August 2018 – Page 2 – immigrationcourtside.com

WHITE SUPREMACISTS OCCUPY THE WHITE HOUSE!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/08/24/president-trump-is-pushing-white-nationalist-ideas-into-mainstream/

Aaron Sankin and Will Carless write in the Washington Post:

August 24

When President Trump tweeted Wednesday night that he had asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to look into violence against, and seizures of land from, white farmers in South Africa, he wasn’t just amplifying a narrative he heard from Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

Trump was also elevating a storyline that has floated around white supremacist blogs, podcasts and online forums for years. And the president’s tweet shows how these white supremacist ideas bubble up from the Internet’s darkest corners into the Oval Office.

In 2015, Dylann Roof walked into a Bible study group at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., listened quietly for an hour and then opened fire, killing nine people. A photo that later surfaced online showed Roof wearing a jacket sporting the flag of South Africa’s apartheid regime. The 24-year-old South Carolinian clearly felt an affinity with white South Africans.

That sentiment is common across the white supremacist universe.

The neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer has published hundreds of stories about the plight of white South African farmers. Users of the white supremacist site Stormfront have been going on about the issue for years. White nationalist groups on platforms such as Facebook are similarly devoted the fate of South African whites.

These narratives often portray the treatment of South African whites as a critical front in an imagined global fight against white people. If whites in South Africa are treated so poorly after handing over power to the country’s black majority, the story goes, it’s just a preview of what could happen in the rest of the world as more diverse voices are allowed into the political conversation. This fear has been given a name: white genocide.

[The Trump administration is showing white nationalists it won’t fight them at all]

In the leaked logs of an online white nationalist chat server operated by South African Willem Petzer, published by the independent media outlet Unicorn Riot, users explicitly discussed highlighting this story as part of a larger propaganda goal. “Are we selling this white genocide lie in SA as well as the jews did with the holocaust in ww2?” one user wrote, equating the neo-Nazi conspiracy theory that the Holocaust never happened with a desire to use inflated claims about the treatment of South African farmers to further the cause of white nationalism. “We need to build some head lice treatment rooms/showers,” replied another, blithely nodding at killing methods methods used in Nazi concentration camps. “I think that may solve the problem.”

The white nationalist version of what’s happening in South Africa is a twisted history of the land reforms that have been instituted since apartheid ended in 1994. The claim is that black South Africans are increasingly invading white farms, slaughtering farmers and claiming their land for themselves.

But there’s no evidence of a genocide against white South Africans.

“There’s no truth to this story whatsoever,” said Ben Cousins, a senior professor at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. “Every now and then, a white person is robbed or killed on a farm, but the murder rate is far higher for black South Africans. This is just an attempt by the far-right to whip up a frenzy.”

While there are certainly cases of white farmers being attacked and murdered in South Africa, the number of those attacks had decreased steadily since a peak in 2001, until last year, when they rose slightly. In 2001, there were 1,069 farm attacks and 140 murders in South Africa. By 2017, that had dropped to 561 attacks and 47 murders, according to the South African Police Service. About 61 percent of murder victims in farm attacks even during the peak were white, according to a 2003 study.

Trump likely isn’t personally crawling through obscure Internet forums to learn about agrarian South African politics. Instead, his information is being filtered through Fox News, which has increasingly played a role in spreading ethno-nationalist rhetoric.

[Trump could get his intel from the government. Instead, he gets it from Fox News.]

“Tucker Carlson has become our hate mainstreamer in chief,” said Heidi Beirich, who leads the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project on hate and extremism.“ He seems to be picking up the thinking of the white supremacist movement in the United States and expressing it in very harsh terms…. This isn’t a dog whistle. This is just a blatant repeating of white supremacist ideas.”

Carlson’s repeated surfacing of white supremacist rhetoric has earned him a devoted set of fans among online racists. On the far-right social network Gab, there are user-created groups devoted to fawning conversations about Carlson’s show. Other groups on the platform promote neo-Nazi ideology or act as whites-only job search boards.

Trump has pushed the narrative of white genocide into the national conversation before. During the 2016 presidential campaign, he retweeted a Twitter user with the handle @WhiteGenocideTM.

But Wednesday night marked the first time he has referenced white South Africans directly. And white supremacists celebrated.

“IT’S HAPPENING: Trump Tweets About WHITE GENOCIDE in South Africa” blared a headline on the Daily Stormer. “This is a fairly significant step in the right direction,” read an article on the white supremacist site Infostormer. “Trump’s involvement is going to draw even more attention to the plight of White farmers in South Africa.”

On Stormfront, Trump’s tweet was seen a welcome sign of an impending race war that users hope will drench the planet in a cleansing bloodbath. “It’s a start,” one Stormfront user wrote. “Regardless where I’ll be in the world, when the shooting starts I’ll be on my way back.”

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Yet there are still some who believe they can “normalize” the Trump/Sessions/Miller restrictionist immigration program without carrying any of the racist White Nationalist baggage that comes with it.

PWS

08-26-18

EXPLOSIVE EXPOSE’: TAL @ CNN SHOWS HOW WHITE NATIONALISTS IN THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IMPROPERLY SKEWED THE DECISION TO TERMINATE TPS!

https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/24/politics/trump-administration-tps-end/index.html

‘It IS bad there’: Emails reveal Trump officials pushing for TPS terminations

Washington (CNN)There was a simple explanation in October 2017 when a Department of Homeland Security official was asked why a memo justifying ending immigrant protections for Central Americans made conditions in those countries sound so bad.

“The basic problem is that it IS bad there,” the official wrote.

Nevertheless, he agreed to go back and see what he could do to better bolster the administration’s decision to end the protections regardless.

The revelation comes in a collection of internal emails and documents made public Friday as part of an ongoing lawsuit over the decision to end temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of immigrants who live in the US, most of whom have been here for well over a decade.

Friday’s document dump come as backup for the attorneys’ request that the judge immediately block the government’s decision to end these protections as the case is fully heard. A hearing is scheduled for late September.

Trump admin was warned a policy change could strengthen MS-13. They did it anyway.

In the emails, Trump administration political officials repeatedly pushed for the termination of TPS for vulnerable countries, even as they faced pushback from internal assessments by career staffers and other parts of the administration.

In one exchange, the now-director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, Francis Cissna, remarks that a document recommending that TPS for Sudan be terminated reads like it was going to recommend the opposite until someone was “clubbed … over the head.”

“The memo reads like one person who strongly supports extending TPS for Sudan wrote everything up to the recommendation section and then someone who opposes extension snuck up behind the first guy, clubbed him over the head, pushed his senseless body of out of the way, and finished the memo. Am I missing something?” he wrote to key DHS staffers. Another high-ranking official then asks for the memo to be “revised.”

In a similar exchange, policy adviser Kathy Nuebel Kovarik asks her staff to address what she perceives as inconsistencies in the justification documents for ending TPS for El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua.

“The problem is that it reads as though we’d recommend an extension b/c we talk so much about how bad it is, but there’s not enough in there about positive steps that have been taken since its designation,” she wrote.

Staffer Brandon Prelogar responded that “it IS bad there.”

“We can comb through the country conditions to try to see what else there might be, but the basic problem is that it IS bad there (with regards to) all of the standard metrics,” Prelogar wrote. “Our strongest argument for termination, we thought, is just that it is not bad in a way clearly linked to the initial disasters prompting the designations. We can work with RU to try to get more, and/or comb through the country conditions we have again looking for positive gems, but the conditions are what they are.”

Trump’s immigration policies were supposed to make the border safer. Experts say the opposite is happening.

DHS did end protections for all three countries, despite dire predictions previously reported by CNN from career analysts about the consequences including potentially strengthening the vicious gang MS-13.

Immigrants are suing over the ending of TPS for these countries, alleging the protections were terminated due to a prebaked agenda that violated the law, as well as a racist agenda. The judge has previously allowed the lawsuit to proceed and forced the production of these internal documents, over the objection of the government.

The program covers migrants in the US from countries that have been hit by dire conditions, such as epidemics, civil war or natural disasters. Previous administrations, spanning both parties, had opted to extend the protections for most of the countries involved every few years when they came up for review.

The Trump administration says the conditions in each country have improved from the original disasters to the point that the protected status had to end. DHS has maintained that under its reading of the law, decisions to extend may be based only on conditions from the original disaster — not any that have arisen since. That breaks with the reading of the law from all prior administrations, attorneys argue — citing a deposition of a former USCIS director also submitted Friday.

The documents show a gradual process of the front offices of DHS taking more control of the TPS decision making. Early in the administration, career staffers drafted a document that would have justified extending TPS for Haiti. Officials asked that it be changed, and it was initially extended just six months ahead of being terminated completely.

For later decisions, the documents show the State Department complaining that it was marginalized from the process. In fact, a Federal Register Notice for the termination for Sudan had to be pulled back and edited after the State Department complained that it had been changed from a version it had approved at the last minute to something inconsistent with current US policy toward the country.

The emails show that Gene Hamilton, a close ally of Attorney General Jeff Sessions who was a senior counselor at DHS before moving to the Justice Department, made some of those last-minute revisions, attempting to remove references to human rights violations, among other changes.

When presented with Hamilton’s changes to some language already agreed to with the State Department, Prelogar wrote that “we’d just say that this could be read as taking another step toward providing an incomplete and lopsided country conditions presentation to support termination, which may increase the likelihood of criticism from external stakeholders to that effect.”

The trail also shows the State Department had recommended TPS for Sudan be extended, although it did so late in the game, and that it was caught off-guard by the changes.

In a last-minute email, the State Department’s Christopher Ashe wrote to the acting director of USCIS that there were problems.

Documents reveal DHS knew ending protections could cause more, not less, illegal immigration

“The Department has identified some significant mischaracterizations that are at odds with the Department’s understanding of circumstances on the ground. We believe that lacking correction, the (Federal Register Notice) could be out of step with the Administration’s broader engagement on Sudan — much of which DHS is not engaged on and is likely unaware of the nuances that USCIS’s changes in the language could have,” Ashe wrote.

He continued that State was “caught off guard” by a decision to make the announcement.

“We literally were forced to dispatch our Foreign Affairs Officers by taxi to the Embassies with virtually no notice to inform the host governments of the imminent announcements. We had thought we had obtained a commitment for sufficient notice to make such notifications,” Ashe wrote.

DHS terminations of protected status ignored diplomats’ recommendations, report says

Nuebel Kovarik responds on the email chain that DHS would reject the suggested change by State that would imply not “all” nationals of Sudan could return, saying it would contradict the decision to terminate. She agrees to change the notice to acknowledge that some regions of Sudan may remain too dangerous for return.

State had asked for that, noting that otherwise it could “encourage the Government of Sudan to believe they have the greenlight from US (government) to force the return of displaced persons … to return to deadly conflict-affected areas. These areas are places where even well-armed UN peacekeeping forces decline to engage for fear of violence and recent killings of peacekeepers.”

But Nuebel Kovarik declines to hold off publishing the official announcement to accommodate the change, saying it’s “minor” enough to be done later on as a revision.

“We don’t say the country is perfect,” she concluded.

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Great to have Tal back and “telling it like it is.” Just like at the DOJ, racist hacks like Cissna and his unholy cabal are distorting and downright suppressing facts to implement a predetermined White Nationalist agenda. Every decent American should be appalled! These folks are blatantly dishonest in maters that affect human lives. They probably belong in jail; if not, they should never hold public office now or in the future

It’s time for all Americans of conscience who believe in our Constitution and the rule of law to rise up at the ballot box in November and take our country back from the White Nationalists!

PWS

08-24-18

INSIDE EOIR WITH HAMED ALEAZIZ: THE INSIDIOUS WAYS IN WHICH SESSIONS CONTINUES TO COMPROMISE JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE OF THE IMMIGRATION COURTS — Quoting “Our Gang Rock Star” Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase!

https://www.buzzfeed.com/hamedaleaziz/immigration-judges-have-been-told-to-hold-more-hearings?utm_term=.yhamGYaYoZ#.yhamGYaYoZ

HAMED ALEAZIZ reports for BuzzFeed:

In a move that advocates say could threaten due process rights for immigrants and lead to more deportations, immigration judges in multiple cities have been instructed to cram more hearings into their daily schedules, according to sources knowledgeable on the matter.

Advocates believe the Trump administration has undercut the independence of judges in order to speed up deportations. Already this year, Attorney General Jeff Sessions restricted the types of cases in which asylum would be granted and limited the ability for judges to indefinitely suspend certain cases.

Judges across the country, in places like San Francisco; Arlington, Virginia; Memphis, and Dallas, recently received the instructions from assistant chief immigration judges, who supervise separate immigration courts, to schedule three merits hearings a day starting Oct. 1, according to sources who did not want to speak publicly on the matter.

An Executive Office for Immigration Review official said that that the assistant chief judges were not directed by the office’s leadership to push the instructions.

Advocates believe the move could be potentially disastrous for immigrants. During merits hearings, immigrants facing deportation provide evidence and call witnesses to back up their claims to remain in the country, such as arguing for asylum. In addition, earlier in the year, the Department of Justice announced that beginning Oct. 1, judges would be expected to complete 700 cases a year.

“The requirement of three merits hearings a day could do more to threaten the integrity of the court system than the 700-case-per-year requirement,” said Sarah Pierce, a senior analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. “Requiring immigration judges to schedule three merits hearings a day assumes each case will be a similar or at least comparable length — and that’s just not true.”

Pierce said some hearings, such as asylum hearings, may require detailed testimony that can make the case stretch on for hours. “By mandating three merits hearings a day the court would be placing unrealistic pressures on immigration judges, which will certainly have negative after effects on the due process rights of the foreign nationals in their courtrooms,” she said.

Until now, how many hearings a judge schedules each day has been up to the judges themselves. Often, judges schedule two such hearings a day, experts say.

Jeffrey Chase, a former immigration judge and now an immigration attorney, said the instructions to schedule three could lead to judges feeling forced to speed through hearings.

“If a judge is going to think: ‘let me do [the] right thing and have an eight-hour hearing, or I’ve got my kids’ tuition I have to pay, I’m going to do what they want me to do,’” he said. “It’s the next step in taking away immigration judges’ independence, making them choose between job security and due process.”

Unlike federal judges who are given lifetime appointments, immigration court judges are employees of the Department of Justice. In his role overseeing the court, Sessions has been vocal in cutting down the backlog of deportation cases.

To that end, in March, judges were given benchmarks on how many days they should take to complete certain cases and how many cases they should finish every year beginning on Oct. 1.

Dana Marks, a spokesperson for the National Association of Immigration Judges, told BuzzFeed News that she could not confirm or deny the report. Marks, however, said that their association is “deeply concerned any time” there is an encroachment on judges’ ability to manage their dockets.

“Micro-managing our dockets from afar does not help us to do our job more efficiently and effectively,” she said, “it hinders us.”

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Of course demanding that Immigration Judges schedule additional cases is NOT “mere administration” or “value neutral.” Given the clear anti-immigrant, “blame the victims and the judges” message delivered by Sessions, it’s basically saying “most of the cases are easy denials — get the lead out and move ‘em out.”

A really good Immigration Judge can do a maximum of two full contested cases per day. A thorough job on a “contested merits case” including delivery of oral decision takes 3-4 hours. And, frankly, many Immigration Judges can’t fairly complete two cases.

That doesn’t mean that they aren’t working hard or good judges; it’s just a “fact of life” that judges are human and work at different paces. Also the preparation of the parties and whether or not the case requires an interpreter (obviously, cases in English go more quickly), things over which a judge has no control, enter into it. Indeed, judges purporting to complete more than two full contested cases per day are almost certainly cutting corners, doing a substandard job, or denying Due Process to the respondents.

Sessions, through a toxic combination of ignorance, incompetence, and gross bias is destroying what is left of Due Process in the Immigration Courts. Time for the Article III Courts to step in, oust Sessions from control on ethical grounds (he is a living, breathing, violation of judicial ethics), and appoint a “Special Master” to run the system until Congress steps up and creates an independent US Immigration Court.

Otherwise, one way or another, the Article IIIs will find themselves destroyed by the mess Sessions is intentionally creating in the Immigration Courts. The Article IIIs can’t “run and hide” from the “Sessions Debacle.” Eventually, they are going to be sucked into the legal, ethical, and moral morass Sessions is creating.

In the period leading up to World War II, the German courts not only failed to stand up to Hitler, but actually willingly joined in his racist, anti-semitic program that eventually led to the Holocaust. History didn’t let them off the hook. Where will the Article IIIs stand in the Trump/Sessions White Nationalist assault on the Constitution and the rule of law?

PWS

08-24-18

KILLERS ON THE LOOSE: CATHERINE SHOICHET @ CNN EXPOSES HOW IN THE “NEW AMERICAN GULAG” UNDER TRUMP & SESISONS ICE LITERALLY GETS AWAY WITH MURDER!

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2018/08/us/ice-detention-stewart-georgia/?utm_content=chapter_01

Catherine Shoichet reports for CNN;

Miguel Montilla was in the law library when the banging started.

Over and over he heard it – the sound of a man screaming as he pounded the wall of the cell next door.

When a guard came by, Montilla listened. The man in Cell 102 said he was suffering from psychosis.

“I hear voices talking to me,” he said. “And they’re bothering the shit out of me.”

Montilla climbed on a toilet and spoke through a vent. He wanted to offer some words of comfort to a fellow detainee – to tell him things were going to get better.

“Hey, man. You OK, man? Calm down. Don’t worry about it. You’re gonna be out of here soon.”

But things got worse for the man in Cell 102.

Two weeks later, Montilla heard a jarring noise again – the sound of a man ramming into the wall of his cell.

Boom.

This time, there would be no words of comfort.

Jeancarlo Alfonso Jimenez Joseph, the 27-year-old who’d been locked inside Cell 102 for 18 days, hadn’t just banged into the wall of his cell. He’d tied one end of a white bed sheet around a sprinkler head and the other end around his neck.

The night he died in May 2017, Jimenez was one of more than two dozen people in solitary at the Stewart Detention Center, a hulking complex just outside Lumpkin, Georgia, that can house nearly 2,000 immigrants.

He was the fourth detainee to die in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in 2017 and the 170th since the agency began in 2003.

. . . .

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Read Catherine’s entire article at the link.

Yes, prior Administrations are also to blame for this miscarriage of justice. But, the information on the dangerousness and lack of justification for most immigration detention was well-developed and readily available when Trump took over. Instead of dong what a rational Administration might have done, curtailing detention with an eye to phasing it out altogether except in unusual circumstances involving dangerous criminals, Sessions and Trump decided to “double down” on what they knew was a deadly and unnecessary practice.

PWS

08-24-18

INSIDE EOIR: FOIA RESPONSE DOCUMENTS THE BIZARRE FIXATION OF EOIR “MANAGEMENT” ON THE SCHEDULING OF CASTRO-TUM!

https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/castro-tum-judicial-e-mails-55803/#file-212223

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Clink the above link to enter the weird, wacky world of EOIR in the “Age of Sessions.” Let’s remember, there is nothing whatsoever remarkable about the Castro-Tum case except that Sessions chose, for some reason, to make it a “cause celeb.” Indeed, nobody even knows if this dude is still in the US, is alive, or even existed in the first place.

It’s pretty easy to understand why the taxpayers are being ripped off and our justice system is in tatters under Jeff Sessions as he squanders our money on his White Nationalist agenda! Think what America might be like under a real Attorney General, instead of “Gonzo Apocalypto.” The real problems, Russian interference in our elections, smuggling, police misconduct, human trafficking, voter suppression, hate crimes against vulnerable groups, rampant gun violence, government corruption, and violence against women go largely unaddressed while Sessions chases after non-problems to carry through on his “wing nut, extremist, far-right, immigration restrictionist” agenda that made him an “outlier” even within the GOP during his days in the Senate.

I look forward to the day when Jeff Sessions is no longer Attorney General of the US. It might be the only thing I have in common with Donald Trump.

PWS

08-24-18

EXPOSING SESSIONS’S DEADLY DUE PROCESS SCAM: JUDGE SULLIVAN BLOCKS ANOTHER POTENTIAL DEPORTATION TO DEATH AS SESSIONS-LED DOJ ARGUES THAT THE KILLING LINE NOT SUBJECT TO REVIEW — Pro Bono Counsel Jones Day Saves The Day, At Least For Now — “To be blunt, if she’s killed, there’s no remedy, your honor.” She added: “No remedy at all.”

https://www.law.com/nationallawjournal/2018/08/23/judge-who-forced-feds-to-turn-that-plane-around-blocks-another-deportation/?kw=Judge%20Who%20Forced%20Feds%20to%20%27Turn%20That%20Plane%20Around%27%20Blocks%20Another%20Deportation&et=editorial&bu=NationalLawJournal&cn=20180823&src=EMC-Email&pt=NewsroomUpdates&utm_source=newsletter

C. Ryan Barber reports for the National Law Journal:

Judge Who Forced Feds to ‘Turn That Plane Around’ Blocks Another Deportation

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan this month lambasted federal officials for the unauthorized removal of a woman and her daughter while their emergency court challenge was unfolding in Washington, D.C.

By C. Ryan Barber August 23, 2018 at 03:08 PM

Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for D.C. May 27, 2009. Photo by Diego M. Radzinschi/NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration not to depart a pregnant Honduran woman as she seeks asylum in the United States, two weeks after demanding that the government turn around a plane that had taken a mother and daughter to El Salvador amid their emergency court appeal challenging removal.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, granted a temporary stay preventing the Honduran woman’s deportation following a hearing on her challenge to the administration’s decision to make it all but impossible for asylum seekers to gain entry into the United States by citing fears of domestic abuse or gang violence.

In court papers filed earlier this week, the Honduran woman’s lawyers—a team from Jones Day—said she fled her home country “after her partner beat her, raped her, and threatened to kill her and their unborn child.” The woman, suing under the pseudonym “Zelda,” is currently being held at a Texas detention center.

“Zelda is challenging a new policy that unlawfully deprives her of her right to seek humanitarian protection from this escalating pattern of persecution,” the woman’s lawyers wrote in a complaint filed Wednesday. The immigrant is represented pro bono by Jones Day partner Julie McEvoy, associate Courtney Burks and of counsel Erin McGinley.

At Thursday’s court hearing, McGinley said her client’s deportation was imminent absent an order from the judge blocking such a move. “Our concern today,” McGinley said, “is that our client may be deported in a matter of hours.”

U.S. Justice Department lawyers on Wednesday filed papers opposing any temporary stay from deportation. A Justice Department lawyer, Erez Reuveni, argued Thursday that the Honduran woman lacked standing to challenge the Justice Department’s new immigration policy, which makes it harder for immigrants seeking asylum to argue fears of domestic violence and gang violence.

After granting the stay preventing the Honduran woman’s deportation, Sullivan made clear he had not forgotten the events of two weeks ago, when he learned in court that the government had deported a mother and daughter while their emergency challenge to deportation was unfolding.

“Somebody … seeking justice in a United States court is spirited away while her attorneys are arguing for justice for her? It’s outrageous,” Sullivan said at the Aug. 9 hearing. “Turn that plane around and bring those people back to the United States.”

Sullivan on Thursday urged Reuveni to alert immigration authorities to his order. Reuveni said he would inform those authorities, adding that he hoped there would not be a recurrence of the issue that arose two weeks earlier.

“It’s got to be more than hopeful,” Sullivan told Reuveni in court Thursday. Reuveni said he could, in the moment, speak for himself and the Justice Department, but not the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“I cannot speak for ICE until I get on the phone with them and say this is what you need to do immediately,” Reuveni said.

Sullivan said he appreciated Reuveni’s “professionalism” and his efforts to “undo the wrong” that had been done to the Salvadoran mother and daughter earlier this month.

The government, after the fact, said it was reviewing removal proceduresin the San Antonio immigration office “to identify gaps in oversight.”

Stressing the need for a stay against Zelda’s deportation, McGinley said at Thursday’s hearing: “To be blunt, if she’s killed, there’s no remedy, your honor.” She added: “No remedy at all.”

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When individuals have access to high quality counsel like Jones Day, the courts pay more attention. That’s why Sessions & co. are working overtime to insure that individuals are hustled though the system without any meaningful access to counsel and, perhaps most outrageously, by excluding counsel from participation in the largely rigged “credible fear review process” before the Immigration Court. This isn’t justice; it isn’t even a parody of justice. It’s something out of a Kafka novel.

No wonder the Sessions-infused DOJ attorneys don’t want any real court to take a look at this abusive and indefensible removal of individuals with serious claims to relief without consideration by a fair and impartial adjudicator operating under the Constitution and our Refugee Act rather than “Sessions’s law.”

Judge Sullivan actually has an opportunity to put an end to this mockery of American justice by halting all removals of asylum seekers until at least a semblance of Due Process is restored to the system. The only question is whether he will do it! The odds are against it; but, with folks like Jones Day arguing in behalf of the unfairly condemned, the chances of halting the “Sessions Death Train” have never been better!

(Full Disclosure: I am a former partner at Jones Day. I’ve never been prouder of my former firm’s efforts to protect the American justice system and vindicate the rights of the most vulnerable among us. Congrats and appreciation to Jones Day Managing Partner Steve Brogan, Global Pro Bono Coordinator Laura Tuell, Partner Julie McEvoy, Of Counsel Erin McGinley, and everyone else involved in this amazing and much needed effort!)

PWS

08-24-18

INSIDE THE TRUMP-SESSIONS “NEW AMERICAN GULAG” — “It was a nun who best summed up the experience as we entered the facility one morning. ‘What is happening here,’ she said, ‘makes me question the existence of God.’”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/family-detention-center-border_us_5b7c2673e4b0a5b1febf3abf

Catherine Powers writes in HuffPost:

In July, I left my wife and two little girls and traveled from Denver to Dilley, Texas, to join a group of volunteers helping migrant women in detention file claims for asylum. I am not a lawyer, but I speak Spanish and have a background in social work. Our task was to help the women prepare for interviews with asylum officers or to prepare requests for new interviews.

The women I worked with at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley had been separated from their children for up to two and a half months because of a policy instituted by the Trump administration in April 2018, under which families were targeted for detention and separation in an attempt to dissuade others from embarking on similar journeys. Although the separations have stopped because of the resulting public outcry, hundreds of families have not been reunited (including more than 20 children under 5), families continue to be detained at higher rates than adults crossing the border alone, and the trauma inflicted on the women and children by our government will have lifelong consequences.

To be clear, this is a policy of deliberately tormenting women and children so that other women and children won’t try to escape life-threatening conditions by coming to the United States for asylum. I joined this effort because I felt compelled to do something to respond to the humanitarian crisis created by unjust policies that serve no purpose other than to punish people for being poor and female ― for having the audacity to be born in a “shithole country” and not stay there.

I traveled with a group of amazing women gathered by Carolina, a powerhouse immigration lawyer and artist from Brooklyn. My fellow volunteers were mostly Latinas or women whose histories connected them deeply to this work. Through this experience, we became a tight-knit community, gathering each night to process our experiences and try to steel ourselves for the next day. Working 12-hour shifts alongside us were two nuns in their late 70s, and it was one of them who best summed up the experience as we entered the facility one morning. “What is happening here,” she said, “makes me question the existence of God.”

It was a nun who best summed up the experience as we entered the facility one morning. ‘What is happening here,’ she said, ‘makes me question the existence of God.’

I am still in awe of the resilience I witnessed. Many of the women I met had gone for more than two weeks without even knowing where their children were. Most had been raped, tormented, threatened or beaten (and in many cases, all of the above) in their countries (predominantly Honduras and Guatemala). They came here seeking refuge from unspeakable horrors, following the internationally recognized process for seeking asylum. For their “crime,” they were incarcerated with hundreds of other women and children in la hielera (“the freezer,” cold concrete cells with no privacy where families sleep on the floor with nothing more than sheets of Mylar to cover them) or la perrera (“the dog kennel,” where people live in chain link cages). Their children were ripped from their arms, they were taunted, kicked, sprayed with water, fed frozen food and denied medical care. Yet the women I encountered were the lucky ones, because they had survived their first test of will in this country.

Woman after woman described the same scene: During their separation from their children ― before they learned of their whereabouts or even whether they were safe ― the women were herded into a room where Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials handed them papers. “Sign this,” they were told, “and you can see your children again.” The papers were legal documents with which the women would be renouncing their claims to asylum and agreeing to self-deport. Those who signed were deported immediately, often without their children. Those who refused to sign were given sham credible-fear interviews (the first step in the asylum process), for which they were not prepared or even informed of asylum criteria.

The women were distraught, not knowing what ICE had done with their children or whether they would see them again. Their interviews were conducted over the phone, with an interpreter also on the line. The asylum officer would ask a series of canned questions, and often the women could reply only, “Where is my child? What have you done with my child?” or would begin to give an answer, only to be cut off midsentence. Not surprisingly, almost all of them got negative results — exactly the outcome this policy was designed to produce. Still, these women persisted.

After a court battle, my clients were reunited with their children and were fortunate enough to have access to free legal representation (many do not) through the CARA Pro Bono Project. The women arrived looking shell-shocked, tired, determined. Some of their children clung to them, afraid to be apart even for a few minutes, making it very hard for the women to recount their experiences, which often included sexual violence, death threats and domestic abuse. Other children stared into space or slept on plastic chairs, exhausted from sleepless nights and nightmares. Still others ran manically around the legal visitation trailer. But some of the children showed incredible resilience, smiling up at us, showing off the few English words they knew, drawing pictures of mountains, rivers, neat little houses. They requested stickers or coloring pages, made bracelets out of paper clips. We were not allowed to give them anything ― no treats or toys or books. We were not allowed to hug the children or their mothers ― not even when they sobbed uncontrollably after sharing the details of their ordeals.

In the midst of this sadness and chaos, the humanity of these women shined through. One of my clients and her son, who had traveled here from Guatemala, took great pleasure in teaching me words in their indigenous language, Mam. She taught me to say “courageous” ― hao-tuitz ― and whenever our work got difficult, we would return to this exhortation. These lessons were a welcome break from reviewing the outline of the experiences that drove them to leave, fleshing it out with details for their interview. They wearied of my pressing them to remember facts I knew the asylum officer would ask about. They wanted only to say that life is very hard for indigenous people, that their knowledge of basic Spanish was not enough to make them equal members of society. Mam is not taught in schools, and almost everyone in Guatemala looks down on those who speak it. They were so happy to have a licenciada (college graduate) interested in learning about their culture. We spent almost an hour finding their rural village on Google Earth, zooming in until we could see pictures of the landscape and the people. As we scrolled through the pictures on the screen, they called out the people by name. “That’s my aunt!” and “There’s my cousin!” There were tears of loss but mostly joy at recognizing and feeling recognized ― seen by the world and not just dismissed as faceless criminals.

A diabetic woman who had not had insulin in over a week dared to ask for medical attention, an infraction for which she was stripped naked and thrown in solitary confinement.

There were stories of the astonishing generosity of people who have so little themselves. One colleague had a client who had been kidnapped with her daughter and another man by a gang while traveling north from Guatemala. The kidnappers told the three to call their families, demanding $2,000 per person to secure their release. The woman was certain she and her daughter were going to die. Her family had sold, mortgaged and borrowed everything they could to pay for their trip. They had never met the man who was kidnapped with them. She watched as he called his family. “They’re asking for $6,000 for my release,” she said he told them. He saved three lives with that phone call. When they got to the U.S.-Mexico border, they went separate ways, and she never saw him again, never knew his last name.

Another client I worked with was a different kind of hero. After confronting gangs trying to extort her in her country, she fled north with her son and was caught at the U.S.-Mexico border. She and her son were forcibly separated, and she was pressured to sign papers waiving her legal rights. Not only did she resist doing so, but she also took great personal risks to confront the ICE officials. “You didn’t need my signature to take my son away from me. Why do you need my signature to bring him back?” Then she loudly urged all the women in the room not to sign. “It’s a trick!” she told them. She made sure to write down the names and contact numbers of the women she was detained with. When I worked with her, she would often ask if she could call the relatives of one of the women to notify the family or see if she had made it safely to her destination. Every day I was at Dilley, this client took other women with her to the legal visitation trailer, trying to ensure that everyone had access to representation. She is a budding community organizer, a true example of the kind of concern, compassion and courage that our country needs.

Not everything I heard was so positive. Without exception, the women described cruel and degrading treatment at the hands of ICE officials at the Port Isabel immigrant processing center, near Brownsville, Texas. There was the diabetic woman who had not had insulin in over a week and dared to ask for medical attention, an infraction for which she was stripped naked and thrown in solitary confinement. Women reported being kicked, screamed at, shackled at wrists and ankles and told to run. They described the cold and the humiliation of not having any privacy to use the bathroom for the weeks that they were confined. The children were also kicked, yelled at and sprayed with water by guards, then awoken several times a night, ostensibly so they could be counted.

Worse than the physical conditions were the emotional cruelties inflicted on the families. The separation of women from small children was accomplished by force (pulling the children out of their mothers’ arms) or by deceit (telling the women that their children were being taken to bathe or get medical care). Women were told repeatedly that they would never see their children again, and children were told to stop crying because they would never see their mothers again. After the children were flown secretively across the country, many faced more cruelty. “You’re going to be adopted by an American family,” one girl was told. Some were forced to clean the shelters they were staying in and faced solitary confinement (el poso) if they did not comply. Children were given psychotropic drugs to ameliorate the anxiety and depression they exhibited, without parental permission. One child underwent surgery for appendicitis; he was alone, his cries for his mother were disregarded, and she was not notified until afterward.

The months of limbo in which these women wait to learn their fate borders on psychological torture. Decisions seem arbitrary, and great pains are taken to keep the women, their lawyers and especially the press in the dark about the government’s actions and rationales for decisions. One woman I worked with had been given an ankle bracelet after receiving a positive finding at her credible fear interview. Her asylum officer had determined that she had reason to fear returning to her country and granted her freedom while she pursues legal asylum status. Having cleared this hurdle, she boarded a bus with others to be released, but at the last moment, she was told her ankle bracelet needed a new battery. It was removed, and she was sent instead to a new detention center without explanation. A reporter trying to cover the stories of separated families told me about her attempt to follow a van full of prisoners on their way to be reunited with their children so that she could interview them. First ICE sent two empty decoy vans in different directions, and then it sent a van with the detainees speeding down a highway, running red lights to try to outrun her. Every effort is being made to ensure that the public does not know what is happening.

The accounts of the horrors that women were fleeing are almost too graphic to repeat. Of the many women I spoke to, only one did not report having been raped.

The accounts of the horrors that women were fleeing are almost too graphic to repeat. Of the many women I spoke to, only one did not report having been raped. The sexual assaults the women described often involved multiple perpetrators, the use of objects for penetration and repeated threats, taunting and harassment after the rape. A Mormon woman I worked with could barely choke out the word “rape,” much less tell anyone in her family or community what had happened. Her sweet, quiet daughter knew nothing of the attack or the men who stalked the woman on her way to the store, promising to return. None of the women I spoke with had any faith that the gang-ridden police would or could provide protection, and police reports were met with shaming and threats. Overwhelmingly, the women traveled with their daughters, despite the increased danger for girls on the trip, because the women know what awaits their little girls if they stay behind. Sometimes the rapes and abuse were at the hands of their husbands or partners and to return home would mean certain death. But under the new directives issued by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, domestic violence is no longer a qualifying criterion for asylum.

Two things I experienced during my time in Dilley made the purpose of the detention center crystal clear. The first was an interaction with an employee waiting in line with me Monday morning to pass through the metal detector. I asked if his job was stressful, and he assured me it was not. He traveled 80 minutes each day because this was the best-paid job he could get, and he felt good about what he was doing. “These people are lucky,” he told me, “They get free clothes, free food, free cable TV. I can’t even afford cable TV.” I did not have the presence of mind to ask him if he would give up his freedom for cable. But his answers made clear to me how the economy of this rural part of Texas depends on prisons. The second thing that clarified the role of the detention center was a sign in the legal visitation trailer, next to the desk where a guard sat monitoring the door. The sign read, “Our stock price today,” with a space for someone to post the number each day. The prison is run by a for-profit corporation, earning money for its stockholders from the incarceration of women and children. It is important to note the exorbitant cost of this cruel internment project. ICE puts incarceration costs at $133 per person per night, while the government could monitor them with an ankle bracelet for $10 to $15 a day. We have essentially made a massive transfer of money from taxpayers to holders of stock in private prisons, and the women and children I met are merely collateral damage.

I have been back home for almost a month now. I am finally able to sleep without seeing the faces of my clients in my dreams, reliving their stories in my nightmares. I have never held my family so tight as I did the afternoon I arrived home, standing on the sidewalk in tears with my 7-year-old in my arms. I am in constant contact with the women I volunteered with, sharing news stories about family detention along with highlights of our personal lives. But I am still waiting for the first phone call from a client. I gave each of the women I worked with my number and made them promise to call when they get released. I even told the Mormon woman that I would pray with her. No one has called.

I comb the details of the Dilley Dispatch email, which updates the community of lawyers and volunteers about the tireless work of the on-the-ground team at Dilley. This week the team did 379 intakes with new clients and six with reunified families. There were three deportations ― two that were illegal and one that was reversed by an ACLU lawsuit. Were the deported families ones I worked with? What has become of the Mam-speaking woman and her spunky son, the Mormon woman and her soft-spoken daughter, the budding community organizer who joked about visiting me? Are they safely with relatives in California, North Carolina and Ohio? In each case, I cannot bear to imagine the alternative, the violence and poverty that await them. I have to continue to hope that with the right advocates, some people can still find refuge here, can make a new life ― that our country might live up to its promises.

Catherine Powers is a middle school social studies teacher. She lives in Colorado with her wife and two daughters.

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Yes, every Administration has used and misused immigration detention to some extent. I’ll have to admit to spending some of my past career defending the Government’s right to detain migrants.

But, no past Administration has used civil immigration detention with such evil, racist intent to penalize brown-skinned refugees, primarily abused women and children from the Northern Triangle, so that that will not be able to assert their legal and Constitutional rights in America and will never darken our doors again with their pleas for life-saving refuge. And, as Catherine Powers points out, under Trump and Sessions the “credible fear” process has become a total sham.

Let’s face it! Under the current White Nationalist Administration we indeed are in the process of “re-creating 1939” right here in the USA. If you haven’t already done so, you should check out my recent speech to the International Association of Refugee and Migration Judges entitled “JUST SAY NO TO 1939: HOW JUDGES CAN SAVE LIVES, UPHOLD THE CONVENTION, AND MAINTAIN INTEGRITY IN THE AGE OF OVERT GOVERNMENTAL BIAS TOWARD REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS” http://immigrationcourtside.com/just-say-no-to-1939-how-judges-can-save-lives-uphold-the-convention-and-maintain-integrity-in-the-age-of-overt-governmental-bias-toward-refugees-and-asylum-seekers/

Even in the “Age of Trump & Sessions,’ we still have (at least for now) a Constitution and a democratic process for removing these grotesquely unqualified shams of public officials from office. It starts with removing their GOP enablers in the House and Senate.

Get out the vote in November to oust the GOP and restore humane, Constitutional Government that respects individuals of all races and genders and honors our legal human rights obligations. If decent Americans don’t act now, 1939 might be here before we know it!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-24-18

INSIDE EOIR: FOIA REVEALS THAT DURING “JUDICIAL TRAINING,” BIA APPELLATE IMMIGRATION JUDGE ROGER PAULEY INSTRUCTED FELLOW JUDGES ON HOW TO FIND INDIVIDUALS REMOVABLE BY AVOIDING THE LAW!

https://www.hoppocklawfirm.com/foia-results-immigration-judges-conference-materials-for-2018/

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Here’s what Attorney Matthew Hoppock, whose firm made the FOIA request, had to say about Judge Pauley’s presentation:

Developments in Criminal Immigration and Bond Law:

Slides – Developments in Criminal Immigration and Bond Law

This presentation is really striking, because Board Member Roger Pauley appears to be instructing the IJs not to apply the “categorical approach” when it doesn’t lead to a “sensible result.” The “categorical approach” is mandatory, and the Supreme Court has repeatedly had to reverse the BIA and instruct them to properly apply it. So, it’s definitely disheartening to see this is the instruction the IJs received at their conference this summer on how to apply the categorical approach:

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Can’t say this is unprecedented. I can remember being astounded and outraged by some past presentations that essentially focused on “how to find the respondent not credible and have it stand up in court,” “how to deny claims establishing past or future persecution by invoking ‘no-nexus’ grounds,” and “how to find proposed ‘particular social groups non-cognizable’ under the BIA’s three-part test.”

I also remember a BIA Judge essentially telling us to ignore a previous “outside expert” panel that provided evidence that governments in the Northern Triangle were stunningly corrupt, politically beholden to gangs, and totally incapable of protecting the population against targeted gang violence.

Another colleague gave a stunningly tone-deaf presentation in which they referred to OIL and ICE as “us” and the respondents as “them.”

But, presentations like Judge Pauley’s are particularly troubling in the context of a so-called “training conference” where the “keynote speech” by the judges’ titular “boss” Jeff Sessions touted his decision removing asylum protections from battered women, warned judges to follow his precedents, emphasized increasing “volume” as the highest priority, and otherwise notably avoided mentioning the due process rights of respondents, the need to insure protection for asylum seekers, or the obligation to follow decisions of the Article III Courts (the latter has been, and remains, a chronic problem for EOIR).

Many of the Immigration Judges were recently hired, attending their first national conference. What message do you think they got about how to be successful in the “Age of Trump & Sessions?” What message did they get when a vocal minority of their colleagues improperly “cheered” the removal of protections for vulnerable refugee women? How would YOU like to be a foreign national fighting for your life in a system run by Jeff Sessions?

Right on cue, EOIR provides another powerful example of why Professor Maureen Sweeney was right in her recently posted article: the Article III Courts should NOT be giving the BIA or Sessions “Chevron deference.”

PWS

08-23-18

JASON DZUBOW @ THE ASYLUMIST: IMMIGRATION PROVOCATEUR STEPHEN MILLER ISN’T A HYPOCRITE – HE’S EXACTLY WHAT HE CLAIMS TO BE: A Xenophobic Bigot!

http://www.asylumist.com/2018/08/20/stephen-miller-is-not-a-hypocrite/

Stephen Miller Is Not a Hypocrite

by Jason DzubowAugust 20, 2018

If you follow the news about immigration, you probably know Stephen Miller. He’s a Senior Policy Advisor to President Trump, and he’s supposedly the nefarious driving force behind many of the Administration’s most vicious anti-immigrant policies.

Last week, Dr. David S. Glosser–Mr. Miller’s uncle and a retired neuropsychologist who volunteers with refugees–penned a powerful article refuting his nephew’s raison d’etre: Stephen Miller Is an Immigration Hypocrite. I Know Because I’m His Uncle. The article discusses the immigration history of Mr. Miller’s family, and points out that the policies espoused by Mr. Miller would have prevented his own ancestors from escaping persecution in Europe. Here’s Dr. Glosser’s money shot:

Trump and my nephew both know their immigrant and refugee roots. Yet, they repeat the insults and false accusations of earlier generations against these refugees to make them seem less than human. Trump publicly parades the grieving families of people hurt or killed by migrants, just as the early Nazis dredged up Jewish criminals to frighten and enrage their political base to justify persecution of all Jews. Almost every American family has an immigration story of its own based on flight from war, poverty, famine, persecution, fear or hopelessness. Most of these immigrants became workers, entrepreneurs, scientists and soldiers of America.

Can you guess which one is Stephen Miller?

It’s a powerful piece, in part because of Dr. Glosser’s relationship to Stephen Miller, and in part due to the juxtaposition of these two men. Dr. Glosser speaks from his personal experience dealing with refugees. He sees the story of his parents and grandparents in the stories of modern-day refugees. He has absorbed the lessons of the past, particular with regard to ethnic and religious demonization. Mr. Miller, on the other hand, seems inured to the suffering of his fellow humans and immune to the lessons of history. I have never heard him articulate a fact-based justification for his cruel policies. But he persists in advocating for those policies nevertheless. Mr. Miller’s background and how it influences (or fails to influence) his thinking are important questions, as is the “grim historical irony” of his views.

Here, however, I want to discuss a different question: Is it accurate to call Mr. Miller and the President hypocrites because their policies would have blocked their own ancestors from immigrating to the United States? A second, perhaps more important question, is this: Why does the first question matter?

A hypocrite is a person who pretends to be something that he is not. It’s an epithet often used for politicians who claim to be virtuous and honest, but who, in reality, are the opposite. The word derives from the Greek “hypokrites,” which means “actor,” and there’s a long and rich history of contempt for hypocritical politicians (Dante, for example, relegates the hypocrites to the eight circle of hell, which is pretty close to the bottom).

I don’t think that Mr. Miller or Mr. Trump are hypocrites simply because their immigration policies would have blocked their own ancestors from coming to the U.S. They may be bigots and bullies, whose policies are based more on falsehood than fact, but that is not hypocrisy. Indeed, Mr. Trump has repeatedly articulated his disdain for Muslims, Mexicans, people from “shit-hole countries,” etc., and so the fact that he enacts policies to exclude such people seems perfectly consistent with his world view. He and Mr. Miller may hold ignorant and racist views, but that does not make them hypocrites.

Why does any of this matter?

Aside from the fact that words should be used properly (or as Inigo Montoya might say, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means”), it seems wrong to try to limit what people can do by shaming them as hypocrites based on their ancestry. Is the decedent of slave owners a hypocrite if she supports Affirmative Action? Would a Native American be a hypocrite if he became an immigration lawyer? Is the daughter of a candy store owner acting hypocritically if she becomes a dietician? You get my point. We are who we are because of, and in spite of, our progenitors. But I don’t think we should be condemned for the choices we make that are not consistent with the choices they made.

Further, with regards to a complex topic like immigration policy, labels such as “hypocrite” seem inapplicable and designed to shut down–rather than encourage–discussion. Even a person who personally benefited from U.S. refugee policy, for example, has a right to oppose the admission of additional refugees. Economic and political circumstances change, as does the population of refugees seeking admission to our country. Maybe you support admitting some types of refugees (those like you) and oppose admitting others. Such a position is likely based on ignorance of “the other,” but I don’t think it is necessarily hypocritical.

So condemn Mr. Miller for his bigotry and his lies. Call out the irony of his policies, which would have blocked his own ancestors from finding refuge in our country. But don’t call Stephen Miller a hypocrite. Sadly, he is exactly what he purports to be.

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I personally think that racist, White Nationalist, and White Supremacist, as well as disingenuous are the best terms to describe Miller. And, it’s no coincidence that he once worked for Jeff Sessions.

PWS 08-23-18

PROFESSOR MAUREEN SWEENEY ON WHY THE BIA DOESN’T DESERVE “CHEVRON” DEFERENCE – JEFF SESSIONS’S ALL OUT ATTACK ON THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE IMMIGRATION JUDICIARY IS EXHIBIT 1!

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2018/08/immigration-article-of-the-day-enforcingprotection-the-danger-of-chevron-in-refugee-act-cases-by-mau.html

Go on over to ImmigrationProf Blog at the above link for all of the links necessary to get the abstract as well as the full article. Among the many current and former Immigration Judges quoted or cited in the article are Jeffrey Chase, Ashley Tabaddor, Dana Marks, Lory Rosenberg, Robert Vinikoor, and me. (I’m sure I’m missing some of our other colleagues; it’s a very long article, but well worth the read.)

In an article full of memorable passages, here is one of my favorites:

Full enforcement of the law requires full enforcement of provisions that grant protection as well as provisions that restrict border entry. This is the part of “enforcement” that the Department of Justice is not equipped to fully understand. The agency’s fundamental commitment to controlling unauthorized immigration does not allow it a neutral, open position on asylum questions. The foundational separation and balance of powers concerns at the heart of Chevron require courts to recognize that inherent conflict of interest as a reason Congress is unlikely to have delegated unchecked power on refugee protection to the prosecuting agency. In our constitutional structure, the courts stand as an essential check on the executive power to deport and must provide robust review to fully enforce the congressional mandate to protect refugees. If the courts abdicate this vital function, they will be abdicating their distinctive role in ensuring the full enforcement of all of our immigration law—including those provisions that seek to ensure compliance with our international obligations to protect individuals facing the danger of persecution.

This is a point that my friend and colleague Judge Lory Rosenberg made often during our tenure together on the BIA. All too often, her pleas fell on deaf ears.

The now abandoned pre-2001 “vision statement” of EOIR was “to be the world’s best administrative tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.” Nothing in there about “partnering” with DHS to remove more individuals, fulfilling quotas, “sending messages to stay home,” securing the border, jacking up volume, deterring migration, or advancing other politically motivated enforcement goals. Indeed, the proper role of EOIR is to insure fair and impartial adjudication and Due Process for individuals even in the face of constant pressures to “just go along to get along” with a particular Administration’s desires to favor the expedient over the just.

Under all Administrations, the duty to insure Due Process, fairness, full protections, and the granting to benefits to migrants under the law is somewhat shortchanged at EOIR in relation to the pressure to promote Executive enforcement objectives. But, the situation under the xenophobic, disingenuous, self-proclaimed “Immigration Enforcement Czar” Jeff Sessions is a true national disgrace and a blot on our entire legal system. If Congress won’t do its job by removing the Immigration Courts from the DOJ forthwith, the Article III courts must step in, as Maureen suggests.

PWS

08-23-18

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION PLANS TO KILL 1,400 AMERICANS! — Is Anyone Paying Attention?

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/08/trump-coal-plan-will-kill-1400-americans-a-year

Bess Levin writes for Vanity Fair:

Last week, we learned that Donald Trump’scoal-loving administration was set to release a proposal that would allow coal-burning plants to flood the planet with greenhouse gas emissions, raising a giant middle finger to the killjoy tree-huggers who insist on protecting the environment and human health through silly little things like government regulations. Whereas Barack Obama’s 2015 Clean Power Plan would have caused a shift toward less-dirty energy sources like wind, natural gas, and solar, the White House’s plan would prop up coal plants by giving states free rein to come up with their own rules, or letting them petition to opt out of regulations altogether. On Tuesday, the administration officially unveiled the proposal, and as it turns out, it’s not as bad as everyone feared—it’s much, much worse, if one considers the deaths of 1,400 Americans and the hastened demise of the planet to be “worse.”

The New York Times [reports] that, buried within 289 pages of technical analysis, the Environmental Protection Agency casually notes that under the scenario individual states are most likely to follow in order to comply with Trump’s hilariously titled “Affordable Clean Energy rule,” between 470 and 1,400 premature deaths will occur each year by 2030 due to “increased rates of microscopic airborne particulates known as PM 2.5.” On the flip side, Obama’s Clean Power Plan was expected to prevent between 1,500 and 3,600 premature deaths annually by 2030, but that guy’s a law-flouting Commie, so screw him. In addition, the Trump administration’s own analysis concludes that its plan would cause 48,000 new cases of “exacerbated asthma” and a minimum of 21,000 missed school days a year by 2030 due to ozone-related illnesses. By contrast, the plan it is replacing would have resulted in a significant drop in new instances of asthma and 180,000 fewer missed school days annually.

But breathing, going to school, and a normal life-expectancy are obviously for losers, which is presumably why William Wehrum, the acting administrator of the E.P.A.’s Office of Air and Radiation, simply referred to the plan’s downsides as “collateral effects” in a comment to the Times; he also said that the administration has “aggressive programs in place that directly target emissions of those pollutants.” (Incidentally, Wehrum spent much of the past 10 years working to destroy air-pollution rules as a lawyer representing—wait for it—coal-burning power plants, chemical manufacturers, oil drillers, and refineries. He was able to so seamlessly transition to weakening air-pollutant rules from within the E.P.A. thanks to “a quirk in federal ethics rules [that] limit the activities of officials who join the government from industry [but are] less restrictive for lawyers than for officials who had worked as registered lobbyists.”)

Speaking of premature deaths, Trump is apparently super concerned about them—not when they happen to humans, of course, but to birds, whose early demise he vastly overestimated last night in a characteristically crazy, off-the-rails speech decrying wind turbines and other forms of energy that both cost and pollute less than coal. Quoth the man who is somehow the president of the United States:

You can blow up a pipeline, you can blow up the windmills. You know, the wind wheels [mimics windmill noise, mimes shooting gun], “Bing!” That’s the end of that one. If the birds don’t kill it first. The birds could kill it first. They kill so many birds. You look underneath some of those windmills, it’s like a killing field, the birds. But uh, you know, that’s what they were going to, they were going to windmills. And you know, don’t worry about wind, when the wind doesn’t blow, I said, “What happens when the wind doesn’t blow?” Well, then we have a problem. O.K. good. They were putting him in areas where they didn’t have much wind, too. And it’s a subsidary [sic]—you need subsidy for windmills. You need subsidy. Who wants to have energy where you need subsidy? So, uh, the coal is doing great.

Really, what else is there to add?

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Read the rest of the Levin Report at the link.

I suppose with a President who favors KGB vet Putin over our intelligence officers, is dodging criminal charges for payoffs to an adult entertainment star and a Playboy model, and surrounds himself with family members, criminals, grifters, and wingnut ideologues, deciding to sacrifice 1,400 Americans to promote a dying industry that damages the health and welfare of its employees is sort of “below the radar screen.”

But, it’s on the screen over here at “courtside.”

PWS

08-23-18

RIGHT WING APOLOGISTS DOUBLE DOWN ON LIES AND MYTHS AS TRUMP ADMINISTRATION SINKS DEEPER INTO THE QUICKSAND! — “On cue, conservatives pulled out every single pro-Trump defense they had concocted over the past two years.”

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/08/right-wing-response-michael-cohen-paul-manafort-convictions?mbid=nl_CH_5b7dac2bf9a65f4b9ec05fbd&CNDID=48297443&spMailingID=14112614&spUserID=MjMzNDQ1MzU1ODE2S0&spJobID=1462003727&spReportId=MTQ2MjAwMzcyNwS2

Tina Nguyen writes in Vanity Fair:

Just hours after Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, pled guilty to violating campaign-finance law on behalf of an unnamed political candidate in 2016, and Paul Manafort, his former campaign manager, was convicted of eight counts of financial fraud, Trump was firmly ensconced in the safe space of a political rally in West Virginia, greeted by comforting chants of “Lock her up!” For the next few hours, the president studiously avoided mentioning the two men who may very well have thrown his political future into jeopardy, freewheeling instead about “no collusion” before a crowd that would accept—and even repeat—virtually anything he said. Yet even as the president pontificated, his right-wing allies found themselves in the uncomfortable position of being forced to fill his silence. Blindsided by not one, but twodamning convictions, they did the only thing they could: everything. “There are a lot of lines of defense that are being wheeled out right now,” Right Wing Watch’s Jared Holt observed to me. “It feels very much like throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks.”

On cue, the right’s public-facing side pulled out every single pro-Trump defense it had concocted over the past two years. Within an hour of the verdicts breaking, The Five’s Greg Gutfeld was aggressively dismissing Cohen and Manafort as “two men who most Americans don’t know their names.” Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo went after Hillary Clinton, saying Tuesday morning that Robert Mueller’s probe had no legitimacy unless the former Democratic presidential candidate was likewise investigated for the infamous Steele dossier. A shrewder group of Republicans converged on the seeming lack of Russia-related convictions in the Manafort trial, putting their disavowals on hold: “Thus far, there have yet to be any charges or convictions for colluding with the Russian government by any member of the Trump campaign,” Senator Lindsey Graham said in a statement, in one of the more measured defenses coming out of the Republican Party. The line made its way into the official G.O.P. defense, according to notes that a surrogate texted to reporter Josh Dawsey.

A less artful group of Trump supporters deployed a different line of logic: if the Manafort convictions carried no mention of Russia, then the media’s Russia-meddling narrative was, ipso facto, false, and Trump was therefore innocent (never mind the fact that a second Manafort trial, centering around the former G.O.P. operative’s extensive work in Russia and the Ukraine, is set to begin in D.C. in less than a month). “So all this legal activity strange I see no ‘Russian collusion’ in any breaking news,” tweeted Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union and the husband of White House communications director Mercedes Schlapp. “Odd.” Still others, said Holt, went further off the deep end, asserting that the Justice Department was being “run as part of a conspiracy theory,” and the trial wasn’t proof of the “Russian hacking narrative’s” veracity.

Almost simultaneously, a large segment of Trump’s diehard, MAGA-oriented allies began pushing the story of Mollie Tibbetts, a college student who was allegedly murdered by an undocumented immigrant. The lead story on Fox News’s home page was dedicated exclusively to the case, as was Breitbart’s, while MAGA wunderkinds Charlie Kirk,Candace Owens, and Tomi Lahren all tweeted that Tibbetts’s story ought to be top-line news, and lamented the “liberal media’s” preoccupation with Manafort and Cohen.

Fox and Friends simply ignored the convictions altogether in favor of discussing Tibbetts, along with kneeling N.F.L. protesters, and Andrew Cuomo’s recent gaffes. Though the outpouring could be read as spontaneous, it could not have come at a more convenient time—as former speaker Newt Gingrich put it to Axios, “If Mollie Tibbetts is a household name by October, Democrats will be in deep trouble. If we can be blocked by Manafort-Cohen, etc., then G.O.P. could lose [the House] badly.”

Behind the scenes, Republicans reportedly wrung their hands, increasingly concerned that the two cases, and Cohen’s in particular, could herald the president’s doom. “The verdict in the Manafort trial isn’t nearly as worrisome to me as the Cohen agreement and the Cohen statement,” former Trump adviser Michael Caputo told Politico. “It’s probably the worst thing so far in this whole investigation stage of the presidency.” “There was political momentum building to wrap up the Mueller probe soon,” a former administration official fretted to the outlet. “At the very least, in the short term, these two developments will pretty significantly bolster the office of the special counsel and people’s perceptions of it.” The perception, it seems, is widespread:

Nearly a dozen people close to the president, including current and former White House aides, acknowledged that Tuesday was one of the darkest days of Trump’s year and a half in office. And they worried that the revelations—even if they are unrelated to allegations of collusion with Russia—could lend new credence to the Mueller probe, even after the president’s allies spent months undercutting public faith in the investigation.

A close Trump friend confessed to Axios that they are “a bit concern[ed] about what he would do fully backed into a corner.” And a “usually buoyant outside West Wing adviser” read the tea leaves, noting, “Booming economy, robust bull market, troops in harm’s way but not in a large-scale war. And yet the president is enmeshed in a series of scandals and controversies . . . and that is before the Dems in the House start with the investigations.”

But by Wednesday morning, the G.O.P.’s fearless leader had returned from West Virginia and thrown himself back into the fray, making it clear what he wanted his followers to do: hail Manafort as a “brave man” who escaped 10 counts but fell victim to the Russia “witch hunt;” and jeer Cohen, the bad lawyer who pled guilty to things that were “not a crime.” “Whenever Trump tweets out what could be perceived as the official response, that tends to take over,” Holt said. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see if that becomes the primary line of defense.”

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There’s only going to be one “right side of history” on this one. And, Trump and his supporters won’t be on it.

PWS

08-22-18

NYT EDITORIAL: “DON’S CONS” — TRUMP TAKES CORRUPTION TO A NEW LEVEL!

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/opinion/manafort-cohen-guilty.html?em_pos=large&emc=edit_ty_20180822&nl=opinion-today&nlid=79213886edit_ty_20180822&ref=headline&te=1

All the President’s Crooks

One of them, Mr. Trump’s own lawyer, has now implicated him in a crime.

By The Editorial Board

The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed section.

Aug. 21, 2018

Image
Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort.CreditLeft, Jeenah Moon for The New York Times; right, Zach Gibson/Bloomberg, via Getty Images

From the start of the Russia investigation, President Trump has been working to discredit the work and the integrity of the special counsel, Robert Mueller; praising men who are blatant grifters, cons and crooks; insisting that he’s personally done nothing wrong; and reminding us that he hires only the best people.

On Tuesday afternoon, the American public was treated to an astonishing split-screen moment involving two of those people, as Mr. Trump’s former campaign chief was convicted by a federal jury in Virginia of multiple crimes carrying years in prison at the same time that his longtime personal lawyer pleaded guilty in federal court in New York to his own lengthy trail of criminality, and confessed that he had committed at least some of the crimes “at the direction of” Mr. Trump himself.

Let that sink in: Mr. Trump’s own lawyer has now accused him, under oath, of committing a felony.

Only a complete fantasist — that is, only President Trump and his cult — could continue to claim that this investigation of foreign subversion of an American election, which has already yielded dozens of other indictments and several guilty pleas, is a “hoax” or “scam” or “rigged witch hunt.”

Related in Opinion

Opinion | Noah Bookbinder, Barry Berke and Norman L. Eisen

What the Manafort Verdict Means

Aug. 21, 2018

Opinion | Ken White

Can Michael Cohen Bring Down Trump?

Aug. 22, 2018

The conviction of Paul Manafort, who ran the Trump campaign for three months in 2016, was a win for prosecutors even though jurors were unable to reach a verdict on 10 of the 18 counts against him. On the other eight, which included bank fraud, tax fraud and a failure to report a foreign bank account, the jury agreed unanimously that Mr. Manafort was guilty. He is scheduled to go on trial in a separate case next month in Washington, D.C., on charges including money laundering, witness tampering, lying to authorities and failing to register as a foreign agent. Mr. Manafort faces many decades behind bars, although he will probably serve less than that under federal sentencing guidelines.

A few hundred miles to the north, in New York City, Michael “I’m going to mess your life up” Cohen stood before a federal judge and pleaded guilty to multiple counts of bank and tax fraud as well as federal campaign-finance violations involving hush-money payments he made to women who said they’d had sex with Mr. Trump. Mr. Cohen, who spent years as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer and “fix-it guy” (his own words), was under investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, to whom Mr. Mueller referred his case. In April, F.B.I. agents raided Mr. Cohen’s office, home and hotel room looking for evidence of criminality on a number of fronts. Apparently they found it.

Mr. Cohen didn’t agree at Tuesday’s hearing to cooperate with prosecutors, but if he eventually chooses to, that could spell even bigger trouble for Mr. Trump. Mr. Cohen has been involved in many of Mr. Trump’s dealings with Russia, including his aborted effort to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, and could shed light on connections between the Trump presidential campaign and Russian officials involved in the 2016 election interference.

But back to Tuesday’s news. Mr. Manafort was not an original target of the inquiry by Mr. Mueller, who was appointed in May of last year to look into possible ties between the Trump campaign and efforts by Russian government officials to interfere in the election. But Mr. Mueller’s mandate authorized him to investigate any other crimes that arose in the course of his work. It didn’t take long. As soon as he and his lawyers started sniffing around, the stench of Mr. Manafort’s illegality was overpowering.

As a longtime lobbyist and political consultant who worked for multiple Republican candidates and presidents, Mr. Manafort had a habit of lying to banks to get multimillion-dollar loans and hiding his cash in offshore accounts when tax time rolled round. In at least one case, he falsely characterized $1.5 million as a loan to avoid paying taxes on it, then later told banks that the loan had been “forgiven” so he could get another loan.

He also enriched himself by working for some of the world’s most notorious thugs and autocrats, including Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, Jonas Savimbi in Angola and Mobutu Sese Seko of the Democratic Republic of Congo. He helped elect the pro-Kremlin Viktor Yanukovych as president of Ukraine, a job that earned him millions until Mr. Yanukovych was ousted from power in 2014.

Despite this mercenary history — or perhaps, more disturbingly, because of it — Donald Trump, while running on promises to clean up Washington, hired Mr. Manafort to run his presidential campaign, a job he may well have kept but for news reports that he was receiving and hiding millions of dollars from his work on behalf of Mr. Yanukovych.

What does it tell you about Mr. Trump that he would choose to lead his campaign someone like Mr. Manafort, whom even on Tuesday he called a “good man”? It tells you that Mr. Trump is consistent, and consistently contemptuous of honesty and ethics, because he has surrounded himself with people of weak, if not criminal, character throughout his career.

RELATED

More on Mr. Cohen and Mr. Manafort

Trump Praises Manafort for Refusing to ‘Break,’ Unlike Cohen, His Former Fixer

Aug. 22, 2018

Cohen and Manafort Are in Deeper Legal Trouble. Mueller Could Benefit.

Aug. 22, 2018

Michael Cohen Says He Arranged Payments to Women at Trump’s Direction

Aug. 21, 2018

Paul Manafort, Trump’s Former Campaign Chairman, Guilty of 8 Counts

Aug. 21, 2018

A One-Two Punch Puts Trump Back on His Heels

Aug. 21, 2018

While the president has so far dodged questions about whether he will pardon Mr. Manafort, he’s already shown a willingness to make a mockery of the justice system with his pardons of unrepentant lawbreakers like Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Dinesh D’Souza. Last year, the president’s lawyer dangled the prospect of a pardon to lawyers for Mr. Manafort and Michael Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser. If Mr. Trump were to follow through and grant clemency to Mr. Manafort, it would make his pardon of Mr. Arpaio look like the signing of the Civil Rights Act.

You’re forgiven if you’ve lost track of all the criminality, either charged or admitted, that has burst forth from Mr. Trump’s circles in the last couple years even as Mr. Trump has continued to claim that the investigation is a hoax, a pointless waste of taxpayer dollars. So here’s a brief refresher:

In addition to the prosecution of Mr. Manafort, the special counsel’s office has secured guilty pleas from multiple people, including Mr. Flynn and George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser on the Trump campaign, both of whom lied to federal investigators about their communications with Russian officials.

Others have pleaded guilty to identity fraud and making false statements. Mr. Manafort’s longtime associate Rick Gates also pleaded guilty and testified against his former boss.

Meanwhile, Mr. Mueller has charged more than a dozen Russian individuals and companies for their roles in a coordinated and deceptive social-media campaign aimed at hurting Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and helping Mr. Trump’s. Some Trump campaign officials were unwittingly in contact with some of these defendants.

Mr. Mueller has also charged a dozen Russian military officials with hacking and helping to release emails of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The hackers first tried to break into Mrs. Clinton’s personal servers on July 27, 2016 — the same day that Mr. Trump publicly called on Russians to do exactly that.

And he has charged Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian associate of Mr. Manafort and a suspected spy, with obstructing justice.

As Mr. Trump rages on about the unfairness of the investigation, remember that Mr. Mueller has been on the job for just 15 months. For comparison, the Watergate investigation ran for more than two years before it brought down a president and sent dozens of people to prison. The Iran contra investigation dragged on for about seven years, as did the Whitewater investigation, which resulted in President Bill Clinton’s impeachment.

Also remember we still don’t know anything about the ultimate fate of several other Trump associates who have been under Mr. Mueller’s microscope, including Roger Stone, Carter Page and Donald Trump Jr. (“If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer”).

For a witch hunt, Mr. Mueller’s investigation has already bagged a remarkable number of witches. Only the best witches, you might say.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTOpinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 22, 2018, on Page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: All the President’s Crooks. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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Unfortunately, the Trump Circus is just picking up steam. We’re sure to be subjected to a “carpet bombing” of lies, tweets, insults, and threats as the Emperor’s clothes come off piece by piece while the emasculated GOP Congress merely sits and watches. And, of course, there will be the “normal” Trump strategy of attempting to shift blame to the victims and away from himself and the other corrupt individuals associated with him. Seems Trumpie owes Stormy (and Melania) an apology

PWS

08-22-18

THE GIBSON REPORT – 08-20-18 — COMPILED BY ELIZABETH GIBSON, ESQ., NY LEGAL ASSISTANCE GROUP – Featured Item: Jeff Sessions Tells Iowa Gathering Of Federal Judges To “Butt Out!” (Item 4)

THE GIBSON REPORT 08-20-18

TOP UPDATES

Attorney General States IJs May Only Grant Continuances “For Good Cause Shown”

The Attorney General (AG) found that an IJ may only grant a continuance “for good cause shown” and outlined the good-cause standard. Further, the AG vacated the Board’s orders declining to entertain these appeals and remanded. Matter of L-A-B-R-, et al., 27 I&N Dec. 405 (A.G. 2018) AILA Doc. No. 18081671. See also Retired IJs and Former Members of the BIA Issue Statement in Response to Matter of L-A-B-R-.

What will happen to DACA? Federal court cases could lead to an answer.

WaPo: On Friday, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates ruled that the Trump administration does not have to accept new applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program but must continue processing renewals while the future of the program is under appeal.

Executive Office for Immigration Review Announces Largest Immigration Judge Investiture Since At Least 2010, Hiring Times Reduced by More Than 50%

EOIR: The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) on Friday held the investiture of 23 new immigration judges, which increases the total number of immigration judges to 351. Since the end of January 2017, 82 immigration judges have been sworn in, and EOIR anticipates three additional hiring classes this fall that will total at least 75 more immigration judges.

Sessions: Federal judges costing taxpayers with immigration rulings

AP: U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions told an audience of hundreds of judges and attorneys on Friday that “erroneous rulings” by federal judges have been costly to taxpayers, and he criticized judges who’ve thwarted some of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

White House to honor ICE ‘heroes’ after family separation fiasco

Politico: The “Salute to the Heroes of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs [and] Border Protection” is scheduled for Aug. 20 in the East Room, an administration official confirmed, in the latest signal that the Trump administration anticipates the midterm fallout from its zero-tolerance border policy very differently from its critics.

The Trump Administration Is Seeking To Restart Thousands Of Closed Deportation Cases

BuzzFeed: So far this fiscal year, attorneys for Immigration and Customs Enforcement have sought the reactivation of nearly 8,000 deportation cases that had been administratively closed — meaning pushed off the court’s docket. The previous fiscal year, which included nearly four months of the Obama administration, there were nearly 8,400 such requests. The pace of such requests is nearly double that of the last two years of the Obama administration, when there were 3,551 and 4,847 such requests, respectively.

Trump’s New Immigration Rule Could Hurt Obamacare Markets

Governing: If a significant number of legal immigrants forgo health insurance, that could have negative ripple effects on so-called Obamacare premiums and on the health-care system as a whole.

Online trolls are using immigration as a wedge issue for 2018 midterm elections

LA Times: The nation’s volatile immigration debate has amplified online, researchers warned, and foreign operatives and homegrown trolls are using it as a political wedge ahead of the November elections. The report said the online disinformation campaign was likely to grow more sophisticated, with bad actors tailoring their posts, videos and other content to target communities of color — and to hide who is controlling the message.

Citizenship service conspired with ICE to ‘trap’ immigrants at visa interviews, ACLU says

WaPo: According to emails between federal officials unsealed in federal court documents this week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had been coordinating with ICE to alert the agency when certain immigrants eligible for deportation showed up at the CIS office for routine interviews.

Feds Crack Down on Volunteers Helping Migrants Survive the Arizona Desert

ColorLines: Nine humanitarian volunteers are facing federal charges after leaving water bottles for migrants in the Arizona desert. Colorlines talks to members of No More Deaths about their work and the consequences of their solidarity.

Millions of Frequent Flier Miles Are Donated to Reunite Families Separated at Border

NYT: Miles4Migrants has partnered with donors and aid organizations to reunite dozens of families on an ad hoc, case-by-case basis. The refugees and asylum seekers they helped had international itineraries…

But this week, flush with more than 28 million newly donated frequent flier miles, the organization is thinking about how to tackle the logistics of reuniting families in the United States.

A growing number of California detainees are Indians crossing through Mexico to seek asylum

LA Times: According to immigration officials and attorneys, there has been an increase in recent years of Indian nationals crossing into the U.S. through Mexico — although they represent a small percentage of those detained overall.

Detention Is Not the Solution to Family Separation: 15 Years of Government Data Explain Why

AIC: According to a recent study that analyzed 15 years of government data, detention poses significant barriers to justice for asylum-seeking families. The study’s findings also provide further evidence that detaining families seeking protection is unnecessary, costly, and inhumane.

Assessing the impact of “Secure Communities”, an Obama-era programme revived by Donald Trump

Economist: Launched in the last year of the George W. Bush administration and expanded under President Barack Obama, Secure Communities was axed in 2014 amid protests that it might be unconstitutional and that it discouraged migrants from co-operating with local law enforcement. Two new papers look at the effects of the programme in its earlier incarnation. They find that it succeeded in its stated goal of removing undocumented workers—but it also reduced access to jobs, health care and nutrition for migrants and citizens alike.

Adopted and Undocumented

Intercept: Over the course of six months, The Intercept interviewed more than 25 people who were adopted by U.S. citizens as children but who remain without citizenship, in some cases well into their 40s and 50s. Some no longer reside in the United States, unable to return because of their legal status. Others live with the constant fear of deportation. The majority live as permanent residents, a nebulous status within American immigration law that can be rescinded if an individual commits a crime that falls within a broad range of nonviolent “aggravated felonies,” including burglary and selling drugs.

Practice Alert: USCIS Provides Email Address to Report Receipt Numbers Not Recognized in “My Case Status”

On a 2/27/18 Ombudsman’s teleconference, USCIS instructed individuals experiencing problems using “My Case Status” to email myuscissupport@uscis.dhs.gov for assistance. AILA members have reported that USCIS’s website is not recognizing client’s receipt number when entered into the online tool.

LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS

Trump Administration Says Deportable Immigrants Can’t Go To The Courts — Even If Their First Amendment Rights Are Violated

Intercept: Is there any court, or indeed, any authority at all outside the executive branch, with the power to protect those activists’ First Amendment rights? No. That was the position articulated by Justice Department lawyers on Tuesday before a panel of judges on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City. The hearing was meant to determine whether the court should issue a stay preventing ICE from deporting just such a figure, Ravi Ragbir, executive director of the New Sanctuary Coalition of New York City, before he has a chance to assert his constitutional claim in federal court.

Judge halts mother-daughter deportation, threatens to hold Sessions in contempt

WaPo: federal judge in Washington halted a deportation in progress Thursday and threatened to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions in contempt after learning that the Trump administration started to remove a woman and her daughter while a court hearing appealing their deportations was underway.

‘Shocked and humiliated’: Lawsuits accuse Customs, Border officers of invasive searches of minors, women

CPI: An August 1 Justice Department filing sought to dismiss CBP and individual officers, but not the U.S government, as defendants. Nevertheless, Lovell’s lawsuit — and 10 others since 2011 reviewed by the Center for Public Integrity — raise timely and unsettling questions about how far border and other immigration officers can go with their considerable power to detain people at the nation’s 328 ports of entry.

State probe finds immigrant teens not currently being abused

AP: A state review into the treatment of immigrant teens held at a Virginia detention center confirmed the facility uses restraint techniques that can include strapping children to chairs and placing mesh bags over their heads…But a top state regulator conceded in an interview that investigators did not attempt to determine whether serious allegations of past abuse at the locally run facility are true.

DOJ employee who heckled immigration chief didn’t violate rules, agency finds

CNN: A Justice Department employee who heckled DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen at a Washington restaurant and criticized the administration’s immigration policy online did not violate rules against political activity by government workers, a watchdog agency found.

An ICE attorney forged a document to deport an immigrant. ICE didn’t care until the immigrant sued.

Slate: The suit finally spurred ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate Lanuza’s allegations, which found them credible. In January 2016, prosecutors took action against Love, charging him with deprivation of constitutional rights under color of law. In addition to serving 30 days in jail, he agreed to stop practicing law for 10 years and paid Lanuza $12,000.

District Court Judge Orders Reunification of Parents and Children

In a joint status report on the current status of reunification of families with children ages 5- 17, the government stated that 559 children have not been reunified with their family, including 163 children whose parents are outside the United States. (Ms. L, et al., v. ICE, 8/9/18) AILA Doc. No. 18060800

CA5 Rules That Adequacy of Procedures Under INA §360 Precludes APA Relief

Affirming district court’s dismissals, the court rejects plaintiffs’ APA challenge to the deprivation of their U.S. passports—based on allegedly erroneous conclusions that they are not U.S. citizens—finding that INA §360 establishes an adequate alternative remedy. (Hinojosa v. Horn, 5/8/18) AILA Doc. No. 18081335

BIA Termination Refiling of Same NTA

Unpublished BIA decision upholds IJ decision terminating proceedings for second time because second NTA contained same charge alleged in first NTA and because DHS failed to submit evidence during the first round of proceedings. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Kurremula, 8/10/17) AILA Doc. No. 18081702

BIA Holds Oklahoma Possession with Intent to Distribute Statute Is Not an Aggravated Felony

Unpublished BIA decision holds possession of cocaine with intent to distribute under 63 Okla. Stat. 2-401-2-420 isn’t an aggravated felony as it requires neither unlawful trading or dealing nor knowledge of the substance’s illicit nature. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Gonzalez, 8/14/17) AILA Doc. No. 18081704

BIA Reverses Denial of Motion to Change Venue from Atlanta to Arlington

Unpublished BIA decision reverses denial of motion to change venue from Atlanta to Arlington, noting that the respondent, her attorney, and her witnesses all lived in Virginia. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of C-D-L-G-, 7/26/17) AILA Doc. No. 18081502

BIA Holds Florida Arson Statute Is Not a Crime of Violence

Unpublished BIA decision holds that arson under Fla. Stat. 806.01(2) is not a crime of violence under 18 USC §16 because it prohibits the intentional causing of a fire or explosion against one’s own property. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Kotowski, 7/27/17) AILA Doc. No. 18081503

BIA Holds Texas Statute Is Not Sexual Abuse of a Minor

Unpublished BIA decision holds that indecency with a child under Tex. Penal Code 21.11(a)(1) is not sexual abuse of a minor because it criminalizes sexual contact with 16-year-old victims. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of C-M-O-G-, 7/31/17) AILA Doc. No. 18081630

BIA Holds Arizona Statute Is Not a Firearms Offense

Unpublished BIA decision holds that misconduct involving weapons under Ariz. Rev. Stat. 13-3102(A)(4) is not a firearms offense because it prohibits possession knives and nunchaku. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of R-S-A-, 7/25/17) AILA Doc. No. 18081405

BIA Holds Michigan Assault Statute Is Not Sexual Abuse of a Minor

Unpublished BIA decision holds that assault with intent to commit criminal sexual conduct under Mich. Comp. Laws. 750.520g(1) is not aggravated felony sexual abuse of a minor because the age of the victim is not an element of the offense. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of W-P-M-, 7/18/17) AILA Doc. No. 18081404

BIA Holds Virginia Larceny Statute Not a Particularly Serious Crime

Unpublished BIA decision holds that grand larceny from the person under Va. Code Ann. 18.2-95 is not a particularly serious crime on its face, making it unnecessary to examine the underlying circumstances of the offense. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of J-J-V-, 7/18/17) AILA Doc. No. 18081300

BIA Finds Reentry As LPR Not an “Admission” Under INA 212(h)

Unpublished BIA decision holds that respondent was not subject to the aggravated felony bar in INA 212(h) because his reentry following a trip abroad did not qualify as an “admission” as an LPR. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Reza, 7/18/16) AILA Doc. No. 18081303

DHS Issues Statement from Press Secretary on July 2018 Border Numbers

DHS issued a statement regarding the July 2018 border migration numbers, stating “DHS is continuing to refer to DOJ single adult illegal border crossers for prosecution at historic rates.” AILA Doc. No. 18081333

EOIR Provides Comparison Chart of In Absentia Rates

EOIR provides a comparison chart of in absentia rates from FY2014 through FY2018 (through 6/30/18). AILA Doc. No. 18081730

Bipartisan Senate Report on UACs Finds Agencies Haven’t Taken Sufficient Responsibility

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations issued a report, finding that HHS and DHS have taken steps towards improving the care of UACs, but that they “still do not take sufficient responsibility for guarding their safety and ensuring they appear at their immigration court proceedings.” AILA Doc. No. 18081771

USCIS Performance Data on All Form Types for FY2018

USCIS statistics on all USCIS form types for the first and second quarter of FY2018, broken down by category (family, employment, humanitarian, citizenship and naturalization, and “other”), as well as by case status (received, approved, denied, pending). AILA Doc. No. 18051031

RESOURCES

New Practice Advisory on Fee Waivers

CLINIC Fact Sheet: Family Separation for Asylum Seekers

Litigating Immigration Cases in Federal Court

Detaining Families: A Study of Asylum Adjudication in Family Detention

EVENTS

8/20/18 All About Survivor Derivatives

8/23/18 All Rise: A Comedy Show About Law – This month: Immigration. Andrea and JR proudly fight alternative facts with legal fictions as they face off over America’s immigration laws and ask some of New York’s best comedians and legal experts to testify

8/28/18 Overcoming Secondary Trauma in Immigration Practice

8/29/18 Understanding and Preparing Waivers

9/6/18 Asylum Law Updates on Particular Social Groups

9/7-9/18 NOVA Frontier Film Festival – showcases films that are centered around the theme of Identity and Immigration, supporting the artistic development of filmmakers of African Descent

9/10/18 NYIC 40 Hour Training: Albany

9/12/18 Improving Productivity and Time Management

9/20-21/18 2018 Federal Court Litigation Conferences: Join Us in Washington, D.C. or Remotely via Webcast

9/26/18Representing Children in Immigration Matters 2018: Effective Advocacy and Best Practices

10/9/18 Citizenship in an Era of Record Migration and Growing Nationalism

10/10/18 Immigrant Women, Labor, and the Quest for Gender Justice

11/26-28/18 CLINIC & NITA “Advocacy in Immigration Matters”

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Wow! Sessions’s overt contempt for the Federal Judiciary continues to astonish! Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why he loses so many cases in the Federal Courts, even though the deck is generally stacked in favor of the Government because of judicial “deference” to agency interpretations.

Sorry, Jeff, but just because there are “three equal branches of government,” does it mean they exercise equal authority in all situations. To the contrary, the role of the Federal Courts is to insure that the laws enacted by Congress are Constitutional and that the Executive acts within the laws and the Constitution. That’s basic Marbury v. Madison.

Time and time again, the Article IIIs have found that Trump and Sessions are misusing their statutory authority and violating the Constitution with their immigration actions. Even the “vindication” in Trump v. Hawaii came only after plaintiffs and lower Federal Courts had forced the Administration to narrow the scope of the Executive Orders (twice) to make them at least arguably legal, according to a narrow majority of the Supremes.

Even recent Trump appointee, Justice Neil Gorsuch, hardly known as a civil libertarian, sounded like a bastion of moderation, common sense, humanity, and Constitutional scholarship by comparison with Sessions “over the top” chastisement of the judiciary:

“I think that the right to have an independent judge tell you what the law is, no matter who you are, is one of the great liberties and genius of the constitutional design,” Gorsuch said. “It’s something that’s very real today for the immigrant, the criminal defendant, the unpopular, the minority.”

The most telling comment was delivered by community organizer Matthew Covington who said quite accurately: “Sessions has not been kind to any marginalized group and has actively undermined voting rights.” What a sad commentary on a man who violates his oath of office to uphold the Constitution and protect the rights of everyone in America (not just Trump’s White Nationalist base) every day he is in office.

PWS

08-22-18

“OUR GANG” LEADER HON. JEFFREY S. CHASE QUOTED BY NICOLE NAREA IN LAW 360 RE: L-A-B-R- MESS!

But Jeffrey Chase, a former immigration judge and senior legal adviser to the BIA, said that the attorney general’s ruling is more likely to hinder efficient case adjudications. He said that immigration judges are already facing pressure to meet case completion quotas imposed by the Executive Office of Immigration Review earlier this year, and they have been forced to double-book hearings, meaning that cases will, by necessity, have to be continued.

“Under this latest ruling, judges will now have to write lengthy, detailed decisions for each continuance, an unrealistic expectation where judges must also complete three or more full hearings a day,” he said. “Some judges report receiving 10 or more motions for continuance a day, and lack the time and resources to write lengthy decisions on each while also hearing a full docket of cases.”

. . . .

Chase said that the decision’s “emphasis on efficiency over justice is particularly callous” given that, for many asylum applicants in immigration court, deportation may be a “death sentence.” He also pointed out that the decision does not seem to apply to continuances requested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“It is unfair to require noncitizens seeking immigration status to demonstrate good cause for a continuance, while allowing ICE continuances for avoidable reasons such as misplacing the file, failing to obtain a needed document or not having adjudicated a petition in time,” he said.

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Those of you with access can read Nicole’s full article over at Law 360.

Of course as Judge Chase says L-A-B-R- will not “promote judicial efficiency.” Far from it!

Immigration Judges will have to spend more time writing decisions to justify granting, as well as denying, continuances. That means less time for merits cases. The BIA will see an increase in “interlocutory appeals” from both sides, but particularly from DHS. Again, this takes time away from work on the merits appeals, which is why the BIA quite properly discouraged such interlocutory appeals in the first place. And, denial of a continuance to a respondent, particularly when it involves finding an attorney, attorney preparation, or obtaining evidence or witnesses, is an appealable due process issue on petitions for review to the Article III courts. Consequently, expect plenty of remands from the Circuit Courts as Immigration Judges and BIA Appellate Immigration Judges are pushed to churn out more denials and final orders of removal under Sessions’s “tilted field” approach.

As Jeffrey also points out, DHS requests and gets many continuances for routine matters like failure to have files or missing evidence to support the charges. Moreover, in L-A-B-R- Sessions totally ignores one of the main culprits for today’s backlog: Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”) by EOIR often to accommodate the enforcement aims of DHS or politicos at the DOJ.

“Just pedal faster gimmicks” and having unqualified politicos tell judges how to manage dockets and run their courtrooms are a prescription for failure. The only question is how big the train wreck caused by this hunk of Sessions’s malfeasance will be!

Thanks for speaking out, Jeffrey. And thanks for your coverage, Nicole.

PWS

08-21-18

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