"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.
Professor Kate Cronin-Furman University College, London
Professor Kate Cronin-Furman writes in the NY Times:
The debate over whether “concentration camps” is the right term for migrant detention centers on the southern border has drawn long-overdue attention to the American government’s dehumanizing treatment of defenseless children. A pediatrician who visited in June said the centers could be compared to “torture facilities.” Having studied mass atrocities for over a decade, I agree.
At least seven migrant children have died in United States custody since last year. The details reported by lawyers who visited a Customs and Border Protection facility in Clint, Tex., in June were shocking: children who had not bathed in weeks, toddlers without diapers, sick babies being cared for by other children. As a human rights lawyer and then as a political scientist, I have spoken to the victims of some of the worst things that human beings have ever done to each other, in places ranging from Cambodia to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Sri Lanka. What’s happening at the border doesn’t match the scale of these horrors, but if, as appears to be the case, these harsh conditions have been intentionally inflicted on children as part a broader plan to deter others from migrating, then it meets the definition of a mass atrocity: a deliberate, systematic attack on civilians. And like past atrocities, it is being committed by a complex organizational structure made up of people at all different levels of involvement.
Thinking of what’s happening in this way gives us a repertoire of tools with which to fight the abuses, beyond the usual exhortations to call our representatives and donate to border charities.
Those of us who want to stop what’s happening need to think about all the different individuals playing a role in the systematic mistreatment of migrant children and how we can get them to stop participating. We should focus most on those who have less of a personal commitment to the abusive policies that are being carried out.
Testimony from trials and truth commissions has revealed that many atrocity perpetrators think of what they’re doing as they would think of any other day job. While the leaders who order atrocities may be acting out of strongly held ideological beliefs or political survival concerns, the so-called “foot soldiers” and the middle men and women are often just there for the paycheck.
This lack of personal investment means that these participants in atrocities can be much more susceptible to pressure than national leaders. Specifically, they are sensitive to social pressure, which has been shown to have played a huge role in atrocity commission and desistance in the Holocaust, Rwanda and elsewhere. The campaign to stop the abuses at the border should exploit this sensitivity and put social pressure on those involved in enforcing the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
Here is what that might look like:
The identities of the individual Customs and Border Protection agents who are physically separating children from their families and staffing the detention centers are not undiscoverable. Immigration lawyers have agent names; journalists reporting at the border have names, photos and even videos. These agents’ actions should be publicized, particularly in their home communities.
This is not an argument for doxxing — it’s about exposure of their participation in atrocities to audiences whose opinion they care about. The knowledge, for instance, that when you go to church on Sunday, your entire congregation will have seen you on TV ripping a child out of her father’s arms is a serious social cost to bear. The desire to avoid this kind of social shame may be enough to persuade some agents to quit and may hinder the recruitment of replacements. For those who won’t (or can’t) quit, it may induce them to treat the vulnerable individuals under their control more humanely. In Denmark during World War II, for instance, strong social pressure, including from the churches, contributed to the refusal of the country to comply with Nazi orders to deport its Jewish citizens.
The midlevel functionaries who make the system run are not as visibly involved in the “dirty work,” but there are still clear potential reputational consequences that could change their incentives. The lawyer who stood up in court to try to parse the meaning of “safe and sanitary” conditions — suggesting that this requirement might not include toothbrushes and soap for the children in border patrol custody if they were there for a “shorter term” stay — passed an ethics exam to be admitted to the bar. Similar to the way the American Medical Association has made it clear that its members must not participate in torture, the American Bar Association should signal that anyone who defends the border patrol’s mistreatment of children will not be considered a member in good standing of the legal profession. This will deter the participation of some, if only out of concern over their future career prospects.
The individuals running detention centers are arguably directly responsible for torture, which could trigger a number of consequences at the international level. Activists should partner with human rights organizations to bring these abuses before international bodies like the United Nations Human Rights Council. They should lobby for human rights investigations, for other governments to deny entry visas to those involved in the abuses, or even for the initiation of torture prosecutions in foreign courts. For someone who is “just following orders,” the prospect of being internationally shamed as a rights abuser and being unable to travel freely may be significant enough to persuade them to stop participating.
When those directly involved in atrocities can’t be swayed, their enablers are often more responsive. For-profit companies are supplying food and other material goods to the detention centers. Boycotts against them and their parent entities may persuade them to stop doing so. Employees of these companies can follow the example of Wayfair workers, who organized a walkout on Wednesday in protest of their company’s sale of furniture to the contractor outfitting the detention centers. Finally, anyone can support existing divestment campaigns to pressure financial institutions to end their support of immigration abuses.
Many Americans have been asking each other “But what can we DO?” The answer is that we call these abuses mass atrocities and use the tool kit this label offers us to fight them. So far, mobilization against what’s happening on the border has mostly followed standard political activism scripts: raising public awareness, organizing protests, phoning our congressional representatives. These efforts are critical, but they aren’t enough. Children are suffering and dying. The fastest way to stop it is to make sure everyone who is responsible faces consequences.
Dr. Cronin-Furman is an assistant professor of human rights.
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“The fastest way to stop it is to make sure everyone who is responsible faces consequences.”
That includes attorneys who defend indefensible policies in Federal Court as well as Federal Judges all the way up to the Supremes who fail to stand up for Due Process for individuals, and who insist on treating Trump’s overt attacks on our Constitution, democracy, and human dignity as within the scope of “normal” Executive actions rather than intentional and dishonest abuses requiring censure and strong, courageous, unconditional disapproval.
Ken Cuccinelli immediately stands out in an Administration that values cruelty. What a despicable and heartless thing to say.
Quote Tweet
The Washington Post
@washingtonpost
Jun 28
Ken Cuccinelli, head of citizenship service, blames migrant father for drowning deaths captured in photo (link: https://wapo.st/2NlcWTb) wapo.st/2NlcWTb
Thanks, Don, and well said! I’m proud to have you for our Representative here in Alexandria. You have been a constant voice of decency, common sense, and opposition to the “malicious incompetence” of the Trump Kakistocracy. And those of us in Virginia who survived the “Modern Day Jim Crow Era” of “Cooch Cooch” as Virginia Attorney General know just what a nasty, vile, unqualified, racist hack he has always been and always will be. Heck, even Mitch McConnell can’t stand him, and that says something!
“Cooch Cooch’s” latest despicable act of note comes along with provoking an immediate rebellion among Asylum Officers. As I predicted, “Cooch Cooch” has already distinguished himself as a “lowlife among bottom dwellers.”
Hi all: I volunteer on Tuesday nights at a free immigration law clinic run by the New Sanctuary Coalition, based in Judson Church In Greenwich Village, NYC. As you can imagine, fear has been running high since the announcement of multi-city raids. Micah Bucey, a minister at Judson, composed the following non-denominational centering prayer that is now recited before each clinic. I share with you for inspiration:
Spirit of Resistance,
You who are beyond the capacity of any border or name,
You who stretch beyond the indignity of any cage
You who envelop us in the power to persist, to protest, and to rehumanize, //
As we bring our passion and our pain to this place,
We offer gratitude for small gatherings that do monumental things,
We offer gratitude for a fierce community that unbuilds walls
And we offer gratitude for dreams of the world we are creating. //
We ask that you
Refresh us with new breath and energy for the long haul,
Guide us through fear, frustration, and panic,
Expand our hearts to envelop all those who pass through this room tonight and all those who have yet to make it to this room,
Ignite the fire of our faith in the truth that love knows no borders. //
Help us to never forget
That ICE is meant to melt,
That you cannot deport a movement,
And that the moral arc of the universe only bends toward justice if we keep bending it together. //
U.S. asylum officers slammed President Trump’s policy of forcing migrants to remain in Mexico while they await immigration hearings in the United States, urging a federal appeals court Wednesday to block the administration from continuing the program. The officers, who are directed to implement the policy, said it is threatening migrants’ lives and is “fundamentally contrary to the moral fabric of our Nation.”
The labor union representing asylum officers filed a friend-of-the-court brief that sided with the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups challenging Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols program, which has sent 12,000 asylum-seeking migrants to Mexico since January. The policy aims to deter migrants from coming to the United States and to keep them out of the country while courts weigh their claims.
The union argued that the policy goes against the nation’s long-standing view that asylum seekers and refugees should have a way to escape persecution in their homelands, with the United States embracing its status as a safe haven since even before it was founded — with the arrival of the Pilgrims in the 17th century. The union said in court papers that the policy is compelling sworn officers to participate in the “widespread violation” of international and federal law — “something that they did not sign up to do when they decided to become asylum and refugee officers for the United States government.”
“Asylum officers are duty bound to protect vulnerable asylum seekers from persecution,” the American Federation of Government Employees Local 1924, which represents 2,500 federal workers, including asylum officers, said in a 37-page court filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in California. “They should not be forced to honor departmental directives that are fundamentally contrary to the moral fabric of our Nation and our international and domestic legal obligations.”
The legal filing is an unusual public rebuke of a sitting president by his own employees, and it plunges a highly trained officer corps that typically operates under secrecy into a public legal battle over one of Trump’s most prized immigration policies.
Under Trump, the asylum division has become a target of internal ire, often assailed for approving most initial asylum screenings and sending migrants to immigration court for a full hearing. Trump administration officials say most cases are denied. Last week, the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Ken Cuccinelli, outraged some asylum officers by sending the staff an email they thought criticized them for approving so many initial screenings.
Trump placed Cuccinelli, an immigration hard-liner and former Virginia attorney general, in the position ostensibly as part of his move to get tough on immigration policy, and the union’s legal filing appears to be directly at odds with that approach.
The policy has been challenged in federal court, with a lower-court judge temporarily halting MPP in April, saying it probably violates federal law. A three-judge appellate panel allowed the program to resume in May while the court considers the policy.
Justice Department lawyers have said in court filings that migrants are filing thousands of sham claims because they virtually guarantee their release into the United States pending a hearing in the backlogged immigration courts. The U.S. government cannot process the migrants’ cases quickly or detain children for long periods, which means some migrants can stay in the country for months or years while waiting for their cases to play out.
Three migrants wait near the border shortly after being returned to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico on June 13. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)
Ending the program, the government lawyers have said, “would impose immediate, substantial harm on the government’s ability to manage the crisis on our southern border.”
The Justice Department declined to comment on the filing Wednesday. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the program, did not respond to a request for comment.
The influx of Central American migrants at the southern border has overwhelmed the U.S. immigration system. It also has led to a political fight between congressional Democrats and the White House regarding crowded and unsanitary conditions in border holding facilities amid Trump’s push for heightened enforcement. More than 144,000 migrants were taken into custody in May after crossing the southern border, the largest monthly total in more than a decade, and asylum filings have soared.
Trump administration officials this week have been pleading with Congress to approve emergency funding for the humanitarian crisis at the border. The Senate on Wednesday responded, passing a $4.6 billion emergency spending measure amid debates about treatment of migrants and the risks they face as they try to enter the United States, with a graphic photo of a migrant and his young daughter having drowned in the Rio Grande as the backdrop.
In the federal court filing, the asylum officers say they are enforcing the laws as Congress intended, based on approaches and international treaties shaped after World War II and atrocities connected with the Holocaust. Federal laws hinge on the principle of “non-refoulement” — which means people should not be sent back to countries where they could be harmed or killed. To qualify for asylum, migrants must show that they face harm based on their “race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.”
The asylum officers say Mexico is too dangerous for Central American asylum seekers, particularly women, people who are gay, lesbian or transgender, and indigenous minority groups. They cited State Department reports showing that gang violence and activity is widespread and that crimes are rarely solved.
“Mexico is simply not safe for Central American asylum seekers,” the filing said, noting that gangs that terrorized migrants in their home countries might easily follow them into Mexico. “And despite professing a commitment to protecting the rights of people seeking asylum, the Mexican government has proven unable to provide this protection.”
Asylum officers say the U.S. asylum system is “not, as the Administration has claimed, fundamentally broken,” and that they could handle more cases quickly without sending people back to Mexico.
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MPP is “entirely unnecessary, as our immigration system has the foundation and agility necessary to deal with the flow of migrants through our Southern Border,” the officers wrote.
The officers said they fear that MPP is sending asylum seekers back to a country where they are in danger, a violation of federal and international law. The said immigration agents do not ask migrants if they fear persecution or torture in Mexico, and that they only send migrants to asylum officers for screenings if the migrants independently express fear of return.
[Why migrant families are seeking asylum at the border in record numbers]
The latter are granted an initial asylum screening, often by phone or video. But they must prove that they are “more likely than not” going to face persecution in Mexico, a higher bar than in the immigration courts, where migrants are offered safeguards such as access to lawyers, a reading of their rights, and the right to appeal.
“The MPP, however, provides none of these safeguards,” the officers said.
Officials are attempting to extend the program along the nearly 2,000-mile border and are giving Mexico time to expand its shelter capacity, a top official at U.S. Customs and Border Protection has said.
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So why do Asylum Officers have the courage and integrity to stand up to what is essentially fraud, abuse, and murder of asylum seekers by the Trump Administration when Article III Judges won’t? U.S. Immigration Judges have so spoken out against
Administration abuses through the National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”), although a minority of Immigration Judges have contributed to the problem by engaging in unlawful and unconstitutional bias against asylum seekers.
Obviously, we have the wrong type of individuals holding judicial positions in the U.S., something that the next competent and honest Administration should consider before appointing more complicit “go alongs to get alongs” to any type of bench.
It started with the Supreme’s atrocious and cowardly cop out on the Travel Ban case and has continued. Courage and the willingness to stand up against Government abuses are the primary qualifications for judges.
Other than some U.S. District Court Judges, too few Article IIIs have measured up to the task, and innocent people are being harmed, abused, and killed by Trump and his enablers as a result. The Courts of Appeals who have ignored the glaring Constitutional defects and clearly substandard justice in the Immigration Court system for more than a decade are particularly complicit in this unfolding disaster.
Moreover, as I have pointed out before, the lack of understanding of asylum law and unwillingness to stand up for the legal rights of asylum seekers among some Immigration Judges and too many Article III Judges is simply appalling!
To date, the performance of the Article III Judges on the 9th Circuit on the “Remain in Mexico”/“Die in Mexico” atrocity has been so disastrously deficient and incompetent as to make the wheels come off of the entire Government. This is a “rebellion” that should never have been necessary had the irresponsible, incoherent, and clueless three-“judge” panel that let “Die in Mexico” proceed done their jobs.
Hurrah for the Asylum Corps! Boo to the cowardly and unqualified judges who continue to enable Trump’s destruction of America and of human rights! And “double boo” to the career lawyers at the DOJ defending the Administration’s dishonest and illegal policies with lies and false narratives! Whatever happened to ethical standards for Federal Employees? Why do they apply to Asylum Officers, but not to DOJ “judges” and attorneys?
CNN Digital Expansion 2019, Priscilla AlvarezCNN Digital Expansion 2019, Geneva Sands
Priscilla Alvarez and Geneva Sands report for CNN:
Washington (CNN)Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner John Sanders is resigning, he said in a message sent to agency employees Tuesday, amid the dramatic increase in the number of undocumented migrants crossing the border, a fight over how to address it and controversy over how children are being treated.
“Although I will leave it to you to determine whether I was successful, I can unequivocally say that helping support the amazing men and women of CBP has been the most fulfilling and satisfying opportunity of my career,” Sanders writes. His resignation is effective July 5.
Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Mark Morgan is expected to take over as Customs and Border Protection in an acting capacity, according to a Department of Homeland Security official. Sanders’s resignation as acting head of CBP comes amid a crush of migrants at the border that has overwhelmed facilities. Earlier Tuesday, CBP held a call with reporters on squalid conditions at a Border Patrol facility in Clint, Texas.
Officials conceded that children should not be held in CBP custody, noting that the agency’s facilities were designed decades ago to largely accommodate single adults for a short period of time.
Over the weekend, President Donald Trump called off planned raids by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, saying deportations would proceed unless Congress finds a solution on the US-Mexico border within two weeks. Before it was postponed, Mark Morgan had publicly confirmed an operation targeting migrant families and others with court-ordered removals was in the works.
Morgan, a vocal proponent of the President’s efforts, was another of Trump’s picks to lead ICE after abruptly pulling the nomination of Ron Vitiello.
Morgan briefly served as Border Patrol chief during the Obama administration before leaving the post in January 2017. He previously spent two decades at the FBI. He is expected to return to Customs and Border Protection, which encompasses Border Patrol.
Sanders assumed the post after Kevin McAleenan, the former commissioner, moved up to fill the role of acting homeland security secretary in the wake of Kirstjen Nielsen’s ouster this spring. In his role, Sanders has overseen the agency responsible for policing the US borders and facilitating legal trade and travel. It is also the frontline agency dealing with the surge of migrants at the southern border.
Robert Perez, the highest-ranking career official, is the current deputy commissioner. It is unclear if he will step into the acting commissioner position.
<img alt=”100 children moved back to controversial Clint, Texas, border facility” class=”media__image” src=”//cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/180706121423-02-immigration-facility-0628-large-169.jpg”>
Before becoming acting commissioner, Sanders, served as the Chief Operating Officer at CBP, where he worked with McAleenan to address the operational needs of the agency and work on strategic direction.
As of June 1 this fiscal year, Border Patrol has arrested more than 377,000 family units, over 60,000 unaccompanied children, and over 226,000 single adults.
Sanders did not provide a reason for his departure.
Read Sanders’s letter here:
As some of you are aware, yesterday I offered my resignation to Secretary McAleenan, effective Friday, July 5. In that letter, I quoted a wise man who said to me, “each man will judge their success by their own metrics.” Although I will leave it to you to determine whether I was successful, I can unequivocally say that helping support the amazing men and women of CBP has been the most fulfilling and satisfying opportunity of my career.
<img alt=”100 children moved back to controversial Clint, Texas, border facility” class=”media__image” src=”//cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/180706121423-02-immigration-facility-0628-large-169.jpg”>
I’ve spent a significant amount of time over the last several days reflecting on my time at CBP. When I began this journey, Commissioner McAleenan charged me with aligning the mission support organizations and accelerating his priorities. Easy enough, I thought. What I didn’t appreciate at the time was how the journey would transform me professionally and personally. This transformation was due in large part to the fact that people embraced and welcomed me in a way that was new to me — in a way that was truly special. To this day, I get choked up when speaking about it and I can’t adequately express my thanks. As a result, let me simply say I will never stop defending the people and the mission for which 427 people gave their lives in the line of duty in defending. Hold your heads high with the honor and distinction that you so richly deserve.
Throughout our journey together, your determination and can-do attitude made the real difference. It allowed CBP to accomplish what others thought wasn’t possible…what others weren’t able to do. And even though there is uncertainty during change, there is also opportunity. I therefore encourage everyone to reflect on all that you have accomplished as a team. My hope is you build upon your accomplishments and embrace new opportunities, remain flexible, and continue to make CBP extraordinary. This is your organization…own it! Don’t underestimate the power of momentum as you continue to tackle some of this country’s most difficult challenges.
I will forever be honored to have served beside you. As a citizen of this great country, I thank you for your public service.
Take care of each other,
John
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Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the latest TRAC Report confirms that under Trump, the DHS, particularly ICE, has been ignoring real enforcement priorities to concentrate on often counterproductive, yet cruel, wasteful, and polarizing, improperly politicized enforcement aimed at non-criminals and those contributing to our country. In other words, terrorizing primarily Hispanic communities just because they can. And these racist attacks appeal to Trump’s base. Just part of the “ICE Fraud” that Morgan undoubtedly intends to bring over to CBP.https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/564/.
Not surprisingly, some dedicated and professional ICE Agents are tiring of Trump and his sycophants’ “malicious incompetence” that is demoralizing the agency and (as I had predicted long ago) turning it into probably the most hated, least trusted, least useful, and least effective law enforcement organization in America. Michelle Mark at Business Insider covers the “bad things that happen” when you have a “no values” White Nationalist President and exceptionally poor leaders like Tom Homan and Mark Morgan who lacked both the will and the backbone to stand up to Trump’s White Nationalist nonsense. https://apple.news/AxFctS7mET3qBX419lPootw
It’s an out of control agency badly in need of professional leadership, practical priorities, and some restraint and professional discipline in both rhetoric and actions. In other words, it needs a real law enforcement mission with honest, unbiased, professional leadership. Not going to happen under Trump!
So, the next competent President will have her or his work cut out to reform and reorganize ICE into an agency that serves the national interests of the majority of Americans. Whether that can be done in ICE’s current configuration, given its overtly racist overtones and widespread lack of community trust under Trump, remains to be seen. It could be beyond repair.
In an interview on “Meet the Press,” President Trump repeated a whopper of a lie.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:
Separation, President Obama, I took over separation. I’m the one that put it together. What’s happened though are the cartels and all of these bad people, they’re using the kids. They’re, they’re, it’s almost like slavery.
CHUCK TODD:
But let’s not punish the kids more.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:
No this has been happening —
CHUCK TODD:
Aren’t you — the kids are getting punished more.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:
You’re right. And this has been happening long before I got there. What we’ve done is we’ve created, we’ve, we’ve ended separation. You know, under President Obama you had separation. I was the one that ended it. Now I said one thing, when I ended it I said, “Here’s what’s going to happen. More families are going to come up.” And that’s what’s happened. But they’re really coming up for the economics. But once you ended the separation. But I ended separation. I inherited separation from President Obama.
The Post’s fact-checkers back in April explained: “The Obama administration rejected a plan for family separations, according to Cecilia Muñoz, Obama’s top adviser for immigration. The Trump administration operated a pilot program for family separations in the El Paso area beginning in mid-2017.” Trump’s claim that “Obama did it first” is both morally vapid and completely wrong: “The Trump administration implemented this policy by choice, exercising its discretion to prosecute some crimes over others. But no law or court ruling mandates family separations. In fact, during its first 15 months, the Trump administration released nearly 100,000 immigrants who were apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border, a total that includes more than 37,500 unaccompanied minors and more than 61,000 family-unit members.” In short, “The zero-tolerance approach is worlds apart from the Obama- and Bush-era policy of separating children from adults at the border only in limited circumstances, such as when officials suspected human trafficking or another kind of danger to the child or when false claims of parentage were made.”
Jake Tapper at CNN showed the right way to confront administration members on Sunday, when he went right after Vice President Pence’s misrepresentations about the dismal condition of children still held. After playing a clip of administration lawyers arguing in the 9th Circuit that there was no responsibility to provide basic necessities to children such as toothbrushes, Pence tried to claim that he didn’t know what the lawyers were saying. Tapper kept after him:
”But this is going on right now,” Tapper said, adding “This is the wealthiest nation in the world. We have money to give toothpaste and soap and blankets to these kids in this facility in El Paso County. Right now, we do.”
“Well, of course — of course we do,” Pence said.
“So why aren’t we?” Taper asked.
Pence again dodged the question with a snicker, replying “My point is — my point is, it’s all a part of the appropriations process.”
Tapper then had to cut Pence off from the lengthy digression that followed in order to force the question again.
“But I’m talking about the kids — I’m talking about the kids our custody right now,” Taper said. “Just listen to this. This is ‘The New Yorker’ citing a team of lawyers who visited a border facility.”
Pence tried to interrupt him again, but Tapper insisted “I just want to quote this.”
“The conditions the lawyers were found were shocking,” Tapper read. “Flu and lice outbreaks were going untreated. Children were filthy, sleeping on cold floors, taking care of each other because of the lack of attention from guards.”
“I know you. You’re a father. You’re a man of faith. You can’t approve of that,” Tapper said.
“Well, I — I — no — no American — no American should approve of this mass influx of people coming across our border,” Pence stammered. It is overwhelming our system at the southern border.
“But how about how we’re treating these children?” Tapper asked, again, and Pence deflected, again.
“I was at the detention center in Nogales just a few short months ago. It is a heartbreaking scene,” Pence said, but then added These are people who are being exploited by human traffickers, who charge them $5,000 a person to entice them to take their vulnerable children…”
“But now these kids are in our custody,” Tapper said.
Pence continued to blame Democrats in Congress, but Tapper again reiterated “But I would say that I’m talking about the kids on our southern border right now.”
He told Pence “you have the power right now to go back to the White House and say, we need to make sure that these kids — first of all, that there are people taking care of them, so it is not 12-year-olds taking care of 3-year-olds, and, second of all, that they have soap, that they have toothbrushes, that they have combs, that we’re taking care so they don’t all get the flu.”
Pence once again tried to blame Democrats, to which Tapper replied “I think Democrats would argue that they want to do a deal with President Trump, but he hasn’t showed any inclination.”
That’s precisely how reporters need to go after Trump and his morally deficient administration. This is the Trump administration’s policy. This is the Trump administration’s doing. This is the Trump administration’s refusal to address basic humanitarian needs (while raiding the Defense Department to build a useless wall that has nothing to do with asylum seekers presenting themselves at the border).
Allowing Trump and his ilk to bluster and flat-out lie their way through interviews might be the path of least resistance when trying to cover a lot of ground. However, if Trump and his teammates are not stopped dead in their tracks, the media become a platform for deceiving voters.
Headlines that echo the president — “Trump says Obama did it first” — are equally reprehensible. (It should be “Trump falsely blames Obama for his own policy.”) Trump, Pence and the rest are accustomed to running through their ridiculous talking points (e.g. the United States has the cleanest water and air in the world) without objection on outlets such as Fox. Other media can and must do better. And when the general-election debates roll around, moderators must be willing to correct misstatements of fact. (Or follow up by asking, “But that’s not true, is it Mr. President?”)
We’re at risk of losing not only a shared set of facts but also a uniform belief that there are such things as facts. That’s straight out of the autocratic playbook — one that the media cannot facilitate.
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Another part of the Trump, Pence, GOP “Big Lie” — that folks are coming “illegally.” Actually, they are coming and turning themselves in to apply for legal status which they are entitled to do under our laws and international treaties. Trump & Pence actually eliminated the only program allowing folks from the Northern Triangle to seek refugee status from outside the U.S.
What is illegal is the Trump Administration’s failure to promptly and fairly process individuals at ports of entry and returning those who have passed the first step of the process, known as “credible fear,” to Mexico where they are in danger, prevented from getting lawyers of their choice as authorized by statute, and inhibited from fairly and completely presenting their asylum cases before U.S. Immigration Judges (who themselves are not independent, fair, and impartial adjudicators since they work for Attorney General, Trump protector, and self-styled enforcement guru Bill Barr).
Oh, and how about a moratorium on Trump’s Golf Trips and Pence’s religious proselytizing trips on the public dime until every kid in Government custody has a bed, blanket, toothbrush, and a bar of soap?
No, it isn’t really about Congressional appropriations (although the GOP in Congress certainly bears a major part of the blame for Trump’s audacious violations of human rights). Congress didn’t waste money that could and should have been spent on the welfare of asylum seekers on less important things like walls, tent cities, detention, and other “built to fail” initiatives that have done little or nothing to advance the fair and effective administration of our asylum laws. Nor did Congress make the decision not to be prepared to process the asylum seekers who have been slowly and methodically heading north since before last Thanksgiving. You wouldn’t need the world’s best intelligence service to figure out the rate of flow and predict how many might need processing.
As those of us who understand immigration know, desperate people are likely to continue to leave the failed states of the Northern Triangle until the international community deals with the causes of the migration.
Everything the U.S. has done under the “maliciously incompetent” Trump Administration, from encouraging environmental degradation, to withdrawing refugee programs and aid programs, to dumb, anti-human rhetoric, to egging Mexico on to a militarized rather than a human rights response, to idiotically trying to ”enforce” our way out of a humanitarian crisis notwithstanding decades of experience and data showing it won’t work, to empowering gangs, smugglers, cartels, and corrupt government officials, to intentionally backlogging Immigration Courts while destroying established legal principles that could have led to “fast track grants” of many deserving domestic violence asylum cases, to tying up the Federal Courts with frivolous litigation, to intentional child abuse, has made the situation immeasurably and unnecessarily worse.
Yes, Trump might be able to get away with killing and abusing hundreds, perhaps thousands, in Mexico. But even this predictable bloodbath, which he hopes to keep out of sight as the U.S. media loses interest, won’t solve the problem in the long run.
Every day Trump remains in office we diminish ourselves as a nation; but, that won’t stop human migration. It will just leave us as diminished, dehumanized, shells of humanity. It’s time to “just say no to Trump and his supporters and enablers” as they seek to destroy America!
NYT: TRUMP IS A CHILD ABUSER — Here’s How to Stop Him: Speak, Educate, Donate, Vote!
The NY Times Editorial Board writes:
From his promise of a “beautiful wall” to his false alarms about caravans of alien marauders at the gate, President Trump has exploited immigration as his marquee issue. He is right, there is a crisis: Not of undocumented immigrants or thousands seeking refuge, as the president would have it, but a crisis of American values, a crisis of America’s premier tradition as a welcoming and humane haven. A crisis Mr. Trump has created, even as Congress has fueled it.
That is not to deny that comprehensive immigration reform is urgently needed, as is funding for the overstretched facilities where undocumented immigrants, and most horribly the children of undocumented immigrants, are held.
But, by his divisive, incoherent and barbaric policies, Mr. Trump has only made agreeing on an approach to immigration in the United States far more difficult. He has done so by systematically creating a false narrative of immigrants as job-stealing criminals, by insisting that there is a crisis of illegal immigration where there is none and, most maliciously, by dreaming up schemes to torment these people in the perverse notion that this would deter others from trying to reach the United States.
The most appalling of these has been the separation of children from their parents and detaining them in conditions no child anywhere should suffer, and certainly not children in the care of the American government. At a recent hearing before a federal appeals court in San Francisco, judges were stunned by the administration’s arguments that children sleeping on concrete floors in frigid, overcrowded cells, without soap or toothbrushes, were being kept in “safe and sanitary” facilities, as required by law. “You’re really going to stand up and tell us that being able to sleep isn’t a question of safe and sanitary conditions?” asked one judge.
Mr. Trump’s latest display of cruel bluster was the announcement, and then the delay, of nationwide raids to deport undocumented families. In fact, deporting immigrants who have exhausted their legal claims is not uncommon — President Obama, remember, was often referred to by immigration groups as “deporter in chief” — and the targets of these raids are not random. But Mr. Trump sought to use the operation to strut before his base and extract concessions from Democrats, and spread panic through immigrant communities. His announcement delayed action by Congress and made the operation that much more difficult by warning those targeted for deportation. Then he tweeted that he was delaying the raids for two weeks.
The United States urgently needs an immigration policy that combines border security, justice and humanity. President Trump has promoted policies that undermine all these goals, and Congress has failed to agree on a coherent vision. You can help turn that around. Here’s how:
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Read the complete editorial for the “game plan.”
Amen!
Of course, we should never forget that the “Original National Child Abuser” is Jeff Sessions who developed the original “Family Separation” program for which he has escaped accountability to date.
Some of the lawyers interviewing immigrant children held in Border Patrol detention facilities were so disturbed by what they saw that they have decided to talk to the media.
Photograph by Cedar Attanasio / AP
Hundreds of immigrant children who have been separated from their parents or family members are being held in dirty, neglectful, and dangerous conditions at Border Patrol facilities in Texas. This week, a team of lawyers interviewed more than fifty children at one of those facilities, in Clint, Texas, in order to monitor government compliance with the Flores settlement, which mandates that children must be held in safe and sanitary conditions and moved out of Border Patrol custody without unnecessary delays. The conditions the lawyers found were shocking: flu and lice outbreaks were going untreated, and children were filthy, sleeping on cold floors, and taking care of each other because of the lack of attention from guards. Some of them had been in the facility for weeks.
To discuss what the attorneys saw and heard, I spoke by phone with one of them, Warren Binford, a law professor at Willamette University and the director of its clinical-law program. She told me that, although Flores is an active court case, some of the lawyers were so disturbed by what they saw that they decided to talk to the media. We discussed the daily lives of the children in custody, the role that the guards are playing at the facility, and what should be done to unite many of these kids with their parents. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How many lawyers were in your party? And can you describe what happened when you arrived?
We had approximately ten lawyers, doctors, and interpreters in El Paso this past week. We did not plan to go to the Clint Facility, because it’s not a facility that historically receives children. It wasn’t even on our radar. It was at a facility that historically only had a maximum occupancy of a hundred and four, and it was an adult facility. So we were not expecting to go there, and then we saw the report, last week, that it appeared that children were being sent to Clint, so we decided to put four teams over there. The teams are one to two attorneys, or an attorney and an interpreter. The idea is that we would be interviewing one child at a time or one sibling group at a time.
How many interviews do you do in a day?
We do a screening interview first to see if the child’s most basic needs are being met. Is it warm enough? Do they have a place to sleep? How long have they been there? Are they being fed? And if it sounds like the basic needs are being met, then we don’t need to interview them longer. If, when we start to interview the child, they start to tell us things like they’re sleeping on the floor, they’re sick, nobody’s taking care of them, they’re hungry, then we do a more in-depth interview. And those interviews can take two hours or even longer. So it depends on what the children tell us. So I’d say, with a team of four attorneys, if you’re interviewing several groups, which we sometimes try to do, or if you interview older children who are trying to take care of younger children, then you are interviewing, let’s say, anywhere from ten to twenty children per day.
How many kids are at the facility right now, and do you have some sense of a breakdown of where they’re from?
When we arrived, on Monday, there were approximately three hundred and fifty children there. They were constantly receiving children, and they’re constantly picking up children and transferring them over to an O.R.R. [Office of Refugee Resettlement] site. So the number is fluid. We were so shocked by the number of children who were there, because it’s a facility that only has capacity for a hundred and four. And we were told that they had recently expanded the facility, but they did not give us a tour of it, and we legally don’t have the right to tour the facility.
We drove around afterward, and we discovered that there was a giant warehouse that they had put on the site. And it appears that that one warehouse has allegedly increased their capacity by an additional five hundred kids. When we talked to Border Patrol agents later that week, they confirmed that is the alleged expansion, and when we talked to children, one of the children described as many as three hundred children being in that room, in that warehouse, basically, at one point when he first arrived. There were no windows.
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As Trump launches his latest “human hostages for outrageous ransom” scheme, it’s important for Democrats to hang tough against any reduction in rights for asylum seekers. The whole “loopholes” bogus claim is just another piece of this toxic White Nationalist racist narrative.
The only “change” needed would be to require the Trump Administration to comply with its domestic, international, and Constitutional duties to administer asylum laws fairly and generously for the protection of asylum seekers. An end of child abuse should be a prerequisite for any discussions.
The reality to keep in mind is that while ICE’s ability to inflict pain and suffering on ethnic communities as part of the racially-motivated “New Operation Wetback” is real, their capacity to actually remove undocumented residents is quite limited.
Contrary to the bogus narrative, several million of the 10 million so-called undocumented residents are actually here with permission and are therefore not currently subject to removal. Those include individuals with DACA, TPS, PD, Deferred Action, and in the EOIR Court System, or whose cases are pending in the Courts of Appeals.
Additionally, many, perhaps the majority, of those with so-called final “in absentia” orders of removal never received proper legal notice of their hearings and will be entitled to file a “motion to reopen” with an automatic stay while those motions are pending. Those who are not yet in the EOIR system will go to the end of a backlog that stretches out for many years.
Given their notoriously poor record keeping, it’s likely that many of ICE’s “last known addresses” are no good. Plus, the resistance that ICE’s racist fear-mongering tactics have engendered in many communities will hamper operations.
Additionally, ICE keeps claiming that is detention capacity is already “saturated.” Thus, most of those picked up, who will not be “immediately removable,” will have to be released.
In short, while we can expect some human tragedies and human rights abuses, the result of the Trump/DHS/ICE “saber rattling” will likely be another resounding operational failure that fuels the “Abolish ICE Movement” while energizing the vote to remove Trump and his GOP White Nationalist Cabal from office in 2020. Kind of an “everyone loses” outcome – but, despite all of his lies, boasting, and shamelessly false self-promotion, that’s all Trump has ever been about.
Much of the Supreme Court’s 7–2 decision in Flowers v. Mississippi on Friday reads like a nightmare. The facts are straight out of the Jim Crow South: A white Mississippi prosecutor, Doug Evans, prosecuted a black man, Curtis Flowers, for the exact same crime six times in search of a capital conviction that might stick. In the process, Evans struck 41 of 42 black prospective jurors, an obvious attempt to secure an all-white jury. Several convictions were overturned due to flagrant prosecutorial misconduct. At Flowers’ sixth trial, however, Evans finally got a death sentence upheld by the Mississippi Supreme Court. Can that punishment possibly comport with the Constitution’s command of equal protection?
In a decision written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the U.S. Supreme Court said no, reversing Flowers’ conviction in light of obvious racial bias. To Kavanaugh’s credit, his opinion confronts Evans’ racism head-on and bolsters constitutional safeguards against prosecutorial attempts to purge minorities from juries. Meanwhile, Justice Clarence Thomas penned a scorching dissent, joined in part by Justice Neil Gorsuch, savaging the majority for trying to “boost its self-esteem” while “needlessly prolong[ing] the suffering of four victims’ families.” Thomas, in fact, is eager to overturn decades of precedent limiting prosecutors’ ability to exclude minority jurors on the basis of their race.
The facts of Flowers are simply appalling. In 1996, someone murdered four people at Tardy Furniture in Winona, Mississippi; Evans, the district attorney, decided Flowers was the killer. The evidence against Flowers was astonishingly meager: It rested largely on eyewitness testimonies, provided weeks and months after the crime, that often provided conflicting details. No eyewitnesses came forward until the state offered a $30,000 reward, and several later reported being coerced by prosecutors into implicating Flowers. Investigators never found DNA evidence or fingerprints tying Flowers to the murder. Instead, they identified a single particle of gunshot residue on Flowers’ hand—which, they acknowledged, could have come from the police car that took him to the station, or from the fireworks he set off the day before.
Throughout the six trials, three “jailhouse snitches” testified that Flowers confessed to them; each later recanted, admitting that they had lied. One conceded that he fabricated the confession to receive a sentence reduction. The victims were executed with chilling efficiency, several execution-style, yet Flowers had no criminal history; he did not even own a gun. His cousin, Doyle Simpson, owned the gun allegedly used in the killings. Multiple eyewitnesses saw a man who looked like Simpson outside Tardy Furniture on the morning of the crime. Their evidence was not contradictory or coerced.
Nonetheless, Evans relentlessly targeted Flowers, engaging in a quest to remove black Mississippians from the jury each time. He did so using peremptory strikes, which allow trial attorneys to strike prospective jurors without providing a reason. In 1986’s Batson v. Kentucky, the Supreme Court attempted to come up with a tool to combat racist peremptory strikes: If a defendant challenged a strike on racial grounds, prosecutors had to provide a “neutral explanation” for their decision. The court explained that the Constitution “forbids the States to strike black [jurors] on the assumption that they will be biased in a particular case simply because the defendant is black.” Otherwise, the “core guarantee of equal protection … would be meaningless.”
Nonetheless, at Flowers’ first trial, Evans used peremptory strikes to remove every potential black juror, obtaining an all-white jury that sentenced Flowers to death. The Mississippi Supreme Court reversed because the prosecution acted “in bad faith” by baselessly disputing the credibility of a defense witness and mentioning facts not in evidence. Next time around, Evans once again used his peremptory strikes to remove all black jurors, but this time the trial judge objected and seated one black juror. The jury convicted Flowers, but its verdict was reversed again for essentially the same reasons.
Third time up: Prosecutors used all their peremptory strikes to remove black prospective jurors. Only one black juror was seated. The jury sentenced Flowers to death, but the Mississippi Supreme Court reversed, finding a Batson violation. At the fourth and fifth trials, prosecutors ran out of peremptory challenges and had to settle for juries with multiple blacks. Both times, the jury failed to reach a verdict, resulting in mistrials. Finally, at Flowers’ sixth trial, prosecutors used five out of six peremptory strikes on black potential jurors. A jury of 11 whites and one black sentenced Flowers to death. He argued another Batson violation, but the Mississippi Supreme Court upheld his sentence, so he appealed to SCOTUS.
Technically, only the peremptory strikes at Flowers’ sixth trial are at issue in this case. But Kavanaugh recounted the history of Evans’ racist machinations and clarified that this “historical evidence” matters. Across Flowers’ many trials, he wrote:
[T]he State employed its peremptory strikes to remove as many black prospective jurors as possible. The State appeared to proceed as if Batson had never been decided. The State’s relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of black individuals strongly suggests that the State wanted to try Flowers before a jury with as few black jurors as possible, and ideally before an all-white jury.
“We cannot ignore that history,” the justice concluded, when assessing Evans’ removal of blacks from the jury at Flowers’ most recent trial. “We cannot take that history out of the case.”
Kavanaugh also pointed to “dramatically disparate questioning of black and white prospective jurors in the jury selection process for Flowers’ sixth trial.” Prosecutors “asked the five black prospective jurors who were struck a total of 145 questions.” Yet they asked “the 11 seated white jurors a total of 12 questions.” Put differently, each prospective black juror was grilled with an average of 29 questions; each seated white juror was asked an average of one.
Why? By “asking a lot of questions of the black prospective jurors,” Kavanaugh wrote, “a prosecutor can try to find some pretextual reason—any reason—that the prosecutor can later articulate to justify what is in reality a racially motivated strike.” But a court “confronting that kind of pattern cannot ignore it.” This “lopsidedness” can demonstrate that the prosecutor was attempting to “disguise a discriminatory intent.”
Assessing all this damning evidence, Kavanaugh found that prosecutors struck at least one potential black juror from Flowers’ sixth trial on the basis of race. He tossed out the death sentence and sent the case back down to Mississippi for a new trial. Evans still serves as district attorney and could handle Flowers’ seventh trial—even though SCOTUS has now made clear that his conduct in this case has been permanently tainted by racism.
In dissent, Thomas accused the majority of taking Flowers’ case because it wanted to “scorn” Mississippi state courts, or perhaps “because the case has received a fair amount of media attention.” (The media, he warned, often prefers “to titillate rather than to educate and inform.”) Thomas dismissed Kavanaugh’s opinion as “manifestly incorrect,” insisting that Evans had perfectly good reasons to strike five black prospective jurors from the sixth trial. And he wrote that the majority “builds its decision around the narrative that this case has a long history of race discrimination. This narrative might make for an entertaining melodrama, but it has no basis in the record.” (It does; Thomas just rewrites the record to excuse every single instance of Evans’ egregious racial bias.)
It’s an encouraging sign that Kavanaugh just ignored Thomas’dissent.
Gorsuch joined those portions of the dissent, but declined to sign onto its most radical assertion: that Batson itself should be overruled. Black defendants tried by all-white jurors created by racist prosecutors, Thomas wrote, suffer “no legally cognizable injury.” The accused suffer no equal protection violation when they are tried by a jury selected on the basis of race. Moreover, prosecutors should be permitted to make “generalizations” about black jurors, because “race matters in the courtroom.” Thomas ended his screed by berating the court for “needlessly prolong[ing] the suffering of four victims’ families” in an effort to “boost its self-esteem,” and declared: “If the Court’s opinion today has a redeeming quality, it is this: The State is perfectly free to convict Curtis Flowers again.”
It’s an encouraging sign that Kavanaugh just ignored Thomas’ dissent, as it is really too wacky, too hostile, and aggrieved to merit a response. Rather, with a majority of the court behind him, Kavanaugh made the case that courts can identify discriminatory intent without a smoking gun of overt racism. Evans never used racial epithets in the courtroom or stated his desire for a white jury; his actions alone told the court everything it needed to know about his motivations. This Supreme Court may not always confront unconstitutional prejudice with such clear-eyed pragmatism, but it’s worth celebrating a decision that enforces constitutional limits on racist prosecutions.
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I admit to not being a big BKavs fan. But, I appreciate his strong and courageous leadership on this case.
Four toddlers were so severely ill and neglected at a U.S. Border Patrol facility in McAllen, Texas, that lawyers forced the government to hospitalize them last week.
The children, all under age 3 with teenage mothers or guardians, were feverish, coughing, vomiting and had diarrhea, immigration attorneys told HuffPost on Friday. Some of the toddlers and infants were refusing to eat or drink. One 2-year-old’s eyes were rolled back in her head, and she was “completely unresponsive” and limp, according to Toby Gialluca, a Florida-based attorney.
She described seeing terror in the children’s eyes.
“It’s just a cold, fearful look that you should never see in a child of that age,” Gialluca said. “You look at them and you think, ‘What have you seen?’”
Another mother at the same facility had a premature baby, who was “listless” and wrapped in a dirty towel, as HuffPost previously reported.
The lawyers feared that if they had not shown up at the facility, the sick kids would have received zero medical attention and potentially died. The Trump administration has come under fire for its treatment ― and its alleged neglect ― of migrants who have been crossing the southern border in record numbers. The result is overcrowded facilities, slow medical care and in some instances, deaths.
Immigration authorities say they’re overwhelmed; activists say they’re not trying hard enough.
“It’s intentional disregard for the well-being of children,” Gialluca said. “The guards continue to dehumanize these people and treat them worse than we would treat animals.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection declined to respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
The Associated Press reported this week that children in border facilities don’t have adequate access to food, water, soap or showers. On Tuesday, a Justice Department attorney argued in court that the government should not have to provide detained children with soap, toothbrushes or beds.
The AP report is based on interviews a group of lawyers conducted with hundreds of children in three Texas-based Border Patrol stations last week as part of the Flores settlement ― an agreement that outlines conditions for detained children. The lawyers say children are also being held in these facilities for longer than the 72-hour limit the settlement specifies, and in some cases up to three weeks.
Lawyers are particularly concerned about the spread of illness inside Border Patrol facilities, which can sometimes turn fatal. Five children have died in Border Patrol custody since December, some of whom were initially diagnosed with a common cold or the flu. The processing center in McAllen, known as Ursula, recently quarantined three dozen migrants who were sick after a 16-year-old died of the flu at the same facility.
Children and their parents told lawyers that in some cases they didn’t have any access to medical treatment in Border Patrol facilities despite being visibly ill. Gialluca spoke with one 16-year-old mother whose toddler had the flu, but was told by a guard the child “wasn’t sick enough to see a doctor.” She said others also reported being denied medical attention despite having critically sick babies.
Medical experts say that because children have less developed immune and respiratory systems, their symptoms can escalate quickly if they aren’t properly treated.
Dr. Julie Linton, the co-chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics, previously told HuffPost that children can’t recover from illnesses in Border Patrol facilities. These centers are described as “hieleras” ― Spanish for iceboxes ― because of their freezing temperatures, and migrants describe sleeping on floors under bright lights that shine 24/7, with nothing but Mylar blankets to keep warm.
Gialluca met one 16-year-old mother whose 8-month-old baby was sick with the flu and forced to sleep outside for four days at the McAllen Border Patrol station. The mother said the guards took the clothing off the baby’s back, leaving her in a diaper, and forced them to sleep on concrete without a blanket.
A sick 2-year-old girl was shivering in a T-shirt and had shallow breathing, according to Mike Fassio, a Seattle-based immigration attorney who visited Ursula.
“I was very, very concerned,” he said, adding lawyers spoke with immigrants in a room outside of the facility. “When she left us, I knew she was going back to a place that was cold, crowded and unsanitary.” Fassio noted that guards referred to the children as “bodies.”
Some children were so exhausted they fell asleep during the interviews, said Clara Long, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch who spoke with kids at a facility in Clint, Texas. Long met a 3-year-old boy who was dirty with matted hair and was being taken care of by his 11-year-old brother. She said that more than 10 sick children were being quarantined in cells.
While the group of roughly eight lawyers and interpreters at Ursula were supposed to be interviewing children about conditions in the facilities, they also ended up asking guards and government officials to bring kids to the hospital because they were so worried about their state. Gialluca added that she and her colleagues interviewed only a small portion of migrants in the facility, which is the largest processing center in the U.S. and can hold up to 1,000 people. She believes the number of migrants in need of hospitalization is likely much higher.
Government officials have blamed horrific conditions at detention facilities on the fact that Congress has not yet passed an emergency funding package that would include almost $3 billion to help care for unaccompanied migrant children. But Gialluca says border officials shouldn’t need more resources to treat immigrants like human beings.
“Money isn’t keeping guards from allowing people to access toilets,” she said. “Money isn’t causing guards to take clothing and medicine away from children.”
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Nicole Goodkind Political Reporter, Newsweek
Here’s Another report from Nicole Goodkind at Newsweek on the “malicious incompetence” and intentional misallocation of resources by Trump and his DHS sycophants that is willfully endangering kids’ lives as part of a cheap White Nationalist political stunt:
8-YEAR-OLD MIGRANTS BEING FORCED TO CARE FOR TODDLERS IN DETENTION CAMPS
A team of lawyers conducted 60 interviews with migrant children being held in an El Paso, Texas, detention camp and found conditions to be dismal.
Fifteen of those in the holding center had the flu and 10 more are quarantined with illness, according to the lawyers, who first gave the data to the Associated Press. Three infants are being detained alongside their teenage mothers, and many children are under the age of 12.
“A Border Patrol agent came in our room with a 2-year-old boy and asked us, ‘Who wants to take care of this little boy?’ Another girl said she would take care of him, but she lost interest after a few hours and so I started taking care of him yesterday,” one teenaged girl told the lawyers in an interview. The boy was not wearing a diaper and his shirt was covered in mucus, she said.
Law professor Warren Binford, who aided in the interviews, said she witnessed an 8-year-old girl caring for a 4-year-old child who was very dirty, the girl was unable to get the boy to take a shower. She also described the children she interviewed as sleep-deprived, often falling asleep while speaking with her.
“In my 22 years of doing visits with children in detention, I have never heard of this level of inhumanity,” said Holly Cooper, co-director of the University of California, Davis’ Immigration Law Clinic, to the AP.
The lawyers were inspecting the facility as part of the Flores agreement, which resulted from a landmark 1985 case that established that facilities where minor migrants are held must be kept “safe and sanitary.”
A representative of the Trump administration, the Justice Department’s Sarah Fabian, argued Tuesday that safe and sanitary conditions don’t necessarily have to include toothbrushes, soap or towels for children.
Nicole Goodkind is a political reporter at Newsweek. You can reach her on Twitter @NicoleGoodkind or by email, N.Goodkind@newsweek.com.
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION PLANS MAJOR ICE RAIDS FOR SUNDAY
U.S. immigration authorities plan to raid Miami, Houston, Chicago and Los Angeles and other cities. They intend to arrest up to 2,000 families, three U.S. officials with knowledge of the plans told The Washington Post. The orders reportedly come directly from President Donald Trump.
On Monday, the president tweeted: “Next week ICE will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States. They will be removed as fast as they come in.”
Officials told The Washington Post that the Department of Homeland Security agency plans to hold families in hotel rooms until they are deported. Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan is allegedly targeting families that have completely dropped out of the court process, but has warned that the operation could lead to further cases of families being separated.
Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michel Moore confirmed the raids on Friday, saying that about 140 families in southern California will be targeted in pre-dawn raids early next week. The chief also made clear that the raids are done on a federal level and that the police department will not be involved.
On Thursday, Carla Provost, chief of the United States Border Patrol argued that the Department of Homeland Security was not receiving enough money to properly care for migrants on the southern border, and that was leading to terrible conditions in detention centers. On Wednesday, the Senate Appropriations Committee agreed to $4.6 billion in emergency funds for what the Trump administration has referred to as a “border crisis.”
Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro questioned how the agency could afford mass raids while asking for more money Friday. “The Trump Administration says it needs more money (supplemental bill) for the situation at the border yet they may be starting massive immigration raids next week. So how do you have the money for that if you’re running out of money ICE?” he tweeted.
“These potential raids are a disgusting political ploy to stoke fear and rile up Trump’s base for 2020,” wrote Sandra Cordero, Director of Families Belong Together, an immigration advocacy group, in a statement. “Past raids have left children alone and afraid in empty homes, praying they won’t be left to care for younger siblings by themselves, with no idea if they’ll see their parents again. This is yet another flagrant disregard for the welfare of children on behalf of a cruel administration bent on fomenting fear and creating chaos.”
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Come on, Carla, cut the BS and butt covering. The “mix” of arrivals at the Southern Border began to shift to refugee families from the Northern Triangle back in the summer of 2014. So, CBP and DHS have had five years to prepare for this “change” which is actually “old news.”
More “old news” is the increased flow of asylum seekers with kids which began back before Thanksgiving. Plenty of time for CBP and DHS to bring back retired asylum officers and adjudicators and reassign other adjudicative personnel to the border to insure prompt, orderly, safe, and efficient processing of asylum applicants at ports of entry, thus eliminating the incentive (or necessity) for folks to turn themselves in after crossing the border between ports.
Also, plenty of time to work with NGOs, pro bono groups, states, and communities to insure representation and proper placement of family groups in various locations throughout the country without panic or “dumping.”
Another bogus claim spread by Trump, Provost, and the rest of the sycophants: that the prevalence of kids among new asylum arrivals is somehow totally a response to the Flores settlement (which actually has been in effect for decades).
Undoubtedly, with the Trump Administration’s active assistance, unscrupulous smugglers and coyotes are encouraging some folks to bring children as the only way to have a shot at fair processing under the tilted U.S. asylum system promoted by Trump. Indeed, as I have observed before, the Trump Administrations has consistently been a “best friend” to gangs, smugglers, traffickers, cartels, and druggies seeking to “jack up” profits by further exploiting the human misery caused by the Trump Administration’s “maliciously incompetent “ approach to immigration, effective law enforcement, and humanity generally. https://apple.news/AFQw_eqcHSZCYxUznmP0wpQ
Undoubtedly, some of these unscrupulous individuals are telling families to travel with kids. But, the truth is that according to the UNHCR, over one-half of today’s refugees are children. https://www.unhcr.org/children-49c3646c1e8.html.
So, the prevalence of children among new arrivals should properly been seen as part of a sad worldwide trend that Trump and his cronies disgustingly have done everything possible to encourage, exploit, and aggravate. It most certainly is not primarily caused by the Flores settlement or by giving soap, toothbrushes, blankets, or medical care to children being abused in the “DHS Gulag” administered in part by disingenuous folks like Provost.
Any honest observer of what’s going on knows that the majority of the asylum applications that passed credible fear probably could have been granted (or given protection under the Convention Against Torture — “CAT”) by the Asylum Office without even going to Immigration Court under the proper generous interpretation of our asylum laws, an honest interpretation of CAT that reflects the true conditions in the Northern Triangle, and a very “doable” change in procedures.
Only dishonest fools in the Trump Administration (and a few from the Obama Administration) would maintain that gender isn’t a social group subject to widespread persecution in the Northern Triangle, deny that gangs have assumed the role of quasi-governmental entities thus making most of the harm they inflict on resisters “political persecution,” and make the beyond ludicrous claim that the corrupt failed states of the Northern Triangle have either the ability or much real interest in protecting those subject to persecution.
And, Carla, why aren’t you out there today registering a public protest of the waste of time and funds in ICE going after families with ridiculously inappropriate “raids” when everyresource could and should be focused instead on providing humanitarian assistance to asylum seekers arriving at the Southern Border?
This racist-inspired “Sunday Morning Reign of Terror” directed at U.S. ethnic communities is specifically designed to return helpless families to the very dangerous countries from which they originally fled! Thus, Trump and his phony DHS are intentionally feeding “fresh meat” to gangs and cartels and insuring that the cycle of northward migration, no matter how dangerous, will continue until everyone who needs to leave its either gone or dead (the latter apparently the “solution” favored by Provost, Trump, Morgan, McAleenan, Miller, and others).
Provost, McAleenan, Morgan, and their co-conspirators are all participants in a cynical scheme to intentionally “crash” the asylum system, rather than competently administering it. They are intentionally endangering the lives of children and other vulnerable asylum seekers, many entitled to legal protections, to promote, along with GOP restrictionists, totally bogus, dishonest, and completely unnecessary and unwarranted restrictions of the precious, life-saving right of refugees to seek asylum in the U.S.
It’s an unbelievably dishonest and cowardly scheme, and a complete breach of both oaths of office and public trust. It might be that those who long ago abandoned American values will lap up this insult to human values and human dignity.
But, there are plenty of us out here who know and understand exactly what you are doing. We will not only resist it, but will be historical witnesses to your cruel, inhuman, and unlawful schemes and gimmicks to “abuse and kill the innocent.” And, we’ll be keeping count.
Kirk Semple Reporter, NY TimesPaulina Villegas Reporter, NY Times
By Kirk Semple and Paulina Villegas
MEXICO CITY — The Mexican authorities are investigating the death of a teenage migrant from El Salvador who was shot and killed after the truck she was in ran a government checkpoint.
Witnesses have told investigators in the state of Veracruz, where the shooting happened last Friday, that a truck carrying the 19-year-old woman and other migrants bound for the United States border passed through a government checkpoint and that people wearing police uniforms gave chase in a police car and shot at the truck, said Jorge Winckler Ortiz, the attorney general of Veracruz.
Two other migrants in the truck were wounded in the shooting, officials said.
The incident occurred amid a Mexican government deployment of security forces to assert greater control of migration toward the United States, part of a dealthat President Andrés Manuel López Obrador struck with President Trump earlier this month to fend off a threat of tariffs.
The possibility that the Mexican police may have killed the teenager has reaffirmed the fears of migrants’ advocates and human rights experts, who worry that the security forces, being rushed into migration control, are ill-prepared for the task.
Justice Department Argues Against Providing Soap, Toothbrushes, Beds To Detained Kids
“I find it inconceivable that the government would say” current conditions are “safe and sanitary,” as required, said a stunned Judge William Fletcher.
A Justice Department attorney this week argued in court that the federal government should not be required to provide soap, toothbrushes or even beds to detained children apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Attorneys for the detained children are arguing that the government is not following the requirements of a 1997 settlement agreement in the case of Jenny Flores that established a framework for the humane treatment and release of detained migrant minors. Children must be housed in “safe and sanitary conditions” under the settlement. A district judge added the specific requirements that children be provided with soap and toothbrushes.
“Are you arguing seriously that you do not read the agreement as requiring you to do something other than what I just described: cold all night long, lights on all night long, sleeping on concrete and you’ve got an aluminum foil blanket?” asked Judge William Fletcher. “I find it inconceivable that the government would say that that is safe and sanitary.”
Judge Marsha Berzon asked Fabian: “You’re really going to stand up and tell us that being able to sleep isn’t a question of ‘safe and sanitary’ conditions?… You can’t be sanitary or safe as a human being if you can’t sleep.” (See the video below at 24:30.)
Fabian was challenging an order by U.S. District Judge Gee in Los Angeles, who appointed an independent monitor to ensure that the federal government complies with the Flores settlement and specifically required such items as soap and toothbrushes. Fabian argued that such requirements are not detailed in the original settlement. (In the video at 26:40.)
“One has to assume … parties couldn’t reach agreement on how to enumerate that or it was left to the agencies to determine,” Fabian argued.
Fletcher responded: “Or it was relatively obvious — at least obvious enough so that if you’re putting people into a crowded room to sleep on a concrete floor with an aluminum foil blanket on top of them, that doesn’t comply with the agreement.”
He added: “It may be they don’t get super-thread-count Egyptian linen, I get that. … I understand at some outer boundary, there may be some definitional difficulty. But no one would argue that this [current situation] is safe and sanitary.”
As for soap, it “wasn’t perfumed soap, it was soap. That sounds like it’s part of ‘safe and sanitary,’” he added. “Are you disagreeing with that?”
Judge A. Wallace Tashima said that such items are “within everybody’s common understanding that if you don’t have a toothbrush, if you don’t have soap, if you don’t have a blanket, it’s not safe and sanitary. Wouldn’t everybody agree to that?” he asked. “Do you agree to that?”
Fabian, who appeared to stumble throughout much of her presentation, responded: “Well … maybe.”
The attorney for the children argued that, although soap and toothbrushes weren’t specifically mentioned in the 1997 settlement, they must be provided because they would be “reasonably interpreted” as part of the agreement under contract law.
The “first thing you do is honor the plain meaning” of words like “safe and sanitary,” said Peter Schey. “Today we have a situation where once a month a child is dying in custody. Certainly the Border Patrol facilities are secure, but they’re not safe and they’re not sanitary.”
It’s not clear when the 9th Circuit, based in San Francisco, will issue a decision in the case.
Honestly, how does Sarah Fabian sleep at night? If she has kids, what does she tell them about what she does to other people’s kids for a living?
And, what can you say about 9th Circuit judges who accept frivolous, totally disingenuous arguments from Government counsel. A private attorney who wasted the court’s time and disrespected its integrity and functions in this matter would almost certainly be disciplined or disbarred in short order.
At one time, DOJ attorneys were expected to adhere to higher standards of ethics because of their role in protecting the public interest and aiding the courts in pursuit of justice. Why in the age of Trump, Sessions, Barr, and Solicitor General Noel Francisco are ethical standards no longer enforced against DOJ Attorneys? And that goes right up to the top, as both Barr and Sessions have clearly interfered with and participated in quasi-judicial immigration decisions after showing clear bias against migrants and in favor of DHS Enforcement, in violation of ethical standards.
Folks like Trump and his cronies always depend on complicit subordinates, as well as complicit courts, to carry out their vile and illegal programs.
Nicole Narea Reporter, Law360Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase Jeffrey S. Chase BlogProfessor Karen Musalo Director, Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, Hastings Law
Nicole Narea reports for Law360:
. . . .
Trump tweeted Monday night that Guatemala is “getting ready to sign” a socalled safe third country agreement with the U.S., and he lauded Mexico for “using their strong immigration laws” to stop migrants well before they reach the southern U.S. border. Mexico said Friday it would also weigh a safe third country agreement with the U.S. if its efforts to ramp up immigration enforcement as part of a trade deal do not succeed within 45 days.
The announcements came as the Trump administration moved to reduce its obligations to asylum seekers by expanding its “Remain in Mexico” policy, officially known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, by which migrants are sent back to Mexico while they await hearings in U.S. immigration court.
As for Guatemala, experts have protested that Mexico’s southern neighbor cannot offer asylum seekers the kind of security intended by a safe third country agreement.
But the Trump administration is not proposing such an agreement with Guatemala because it believes the country to be safe, said Jeffrey Chase, a former immigration judge and ex senior legal adviser to the Board of Immigration Appeals. Rather, the White House believes the accord will stop asylum seekers from countries farther south from entering the U.S., Chase said.
Migrants from El Salvador and Honduras have to travel through Guatemala en route to the U.S., and if Guatemala were subject to such an agreement, the Trump administration would have an “excuse to turn away those fleeing violence in those countries,” he said.
Karen Musalo, the founding director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at University of California, Hastings College of the Law, said that to call Guatemala safe is absurd.
“I don’t think that anyone familiar with the human rights situation in Guatemala — with its extremely high levels of homicides, femicides, gender violence, gang and organized crime violence, corruptions, etc. — could say with a straight face that asylum seekers would be safe there,” she said.
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Those with access to Law360 can read Nicole’s complete article at the above link.
It isn’t just that Trump (supported by some equally dishonest and nasty GOP legislators and flunkies like Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Ken “Cooch Cooch” Cuccinelli, and Kevin McAleenan) is blatantly lying about asylum seekers and Guatemala being “safe.” What he essentially proposes is the U.S.-sanctioned murder of innocent asylum seekers from the Northern Triangle.
Why is this outrage against the law and humanity “below the radar screen?” Seems like it’s actually the most clear “impeachable offense” that Trump has committed to date. And, it’s right out in plain view for all to see, with irrefutable proof that Guatemala is NOT a safe country for anyone, let alone asylum seekers. That’s exactly why folks are fleeing Guatemala for their lives every day.
Representing “The Roundtable”: Judge Polly Webber, Judge Jeffrey S. Chase, Judge Lory D. Rosenberg, Judge Cecelia Espenoza, Judge Sue Roy, Judge Carol KIng
AILA Presents the Roundtable of Former Immigration Judges with the 2019 Advocacy Award
WASHINGTON, DC – The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) will recognize the Roundtable of Former Immigration Judges, with the 2019 Advocacy Award for outstanding efforts in support of AILA’s advocacy agenda. The roundtable will accept the award this week during AILA’s Annual Conference in Orlando, FL.
The Round Table of Former Immigration Judges was formed in June 2017 when seven former Immigration Judges and BIA Members united for an amicus brief in Matter of Negusie. In the two years since, the group has grown to more than 30 members, dedicated to the principle of due process for all. Its members have served as amici in 14 cases before six different circuit courts, the Attorney General, and the BIA. The group has made its voice heard repeatedly in support of the rights of victims of domestic violence to asylum protection, and has also lent its arguments to the issue of children’s need for counsel in removal proceedings, the impact of remote detention in limiting access to counsel, and the case against indefinite detention of immigrants. The Round Table of Former Immigration Judges has submitted written testimony to Congress and has released numerous press statements. Its individual members regularly participate in teaching, training, and press events.
Cite as AILA Doc. No. 19062032.
And here are Judge Chase’s “acceptance remarks” in behalf of our entire group:
Thank you; we are humbled and honored to receive this award. Due to the time constraints on our speeches, I don’t have time to either name all of the members of our group, or to thank all those to whom thanks is due. So I will do that in a blog post.
In terms of advocacy, we are all advocates – everyone in this room, all AILA members. The past experience of our group as former judges gives us more of a platform. But it is a special group, in that so many have chosen to spend their post-government careers or their retirement actively fighting to make a difference in these trying times.
In fighting to make that difference, we must all speak for those who have no voice, and must serve as the conscience in a time of amoral government actions. Those whom we advocate for had the courage and strength to not only escape tragedy and make their way to this country, but once here, to continue to fight for their legal rights against a government that makes no secret of its disdain for their existence. We owe it to them to use our knowledge and skills to aid them in this fight.
In conclusion, I will quote the response of one of our group members who isn’t here tonight upon learning of this award: “It’s nice to be recognized. Now let’s get back to work.”
Thank you all again.
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Congrats to all of my 30+ wonderful colleagues in “The Roundtable.” It’s an honor to be part of this group. Also, many, many thanks to all of the firms and individual lawyers who have provided hundreds of hours of pro bono assistance to us so that we could have a “voice.” It’s been a real team effort!
WaPo: With days to prepare, a top state official said he expects a fivefold increase in the number of migrants who will be sent to Juarez as a result of the expansion of the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols.
WaPo: The strategy, which will apply only to applications for permanent residency — also known as green cards — or U.S. citizenship, probably will be a welcome respite to immigrant communities in cities such as St. Paul, Minn., where some applicants wait up to two years to become citizens. Immigrants in other places could see the process lengthen.
The Conversation: As current anti-immigrant policies diminish the supply of migrant workers (both documented and undocumented), farmers are not able to find the labor they need. So, in states such as Arizona, Idaho and Washington that grow labor-intensive crops like onions, apples and tomatoes, prison systems have responded by leasing convicts to growers desperate for workers.
NYT: Men, women, and children from central Africa — mostly from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola — are showing up at the United States’ southwest border after embarking on a dangerous, monthslong journey. Their arrival at the border and at two cities more than 2,100 miles apart — San Antonio and Portland, Maine — has surprised and puzzled immigration authorities and overwhelmed local officials and nonprofit groups.
TIME: Fort Sill, an 150-year-old installation once used as an internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II, has been selected to detain 1,400 children until they can be given to an adult relative, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Daily Beast: Former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli’s long-rumored role as a top coordinator of the Department of Homeland Security immigration policy finally has an official title. According to an email sent to staff at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Monday, the longtime border hawk has been named acting director of the agency, whose 19,000 employees orchestrate the country’s immigration and naturalization system. See also High Turnover Roils Trump’s Immigration-Policy Ranks and GOP mutters, gently, as Trump sidesteps Senate for top aides.
USCIS provided notice to the class in R.F.M., et al., v. Nielsen, et al. The class involves Special Immigrant Juveniles with applications based on a New York Family Court Special Findings Order issued between their 18th and 21st birthdays. Notice includes next steps. AILA Doc. No. 19061400. See also Legal Aid’s R.F.M. v. Nielsen website.
IDP: has put out a legal alert on the BIA’s new decision in Matter of Navarro Guadarrama, 27 I&N Dec. 560 (BIA 2019), and why it should not affect the Second Circuit precedent set by Harbin and Hylton. Included are some arguments that could be used to rebut DHS should they try to argue otherwise (please let us know if they do raise this decision and what IJs are deciding).
Fed Defenders: On May 30, 2019, the Second Circuit withdrew the per curiam opinion in Thompson v. Barr, #17-3494, that was issued on May 13. The opinion found that NY assault in the second degree (NYPL § 120.05(1)) is an aggravated felony crime of violence for immigration purposes under the force clause of 18 USC § 16(a).
RollingStone: In the days before he allegedly struck a 23-year-old undocumented Guatemalan man with a government-issued Ford F-150, Border Patrol agent Matthew Bowen sent a text to a fellow agent. In the exchange, which federal prosecutors now claim offers “insight into his view of the aliens he apprehends,” Bowen railed against unauthorized migrants who’d thrown rocks at a colleague as “mindless murdering savages” and “disgusting subhuman shit unworthy of being kindling for a fire.”
Chase: So in summary, Andrade Jaso is inconsistent with all of the AG’s precedent decisions under this administration, and with binding regulations. And yet, a three Board Member panel had no reservations (there wasn’t any dissent) in issuing this decision. Why? Because it prevents the only group of people who actually want to be in proceedings from having the chance to apply for legal status.
AP: federal appeals court in Washington ruled Friday against a Trump administration policy it described as a “blanket ban” preventing immigrant teens in government custody from getting abortions, and it kept in place an order blocking the policy.
NPR: The courts have yet to issue their final word on whether the Trump administration can add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. But starting Thursday, the Census Bureau is asking about a quarter-million households in the U.S. to fill out questionnaires that include the question, “Is this person a citizen of the United States?”
USCIS: As part of USCIS’ implementation of this memorandum, USCIS officers will now be required to remind individuals at their adjustment of status interviews of their sponsors’ responsibilities under existing law and regulations. Our officers must remind applicants and sponsors that the Affidavit of Support is a legal and enforceable contract between the sponsor and the federal government. The sponsor must be willing and able to financially support the intending immigrant as outlined by law and regulations (see INA 213A and 8 CFR 213a). If the sponsored immigrant receives any federal means-tested public benefits, the sponsor will be expected to reimburse the benefits-granting agency for every dollar of benefits received by the immigrant.
CLINIC: The memo, titled “Updated Procedures for Asylum Applications Filed by Unaccompanied Alien Children” and signed by Asylum Division Chief John Lafferty, reverses a 2013 policy, often referred to as the “Kim memo.” Under the Kim memo, USCIS took jurisdiction over asylum applications filed by applicants who had previously been determined by Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Protection to be “unaccompanied alien children” (UC).
The U.S. and Mexican governments proclaimed their commitment to address the increase in migrants moving from Central America, including the deployment of the Mexican National Guard to the southern border and the expansion of Migrant Protection Protocols across the entire southern border. AILA Doc. No. 19061197
ImmProf: While bold immigration proposals continue to be in the news, a lesser noticed regulatory planning document provides info on the timeline and implementation details of known policies. An analysis of the regulatory agenda shows that the administration plans to spend the next year implementing the public charge rule that denies green cards and visas to those who take public benefits and reforming employment visa programs to eliminate work authorization for H1-B spouses.
EOIR SHAKEUP: Chief Immigration Judge, Deputy Director, General Counsel Ousted!
Courtside: Evidently, Chief Immigration Judge MaryBeth T. Keller, General Counsel Jean King, and Deputy Director Katherine H. Reilly all “got the boot” late this week. They are career civil servants. Keller and King were “holdovers” from the prior Administration, while Reilly was appointed to her recent position by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Piecing together bits from anonymous sources, it’s likely that the three clashed with EOIR Director James McHenry and Department of Justice (“DOJ”) politicos over some of the more extreme aspects of the Administration’s “master plan.” See also American Bar Association Says Immigration Courts Are ‘On The Brink Of Collapse’.
Reuters obtained a memo with updated procedures for asylum applications filed by unaccompanied alien children (UACs), modifying 5/28/13 guidance. This guidance is effective 30 calendar days after 5/31/19 and applies to any USCIS decision issued on or after the effective date. AILA Doc. No. 19060771
WaPo: The Trump administration’s new immigration enforcement chief said Tuesday that he is preparing to increase arrests and deportations of migrant families living illegally in the U.S. interior, promising the kind of more aggressive approach the White House has been seeking. See also Border Patrol searches have increased on Greyhound, other buses far from border.
WaPo: On the same day the White House heralded veterans on the 75th anniversary of D-Day, a federal watchdog said the government had violated its own rules on deporting former service members — and immigration authorities have no idea how many they have removed.
Salon: The State Department announced this week a major change to the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, which Trump has repeatedly maligned. The first new rule requires applicants to already have a passport at the time of application. The second mandates that any typographical error on the application results in immediate, unappealable disqualification.
Sunlight Foundation: In answer to our first question— who initiated the removal? — the records turned over under FOIA show that USCIS’ training materials, which had been public for years, were in fact removed at the explicit direction of the Asylum Division’s top official. Even as that official, John Lafferty, acknowledged that the materials were of significant public interest, correspondence shows he rebuffed his own staff’s suggestion to archive them.
NBC: The deaths of three ICE detainees since April, along with the release of several internal and watchdog reports documenting dismal conditions at ICE detention centers, have prompted an outcry from advocates who say the Trump administration is pushing growing numbers of immigrants into a detention system ill-equipped to care for them. See also HHS to house thousands of unaccompanied minor migrants on military bases and at Texas facility.
NYT: A growing number of asylum seekers have found that the journey to the Continent is safer and cheaper than paying smugglers to get them through Mexico.
IOM and UNHCR: The number of Venezuelans leaving their country has reached four million, IOM, the International Organization for Migration, and UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, announced today. Globally, Venezuelans are one of the single largest population groups displaced from their country.
QNS: The legislation [would] ensure that conditions for immigrants in New York State county jails comply with legal detention standards. In addition, the law will also limit the expansion of detention facilities in the state unless approved by the legislature.
Politico: A fast-track asylum regulation is currently under review at the White House budget office, according to a related regulatory website.
The regulation — titled “Asylum Eligibility and Procedural Modifications” — would be implemented as an interim final rule, which means it would take effect upon publication in the Federal Register.
WaPo: But it is unlikely that the Senate will consider the bill: McConnell and other Senate Republican leaders made no mention of the bill at their weekly news conference Tuesday afternoon.
From the listservs: If you get calls from family trying to locate someone who was just detained, keep in mind that if they were detained crossing the border then there is a high probability that they are not with ICE, but with the U.S. Marshal Service with pending illegal entry charges. This became much more common over the past year with Zero Tolerance and its implementation through Operation Streamline. So they won’t appear on the ICE Locator. Unfortunately, they will often not appear on BOP’s website either because USMS detainees that are in contract facilities don’t show on the website. One trick is to check on PACER (www.pacer.gov worth getting an account), which will confirm if have a pending criminal 1325 or 1326 case, and will also have their defense atty name.
In a one-sentence order, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the Trump administration’s motion to expedite consideration of the petition for a writ of certiorari. (DHS, et al. v. Casa de Maryland, et al., 6/3/19) AILA Doc. No. 18030734
LexisNexis: “The BIA reversed [an IJ in] Salt Lake City in a detained withholding / CAT case (client is in Tacoma, WA in withholding only proceedings) on the grounds that my client had suffered past persecution at the hands of local [Mexican] police on account of his imputed nationality as a U.S. citizen.”
Gothamist: The civil rights lawsuit, which was filed this week in federal District Court by Legal Services NYC, raises serious questions about the DOE’s commitment to serving a significant demographic in the New York City public school system, that of non-native English-speaking parents.
The GAO responded to a letter sent by 82 members of the House, accepting their request to work within the scope of its authority to review several issues regarding the current backlog of immigration cases managed by USCIS. AILA Doc. No. 19060334
AILA issued a practice alert on EOIR’s policy memo, No Dark Courtrooms, effective Wednesday, 5/1/19. This memo formalizes EOIR’s policy of “no dark courtrooms” and directs “OCIJ managers to ensure…that all blocks of available immigration court time are being utilized for scheduling cases.” AILA Doc. No. 19052970
On 5/31/19, the DOS updated its immigrant and nonimmigrant visa application forms to request additional information, including social media identifiers, from most U.S. visa applicants worldwide. AILA Doc. No. 19060671
DHS OIG issued a report after it conducted inspections of four detention facilities and found violations of ICE’s National Detention Standards, including “immediate risks or egregious violations of detention standards in Adelanto, VA, and Essex County, NJ….” AILA Doc. No. 19060601
USCIS Updates Fee Payment System Used in New York Field Offices
USCIS: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has expanded the fee payment system used in field offices across the country, including the New York, Brooklyn, Long Island, and Queens offices. The improvements, implemented in New York in April, will fully replace the older system on Friday, June 7. Note that after that date, applicants will no longer be able to pay by money order or a cashier’s check at the New York, Brooklyn, Long Island, and Queens offices.
RESOURCES
· Mexican Tarjetas de Visitante por Razones Humanitarias and Firm Resettlement: A Practice Advisory for Advocates (attached)
· Practice Advisory on the SIJS litigation for applicants between the ages of 18-21 (attached)
