Bill Boyarsky writes for Truthdig:
From the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, the immigration issue has defined his political profile. More than anything else, it has opened a window on his authoritarian mind, his disdain for the truth and for democratic institutions. Such contempt has revealed the dangers of Trumpism to much of a nation governed, often imperfectly, by the law. The way immigrants are locked up in detention centers without trial warns us of the possibility of a police state.
Last week, the president’s braggadocio crumbled in the face of facts and the strategic opposition of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She clearly saw beyond the façade as she took the measure of her opponent.
Trump’s signature combination of untruthfulness, ignorance and arrogance became evident to the country on Friday when maps appeared on cable television showing planes stacking up at airports, sending passengers into a state of exasperation that transcends partisan politics. Those deficiencies were further exposed when he, while putting an end to the protracted government shutdown, used his concession speech in the White House Rose Garden on Friday to rehash his lying attacks on immigrants.
Trump repeated his call for a wall, arguing that only a wall would stop the drug dealers and other criminals from coming across the southern border. But he pulled back from the “Build the Wall” promises that stirred nationalistic crowds at his rallies. “We do not need 2,000 miles of concrete wall from sea to shiny [sic] sea—we never did,” he said, insisting that he had never proposed one.
On the contrary, as Linda Qiu and Michael Tackett wrote in The New York Times:
Dozens of times during the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump promised to build a wall along the southwestern border, usually saying it would be 1,000 miles at varying heights and costs. At times the building materials changed. He mentioned concrete, steel and, at one point, even a wall that would have solar panels. But a wall and the unsupported pledge that Mexico would pay for it were foundational elements of his campaign, and Mr. Trump has continued to make similar assertions throughout his presidency.
Except on Friday. Qiu and Tackett also picked up that detail: “ … notable was something Mr. Trump did not say, namely that Mexico would pay for the wall. …”
As he had from the beginning of his presidential campaign, Trump trafficked in falsehoods Friday in the Rose Garden when he described the immigrants trying to cross the border into the United States as dangerous criminals.
Figures from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Clearinghouse(TRAC), a respected compiler of immigration statistics, refute his claim.
As of June 30, 2018, Immigration and Customs Enforcement had 44,435 immigrants in custody. Of these, four out of five had no criminal record or had committed only a minor offense, such as a traffic violation. Of the remainder, only 16 percent had committed crimes considered serious, which includes selling marijuana, now legal in many states. Of those eventually convicted of a crime, most were for illegal entry into the United States, a misdemeanor.
Another factor to consider is the incompetence of the way Trump administers his anti-immigrant policy. His former Attorney General Jeff Sessions drastically reduced the grounds for immigrants seeking asylum in the United States. Under his plan, dangers posed to immigrants by criminal gangs or domestic violence were no longer accepted as reasons for granting asylum—a devastating legislative blow to those fleeing gang-ridden Central American countries.
Other restrictions on asylum were also imposed. When immigrants present themselves to border officers and ask for sanctuary, they are arrested for illegal entry. They are then placed in detention, awaiting a hearing in immigration court, or are deported, although courts have ordered some released.
Sessions also ordered judges in immigration courts to speed up their hearings and decision-making protocols. He claimed this directive was aimed at reducing the backlog of cases awaiting hearing in immigration court that involve immigrants either in detention or freed through the legal intervention of immigrant advocates.
The backlog, TRAC said, totals 1,098,468—more than double the waiting list in January 2017 when Trump took office. It would take immigration courts more than five years to work their way through the backlog. This explains why so many immigrants are held in detention for years without a trial in onerous conditions, and why those freed from detention are in legal limbo, subject to being stopped, questioned and improperly arrested.
When Trump shut down the government, most immigration hearings were cancelled. That gave the president a lesson in the law of unintended consequences. Rather than carry out his intent—hustling the immigrants out of the country—he has done the opposite and has increased the logjam.
In short, incompetence plus evil intentions have brought the country to this point.
Trump has been able to paper over his incompetence with bluster. The mass media has served as an accomplice. Too many stories focus on his performance. Sometimes, even his critics offer grudging admiration.
The shutdown ripped away the mask. Immigration was the central issue behind Trump’s closure of the federal government. His lies about immigration were exposed, as was his bungling execution of a cruel policy.
Bill Boyarsky
Political CorrespondentBill Boyarsky is a political correspondent for Truthdig. He is a former lecturer in journalism at the Annenberg School for Communication of the University of Southern California. Boyarsky was city editor of….
ICE agents told hundreds of immigrants to show up to court on Thursday or risk being deported. But lawyers say many of those hearings won’t happen because the dates ICE provided are fake.
Immigration attorneys in Chicago, Miami, Texas, and Virginia told CBS News their clients or their colleagues’ clients were issued a Notice to Appear (NTA) for hearings scheduled Jan. 31. The attorneys learned the dates weren’t real when they called the courts to confirm. ICE is required to include court dates with court notices, per a Supreme Court decision last summer, but most don’t actually reflect scheduled hearings.
The American Immigration Lawyers Association issued a “practice alert” on Tuesday evening, warning members “the next upcoming date on NTAs that appears to be fake is this Thursday.”
On Wednesday evening, the Executive Office of Immigration Review, the body that oversees all the immigration courts, instructed all attorneys with a January 31 NTA “to confirm the time and date of any hearing.”
“There will be another episode of mass confusion in the immigration courts [Thursday] as a result of the DHS’s decision to issue Notice to Appear with fake immigration court dates,” Brian Casson, a Virginia-based immigration attorney, said in an email to CBS News.
In a statement Thursday morning, an ICE spokesperson said the agency was working with the Department of Justice “regarding the proper issuance of Notices to Appear.” The spokesperson said the government shutdown “delayed” that process, “resulting in an expected overflow of individuals appearing for immigration proceedings today/January 31.”
The fake notices stem from a Supreme Court ruling last summer. Prior to the decision, ICE officials used to send immigrants NTAs with date listed as “TBD” – or “to be determined.” The immigration court would issue the migrant an official hearing notice later, said Casson.
One effect of this: The NTAs could block an immigrant’s eligibility for “cancellation of removal,” a legal residency status granted to some undocumented immigrants after 10 uninterrupted years of living in the U.S. A NTA, even without a hearing date, would interrupt the 10-year “clock,” said Jeremy McKinney, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based immigration attorney, in a telephone interview with CBS News.
A Supreme Court ruling last summer — Pereira v. Sessions — banned the practice, requiring all appearance notices to use actual dates.
However, systems weren’t in place for ICE to see the court’s schedule, so ICE issued fake dates instead. Immigrants were instructed to appear on weekends, midnight, and dates that just didn’t exist, like Sept. 31, multiple attorneys told CBS News.
On October 31, hundreds of immigrants received phony NTAs. They showed up to court for non-existent hearings to find “extraordinarily long lines,” according the recent alert from the immigration lawyers’ organization.
“It was complete dysfunction and confusion,” said McKinney.
The problem became so pervasive that on Dec. 21, the Executive Office of Immigration Review issued a rare policy memo telling ICE agents and DHS that courts would “reject any NTA in which the date or time of the scheduled hearing is facially incorrect.”
Matthew Kriezelman, a Chicago-based immigration attorney, has four clients with hearings scheduled for tomorrow. After checking with the court earlier this week, he found out that two of those appearances weren’t real: administrators had no record of the hearings and told Kriezelman his clients would have to wait until the court itself sent them a hearing date.
Kriezelman’s clients are among the lucky ones; experts estimate less than half of immigrants have legal representation. That means hundreds won’t realize their Jan. 31 hearing date was phony and will show up anyway, said Kriezelman.
The court in Chicago handles all the immigration cases in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana, meaning many immigrants could be traveling for hours on Thursday morning for a hearing that doesn’t actually exist, Kriezelman said.
When they show up, nobody will be able to assist — because of the extreme cold weather, the Chicago immigration court is scheduled to be closed on Thursday, Kriezelman said.
Failure to show up to an immigration hearing can result in immediate removal proceeding, making immigrant especially wary when they hear they don’t need to come into court after all, said Kriezelman.
“They feel like someone is screwing with them or playing a terrible joke,” Kriezelman said. “It’s really confusing for a lot of people, especially ones that are unrepresented.”
Read more CBS News immigration coverage: The country’s busiest border crossing will allow 20 people to claim asylum a day. They used to take up to 100
Every congressperson along southern border opposes border wall funding
Bill and Kate must be “reading my mind.” Keep on exposing the truth about this cruel, dishonest, and incompetent Administration and all of the “ethics-free minions” who carry out often illegal orders! What goes around, comes around, folks.
Anybody and I mean anybody, could need a fair, impartial, and honest justice system at some point in life. Why are so many folks standing by and letting Trump and his toadies destroy it? Piece by piece, the most important foundations of our democracy are being destroyed right in plain daylight!
Also congrats to my good friend and long-time fellow member of the Beverley Hills Community United Methodist Church family Mike Tackett of the NY Times and his colleague Linda Qiu for their continuing outstanding coverage of the truth about Trump’s disingenuous, wasteful, and cruel immigration policies. You’re making a difference, Mike and Linda! Keep at it!
There was a time when dishonesty and falsely filling out official government documents (known as fraud or willful misrepresentation in some criminal law circles) would get a Government employee fired, prosecuted, or disciplined. Not any more. With our country headed by a grifter “Liar-in-Chief” “anything goes” unless you are a migrant, a minority, or a member of the LGBTQ community. In that case, expect “no mercy.”
Also remember that White Nationalist former AG Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions disingenuously pontificated about “the rule of law,” called DHS “a partner of EOIR,” and referred to immigration attorneys as “dirty lawyers.” He tried to cover up his gross mismanagement and political manipulation of the Immigration Courts by falsely blaming migrants, their attorneys, and the Immigration Judges themselves for the mess he himself, and also to a large extent DHS, caused.
He also spread false narratives about “widespread asylum fraud” and made the demonstrably false claim that asylum applicants were somehow a “major cause” of 11 million (mostly hard-working and law-abiding) “illegals” as he liked to contemptuously call them in his racist lingo. I doubt that there have even been 11 million asylum applicants total since the enactment of the Refugee Act of 1980.
Certainly, the causes for our “extra-legal” immigration system go far beyond alleged asylum fraud (which, in fact, does exist on a much smaller scale and in my experience is generally effectively uncovered, investigated, and aggressively prosecuted by DHS). They are a direct result of outdated and misguided policies that failed to recognize legitimate market forces in creating legal immigration categories and a failure to fully carry out in a good faith manner our humanitarian obligations under the refugee laws and international conventions.
Fact is, even if restrictionists like Sessions won’t admit it, the vast majority of the 11 million undocumented individuals should have been screened and admitted under our legal immigration system. The U.S. Government created the problem; so far, they have lacked the honesty, leadership, and courage to fix it in a fair and humane way that will benefit both our country and the migrants, current and future. Immigrants are America. And, except for our Native American brothers and sisters, we are all immigrants!
That’s why we have the “New Due Process Army!” Enlist today, and help fight the forces of “malicious incompetence” everywhere and for as long as it takes to win the battle and vindicate the Constitutional right of everyone in American to enjoy the benefits of Due Process of law.
PWS
01-31-19
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