well. That is a narrow and focused package that should have the support of both parties.

Meanwhile, on Meet the Press, GOP Latino leader Al Cardenas hit the nail on the head in charging Cotton and others in the GOP with a disturbing “lack of empathy” for Dreamers and other, particularly Hispanic, immigrants:

Cardenas said:

“Excuse me, that’s right. And you know, look, for the Republican Party the president had already tested DACA. The base seemed to be okay with it. Now that things have changed to the point where this bill passes, and it should, Democrats are going to take all the credit for DACA. And we’re taking none. Stupid politics. Number two, the second part that makes us stupid is the fact that no one in our party is saying, “Look, I’m not for this bill but I’ve got a lot of empathy for these million family.” Look, I can see why somebody would not be for this policy-wise. I don’t understand it. But I can respect it. But there’s no empathy. When I saw the secretary of homeland security in front of a Senate saying she’d never met a Dreamer. And yet she’s going to deport a million people, break up all these families. Where is the empathy in my party? People, you know the number one important thing in America when somebody’s asking for a presidential candidate’s support is, “Do you care…Does he care about me?” How do we tell 50 million people that we care about them when there’s not a single word of empathy about the fate of these million people.”

Here’s the complete transcript of “Meet the Press” from yesterday, which also included comments from Democratic Senator Dick Durbin and others. Check it out for yourself, if you didn’t see it.

https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-january-21-2018-n839606

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Unlike Cotton and his restrictionist colleagues, I actually had “Dreamer-type” families come before me in Immigration Court. The kids eventually had obtained legal status, probably through marriage to a U.S. citizen, naturalized and petitioned for their parents.

Not only had the kids been successful, but the parents who were residing here were without exception good, hard-working, tax-paying “salt of the earth” folks. They had taken big-time risks to find a better life for their children, made big contributions to the U.S. by doing work that others were unavailable or unwilling to do, and asked little in return except to be allowed to live here in peace with their families.

Most will still working, even if they were beyond what we might call “retirement age.” They didn’t have fat pensions and big Social Security checks coming.

Many were providing essential services like child care, elder care, cleaning, cooking, fixing, or constructing. Just the type of folks our country really needs.

They weren’t “free loaders” as suggested by the likes of Cotton and his restrictionist buddies. Although I don’t remember that any were actually “rocket scientists,” they were doing the type of honest, important, basic work that America depends on for the overall success and prosperity of our society. Exactly the opposite of the “no-skill — no-good” picture painted by Cotton and the GOP restrictionists. I’d argue that our country probably has a need for more qualified health care and elder care workers than “rocket scientists” for which there is much more limited market! But, there is no reason se can’t have both with a sane immigration policy.

PWS

01-22-18

JOSE ANDRES @WASHPOST: A NATION IS ONLY AS GOOD AS ITS FOOD! – How Trump & The White Nationalists Undermine the REAL America!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/jose-andres-how-the-immigration-debate-hits-a-restaurant-kitchen/2018/01/18/9ac5ae40-fa22-11e7-a46b-a3614530bd87_story.html

Famous Chef Jose Andres writes in the Washington Post:

“Washington is the kind of city where you can learn a lot by listening to the conversations over dinner. At my restaurants, I have been lucky to join the conversation with presidents and first ladies, senators and ambassadors.

But right now, you can hear the most important conversations if you walk past the tables out front and into my kitchens. There — amid the din of knives chopping, plates clattering and chefs calling out a staccato stream of food orders — you’ll hear from people who look and sound a lot like America. English predominates, but you’ll also catch Haitian Creole, French and Spanish. Natural-born citizens and naturalized citizens like me work alongside those on temporary visas. I believe that all these voices make us stronger, more creative and courageous, less complacent and fearful.

Manuel is one of those people in the kitchen who prepare food for the powerful. (I am using only his first name here, to protect him from the threats many immigrants are now facing.) He was born in El Salvador, in a small town called Santa Rosa de Lima. He came to the United States in 1997 and, after a massive earthquake in his native country, was granted temporary protected status (TPS) in 2001. When immigration officials asked how he came into the United States, he didn’t lie about his walk across the border. “Matamoros,” he said.

It was also in 2001 that Manuel started as a cook at my Spanish restaurant, Jaleo. I have come to know him as someone who works hard, pays his taxes and is raising his children — a son with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status and two American-born children — to respect the country that gave him so much. But now, his family’s future is in doubt. “I just want to work to be able to send my two American-born children to university; I want them to have a better life than mine,” he told me.

[‘We will lose practically everything’: Salvadorans devastated by TPS decision]

The Trump administration’s decision to revoke protective status for Salvadorans (affecting 200,000 immigrants living in the United States, including 32,000 in the Washington area), Haitians (59,000 immigrants) and possibly Hondurans (86,000 immigrants) has thrown families across the country into chaos. This policy shift also has the potential to devastate my industry and hurt the overall economy.

Congress created TPS in 1990 to provide legal status to foreigners who could not safely return home because of war, natural disasters or other extreme conditions. Republican and Democratic administrations alike have extended those protections, six to 18 months at a time, recognizing that conditions remain dangerous. El Salvador, for example, is in such a state of turmoil that the State Department advisesU.S. citizens to reconsider traveling there. An influx of tens of thousands of returning citizens would only make things worse.

In the meantime, people like Manuel have built lives in the United States, buying homes (nearly a third have mortgages) and becoming active in their communities. Like Manuel, many TPS recipients are married and have children who are U.S. citizens — immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti and Honduras are raising about 273,200 U.S.-born children, according to the Center for American Progress.

Understandably, few parents would want to uproot their spouses and children to travel to a country with little opportunity and widespread violence. So, instead, these individuals face an agonizing choice: to leave without their families, or to remain in the United States without the legal means to work and in constant fear of deportation. No doubt, many will disappear from their jobs, obtain fake documents and become ghosts in a country where they used to belong.

[Trump’s move against Salvadorans won’t make them leave — or help U.S. workers]

As Americans, we also have much to lose if hundreds of thousands of industrious migrants are expelled. The Center for American Progress estimates that removing TPS workers from the economy would generate a $164 billion hole in gross domestic product over the next decade.

Because restaurants are among the main employers of these immigrants (along with construction companies, landscape businesses and child-care services), the restaurant industry stands to be particularly hard hit. Immigrants, including Salvadorans and other Central Americans, make up more than half of the staff at my restaurants, and we simply could not run our businesses without them. With national unemployment at 4 percent, there aren’t enough U.S.-born workers to take their places — or cover the employment needs of a growing economy.

Let me be frank: The administration is throwing families and communities into crisis for no good reason. This is not what people of faith do. It’s not what pragmatic people do. It’s not what America was built on.

I came to the United States from Spain in 1991 with an E-2 visa and big ambitions. I wanted to introduce America to the food of my heritage while at the same time reimagining it. I wanted to become a chef and start my own restaurant.

Despite the many hardships of being a new immigrant, life was relatively easy for me — in no small part because of my fair skin and blue eyes. America isn’t the only place where this happens; it is a human sickness. We have a hard time welcoming those who are different from us.

With the help of many friends and mentors, I worked hard to realize my ambitions. And I made sure to bring as many people as I could along with me. That is the American Dream: to live your own dream while helping others achieve theirs.

As an employer and friend of Salvadorans, Haitians and incredible people of many other nationalities, I hope Congress can work with the administration to change course on immigration policy.

TPS recipients, who have contributed for so long to the U.S. economy and our communities, should be able to apply for green cards and start on the path to citizenship. And DACA recipients, like Manuel’s son, should be able to apply for permanent status so they can truly belong to the country they have long thought of as their own.

Let’s also create a revolving-door visa, allowing people from Mexico, El Salvador and other countries to work for a few months and then return home, bringing their earnings back with them. Revolving-door visas would help the U.S. economy continue to grow and help grow the economies of our allies, too.

President Trump knows full well the value of temporary visas. From his family’s winery in Virginia to his construction projects in New York, he has hired many foreign workers to build his businesses.

President Trump, if you are reading this: Back in 2016 you told me in a phone conversation that you wanted to hear more about my views on immigration. We haven’t spoken in a while. So let me say this here: Walls will not make America safer or greater. But the money our immigrants send back home most certainly does, because economic stability contributes to political stability and international security. Allowing immigrants to work without fear of deportation or exploitation would help, too, because it would sustain American businesses and support American families. It’s the right thing to do. It’s the American way to transform what might seem a problem into an opportunity.”

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Jose Andres doesn’t just talk and write; he acts! During the recent Puerto Rico disaster, while the Trump Administration was dithering and pointing fingers, Andres was “on the ground” serving free meals to those who needed them. Seems like we have the “wrong kind of businessman” in the White House! One who is more concerned about himself than he is about others and the country.

PWS

01-21-20

MICHELLE BRANE @ WOMEN’S REFUGEE COMMISSION — “Why I March!”

“Dear Paul,

Today, my daughter Marisa and I joined thousands of women, men, and children in Washington, DC and other cities around the country to march for equality and for justice.

First and foremost on my mind while I marched with my daughter were the migrant and refugee women, children, and families for whom I advocate every day. With each step, I thought about the brave mothers who escape danger in their home countries because, like all mothers, they want a bright future for their children. Expecting to find safety at our border, these women and children are instead met by the Trump administration’s policies of ripping families apart.

I decided to march today in honor of the women and children who reach for safety but are instead betrayed.

The Women’s Refugee Commission will march forward with our important work supporting women and children seeking safety at our border. We will continue to utilize the court systems, inform the press and public, and hold the Trump administration accountable until asylum seekers have the protection and services they need to be safe, healthy, and to rebuild their lives. But there is strength in numbers.

In the spirit of the Women’s March, and the women for whom we march, please join us by donating today.

We can accomplish so much more together than we can alone.

In solidarity,

Michelle Brané
Director, Migrant Rights and Justice Program

DONATE

© 2017 Women’s Refugee Commission. All rights reserved.
The Women’s Refugee Commission is a 501(c)(3) organization.
Donations are deductible to the full extent allowable under IRS regulations.
15 West 37th Street, 9th Floor, New York, NY 10018 • Tel. (212) 551-3115”

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Like me, my friend Michelle began her career as an Attorney Advisor at the BIA. She is also a distinguished alum of Georgetown Law where I am an Adjunct Professor.

The Women’s Refugee Commission does some fantastic work in behalf of vulnerable women and children who arrive at our border seeking refuge and justice, only to be detained and railroaded back to life-threatening conditions by the anti-refugee, anti-Due-Process, White Nationalist regime of Trump, Sessions, Miller, Nielsen, and their complicit minions.

Michelle was named one of the “21 Leaders for the 21st Century” by Women’s e-News.

Imagine what a great country this could be if our Government and our justice system were led by smart, courageous, principled, values-driven, humane leaders like Michelle and her colleagues, rather than by a cabal of morally bankrupt White Nationalist men and their sycophantic subordinates.

PWS

01-22-18

CNN: ON THE ROAD TO NOWHERE! — PARTIES HAVE ONE THING IN COMMON: Each Underestimated The Resolve Of The Other!

http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/21/politics/donald-trump-government-shutdown-sunday-highlights/index.html

By Stephen Collinson, Phil Mattingly, Tal Kopan and Daniella Diaz, CNN

Updated 2:19 PM ET, Sun January 21, 2018

CNN)The government shutdown went into a second day Sunday with recriminations deepening between the parties and with no sign of progress towards ending the impasse.

The House and the Senate will be back at work by early afternoon, but after a day of futility on Saturday, there are few hopes of a sudden breakthrough to resolve a showdown over the refusal of Senate Democrats to vote to fund the government until President Donald Trump agrees to deal with the fate of 700,000 people brought to the US illegally as children.

The White House, and Republican and Democratic leaders spent most of Saturday apportioning blame as they sought to shape the political fallout from the shutdown that will only truly begin to hit home on Monday when government departments stay dark after the weekend as federal workers are furloughed.

“Everyone’s dug in. No movement at all from either side,” said a Democratic aide.

Trump had been hoping to be the star of the show at a glitzy fundraiser at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida Saturday celebrating the anniversary of his inauguration. But he was forced to hole up in Washington when his trip was canceled because of the shutdown.

. . . .

Both sides are convinced they have the upper hand — one reason why the shutdown could last for a while.

Republicans feel confident that they’re on the right side of the shutdown. While House Republicans were the ones who failed to deliver the votes when the government shut down in 2013. This time around, members say they want their leadership to stand firm against Senate Democrats who they believe will feel the pressure sooner or later.

Democrats believe that the fact that the GOP controls the House, the Senate and the White House will prompt voters to blame Trump and his troops.

CNN’s Ashley Killough, Deirdre Walsh, Abby Phillip, Manu Raju, Kevin Liptak and Ryan Nobles contributed to this report.”

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Read the complete article at the above link. Doesn’t sound promising; but, they are going to keep at it.

PWS

01-21-18

JULIA PRESTON: CHAOS IN COURT! – TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S MAL-ADMINISTRATION OF IMMIGRATION COURTS RUINS LIVES, FRUSTRATES JUDGES!

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/01/19/lost-in-court

Julia writes for The Marshall Project:

“. . . .

And so in this gateway city on the Rio Grande [Laredo], inside a building rimmed with barbed wire, past security guards and locked doors, immigration judges on short details started hearing cases in a cramped courtroom that was hastily arranged in March.

But seven months later, the case of Oscar Arnulfo Ramírez, an immigrant from El Salvador, was not going quickly. He was sitting in detention, waiting for a hearing on his asylum claim. And waiting some more.

The court files, his lawyer discovered, showed that Ramírez’s case had been completed and closed two months earlier. Since the case was closed, the court clerk couldn’t schedule a new hearing to get it moving again. In fact, the clerk didn’t even have a record that he was still detained.

“It’s as if he’s non-existent,” his lawyer,, said. “He’s still in a detention center. He’s still costing the government and the American people tax dollars. But there’s no proceeding going on. He’s just sitting there doing completely nothing.”

Ramírez’s case was one of many signs of disarray in the improvised court in Laredo, which emerged during a weeklong visit in late October by a reporter from The Marshall Project and a radio producer from This American Life. Instead of the efficiency the Trump administration sought, the proceedings were often chaotic. Hearing schedules were erratic, case files went missing. Judges were exasperated by confusion and delays. Like Ramírez, detainees were lost in the system for months on end.

For a view of the border crossing in Laredo and the grinding process migrants begin there, check out Kirsten Luce’s photosfrom the gateway on the Rio Grande.

With the intense pressure on the court to finish cases, immigrants who had run from frightening threats in their home countries were deported without having a chance to tell the stories that might have persuaded a judge to let them stay.

. . . .

For Paola Tostado, the lawyer, Ramírez was not the first client to fall through the cracks in Laredo. Even though she is based in Brownsville, three hours away, Tostado was making the pre-dawn drive up the highway as many as three times a week, to appear next to her clients in court in Laredo whenever she could.

Another Salvadoran asylum-seeker she represented, whose case was similarly mislaid, had gone for four months with no hearing and no prospect of having one. Eventually he despaired. When ICE officers presented him with a document agreeing to deportation, without consulting Tostado he had signed it.

“I’ve had situations where we come to an individual client who has been detained over six months and the file is missing,” she said. “It’s not in San Antonio. It’s not in Laredo. So where is it? Is it on the highway?”

In her attempts to free Ramírez, Tostado consulted with the court clerk in San Antonio, with the ICE prosecutors and officers detaining him, but no one could say how to get the case started again.

Then, one day after reporters sat in the courtroom and spoke with Tostado about the case, ICE released him to pursue his case in another court, without explanation.

But by December Tostado had two other asylum-seekers who had been stalled in the system for more than seven months. She finally got the court to schedule hearings for them in the last days of the year.

“I think the bottom line is, there’s no organization in this Laredo court,” Tostado said. “It’s complete chaos and at the end of the day it’s not fair. Because you have clients who say, I just want to go to court. If it’s a no, it’s a no. If it’s a yes, it’s a yes.”

Unlike criminal court, in immigration court people have no right to a lawyer paid by the government. But there was no reliable channel in Laredo for immigrants confined behind walls to connect with low-cost lawyers. Most lawyers worked near the regular courts in the region, at least two hours’ drive away.

Sandra Berrios, another Salvadoran seeking asylum, learned the difference a lawyer could make. She found one only by the sheerest luck. After five months in detention, she was days away from deportation when she was cleaning a hallway in the center, doing a job she had taken to keep busy. A lawyer walked by. Berrios blurted a plea for help.

The lawyer was from a corporate law firm, Jones Day, which happened to be offering free services. Two of its lawyers, Christopher Maynard and Adria Villar, took on her case. They learned that Berrios had been a victim of vicious domestic abuse. A Salvadoran boyfriend who had brought her to the United States in 2009 had turned on her a few years later when he wanted to date other women.

Once he had punched her in the face in a Walmart parking lot, prompting bystanders to call the police. He had choked her, burned her legs with cigarettes, broken her fingers and cut her hands with knives. Berrios had scars to show the judge. She had a phone video she had made when the boyfriend was attacking her and records of calls to the Laredo police.

The lawyers also learned that the boyfriend had returned to El Salvador to avoid arrest, threatening to kill Berrios if he ever saw her there.

She had started a new relationship in Texas with an American citizen who wanted to marry her. But she’d been arrested by the Border Patrol at a highway checkpoint when the two of them were driving back to Laredo from an outing at a Gulf Coast beach.

After Berrios been detained for nine months, at a hearing in July with Maynard arguing her case, a judge canceled her deportation and let her stay. In a later interview, Berrios gave equal parts credit to God and the lawyers. “I would be in El Salvador by this time, already dead,” she said. “The judges before that just wanted to deport me.”

. . . .

We have heard frustration across the board,” said Ashley Tabaddor, a judge from Los Angeles who is the association [NAIJ] president. She and other union officials clarified that their statements did not represent the views of the Justice Department. “We’ve definitely heard from our members,” she said, “where they’ve had to reset hundreds of cases from their home docket to go to detention facilities where the docket was haphazardly scheduled, where the case might not have been ready, where the file has not reached the facility yet.”

Another association official, Lawrence Burman, a judge who normally sits in Arlington, Va., volunteered for a stint in a detention center in the rural Louisiana town of Jena, 220 miles northwest of New Orleans. Four judges were sent, Burman said, but there was only enough work for two.

“So I had a lot of free time, which was pretty useless in Jena, Louisiana,” Burman said. “All of us in that situation felt very bad that we have cases back home that need to be done. But in Jena I didn’t have any of my files.” Once he had studied the cases before him in Jena, Burman said, he was left to “read the newspaper or my email.”

The impact on Burman’s case docket back in Arlington was severe. Dozens of cases he was due to hear during the weeks he was away had to be rescheduled, including some that had been winding through the court and were ready for a final decision. But with the enormous backlog in Arlington, Burman had no openings on his calendar before November 2020.

Immigrants who had already waited years to know whether they could stay in the country now would wait three years more. Such disruptions were reported in other courts, including some of the nation’s largest in Chicago, Miami and Los Angeles.

“Many judges came back feeling that their time was not wisely used,” Judge Tabaddor, the association president, said, “and it was to the detriment of their own docket.”

Justice Department officials say they are pleased with the results of the surge. A department spokesman, Devin O’Malley, did not comment for this story but pointed to congressional testimony by James McHenry, the director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review. “Viewed holistically, the immigration judge mobilization has been a success,” he said, arguing it had a “positive net effect on nationwide caseloads.”

Justice Department officials calculated that judges on border details completed 2700 more cases than they would have if they had remained in home courts. Officials acknowledge that the nationwide caseload continued to rise during last year, reaching 657,000 cases by December. But they noted that the rate of growth had slowed, to .39 percent monthly increase at the end of the year from 3.39 percent monthly when Trump took office.

Judge Tabaddor, the association president, said the comparison was misleading: cases of immigrants in detention, like the ones the surge judges heard, always take priority and go faster than cases of people out on release, she said. Meanwhile, according to records obtained by the National Immigrant Justice Center, as many as 22,000 hearings in judges’ home courts had to be rescheduled in the first three months of the surge alone, compounding backlogs.

. . . .”

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

Read Julia’s complete article at the above link. Always enjoy getting quotes from my former Arlington colleague Judge Lawrence O. (“The Burmanator”) Burman. He tends to “tell it like it is” in the fine and time-honored Arlington tradition of my now retired Arlington colleague Judge Wayne R. Iskra. And, Judge Iskra didn’t even have the “cover” of being an officer of the NAIJ. Certainly beats the “pabulum” served up by the PIO at the “Sessionized” EOIR!

Also, kudos to one of my “former firms” Jones Day, its National Managing Partner Steve Brogan, and the Global Pro Bono Counsel Laura Tuell for opening the Laredo Office exclusively for pro bono immigration representation, As firms like jones Day take the “immigration litigation field,” and give asylum applicants the “A+ representation” they need and deserve, I predict that it’s going to become harder for the Article III U.S. Courts to ignore the legal shortcomings of the Immigration Courts under Sessions.

A brief aside. My friend Laura Tuell was a “Guest Professor” during a session of my Immigration Law & Policy class at Georgetown Law last June. On the final exam, one of my students wrote that Laura had inspired him or her to want a career embodying values like hers! Wow! Talk about making a difference on many levels!And talk about the difference in representing real values as opposed to the legal obfuscation and use of the legal system to inflict wanton cruelty represented by Sessions and his restrictionist ilk.

We also should recognize the amazing dedication and efforts of pro bono and “low bono” lawyers like Paola Tostado, mentioned in Julia’s report. “Even though she is based in Brownsville, three hours away, Tostado was making the pre-dawn drive up the highway as many as three times a week, to appear next to her clients in court in Laredo whenever she could.” What do you think that does to her law practice? As I’ve said before, folks like Paola Tostado, Christopher Maynard, Adria Villar, and Laura Tuell are the “real heroes” of Due Process in the Immigraton Court system.

Compare the real stories of desperate, bona fide asylum seekers and their hard-working dedicated lawyers being “stiffed” and mistreated in the Immigration Court with Sessions’s recent false narrative to EOIR about an asylum system rife with fraud promoted by “dirty attorneys.” Sessions’s obvious biases against migrants, both documented and undocumented, and particularly against Latino asylum seekers on the Southern Border, make him glaringly unqualified to be either our Attorney General or in charge of our U.S. Immigration Court system.

No amount of “creative book-cooking” by EOIR and the DOJ can disguise the human and due process disaster unfolding here. This is exactly what I mean when I refer to “”Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”), and it’s continuing to increase the Immigration Court backlogs (now at a stunning 660,000) notwithstanding that there are now more Immigration Judges on duty than there were at the end of the last Administration.

I’ll admit upfront to not being very good at statistics and to being skeptical about what they show us. But, let’s leave the “Wonderful World of EOIR” for a minute and go on over to TRAC for a “reality check” on how “Trumpism” is really working in the Immigration Courts. http://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/court_backlog/apprep_backlog.php

On September 30, 2016, near the end of the Obama Administration, the Immigration Court backlog stood at a whopping 516,000! Not good!

But, now let go to Nov. 30, 2017, a period of 14 months later, 10 of these full months under the policies of the Trump Administration. The backlog has mushroomed to a stunning 659,000 cases — a gain of 153,000 in less than two years! And, let’s not forget, that’s with more Immigration Judges on board!

By contrast, during the last two full years of the Obama Administration — September 30, 2014 to September 30, 2016 — the backlog rose from 408,000 to 516,000. Nothing to write home about — 108,000 — but not nearly as bad as the “Trump era” has been to date!

Those who know me, know that I’m no “fan” of the Obama Administration’s stewardship over the U.S. Immigration Courts. Wrongful and highly politicized “prioritization” of recently arrived children, women, and families from the Northern Triangle resulted in “primo ADR” that sent the system into a tailspin that has only gotten worse. And, the glacial two-year cycle for the hiring of new Immigration Judges was totally inexcusable.

But, the incompetence and disdain for true Due Process by the Trump Administration under Sessions is at a whole new level. It’s clearly “Amateur Night at the Bijou” in what is perhaps the nation’s largest Federal Court system. And, disturbingly, nobody except a few of us “Immigration Court Groupies” seems to care.

So, it looks like we’re going to have to stand by and watch while Sessions “implodes” or “explodes” the system. Then, folks might take notice. Because the collapse of the U.S. Immigration Courts is going to take a big chunk of the Article III Federal Judiciary with it.

Why? Because approximately 80% of the administrative review petitions in the U.S. Courts of Appeals are generated by the BIA. That’s over 10% of the total caseload. And, in Circuits like the 9th Circuit, it’s a much higher percentage.

The U.S. Immigration Judges will continue to be treated like “assembly line workers” and due process will be further short-shrifted in the “pedal faster” atmosphere intentionally created by Sessions and McHenry. The BIA, in turn, will be pressured to further “rubber stamp” the results as long as they are removal orders. The U.S. Courts of Appeals, and in some cases the U.S. District Courts, are going to be left to clean up the mess created by Sessions & co.

We need an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court with competent, unbiased judicial administration focused on insuring individuals’ Due Process now! We’re ignoring the obvious at our country’s peril!

PWS

01-20-18

SUPREMES AGREE TO REVIEW TRAVEL BAN 3.0!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-to-rule-on-trumps-powers-to-ban-foreign-travelers/2018/01/19/9e6e1242-fc90-11e7-8f66-2df0b94bb98a_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-more-top-stories_travelban-214pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.5ed961faa53f

Robert Barnes reports for WashPost:

“The Supreme Court on Friday said it will review whether President Trump has the authority to ban travelers from certain countries in the name of national security, and will rule by June in what will be a major examination of the president’s powers.

The court will consider the third iteration of Trump’s travel ban, issued last fall, which bars various travelers from eight countries, six of them with Muslim majorities.

[Appeals court strikes down latest version of travel ban]

Lower courts have struck down each version of the Trump administration restrictions, dating back to those issued in his first week in office, but the Supreme Court has yet to rule on the extent of the president’s authority.”

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

Read the complete article at the link.

PWS

01-19-18

CNN: GOP LEADERSHIP APPARENTLY WORKING TO SCOTCH ANY CHANCE OF IMMIGRATION COMPROMISE, WHILE GOP HOUSE RESTRICTIONISTS THROW GASOLINE ON THE FIRE!

http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/19/politics/republican-leadership-against-durbin-graham-bill/index.html

“Republican leaders pressure members against Durbin-Graham DACA bill

By: Tal Kopan and Phil Mattingly, CNN

Republican Senate leadership is waging a quiet, behind-the-scenes pressure campaign to encourage GOP members to not sign onto a bipartisan immigration deal.

Sources say the pressure is directed at members who might support a bill proposed by Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, and Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, and rest of the so-called Gang of Six.

Two GOP sources with knowledge of the process say Republican leadership — including Sen. Mitch McConnell — has made clear to several members that it wouldn’t be helpful to the current Republican strategy to get onto the proposal.

Meanwhile, Congress remained hours away from a government shutdown on Friday.

Republican Majority Whip John Cornyn’s spokesman denied any active whip operation, pointing to Cornyn’s public statements against the bill.

“To write our office is whipping against their proposal (I haven’t seen a bill, have you?) is factually inaccurate. It could not be further from the truth,” the spokesman said in an email.

But sources close to the process say the pressure does exist.

Durbin and Graham have managed to lock up four Republicans — Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Mike Rounds of South Dakota and Susan Collins of Maine — in addition to the three Republicans that made up half of the “gang” to support the proposal so far — still four votes short of enough to muster the 60-vote threshold needed to advance the legislation if all Democrats join in. It still has not been introduced in legislative text form, but a description of the pieces of the bill has been made public.

President Donald Trump last week rejected the proposal, in vulgar terms, in an Oval Office meeting where it was presented to him.

The day before the Gang of Six unveiled their plan, Graham, Flake and Durbin were visibly working the Senate floor during a long FISA cloture vote. The three of them spoke at separate times with Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, for example, who voted for immigration reform before.

Asked if anyone was trying to undermine their efforts on the bill on Thursday, Republican Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, himself a member of the GOP leadership, denied activity to tank a deal.

“I think there are probably people on the left and right who don’t want a solution; I don’t feel that anybody is actively working against a solution,” Gardner told reporters.

Graham and Cornyn have landed publicly on different sides of the issue. Asked about Cornyn’s assertion there would not be a short-term continuing resolution of a few days on Thursday, Graham replied: “Well then you need to tell Sen. Cornyn, I respect him a lot, but he needs to get 60 votes. Good luck.”

Government funding runs out at midnight on Friday and the Senate does not appear to have the votes for a House-passed continuing resolution into mid-February.”

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

http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/18/politics/goodlatte-hardline-bill-freedom-caucus-deal/index.html

“GOP leaders promise to whip hard-line immigration bill

By: Tal Kopan, CNN

Conservative House members say they got a promise from leadership to pursue a separate hard-line Republican-only immigration bill in exchange for their votes to pass government funding Thursday night — a measure that several Republicans doubt could pass the House, let alone the Senate.

The bill is a proposal from key committee and subcommittee chairs Bob Goodlatte, Raul Labrador, Mike McCaul and Martha McSally that includes a large number of hard-line immigration provisions that Democrats and some Republicans have said are nonstarters.

Labrador told CNN after votes Thursday that the commitment to members of the House Freedom Caucus was “to actually whip (the bill) and to work on it like they did on all the other important bills we’ve done this year.” While there was no clear timeline for a floor vote, Labrador said that “should” be the goal.

More…http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/18/politics/goodlatte-hardline-bill-freedom-caucus-deal/index.html”

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

Not looking good right now. Both sides digging in.

PWS

01-19-18

DISORDER IN THE U.S. IMMIGRATION COURTS: SESSIONS “DECLARES WAR” ON HIS OWN IMMIGRATION JUDGES! — JUDGES’ ASSOCIATION (“NAIJ”) REPORTS MEMBERS REACTING WITH “DISBELIEF, SHOCK, CONFUSION, AND OUTRAGE” TO THE CONDESCENDING “McHENRY MEMO!” — NAIJ DEMANDS BARGAINING ON CASE QUOTAS!

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a retired member of the National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”). In that capacity, I received the following e-mail from our President, The Honorable A. Ashley Tabaddor (who is resident in the U.S. Immigration Court in Los Angeles California), acting in her NAIJ capacity. I republish that e-mail below with Judge Tabaddor’s permission.

“Dear NAIJ Members,

We have been hearing much from our members regarding the recent Director’s email, dated January 17, 2018, publishing purported “Case Priorities and Immigration Court Performance Measures.” Many have expressed their disbelief, shock, confusion, and outrage as to the published standards, in light of the severe backlogs in our courts. We share your concerns. NAIJ has demanded to bargain on implementation of “numeric based performance measures on Immigration Judges”, and the Agency had provided assurances to NAIJ that no individual IJ based quotas and deadlines will be imposed until they have fulfilled their obligation under labor law to bargain with us. And under the law, the Agency is prohibited from imposing such standards until all our bargaining rights have been properly exhausted. NAIJ is also fighting any infliction of quotas and deadlines on Immigration Judges through outreach to the public and Congress, and is investigating the possibility of legal action.

In addition, NAIJ is currently evaluating the memo to determine if there has been any breach in law with the issuance of this memo or any further action we can take under labor law with respect to it.

NAIJ is working diligently to fight the implementation of any “numeric based performance measures” on Judges, and ensure that any future standards that may be imposed on Judges or the Immigration Courts are legally defensible, fair, and would not encroach on our independent decision making authority. Please stay tuned for further development.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to myself or any of our NAIJ representatives.

The Honorable A. Ashley Tabaddor, President

National Association of Immigration Judges

DISCLAIMER: The author is the President of the National Association of Immigration Judges. The views expressed here do not necessarily represent the official position of the United States Department of Justice, the Attorney General, or the Executive Office for Immigration Review. The views represent the author’s personal opinions, which were formed after extensive consultation with the membership of NAIJ.”

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

I’ve already noted the total preposterousness and tone-deafness of setting arbitrary “case completion goals” for a court system that is already working overtime but crumbling under incredible backlogs and outdated procedures and technology.

Make no mistake about it: those backlogs are not because of Judges, immigrants, or immigrants’ attorneys. They are the direct result of: 1) years of mismanagement and continuing improper political meddling by Sessions and his predecessors going back over several Administrations; and 2) an irresponsible lack of restraint and common sense priorities by DHS enforcement that has been encouraged, aided, and abetted by this Administration.

Under the Trump Administration, DHS line enforcement agents have been freed from any semblance of priorities and given essentially carte blanche to arrest anyone they feel like arresting and placing them into an already overwhelmed and crumbling U.S. Immigration Court System. Meanwhile, the Immigration Judges, who are struggling to provide due process, and have been stripped of any meaningful control over their own dockets, are treated like “assembly line workers” subject to “production quotas.” That’s no way to run a Due Process Court System, and it’s showing in some of the incorrect and unfair results that I report on regularly!

We need an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court, now! But Congress, which can’t perform the basic functions of governance, apparently isn’t interested in cleaning up the mess they created and enabled. So, with the system fast heading for complete collapse, it looks to me like, willing or not, the Article III U.S. Courts will be stuck with effectively placing the U.S. Immigration Courts in “judicial receivership” until some future Congress addresses the situation in a way that insures Constitutional Due Process of law for all.

A very bad day for the U.S. Justice System and for all who care about upholding Due Process under our Constitution.

PWS

01-19-20

EOIR/IMMIGRATION COURTS: AG SESSIONS ANNOUNCES APPOINTMENT OF HON. JAMES McHENRY AS PERMANENT DIRECTOR OF EOIR!

“JUSTICE NEWS

Department of Justice

Office of Public Affairs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Attorney General Sessions Announces Appointment of James McHenry As Director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review

Attorney General Jeff Sessions today announced the appointment of James McHenry as the permanent Director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) at the Department of Justice. McHenry has served as the Acting Director of EOIR since May 30, 2017.

“I am pleased to announce the appointment of James as the permanent Director of EOIR. Since his appointment as Acting Director last May, James has led EOIR in restoring its commitment to the timely and efficient adjudication of immigration cases, and in identifying additional common-sense improvements to the immigration court system,” said Attorney General Sessions. “James is an exceptionally talented and capable leader, and I am confident that he will continue to ensure that EOIR and its components will adjudicate cases in a manner that serves the national interest.”

“Under Attorney General Sessions’ leadership, EOIR has implemented a series of sensible reforms that aim to reduce the pending caseload by realigning the agency towards completing cases, increasing both productivity and capacity, and changing policies that lead to inefficiencies and waste,” said EOIR Director McHenry. “I look forward to building on the success of last year and further realizing our goal of cutting the pending caseload in half by 2020.”

EOIR was created on Jan. 9, 1983, through an internal department reorganization which combined the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) with the immigration judge function previously performed by the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) (now part of the Department of Homeland Security). The Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer (OCAHO) was added in 1987.

EOIR is headed by a director who is responsible for the supervision of the Chairman of BIA, the Chief Immigration Judge, the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer and all agency personnel. EOIR has more than 2,100 employees in its 59 immigration courts nationwide, at the BIA, at OCAHO, and at EOIR headquarters in Falls Church, Virginia.

Director McHenry has previously served in the Executive Office for Immigration Review; he first joined the agency in 2003 through the Attorney General’s Honors Program and returned to the agency in 2016, when he was appointed as an administrative law judge (ALJ) for EOIR OCAHO.

Last year, McHenry served as a Deputy Associate Attorney General working on a variety of immigration-related litigation matters and overseeing multiple components reporting to the Office of the Associate Attorney General. From 2014 to 2016, he served as an ALJ for the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review in the Social Security Administration. Prior to that, he worked for the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security as an Assistant Chief Counsel and, later, as a Senior Attorney where he served as a lead attorney for national security, denaturalization, gang cases, anti-human trafficking operations, and worksite enforcement matters. He also served a detail as a Special Assistant United States Attorney for the Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of Georgia.

Director McHenry earned a Bachelor of Science from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, a Master of Arts in political science from the Vanderbilt University Graduate School, and a Juris Doctor from the Vanderbilt University Law School.”

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

PWS

01-19-20

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