"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
THE HILL: Nolan On Pelosi’s Reaction To Trump’s “Sanctuary Cities” Threats — PLUS, “Bonus Coverage” From Tal @ SF Chron!
Family Pictures
Bizarro world: Pelosi angry over Trump plan to send illegal crossers to sanctuary cities. By Nolan Rappaport
Apparently, President Donald Trump is about to make life much easier for aliens with children who are apprehended after making an illegal entry.
The Flores Settlement Agreement prevents him from detaining, for more than 20 days, children apprehended after making an illegal crossing into the United States. And because all Hell broke loose when he separated the children from their parents, he is now releasing their parents, too.
But according to his tweets on Friday, that isn’t all he is going to do for them.
I’m sure he was being sarcastic when he said this should make them very happy, but it really should make the Democrats very happy. The government would be providing these families with free transportation to places that are welcoming undocumented aliens, i.e. the sanctuary cities.
In fact, many of them are headed for sanctuary cities anyway. In 2014, California, which is a sanctuary state, was home to between 2.35 million and 2.6 million undocumented immigrants. Nearly a quarter of the nation’s undocumented immigrants lived there. Roughly one in ten California workers was an undocumented immigrant. And the population of undocumented aliens in California has gotten even largersince then.
But it turns out that Trump was right: The Democrats are upset.
I was astonished to see an article entitled, “Pelosi fumes over White House plan to release immigrant detainees in sanctuary cities.”
Nolan Rappaport was detailed to the House Judiciary Committee as an executive branch immigration law expert for three years. He subsequently served as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims for four years. Prior to working on the Judiciary Committee, he wrote decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals for 20 years.
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It’s always difficult to take anything Trump says seriously, particularly about immigration.
I think Pelosi was reacting to 1) the tone of Trump’s threat; 2) his use of human lives as pawns and bargaining chips (something he has done before with the Dreamers); 3) his continuing threats to misuse Presidential power to “punish enemies;” and 4) the lack of any serious coordination that would accompany a good faith plan.
On the other hand, as shown in this article by Tal Kopan of the SF Chronicle, California and San Francisco officials appear ready to welcome and help any migrants sent their way or who are released and choose to settle in California.
Paul’s comments remind me of the way a ninth circuit judge evaluated Trump’s revised travel ban. The judge observed that nothing in the language of the executive order indicated that religious discrimination was the reason for the travel ban, but he went on to say, in effect, but Trump wrote the order and he is a bigot.
As I explain in my op-ed, it does not harm undocumented aliens to provide them with transportation to a location that welcomes undocumented aliens, i.e., a sanctuary city. And Pelosi’s communication director sounds like the Mad Hatter when she says it is a warped game to perpetuate fear and demonize immigrants.
On the other hand, Trump really is shooting himself in the foot. The fact that illegal crossers are released after they are apprehended and allowed to continue their journey into the interior is a powerful pull factor, and the dramatic increase in families crossing illegally proves it. Giving them free transportation to a sanctuary city and releasing them there will make the pull factor even stronger.
First. Let’s compliment Nolan for calling asylum applicants “undocumented immigrants”, instead of “illegal aliens”. Progress is progress, even if small. But then, saying that “illegal crossers are released after they are apprehended and allowed to continue their journey into the interior is a powerful pull factor, and the dramatic increase in families crossing illegally proves it ” is his typical mix of misleading and fallacy.
First it is misleading in that in fact Trump’s constant demagoging that millions of criminals are crossing the border is the “big pull”. Remember the Sly and the Family Stone hit song: “There’s a Riot Goin’ On”.
Anyone who lives in a city that has experienced urban riots knows that while most people stay inside for safety, criminals and other thrill seekers go out to where the action is. And that’s why immigrant “caravans” have mushroomed during Trump time after he doubled down in his inhuman “no tolerance” demagoguery.
And Nolan’s assumptions are also fallacies based on false premises two ways. First, people don’t risk their lives and leave everything they have behind that casually. They come to the USA because their lives are in danger and come here, just like previous immigrants because USA is the land of the free and the home of the brave.
And of course, his assumption that new immigrants are a bad thing is another xenophobic canard, coupled with the Trumpian demagoguery that applicants for asylum at the US border are “illegal entrants”. Nolan should know from working at the BIA that aliens applying for the border are not “entrants”, because they have not entered the USA. They are applicants for admission.
And in any event, such an applicant for asylum is not doing so illegally anymore than someone applying for a drivers license at the DMV is thereby an “illegal” driver.
And then I congatulate the California officials welcoming released asylum applicants. Like Germany’s Prime Minister Markel, by acting early, California is probably going to get the “First Round Draft Picks”.
Eventually most diligent local officials without racial prejudices realize that getting a fresh influx of hard working USA loving immigrants, who risk everything to follow the American dream, is just what their communities need. Same with Angela Merkel in Germany which is smoothly absorbing millions of Syrian refugees to refresh their aging native stock.
And based on my Miami experience watching Haitian Americans, that’s exactly what happened in Miami, once again a thriving magnet city rebounding from the 2007 Real Estate crisis that hit Florida hardest.
Talk to any Miami policeman or social worker who has to enter Haitian American homes in Liberty City, traditionally Miami’s poorest neighborhood. The Haitians’ homes inside are always spotless, full of patriotic and religious art, and grandmas babysitting while their younger relatives are working long hours to get ahead in the USA. Everyone is well dressed and the kids are all either in school or home studying to get ahead.
All my African American friends with kids who married a Haitian American can’t stop praising their Haitian inlaws and the positive effect these family oriented new relatives have had on their USA born kids.
Well intended 1960s policies like income based public housing had unintended pernicious effects by isolating poor black kids in dangerous high rise communities like the Cabrini complex in Chicago full of drugs and opportunities for illegal activities.
As the families headed by parents with a decent job moved out, the only successful role models left are the drug dealers and other criminal gang members who prey on their neighbors. Kids who choose education are harassed for “acting White” by their peers, as the first targets for neighborhood bullies building street cred as enforcers or drug dealers as their first step in a life of crime.
An influx of tight immigrant family units willing to do whatever it takes to succeed in this country is just what poor minority/majority cities need to break out from the vicious cycle created by well intended social policies like income limited public housing for the poor. Way to go, Oakland and San Francisco.
And congratulations again Nolan for toning down your “illegal aliens” trope to make your extremist views more palatable. At 75 years old it’s best to build up some street cred for the after life when your Jewish ancestors will spend an eternity asking why you chose to support the American Hitler in his plans to Make America White Again with ethnic cleansing.
Yes I said Hitler. Although Mussolini is more Trump’s style. But fortunately prosperous and diverse 2019 USA is not the post WWI-Depression era 1932 Weimer Republic saddled with wartime reparations, hyperinflation and looking for scapegoats. Americans love their Burritos and Guacamole.
But again, it’s a good thing that Nolan refrains from the offensive “illegal aliens” epithet. It’s never too late. That’s why I always hold doors open for everyone coming behind me, looking for some easy “do-gooder” street cred in case I drop dead and have to impress St Peter to let me in, instead of sending me downstairs. Same thing I am still trying to do for my fellow immigrants. LOL!
Long Live the Due Process Army!
Gus hits the two main fallacies of Trump restrictionism.
First, the fallacy that individuals are coming for “mere economic” reasons or reasons that don’t fit the Convention.
Forced migrants are forced migrants. And, given the conditions in the Northern Triangle that we helped aggravate, what’s the difference if they face death because of femicide, opposing gangs (which most assuredly is a political statement in countries where “gangs rule”), or are victims of climate change which we have professed little interest in addressing. Dead is dead from their perspective. And, given the Refugee Act’s recognition of “mixed motive,” there doesn’t have to be just one reason. Even those who don’t qualify are likely in danger. Just sending them back isn’t necessarily the correct solution even when we have power to do so.
Second is the false idea that refugees are a burden. Refugees are overwhelmingly grateful, courageous, and hard working. We actually get lots of taxes even from those who have not yet achieved legal status. We need folks working at all levels, not just “rocket scientists.”
A competent government could screen out those who don’t belong and put others in the best position to help us by getting them work authorized and enabling them to contribute.
Like climate change, we also need to invest in helping solve refugee producing situations. Trump’s “head in the sand” policies – based largely in a toxic White Nationalism — are a huge threat to our country and the world.
PWS
04-15-19
Nolan Rappaport
5 years ago
It’s interesting that Paul and Gus make their standard objections to Trump and his immigration policies despite the fact that my article doesn’t discuss his immigration policies. It just addresses the possibility that he will start transporting illegal crossers with children to communities that will welcome them, i.e., sanctuary cities. And I do not support that idea. In fact, I say he will be shooting himself in the foot if he carries it out.
For the sake of readers who want to know what my article is actually about, I am just making two points in it.
First, Trump would be making a huge mistake from a border security standpoint. Transporting illegal family crossers to communities that will welcome them will encourage other asylum seeking families to make illegal crossings into the US.
Second, the comments Pelosi’s office stated in a press release about the possibility that Trump will actually do this make Pelosi sound like the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland. It simply isn’t rational to say that giving illegal crossers a free ride to a sanctuary city promotes a warped game to perpetuate fear and demonize immigrants.
There you go again Nolan. Calling asylum applicants who come to the border to submit their application in accordance with the law “illegal crossers”. How is that not “demonizing immigrants”?
As I keep telling you, this constant diatribe against immigrants as dangerous criminals has poisoned the public debate over immigration preventing political consensus consistent with the national interest.
Just like the similar anti-Jewish and anti-Italian blood libels of the 1920s led to the racist quota law of 1924, the refusal to reapportion congressional representation following the 1920 Census, as well as the resurgence of the KKK (google Klambake), the protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff, and the other isolationist policies which made the consequent Great Depression= “GREAT”.
8 U.S. Code § 1325. Improper entry by alien
U.S. Code
(a) Improper time or place; avoidance of examination or inspection; misrepresentation and concealment of facts
Any alien who (1) enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers, or (2) eludes examination or inspection by immigration officers, or (3) attempts to enter or obtains entry to the United States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a material fact, shall, for the first commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both, and, for a subsequent commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18, or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both.
Roxanne Lea Fantl
5 years ago
While 8 USC 1325 is Jeff Session’s wet dream, it is just as unrealistic to think that prosecuting all illegal/improper entries by undocumented aliens is viable. Not to mention the complete inhumanity of penalizing an asylum seeker for not knowing where to POE of entry might be….
Who in their right mind thinks like this?
We had a client who was targeted by gangs in Central America after her mother in refused to pay the extortion demanded by MS-13, and went to the police. A short while afterwards, two gang members went to family’s home, told the girl they knew her mother had gone to the police. The men then urinated on the girl (in front of her disabled brother) and anally raped her. She was 19 years old at the time.
She immediately fled after the rape and threats to the USA, and when she approached the US border, she either had to pay $500 to cartels to cross thru a POE or cross wherever she could on her own. She didn’t have any money to pay the cartels, so she did the only thing she could: cross over to USA in an undesignated place, and turn herself into the border patrol agents and ask for asylum.
She then passed a credible fear interview conducted by the USCIS AO, and went before an IJ in Dallas to ask for bond. DHS stated she was a flight risk because she hadn’t turned herself in at a POE, and the IJ denied bond in spite of the fact she wasn’t an arriving alien, had passed a CF interview and she also had an LPR uncle who wrote letter offering her room and board in his home if released.
There you go Nolan – another “win” for your team! I hope that little story – like countless others that can be found all over the media – helps you sleep better at night, knowing that Jeff Sessions would be soooooo proud of the views you express in your articles.
Nolan Rappaport
5 years ago
Why are you blaming me? I didn’t make illegal crossings a crime, and this topic has nothing to do with my article. I was just providing this statutory provision in response to Gus’ accusation that I am criminalizing illegal crossings.
I have no problem with you or Gus explaining why you don’t think this provision shouldn’t be enforced, but leave me out of it.
I wrote two major immigration reform bills and a. Umber of smaller bills, amendments, and resolutions when I was the immigration counsel for the Dems on the Judiciary Committee. I will provide you with links if you want to discuss the provision s in those bills.
But stop holding me responsible for provisions I had nothing to do with.
We blame you Nolan because you have become the most prominent private mouthpiece on Immigration for the worst President in the history of the United States. The ignorant bigot lying crook who works for Putin. You are a willing, indeed eager tool for the dismantling of US Democracy conducted by Trump on behalf of Putin. Trump’s Baghdad Bob.
So you cite the text of 8 USC 1325 as if that settles it. Unlike you, I actually participated in the prosecution of hundreds of cases for illegal entry as EOIR Records manager. It takes more than making a word salad to convict.
Why? Because in addition to making a word salad out of the text of 8 USC 1325, you have to prove mens rea. And you can only prove mens rea by showing beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant knew what he was doing was legally wrong.
So as EOIR Records Manager I had to provide the prosecuting Assistant US Attorneys with certified copies of the transcript of the hearing reflecting that the alien had been advised that if he returned to the US illegally he may be prosecuted.
As I kept trying to explain over and over, immigration laws are malum prohibitum, not malum in se, and that has legal significance for criminality. I was a prosecutor. Immigration laws are the quintessential time and place regulations, and that too has legal implications.
Now I gather you and your new Neo-Nazi friends think it’s self-evident that a Mexican, Honduran, Salvadoran, etc. should know he cannot be a real American. But if you live in a country where millions cross the border every day, back and forth, as neighbors, the fact that there are guards at the border only means that there are people with guns that may try to prevent their entry.
Also, BTW, the first illegal entry by an alien is a misdemeanor subject to a 5 year statute of limitations. And unlike removal proceedings, in criminal proceedings, the government also bears the burden of proof by the similar beyond reasonable doubt standard for every element of the crime. You yourself told me how every time some Congressman wanted to turn an 8 USC 1325 violation into a felony, he backed off once he was told then the defendant would be entitled to free counsel under Gideon vs Wainwright. And then there is jury nullification. Most AUSAs know getting a local jury to convict a neighbor for trying to be an American is very difficult.
Sadly, I once thought of you as more than a friend. More like an older brother. I even went to your home first for advice when I decided it was time for me to retire, and over the years many acts of personal touches made me love you dearly. I think about you every day. It hurts. Specially after I also learned of my extensive Jewish heritage through my Dominican maternal grandfather.
But something happened to you after you came back from your detail at the Hill. Was it that you believed they were going to make you a Board member? EOIR regularly has 5-6 attorneys detailed to the Hill. And except when someone at the Hill makes a special request, these are simply staff we can spare. Or maybe it was that neighbor from India and her noisy wind chime. Does it matter? I too don’t feel I was treated fairly by DOJ, but that’s life. No big deal. That’s why they paid us the Big Bucks. LOL! I’m enjoying being retired on a 6 figure government pension since I turned 61 years old.
It was still a great honor to serve this great country and give it my best even if some bigots didn’t like that I interpreted the laws as written. That’s why Fred Vacca and I became such good friends and his wife asked me to speak at his retirement and at his funeral. We often disagreed, but we both respected our strict construction of the statutes we interpreted.
My turning point with you was when I realized you had been manufacturing blood libel against Mexican immigrants on behalf of the Tanton Hate Network. You called it “news consolidator”. That’s where all the crazy stories you sent me came from, like the doctor and nurses in Argentine who found a baby alive they first thought was stillborn and you wanted them prosecuted. Or the stray bullets in Southern Texas that hit a courthouse. You thought it was evidence of Mexican perfidy, until I pointed out the bullets were probably were made in America. Self Deportation?
How can a Jewish person do blood libel to another powerless minority? Do you know where that leads? 670 years ago bigots of Bassel, perhaps Europe’s most civilized city started rumors that Jews caused the Black Plague putting something in the water because so many had survived due to the fact that Jews ritually cleaned their homes of old bread and eat unleavened bread at Passover. The locals locked all the Jewish adults in a synagogue and burned them alive. And baptised the children of course. How thoughtful!
And you confessed that you thought that after the government decides, the people are bound and the laws should be enforced strictly. And you didn’t see how anyone would prefer it any different. Of course you called the government “the people”, as if they were the same. In a Democracy the people are never bound and malum prohibitum laws are not enforced strictly.
Gotta hand it to you, you are an excellent writer and that just above is as succinct a definition of a police state as anyone has given. Do you realize what you’re doing helping Trump destroy American Democracy just because you dislike immigrants?
Read some History. Most immigrants broke some law somewhere to get here. If you were a European peasant, you broke laws that said you had to work the land on behalf of landowner. If you came to the US from Ireland during the potato famine, you were supposed to pay your debts to your British landlord before you left. If you came from Germany around that time, like my in-laws ancestors, you were supposed to serve in the Prussian military which had just conquered Westphalia, etc., etc.
And yes, we didn’t have national immigration laws then. But we had lots of local laws prohibiting Catholics, Jews, even American free blacks. The latter was called the Cincinnati plan because Cincinnati, sitting right across the Ohio river from Slave Kentucky, didn’t want African Americans, and most Midwestern States passed similar laws, which like today’s immigration laws proved unenforceable.
After helping poison the political discourse on immigration which helped Mango Mussolini get elected, you began writing articles defending every Trumpian assault on immigrants and the US Constitution: the Muslim Travel Ban, the odious Wall which Congress keeps rejecting, forced family Separations, preventing asylum applicants from submitting their applications on US soil, etc.
What you’re doing is provide a veneer of legitimacy for the most lawless Presidency in every way and specially against the New Americans. Like the “scientists” who wrote scholarly treatises “proving” that Jews were subhuman. Your immigration views are right out of “Blood and Soil” and your view of Trump’s unbridled presidential power is right out of Rudolph Hess’ “Fuhrer Principle”. Shame on you!
Nolan Rappaport
5 years ago
Gus, if you are right about Trump, you should be able to challenge what he does instead of resorting to personal attacks on him and on someone who was your friend for more than 30 years. Ad hominem attacks only appeal to people who feel the same way that you do.
One other point, Gus. You said, “Do you realize what you’re doing helping Trump destroy American Democracy just because you dislike immigrants?”
In fact, you are the one who is destroying democracy, and I don’t dislike immigrants. Freedom of speech is one of the essential foundations of a democracy, and your offensive, insulting attacks on me for saying things you don’t like makes it difficult for me to exercise that right.
Things like:
***You are a willing, indeed eager tool for the dismantling of US Democracy conducted by Trump on behalf of Putin. Trump’s Baghdad Bob.
***Now I gather you and your new Neo-Nazi friends think it’s self-evident that a Mexican, Honduran, Salvadoran, etc. should know he cannot be a real American.
***My turning point with you was when I realized you had been manufacturing blood libel against Mexican immigrants on behalf of the Tanton Hate Network.
***How can a Jewish person do blood libel to another powerless minority?
***Do you realize what you’re doing helping Trump destroy American Democracy just because you dislike immigrants?
***Your immigration views are right out of “Blood and Soil” and your view of Trump’s unbridled presidential power is right out of Rudolph Hess’ “Fuhrer Principle”. Shame on you!
I could go on, but those examples are sufficient to make my point. You are the one who should be shamed of himself.
Nolan: If there is no afterlife, you will have enjoyed your 15 minutes of fame, per Andy Warhol, scot-free. But if there is an afterlife, and you meet your ancestors, as Ricky Ricardo used to say: “You’ll a lot of ‘splaining to do.
Paul’s comments remind me of the way a ninth circuit judge evaluated Trump’s revised travel ban. The judge observed that nothing in the language of the executive order indicated that religious discrimination was the reason for the travel ban, but he went on to say, in effect, but Trump wrote the order and he is a bigot.
As I explain in my op-ed, it does not harm undocumented aliens to provide them with transportation to a location that welcomes undocumented aliens, i.e., a sanctuary city. And Pelosi’s communication director sounds like the Mad Hatter when she says it is a warped game to perpetuate fear and demonize immigrants.
On the other hand, Trump really is shooting himself in the foot. The fact that illegal crossers are released after they are apprehended and allowed to continue their journey into the interior is a powerful pull factor, and the dramatic increase in families crossing illegally proves it. Giving them free transportation to a sanctuary city and releasing them there will make the pull factor even stronger.
First. Let’s compliment Nolan for calling asylum applicants “undocumented immigrants”, instead of “illegal aliens”. Progress is progress, even if small. But then, saying that “illegal crossers are released after they are apprehended and allowed to continue their journey into the interior is a powerful pull factor, and the dramatic increase in families crossing illegally proves it ” is his typical mix of misleading and fallacy.
First it is misleading in that in fact Trump’s constant demagoging that millions of criminals are crossing the border is the “big pull”. Remember the Sly and the Family Stone hit song: “There’s a Riot Goin’ On”.
Anyone who lives in a city that has experienced urban riots knows that while most people stay inside for safety, criminals and other thrill seekers go out to where the action is. And that’s why immigrant “caravans” have mushroomed during Trump time after he doubled down in his inhuman “no tolerance” demagoguery.
And Nolan’s assumptions are also fallacies based on false premises two ways. First, people don’t risk their lives and leave everything they have behind that casually. They come to the USA because their lives are in danger and come here, just like previous immigrants because USA is the land of the free and the home of the brave.
And of course, his assumption that new immigrants are a bad thing is another xenophobic canard, coupled with the Trumpian demagoguery that applicants for asylum at the US border are “illegal entrants”. Nolan should know from working at the BIA that aliens applying for the border are not “entrants”, because they have not entered the USA. They are applicants for admission.
And in any event, such an applicant for asylum is not doing so illegally anymore than someone applying for a drivers license at the DMV is thereby an “illegal” driver.
And then I congatulate the California officials welcoming released asylum applicants. Like Germany’s Prime Minister Markel, by acting early, California is probably going to get the “First Round Draft Picks”.
Eventually most diligent local officials without racial prejudices realize that getting a fresh influx of hard working USA loving immigrants, who risk everything to follow the American dream, is just what their communities need. Same with Angela Merkel in Germany which is smoothly absorbing millions of Syrian refugees to refresh their aging native stock.
And based on my Miami experience watching Haitian Americans, that’s exactly what happened in Miami, once again a thriving magnet city rebounding from the 2007 Real Estate crisis that hit Florida hardest.
Talk to any Miami policeman or social worker who has to enter Haitian American homes in Liberty City, traditionally Miami’s poorest neighborhood. The Haitians’ homes inside are always spotless, full of patriotic and religious art, and grandmas babysitting while their younger relatives are working long hours to get ahead in the USA. Everyone is well dressed and the kids are all either in school or home studying to get ahead.
All my African American friends with kids who married a Haitian American can’t stop praising their Haitian inlaws and the positive effect these family oriented new relatives have had on their USA born kids.
Well intended 1960s policies like income based public housing had unintended pernicious effects by isolating poor black kids in dangerous high rise communities like the Cabrini complex in Chicago full of drugs and opportunities for illegal activities.
As the families headed by parents with a decent job moved out, the only successful role models left are the drug dealers and other criminal gang members who prey on their neighbors. Kids who choose education are harassed for “acting White” by their peers, as the first targets for neighborhood bullies building street cred as enforcers or drug dealers as their first step in a life of crime.
An influx of tight immigrant family units willing to do whatever it takes to succeed in this country is just what poor minority/majority cities need to break out from the vicious cycle created by well intended social policies like income limited public housing for the poor. Way to go, Oakland and San Francisco.
And congratulations again Nolan for toning down your “illegal aliens” trope to make your extremist views more palatable. At 75 years old it’s best to build up some street cred for the after life when your Jewish ancestors will spend an eternity asking why you chose to support the American Hitler in his plans to Make America White Again with ethnic cleansing.
Yes I said Hitler. Although Mussolini is more Trump’s style. But fortunately prosperous and diverse 2019 USA is not the post WWI-Depression era 1932 Weimer Republic saddled with wartime reparations, hyperinflation and looking for scapegoats. Americans love their Burritos and Guacamole.
But again, it’s a good thing that Nolan refrains from the offensive “illegal aliens” epithet. It’s never too late. That’s why I always hold doors open for everyone coming behind me, looking for some easy “do-gooder” street cred in case I drop dead and have to impress St Peter to let me in, instead of sending me downstairs. Same thing I am still trying to do for my fellow immigrants. LOL!
Long Live the Due Process Army!
G
Gus hits the two main fallacies of Trump restrictionism.
First, the fallacy that individuals are coming for “mere economic” reasons or reasons that don’t fit the Convention.
Forced migrants are forced migrants. And, given the conditions in the Northern Triangle that we helped aggravate, what’s the difference if they face death because of femicide, opposing gangs (which most assuredly is a political statement in countries where “gangs rule”), or are victims of climate change which we have professed little interest in addressing. Dead is dead from their perspective. And, given the Refugee Act’s recognition of “mixed motive,” there doesn’t have to be just one reason. Even those who don’t qualify are likely in danger. Just sending them back isn’t necessarily the correct solution even when we have power to do so.
Second is the false idea that refugees are a burden. Refugees are overwhelmingly grateful, courageous, and hard working. We actually get lots of taxes even from those who have not yet achieved legal status. We need folks working at all levels, not just “rocket scientists.”
A competent government could screen out those who don’t belong and put others in the best position to help us by getting them work authorized and enabling them to contribute.
Like climate change, we also need to invest in helping solve refugee producing situations. Trump’s “head in the sand” policies – based largely in a toxic White Nationalism — are a huge threat to our country and the world.
PWS
04-15-19
It’s interesting that Paul and Gus make their standard objections to Trump and his immigration policies despite the fact that my article doesn’t discuss his immigration policies. It just addresses the possibility that he will start transporting illegal crossers with children to communities that will welcome them, i.e., sanctuary cities. And I do not support that idea. In fact, I say he will be shooting himself in the foot if he carries it out.
For the sake of readers who want to know what my article is actually about, I am just making two points in it.
First, Trump would be making a huge mistake from a border security standpoint. Transporting illegal family crossers to communities that will welcome them will encourage other asylum seeking families to make illegal crossings into the US.
Second, the comments Pelosi’s office stated in a press release about the possibility that Trump will actually do this make Pelosi sound like the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland. It simply isn’t rational to say that giving illegal crossers a free ride to a sanctuary city promotes a warped game to perpetuate fear and demonize immigrants.
Nolan Rappaport
There you go again Nolan. Calling asylum applicants who come to the border to submit their application in accordance with the law “illegal crossers”. How is that not “demonizing immigrants”?
As I keep telling you, this constant diatribe against immigrants as dangerous criminals has poisoned the public debate over immigration preventing political consensus consistent with the national interest.
Just like the similar anti-Jewish and anti-Italian blood libels of the 1920s led to the racist quota law of 1924, the refusal to reapportion congressional representation following the 1920 Census, as well as the resurgence of the KKK (google Klambake), the protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff, and the other isolationist policies which made the consequent Great Depression= “GREAT”.
8 U.S. Code § 1325. Improper entry by alien
U.S. Code
(a) Improper time or place; avoidance of examination or inspection; misrepresentation and concealment of facts
Any alien who (1) enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers, or (2) eludes examination or inspection by immigration officers, or (3) attempts to enter or obtains entry to the United States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a material fact, shall, for the first commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both, and, for a subsequent commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18, or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both.
While 8 USC 1325 is Jeff Session’s wet dream, it is just as unrealistic to think that prosecuting all illegal/improper entries by undocumented aliens is viable. Not to mention the complete inhumanity of penalizing an asylum seeker for not knowing where to POE of entry might be….
Who in their right mind thinks like this?
We had a client who was targeted by gangs in Central America after her mother in refused to pay the extortion demanded by MS-13, and went to the police. A short while afterwards, two gang members went to family’s home, told the girl they knew her mother had gone to the police. The men then urinated on the girl (in front of her disabled brother) and anally raped her. She was 19 years old at the time.
She immediately fled after the rape and threats to the USA, and when she approached the US border, she either had to pay $500 to cartels to cross thru a POE or cross wherever she could on her own. She didn’t have any money to pay the cartels, so she did the only thing she could: cross over to USA in an undesignated place, and turn herself into the border patrol agents and ask for asylum.
She then passed a credible fear interview conducted by the USCIS AO, and went before an IJ in Dallas to ask for bond. DHS stated she was a flight risk because she hadn’t turned herself in at a POE, and the IJ denied bond in spite of the fact she wasn’t an arriving alien, had passed a CF interview and she also had an LPR uncle who wrote letter offering her room and board in his home if released.
There you go Nolan – another “win” for your team! I hope that little story – like countless others that can be found all over the media – helps you sleep better at night, knowing that Jeff Sessions would be soooooo proud of the views you express in your articles.
Why are you blaming me? I didn’t make illegal crossings a crime, and this topic has nothing to do with my article. I was just providing this statutory provision in response to Gus’ accusation that I am criminalizing illegal crossings.
I have no problem with you or Gus explaining why you don’t think this provision shouldn’t be enforced, but leave me out of it.
I wrote two major immigration reform bills and a. Umber of smaller bills, amendments, and resolutions when I was the immigration counsel for the Dems on the Judiciary Committee. I will provide you with links if you want to discuss the provision s in those bills.
But stop holding me responsible for provisions I had nothing to do with.
We blame you Nolan because you have become the most prominent private mouthpiece on Immigration for the worst President in the history of the United States. The ignorant bigot lying crook who works for Putin. You are a willing, indeed eager tool for the dismantling of US Democracy conducted by Trump on behalf of Putin. Trump’s Baghdad Bob.
So you cite the text of 8 USC 1325 as if that settles it. Unlike you, I actually participated in the prosecution of hundreds of cases for illegal entry as EOIR Records manager. It takes more than making a word salad to convict.
Why? Because in addition to making a word salad out of the text of 8 USC 1325, you have to prove mens rea. And you can only prove mens rea by showing beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant knew what he was doing was legally wrong.
So as EOIR Records Manager I had to provide the prosecuting Assistant US Attorneys with certified copies of the transcript of the hearing reflecting that the alien had been advised that if he returned to the US illegally he may be prosecuted.
As I kept trying to explain over and over, immigration laws are malum prohibitum, not malum in se, and that has legal significance for criminality. I was a prosecutor. Immigration laws are the quintessential time and place regulations, and that too has legal implications.
Now I gather you and your new Neo-Nazi friends think it’s self-evident that a Mexican, Honduran, Salvadoran, etc. should know he cannot be a real American. But if you live in a country where millions cross the border every day, back and forth, as neighbors, the fact that there are guards at the border only means that there are people with guns that may try to prevent their entry.
Also, BTW, the first illegal entry by an alien is a misdemeanor subject to a 5 year statute of limitations. And unlike removal proceedings, in criminal proceedings, the government also bears the burden of proof by the similar beyond reasonable doubt standard for every element of the crime. You yourself told me how every time some Congressman wanted to turn an 8 USC 1325 violation into a felony, he backed off once he was told then the defendant would be entitled to free counsel under Gideon vs Wainwright. And then there is jury nullification. Most AUSAs know getting a local jury to convict a neighbor for trying to be an American is very difficult.
Sadly, I once thought of you as more than a friend. More like an older brother. I even went to your home first for advice when I decided it was time for me to retire, and over the years many acts of personal touches made me love you dearly. I think about you every day. It hurts. Specially after I also learned of my extensive Jewish heritage through my Dominican maternal grandfather.
But something happened to you after you came back from your detail at the Hill. Was it that you believed they were going to make you a Board member? EOIR regularly has 5-6 attorneys detailed to the Hill. And except when someone at the Hill makes a special request, these are simply staff we can spare. Or maybe it was that neighbor from India and her noisy wind chime. Does it matter? I too don’t feel I was treated fairly by DOJ, but that’s life. No big deal. That’s why they paid us the Big Bucks. LOL! I’m enjoying being retired on a 6 figure government pension since I turned 61 years old.
It was still a great honor to serve this great country and give it my best even if some bigots didn’t like that I interpreted the laws as written. That’s why Fred Vacca and I became such good friends and his wife asked me to speak at his retirement and at his funeral. We often disagreed, but we both respected our strict construction of the statutes we interpreted.
My turning point with you was when I realized you had been manufacturing blood libel against Mexican immigrants on behalf of the Tanton Hate Network. You called it “news consolidator”. That’s where all the crazy stories you sent me came from, like the doctor and nurses in Argentine who found a baby alive they first thought was stillborn and you wanted them prosecuted. Or the stray bullets in Southern Texas that hit a courthouse. You thought it was evidence of Mexican perfidy, until I pointed out the bullets were probably were made in America. Self Deportation?
How can a Jewish person do blood libel to another powerless minority? Do you know where that leads? 670 years ago bigots of Bassel, perhaps Europe’s most civilized city started rumors that Jews caused the Black Plague putting something in the water because so many had survived due to the fact that Jews ritually cleaned their homes of old bread and eat unleavened bread at Passover. The locals locked all the Jewish adults in a synagogue and burned them alive. And baptised the children of course. How thoughtful!
And you confessed that you thought that after the government decides, the people are bound and the laws should be enforced strictly. And you didn’t see how anyone would prefer it any different. Of course you called the government “the people”, as if they were the same. In a Democracy the people are never bound and malum prohibitum laws are not enforced strictly.
Gotta hand it to you, you are an excellent writer and that just above is as succinct a definition of a police state as anyone has given. Do you realize what you’re doing helping Trump destroy American Democracy just because you dislike immigrants?
Read some History. Most immigrants broke some law somewhere to get here. If you were a European peasant, you broke laws that said you had to work the land on behalf of landowner. If you came to the US from Ireland during the potato famine, you were supposed to pay your debts to your British landlord before you left. If you came from Germany around that time, like my in-laws ancestors, you were supposed to serve in the Prussian military which had just conquered Westphalia, etc., etc.
And yes, we didn’t have national immigration laws then. But we had lots of local laws prohibiting Catholics, Jews, even American free blacks. The latter was called the Cincinnati plan because Cincinnati, sitting right across the Ohio river from Slave Kentucky, didn’t want African Americans, and most Midwestern States passed similar laws, which like today’s immigration laws proved unenforceable.
After helping poison the political discourse on immigration which helped Mango Mussolini get elected, you began writing articles defending every Trumpian assault on immigrants and the US Constitution: the Muslim Travel Ban, the odious Wall which Congress keeps rejecting, forced family Separations, preventing asylum applicants from submitting their applications on US soil, etc.
What you’re doing is provide a veneer of legitimacy for the most lawless Presidency in every way and specially against the New Americans. Like the “scientists” who wrote scholarly treatises “proving” that Jews were subhuman. Your immigration views are right out of “Blood and Soil” and your view of Trump’s unbridled presidential power is right out of Rudolph Hess’ “Fuhrer Principle”. Shame on you!
Gus, if you are right about Trump, you should be able to challenge what he does instead of resorting to personal attacks on him and on someone who was your friend for more than 30 years. Ad hominem attacks only appeal to people who feel the same way that you do.
You can start with what his AG did yesterday.
“Trump attorney general’s ruling expands indefinite detention for asylum seekers”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-bond/trump-attorney-generals-ruling-expands-indefinite-detention-for-asylum-seekers-idUSKCN1RT053
One other point, Gus. You said, “Do you realize what you’re doing helping Trump destroy American Democracy just because you dislike immigrants?”
In fact, you are the one who is destroying democracy, and I don’t dislike immigrants. Freedom of speech is one of the essential foundations of a democracy, and your offensive, insulting attacks on me for saying things you don’t like makes it difficult for me to exercise that right.
Things like:
***You are a willing, indeed eager tool for the dismantling of US Democracy conducted by Trump on behalf of Putin. Trump’s Baghdad Bob.
***Now I gather you and your new Neo-Nazi friends think it’s self-evident that a Mexican, Honduran, Salvadoran, etc. should know he cannot be a real American.
***My turning point with you was when I realized you had been manufacturing blood libel against Mexican immigrants on behalf of the Tanton Hate Network.
***How can a Jewish person do blood libel to another powerless minority?
***Do you realize what you’re doing helping Trump destroy American Democracy just because you dislike immigrants?
***Your immigration views are right out of “Blood and Soil” and your view of Trump’s unbridled presidential power is right out of Rudolph Hess’ “Fuhrer Principle”. Shame on you!
I could go on, but those examples are sufficient to make my point. You are the one who should be shamed of himself.
Nolan: If there is no afterlife, you will have enjoyed your 15 minutes of fame, per Andy Warhol, scot-free. But if there is an afterlife, and you meet your ancestors, as Ricky Ricardo used to say: “You’ll a lot of ‘splaining to do.