"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.
Last year, the Trump administration ripped apart thousands of immigrant families despite knowing it did not have a tracking system in place that would ensure they could be reunited, according to a new report from the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services.
As a result, the public will likely never know how many immigrant children have been separated from their parents.
The Trump administration was prepared to separate more than 26,000 children from their families between May and September 2018 under a zero tolerance policy for unauthorized border crossing, according to the inspector general report released on Wednesday. But in spite of the plan for mass separations ― ultimately blocked in court in June 2018 ― the government didn’t have the technology to track family separations.
The estimate that roughly 3,000 children were taken from their parents between May and June 2018 is undoubtedly lower than the true number.
The Department of Homeland Security failed to accurately record the family relationships of roughly 1,400 children over a year and a half, from October 2017 to February 2019, according to the report.
Immigration officials knew about these technical issues long before the zero tolerance policy was implemented. But they failed to fix them before taking children from their families en masse, making an already traumatic situation for parents and kids all the more chaotic.
“It just confirms that the real policy and attitude of dehumanization of this population,” said Michelle Brané, the director of the Migrant Rights and Justice Program at the Women’s Refugee Commission. “I really think a part of this administration’s approach is that we don’t view this population as having human rights.”
DHS and HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
I really think a part of this administration’s approach is that we don’t view this population as having human rights.
Michelle Brané, director, Migrant Rights and Justice Program at the Women’s Refugee Commission
The Trump administration has admitted that it didn’t have a proper system to track separated families across both DHS and HHS. HHS is responsible for unaccompanied immigrant children, including those taken from their families at the border.
In April, after an internal watchdog report revealed the Trump administration had likely separated thousands more children from their parents than previously known, HHS officials said it could take up to two years to identify them because of the disorganized data. In a court filing, a deputy director at HHS called the process of tracking down these children a “burden” and said the department didn’t have enough staff to take on the project.
During family separation, DHS’s IT system did not have the ability to properly label separated family members or track them after they were split up, according to the inspector general report. As a result, employees came up with various ad hoc methods of tracking families. But they were not standardized across the department and caused widespread confusion once the data reached ICE officers.
Agents were also not properly trained on how to use the existing technology, and mistakes were rampant. Shortly after the zero tolerance policy was implemented, eight children were separately entered into the system despite being from the same family, according to the report. There was also no plan to reunify families post-separation, despite the fact that parents were being deported without their children.
While the stated goal of the zero tolerance policy was to prevent immigrants from being apprehended and released into the U.S. while they awaited legal proceedings ― a process derisively known as “catch-and-release” ― the result was that children were traumatized and detained for record amounts of time.
Brané said the government has still failed to take accountability for its faulty tracking system and the lifelong trauma it has caused these families.
“There was an affirmative decision not to record,” she said. “They continue to drag their feet and act defensive as though this was some sort of natural disaster that happened to them that they didn’t respond to in the best way.”
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So, the victims of these human rights violations continue to suffer while the regime’s “perps” go free and even brag about their White Nationalist racist dehumanization actions. Some are still in Government positions, others are giving speeches, and the evil mastermind of “zero tolerance” Jeff Sessions is running for office. Incredibly, Sessions was actually in charge of insuring that our Government complied with the law and respected individual rights. Instead, he carried out a Jim Crow racist program of human rights abuses, demeaning the Department of Justice and the rule of law in the process. How does this make sense?
This happens when regime flunkies believe that they will never be held accountable for their actions and abuses. Obviously, that’s a view that starts with their Supreme Leader and his party of enabling sycophants.
Judges Quietly Disrupt Trump Immigration Policy in San Diego
Immigration court terminates more than a third of ‘Remain in Mexico’ cases
SAN DIEGO—Immigration judges in this city are presenting a challenge to the Trump administration’s policy of sending asylum-seeking migrants back to Mexico, terminating such cases at a significantly higher rate than in any other court, according to federal data.
Between January and the end of September, immigration judges in San Diego terminated 33% of more than 12,600 Migrant Protection Protocols cases, also known as Remain in Mexico, according to data collected by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
Judges in El Paso, Texas, the busiest court hearing MPP cases, terminated fewer than 1% of their more than 14,000 cases.
The nine San Diego judges have repeatedly ruled that asylum seekers waiting in Mexico weren’t properly notified of their court dates or that other due process rights were violated.
The high rate of dismissals is undermining the Trump administration’s goal of quickly ordering the deportation of more illegal border crossers who request asylum, including those who don’t show up from Mexico for their court hearings.
The effect is more symbolic than practical. Such a decision doesn’t mean a migrant is allowed to stay in the U.S., even if they show up for their court hearing. Instead, it saves them from being banned from coming to the country for 10 years and makes it tougher for the government to charge them with a felony if they cross the border illegally in the future. Those whose case is dismissed when they aren’t in court might not even know about the decision unless they call a government hotline.
Spokespeople for Customs and Border Protection, which carries out MPP at the border, and the Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to requests for comment.
However, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, whose lawyers represent the government in immigration Court, have filed an appeal with a Justice Department panel. The appeal questions whether judges who terminate cases for migrants who don’t show up in court made a mistake.
A spokeswoman for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the immigration court’s parent agency, said immigration judges don’t comment on their rulings.
Denise Gilman, an immigration lawyer and director of the immigration clinic at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin, said the high number of dismissals in San Diego sends a message that judges there believe many government’s cases don’t meet minimum legal standards.
That stands in contrast to immigration judges elsewhere, experts and advocates said.
“Everywhere but in San Diego, [judges] are going with the flow,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a lawyer and policy analyst with the American Immigration Council, which opposes the Trump administration’s border policies.
Immigration judges are unlike most other judges in that they are civil servants, neither appointed nor elected. In civil courts, some jurisdictions are known as more plaintiff- or defendant-friendly. Some federal appeals courts skew left or right, but most don’t rule so frequently on a single policy as immigration judges on MPP.
The Trump administration has sent more than 55,000 asylum-seeking migrants to Mexico to await court hearings under MPP. Migrants were first turned back in January, and through the end of September, just over 5,000 have been ordered deported. Eleven were granted some sort of relief, including asylum, according to TRAC.
Over two recent days in San Diego, multiple judges made clear that they had concerns about Remain in Mexico program as they dismissed cases.
Judge Scott Simpson terminated cases for a family of three from Honduras after ruling that the government violated their due process rights by not properly filling out their notice to appear. As a result, he said, the migrants didn’t know the grounds on which they could fight their case.
“I found that the charging document was defective on a technicality,” Judge Simpson explained to Belma Marible Coto Ceballos and her two children. “It just means that your court case is over.”
Ms. Coto quietly nodded as she listened to an interpreter before her attorney, Carlos Martinez, objected to the government’s plan to send the family back to Mexico while it appeals the termination. She and her children are afraid to return, Mr. Martinez explained, after Ms. Coto was assaulted in Tijuana.
Judge Simpson said he didn’t have the authority to keep the family in the U.S., but sought assurances that authorities would interview Ms. Coto about her fears of being sent back to Mexico.
During a separate hearing that same day, 10 MPP cases were closed by Judge Christine A. Bither, who also raised questions about the migrants’ addresses listed on government documents. She denied a government request to issue deportation orders in their absence.
Judge Simpson, meanwhile, repeatedly questioned how the government would update migrants in Mexico about their cases. Migrants routinely move between shelters or cities and don’t have a fixed address where they can receive mail.
He noted that migrants’ addresses are routinely listed on government documents as “domicilio conocido,” or general delivery in Spanish. In one case, he noted that “domicilio conocido” was misspelled for a migrant family that arrived late to the port of entry and missed the bus to immigration court. The government agreed to dismiss that case.
As noted in the article, the issues raised by the San Diego rulings are now before the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”). Even if the BIA Appellate Immigration Judges “do the right thing” and reject the DHS appeal, I’m relatively sure that Billy Barr will change the result so that the DHS “wins” (and justice “loses”) no matter what the law says.
Larger question: a system where the biased prosecutor gets to hire and supervise the “judges” and then change the result if the individual nevertheless wins is obviously unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment. So whatever happened to the Article III Courts whose job it is to uphold the Constitution and enforce the Bill of Rights against Executive overreach (which is exactly why the Bill of Rights was included in our Constitution)? Why are those gifted with life-tenure so feckless in the face of clear Executive tyranny?
Some Immigration Judges who lack life tenure and the other protections given to Article III judges are willing to stand up; those who are empowered so they can stand up instead stand by and watch injustice unfold every day in this fundamentally unfair system that is an insult to Constitutional Due Process, a mockery of justice, and a disgrace to their oaths of office!
The president would always like to be the president. And he’s bending the law to his will to do so.
November 27 2019 4:41 PM
It is a Thanksgiving tradition to spend time thinking about what one is thankful for; a healthy practice that reminds us to see the world in a positive light. Gratitude is good for us and we should not take it for granted. This year, though, I feel compelled to spend at least a bit of time focusing not only what I am thankful for, but on what I am freaking out about. And the thing that concerns me greatly these days is simple: The president seems to have no intention of leaving office and we seem to have no meaningful plan to address that.
The growing hysteria about imaginary past Ukranian election interference, a ludicrous impeachment defense, will be used to deflect from the emphatically certain future Russian election interference (as well as interference from other nations who reasonably want in on the fun). The Mitch McConnell-dominated Senate has declined to do anything to protect against that certainty and instead is building a judiciary that will permit it. Please consider, as well, that the geniuses among us who claim that we should ignore Trump’s effort to conscript Ukraine into working on his 2020 presidential run, and just defeat him roundly at the polls, are forgetting that Donald Trump’s entire raison d’etre, his past and future destiny, is to manipulate presidential elections in ways that preclude his round defeat at the polls. That is why he worked—as we now know—with Roger Stone to distort the outcome of the 2016 elections, it is also why he withheld almost $400 million in appropriated aid to Ukraine this summer. Insisting that we will let the voters decide this matter in a free and fair election in 2020 has to be the Lucy-football-est move ever, in a three-year festival of Lucy-footballing.
Don McGahn thinks someone else is responsible for taking care of all this, as, evidently, does John Bolton. Robert Mueller made the same mistake last spring, when he decided it was Congress’s responsibility to act on what he had found. And so, to be frank, did most of the impeachment witnesses, many of whom only came forward to corroborate the whistleblower’s anonymous report, and some of whom only came forward only pursuant to a subpoena. Everyone seems to assume vast quantities of courage in other people that they cannot seem to find in themselves. Yet somehow, our greatest worry in the coming days will be how to remain civil with one another over a large bird and its cute little cranberry accessories. The president believes that he is above the law and has foreclosed any attempt to prove otherwise. The president seems unable to conceive of himself losing an election. The president is counting on all of us to merely hope that something somewhere gets done about all this stuff at some point, but to never actually do anything ourselves beyond passing the stuffing around. This year, what I am most thankful for is the people who are trying to do that something themselves.
I’m most thankful for all of my wonderful, dedicated colleagues in our Roundtable of Former Immigration Judges, an important “brigade” of the New Due Process Army. The NDPA does more than “merely hope that something somewhere gets done about all this stuff at some point.”
We’re out there leading “the Resistance” (yes, Billy Barr, not everyone is a sleazy sycophant like you) and fighting the forces of White Nationalism, xenophobia, racism, and “legal nihilism” every day in every possible way! Thanks for all you do my friends and colleagues for America, American justice, and to see that the most vulnerable among us get the rights to which they are legally entitled but which are being denied by a fundamentally dangerous and dishonest regime assisted by complicit courts.
Due Process Forever; Legal Nihilism & Complicit Courts Never!
CDC recommended that migrants receive flu vaccine, but CBP rejected the idea
EL PASO — As influenza spread through migrant detention facilities last winter, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that U.S. Customs and Border Protection vaccinate detained migrants against the virus, a push that CBP rejected, according to a newly released letter to Congress.
The CDC recommendation was revealed in a letter from the agency to Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.), chair of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees funding for the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the CDC. The agency’s director, Robert Redfield, issued the letter Nov. 7 in response to questions DeLauro posed last month after the flu had taken a toll on migrants in U.S. custody during the past year.
An 8-year-old Guatemalan boy died of the flu while being detained near El Paso in December, a month before the CDC’s vaccination recommendation. In the months after CBP rejected the recommendation, at least two children — one in El Paso and one in Weslaco, Tex. — died after being diagnosed with the flu in Border Patrol custody, autopsy reports showed. Influenza outbreaks in Border Patrol detention facilities continued through May, sickening hundreds of people, including agents and detainees.
DeLauro said CBP’s continuing refusal to provide flu vaccines to detained migrants is “unconscionable,” especially given Trump administration policies and migrant influxes that at times have caused U.S. facilities to be significantly overcrowded.
“CDC’s recommendations are clear: flu vaccines should be administered to people as soon as possible to prevent the spread of this deadly disease,” she said. “Worse still, administration policies that kept families locked in cages for extended periods of time greatly increased their risk of illness.”
Officials with CBP have never provided immunizations for detained migrants and does not plan to do so now, according to Kelly Cahalan, an agency spokeswoman.
“CBP has significantly expanded medical support efforts, and now has more than 250 medical personnel engaged along the Southwest border. To try and layer a comprehensive vaccinations system on to that would be logistically very challenging for a number of reasons,” she said. “The system and process for implementing vaccines — for supply chains, for quality control, for documentation, for informed consent, for adverse reactions — is complex, and those programs are already in place at other steps in the immigration process as appropriate.”
The two agencies that hold migrants for extended periods, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Office of Refugee Resettlement, provide flu vaccines. Adults and families who cross the U.S. border increasingly are being sent back to Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols program before they are turned over to ICE and thus do not get vaccinated. Unaccompanied children generally go to ORR shelters.
The CDC recommends that most people in the United States age 6 months and older receive a flu vaccination, as it is the primary preventive measure against what can be a potentially severe illness. In the 2018-2019 flu season, nearly 63 percent of children under the age of 18 received the flu vaccine and just more than 45 percent of adults received the vaccine.
CDC officials visited Border Patrol detention facilities in El Paso and Yuma, Ariz., in December and January, at CBP’s request. The CDC’s January report warned that because of inadequate medical infrastructure in the facilities, “illness in the Border Patrol facilities stresses both the Border Patrol staff and community medical infrastructure.”
The report made nine recommendations for minimizing the spread of the flu, and CBP adopted many of them, including expanding medical staff at detention facilities and increasing flu surveillance.
But CBP did not implement a recommendation for an aggressive vaccination program that would prioritize children and pregnant women.
In his Nov. 7 letter to DeLauro, Redfield reiterated the vaccination recommendation: “CDC recommends that priority should be given to the screening and isolation of ill migrants, early antiviral treatment, and flu vaccinations for all staff. CDC further recommends influenza vaccination at the earliest feasible point of entry for all persons at least six months of age, which is in concurrence with our general influenza vaccine recommendations.”
Other health experts also have recommended vaccines for migrants detained by CBP, especially children. A group of physicians that reviewed autopsy reports of children who died in CBP custody made that recommendation in an August letter to DeLauro and others in Congress.
A new report from the Brookings Institution warns that risk factors such as lackluster sanitation, overcrowding and poor nutrition are creating a “perfect storm” of conditions in CBP detention facilities that could lead to severe outbreaks of the flu and other communicable diseases. The report recommends vaccinating detained migrants as a way of limiting outbreaks.
Robert Moore is a freelance journalist based in El Paso.
Trump’s White Nationalist “DUD” (“Detain Until Dead”) policy in action! Might also include in your Thanksgiving thoughts those abused under Trump’s “Let ‘Em Die in Mexico” program as well as those who will soon be “orbited” to potential harm or death under bogus “Dangerous Third Country Agreements.”
Will Markie “Fund My TGIF” Morgan and his fellow killers, child abusers, and human rights abusers at DHS ever be held accountable for their arrogant misdeeds in Trump’s service? Don’t count on it. But, removing this truly cruel, immoral, and otherwise horrible group of “kakistocrats” and their Supreme Leader in 2020 is both possible and necessary for the continued existence of our country and would be a service to the future of the human race.
Doesn’t mean it will happen; but, our nation might not survive if it doesn’t.
My colleague Judge Jeffrey Chase of our Roundtable of Former Immigration Judges reports some good news:
Also, for those of you who subscribe to Ben Winograd’s index of unpublished BIA Decisions, today’s update includes an unpublished decision dated Nov. 6, 2019, Matter of A-C-A-A- (single BM Ellen Liebowitz), affirming the IJ’s grant of asylum in a domestic violence case based on her cognizable PSG of “Salvadoran females.”The written decision of the IJ, Julie L. Nelson in SF, is also included.
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Thanks to those judges like Judge Nelson and Judge Liebowitz who are continuing to stand up for the rights of asylum seekers “post-A-B-.”
And, many thanks to Jeffrey & Ben for passing this good news along and for all they do for Due Process every day!
What if rather than the “A-B- atrocity” made precedent by unethical White Nationalist Jeff Sessions, we had an honest, independent Immigration Court system that encouraged fair and impartial adjudications and implemented asylum laws generously, as intended (see, e.g., INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca) by publishing precedent decisions like this recognizing the right to protection?
BIA precedents on asylum have intentionally been constructed in a negative manner, showing judges how to deny, rather than grant, protection and encouraging them to take a skewed anti-asylum view of the law. Even worse, bogus, unethical, legally incorrect “Attorney General precedents” are uniformly anti-asylum; the applicant never wins.
Some judges, like Judge Nelson and Judge Leibovitz, take their oaths of office seriously. But, too many others “go along to get along” with the unlawful and unethical “anti-asylum program” pushed by the White Nationalist Trump Regime.
Indeed, even during my tenure as an Immigration Judge, I remember being required to attend asylum “training” sessions (in years when we even had training) where litigating attorneys from the Office of Immigration Litigation basically made a presentation that should have been entitled “How to Deny Potentially Valid Asylum Claims And Have Them Stand Up On Judicial Review.”
It’s also past time for the Supremes and the Circuit Courts of Appeals to get their collective heads out of the clouds, start paying attention, begin doing their jobs and strongly rejecting “disingenuous deference” to bogus, illegal, unethical “precedents” rendered by politically biased enforcement hacks like Sessions and Barr who have unethically usurped the role of quasi-judicial adjudicator for which they are so clearly and spectacularly unqualified under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. It’s nothing short of “judicial fraud” by the Article IIIs! Constantly Confront Complicit Courts 4 Change!
With a more honest and legally correct favorable precedents on asylum, many more cases could be documented and granted at the Asylum Office and Immigration Court levels. The DHS would be discouraged from wasting court time by opposing meritorious applications. The backlog would start going down. There would be fewer appeals. Justice would be served. Worthy lives would be saved. DHS could stop harassing asylum seekers and start enforcing the laws in a fair and reasonable manner. America would lead the way in implementing humanitarian laws, and we would become a better country for it.
Help the New Due Process Army fight for a better, more just, future for America and the world.
A Federal Judge Orders Sweeping Changes To Bond Hearings In Boston Immigration Court
A federal judge in Boston ruled Wednesday that it’s unconstitutional for the federal government to place the burden of proof on undocumented immigrants in bond hearings. The decision from U.S. District Court Judge Patti Saris will usher in sweeping changes to the way bond hearings are administered in Boston immigration court.
Saris ruled that asking an undocumented immigrant who is eligible for bond to prove why they are neither a flight risk nor a threat to the community violates the individual’s due process.
Moving forward, the burden of proof will be placed instead on federal immigration officials, similar to how bond hearings are decided in criminal court proceedings. The ruling also mandated that immigration judges in Boston consider the individual’s ability to pay when setting a bond amount above $1,500. Saris additionally ordered immigration judges to consider alternative conditions to detention, like GPS monitoring and orders of supervision that require regular check-ins with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The ACLU of Massachusetts filed the class action suit in June arguing the government is constitutionally required to prove why an individual should be deprived of liberty.
With her ruling Wednesday, Judge Saris agreed with that argument. The ACLU estimated hundreds of immigrants detained in New England could be affected by the ruling, and, for some, the decision would result in new bond hearings.
In her ruling, Saris ordered the Boston immigration court to notify non-criminal immigrants currently in detention of her decision — both those individuals who have already received a bond hearing and those awaiting a bond hearing.
Additionally, Saris mandated the federal government identify and locate all eligible immigrants who already have received a bond hearing under the previous process and remain detained as a result.
Saris also agreed with an additional argument made by the ACLU in the case.
She ruled the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), the top court in the immigration system, also violated the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) with its 1999 decision, which switched the burden of proof in bond hearings to the detainee.
The APA provides guidelines for federal agencies when developing and issuing regulations, like allowing the public to comment on proposed changes and overall transparency in the rule-making process. It’s important to note that Saris’ consideration of the APA’s guidelines for the Board of Immigration Appeals could set a powerful precedent for others seeking to challenge similarly broad decisions.
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You can read Chief Judge Saris’s opinion in Brito v. Barr at the first link in the text of Shannon’s original article (go to link above). Her Due Process analysis is clear, logical, succinct, and straightforward. None of the legal gobbledygook and turgid prose too often used by the Supremes and Federal Appellate Judges struggling for ways to uphold Trump’s unconstitutional and illegal immigration agenda.
Indeed, it’s the type of clear Due Process analysis that could and should have been applied long ago to hold the entire Immigration Court system unconstitutional because it is run by a biased prosecutor who controls the judges and can change results. This is clear violation of the Due Process requirement for a fundamentally fair process for determining deportability that must provide a fair and impartial decision maker. End of decision.
Interestingly, the 1999 BIA precedent rejected by Chief Judge Saris, Matter of Adeniji, 22 I&N Dec. 1122 (BIA 1999) was decided while I was BIA Chair. I actually dissented. However, my dissent did not challenge the burden or standard of proof – just its misapplication by my colleagues in the particular case then before us.
Unfortunately, this great decision only applies within the jurisdiction of the Boston Immigration Court right now. But, it’s certainly something that the New Due Process Army can build upon in the future!
Jared Kushner’s New Big Boy Job: Building Trump’s Wall
First order of business: Seize all the private land.
When we last checked in about the progress of Donald Trump’s fantasy border wall, things were not going super well in that very little of it had actually been built. Plagued by logistical issues—not to mention opposition by the majority of Americans—as of last month the administration had reportedly acquired only 16% of the land it needs in Texas, where at least 100 landowners will have to give up valuable property for the project to happen. That news was presumably of little bother to the millions of people who think the border wall is a patently absurd, wildly racist, completely pointless monument to Trump’s ego, but for the president it was completely unacceptable. So, insistent that he will deliver the fence by the end of 2020 as a gift to his rabid base, he’s brought in the big guns: Jared Kushner.
Yes, in addition to his 387 other jobs at the White House, which include bringing peace to the Middle East, solving the opioid crisis, “fixing the government with business ideas,” reforming veteran care, and overhauling the entire immigration system, the first son-in-law is the “de facto project manager” for constructing the border wall, according to a new report from the Washington Post. What big ideas has he come up with so far? Well, where government officials have been resistant to the president’s “take the land” edict, wherein he thinks using eminent domain to seize private land will go over great both legally and politically, Jared is all for it. Once a slumlord, always aslumlord!
According to one person involved in the matter, Kushner has “annoyed” officials due to his total lack of knowledge of the government’s procurement process for obtaining land and the “realities” of the project. “So he took a much more hands-on role in figuring out, mile by mile, how to get more wall up,” this person told the Post. “It didn’t help put wall up faster and cheaper. His interventions actually just created more inefficiency in the process.”
While Kushner insists that everything is on target to meet the goal of 450 miles by the end of next year—a pace that means accelerating construction at least fourfold—to date just 83 miles of new barrier have been completed, with nearly all of that classified by CBP as “replacement wall,” a characterization the president does not appreciate:
Though Kushner has blamed his predecessors for not moving quickly enough to obtain necessary land, a former Department of Homeland Security official told the Post the reason for that was this little thing called the law. “We weren’t taking people’s land willy-nilly,” said the official.
The White House declined to comment; Kushner’s allies in the administration say he is bringing private sector know-how to the project, which is a bit worrisome given his track recordinthe private sector.
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Imagine what we could do if the time and money spent on these political gimmicks were redirected to humane, practical immigration enforcement that complied with laws and Due Process.Gee, we might actually solve problems instead of making them worse and unnecessarily creating new ones.
Also, remember that there was a time when the GOP claimed to stand for the “sanctity of private property.” But, that was then; this is now.
Judge halts Trump’s insurance mandate for immigrants
A federal judge in Oregon blocked President Donald Trump’s bid to deny immigrants visas unless they buy health insurance within 30 days of entering the country or otherwise show they can cover their medical costs.
U.S. District Court Judge Michael Simon issued an order on Tuesday to stop the State Department from enforcing a policy that officials unveiled in late October under a mandate from President Donald Trump, and which could drastically curtail the ability of people to legally migrate to the United States.
Simon noted that the requirement that immigrants buy unsubsidized insurance — meaning they couldn’t get financial assistance through Obamacare — barred poor people from entering the country, which he said clearly infringed on the law.
“The proclamation is anticipated to affect approximately 60 percent of all immigrant visa applicants,” the judge wrote. “The president offers no national security or foreign relations justification for this sweeping change in immigration law.”
Simon agreed with plaintiffs, including U.S. citizens and their overseas family members as well as the non-profit Latino Network, that the rule violated the Constitution’s separation of powers. His decision applies nationwide.
Immigration officials could have begun enforcing the requirement on Dec. 1. The administration is expected to appeal.
Simon, a Barack Obama appointee, had already temporarily blocked the policy from taking effect early this month, saying there was sufficient concern about the legality of the new requirements to merit a delay, particularly since the administration didn’t use a standard public comment period for the new rules.
The plaintiffs argued the sweeping nature of the executive action showed an attempt “to rewrite our country’s immigration laws and fundamentally shift the balance of power between the branches of government.”
The policy originated with a proclamation Trump issued on Oct. 4 that cast confusion and uncertainty onto the immigrant community and raised immediate concerns it could be unworkable. In the original order, Trump laid out the parameters for the types of health insurance legal immigrants could buy as a condition for getting a visa.
They wouldn’t be able to use federal subsidies to buy coverage on Obamacare exchanges, but could buy short-term insurance plans the administration has promoted that are cheaper but only offer barebone coverage.
That latter option layered Trump’s tough immigration policies on top of the fight over short-term plans. Democrat-led states including New York and California — which happen to draw a large share of immigrants — have banned the sale of such plans.
The plaintiffs also argued that since short-term plans leave people underinsured, the directive is undermining its own stated goal of cutting some of the uncompensated care costs from the U.S. health care system.
They also estimated the State Department through the policy would bar up to 375,000 people who could otherwise legally enter the country, shrinking the annual number of legal immigrants by nearly two-thirds.
The administration contends the criticisms are overblown and that the policy wouldn’t affect all legal immigrants, such as parents coming to the country to reunite with their children or vice versa.
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Of course Trump’s intent was to invidiously discriminate against immigrants of color and the poor. Of course, that’s unconstitutional. It’s not rocket science! It’s not even very complicated constitutional law.
But, then again, Trump’s “Muslim Ban,” his rewriting of asylum statutes, and his misappropriation of funds for hisborder wall stunt were also clearly unconstitutional. That didn’t seem to bother the Supreme’s GOP majority a bit in their “race to roll over for the Trump Regime.”After all, as Trump and his chump Solicitor General Noel Francisco keep not too subtly reminding the “Gang of Five,” they are “bought and paid for” and expected to perform as Regime toadies. Most of the time, they get the message.
So far, the Supremes and many Circuit Courts have lacked the guts and integrity to stand up consistently and powerfully to theTrump Regime’s attacks on our Constitution and humanity.
They apparently think that they are above the fray, particularly when the rights of the most vulnerable and defenseless are involved. But, maybe they are wrong. Perhaps, when Trump has finished eradicating constitutional norms and imposed his unique form of authoritarian dysfunction on our nation, these “robed wondermen” will be refugees along with the rest of us.
Nobody that I’ve ever met expects or wants to be a refugee. It can happen to anyone, at any time, no matter how fat, content, above the fray, and complicit you might be in your current position. Disturbingly, a majority of our very highest judges appear to lack the human perspective, historical knowledge, decency, courage, and empathy to see themselves in the position of those whose legal rights they abuse in Trump’s behalf. They certainly try hard not to understand the situation of refugees and migrants.
Yes, we want fair and impartial judges (something the Supremes have conveniently overlooked in dealing with the Immigration Courts). But, we don’t want or need judges who are detached from or indifferent to humanity and human suffering. After all, our laws are made by humans to regulate human conduct. When detached from its human roots and consequences, it becomes a tool for disorder and tyranny.
Exclusive: Trump’s top border official broke FBI rules to fund happy hours
By Tal Kopan
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s top border official broke federal ethics rules in a previous job by seeking sponsors to buy alcohol and fancy food for FBI happy hours, according to a watchdog report exclusively obtained by The Chronicle.
Mark Morgan, acting commissioner of the Customs and Border Protection agency, continued asking the outside entities to pay for the social events even after being warned it was against federal rules, the Justice Department’s inspector general found.
The previously unreported finding raises questions about the Trump administration’s vetting process for top officials. Although Morgan’s role is typically subject to Senate confirmation, Trump has not nominated him for the job. That has circumvented the traditional review by the Senate — leaving it unclear whether the ethical lapse was ever known to the administration.
Customs and Border Protection and Morgan declined to comment. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The violations occurred when Morgan was working at the FBI in 2015 as deputy assistant director of the training division, according to the inspector general’s report. Midway through the investigation in the summer of 2016, Morgan retired from the FBI and was named under then-President Barack Obama to head the Border Patrol. He declined to cooperate with the probe after that, the report said.
Let’s see. Morgan is the racist charlatan who claimed that he could identify a future gang member just by “looking in their eyes.”He was also an enthusiastic supporter of Trump’s threatened (but never fully implemented) “reign of terror” directed against families in ethnic communities. And, of course, as acting CBP Honcho, he encourages and presides over parts of the “New American Gulag,” “Let ‘Em Die in Mexico,” and other human rights violations every day.
Plus, Morgan is as dim as he is evil if he considers government ethics advice to be “mere suggestions.” But, of course, when funding of a TGIF is on the line, why not “push the envelope.” He does exhibit the arrogance and disregard for the rules that apply to others that is a hallmark of the Trump Regime’s Kakistocracy.
However, it’s also significant that this information was available when Obama appointed Morgan Border Patrol Chief. Lots of today’s gross abuses by the Trump Regime have their roots in the Obama Administration’s overall poor, often uninformed, and sometimes negligent approach to immigration issues.
Travesties like “family detention,” “insider-only” hiring at the Immigration Courts and the BIA, absolutist positions on indefinite detention, defense of “toddlers representing themselves” in Immigration Court, and use of “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” at the Immigration Courts in support of inappropriate and unethical “enforcement goals” all helped create unnecessary disorder and inhumanity in the already poorly functioning system.
Obama had a golden chance both to resolve Dreamers and create an Article I Immigration Court at the beginning of his Administration with badly needed, straightforward statutory reforms. Instead, by putting all of his attention on healthcare, to the exclusion of other pressing humanitarian problems, he more or less insured the later “weaponization” of the Immigration Courts, the creation and expansion of the “New American Gulag,” and holding “Dreamers” hostage.
If Obama had taken bold action in 2009, many of the “original Dreamers” would be fully integrated into our society and on their way to citizenship and full participation in our political process by now. Instead, they are being “hung out to dry” by Trump, the GOP, and likely the Supremes. A generation of American youth is being denied the opportunity to contribute and achieve their full potential in the United States.
And, think of how a “real” independent Immigration Court system, with a diverse judiciary with true immigration, human rights, and due process expertise, might have dealt with Trump’s consistent legal overreach on immigration and asylum issues. Indeed, while the Immigration Court backlog might not have been eliminated by an Article I Court, I’ll be it would be considerably less than it is now with an independent court where judges, not enforcement-driven bureaucrats, are in charge of managing their own dockets.
Obviously, we can’t change the past. But, we certainly can avoid repeating its mistakes in the future. Something to consider when looking at Democratic Presidential contenders.
Immigration court backlog has nearly doubled under Trump
November 25, 2019 05:00 PM EST
The nation’s backlog of active immigration court cases has surpassed the 1 million mark and has nearly doubled since President Donald Trump took office, a new analysis shows. In Ohio, 12,851 cases are pending in Cleveland’s immigration court, which includes Columbus-area cases. That’s up from 3,295 in 2009.
While most people might look a few weeks into the future when scheduling appointments for work, Amy Bittner has put court dates on her calendar for 2022.
The Columbus-based immigration lawyer already knows she’ll have to make the 280-mile round trip to Cleveland to represent a client at a hearing in three years.
“The backlog is a victim of this administration’s priorities. There did not used to be this backlog,” Bittner said.
Nationwide, the backlog has almost doubled, from 542,411 pending cases when President Donald Trump took office in January 2017 to just over 1 million as of Sept. 30, according to an October report by TRAC, a Syracuse Universityclearinghouse that gathers and analyzes immigration data from government agencies.
In Ohio, 12,851 cases are pending in Cleveland Immigration Court, the state’s only such court. That is up significantly from 3,295 in 2009. It’s also double the 6,184 in 2016.
Hearings are scheduled in the Cleveland court through Dec. 30, 2022.
Trump administration policies have not helped temper the rise in the country’s immigration court backlog, the TRAC report says.
Austin Kocher, a faculty fellow at TRAC and an Ohio State alumnus , said such backlogs result when “the government focuses concern on immigrants and puts enforcement ahead of due process and civil rights.”
“Very little resources actually go to the immigration court system and judges” compared with enforcement efforts, Kocher said.
Although the judges in northeastern Ohio stay busy, the backlog at Cleveland’s immigration court isn’t the worst in the country. In areas such as New York, Chicago and Philadelphia, immigrants are waiting an average of 1,450 days, or just under four years, to see a judge.
Part of the reason for the backlog, TRAC says, is that then-U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions in May 2018 ordered the nation’s immigration judges to end their practice of removing cases from their dockets without issuing decisions. That resulted in formerly closed cases being reopened, according to TRAC.
“The decision to reopen previously closed cases has single-handedly exacerbated the immigration court crisis, yet it has not received sufficient attention,” the TRAC report states. “This single policy decision has caused a much greater increase in the court’s backlog than have all currently pending cases from families and individuals arrested along the southwest border seeking asylum.”
Others blamed the delays in part on one of Trump’s earliest executive orders, from January 2017, when he made every immigrant who was in the country illegally a priority for deportation. The norm had been to prioritize those who had committed crimes.
“It is a senseless waste of taxpayer money to attempt to remove people who are not criminals and who are well-integrated into our community,” Bittner, the Columbus immigration lawyer, told The Dispatch in an email.
The backlog has grown despite the Trump administration having given the immigration courts “the greatest amount of resources,” said Judge Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, a union.
The nation has 442 immigration judges, according to TRAC. Although about 220 judges have been hired in the past three years, about 100 others have left, Tabaddor said. She said that many of those who have left have expressed feeling like the Trump administration doesn’t allow them to do their jobs properly while adding quotas and micromanaging their work.
Each judge has about 2,000 cases, according to TRAC.
In 2016, when Cleveland’s immigration court had three judges, Bittner went to the court only twice. Now it has six judges, and she goes more than once a month.
Hiring more judges hasn’t fixed the backlog, Bittner said.
“It is very frustrating because justice delayed is justice denied, and while foreign nationals wait years for the adjudication of their cases, they are putting down roots here and having families, which makes removal from the United States even crueler if their case is ultimately denied,” Bittner wrote in the email.
She said some of her clients are grateful for the wait because they have more time to build a life here. Others, however, are frustrated, Bittner said, because they feel that they are constantly in limbo, and once they’ve built a life, it could all come crashing down when their day in court finally arrives.
A few of her clients who had waited years to make their asylum case in the U.S. court left for Canada instead, hoping things would go more smoothly up north.
“It just seems to be getting worse,” Bittner said.
Actually, this article significantly understates the true scope of the backlog. Because, as noted in the article, in Castro-Tum, Sessions unethically, mindlessly, and unlawfully created a situation that, if not halted by the Congress or the Appellate Courts (note the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has “just said no” to Session’s bogus ruling), will require that over 300,000 low priority, properly “administratively closed” cases be restored to the docket. They vast majority of these are (absurdly) themselves backlogged, “awaiting re-docketing” (more than a clerical process in the antiquated, non-automated, paper heavy Immigration Courts). That makes the total backlog well over 1.4 million and still growing every day.” “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” at its worst!
And, because of the almost guaranteed legal and quality control problems with the Regime’s “cutting corners to deny due process” approach, many of these will end up in the Circuit Courts of Appeals in a condition that requires “return to sender.”
It doesn’t take a legal scholar or much of a judge to recognize that today’s Immigration “Courts” being run by biased, maliciously incompetent DOJ prosecutors don’t satisfy the basic requirement for “fair and impartial adjudications” to conform to Fifth Amendment Due Process. Moreover, the incompetent, “bad faith” mis-management of the Immigration Courts basically “throws garbage” into the higher courts and precludes effective, timely judicial review.
The solution: recognize that this travesty is unconstitutional and require a court-approved “special master” to run the Immigration Courts in place of the DOJ until Congress fixes the glaring Due Process and court management problems with an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court as recommended by almost all experts!
We also must remember the DOJ’s & EOIR’s concerted White Nationalist attacks on foreign nationals and their legal and Due Process rights in the Immigration Courts is also a vicious, unprovoked assault on the courageous attorneys representing the most vulnerable among us and trying, against the odds, to make the system function for everyone’s good. By failing to aid and support “officers of the court” in this dire situation, the Federal Judiciary basically undermines our entire justice system and brings it into disrepute!
It was never about protecting the border, rule of law or the U.S. economy. And it was never about “illegal” immigration, for that matter.
Trump’s anti-immigrant bigotry was always just anti-immigrant bigotry.
There’s no other way to explain the Trump administration’s latest onslaught against foreigners of all kinds, regardless of their potential economic contributions, our own international commitments or any given immigrant’s propensity to follow the law. Trump’s rhetoric may focus on “illegals,” but recent data releases suggest this administration has been blocking off every available avenue for legal immigration, too.
Last month, the number of refugees admitted to the United States hit zero. That’s the first month on record this has ever happened, according to data going back nearly three decades from both the State Department and World Relief, a faith-based resettlement organization.
So what happened?
The problem wasn’t that the 26-million-strong global refugee population lacked a single person who met America’s strict screening requirements. No, our admissions flatlined because Trump announced and then delayed signing a new refugee ceiling for the 2020 fiscal year. This delay led to a complete moratorium on admissions.
Hundreds of flights were canceled for approved refugees who had waited years or decades to come — once again, legally — to our shining city on a hill. As the moratorium dragged on, some refugees’ eligibility expired. At least four were minors who have now turned 18. This means they’ve aged out of the resettlement program they were accepted under and now must get back in line, perhaps indefinitely, to reapply under a different system as adults.
By the way, when Trump finally did sign off on that new fiscal 2020 refugee ceiling, it was for a mere 18,000 admissions. That too is an all-time low. The Trump administration has also thrown up other roadblocks for refugees, such as allowing states and localities to veto any resettlements within their borders. (This policy is being challenged in court.)
Trump supporters might argue that, whatever our moral obligations to the world’s destitute and desperate, the president is merely keeping immigrants out to protect our economy.
They are wrong.
The Trump administration’s own research — which it attempted to suppress — found that refugees are a net positive for the U.S. economy and government budgets. That is, over the course of a decade, refugees pay more in taxes than they receive in public benefits.
The Trump administration is also turning away categories of legal would-be immigrants who are historically admitted because they are economically valuable.
Last week, for instance, we learned that enrollment of new international students has fallen more than 10 percent over the past three years, according to the Institute of International Education.
This is a shame. Higher education has been one of our most successful industries, adding $45 billion to the U.S. economy last year alone. International students spend money in the local economies where they study — on lodging, food, books, entertainment. They are also more likely to pay full freight in tuition. This means they cross-subsidize American students, especially in states where public education funding has fallen.
International students are also more likely to major in high-demand STEM fields, providing U.S. employers with a pipeline of talent that supports the jobs of native-born Americans.
New international student enrollment is declining for a number of reasons, including high tuition and fear of campus gun violence. But the barrier most frequently cited by universities lately is problems with the visa-application process. Meanwhile, other developed countries, such as Canada and Australia, are poaching students who might otherwise have contributed their talents here.
These are hardly the only signs we’re discouraging or denying legions of desirable and legal would-be immigrants.
Denial rates for H-1B visas — awarded to high-skilled workers — have more than doubled since Trump took office, according to tabulations from National Foundation for American Policy. Processing delays for citizenship applications have doubled. Naturalization and visa fees have skyrocketed.
Meanwhile, when families apply for their legal right to asylum at the border, we tell them to await processing in Mexico, in a region so dangerous that Americans are instructed not to visit. (“Violent crime, such as murder, armed robbery, carjacking, kidnapping, extortion, and sexual assault, is common,” the State Department website advises.)
There, asylum seekers live outdoors, in filthy, flooded, freezing tents. Agonized parents send sick and frostbitten toddlers to cross into the U.S. alone, because they fear they’ll die waiting in Mexico.
And if these desperate families don’t like living in squalor, we tell them they should just return home, get in line and apply through another legal route into the United States. Perhaps as refugees, students or workers.
As though there were still such routes to be found.
It’s institutionalized hate, racism, sexism, lawlessness, and cruelty.
One of the worst things is that’s it’s basically enabled by Federal Appellate Courts who see the same problems as many U.S. District Judge do, but “go along to get along” by “normalizing” Trump’s disgraceful racist behavior and “deferring” to pretextual Executive actions that are merely facades for a dishonest, illegal, and unconstitutional White Nationalist agenda. Sort of reminds me of the bogus “separate but equal” doctrine of judicial cowardice.
Apparently, too many life-tenured Article IIIs in the ivory tower think that they and their privileged circles will escape the gratuitous harm being inflicted on our nation and on vulnerable individuals by a scofflaw executive. Certainly, not unlike the enabling white male judges and Supreme Court Justices who “looked the other way” and thereby enabled Jim Crow regimes to corruptly use our legal system to disenfranchise, murder, oppress, and otherwise abuse African American citizens.
Where has judicial courage among the higher levels of our Federal Judiciary gone?
IN THE TWO YEARS AND 308 DAYS THAT DONALD Trump has been president, he has constructed zero miles of wall along the southern border of the United States. He has, to be fair, replaced or reinforced 76 miles of existing fence and signed it with a sharpie. A private group has also built a barrier less than a mile long with some help from Steve Bannon and money raised on GoFundMe. But along the 2,000 miles from Texas to California, there is no blockade of unscalable steel slats in heat-retaining matte black, no electrified spikes, no moat and no crocodiles. The animating force of Trump’s entire presidency—the idea that radiated a warning of dangerous bigotry to his opponents and a promise of unapologetic nativism to his supporters—will never be built in the way he imagined.
And it doesn’t matter. In the two years and 308 days that Donald Trump has been president, his administration has constructed far more effective barriers to immigration. No new laws have actually been passed. This transformation has mostly come about through subtle administrative shifts—a phrase that vanishes from an internal manual, a form that gets longer, an unannounced revision to a website, a memo, a footnote in a memo. Among immigration lawyers, the cumulative effect of these procedural changes is known as the invisible wall.
In the two years after Trump took office, denials for H1Bs, the most common form of visa for skilled workers, more than doubled. In the same period, wait times for citizenship also doubled, while average processing times for all kinds of visas jumped by 46 percent, even as the quantity of applications went down. In 2018, the United States added just 200,000 immigrants to the population, a startling 70 percent less than the year before.
Before Trump was elected, there was virtually no support within either party for policies that make it harder for foreigners to come here legally. For decades, the Republican consensus has favored tough border security along with high levels of legal immigration. The party’s small restrictionist wing protested from the margins, but it was no match for a pro-immigration coalition encompassing business interests, unions and minority groups. In 2013, then-Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions introduced an amendment that would have lowered the number of people who qualified for green cards and work visas. It got a single vote in committee—his own. As a former senior official at the Department of Homeland Security observed, “If you told me these guys would be able to change the way the U.S. does immigration in two years, I would have laughed.”
. . . .
In November, Cuccinelli was promoted to DHS deputy acting secretary. Kathy Nuebel Kovarik became acting deputy at USCIS and Robert Law, the former FAIR lobbyist, ascended to the head of the policy office. The agency has promised a new flurry of major policy changes before the end of the year. And in what is perhaps the purest expression of the administration’s intentions so far, it started sending Central American asylum seekers to Guatemala with no access to an attorney, no review by an immigration court, far away from the border infrastructure of activists and reporters and lawyers or any form of help at all.
IT’S EASY ENOUGH TO BELIEVE THAT BECAUSE NONE of the Trump administration’s reforms are entrenched in law, they can be overturned as quickly as they were introduced. And yet even though, in theory, the policy memos can all be withdrawn, the “sheer number of both significant and less significant changes is overwhelming,” said Jaddou, the former USCIS chief counsel. “It will take an ambitious plan over a series of years to undo it all.” Formal regulations, like the third-country asylum rule and public charge rule, if it succeeds, will be especially hard to unravel.
The institutional implications run deeper. The backlog of delayed cases will likely take several years to get under control. The administration has promoted six judges with some of the highest asylum denial rates to the Justice Department’s immigration appeals court, including one who threatened to set a dog on a 2-year-old child for failing to be quiet in his courtroom. Those appointments are permanent.
The refugee program, too, will take years to rebuild. The plunge in admissions caused a plunge in funding to the nine resettlement agencies, which have closed more than 100 offices around the country since 2016. That’s a third of their capacity, according to a report by Refugees Council USA. “The whole infrastructure is deteriorating,” said Rodriguez, the former USCIS director. Because the application process is so lengthy, even if a new administration raises refugee admissions on day one, it would take as long as five years before increased numbers of people actually make it to the United States. Consider that in January 2017, the State Department briefly paused in-bound flights for refugees who had finally made it through the gauntlet of health, security and other checks. As of this summer, some of those refugees were still waiting to leave. While the flights were grounded, they missed the two-month window during which all of their documents were current. When one document expires, it can take months to replace, causing others to expire and trapping the refugee in what the report called “a domino effect of expiring validity periods.”
Even harder to repair is the culture shift within USCIS. New visa adjudicators will remain in their jobs long after the political appointees have gone—kings and queens of their own offices. Employees who were promoted for their skeptical inclinations will stay in those positions, setting priorities for subordinates. The multitude of changes at USCIS are the product of an administration that regards immigration as its political lifeblood. There’s no guarantee—or indication—that any of the potential Democratic nominees would apply the same obsessive zeal to overturning them.
Back in 1924, Johnson-Reed’s supporters never anticipated the Holocaust, and yet they expanded its horrors. We don’t know where our own future is headed, but we live in a time of metastasizing instability. Last year, the United Nations’ official tally of refugees passed 70 million, the highest since World War II. Mass migrations, whether because of violence or inequality or environmental calamity or some murky blend of factors that don’t conveniently fit existing laws, are the reality and challenge of our era. There aren’t any easy solutions. But already, what started as a series of small, obscure administrative changes is resulting in unthinkable cruelty. If left to continue, it will, in every sense, redefine what it means to be American.
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Read Rachel’s entire, much longer, article at the link.
Building Due Process and fundamental fairness is a painstaking incremental process that takes years, sometimes decades, to achieve. Destroying it can happen basically overnight.
This should never have happened if the Supremes had stood up to the Administration’s unconstitutional, factually bogus, racist, religiously targeted “Travel Ban” instead of green-lighting the return of “Jim Crow 2” under a clearly pretextual and fabricated “national security” facade. Judicial complicity and task avoidance enables cruelty and the destruction of democratic institutions (including, ultimately, the independent judiciary). That’s why the “New Due Process Army” is in it for the long run!
Constantly Confront Complicit Courts 4 Change!
Due Process Forever. White Nationalism Never! Complicit Courts Never!
The White House has directed the Department of Homeland Security to implement a deal to send asylum-seekers to Honduras by January, the second in a series of controversial agreements made with Central American countries to deport immigrants seeking protection at the southern border, according to a government document obtained by BuzzFeed News.
Implementing the agreement has been met with a series of issues that appear to be complicating the January deadline. The deal with Honduras was initially signed in September — at the time, agency officials did not provide many specific details about its implementation — and is part of the Trump administration’s strategy to deter asylum-seekers from coming to the US border.
Critics say the Trump administration is forcing people who are fleeing violence and poverty to go back to countries in what’s known as the Northern Triangle that have weak asylum systems and are unable to protect their own people, let alone immigrants.
Last week, DHS officials implemented a similar agreement to send adult asylum-seekers picked up in the El Paso area who are from Honduras and El Salvador to Guatemala.
In October, DHS officials traveled to Honduras to discuss details about implementing the unprecedented plan, called the Asylum Cooperative Agreement (ACA), according to briefing materials drawn up for acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf and obtained by BuzzFeed News.
The discussions in Honduras appear to have hit a few roadblocks. First, Honduran officials requested that no one convicted or accused of a felony crime be sent to their country, a proposal that was seen by DHS officials as “operationally unfeasible given the expedited nature of the removals.”
They also wanted asylum-seekers to “manifest their conformity,” or express their agreement, to being transferred — something DHS officials recommended rejecting or clarifying because it was “not legally or operationally feasible.”
And third, Honduras wanted transfers to start only once both countries “provided notification that they have complied with the legal and institutional conditions necessary for proper implementation of this agreement.” But privately, DHS officials viewed that request as an attempt to get out of the deal if they wanted to.
“This reads as GOH’s escape-hatch not to implement the ACA given its lack of ‘institutional conditions’ or as the hook to demand more assistance” from the US or non-governmental organizations, the officials wrote.
The Central American country also wanted a definition of what would constitute a “public interest” exemption to deporting someone to Honduras. The vague exemption is also being used in the plan to deport asylum-seekers from El Salvador and Honduras to Guatemala.
But in their recommendation to Wolf, DHS officials said the request should be rejected since “it gives the US government more operational flexibility not to define what we consider the ‘public interest exemption’ for when we chose not to remove an alien pursuant to the ACA.’”
DHS officials have previously said that more than 71% of those apprehended at the southern border in the 2019 fiscal year were from Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador.
Honduras had a homicide rate of 40 per 100,000 people in 2017, while Guatemala’s was 22.4 per 100,000 inhabitants, among the highest in the Western Hemisphere, according to InSight Crime.
The “third country”-like agreements with Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, paired with policies that force asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico for the duration of their cases in the US and a rule that bars asylum for people who cross through Mexico to get to the southern border, would nearly close off the US to people fleeing persecution in Central America.
The functional end of U.S. refugee and asylum laws without any participation from Congress which had enshrined them in statute will go down as one of the most disgraceful and cowardly acts of a disintegrating republic now ruled by a White Nationalist regime.
ProPublica: A federal judge ruled Tuesday that migrants couldn’t be barred from asylum under a regulation that came out while they were waiting at the U.S.-Mexico border. The administration appears to be dragging its feet in complying.
USCIS issued policy guidance on the application of Matter of Stockwell, clarifying when USCIS may adjust the status of an individual whose Conditional Permanent Resident (CPR) status has been terminated. An immigration judge does not need to affirm the termination of CPR status before the individual can file a new adjustment of status application. This guidance applies to adjustment of status applications filed with USCIS on or after 11/21/19. Comments are due by 12/5/19. AILA Doc. No. 19112190
Intercept: A jury found Scott Warren not guilty in the government’s second attempt to lock him up for providing humanitarian aid on the border in Arizona.
AP: The lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union recounts the experiences of the freelance photographers and seeks to test the limits of U.S. officials’ broad authority to question anyone, including journalists, entering the country.
ImmProf: The Supreme Court has agreed to take up United States v. Sineneng-Smith this term, a case that concerns a little-used provision of immigration law that forbids “encourag[ing] or induc[ing] an alien to … reside in the United States” when the encourager knows that person has no legal status.
Pursuant to 8 C.F.R. §1003.1(h)(1)(i), I direct the Board of Immigration Appeals (“Board”) to refer this case to me for review of its decision. The Board’s decision in this matter is automatically stayed pending my review. See Matter of Haddam, A.G. Order No. 2380-2001 (Jan. 19, 2001). To assist me, I invite the parties and interested amici to submit briefs that address whether an alien who has been convicted of a criminal offense necessarily has been convicted of an aggravated felony for purposes of 8 U.S.C. §1227(a)(2)(A)(iii), where all of the elements of the underlying statute of conviction, and thus all of the means of committing the offense, correspond either to an aggravated felony theft offense, as defined in 8 U.S.C. §1101(a)(43)(G), or to an aggravated felony fraud offense, as defined in 8 U.S.C. §1101(a)(43)(M)(i).
DHS published a copy in the Federal Register of the Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Republic of Guatemala on Cooperation Regarding the Examination of Protection Claims, which was signed on 7/26/19. (84 FR 64095, 11/20/19)
EOIR issued PM 20-04, with guidelines regarding new regulations providing for the implementation of the Asylum Cooperative Agreements. Guidance is effective as of 11/19/19 and applies to individuals who arrive at U.S. ports of entry, or enter, or attempt to enter on or after 11/19/19. AILA Doc. No. 19112036
EOIR issued PM 20-03 memorializing EOIR’s policy regarding child advocates appointed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services under the TVPRA of 2008, stating that this authority only exists for “child trafficking victims and other vulnerable unaccompanied alien children,” not for all UACs. AILA Doc. No. 19112035
USCIS updated the USCIS Policy Manual regarding the Special Immigrant Juvenile classification to incorporate recent clarifications made in three adopted AAO decisions. Clarifications are effective immediately and apply to cases pending on or filed on or after 11/19/19. Comments are due by 12/3/19. AILA Doc. No. 19111932
EOIR final rule exempting the “OCAHO Case Management System” system of records from certain provisions of the Privacy Act. The rule is effective 12/23/19. (84 FR 64198, 11/21/19) AILA Doc. No. 19112130
So many ways to screw migrants out of their rights and lives. So many unethical government officials doing it. So many Article III Judges looking the other way.
Donald Trump’s friend, lawyer and mentor Roy Cohn had an adage: “F— the law,” he liked to say, according to a new book by attorney James D. Zirin. “Who’s the judge?” He meant that, although idealists might imagine that the courts were august and impartial, the judiciary was in fact made up of people who could be bullied or bamboozled or bought off. To Cohn, politics was a brutal and unfair game, and the law was just an extension of politics, with extra paperwork. If you understood that, he believed, you could get a huge head start on the idealists.
For a young Trump, this was a foundational lesson, according to Zirin. In his book “Plaintiff in Chief: A Portrait of Donald Trump in 3,500 Lawsuits,” Zirin argues that Trump learned to see the law as Cohn did: “not as a system of rules to be obeyed . . . but as a potent weapon to be used against his adversaries.” Trump sued often but rarely won big. Winning in court wasn’t always the point: The lawsuit itself was the thing, a tool of intimidation cloaked in legalese, an outgoing missile that left your enemies buried in costs and hassle. That approach had costs for Trump, too. But he could bear them. He lost friends, wives, lawyers and business partners — but always found new ones, who thought their fate would be different.
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Go to the link to read the rest of the review.
Trump has betrayed his country and everyone around him. His “skill” is that he keeps his gang of gullible GOP sycophants believing that he will treat them differently from everyone else, right up to the time of the final betrayal.
Anytime the word “law” comes out of Trump’s mouth or is uttered by one of his sycophants, you can be sure that a stream of outrageous lies is about to follow.
It’s also worth remembering that the entire Jim Crow Era was cloaked in a bogus use of the “rule of law” and BS about “states’ rights” while the “justice” system, including many morally and intellectually corrupt “judges” and “prosecutors” at all levels, were “weaponizing” the law to deny the Constitutional and human rights of African-American citizens!
